Westminster Hall

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 21 May 2024

[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]

Zero-emission Buses

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the introduction of UK-made zero-emission buses.

I thank the Backbench Committee for listing the debate. At the outset, I declare my membership of the all-parliamentary group for the bus and coach industry. The chairman of that group, the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill), should have moved the debate, but unfortunately, as he is the Chair of a Select Committee, his duties today find him elsewhere in the House. I want to put on the record his commitment and his desire to have been present on behalf of the group.

It is also important to put on the record that I have a major manufacturer of buses operating in my constituency. The UK is blessed with three major manufacturers—Alexander Dennis, Switch Mobility and Wrightbus—and each makes a significant contribution to the UK economy and to local employment around the entirety of the United Kingdom.

The debate is about the introduction of UK-made zero-emission buses. Why do I say “UK-made” and “zero-emission” buses? Across the whole United Kingdom, 40,000 buses are on the road; about 3,000 of those buses are zero-emission, so there is a huge opportunity. Government, obviously and rightly, want to get away from diesel-powered buses and on to zero-emission buses. That is a massive opportunity. That opportunity, however, is under threat.

In 2020, in a very important statement, the Government made a commitment to level up across the country with 4,000 “beautiful, British-built buses” that are

“cleaner, greener, quieter, safer and more frequent.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2020; Vol. 671, c. 712.]

What an ambition! It is an ambition that this House and the parties across this House got behind, and an ambition that I still hold to. I hope that we can deliver on it.

I am afraid, however, that the Department for Transport needs to look at how the policy is implemented, because I do not believe it is resulting in beautiful, British-built buses being purchased with the serious amounts of money that have been set aside for the zero-emission bus regional areas, or ZEBRA, zero-emission scheme. The original ambitions that drove the design of that policy to support UK bus manufacturers have been overlooked in the implementation and roll-out of the policy, resulting in many local authorities and transport authorities buying non-UK-made British buses.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. It is always good to support a colleague when they secure such an important debate. On the issue of UK-made buses—he has repeated “UK-made” several times, quite rightly—does he agree that that is all the more important now when we look at the challenge coming from China and the far east? More and more, a huge challenge is being made to the west and the UK. We have to meet that challenge and rise to it. As he indicated, that is what the Government need to respond to.

[Ian Paisley]

I was going to come on to that point later, but I will come on to it now, because it gets to the nub of the issue. The ZEBRA 1 and 2 schemes promised the United Kingdom £312 million of taxpayers’ money to fund the purchase of 2,270 buses. That is a major impact on the provision of zero-emission buses. I hope that Members are shocked by the next figure, however, because, according to the final purchasing decisions that have been made, 46% of those 2,270 buses will be manufactured outside the UK, principally by China.

On the one side, we have to giggle, because we are making zero-emission, green-energy buses, within our shores, for the home market, and therefore the footprint of the manufacturing of those things should also be green, but 46% of these buses are coming from what is, apart from Australia, the furthest away country in the world, and they are being delivered to us. I am not going to bash the companies that make them in China, but their buses have a shorter life cycle on our roads—almost a third less—and are therefore ultimately less efficient, yet 46% of the ZEBRA money is going overseas. What is that money doing? It is supporting overseas technology—cutting-edge technology. It is supporting overseas jobs. It is supporting cutting-edge, well-paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs and it is supporting them in other countries, but we are crying out for that money to be spent on high-skill, green-energy, high-tech jobs across the entirety of the United Kingdom. Some 10,000 people are employed in the supply chain for manufacturing buses across the United Kingdom: electronics engineers, hydrogen engineers and manufacturers, engineers, of steel. All that is being undermined by a policy that was put in place to build beautiful, British-made, clean, green, better buses.

I am pleading, not on behalf of the companies, which are big companies, but on behalf of workers across the United Kingdom who are entitled to these jobs and who are entitled to bring stuff home to their wives and families and their husbands and families, to make sure that the jobs stay in British hands. I am not arguing that we buy an inferior product, but British-made buses, whether they are made by Switch, Wrightbus or Alexander Dennis, are the leading cutting-edge buses in the world. That is shown because they are manufactured not just for this country—other countries demand them. But we cannot go in and undercut other bus companies in countries that make buses. The countries that buy buses from us do not make buses, so we are competing in a fair market. Unfortunately, one of the largest countries in the world, the Chinese state, is manufacturing buses, subsidising their manufacture and the technology is coming here and undermining us. We have to take a good, long, hard look at that and ask the question: is that really where we want to be?

Every constituency in the UK benefits from British-made manufactured products. I do not say that glibly; it is based on fact. I have gone through a register of all the councils and local authorities across the whole United Kingdom that have received money from the ZEBRA zero-emission scheme, and have listed all the constituencies covered by that—it comes to about 180 constituencies, and those 180 constituencies benefit in some way from the manufacture of buses in the United Kingdom. They are getting ZEBRA money, but unfortunately 46% of the money is going outside this country and they are not buying the British product.

I will not do so, Mr Rosindell, but I could read out the name of every single local authority that has received millions of pounds. I have the information here and I am happy to leave it in the Library for hon. Members to study. It goes through every single local authority that has received millions on millions of pounds, yet some of those authorities are not spending that money on British-made products. A couple of examples stand out, and I will bring them to Members’ attention.

Last year in Blackpool, there had to be a complete retender after protests led by the chairman of the APPG, myself and other members of that group. We pushed the Government to retender the Blackpool order because it had gone to a Chinese company. It was an order for 90 buses, or about 30 million quid of manufactured goods. I am glad to say that the tender, which originally went to the Yutong company in China, was won following retender by Alexander Dennis. It was discovered that the social and economic benefit that flowed from the manufacture of those buses in the United Kingdom outweighed a slightly cheaper product being brought in from overseas.

Transport for London announced at the weekend the purchase of over 100 new double-decker electric buses. Unfortunately, that order was made to a Chinese company called BYD, further increasing the reliance on oversea supply chains. I want to deal with this matter of Transport for London. No matter which part of the United Kingdom we come from, no matter our passion about Ulster, Scotland, Wales or the north of England, London is our capital. It is the flagship. What happens in London, the world sees. It is the window into the United Kingdom. When I stand on the Terrace of this House and see bus after bus going over Westminster bridge, I know by the shape of them, “That one was made in Ballymena, and so was that one. That one was made in Scotland, and that one was also made in Ballymena.” I know by the shape of them that those buses are ours, and we are proud. That says to the workers in my constituency, “Look what you’ve done—isn’t that fantastic?” Their work is in the window to the world. People see them or jump on and off them and think, “These are fabulous advertisements of the skillset that is in the United Kingdom”.

I then hear today that a £40 million contract has been handed by TfL to BYD in China to make the next 100 buses for this city. There are thousands of buses in this city. People say, “You’ll hardly notice them”. That is not the point. The point of the matter is that that is where we are spending our money, and that will soon become the flagship. People say, “Well, they’re slightly cheaper.” That is penny wise and pound foolish if that is the way they are making the decision, because the situation is much more disturbing than it just being slightly cheaper.

I take the view that it is not green to buy the buses from so far away whenever we are manufacturing them at home. In 2021, the United Nations working group on business and human rights wrote to BYD, saying that it

“had received information that your company may be involved through your supply chain in alleged forced labour, arbitrary detention and trafficking of… Uighur [Muslims] and other minority workers”.

BYD did not respond to that inquiry from the United Nations. Whenever it was approached by the trade magazines to respond, BYD refused to comment. Our nation has a duty to ensure that if we are buying overseas products, we are not buying them from a country that uses slave labour or abuses its workforce. I will tell hon. Members one thing: our workforce in the United Kingdom is not abused. They are paid good wages, make good products and are proud of what they do. If that abuse is happening, it is a double offence on what we should be looking at and doing with this resource.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

My hon. Friend has underlined the crucial issue of human rights abuses and the persecution, trafficking and all sorts of things happening to ensure that China can produce a bus more cheaply. When it comes to our councils buying buses in the United Kingdom—it is brought up all the time in Parliament—is there not a need for central Government to ensure that if that is what is happening, those buses or, indeed, any product, are not bought?

[Ian Paisley]

That is a point I will come to whenever I make requests of the Minister at the end of my speech. I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point.

I have an appeal for Transport for London, which has been one of Northern Ireland’s most brilliant customers. It allowed us to come up with the new iconic London double-decker bus, which is a flagship—it has been brilliant. Whether the administration has been controlled by the Conservatives or by Labour, the respective Mayors have been absolutely brilliant about helping Wrightbus to go forward, but the decision by the current Mayor and Transport for London should be taken back and looked at again. It is totally wrong and scandalous that our nation’s capital should have a bus with a questionable reputation concerning its manufacture and £40 million of ZEBRA money.

I have some policy asks for the Minister. I am delighted that he is visiting my constituency soon. I hope he will visit Wrightbus and other manufacturers, and see the supply chain across the whole of our country, including all the other little companies—micro-companies—that rely on this manufacturing giant. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to a number of things about the impact of ZEBRA. First, the Department for Transport should ensure that no ZEBRA 2 funding is used by local authorities to purchase buses from outside the UK, which was a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). To support this, bus operators should be encouraged by the Government to place a greater emphasis, whenever they are evaluating tenders, on social value for the tender and the wider economic community impact.

I am not asking the Government to do anything illegal or to use any sleight of hand. I believe the law allows the Government to weight the tenders in such a way that there will be a successful outcome for British manufacturers. I am not proposing that the company in my constituency is the only one that benefits. Alexander Dennis, Switch and so on are all competing companies making brilliant products, and they should all be allowed to have a fair crack of the whip. One camp dominates the entire market, but I want those companies to have a fair crack of the whip. They cannot have a fair share in the market if they are outbid and outmanoeuvred by what is happening in another country.

Secondly, the Government need to give industry long-term confidence in what they are doing, by setting an ambitious plan to say that a quarter of all the buses on British roads—10,000 buses—will be emission free from 2025 to 2030. If the Government said that to those companies, they would gear up and scale up, and it would reduce the overall cost of the final product, so the potential of these companies would be realised. Going forward, we would see a vast array of new tech coming through British companies and manufacturers, because they would have the confidence in there being 10,000 orders to keep their companies in business for year after year. That would increase investment in those companies.

The Department for Transport should consider creating a Crown Commercial Service framework for zero-emission vehicles to supply and expedite the tender process. It should collaborate with other Government Departments to conduct a formal review of how other countries purchase buses and prioritise domestic content when evaluating their tender process.

The DFT and the Department for Business and Trade should provide further detail on the Trade Remedies Authority and support with the process of gathering evidence of unfair practices. There have been allegations that some of these orders have led to kickback through other companies. That should be investigated, and this should be totally transparent. I can tell Members one thing—there is no kickback through the three British companies. What is going on is clear and transparent. I hope that the Government will allow us to have confidence in how we view the future, and so that our British manufacturing companies can say, “We have turned a page today and we are going forward on a new footing. In future, the lion’s share—the overwhelming majority—of ZEBRA money will be spent on British manufacturing.”

09:49

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) on securing this important debate. I have worked on the subject of zero-emission buses for some time, both in my current role as Chairman of the Select Committee on Transport and in my previous guise as a Minister in the Scotland Office, when I had a number of dealings with Alexander Dennis in Falkirk.

I was particularly pleased when the Falkirk growth deal was agreed with Falkirk Council, the Scottish Government and local stakeholders. If memory serves me correctly, that included £10 million for a public transport net zero tech cluster that Alexander Dennis was closely involved in. This is a really important sector and I share the ambition of the hon. Member for North Antrim to have a vibrant zero-emission bus network, with the lion’s share manufactured by companies on these islands.

I want to put the issue in a slightly more balanced context. It is very easy to get into “Buy British” against “Buy overseas”. In reality, bus companies often work with each other. I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong, but I think Alexander Dennis, for example, has worked with BYD on part of the chassis. We have to be slightly more nuanced about what buying from a particular company means.

The hon. Member for North Antrim is absolutely right that we need fair competition. It is not in anyone’s interest to have an artificial purchase of buses, in whichever direction that is. It has to be good quality at a fair price. How that fair price is looked at is what matters; it is not just the headline price. I imagine bus showrooms are slightly different from car showrooms, but the sticker in the windscreen is not the full price. Wider issues have to be taken on board, such as the social value points the hon. Member identified.

The whole-life cost is important as well; this technology is still in nascent form. What does it mean when the bus comes to the end of its working life? Is there a second-hand market for it? What happens to the batteries, over what time? Those are important factors that need to be included when looking at the whole-life cost. If there are concerns about human rights, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, those also need to be factored into the equation.

Hidden subsidies may or may not be present. This example is not from the world of transport, but I have a company in my constituency that is world-leading in making industrial lifts, pickers and so on. At a recent event, the chairman of that company told me, “Our products are the best in the world.” He would say that, because they are. “But we are being undercut by competition from China.” Chinese products are good quality—perhaps not quite as good—but they are considerably cheaper. When the chairman asked how the competitor managed that, the reply was, “Our Government is very helpful to us.” The cost of running the factory there is significantly subsidised. That is the point I am making.

I want to see open and fair competition, so that world-leading British products can thrive fairly. The true costs have to be highlighted and be transparent, so that a local authority, or whoever, purchasing these vehicles has to show workings for the full cost of one bus against another. The point about fair competition was also made in a slightly different area of transport last week, when my Committee hosted a session on private electric vehicles. One of the questions I asked witnesses was: given that in the previous 24 hours President Biden’s Administration had announced tariffs for the import of Chinese-made electric vehicles and other products into the United States, should the UK and, indeed, Europe more widely consider such a tariff? I was somewhat surprised by the answer, as I thought there would be a demand for that. However, the witnesses said that no, many motor manufacturers do not want that. What they want is fair and open competition because that is what drives innovation, a better product and greater reliability and a better price for the customer. That is absolutely right, but it has to be on the basis of fair competition, looking at the costs in the round and not just the headline sales figure. I am not sure at this point exactly how we ensure that local authorities and others are obliged to look at that whole cost, but I hope the Minister will take that away and reflect on it.

The Government are right; they are putting a lot of money into zero-emission buses. The UK sector is world-leading and has enormous potential to become a major player both here and by exporting those buses overseas. However, I think we need to step back a little and look at the issue in the round. I hope today’s debate will help further that cause, and I once again thank the hon. Member for North Antrim for making the effort to secure it.

09:56

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) on securing the debate. I thought his speech was both passionate and spot on in terms of analysis and presentation. He and I may disagree on many aspects—in particular, on the constitution—but on his analysis of the requirement for these buses to be made in the United Kingdom, we are certainly in agreement. It is not that long since we were promised a Brexit bonus and it was branded on the side of a bus. The irony is that the bonus will be that the bus is imported from China, which is simply scandalous.

I am advised by Unite the union that there is a suggestion that the London buses bought from China will be £100,000 cheaper than those that can be manufactured at Alexander Dennis Ltd in Falkirk or elsewhere. There are two aspects to that. First, there is a great danger, as the United States has correctly acted on with regard to cars, that the market is flooded to create a monopoly situation, thus knocking out any competition. Then we are left with whatever those companies charge, because this is undercutting and buses are flooding in, as are manufactured motor vehicles. Secondly, if the factories that currently exist are lost, the costs to the taxpayer—as we see 40 years on from the miners’ strike, in terms of devastation to communities, unemployment benefit and all the accompanying social harms—are far greater.

It is on that basis that we have to ensure that orders stay in the United Kingdom. I would like to see them go to Alexander Dennis Ltd, but I appreciate that there are other factories in the United Kingdom, although not those that simply assemble buses made elsewhere. That is not acceptable and those that are simply a front for Yutong or whatever are not UK-made buses.

There is also a need to decarbonise, which should be about a virtuous circle. We have to change, because global warming is happening. Although huge progress has been made by the motor industry—I recall arguments in the city of Edinburgh over pollution from diesel buses, which has reduced significantly—there comes a time when we have to recognise that our vehicles have to transition as we change to renewable energy. I know that we are looking at electric buses, but I will come on to argue for hydrogen buses, which Alexander Dennis Ltd manufactures. There is good reason for that.

We know that electric cars are coming in, but that is one thing in the City of London and quite another in rural parts of Scotland. Travelling long distances in an electric car can cause considerable difficulty, not just in the highlands but in my constituency of East Lothian, where finding a charging station can be difficult.

Buses are also in a difficult situation. I recall a good friend of mine, the managing director of Lothian Buses, making the point that the company does have electric buses, but he was not particularly keen on them. They were double-axled, which made certain routes difficult—they certainly chewed up the road. Anecdotally and quite humorously, he pointed out that if every bus were charged at the Annandale Street depot at the top of Leith Walk in the heart of Edinburgh, nobody in Leith would be able to boil a kettle, such would be the drain upon the grid, so it is not so simple.

A particular point that my friend made that struck home with me was that his buses go out at 6 in the morning and return at 12 at night. The drivers change, but the buses keep operating. They do not want the buses off the road for two or three hours—they cannot afford that. They want those buses running. That is why hydrogen is the fuel that he wanted, but that requires an infrastructure, because the buses require to be refuelled.

Hydrogen buses operate in Germany, in Aberdeen and probably in the City of London. They certainly operate in Glasgow: Alexander Dennis Ltd is there. Scotland is decarbonising. Hydrogen is coming in. The National Grid electricity system operator tells me that it anticipates that 100% of the green hydrogen manufactured in the UK will be manufactured in Scotland. It is not rocket science to join the dots. Hydrogen is coming in. There is a plant going to Grangemouth, a stone’s throw from Alexander Dennis Ltd in Larbert.

A hydrogen plant is coming to my own constituency because there is decarbonisation going on in the whisky sector. When I spoke to the people bringing in the hydrogen factory, I said, “Will you have excess hydrogen?”. They said yes. I said, “Could we use it for fuel?” They said, “Absolutely.” I live in a more rural area, but it certainly makes smaller buses more affordable if we can have cheap energy that is being manufactured and would otherwise go to waste. That is why in the Orkney islands they are looking at hydrogen-propelled ferries: because they have so much hydrogen being manufactured on one island that they cannot get it off the island.

Hydrogen is the fuel, but we have to have a virtuous circle. We need to decarbonise and alter our society, but the new renewable future should not just be based on manufacturing. We need a just transition. We should ensure that the fuel that we are blessed with—cheap and available green hydrogen—is used to fuel buses that are manufactured here, preferably in Falkirk and certainly in the United Kingdom. That is a just transition. The purchasing of buses from China is an unjust transition. Like what is happening in the North sea, it is a selling out of those who have contributed to the economy of this country over years and who should be the basis of the new economy that we are required to enter into.

10:02

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for securing this important debate. It was a pleasure to meet him and the bus manufacturers he recently invited to the House to discuss in more detail this hugely important issue for jobs and the economy in Great Britain.

I want first to touch on the positive impacts of the ZEBRA funding that has come our way in Nottinghamshire, particularly in Mansfield. In March, we brought forward a £13 million investment in 23 new electric buses that will serve the people of Mansfield. We previously had two, which were made by Alexander Dennis—we continue to prioritise that UK manufacturer. We delivered the Berry Hill Flyer, an all-electric service, a couple of years ago, and 23 further buses on the 1, 6, 7 and 16 services will be delivered over the next 18 to 24 months, replacing the older diesel buses, with £2.8 million of that £13 million investment coming from the ZEBRA 2 scheme and from the Department for Transport. We are grateful for the opportunity to deliver a better public service and a clean and greener transition in our public transport network.

There are still challenges around the infrastructure. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) has touched on electric charging infrastructure in rural areas, an issue that I have recently spoken at great length about to bus companies in our part of the world. We are also developing significant hydrogen fuel technology in the east midlands through our hydrogen partnership, working with partners such as Toyota and the Trentbarton bus company on opportunities to deliver. Although there are challenges around the use of hydrogen in private vehicles, for bus companies it is a massive opportunity that we need to focus on and develop.

I am really proud to have worked in recent years on the new East Midlands Combined Authority, which will help to take that process forward and develop technology and skills in the industry. I am also grateful for the fourfold increase in transport funding locally that has been devolved down to our part of the world to help us to make a massive impact, deliver a better and more joined-up bus service, fill some of those gaps and support the transition to a cleaner service.

In addition to that investment and what it means for buses on the road, we are adding value locally through our partnership with Nottinghamshire County Council and Stagecoach, which is working with West Notts College in my constituency to support learners. Through the manufacturing scheme, learners are doing work experience with Stagecoach: they are working in engineering and manufacturing, working on vehicles, going out and learning the trade on the job, and getting relationships with employers and access to future job opportunities. It is fantastic that we are not only building buses in the UK, but supporting young people in my constituency to repair them, maintain them and work on them.

In any transport debate, it would be remiss of me not to mention that buses drive on roads, so it is also important that we continue to get investment in our roads around Nottinghamshire and around the country. We can shift as many people on to public transport as we like, but we still need that investment in our road network. There are huge challenges for us locally, after massive flooding and the wettest winter on record in Nottinghamshire.

We have had significant extra investment from Government, which is a step forward; it would certainly be much worse without that. We need to work with the new combined authority and the new Mayor to bring funding forward. A huge amount of funding is scheduled for 2025 onwards, which is a great opportunity for us, but we need it now. I urge the Minister to consider that point, as well as helping me to lobby our regional Mayor, who will have that funding, to bring it forward. I was very disappointed not to be elected to the role, as the House might imagine; I certainly had significant plans to bring that funding forward early and get the infrastructure investment delivered. I now need to lobby our Labour Mayor to deliver that, and I trust that Government will support me and colleagues in the region to do that.

