High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

My opposition to HS2 has been expressed somewhat forcefully in this House over the two and a half years for which I have had the privilege of representing the Buckingham constituency. I note with some sadness, and certainly bewilderment, that we continue to debate this relic from the Blair-Brown Labour Government; and, worse than that, to extend it yet further with this Bill, bringing to more parts of the country, and more lives, the human misery that my constituents have experienced since enabling works and construction started. We have heard some commentary about the Leader of the Opposition’s previous stance, and perhaps this is one occasion on which Captain Hindsight got it right the first time.

It is not lost on me that this debate comes on the eve of the hard left and the unions bringing our railways to a halt, and preventing hard-working British people, schoolchildren and people who want to go out for the day from getting on the railways that we do have. I was struck by what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport said in his earlier statement, which provides important context to our debate:

“The railway is in a fight…not just competing with other forms of public and private transport but competing with Teams, Zoom and other forms of remote working. Today, many commuters who three years ago had no alternative but to travel by train have…the option of not travelling at all. Rail has lost a fifth of its passengers.”

In the light of the Secretary of State’s words, it has to be asked why on earth we continue to plough in excess of £100 billion into a railway project that blights the British countryside and delivers none of the real or quantifiable benefits that some—including, and I say this with great respect, hon. and right hon. Members who spoke before me—believe it does. I welcome the cancelling of the eastern leg and the cancelling of the Golborne spur, but even before those bits were chopped off, the benefit-cost ratio was only 0.6:1.7. We are yet to see from the Government where that BCR sits today with a scaled-back HS2.

I want to focus on two things. First, why on earth are we continuing to plough money into this thing? Secondly, from my constituency experience, I say to hon. and right hon. Members who support the Bill and want to extend HS2 further that they should be careful what they wish for. But before I get on to that, I want to explore a point that others have raised today about the ongoing HS2 debate.

At the start, HS2 was all about speed; it was all about how fast we could get to Birmingham or Manchester, which are fantastic parts of our United Kingdom. Personally, I have never had a problem with the time it has taken to get by rail to Birmingham, to Manchester or, for that matter, up to Glasgow, where I had clients when I ran my business. The debate very quickly became about capacity, and we have heard that word a lot today. As the Secretary of State said in his statement, however, rail has lost a fifth of its passengers, so presumably we no longer have that capacity problem. Earlier this year, we even saw suggestions reported in the press in relation to the Transport Committee and others that HS2 had become about propping up the construction industry. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) said in her excellent speech earlier, with 1.3 million vacancies in the economy, I do not think that the taxpayer should be propping up anything at all in the construction industry. At present, it is almost impossible to find a builder for either a big or a small project. It is almost impossible to work to a tight timescale.

I challenge my hon. Friend the Minister, when he sums up the debate, to give us an answer to this question. Is it about speed, is it about capacity, is it about propping up the building industry? There is a further question that should worry all those on this side of the House, all those with a free-market, low-tax, small-state viewpoint: how it can be that we are building this thing entirely at cost to the taxpayer? If there really is such high demand for HS2, if it really is the great railway, the golden bullet, that will solve all the north-south transport problems in the country, why does no one in the private sector want to risk their own pounds and pence in real investment? Why does no one have the confidence to put their own money into this project? That is a massive alarm bell that should sound in the minds of certainly every Conservative, if not every Member in the House.

As we look at extending high-speed rail yet further, from Crewe to Manchester, I say again that those who support this should be careful what they wish for. I extend an open invitation to any Member to visit my constituency, and to travel through villages and hamlets such as Terrick, Butlers Cross, Ellesborough, Little Kimble and Great Kimble, Marsh, Stone, Fleet Marston, Waddesdon, Quainton, Edgcott and Grendon Underwood, Steeple Claydon, Twyford, Charndon, Chetwode, Westbury, Turweston—and there are more. I invite Members to come and see the scale of not just the devastation caused to the Buckinghamshire countryside, but the real human misery that goes with that. There are the endless road closures, often taking place at a moment’s notice. In a rural environment, that does not mean a five-minute diversion to get the kids to school, to get to work, or to go wherever else people wish to go; it is often a half-hour or a 45-minute diversion.

