Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:11 pm on 24 January 2017.
These are all part of the franchise negotiations. We’ve already, of course, very publicly produced our plan for a metro, which will see an improvement in journey times and, indeed, in facilities and rolling stock, as far as passengers are concerned. For the first time, it will be the people of Wales who are able to determine what their train services—not InterCity, but what their train services actually look like. We had this bizarre situation at one point where it was said that the Wales and borders franchise would only cover trains that began their journeys and terminated their journeys in Wales, which would mean, effectively, the Conwy Valley line and nothing else north of Merthyr. I’m glad that that rather odd situation seems to have been vacated by the UK Government, but we are determined to provide a far better level of service, not just, in fact, for our own people, but for those people who live on the other side of the border but who use trains from the Wales and borders franchise.