3. Will the First Minister make a statement on the development of a Swansea bay and western Valleys metro? OAQ55138

I thank Dai Lloyd for that question. Four hundred and thirty two thousand pounds has been awarded to the City and County of Swansea in this financial year to develop the rail and bus business cases for the south-west Wales metro. New services will help to reduce travel times across the region.

Thank you for that answer. So, are you fully confident that you have all the moneys that you're able to put forward towards the development of the Swansea bay metro, and will you ensure, on top of that, that the Valleys communities in the west are not neglected as part of this development?

Llywydd, my colleague Ken Stakes will be making a statement on all of this later this afternoon. As I explained in my first answer, the Welsh Government has provided funding to the City and County of Swansea to allow them to carry out the necessary preliminary work to develop the south Wales metro. Stage 1 is completed, stage 2 will be completed shortly, and we look forward to working with local authorities—not just in Swansea, but, as Dr Lloyd has said, in the surrounding areas—to make sure that that multi-modal approach to the construction of a metro, bus and train services, that we are able to put that to work for the benefit of local residents.

I strongly support a metro system for the Swansea city region. Does the First Minister agree that stage 1 needs to be to get bus/rail interchanges at current railway stations with aligned timetables and buses stopping as close as possible to the railway station? Llansamlet, for example, not all of the bus stops are outside Llansamlet station and one of them is around the corner down another road, which, if you didn't know the area, you'd probably have great difficulty in finding. And can I also make my regular request for the reopening of Landore station?

I thank the Member for those important points on behalf of his constituents, and of course he is right that the integration of bus and train services is at the heart of the metro concept—an integrated transport system.

The bus legislation that we hope to bring in front of this National Assembly will provide local authorities with the powers they need to be able to make practical sense of the disposition of bus and rail services so they are genuinely integrated in that way. And Mike Hedges, I know, will have welcomed the plan to improve bus services, particularly along the corridor between Ystradgynlais and Mumbles, which specifically is looking at how bus timetables and rail timetables can be brought together so that bus services operate in ways that are reliable, attractive, frequent and therefore better usable to residents.