Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 14 February 2023.
Well, I thought most people would welcome three months additional funding for our bus services. I think there has to be a much wider conversation, and I think the Deputy Minister for Climate Change has referred to this. We haven't seen the return to bus use that we did pre the pandemic. I can't remember if the figure was 70 per cent or 75 per cent, as to what has returned. So, 25 per cent or 20 per cent—sorry, 30 per cent—has not come back. That patronage has not come back to our bus services. So, those conversations obviously will be ongoing. I appreciate a lot of people need a bus service and they need a reliable bus service, and certainly, if we're going to get people off our roads, we absolutely accept that our public transport has to be good and it has to be accessible. But I go back to what I've been saying probably now in three answers: a lot of it is about funding. You can't spend funding that you haven't got, but I would imagine that most people would welcome that three-month extension of funding.