Business of the House

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

Congratulations to my hon. Friend—a number of hon. Members would love to do the same in their areas. He will be aware that the bus market outside London is deregulated and that decisions about service provision are primarily a commercial matter for bus operators. Individual English local authorities will make decisions on whether to subsidise bus services. The Bus Services Act 2017 provides the tools that local authorities need to improve local bus services and increase passenger numbers, but I am sure I am not alone in this place in thinking that we need to do more to provide better bus transportation for all our communities.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

May a debate be held on the urgent need to fund community-based projects to tackle climate change? North Glasgow Housing Association is the biggest community-owned housing association in Glasgow, and with Lambhill Stables it is doing fantastic work in all sorts of fields using climate challenge funding from the Scottish Government, including community swapshops for furniture and even using comics to educate young people. Unfortunately, that funding has not been renewed this year, so the projects cannot continue. May we have an urgent debate on the need to advance funding for community-based climate change initiatives?

[Andrea Leadsom]

First, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman’s constituents on their work. It is incredibly important that we do all we can to make people aware of the importance of climate change and the steps we can take to address it. He will be aware that our 25-year environment plan seeks to ensure that ours is the first generation that leaves our environment in a better state than we found it. Within that plan, there are many different initiatives. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to talk to Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about what more they can do to support such initiatives.