5. How is the Welsh Government encouraging the growth of public transport use in South Wales East? OQ57211

I thank the Member. Llywydd, the greatest contribution to growth in public transport use in South Wales East will come through a sustained fall in the rate of coronavirus in the area. Since the start of the pandemic, use of public transport has recovered but remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

Diolch, Prif Weinidog. I was recently at COP26 and the overriding theme was that we need radical action to change our fate on this planet. This includes the way we approach public transport. It needs to be more attractive if people are to ditch their cars. Unfortunately, this much-needed culture change has been hampered by crowded scenes like the ones we saw after the Wales versus Belarus game, the issues that seem to have been resolved with Stagecoach not paying drivers a fair wage, which have seriously impacted services in my region, and some pre-COVID services disappearing off the timetable. The Welsh transport strategy that you unveiled earlier this year includes a target that 45 per cent of journeys will be made by public transport by 2040, an increase from 32 per cent in the pre-pandemic period. What would you say to someone in my region who remains to be convinced that public transport is the clean, comfortable and reliable service that they need it to be?

I thank the Member for that important supplementary question, which I think raises a series of really important issues. The COVID context is still very real indeed for public transport, Llywydd. In the last financial year, the Welsh Government spent £176 million over and above what we would normally have spent on rail services simply to keep the rail service going. In the last 15 months, we have spent £108 million in sustaining bus services, and yet patronage outside those major event days is still very significantly below where it would have been in the month before coronavirus hit. Bus patronage fell by up to 95 per cent at the bleakest days of the pandemic; it's recovered to 66 per cent. Rail journeys did recover and are recovering this year, but in the last quarter for which figures are available, there were 182 million rail passenger journeys across the United Kingdom, and in the same quarter in 2019, the figure was 437 million. At the moment, that is still the shaping context for our public transport providers. They have far fewer people, their farebox is radically down, they are depending on our limited ability to go on providing subsidies, and it is difficult for them to shape that future.

Nevertheless, as a Welsh Government, we go on doing the things we said we would do to create the south Wales metro, which will be relevant to the Member's region. We will publish a bus plan in January, which will be the precursor to the White Paper and the Bill that we will then bring forward here in the Senedd to re-regulate bus services. We will go on investing in the electric fleet, which is there to be seen in Newport and Cardiff and outside as well. So, despite the difficulties, which are very real and still press very hard on the industry, we will go on investing in the conditions that will allow the person to whom Peredur Owen Griffiths referred, that we have to convince that leaving the car behind and getting on a bus or a train, that we will have answers for them that they will find convincing.