Rosemary Butler, Newport West:

"Newport has attracted thousands of high-quality jobs and we need to ensure that we can fill those jobs, particularly with people who are living in Blaenau Gwent. Until this rail link is finished, those jobs could well remain vacant.

"It is most important that this is finished as early as possible. I have already spoken to the people who are doing the work on the rail link, who take a more optimistic line than the one that you have taken today. Can you put as much pressure as you possibly can on them to ensure that this line is opened at the earliest possible opportunity?"

The First Minister:

"I accept that we have a target date by which we would like a lot of infrastructure projects in Newport to be ready, namely by September 2010, because of the Ryder Cup. The full refurbishment of Newport station will be ready by then, as will many works in the town centre. People may think of this as a poor substitute, but there will be a regular shuttle bus service from Rogerstone station into Newport, because of the problem of getting the re-signalling done.

"For reasons that I cannot understand—I am not a railway engineer—a regular, scheduled Ebbw vale line to Newport needs full, bidirectional working on all four platforms at Newport station. That will be delivered by the forthcoming Newport area re-signalling, which will also generally improve throughput at Newport, and the reinstatement of the crossover at Gaer junction.

"That is a complicated series of issues that Network Rail has to deal with for a decision to be taken on the expenditure on linking the Ebbw vale line to Newport."