Let me give the House a tangible example of where that can really strike. The Princes Centre is a daycare centre in Princes Risborough, quite a long way from the trace of HS2, but serving clients from all over the county of Buckinghamshire. It has had to pay 75% more in overtime rates for its employees to account for the time for which those carers are stuck in traffic—for no good reason, other than the HS2 road closures and endless traffic lights and diversions—while trying to reach the people who rely on their care. We have all seen the price of fuel rise in recent months, but the centre’s fuel consumption has increased by more than a quarter because of those diversions. This is an independent daycare centre, a charity, suffering severe financial penalties because of all the road closures and other disruptions that HS2 has brought to the county of Buckinghamshire.

Let us travel a little further up the road, to Fleet Marston on the edge of the town of Aylesbury, where the Hunters farm land all around the A41. HS2 has acquired a significant proportion of their land—farmland, arable land—and as a result of the way in which it has treated that land, it has become entirely waterlogged. No proper drainage has been put in place, and where the Hunters still have land to farm, their crops are completely ruined. No signs have been put up around the farm, and HS2 HGVs are constantly driving through the farmyard, finding it almost impossible to do three-point turns to get out again. This has also created an extremely dangerous stretch of the A41, the main road that runs through my constituency from Aylesbury to Bicester, where every day hundreds of HGVs come very close to people who are trying to go about their daily business. There have been many near misses on that stretch of road, and, sadly, there have been fatalities.

I could give countless examples of other farmers across the constituency who have been messed about time after time. They have, for instance, been subject to poor timescales for crop loss compensation, when they have not been able to farm their land or grow the crops or graze the cattle. In some cases, it has taken two harvests for farmers to receive the compensation.

Great Moor Sailing Club, just outside Calvert, has experienced massive construction disruption, which has almost prevented it from carrying out its activities. Agreements made between contractors and the club have constantly failed to be met and honoured. A good neighbour High Speed Two Ltd is categorically not.

Let us go a little further up the road to Steeple Claydon, where the bus company Langston & Tasker operates. That company has one of the main home-to-school contracts in the county of Buckinghamshire. Andy and Dan Price, who own the business, are having to deal not only with the increase in overheads that the cost of living pressures and the global oil price have brought to them, but massive increases in overheads because of the diversions that are affecting their school buses, and the damage to their vehicles caused by the crumbling roads that have been unable to cope with the thousands of daily HGV movements. Tyres have been torn off the company’s buses because the edge of the road has become like a bread knife as those thousands of HGVs have been forced out on to the verge, causing huge damage.

There are cases of landowners being messed around by not being offered a fair price for their land, or having land taken only to be told, “We have taken too much” or “We have taken too little and will have to take a bit more, but we are not going to tell you when you will get it back, or if you will get it back”. There was one tragic case of a farmer in my constituency who suffered a fatal heart attack. It is certainly the family’s view that the strains and the pressures and the stresses of the way in which he was treated by High Speed 2 Ltd were in part, if not wholly, to blame.

Construction projects like this bring real misery to communities. They will bring that same misery along the stretch from Crewe to Manchester. They will bring that same misery wherever big state infrastructure is put in place.

I am grateful to the HS2 Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), who has visited the constituency and always been available to discuss concerns. I am grateful to the new residents commissioner, Stewart Jackson, for spending two and a half hours in my car on Friday morning as I personally drove him round all the sites where roads have been damaged and showed him the inexplicable contradictions between what HS2 said it would do and what it has actually done. I showed him some of the farms that have been so badly messed about, and the homes have been boarded up and taken. I am also grateful to the construction commissioner, Sir Mark Worthington, for the time he has spent in the constituency and in engaging with me.

