The following amendment has been selected: amendment 1 in the name of Lesley Griffiths.

We move now to item 7, the Plaid Cymru debate on the bus emergency scheme, and I call on Delyth Jewell to move the motion.

Motion NDM8229 Siân Gwenllian

To propose that the Senedd:

1. Notes that the Government's written evidence to Senedd scrutiny committees on allocations within each main expenditure group specified that the £28 million that constituted the bus emergency scheme in 2022-23 would be matched in 2023-24, but that bus operators were then informed that there was no guarantee of any funding from 1 April 2023 for the bus emergency scheme.

2. Notes that the 3-month extension to the bus emergency scheme offers little certainty to bus operators to maintain key services and routes in their area in the long-term.

3. Expresses concern that failing to extend bus emergency scheme funding would result in mass cancellations of services, leaving communities across Wales—primarily rural communities—isolated.

4. Calls on the Welsh Government to extend bus emergency scheme funding for at least 18 months to provide longer-term financial security to bus operators across Wales. 

5. Calls on the Welsh Government to bring forward longer-term secure funding options to maintain bus services, as opposed to emergency funding schemes.

Motion moved.

I believe it was Gustavo Petro who said that the way to identify a developed country is not by finding a place where the poor have cars, but finding a place where the wealthy use public transport. And that is the crux of our debate this afternoon, in a way. It isn't just a debate raising urgent questions about funding public transport; it also raises related questions—fundamental questions about the level of respect that our society shows public transport. We as a nation are on a journey towards net zero by 2035. We need to be on that journey, but we can only cross that bridge if the use of public transport becomes the norm in our daily lives. So, that's the context in which we have to place our debate this afternoon.

But, to turn to the specific points in our motion, Llywydd, because we couldn't have this wider discussion without the bus industry existing, and this about the existence and survival of this industry. Our motion focuses on the need for certainty for the industry in Wales—certainty that will be particularly important for small operators, those without reserves, the family-run operators, and those on which their communities depend. We're asking for certainty about how much additional funding will be available to assist the industry, and for how long any additional funding will be provided. Our motion calls on the Government to extend the emergency scheme for at least 18 months, because there isn’t a great deal of certainty at the moment, and the providers cannot plan further ahead than the month we’re currently in. Since we heard that the future of the emergency scheme, the BES, was under threat, at the time of the budget, an extension of just three months has been offered. Now, of course, that extension is to be welcomed, but the time provided isn't sufficient to provide the certainty that is needed. Now, of course, we do need a debate on a sustainable future for the industry, an assurance that funding won’t merely be considered as an emergency measure, and our motion refers to those needs too. But it’s the current situation that is the cause of greatest concern.

As many of us who have heard directly from the bus industry in our areas will know, this exceptionally short period of time—three months—is not sufficient to enable bus operators to sustain their services in the long term. And the danger, of course, is that providers will decide to discontinue those routes that aren’t commercially viable, despite these being routes that many residents are dependent on to live full lives—to attend college, the workplace, or hospital appointments, or to see family and friends. 

And this is the thing, Llywydd: this isn’t just a debate about saving the bus industry. It is a debate that focuses on the need to safeguard and guarantee the way of life for many people in Wales. Almost 80 per cent of journeys by public transport are made using buses. The future of our bus services is a matter of social justice. This isn’t an academic debate about structures, funding and infrastructure, but an urgent debate about delivering fairness for our communities.

Would you like to give way on that point?

Yes, certainly. Oh, my gosh—who first? Huw. Huw, yes.

Diolch, Delyth. I have a lot of sympathy with your argument, because this is about social justice and environmental justice and so on. The challenge we have, however, is that there was nothing—nothing, not a penny—within the budget just announced about any uplift in bus services. The England bus grant has gone already. We've seen the effects of it. At least what we have here is a short-term thing. So, I guess my question to you is this: where will that money come from for an 18-month extension, and how much will it be?  

Thanks for that, Huw. In terms of—. Well, this is why we've got this almost two different perspectives—well, not two different perspectives, but two different—. The immediate and then the more fundamental questions happening at the same time. In terms of the immediate, we're asking evidently for the Government to look again at not just the transport budget that's given over to buses. The Deputy Minister has been honest with the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee in the past about how so much more, proportionally, of the transport budget is given over to trains. I appreciate the fact that these projects for trains are very expensive, but, at the moment, because of just how skewed actual passenger numbers are in favour of buses and those journeys at the moment, I think that does need to be looked at. 

But I think we also need to be having a much more fundamental conversation about how we learn from places like London, where they seem to be getting this. It's not often that I'll say we need to be learning from London, but I think, in this, we do need to look at how the balance works. I'm not pretending that this is an easy thing, but, really, I'm worried about the effect this will have on our communities unless something radical is done. 

Rhun, you also wanted to intervene. 

Just very briefly. On that very point, we are acting for the benefit of our communities here. I have a letter from the O.R. Jones company from Anglesey. Yes, they are calling for an extension of this funding, and for a longer-term investment in bus services, they're concerned about the jobs that would be lost if that didn't happen, but, at heart, they are concerned about the impact on communities. Does the Member agree that the bus companies themselves are truly worried about the communities that they serve? 

Yes, and I think that that—. I think both of you perhaps would want to see the same thing here, and the bus operators, particularly those small operators, the family-owned operators, they see that passengers are at the heart of this industry, and that's why I say that it's not just a discussion that's an academic one about structures; it's about maintaining people's ways of life. And I think we need to look again at our trends as a society, our attitudes towards public transport, and that dovetails with what Huw has asked for as well. But thank you for both of those interventions.

Now, the large-scale cancellation of services, as we’ve just heard, particularly those services that aren’t commercially viable, will leave communities across Wales isolated. That’s what we’re really concerned about here. It will leave people isolated, particularly in parts of the Valleys or in rural areas, places where people don’t have as many options in terms of different ways of getting from A to B. The point has been made previously that buses aren’t just vehicles; they're a lifeline for people and they bring our communities together. This is a wider question, which goes beyond transport alone.

Research by First Bus suggests that people choose buses for a number of different reasons, including awareness of the environmental crisis and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis. Thirty-six per cent use buses to save money, and a similar percentage feel that travelling by bus is beneficial to their mental health. And there is an appetite for even more. A recent YouGov survey found that 90 per cent of the population of these islands want to live within a 15-minute walk of a bus stop.

Now, buses do have the potential to play an even more prominent role in our daily lives, as we’ve just been discussing with Huw and with Rhun. But, without financial security for the industry in the long term, the impacts will be felt by the workforce, there will be impacts on education provision and, of course, in terms of how polluted the air that surrounds us is, because more people will opt to use their cars. And that will be a failure—not only a failure of policy, but a moral failure on the part of all of us. 

