Yes. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to thank all Members for their contributions today and for bringing forward this particular debate. As many Members have already said, improving our public transport system is absolutely critical to the economic, social and environmental ambitions of our country. I want to begin by saying that there is a huge amount in what Lee Waters said in opening this debate that I wholeheartedly agree with. Lee rightly outlined the scale, for example, of the challenge ahead of us. Public transport growth has been very significant in recent years, and it's likely to increase substantially in the years to come. As Lee outlined, and as others have outlined in their own areas, it's incredibly difficult for people in many communities, particularly those rural communities, to connect with other communities at a convenient time and with regular, decent, high-quality services. Lee, and others, demonstrated very clearly that enhanced connectivity is essential to supporting both economic and population growth in all parts of Wales. Others, like Julie, shared particular case studies concerning the use and need for better public transport, better integrated public transport. And the metro projects that we're developing in the north-east and in south Wales will be multimodal. They will be integrated, rapid transit networks that have improved bus, rail and active travel services right at their very heart. 

As Julie, Jenny and others have outlined, it's also important that passengers have confidence in the quality of services and that standards are universally applied to local public transport, right across the whole of Wales. As Adam Price rightly said, the quality of service delivered in the more rural parts of our country should be of no less favourable quality than those provided within the metro or more urbanised parts of the country.

Now, at this point, I'd like to say something about accessibility, which is something that I see as being crucially important to transport design. Buses are now required to offer priority seating, lower floors and spaces for wheelchairs. In relation to the publication of lists of wheelchair-accessible taxis by licensing authorities, passengers can now be better informed about the availability of wheelchair-accessible taxi services operating in their areas. And, of course, in addition, from January 2020 all trains operating on our railways will be required to meet accessibility standards set out by the European Union and also the UK Government. Now, whilst these advances have been, no doubt, welcome, there is still much more action that needs to take place to make public transport more inclusive and more accessible. It's something that I want help with from Members in this Chamber as we move our public transport system forward in the next few years. 

One of the key barriers, Deputy Presiding Officer, to accessibility identified by many disabled people is a lack of consistency in the way that services and facilities are delivered. Central to this issue is the need to transform the understanding of accessibility and inclusive design amongst professionals who plan, design, build and operate transport infrastructure and interchanges, services and streetscapes. 

The new accessibility objectives that we have developed and the actions underpinning them have been designed by my accessible transport panel, comprising organisations representing disabled people, older people, people with learning disabilities and equality groups. Now, as Members have said, transport plays a pivotal role in improving prosperity, and yesterday we launched the economic action plan, which set out the importance we attach to effective and integrated transport infrastructure in achieving our aim of prosperity for all. One of the important changes of approach in the document relates to the point made by several Members during this debate, namely the need to utilise major projects such as the metro, through which to undertake major, wider housing, land use, skills and economic development planning. I don't see Transport for Wales itself becoming an independent development agency by which to achieve this, but I will be expecting it to work with partners very closely in order to achieve that joined-up planning that Lee and others called for, to exploit increasing land-use values driven by transport investment, and to ensure that we have the development of houses and services in the right locations, linking up with transport investments.

Deputy Presiding Officer, a number of Members including Nick Ramsay and Lee Waters spoke about the need to address the failures of bus deregulation in 1986, and we'll do just this through the radical reforms that we'll be consulting on in the spring. Wales's bus network carries more than 100 million passengers a year, and I am determined that this number should not just stay steady, but should increase if we are to tackle road congestion and pollution as outlined by Jenny Rathbone. An effective and efficient rail service is also essential to this process, and I expect the new Wales and borders rail services franchise to deliver this.

These are exciting times, I think, for rail in Wales. A huge amount of activity is under way in finding the operator and development partner to operate the Wales and borders rail services from October next year, and to deliver the south Wales metro from 2023. This procurement exercise that we're currently engaged in is indeed the largest single procurement the Welsh Government has ever undertaken. The new rail services will deliver a step change in the quality of rail travel across Wales.

Now, the south Wales metro will provide the model that we can roll out across the rest of the country, and we've also already funded development work on the outline concept of a metro for south-west Wales this financial year. I'm very pleased to say that Swansea county council is co-ordinating this work in partnership with other local authorities, and the project is progressing well, with consultants appointed to develop the concept. Both an inception meeting and a regional workshop have been held, and Swansea council will seek to continue the development of the concept into the next financial year, when work will be undertaken to apply a more thorough assessment and testing of the concept through a strategic outline business case. Our metros will deliver much more that just an improved public transport network. They'll provide more frequent services, allowing passengers to turn up and go.