Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales – in the Senedd at 2:22 pm on 26 February 2020.
As a result of a series of reforms and measures, I can offer that assurance, first and foremost. Although we've have had 10 years of austerity, we've been able to maintain the bus services support grant of £25 million since 2013. If austerity is truly coming to an end, then clearly there will be opportunities to increase the amount of funding allocated to support bus services across Wales, including in and around Cardiff.
Secondly, we're bringing forward to this Chamber proposals to legislate for the re-introduction of franchising to allow local authorities to run bus companies, to ensure that there is better open data and data gathering so that we can better integrate timetables for rail and for bus services. And we will be bringing forward enhanced quality partnerships to ensure that the experience that passengers have are improved and that the infrastructure in place to support bus services is enhanced as well. This is an incredibly exciting area of work. It's exciting because the work that this Welsh Labour Government is doing will address, finally, the failure of deregulation in the 1980s.