As I've said, travellers are at the heart of the bus industry, and how we do this in Wales. And of course the network isn’t perfect—the Government must have in-depth discussions with local government, with passenger groups, with TfW and other partners about the future of the current franchising model to ensure that the voice of our smallest operators is heard, and that the voice of the travellers and passengers is heard.

I'll conclude, Llywydd, with a list of questions for the Government. If the emergency funding scheme comes to an end in June, what additional support will be available to sustain those routes that aren’t commercially viable? Is sufficient funding available through the BES—or different sources of funding, as Huw perhaps was referring to—to create a new funding mechanism that is more sustainable? And does the Government believe that a deadline of the end of June gives the industry, local government and others—all of the partners—enough time to plan for the future? Because that’s the challenge.

I’m sorry, Mabon, that I’ve gone over time and you’ll have less time to respond to the debate, I’m afraid. But I do look forward to hearing the rest of the debate. Thank you.

I have selected the amendment to the motion and I call on the Deputy Minister for Climate Change to formally move.

Amendment 1—Lesley Griffiths

Delete all and replace with:

To propose that the Senedd:

1. Acknowledges that the Welsh Government has made over £150m of additional funding available to the bus industry throughout the pandemic and to support its recovery from it.

2. Notes that bus passenger numbers have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels and patterns of usage have changed.

3. Notes that the initial 3-month extension to the bus emergency scheme offers short-term certainty to bus operators to support the development of a base bus network.

4. Supports the Welsh Government’s longer term plans to reform the bus industry through regulation.

5. Supports the Welsh Government’s intention to move away from emergency-style funding at the earliest opportunity to a funding package that supports the transition to franchising.

Amendment 1 moved.

Formally.

Diolch. Jenny Rathbone.

Thank you very much. We are in a very difficult situation here, and I think it’s absolutely right that we do debate this issue, so I thank Plaid for that. This is going to be a much more fruitful debate than the one we’ve just concluded.

The Welsh Government has put over £150 million of subsidy into the bus industry since the pandemic, and there’s absolutely no doubt that the numbers of people who used to use the bus services still haven’t come back to the buses. Even in Cardiff, where there has been a better than average return, it’s still only 75 per cent to 80 per cent of the people using the buses who used them pre pandemic. So, some people have completely changed the way they operate in their lives, either because they’re too scared to come out for a variety of reasons, or because they’ve either bought a bike—unlikely; we’d like to hope so—or they’ve got a private car. Of course, this is absolutely the wrong direction to the one we want people to go in, particularly as many people try and operate a private car when they actually don’t have the money to do it; they are living in transport poverty.

I absolutely congratulate the Deputy Minister for the heroic things he’s been trying to do to keep the bus services going, because we are facing a real cliff edge of crisis on this one. But we’ve heard yesterday that there’s only £1 million in capital in the budget from the UK Government for everything, for all the services and things that we have to fund. So, there is no more money at the moment, and how we're going to manage to get through this and still have the bus services that we need to make the transition away from the private motor car—it's really, really difficult to see how we're going to do that.

We are absolutely between a rock and a hard place, because most of the buses that are being used are using petrol and diesel, ergo the price of these fuels has gone up exponentially. Very few local authorities have actually managed to get the grants to electrify their buses. I know that Cardiff and Newport have been able to be successful in doing so. Other local authorities either haven't applied or have been turned down, and I can't say which that is, but, clearly, that's a very good question.

We have no central direction of where our buses go. Private companies will cherry-pick the routes that they want to go on in order to maximise the amount of money that they can make out of x or y. That means that they are undermining the viability of public sector bus services, which were in a position to cross-subsidise, if you like, the better used services with those that were socially important but not very well used.

We've had years and years of under-investment in rail, which makes it seriously difficult for us to develop the sort of amazing integrated public transport system that London has. But that is because we have a system of Government that's completely unfair. London and the south-east have had way more money invested in public transport than we have had in Wales. At the moment, we have a Government that is providing us with a fiction that, somehow, HS2, which runs between Old Oak Common and Birmingham, is benefiting Wales. I invite you to look at the geography.

So, until we get a change of Government with a little bit more sanity in the arrangements around fair funding, we have the following situation: we have a private company who operate the C8 from St Mary's Street in the centre of Cardiff, and they've suddenly announced that it's not going to run after 4 April. This is important to you guys, because people who provide the services to us in the Senedd, some of them have to start at 7 o'clock in the morning. After that bus is withdrawn, they have no way of getting here by 7 o'clock in the morning, because there is no other bus service. Unless they're suddenly, after 40 years, going to acquire a bike, they are simply not going to be able to. Their rotas are going to have to change to accommodate whatever still exists of bus services. 

Equally, the other huge, massive issue in my constituency is the cost of school transport. Children are not attending school because even those on free school meals are having to pay £400 for the privilege of going to school if they live too far away to realistically walk, and we simply don't yet have the alternatives of active travel, because most secondary school students should be able to travel by bike. So, we have a really difficult situation, and I don't know how we're going to resolve this one and I'm interested to know who has got the solutions.

I think it's clear that we all want to ensure that we have a good public transport network here in Wales. I don't doubt that the Deputy Minister will deny this, even though we know that he prefers to use his private car, to the tune of 12,000 miles over the last four years. But, sadly, we're facing a public transport crisis. From the messaging the Welsh Government has given us during the pandemic, which has scared the public away from using the vital service, to the lack of funding that it's getting to recover from COVID-19, what we see is a Welsh Government failing to incentivise local bus use.

Across the Chamber, Minister, it's clear that we are regularly seeing the Minister actually say something and mean something else. The front line is a totally different story from the picture that we often have painted here of the Welsh public transport network, including the collapsed roads review here, where often the Deputy Minister tells the Welsh public not to drive on roads and to rely on public services, and yet the Government has utterly failed to invest in buses or the public transport network right here in Wales. [Interruption.] Local bus use is now approximately 75 to 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, and these aren't scheduled to rise until around about 2030. And I'm not saying it— 

Are you giving way? 

—this comes from the Confederation of Passenger Transport. 

No.

Deputy Minister, this is your problem to solve, and you haven't been seeming to solve it. Yes, it's really welcome that the Welsh Government is providing extra emergency funding for bus services, but it seems that this was a panicked response—just another short-term reply to a long-term issue. And this is despite the Deputy Minister warning that there was no cash to help last month.

I also listened carefully to the First Minister's response about the subject just the other week, and I felt like, again, it was something he may not have run past the Deputy Minister, much like Labour's vote against the roads review a few weeks ago. Distances covered by buses in Wales have fallen significantly over the last 10 years, and, yes, this includes years that are under the Deputy Minister's watch. He may sit here, he may shake his head, going forward, pull faces at me and remain in denial, but it's your responsibility, Deputy Minister, no-one else's. While we saw 123 million km travelled by buses in 2010, this halved to 64.2 million km in 2021. What are you going to do about this shameful decline, Deputy Minister, going forward? For many users of bus services, reliability and punctuality are top priorities—

Will you take an intervention?

