Decarbonising Rural Transport Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con) I
beg to move, That this House has considered decarbonising rural
transport. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Davies, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting
the debate, which is so important to those of us who live in rural
constituencies like mine. Transport is the United Kingdom’s
highest-emitting sector and is responsible for a quarter of
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Decarbonising Rural
Transport
(North Devon) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered decarbonising rural transport.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate,
which is so important to those of us who live in rural
constituencies like mine.
Transport is the United Kingdom’s highest-emitting sector and is
responsible for a quarter of our emissions. If we want to achieve
net zero by 2050, we need to reduce emissions from our cars, vans
and lorries, but we also need to recognise that rural transport
is different from urban, and that reliance on cars is so much
higher in rural areas. Therefore, we need to include rurality as
a factor in more decisions on how we move to decarbonise our
transportation.
Public transport is limited in rural Britain, and given the
sparsity of population, expanding it along the lines of transport
in our towns and cities is not, in general, financially viable,
or even welcome—for example, sending enormous buses through tiny
country lanes—but we must find ways to extend routes, provide
smaller vehicles or car shares, and reintroduce train lines,
especially where there has been large growth in housing, such as
between Bideford and Barnstaple in my constituency of North
Devon.
(Hastings and Rye)
(Con)
East Sussex County Council has an excellent bus service
improvement plan, one of whose objectives is progressively to
support operators to increase the number of zero-emission buses
used on the network and to upgrade diesel buses to Euro 6
standard as part of the drive to achieve net carbon neutrality by
2050.
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in order to fulfil that
objective, further Government funding opportunities will be
required to introduce battery electric buses or hydrogen fuel
cell buses, and for retrofitting to Euro 6 specification, and
that decarbonisation of rural transport should not be restricted
to local buses but should include trains? Does she further agree
that the extension of HS1 from Ashford to Rye, Hastings and
Bexhill, which will decarbonise and make the journey faster, is
essential?
My hon. Friend is entirely right that all of us in rural
constituencies have plans that we need our councils to deliver to
facilitate the decarbonisation of our rural transport network.
The challenge we face is that, unfortunately, there is not always
the funding to support those fantastic rural transport schemes,
although I hope the Minister will reassure us on that point. I
will come to some of my own suggestions for the bus network in
Devon.
Active travel is an opportunity for some, but the distances
involved in rural commuting by bike mean that it is not always an
option for everyone. In my constituency of North Devon, 2.4% of
work journeys are made by bike, which is a surprisingly high
percentage for such a rural area, but realistically, active
travel is unlikely to replace huge numbers of car journeys unless
it is integrated into a wider transport solution.
I will return to the opportunities to tackle the issues of public
transport and active travel, but we need to be realistic: rural
Britain will continue to rely on its cars for the foreseeable
future.
(Rutherglen and Hamilton
West) (Ind)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Limited
public transport options in rural communities mean that, as the
hon. Lady says, many residents depend on their car for
everything—getting to work, going to the doctor, seeing family
and friends. Does she agree that any strategy to decarbonise
rural transport needs to improve connectivity so that social
isolation is not inadvertently increased?
I agree entirely that there are so many more challenges around
rural connectivity. If we are to continue to rely on our cars, we
need to decarbonise them, but the roll-out of electric charging
points in rural Britain lags behind that in towns, and when the
distances we travel per day are so much greater, investing in an
electric vehicle is a far harder decision to take.
Only 1.5% of North Devon residents have gone fully electric,
compared with 2.1% nationally. I have a hybrid, as the majority
of electric vehicles would not get me to Westminster each week,
and I am not sure I would ever get to Exmoor in my constituency
and back home as there are no charging points where I live. The
nearest one is 5 miles away. To plug in at home, I would need to
lay my own cable down 20 feet of path every evening, and I am not
sure my schedule accommodates that.
While the Transport Minister is here, I want to highlight the
appalling state of the roads in Devon. I am fully aware that we
have the longest road network in the United Kingdom by 2,000
miles and that the council is working flat out to try to repair
the proliferation of potholes that we have seen this winter. Not
only has the weather contributed but we need to recognise that in
rural Britain we have enormous farm vehicles on tiny lanes and we
therefore create even more potholes, yet our council is not
assigned long-term funding solutions to tackle them.
