Decarbonising Rural Transport

Debate between Margaret Ferrier and Helen Morgan

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan]

Yes. Secondly, if someone cannot access a car because they are young, are prevented from driving by their health or simply cannot afford to run one, they become stranded on the island of where they live. They cannot sign up to a college course, they cannot commit to a job outside the area and, in many cases, they cannot access what is becoming increasingly centralised healthcare provision without calling on endless favours from friends and family or using private cars instead.

The lack of a usable service not only means we emit far more greenhouse gases than we used to or, more accurately, than we need to, but there is a social and economic cost. For instance, the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen, near Oswestry in North Shropshire, is a top-class orthopaedic hospital with a dedicated veterans’ centre that takes patients from all over the country. We are extremely proud of it. Recently, however, the hospital is struggling to recruit and retain its staff and one of the factors in that is the lack of a bus service back into Oswestry for those working early or late shifts because those end-of-day services have been axed from the route. More widely, the issue is driving young people from our towns, increasing the proportion of elderly residents, and harming the economic vibrance of the high streets.

How can we reverse that in an area where the council is spending 85% of its budget on social care and where bus services have been so badly depleted that the remaining routes are uneconomic? At this point, I should also mention the importance of active travel. For an increasingly elderly population, in an area where rural roads are single carriageway with quite fast speeds, it is probably not sensible to suggest that those people should be cycling every day between the market towns, which are some distance away from each other.

[Margaret Ferrier]

The focus on active travel is sensible, because it has both an environmental and health benefit. However, there are many reasons that is not a suitable focus for rural communities when it comes to decarbonisation. Does the hon. Member share my concern that while the Government’s active travel strategy seems to acknowledge that, they have yet to set out any further specific guidance?

[Helen Morgan]

I think that is a fair point. Active travel has a role to play in towns, but it is concerning that we are not investing in public transport to move people around in rural areas. We need some clarity on that.

Going back to cycling and walking, many shorter journeys within towns can be made easier on a bike or on foot if there is a sensible network of crossings and dropped kerbs. In towns such as North Shropshire’s, which are largely medieval market towns, it would clearly be difficult to add a big network of cycle lanes into the narrow roads. During covid, councils were very quick to reimagine the way vehicles flowed around the town, making a pedestrian-friendly space workable at a fast pace. It would be good to see those councils being encouraged to continue to find practical ways of allowing people to move more easily around the centre of our towns. Removing the need for even a proportion of short car journeys, even if only on days when the weather is good, would surely have an impact on car emissions and—as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) just pointed out—improves the health and wellbeing of anyone who decides to walk and cycle a little more.

Returning to the thorny issue of public transport, I am afraid that national intervention is probably needed. I welcome the restoring your railways scheme; North Shropshire has a great bid in for the Oswestry to Gobowen line, with an important stop at the hospital, and I take this opportunity to plug that bid. However, railway stations are not accessible for everyone. There is not really access for all where there is no step-free access to the railway station, which is another big problem in rural constituencies. At Whitchurch in my constituency, people cannot access the southbound platform, so despite the fact that there is actually a pretty good public transport service into Shrewsbury and beyond, on the main line to Crewe and Manchester, if someone has trouble with steps or has a lot of heavy baggage or a pushchair, they will turn again to their private car.

We are on the list for the Access for All plan. We have made our bid, which I hope will be successful, but it takes years and years to come through. If we are trying to get to net zero by 2050, the Access for All process really does need to be speeded up and, let’s face it, most places do not have a railway station or a railway line. Many of those stations have been axed from rural market towns and would be totally uneconomic to reinstate, particularly as those towns largely have housing estates over the former track, so we need to have a nationally led bus strategy that addresses people getting out of their cars and on to buses.