No. You don't want to use public transport just to turn up late for work or to get up at some extremely early hour for your commute.

In my own region of south-east Wales, more than one in 10 bus journeys are not on time according to bus users, and this will no doubt increase with the roll-out of the 20 mph speed limits. As a result of these shameful figures, are we seeing huge investments in the bus service network? No, not anything. Instead, the Welsh Government believes the solution will be to make buses public again. But do we trust the Welsh Government to be up to the job? Not on this side of the Chamber, sadly. We've seen the botch job you've done over the NHS, the economy, so what's going to be different about bus services, going forward?

It's also laughable about the 20 mph speed limits that are going to be costing around about £30 million when that money could be invested into public transport. As ever, you seem to preside over a shocking waste of money on an issue that no-one is in favour of.

You're also about the decarbonisation of transport, and yet, the figures tell a different story. What's new here? Electric buses were introduced with great fanfare by the Deputy Minister in Carmarthen, but we're still here waiting for a Government-funded scheme on this, unlike Scotland and England, whose councils and operators have enjoyed assistance with the costs of green vehicles and infrastructure. Just two local authorities in Wales, as my colleague mentioned, Cardiff and Newport, have made great strides in this area, and while we see plans for extra buses that meet your own Government's criteria, we don't see any tangible support.

So, it is my pleasure to support Plaid Cymru's motion today. There are many things wrong with the Deputy Minister's stance on public transport. On the one hand, he tells us he's obviously going to be increasing our use of public transport, and on the other hand, he's putting roadblocks in our way. Thank you, Presiding Officer.

Getting bus services right is something that will be transformative for Wales, and, certainly, in terms of the long term, I know that the Deputy Minister shares the passion that many of us have to ensure that we have a bus network that works for Wales. That will take time, it needs investment, but what we are talking about at this point in time are the services that people in our communities currently use and rely on, and the risk to the future of that service. That's why we're putting forward this debate, because of representations by those directly affected by proposed cuts to services.

Looking at census data, which is really interesting, when you drill down in terms of car ownership, you get a picture of those isolated communities, where car ownership—. You know, it's not something that people just like to use every now and then. There are no other options. They're not close to train stations; bus travel is the only travel. Car ownership rates in the region that I represent vary greatly. If you look at the Vale of Glamorgan, very high car ownership in many places; Cardiff is variable. You'd expect the city centre itself, about 90 per cent in some wards have no cars, but, obviously, that's very much in the city centre—no surprise.

But you look at communities like Glyncoch, just outside of Pontypridd, where there hasn't been a decision to extend the metro line, despite local calls in terms of the halt there, but car ownership's amongst the lowest in Wales. For people there, what it means when they don't have a bus service or buses are less frequent or don't show up, which is a huge problem currently, because of the shortage of bus drivers, is missed hospital or doctor appointments; late to school or college; late to work, or not getting to work; fewer wages; losing employment; late collecting children from school; waiting in the rain only for no bus to come; feeling isolated, disconnected, restricted to their homes; unable to be independent.

For children, buses provide absolutely essential access to education, but also to breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and extra-curricular activities. Buses allow their parents to live their lives too. But we are seeing, increasingly so, that people are missing out on school, as illustrated by Jenny Rathbone, because of not being able to afford transport if they fall outside of that bracket in terms of getting free school transport, or simply that bus services are not there.

So, if you look at some of the investment going into trains at the moment, it was mentioned earlier in terms of the Treherbert line, which is also in my region. If you see the responses from local people to the announcement in terms of the scheme that will close the railway for at least eight months—a significant amount of time—well, for many people who are along that train line, they know the bus services are either non-existent and are hugely concerned because they also have seen when bus replacement services are used, demand has risen in other buses, because people know the bus replacement schemes have not been working. In theory, they're supposed to work, but that's not been the reality, because people have been waiting maybe an hour, an hour and a half, to try and get on that bus replacement, and then the journey taking so much longer than what is said on paper.

So, we've seen an increase in demand, then, for local buses, on many of the services that are at risk, unless the scheme is extended. So, we really are talking about ensuring equity of access. I know that many of us see, in terms of our response to the climate emergency, that we need to encourage people to try and transition from cars to using public transport. But that's not to accept the reality for the majority of people in many of those communities, where they use buses daily.

Another issue that has been raised with me in terms of South Wales Central is that many machines have been broken on buses, and they can be very expensive to replace, and it often takes weeks for the machines to arrive, if they are able to get them from Europe. That means we don't have an accurate picture of some bus routes in terms of passenger numbers, and I wonder if this is something that had also been raised with the Deputy Minister, because we do talk about not having the numbers for some routes, but actually, there isn't an accurate picture for some bus routes that are crucial in terms of connecting areas like Pontypridd to other parts of RCT.

I am glad that we have been able, through the co-operation agreement, to agree on some key priority areas where we would like to see greater investment, and this is one of them, but I think crucially, we must think about all the ways we can address the immediate issues here, and what we're asking is for an extension, so that we can secure the services that people currently rely on for the reasons outlined, whilst we work on long-term solutions. Diolch.

Can I just begin by thanking Plaid Cymru for bringing this debate, as Jenny indeed did, and also to agree with many of the comments that have been made, both by Delyth in her introductory remarks, and also by Heledd? They stressed very much that this is a matter of social and environmental justice, or if you want to put that into layperson's terms, it's the individual at the top of the Garw valley who works in a social care job, who needs to get there for a late evening shift and then get back very early morning to their family and get into bed, so that they can get back to the next shift. So, I agree with all of that.

The questions that they put are the right questions. The problem is—looking to the Minister—I'm not sure we have heard the answers. Because the question that I put to Delyth, and it's a genuine question—and I held back from intervening, asking you exactly the same, Delyth—is to recognise that the emergency fund has already been withdrawn in England and we've seen already the impact there on services in England. It was a pity that I couldn't actually intervene on the Conservative speaker to ask that, as she wasn't taking interventions. I welcome interventions, by the way, if anybody would want to.

The problem is there was no uplift whatsoever in terms of bus services or transport within the provision of the budget that we just heard. There should have been. There should have been, absolutely, to absolutely give us a longer transition, so we could have these discussions, but there was none. So then, 18 months, the question is: how much additional will fall on Welsh Government to do it, and where do Plaid Cymru believe that should come from? Because that is the real hard choice. So, I agree with the questions you posed. The answers are not, unfortunately, that straightforward.

It is undoubtedly true—as anybody who's been involved with the bus operators over the last two and three years in tense discussions, as I have been in Rhondda Cynon Taf and Bridgend with First Cymru and with other providers, as we've seen services go, by the way—but none of those services would be there, frankly, at this moment, unless that £150 million of additional support had been put in by Welsh Government. That's a simple fact. They would have gone to the wall. There would have been none of those people, even with the reduced service, accessing their jobs, accessing their surgery appointments, being able to socialise, to deal with the issues of isolation we often talk about in this Chamber. It has kept it going, and it's welcome and it isn't reflected, curiously, in the Plaid Cymru motion. It was reflected in Delyth's comments, but not in the motion, that, actually, Welsh Government has gone further and has extended it to have those further conversations. [Interruption.]