Like the hon. Member for North Antrim, I want to see our new buses built in the UK. It is hugely important to jobs, skills and to young people looking to get into that sector, as I have described. We are massively short of skills, particularly in electric and hydrogen vehicles—just go down to any garage and try to get your car sorted! The other day, I went to a garage near where I live. When I said it was a hybrid, they said, “You can’t come here, mate, because we don’t know what we’re doing when it comes to hybrid vehicles.” We are massively short of those skills, so we need to develop them in our region, as well as working with colleges in the way that I have described.

I understand that procurement decisions are made locally by the bus companies—Stagecoach, in our case—working with us in partnership as a transport authority, and in the future with our regional combined authority as the new transport authority, but I want to know from the Minister whether the Government are doing everything in their power to ensure that we are taking full advantage of procurement rules and processes.

The hon. Member for North Antrim mentioned community and social value in the tendering process. It is pretty difficult to add value to a local community in the UK if we are building stuff in China. We need to ensure that we get added social and economic benefit here through fair competition, while making sure that the fair competition values the things that we value for our communities—the skills, investment, and jobs that are so important. Can the Minister reassure me that he and his Department will take all those steps to ensure that happens? What conversations has the Minister had with those local authorities that are bidding and seeking to deliver the investment to ensure that that is clear to them?

The Department for Transport might want to consider where the buses will be made when it decides where funding is given. The procurement process is one thing, but the Department will decide who gets access and who is granted the funding. That is another opportunity for the Government to assess and prioritise the question of where the buses will be manufactured. Although the procurement decisions are local, there are several ways and mechanisms by which the Department and its Ministers can ensure that we are getting the best value and that the majority of these buses can be built in the UK in future. Although there are no bus manufacturers in my constituency, there are certainly countless young people looking to benefit from the skills and career opportunities that working in automotive engineering and manufacturing can bring. Having high-quality, lower-emission vehicles on our roads will certainly bring huge benefits to my constituents.

As we look to push people towards using public transport and to deliver the new funding that I have worked to secure over recent years, a better and more joined-up public transport network will be a huge opportunity for us. I hope that the Minister can offer some reassurances about the Government’s commitment to British manufacturing. I certainly look forward to working with him and with our new regional combined authority, with its transport funding, to deliver a better network for my residents.

10:10

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is an absolute pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for introducing it so well. This is something that he has done not just today, but for all his elected life, and he deserves a lot of credit for what he has done over years. In particular, his commitment to Wrightbus in North Antrim can never be disputed. I wish him well.

My hon. Friend said that the Minister would be coming to his constituency. I can tell the Minister that whenever he comes to North Antrim, he will never get the lemon drizzle cake that he got in Newtownards, so my hon. Friend has an even harder task to take on. He can always ask me to send up the same drizzle cake from Newtownards, and I will ensure that it is available for the Minister’s visit. It is good to see the Minister and the shadow Ministers, the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood), in their place.

The factory in my hon. Friend’s constituency is a source of pride to all Northern Ireland MPs. The world-class, groundbreaking research and development carried out there is something that we in this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can be immensely proud of.

I want to refer, as I did in my intervention, to Chinese buses. We are always looking for a fair and level playing field. There is something incredibly wrong not just with the purchasing and pricing of buses, but with the Chinese human rights abuses and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, whether they be Uyghurs, Christians, the Falun Gong or any other ethnic group.

Consideration of human rights abuses, including the persecution of those with a religious faith, should be an integral part of all trade. My hon. Friend was right to set the scene; others have spoken about the issue as well. I feel incredibly strongly about it. I chair the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, and it is always an integral part of our debate. Human rights and religious belief go hand in hand. If you take on one, you hurt the other. It is an important issue for countries across the world. China in particular seems to abuse and use people just because they are different and do not conform to what it wishes to see.

Like many others, I was delighted back in September when funding was announced for zero-emission buses. If we are ever to reach our global targets, this has to be a major part of our strategy. It was great to see that towns, villages and cities across England, including in the most rural parts of the country, were to benefit from zero-emission buses backed by £129 million of Government funding, which would also help to grow the economy by supporting green jobs at UK bus manufacturers. I particularly recall a point that was highlighted in the press release:

“To make sure more parts of England benefit from green technology, particularly remote areas where building the infrastructure needed for the buses is more expensive, the government has prioritised the first £25 million for rural communities.”

Hailing from the rural constituency of Strangford, I am very aware that we do not have infrastructure in place, and that this will take enhanced funding. The beauty of Wrightbus in my hon. Friend’s constituency of North Antrim is the capacity that it has for more. It has potential in terms of physical ability and skills levels, and it has a desire to press research further and deliver more. It is always innovative, looking to the future and going the extra mile to find its next potential track.

One reason why I supported Brexit—as most hon. Members present did, but not all—was solidified before 2016 when I heard that a contract for buses was outsourced to Germany rather than the Northern Ireland-based Wrightbus, due to scoring mechanisms. In other words, the criteria were weighted in favour of that company. I felt so much disappointment to be having that debate at the time. We are underscoring not a Brexit issue as such, but another issue of a bus company that has taken advantage.

I was therefore determined that our own businesses in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should get first refusal. That is the foundation of this debate. I thank again my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim for highlighting the need for a full Government commitment to British engineering, local jobs and the development of world-class facilities, which there are.

I wholeheartedly support my colleague, knowing that a rising tide lifts all ships. It equals the expertise, the staff skill, the research and development, the vision and the reputation that are in place at Wrightbus, and that should form a key component of any future view as to how we progress British industry and meet our environmental obligations. The then Business Minister, the right hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), said:

“It’s been fantastic to be at Alexander Dennis and see how our £129 million investment will impact British bus manufacturing.

This brings our total investment in new zero-emission buses to almost £500 million, helping to kick-start a new generation of bus manufacturing in the UK and create good, high-quality jobs from Scarborough to Falkirk.

We’re leading the way by ensuring that Britain can take advantage of high-skill manufacturing while delivering cleaner public transport for passengers across the country.”

We cannot and should not forget the jewel in the crown of bus-making, situated in the United Kingdom, and that is in Northern Ireland. I implore the Minister to ensure that Government strategy makes the best of what we have and can do. That is found in an engineering sector in Northern Ireland, an integral part—indeed, a great part—of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We are always better together.

10:17

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

There was me, about to say that I agreed with pretty much everything that my DUP colleagues said, and then the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made his final comment. I am sure he did so on purpose, as he always does.

I start by thanking the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for introducing this debate and for bringing up this issue again, as he often does. As the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) said, it is uncomfortable to agree with pretty much everything that all the DUP representatives have said in the debate thus far, apart from the last sentence of the hon. Member for Strangford. That is not always a comfortable position for an SNP Member, but I thought the hon. Member for North Antrim set his case out extremely well to remedy the unacceptable situation in this country. He spoke of the three major bus manufacturers. I have visited Alexander Dennis in Falkirk and Camelon a couple of times and spoken to it many times. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the 40,000 buses, only 3,000 of which are zero-emission, and the 4,000 British-built green and clean buses that were promised by a previous, previous, previous, previous, previous Prime Minister—however many previous it is. They said that they would be manufactured in the UK. The initial aim of that commitment has been lost.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned imports, and that gets to the crux of the issue. Some 46% of those buses were manufactured outside the UK. The vast majority come from China. That is the case in my constituency. I will come on to say how good a job the Scottish Government have done in getting on with ordering zero-emission buses, but we have the same issue with the import of Chinese buses in Scotland. Renfrewshire, in my constituency, with McGill’s, has the highest concentration of zero-emission buses anywhere in the country outside of London, a fact of which I am proud. The fact of which I am less proud is that the clear majority of those buses are Chinese-manufactured. I wish to see that change.

Ultimately, these are highly skilled, highly paid jobs. They are the type of jobs that this Government—in fact, all of us—want to see not just retained, but increasing in this country. At the moment, we are in danger of losing some of those jobs.

The hon. Member for North Antrim spoke of the retendering of the Blackpool bus order, which was changed from Yutong to a UK manufacturer due to social and environmental benefits. In my mind, though, we should not be leaving it up to the operators or the local authorities to put those conditions in place—I will come on to that later. It should be for the Government to do so.

The Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), made a far more balanced contribution to the debate. He spoke of the Falkirk growth deal, which I am well aware of, having visited ADL. He made a fair point on Alexander Dennis having previously partnered with BYD, which has been brought up. It used BYD chassis, but that is no longer the case; the new electric bus fleet is now manufactured entirely in-house.

The hon. Member for East Lothian spoke of the Brexit bonus that was plastered on the side of the bus; the irony is that we are not seeing the Brexit bonus in bus manufacturing in this country. He spoke of global warming, and how important it is that we decarbonise as quickly as possible. He made a very fair point that electric buses are not the solution—certainly at the moment—for many rural routes, particularly in Scotland: hydrogen may be a better alternative for those services. He also made the point that Scotland is almost uniquely placed in Europe to deliver the green hydrogen that would support such an endeavour—in fact, it is probably better placed to do so than anywhere else in Europe.

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) spoke of the £13 million for the scheme towards a new zero-emission bus fleet, as well as the challenges on infrastructure, with which I think we all agree. He also spoke of his disappointment at not being elected Mayor—I suggest the hon. Gentleman is somewhat of a masochist, addicted as he seems to be to standing for election.

Of course, the hon. Member for Westminster Hall, West—the hon. Member for Strangford—who is always here assiduously, spoke rightly about the potential issues around human rights and religious freedom relating to some of these orders. The irony in all this, with all the contributions we have had from DUP Members today— I am not ascribing any blame to the DUP for this, incidentally—is that Northern Ireland has, by some distance, the worst charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in this country. This is an issue that the hon. Gentleman has brought up previously in debates in this Chamber. I will forget his concluding sentence and instead circle back to the sentence before, when he said that a rising tide lifts all ships, or all boats—you may choose the version you wish. I think that is entirely true.

I raised this issue in Transport questions last week. In his answer, the Secretary of State challenged the Opposition’s confidence in UK bus manufacturing. Given the DFT and wider UK Government’s delivery on this, I thought that was quite a brave challenge. We do have confidence in the bus manufacturing sector, but it is very difficult for that sector to compete on a level playing field with the significantly lower wages and the subsidies available in China.

The hon. Member for North Antrim was talking about TfL when he said that we are penny wise and pound foolish in this country, but I think we can say that in a wider context and in many ways when it comes to bus tendering or procurement in this country. To save a few per cent, we are sending hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of orders outside this country. I want the Minister to make it make sense, because it makes no sense to me. We are doing economic harm and losing jobs overseas. It makes no sense whatsoever.

In addition to the questions already asked by the hon. Member for North Antrim, I would like the Minister to directly answer these three questions. Does he think that highly skilled engineering and manufacturing in this country can compete with China on labour costs? What work has been done in Government to identify how other European countries that follow the same trade criteria obligations as us manage to support their domestic manufacturing sectors a hell of a lot better than we do? Lastly, particularly when compared to the Scottish ultra low emission bus schemes—SULEBS 1 and 2—and now the zero-emission bus schemes—ScotZEBs 1 and 2—would he agree that his Government’s ZEBRA schemes have been an unmitigated failure?

To conclude, the Minister also said in his response that those being awarded ZEBRA grants can put

“social value in their tenders”,

but there is no reason why the scheme itself cannot embed that social value in the conditions for getting Government grants in the first place. Bluntly, local councils and combined authorities in England are financially under the cosh enough from this Government. They fear expensive legal challenges from companies with deeper pockets than their own, and the UK Government simply do not have that problem. France just a few years ago began beefing up its social and environmental procurement roles, and from 2026 public contracts must include conditions that specifically relate to broader social needs and employment protections. To be honest, they are in a far better place already without the beefing up of those particular obligations in 2026.

It is no use for the Minister to wring his hands and say that it is up to councils to decide; the UK Government are ultimately the ones handing over the cash. At the moment, that cash is allocated with no thought given—or allowed to be given—to any industrial strategy or economic policy that might benefit bus manufacturing on these isles. They have just thrown £143 million at ZEBRA round 2, and not a penny of that will be conditional on its being spent on buses made using labour that is covered by humane employment laws or with any kind of environmental accountability. UK manufacturers play by those rules; their competitors overseas, who will be able to grab a share of that windfall, cannot say the same. We all know that to be true.

There are world-class bus manufacturers in these isles—Alexander Dennis Ltd in Camelon is one of the leading ones—but if the Government carry on with their current course, they will push bus-making down the same road as our counterparts in the rail manufacturing industry—going from crisis to crisis, with the barely remaining operations here all owned overseas and supply chains completely devastated. The Government have it in their hands to stop the rot now and guarantee a future for a high-skill, high-value industry right here in these isles. They need to grasp that opportunity quickly, before it is too late.

10:27

[Simon Lightwood (Wakefield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, and to respond to this debate on behalf of the official Opposition. I extend my sincere thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating this debate, and to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for securing it. The hon. Member is a vociferous and passionate advocate for UK manufacturing—not just for Wrightbus in Ballymena, which is in his constituency, but for all bus manufacturers across the United Kingdom; for that I thank him.

This is a vital issue, and it is right that we have had the opportunity today for such robust discussion. I place on record my thanks to the excellent, insightful contributions that we have heard from colleagues throughout this debate, including the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), Chair of the Transport Committee. I share his desire for a vibrant zero-emission bus fleet in the UK, with the majority manufactured on these islands, and I agree on the need for fair competition and that the true cost must be highlighted. I also thank him for his mention of the end-of-life processes for those buses and how those should also be taken into consideration.

I am afraid the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) had me at lemon drizzle cake—I would love to sample that—but he also made the important point about the significant capacity for UK manufacturers to expand their capabilities, given the right conditions and the certainty that they need. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) raised the real importance of recognising social and environmental benefits when awarding those grants. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions.

Labour knows that decarbonising the transport sector is essential to achieving net zero. Decarbonising what is now the single largest source of the UK’s carbon emissions will be no easy feat, but Labour is crystal clear that with those challenges come enormous social and economic opportunities. Across road, rail and bus there are immense opportunities for secure, high-skilled green jobs to power our next industrial revolution. With bus being by far the most utilised mode of public transport, zero-emission buses are central to that.

Across the UK, operators and local transport authorities are already taking great strides to decarbonise their fleets, meaning that demand for zero-emission buses will only continue to rise. However, it is clear that the flagship decarbonisation scheme known as ZEBRA, which was announced with much fanfare two Transport Secretaries ago as part of bus back better, continues to be woefully off-target.

Bus back better promised 4,000 new zero-emission buses on the road, but it also promised to set a date for ending the sale of new diesel buses in the UK. Neither of those promises have been met. The Government continue to dither on the phasing-out date, leaving both manufacturers and operators in the dark. In July 2023, the previous Transport Minister—the right hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden)—promised that a response to the DFT’s consultation would be forthcoming “within months”. Well, almost 12 months later, it is still the case that no Transport Minister is able to tell us on what date they will mandate the end of new diesel bus sales. The current Minister with responsibility for roads and local transport, who is here today, told the House in response to a written parliamentary question in January this year that more information would be provided “in due course”. Almost five months on, we are none the wiser.

In the absence of leadership on this issue from the Government, large operators have resorted to setting their own targets. National Express has committed to operating only zero-emission buses by 2030, and Go-Ahead, First Bus and Stagecoach aim to have fully decarbonised fleets by 2035. Although that is commendable, the continued silence from the Government on the end date for diesel bus sales will doubtless have the biggest impact on smaller and more rural bus operators.

The parameters of the Government’s consultation, which was launched back in 2022, could see a date for phase-out set “between 2025 and 2032”. Operators and manufacturers alike need certainty from this Government. It feels like a profoundly short-sighted, anti-business stance for the Government to refuse to grant that certainty, leaving it up to the sector to guess whether the phase-out could be as soon as next year or in eight years’ time.

As I mentioned, bus back better also pledged 4,000 zero-emission buses. I regularly quiz the DFT on the latest statistics about the roll-out of zero-emission buses funded by ZEBRA. The most recent statistics, which I was able to obtain last month, show that just 313 are on the road and 1,053 have been ordered using ZEBRA 1. That means that to date the Government have achieved barely a quarter of ZEBRA’s potential. The successful bidders in the next phase of ZEBRA—ZEBRA 2—were announced back in March, funding a further 955 zero-emission buses. But even if every single one of those buses is somehow on the road by the end of this Parliament, the Government will still fall considerably short of their target. Even the Chair of the Transport Committee said last year that “it seems increasingly unlikely” that the Government will meet their target.

Despite bold steps by operators, local transport authorities and manufacturers, it is clear that we have a long way to go before we decarbonise our bus sector. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me exactly how many zero-emission buses he thinks he will be able to deliver on the road by the end of this Parliament. For the UK’s leading bus manufacturers—Alexander Dennis, Wrightbus and Optare, or Switch—the ambition and appetite for zero-emission buses is an enormous opportunity. Our bus manufacturing sector directly employs 3,500 staff across the UK and supports a further 10,000 across the supply chain.

Those companies are world-class, trailblazing manufacturers producing some of the most advanced zero-emission and ultra low emission buses anywhere on the globe. Not only are their products world-class, but they are vital employers, contributing millions to the UK economy. I regularly meet them and they frequently tell me about their fantastic apprenticeship schemes and training and upskilling programmes. But under the Government’s approach to decarbonising the bus sector, those companies are at risk.

Research undertaken by Labour and—commendably—by the office of the hon. Member for North Antrim shows that 46% of the money spent by the Government on funding ZEBRA 1 has been used to purchase buses built outside the UK. The Minister will be aware that in addition to recent reports of more Chinese buses being procured, funding from ZEBRA has already been used to procure hundreds of Chinese Yutong buses. In last week’s Transport questions, I told the Secretary of State that it had emerged that a major UK operator was preparing to procure tens of millions of pounds-worth of buses, not from Wrightbus, ADL or Optare, but from China.

Labour is realistic about the fact that, as demand for zero-emission buses increases globally, competitive manufacturers will be involved in the supply chain. However, we are at a crossroads. Britain under the Tories risks losing the global race for the clean industries of the future, losing jobs overseas and betraying communities across the country. The hon. Member for North Antrim is right to question whether taxpayer-funded schemes to support the introduction of zero-emission buses should be delivered in a manner that helps UK bus manufacturing industries more. We must remember that the Government have refused to adopt a full-scale industrial strategy since 2017. We should make no mistake: the lack of a strategy from the Government is putting home-grown bus manufacturers at risk. Alexander Dennis tells me that, with enough joined-up thinking from the Government, the company could spool up production to meet demand, but, in the absence of certainty, it may have to reconsider its future in the UK.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

I am listening to the hon. Member’s speech with interest. I want to clarify one point before I address the Chamber. Is the Labour party’s approach to continue to be part of the World Trade Organisation agreement on Government procurement rules made in 2012? Surely that goes to the heart of the debate.

[Simon Lightwood]

I do not agree with the Minister’s assertion. As others have said, the debate is about highlighting and acknowledging the important social and environmental benefits that UK manufacturing brings to these shores.

UK bus manufacturers are in a profoundly frustrating position when they should be leading our green transition. Support for them has not been sufficiently integrated into the national bus strategy from the start. It is a damning metaphor for the Government’s attitude that the front cover of the “Bus Back Better” document shows an image of a bus manufactured by BYD, a Chinese company.

Labour will always back British industry. A Labour Government will act as a strategic industrial partner, setting out clear priorities to provide the certainty that businesses and investors need to solidify the UK’s position as a leader in clean industry. That extends across the EV supply chain. Labour will accelerate domestic battery-making capacity with a national wealth fund to part-finance the new gigafactory capacity that we will need to support the green transition. Not only will that create thousands of good, green jobs in the supply chain and add billions to the UK economy, but it will provide the certainty that UK bus manufacturers desperately need to continue to play a leading role in the UK’s decarbonisation.

I will finish with a few questions for the Minister. On the battery supply chain, what is he doing to ensure that, as demand for electric bus batteries rises, so too does our battery manufacturing capacity? There are billions of pounds-worth of growth to be unlocked if Ministers get this right. The Government’s battery strategy is a welcome first step, but we are already behind the curve, and the scale of ambition in the strategy does not currently match the scale of the challenge we face to reach 100 GWh of capacity by 2030.

What steps will the Minister take to support UK bus manufacturers, in respect of everything that has been discussed today? In a similar Westminster Hall debate in 2022, the then Transport Minister, the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), was asked the same question. She said that she would look into going

“further to understand how we can support British-built buses.”

She went on to say she would explore the factors

“that may help to encourage competitive bids from UK firms”.—[Official Report, 5 July 2022; Vol. 717, c. 290WH.]

I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on whether that work has progressed, and whether he considers the current procurement regime sufficient to back British industry when it comes to bus manufacturing.

Labour stands ready to embrace the green transport revolution and knows that zero-emission buses are essential to that. The UK has a world-class bus manufacturing sector that can, with the right policies from the Government, deliver millions of pounds-worth of economic growth by leading the transition. We need more action from the Government to ensure that our home-grown bus manufacturers can continue to thrive.

10:39

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I think it is the first time I have had the opportunity to do so since you returned to the House, and you are most welcome.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) on securing the debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for recommending that it take place. I welcome it because it is an opportunity for us to discuss the successes and for me to set out the ways in which the Government are supporting the transition to zero-emission buses.

With respect, I welcome the nuanced way in which this debate has to be considered. Quite clearly, buses are at the centre of the public transport network; we are aware, are we not, that there are 4 billion bus journeys a year? It is utterly to the credit of this country that we have created and support a variety of providers.

