Local Transport: Planning Developments

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I suggest a time limit of four minutes to start with.

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[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) on securing this important debate and on her continued work in this policy area.

In West Dorset, the issue with planning development is not just about how many homes we build, but where we build them and whether they are built with the infrastructure that is needed to support them. As I have said repeatedly, we need the right houses in the right places and at the right price. That means genuinely affordable homes for local people. It means accessible homes, so that older residents can downsize and stay close to the family. It means not building on floodplains—something that recent storms in the area have shown to be serious and costly. It means protecting natural landscapes, such as the one that covers 70% of West Dorset; and it means that, when new homes are approved, the infrastructure that is needed, such as GPs, dentists, schools and, critically, transport, must be delivered.

Having spent many thrilling hours on the Railways Bill Committee, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), I will not revisit every rail argument, but I do want to be clear that housing growth and rail capacity must be planned together. Local transport must be properly joined up. Local communities must be given a voice; and buses need to connect reliably with train services, so that people in new developments can realistically commute without relying entirely on a car.

When demand increases, supply should increase with it. Ticket prices remain too high, and peak services are often overcrowded, with elderly and disabled passengers standing for long journeys. It is not acceptable, and it will only worsen if housing numbers rise without matched investment. West Dorset is rural and spread out. We have an ageing population. Many residents rely on buses to get to work, school, hospital appointments and shops, but bus services have been cut back dramatically.

From 2010, service frequency in West Dorset fell by 62%. Satisfaction with bus services across Dorset stands at just 48%, despite nearly half of residents living in areas ranked in the top 20% most deprived nationally for access to services. Dorset received £3.8 million through the bus services improvement plan, compared with £11.6 million for Devon. It was one of the lowest settlements in the south-west. It does not reflect our rural geography, the scale of the problem, our older population or our surge in visitor numbers during the summer months.

When new housing developments are approved, especially in rural areas, they should come with guaranteed improvements to local transport. If buses are unreliable or non-existent, people will have no choice but to drive. Properly supported community transport also has a role to play. In places where commercial routes are no longer viable, there should be secure grant funding for community-led services. A hub-and-spoke model linking villages to key towns can be more realistic than trying to restore full commercial routes.

The CB3 service in Beaminster shows what can be achieved when communities work together, but parish and local councils cannot be expected to carry the financial burden alone. We should look seriously at pilots for larger roll-outs of on-demand services. Flexible bus systems can use technology to plan the most efficient routes based on bookings. These services have already worked particularly well for younger people travelling between villages.

If that is to work, the council will need technical support and funding to deliver it properly. On-demand services should be supported where reinstating traditional bus services is not viable, and the Government services should provide new centralised pots for community transport funding that can be bid for to specifically counteract the years of underfunding. The extra money and multi-year funding from central Government is a welcome change, but it is not enough to turn the tide. We need measures targeted to those places that have lost the most before we can start building a more sustainable network; otherwise, we will just normalise failure.

There is also a sequencing problem in planning. I have seen developments where housing has gone ahead but infrastructure has stalled, sometimes because a contractor has gone bust after being awarded the contract, as happened recently in Bridport. That leaves new homes without the transport links, roads and roundabouts that they were promised. It undermines trust in the planning system and fuels opposition to future development.

Transport is central to whether a development works. If we build homes without properly improving buses, trains and roads, we increase congestion, make daily life harder and create understandable resentment. If we want communities to have and agree to new housing developments, we must show that infrastructure will come alongside it, not years later.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

I call Chris Bloore.

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[Steff Aquarone]

On a point of order, Sir Desmond. I want to draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a serving county councillor.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Thank you.

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

1. Whether she plans to retain the zero emission vehicle mandate.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Heidi Alexander)]

This Government remain fully committed to the zero emission vehicle transition and the ZEV mandate. In 2025, the UK had the largest electric vehicle market share of any major European economy, thanks to the certainty provided by clear Government policy and the £7.5 billion that we are investing by 2035 to support industry and drivers. The Government will review the mechanisms through which we will achieve the 2030 and 2035 phase-out dates, as planned, in the coming year.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Even the UK gigafactory commission, chaired by a former Labour Secretary of State, says that the ZEV mandate is disincentivising investment in UK motor manufacturing. We all know that U-turns are a sign of open-mindedness and strength. Can we please have another?