I will indeed give way to the Member, although noting that she didn't want to enter into a debate earlier, but I am happy to enter into a debate.

Thank you very much for the intervention opportunity. I don't like to intervene, purely because I want to give everyone the opportunity to speak. That's why I didn't accept the intervention myself—that's the only reason why. It's my own personal preference, Presiding Officer. That's absolutely fine; that's my personal preference. I'm entitled to have it, as are you—

Yes, yes, carry on with your intervention on the subject.

But coming back to the point, you wanted to ask me the question about the funding for this. Now, I'm fortunate enough, and I've said this on many occasions. You speak about £150 million, but I'll tell you exactly where you could have saved £155 million: if this Government, the Welsh Labour Government, had bothered to pick up the phone and call Westminster just to clarify where they could have spent the extra £155 million they were given by Westminster in the first place, you wouldn't have lost that money back to Westminster, which was here for the people of Wales, but didn't make its way there. So, thank you very much.

I think I've heard the intervention now, Llywydd. It was a long intervention. Maybe the Member wasn't here yesterday in the debate that we had in First Minister's questions, where the hard reality is that, at this moment, in real terms, we are £900 million down—£900 million down—and in terms of actually developing a new fleet of electric buses and so on, we've been given £1 million uplift. This is scandalous. So, I thank you for the intervention because it shows the paucity of the Conservative argument in terms of supporting public transport. 

I have to say—I know I don't look this old, Llywydd—but I recently had my bus pass through—

Member of the Senedd:

No. [Laughter.]

Thank you. [Laughter.] I genuinely feel more like a citizen of Wales because of that universal provision, but the challenge the Minister has is to work over the next few months—and he is working hard with those bus operators and with local authorities—to actually use this very short breathing period to find a way forward that is sustainable. I don't envy him his task in that. 

Let me just make a couple of points, because we did have a long intervention, with your discretion, Llywydd. Long term, we do have to get on with reversing this disastrous deregulation, because at least then we can have the democratic argument with people who have a stake directly in deciding where services go. Long term, we have to do that.

Long term, we have to find a more sustainable funding package as well. But do you know also what we need to do? Use the buses. Because there's the biggest challenge of all, and it's not just for the public out there, because if you demand a public service and buses that are only for poor people to use, you will end up with a poor service. It's for all of us—every one of us, myself included with my bus pass—to get on those buses now and use them, because that's the way you deliver a very secure future for buses—not just trains, but buses—is if every one of us actually gets on them as well, otherwise, if we don't use it, we will lose it.

In the Swansea valley where I live, there are no trains—none. The same is true for the neighbouring Dulais valley, the Neath valley and the Afan valley. And although there are some great cycle paths, the geography and terrain of these valleys make active travel more challenging than in other urban areas of Wales. They are areas that are completely dependent on buses for public transport. And I want to make this point crystal clear, because this debate is sometimes framed around rural populations versus urban or the use of rail transport versus bus.

And another factor I also want to throw into the mix, as Heledd Fychan did here, is car ownership, or rather the lack of. Buses serve those without cars, and the Valleys communities I represent in South Wales West have below-national-average levels of car ownership. Buying and running a car is simply unaffordable and so, the bus is the only choice—the only way many people of all ages can access work, education, healthcare, shops, leisure and social activities. So, if you live in these areas and do not own a car, the way you can get around is already limited. And the number of complaints I receive about cuts to already skeleton services is huge, and I'd like to share some of them with you, because the voices of these people, as many Members have said, rightfully belong in this debate.

One 37-year-old woman told me that she relies completely on bus services. She used to use the bus to go to work every day: one bus from her village in the Neath valley into Neath and then one from Neath to her place of work just outside Port Talbot. But frequent delays resulted in her missing her connection, getting to work late. She no longer works there. Recent bus cuts and reduced Valleys services have meant that if she'd still been employed there, a journey that already took over an hour would now take even longer, if the bus turns up at all. As she is currently seeking employment, she says she has to take current levels of service into account when considering opportunities, which limits the jobs she can apply for.

Another woman, whose health is deteriorating, uses a car at the moment, but worries it won't be long until she can no longer drive, and she says she's really worried about getting old in her community. A woman who lives in Godre'r Graig told me service is already poor. She feels she's going to be completely cut off if there are any further reductions to services. She's really concerned for her son, who is due to start Neath college in September. Loss of service would mean that he would not be able to attend. Her sister works in Morriston Hospital. She doesn't drive, and regular and reliable bus services are vital for her employment.

And it's not just the Valleys communities in South Wales West. Dyffryn Clydach is a community in Neath, but it's on a long, steep hill—very long. Many residents have told me there they feel completely cut off on the weekend because there's no bus on a Saturday, and they can't even get into Neath town centre, therefore, to go shopping or meet people because of the lack of buses. 

But if buses are a lifeline, then the cost of a ticket is also often a barrier, and I think this is also something we must consider. A mother from Neath says she struggles with the cost of the fare if she has to go and pick up her child from school if she's sick or has a practice after school.

So, the absolute state of bus services in areas like mine is nothing new. South Wales West is predominantly served by First Cymru, with a number of routes served by South Wales Transport, Adventure Travel and Stagecoach. While a lot of the services between the main urban areas of Bridgend, Port Talbot, Neath and Swansea are run on commercial grounds and are well used, many of the Valleys areas, as I've outlined, have a lesser service. And in the Swansea and Amman valleys in particular, services are extremely patchy and infrequent. A 15-minute journey in a car can take well over an hour by bus, and sometimes even more. And, as I've said, many places have no weekend services, or very limited weekend services. And the availability of bus in the evenings can result in people not being able to attend events that go beyond 6 p.m. or get home, as Huw mentioned, after shift work. Any cuts to bus services will exacerbate these difficulties, limiting the mobility of even more people. 

In the summer holidays of 2021, Swansea Council launched their free bus initiative. Since that initial trial, it has been repeated many times during school holidays. In correspondence with the council, asking if they'd evaluated this and the impact of it, I was told that anecdotal evidence from a customer survey undertaken in December last year indicated that 25 per cent of people who've used the scheme would not otherwise have travelled. While it is clear the scheme proved popular and saved people money at the times it ran, Swansea Council stated that the nature of the initiative has made it difficult to assess longer term impacts. With similar schemes being pursued or explored in other parts of the country, what efforts is the Government taking, in conjunction with service operators and local authorities, to monitor and analyse the longer term impact of these schemes on passenger numbers? Given that one of the problems facing the bus sector is reduced passenger numbers, should we not be looking at the impact interventions like this can have on the number of people using buses, and exploring ways they can be scaled up if they prove to be successful in encouraging modal shift?