The short-term approach to funding, with inadequate rural
weighting, makes the cost of repairing each pothole far higher.
At this time, Devon is moving teams off scheduled roadworks as we
cannot take on full-time highways teams due to the uncertainty
around long-term funding. I hope that the Minister will be able
to take that away and see what more can be done to address the
entirely unacceptable state of our roads. If there were an Ofsted
inspection of roads, I suspect we would go into special measures,
yet the current funding mechanism contributes to that. The damage
that potholes do to vehicles is also hugely expensive to
motorists and the council, which is no doubt reimbursing a
growing number of inconvenienced motorists with damaged tyres.
And it deters people from switching to active travel solutions
because of the potential risk of falling due to a pothole.
I spend a lot of time in this place talking about connectivity,
often the communication kind, but our transport connections are
vital. The lack of decarbonised public transport is impacting on
decarbonising our travel.
(Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing a really important
debate. When it comes to decarbonising public transport, bus use
is massively important in rural communities like hers and mine. I
am sure she will agree with me that the Government’s £2 cap on
bus fares is a positive thing and it is positive that it has been
extended to June, but even more positive would be to extend it
beyond that. But it is of no use whatever if someone lives in a
community where there is no bus service. When I think about
places in my own community such as the Cartmel peninsula and
areas in Cumbria such as the Eden valley, there is a lack of
options when it comes to bus services—far too few or none at
all—so it would make sense to give local authorities like the new
Westmorland and Furness Council the power to start and run their
own bus services to fill in the gaps and people could spend their
£2 on bus services that actually exist.
I agree with the hon. Member. There is so much more that could be
done. With so many of these rural transport issues, we need local
solutions and for local communities to be able to share their
best practice, because there are some great local bus solutions
up and down the country. I have a remote district council that is
detached from the county council, which is where highways sits.
How do we join up those pieces? More could be done to come up
with innovative solutions, which already exist in places, but are
not universally available. Indeed, bus travel in my constituency
is not universally available, let alone decarbonised, and that
makes things as basic as getting to school both expensive and
problematic.
Our bus company, which I recently met, notes that people are
tending to make fewer trips than they did before the pandemic and
also tending to make shorter and more local journeys as opposed
to long-distance trips on a daily basis. Public transport
providers have had to adapt to that, but our communities still
rightfully expect the same connections to exist as they did
before the pandemic, or even new connections to be developed as
society has changed.
Broadly in my constituency the patronage has recovered to about
80% to 90% of pre-pandemic levels, but with concessionary
journeys recovering only to around 70%. That recovery creates a
challenge in rural settings where margins were stretched or
non-existent before the pandemic. Funding needs to respect
rurality and the higher costs of operating the routes. That could
be done through paying bus service operator grants on a mile or
kilometre basis as opposed to per litre of fuel to cover costs. I
am assured that the industry wishes to engage with the Department
on those points so that a longer-term settlement can be reached
to support rural services on a longer-term basis as opposed to
the current cycle of short-term funding that we are in, even
though that funding is greatly appreciated.
The current Get Around for £2 is fabulous. In my constituency
people can do a fantastic trip from Barnstaple to Lynton for just
£2—a full 26 miles—or get to Exeter on the bus for £2. In normal
times, to get from Ilfracombe, which has recently lost its last
bank, to Barnstaple for the nearest branch, is two to three times
more than the current £2 rate. We need to find a way to
facilitate access to services for remote rural communities. In
other communities, such as Woolacombe, employers provide buses
for their teams to get to work, because there are no public
transport options.
In the peak of the tourist season, overlaid with parking
challenges and air pollution, huge queues of visitors and locals
try to get to our beautiful beaches. Although the availability of
public transport is my primary concern, decarbonisation of it is
an entirely different matter, as rural bus journeys are
significantly longer than urban ones. Capital investment in
suitable vehicles is by definition going to be higher in rural
Britain.
I recently spoke here about introducing a rail link from
Barnstaple to Bideford. We also unsuccessfully submitted an
inquiry into putting in a light rail link from Braunton to
Barnstaple. Time and again, those projects do not progress; one
cannot help but think that our rurality and population sparsity
are factors. I hope that the Department for Transport will
continue its positive work in active travel, with the latest
round of funding of £200 million including rurality as a factor
for the first time.