[Heidi Alexander]

I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman talks about U-turns. I am sure that I should not be doing this, but I reviewed his tweets from none other than the 2019 general election, in which he was very excited about decarbonisation schemes, electric vehicle infrastructure and clean energy. Perhaps his constituents will be surprised by his flip-flopping on this issue. This Government remain committed to the ZEV transition, and it is precisely the certainty of this Government’s policy that means we will meet the transition targets. Yet again, he is showing that his party cannot be trusted with the economy and the environment.

International Rail Services: Ashford

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I suggest a time limit of six minutes.

Road Safety: Young Drivers

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Before I call Julia Buckley, I wish to make a short statement. I have been advised that she wishes to raise relevant cases that are not currently sub judice but have been subject to a completed police investigation and a coroner inquest. Caution must be exercised by any Member wishing to raise the specifics of relevant cases.

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered road safety for young drivers.

Thank you for chairing this Westminster Hall debate on road safety for young drivers, Sir Desmond, and for allowing me to present the opening statement to our Minister for the Future of Roads, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). I thank her for giving up her time today to engage in this discussion.

Road traffic collisions are the biggest killer of young people aged 15 to 29 worldwide. In 2023, 290 young people were killed in the UK as a result of a road collision, and nearly one quarter of all road collisions involved young people. Although drivers under 24 make up only 6% of total licence holders, they represent 18% of all car drivers killed and seriously injured. That is because one in five newly qualified drivers will have an accident in their first year. For any other leading cause of death of our young people, we would declare a public health emergency and prioritise resources to tackle the crisis.

Unfortunately, young people are also more likely to be involved in crashes causing multiple injuries and those that involve a greater number of people. There is much evidence to suggest that younger and less experienced drivers carry a heavier risk. The road safety campaign Brake points to some development-related risks, including the level of brain development, overconfidence and poor assessment of hazards, that make young drivers more prone to serious accidents.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

There will be a three-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.

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[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Before I start, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for her incredibly moving story, particularly her story about Harvey. The hearts of everyone in this Chamber today will go out to Harvey’s family for what must have been an absolutely terrible ordeal. Sadly, one does not have to go far in my constituency of Harlow to see signs of a road traffic incident—a damaged traffic island, a crushed crash barrier, a single bunch of flowers or a football scarf tied to a lamppost.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury about the issues on rural roads. Like previous speakers, my constituency is made up of urban areas, Harlow, and rural areas, such as Roydon. I have met the Roydon community speed watch team to talk about the issues they face; I will go into some of my suggestions as to how we can solve those if I have time.

In 2022, there were a total of 228 casualties in Harlow, two of which were fatalities and 51 were life-changing serious injuries. There have been over 1,000 incidents since 2018. I recognise that I do not have a lot of time, but I will briefly mention the two young gentleman who I had the pleasure to teach and who I mentioned in the Chamber a few weeks ago. The impact of losing someone so young is huge for those families and for everyone who knows and cares about them. Later in the week, there will be a debate about road safety around schools, which I look forward to taking part in, but I agree with what hon. Members have said about education.

I will finish by mentioning my pet peeve—I am sure many campaigners in the room will agree—that when an issue of road safety is raised with the relevant authority, it takes so long to get the necessary road safety interventions in place. I ask the Minister to give that some consideration.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

I am afraid I must reduce the time limit to a formal two-minute limit.

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this debate.

In the words of my constituents Mark and Mandy Ogden, whose daughter Georgia died on 26 June 2020:

“The last thing we want is to parade our grief, but we need people to understand the devastation these road deaths cause.”

Georgia, known as Gee to her family, was 17. She had been out for the evening and was in a car with another teenage passenger, driven by a third teenage girl. They were all wearing their seatbelts. Mandy talks about the pain of four years now without hearing Gee’s voice, her cute laugh, her silliness and random outbursts of singing, her tantrums over something and nothing, her sassiness, her incredible dancing and performing. She speaks of a gaping hole at the loss of her daughter and of the loneliness and emptiness that she has left. It is indescribable. Mandy told me of the knock at the door and the immediate realisation of what had happened, and that the day that Gee was killed will haunt her for the rest of her days.