The hon. Member for North Antrim is right that I am keen to visit Wrightbus, having sought to do so on several occasions in the past. I should, at the very outset, put to rest the cake rumours. Our former Prime Minister was famously ambushed by a cake in an incident that is well known to this nation. When I visited the constituency of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in a former role at the Department for Work and Pensions, I walked into the office and his assistant— I think her name is Claire—ambushed me with a lemon drizzle cake. I will not try the strong Strangford accent, but she said, “You’ll be needing a lemon drizzle straight away after the journey you’ve had, sir.” Sure enough, I was sat down with a large slice of cake before we had our meeting, in circumstances that I am quite sure will be matched, if not surpassed, when I visit Ballymena.

The UK has a proud history and particular expertise in bus manufacturing and it is right that we celebrate our successes. We acknowledge and accept that our bus manufacturers play a vital part in the UK automotive ecosystem, employing well over 3,000 people across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I suggest, with respect, that our bus manufacturers are very competitive. As has been outlined, Wrightbus has the first hydrogen-powered double-decker bus and Alexander Dennis continues to innovate with a new in-house series of electric buses developed with the knowledge and experience gained from working hand in hand with international partners. That has resulted in 2,300 zero-emission buses hitting the UK roads to date. The vast majority of the buses operating in urban areas are produced here in the UK and we are committed to continuing to make the UK one of the best places in the world for automotive investment as we transition to zero- emission vehicles.

There are certain frameworks that I want to try to address as a starting point.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

Not yet. Let me try to set out the position and then I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman.

The starting position is that the UK is part of the 2012 World Trade Organisation agreement on Government procurement and the related WTO texts. As the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), set out, that is a basis upon which all such organisations have to work. Were there to be any breach leading to unfair competition —the technical term is “dumping”—then, as the Secretary of State set out last Thursday, it would be the responsibility of the Trade Remedies Authority, the independent statutory body, to look at the circumstances.

It is the case that the UK Government support various manufacturers in a variety of ways. I will try to set that out in detail, but before I do so, I will give way to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan).

[Paul Girvan]

I want to make a point about other countries that are major manufacturers. We will not speak about the elephant in the room—although we probably will; it is China—but some of our neighbours sometimes play fast and loose with what is termed state aid. Unfortunately, companies in those places get the benefit of the opportunity to export at a reduced rate because of help and assistance given to them either directly or indirectly. Unfortunately, the UK tends to be too good at abiding by the rules and does not see that many companies are sliding under the radar and getting our markets because of the shortcuts that they are taking.

[Guy Opperman]

I am told that the companies Yutong and BYD are not state-owned. That is the first key point. The second is that there is a degree to which we debate in this House the extent to which the state supports individual companies in their individual country. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. Clearly, on one simple basis, a worker in China is not paid the rate or salary that a worker in this country is paid, with automatic-enrolment pensions and all the welfare support and other bits that come on top of that. That is clearly a difference in scale. But I want to try to address a couple of the key points.

[Gavin Newlands]

Will the Minister give way on the WTO?

[Guy Opperman]

No. I will try to address the point made by the hon. Member for South Antrim. As a Minister in a different Department, I brought forward ESG: environmental, social and governance regulations. Those apply across the City of London, all pension funds and, by and large, to how local authorities conduct their business. Those bodies must give due consideration to ESG in their purchasing. More particularly, under the Cabinet Office public procurement notice 02/23 they have to be mindful and cognisant of modern day slavery in the supply chain. Public sector suppliers must comply with all the applicable human rights and employment laws, as set out in the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

As was rightly set out, social value for the tender can be considered—and already is—by local authorities. There is a degree to which organisations seek for Government to say the local authority cannot do this, but it is for the individual local authority to look at the way it is commissioning. Matters of social value, ESG and the interpretation of modern day slavery and its impact are highly relevant when doing that. The fair point has been made by various Members that commissioning an environmentally friendly bus from somewhere 10,000 miles away seems an interesting call, given the consequences.

We must be aware that a lot of companies in this country also receive aid from the Government. I want to try to set that out. Members will be aware, I am sure, of the funding, research and development through the Advanced Propulsion Centre, which allows UK bus manufacturers to be supported by Government to seize opportunities for the future. Through the APC research and development competitions, the UK Government have awarded grants totalling £24.2 million for bus-related projects, with total costs of £52 million.

Those late-stage collaborative R&D competitions are an important part of the Government’s support for the UK automotive sector’s transition to zero-emission vehicles and provide backing for new market-leading technology to underpin battery and fuel cell electric buses. There is also £460 million in dedicated funding provided for the zero-emission buses this Parliament. The innovative technology is to be deployed, we suggest, at scale. More than 5,200 zero-emission buses have been funded across the UK since the Government committed to funding at least 4,000 this Parliament, and UK manufacturers are leading the way.

In March this year, we announced a further £142 million to support almost 1,000 more zero-emission buses. I look forward to UK manufacturers winning more orders. For example, I think Wrightbus has been named the fastest-growing and most successful business in Northern Ireland, having been struggling a few years ago, however one interprets the business as it was. On the back of Government funding for zero-emission buses, the company’s numbers have massively increased, from more than 1,000 to almost double that. Bus funding in this country has pretty much doubled in terms of Government subsidy and support over the past 14 years.

With respect, I suggest that the Government are fully supporting the bus sector, providing financial support, whether through Innovate UK or individual support in relation to hydrogen.

[Gavin Newlands]

The Minister talked about Government support. In fairness, it was before he was Minister, but he may remember a Transport Committee report that said that Scotland had ordered just over 10 zero-emission buses per 100,000 people, compared with 0.94 zero-emission buses outside of London. Does that highlight the success that the DFT has made of the roll-out?

[Guy Opperman]

There was pretty much nothing in the hon. Member’s speech with which I agreed, aside from his comments in relation to the hon. Member for Strangford. I, too, believe we are better together, in so many different ways. The long and the short of it is that I am proud to stand up and defend the UK bus industry. I am also proud to defend and support the degree to which this Government have supported the bus industry, and we have seen companies such as Wrightbus and others grow on the back of that.

Is everything perfect? No, of course not. Is there still work to be done? Yes, of course. Is there still work to be done to ensure that local authorities and commissioners fully understand their obligations under the Modern Slavery Act, the impact of social value and all the consequences of any commissioning purchase? Can the Government work harder with, for example, the Department for Business and Trade and the Cabinet Office to ensure those rules are then disseminated to the commissioners? I do accept that more can be done in that space.

However, as an example, £76 million in UK export finance loans and guarantees have been provided to UK bus manufacturers in the past few years, which is turbocharging exports. Wrightbus, as I understand it, is exporting to Hong Kong, right on the doorstep of China, and UK manufacturers are continuing to win orders around the world. Although we clearly want UK manufacturers to be commissioned in this country, it is most important, surely, that they can also take orders from around the world; my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South made that fair point. The argument is nuanced. We want our manufacturers to be able to compete worldwide, and I believe they can.

We are also providing certainty for manufacturers on the pathway to a fully zero-emission fleet. The final decision on diesel buses will be made shortly; part of the process is understanding exactly the capacity and capability of our UK bus manufacturing sector—if one sets a date that is too soon, clearly there are consequences, but if one sets a later date, there are also consequences. We are very much engaged with finding the sweet spot for a date, and we will be making a decision without a shadow of a doubt in the very near future. We believe that will provide a greater degree of certainty, allowing further focus on research and development lines, and also shifting production to producing more zero-emission buses at scale.

It is also clear that as a result of the Government’s action, air pollution has reduced significantly, both since 2010 and, more recently, since the introduction of zero-emission buses: since approximately 2016 or 2017, there has been a true ramping up—a massive reduction in CO₂.

I want to finish on a couple of the key points that have been made. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) rightly made a variety of points. We clearly are working with local authorities, like his good self’s. The £8.3 billion for road resurfacing, redirected because of the HS2 second-leg decision taken by the Prime Minister in October, has benefited all local authorities, not least Nottinghamshire. I saw that when I visited there about three weeks ago and met my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards). I actually visited the site and met some of the councillors and other individuals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield is clearly badgering me about a variety of roads and infrastructure projects. He is passionate about the A614, which, I assure him, is engraved at the very top of my to-do list. I will make sure that we get that project over the line, to the benefit of both his constituents and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Sir Mark Spencer), who has been robust in his recommendations.

I have dealt clearly with the point about competition on labour costs, which is a fact that we cannot disagree with or ignore.

It is hard to disagree with anything that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South said. I do want to restate the point, though, that this is a nuanced argument. We want our manufacturers to be able to export, as well as to supply in the local environment. That has consequences when it comes to being part of WTO agreements. But we also want to make sure that we, as Government, are supporting manufacturers as much as we possibly can. I have addressed the issues of modern-day slavery and will not necessarily take that any further.

I want to finish, to allow the hon. Member for North Antrim to wrap up the debate with sufficient time. I genuinely welcome this debate. It has been an opportunity for us to cite, laud and praise a growing business in the UK. In these tricky times, there is no doubt that bus manufacturing in the UK is growing substantially. The best evidence is Wrightbus, with its massive increase in numbers. I look forward to visiting and being ambushed by a lemon drizzle cake in the appropriate way, and I greatly welcome the opportunity to set out the degree of support that the Government have given it.

10:55

[Ian Paisley]

I thank all Members who participated in this debate. Some small friction has emerged here and there, but there has been a clarion call that we are all on the same page and want to see this industry flourish, and there is a vision of how it can flourish. Although the Minister was able to have his cake and eat it, I think our companies want to see more cake and get more slices of that cake; they are right to be ambitious about having that, and I hope that they can have it.

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) quite rightly raised the point that he does not have a bus company in his constituency but that there is spin-out in terms of opportunities for young people, skills development and all the rest of it. If we get behind this skillset and opportunity and develop the best hydrogen bus, which we are already doing, we will then start developing the best hydrogen rail coaches, heavy goods vehicles, shipping facilities and aircraft. We will be in the midst of a technological revolution driven by these islands, but it will happen only if we get behind and push it. That will lead to jobs in the hon. Member for Mansfield’s constituency and to the tech and opportunities. It will lead to success, and it will be unrelenting, but it will happen only if we ensure that we actually deliver on the strategies being put in place and ensure that we are not lazy at any point and throw the odd bus order or manufacturing job here or there because we can.

We must get behind this and ensure that the outcome is in the interests of these islands, because unlike China we are not at the cutting edge of battery technology. We must buy practically every single battery from China. It has cornered that market, which is fair enough, but we are at the cutting edge of hydrogen; we could take over that market, but only if we see the vision.

I hope that the Minister gets behind us and replies to me in writing on the issues that I raised earlier. I plead with him and hope that we can see some of the success. When he comes to Wrightbus, I will ensure that Jenny Bristow, one of our local chefs, bakes him a cake that means that he will forget forever any other piece of cake he has had anywhere else.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the introduction of UK-made zero-emission buses.

Support for Bereaved Children

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

I would like to inform hon. Members that the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming during the debate for its series of procedural explainers.

I will call Andy Carter to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for bereaved children.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating the debate. I want to talk about a subject that has affected almost all of us at some point or that will do so in the future: grief, and particularly the grief experienced as a result of being bereaved of a parent. Grief is unique; it is both an experience and an emotion, and it comes in many forms, whether it be for the loss of a family member, a friend, a colleague or even a beloved pet. In fact, the only commonality shared between people when they grieve is the pure uniqueness of that experience.

Like many colleagues, I know that it is difficult, to say the least, to lose a parent. It is something that we will all experience in our lives, so we can only hope and pray that it comes later rather than sooner. Tragically, for some people, that is not the case. They lose their mum or dad during childhood, and that is the area I want to focus on.

Bereavement is a complex challenge to navigate at any stage in life, but going through it during childhood has its own unique challenges. The raw wound of loss carries a heavy burden, and we must ensure that it is handled with delicacy and in the manner that best suits the grieving child.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this issue to Westminster Hall. It is certainly one we all are or will be affected by. Is he aware that the voluntary Barnardo’s advice line is available on Mondays and Tuesdays from 10 am to 1 pm and on Fridays from 10 am to 12.30 pm? It is for adults concerned about bereaved children, and we thank the charity for setting it up. However, a helpline for bereaved children does not go far enough, and I think the hon. Gentleman will be asking for Government action. Through the education system and the NHS, the Government must set up a statutory body to provide permanent, accessible support without people having to search that out.

[Andy Carter]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting the work that many charities do. He is absolutely right, and I will come to his point shortly.

I want to put the issue into some context. The Childhood Bereavement Network provides statistics on the number of children bereaved of a parent every year. The figure currently sits at about 46,000 annually. To put that in context, it equates to a young person being bereaved of a parent every 20 minutes. However, we know that that figure is inaccurate, and we have tried to estimate the total number of bereaved children. That is because grief can come with so many types of loss, and the figure we have applies only to children who have lost parents. Crucially, we lack the statistics that charities and service providers need in order to ensure that bereavement support networks, schools and professionals can support children.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I am delighted the hon. Member has brought this subject forward. As he probably knows, it is very close to my heart and I have been doing a lot of work on it. The figures he brings up for this problem are the tip of the iceberg, because although we know that children are bereaved every day, we do not know where they are and the charities do not know how to get in touch with them. That is why I have brought forward a private Member’s Bill—the Bereavement Support (Children and Young People) Bill—to create a protocol for putting children in touch with organisations and vice versa. Is that something the hon. Member thinks he can support?

[Andy Carter]

I pay tribute to the work the hon. Lady has done with colleagues on her private Member’s Bill. I absolutely support its aims, and I will talk a little more about it in just a second.

This debate is largely down to the experience of a young man called Dan Walsh, who I am pleased to say is able to join us in the Chamber today with his friend Finn and his teacher Alice. Dan is currently studying at Priestly College in my constituency, where I had the pleasure of first meeting him a few months ago during a visit. He gave me a heartwarming account of his experience of loss, how it impacted him and his family and how he not only overcame that terrible and tragic event at such a young age, but was empowered to become involved in campaigning to help others who, sadly, find themselves in the same position.

I would like to share the speech that Dan has written for this debate. He writes:

“Nearly five years to the day, I lost my father to a shock brain aneurysm. He was a fit and healthy man, and we had absolutely no warning of what was to come. At the time I was 12 and in Year 7, and little did I know that when I left school that day, my life was about to change forever in a way that I could never have anticipated.

The journey that followed was rough, my world had been turned upside down. At 12 I struggled to grasp the permanence of death. I let the guilt and anger consume and stop me from being able to properly process his passing.

Throughout that difficult time, I was reminded constantly that I wasn’t alone. My own family and school always made sure that I knew that they would always be there.

Yet it was at that point when I felt most alone.

Mark Lemon, an author, captured this feeling brilliantly when he wrote ‘grief is feeling lonely in a room full of people’. I knew full well that I was supported by loving and caring people, but nothing could ever stop me from feeling so isolated, nothing anyone could do would ever make me feel any different.”

[Dame Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this speech to the House. I also thank his constituent—it is very brave of him to do this. My son, Clifford, was just five years old when he lost his beloved nana, my mum Valerie, who was like a second mum to him. A few months later, he lost his dog as well. We got through that with faith. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Church has an important place in helping with this issue, and that schools need more guidance on how to spot if a child is grieving and on understanding the stages of grief?

[Andy Carter]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those points, and particularly the role the Church can play in supporting families. I say to anybody going through grief that there are people out there they can reach out to. The challenge is knowing where to reach out, and this debate is about helping people to find places they can go when they need support.

I will return to the speech written by Dan:

“It was a cruel realisation, but necessary. It allowed me to begin the process of healing, because grief is a bittersweet feeling; whilst you’re suffering your own loss, you get to share each other’s love and compassion for the person that you lose.

After months of not being able to cope and agonising over the loss I was finally directed to a charity called Child Bereavement UK.

The months following my dad’s death I experienced a communication breakdown. I was unable to talk about him and felt completely overwhelmed. I sought relief in my own solitude but to no avail. Feeling trapped in this sensation of anguish.

The charity then became a lifeline for me. It was the only place where I could feel safe to express my own feelings and where I was able to begin that complex journey of navigating through emotion.

What counselling did for me was allow me to talk openly and freely about my dad; however, the most helpful aspect of my time at Child Bereavement was the group meetings where I could speak to young people who had also been through what I had. The groups offered a comforting presence and with their guidance I was able to acknowledge my own feelings of grief.

It gave me the opportunity to talk about my own experiences but also to console those who had similar experiences. In doing so it created a sense of solidarity between myself and other grieving young people.

I had one particular issue when first attending Child Bereavement and that was not being able to comfortably talk about my dad openly. For months I had suppressed my own feelings, but now I cherish the moments that I had with him and I’m always keen to listen to the impact that he had on everybody else.

I would go once a month to one-to-one sessions and a group for young people, yet after a few months I felt comfortable talking about the memories that I built with my dad and the struggle that followed his death.

Looking back at this time it gives me great self-pride to be able to talk about my own experience openly and to know that to have been able to do that I overcame the most painful time of my life.

No one should ever face this journey alone.

And, having experienced this first hand, I feel an obligation to make sure that young bereaved people across the country have the accessibility of these services and are able to secure the level of support that I did.”

Dan is only 17 years old, and he tells a story that is all too common for people of his age. Too many young people are unable to access what they need, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) said. For those who do lose a loved one, it is imperative that they know they are not alone and that they know where to turn.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for sharing such powerful testimony from his constituent, which shows that young person’s bravery in not just getting through that experience but sharing it to motivate change. I am privileged to work with some fantastic kinship carers in my constituency, who look after young people who have gone through real trauma and often deep bereavement. Those carers are not always able to access the adoption support fund, which provides access to therapeutic care, if their young person has not formally been through the care system. Does the hon. Member agree that removing the looked-after status requirement for the fund would be a powerful way to ensure that every young person can access the therapeutic support they need?

[Andy Carter]

The hon. Member has eloquently taken one of the asks that I was going to put to the Minster, so I am grateful for his intervention.

The issues that Dan’s speech provokes allow me to make one or two requests of the Minister. Will he look at the steps the Government can take to ensure that much-needed data on children who have lost loved ones is collected and released to help bereavement support practice? Last October, the Department for Education responded to an e-petition calling for a proper record to be kept of the number of bereaved children, to ensure that they are supported, and for responsibility to fall to the General Register Office, which oversees the recording of deaths. I would be grateful if the Minister could expand on that and look into what other routes are available for recording information, separate from death registration by His Majesty’s Passport Office. I would also be grateful if he could comment on what further steps the Government are taking to ensure that young people who are unaware of the support services being offered are properly informed about where they can seek help and advice.

It cannot be beyond the Government, with today’s technology, to reach out to young people when they feel most lost and to ensure that those supporting them—those around them and looking after them—can give them guidance when they need it. To that end, I would be grateful if the Minister could outline what consideration the Government have given to the provisions in the private Member’s Bill from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West to expand the requirements for specified organisations and public bodies to inform young people of the local, national and online support services available to them following a bereavement.

I am incredibly grateful to the Minister for being here to respond to the debate today. I could not have asked for a better Minister to take up this debate. I am also grateful for his spending time with Dan just before the debate. I thank colleagues who have attended, particularly the hon. Member for Edinburgh West, who has been a real champion in this area. I am very happy to support her private Member’s Bill. I pay tribute to the many brilliant campaigners and charities that Members have mentioned, which do so much to support young people who experience bereavement at any age. Nobody should go through bereavement alone.

I congratulate and pay tribute to Dan Walsh, who I met and who talked to me about his deeply personal experience and showed great maturity. In that conversation, he talked about his interest in politics—he is studying politics at Priestley College —so I asked him to write this speech, which he did. I know his dad would be incredibly proud, and I encourage him to continue to pursue his political ambitions because I think he will go a long way.

11:15

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) for securing a debate on this important topic. It is typical of him to bring such an important and sensitive topic to the House. I am delighted that he has been joined by his constituent Dan from Priestley College, who wrote a considerable portion of my hon. Friend’s opening speech. It was an excellent speech—he might like to start writing speeches for other colleagues, perhaps myself included. I thank him for his courage in bringing forward his story. We had a chat before the debate, alongside his friend Finn. Dan spoke movingly about his experience, and he should be proud of the way that he has sought to bring what has been a very sad experience for him to this place to help other young people experiencing grief. He should also be pleased to have a friend like Finn.

We will all experience a bereavement at some point in our lives, and it can be most devastating for children and young people because it is not the order that we expect life to go in. Just as bereavement touches us all, we all have a role to play in how we support the bereaved. We—Government, parliamentarians, schools, health professionals, voluntary and charitable organisations, and everybody, really—have a responsibility to ensure that children and young people can access the support they need when they need it.

Responsibility for bereavement sits across different Departments, including the Department of Health and Social Care, but I will obviously focus on the work of the Department for Education. What I will say is the Department of Health and Social Care continues its work to address the recommendations in the “Bereavement is everyone’s business” report from the UK Commission on Bereavement. Following that, we established a cross- Government group with representatives from over 10 Departments to improve bereavement support and ensure better joined-up work across Government. We will keep working with the commission and the voluntary sector, including the Childhood Bereavement Network, to explore how their findings could inform policy.

