Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 24 January 2017.
The difficulty we have is that we work with Arriva, that’s true, but, in terms of having levers—well, no, they won’t arrive until next year. Why this wasn’t devolved before is a good question, but at least from next year we’ll have this opportunity. I know in the past that Arriva has obtained locomotives to pull locomotive-hauled trains. They did it in the Rhymney valley for a number of years and those trains were popular, actually, with commuters. There is no reason to my mind why they couldn’t seek to do that again. But what my colleague the Member for Islwyn has neatly outlined is the frankly barmy situation where we pay a subsidy to rail operators to provide a substandard service while they make enormous profit. This, apparently, was the wonder of privatisation back in the early 1990s. My view is that we should be in the same position as the Scots, where we’re able to look at having a public sector not-for-profit agency running the railway lines for the benefit of the people of Wales, and not by paying a subsidy in order to pay shareholders.