Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Dave Doogan for the final question.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. While the Tories get excited about “Get around for £2”, under 22s in Scotland get around for free, because their fares are funded by the Scottish Government in a strategic paradigm shift to get people modal-shifting over to public transport. Will the English Government provide that same support to commuters in England, or are they too proud to follow Scotland’s lead?

[Mr Holden]

The hon. Gentleman could do well to recognise that fares in Scotland are up by over 10 % on an annualised basis, whereas in areas of England they are falling. There is also no fare cap in Scotland for those over the age of 25, whereas my constituents—many of them in low-paid work or looking to go to work and get jobs—can get a £2 bus fare. On a recent visit to Scotland, I saw people paying £8 or £9 to travel between some major towns. Actually, the Scottish Government would do well to follow the English Government’s example.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Workers in Angus, from Kirriemuir to Arbroath and from Montrose to Brechin, are stuck because of the lack of buses, itself due to a lack of drivers. They are going cap in hand to their employers to explain why they are late for work, and they are having to take taxis home because the bus had never turned up. I have canvassed a good many colleagues in this place, and I know that this is not a Scottish issue—it extends across the British Isles—so I ask the Minister please not to remind me that transport is devolved. This is a UK issue requiring UK intervention, with training for drivers and support for operators.

[Lucy Frazer]

I am sorry, but I will remind the hon. Gentleman that transport is devolved. If there are issues in Scotland, he knows where to address those points. However, I also remind him that we have invested nearly £2 billion in buses over the pandemic, in addition to the £1 billion invested to ensure that our buses become more reliable and cheaper throughout the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the pressures that exist. As I mentioned, we froze fuel duty for the 12th consecutive year, which means that it costs about £15 less to fill up a family car than it would have done otherwise. He is right to mention my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who is perhaps the most expensive Member of this House, having cost the Treasury tens of billions of pounds over the years for this worthwhile saving.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Alan Davie, Ian Roberts, Geddes and Laird are the hauliers who keep the economy of Angus moving, and by the Road Haulage Association’s estimate they are facing an 18% increase in operating costs purely on fuel. What discussions will the Secretary of State have with the Chancellor to get something sorted to keep our economy moving?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Member is right to point out the fantastic work done by haulage companies and all their workers. Over the next five years, the 2022-23 freeze will represent £8 billion off the fuel bill for motorists in this country, including the haulier sector, which I recently backed with 32 separate measures to ensure that it can continue to operate during what have been difficult times post covid.

Decarbonising Aviation

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Gary. I rise to contribute to this debate as an aircraft engineer. There are precious few of us—or engineers of any description—in Parliament, and these technically challenging debates are sometimes the poorer for it. Others have spoken about the need to support airports, and I fully endorse that priority. That effort is led in this place largely by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), and I am sure he will touch on that topic later on. Similarly, we need to act on the pressing need to support aircraft manufacturing and maintenance in Scotland and the rest of these islands, recognising the tremendous expertise that exists in the sector and the value that it has for the economy.

In this debate, I wish to shine a light on design issues, especially the twin problems of realism and pace within the design dimension, which I feel are not being properly addressed, much less owned. The UK Government talk an average game when it comes to net zero, but the investment and the road map have been pushed out almost entirely to make space for political rhetoric, much of it hyperbole. Perhaps if we put a gun on a new sustainable prototype aircraft, the UK Government would get their act together. With just a fraction of the investment lavished on the Typhoon multi-role combat aircraft, UK taxpayers could have a real global competitive advantage in renewable aviation businesses all over these islands. The absence of investment leaves industry to do what it can, which is good up to a point, because it is the industry’s engineers and scientists who will get us out of the inertia of conventional propulsion systems consuming fossil fuels and into the next generation of passenger aircraft, but they will not do it without game-changing Government investment.

I invite the Minister to agree with me that in the effort to get beyond hydrocarbon propulsion, batteries are intensely limited in their role. With current battery technology, they will always be limited to only a few hundred miles, and even then battery aircraft are some way off being commercially available. They are somewhat of a distraction from the real prize of engineering a solution to medium and long-haul transportation.

The Minister will know that the trouble with using batteries, not jet fuel, is that a craft that sets off with 10 tonnes of batteries will still have 10 tonnes of batteries at its destination. By all means, let us invest in short- haul regional aircraft—locked-up, prototype-tested, type-approved—and get them into service, if for no other reason than that we can then shift the focus on what we really need to deliver, which is a wholesale reimagining of long and medium-haul travel.

The rest of the UK could learn from the extraordinary work being led by Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd, serving Orkney and Shetland and assisting in the development and proving of short-range commercial electric aircraft. Nobody—certainly not me—doubts the potency of lithium-ion-powered aircraft, but nobody has overcome the critical weight and duration conundrums yet.

I know the Minister will not mind my pointing out that, like me, he is a bit of an aviation geek. I therefore have no hesitation in highlighting aircraft such as the de Havilland Comet, the Fairey Rotodyne, the Harrier Jump Jet and the Avro Vulcan—aircraft developed on these islands that represented a quantum leap in aircraft design and performance—all of which were facilitated by colossal Government investment. Where is that investment now? I do not know how much Government investment went into the now terminated Airbus/Rolls-Royce E-Fan X, which substituted one turbo fan on a BAE 146 regional jet for an electric fan powered by a battery linked to a gas turbine on board generator. It was not the last word in outside-the-box thinking, but I am advised by Rolls-Royce that it was a valuable test bed for high-powered electrical architecture on board aircraft. Other Members have touched on hydrogen, and my personal view is that that is the route out for us. I invite the Minister to set out how he is going to facilitate that.