Sadly, there are several tributes on A roads around my constituency to other young people who have been killed in surprisingly similar circumstances. Roads in our area are dark, fast and dangerous. We cannot change the entire rural road network, certainly not in the short term, but we can change the law. Mark and Mandy are now part of Forget-me-not Families Uniting, the campaign group alluded to by previous speakers, which is calling on us to save young lives through the introduction of graduated driving licensing and through the creation of an expert panel to advise the Government on how graduated driving licensing in the UK should look.

The Department for Transport’s 2019 road safety statement noted there is evidence that graduated driving licensing schemes, where they have been introduced elsewhere, have proved very effective at improving the safety of young drivers. For example in California, where drivers aged under 18 cannot take passengers under 20 unless supervised, and in New Zealand where young and newly qualified drivers go on to a restricted licence, which means—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Jim Shannon.

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[Claire Hughes (Bangor Aberconwy) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this important debate, and specifically for mentioning road safety on rural roads.

Sadly, nowhere is the devastating impact of crashes on rural roads better demonstrated than by telling Olivia’s story. Olivia Alkir, a much-loved 17-year-old, was denied her bright future when she was killed in the passenger seat of a friend’s car. The driver had been racing on another rural road when he lost control and crashed head-on into an approaching vehicle at 80 mph. He had only passed his driving test the day before. Olivia’s tragic death in 2019 devastated her family, of course, but also the wider community of Efenechtyd, near Ruthin.

Olivia’s mother, Jo, is determined that her daughter’s story will save other people’s lives. I am sure that it already has saved lives, because Olivia’s family decided to work with North Wales Police to create a hard-hitting film designed to warn other young people about the dangers of reckless driving. Olivia’s story has been shown to learner drivers in schools all across Wales and indeed in this House, thanks to the work of my predecessor, Simon Baynes, who represented what was then the constituency of Clwyd South.

Olivia’s story brings into sharp focus the need for action. I welcome the new Government’s road safety review and I implore the Minister to leave no stone unturned in her mission to improve road safety for young people, including learning from other countries, listening to campaigners such as Crystal Owen and considering the use of emerging technologies, such as AI and telematics, which are developing all the time.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the debate and to seeing further action in the coming months.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

I call Alison Bennett, spokesperson for the Lib Dems.

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

The Government are on track to deliver the policy. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, we are working with companies to build substantial supply chains that then have to scale up by several orders of magnitude in order to meet the scale of orders. If we look at the number that have been ordered alone: for zero emission bus regional areas, the ZEBRA scheme, 1,342; 275 for Coventry; 20 will be going to Cambridgeshire in the next few weeks, I am pleased to say; and 350 to other schemes in England outside London. The total so far is 3,429, which is well on track to meet our target.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Will the Minister visit Morebus, serving my constituency, because there he will learn that its new buses generate fewer emissions than I do pushing my lawnmower?

[Jesse Norman]

One can take that as a comment either about buses or about the size of my right hon. Friend’s lawnmower—let us assume that it is about buses. I thank him for his interest and I am certainly happy to discuss that further with him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

When will services be restored on the mainline between Waterloo and Southampton?

[Huw Merriman]

I am happy to write to my right hon. Friend on that matter. I am not sure whether he is referring to landslips and recent weather-related events, but Network Rail is working incredibly hard to deliver. Perhaps I can update the entire House by putting in the Library a letter with the most recent update.

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury]

In the past three months alone, I have received 26 complaints about delays at the DVLA—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Hear, hear!

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[Trudy Harrison]

I am delighted to confirm that we have now appointed Chris Boardman as the acting CEO of Active Travel England, which I will be meeting after this session. Actually, the £2 billion is an unprecedented amount to be investing in walking and cycling over this Parliament. Our investment is already seeing results: levels of cycling increased by 46% in 2020 compared with 2019. However, I would like to put on record my thanks to the hon. Member for the work she does on the all-party parliamentary group on cycling and walking, which I look forward to joining.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I cycle for 10 hours a week, and on a narrow forest road I always cycle close to the kerb, because I am a driver too and I want to accommodate drivers. The advice in the new code that I should cycle in the centre of the carriageway is bonkers, isn’t it?

