1. Will the Minister make a statement on the announcement of the future of the Cardiff to Anglesey public service obligation flights? TQ637

Thank you, Carolyn. Following a full cost-benefit analysis, we've made a decision to cease all support for the service. We don't think passenger levels will return to a level that makes this service viable, either economically or environmentally. We will use the funding earmarked for the air link to accelerate work to improve north-south connectivity.

Thank you for that explanation, Minister. I understand the flights have been costly and agree with your reasoning for not restarting the service. I welcome that the millions of pounds saved by cancelling these flights will be invested into connectivity in north Wales, both digital, through the excellent digital signal processing centre in Bangor, and the roll-out of the pilots in Anglesey of broadband and transport. I know the Minister will be concerned, as I was, to see the horrendous overcrowding on trains from north to south Wales over the weekend, which shows that additional carriages, the ones that are on order to improve the service, are needed urgently. We need four carriages on that service. Sometimes we have four carriages. Very often it's the two-carriage service, which isn't enough any more. Will the Minister give an update regarding when the new trains and carriages will be operating on that service? Thank you.

Certainly, Carolyn. Absolutely right: we obviously do need to improve, as fast as possible, connectivity between all areas of north Wales and south Wales. The brand-new 197 trains that will be introduced in north Wales will be introduced well before they're introduced in the rest of Wales, and they're due to enter service no later than the end of this year, but later this year, and we're working to make that as soon as possible this year. We have 77 trains on order, and they will increase capacity on our services, exactly as you say, improve passenger experience and enable new services to be introduced along the north Wales route, as well as making sure that we have sufficient capacity at peak times on the route. So, I absolutely accept the premise, and we will be able to redirect the money from the service to accelerating that.

I'm glad, frankly, that the Welsh Government has finally woken up and smelt the coffee. I told you back in 2010 that this service was not good value for money for the taxpayer, and that alternatives needed to kick in. In fact, I've spoken about a number of alternatives that you could have looked at over the years, including an opportunity for the plane to hop to a number of different destinations in order to make it more commercially viable, including through Anglesey, say to the Isle of Man, Anglesey and Cardiff. I put that proposal forward, you didn't listen. You didn't listen. You didn't listen either when I said that this service would be better placed in north-east Wales, where the majority of the population in north Wales actually live. You didn't listen. You didn't listen either when I said you should have put this air link into somewhere like Liverpool or Manchester, connecting the north of England, the powerhouse that is the north of England, with our economy here in south Wales. But you didn't listen. Those could have been commercially viable options that would have kept an air service available to the people of north Wales for them to be able to use in order for them to be able to access Cardiff, but you didn't listen.

So, will you listen now, when I say to you: will you look at working with other airlines as potential partners to try to establish some of those alternatives, to make sure that north Wales does have those good transport links that we need to be able to have with south Wales? And will you also look at the disparity in transport spending from your Government here in Wales? You're spending hundreds of millions of pounds on roads in the south of the country and paltry amounts, frankly, on the transport network in north Wales. You're spending peanuts, and I say peanuts, in terms of the cash that you're putting into the north Wales metro, at £50 million compared to £750 million in south Wales. We need some better levelling up of our transport infrastructure in north Wales, and we've not got it at the moment. So, why don't you look at making sure that your capital infrastructure is spent more evenly across the country, and take the opportunity to see whether there are potential airline partners who can establish commercially viable links that can serve the people of north Wales, helping to connect them to the south in a way that your publicly subsidised service, frankly, could not?

Well, I think that is an absolutely excellent example of what the Conservatives think of their commitment to net zero. Let's fund a commercially viable, but environmentally destructive air service when what we should be doing is putting that money into rail services. [Interruption.] And you'd be a lot better placed, Darren Millar, to—[Interruption.]

Darren Millar, you've had your chance to ask your question. Allow the Minister to respond.

You'd be a lot better placed to use your undoubted emotional energy to get the Government in Westminster to properly fund rail services in Wales, and get behind the net-zero commitment that you say you will support, but every single time we do anything towards it, you say something different. It's absolute nonsense to say that the solution to north Wales connectivity is to put more airlines half-empty into the air, when we are looking at a climate emergency the like of which we've never seen before. [Interruption.] I absolutely am not listening to that, because it is nonsense.

