Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department plans to introduce universal signage for electronic vehicle charging points.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
A reliable, accessible public charging network to support electric vehicle (EV) drivers on long journeys is essential. Ensuring this is visible and functional will build consumer confidence, which is vital for mass EV adoption. An EV charging symbol is in use on traffic signs to direct drivers to the growing number of chargepoints. There are now over 5,250 open-access rapid and ultra rapid chargers within one mile of the Strategic Road Network (SRN), having doubled over 18 months.
Government is working with industry, including chargepoint operators, and with National Highways, which manages the SRN in England, to improve signage deployment. This includes looking for opportunities to make it easier to provide signage for EV-only charging hubs.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department plans to take steps to help reduce the cost of using the public electric vehicle charging network.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government is committed to ensuring that the public charging network is affordable and accessible. The Government’s Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 increase transparency of public charging costs and make it easier for drivers to pay.
Under the regulations, companies are required to clearly provide the price of charging in pence per kilowatt hour. The maximum price cannot increase once a session has started. Whilst this does not cap the cost, it does ensure consistency in the way prices are displayed, making it easy for drivers to compare and understand prices across different public chargepoints. This will allow customers to choose the chargepoint and the price most appropriate for their needs.
The Government will continue to work with other Government departments and industry on measures to keep the cost of EV charging affordable for consumers.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether she plans to incentivise local authorities to provide funding for public electronic vehicle charging points.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government's £381m Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund supports local authorities in England to work with industry to transform the availability of public EV charging infrastructure. The funding, which is expected to leverage significant further private investment, will support the installation of at least 100,000 local chargepoints across the country.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to mitigate rail congestion across East-West rail lines in the north of England.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline portfolio contains some of the most transformative and important programmes in the country such as the TransPennine Route Upgrade, which will increase capacity and improve reliability of East to West rail lines in the north of England.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the deliverability of the Northern Powerhouse Rail project.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
As announced in the Autumn 2024 Budget, we are maintaining momentum on Northern Powerhouse Rail by progressing planning and design works to support future delivery. This improved rail connectivity in the north is a vital step towards better linking people and jobs, creating opportunities for everyone and we will set out further details in due course.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to ensure the resilience of critical transport infrastructure in the north of England.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The government is committed to ensuring the resilience of the transport network across the UK, including vital services in the North of England. We work closely with transport operators to prevent and respond to the range of risks the sector faces: and aid them in assessing their vulnerabilities and implementing contingency planning arrangements.
Transport related risks to resilience are kept under review, including through the internal, classified National Security Risk Assessment, and the external-facing version, the National Risk Register, to ensure that we effectively plan at the national and local levels. This includes risks around adverse weather conditions, security threats and accidents.
We are also conducting a Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) review to support our work, building our understanding of the CNI landscape and the wide variety of systems, dependencies and redundancies that keep it running. This work is strengthening our ability to plan against risks and threats and bolster our incident response capabilities, ensuring our Critical National Infrastructure is resilient and secure.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she plans to take to support the use of shore power technology to aid maritime decarbonisation.
Answered by Mike Kane - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government has published its Maritime Decarbonisation Strategy and a core policy within this is taking action to reduce emissions from vessels whilst at berth. Whilst the Government remains technology neutral, we recognise that shore power will play a role in reducing emissions from vessels whilst at berth, supporting our mission to make Britain a Clean Energy Superpower.
The UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions programme has previously allocated over £33m to five shore power demonstrator projects at Aberdeen, Atlantic and Peninsula Falmouth, Cammel Laird shipyard, Leith and Portsmouth.
The Government has also published a call for evidence on Net Zero Ports which will explore the opportunities and barriers to reducing emissions at berth, with a focus on the role ports can play in enabling the shipping sector to decarbonise.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she plans to take to help increase awareness of careers in the maritime sector.
Answered by Mike Kane - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department continues to support industry to improve the awareness of careers in the maritime sector though the implementation of the Ratings Review and the Cadet Review, both of which were undertaken by the Maritime Skills Commission. The Cadet Review is being delivered through the Cadet Training & Modernisation programme and promoting seafaring career pathways is an important part of that work. A new maritime strategy is in development, which will include a focus on maritime careers.
Additionally, the Department continues to work with stakeholders, such as Maritime UK, on careers promotion and has supported Maritime UK’s Maritime Roadshow for Girls, which promotes STEM and maritime careers in schools. Officials are also working with Maritime UK’s Careers Taskforce, which coordinates careers outreach activity across the sector.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department plans to introduce an independent organisation to (a) monitor and (b) control parking fees at airports.
Answered by Mike Kane - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
As commercial businesses it is for airport operators to manage and justify the amount and advertising of parking charges. Parking arrangements are subject to contractual agreements between airport operators, car parking companies and covered by consumer laws. While there are no plans to introduce an independent organisation to monitor or control parking fees at airports, the Department for Transport expects car parking at airports to be managed appropriately.
Asked by: Elsie Blundell (Labour - Heywood and Middleton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to increase the UKs (a) manufacturing and (b) refining capacity for sustainable aviation fuel.
Answered by Mike Kane - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Building a UK Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) industry represents a significant economic opportunity which can bring good, high-skilled jobs across the UK. The SAF Mandate, which is the UK’s key policy to decarbonise jet fuel, secures demand for SAF by obligating the supply of an increasing amount of SAF in the overall UK aviation fuel mix. We are putting £63 million into the Advanced Fuels Fund in 2025/2026 to help support UK SAF plants to reach commercial scale. The Government is also legislating to introduce a revenue certainty mechanism, giving SAF producers confidence to invest in new plants in the UK.