Today, when you speak to any young person about the sorts of things they want to see from politics, public transport, both its availability and its cost, are always pretty near the top of the list. Through the Neath area economic forum, we heard a story of a young man who’d lost confidence due to a failed job placement, which had broken down as a result of his having to depend on bus transport from the top of the Neath valley into Neath and onwards into Cardiff. The difficulty of making that journey work for him had led to him losing his job and set him back, really, on the road to sustainable employment. So, young people definitely need a new deal for bus users and one that gives them free or cheap travel, but that also improves travel times and experience. And that’s about bus prioritisation, planning issues and technology, as we’ve discussed several times before in this Chamber.

On the cost of travel, I welcome the Welsh Government’s consultation on extending the age of discounted travel to those aged 24, and I’d encourage young people across Wales to respond to that consultation with their views so we can hear what matters to them. I also think it’s right that the Welsh Government should keep alive the option, if needs be, of a mandatory scheme to build on the voluntary arrangements if that should prove to be necessary. But the debate today on the Welsh Conservatives’ motion is not about those things; the motion repeats the policy that the Conservatives have been pushing in the press in recent weeks, which has the virtue of consistency if little else.

They claim that offering free bus travel and a third off rail fares would cost £25 million. Let’s examine that. There are currently some 15,000 pass holders who will take approximately 1.5 million journeys on buses by March 2018. On the basis of those figures, you can assume that a completely free travel pass would be used by many more young people. Assuming an adult bus ticket price costs around £2 and some 350,000 people would be potentially eligible, the price tag for the Conservative proposal is not £25 million, it’s probably much nearer £70 million—and that’s just for the bus element, let alone the rail discount. Now, I’ve got a calculator if anybody wants to borrow it.

But they tell us that they want to scrap education maintenance allowance in order to pay for part of it, just like their Tory colleagues did in Westminster—the EMA, which, by the way, supports 26,000 students to stay in education. Now, if you’re one of those students—and we’ve heard a lot about educational opportunities from the bench opposite today—if you’re one of those students the Conservative plan would take away from you more than £1,500 a year. Russell George has said that transport costs are a huge barrier to education and I agree, but what on earth do you call a £1,500 hit? I call that a huge barrier too.

And, if the Tory bus policy isn’t puzzling enough, their policy of a third off rail travel is already national rail policy. So, I won’t be backing the Tory motion today, because it doesn’t help young people and it doesn’t add up. I urge young people to respond to the Welsh Government’s consultation and to tell us what they want from discounted bus travel so they can get policy that works for them.