Assembly Member Clashes with Minister Over Ebbw Valley Railway | "Minister refuses to answer a very basic question"

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 19th May 2010

People left waiting for a train to Newport

A local Assembly Member clashed with the Deputy First Minister of Wales today in the National Assembly for Wales over the future of the Ebbw Valley Rail Link to Newport.

Local Welsh Lib Dem Assembly Member for South East Wales, Michael German, asked the Deputy First Minister and Minister for Transport when local people could expect trains to run to Newport from Ebbw Vale.

Refusing to answer the question, a clearly bad tempered Ieuan Wyn Jones (Plaid Cymru) attacked Mr. German's party on an unrelated transport issue.

Mr. German said, "It serves little purpose for the Deputy First Minister to talk about electrification of railway lines, when what people along the Ebbw Valley line want to know is when will the trains run into Newport? We have had delay after delay, promise of announcements and yet we have seen no progress in the last few years.

"He (the Deputy First Minister) was given options to solve the problems of getting trains into Newport by Network Rail some time ago. I can only imagine that the options have remained on a desk somewhere collecting dust."

In what is becoming an increasingly embarrassing situation for the Plaid-Labour coalition Welsh Government with the prolonged delay in starting a regular timetabled train service from Ebbw Vale to Newport, Mr. German said that the Deputy First Minister "was clearly not in the best of moods today, refusing to answer the most basic question: when will the rail service will go to Newport?"

In the Senedd, Michael German challenged the Deputy First Minister to answer the question and under pressure he answered: "I will make an announcement shortly." Mr. German's response was equally sharp: "We've heard that before. What we want is a date: people have been left waiting for years."