However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said earlier, there are still no answers about the price that has to be hit before anyone says, “Enough!” The reality is that when these big projects set off, with their huge commitments and unlimited budgets, they take on a life of their own. Completing these projects becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the contractors are out of control, no matter how much goodwill and fantastic effort goes into trying to rein them in.

To put this into perspective, let me say that I doubt that any other right hon. or hon. Member has a member of staff working full time just on the construction of this railway and East West Rail in their constituency. Such is the scale of the workload—the incoming—on HS2-related matters in my constituency.

No matter how much goodwill and engagement there is, and no matter how much the issues are looked at and properly interrogated, the contractors will carry on regardless. HS2 Ltd will carry on regardless. They see it as building this railway, full stop. We often get warm words. We often get roadshows at which they say they are listening, but the problem is that nothing changes. I give this to the House as a warning: this is the reality that underpins some of these infrastructure projects, particularly this one. I live in hope that one day sense will be seen and this project can be scrapped for good, but in the meantime we need a massive change of attitude from HS2 Ltd, from the contractors and from all who work for them, so that they start to put communities first.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Largan]

I could not have put it better myself. When I flagged this point earlier, Opposition Members said it is a constituency interest, which is very revealing. A Member of Parliament’s list of priorities is supposed to be country, constituency, party and then self. It is slightly worrying that, when the interests of the country come up against the interests of a narrow corner of north London, the leader of the Labour party opts for self, party, constituency and then country last, which is very revealing about his priorities.

HS2 is an important infrastructure project, so I take great pleasure in busting some of the myths we have heard this evening. A series of myths about high-speed rail have been perpetuated over the last decade by a combination of muddled thinking and well-financed interest groups, and I will take them one by one.

As we have heard tonight, this is all about time. Who needs an extra 30 minutes off rail journeys down to London? First, this has never been primarily about journey times and speed; this has always been about capacity.

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend and I never fell out when we took opposite sides in the Brexit referendum, and we will not fall out over this. He says HS2 has always been about capacity, so why did it have to be built as a high-speed line so dead straight that it had to go through the middle of ancient woodland and the Calvert Jubilee nature reserve? If it were about capacity, the line could have been slower from the outset and could therefore have gone around ancient woodland and nature reserves.

[Robert Largan]

If we are going to spend billions of pounds on a new railway line, we want to make it a fast line. If we were to give in to my hon. Friend’s demands and scrap HS2 tomorrow, we would quickly run up against gridlock on the west coast main line, which is almost at complete capacity already.

International Travel

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We all remember Margaret Keenan receiving that very first properly approved vaccination in the entire world, and that happened in this country. It was not just that: we also got the vaccination programme out first and, critically, the booster programme out first and showed world leadership. Actually—this is partly in response to the comments of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh); I did not pick up this point—2.6 billion people have received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccination, so we have made more of a contribution than any other country in the world. It is absolutely right to recognise all of that.

I do not know the technicalities of quite what happens—I imagine that we must sign an SI—but I do know that we need a few days to alert everyone to change the systems for Border Force and ensure that people already away can adjust to the change. However, it is only three more sleeps, is it not? I hope that my hon. Friend can contain himself.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. It is the right thing to do and, as I have said before, freedom works. However, may I press him on his answer to the Chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) about ensuring that, after a period of having been wound down to deal with fewer passengers, ports of entry are ready to give that warm British welcome to people either returning home or visiting for travel and leisure? I heard a horror story the other day that, at Heathrow terminal 5, e-gates were telling everybody to seek assistance but there was only one official. Will he do everything possible to support our airports and work with the Home Office to ensure that all ports of entry are ready to receive people?