The previous cycling Minister visited north Devon’s iconic Tarka
trail. Completing a stretch of that trail would see the north and
south coasts of Devon fully connected. The project was ranked
second out of six submitted by Devon County Council. The council
team met the Minister to explain their frustration at having the
five Exeter-based projects succeed, yet the second highest
priority project rejected. I am delighted that rurality is now
being considered following the Minister’s visit, and that the
Tarka trail project is now being resubmitted. I hope that Active
Travel England and the Department will look favourably upon it,
and take further steps to enable more active travel solutions
come to fruition in rural Britain.
Large counties such as Devon, with big urban centres and an
enormous rural hinterland, need different approaches for those
two elements. As a community, we would benefit hugely from
electric bikes, which can undertake longer, hillier journeys and
enable people who may not be able to cycle so far on a
traditional bike to do so. Again, electric bike hire facilities
are available at transport hubs in Exeter but not Barnstaple.
To begin to decarbonise our transport network, we need to look to
transport hubs, where active travel can potentially be the first
or last mile. To do that, our buses and trains should be better
at taking bikes, hubs should have better bike storage and there
should be electric vehicle chargers, if travellers are connecting
to buses or trains, alongside public toilets.
I am taking advantage of the hon. Lady’s generosity, for which I
am grateful. I am in full agreement with what she says about
transport hubs, where there can be electric bikes, non-electric
bikes, and bus and rail interchanges. In our community, we have
several railway lines: Settle to Carlisle, the Furness line, the
Lakes line and the main line. My great concern is that we stand
to lose railway station ticket offices at Grange, Appleby and
Windermere. Would those not be great places to have hubs? Is that
not a good argument to ensure we maintain fully-staffed railway
stations in rural communities?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is important
to look at rurality in how we deal with all infrastructure
developments. I know that my own ticket office in Barnstaple has
concerns. I have only one trainline, so his constituency is
particularly well connected. We need to recognise that, where
there is a sparse population, ticket offices are working less
than in a busy town centre. We need to be more innovative in our
approach, to ensure that residents who do not use trains so often
can comfortably use the train station and transport hubs.
I was coming on to say that facilities such as public toilets are
a vital part of transport hubs. Barnstaple’s bus station toilets
have not reopened since March 2020. If we are serious about
encouraging public transport usage and decarbonising our
transport, we need to recognise that longer journeys, with longer
waits between buses and trains, require these additional
facilities to be present, particularly for our older residents.
The lack of hubs that are safe, warm and have the right
facilities makes using public transport far harder in locations
such as North Devon at this time.
Far too many routes in rural Britain are single-carriageway,
60-mile-an-hour roads. If we are to tackle that head-on, to
facilitate safer cycling and walking on those roads, we need
additional paths to be constructed to facilitate things such as
safe school journeys on foot or bike. Although today’s debate
focuses on decarbonisation, we could also consider the health
benefits of an active travel mode to work or school, which often
seem to be somewhat neglected.
I recognise that, as was mentioned earlier, there are examples
across the UK of great rural transport schemes. However, as with
so many matters around rurality, as discussed in the debate that
I led on levelling up rural Britain, it is harder for these
examples of best practice to be shared between councils and
communities. I hope that as we move towards decarbonising our
transportation, more support is given to overstretched councils
to share best practice and roll out solutions to rural as well as
urban Britain and find funding solutions that give councils the
ability to deliver a decarbonisation plan that reflects rurality,
alongside an acceptance that the costs per capita will differ. In
areas reliant on their tourists, the population swells enormously
in the summer, which, again, is rarely reflected in funding
settlements or even the calculation of carbon pollution.
Rural Britain deserves to see its transport decarbonised. Our
productivity is reduced because of the poor transport links. I
hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister has plans in his
Department to ensure that rurality is rapidly included in future
funding announcements and that there are long-term settlements
lying ahead—it was so warmly welcomed to have rurality mentioned
in the current round of active travel funding—because we all want
to level up and decarbonise transport in rural Britain.
Several hon. Members rose—
(in the Chair)
Order. I remind any hon. Members wanting to speak that they
should bob if they have not done so. Thank you so much. I will
ask to speak next.
9.47am
(Strangford) (DUP)
I think the hon. Member for North Shropshire () is first, Mr Davies.
(in the Chair)
You were first on the list, Jim.
Well, may I say how pleased I am?
