Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 7 March 2017.
Andrew RT Davies
Conservative
1:49,
7 March 2017
Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. First Minister, today there’s this startling news that five people a week are dying in Wales—five people a day, sorry, dying in Wales—because of air pollution. This is a frightening figure that my colleague David Melding has raised many times in this Chamber, and the Welsh Conservatives led a debate on this in July. Many communities will rightly be looking to the Welsh Government to try to understand what measures the Government will be taking to improve air quality through the lifetime of this Assembly? I’d be grateful if you could give us some understanding of the action that the Welsh Government is taking to make sure that communities such as those in Caerphilly county borough that are cited in the ‘Week In Week Out’ programme today can take comfort and see real improvement.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The Conservatives are a centre-right political party in the UK, founded in the 1830s. They are also known as the Tory party.
With a lower-case ‘c’, ‘conservative’ is an adjective which implies a dislike of change, and a preference for traditional values.
