I’d like to thank Vikki Howells for her questions, not just today, but questions that she’s raised on numerous occasions as we look to develop a franchise agreement that better suits the needs of her constituents and people across Wales. The Member is absolutely right: the nature of work and the way of life have both changed in Wales and around the world in recent decades, to the extent that we should now expect public transport services on weekend days to be far, far better than they were in the 1980s and 1990s and some parts of the world even today. So, I can assure the Member that there will be improved services on Sundays, not just in terms of rail services under the new franchise, but also with the work that’s taking place in parallel on reforming bus services in Wales.

The Member will be aware that there was a recent consultation where a number of recommendations were outlined. The response to the consultation was healthy. We are now working through those responses. It’s my view that bus services, since deregulation, have not served the purpose of ensuring people can get to and from services and work, swiftly and smoothly, above the profit motives of operators. We see something in the region of 100 million passenger journeys taking place on buses every year, and yet we, as a combined public service—Welsh Government, local government—spend more than £200 million on local bus services every year. So, it’s therefore clear that we should expect a better degree of bus provision across Wales and provision that is more attuned to the needs of passengers.

In terms of the ability for people to get to and from work, it’s quite an astonishing fact that in the Growth Track 360 area of Britain, about a quarter of all people who have a job interview refuse to go on the grounds that they simply cannot access transport in order to get to their job interview. That’s a shocking statistic. Bus travel can be one of the biggest enablers in terms of getting people out of unemployment and into the workplace, which, in turn, is one of the principal methods of eliminating poverty.