(in the Chair)
This is the first time you have been called first, I know.
To be first on the list—my goodness. I am almost in a state of
shock. Mr Davies, you are very kind. Thank you for giving me the
chance to contribute. Others will contribute as well.
I thank the hon. Member for North Devon () for leading today’s debate
and setting the scene so well. She is right. The examples from
her constituency are replicated across all the other
constituencies represented here. Those hon. Members who have
intervened so far have given an indication of the same
issues.
As someone who represents a rural constituency, I have stated
before that it is imperative that there is sustainable and
economical transport for our constituents who live out in the
countryside. I am very fortunate in that I have lived in the
countryside all my life. I am very pleased to do so. I love the
green fields; I do not like the concrete—that is no secret. That
is why London does not really appeal to me as a place where I
would want to live—there is not enough greenery around me to
enjoy. But that is a choice that I have and that I have been able
to make over the years.
We have seen the expansion of “green” transport to protect and
preserve our atmosphere and environment, and we must continue to
do this as time goes on. The hon. Lady outlined that. The issue
must be addressed not only in England but UK-wide to ensure that
we are consistent and equal in our efforts to decarbonise rural
transport. I realise that the Minister is responsible only for
England, but my comments will be on Northern Ireland, as they
always are, and what we have done there.
Electric car charging points are few and far between. In rural
areas, we have few or no charging points; they are always
concentrated, as it is probably right that they should be, in
towns—in my constituency, it is the towns of Newtownards and
Comber. There are not enough charging points; I realise that.
Central Government here have taken a decision to support the
Northern Ireland Assembly and, with that process in mind, have
allocated money to ensure that charging points are available
across my constituency as well. There is an issue not with the
number of charging points but with the time it takes to charge a
car. The hon. Member for North Devon talked about needing 20 feet
of cable to charge her car. Wherever there is a charging point,
it is also important to have enough charging connections. I am
not in any way influenced to buy an electric car, but my sons
have done so; they are moving with the times, while their father
may not be anxious to do that. My point is that we need charging
points and enough connections. If it takes six hours to charge a
car, as some people have indicated to me, then that tells me that
we need more connections.
Transitioning the country from petrol to electric vehicles
requires extensive work that needs to be done by 2030. The
Government have already acknowledged that poor grid connectivity
in rural areas could be a real problem when it comes to the
charging infrastructure. Does the hon. Member agree that the
current reliance on the private sector to decide on charge point
locations and the lack of central policy around that could create
a barrier to reaching the target?
I thank the hon. Lady for her wise and salient words. In
Newtownards for example, people can charge their electric cars at
the shopping centre, but if they want to go elsewhere in the
town, they cannot charge their cars. Councils have a key role in
prioritising charging points and, as the hon. Lady said, we must
not depend on private companies, who may put charging points only
in places that are advantageous to them. I am not saying such
companies do not have a role, but the issue needs to be looked at
more widely and in greater depth.
I am pleased to record a recent development by Wrightbus, whose
headquarters are in Ballymena, in Northern Ireland, in the
constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim
(); indeed, my hon. Friend talked about this last week
at Transport questions in the main Chamber. Wrightbus has secured
a major order to supply 117 zero-emission buses across England,
thanks to an investment of £25.3 million by the Government. That
is an example of the many things that the Government are
doing.
Operated by First Bus, the buses will be rolled out across
Yorkshire, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Hampshire, and will enable
passengers to enjoy greener, cleaner journeys. Therefore there is
a strategy and we, in Northern Ireland, are very much part of
that. The new buses will be manufactured by Wrightbus in
Ballymena, supporting hundreds of new high-skilled jobs to help
level up and grow the economy. Some of those workers live in my
constituency of Strangford and travel to the Wrightbus
headquarters for their work, so there is a spin-off in jobs,
opportunity and economic advantage.
The new additional funding brings the vision of a net zero
transport network one step closer to reality. The double-decker
battery electric buses are 44% more efficient grid to wheel,
saving energy costs and carbon. That is another example of how we
are moving forward. The fact that the buses are manufactured in
Ballymena means that the whole United Kingdom has the chance to
benefit from that advantage, and hopefully other companies will
be able to do the same.
