Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by the Prime Minister on 2 February that "it is really important that we champion the building of buses" (HC Deb col 41), what steps they are taking to increase the manufacture of zero emission buses in the United Kingdom.

The Government’s DRIVE35 programme supports the design, development and manufacture of zero emission vehicles, including buses. This will help UK bus manufacturers and suppliers invest in new technologies, scale up their production and strengthen domestic capability.

In March, the Government announced £73.2 million in additional zero‑emission bus funding to support the delivery of 484 zero‑emission buses across 10 projects in England. To give UK bus manufacturers greater visibility of future demand, the Government has also published a 10-year zero-emission bus order pipeline, updated twice yearly.