[Grant Shapps]

I absolutely will do that. I know that Border Force has been working hard, sometimes under difficult conditions. Many people do not realise that every time there was a change in which countries were added or removed or rules changed—there were hundreds of them—that often required not just software but hardware changes. As a passenger put their passport down on an egate, it was reading not only their passport for permission to enter but checking the passenger locator form, their vaccination status and how they had filled in the form—it was doing an awful lot of work behind the scenes. Updates, unfortunately, commonly caused breaks in that system. As far as I know, we were the only country in the world to even attempt anything as ambitious on e-gates—I certainly came across no equivalent in North America or Europe. It is really important that much of that bureaucracy will be removed as that should smooth things out. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), I will discuss Border Force resourcing with the Home Secretary.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

No, that is absolutely incorrect. We have just heard about this Government’s investment in Stoke. That is investment we are going to spread across the country. It is false to claim that that £1.2 billion is the total funding. It is not, as I have already pointed out. There will be £5.7 billion over five years for the city region sustainable transport settlement, for example, bringing more money in. I will write to the hon. Lady with a detailed breakdown, but I ask her to take into account the full amount of money being spent on buses—a record never achieved before by any Government, as far as I can see.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

T4. At a meeting I chaired between East West Rail and residents in the town of Winslow in my constituency whose houses back on to the new railway, we were disappointed to learn from East West Rail that it plans to launch with diesel-only trains borrowed from another railway. Will my hon. Friend make an intervention with East West Rail to ensure it launches with bi-mode trains that can run on battery where the railway comes close to people’s homes in towns such as Winslow and villages such as Verney Junction and Newton Longville?

[Wendy Morton]

I know that my hon. Friend takes a close interest in this issue on behalf of his constituents, as I would expect. I would be very happy to have a meeting with him, at which he can share with me some of the concerns he has on behalf of his constituents.

Integrated Rail Plan: North and Midlands

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Stoke-on-Trent is, as ever, brilliantly represented by my hon. Friend. He will get HS2 trains into the centre of Stoke, and we will work closely with him to ensure that that benefits his constituents in every possible way.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

The strengthening of regional rail is the right thing to do and my right hon. Friend has my support in that respect; however, given that the original HS2 business case was ropey at best, will my right hon. Friend set out what the loss of a leg does to the overall business case? Surely, the right thing to do is to scrap it altogether, save more than £100usb billion and put that into more of the regional schemes.

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend should tell that to the 2 miles of tunnel that has already been dug for HS2. I know he has not been the HS2 plan’s firmest supporter, but at this stage, with 20,000 people and hundreds of apprenticeships working with HS2, I think that train has probably left the station.

HS2

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I stand with the petitioners calling for HS2 to be scrapped—first, on cost grounds. At a time when the state is reaching deeper into people’s pockets, it is obscene to keep throwing money into this unwanted project. The latest estimate for the total cost is £146 billion; that is 10 times the original estimate.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that covid has completely changed likely travel patterns, and that the big commuting demand will be much reduced? So where is the argument for capacity, which HS2 was supposed to be about?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention; he has read my mind—this is a point that I will come to shortly. The National Audit Office has noted that 50% of the costs for phase 1 are still based on HS2 Ltd’s estimates, consultant designs and benchmarking information, rather than actual costs—real pounds and pence—agreed with industry. Therefore, the overall cost could clearly rise again. HS2’s own revised cost estimates assume that it will be able to find £2.8 billion of savings, yet there has already been a substantial dip into its contingency budgets. We all know that the case for HS2 was ropey to start with; some estimated a 66p return for every taxpayer pound spent. If rumours of the eastern leg being scrapped are true, that must make the business case utterly untenable.

As my right hon. Friend says, there is also the aftermath of covid. The Transport Committee heard last year that rail passenger numbers are unlikely to recover to more than three quarters of 2019 levels—other estimates have it as low as 47%. The pandemic, and new working patterns, should surely allow for fresh eyes to look at High Speed 2.

I fear that the cat was somewhat let out of the bag by Douglas Oakervee, who, at the Transport for the North annual conference last year, was quoted as saying,

“The construction industry was in a very fragile position”.