The funding is an additional investment from the zero-emission
buses regional area scheme, which was launched in 2021 to allow
local transport authorities to bid for funding for zero-emission
buses and supporting infrastructure. The Government have a policy
that is working. Obviously it is a first stage, but I believe the
policy will be able to go a lot further.
While it is a welcome and much-needed step, it goes back to my
point that this needs to be a UK-wide measure. As the buses are
manufactured in Northern Ireland, it would be fantastic for the
Northern Ireland economy if some of the buses could be
administered across the Province. We manufacture and sell the
buses across the United Kingdom, but unfortunately we do not have
much take-up back home, but I know Translink, our bus company,
has purchased some.
The Secretary of State for Transport met Wrightbus
representatives to discuss the success and stated that it would
help level up transport across the country, yet the funding has
been awarded only to places in England. While I respect the fact
that infrastructure and transport are devolved matters, there
needs to be greater communication between Westminster and the
devolved Governments in relation to nationwide levelling up. I
support the Government’s levelling-up policy. I think they have
taken giant leaps to make levelling up happen, and this is such
an example.
We need ideas for decarbonising public transport in more rural
areas, where the population is more dispersed. As others have
said, we do not have the continuity or regularity of buses that
we should have in rural communities in order to incentivise
people to leave their cars and use buses. We in the
countryside—especially where I live in the Ards peninsula;
indeed, in the whole of the Ards peninsula—depend on our cars,
whether they are diesel, petrol or, in my son’s case,
electric.
It will always be challenging and expensive to provide the
decarbonisation of public transport, but many residents have
brought to my attention that some rural buses routes are
extremely limited anyway, and I want to put that on the record.
There is hope that installing hydrogen buses in rural areas will
further discourage people from using cars, which is certainly the
intention. People with cars can jump in them and go—they do not
have to wait for a bus to come along—but others are probably in a
position where they can do that. The use of hydrogen buses and
other approaches tend to focus on densely populated urban areas,
as there may be a critical mass of people to support public
transport services, so it is great to see some Government
commitment and willingness to ensure that efforts are made to
decarbonise our rural communities too.
I hope that the Minister can join me in congratulating Wrightbus,
take the comments of Members from across the House into
consideration, and ensure that there is equal opportunity for
rural decarbonisation across the whole of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
9.56am
(North Shropshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I
thank the hon. Member for North Devon () for securing the debate. I
think we all agree that this is a really important topic, and it
is good to have the opportunity to air the issues.
I am sure we are all aware that domestic transport is the largest
source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. The Department
for Transport’s 2022 statistical estimates report that cars emit
more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than trains and coaches,
for the obvious reason that trains and coaches convey more
people, so maximising the number of people in a vehicle for each
journey is a really important part of meeting our emissions
targets. The example that the Department gives is a long-distance
one: on a journey between London and Glasgow, the average petrol
car emits over four times more CO2 than the equivalent journey by
coach for each person, or 3.3 times more CO2 per passenger than
an electric car, once it has been taken into account that we do
not generate all our electricity in a totally green way.
In rural areas, it is proving really difficult to get such
efficiencies and cut the greenhouse gases that we emit because of
the high level of dependency on private cars, which are mostly
non-electric. Our bus services are already very poor and have
been driven to the verge of extinction by the covid pandemic, and
it is well documented that usage has not yet recovered to
pre-pandemic levels. In Shropshire, services have continued to be
cut since 2020 because they are no longer considered commercially
viable. Obviously, we are not just talking about the tiny hamlets
where everyone accepts it would be uneconomical and unsuitable
for a large bus to trundle through; market towns of under 20,000
or 30,000 people are suffering as well.
North Shropshire has five market towns with fewer than 20,000
people, which contain about half the population of the area.
There are also a significant number of larger villages that sit
on main roads, and they are all pretty poorly served. There is
only one bus service running in the whole county on a Sunday, and
the weekday and Saturday services have been reduced, with early
and end-of-day services being cut back. Even some Saturday
services are at risk: the service from Shrewsbury to Market
Drayton in my constituency, and on to Hanley in Stoke-on-Trent,
is at risk of being axed on a Saturday. It has been given an
interim stay of execution by Shropshire Council, but given that
the council has missed on the bus back better funding and money
from its bus improvement plan as part of the levelling-up bid, it
is now looking to make cuts of at least £150 million over the
next three years, and I fear for route’s future. As the hon.
