Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 14 July 2021.
Thank you. There's no doubt that decarbonising our bus stock is a huge challenge for us at the pace at which we need to do it in order to meet our net-zero emissions targets. I recently saw and got to sit behind the wheel of, in fact—a childhood dream come true—one of the new Newport electric buses. It's an incredibly impressive piece of kit—significantly more expensive than its petrol equivalent, it must be said. So, there is going to be a gap to be filled in the period. So, as Joel James rightly points out, some areas are ahead of the others.
In terms of Welsh Government funding a wholesale increase, we are looking, as part of our bus strategy, at how our relationship with the bus industry needs to change, and how that's funded. But I would note what the Welsh Affairs Select Committee said earlier today about the shortfall in funding that the Welsh Government gets because of transport consequentials, because of the way High Speed 2 is treated as an England-and-Wales project, when, in fact, as the Conservative-dominated committee notes, it is in fact an England-only project—we don't get the knock-on consequences for Wales that we need to fund all of our aspirations in transport. So, we need to scratch our head and figure out how that gap can be filled, and it's one that we want to fill, but it would help if the Conservative Government gave us a little bit more money.