Transport (Wales) Bill

Indeed. That brings me on to why has the Welsh Assembly not developed some sort of viable road link straight on to the M4, which is only a few miles away geographically? I understand, as I have seen loads of figures on the potential costs, that a realistic estimate for such a fast road link on to the M4 would be £37 million. That is a lot of money but not huge in the scheme of things when we consider what is likely to be spent on the M4 relief road going through Newport. Without a shadow of a doubt, however, such a scheme would add to the viability of that airport and even make possible the development of some of the services that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) mentioned, without the need for various different subsidies. That brings me to another problem that could worsen as a result of the Bill. I have noticed a tendency over the last few years for the Assembly Administration to deal with complaints about transport by suggesting impractical and expensive headline-grabbing solutions to meet a need that does not really exist, rather than spending the money at a local level where it could make a difference. We need to ensure that the Bill does not make that even worse by giving the Assembly too many powers to subsidise such grandiose schemes. A couple of years ago, I well remember that the Assembly wanted to use £20 million of public money to build a futuristic monorail system, which would have transported people in driverless pods 15 ft above the ground at Cardiff bay from the Welsh Assembly Building to Cardiff city hall, which is only a few hundred yards further up the road. If that pipedream ever goes ahead—I understand from an answer to a written question a few months ago that there is still a possibility that it could—it could end up being the most expensive funfair ride this side of Walt Disney in Paris. The same mentality seems to be behind the idea to subsidise an air link between north and south Wales. We must remember that in January 2004, Air Wales actually axed a service between Liverpool and Cardiff. In October, it axed a service between Cardiff and London—not even 18 months after the service was first introduced. It is all very well giving the Welsh Assembly the powers to subsidise air routes that would otherwise not be available in and around Wales, but we should perhaps ask ourselves why those services would not otherwise be viable. The simple answer is that, although they might suit some Assembly Members and the growing army of civil servants, they would be effectively useless for the vast majority of Welsh travellers. The link will fail because there has never really been the same demand in Wales to travel between north and south as there has been between east and west. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire spoke earlier about the history of Wales from the ice age, emphasising the difficulties of getting from north to south, but ever since Edward I took an interest in Wales, travel has been mainly from east to west. People in north Wales look towards Liverpool, just as those in Cardiff and Newport, where I come from, look towards Bristol and London. The M4 and the A55 were built to meet a demand that already existed, and the Assembly will not improve transport links by trying to service a demand that simply is not there.