Member for North Devon said, we need to take into account that
Government grants for public transport in rural areas are more
expensive than grants for urban areas. We need to accept that and
consider whether the need requires them.
Does the hon. Lady agree that, far too often, our rural bus
routes are the first thing that is threatened when our large
rural councils face funding pressures?
Yes, I agree. We have absolutely seen that in North Shropshire
and across the rest of the county. It is causing us a number of
different issues, in addition to those of climate emissions.
Already in my constituency, it is no longer possible to access
one of our two key hospitals in Telford from Oswestry without
changing services at least twice. There is no direct public
transport service at all between Market Drayton, a town of around
12,000 people, and the sizeable town of Telford, where there are
all sorts of extra services that people might want to access.
The impact of those poor and continually reducing services is
twofold. First, a private car is a necessary part of life in the
countryside or in one of the smaller towns, and many households
have to find the money for at least two if the adults in those
households work in separate directions. Once they have forked out
for a private car and accepted the expense of running it, they
are less likely to use the available public transport, so we are
in a downward spiral of cuts to public transport as it becomes
more and more uneconomic.
It is not just those who have one or two cars in their
households; it is their families and where they work. By and
large, if someone wants a job in my constituency, they have to
travel to Newtownards or Belfast. Then, there are the extra
complications of employment and getting access at the right time
for shift work, and buses are probably not on at that time. So
there are other complications for people who live in the
countryside.
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman and am just about to
come on to that.
I just set it up for the hon. Lady.
Yes. Secondly, if someone cannot access a car because they are
young, are prevented from driving by their health or simply
cannot afford to run one, they become stranded on the island of
where they live. They cannot sign up to a college course, they
cannot commit to a job outside the area and, in many cases, they
cannot access what is becoming increasingly centralised
healthcare provision without calling on endless favours from
friends and family or using private cars instead.
The lack of a usable service not only means we emit far more
greenhouse gases than we used to or, more accurately, than we
need to, but there is a social and economic cost. For instance,
the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen,
near Oswestry in North Shropshire, is a top-class orthopaedic
hospital with a dedicated veterans’ centre that takes patients
from all over the country. We are extremely proud of it.
Recently, however, the hospital is struggling to recruit and
retain its staff and one of the factors in that is the lack of a
bus service back into Oswestry for those working early or late
shifts because those end-of-day services have been axed from the
route. More widely, the issue is driving young people from our
towns, increasing the proportion of elderly residents, and
harming the economic vibrance of the high streets.
How can we reverse that in an area where the council is spending
85% of its budget on social care and where bus services have been
so badly depleted that the remaining routes are uneconomic? At
this point, I should also mention the importance of active
travel. For an increasingly elderly population, in an area where
rural roads are single carriageway with quite fast speeds, it is
probably not sensible to suggest that those people should be
cycling every day between the market towns, which are some
distance away from each other.
The focus on active travel is sensible, because it has both an
environmental and health benefit. However, there are many reasons
that is not a suitable focus for rural communities when it comes
to decarbonisation. Does the hon. Member share my concern that
while the Government’s active travel strategy seems to
acknowledge that, they have yet to set out any further specific
guidance?
I think that is a fair point. Active travel has a role to play in
towns, but it is concerning that we are not investing in public
transport to move people around in rural areas. We need some
clarity on that.
Going back to cycling and walking, many shorter journeys within
towns can be made easier on a bike or on foot if there is a
sensible network of crossings and dropped kerbs. In towns such as
North Shropshire’s, which are largely medieval market towns, it
would clearly be difficult to add a big network of cycle lanes
into the narrow roads. During covid, councils were very quick to
reimagine the way vehicles flowed around the town, making a
pedestrian-friendly space workable at a fast pace. It would be
good to see those councils being encouraged to continue to find
practical ways of allowing people to move more easily around the
centre of our towns. Removing the need for even a proportion of
short car journeys, even if only on days when the weather is
good, would surely have an impact on car emissions and—as the
hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West () just pointed
out—improves the health and wellbeing of anyone who decides to
walk and cycle a little more.
Returning to the thorny issue of public transport, I am afraid
that national intervention is probably needed. I welcome the
restoring your railways scheme; North Shropshire has a great bid
in for the Oswestry to Gobowen line, with an important stop at
the hospital, and I take this opportunity to plug that bid.
