As we begin our journey with TfW to change Wales's network, the complexity and volatility of the drivers for change that the Welsh Government needs to respond to are unprecedented. The advent of new and emerging technologies in the transport sector will transform how people use transport in their everyday lives over the next decade. I was launching this morning, Dirprwy Llywydd, a new fleet of buses for TrawsCymru and reflecting on my own experience, as a student in Aberystwyth making the hideous journey by bus through the winding lanes of mid Wales, with drivers going way too fast, and myself feeling very queasy after a night out the night before—of what the experience of using public transport was. And then, fast forward 25 years in the future, and the experience of using public transport will be dramatically different. The idea of an Uber for buses is now something that we are actively piloting through the Valleys and in Wrexham, which was simply unimaginable when I was a student. So, these new technologies, if managed correctly, are opportunities for Wales's economy to benefit from new, highly skilled jobs and for the passenger experience to change too, and to attract more people to shift modes of transport to help us respond to the climate change emergency.

The existing model, whereby Welsh Government has responsibility for strategy all the way through to project delivery and operations, leads to fragmentation of effort and of focus, inevitably shifting from the development of effective policy to dealing with the here and now of delivery. We've set out in the economic action plan our aspiration for TfW to exploit the opportunity it has as our transport integrator—to allow the company to take on a wider range of transport functions. In doing so, we will increase TfW's staffing capacity, capability and expertise to deliver the Welsh Government's policy goals, including some immediate steps towards transport integration: empowering TfW to deliver a public transport system that gives everyone easier access to bus, train and active travel for everyday journeys; creating a transport planning model for Wales, enabling improved decision making for transport and land-use planning; implementation of smart ticketing technology to create interoperability and use across modes; and co-ordinating information across transport modes to help inform route planning.

In the medium term, we have instructed officials to plan for the migration of the remaining transport delivery functions, such as highway improvements and operations, from the Welsh Government into TfW. Doing this will leave the Welsh Government free to focus on the policy challenges posed by decarbonisation, air quality, autonomous and electric vehicles and so on to develop a multiterm legislative programme and policy framework that will help us realise the ambitions we have for TfW. As part of the bus reform work, we are proposing the joint transport authority approach, whereby local authorities in the regions of Wales work together to provide local and regional transport outcomes. I'd like to respond to Hefin David's challenge—not the bit where he revealed his penchant for fare dodging, but the other bit—where he said there was a lack of clarity on whether TfW should be a national transport planning body or a regional one. This is the debate that we want to have, and I'd invite Members to input this into local authorities too.

Our current thinking—and this is a genuine invitation to help us shape it—working closely with local authorities, and the work that the Minister for Local Government and Housing is doing on creating a regional footprint for collaboration, is that transport should be very much part of that, not as a stand-alone development, but completely integrated into the regional collaboration bodies that the Minister is creating. Just as, at the moment, the Welsh Government can commission Transport for Wales to do a piece of work for us, it's entirely possible, in keeping with what we want to see, that local authorities could equally commission them to do a piece of work for them, because there simply isn't the capacity and the expertise in every local authority, as there once was, to be able to do this. So, there's no reason why different layers of government can't exercise that executive and democratic decision making, and TfW can sit alongside them as partners to deliver the expertise. That way, as a small, smart nation, we can make the most of our expertise, and do that in a collaborative way.

That's our plan. That's what we're working towards, and we'd welcome some challenge on that if Members think that a different direction would be better. So, I do hope there is some clarity, to answer Hefin David's point on our direction of travel. As an organisation solely focused on the delivery of transport solutions, TfW can build a highly skilled transport delivery workforce with emphasis on technical, management and leadership skills that will create better value and outcomes for people, places and for Wales. Diolch yn fawr.