Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what support his Department is providing to unpaid carers in (a) Stockport constituency and (b) Greater Manchester to help deal with the effects of the cost of living crisis.

Greater Manchester Combined Authority has been allocated £94.8 million government funding for their Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP), to deliver improvements to their local bus services. Part of this funding has been used to introduce a £2 bus fare cap to help people in Stockport and Greater Manchester with cost of living pressures and save on everyday travel costs. This is in addition to £1.07billion funding from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement to transform local public transport and active travel networks and £37.5 million for zero emission buses, which will benefit all residents.

In order to keep vital services running, we have provided over £135 million in emergency and recovery funding since March 2020 to Greater Manchester Combined Authority and bus operators to support bus services until end of June. On 17 May, we announced that we will provide up to £300 million in further funding from July 2023 until April 2025, of which £140 million will go to bus operators in England, outside London, to help them maintain bus services. Recently we confirmed an additional £18m in extraordinary funding for Greater Manchester to help maintain local transport services until the end of 2024.