Sentencing Bill

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Kohler

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

Does the Lord Chancellor agree with my concerns that neither the Bill nor the excellent report that preceded it make any mention of restorative justice—a process that truly puts the victim at the heart of the criminal justice process? Will he pledge in future legislation to address that omission?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Before the Lord Chancellor responds, let me say that a huge number of his own Back Benchers would like to get in this afternoon. He might therefore like to think about getting to the end of his contribution.

Regional Transport Inequality

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Kohler

Thursday 11th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

I was all too conscious at Transport questions this morning not only to ensure that I did not, after last night’s scolding, repeat the heresy of “you” or “yours”, Madam Deputy Speaker, but to keep my questions brief. Consequently, I did not have time to put on the record—for the third time in less than a year—a formal welcome on behalf of my party to the new shadow Transport Secretary. Therefore, notwithstanding the fact that the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden) is no longer in the Chamber, I formally congratulate him on his elevation.

As former Transport Minister, the right hon. Gentleman knows all about the transformative effect of transport, having only recently hopped aboard the overnight shuttle from Durham to Basildon. On that tortuous journey from the north of England to the south-east, he would have glimpsed the huge inequalities in transport provision across our country. Be it trains or buses, roads or air travel, where people live or their business is situated has a massive effect on their mobility. Mobility—the ability to move from A to Z and all points in between—is key to a modern economy and a cohesive society.

The statistics paint a stark picture of, to coin a phrase, a two-tier system. Last year, for example, transport spending in London was over £1,300 per head, compared with under £400 per head in the east midlands. New research from Transport for the North reveals that over 11 million people in England face a high risk of social exclusion specifically because of inadequate transport systems. That represents a 14% increase—an extra 2 million people—since 2019. In the north-east, well over 30% of residents face a high risk of transport-related social exclusion, compared with below 3% in London. And who are the excluded? It will come as no surprise that, as Transport for the North has highlighted, it is disproportionately low-income households, unpaid carers, the old and the disabled. The very people our transport system should be helping the most are the ones facing its greatest barriers.

It is not just the north of England suffering from these inequalities. Minehead in Somerset, for example, is virtually cut off. The railway station closed in 1971, and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) tells me that the No. 28 bus appears to run on a whim. In Stratford-upon-Avon, Stagecoach has stopped running buses in the evening and at weekends, and there is no direct train service between the home of Shakespeare and London, undermining the town’s tourist and cultural economy. Transport is, of course, key to our tourist industry. That is why in Cornwall, the new Lib Dem council has cancelled the previous Tory administration’s plans to sell off Newquay airport, but it now needs more help than is currently being offered by the Government to make the critical investment the airport so badly needs.

Investment in transport is key. Even in London, where Transport for London is the envy of the rest of the country, more investment is needed. Repeated disruption on the District line is caused by some of the infrastructure being up to 130 years old, according to TfL. It sounds grim, but as my constituents are getting tired of hearing me say, we in Wimbledon and the rest of London do not know how lucky we are. Just imagine living in a region where services are sparse or non-existent, bus routes are cut, stations have been closed and the few trains running are routinely delayed.

I am addressing my remarks to the Minister, for whom I have high regard and no little sympathy, because the problems with regional transport inequalities are clearly not of his making, nor his Government’s, but of the past Tory Administration’s. Take buses, for example, where deregulation allowed private operators to cream off the profitable routes and abandon the rest. Between 2015 and 2023, over 1 billion passenger journeys were lost. In the north-west alone, bus routes were reduced from nearly 3,500 in 2015 to half that number in 2024.

Sadly, however, the problem still continues. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) in the south-east of England tells me that three bus services have been cancelled since last summer. In the south-west and north-east, 56% of small towns are now identified as transport deserts or at risk of becoming so.

I do not doubt the Government’s good intentions, evidenced by the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill, but in some respects, things are getting worse. The Government’s decision to increase the bus fare cap from £2 to £3, for example, will only accelerate the decline in bus usage, hitting those who are already struggling the most. The Minister will rightly point to the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill and its many excellent provisions but, as with the soon-to-be-published rail Bill, no amount of legislation will solve the issue of regional transport inequality without the necessary investment. As we saw with High Speed 2 and, more recently, the spending review, those moneys are not forthcoming.

The electrification of the midland main line from London to Sheffield has now been cancelled, while at Dawlish, the critical work to protect the vital Paddington to Penzance main line from the sea has been put on hold despite the very real risks to regional connectivity. The same is true of our road network, where, for example, the promised widening of the A12, which would have supported the creation of 55,000 new homes in the Chelmsford area, has been cancelled.

