§ Mr. RuaneTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will list the public funding for rural and urban bus services in each county of Wales over the next three years. [66179]
§ Mr. HainFor 1999–2000, I am making £5 million available to local authorities in bus subsidy grant, which is in addition to the support for socially necessary services provided by local authorities out of their unhypothecated resources. Of the £5 million, £3 million must be spent on support for rural bus services, with local authorities free to decide whether to spend the remaining £2 million on either rural or urban services. I am currently consulting on the distribution formulae used to allocate the grant to individual local authorities, and I will be announcing the allocations shortly.