He went on to justify his recommendation as a way of preventing harm to the construction industry. That is a purely unacceptable rationale.

This leads me to the environmental destruction. Hedgerows, trees and nature reserves, such as Calvert Jubilee in my constituency—destroyed. Water quality and wildlife are being put at risk; environmental standards that were agreed are now not being met, as has been well documented by the Chilterns Conservation Board and the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. Now, in my constituency, we have uncovered evidence of limestone being applied to land taken, rendering it useless for any future agricultural use. No prizes for guessing what the endgame is there; there is more to this gravy train than just the train.

Worst of all, HS2 brings real human misery to my constituents, and constituents up and down the line of route. This is through the endless road closures; the destruction of local rural roads, which are in conditions that are not safe to travel on; the grossly unfair way that landowners and farmers are treated; and people being left in a state of severe stress and anxiety by not knowing what will happen to their land, homes and businesses—not for days and weeks, but for months and years. I am devastated to tell this House that, from among the hundreds of people in this state of stress and anxiety, there have now been cases of people suffering heart attacks and losing their life, which I fear is not a coincidence.

Let us look at the reality. Let us call time on HS2 right now, ending this waste of money and this destructive project.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

We recognise the importance of rail freight, and of supporting all the newly announced freeports. I know that the rail Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), will be happy to meet my hon. Friend.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of the impact on roads along the routes of (a) HS2 and (b) East West Rail of traffic connected to the construction of those railway lines.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Andrew Stephenson)]

Assessments of the impact of HS2 construction traffic on roads were included within the environmental assessments submitted during the passage of the High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Act 2017 and the High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Act 2021. For East West Rail the impact of construction on roads is monitored in compliance with the Transport and Works Act orders.

[Greg Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend, and the rail Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), for visiting my constituency during the summer recess to see for themselves the many issues that the construction of HS2 and East West Rail are causing for my constituents, one of which is the perilous state of the roads following a number of HGV movements. Will my hon. Friend reassure me that there will be urgent and rapid action to make safe those roads affected by the construction of those two projects?

[Andrew Stephenson]

Both the HS2 and East West Rail projects undertook full surveys of road conditions for the designated lorry routes prior to the construction works commencing. HS2 Ltd and East West Rail Company must ensure that all road damage as a result of construction works is repaired to the standard reported in those surveys. My hon. Friend continues to be a vocal champion for his constituents, and I look forward to continuing to work with him on this and other issues.

East West Rail: Aylesbury Spur

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) on securing this debate. He has made the case for the Aylesbury spur incredibly eloquently, and I wish to add just a few very brief comments to support the case that he has made.

As my hon. Friend said, this is the railway that we do want in Buckinghamshire. Within the county of Buckinghamshire, the existing approved stretch of East West Rail is currently entirely in my constituency as it arrives from Oxfordshire and departs into Milton Keynes. But the Aylesbury spur is vital as it adds a level of connectivity to Buckinghamshire that is truly game changing. A massive part of the appeal of East West Rail to my constituents in the first place was not just connecting, via a new station in Winslow, Bicester to Bletchley, but having that vital link with the Chiltern line in the town of Aylesbury and access to the key services and attractions in around that town, not least Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

As my hon. Friend said, given the suffering we have faced in Buckinghamshire from the railway we do not want, HS2, and the significant disruption East West Rail has itself brought on the main line during that construction phase, it can be only fair and equitable for the full East West Rail connectivity to be delivered. As he outlined, the spur is on a line that is already in existence and being used for aggregate deliveries and freight.

The spur is the key to unlocking the full potential of this east-west connection, which is why, despite those disruptive and frustrating impacts building East West Rail has caused—the subject dominates so much of my time and I am grateful that the Minister has engaged with it in trying to help resolve things—I truly welcome the boost it will bring to the north of Buckinghamshire. It will reduce congestion and pollution, create new job opportunities and allow for that decisive step towards enhancing economic prosperity, particularly for our rural communities. My constituents need to know that their patience will be worth it and that they will reap the full benefits of restoring this vital link between some of the fastest-growing areas of the south-east. We have waited long enough. We really need the Aylesbury spur to be delivered.