Meanwhile, people like those who live in cwm Tawe, cwm Nedd, cwm Dulais and cwm Afan are feeling forgotten about, devalued and anxious. They don't understand why there are shiny new buses and trains in some areas, constant talk of a greener, cleaner Wales in this place, when the communities they are living in are being left behind. Llywydd, a solution must be found, and I really want to hear what action the Government can take to address this, because they need to address this. 

Thank you, Plaid Cymru, for this debate today. I will support the unamended motion, which rightly notes the serious concern that we are facing in Wales, with mass cancellations of transport services leaving communities across Wales feeling very isolated. That public transport crisis has already hit us in Aberconwy, and we, my constituents, have been left without the means to get to work, schools, university, the doctor, to buy food, et cetera, et cetera, and at very short notice. And, I've got to be honest, I don't like pointing fingers, but I do lay this blame at your table, Lee Waters, because you've had every opportunity to deal with this urgent issue and you've just completely ignored everybody.

Will you give way?

Yes, of course.

I wonder if you could tell me how the UK Government—sorry, the England Government—has dealt with this, with the cancellation of the emergency bus scheme and the 10 per cent drop now in services being provided immediately?

Right. As a colleague here, we are elected as Members of the Welsh Parliament, Senedd Cymru, here, so my concern is—. I would imagine that MPs over in England will be holding to account, if they need to, the UK Government, but it's my job to scrutinise this Government and Lee Waters in particular.

Now then, I do remain disappointed, Deputy Minister, that, alongside Transport for Wales, Gwynedd Council—Plaid Cymru—Conwy County Borough Council, you allowed the T19 between Blaenau Ffestiniog and Llandudno to be terminated at such short notice. Three weeks—three weeks—have passed since your Transport for Wales officials made a promise, in my virtual meeting of stakeholders, to look into the Conwy valley Fflecsi service and the 19X as potential solutions. These bus operators have come forward with solutions just to be ignored. It's shocking. To quote a bus company in Aberconwy, 'TfW lacks communication, correspondence and expertise in the marketplace. From the tracks to tarmac, TfW are seriously overwhelmed.' Those are their words, not mine. This is affecting the most vulnerable in society, and TfW know it. They themselves have said that 13 per cent of Welsh households do not have access to a car. Twenty-five per cent of bus users have a disability or long-term illness. And Sustrans Cymru—you'll remember Sustrans Cymru, Lee—has reported that transport poverty is a widespread experience here in Wales. Plaid Cymru's thrust is about the bus emergency scheme, and I support that—yes, of course I do—but that isn't enough. I have no objection to extending BES funding for at least 18 months, but, let's be clear, such action would not provide longer term financial security to bus operators across Wales. To quote a stakeholder, 'The BES scheme is a financial sticking plaster, designed to make good losses for businesses that are doing little, if anything, to actually attract customers back on board'.

Now, I know it's rather like a post office with buses. If you don't use it, you're going to lose it, and I don't think you get that message out enough. It's usually far too late and people are left feeling stranded and isolated. Local bus use is only approximately 75 per cent to 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, so tell me today what is the Welsh Government doing about that? We need a major campaign involving Welsh Government, TfW, local authorities and every single operator to market services, not just to get bottoms on bus seats, but to convince the public that using public transport is the best way to access places for retail, social and work. BES should be reliant on an ability to prove growth, investment, improvement in the quality of service and major marketing. However, bus operators I have spoken to have warned of a massive problem only a few stops away, and that is this idea of franchising. One bus company has written to me, and I quote, 'We have zero understanding of what franchising means to the sector'—[Interruption.] Do you want to intervene? [Interruption.] All right.

'Being completely in the dark means that we cannot plan or invest in our businesses or in maintaining critical services'. Now, as someone who emerges from the private sector myself, the number of people in the private sector who are in dismay at the lack of business acumen that your department holds—. Even more worrying is that there is concern in the sector that even you, Deputy Minister, and TfW, don't know either. Individuals working in the sector have suggested to me that the implementation of a London-style—come on, Plaid Cymru, you won't like this—a London-style franchise model across Wales will cost at least £300 million a year. No surprise, then, that the sector is rightly calling for a clear explanation as to why you think franchising is considerably viable. [Interruption.] I did take an intervention.

Across the bus and coach industry, there is huge scepticism as to whether Welsh Government and TfW are actually capable of designing, contracting and managing a pan-Wales franchise framework. Llywydd, we need to hear from the Deputy Minister today not only how he will support bus companies in the short term, but assurance that the longer term plan of franchising is even affordable and deliverable. You don't need me to remind you just how the Welsh Government have handled the actual ownership of an airport. Diolch, Llywydd.

Most of us here will know someone who is entirely dependent on buses to get around—be they members of our families or constituents, people need buses to get to work, to go to the shops, to attend school and medical appointments, or to access leisure opportunities. It is certainly true of my region—communities that are underserved by the rail network, for example—that people are dependent on buses to live their lives, and to live them well. As has already been mentioned, access to bus services is just as much a matter of social justice as it is a matter related to climate change, but, on top of this, it is a matter of vital economic importance. It affects people’s ability to access employment opportunities and the kinds of opportunities that people can reach, but it also dictates what services are available to people. With the increase in online shopping and the slow decline of our high streets, buses are going to be crucial to enable customers to support businesses in town centres.

I and colleagues have brought this matter up time and time again. Communities in my region are underserved when it comes to public transport. It doesn't help that there's a lack of investment in rail from the UK Government, for example. If we look at Ogmore, the vast majority of the constituency isn't covered by rail. And this isn't a unique characteristic of Ogmore; this is something that is seen across Wales. As I’ve said before, valleys in my region are solely reliant on bus services for public transport—from the Ogmore valleys to the Neath valleys and to the Swansea valleys. A lot of these areas are reliant on these services and, despite this, services are under constant threat of being cut or being altered because they are no longer profitable.

Now, the reality is that so long as bus services are in the hands of companies that are driven by profit, they will never be driven by the needs of our communities. That's the bottom line. Another failure of Thatcherite policy and one we need to grapple with. We know that, where services are needed, largely in low-income communities, they are pretty much non-existent and of poor quality, but where people can afford to pay more for these services, then the quality of the service is great. Huw has made the point already—and both Huw and I often bump into each other on public transport—but we do need to prioritise its use. We need to encourage others to use it. We are on the verge of simply making this problem worse, and, ultimately, if we want to realise a vision of a green Wales where public transport is the primary mode of transport, we need to get buses right, and we need to encourage their use above all else. That means publicly owned, that means community involvement in mapping routes—power anywhere where there's people.

