Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 8 January 2019.
Llywydd, thanks to Nick Ramsay for what he said and for the important points that he has made. He will be glad to know that our plans for the south Wales metro are well on track, that the funding for it that we have secured through the European Union will be used in full, that the money that is coming through the UK Government as part of the Cardiff capital deal will also be part of that broader funding package, together with significant funding from the Welsh Government itself, and we are confident that we will be able to press ahead to the timetable and to the extent that we have already announced, as far as the metro is concerned.
I know that he will recognise as well that public transport provision for communities of the sort that he has identified and represents relies on bus travel as well as on train travel. And there is significant work going on in the department headed by Ken Skates to look at the way in which we can make better use of bus services, taxi services, a more imaginative, sometimes, approach to the way in which those services can be procured, so that, alongside the rail developments of the metro, we will have that wider span of public transport possibilities connecting towns and villages of Wales so that people can live, work and thrive in those communities, confident in knowing that connectivity to other parts of Wales is reliable and secure.