Britain’s Railways

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I most certainly welcome the hon. Lady’s welcome for the White Paper. It is great to hear that she thinks that flexi-tickets will help her constituents; I think that they will, as work patterns evolve post covid. I can provide her with the reassurances that she is after, because today’s announcement of Great British Railways does not change how fares have been capped up to now, and all those regimes will remain in place. I think there are great benefits coming down the road—down the line, actually—for her constituents.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I welcome the commitment to making our railways more passenger-focused and, indeed, resisting Opposition Members’ calls to go back to the bad old days of nationalisation. My right hon. Friend will know, however, that my constituents suffer at the hands of the railway that we do not want, HS2, while the railway that we do want, East West Rail, lacks a firm commitment to the important connectivity of the Aylesbury spur. As a key strand of this review is passenger-focused connectivity, will he fully commit to the Aylesbury spur?

[Grant Shapps]

I do not think we could ever accuse my hon. Friend of not putting on the record his concerns about a new railway line, HS2, being built through his constituency. He has been a clear champion for his constituents in that regard. The other new railway—East West Rail and the Aylesbury spur—is a matter that is under consideration. I note that there is an Adjournment debate on the subject this coming Monday, which one of my hon. Friends will be answering. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) will get the opportunity to put many a point across as we consider the exact path for East West Rail and its spurs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I will now come to the final question, from Greg Smith. I am pretty disappointed—topical questions are meant to be short and punchy. I say to everybody that, in the future, we have to get through them.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

On 6 January, the Transport Committee heard evidence of the continuing nightmares faced by communities at the hands of HS2 Ltd. What progress has been made on the excellent suggestions made at the Committee, particularly for a new independent role with real teeth to hold HS2 Ltd to account?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

My hon. Friend modestly mentions the excellent suggestions that I believe he suggested at the Select Committee on 6 January. HS2 Ltd is meeting some parish councils on 1 March. I know that my great friend the HS2 Minister is looking forward to ongoing discussions about the ideas that my hon. Friend raised in that Select Committee.

Future of the Coach Industry

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I absolutely welcome the unprecedented level of support that the Government have put into supporting businesses. However, it is clear from this debate that the coach sector has fallen through the cracks and needs further support. Businesses such as Masons Coaches in Cheddington and Countrywide Coaches in Princes Risborough in my constituency are losing frightening amounts of money every single month, and they need support. We can be in no doubt that UK coach operators are facing the very real prospect of going bust all over our country.

First and foremost, we need recognition that the coach sector is an integral part of the leisure sector. Home-to-school transport is an important part of its business, but until it gets the recognition that it is part of the leisure sector, too many businesses will go under. Indeed, one business in my constituency is operating home-to-school transport, but without any of its other usual activities it is still losing in excess of £30,000 a month. That is just not sustainable.

I was struck by recent survey data completed across the sector, which shows that there has been a 90% reduction in operational mileage from April 2020 to October 2020, compared to the same period last year—2019 saw UK coaches cover some 130 million miles in this country, whereas in 2020 the figure was 13 million miles. There has been an 80% reduction in vehicle hires—equivalent to 3.6 million days in 2019, down to 758,000 in 2020. The numbers speak for themselves.

We cannot presume that carrying on with just saying that home-to-school transport is enough will be the answer for our coach sector. We need a whole-Government approach, because this is not just a problem for the Department for Transport. We need to bring in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Treasury to ensure that our coach sector gets the support it needs.

I particularly add my voice to those calls to give those businesses the support they need on vehicle finance. They are all debt-leveraged up to their eyeballs, but many are also indebted, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) said, because they have taken on considerable debts to meet the PSV requirements. They need support on that and support in grants, and then we will have a healthy coach sector to return to after this crisis.