However, railway stations are not accessible for everyone. There
is not really access for all where there is no step-free access
to the railway station, which is another big problem in rural
constituencies. At Whitchurch in my constituency, people cannot
access the southbound platform, so despite the fact that there is
actually a pretty good public transport service into Shrewsbury
and beyond, on the main line to Crewe and Manchester, if someone
has trouble with steps or has a lot of heavy baggage or a
pushchair, they will turn again to their private car.
We are on the list for the Access for All plan. We have made our
bid, which I hope will be successful, but it takes years and
years to come through. If we are trying to get to net zero by
2050, the Access for All process really does need to be speeded
up and, let’s face it, most places do not have a railway station
or a railway line. Many of those stations have been axed from
rural market towns and would be totally uneconomic to reinstate,
particularly as those towns largely have housing estates over the
former track, so we need to have a nationally led bus strategy
that addresses people getting out of their cars and on to
buses.
What would that look like? I am open-minded about demand-led
travel and the technology that enables it, and it may well be
part of the solution to improve connectivity and public transport
in the more rural parts of Britain, and to integrate that with
other parts of the network. We see elements of that with some of
the voluntary schemes that are in place—the dial-a-ride, North
Salop Wheelers-type schemes that help to get elderly and more
vulnerable people out of their houses and into the towns on
market days. However, those schemes are volunteer-run by nature,
which is not necessarily sustainable. Demand-led travel might be
part of the solution, but in areas where the population is sparse
and the benefits of lift sharing and journey planning might be
more limited, we still need a proper investigation into the
relative benefits of demand-led travel and a good look at
reliable, clock-face services for smaller market towns and the
feed-in services from their surrounding villages.
We do, of course, need to talk about the types of buses—the fact
that they do not all need to be huge, and that in future, they
probably need to be electric or hydrogen-fuelled—but I will not
elaborate on that point, because it has already been made. We
should also accept that in small villages, there will always be a
need for the private car, and we need to continue to incentivise
the roll-out of electric cars. Public charging points are,
therefore, really important. We are only just beginning to see
the roll-out of public charging points in North Shropshire, but
the capacity of the electricity infrastructure to cope with the
additional demand on the rural grid is absolutely critical. I
urge the Minister to consider not only the number of points, but
the ability of the underlying energy infrastructure to support
what is going to be an increasing electricity load, particularly
in rural areas.
Overall, I support empowering local councils to develop their own
public transport plans within the framework of a national
strategy to find the solution that serves their area best.
Empowering means funding and supporting those councils with the
expertise they need to deliver a better future for rural
transport, and funding them to tackle the additional rural
distances is a critical factor. The rural economy, just like the
climate, is approaching a tipping point, so we need a radical
approach to public transport that can help tip both things in the
right direction.
(in the Chair)
I call the SNP spokesperson.
10.09am
(Paisley and Renfrewshire
North) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Davies; it is a pleasure to serve under your
chairmanship again. I congratulate the hon. Member for North
Devon () on securing the debate, and
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating it.
The hon. Member opened the debate very well, setting out a number
of issues that are the same across pretty much all rural areas in
the UK. As she said, many of the solutions for our towns and
cities simply would not suit a rural setting or be as efficient.
She mentioned a lack of electric vehicle chargers and the
reinstatement of rail lines. She also welcomed the Government’s
£200 million active travel budget and plans, although that pales
into insignificance compared with the Scottish Government’s
investment in active travel, as I will set out.
The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye () mentioned zero-emission
buses and the requirement for further Government support. I could
not agree more, and I will touch on that later. The hon. Member
for Rutherglen and Hamilton West () made an excellent point
about social isolation, and how we need to be careful that rural
decarbonisation solutions do not entrench those issues or make
them worse. She also made a salient point about capacity issues
in our rural electricity grid.
The hon. Member for Strangford ()— I call him the hon. Member for Strangford and
Westminster Hall West—gave an excellent speech, as usual. My
biggest surprise was that he said he liked something green; that
may also be a surprise to some people watching, certainly in
Scotland. He mentioned the time it takes to charge a car. In a
recent debate in this place, we spoke about the charging issues
in Northern Ireland. As an EV owner myself, I would have been
unlikely to make the switch if I lived in Northern Ireland, such
is the paucity of public chargers over there. He also mentioned
the importance of the UK Government’s ZEBRA—zero-emission bus
regional areas—scheme, and obviously he has Wrightbus in Northern
Ireland. The implementation of that scheme is frankly shocking,
but I will touch on that later.