As the Minister is fond of telling me, there is no magic money tree, which is why the only way to address regional transport inequality is to grow the economy—a growth that is impeded by the very inequality that growth would help to address. That is why the pump must be primed with more investment in our transport system and a far more ambitious approach to growth, which can be achieved not by wishing on a star or by the PM tying himself in knots with his red lines over Europe but by boldly re-engaging with the EU and thereby completing the virtuous circle of an integrated transport system driven by and driving a dynamic and growing economy.

I end by thanking the hon. Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) for securing this important debate and all Members for their excellent contributions.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Kohler

Report stage
Wednesday 10th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kohler]

My party supports this Bill. After decades of failure, with the deregulation orchestrated by the Tories, this is clearly a move in the right direction. It is not ambitious enough, and I regret deeply your failure to reinstate the £2 bus fare cap, the failure to remove the time limits on concessionary travel for disabled people and your failure to address—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has repeatedly used the words “you” and “yours” throughout this afternoon’s proceedings. Please can he do better?

[Mr Kohler]

And the Government’s failure to address the awful scourge of headphone dodgers. Most fundamentally, the Bill will not work unless it is properly funded. At the moment it is not, and the Government cannot hide behind localism when it needs proper funding. However, we will support the Bill.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Kohler

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I have made this point before, but interventions really must be shorter than that. There are many hon. Members who wish to get in.

[Mr Kohler]

I will simply say that I agree with my hon. Friend.

Hon. Members have spoken about rural areas suffering. From 2015 to 2023, Shropshire lost 63% of its bus miles, the largest decline in any part of England. No doubt that was one reason among many that Shropshire voters decided that they had had enough of the Conservatives. In May, they voted a majority Liberal Democrat administration in for the first time.

Although the bus service in Shropshire is one of the worst in the country, it is by no means an isolated case. I have heard from colleagues and residents across the country, just as the House has heard today, that in rural areas such as Norfolk, Somerset and Hampshire, having no buses—or one bus a day, if residents are lucky—has sadly become the norm for many villages. This is not just inconvenient; it is holding back our rural economies and stifling growth. I fear that the measures in the Bill will not be sufficient to reverse that decline.

Lastly, I want to address accessibility, an issue on which my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the other place and other noble Lords have made good progress and have secured a number of improvements. As originally drafted, the Bill included positive provision on the mandatory training of staff, both in supporting disabled passengers and in tackling antisocial behaviour on board. We support those measures, but the Liberal Democrats believe that true accessibility means more than awareness training; it means fully accessible vehicles, clear signage and announcements, and accessible journey planning tools. Critically, it means accessible infrastructure, from bus stops to ticket machines.

The excellent amendment to ensure accessibility guidance on the provision of floating bus stops, which if badly designed can prove a real hazard to disabled people, was inserted after representations from the Lib Dem transport lead in the Lords, Baroness Pidgeon. The inclusion of bus network accessibility plans, after pressure from Baroness Brinton among others, is an important amendment that will go some way towards helping us to understand the barriers that disabled residents face in accessing a vital lifeline. We must not be complacent, however. I anticipate that more work will need to be done in Committee, as the Secretary of State has intimated, to probe the Bill’s provisions and ensure that they are as effective as they can be.

I will conclude where I began. My party and I welcome many aspects of the Bill. After years of Tory neglect, provisions to give local authorities more control of and input into their local bus networks are long overdue and clearly sensible, but we cannot give local authorities tantalising new powers without a practical means of using them. That will require sustained investment and reform of the funding models. I acknowledge that the Government have promised to include longer-term funding settlements in the spring spending review, but noises off suggest that those are unlikely to address the shortfall in local government funding.

The Bill will provide the necessary tools, but if councils are to build something effective with them, they will need not just legislation, but the finance, expertise and flexibility required to give effect to their vision and address their communities’ needs. I urge the Secretary of State to go back to the Treasury and ask for more, because financing a viable bus network is key to growing our economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Kohler

Thursday 15th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her answers and for all she did on this issue in her previous role as Chair of the Transport Committee. Regulations prohibiting pavement parking already exist in London, but that alone will not solve the problem. At All Saints’ primary school in south Wimbledon, for example, pavement parking is a long-running issue, forcing parents and children into the road and obvious danger, and it is proving very difficult to solve. Has the Minister considered how the public can be better educated and restrictions enforced? Are the Government planning to create a new offence of obstructive parking, as the Minister recommended in her previous role?

