Nick Thomas-Symonds
Main Page: Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour - Torfaen)Department Debates - View all Nick Thomas-Symonds's debates with the Department for Transport
(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the First Report of the Transport Committee, Community Transport and the Department for Transport’s proposed consultation, HC 480, and the Government response, HC 832.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the other members of the Transport Committee for their work on this inquiry. I am pleased to see that my hon. Friends the Members for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), for Easington (Grahame Morris) and for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), and many hon. Members from across the House, are present to debate our report.
The Transport Committee often scrutinises multibillion-pound investment in roads and railways—high-profile mega-infrastructure projects. Community transport rarely comes under the spotlight, yet it encapsulates what local transport is for: connecting people with their communities. It is vital to many thousands of users, who are often the most vulnerable in society, and it provides them with reliable, high-quality and, above all, friendly and caring local transport services.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
On that point, in my constituency I have a provider called Torfaen Community Transport, which is exactly as my hon. Friend says. Does she agree that, with rules and regulations, it is important to recognise the special status of community transport and the excellent services it provides?
Lilian Greenwood
My hon. Friend is exactly right, and I suspect I will hear from many more hon. Members who want to talk about their local providers.
On reading through the many comments on the Committee’s online forum from community transport groups, drivers, users young and old, their families and even a tea shop and bed and breakfast in the Yorkshire Dales, it is clear just how important those services are to people’s daily lives. It is noticeable how many people referred to them as a lifeline. I recommend that everyone looks at #WithoutCT on Twitter to see the range of socially valuable activities that would simply not be possible for some without a local community transport operator.