Bus Funding
Debate between Laurence Turner and Louise Haigh(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Louise Haigh
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those incredibly important questions. We have committed to publish the evaluation of the £2 bus fare cap shortly. We will introduce the better buses Bill in the coming weeks, which will allow every area of the country to avail themselves of the franchising powers and overturn the ideological ban on public ownership. My Department is also taking a much more proactive enabling role with local transport authorities, making sure that they have the capability and capacity to move to franchising. A significant amount of the funding settlement announced today is specifically for capability and staffing in local transport authorities.
Finally, on pork barrel politics, the reason behind today’s funding is that we are not in the business of picking winners and losers. We want to ensure that every corner of the country has the funding it deserves and the ability to avail itself of the style of buses that we have enjoyed in London for four decades.
Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)
Given that the Conservative party’s record was a 20% cut in the bus service operators grant, a 40p-in-the-pound cut in local bus funding, and 12,000 bus services cut between 2010 and 2023—a fall of more than half—does my right hon. Friend agree that some of what we have heard today is a bit rich?
Louise Haigh
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We saw bus mileage and passenger numbers plummet under the last Tory Government. The hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) talked about the funding that they provided, but they were throwing money at a broken system. This record funding for the majority of the country comes alongside massive reform so that we can give back control and deliver the better buses that every corner of the country deserves.
Rail Performance
Debate between Laurence Turner and Louise Haigh(1 month ago)
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Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)
The shadow Secretary of State said that we should pay attention to performance statistics. The figures that I have obtained from the Department show that over the past seven years, there was a 35% increase in temporary and emergency speed restrictions on the network. The Secretary of State has a difficult inheritance, but can she set out for us the work that she is doing to refocus the industry on the hard graft of understanding, maintaining and improving our crumbling infrastructure?
Louise Haigh
Shadow Great British Railways brings together the Department, Network Rail, and those operators that are already in public ownership to look at integration and ensure that our investment in the network delivers improvements for passengers as quickly and efficiently as possible. That work will absolutely cover maintaining the network, and we will set out how we will do so in the next control period, as we look towards the second phase of the spending review.