Rachel Hopkins
Main Page: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South and South Bedfordshire)Department Debates - View all Rachel Hopkins's debates with the Department for Transport
(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberThe Government are providing the largest public investment in buses for a generation, providing more than £4.5 billion-worth of services in England outside London since 2020, as we rebuilt post covid.
My constituents are deeply concerned about the proposed cuts to the 78, 79 and 200 bus routes linking villages and towns in Bedfordshire. That is in the context of the Government’s own latest bus statistics, which show that in the last decade the bus sector in England outside London lost 15,000 workers and had around 600 million fewer annual bus passenger journeys. The Government’s bus strategy, published in 2020, is not reversing that decline. Will they commit to reversing the ideological ban on municipal bus companies and ensure that all local authorities get sufficient funding to deliver the bus services our communities need?
The hon. Lady seems to have forgotten the covid pandemic. The number of local bus passenger journeys in England increased by half a billion—that is 19%—in the financial year ending March 2023. Her local authority received extra BSIP-plus—bus service improvement plans—funding of £19 million. I urge her bus operators to sign up to the £2 bus fare, which has been transformational across the country in raising bus numbers.