I have to say, Llywydd, that I am shocked by the hypocrisy of the Conservatives here, denigrating north-south links, saying that there's been too much investment in south Wales, when they wanted to spend billions of pounds on the M4 in the south-east. I am shocked that Carolyn Thomas asked this question given that she was so lackadaisical on the Sharp End programme on ITV Wales last night about north-south links, saying that there wasn't much of a problem with north-south links because the Welsh Government was investing in digital. Now, don't misunderstand me, as the chair of the cross-party group on digital Wales, I welcome the investment in digital signal processing, but don't try to tell me that that investment has anything to do with transport connections between north and south. The Welsh Government has shown in the way that they've made this decision that they've looked at the cost of the flight between Cardiff and Anglesey, but haven't considered its value—its value as a sign that our Government cares about uniting our nation through swift transport, that Ministers care about reaching out to areas that, I promise you, do feel very far away from the capital city at times, where our Government is based. 

Now, as I've said in the past, I was pragmatic and said that of course our new ways of working in light of COVID had weakened the business plan. We don't always need to travel from one end of the country to another. I said that of course our increasing concern about the environment was something that should be welcomed, and that also changes the context. But, the question that I asked, very simply, was: if not an air link as an investment in the value of our connections from one end of the country to another, then what? And what we got in this announcement was nothing. No commitment whatsoever, no investment whatsoever in improving and strengthening connections between north and south, and no sign that this Government cares about how our nation is linked economically and socially.

As one constituent of mine said, 

'This is a decision that demonstrates a depressing lack of vision and ambition. Wales has so often been the victim of a casual decision made in London', he said, 

'ignorant or uncaring about its effects on Wales.'

Now, he feels that this is as casually ignorant of the need to bring us together as a nation through transport links—not necessarily the nature of that link and the air link that we've had, but the fact that nothing was provided and no vision was presented instead of it.

Well, Rhun, I completely agreed with the first part of your analysis, of course, and I won't bother to repeat that. And I'm sorry to hear that your constituent felt that, because that was certainly not the impression that we wished to give. According to our pre-pandemic passenger surveys, undertaken by the operator, 77 per cent of the people who travelled on the service used it for work purposes—so, very few for leisure purposes—and we widely recognise that business travel has significantly reduced as a result of the pandemic, and the change in behaviour is likely to continue. We also had an independent study commissioned into the carbon impact of the service, and basically—I was not surprised to find this—it is the most carbon intensive way of connecting the two parts of Wales. 

Now, I completely agree with you that we need to get the connectivity between north and south Wales much better, much faster, much more comfortable—something that you can do without having to worry about the effect on yourself and your journey. I completely agree with that. So, we've already announced, as I said in answer to Carolyn, the brand new 197 trains, which will come into effect in north Wales before the rest of the country. And, as part of the co-operation agreement between our two parties, we've agreed to work with you on a range of other measures to improve north and south connectivity. This money will help us to accelerate that connectivity work, and I'm looking forward to doing that.

I take your point about the digital, but I was nevertheless pleased to see the digital improvement. I know that you are too. We've announced a number of things that allow us to look at white premises on Ynys Môn—and you and I, in a previous life, went to look at some of those, so I was delighted with that as well. I absolutely accept that that doesn't improve the connectivity, but what it does do is make it more and more likely that people will work from home a very large percentage of the time, and make it more likely that the plane is even less full than it was in the first place. 

So, I am sorry to hear your constituent felt like that. It was certainly not casually taken. It was the subject of a great deal of thought. We do not wish anyone in north Wales to feel less connected, and we look forward to working with you, through the co-operation agreement, on improving that north-south connectivity to the best of our ability, and also working with you to hold the feet of the Conservatives opposite to the fire about the absolutely scandalous position of rail infrastructure investment in Wales.

I thank the Minister for the responses to those questions. She is also responding to the next topical question, and that question is from Natasha Asghar.