Schools and colleges, which I will focus on most given that I am a Minister for the Department for Education, clearly pay a key role in supporting children, including through difficult times. We are grateful for the vital pastoral support provided by headteachers and staff. Although we cannot expect those staff to be specialists in mental health, bereavement or trauma, they know their pupils best and are well placed to determine the pastoral support that they might need. To support them, we are offering all schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead to help them put informed support in place, drawing on specialists where needed. More than 16,700 schools and colleges have now received a senior mental health lead training grant, including more than eight in 10 state-funded secondary schools.

In addition, we announced £1.3 billion of recovery premium funding for schools, which, on top of the pupil premium, can be used to deliver evidence-based approaches to support pupil mental health and wellbeing, and that can include counselling or other therapeutic services. We have also been rolling out mental health support teams in schools across the country. They offer support to children experiencing common mental health issues, such as anxiety and low mood, and they try to facilitate smoother access to external specialist support. As of April, the teams covered 44% of pupils in schools and students in further education in England, and we are extending the coverage to reach at least 50% of pupils by March 2025.

More broadly, we are providing record levels of investment in increasing the mental health workforce to expand and transform NHS mental health services in England. The NHS forecasts that, since 2019, spending on mental health services has increased by £4.7 billion in cash terms, compared with the aim of £3.4 billion that was in the NHS long- term plan. Some 345,000 more children and young people will have access to mental health support by March 2025.

What is taught through the school curriculum is clearly important, too. Through the mental wellbeing topic of health education, pupils are taught a range of content relevant to dealing with bereavement. That includes recognising and talking about their emotions and how to judge whether what they are feeling and how they are behaving is normal. It is important that young people know where and how to seek support, including who at home and school they should speak to if they are worried about their own or someone else’s mental wellbeing.

In addition, last week, we published our revised relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance for consultation, which specifically includes bereavement. The guidance sets out that all pupils should know that change and loss, including bereavement, can provoke a range of feelings; that grief is a natural response to bereavement; and that everyone grieves differently. It is designed to enable schools to deal sensitively with the individual needs of their pupils, and we are grateful for the support we have had from charities such as the Childhood Bereavement Network and the Anna Freud Centre in developing the guidance. Before this debate, Dan told me how helpful he had found support from Child Bereavement UK. It should be commended for that.

I appreciate that Dan, Finn and his classmates, along with thousands of their contemporaries across the country, are currently in the midst of exam season. Where bereavement has the potential to affect a pupil’s ability to attend exams, the Department has published guidance that includes examples of effective practice to support these students. Regular attendance at schools and colleges is, of course, crucial to both the development and wellbeing of children and young people, and bereaved pupils need time to grieve and may understandably find it harder than others to attend. Schools and colleges should work with pupils, parents and carers to remove any barriers to attendance and work together to put the right support in place. That should include having sensitive conversations, developing good support and considering whether additional help from external partners, including the local authority or health services, would be appropriate.

Dan, Finn and I had a good conversation about data collection, and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South is quite right that the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) has been doing a huge amount in that area. We continue to talk to her and others about what to do regarding data collection. Candidly, in one sense, the simplest way to know the children who have been affected by a bereavement is for them to be recorded on the death certificate. However, we have a significant concern, as I explained to Dan, that anybody can buy a death certificate and that the information about who the children of the deceased were would therefore be accessible to everybody. That carries potential negative consequences that we do not want to facilitate. We may find that that causes other problems.

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South introducing this debate, I have had a conversation with officials about whether we might add a question to the school census regarding bereaved children. That partly requires schools to know. We recently added a question about young carers, and that has been helpful for us to begin to understand how many children are young carers. That was something that charities supporting young carers have wanted for some time. I am happy to commit to exploring whether that is appropriate to do in the case of bereaved children.

[Andy Carter]

I am very grateful for that comment; it is very much appreciated. My experience of registering a death is that someone goes to the registrar, they fill in some forms and they are able to record a number of details, but they do not receive a great deal back. So would the Minister also consider exploring opportunities for registrars in county council areas and unitary authority areas to provide people with information at the point that they register a death, especially when a parent is bereaved and the child’s death is acknowledged in that process? I understand the points that the Minister made about recording information on a death certificate, but is there a process whereby some information could be handed over at that point, when the death is registered?

[David Johnston]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I am happy to have a discussion with my colleagues in other Departments to see whether something like that might be feasible.

One of the things that we are keen to ensure—again, I had this conversation with Dan and Finn before the debate—is that we balance the need to ensure that children and young people receive support against the fact that some of them may not want certain people to know what has happened, including their school and teachers. We may feel that it is better that their school and teachers know, but it might be the case that, for a whole host of reasons, it is not something that they want to be known or to have discussed. Nevertheless, as I say, I am happy to take that suggestion away and discuss it with my Government colleagues.

[Christine Jardine]

Further to the point that the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) just made, I agree that perhaps there is no need to put the information on the death certificate. However, when it comes to the school census, very often children will have moved from one parent’s house to another’s, if the parents have separated, or even to their grandparents’ home, so the school has no way of knowing. It would therefore be useful to inform the school, but we also have to take into account GDPR. So it might not be as easy as the schools being able to tell people. However, if the person responsible for recording the death could set the whole process in motion, that might be easier.

[David Johnston]

The hon. Lady makes a good and important point. These things always involve considerable practical challenges, so they often sound simpler than they are in reality. However, we will certainly see what it is possible to do, given the constraints that she just identified.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South again for securing this debate. Children and young people who lose someone close to them deserve all the support, help and love that they can get. Nobody experiences grief in the same way, but we always want to consider how we can best support children and young people in the toughest circumstances, and where support is needed the Government are committed to ensuring that it is available and accessible.

Finally and most importantly, I thank and pay tribute to Dan for bringing about this debate. It is not often that someone of his age secures a debate in Parliament, and I am very impressed by the work that he has done to turn his very difficult experience into positive change for other young people.

Question put and agreed to.

11:28

Sitting suspended.

Bus Services: England

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Valerie Vaz in the Chair]

14:30

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered bus services in England.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. Connecting communities through better public transport has been one of my top priorities since I was elected in December 2019 by the fine people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. I am therefore delighted to have secured funding—with my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon)—for the return of the Stoke-Leek line, millions more to fix the potholes that drive us potty in the Potteries, and upgrades to Stoke-on-Trent railway station and Station Road. However, like other Members from across the House, I know that buses remain the most important and valued form of public transport.

Stoke-on-Trent’s road network harks back to the Victorian era. The city is made up of six towns in an unconventional layout, and fewer residents than the national average own or have access to a motor vehicle. Other major cities benefit from underground networks, and in some cases trams, but our city relies solely on its good-quality bus network. Buses are vital in connecting our communities across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. They enable people to shop, eat and drink, see loved ones, get to school or college, attend a local GP appointment or enjoy one of the many great tourist attractions our city has to offer, such as the Spitfire gallery in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.

Despite the large number of people who require or would like to use the bus, the local bus network across Britain shrunk by an estimated 14% between 2016-17 and 2021-22. The BBC reported in early 2023 that about 13% of bus services across England are supported by councils. That places heavier pressure on local authority budgets, which are more stretched than ever since covid and the cost of living pressures that resulted in large part from the post-covid global recovery and Putin’s illegal and immoral war in Ukraine, which spiked energy costs and fuelled inflation.

Bus demand plummeted during the global covid-19 pandemic, and is still recovering; reports show that passenger numbers across Britain, excluding London, remain about 20% below pre-pandemic levels. In Stoke-on-Trent, we have felt that more than most other areas. Across the city, bus services shrank by an estimated 50% between 2013-14 and 2021-22. However, it is important to caveat that: to a large extent, the reductions came not from the closure of entire routes, but from repeated timetable changes that, by sleight of hand, reduced how frequently buses arrive or how late into the evening they run.

In summer 2022, I hosted two well-attended meetings in Chell Heath and Smallthorne, at which local residents and I held First Potteries and D&G to account. We were determined to ensure that the operators stop slashing routes, which is making it harder for local people to get around. Residents told me that they need better and more straightforward routes to places such as Leek—passengers are currently required to change buses—and a direct link to Wolstanton retail park to do their shopping. Elderly passengers told me that the lack of routes made them isolated. Parents told me that their children could not get to their college or apprenticeship easily. Businesses told me that the lack of routes was a challenge for recruitment and retention, as many employers still work on shift patterns that do not work within existing timetables. Shops on our high streets felt that the poor quality of service meant that people were shopping outside Stoke-on-Trent.

That argument was reinforced by a survey I conducted of more than 1,000 local residents across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. Some 76% said they would use the bus to go shopping, and 57% said they would undertake more leisure activities, if better bus services were available. In addition, 64% said bus services could be improved by having better routes to get them to different parts of the city so that they can get out and about. Residents also expressed their desire for better services in the evening, with 49.6% saying bus services could be improved if they ran later. That is especially the case for women and girls, who might be concerned about getting home safely.

I have outlined the challenges we face nationally and in Stoke-on-Trent, but it would be unfair not to mention the unprecedented support and subsidy that bus operators have received since I was elected in 2019, particularly during the pandemic, when passenger numbers plummeted because people were staying at home to protect loved ones. Since 2020 the Government have announced more than £4.5 billion of funding for buses in England, outside of London. Between March 2020 and June 2023, over £2 billion of taxpayers’ hard-earned money was used in emergency and recovery funding to mitigate the impact of the covid pandemic on the bus sector. The Department for Transport also makes up to £259 million available every year for bus operators and local authorities to help operators keep fares down and run services that might otherwise be unprofitable and could be cancelled. Without that support, we would simply have seen services cease entirely, and bus operators go out of business. I therefore pass on my thanks to the Government for intervening. I also thank the many bus drivers who kept going into work, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic, when we had no vaccine. Simply by turning up to work, they were putting themselves in harm’s way.

In addition to the covid recovery grant, Councillors Abi Brown and Daniel Jellyman, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South and I successfully campaigned for and received over £31 million for Stoke-on-Trent to improve our bus services through the bus service improvement plan, enabling us to start busing back better. We bid for new bus routes across the city, based on concerns we had heard from residents and businesses across Stoke-on-Trent. Our goal was to help thousands more people get around the city, while reducing congestion on our road network. We also campaigned for better bus stops and shelters across the city. I was recently on Chell Heath Road, where we can see investment to improve boarding kerbs, which will be particularly helpful for elderly and disabled residents. We want to improve the quality of bus shelters to encourage people on to the buses in bad weather and to have electronic boards to ensure that people can keep on track of the new and improved services.

To improve existing routes in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, the 8 and 36/36A services have been extended. The improved 36/36A service means the bus routes start earlier and finish much later, better connecting the three towns in Stoke-on-Trent North—Kidsgrove, Tunstall and Burslem. That means people can enjoy a day out at Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire’s award-winning indoor market in Tunstall, enjoy a pint or two at the Bull’s Head in Burslem, see the mighty Port Vale on match day at Vale Park, and visit the mother town of Stoke-on-Trent—Burslem—to enjoy the historic Middleport Pottery and a tour around Titanic Brewery.

The extension of the No. 8 route means that the people of Ball Green, Norton and Smallthorne will benefit from a weekend service, enabling them to get to and from the city centre, which needs to see increased footfall. It will also enable elderly relatives to see their family and friends more easily. For too long communities, particularly in wards such as Baddeley, Milton and Norton, have felt disconnected from the city and all it has to offer. Councillors Dave Evans and Carl Edwards have lobbied relentlessly with me to improve connectivity. There is still more to be done on the location of bus stops in the ward, but this is a good first step to better connecting communities.

It is not just Stoke-on-Trent that is reaping the benefits of bus funding. Bus funding for Staffordshire County Council has been used to introduce, for the first time in years, a bus service that connects Mow Cop and Harriseahead with the rest of Newchapel, Kidsgrove, Whitehill, Talke and Butt Lane. The brand-new 95 route enables residents to get down to Clough Hall Park or Kidsgrove Sports Centre to keep fit and active, or to enjoy a coffee or some shopping at the Affinity shopping centre. The conversations I have had on doorsteps indicate that the route, run by D&G, has been warmly received by local residents. I have been a passenger myself, and by hopping on at one of our nearest bus stops—the Butt Lane Co-op on Cedar Avenue—my family and I can enjoy a day out, such as seeing Jodrell Bank from Mow Cop castle.

This landmark investment also creates fairer fares for passengers. We have been able to cut bus fares by a third with a new £3.50-a-day flat fare, which has massively helped to drive up footfall and consumer confidence in our local bus service. On a recent visit to the First Potteries depot in Stoke-on-Trent, I spoke with staff about the impact of the Government’s £31.7 million investment in Stoke-on-Trent’s bus services. Staff told me that there has been an improvement since the funding came in, and that is backed up by research from Transport Focus, which reveals that Stoke-on-Trent is now ranked fourth for most satisfied bus users and second for value for money. Believe me, those are figures I did not think I would see when I was first elected.

I was also told of the positive impact of the £3.50-a-day fare cap and the £2 fare on single journeys, which supports over 5,000 routes across England, including those in Stoke-on-Trent, Kidsgrove and Talke. Transport Focus’s research has revealed that 11% of respondents are using the bus more thanks to the capped fare, with 80% agreeing that the £2 ticket has helped with the cost of living. That research is supported by Department for Transport statistics, which show that, following the introduction of the cap, bus fares in England, outside of London, dropped by 6.2% between December 2022 and December 2023, and by over 11% in rural and non-metropolitan areas. However, in Scotland, Wales and London—where buses are devolved—fares increased by 9.8%, 8.1% and 6% respectively.

In addition to the landmark £31 million to bus back better, communities across England such as Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire are benefiting from the Prime Minister’s bold new vision for the midlands and north, with a huge uplift in funding as a result of the cancellation of the northern leg of High Speed 2. The reallocation of £36 billion from HS2 will mean that Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire cumulatively benefit from over £200 million in additional funding for our roads and pavements, while Stoke-on-Trent will receive £19 million a year over the next seven years for transport from the local government transport fund. That unprecedented investment will help us compete with London and the south-east, which typically have better roads and transport links, in part because they generate more revenue from council tax and parking fees in comparison to northern towns and cities such as Stoke-on-Trent.

I am campaigning to support elderly and disabled residents to use their concessionary bus passes before 9.30 am. Research from the House of Commons Library shows that in 2020 almost a quarter of older persons across the country and just over a third of disabled people were allowed to use their bus passes before 9.30 am by local authorities. Not every concessionary bus pass user will need to travel early every day, but it gives vulnerable people security to know that, when they do, they will not be charged. We cannot put a price on giving those who need support the confidence to travel around Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding area.

At Prime Minister’s questions on 29 November 2023, I was delighted that the Prime Minister supported my campaign to scrap the cap, saying that he “wholeheartedly” backed it. However, Labour-led Stoke-on-Trent City Council has so far failed to back it. In misleading comments given to the BBC, cabinet member Councillor Chris Robinson said Stoke-on-Trent City Council was not responsible for setting the timings for concessionary fares. I have therefore written to Councillor Robinson to make it clear that Department for Transport guidance states that free travel is at the discretion of local authorities, with the guidance stating:

“The national bus concession in England is available at any time on a Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday, and from 9.30 am to 11 pm on any other day.”

It goes on to say that travel concession authorities

“are able to offer concessionary travel outside these hours on a discretionary basis.”

Despite having written over 100 days ago, I am yet to hear back from any of the Labour councillors in the cabinet of Stoke-on-Trent City Council. However, with the backing of over 1,600 local people via my “Scrap the Cap” petition, I am determined to keep going and ensure that no excuse is used, particularly now that there has been such a substantial increase in Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s transport budget.

Lots of residents have written to me to say why they back the campaign. Pamela from Tunstall says:

“Many pensioners can’t afford to own a car and need buses to get to appointments. The older we become the more important it is to have access to the bus.”

Roland from Talke Pits asks:

“What is the point in having a free bus travel pass when it restricts people at a time when it is most needed not only for convenience, but to save money which in most cases these people can ill afford to lose.”

Roderick from Milton says:

“Being able to use the buses before 9.30 would mean that it would be a lot easier to make connections to other buses and to be able to get to Stoke Station to catch earlier trains.”

It is therefore vital that Stoke-on-Trent Labour listens and delivers for residents by backing my campaign. I hope the Minister will use today to join myself and the Prime Minister in calling on Stoke-on-Trent City Council to scrap the cap.

When visiting the First Potteries depot a few weeks ago, I spoke to Zoe Hands from First Bus about the exciting opportunity for a new electric bus fleet to come to Stoke-on-Trent. First Bus is ready and willing to invest £37 million in a brand-new electric bus fleet for our great city, but this ambition must be met with an around £11 million investment from Stoke-on-Trent City Council. These brand-new buses would not only encourage travel because they would be more modern and exciting but make a huge difference to improving air quality in Stoke-on-Trent. The fleet we currently have roaming around our city is old, and a more reliable, modern fleet would reduce the number of costly repairs, keeping buses on our roads and out of workshops.

I am therefore working with First Potteries and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South to make sure Stoke-on-Trent City Council plays its part in facilitating this exciting plan and invests that £11 million to support a new, sustainable bus fleet. First Bus has made it clear that if the council can deliver the necessary investment and infrastructure, these new buses could begin carrying passengers in early 2025. The Government have already shown their ambition by allocating over £460 million in dedicated funding for zero-emission buses in this Parliament, of which Staffordshire County Council has already been a recipient. I have now written to Stoke-on-Trent City Council about these exciting plans, and I hope the council will deliver for people in Stoke-on-Trent and make this sensible investment to enhance the city’s bus network.

In conclusion, as I have laid out, good local bus services are so important for local communities. They help to drive people on to our high streets, to encourage growth and investment and to liberate the elderly and disabled, giving them more freedom to get out and about. They provide health benefits by reducing congestion and improving air quality, and they help people get to work or college, which they would otherwise have been unable to do. In short, buses are pivotal to achieving levelling up, which matters hugely. If we really want to transform communities such as Stoke-on-Trent, we must ensure that the infrastructure exists to empower and embolden their people and businesses. To do that, there has to be a reliable public transport network to help people get around. Buses are the most popular form of transport and serve as great liberators for millions of people. It is vital that we get them right.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that there is the possibility of a Division in the House during the course of the debate.

14:45

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is an honour, Ms Vaz, to serve with you in the Chair. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) not only for securing this debate but for sticking up for his constituents by talking about the reasons why they need bus transport.

Let me read from an email that I received in October 2022, shortly after I was first elected to the House. It was a very pleasant read, and begins:

“I would like to invite you to brunch at Greendale Farm cafe on Sunday morning. My treat. The only stipulation is that we both travel there on public transport.”

I was obviously quite keen to take up that invitation, until I looked into it a bit further and found that Donna from Seaton was entirely right to predict that I would not be able to meet her at Greendale Farm café that Sunday morning for her treat. She knew all too well that buses do not travel there on a Sunday morning, because her son had started using that route. He had shown the get-up-and-go to get himself a part-time job over the summer, but unfortunately the bus route was withdrawn by the network provider partway through the tourist season. Donna went on to say:

“The government has a responsibility to provide a public transport system that is fit for purpose and it is failing.”

I will return to Donna at the end of my speech.

Outside London, almost a quarter of bus routes have been cut in the last 10 years, yet buses are the easiest form of public transport to flex. The service can be introduced, improved and expanded very readily, but of course that also means that it can be reduced or withdrawn just as quickly. For many people living in cities or other urban areas, buses are something that they can depend on. They are always there; they can be taken for granted. People living in urban areas probably do not pay too much attention to buses, because they know that if they miss one there will be another one along shortly. However, for the people I represent in rural mid and east Devon, not only are buses an essential part of daily life, but they are so infrequent that even a single delay or no-show can have a huge impact on someone’s journey.

Most of the villages and towns that I represent are served by a bus company called Stagecoach. Although that name might conjure up in the mind the idea of an 18th-century horse and a gilded mail-coach that rapidly gets the post from rural Devon to London, that is simply not the sort of image that bus users in Devon have today. In fact, it more probably brings to mind the potholes that the stagecoaches of the 1800s had to negotiate.

In recent years, bus routes in my constituency have been increasingly scaled back often with very little public consultation. Since I was elected in 2022, we have seen changes to the No. 1 service between Cullompton and Exeter, to the No. 55 service between Tiverton and Exeter, to the No. 9A, which connects Seaton and Exeter, and to several other routes that plug people into our towns, or at least used to.

As a regular bus user, I know it is not uncommon to have to wait up to half an hour after the allotted time for the bus to round the corner. That would not be such a big issue if it were a consistent bus that could be depended on, but it is not. I will give an example from about 18 months ago, when I was waiting at a bus stop in Uffculme to get to the railway station at Tiverton Parkway, to come here. I was waiting with a young lad who told me he was going into Exeter to sit his driving theory test.

We waited as the bus was 15 minutes late, then 20 minutes late. I could see he was getting anxious and jittery about missing his theory test. In the end, I gave up and called a taxi. I knew that Colin round the corner was reliable and would get us there. We gave this young lad a lift and he made it to his theory test on time. It occurred to me that we cannot depend on the bus, and should not have to depend on other bus users to call a taxi to get to an onward connection on time.

As this is a rural area, not only the buses but the trains are infrequent. If we miss our connection, we can be delayed for more than an hour, maybe for two. Young people trying to get to college, for example, are forced either to wait for those long periods or to depend on family, perhaps their parents, to run them into the city. That is affecting people’s working days. There is a material effect, as people have to leave their working from home jobs or perhaps take time out of their working day to run young people to college.

