1. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 29 March 2022.

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Photo of Janet Finch-Saunders Janet Finch-Saunders Conservative 1:48, 29 March 2022

Trefnydd, I notice many of my colleagues asking for statements during business statement, but I never see those statements, actually, frankly, coming from this. But I'm going to formally request a statement from the Deputy Minister for transport Lee Waters, and I would also like to put on record my utmost disappointment that our Deputy Llywydd didn't see fit to allow this to be an urgent question.

Now, my question is in relation—[Interruption.] You weren't there, I was.

It's in relation to the severe and chaotic delays that were encountered by hundreds of passengers yesterday due to a rail operational incident at Abergavenny. Three trains, several carriages, and hundreds of passengers left stranded on these trains in warm weather conditions with no ventilation. The first train, we were allowed on the platform for a couple of hours. I left my office with a member of staff at 1 o'clock. I arrived in my flat here, in Cardiff, at 10 o'clock last night. It was the most horrendous situation I've ever witnessed: people crying, people anxious to get to their final destination.

In desperation, my colleague Llyr Gruffydd and I took to Twitter, copying in the Deputy Minister, and hour by hour went past with nothing. Frankly, I would have been really ashamed to have been the Deputy Minister, or not to have gone on to Twitter and said, 'Look, I will launch an investigation as to what's gone wrong.' But we were kept with no food, no nourishment, no sustenance or anything.