May I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement and also welcome this update—first of all on the Wales and borders franchise, and also the situation with the metro? Of course, in talking about the franchise in the first instance, the situation as we talk about trains can be difficult because not all railways are devolved here to Wales, and specifically with this particular franchise, part of the track is in England and part of the track is in Wales also.

Now, the intention of the United Kingdom Government, as we know from the command paper, was to prescribe that some services serve markets in England and take them from the map for the franchise here, and reassign them to a franchise in England, disregarding the fact that these English franchises would run services into Wales, but that our Welsh franchise would be prohibited from doing the same. Now, the United Kingdom Government has reassured us that Wales won’t lose out financially—we’ve heard that many times over the past few weeks. However, following the way that the Wales Bill has been treated, we on these benches aren’t willing to trust their words. So, I would like to ask the Cabinet Secretary: what representations have you made to the United Kingdom Government to ensure the best deal for Wales in terms of the Wales and borders franchise?

In turning to funding for the metro, the Brexit vote a few weeks ago will cause a great deal of uncertainty, as the Cabinet Secretary has said, in terms of funding for the Cardiff metro. We are all working on the assumption, of course, that the United Kingdom Government will make up all of the funding promised to Wales by the Brexiteers, and some of them part of the Government—whichever Government comes in the coming days. However, if that doesn’t bear fruit, what other ways of funding will the Welsh Government pursue to ensure that the metro does serve people of the region effectively? Remembering our meeting last week, Cabinet Secretary, in relation to a national infrastructure commission for Wales, are you prepared to ensure that the infrastructure commission has the powers and the responsibilities that are independent of the Government to consider innovative ways of ensuring capital funding to fund the metro, if needed?

Turning to the north Wales metro, you’re talking about a north Wales metro but we all know that it’s a metro for the north-east of Wales and the north-west of England, because a great deal of Wales to the west of Rhyl—with all due respect to Rhyl—that’s where your proposals end. And you also talk in your statement about work that is under way to improve links between north Wales and the east of England, and a number of other places, including the west midlands. But there’s no talk of schemes to connect the north and south of our nation here in Wales. You’ll be aware that Plaid Cymru has reiterated this point for decades now, which is that it becomes increasingly difficult to unify our nation without the infrastructure needed to connect north and south. When the Welsh Government has a great deal more interest in mentioning connections with other nations, but is not willing to consider connecting the communities of our nation with each other, could you discuss this loss in these schemes, which is the huge need to have better connectivity between north and south Wales? Thank you.