I imagine we might hear from the Minister about the benefits of the bus fare cap. I admit that that has been a welcome measure for regular bus users, but capping fares does not mean much if the bus does not arrive in the first place. A couple of years ago, the west country was right at the bottom of the league table for bus delays for the whole of England. Since then, the appointment of a new managing director, Peter Knight, has been welcome. I have met him several times and he has certainly improved the service from two years ago. He pointed out to me that an area such as Devon has a large population of older people, who have concessionary fares or may travel on free bus passes. That has a material effect on the bus company trying to operate the contract in the area. Making a bus route profitable can be tremendously difficult in an area where lots of people use concessionary fares or pay nothing for the service.

In conclusion, I come back to the original correspondence I had from Donna. She had a practical suggestion, on which I am keen to hear the Minister’s take. She writes:

“The country networks should be divided into routes, and their associated profitability, and then these routes combined into baskets, which group both profitable and non-profitable routes together. The Government determines the timetable”—

or perhaps local authorities could do that—

“The provider must deliver on that timetable, taking the good with the bad.”

Instead, we have the correspondence I received from a Government Minister, Baroness Vere of Norbiton, who wrote to me in October 2022. She said that since deregulation in 1985, bus services have been on a commercial footing, so I should write not to a Minister but to the bus company about my concerns, as that would be the most appropriate action. Listening to the concerns of constituents who cannot get to work on time, I am struck that this is not only a matter for private companies. It also needs to be a concern for Government.

14:54

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my city colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), on securing this important debate. Bus services are extremely important to everyone in the Potteries and right across England—notably for those in deprived and remote communities, but also for those who are wedded to their cars. Road congestion would be even worse for those people if bus services did not take some of that strain.

We all have a stake in bus services being attractive and successful. Of course, that does not mean that bus services are always the optimal solution to road congestion, because often local rail or trams will be more efficient than buses in that regard. However, it does mean that buses are a necessary part of the mix, and we need to ensure that they are attractive enough to tempt more people out of their cars.

I very much support the initiative proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North on the fare cap, which is causing severe issues for many of our constituents. I visited Strathmore College, in my constituency, on Friday. It provides education to young people with special educational needs, and college staff told me about the challenges of the 9.30 am start, and the impact on their young people’s ability to access education. I was talking to the principal there, Kate Ward, about some of the travel training that they are providing to young people, and the impact that the 9.30 am start has on them. I very much support my hon. Friend’s campaign to address that issue.

The focus of my comments in the debate will be on non-metropolitan areas of England, outside London. This particularly means north Staffordshire, which includes, but extends further than, the Potteries bus network, which itself extends further than the city of Stoke-on-Trent. If that sounds complicated, I should also add that the city is cut in two by Network Rail management areas, which all adds up to public transport solutions being harder to come by than public transport problems in north Staffordshire. The decline of bus services in our area over many years now is partly because we lack seamless public transport services and partly because we suffer some of the worst road congestion in Europe. We need to increase demand for bus travel in order to keep services financially viable in the future.

That gives me a welcome opportunity to plug my private Member’s Bill to preserve and enhance high streets through mandatory improvement plans. The Bill received its Second Reading in the other place last Friday, ably moved by my noble Friend Lord Whitby, the former leader of Birmingham City Council. Optimal accessibility by bus to designated and improved high streets under my Bill will surely be a part of any local authority’s considerations in its high street reviews. That will be particularly important in the market hub towns identified by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that have high streets of importance to surrounding rural areas. In proximity to my constituency, these include Cheadle and Stone. Many residents living in villages throughout parts of north Staffordshire, such as Forsbrook, Tean and Alton, have raised with me the lack of effective bus services.

Locally, I am glad that the bus service improvement plan, on which we, as MPs, were active and contributing consultees and for which we helped to secure Government funding, is making it cheaper to travel by bus. The fare is £3.50 per day now—or £12.50 per week—in the Potteries “smart” area, which I think will be a massive bonus for attracting more people on to the bus network. The plan combines with work from the transforming cities fund, which we also helped to secure, making it easier to catch a bus, and more desirable to travel by bus.

However, unfortunately it has been painful for us, as MPs, to see how slowly our city councillors delivered on any of the funding that we worked so hard to secure. The package needs to be delivered with greater urgency. I thank the Department for its patience, and I hope Ministers will continue to press the city council to get all the promised and funded schemes over the line without any further watering-down of ambition by the current Labour council leadership.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

I hesitate to interrupt my hon. Friend, because I am aware that he is making a number of points, but I take his point about the council. I just want to make it very clear that we will continue to press the council to respond and produce the results that it clearly needs to produce. I also echo and endorse the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) that responsibility for concessionary fares absolutely lies with the local authority.

[Jack Brereton]

I thank my hon. Friend—actually, I think he is right honourable.

[Guy Opperman]

I am not.

[Jack Brereton]

Well, he should be. I thank him for the work that he has been doing in the Department to push on some of these issues. That has been a great assistance, and I know he will continue to work hard for us in the Department.

On the TCF package, we were promised that if funding was won, the city council would deliver a more efficient bus-rail interchange at Stoke station. Works are starting on the site this week, but we need further action to reinstate some of those cross-city bus routes that serve the places that rail cannot reach without people having to change and wait at our city centre in Hanley.

It will be a betrayal if the city council fails to deliver effectively the package promised. Our local buses now routinely take card payments, in line with 93% of buses across England. In fact, the worry now is not that buses will not take cards, but that they will not take cash in the future. We must nip such fears in the bud, and I would welcome any comments from the Minister on ensuring that cash payment will continue to be accepted on buses well in the future.

Under BSIP and TCF, it is now far more usual for Stoke-on-Trent bus stops to be elevated above the standard kerb height so that wheelchairs, prams and so on can be more easily wheeled on and off services. Those who find the step up and step down from the bus more challenging no longer struggle so much—except, of course, when the bus cannot pull into the bus stop because someone has decided to park there, often hurling abuse at the bus driver who tries to move them on. Thankfully, it is rare that these things turn violent, but the range of antisocial behaviour we see on public transport, whether against drivers or against other passengers, seems to be widening. That is why I particularly welcome Government funding for new transport safety officers to help reduce ASB on buses and trains throughout Stoke-on-Trent.

London continues to dominate the bus statistics, accounting for 52.2% of all passenger journeys in the year to March 2023, but it is encouraging that non-metropolitan England has seen the strongest recovery in passenger journeys over the past two years, with the number up 133.4%. That beats metropolitan areas, where they are up 111.4%, and London, where they are up 106.3%. Over the past two years, bus mileage in non-metropolitan England is up 11.3%, which compares favourably with the 2.1% increase in metropolitan England and the decline of 1.3% in London. But—I pause deliberately, because it is a big but—all three areas saw declines in bus mileage in the latter year of the two-year period. I am afraid that reflects what we are seeing on the ground: some bus routes have been cut from, say, half-hourly to hourly, and rural stretches have been cut altogether.

However, the decline that we have seen over many years may be about to reverse because of the £31 million bus improvement funding that we have secured. We are seeking new and expanded routes, particularly in the evenings and at weekends, across the Potteries. Thanks to the funding, Lightwood, which has not had a service for many years, has just had one reinstated, with the extension of the No. 50. More services in the evenings and at weekends will help shift workers, who often struggle to get to and from their shifts. A number of other services have been extended: the No. 6 has an earlier start at weekends; evening services have been introduced on the No. 11; Sunday services of the No. 23 have been extended to Newstead; the No. 26 has an extra service every hour; and the new 36/36A service in the evenings for Meir and Meir Park will make a massive difference to those areas.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said, local operators are starting to have a much more positive outlook, with First also looking to restore services to communities such as Sandford Hill and Saxon Fields, which lost its services some years ago. I very much also support my hon. Friend’s campaign to get the fleet renewed, because we need investment in new, zero-emission and sustainable buses throughout north Staffordshire. I join him in urging Stoke-on-Trent City Council to take seriously the proposals by First to invest in upgrading the fleet, which will help to attract more people back on to our bus services and help to address some of the serious air quality issues that we have seen in a number of parts of Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire.

It is not just about buses; local rail should also be taking a bigger share of public transport demand in north Staffordshire. Sadly, in accordance with Beeching’s proposals, Stoke-on-Trent lost the entire loop line that served four of the six towns, leaving three with no town centre trains at all, while the fourth town, Fenton in my constituency, lost its stations on both the Crewe-Derby line and the Stoke-Leek line. The suburbs of Trentham and Meir in my constituency also lost their stations. Relying on buses to absorb the traffic, as Beeching claimed they would, has proven to be a great mistake—so notably so that Meir, I am delighted to say, is set to have its station rebuilt under the restoring your railway programme. I continue to push for it to be delivered with every urgency, and connected to local bus services too. Importantly, restoring your railway is a reversal of the Beeching mindset, not just the Beeching cuts. It has been accepted that bus services alone cannot solve the pressing issues of transport deprivation and chronic road congestion in Meir.

In Trentham, the effect of the Beeching axe has been compounded by the decision of the last Labour Government to close the nearby stations at Wedgwood and Barlaston. That very Beeching-mindset move very marginally speed up the west coast main line through the Potteries arc, but only for the benefit of people travelling between Manchester and London. Again, local buses have not filled the gap in the south of the city, and I am pressing the West Midlands Rail Executive and Network Rail to forge ahead with their work towards restoring a station in the south of the city to replace at least one of the three that have been lost.

In Fenton, again, the problem of road congestion and pollution is cannot be solved by buses alone. We need Fenton Manor station on the Stoke-Leek line restored—my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North has been a great champion of that, too. The station was closed to passenger traffic in 1956, but it is now advancing through the restoring your railway fund, and it was committed for delivery in the Government’s Network North Command Paper.

It will, of course, be crucial that those rail infrastructure projects are connected to bus services and that we achieve multi-modal public transport journeys that are as seamless as possible. That should include a station at Bucknall that offers easy interchange with existing bus services along the Werrington Road to places such as Tean, and along Dividy Road to places such as Parl Hall.

In 2022, on average, people in households without access to a car made over six times as many local bus trips as those with access to a car; the figures were 131 trips per person and 20 trips per person respectively. Local bus services account for over half of all public transport trips made by people in households without access to a car. Bus services will continue to be a lifeline, but more effectively so if we can marry them up seamlessly with a growing local rail network. I note that among people in households with access to a car, under half—45%—of all public transport trips are made by bus, which suggests that people with cars are more easily tempted out of them by trains than by buses. The mix needs to be right.

I conclude with a plea to local companies to add more bus services to the mix in north Staffordshire that do not involve having to change at Hanley. Restoration of a route from Trentham to Cheadle, via Longton, Blythe Bridge, Tean, and Forsbrook, is a top priority; in peak season, it could run to Alton Towers. Thanks to this Government, with TCF, BSIP and RYR, the progress and momentum are definitely there for north Staffordshire to enjoy a meaningful revolution, frankly, in public transport provision. We must keep the momentum going and make travelling by bus more attractive, more viable and more connected, seamlessly with local rail.

15:09

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for securing this incredibly important debate.

From 2022 to 2023, the number of bus miles travelled in County Durham dropped by 18% from 14.5 million to 11.8 million, and the number of miles supported by the local authority dropped by 25% from 2.6 million to just under 2 million. Durham also saw a decline in journeys per head of population from 33.8 to 32.6. What is happening is just a complete decline. The county is among the worst for buses running on time, with just 77% running on time in March ’23.

But those are just statistics; the real thing for all our constituents is the detail that sits underneath them. I have a list of bus changes, the first of which is to the No. 7, which has increased its frequency from half-hourly to hourly. Brilliant—now I will read out the rest, which go the other way. The No. 8A has been reduced, with the removal of Sunday services, and the No. 12 has been withdrawn completely. The No. 22 and No. 22B have been reduced, down from half-hourly. The hourly X21 service from Darlington to Peterlee has been scrapped, while the X22 is going to change. There is just this inconsistency. The Scarlet Band 112 has been lost completely, as has the 113 connecting Fishburn, Sedgefield, Ferryhill and Bishop Middleham. The Arriva 57, which connected Durham and Trimdon to Hartlepool, has been replaced with another, alternative service. This jumping just confuses people.

We also have the X12, which goes past Fishburn. Our residents told the Minister on a recent visit that the direction of the route needed to be changed, with just a slight deviation. On this occasion I give credit to Arriva, which has a consultation out on doing exactly that—although that is just about the only favourable thing I can say about Arriva at the moment. Arriva has also removed the X21, which has generated more constituent casework than any other service. It is the connection that would get my people from the mining villages, such as all the Trimdons—there are several of them—Fishburn and Sedgefield. These are deprived communities, with very low car ownership. What has Arriva done? It has removed the umbilical cord that gets them to Newton Aycliffe. Newton Aycliffe has an industrial estate with 10,000 jobs on it. There is everything there, from major organisations like your Hitachis, your Gestamps and your Husqvarnas, down to the myriad small and medium-sized enterprises.

This is a lifeline for those communities, but the Trimdons and Fishburn are places with low population density and low job opportunities, and now they face this commute. To compound it all, they are also places with incredibly low car ownership. In a survey of the Trimdons, which over 400 residents participated in, most complained that the lack of bus services severely restricted their lifestyle. Some 40% of residents have had to turn down employment or education opportunities because the transport connections did not exist to get them there. Stories have been posted in the local Facebook group about young people giving up jobs or turning them down due to these transport challenges. The jobcentre has said that transport challenges are the greatest difficulty in placing people into work. I am really pleased that the recent grant for Durham can be used for infrastructure, such as new buses, bus stations and road improvements, but it cannot be used as revenue support for unprofitable routes. I think we really need to look at kick-starting these situations, even if through something short term, just to pump-prime those routes.

I want to repeat something that I said recently, in a debate on miners and mining communities, about low connectivity. For me, social mobility can only come with physical mobility. If people cannot get to the jobs, it is very difficult for them to improve themselves, no matter where they are. We have so many wonderful employment opportunities in Newton Aycliffe and NETPark, but the bus services connecting them to the mining villages are just appalling. The single most crucial factor in enabling those mining communities to thrive will be better transport, because they have incredibly low levels of car ownership, as I have said, and they are far too isolated to walk or cycle from. The efforts to improve connectivity are more critical than just about anything else going on in my part of the world. It is not only the people trying to get to jobs; right here, right now, people are trying to get to the DWP to sign on. They cannot even get there to get to their appointments to get the development, to get them to—I think you know where I am going, Ms Vaz.

There have been some attempts at improvement. Durham has something it calls Link2work, which is a dial-a-ride situation. But it is so specific: it potentially gets people to a 7 o’clock shift, and that is it. I am currently working with it and we are hopeful of getting another proposal that will expand Link2work so that people can get to a nine-to-five job as opposed to a shift pattern job, or, with a bit of luck, go shopping or to education facilities. I am hopeful; we are seeing some movement in that direction.

I will digress a bit and endorse what was said by my hon. Friend from the other Stoke—I cannot remember which one—

[Jack Brereton]

South.

[Paul Howell]

I endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) said about the importance of rail links. A restoring your railway project has been approved for Ferryhill station and is ongoing. It will deliver economic growth to the station and stimulate economic activity—all the things that make villages feel like we care and that people want to invest in them—but we need to connect the buses to the stations as well. It will be a long walk to the train if we do not deliver that.

I thank the Minister for his recent visit to my constituency to talk to residents in Fishburn. I also thank him for understanding the need for what we do and for encouraging our local providers and councils to deliver more—anything further that he can do to encourage their efforts will be appreciated.

15:16

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. Before I thank the Minister, I will say that we on the Island are fortunate for many reasons, but one of them is that we still have a very healthy set of bus routes by rural standards. Even in my little hamlet in the Back of the Wight, in west Wight, where we are served by the No. 12 bus, we have eight services from Newport per working day and seven in the other direction, if my memory serves me. The last time I used the bus, and indeed our wonderful £2 bus fare, which I will come to shortly, was the week before last, when I needed to get to Carisbrooke castle for the wonderful Walk the Wight event in aid of the Isle of Wight hospice.

Being a Minister is often a thankless task, so it is nice to have a Minister who goes the extra mile for Conservative colleagues and, I strongly suspect, Members of Parliament on the other side of the House. I thank him for helping us to get the electric bus bid for the Isle of Wight over the line. We had to push quite hard, but I am delighted that, following a few conversations with my hon. Friend the Minister—he should clearly be my right hon. Friend —we could get it over the line. I am hugely grateful that he was able to support the excellent bid from Southern Vectis and Richard Tyldsley. It is a great little company. Bus drivers on the Island seem to be incredibly friendly and a decent bunch; it is always lovely to see them and I thank them for running such a friendly and reliable service.

Thanks to the funding that we are getting from the Minister, we have already started testing electric buses on the Island. We will soon have zero-emission buses covering route 1 from Newport to Cowes, route 5 from Newport to East Cowes and route 9 from Newport to Ryde. That will mean lower emissions and better air quality for the Island towns of Newport, Ryde, Cowes and East Cowes.

The Minister will also know, because we have talked about it on quite a few occasions, how popular the £2 bus fare is. According to Richard at Southern Vectis, it has undoubtedly got thousands more people a month using the bus network on the Isle of Wight. It was going to be a temporary scheme, but I was not the only Member of Parliament lobbying the Minister—many of us were, including, I am sure, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), whom I thank for organising this great debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton).

I am absolutely delighted that we have been able to extend the scheme because it is really important to help youngsters on the Island to get around. Pensioners get free bus passes—we know about that—but if someone is on the minimum wage or a young person is starting out in their first job and they do not have a lot of money, taxis on the Island are really expensive. We have a vibrant bus network, so having a £2 max fare in one direction—£4 there and back—makes a big difference.

[Guy Opperman]

My hon. Friend is talking eloquently about the £2 bus fare, which I utterly endorse. It is the simplest and most persuasive way of getting people back on the buses. The most important thing for me, certainly in my constituency and up and down the country where it has been brought in, is that the impact on people with a low income is off the charts. The ability in tough times, which we have clearly been living through for the last few years, to get to work for an understandable figure that is by far discounted on what it was previously is a genuine game changer.

[Bob Seely]

I thank the Minister for his intervention. The last time I had a school visit in Parliament, some of the kids said, “Why should we vote Conservative?” I could have talked about the amazing apprenticeships schemes, but the first thing that came into my head was the £2 bus fare. If someone lives in Wales or in Labour-controlled London, fares are going up. If they are in Conservative areas, for the most part there is a fantastic scheme that helps young people get around.

In conclusion, I thank the Minister for finding the money to make sure that the Isle of Wight was included in his electric bus scheme. It will make a big difference and help to drive down emissions and improve air quality on the Island. I also thank him for the £2 bus fare, which has made such a difference and is getting people back on the buses, not least me.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

The Front-Bench spokespeople have 10 minutes each. I call the Opposition spokesperson, Bill Esterson.

15:21

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for securing the debate. I thank also the other hon. Members for their contributions. It is fair to say that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and I do not agree on much, but I have managed to identify some areas where we do. I join him in paying tribute to bus drivers and other public transport staff who, as he rightly said, served through the pandemic—before and after. They put their lives on the line and some of them died. He reminded us of the important role that people in public transport play.

We also agree about the importance of buses in England. Millions of people depend on them and they are by far the most used form of public transport. Regardless of our policy disagreements, we can at least agree on their significance in his constituency and mine, so I genuinely thank him for securing the debate.

England’s crumbling bus network is symptomatic of the scale of astonishing decline that the Government have presided over. The statistics say it all. The bus network was deregulated in 1985, and there were 1.5 billion fewer bus journeys in 2019 than there were in 1985. Since 2010, 300 million fewer miles have been driven by buses per year and thousands of bus services have been cut. In the hon. Member’s patch alone, bus miles have halved in the last decade—one of the highest falls in bus numbers in the country, as he acknowledged. Some parts of Stoke-on-Trent are barely served by buses at all.

Although I welcome the better news that the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) shared about attempts to improve the service, this is a very serious story across the country. In 2023, an outspoken local politician in Stoke-on-Trent said that the state of the buses and the figures were

“damning on the poor performance of operators like First Bus”

and that

“we need to…let current operators know they’ve been put on notice.”

Those were the words of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. In fact, he has been an outspoken critic of his local bus operators on multiple occasions, even going so far as to lecture Ministers that

“First Bus continues to cut routes”

and it is

“time that First Bus does its bit”.—[Official Report, 13 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 489.]

The experience that he describes demonstrates the reality of bus deregulation under the Conservatives, and completely exposes the failure of the Government’s sticking-plaster approach to address the problems of a creaking bus network.

[Bob Seely]

If the hon. Gentleman is so critical, what would the Labour party do about it?

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the second half of my speech, because I will come on to that. Before I do, the criticisms by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North are a tacit admission that we need bold reform. On the question of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), only Labour will be able to deliver that.

Despite the pleading of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, deregulation has not compelled First Bus to pull its finger out. Instead, it has robbed communities of a say over the vital bus services on which they depend. Micromanagement from Whitehall makes it ridiculously complicated for local authorities to access the kind of funding streams that he and Conservative Members were alluding to. It simply has not achieved results.

The current system has led to thousands of vital bus services across the country being axed. Bus services are a shadow of what they once were because unaccountable operators remain able to decide for themselves where services go and how they run. The Government preside over shockingly bad bus services. We have a Prime Minister who prefers to travel by helicopter and private jet, and who has no experience of the buses and trains that the rest of us use, so is it any wonder that public transport is in such a mess?

Turning to Labour’s plans for Government, we know that a reliable, affordable and regular bus service is the difference between opportunity and isolation for millions of people. Labour will give every community the power to take back control of their bus services and will support local leaders to deliver better buses and to do so faster. Labour’s plans will create and save vital routes and services, will end today’s postcode lottery of bus services, and will kick-start a revival of bus services across England.

