Could I call for a single statement on rail services in north Wales? On Saturday I attended the Wrexham-Bidston Rail Users Association's annual general meeting, where the chair referred us to Transport for Wales's live travel updates on Saturday, which showed that, with the exception of minor delays at Cardiff-Shrewsbury and Cardiff-Swansea, all the other south Wales services had good service, whereas Llandudno-Blaenau Ffestiniog and Chester-Crewe had severe delays, and Wrexham-Bidston had an amended timetable—i.e. cancelled.

Yesterday, the executive member for transport at Wrexham wrote to the Cabinet Secretary here. You will be aware that following the decision by Transport for Wales that no train services operated on Wrexham-Bidston last weekend, due to rail services in south Wales being supplemented due to a sporting fixture, no stakeholders here were consulted in advance or informed directly of that, or then the decision to rescind and reduce the reduced timetable over the weekend with no discussion with stakeholders. We know that the chair of Neston transport working group, the other end of this line, on Friday e-mailed—it's been their position in Neston for three years that the whole of the line should be operated by Merseytravel, because at least the section from Bidston to Shotton, they say, could then experience high-quality services provided by them. 

And, finally, on Friday, my office received a phone call from a rail insider, a whistleblower, who wished to remain anonymous, who told me that the majority of trains had been cancelled because no spares were available when the Welsh Government took over, and that the tooling and spares had been taken by Arriva. So, we need to know why these missing spares were not picked up and provided for by the operator, and why the wheel lathes access was not put into place. Again, we heard on Saturday that there was no access, belatedly, to Crewe, Bristol and Taunton. But we also know that the excuse for so many trains being off the line is because of shortage of wheel lathes. Is there a sustainable solution in place, or is this a one-off, and will this address the problem?

I don't want a short response. I'm calling for a ministerial statement to this Assembly so that we can get to the bottom of these many questions being raised by very worried stakeholders.