Petition to scrap 20mph default speed limit in Wales breaks record

A petition calling for the new 20mph default speed limit in Wales to be scrapped has broken a Senedd record.

The petition, which now has more than 150,000 signatures, has become the most signed petition on the Senedd‘s website since records began.

Organisers have called on the default speed limit introduced on built-up roads to be scrapped.

But the government says the new lower default limit will save lives.

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The record for the Senedd’s most-signed petition was previously held by a call to allow supermarkets to sell non-essential items during the COVID lockdown.

The Welsh government introduced a 17-day “firebreak” lockdown in October 2020 and restricted the items shops could sell.

Restrictions were gradually lifted, before lockdown measures were re-introduced in December.

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The petition, which gained 67,940 signatures, argued the policy was “disproportionate and cruel”.

The third most popular Senedd petition is one opposing the closure of Withybush Hospital’s emergency department in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire.

Under plans to re-structure healthcare in West Wales, Withybush and Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen will become community hospitals, with a new hospital to be built in St Clears or Whitland, Carmarthenshire.

It gained 40,045 signatures and was debated in the Senedd where the former health minister, Vaughan Gething, said the government’s long-term plans for the national health service will evolve “traditional ways of working to provide a more proactive approach”.

A bid to ban greyhound racing received 35,101 signatures.

The Welsh government has since committed to consult on proposals which include a potential ban of greyhound racing.

The only greyhound racing track in Wales, Valley Greyhound Stadium in the county of Caerphilly, said in a statement on its website a ban would be “an awful, ill-informed decision”.

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Rounding off the top five is a call for “Black and POC [people of colour] UK histories to be taught in the Welsh education curriculum“.

There were 34,736 signatures collected by the petition, which argued the British Empire had been “glamorised” and called for “real and significant change”.

The Welsh government says its new curriculum for Wales, gradually introduced in schools since the beginning of September, makes it “impossible to ignore the central and critical role of all of our histories… including black history”.

The most-signed petitions in the UK parliament were in the wake of the Brexit vote, calling for the revocation of Article 50 withdrawing the UK from the EU (over 6 million), and calling for a change in rules governing what referendums can decide, with a turnout minimum of 75% (4.1 million).

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