[Paul Howell]

Will the hon. Member give more information about precisely how he will achieve those objectives?

[Bill Esterson]

I am enjoying these interventions because they are prompting the next stage of my speech, which explains exactly what Labour’s plans are for Government. In our first term, should we be fortunate enough to serve—I take nothing for granted; I am not complacent about it—Labour would pass new legislation to support local transport authorities to take back control of their bus services. We would do that through a better buses Act, which would remove the costly, time-consuming barriers that restrict the ability of local transport authorities to control their bus services properly.

Labour would also reform funding structures to give local leaders more flexibility over bus funding and to allow them to finally plan for the long term—no more short-term cliff edges. Such approaches would address the difficulties that Conservative Members identified in their speeches.

[Paul Howell]

I am interested to see how that plays out in terms of consistency. We have a new North East Mayor in my part of the world who has just said that she is going to look at franchising, but when I sat in the Transport Committee last week, the union leaders in front of us were absolutely against franchising. I wonder whether there is any consistency in Labour’s approach.

[Bill Esterson]

The short answer is that there is, because we recognise the need for flexibility and different options—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are reacting to what I say. Although we see the local franchising process as the presumed option, it is not the only option that will be available under a Labour Government.

[Jack Brereton]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Bill Esterson]

I will finish the point rather than taking further interventions. At the moment, those powers are limited to Metro Mayors, but we will expand them to every local transport authority. We will also accelerate the franchising process, cutting it from the six-year slog endured by Greater Manchester down to as little as two years. We will introduce local network safeguards to provide more accountability over bus operators and ensure higher standards for operators wherever they are in England, whether they are under local franchising or not. We are going to end the nonsensical ideological ban on new municipal companies, which this Government introduced in 2017. Labour’s plans could save up to 700 routes, with local network safeguards designed to benefit profiteering at the expense of yet more devastating bus cuts. Our plan is to create up to 600 new routes by expanding franchising powers, totalling an extra 250 million passenger journeys per year.

[Jack Brereton]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Esterson]

I am going to finish answering the previous two questions by going through our plans, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. Thanks to our trailblazing Labour Metro Mayors, we know how effective franchising can be. London under Sadiq Khan has one of the most sophisticated and best integrated transport networks in the world, and Andy Burnham’s Bee Network in Greater Manchester is already improving reliability and boosting ridership. We want to emulate that in the Liverpool city region with the Mayor, and we are already adopting the approach of local franchising.

After the fantastic election results in the West Midlands, North East England, York and North Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire, there is an opportunity for other areas to join the Liverpool city region and West Yorkshire, as their combined authorities take the steps to pursue local franchising. Labour in regional government is taking bold steps to deliver for its communities, while the only remaining Conservative Metro Mayor—in the Tees Valley—refuses to pursue franchising, even when bus journey satisfaction in the Tees Valley is among the lowest anywhere in the country.

On the point about options, franchising will not be appropriate for every local authority. Labour’s plans are specifically designed to empower local authorities to use flexible funding and strengthened powers to make decisions that affect their own back yard, not through diktat from Whitehall. Our approach will give local leaders the tools they need to improve their bus services, whether through new franchising models, setting up new publicly owned municipal bus companies or significantly strengthened enhanced partnerships. That point is crucial and goes to the question asked by the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell). There are notable pockets across England where enhanced partnerships between local authorities and operators have led to commendable levels of co-operation, excellence and improved performance. Where bus partnerships are working well, we will encourage them to continue. Labour is unapologetically pragmatic—not dogmatic—in its approach. We want to find the best solutions to the terrible state of our public transport system. There is no “one size fits all” approach, in stark contrast to the Conservatives’ ideological obsession with deregulation and privatisation.

[Jack Brereton]

Will the hon. Gentleman now give way?

[Bill Esterson]

I am coming to the end of my speech. The Conservatives have presided—[Interruption.] Okay, I will give way.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that he has almost come to the end of his 10 minutes, but it is his choice.

[Bill Esterson]

Thank you, Ms Vaz.

[Jack Brereton]

But you gave way!

[Bill Esterson]

The Chair has told me not—[Interruption.] May I seek your guidance, Ms Vaz?

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

Carry on. Jack Brereton is intervening.

[Jack Brereton]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way, but I am slightly perplexed, as to what it is we are hearing that is different from what the Government are doing. On franchising, very few to no Labour authorities have taken up those powers, despite the fact that they exist. Actually, those other authorities that are not mayoral areas can apply to the Secretary of State for authority to do franchising if they so choose. We have heard—

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

Order. We are shortly coming up to a vote and we have not heard from the Minister.

[Jack Brereton]

I would like to know what Labour would do differently.

[Bill Esterson]

I think I have understood the question. We are going to speed up franchising and we are going to make it a lot easier for people to do. It took over six years for Andy Burnham to get through the various hoops and bureaucracies in his way, and we have seen a similar problem in the Liverpool city region. We need to speed up the process. It is going to be the presumed option for any local authority that wants to use it, and that is a fundamental shift. Again, we are not being dogmatic but pragmatic.

Labour stands ready to empower local communities with the tools they need to take back control of their bus services, which is in stark contrast to 14 years of shocking decline in our bus network. What Labour will do, if we are in government, is usher in the most ambitious reform to England’s bus network in 40 years.

15:35

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. You wait ages for a debate on bus services and then there are two in a day. It is understandable and appropriate that, for the second time today, I rise to my feet in Westminster Hall to address the state of the nation in terms of our bus network. I will briefly set out, before I am probably interrupted by a vote, some key thoughts.

I endorse the comment by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) that franchising exists already. Local authorities can do this already—[Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) chunters away, having been laughed out of court earlier on, the key point about Labour policy is that it is very keen to propose franchising but there not a squidge of an iota about money. The money that goes to the Mayors for the franchising is the key difference. What the Labour party is proposing is a franchise policy without any fiscal assistance. In reality that will result in a far worse system. If it was so broken, there were 13 years of Labour government when they could have changed it.

When the hon. Member for Sefton Central gets into government—if we were ever so misfortunate for that to happen—he will realise that what he is proposing is genuinely not a good idea without significant extra funding. Labour will not commit to this, as the funding will not follow, so a local authority would struggle to provide even the quality of the services that it is providing at present.

Enough of such claptrap. I move on. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for bringing the debate to the Chamber. It is entirely right that he set out that the covid pandemic has had a massive impact and that slowly but surely the funding situation and take-up is improving. If we look at base funding as a starting point, we have doubled bus funding in this country since 2010. We are in a situation where the degree of support is off the charts compared with yesteryear. We all accept that operators and local transport authorities have been working in a challenging environment over the last few years, but the key point is that there is great collaborative work happening locally between local transport authorities, bus operators and passengers. The regulatory framework put in place by the Bus Services Act 2017 and the largest public investment in bus services in all time—we have announced over £4.5 billion of support to improve services since 2020—are significant.

Over £2 billion of this funding has been allocated to every single local transport authority in England to help to deliver its local bus service improvement plans, which help to deliver more frequent, more reliable, easier to use and cheaper bus services. I want briefly to talk about Stoke-on-Trent specifically. Clearly, the way the funding has been used is an example of the kind of change that we are seeing. Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been allocated over £33 million from the DFT to deliver its bus service improvement plan, including an extra £1.4 million this year in funding redirected from HS2 through Network North. I am pleased to see that investment bearing fruit, with a number of bus service enhancements being introduced across Stoke-on-Trent. That provides better, more frequent services to help people to get to and from work.

I am not going to go through all the villages that have benefited and all the changes also that have taken place in the other parts of Stoke, as they were outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, but the good news does not stop there. The local affordable fares scheme—the £3.50 scheme—is clearly something to be lauded. There is also the £2 single ticket, which is again subsidised and paid for by the taxpayer, arising out of the HS2 funding. There was talk today about funding, but not a word was said about whether that would continue under any Labour authority or any Labour Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) explained, this is the key thing to transform the ability of low-income people to get to work and get about in whatever community. It is such a transformational thing. That £600 million, again, arises out of and is continued by the HS2 funding.

I listened in great detail to all the speeches, and I noticed that many colleagues were keen to laud and be pleased about the zero-emission bus regional areas funding, known as ZEBRA 2. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight, who has campaigned and repeatedly beaten a path to my door, managed to secure £4.5 million for zero-emission buses on the Isle of Wight with ZEBRA 2.

Self-evidently, colleagues were keen to extol the £3.1 million ZEBRA funding for Staffordshire, albeit that Stoke is not particularly affected. I am surprised not to be lauded for the fact that Devon County Council has received £5.3 million for zero-emission buses. I was genuinely stunned and amazed to receive no thanks from the local MP, the hon. Member for Sefton Central, for the fact that Liverpool City Council, the combined authority, received £9.4 million, and that the Government are funding zero-emission buses to a massive degree. As always, the glass is half empty and there is no laudable attempt to accept that a transformational difference has taken place with zero-emission buses.

We can also look at the local transport fund, which is utterly key for places such as Stoke. That is due to a decision by the Prime Minister in respect of the second leg of HS2. I am still unaware of the Labour position on that, as always, with no word on funding. That is £4.7 billion of extra funding, of which Stoke-on-Trent benefits to the tune of £134 million. I want to address some of the key points about Stoke on the issue of the cap. I entirely agree with the Prime Minister and not with the local authority leader, I am afraid. This is something that can be entirely addressed by local authority funding. As I am setting out in detail, there is a plethora of extra local authority funding that could be used in this way.

[Bill Esterson]

What about all those cuts in 2010?

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Gentleman talks about cuts in 2010. He does not seem to remember Gordon Brown selling the gold, bankrupting the economy, and a note written by a Labour MP that famously said:

“I’m afraid there is no money.”

[Bill Esterson]

What is the state of the economy now?

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Gentleman has a brass neck to come to this House and start saying that 2010 was about anything other than a disastrous Labour Government who were rightly voted out. We will move back to Stoke, if I may.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North will be aware that the local transport fund has been transformational. The £134 million can be used for buses and to improve bus routes. It could also build on the substantial investment the Government have put into local transport through the transforming cities fund, where Stoke has again been awarded £34.6 million, as one of the many beneficiaries. I have twice touched on the point about concessionary travel. I regret to say that I manifestly disagree with the local authority leader, and sincerely hope he has the guts to reply, after more than 100 days, to my hon. Friend’s letter.

I am conscious of time and the incoming vote. I have touched on discretionary fares and other key points. It is outstandingly the case that the zero-emission buses will make a huge difference to their areas. I welcome what has taken place on the Isle of Wight and in the other local authorities I have discussed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight rightly said, it is not just in Conservative-run areas or where there are Conservative MPs; it is across the country. On the point about cash, we are aware of the importance of that and would encourage private operators to ensure that alternative payments continue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) made a point about his constituency. It was a pleasure to go to the Fishburn Youth and Community Centre, where I enjoyed a delicious pancake on pancake Tuesday. Clearly, there is some positive news in terms of what Arriva is doing in relation to the X12, but I continue to want to see better work between Durham County Council and the individual provider.

This has clearly been a difficult time, with the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but we absolutely believe that Stoke is doing better and that, with the record funding that is going in, a better future lies ahead for bus services.

15:44

[Jonathan Gullis]

I thank all hon. Members for taking part in today’s debate, and both the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), for their responses.

I extol once again the £30 million-plus for improving our local bus services in Stoke-on-Trent, as well as the £30 million-plus from the transforming cities fund. We are also getting over £100 million to improve transport, as well as an extra £200 million-plus across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire to fix our broken roads and pavements. That is on top of what was done by the last Conservative-led administration in Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which put a record £39 million into fixing over 30,000 potholes and resurfacing over 1,200 roads and pavements. There is also the bus service improvement plan, and specifically the £3.50-a-day flat fare. An awful lot of work has gone on.

I thank the shadow Minister for his kind words about where we do indeed have views in common. He is right that I said to Goldenhill Community Centre that First Bus Potteries was on notice. I was sick to the back teeth of time and again seeing services cut, even after Ministers had arrived to hear about our bus service improvement funding. That led to more and more people feeling despondent, despite the funding having been secured. I am delighted to say that new services are now coming in, and we are therefore seeing improvements. Independent surveys are saying that Stoke is second best in the country for value for money and fourth for passenger satisfaction. First is still on notice—I gave it until the end of 2024—but the direction of travel is right.

The shadow Minister was kind to point out, to the Whip’s annoyance, that I have not always been a party boy. I am willing to say what I think, be outspoken and push the envelope more than I should. He has made it clear to the voters of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke that if they want a true community champion—someone who will stand up for their beliefs and values, who is not willing always to take the party line and who is therefore independent of thought, unlike many of the Opposition opponents I will face in the general election—they should vote for Jonathan Gullis and vote Conservative in the next general election.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered bus services in England.

15:47

Sitting suspended.

Knife Crime Awareness Week

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

16:17

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

I would like to inform Members that the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming during today’s debate for its series of procedural explainers.

I will call Fleur Anderson to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention for a 30-minute debate, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Knife Crime Awareness Week.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz, for this important debate on Knife Crime Awareness Week, which is this week. It is important to raise the urgent need to tackle knife crime across the country. As a mum, it is a big concern for me every time my children walk around the streets. Every time we hear of a life lost so brutally—usually a young life—it breaks my heart.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Indeed, it is a tragedy whenever any family loses a young life. Last month in Moss Side in Manchester, we lost Prince Walker-Ayeni, a 17-year-old boy who was stabbed and sadly later died in hospital from his injuries. Does my hon. Friend agree that the loss of any life to knife crime is unacceptable but particularly the life of a young person, and that this Tory Government are simply not doing enough to tackle knife crime on our streets?

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend for remembering Prince in this debate. It is on behalf of Prince, and on behalf of so many young people who have lost their lives, that we are holding this debate. We do not want to see any more of that. I agree it is unacceptable.

Since 2015, knife crime has risen by a staggering 80%—some of the steepest increases have been in towns and suburbs—devastating families across the country. Despite promising more than 16 times to ban dangerous weapons from Britain’s streets, the Government have dragged their feet, and there are still gaping loopholes in their policy that have left lethal blades such as ninja swords available to buy legally.

There were nearly 50,000 police-recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales in 2023. Tragically, there were 244 murders involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales in the 12 months up to March 2023—244 murders in just 12 months—and 78 young people aged under 25 were murdered with a knife or sharp object in the 12 months up to March 2023, 10 of whom were aged under 16. In their name, in their memory, we must take action.

I have been out for an evening with my local police violence reduction unit. I pay tribute to the police, who are tackling this head-on. Every time the door of that van opened, they did not know what they were going to face.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for making such a passionate speech on this important issue—an issue that we cannot afford to politicise. She has mentioned violence reduction units. We have fantastic VRUs in London working with communities, including those in my constituency. Those VRUs have been funded directly by the Mayor of London’s office. Does she agree that the Government need to keep working on and funding those VRUs, where we see youth workers essentially acting as a line of defence, mentoring our young people and turning them away from crime? That can only happen if our VRUs have adequate resources.

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend and fellow London MP for raising that. Violence reduction units are really important, as is learning what works from the youth workers and police on the ground. I will talk about building on what works and using it to tackle knife crime later in my speech.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate, to which I want to add a Northern Ireland perspective. Just this week, the Police Service of Northern Ireland warned of a surge in the illegal import of knives disguised as belt buckles, which has been happening since January. It is clear that there is a market for hidden knives. Does she agree that this needs to be addressed in a co-ordinated fashion in each constituency across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—ever mindful that, while the Minister is responsible for England, all the regions have to follow suit?

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing that up. I did not know about knives disguised as belt buckles. That just shows how legislation has to be good enough to keep ahead of every new device and new weapon that comes up. I hope that the Minister will respond on that issue in this debate.

When I was working in a youth centre before I was a MP, I worked with organisations across south-west London to look at what we can do as a community to learn from public health approaches to tackling knife crime. I have also been a youth worker.

[Kate Kniveton (Burton) (Con)]

In my constituency, the Streetwise Young People’s Project has had significant success in raising awareness among young people of the dangers of carrying knives. Does the hon. Lady agree that education plays a critical role in preventing knife crime? It is vital that we do all we can to support community-led initiatives that deliver vital education and mentoring to our children.

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising that. I absolutely do agree: education and prevention is crucial to this, and I will also be talking more about that.

I also thank the hon. Lady for mentioning the organisation working in her constituency. I pay tribute to the other charities working to tackle knife crime, which include the Ben Kinsella Trust—which is organising Knife Crime Awareness Week and has written a report on keeping young people safe—along with Lives not Knives, Street Doctors, the Damilola Taylor Trust, Justice for Ronan Kanda, and Triple P. They are just some of the many organisations working across the country to tackle knife crime. Often, education is the key.

Knife crime destroys lives, devastates families, and creates fear and trauma in communities. Labour has made it our mission to halve knife crime within 10 years of a Labour Government. It is right to be ambitious to change the current situation. For 14 years, the Conservatives have failed to grip this epidemic and take the action necessary to get these dangerous weapons off our streets. The Government’s response has been wholly inadequate. The serious violence strategy is more than five years out of date, the serious violence taskforce was disbanded, and everyone knows from their own communities that too little is being done to divert young people away from violence and crime.

Youth services are an essential part of that. I have spoken many times about youth services, and I wanted to use this opportunity to speak about them again. The YMCA’s research shows that real-terms expenditure on youth services has been slashed by 73% since 2010-2011, which equates to a £1.1 billion loss. The number of youth centres has been cut drastically, from 917 in 2011 to just 427 across the country in 2023. It is not enough. No wonder we are seeing this epidemic of knife crime.

Half of young people do not have access to a youth service. Too often, when teenagers are caught with knives, nothing happens; there is no action or support to stop a spiral into even more devastating crime. Too often, when there are signs that a young person is getting into trouble, being groomed by gangs or getting lost in a dangerous online world, nothing is done. There is not enough parenting support either. Too often, when teenagers say they do not feel safe or are struggling with trauma or abuse, no one listens and no help is provided. That is the reality of Tory Britain. Labour will change that.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

There was a horrific incident at Amman Valley School, in Ammanford in my constituency, in which a pupil attacked two teachers and another pupil. Miraculously, nobody died, but one of the teachers sustained especially horrific injuries. Does the hon. Lady agree that there needs to be a focus on weapons in schools? For me, the fact that weapons are being produced in schools in somewhere like Carmarthenshire, of all places, is extremely worrying.

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that horrific-sounding incident. I agree that weapons in schools are extremely concerning and need to be tackled. We need a holistic approach; it cannot just be about weapons in one place or another, or education in one place or another, or about one particular service. We need to address the issue in the round, and weapons in schools are definitely a part of that.

Labour will extend the ban on zombie knives to ninja swords, establish an end-to-end review of online knife sales and close the loophole that allows online marketplaces to sell dangerous knives. Importantly, Labour will introduce a new young futures programme to establish new youth hubs, with both mental health workers and youth workers. The new young futures programme will draw on up to £100 million a year, based on combining existing commitments to fund youth hubs with mental health staff and youth workers in every community, and will be paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools. We will provide mentors in pupil referral units and youth workers in A&E, paid for by full cost recovery for gun licensing and a programme of public sector reform.

We will deliver a targeted programme in every area to identify the young people most at risk of being drawn into violent crime and build a package of support that responds to the challenges they are facing. That will be achieved by bringing together services at a local level to better co-ordinate the delivery of preventive interventions around the young person, rooted in a strong evidence base. We will develop a national network of young futures hubs and end the postcode lottery of youth services, which are better in some places than others. We will bring local services together and deliver support for teenagers at risk of being of drawn into crime or facing mental health challenges. Where appropriate, we will deliver universal youth provision, which has been cut so badly by the Conservative Government. We will also deliver youth workers in A&E units, custody centres and communities, as well as mentors in pupil referral units.

Under a Labour Government, there will be tough consequences for carrying a knife. A Labour Government will end the empty words and apology letters for knife possession, and will guarantee sanctions and serious interventions for young people who carry knives. There will be tough new laws to restrict the sale of knives. A Labour Government will implement a total crackdown on the availability of knives on Britain’s streets—no more loopholes, no more caveats and no more false promises. The Government have published 16 press releases about zombie knives since 2015, yet despite repeated promises to toughen the rules, a full ban is still not in place. Labour will urgently legislate to ban zombie-style knives, introduce tough criminal sanctions on tech executives who allow knife sales on their online marketplaces, and conduct a rapid review of online knife sales from the point of purchase through to delivery. In particular, we will strengthen ID checks and checks conducted by Royal Mail and Border Force for UK-bound parcels.

There are ways to take action. We can stop the increase in knife crime and see an end to this. I again thank the Ben Kinsella Trust, and recommend its report on keeping young people safe, in particular with regard to the need to work with young people in primary schools, which is where some of the belief systems about knife carrying start. I urge the Government to take more action to end knife crime.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

I expect the debate to end at 4.47 pm, when I will move to the next debate.

16:29

[Sarah Edwards (Tamworth) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) on securing this incredibly important debate.

When I speak to constituents in Tamworth, I hear how worried they are about increasing antisocial behaviour. I recently attended a town centre forum in St Editha’s church, meeting people from local businesses. They told me how their experiences of antisocial behaviour and crime in the town centre are impacting the local economy. Reports of knife crime continue to rise. In the last couple of months alone a serious stabbing took place in a Tamworth nightclub in the early hours of the morning.