I'm also glad to hear school transport being raised, an issue that we desperately need to resolve. The rain we've had over the past few days, and kids have been walking in that rain, over an hour, getting to school soaking wet. On school transport, I would appreciate clarity on two points. First, does the Welsh Government have a role here? Depending on who you ask, you get different responses. Secondly, typically, how are contracts paid for? Are they by route or are they by child? We have examples of half-empty buses passing kids, for example, and we have examples of buses stopping on streets with some kids on that street able to access the bus and others not because of a sibling rule, which I know is in use in Bridgend; it could be in use in other local authorities. They cannot access the service, fundamentally, and parents are desperate to see their kids arrive at school safely and dry, and I would hope for some clarity on that issue from the Minister.

Thank you to Plaid Cymru for this motion. I'm going to be supporting the motion unamended.

Just let me tell you a little story about door-knocking in a village called Llangynog, which is just south of Llanwddyn, near lake Vyrnwy. I came across a lady who told me about the bus service that she took every week with her friends, run by Tanat Valley Coaches, based in Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant. Once every Tuesday, the bus would pick them all up at about 11 a.m. They would go to Oswestry, actually—in England, I'm afraid—to have their hair done, to do their shopping and to have a cup of coffee, and they would come back. That was the only bus service, once a week. But, to go back to Delyth's point, it was so important for that community. It was run by Tanat Valley Coaches, who I actually visited as well. Tanat Valley were a service that offered bus services to schools as well, and, actually, they told me that they made a loss, but they felt it was so important that they continued with this community resource. I do praise them and support them for that. We know that, for those rural communities—. Many of us represent them and we've heard from many Members here how vital they are. The bus emergency scheme was so vital to them as well to protect those services, and we're now facing a cliff edge around funding. I totally agree with everything that's been said about deregulation as well, but, in rural areas, we do need a solution. I agree with the Minister that long-term funding is needed. It would be devastating for our communities to lose the bus emergency scheme in its current form. It has been a lifeline. Graham Vidler of the Confederation of Passenger Transport has said that some communities in rural west Wales would be cut off altogether. We need to ensure that important routes linking communities to services, as you've heard, in rural locations, like local hospitals and schools, don't see a significant reduction in services. 

Rural areas need certainty, and our communities need investment. We all want to promote a sustainable economy in our rural areas, but it does depend on decent public transport links, and turning around the long-term decline in bus use. I do pick up Huw Irranca-Davies's point as well: we do need to use them, or we will lose them. I look forward to the roll-out of the Fflecsi bus service, which has been piloted. I've been very impressed with that, having seen it in Pembrokeshire, so I do look forward to hearing more about that.

We know we cannot achieve net zero without increasing bus use. The effect of the cliff edge now means that the bus industry could face catastrophe for passengers and for the industry, and it does undermine the Government's commitment to environmental aims. Wales already has the highest rate of car commuting of any nation in the UK, and we need to ensure that we look at the language of climate emergency through that lens. I do applaud the roads review. I think I was probably the only Member here who supported the roads review without any conditions at all. So, I thank you for that, and we need to move forward on that; that is really important.

I've long advocated as well the introduction of free bus travel for all under-25s. It would have a transformational effect on the lives of many young people, again, particularly in those rural areas. I hope that the Minister will match his ambitions with action. We need to give bus operators the certainty they need to deliver the services that we need for sustainable growth in the kind of rural areas that I represent. I don't believe we can withdraw the emergency support until we have at least a proper funding plan in place, because that's what the ladies of Llangynog need. Diolch yn fawr iawn. 

I think it is important that we have an opportunity to debate these points in this forum, as we do this afternoon. And it's important, I think, that we debate these points, that we listen to what each other has to say, and then that we take interventions from each other so we have a debate, rather than just reading out a preprepared contribution. Because if this debate is to mean anything, it means listening, that we're in receiving mode and not simply transmission mode. This Minister, to be fair to him, is. Sometimes the First Minister wishes he wasn't. But I'm sure he does listen to all these different things, and then replies in his own way. [Laughter.] 

There are three things I would like the Minister to address in his contribution to the debate this afternoon. The first is Government policy, because the Government has been very clear in outlining what its policy is, and we’ve heard Jane Dodds just describe some elements of that, and Sioned Williams beforehand addressing that. But surely, if the Government is serious about the use of buses and public transport, then it will ensure, when it is planning the delivery of public services, that public transport is a part of that. For five years I’ve come to this place and argued for bus services linking my constituency to the Grange hospital, and for five years not a single Minister has ever disagreed with me. Not one. And not one bus has been delivered. Not one. To be fair to the current Minister, he replies to my correspondence, and points out there are buses running from elsewhere, and that’s very comforting, of course, but it’s not the answer to the question. If the Government is serious about what its ambitions are then it must ensure that public transport—in this case, buses—links in to all the delivery of public services, and public services should not be reorganised without a public transport plan to sustain and to support that reorganisation. That means the lady I spoke to in my constituency this week, who told me that when her mother was unwell and in the Grange hospital over the last weekend she not only felt vulnerable and unwell, but isolated as well, and nobody should feel like that when they are facing treatment in a hospital. The Government needs to recognise that.

The second issue I’d like to address to the Minister in this debate—. I smiled when Jane Dodds mentioned how impressed she was with Fflecsi. I would also advise her to come to Ebbw Vale, because in Ebbw Vale, where we’ve had the programme on Fflecsi over the last couple of years, there have been some good elements to it. Let’s not beat about the bush: the access to industrial estates and to more outlying communities has meant there’s been a service that wasn’t delivered before. One of the issues, of course, with the use of a bus pass and subsidised transport is that passenger patterns have changed, and so there isn’t always a commercial model available to us to deliver public transport for people who are going to work early in the morning and coming back late at night. Fflecsi has worked there, and it’s worked to connect areas such as Garnlydan and the Rassau industrial estate. It’s worked there. But what it hasn’t done is to deliver the public transport needs of the town of Ebbw Vale during the day. The local authority there is saying, ‘Actually, what we want is flexi Fflecsi, so that we have the Fflecsi service at the beginning and the end of the day to enable the service to deliver’—[Interruption.] I will give way—'at those times of day, but during the core hours of the day, we want the town circular back’, which is just a bus running round the town providing opportunities for people to catch that service, which gives them the certainty of knowing when the buses will be there. I’ll give way.

Alun, thank you very much for giving way. Would he agree with me that, as we try to transition to this better future with public transport, what we do need to do is to join up all those modes, including not just Fflecsi bus but community transport as well? We put several hundred thousand pounds into the very good Bridgend volunteer-run community transport, but linking those into the scheduled service, into the trains et cetera et cetera is what we need as we move to this reregulated system, with democratic input to say, ‘This is how we pull it all together.'

That’s exactly what we need, and that is actually my third and final point. I hope the Minister will respond to my point on Fflecsi in reply to the debate. But it’s quite an extraordinary thing that Janet Finch-Saunders was able to speak for nearly six minutes about the future of bus services without mentioning the disaster of deregulation. It’s been catastrophic.

