The Welsh Conservatives in particular have been relentless in their opposition to the 20mph policy since they came in (though as you will remember they were widely in favour of it previously). You might say it is their flagship policy. When it comes to Reform, they have barely said anything about Wales and 20mph is the only meaningful Welsh-specific policy I can find about them except vague statements about reopening coal mines (scrapping the Nation of Sanctuary doesn’t count as it is totally insignificant from a financial perspective).

Andrew Davies previously supported the 20mph limit

If either party are actually serious about governing in Wales and improving the lives of people here, one would hope they would have given thought to one of the few policies they actually have. So let’s assess!

What would “scrapping 20mph” actually mean?

Though ditching the 20mph limit might sound like a simple thing, in reality it really wouldn’t be. Since it was introduced in September 2023 it has reduced casualties by a third and saved £43m in just its first year. It has also reduced insurance premiums by about £50 in Wales compared to England.

I therefore approached both parties and asked the following questions (I have explained why we asked this under each question):

1) How will this policy work in a practical sense? Will all roads that have become 20mph simply be changed to 30mph? Will there be exemptions and will these be conducted by local authorities? When the 20mph policy was introduced, councils could exempt certain roads. I was curious about how the Conservatives and Reform thought this would work in reverse.

2) Will people who don’t want a 30mph limit on their street be able to appeal it? Polls suggest that though some people really hated the change, many were very much in favour of it on their particular street. If people in an area didn’t want the limit to change back I wanted to know if either party envisaged a mechanism for dealing with this.

3) How do you anticipate this will impact car insurance premiums as a result of this change? Surely they have a plan to mitigate the impact this will have on people in Wales during a cost of living crisis?

4) How much do you estimate this policy change will cost (signage, messaging etc)? One of the big criticisms of the original policy was the cost of changing all the signage over in Wales. This was about £40m. However, this was a one-off cost. It seems likely that the cost of changing it back would cost about the same again. Given their vocal opposition to wasting public money you would hope they would have thought about this.

5) How will you approach the impact on the NHS arising from moving to a 30mph speed limit, given the reduction in road injuries since the 20mph policy took effect? Have you modelled how much this will increase casualties? Ultimately, this policy was about reducing the number of people, particularly children, hit by cars. It has been very effective at this. You would expect any politician who is serious to have thought about whether what they are promising will result in more children dying.

6) Under this policy will roads that were previously 20mph also become 30mph? There were many roads in Wales that were already 20mph before the change. I wanted to know if they planned to change them too.

7) You have previously indicated that you are in favour of 20mph around schools, care homes, parks and busy pedestrian areas. Will it remain in these areas? If so what will the distance be from these places where 20mph will remain? When questioned previously about 20mph the Tories and Reform have consistently said they are in favour of it in areas like schools, care homes, parks, doctors surgeries and busy pedestrian areas. Given that you can barely go anywhere in towns and cities without passing these things, we wanted to see how this would be applied practically.

Their response

Not an unreasonable set of questions you might think? We put them to both Reform and the Welsh Tories.

The Conservatives sent us the following response:

Hmmm. Not exactly a comprehensive response is it? I went back to them and said:

“Just to be clear. I will be publishing the list of questions I put to you as well as your response.

“Given this is one of your key policy pledges I just want to give you the opportunity to put more meat on the bones if you want to.”

To this I got no reply.

Clearly they didn’t really answer most of our questions but they do at least attempt to answer question 7 by saying:

“We support 20mph limits outside schools, hospitals and places where there is a safety argument.”

But even this poses more questions than it answers. Saying you support 20mph “where there is a safety argument” is nonsense because the entire argument for 20mph is a safety argument.

Just to show how impractical their plans are, I decided to pick a part of Wales at random and plot all the carehomes, schools, hospitals, doctors surgeries and parks on it.

I chose Bangor and every car on the map below shows those places:

Bearing in mind that this doesn’t include busy shopping areas, high streets or residential areas etc, there would be far more places staying 20mph than there would be changing.

Reform UK didn’t even reply to our multiple messages.

Utterly unserious people

Welsh Conservative leader Darren Millar in the Senedd (Copyright: Senedd Cymru)

Let’s face it, we know why the responses from both parties are thin or non-existent - because they haven’t really got a plan. They have found a policy position that they think will win votes and are just repeating it ad nauseam with no real thought to how they would actually deliver it. It is the mark of two utterly unserious parties. In the Tories’ case they have given up on any idea of winning (if they ever had it in the first place).

Their relentlessly pathetic excuse for political opposition does as much to contribute to the terrible governance of Wales as successive Welsh Government failings. When this is the standard of opposition, is it any wonder that those in power can afford to be so abject?