With resources under strain, I am pleased to see Staffordshire Police’s DitchTheBlade campaign, as well as knife banks being located across the constituency in places such as St Editha’s church, St Martin’s church and Sacred Heart church. However, with cuts to the police it is becoming increasingly clear that such initiatives cannot succeed without a greater focus on tackling knife crime from a number of angles.

I am proud of organisations such as Changes Tamworth. This provides a lifeline to those in a mental health crisis and at risk of suicide but also, via referral from the police, now offers anger management courses and mental health support to recent offenders on their last strike. In doing so, it helps to reduce the levels of violence and reoffending in our community. They need support. Not enough is being done at the national level to combat what is becoming an epidemic of knife crime, with some of the steepest increases in towns and suburbs just like my constituency.

Since 2015, knife crime has risen by 77% and the Government have failed to act. I urge the Government to adopt Labour’s bold plan to tackle knife crime by rebuilding security on our streets and building confidence in the criminal justice system. This includes putting youth workers in our A&E units, as well as re-invigorating a national network of youth hubs to bring local services together and deliver support for teenagers. We could be building on the work done by groups such as Mercia Boxing Club, which successfully won funding to convert a community centre in Tamworth that had been left derelict by the Conservatives, leaving our young people with nothing to do. We could be making sure that groups like Tamworth Table Tennis have a long-term base, so ensuring that we have a wide range of activities for young people.

Labour will clamp down on knife sales and create a new law on the exploitation of children and young people by criminal gangs. It will also establish a new cross-Government coalition to end knife crime, bringing together those political and community leaders with a role to play in tackling knife crime and keeping young people safe.

16:32

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Vaz. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) for securing this debate and the hon. Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) for managing to make her contribution as well.

This is an incredibly important topic; any of us who have attended the funeral of a young person who has been the victim of knife crime will know that. I very painfully recall attending the funeral of 15-year-old Elianne Andam, who was murdered in Croydon on 27 September 2023 at 8.30 am. Seeing the grief of her family, her parents Michael and Dorcas and her little brother Kobi is something I will never forget. All of us need to keep in mind the tragic stories of young people who have lost their lives and the importance, therefore, of the work we are doing in making sure that we protect as many as we possibly can.

It is worth setting out some of the facts. When we see reports on social media about knife crime and individual tragic incidents, it sometimes creates the impression that homicides caused by knife crime are more prevalent than they are. We need to keep in mind where we are with progress made. In the year running to March 2010, there were 620 homicides across England and Wales. Last year, there were 577—a reduction in the number of homicides over that period, even though the population of the country has grown.

Over the same period, the Crime Survey for England and Wales—according to the independent Office for National Statistics, the most reliable source of data on offending—reported that violent crime was down by 44%. Hospital admissions following injury by a knife is another measure used to get to the heart of how much knife crime there is. Since 2019, that has reduced by 26% for people under 25.

As those figures show, quite considerable progress has been made, with reductions in homicides since 2010, reductions in violence since 2010 and a reduction in hospital admissions following a knife injury in the five years that we have been tracking those, since 2019. Despite all that progress and all those improvements, more needs to be done because every single death and every single injury is a tragedy. That is why the Government are determined to do everything possible to end the scourge of knife crime up and down the country. Of course, part of that is ensuring that the police have adequate resources. We now have record police officer numbers across England and Wales. In March 2023, we hit 149,566 officers. That is more than we have ever had at any time before. The police funding settlement this year is at a record level. The frontline budget spent by police and crime commissioners went up by £922 million this financial year compared with the last one. The resources are being made available to the police, but we need to do more than that.

We heard reference to banning different kinds of knives. We have been progressively widening the scope of knife bans. Far more knives are banned today than was the case in 2010. The most recent tranche of bans will come into force on 24 September, which will ensure that all zombie-style knives and certain kinds of machetes will rightly be banned. Curved swords have of course been banned since 2008. Wherever we see evidence that a particular kind of knife needs to be banned, we will take action to do that, but I remind the House that possession of any kind of knife, even a kitchen knife, in a public place without reasonable excuse is itself a criminal offence punishable by up to four years in prison.

[Jim Shannon]

I must say how encouraged I am by the Minister’s response to the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson). I mentioned in my intervention buckle knives, which the Police Service of Northern Ireland has indicated are something new that is coming through. The Minister is right that the law will encompass all those issues, but is it possible to contact some of the regional police forces to ascertain some of the issues they face? That would help in bringing forward better legislation.

[Chris Philp]

We are always open to consulting with police forces around the country, including Police Scotland and, of course, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, to ensure that we are quickly picking up those trends, as the hon. Member says.

We heard some discussions around the online sale of knives. The Online Safety Act 2023 passed through Parliament last October. When it is fully commenced—Ofcom is currently consulting on the codes of practice to implement that—it will impose obligations for the first time on social media platforms and online marketplaces, such as Facebook Marketplace, to ensure that they are applying the law to take proactive steps to ensure that, for example, under-18s cannot buy knives online. The Criminal Justice Bill, currently going through Parliament, will increase the penalty for selling a knife to an under-18 to up to two years. The Online Safety Act, which I worked on with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) when he was Security Minister, will do a great deal to prevent the sale of knives online.

We heard some discussion around prevention, which is critical. That is why the 20 violence reduction units up and down the country are receiving about £55 million of funding a year. Next year we will increase that by 50%, and that 50% increase in funding will ensure that those preventative interventions are made. It will fund things like mentoring schemes, cognitive behavioural therapy, diversionary sporting activity and so on to ensure that young people at risk of getting on to the wrong path can be helped. We are doing that in partnership with the Youth Endowment Fund, which has £200 million to invest. The fund researches which interventions actually work, because some interventions sound like they might work but in fact have no impact. I was discussing those interventions with the fund’s chief executive Jon Yates just a few hours ago.

A new initiative that we will be pioneering with the Youth Endowment Fund this autumn is a piece of work starting off in four local authorities, but I hope it will be expanded to all local authorities, to identify in each area the 100 young people at risk of getting into serious violence. That is not youngsters who are already involved in serious violence, who are being supported already, but younger people, maybe in their early teens, who are at risk of getting into serious violence and where we can make an early intervention to stop them ending up on that path. If the pilots in the four local authorities are successful, as I think they will be, part of the extra violence reduction unit funding that I mentioned could support its roll-out nationally, which I would certainly like to see.

The prevention, the bans, the Online Safety Act 2023 and the violence reduction units are all preventive measures, but we also need proper enforcement action. That includes the use of stop and search, which I have not heard mentioned so far this afternoon. Stop and search is important. In London it used to take 400 knives a month off the street, but in London the use of stop and search has gone down by 44% over the last two years, whereas in the rest of the country it has been maintained. It might be no coincidence that knife offences in London have gone up at the same time as stop and search has gone down, which bucks the national trend.

I was very pleased that the commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said that he would increase the use of stop and search—done, of course, lawfully and respectfully— because it does take knives off the streets and save lives. Victims’ families have said to me, “I wish the person that killed my child”—typically a young man—“had been stopped and searched before my son was murdered.” So stop and search is an important tool that needs to be used.

To support that, we are developing new technology. It is not ready to deploy yet, but I hope it will be ready to deploy experimentally by the end of this year. It is technology that allows police officers to scan someone at a distance of, say, 10 or 20 feet—perhaps the distance that we are standing apart now—and detect a knife in a crowded street, enabling officers to identify and remove knives from the people carrying them. We are investing about £3.5 million to expedite the development of that technology. I saw it demonstrated last week. It is not quite ready to deploy, but it is very close. As soon as it is ready, I want it to be trialled. I will certainly volunteer Croydon, the borough that I represent—

[Fleur Anderson]

I think Wandsworth would like to volunteer.

[Chris Philp]

Wandsworth might want to volunteer, and perhaps Tamworth also, and get those knives off our streets.

Also when it comes to technology, the use of both retrospective and live facial recognition is helping us to catch the perpetrators of knife crime and other crimes who would otherwise not be caught. We debated this a lot in the Criminal Justice Bill Committee. The technology is getting more powerful every day and is enabling the police to catch criminals who would otherwise not get caught. Facial recognition, obviously within guidelines and respecting privacy and so on, will help us take more dangerous people off our streets.

The other thing we are pushing is hotspot patrolling. In areas where there is antisocial behaviour and serious violence, all the evidence shows that hotspot patrolling helps stop criminal offences, so we have given police and crime commissioners additional money for the current financial year, over and above their regular budget. It totals about £66 million, of which London is getting about £9 million. That is to fund hotspot patrolling in areas where the police have identified a particular problem. The evidence from pilots last year shows that intensive hotspot patrolling reduces antisocial behaviour and serious violence. I expect that money to fund, in the current financial year, about 1 million hours of extra hotspot patrolling to keep our streets safer.

In summary, it is good that violence and homicide are lower now than they were in 2010, but there is more to do. Every single death is a tragedy and it behoves all of us to do everything we can. I have set out our plans in the preventive and law enforcement arenas. I am sure all of us would want to work with police forces in our constituencies to make sure they have the support that they need to catch perpetrators and keep the public safe.

Question put and agreed to.

Endometriosis Education in Schools

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

16:45

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered endometriosis education in schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I have been trying to raise awareness of endometriosis for several years now. I am proud of the work done by not just me but other colleagues across the House, not least our late, great friend Sir David Amess, on raising the issue of endometriosis—something that, surprisingly, so many people, men and women, still do not know about. In various debates, especially those about endometriosis in the workplace, we have started to raise the profile of the disease, and more and more people are speaking about it. But it is surprising how few people recognise the condition. An e-petition that closed in March 2023, “Include PCOS & Endometriosis education in the national secondary curriculum”, gained only 3,105 signatures. Yet the people who deal with endometriosis know that thousands—in fact, millions—of women are affected by the disease.

Today, I seek to address the issue by asking my right hon. Friend the Minister to prescribe the teaching of endometriosis in the national curriculum, hopefully for this September. I will start by re-highlighting the disease and its impact, because that is important. I will highlight some issues from a 2019 report by Keisha Meek of Northern Endometriosis Sisters Support, because she summarises things well:

“Endometriosis comes with many symptoms, these symptoms do not just occur at the time of a woman’s period.”

The most common symptoms are abdominal cramps, back pain, severe menstrual cramps, abnormal and heavy bleeding, painful bowel movements, pain urinating, painful sex, difficulty becoming pregnant, nausea and sickness. The impact that can have on women’s lives and relationships is enormous. The report says of relationships:

“Long term conditions can have a significant impacts on relationships between family, friends and partners. This can be due to various different reasons such as not understanding, lack of information, taboo around the illness, not publically understood or spoken about. Women who suffer with endometriosis are regular called liars, told it is ‘just a bad period’ and called dramatic. It is known in other long term illnesses that people also…struggle to understand.”

That first paragraph emphasises why I have brought this debate today. The report goes on:

“We have found many women within the endometriosis community have lost friends, this is due to them having to cancel plans due to severe pain and bleeding. Sometimes they have been bed bound, even when they have explained to their friends why they can be left out, not invited or treated like liars. It can be a very isolating experience for women or anyone living with a chronic illness.

As well as friendships we have found women have had issues with their families, resulting in family members no longer speaking to them or inviting them to events. Even after trying to educate their families, the taboo around endometriosis makes this difficult and lack of understanding/knowledge. This is also an issue within other long term condition communities.

We have many women with endometriosis who stay single to protect themselves due to issues in previous relationships. There are women whose partners have left them due to endometriosis, this can be due to sex, the woman’s psychical health and mental health, infertility and many other issues that endometriosis can cause. Women have unfortunately been victims of domestic abuse, their partners excuse being endometriosis or rape due to them saying they can’t have sex due to pain.”

Then, there are the issues at work:

“Many women work with endometriosis, however this can be a struggle and there is lack of understanding for endometriosis sufferers as this is not well known. They are also not protected under the disability act.”

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and I recently met some campaigners, along with the Disability Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), and we are trying to move that forward in a separate piece of work. This issue must be addressed through the work of a wide range of Departments.

Endometriosis results in people having to take a long time off work. In most cases, women find themselves on sickness plans that they are unable to adhere to, which can result in the termination of their employment. A lot of women find themselves moving around jobs trying to survive and pay bills. Due to sickness, many women have felt discriminated against. That is at the heart of why I want the disease to be part of the curriculum. This debate is not just about women who suffer from endometriosis; it is about society as a whole understanding this disease.

I give credit to Essex Police: shortly after my debate on endometriosis in the workplace, it contacted me to ask whether there was more that it could be doing. There are employers out there who are proactively moving ahead, but one reason why this should be on the curriculum is that it is important that everybody is taught about this disease.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the work that the right hon. Gentleman has been doing on this issue. I am slightly concerned about the latest sex and relationship guidance that the Government have published, because it removes a previous reference to menstruation on the curriculum in primary schools, with this “Not before year 4”.

Obviously, the average age for girls to start their periods is 12. However, data shows that some girls start aged eight and younger, so removing that reference means that some girls could be starting their periods before actually receiving any education on what periods are. The same guidance also removes the reference to males having the education at primary school. Surely the Government think that it is important for girls and boys to understand all about periods. Again, I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman’s work in securing this debate.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady—my hon. Friend; we have done a great amount of work on this together. This is truly a cross-party effort, also involving the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon); I know the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) would want a mention of the work she has done.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle is right, and I am going to touch on some of that later on; I have also had representations from people to touch on that issue. The hon. Lady mentioned the reason why I am glad we are having this debate: it is highly relevant, based on the statement made last Thursday. I am glad that the Minister has been able to find time to respond to this debate, because it is absolutely right that we try to use this moment to highlight the point.

People with endometriosis also have a higher risk of the following diseases. That is important because we educate about those diseases, but we are not educating about endometriosis. Compared with the general public, sufferers have: a 37% higher chance of developing ovarian cancer; a 38% higher chance of developing endocrine tumours; a 26% higher chance of developing kidney cancer; a 33% higher chance of developing thyroid cancer; a 37% higher chance of developing brain tumours; a 23% higher chance of developing malignant melanoma; and a 62% higher chance of having a heart attack, and that is a direct result of blood loss and anaemia.

Another account I have is from a lady who contacted me after I went to the premiere of “Below the Belt” in 2022, which I recommend to anybody who has an interest in this subject. I am going to read her description because it paints the picture of why this is so important.

“I am a stage 4 endometriosis sufferer, in which it took over 15 years to be diagnosed, in which time my story, in brief, was:

Every month since I started my period I would spend the first day sat in the toilet holding my bin. So that I could be sick and completely empty my bowels. I would then 9/10 pass out in the bathroom or on the hall trying to get to my bedroom. If I wasn’t lucky enough to be out cold, I would have to take enough painkillers to knock me out. I would then spend two days in bed having hot sweats in a cycle of being in pain, throwing up and sleeping. When I hit 30 I started to have mid cycle pains and neurological symptoms and extreme fatigue, in which I struggled to stay awake, and I would have to take daily naps. I started to have blood in my poo, and bloated stomach, I was having upper quadrant pain, and getting these weird red dots on my skin, suffering with night sweats and random fast heart palpitations. I thought I was going to die.

From the age of 13 being called a liar, being shoved pain killers and anti depressants, being told that it is just a period and to get over it by GPs…several referrals to gynaecology from the age of 17. Being told I have a low pain tolerance and to just have a baby as that will sort everything out. Also reassuring me that nothing was wrong at all with my fertility (how wrong they were)…Being misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, IBS, piles, querying bowel cancer and Crohn’s…Being told I had a tiny cyst on my ovary that meant nothing, and that I have dramatised and medicalised the situation as I know it is there.

Suffering early-stages miscarriages/chemical pregnancies…Handing my notice into a job I loved due to the lack of support and workplace ‘banter’ over me being sensitive…Passing out at work, being called lazy at work for having to sit down, getting into trouble for spending too long in the toilets/disappearing…Waking up in the uni toilets five hours later by myself, after passing out in pain. I had to pay over £100 to get a cab back from Eastbourne to London. A cab driver had to deal with my endometriosis flare-up on a motorway until I passed out in pain. When he got me home, I woke up to random people around me, as he started to bang on all the doors to get help/get to someone that I know.

I have lost friends due to ‘letting them down’, being ‘sick’ for no reason at all…Once I paid privately (over £5,000) to find out what was wrong with me and get me help, in which I was told I could lose my bowel, my womb and bowel are twisted, and my organs had been shoved to the left-hand side of my body. I then had a fight with my GP to get access to the help I needed. In which I was sent as a routine patient to a general gynaecologist who told me to have a baby and go on the pill. It then took me weeks to be asked to be sent to Guy’s endometriosis clinic, in which I was given an urgent appointment after I sent them through my scans. They then gave me an urgent MRI and told me that they believe that it is worse than expected and I would lose my tubes and ovary, and require a stoma. Although I would have to wait over two years for surgery and to go to pain management to help medicate the pain (this is a nine to 12 months wait list).

I paid over £15,000 for private robotic surgery to completely remove all the endo. Best choice of my life, I have my life back…I now have mild pain during my periods, which I can manage with exercise or occasional paracetamol…My periods do not rule my life…I have my life back.”

The reason I wanted to give those examples is that they describe the trauma of this disease. As many as 10% of women in this country have this disease. I have a report from a lady called Nel at Hey Endo!; I think the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle knows her quite well. I am exceptionally grateful for the information she sent me about what they are doing in schools. The statistics are quite shocking.

When asked, “Have you heard of endometriosis?”, 54% said no. “Have you heard of adenomyosis?”; 98% said no. “Have you heard of PCOS?”; 57% said no. “Do you talk to your family about period health?”; 52% said no. “Do you talk to your friends about period health?”; 60% said yes and 38% said no. “Do you feel like you can approach your education setting about period health?”; 54% said no. “Did you learn about periods in school?”; 16% said no and 82% said yes. That is important, because we are educating them about periods but not about the diseases. “Did you learn about endometriosis in school?”; 88% said no. Before the presentation, only 30 students could state a fact that they knew about endometriosis.

[Emma Hardy]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. As he has pointed out, the figure is 10%. That means that in every classroom, three or four girls potentially have endometriosis, and yet the subject is still not covered. I strongly suggest that we look at covering it specifically, as mentioned, and as early as possible, because this has an impact on girls taking exams. It is exam season right now, when they are in the middle of their GCSEs. Some girls will be sitting their GCSEs now, suffering from endometriosis. It should stop being a taboo subject; it happens to lots of us. Let us make it more publicly known.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

On the hon. Lady’s point, I am rather concerned about reports in the press about schools not allowing girls to use the toilets, saying that they have period passes and that they should plan around it. All those policies are set up around normal periods. That goes to show that there is a distinct lack of understanding throughout, not just in the curriculum but throughout the school’s policies. That is why it is vital to move this issue forward quickly.

I did some research, which I am sure the Minister is well aware of, about what happens at each key stage, and how physical health education is taught. At key stages 4 to 5, lessons on fertility and pregnancy choices include how an individual’s fertility changes over a lifetime, and where to seek medical help and emotional support. Key stages 3 to 5 include “The Truth, Undressed” lessons, in collaboration with Canesten—a set of four lessons promoting understanding of vulval and vaginal health. Key stages 3 to 4 include lessons on breast cancer, in collaboration with breast cancer charity CoppaFeel!, to encourage young people to get to know their bodies and adopt healthy behaviours from a young age. This lesson includes essential knowledge about breast cancer, information on healthy lifestyle choices that may reduce a person’s risk of getting cancer, guidance to help them get to know their bodies, and guidance on what to do if they find something that is not normal for them. Key stages 3 to 5 include lessons on testicular health, with information on testicular torsion, orchidectomy and testicular cancer.

I am sure everyone here agrees that that is highly important education, and that cancer is a terrible disease. That is the word: it is a disease. Endometriosis is a disease, and it should be getting exactly the same treatment in the curriculum as other diseases. I noted the Secretary of State’s comments about a range of diseases that are being looked at with a view to bringing them into the curriculum, but I am specifically talking about endometriosis today to push the issue forward.

As I have pointed out, it is vital that we teach this to boys and girls, as the information can be important to them later as adults when, for example, they might be bosses running a company or business. I genuinely do not believe that people are of bad mind. I do not believe that people want to be evil to people or to bully them. It always comes down to a lack of education and knowledge, and not understanding situations. Maybe I am a naive politician, but I do believe in the good in people. I do not believe that people want to treat others badly, but they just do not know anything about this, and that comes down to education and the curriculum.

I have received a note, drawing on what the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle has said, from Endometriosis UK, which asks whether I could raise these points in this debate directly with the Minister. The Government proposal is to remove a previous reference to covering menstruation in the curriculum in primary schools before the onset of puberty, and to introduce a not-before-year-4 age limit on when pupils learn about menstruation. Endometriosis UK is concerned that the proposed new age restrictions may prevent some children learning about periods before they start having periods, and it seeks further consideration of this matter.

The Government propose the introduction of a specific reference to children being taught the more appropriate language of “periods and menstrual products”, rather than “sanitary items” or “hygiene products”. Endometriosis UK fully supports that. Outdated language and a focus on “hygiene” and “sanitary products” feeds a myth that menstruation is dirty and unhygienic, rather than a natural and normal process.

The Government propose the removal of a previous reference to male pupils when learning about menstruation in primary school. Endometriosis UK would like to see all pupils, including male pupils, learn about menstruation in primary school.

