Rural Bus Services

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), who, in the 17 months that he has been in this Parliament, has put the “great” back into Great Yarmouth.

Rural bus services were an issue before the general election and have continued to be so in my constituency of wonderful South Derbyshire—I have put the “south” into South Derbyshire. The difficulty we find in our rural areas is that we can take a bus out on a Tuesday but we have to wait until Thursday to get the bus back. That is not conducive to family life, I find.

I ask the Minister to take on board many of the points made by my hon. Friend and, in particular, the issues of flexibility and whether we can expand opportunities. Shropshire has brought in community buses to act as feeders to the main bus routes. In one village on my patch, Scropton, we have had round-table meetings with three different commercial bus providers. None of them can make that route work but we could find a way for the county council to put the money into feeder, community transport buses if the section 19 arrangement could be changed to allow for that. Will the Minister be kind enough to look at the pilots around the country, because rural, isolated parts of Derbyshire provide an opportunity for the money to be used better, which is what the coalition Government ought to be all about? The coalition should be about freedom, accessibility and using public money wisely.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to come up with some excellent answers. I shall stay through to the bitter end of 12.30 to listen to those brilliant answers. If he can sort out the bus issue in Scropton, he would make my life so much happier.

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[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) on securing the debate, which is so important to so many of us. As my colleague, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), said, we have exactly the same problems, although there is a border between us. The problem is huge in North West Durham, and in a huge rural area, which many hon. Members here represent.

When I talked to my local authority about the problem, it said that it took a £400 million hit in cuts, with a 28% cut in local transport. It has simply passed that 28% cut across to local bus services and subsidies. I am sure that some hon. Members here will be in a worse situation, but some communities in my constituency have no buses on Sundays, some have none after 6 pm, and some have only one bus a week. Some communities have no buses at all. That has hit the elderly, the disabled and, particularly in my constituency, the young. We have not heard much about young people, but they tell me that my county has cut all home-to-school transport to the absolute legal limit. It has cut all home-to-school transport to faith schools, which has had a massive impact in my constituency, and all home-to-school or home-to-college transport for those aged 16 and above.

[Heather Wheeler]

I am glad that the hon. Lady raised school transport. Derbyshire county council is holding massive consultation on the issue. Some of my villages are astride roads such as the A50 and the A38, which are major roads, and the thought of 11, 12 and 13-year-olds trying to cross them because they are on a route as the crow flies is bizarre. I thank her for bringing up education transport.

[Pat Glass]

I agree with everything that the hon. Lady says. In parts of my constituency, as the nights are getting darker, young people from age 11 must walk home along roads that are unsafe because they do not have footpaths or street lighting.