International Travel Rules

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts]

My hon. Friend is quite right that the vaccines have been a major national success story and we are looking at ways to capitalise on that to restore freedom and the ability to travel. Of course, the measures that come into effect today are a major part of that. We will continue to examine ways in which we can take the next step.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The Association of Independent Tour Operators says that the changes to travel to France have “squashed” consumer confidence. Of course the SNP upholds the rule that public health must come first, but the continued tumult of international restrictions and rules will deny the travel sector a full recovery any time soon. Businesses such as Travel Your World in Forfar in my Angus constituency desperately need dedicated support, so will the Minister finally accept that and commit to new financial support for the travel sector for as long as this international chaos persists?

[Robert Courts]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising that point. I recognise that these are challenging times for his constituents who work in the sector. I am also grateful for his acknowledgment that he supports the principle, as the Scottish Government have done; I think that people would expect us always to protect public health, and I know that he accepts that. As I have said to other right hon. and hon. Members, we are very keen to make sure that we restart international travel in a way that is sustainable and robust and protects public health. That is the way to assist his and all our constituents in the travel sector, wherever we are in the UK.

Future of the Coach Industry

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Many thanks to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for securing the debate on what is clearly an important matter across these islands.

I have spoken in defence of the coach sector numerous times in debates in the main Chamber, in relation both to the economy and to tourism. If we have heard nothing else today, we know that coaches have sadly fallen between two stools when it comes to highlighting the support required. Early-day motions have been raised, yet here we are still talking. The point for the Minister is that this is not just the abstract hobbyhorse of a few Members; this is a grave and immediate threat to a major element of the economy across these islands.

Many coach operators are family enterprises, which has been touched on already, reinvesting their profit in their fleets, businesses and employees. They are wealth-creating enterprises that have paid significant sums into the Exchequer, while never burdening the taxpayer for any financial assistance, prior to the covid pandemic, making them something of an outlier when compared with air travel, rail or buses.

Coach is a vital element of national infrastructure; it is no exaggeration to say that. It is unlike any other element of mass public transportation, such as rail, which cannot survive in normal times without public subsidy, or air, which fills its aircraft with fuel and in so doing leaves not one single penny with the Exchequer. Coach will fill its buses with £540 of diesel, and leave 66%, or £360, with the Exchequer every time they are filled up. The coach industry is surely entitled to a wee bit back in these times of extremis.

As the CPT has warned, the collapse in the coach and tourism sector will wipe 10% off the value of UK tourism, but by guaranteeing loans and covering the interest costs for 12 months, the UK Government could, at a stroke, help operators secure finance holiday extensions that would provide the industry with the breathing space until the return of business in the spring, just a few months away. Many hon. Members of all parties in the Chamber, and others besides, have been making that point to Government for many months.

With every passing month, disaster looms ever closer. I am grateful that businesses in my Angus constituency, such as JP Mini Coaches in Forfar, Black’s of Brechin or Wisharts in Friockheim, will now be benefiting from £6 million of specific support from colleagues in the Scottish Government, recognising as they do that they cannot delay any longer while waiting for the UK Government to act.

The UK Government must accept that that is not a good look. To stand by and not give any support for the English sector, while the devolved Administrations are supporting coach companies in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, is not a good look. It is important for the whole of these islands, because English companies cannot fail for the interests of the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish tourist sectors. It is a self-fulfilling multiplier.

Finally, I say to the Minister that there is no room in the summing up for listening to what we have done before. What we need is something new, and we need it very urgently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Lady for eloquently setting out the issues—I absolutely understand her points. I will speak a bit more about the way in which we are working with the coach sector.

Obviously, I agree with the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle about wanting to get the coach sector back up and running. We believe that demand in the economy is what is needed to help the sector. When there have been safe and viable opportunities to create that demand, we have utilised them. In the autumn, the Government committed more than £70 million of funding to ensure that the coach industry could maximise the potential of the full return to education, and an additional £27 million has been allocated for the spring term. As more vehicles are needed compared with previous years, that funding has provided additional dedicated school and college capacity in our transport system, including coaches, to combat reduced demand on existing public transport.

As hon. Members will know, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is the lead Department for tourism and leisure. It is now considering how the new global travel taskforce might help to remove barriers to international travel, and potential event opportunities for the coach sector. As many hon. Members have pointed out, that is one of the main sources of revenue for the sector.

Going forward, we will continue in the vein of our flexible and adaptable response to the pandemic, keeping all current support under review while exploring opportunities to aid long-term recovery. One of those opportunities was the student travel window; we worked with the Department for Education to encourage students to plan their return journeys from universities carefully and to buy tickets in advance.

I want to be clear with Members that this has been an unprecedented global crisis; none of us could have predicted the scale of the challenges. The Chancellor has stated that in his view it is not possible to preserve every job and every business, and I do not ever underestimate the impact on anybody of these types of circumstances, which have hit us all out of the blue. This is something that the Government take incredibly seriously and my ministerial colleagues have met individual coach operators and heard from them directly. We are well aware of the impact on the sector and on people’s jobs and businesses, which they have built up over many generations. We never underestimate the impact on our constituents’ lives and livelihoods.

We continue to work closely with the CPT. As many Members have said, this organisation has been very helpful in representing its members to Government, so we have a good understanding of the challenges that the industry faces.

[Dave Doogan]

I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way; she is being very generous. I am conscious—indeed, concerned—that she seems to be getting to the end of her summing-up, and I am also very conscious that the CPT and many of its members are watching this debate. It would be very helpful if we could get clarity on whether the Government will support the English sector with money that will provide consequentials for the devolved Administrations.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much indeed, and if the CPT is watching this debate, I want to say to it that we are grateful for its work. We work closely together, so it will know that my colleagues have had a number of discussions with people in the sector and with the CPT itself, and we will continue to have those discussions. We keep under close review all the measures we provide, not just for this sector but across the economy.