Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 8 December 2021.
Minister, I fully agree that we need to be cognisant of the various challenges that the transport sector is facing. Regardless of whose fault these risks are, I struggle to see how it can be said that trains are fundamentally safe, but, maybe, at some times of the day, they're not. I saw last night that someone was quoting George Orwell on Twitter, but it was in relation to No. 10's insistence that the now infamous COVID party didn't happen. Orwell said:
'The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.'
I know we need to move on, Minister, but if the health Minister is in the Chamber, I'd urge her to look at this as well, because I really think there is a mountain of evidence that taking a train in Wales can mean taking a significant COVID risk.
But to move on, Minister, clearly the root cause of this terrible state of our train services is the continual underfunding of Welsh rail. The Wales Governance Centre has calculated that we've been underfunded to the tune of around £500 million over the past 10 years. But it does also seem that the Welsh Government has underdelivered on its promises, or perhaps previous Welsh Governments. When the franchise was awarded to KeolisAmey in 2018, it said that the railway would be unrecognisable in five years, thanks to the vision of the Welsh Government. So, Minister, could you give us an update on how the railway will look in two years' time, now that it's in public ownership? Are we really going to see transformative improvements? And could you give us your view on how much agency the Government truly has over rail and how much is simply out of its hands because it doesn't control the funding?