Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 12 June 2019.
Thank you for those remarks just then, I thought they were very useful, and I'm also looking forward to the White Paper. In the meantime though, in 2016 you announced a five-point plan to support bus routes, offering all bus companies in Wales assistance through Business Wales and Finance Wales, and, at the same time, you called upon—as you've done again today—local authorities to make every effort to protect the funding for bus services.
You may be aware that Bridgend county borough councillors have recently called in a decision by their cabinet to stop subsidising public transport, full stop. Bearing in mind you've got additional moneys, they must have had some of that, and you were expecting it to be used additionally to their own bus subsidies, it doesn't sound like even that's getting to the bus companies in this case. I wonder if you could tell me whether you know whether bus operators in the Bridgend area knew about the offer of Business Wales and Finance Wales help and whether, in fact, the local authority knew about that as well, because they could have encouraged operators to take up that offer, thereby avoiding what is a very, very harsh cabinet decision.