[Trudy Harrison]

I would like to stress that that advice is only on narrow roads, but I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has embraced cycling, because we want to see half of the journeys made in towns and cities walked or cycled by 2030.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Trudy Harrison)]

The Government remain absolutely committed to supporting the introduction of 4,000 zero-emission buses and achieving a zero-emission bus fleet. I had the joy of visiting a place in Glasgow, when I was there for COP26, that is rolling out those buses, and this will support our climate ambitions, improve local transport for communities and support high-quality green jobs. Overall, we are providing £525 million of funding for ZEBs this Parliament, and the Government have provided funding for 900 zero-emission buses through existing funding schemes.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

T5. Were the brilliant bus recovery grant to end, at current passenger number levels, I could lose half of my services. Will the Secretary of State consider extending but tapering it, so that more services have a chance to recover passenger numbers to economic viability?

[Trudy Harrison]

We will of course look into my right hon. Friend’s suggestion, but over the past two years we have provided over £1.7 billion in covid-related support to the bus sector. The recovery grant is worth more than £250 million to operators and local authorities, and has been supporting the sector as passenger numbers remain suppressed.

Income tax (charge)

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

Putting my hat on as the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and having done a lot in previous inquiries on air quality, I should come and see exactly what Aberdeen is doing, because hydrogen has huge capabilities.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Forgive my ignorance, but does a hydrogen-propelled vehicle work on the same principle generally as the internal combustion engine, in that there is an explosion that creates a vacuum that turns a crank?

[Neil Parish]

I do not have the detail to give an exact answer to my right hon. Friend, but I do know that hydrogen is mainly produced from water with electricity, so the actual fuel itself is so much cleaner and so much less polluting. I cannot give him all the details of exactly how the engine itself runs, but it uses a clean fuel and gives that support.

Overall, I believe that this Budget is very good for the future of this country and the people of this country. I look forward, as I have said, to the statement later this evening from the Chancellor, because I think that the thing that is worrying all our populations and all our constituents at the moment is coronavirus. We need to get through this. We need people to have enough income to pay their rent or their mortgage and keep their families running, as well as their businesses, so that we do not have a knock-on effect of business failure bringing other businesses down with it. I look forward to the statement, and I very much welcome this Budget.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

Yes, definitely. That will level up in the process, but we have to get private sector involvement. It is the private sector that creates jobs, not the public sector. That is a means to an end in terms of transport spending. We have to get the private sector to move into these areas, start up and scale up or expand their businesses.

I primarily want to talk about covid-19. We are talking about levelling up. If we are not careful with this, there will be levelling down, because the coronavirus will have a huge impact. We cannot even contemplate the size of the impact that this could have on our economy and business sector. This could be an existential crisis for hundreds of thousands of businesses. It is huge.

The situation is so fluid, but we need to give people confidence—and we are getting there—that we will support them through this crisis. I was heartened by the Chancellor talking at the Dispatch Box about what he has done so far and what he will do in future if that is not enough. He has spoken this afternoon about a massively enhanced package, and that is exactly what we need, because the scale of this is huge. Capital Economics does not give the rosiest outlook in its forecast of the economic situation in the UK. It predicts that there could be a 15% drop in gross domestic product within a three-month period. If we compare that with the great financial crash, we saw a 6% reduction in GDP over a few years from 2008.

We need to say to businesses and consumers—and if we do not, it will cost us the amount anyway—what the German Finance Minister said a week ago: that, as far as possible, no company should get into existential trouble and no job should be lost as a result of this crisis. That is the message we need to get out. Macron has said the same thing, with a €300 billion guarantee that no firm will go bust due to social distancing.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

That is an admirable ambition to have and I do hope that the Government accept that ambition, but be in no doubt that we have, in effect, closed down the hospitality industry and public entertainment, and that will require the Government to pay those wages.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the difficulties with the announcement last night was that it was not brought forward with a package of remediation or mitigation. I think that has come today, and clarity of that is very welcome.

We are going to need to pump hundreds of billions of pounds—not the odd billion, £5 billion or £10 billion—into the economy. I think the Chancellor has announced today £330 billion-worth of loans for the business sector, which is absolutely right, with £25,000 for businesses that are not insured for losses from business interruption, plus business rates holidays and three-month mortgage holidays, which is also absolutely right. If we talk about this in terms of hundreds of billions of pounds, the natural question is: where are we going to get that money from? This is a time when we have to set aside the fiscal rules. We will be paying for this anyway, in lost jobs and businesses, redundancy payments and reductions in tax receipts, if we do not put a huge fiscal stimulus into the system right now, so I welcome the measures from the Chancellor.

