Llyr Gruffydd MS Member of the Senedd for North Wales

This week in the Senedd Llyr Gruffydd challenged the Government to divulge their plans for the transport network in north Wales.

The £1BN+ investment in the south Wales Metro will bring a state of the art public transport system, but what about the north?

Llyr Gruffydd MS remarked in the Senedd-

"Many of us in north Wales look jealously at the investment going into the south Wales metro, the £1 billion plus upgrade of services, which, of course, is welcome, but, by contrast, we have a rather ambiguous candy floss concoction that's been branded a north Wales metro that merely links up existing rail and bus services.

"Bus services, as we know, have long been a poor relative of rail, with services in decline since before COVID, actually. I welcome Government proposals around bus franchising and ending the grip that private bus firms have on those services, but for it to work properly, it obviously has to be funded properly."

Llyr Gruffydd went on to ask the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Cabinet Office - Rebecca Evans -

"Can you assure us today that you will be investing more money in bus services to ensure that the proposed bus legislation is as effective as we all hope it to be? And can you also assure us that north Wales will get its fair slice of the cake?"

The Cabinet Secretary replied specifically on the issue of bus franchising-

"Unfortunately, I'm not able to say more in terms of the future funding for the bus franchising, purely because we haven't yet had those discussions, we haven't yet had our settlement from the UK Government. We haven't entered into a spending review period of that sort yet. But we absolutely will be considering the importance of bus services, as we enter those discussions."