4. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport: 'Llwybr Newydd: a new Wales transport strategy'

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:15 pm on 23 March 2021.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 4:15, 23 March 2021

To take those questions in reverse order, we have provided Newport Bus with a £2 million loan to buy a fleet of electric buses for the city to replace their ageing fleet, which I think is very welcome. But clearly, there is a big challenge for the whole industry to convert to electric buses over the period of this document, and that is a significant challenge for them. We are looking to try and cross-fertilise my ministerial responsibilities for the foundational economy. We are looking at this as an opportunity to build these buses in Wales. We know we are building trains in Newport as part of the new franchise; we'd like to be building the buses too, and there's an opportunity for demand aggregation, as it's called in the jargon—trying to bring the bus companies together to agree a package of work, and we can then find Welsh manufacturers to step in to create jobs locally, as well as providing the necessary change in technologies that we need to see to meet the carbon targets. So, again, there are opportunities for green and local jobs as part of this necessary climate response as well.

In terms of the willingness of the UK Government to do its part in delivering the Burns review, I think that is a good question; it remains a moot point. I do note, as the First Minister said in his questions, that the union connectivity review by Sir Peter Hendy, which came out in the last few weeks, was very positive about the Burns report. And certainly, in the conversation he had with my colleague Ken Skates, he was very complimentary about the work of the Burns commissioners and the report that they produced. He certainly was complimentary also about the impact that devolution has had, unlike Russell George, in delivering transport—he said that devolution had been a positive thing for the delivery of transport. The question remains what ministerial appetite there is at Westminster to deliver on the findings of that report. Their initial response wasn't that encouraging, because they immediately abandoned the report and started talking about the M4 relief road even though the report had said nothing at all about that. So, the UK Government, once the election is out of the way, I hope, will buckle down and get to the serious business of delivery and confront the fact that they've been shirking their responsibilities to date.

On the first point about the rail infrastructure development, I joined, at his invitation, a meeting with the Magor walkway station group last month and was very impressed by the work that they had done as a community movement to make the case for a unique station that didn't have car parking facilities, because it was within a mile of most of the population of Magor on the main line already. I was very keen for us to support that project, and, in fact, it is one of the packages of work that the Burns delivery unit is currently scoping out, along with, as you mentioned, Somerton and Llanwern. I think there is an exciting package of work for the people of Newport from the Burns commission to deliver what, frankly, a city the size of Newport should have had in the first place, which is a modern public transport network.

But this, I'm afraid, is a reflection of the sort of underinvestment we've had in railways for a number of years, which leaves the city of Newport without the basic infrastructure to allow people to make everyday journeys by public transport. That's what we've got to put right, and I think that's what we've got to demonstrate to the people of Newport—that we will take it seriously and will do so with pace and with urgency. The UK Government must play its part in that, and so far, they're not doing so.