(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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I thank the hon. Member for standing up for her local airport in Aberdeen. As someone who recently caught a connecting flight in Manchester from Newquay, going on to Aberdeen, I can say that Loganair provided an excellent service. It was a great honour to visit Aberdeen airport recently to see its helicopter base for North sea oil and its importance to the transition that we will begin with our clean energy mission. I suggest that the hon. Member takes that up with Andy, the chief executive there, and perhaps the new director of corporate affairs, Gavin Newlands, the former MP for Paisley.
There are no public flights from north Wales to London, so we depend on trains. Travellers on Avanti West Coast’s north Wales service endure chronic overcrowding, reduced direct services to London since covid, rolling stock breakdowns and on-the-day cancellations three to four times higher than the rest of the Avanti network. That franchise runs to 2026. What are the Government doing to make sure that Avanti offers the people of north Wales and their economy a decent—