Transport (Wales) Bill

moved Amendment No. 7:"Page 2, line 8, at end insert—" ““(   )   existing franchisees of railway services provided wholly or partly in Wales;”” The noble Lord said: I shall try to be brief, but I want to sketch out the position that my noble friends and I take on the Bill. That is, it is extremely important in Wales to give a great deal more emphasis to the issue of connectivity between services than has been the case. For the past 30 years—as long as I have been associated with transport, and probably longer—people have trotted out the phrase ““integrated transport”” without really knowing what it means. Very simply, it means that when a bus or a train arrives at a station or a bus station, people from one service may connect onto another without undue difficulty. It means co-ordinating the way that those services operate so that people can use them. Members of the Committee who are expert in public performance monitoring of the railways will know that what is measured is the punctuality of train services; it has nothing to do with whether the people who use the trains enjoy a good service. My noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno tells me that the train from Blaenau Ffestiniog arrives at Llandudno Junction at 10.03 and at 10.03, lo and behold, the Virgin train leaves for Euston. That is the kind of occurrence that goes in Wales at Llandudno Junction, at Chester, at Shrewsbury, at Hereford, at Newport, at Swansea. The trains are deliberately timed to avoid connecting with other trains. Such matters form the burden of many of our amendments. Amendment No. 7 would introduce into the Bill the words ““railway services””. I acknowledge that most matters appertaining to the railway are contained in the Railways Act 2005, as my noble friend said. However, it is essential that the Assembly consults not only the franchisees of services in Wales but also the franchisees of services which come into Wales—the Great Western franchise from Paddington and the Virgin franchise from London. If Wales is to be connected to other parts of the United Kingdom, it is essential that those franchises are taken into account in these considerations. Amendment No. 7 simply proposes that when a strategy is being prepared, as well as consulting each local authority in Wales, each county council or district council in England whose area abuts Wales, and any other persons it considers appropriate—which may or may not include franchisees—the National Assembly should also consult the franchisees of the principal services that operate into Wales. For example—I shall not go on—the Strategic Rail Authority published a consultation paper proposing that the Great Western franchise should cut in half its services between Cardiff and London. When the franchise is issued in the next day or two, we hope that will not happen, but the Strategic Rail Authority came out with that idea which, if acted upon, would impinge very heavily on the people of Wales.