Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:03 pm on 17 January 2017.
The problem we’ve had historically is not having control of the franchise. We still won’t be able to put in place a public sector agency in order to run the franchise, unless there are changes at Westminster, even though the Scots can, of course, but we won’t be able to do that. The difficultly is that the current model involves operators that lease their rolling stock in the main. So, when they do face capacity problems, they haven’t got the stock. In the days of British Rail, the stock was there. That’s the problem with the model that we have at the moment and its weaknesses compared to the British Rail model that existed before the early 1990s. But we are making it clear, as part of the procurement for the new contract, that we expect to see higher quality rolling stock. It’s not going to be good enough in the future simply to say, ‘There’s a limit on what we can procure’ or ‘There’s a limit on the quality of the rolling stock that will be running on the Welsh railways.’ We want to make sure, as the metro rolls out, it stands amongst the best in Europe.