The Government propose the introduction of a new requirement to cover gynaecological health for pupils and secondary schools, including what an average period is, period problems such as premenstrual syndrome, heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome—PCOS—and when to seek help from healthcare professionals. Endometriosis UK is extremely supportive. Endometriosis being on the curriculum for all pupils in secondary school would be a major step forward. Endometriosis UK is delighted to see plans for specific content focusing on when to seek help from healthcare professionals, which will help to drive down diagnosis times for endometriosis.

Finally, the Government propose the introduction of a new requirement to cover reproductive health, fertility and menopause to pupils in secondary schools. Endometriosis UK supports that.

To conclude, I have some questions to ask the Minister. This disease affects 10% of women. That is millions of women. Symptoms can be anything from mild to horrific. Tragically, dozens of women every year take their life over this disease because they cannot cope any longer with the pain.

It is a very difficult disease to solve, but knowledge of what the disease is at the start, may provide a head start in improving the eight to 10 years’ waiting time for a diagnosis. I believe that that is because people just do not know enough about it. I gave the example of that poor woman who experienced pain from the start of her periods. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle spoke about menstruation now starting in nine-year-olds. One of the questions I have for the Minister is what work he will be doing with health professionals to consider when we should be putting endometriosis education into the curriculum. I believe it is important that girls know about the potential problems that could affect them before they start menstruation—maybe boys can be taught later. I seek the Minister’s guidance, and maybe he will need to take the question away, on what work he will do to find out when we can put that in the curriculum. There is obviously a lot of science about what the average age is to start menstruation. We heard the example of the woman who from the moment her periods started was in pain. Girls need to understand what it is.

I really want to push for endometriosis to be in the curriculum on sex education in the way that breast cancer is included in personal health education. Endometriosis is another terrible disease, and it does result in death. There is no getting round that. Everybody needs to understand the disease, which is where education becomes the responsibility of the Government. I will finish with this: if someone does not know a disease exists, how do they know they have got a disease?

17:06

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) for highlighting the issue in this debate. He has done that in Westminster Hall numerous times, and more times again in the main Chamber. I have heard him on many occasions and I admire his determination to discuss this subject matter and to make people aware of it—I congratulate him on that. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) made two significant interventions. Although she did not say so, I suspect they came from a place of personal knowledge.

As Members may be aware, while I am a father to three sons—my wife always wanted a wee girl, but it was just not going to happen—I work in an office with six female staff members and one male. I am certainly a lot more educated than I had been, and let us be honest, that understanding should not have taken that long. Gone should be the days of boys and girls being separated out to discuss those issues. The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell mentioned that in both his introduction and summing-up. Those issues affect entire households and there should be a frank, honest and non-shameful understanding, which, frankly, does not take place at the moment.

The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell referred to a story from one of his constituents which is like mine. When I married my wife, which will be 37 years ago on 6 June, the doctor told Sandra, “If you have a child, this will all go away.” Well, no it did not. Indeed, three boys later and it still had not gone away. My wife suffered with the condition over all those years, and only in the last three or four years, because of life-changing things, has it been slightly different.

I will refer to one of my staff members who suffers from endometriosis. I told the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell beforehand that I was going to tell her story. I am not going to mention her name, because that would be the wrong thing to do, but I want to tell her story. It is a terrible story that she has been through. She was diagnosed in 2019 at the age of 24, after having been referred to gynae in 2012, seven years earlier. It took seven years to get the diagnosis. She has not yet been able to see an endometriosis consultant and she is now 29 years of age. That is 12 years, and she is still on the waiting list.

She has been red-flagged on three separate occasions. Her GP, who is very good—I am not saying all GPs are not good, just to be clear—is one of the few to hold a gynae clinic at GP level and has instigated medical menopause, given oestrogen and implanted a coil all on the basis of her ultrasound. Her doctor has been incredibly helpful to her, but she has been through all sorts of problems. She has worked for me for a fair few years, and I am well aware of some of the problems she has, not from a personal point of view but from watching her and seeing how it affects her days as she works. Most GPs do not offer the facility that her GP does.

There are two specialists in Northern Ireland, and we are left with women who are in pain and afraid for their fertility potential. Their partners do not know how best to support and help with what they cannot see and perhaps cannot understand—I think that is part of it as well. People can offer sympathy and comfort and talk to their partner or wife, or perhaps friend, on these matters, but sometimes they do not really understand, because they cannot really feel what they are going through. I believe that the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell is right. We need an absolute shift in the narrative, away from closed doors, to understanding.

We need to stop the classification of “women’s problems”. My mother probably suffered from something similar to this. She is 92, going on 93. I remember that when she was younger, she had a number of miscarriages and other things that happened. My mother says that they were always referred to as “women’s problems”. That covers very generic subject matter, but it does not really illustrate the issue.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I apologise for my late arrival, Ms Vaz. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is one of the fundamental problems? When we describe things as “women’s problems”, we are actually shying away from giving conditions and diseases the proper names that they have and, in so doing, are effectively avoiding an informed, intelligent discussion.

[Jim Shannon]

Yes, I absolutely agree with that. When people refer to “women’s problems”, they do not bring into the open the painful issue; they almost push it aside. The right hon. Lady is absolutely right to make that point. It is an issue that deserves medical attention, and significant attention at some times. We need to encourage medical students to take up this speciality by providing help with tuition, as has been done in colleagues’ constituencies in Wales. I understand that Wales has done some of these things. There has been a shortage of physiotherapists and other things. Therefore the question I ask the Minister—I am ever mindful that he is always responsive to the questions we ask, and we appreciate that because it makes our job of putting questions to him a wee bit easier when we know we are going to get a decent answer—is this. How do we encourage medical students to take up this speciality? We do so by normalising the conversation around reproductive health and by removing boundaries to conversations. That must start in education, at the very beginning—at school level, secondary school level, and college level—and the conversation should then continue right through life. That is what the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell is asking for, and I support him.

I will finish with this comment. The NHS is failing young women, but more than this, it is failing families. We do a disservice by taking a silent stance. It is right that today we bring endometriosis out of the silence and into the conversation, but only if action follows.

17:13

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) on securing this incredibly important debate on this incredibly important topic. He has campaigned tirelessly on the subject over many years, and he spoke incredibly passionately today, sharing very painful testimonies but really shining a spotlight on endometriosis and, in particular, highlighting how workplaces, Governments and schools can all provide better support to those experiencing the condition.

As the right hon. Gentleman rightly set out, endometriosis can be an incredibly challenging condition to live with and can impact every aspect of a person’s life. There is no way of preventing it, and its cause is not yet understood, yet it affects around one in 10 women in the UK. As he rightly pointed out, that means that on average at least one girl in every classroom will go on to experience it. The symptoms can start very early on in adolescence.

Thinking of the disease primarily as a barrier to pregnancy or as simply making a girl’s or woman’s periods more painful is a gross oversimplification and, in many cases, incredibly inaccurate, which is why this debate is so crucial. The disease can vary widely in severity in the way it manifests. For example, 12% of endometriosis cases target women’s lungs and can cause symptoms beyond chronic pain—symptoms that can shatter a woman’s confidence and have a debilitating effect on her mental health. Endometriosis can also cause chronic bowel and bladder-related symptoms. That can lead to depression, which the right hon. Gentleman has also highlighted.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

It would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that endometriosis continues for many people after the menopause. It is not a disease just for women who menstruate; it can continue after the menopause, and it can start before menstruation. As the hon. Lady points out, this disease is not restricted to gynaecology.

[Catherine McKinnell]

The right hon. Gentleman once again demonstrates how incredibly knowledgeable he is about this issue, and how much that knowledge is lacking among the wider public and in this place. We are grateful to him.

It is so essential that young people are taught about their bodies in school, and that they learn about not just relationships and sex, but health and wellbeing. That must include what is and is not normal throughout puberty, the menstrual cycle and hormones, to set young girls and young people up to live healthy lives, both mentally and physically.

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about what is and what is not normal. When the Women and Equalities Committee did some work on women’s reproductive health, we got the message from various witnesses that they simply had no comprehension that their periods were not normal, because the message that they got from medics the whole time was, “You just have to get on with it.”

[Catherine McKinnell]

The right hon. Lady makes an important point—her Committee has done so much important work in this area—and it points to the importance of our education system in combating misunderstandings and providing people with the knowledge that they need to be armed with in order to manage what they and those around them will experience through life.

Sex education has been compulsory in English schools since 2017 and initially covered broad elements of sexual and reproductive health. After many years of campaigning, it was revised in 2020, and since then both boys and girls in state schools have been taught about periods and menstrual wellbeing. Of course, as with the rest of relationships, sex and health education, resources need to be tailored to the relevant age group. They need to be sensitive to a young person’s maturity and their needs.

The Government website states:

“Educating all pupils and students about periods is crucial to tackling the stigma which surrounds it.”

Labour very much agrees, and the next Labour Government will ensure that the curriculum taught in all state-funded schools reflects the issues and diversities of our society and ensures that all young people leave school ready for life.

We have already pledged to deliver, in government, an expert-led curriculum and assessment review, which will learn from international best practice and research across all areas, from history to health, to make sure that our curriculum is as strong and relevant as it can be. I look forward to hearing more from Members in this place and from stakeholders when the review gets started, to ensure that we pick up on the issues that have been identified in the debate today.

Part of that will require having enough teachers in the classroom to improve children’s outcomes and ensure that the curriculum can be delivered to every child as intended. Over the past few years, we have seen dire statistics on teacher recruitment, especially in secondary schools. That is why we have made tackling the recruitment and retention crisis a real focus and announced fully funded plans to deliver 6,500 more teachers to fill the gaps across the profession.

However, I recognise that education will only go so far. This is very much a health issue too, and one on which far too many women are being failed. Nearly as many women in the UK have endometriosis as have diabetes, yet it is unseen in everyday life. Women are waiting far too long for treatment; gynaecology waiting lists have seen the biggest increase of all specialisms in the NHS since the pandemic. As the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell painfully set out, that leaves those experiencing endometriosis with years of unrelieved pain in the bowel or bladder, poor mental health, fertility problems—the list goes on.

I was glad to see the women’s health strategy published in 2022, but it must go further. We must address the NHS backlogs, bring waiting lists down and set out a plan to properly address the workplace challenges in the NHS. For those living with endometriosis who are impacted by poor mental health, Labour has committed to establish a mental health hub in every community. We will deliver mental health support in every secondary school and ensure that young people who are experiencing symptoms relating to such conditions, as well as all those struggling with their mental health, can access that support.

For too long, women’s health has been an afterthought. I am glad that debates like these are being held so that there is an opportunity to discuss these issues in Parliament. I reiterate my gratitude to the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell for bringing forward the debate and for all his contributions on this subject. I also thank all the other hon. Members who have attended for their contributions. We have to get the education right. We have to ensure that young people have the information they need to live a healthy life. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what steps the Government will take to improve our education in this important area.

17:21

[The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz? I think this is the first time I have spoken under your chairship. I join others in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) on securing this important debate. I also thank everybody who has taken part, including the hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who spoke for the Opposition.

There is clearly strong cross-party support and drive to improve understanding of women’s health issues and ensure that young people are able to both navigate any issues they may face and, crucially, understand and support others. This has been an important follow-up to the debate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell led in this Chamber in 2022 on the importance of raising awareness of endometriosis and the support needed in the workplace, including to tackle the many everyday challenges it can bring for employers and staff, which he outlined so powerfully.

I have seen at first hand the excellent work that my right hon. Friend has been doing to improve information and education on endometriosis more generally. I applaud his dedication to keeping the issue in the spotlight. He made a prominent remark during the previous debate:

“It would take 20 days, at 24 hours a day, to name every woman in this country who suffers from endometriosis.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2022; Vol. 708, c. 394WH.]

That really brings home the scale of what we are talking about, as he said again.

Colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care are particularly engaged in these issues. The Government have made women’s health a top priority, and we are driving forward a women’s health strategy that is delivering a better standard of care for women and girls. Care for menstrual problems, including endometriosis, is one of the Government’s top delivery priorities for this year. We are investing £25 million to establish women’s health hubs, which will improve access to services for menstrual problems including endometriosis, contraception, menopause and more. Women’s health hubs will also take pressure off secondary care waiting lists.

Ensuring that women and girls have access to high-quality, trusted information is a top priority, too. We have created a women’s health area on the NHS website, which brings together over 100 pages of information, including on periods and endometriosis, and we have launched a video series on endometriosis on the NHS YouTube channel. In April, we ran a campaign in national media titles, supported by the women’s health ambassador for England, encouraging women not to suffer in silence if their periods or menopause symptoms affect their daily lives. That included a specific focus on endometriosis symptoms, and we are planning further campaigns across the year.

Sadly, we are all aware of the taboos and stigma that surround many areas of women’s health, with girls and women not feeling able to talk about issues such as periods. Too many girls and women are made to feel that very painful or heavy periods are normal and something they just have to get used to, rather than told about how they can seek help for those symptoms and understand what is happening to their bodies. Education can and does play an important role in complementing the women’s health strategy, and that of course includes education in schools. Ensuring that there is an early understanding of women’s health issues, including endometriosis, among boys as well as girls—I will come back to that point—can help in removing remaining stigmas and taboos.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell will be aware that last week we published for consultation updated draft statutory guidance for relationships, sex and health education. That is part of the Government’s plan to deliver a brighter future for Britain in which our young people are supported and given the right education at the right time, so they are safe, happy, healthy and equipped with the information they need to succeed.

The revised RSHE curriculum includes strong health education, which focuses on the core knowledge that children and young people need to thrive as they progress into the wider world. To get the RSHE guidance right, we have worked with stakeholders in the sector, faith groups, teachers, academics and young people themselves. We have also worked with colleagues across Government to ensure that the content is accurate and up to date, that the content of lessons is factual and appropriate, and that children have the capacity to fully understand everything they are being taught, including about puberty and menstrual and gynaecological health.

I am pleased to say that that has led us to make significant additions to teaching in this area, including improvements to teaching about health and, in particular, menstrual health. That is in addition to what is already in the national curriculum, in which the menstrual cycle is taught to pupils between 11 and 14 years of age as part of the key stage 3 science curriculum.

The updated draft RSHE guidance states that primary school pupils should be taught the key facts about the menstrual cycle, including physical and emotional changes, from year 4. The secondary curriculum includes more on menstrual and gynaecological health, now specifically including endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, and heavy menstrual bleeding. Those areas are now specifically set out in the “Developing bodies” section of the guidance.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for his response; he is outlining a very clear path to improvement. Will the education about endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and so on in key stage 3 take place at the very start of year 7? I am concerned about taking it out of key stage 2, given that girls will have started their menstrual cycles; in the example I gave, the lady said that she was in pain from her very first period. I accept that he might not be able to respond right now, but can I push him on when the Department thinks it will be appropriate? Does it think it appropriate for girls who are getting ready to start their periods, or for girls who have started their periods?

[Damian Hinds]

That was a very important and clear question from my right hon. Friend, and I will note two important things in response. First, the guidance is a framework; it is not a week-by-week series of lessons. Earlier, he read out some examples of things that were closer to lesson plans and a sequenced curriculum, which is a further level of detail. The guidance sets out a framework, and then teaching materials are developed. He mentioned a couple of the third parties that are involved in that. We do not specify to schools which third-party material or self-created material they should use. We do not get into such a level of detail that we say, “From the first half-term in year 7, this is what should happen,” but we do not stop it happening either.

The second thing to note is that threaded throughout the RHSE guidance and, indeed, more broadly, is the flexibility for schools to respond to their own circumstances and their children, who they know better than anybody sitting in Whitehall ever could. The general point is that learning about menstruation from year 4 does not mean that teachers are unable to talk about it before year 4 if that is the appropriate thing to do because girls in the class are already at that stage. I hope that that helps to give a little more clarity, but, as ever, I would be happy to follow up with my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell separately, if he would like. The revised draft guidance sets out that curriculum content on puberty and menstruation should be complemented by sensitive arrangements to help girls prepare for and manage menstruation, including with requests for period products. In response to my right hon. Friend’s earlier point, schools should use appropriate language, such as period pads and menstrual products. The guidance also sets out how and when to seek support, including which adults they can speak to in school if they are worried about their health.

Rightly, the revised guidance supports young people to understand their changing bodies and feelings, how to protect their own health and wellbeing, and when a physical or mental health issue requires attention. We have introduced minimum ages in certain areas to ensure that children are not being taught sensitive or complex subjects before they are fully ready to understand them. But, as I was saying—this comes to the point made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle—when girls start menstruating earlier than year 4, schools have the flexibility to cover that.

The relationships, sex and health education guidance is statutory and part of the basic school curriculum, so schools must have regard to the guidance and can only deviate from it with good reason. I want to take this moment to be totally clear that we do not mean that the subjects should be taught only to girls or should not be taught to boys. It is true that in the previous edition of the guidance, that was there in the rubric. It not being there does not mean that that is no longer the case; it should be taken as read that this is for all pupils.

As the hon. Member for Strangford and others said, it is true that there has sometimes been a tendency—perhaps in generations past, sometimes in generations present—to use phrases such as “women’s problems” and to generalise things as if it is not important that everyone can understand and distinguish between them. That is what we need to move beyond. As I said earlier, relationships, sex and health education is not only about understanding what is happening to our bodies; it is also about understanding the people around us and what we may come into contact with in future.

In an analogous sense, I was pleased that in the 2019 edition of the guidance we included the menopause for the first time, which generations of boys in particular, but also of girls at that age, did not know about. It was not about saying that that was about to happen to them, but of course in our wider lives—remember that this is relationships education as well as sex and health education—it is important that we are all educated on these things.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful for the Minister’s response, but—there is always a but—will he specify whether endometriosis will be taught in schools? I cannot dig out whether he said that it will definitely be taught in schools, so I want clarification on that.

[Damian Hinds]

I did. Specifically, in key stage 3, in lower secondary school, yes, it should be part of the curriculum at that stage.

[Caroline Nokes]

Apologies for not having dug around in any great detail in the very recently released guidance, and I absolutely appreciate that this is a debate about endometriosis, but what we might call problem periods can cover a whole range of conditions. We heard evidence on my Committee from Vicky Pattison, who talked about her severe pre-menstrual stress—I cannot remember the precise acronym—and Naga Munchetty spoke of adenomyosis, which I have finally learned how to pronounce. Are both those conditions also included? Teaching young girls to have the language around what is normal and what is not, and giving them the confidence to speak about it, is about more than just saying, “And you might get endometriosis”. There is a whole range of conditions out there.

[Damian Hinds]

To come back to my earlier point, the secondary curriculum includes more on menstrual and gynaecological health, now specifically including endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and heavy menstrual bleeding. Beyond that, I will have to ask for my right hon. Friend’s forgiveness and ask that I may write to her or that we can follow up separately.

Ofsted will inspect schools on their delivery of the RSHE curriculum. As part of their personal development judgment, inspectors will discuss with schools whether they teach RSHE in line with the RSHE statutory guidance. The guidance is now out for consultation for eight weeks and I have a feeling that colleagues in the Chamber or some of the outside bodies they are in close touch with might take part in that consultation. We will take all responses to the consultation into account in the final version of the guidance.

We are expecting a huge amount of interest in the updated draft guidance and I can confirm from the last time that we had a consultation on draft RSHE guidance that there is, understandably and rightly, a lot of public interest. We hope to analyse that over the summer and publish a final version soon after. Schools will then require time to implement any changes to the curriculum and to consult parents about those changes. It would not be fair to expect them to deliver new content without some time to prepare for it, but where they are ready to deliver new content, they can do so immediately. Indeed, I am sure many schools already cover endometriosis when discussing healthy periods and we have encouraged that.

Following a meeting with the chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis in 2021—at the time they were the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and our much-loved and much-missed late colleague Sir David Amess—the then Schools Minister agreed to update the Department’s teacher training module on the changing adolescent body so that it too included a direct reference to endometriosis. Once we have finalised the RSHE statutory guidance later this year, we will update the teacher training modules and consider whether any further support is required.

To date, we have invested more than £3 million in a central support package to increase schools’ confidence to teach such subjects, including teacher training modules, non-statutory guidance, a train the trainer programme and teacher webinars on domestic violence, pornography and sexual exploitation. They are all available on a one-stop page for teachers on gov.uk. Of course, there is always more to do to help schools and we will look at that after the publication of the guidance and when we have listened to school leaders, stakeholders and others.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North moved into some parallel important areas of mental health and her party’s concentration on mental health support in secondary school. I remind her that we are already in the process of rolling out mental health support teams across the country. We think that is important for primary as well as secondary schools and it has to be done at a pace at which we can recruit the people required for those teams. As she will know, we have also offered a training grant to all schools—primary as well as secondary—for training for a mental health lead within the existing school staff, with a high level of take-up already.

I am enormously grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell for his support in securing the debate. He has raised some very important concerns, as have others. I hope that he is pleased to see the Government’s continued work to improve menstrual and gynaecological health in schools today and for future generations of women. The steps we have taken so far to improve health education are extremely important and we really want to get them right. The Government will continue to make a commitment to support the policy area because it is the right thing to do. I thank my right hon. Friend once more for his continued drive on this important subject and for bringing this crucial debate to Westminster Hall today.

17:39

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Clearly, today’s debate has shown that this subject is cross-party. There are no politics in this; it is highly important for young people’s health and the consequences that that will have through their lifetime. I am grateful for the Minister’s response and I am glad to see the curriculum is moving forward. However, he can rest assured that I will still be at his door, nagging to make sure we get exactly what we need to give young people and people the support and education they need throughout their lives.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered endometriosis education in schools.

17:41

Sitting adjourned.