'Voted to slow Wales down and stifle the economy'

MS for North Wales

The time is here for the Welsh Government’s default 20mph speed limit. Sunday September 17th saw the start of this hugely significant change on roads up and down Wales.

I have been strongly campaigning against this since the beginning, and I have heard from so many people across Wrexham, Flintshire and the rest of North Wales who oppose this disastrous policy.

It is a policy cooked up in the minds of those Labour politicians who sit in ivory towers down in Cardiff. However you slice it, this is a bad policy. The Welsh Government’s own figures point to the economy in Wales taking a monstrous £4.5 billion hit. Additionally, a study by leading Universities including Cambridge found that reducing speed limits from 30mph to 20mph actually has “little impact” on safety.

When I ran a survey in Buckley, which the Welsh Government used as a trial location, 97% of the respondents said they didn’t want this default 20mph imposed on them. Those people at the sharp end, who have direct experience of this, absolutely do not want it! Even the Deputy Minister for Transport commented negatively on the process, even saying “we got it wrong”. It remains to be seen what Cardiff Labour learned from that experience.

In the Welsh Parliament, my Conservative colleagues and I gave the Labour Cardiff Government and their junior allies in Plaid Cymru a final chance to ditch this blanket 20mph once and for all. We put forward a debate for them to repeal this policy with immediate effect.

I sincerely hoped they would take this opportunity to fix their historic mistake. Unfortunately, they voted to slow Wales down and stifle the economy, totally ignoring what the people of Wales want.

If you have any queries or issues, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can contact me by emailing sam.rowlands@senedd.wales or calling on 0300 200 7267.