00:00 bus services to the people of Wales.
00:02 Llywydd, we will bring forward a bus Bill to reform the failed system of deregulation.
00:09 That will enable all levels of Government to work with our communities to design and
00:14 deliver bus services they need.
00:17 Thank you, First Minister.
00:18 We're looking forward to having that bus Bill in front of us, because one of the greatest
00:22 frustrations for us as representatives, but also for local people, is that they have no
00:28 real say over where the routes run and at what times of the day to get them to their
00:33 jobs, to get them to hospitals, to get them to visit friends, particularly in the northern
00:38 parts of the Valleys in my constituencies, but we'll all feel it throughout the whole
00:41 of Wales.
00:42 But one of the other big frustrations is there is one part of the UK that has retained the
00:47 powers to do that.
00:49 When we had that disastrous, utterly disastrous deregulation back in the 1980s, where the
00:54 powers were stripped away from any democratic input into control over buses and routes and
01:00 services and so on, one place kept it, and it was London.
01:04 In London, the passenger numbers have gone up, the routes have been sustained, the investment
01:07 has been massive, and everywhere else it has fallen away.
01:11 So, can we have the assurance that that Bill will come forward, and can he clarify for
01:16 us what that will mean for people to have an input into where the routes that serve
01:22 their communities go and that keeps their lives and their livelihoods, gives them a
01:26 chance to sustain them?
01:27 Mark Drakeford AM: Well, Llywydd, I'm very pleased to give the Member an assurance that
01:33 Bill is in the final stages of its preparation.
01:37 It's a complex Bill, but it will come in front of the Senedd.
01:42 One of the fundamental ways in which it will change the bus landscape in Wales is this.
01:49 The system we have inherited and the system that we have run up until now is one that
01:53 pays in a subsidy per journey per passenger.
01:59 That is a very difficult system for government, because it's inherently uncertain and you
02:03 never know how much the system will cost, and it's difficult for companies as well,
02:09 because they don't have predictability about it.
02:12 The future will be about subsidising routes, not individuals, so that we will have a planned,
02:21 agreed, stable and subsidised system of bus transport here in Wales, so that those routes
02:29 which are socially necessaryóand that's how we will be consulting the public, of course;
02:35 we will be looking to see their views of those routes which are socially necessary, but not
02:41 commercially viable.
02:43 We will continue to invest the tens of millions of pounds that are put into the system today,
02:51 but in a way that does not give the public an adequate return on that investment.
02:57 That is what the Bill will allow us to do.
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