Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:44 pm on 7 June 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:44, 7 June 2022

Llywydd, I make a distinction between the two points that the leader of the opposition has made. I think, on capacity, it is genuinely difficult to expect a train company, with fixed assets and a fixed pool of staff able to provide those services, to turn the tap on in a major way around any sort of event, and that's particularly true of train services. You simply can't magic trains out of the air for a couple of days; you've got to be able to afford them all year round, and you have to have staff that are competent and capable of providing a safe service. So, I think that is a genuine challenge and I don't think Transport for Wales can be criticised for the efforts they made to mobilise the resources at their disposal.

Where I do agree with the leader of the opposition is in relation to information. Anybody who has been stuck in any form of traffic event, whether that's at an airport or at a train station, knows that the one thing you need is good information about what is happening. And, even when that information is difficult and is going to tell you that you are going to be delayed or stuck or whatever, you would rather know what you are facing, rather than feel that there's nobody able to tell you what it is that is going on around you. So, that is an important point for Transport for Wales to take away from that event. While I don't expect them to be able to find capacity out of thin air, I do expect, when there are events of the sort that we saw, that every effort is made to make sure that people who are attempting to travel are kept as well informed as they can be.