Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I’m pleased to take part in this debate this afternoon. As Russell George has said, good public transport is essential for younger people in Wales who rely on buses and trains to access educational classes, weekend jobs, after-school clubs and sports—the list goes on. Access to these opportunities and activities is integral to the development of the next generation, who continue to make it clear that they want to see better public transport. Members may remember that the UK Youth Parliament voted to make public transport cheaper, better and accessible their priority campaign for 2012. This UK campaign emerged from a nationwide poll of 65,000 young people, which identified the top-five issues of concern for young people, and clearly public transport was very much at the top of that agenda. Therefore, it’s important that Governments at all levels show that they are listening to the views of young people when it comes to providing transport services.

Of course, it’s also important that the bus and rail industry are also listening and engaging with young people too, as young people are an important market for public travel. Indeed, quite often young people will have no option but to use bus and rail services before they learn to drive. Therefore, public transport providers must ensure that young people have a positive experience of travelling publicly to encourage them to continue using buses and rail into adulthood, even if they learn to drive or buy a car.

We live in an age where it takes seconds to send a tweet or update a status on Facebook, and so it’s clear that young people can be a great influence, or a strong critic, of public transport and that’s something that perhaps the bus and rail industry haven’t taken that seriously in the past. Therefore, perhaps there’s an opportunity here for bus and rail service operators to engage more with younger people when developing services and even campaigns in the future, by using these digital platforms much more than they’ve done in the past to communicate with young people.

Therefore, given the importance of public transport to young people, this motion is today calling on the Welsh Government to support the introduction of a new green card scheme to provide all 16 to 24-year-olds in Wales with access to unlimited free bus travel and discounted rail travel. I think that this scheme sends a clear signal to young people across Wales that we recognise the concerns that they have surrounding public transport, and that we’re looking at ways that we can better support them.

This policy will also help strengthen and support the bus industry in Wales by encouraging more and more young people to use public transport, thereby protecting those bus services for the future, which is particularly important in rural areas and the constituency that I represent. A scheme like this will undoubtedly make some bus services, especially in rural areas, much more sustainable.

Of course, the use of public transport can be even more of a barrier to young people with learning difficulties who quite often find the public transport system complex and intimidating. One of the most effective ways that the Welsh Government can support young people with learning difficulties using the public transport network is by simply increasing understanding and tolerance of the challenges that face young people with learning difficulties. I’ve had many representations from groups such as Pembrokeshire People First, and I should declare an interest as their president. Groups like Pembrokeshire People First continue to advocate policies to make public transport more accessible to people with learning difficulties, and one of their calls has been for free entitlements to bus travel. Hopefully, this scheme will help in some way by encouraging more young people with learning difficulties to use public transport, thereby building up their confidence and encouraging them to live more independently and engage in the wider community.

The importance of providing good public transport is certainly felt in rural areas, where services are fewer and costs are higher. For young people living in rural areas like Pembrokeshire, the geography simply is not as interconnected as other parts of Wales. Therefore, I believe there’s a case here for making better use of the existing transport fleet in rural local authority areas by developing more of a partnership approach with those delivering transport services in local communities. This would mean bringing together a range of agencies and stakeholders, along with local authority departments, to centrally co-ordinate and schedule public transport, by taking into account capacity on the mainstream network and hopefully identifying gaps in transport provision where solutions can be met jointly. With funding tight for many local authorities in rural areas, alternative options are needed to support transport availability for young people, and perhaps a collaborative approach that can co-ordinate public transport is an effective way forward.

Therefore, in closing, Deputy Presiding Officer, at the very heart of this debate is the desire to deliver more support and independence to younger people. I believe that, to do this, the Welsh Government, public transport providers and young people themselves have to work together to make services more affordable, accessible and acceptable. Our proposals aim to give young people the independence to travel more freely around Wales by offering free bus travel and discounted rail travel to young people, and I urge Members to support our motion.