Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:44 pm on 22 March 2023.
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—