You said that you’d take interventions. Alun, you cannot deny that we’ve had 25 years of devolution. Public transport is devolved. You cannot throw this one back at the UK Government, however much you try.

I don’t know where to start sometimes. Janet, you’re absolutely right that we’ve had 25 years of devolution, but we’ve had nearly 30 or 40 years of deregulated bus services that have failed. They’ve failed the country. This Government is going to change the law in the next couple of years, and I expect you to vote for it, quite honestly, and I hope that all your colleagues will vote for it.

Presiding Officer, I’ll bring my remarks to a close now. What I hope the Minister will be able to do—perhaps not this afternoon, but I hope this debate will contribute to his thinking—is to articulate his new vision for bus services. Because when the manifesto was written, when we've had these debates in the past, they were all about bus services that had been unaffected by COVID. COVID has clearly changed the context in which we're now operating, and I hope that the Government will bring to this place a statement on their vision for the future so that we will be able to understand where they see bus services developing. The extension to the current bus funding is a good thing, but I want, for example, to see a role for the smaller operators. I don't want to see all our bus services bought up and chewed out by profiteering larger organisations that really don't care about the people they serve. I want to see that role. I want to see services delivering for the smaller communities, the isolated communities—and they're not all in rural communities, they're in the heart of our cities and our towns. That means that we have to have an all-encompassing vision, and then the delivery for it, where the budget will be and what the legislative framework will be within which these services will be delivered. And then I expect the Conservatives to take our interventions, to listen to what we're saying and to vote for the policy.

The Deputy Minister for Climate Change. Lee Waters.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Llywydd. I'd like to thank Plaid Cymru for tabling this afternoon's debate on this vital subject and for the many excellent contributions across the Chamber setting out the stark challenges that we are facing. I think there's a strong consensus on the need for a comprehensive and affordable bus service. But as Huw Irranca rightly pointed out, the list of challenges is clear; the list of solutions is less clear.

I think there are four main forces at work here that lead us to where we are today, and then I'll come to the points raised in the debate and our next steps. The first, I think, is one recognised by the analysis in the roads review, that for 70 years, we as a country, over generations, over many Governments, have prioritised the private motor car instead of mass transit and giving good-quality public transport alternatives to people. When you look at successful public transport networks across the continent, they consistently spend more than we do, and have done for generations, on public transport. We're now starting from a legacy standpoint of that base lack of emphasis on public transport.

The second factor I think we're dealing with here is the impact of privatisation in the early 1980s. There is no doubt that the bus system going into COVID was extremely fragile. Over half of all the revenue of the private bus operators came from the Government. Delyth Jewell pointed out in her contribution the lessons to be learned from London. Well, the main lesson from London is not to privatise your bus service. London was the only part of the country that didn't deregulate its buses in the 1980s, and you can see the results of it. Buses are a public service, but they are run for profit.

And this is the third factor: COVID blew that model apart. I think that's our problem; a fragile model going into an existential crisis has tipped over the operating model. The Confederation of Passenger Transport say that passenger levels are consistently 15 per cent lower than pre pandemic, when they'd already been declining. This is not just a problem in Wales, this is a problem right across the world. I was listening to the BBC World Service in the wee small hours the other night, hearing about similar problems in Japan, where, in Tokyo, bus services are being withdrawn because passenger numbers have not returned since COVID. So, there is a global problem here with people having confidence to go back to mass transport.

The other thing, of course, COVID did was knock over the workforce that the bus industry relied upon. One of the consequences of privatisation is we have seen suppression of wages in the bus industry since privatisation. We've relied on an ageing workforce, many of whom decided not to return after COVID, and the problem that Sioned pointed out about buses not turning up on time is primarily a factor of staff shortages as a result of that workforce challenge.

So, those are the three main challenges I think we're dealing with. The fourth, which has really put the kibosh on on the whole thing, of course, has been austerity. As Huw Irranca-Davies pointed out, not a single penny was announced in last week's budget for public transport. We have dug deep into our financial budgets to support the bus industry; £150 million during COVID, without which, the bus industry would have gone bankrupt. It's worth noting that, in England, some 20 per cent of bus routes have disappeared. In Wales, 2 per cent have, because we have invested in the bus industry and stopped it from going to the wall—

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, I will.

In regard to the data that you've just given us about the bus numbers in England, do you feel that the emergency bus subsidy that we have placed in Wales has had a significant impact in terms of that?

Well, the bus industry says it themselves; they're very clear that, without it, the bus industry would have collapsed. And I would say this seriously to the Conservative speakers: we have made choices in this Government to support bus, and we would like to continue making those choices, but in the face of the continued austerity budget that we have, we simply do not have the resources available to continue funding the emergency subsidy at the rate that we have. We've already spent over £100 million a year subsidising privatised companies to run buses. On top of that, a quarter of the education budget is spent on school transport. So, there are significant sums of public money going into private companies into a broken model, that has not delivered us the system that we need. And I think that this current crisis shows more than anything—it makes the case for reform of franchising that we set out in our White Paper.

So, I'm confident that we have the right medium-term plan to put many of the flaws set out this afternoon right. But, of course, we have a gap, and that is what we are currently grappling with. Now, I am meeting regularly with the bus operators, we're meeting weekly; I met them on Monday, and I'm meeting with Transport for Wales and the Welsh Local Government Association, and we are trying to come up with a way forward that bridges that gap from where we are to get to franchising. The money simply isn't there to keep all the current services running, and as Janet Finch Saunders rightly pointed out—this, I do agree with her on—the incentive built into the current BES system, which was an emergency response, disincentivises a recalibration of the bus services to meet the demands of today's passengers. We're running a bus network based on the pre-COVID footprint, with a guaranteed 7 per cent profit that operators have been protected from the market realities from, and that is not something we wish to continue to do. So, we want to bring the bus emergency scheme to an end in June, but we do want to create something in its wake that allows us to get to the next stage in a way that is rational and sensible and affordable.

The Conservatives say nothing about bus services in England which are collapsing; the UK Government, as a consequence of not spending any money on buses in England, we are then not getting a Barnett share of that. So, we have a real financial challenge here, and as Plaid Cymru know very well from the discussions they've been having with us about the rest of this year's budget, we collectively have prioritised really important other public services, but we can't spend that money twice, and I think that is something that they need to acknowledge about the choices that, collectively, we have made and the consequences of those choices. There are no easy options here. So, we face a real problem, there's no denying the fact. We are working through, with the industry, a way of making the best of the money that we do have, so we've extended the funding for three months; the First Minister has made clear that we are prepared to make further funding available, and we are trying to co-design with them a way to do that that protects as many services as possible, but there is simply less money than there was last year, and so, there will be a reduction in the bus network. It's not something that I want to see; it's not something anybody in this room wants to see, but it is a consequence of those four forces that I set out, and particularly of the austerity budget that we face.