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

Following the fire at North Hyde substation that closed Heathrow a few weeks ago, various lines on the London Underground were brought to a standstill by another power outage this week. It is clear that we need to do more to improve the resilience of our transport energy infrastructure, so will the Secretary of State commit to a full review to ensure that these incidents do not keep happening?

Political Finance Rules

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Kohler

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) on securing this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

As the Prime Minister declared last year, and as we see so graphically on the world stage now, the �fight for trust� will be

�the battle that defines our political era.���[Official Report, 17 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 56.]

It is clear that if we MPs are to achieve the changes that people need most in their lives, we need a functioning democracy. If those we represent do not trust politicians to act in their best interest, we will not be an effective institution. Currently, it is simply not the case that they trust us. Both in the UK and across the globe, faith in politics and politicians is at an all-time low. In the UK, 76% of people have little to no trust in Members of this House�up from 54% a decade ago. I note with no great relish that this may not be surprising after years of a Conservative Government who were more concerned with their internal politics than the concerns of people around the country, but it should be a deep concern for us all. Rebuilding trust in politics is the goal, regardless of our political colour or persuasion. I am sure that all Members of the House can support that, but it will not happen overnight.

Research from the Electoral Commission shows that only 15% of people agree that there is transparency around the money spent and received by parties and campaigners�down from over a third in 2011. We should be clear that political donations are not inherently wrong and are part of a vibrant democratic system. Individuals should be able to take part in the democratic process through political donations, which can help people to further the goals and ideals that they believe in. Banning any donations would entrench power, leaving new or smaller parties unable to campaign against incumbents. It would work against many of our democratic principles, but it is clear that although political donations are a good thing, we must have adequate transparency as to the source of the money. That is currently not the case.

The legal framework for the political finance system is now over 25 years old, and though it was explicitly intended to ban foreign donations to UK political parties, there are clearly many loopholes. There is no doubt that foreign nations have an interest in altering our politics. Dictators such as Putin and Xi Jinping have made it perfectly clear that they do not believe in democracy and are willing to undermine our institutions, but our current system has built-in loopholes that allow foreign interests to channel money to our politics to shape it in their interest. At present, UK-registered companies are permitted to make donations using money raised overseas and, as has been said previously, unincorporated associations can legitimately make donations using funding from otherwise impermissible donors.

It is not just foreign donations that should cause concern; the sheer amount of money coming from a small number of extremely wealthy donors is also worrying. Of the �85 million received in private donations in 2023 alone, two thirds came from just 19 donors. Money helps direct the political winds, and having that amount of money come from such a small number of powerful individuals risks bringing our democratic system into disrepute.

We must introduce a cap on donations. No matter how noble the intention, no individual should be able to donate excessively, as large donations can at the very least give the impression that undue influence is being exercised over our democracy. This would not only be a positive step in cleaning up politics; it would be popular too. A recent YouGov poll found that more than two thirds of the British public support a limit on political donations. Personally, I also have concerns about the capacity of union barons to exercise what might appear to be undue influence via the vast amount of money accumulated through the political levy, which they can donate or withhold as they see fit. However, I acknowledge that the issue is complex.

We are at a crucial juncture, and it is in everyone�s interests that the Government get a proper handle on this issue. We cannot enter the next general election with so many questions left unanswered.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Stella Creasy, with a four-minute time limit.

Improving Public Transport

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Kohler

Thursday 5th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kohler]

We are talking about now, and we are talking about the fact that you have reduced the bus fare cap.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order—[Interruption.] Order. Just a quick reminder that when I am on my feet, Members should not be.

That is third time the hon. Gentleman has said “you”; perhaps he will be a bit more careful in the rest of his speech.

[Mr Kohler]

Apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker.

We are talking about now, and we are talking about the hike in the bus fare cap to £3. It would cost only £150 million to keep it at £2 according to the House of Commons Library. I thank the Minister for writing to me this week to confirm that a full monitoring and evaluation report has been completed by his Department and will be published in due course, but why is it not being published now? If it is there, we want to see it—what does it say?

I do not doubt the battles the Minister and his colleagues are having with their colleagues in the Treasury. I know the Department for Transport recognises there are fundamental problems across our public transport system. However, there is still vanishingly little detail on which to form a judgment as to whether it has hit on the right solutions.

