Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:47 pm on 8 December 2020.
I'd still like to see the M4 relief road built as promised, but I'll focus my remarks on the report. The UK Government and the Welsh Government have got different responsibilities here through law, but I wonder is a better approach to have a joint project team, where both parties are funding that and working together to deliver an agreed solution, as with Crossrail, where we saw the Department for Transport and Transport for London? Shouldn't we look at that joint model rather than just divvying up responsibilities? The Minister mentioned at the beginning the 10 to 50 miles and Cardiff, Newport and Bristol, and then said there needed to be a regional solution. But the remarks were focused on the south-east Wales region. What is going to be done to link this up and have an approach that takes in the demand to travel to and from Bristol from these parts of south Wales as well? When I've spoken with Ted Hand and the Magor group, who I congratulate too, I've emphasised how they complement what's happening at Cardiff parkway, or St Mellons, and also at Llanwern, because if you have three or now potentially six new stations, then the whole of that is going to change how transport works, and there is a much greater benefit to having all of them than just one. But on the 4.4 figure within the report, the four trains per hour running through those six stations, none of them are shown as going on to Bristol. Is that just how the particular figure has been drawn, or does that imply that, actually, none of those stopping services will be serving commuters going through to Bristol?