To try and pick up some of the other points made in the wide-ranging debate, I would say to Janet Finch-Saunders that I also agree with her on the need for a major campaign, and with Huw Irranca-Davies too, to get people back onto buses. One of the biggest problems that we have on the bus network is that the fare box is down because passenger numbers aren't there. The revenue is not coming in and the model we have will not work. So, I'm very keen to work with the industry to get a campaign going to get people back onto buses.

I agree also with what Luke Fletcher said about the role of school transport in this. We currently have a really inefficient system where we are treating school transport as a separate entity. What I'd like to do as part of the franchising is to bring school transport into the scheduled links and we are working with Monmouthshire in particular to see if we can trial that with their school buses, as we build up to franchising. 

To Alun Davies's point on the Grange, it's a point he's made strongly and correctly for some time. I have written to him again today, setting out one of the reasons we've had, and one of the reasons we've had, as I've mentioned before, is because the current system of deregulation is broken. And we have tried to introduce publicly supported services, but they've been challenged by other operators, which prevented us, under current competition law, from bringing that in. But we think we've now found a way around that and we hope to be making announcements in the coming weeks on a service for his constituents to those key public health services. And on the Fflecsi, of course, he's right that it's had strengths and weaknesses, and that is the point of a pilot—it's to trial things. And we're evaluating it, and he is correct that, in many areas, a scheduled service is what is needed, and Fflecsi does that extra bit that the scheduled service hasn't done well. 

I can assure Jane Dodds that the ladies of Llangynog have not been forgotten, nor have the people of the Neath valley or the Gwendraeth valley or of any other part of Wales. We have a genuine problem here that all of us need to confront: for too long, we have not invested enough in public transport. We are dealing with a legacy of a broken system; COVID has tipped it over the edge and austerity is preventing us from coming to the rescue. Even given those very real constraints, I will do my utmost, working with the industry and local government, to come up with a solution that gets us from where we are to franchising, which I think offers us many of the medium-term solutions that we all agree are necessary.

Mabon ap Gwynfor to reply to the debate.

Thank you very much, Llywydd, and thank you to everyone who participated in this discussion. Well, if public transport is the Cinderella of public services, then the bus service is her forgotten little sister.

Thank you very much, Delyth, for opening this debate so eloquently, painting a picture for us at the outset. We've heard that many of these companies that provide these services are community companies and how important the community is at the heart of that provision.

Now, if we look at our communities, for far too long, people who are far more knowledgeable than me have been asking why we are seeing depopulation in our rural and post-industrial communities. The response, of course, is complex, but one undeniable fact is the lack of public transport. Our communities can't afford to lose more services, but as things stand, that's what will happen, and if we don't see the BES being reintroduced, then we will see more services disappearing. The Deputy Minister just mentioned that we'd seen the number of staff in bus services disappearing during COVID, well, I'm sorry to say that, if the BES is not reintroduced, the rest of those staff will also disappear, losing jobs because of the routes that are lost. 

This Government, I'm afraid, has a bad practice of developing policy based on urban experiences, and trying to force that on other communities. Health and leisure are perfect examples of this. And when this model fails, then, rather than drawing up a new fit-for-purpose model, what happens is that our communities are deprived of services. In reality, it is a colonial model—our rural and post-industrial communities are being exploited for their valuable resources, particularly our young people who are being extracted from those communities, and then there is no investment in those areas to replace them and to keep them viable. That is the definition of a colonial process at work here in Wales.

During the last 20 years, we have seen health services, post offices, banks and other services being centralised away from our communities. The result of all of this and more is that people are expected to travel for these services to the nearest town or city, as we heard from Luke earlier. And we also heard in that contribution about the impact of this on the economies of our communities.

This has been a process that's been ongoing here in Wales and the loss of this BES puts the cherry on Margaret Thatcher's cake. But, I was very pleased to hear Huw Irranca and others calling for the reversal of Thatcher's deregulations in the 1980s and I was pleased to hear the commitment of the Deputy Minister to try and push in that direction.

I've noted examples from my constituency in the past—

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, go for it. 

As somebody who was a bus traveller before deregulation, I can assure you that it wasn't the golden age of public transport. But, nonetheless, do you recognise that, in England, for six years under the 2017 transport bus services Act, they've already been able to choose three options, including franchising, which haven't been available in Wales because of the non-colonial model?

Well, I'm very pleased to hear of that good example. In fairness to the Deputy Minister, I think he did mention the need to look at good practices elsewhere, and to try and adopt those. And those are some of the medium-term solutions that have been put forward, and I will come on to that. But this crisis is happening here and now. 

And, as I was going to mention, I've talked about some examples in my own constituency. Take the constituent in Harlech who has to travel four hours to go to Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor for treatment. Or the old lady in Blaenau Ffestiniog who now has to move to Llandudno because the T19 service has disappeared. Or the gentleman from Caernarfon who has to sleep in a tent in Pwllheli, because there is no bus to take him home in the evening after his shift. These are the kinds of examples facing us. We've heard of others—Jane Dodds mentioned the woman from Llangynog who goes to Oswestry; I was convinced that Oswestry was actually in Wales—perhaps there's another debate to be had there at a future point. But those are the kinds of examples facing all of our communities, and we've heard about them today.

Huw Irranca and Jenny Rathbone talked about the just transition. And, of course, as part of the Deputy Minister's response, we've heard about these medium-term solutions that are being introduced. And that need for a just transition is at the heart of getting people away from private vehicles and on to public transport. But people can't make that transition because of the lack of investment here and now. And that is the weakness that is facing us. We are seeing the loss of those services. We are seeing decreases in the funding provided to these bus services. 

We've heard some good ideas about Fflecsi buses, for example, and here, I have to praise the door-to door, or drws-to-drws Fflecsi bus services in Nefyn around the Llŷn peninsula. There is good practice there, and I know that the Minister is aware of that. But this crisis is facing us now. The question was asked—'Well what is the solution? How are we going to fund it?' There is a question—the bus emergency scheme was funded in the original budget, but, for some reason, it has disappeared—so there is a question there as to where that original funding that was contained in the budget has gone. Now, we, on this side of the Chamber, have made proposals on taxation, and how the tax system in Wales can be used to fund public services, but the Government doesn't agree with us on that. And in the longer term, of course, the HS2 has taken £5 billion out of the Welsh budget. The Northern Rail Powerhouse—or whatever it's called—is taking another £1 billion out of our budget, and the Conservatives refuse to fight for that funding, and, I'm sorry to say that the leader of the UK Labour Party has refused to say that he will commit to providing that funding to Wales. With that funding, we could invest in our public transport. 

So, I want to see the Deputy Minister, and the Government here, committing to ensuring that a Labour Government in future, in Westminster, will provide that funding to Wales, and that we will see that investment in our public transport. 

So, to conclude, thank you to everyone who participated. There are challenges facing us, but the solution is to invest, not to cut. 

The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Yes, there is objection. Therefore, I will defer voting under this item until voting time. 

Voting deferred until voting time.