Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 3 July 2018.
You privatised the buses. [Interruption.] Well, not him personally, but his party and said it would be marvellous and that there would be competition. Whereas, in fact, of course, most of what we have now is a private monopoly, and where, in reality, there's no competition at all.
Secondly, I have to point out to him, when it comes to promises on transport, his own party has a poor record. Where, for example, is the electrification to Swansea that was promised by one Conservative Prime Minister and that promise was then reneged on by another Conservative Prime Minister?
He also fails, again, to point out the effect of austerity as if, since 2010, we have had a tranche of money provided for us every year to spend as we want and we are therefore swimming in notes. We are not. His party has made sure that public spending has been cut across the whole of the UK. But despite those challenges, we have maintained bus service support grant allocations to local authorities, at £25 million per year. It is for each local authority to determine which bus and community transport services to support using that grant. So, if there is a service that should be subsidised, then the first port of call for the Member is his own local authority.