Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:29 pm on 23 May 2018.
It feels a bit like this Government is lurching from one shambles to another. The Welsh Government has today awarded a £5 billion rail franchise to the majority state-owned French rail company Keolis, and Spanish infrastructure corporation Amey—both for-profit, multimillion-pound international corporations.
Now, I'd like to pick up on a question that has been asked, but hasn't yet been answered. Can the Cabinet Secretary explain how this decision squares with the commitment on page 20 of the 2016 manifesto, on which he was elected, that said a Labour Welsh Government,
'will deliver a new, not-for-profit, rail franchise'?
I believe he even wrote the manifesto. Before there's any claim that the involvement of Transport for Wales will mean that this is a not-for-profit operation, can I just remind him that Keolis made a profit of €313 million in 2016? I think they would be quite surprised to hear that they will not be making a profit from this contract.
Of course, the Cabinet Secretary will argue that his hands have been tied by the Wales Act 2017, and as I'm sure he will remember, Plaid Cymru did not support that legislation. He voted in favour of the Wales Act, however, in the full knowledge that it would preclude him from delivering a not-for-profit franchise. The Scottish Government, under their settlement, can procure a public sector operator. Why has the Welsh Government failed to obtain the same deal as their Scottish counterparts?
The Cabinet Secretary has claimed—