Siobhain McDonagh
Main Page: Siobhain McDonagh (Labour - Mitcham and Morden)Department Debates - View all Siobhain McDonagh's debates with the Department for Transport
(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
I will call Sarah Dyke to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered bus services in rural areas.
It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain.
Bus services in rural areas provide a crucial lifeline to many of my constituents. They link communities to hospitals, shops, high street services, and leisure and social activities. They take students to school and college, and they take adults to work. But there has been a worrying trend of decline over the past decade. Research from Channel 4 found that bus provision has decreased by 28% across England since 2011. There has been action from the previous Government, such as investing £3.5 billion into services since the pandemic and introducing the £2 fare cap, but that has been insufficient to arrest the decline.
The loss of services is especially prevalent in rural areas, and it detrimentally impacts those who live there. Rural bus service users travel an average of 47% further compared with their urban counterparts. They travel for longer, and their routes are funded less per head than those in urban areas.
Dr Opher
Sorry. We have experienced a lot of problems with cross-border rural buses in our area. The hon. Lady mentioned local authorities. If there are two local authorities, it creates enormous problems. In Wotton-under-Edge, we have just lost the 84/85 bus service because we cannot get agreement from all the different local authorities to fund it. That is putting a severe strain on rural populations. I would ask for that to be considered.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Member needs to sit down. This issue is clearly of much concern in many constituencies across the country. It could be appropriate for a group of Members to get together and submit an application for a 60 or 90-minute debate in Westminster Hall, which would give Members the opportunity to make their cases and the Minister enough time to respond to their concerns. I am not formally requiring that of anybody, but I suggest that it might be a useful mechanism.
Question put and agreed to.