Public Transport Infrastructure in North Wales

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 9 July 2024.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:16, 9 July 2024

I’m delighted to see the return of services to Llandegla, which the Member has highlighted, but also to confirm again that the pre-election pledge by the Conservatives on north Wales electrification was never a real plan. It was not an honest statement to make to the public. Network Rail, as the Member knows, have confirmed that, despite the promise, no formal development work was undertaken. They were not given a remit and no formal work has been undertaken with them since 2013.

When it comes to what we could do in the future, delivering our manifesto pledge to restore decision making over former EU funds is one of the big opportunities that we have. To go through that, we will need to work with partners to understand what those priorities will be and work with what we’ve been able to do already. I’m very pleased the Member has highlighted the bus grant that has kept services in play that could otherwise have fallen away. We’ll probably talk more about buses in the statement later on this afternoon. But that does mean we have opportunities to look again at the regional investment framework that was co-produced with a range of partners before the last election, to update that and to make sure that we have a clear understanding of what we can do with that, in addition to other areas of future devolution.

I’m very excited on the skills front about what we can do in restoring money into apprenticeships and in the devolution of employment support funding. There are big opportunities to make a real difference in every community. What we’ll have to do, though, is decide what are our strategic priorities and how we choose to use those. That is quite properly in the remit of this Government, to be held accountable by the Senedd, and to do that work with our partners is what I intend for us to do.

Minister

Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.

Conservatives

The Conservatives are a centre-right political party in the UK, founded in the 1830s. They are also known as the Tory party.

With a lower-case ‘c’, ‘conservative’ is an adjective which implies a dislike of change, and a preference for traditional values.