Improving Public Transport

Paul Kohler Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

I commend the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) on her excellent maiden speech, and congratulate her on having the oldest road in her constituency—and doubtless, the oldest potholes as well.

I also commend my hon. Friends the Members for Horsham (John Milne), for Guildford (Zöe Franklin), for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) and for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) and the hon. Members for Swindon North (Will Stone), for Stroud (Dr Opher), for Leeds South West and Morley (Mr Sewards), for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for East Thanet (Ms Billington), who spoke with one voice on the dire state of public transport in many of our rural areas. I agree with my friend, the hon. Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons): before becoming transport spokesman, I did not realise how lucky we were in London. Although our constituents have legitimate complaints at times, we do not know how lucky we are. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke), and I echo her question to the Minister regarding the disruption to commuters from the south-west caused by the HS2 works on Old Oak Common. What can be done to minimise that disruption?

As we have heard from colleagues across the House, the current state of public transport simply is not good enough. Ticket prices are too high, services are too unreliable, infrastructure is too old and capacity is too meagre—and that is just for those who have access to public transport. Too many parts of our country have no meaningful access to public transport whatsoever. After years of routes being cut and timetables being foreshortened, many people no longer have access to a regular bus service despite living many miles distant from any rail network. This is hampering our economy, holding back local communities and damaging our high streets. Our public transport system should be the engine of growth and opportunity, not an impediment to them. If we are to reach the Government targets on economic growth and net zero we must take rapid and urgent steps to improve our public transport provision. We simply do not have time to tarry.

Let me be clear: my party and I have huge sympathy for the Minister, the Secretary of State and the Government. Everyone knows they inherited a mess from the previous regime’s chaos and missed opportunities. Years of under-investment, chopping, changing and rudderless leadership have left our public transport in turmoil, and I appreciate and publicly acknowledge the new Government’s worthy intentions and evident desire to improve the situation.

My party consequently welcomes the Government’s commitment to long overdue rail reform. I am glad to see the first green shoots of positive change. Ensuring HS2 reaches Euston in the first phase of the project is critical to achieving tangible benefits from what was in danger of becoming an expensive folly, while recent talk of an integrated national transport strategy shows that this Government appreciate that something needs to change.

We welcome the recent announcements on buses, too; as we have heard today from so many colleagues, they are critical to many areas—we know you get it. As hon. Friends so eloquently argued, despite buses being the most utilised form of public transport in the country, they are regularly not given the attention or funding they deserve, so thank you for that.

So far so good, then. However—there is always a “however”—although the Department for Transport is onside, I am not so sure that the Chancellor is, with her real-terms cuts to the Department’s day-to-day and capital budgets. If she is serious about growing the economy, she needs to be serious about properly funding the transport system on which it is built, rather than cutting budgets and making up the shortfall by hiking bus fares by up to 50% and an above-inflation increase in the cost of travel by train.

[Ms Billington]

The hon. Gentleman was not in his place at the time, and indeed neither was I, but it is worthwhile looking at the verdict of another transport nerd, a journalist from the Transport Times, back in 2015, who looked at exactly what happened when the Liberal Democrats did have an opportunity to do something about rural buses:

In county after county, cuts in rural bus service support have been severe. City deals may have been welcomed, but the idea that local government might be trusted to raise its own funding and decide on priorities has slipped further into the mists of history.

I just think it is worth reminding the House of that fact.

[Mr Kohler]

We are talking about now, and we are talking about the fact that you have reduced the bus fare cap.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order—[Interruption.] Order. Just a quick reminder that when I am on my feet, Members should not be.

That is third time the hon. Gentleman has said “you”; perhaps he will be a bit more careful in the rest of his speech.

[Mr Kohler]

Apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker.

We are talking about now, and we are talking about the hike in the bus fare cap to £3. It would cost only £150 million to keep it at £2 according to the House of Commons Library. I thank the Minister for writing to me this week to confirm that a full monitoring and evaluation report has been completed by his Department and will be published in due course, but why is it not being published now? If it is there, we want to see it—what does it say?

I do not doubt the battles the Minister and his colleagues are having with their colleagues in the Treasury. I know the Department for Transport recognises there are fundamental problems across our public transport system. However, there is still vanishingly little detail on which to form a judgment as to whether it has hit on the right solutions.

On the railways, for example, yesterday came the long-awaited announcement of the first three train operating companies to be brought back into public ownership. South Western Railway, which I used in my journey this morning, will come into public ownership next May. That much is known. However, what is not known is how that in itself will improve the customer experience and the service offered. As Great British Railways will still not formally exist by then, South Western Railway will, at least temporarily, be left in the hands of the Government’s operator of last resort, which surely needs more than a name change as it assumes responsibility for millions of extra journeys without a clear mission or purpose, without the necessary resource or expertise, without an effective passenger watchdog and without meaningful reform of our broken fares system. Even when Great British Railways arrives at the station, we still have no understanding of how—or even if—this new behemoth will proceed smoothly along the track.

Uncertainty also shrouds many other public transport plans. Too many local authorities are waiting to know what funds and schemes will be maintained and what will be scrapped, stifling investment and leaving too many areas and communities adrift, as we can see with the lack of certainty over the northern powerhouse, the electrification of north Wales rail, levelling up and active travel. That is why we welcome talk of an integrated national transport plan, as it is clear that the current piecemeal approach is letting down communities and local economies. But the devil will be in the detail, which we need to see sooner rather than later.

Uncertainty likewise surrounds the Government’s approach to rebuilding our decaying infrastructure. To improve our public transport, we need to get spades into the ground, invest money and effort into electrification and, most importantly, build new infrastructure. While there is widespread public disquiet regarding our current public transport provision, there is also deep scepticism about, and often outright opposition to, the major infrastructure projects necessary to achieve real improvement.

HS2’s repeated cost overspends and missed deadlines have contributed to an environment in which the public are rightly sceptical about the UK’s ability to deliver infrastructure on time and within budget. We need to get real. While Bruce Wayne might be rich enough to spend £100 million on a bat shed, the British taxpayer is not. The UK does not have the time or resource required to put every rail line in a tunnel.

Politicians across the political spectrum need to promote a more mature dialogue to improve public understanding of the trade-offs necessary to improve public transport. As we have seen with other large-scale infrastructure projects, once they are built, the public reception is overwhelmingly positive, as it was with Crossrail 1. The benefits of the Elizabeth line are already being lauded from Reading to Romford, with protests long forgotten. A host of neighbouring MPs called for its extension to their constituencies in a recent Westminster Hall debate that I attended.

So let us be honest about what needs to be done and what the Government have learned from these projects. Let us maintain a steady pipeline of new projects to ensure that the billions spent acquiring that knowledge, along with the supply chains and skilled workforce we have built up, are not lost.

Too much time has been wasted, and we do not have time to waste. Public transport is vital to our economy, to widening opportunity and our transition to net zero. As a Londoner, I realise that I am blessed by the public transport system that we have in the capital. Despite sometimes justified criticism of Transport for London, it stands as an exemplar of what can be achieved via a co-ordinated transport strategy and a non-ideological approach to ownership, working with both public and private providers to create an integrated transport network. As we heard from colleagues across the House, the situation is very different across much of the country. I hope that the Secretary of State and the Chancellor are both listening.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.