On the railways, for example, yesterday came the long-awaited announcement of the first three train operating companies to be brought back into public ownership. South Western Railway, which I used in my journey this morning, will come into public ownership next May. That much is known. However, what is not known is how that in itself will improve the customer experience and the service offered. As Great British Railways will still not formally exist by then, South Western Railway will, at least temporarily, be left in the hands of the Government’s operator of last resort, which surely needs more than a name change as it assumes responsibility for millions of extra journeys without a clear mission or purpose, without the necessary resource or expertise, without an effective passenger watchdog and without meaningful reform of our broken fares system. Even when Great British Railways arrives at the station, we still have no understanding of how—or even if—this new behemoth will proceed smoothly along the track.

Uncertainty also shrouds many other public transport plans. Too many local authorities are waiting to know what funds and schemes will be maintained and what will be scrapped, stifling investment and leaving too many areas and communities adrift, as we can see with the lack of certainty over the northern powerhouse, the electrification of north Wales rail, levelling up and active travel. That is why we welcome talk of an integrated national transport plan, as it is clear that the current piecemeal approach is letting down communities and local economies. But the devil will be in the detail, which we need to see sooner rather than later.

Uncertainty likewise surrounds the Government’s approach to rebuilding our decaying infrastructure. To improve our public transport, we need to get spades into the ground, invest money and effort into electrification and, most importantly, build new infrastructure. While there is widespread public disquiet regarding our current public transport provision, there is also deep scepticism about, and often outright opposition to, the major infrastructure projects necessary to achieve real improvement.

HS2’s repeated cost overspends and missed deadlines have contributed to an environment in which the public are rightly sceptical about the UK’s ability to deliver infrastructure on time and within budget. We need to get real. While Bruce Wayne might be rich enough to spend £100 million on a bat shed, the British taxpayer is not. The UK does not have the time or resource required to put every rail line in a tunnel.

Politicians across the political spectrum need to promote a more mature dialogue to improve public understanding of the trade-offs necessary to improve public transport. As we have seen with other large-scale infrastructure projects, once they are built, the public reception is overwhelmingly positive, as it was with Crossrail 1. The benefits of the Elizabeth line are already being lauded from Reading to Romford, with protests long forgotten. A host of neighbouring MPs called for its extension to their constituencies in a recent Westminster Hall debate that I attended.

So let us be honest about what needs to be done and what the Government have learned from these projects. Let us maintain a steady pipeline of new projects to ensure that the billions spent acquiring that knowledge, along with the supply chains and skilled workforce we have built up, are not lost.

Too much time has been wasted, and we do not have time to waste. Public transport is vital to our economy, to widening opportunity and our transition to net zero. As a Londoner, I realise that I am blessed by the public transport system that we have in the capital. Despite sometimes justified criticism of Transport for London, it stands as an exemplar of what can be achieved via a co-ordinated transport strategy and a non-ideological approach to ownership, working with both public and private providers to create an integrated transport network. As we heard from colleagues across the House, the situation is very different across much of the country. I hope that the Secretary of State and the Chancellor are both listening.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

Bus Funding

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Paul Kohler

Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement, which I warmly welcome. As she made clear, access to convenient, frequent and affordable buses is vital. They are critical to both employment and quality of life, particularly in rural areas. Sadly, however, too many parts of our country lack decent bus services, after years of Tory neglect. At a time when we desperately need economic growth, ensuring a comprehensive and affordable bus network is vital.

I congratulate the Secretary of State on securing the promised funding. However, we have some concerns. Uncertainty still surrounds how local authorities can seize the opportunities heralded in the promised changes to bus franchising. Furthermore, if, as the Secretary of State believes, buses are a lifeline for young and old, why is she hitting bus users with a 50% increase in fares? Polling commissioned by the Lib Dems and published last week showed that the hike will make a third of people less likely to use a bus, which will have a direct impact on individuals, communities, small businesses and high streets, and will hit the most disadvantaged in society the hardest. It would cost just £150 million a year to retain the £2 fare cap. Again, I ask her to reconsider.

I would like to ask the Secretary of State three specific questions. First, when will she publish the full impact assessment on the £2 bus fare cap, commissioned by her Department earlier this year? Secondly, will she guarantee that the new powers needed for local authorities to franchise bus services will be provided urgently, so that bus routes can be restored and new ones added as soon as possible? Lastly, although I welcome the change to the allocation process and the rejection of wasteful and expensive competitive bidding between councils, will she confirm that the new, more flexible system will not succumb to the temptations of pork barrel politics that we saw so frequently under the last Conservative Government?