We need a few things in addition. We saw in 2008 that banks did not support businesses through that financial crisis—there is no doubt about it; in fact, quite the opposite. We need a commitment from the banks, UK Finance and the Treasury that they will continue to cash-flow businesses for as much as they need until they get through this period. To make sure that they do that, we should introduce emergency legislation to bring SME loans and financing commercial loans within the regulatory perimeter. That would mean that banks would have to have the oversight of the Financial Conduct Authority, and indeed of Members in this place, if they did not do the right thing through that period.

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[Ben Everitt]

That is an excellent point and it is well made. The nutrition of the people of Milton Keynes is well served by the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

We find ourselves in a strange situation in this Budget debate. It is almost as if the rules have changed. As I stand to speak, we are digesting the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has launched a £330 billion fiscal bazooka at the coronavirus to support our businesses, many of which are in my beautiful constituency. In that context, it feels odd to be talking about last week’s Budget. It was going to be the levelling-up Budget. It was going to be the got-Brexit-done Budget. It was going to be the Budget of infrastructure. Of course, it was the first-swing-at-corona Budget. As we look at it now, it was last week’s Budget. These are indeed strange times. However, I am sure that many Members on the Conservative Benches, and possibly some others, were struck by the optimism, hope and positive spirit of the Budget. It was enthusiastic about our future. While we deal with the sheer scale of the coronavirus outbreak, we should take some joy from the fact that this is a Government who are looking forward beyond the coronavirus and into a world where we have levelled up and we will have a more equal, more productive and more aspirant, tolerant society. It is a Budget of hope and positivity.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Does my hon. Friend recall a poster from the 2010 election campaign? It had a picture of a baby and the slogan, “He’s got his mother’s eyes, his father’s hair and Gordon Brown’s debt”. Does he think that future generations will applaud us for the action that we are taking, or curse us?

[Ben Everitt]

My right hon. Friend refers to the bail-out of the banks over a decade ago, which cost our economy in the region of £860 billion. It proved 10 long years before we could get over its effects, during which the British people worked incredibly hard and everybody came together, putting us in a position now where we are dealing with the next crisis. Will we be left with a burden of debt? Undoubtedly. Is it the right thing to do? Given the context, it probably is.

Last week’s Budget was excellent for families, not just in my constituency, but across the country. As set out by the Chancellor of fiscal bazooka fame, it will level up the economy, raise our regions, increase investment and encourage growth across the country. On transport, I particularly welcome not the big flashy transport projects, but the smaller, almost overlooked projects that engage our transport networks on a more local level.

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

As usual, I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. The fact is that the Secretary of State has been leading the way in this area, and the Department for Transport is also a world leader. Some 200,000 ultra low-emission battery, electric, and plug-in hybrid vehicles are registered in the UK, and we are the second-largest market for ultra low emission vehicles in the European Union, so the hon. Gentleman is quite wrong.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

How will it work for houses that do not have a driveway or reserved on-street parking, and what does the Minister mean by the term “en suite”?

[Michael Ellis]

Did I say “en suite”? We are investing in technologies and supporting innovations in on-street architecture—[Laughter.] We might invest in “en suite” architecture as well, but that would not be for my Department. Fixtures have been fitted to streetlamps, for example, and there have been innovations in contactless charging. Businesses around the country are working on various mechanisms, and this Department is supporting many of them with funding to help them to invent new technologies.

Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Jones]

I simply do not accept the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question. This service is not being run on the cheap. We are seeing record levels of investment—both private and public investment is at a record level. Perhaps I should point out to him that his party’s policy is to nationalise the railways, which will result in more cash required from the Government, but of course the Labour party has not yet said where it might come from. We are focused on delivering the enhancements to the network, which will meet our aspirations for a high-capacity, environmentally clean rail network underpinning the UK economy. Therefore, I am afraid that I cannot really agree with the premise of the question.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Is there any progress internationally in discussions to include maritime and aviation emissions?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

When it comes to maritime emissions, we can look at the work of the International Maritime Organisation, which is opposite us on the Thames. A huge amount of work was done earlier this year to look at driving down greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. It is interesting to note that this Government led the high-ambition coalition to get that agreement made, so we are not only leading nationally, but driving down greenhouse gas emissions internationally as well.