Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is right: it is really important to make these bus services work in a manner where people can just rely on them and where they do not even have to look at a timetable because the frequency is there. As part of doing that, we will be opening up bus open data powers, which will ensure that that information is transferred and available to people at bus stops and in their apps, enabling a much more frequent service to run.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

2. What steps he is taking to reduce the cost of rail fares.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

5. What steps he is taking to reduce the cost of rail fares.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

Fares are crucial to funding railway operations and our upgrade programme. We have frozen regulated rail fares in line with inflation for the seventh year running.

[Mike Amesbury]

Given that rail fares have gone up by a massive 40% since 2010, we now have the second most expensive railway in Europe. However, I still have a situation where constituents in the Northwich part of my constituency cannot get a reliable train service—in fact, disabled passengers cannot get one on one side at all. What are the Minister and the Government going to do about that?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The hon. Gentleman would probably like to know that 98p of every £1 paid in fares goes back into the railways, which allows investment in all the areas where he would like to see it, including accessibility for his constituents.