3. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport: Rail Services and the South Wales Metro

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:10 pm on 5 June 2018.

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Photo of Rhun ap Iorwerth Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru 3:10, 5 June 2018

So, Plaid Cymru doing Wales's rail down—the context is quite important here. It's successive Labour and Conservative UK Governments that have done Wales's rail down: the Conservatives, who've recently rowed back on electrification; 13 years of Labour Governments before them that failed to get any electrification done, north, south, east or west; a Labour Government—I think I'm right—that left us with the laughable zero-growth Arriva franchise—laughable, that is, if it wasn't so serious for the thousands of Valleys lines commuters squeezing onto trains, day after day, or north-south travellers sitting on trains for five hours that are really best suited for half-hour or hour-long journeys. So, yes, we're all excited about the prospect of new, fresher trains. I was on the enterprise and business committee in the last Assembly when we considered, in great detail, the dire straits—the dire state, actually—of the current rail system that we have in Wales. Passengers know that it's about time we had better trains, because they've seen pictures of what they have in other countries—they've been on holiday and they've travelled on trains more suited to this century rather than the middle of the last. So, I would urge the Government to be realistic in your expectations about how grateful people should be for what we have now, or what is being promised after suffering the service that they have done for so long.

Now, reading sections of the statement issued by you yesterday—and we're grateful for that statement—there's an element of sadness in many ways. The quality of the franchise deal is very, very important. The last franchise deal left us wanting for so much. We were told 15 years ago that we were having trains that weren't fit for the twenty-first century—we've still got those trains now. Even now we're told that one in every 20 journeys, for some years to come, will continue to be serviced by the current rusty, battered, out-of-date rolling stock that we currently have—[Interruption.] Well, you can clarify that, but 95 per cent travelling on new trains in a few years, you say—that still leaves one in 20 on the very old twentieth-century rolling stock that we currently have. You're having to wait until 2020, still, to have power supply charging points on trains, we were told in the statement yesterday. And again, one in 20 journeys won't have that basic necessity.

It was really important to learn from the mistakes of the last franchise and make sure that they weren't replicated this time around, and I'm not entirely convinced, yet, that those lessons have been learnt. You stated in your statement that onboard catering remains a key feature of services on the Wales and borders network. Anyone travelling north-south will tell you—apart from the one train a day, one northwards and one to the south, that has proper buffet facilities—anybody travelling on the usual trains, north-south, will tell you that the trains aren't suitable for those long journeys—five-hour journeys on trains suitable for short hops. I got on the train in Bodorgan—I would urge anybody to get on the train in Bodorgan, it's a station in a field in the middle of Anglesey; I feel very proud of our little station, but it's a good two and a half or three hours until we get a cup of tea served. And I remember asking Arriva, 'Why doesn't the tea trolley come on until Shrewsbury?', and the answer I got was, 'Because the franchise agreement said that the tea trolley shouldn't come on until Shrewsbury.' So, getting that franchise agreement right is absolutely vital. So, when you say that, in the new all-singing, all-dancing franchise deal,

'As a minimum, provision will be of the same level as that currently available', that fills me with dread about my journeys from—. This is from your statement; I'm quoting from your statement yesterday. That fills people with dread, because people want to use the train more for north-south journeys, and people are looking for a better service. Being told that current provision of things like a cup of tea, a glass of water, on a five-hour journey shouldn't be too much to ask for in the twenty-first century.

Let me ask for your thoughts, also, on the role of the new system for bringing Wales together. Public transport isn't just about moving people from A to B. Surely, our new, visionary rail system for Wales should be about, effectively, bringing A and B closer together, building a network that ties different parts of Wales together. I see very little in that list of improvements that was published yesterday that shows us that we are creating here a genuine Wales-wide rail system. Of course there are improvements—I see the increase in train numbers on certain routes, on many different routes, and improvements for commuters, and new trains—and that's great, but where is the creation of the all-Wales rail system?

On the profit element, picking up on comments made by Leanne Wood earlier on, rail shouldn't have been privatised in the way that it was, but it is privatised. What I'm looking to see is real public control of the money that flows through the rail system. Could you give us more assurances about how we tie in improved performance, which we hopefully will get from the new operator, with how the money gained from that new performance will actually be driven back into the rail network? Those are the kinds of clarifications that we need now. We lost control of rail; rail became a cash cow. Companies were able to profit—still are able to profit. We need to make sure that this is watertight, and I'm still not quite yet hearing that this is total public control of rail in Wales.

On the question of not-for-profit rail operators, the First Minister said earlier, 'Well, we can't do it. The law says that we cannot have a public rail system.' What we can have, of course, and we investigated this in the last—[Interruption.] Thank you for the suggestion that I have a few seconds left. We looked in the committee in the last Assembly at the prospect of creating a not-for-profit vehicle, which certainly is allowable under legislation. Can you tell me, as a final question, what efforts Government made to look at the prospect of finding, developing, sourcing a vehicle for delivering rail not for profit? If you tried and failed, why did you still put it in your manifestos that you wanted a not-for-profit system? If you didn't try at all, well, what on earth were you doing, putting it in your manifestos? I'll leave it there. Thank you, Llywydd.