There's no doubt that incentives and disincentives will play a key role. As Julie James and I have been saying since we were appointed as Ministers for climate change last May, we need to make the right thing to do the easiest thing to do. But our transport and planning system has been shaped to make jumping in the car the easiest thing to do, and cycling, walking or using public transport less easy, and that has to change. Clearly, price has a role to play in how we incentivise public transport use. It certainly is not the only factor, though. Bus operators have been telling Senedd committees for years that the biggest barrier to attracting more passengers is the impact congestion has on journey times and reliability. A lack of integration between bus and rail is another barrier, as is changing habits. Fifty per cent of people never get on the bus. As a result, many of us have a skewed view of the reality of bus travel, its ease of use or its convenience. So, there's lots we need to change, but where to start and how to pay for it? Those are the questions that confront us.

In the French city of Dunkirk, they've certainly found that free bus use has been a success. In September 2018, they increased local business tax to fund free bus use and have seen the number of passengers increase by 60 per cent during the week and double on weekends. We've already trialled it ourselves with free weekend travel on our TrawsCymru strategic bus network between July 2017 and March 2020, and it was successful too in increasing usage. About a quarter of bus passengers were young people aged between 16 and 24, and when questioned, 73 per cent of young people told us that free travel would encourage them to make more journeys by public transport and switch from using the car. 

Dirprwy Lywydd, I take my hat off to Swansea, Cardiff and Newport councils—Labour councils—who have all offered free and discounted bus fare initiatives over the last year. They all saw more people hopping on buses as a result, and we're looking carefully with them at the evaluation reports. So, again, there's no doubt that free bus use is an attractive option. But, of course, it comes at a cost and every Government has to prioritise. I know Jane Dodds is not arguing for free bus use across the board, but targeted at young people. And there is precedence: we provide free bus travel for older people, and it has been a great success. We all recognise that young people in particular have had a hard time during the pandemic, and that a range of metrics are not having the same opportunities as my generation has, or my parents'.

We do offer some help already. Starting with the youngest, all children in Wales under 6 travel free by us, 16 to 21-year-olds receive a third discount on bus fares with the help of the Welsh Government's MyTravelPass scheme, as Jane Dodds referenced, and some young people are eligible for free travel with the help of our mandatory concessionary travel scheme. On rail, children under 11 can travel for free when they're with an adult, and under 16-year-olds can benefit from free off-peak travel with Transport for Wales. For those age 16 to 17, TfW offers a 50 per cent discount saver railcard off many tickets. And, of course, in Wales, we've retained the educational maintenance allowance, which provides students with valuable financial support towards living costs, including public transport fares.

To be clear, we want to do more, but it's also fair to point out that we are constrained. Our budget at the end of this Senedd term will be nearly £3 billion lower than if it had increased in line with the economy over the term of the UK Government since 2010. And we don't get our fair share of UK transport resources. We should all unite on this; this need not be a party point. If we had a share of the spending on the HS2 programme, we would get an extra £5 billion that we could use to radically improve transport in Wales. I do hope, again, that we can come together across parties to make a call to the UK Government to look at this again.

As a result of that, we can't do everything we'd like to, but we are determined to do more. In fact, our climate commitments demand that we do more. Our programme for government includes pledges to build on the success of our concessionary travel scheme for older people and to look at how fair fares can encourage integrated transport. Secondly, we've committed to exploring extensions to the MyTravelPass for reduced-cost travel for young people. I'm aware that over 100 towns and cities across the world have introduced free public transport for all citizens, and we're looking at these to see what will work best in Wales. We're also looking closely at the work in Scotland, which has been highlighted in the debate, in introducing free bus travel for under 22-year-olds.

Whilst fares are an important factor, I mentioned that the bus industry places greater emphasis on punctuality and reliability. Intriguingly, research last year by Passenger Focus showed that this is a view shared by young people in particular; they place higher value than other age groups on punctuality and reliability, the provision of free Wi-Fi on bus stops, along with value-for-money fares and being able to get a seat. So, Dirprwy Lywydd, these aren't straightforward judgments; there is no doubt that price is an important factor in getting more people on buses, but it's only one of a range of incentives and we have to carefully judge how we use our finite resource to bring about the modal shift that we're all committed to.

I'm not in a position to make announcements to the Senedd tonight, but I can assure Members that Julie James and I are working hard to ensure that we implement the new Wales transport strategy that we launched last year, to put Wales onto a llwybr newydd. Diolch.