Improving Public Transport

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) on her excellent maiden speech. When I was first elected, I thought it would be difficult to get to know my 71 Liberal Democrat colleagues, but I realise that the challenge is considerably bigger for those on the Labour Benches, so I wish her well with that.

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to her and her colleagues on Somerset council for their work over recent years, in very difficult circumstances. The previous Government may have introduced the bus fare cap, but that did not go far enough to outweigh the decimation of public transport and bus services over decades in this country, both by central Government and Somerset county council, which cut services throughout Somerset.

For example, in 2019, shortly before the Liberal Democrats took control of Somerset, the Conservative county council proposed closing the park and ride services in Taunton. Park and ride is vital to the whole system of integrated public transport, and was an innovation of the noughties, built by a Liberal Democrat council. Although there were plans for the closure of the park and ride service, my colleagues who run the district council stepped up and saved it. They restructured fares, and the service is now once again profitable and does not require a subsidy. That shows that with a commitment to public transport and political will, such services can be made viable and can be sustained.

During these years of real challenge for local government, I give credit to Somerset council for bringing back night buses. I was delighted to meet the first night bus out of Taunton, which means we can now travel between Taunton and Wellington in my constituency until midnight every night on a weekday. I was out there with Mike driving his first night bus last year. It is a fantastic improvement.

The fare cap in Taunton meant that tickets were reduced to £1, not just £2. Shockingly, following privatisation, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne), the companies closed the bus station in Taunton and sold it off. I am delighted that the council is bringing forward plans to have a transport hub once again in Taunton town centre, so that people do not have to stand shivering on pavements in the county town, getting rained on, to catch buses.

I credit the Government for the £6 million in bus service improvement plan funding, which is genuinely welcome. We would obviously have liked more and it is disappointing to see the bus cap increase to £3. As the hon. Member for East Thanet rightly pointed out, no money was pledged to support that service by the last Government. I understand the challenges, but we would have taxed big banks and big energy companies more, as my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) pointed out, so that we could fund some of these things to a higher level.

Before I leave bus services, I must mention that in my constituency of Taunton and Wellington, there is one part of Somerset where young people—students—get no discount at all on their bus fare. If they want to attend college as a sixth-former in my part of Somerset, they have to pay £900 per year just to get there and back. That is a prohibitively high bus fare to pay to get to college. I am working closely with councillors on Somerset council and I hope it will be possible to bring forward a discount scheme for students in our part of Somerset, like those that exist in other parts of Somerset and other parts of the country.

I will move on to the vital importance of rail in Taunton and Wellington and my part of Somerset. We have the fantastic West Somerset steam railway, which I invite all hon. Members to come and visit. It takes us from Bishops Lydeard, just outside Taunton, down to Minehead and the famous Butlin’s—I know that all Members will want to go there, and they can enjoy the steam journey over to it. A strategic outline business case has recently been submitted by West Somerset Railway to the Department for Transport to connect that railway with Taunton station so that it would have a mainline station connection, providing both a commuter service to Bishops Lydeard on the edge of Taunton and direct access to one of the best heritage railways in the country.

Perhaps more important than any of those things is the Wellington and Cullompton stations project. I recognise that there are station opening projects across the country that Members across the House will be championing as their favourite, but I must say that my understanding of the Wellington and Cullompton stations project is that, because it is a two-station project that would deliver two stations in one, it has the best benefit-cost ratio of any railway station reopening project in the country at 3.67. I said that like I understand Treasury benefit-cost ratio numbers; I only wish that were true. I am reliably informed, however, that anything above one is a really high benefit-cost ratio.

On that ground alone, the project should qualify for funding, and it would bring £3.3 million of benefit to the local economy. After all, growth is vital to the whole country, and reopening Wellington station would unlock thousands of homes around Wellington. We have a town council that wants Wellington to thrive and grow. The project to bring that railway station was very close to getting shovels in the ground. In July, the project had reached its final business case. The detailed design was ongoing—there was just a small amount of money needed to complete it—and then the Government froze the whole programme. However, I was assured by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Budget debate that the station would go ahead.

We are still waiting to hear why the most financially beneficial station reopening project in the country has not yet got the go-ahead. I am very grateful to Lord Hendy, the Minister for Rail, for the two meetings we have had. I know that the Government are supportive and sympathetic, but we need this project to get back on track—I am sorry, but it is impossible to avoid railway puns in this debate. The station is so ready to be built. We have a lot of third-party funding coming in. The access road and the car park are funded by a third-party developer. Cullompton, in the neighbouring constituency, is putting in similar third-party funding. We urgently need that project to go ahead.

We wish to secure the economic growth that Somerset needs, but we have lost £2 billion-worth of transport projects over the past few months. The A303 and the A358 have been cancelled. We desperately need a bypass for the villages of Thornfalcon and Henlade, which that A358 project would have completed. With all these projects being taken away, surely it is time that we received the funding for the new stations project at Wellington and Cullompton, with all its excellent economic growth impacts.

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[Gideon Amos]

The Minister is trying to comprehensively address all the comments in the debate. I realise he cannot comment on individual projects, but will he undertake to inform the Secretary of State of the need to release funding for the most important restoring your railway projects?

[Simon Lightwood]

I am sure the Secretary of State will have heard that message, as will the Rail Minister regarding the hon. Gentleman’s individual project.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Croydon East (Natasha Irons). I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East will welcome the £485 million that was delivered to Transport for London in the last Budget; as a northern MP, I can say that without any hesitation. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) for her passionate speech, which was delivered by a passionate advocate for public transport.

Turning to the comments made by the shadow Secretary of State, I will take no lectures from the Opposition on public transport. Looking at the Opposition Benches, all I will say is this: a picture paints a thousand words.