5. How is the Welsh Government developing a sustainable transport network in North Wales? OQ58037

Our north Wales metro programme will transform rail, bus and active travel services across north Wales. We've also announced a north Wales transport commission, led by Lord Terry Burns, the former Treasury Permanent Secretary, who's done such good work for us around the M4 in Newport. And that is already beginning. It's meeting, I think, today, for the first time, to develop an evidence-led approach that will then develop a pipeline of recommendations for a stream of multimodal and integrated transport solutions for the north.

Electric vehicle charging points will be key to a sustainable transport network in north Wales. In February I wrote to you in support of a constituent who asked for help in finding out why Transport for Wales, TfW, was taking so long to install the 21 rapid electrical vehicle charging points announced last June. In your reply, you stated that the project referred to is a complex one, there'd been delays experienced in obtaining planning permissions, leases and wayleaves, and Transport for Wales have assured your officials that once they've secured the permissions, the sites will quickly move to the construction phase. How, therefore, do you respond to my constituent's subsequent statement that TfW really need to move this along with priority, as visitors driving electric vehicles will come to north Wales and find it unprepared for EV drivers, who will have disposable income, which our local tourism industry would like to be spent here, and that the Rhug estate announced that it's installing eight high-powered car chargers at Corwen—a few weeks to install eight high-powered chargers, when TfW and Welsh Government can only manage one medium-powered charger in 10 months?

I certainly share the Member's frustration that the scheme has hit some snags. Let me say a couple of things in response to the points he raises. First of all, I think he is a great champion of the private sector and I would've thought that, in this case, it is not for Government to be leading the roll-out of e-charging; the Government doesn't provide petrol stations and I don't think it's reasonable to expect Government to be the primary provider of e-charging facilities—that is a role, primarily, for the private sector. And the role of the public sector is to pump prime and deal with those areas that are going to be less likely to be served by the private sector, firstly.

TfW do have a programme of work and this does prove to be very complex, for the range of reasons that he set out, and there have been delays for a whole range of reasons, not least due to supply chains as well as legal hold-ups, and also, as we were discussing in the Senedd earlier, the constraints of the grid. And this is another problem where the grid that we have is not fit for purpose to deal with the climate change emergency. Now, these are not things that are within the control of the Welsh Government. So, it's a complex patchwork of reasons why there have been frustrations.

I would just say that the figures I've seen show that, per head, Wales has as many charging points as other parts of the UK. We have set out an e-charging action plan, which shows—[Inaudible.]—keep pace on that. But I won't deny that the progress to date on the TfW project hasn't been what I would've liked to have seen, but the number of reasons for that are as I've set out.

Minister, sustainable transport networks have to have at the heart of them the interests of the travelling public. They must get people to where they need and want to be, and that means Welsh Government working with partners to build networks that work for people—and it's partners like our wonderful local government colleagues. And, Llywydd, if I may take this opportunity now to congratulate my friend Keith Jones, who has just been appointed to the esteemed position of transport cabinet member in Cardiff, a highly important job for all local authorities.

Minister, if we look across to my constituency, transport routes have to be cross-border, and that means working with partners cross-border, like the metro mayor, Steve Rotheram. Minister, can I commit you today to committing your officials to working with metro mayor Steve Rotheram's officials to ensure that residents in Alyn and Deeside get to their jobs and places of recreation nearest to their homes on sustainable transport networks?

Well, I can reassure Jack Sargeant that one of the consequences of working with Ken Skates for two and half years is that I absolutely understand the need to work cross-border and to work closely with the metro mayor. I can assure you that that's what we're doing. Good relationships were set up when Ken was in charge of the transport portfolio and they have been sustained, I'm pleased to say. In fact, the north Wales transport commission we've set up under Lord Burns has on it a member from Nottinghamshire council, as well as Ashley Rogers, chair of Growth Track 360, to show that we absolutely understand the east-west nature of transport links, particularly in the north-east, and we continue to make sure that that is central to the planning that TfW is doing.

Jack Sargeant is absolutely right, we need a range of networks and they need to make—. The right thing to do and the easiest thing to do—. At the moment, we have a 70-year legacy of a transport system where we've made it easy to drive and more difficult to use public transport. And unless we turn that on its head and make public transport the easy, obvious, pain-free, cost-effective way to make our daily journeys, we're never going to meet our climate targets. And I hope that the Burns commission will do a practical job of work to set up a pipeline of schemes and create the delivery of relationships in the north and that those can then be achieved at pace.