What would that look like? I am open-minded about demand-led travel and the technology that enables it, and it may well be part of the solution to improve connectivity and public transport in the more rural parts of Britain, and to integrate that with other parts of the network. We see elements of that with some of the voluntary schemes that are in place—the dial-a-ride, North Salop Wheelers-type schemes that help to get elderly and more vulnerable people out of their houses and into the towns on market days. However, those schemes are volunteer-run by nature, which is not necessarily sustainable. Demand-led travel might be part of the solution, but in areas where the population is sparse and the benefits of lift sharing and journey planning might be more limited, we still need a proper investigation into the relative benefits of demand-led travel and a good look at reliable, clock-face services for smaller market towns and the feed-in services from their surrounding villages.

We do, of course, need to talk about the types of buses—the fact that they do not all need to be huge, and that in future, they probably need to be electric or hydrogen-fuelled—but I will not elaborate on that point, because it has already been made. We should also accept that in small villages, there will always be a need for the private car, and we need to continue to incentivise the roll-out of electric cars. Public charging points are, therefore, really important. We are only just beginning to see the roll-out of public charging points in North Shropshire, but the capacity of the electricity infrastructure to cope with the additional demand on the rural grid is absolutely critical. I urge the Minister to consider not only the number of points, but the ability of the underlying energy infrastructure to support what is going to be an increasing electricity load, particularly in rural areas.

Overall, I support empowering local councils to develop their own public transport plans within the framework of a national strategy to find the solution that serves their area best. Empowering means funding and supporting those councils with the expertise they need to deliver a better future for rural transport, and funding them to tackle the additional rural distances is a critical factor. The rural economy, just like the climate, is approaching a tipping point, so we need a radical approach to public transport that can help tip both things in the right direction.

Baby Loss and Safe Staffing in Maternity Care

Debate between Margaret Ferrier and Helen Morgan

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

The APPG’s report on staffing shortages found that hospital staff feel that post-natal care has suffered the most from cuts, with most aftercare being devolved to healthcare workers who do not hold the same level of qualification as a midwife. That will impact on the health of mother and baby—for example, if they do not have access to breastfeeding support because resources are stretched too thin. Does the hon. Member agree that post-natal care needs urgent attention?

[Helen Morgan]

I agree. Many of us have experience of less than brilliant post-natal care, and the staff shortages are well documented. The Health and Social Care Committee report recommendation that £200 million to £350 million a year is required to be invested immediately in maternity services speaks to that issue. On Wednesday 30 March, the then Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), confirmed that £222 million had already been committed but was not guaranteed for the future, although he would keep it under review. That was two Health Secretaries ago.

On 1 September, the next Health Secretary argued that, given how stretched the NHS was, services such as maternity might no longer be a priority. I seek reassurance from the Minister that that is not the case. Maternity services have been treated as a Cinderella service for years and we have been left with shocking scandal after shocking scandal, with thousands of families devastated by poor care at a time when they were supposed to be at their happiest. I am at a loss to understand the deprioritising of maternity services—the one service that every one of us will need at least once in our lives.

The workforce gap of 2,000 midwives and 500 new consultants has been referred to, but it is estimated that nearly 700 midwives have left the profession in the past year, and eight out of 10 report that they do not have enough staff on their shift to provide a safe service. Will the Minister commit to increasing funding to meet the £200 million to £350 million-a-year recommendation, for a specified period of time, and to developing a fully costed, multi-year workforce plan?

The safe staffing report produced by the baby loss and maternity APPGs, on which I serve, has already been referred to. I draw particular attention to the need for more bereavement midwives. The pressure and increased likelihood of failure, and the sheer exhaustion that overworked maternity staff feel, must be a cause of some of the other issues we have seen at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, and at the other trusts that face challenges.

Shropshire is not the only area of the country to have suffered a crisis in its maternity services, with Morecambe Bay, East Kent and Nottingham all facing serious issues. Far too many families have faced tragedy. I ask the Minister to ensure that their experiences are not in vain, and that the Government will act on unsafe staffing.