Asked by: Alex Easton (Independent - North Down)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of extending the Armed Forces Covenant Duty to include all of her Department's responsibilities.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Armed Forces Covenant is a promise by the nation that those who serve, or have served, in the Armed Forces, and their families, including the bereaved, will be treated fairly and not disadvantaged in accessing public and commercial goods and services as a result of their military service. It also allows for special provision, when justified, for those who have sacrificed the most, such as the bereaved and injured. The Covenant Legal Duty helps promote better outcomes for the Armed Forces community when accessing key public services of healthcare, housing, and education, and this will soon be extended to transport.
The Department for Transport is well-equipped to meet its obligations under the Armed Forces Covenant Legal Duty, ensuring that armed forces personnel and their families do not face undue disadvantage when accessing transport services.
The Department will continue to work with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on the Covenant’s Statutory Guidance and implementation.
Asked by: Alex Easton (Independent - North Down)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to help improve road safety for cyclists; and what financial support she has provided for programmes delivered by The Bikeability Trust since July 2024.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
In 2022, Active Travel England was established as an executive agency to the Department for Transport, with the strategic aim of enabling people to walk, wheel and cycle and protecting them when they do by reducing road danger through the creation of safe infrastructure. The agency has been supporting the development of designs and the assessment of design quality through the use of recently published active travel design assistance and scheme review tools. Officials use these tools for ongoing design assurance and to identify critical safety issues that are associated with an increased risk of collisions for people walking, wheeling, or cycling, and work with local authorities to remove or mitigate them.
To further improve road safety for cyclists, we are investing up to £30 million this year to scale up Bikeability training to over 500,000 more children, and will announce further funding for Bikeability training in the coming months.
Asked by: Alex Easton (Independent - North Down)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to accelerate the rollout of public electric vehicle charge points; and what steps she plans to take to ensure sufficient infrastructure to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Government is committed to accelerating the roll-out of charging infrastructure so that everyone, no matter where they live or work, can make the transition to an electric vehicle (EV). As of November, there are over 71,000 publicly available charging devices in the UK. The £381 million Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund currently supports local authorities in England to work with industry to transform the availability of EV charging for drivers without off-street parking and will support the installation of tens of thousands of local chargers.
The Government also confirmed in the October 2024 Budget that it will continue to support the uptake of EVs by investing over £200 million in 2025/26 to accelerate EV chargepoint rollout.