Extract from Welsh Assembly Plenary: Questions to the Leader of the House - Feb 28

Suzy Davies AM: In response to a question that I asked the economy Secretary last year about broadband provision near rail lines, he said that he recognised the importance of Wi-Fi on rail services in Wales and mentioned that Arriva Trains Wales was doing work to improve that at the time. While you know that constituents will enter Swansea train station in Swansea West, it takes them just a matter of seconds, as Mike Hedges will agree, to be in Swansea East and they're already complaining about how fickle the Wi-Fi connection is. Have you spoken to the economy Secretary at all about how we can improve Wi-Fi services on trains? I appreciate that trains aren't your responsibility, but Wi-Fi is, so there's obviously some work to be done together there?

Julie James (Leader of the House): Indeed, and his officials attend my ministerial data and digital group, which as I said, met only this morning. One of the topics of conversation was that we're putting in place a new transport data arrangement, as part of the way the officials work, to consider how we might best improve some of the connectivity issues. So, you will know that Arriva Trains Wales has just put Wi-Fi on all of its rolling stock and the rolling stock will transfer when the franchise happens. But Great Western—we've been unable to secure that, although there's a conversation going on. We are, however, looking to see whether an agreement with Network Rail might be productive in terms of using some of the network itself as infrastructure, and, indeed, we're also looking at noding the roads and so on in order to improve some of it. So, I have a very intensive and ongoing conversation with the Cabinet Secretary and his officials about how we can best use the infrastructure that's available to us in order to increase exactly that sort of provision.