The hon. Member for North Shropshire () made an excellent point
about the issues with recruitment and retention for all sorts of
businesses and services in rural areas because of the lack of
connectivity and public transport. That does not help with the
brain drain of young people leaving rural areas to go to cities
and large towns. She also spoke about the lack of rural rail
services in North Shropshire and elsewhere, which leads me to my
own remarks.
Scotland has led the way on transport innovation over the years,
and our track record on rail decarbonisation is yet another
example of that. The world’s first electric railway locomotive
was powered by batteries and invented in Scotland. It was
designed by Robert Davidson of Aberdeen and first tested on the
Glasgow to Edinburgh line. If we fast-forward over a century, one
of the first battery trains to be used in regular passenger
service was deployed on the Aberdeen to Ballater line. It is
powered by clean, renewable electricity provided by the hydro
board.
Today, the Bo’ness and Kinneil railway is seeing testing of a
class 314 train formerly used as a workhorse on the Strathclyde
lines. It has been converted to hydrogen-fuelled operation, and
it is being put through its paces by the University of St
Andrews, Transport Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Ballard
Motive Solutions. That kind of innovation is one part of the
deployment of investment and policy decisions that make Scotland
a leader in the decarbonisation of rural transport.
The reopening of Reston station in the Scottish Borders is
another such example, with £20 million of investment from the
Scottish Government accompanied by £3 million from Scottish
Borders Council. That investment will improve bus links to and
from the station, making it a hub for an area of the east borders
that has been poorly served by public transport. Reston itself is
a village with only a few hundred souls, but the integrated
transport package introduced by local and national Government has
turned it into a major transport centre, giving access to major
cities on both sides of the border to a population that was
previously either poorly served or not served at all by links
beyond the local area.
The Scottish Borders were hit harder than most areas by the
post-war retrenchment in rail. Peebles, Eyemouth, Kelso, Duns,
Hawick, Selkirk and Melrose—I am starting to sound like a Bill
McLaren rugby commentary—were all linked by rail to the wider
country and the world. However, post-war mistakes in rail
management across the UK, and the Beeching axe, left the borders
with no rail links at all for 40 years, until the Scottish
Government reopened the Borders railway in 2015. That new route
is among the first in line for the next tranche of
electrification on Scotland’s railways. After 40 years of
isolation from the rest of this island’s rail network, the
borders are seeing a bonanza in rail, integrated public transport
and decarbonisation, which is surely unmatched by any comparable
rural area on these islands.
The Scottish Borders are just one example of how decarbonisation
is not constrained to our urban areas. We have seen the Invernet
service, which provides commuter rail in the Inverness area, as
well as the opening of the Inverness Airport railway station.
Reopening the station at Beauly, which has a population of just
over 1,000, generated more than 50,000 passenger journeys a year
pre covid.
In the north-east, we have seen a step change in rail provision
with the full introduction of the Aberdeen Crossrail, which
connects Inverurie to Montrose via Aberdeen with regular fast
services. Those communities will benefit still further from the
rolling programme of electrification in Scotland, with main
routes to the central belt, as well as the Inverness to Aberdeen
route, becoming wired. The programme will also electrify the
Glasgow to Dumfries route—indeed, part of it is being electrified
as we speak—giving a huge boost to rural communities along its
length. It will also give us scope to look again at the rural
stations closed by the Beeching axe and at how we can apply the
lessons learned from the Reston reopening to another area in the
south of Scotland.
By 2045, every rail line in Scotland bar the West Highland and
Far North lines, and the Girvan to Stranraer line, will be fully
electrified. That is quite an achievement in a country where
modernisation was ignored by this place for decades, until
devolution and the Scottish Parliament came along. Clearly, 100%
electrification would be preferable, but the economic reality is
that electrification cannot always be justified in rural areas.
However, that must not mean that more sparsely populated locales
miss out on decarbonisation, and lines without full
electrification will see the roll-out of innovative and
game-changing trains such as battery electric and, potentially,
hydrogen trains.
It is not just our rail network that is being transformed through
funding from the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland.
Fully 20% of the funding and buses on the road as a result of the
first round of ScotZEB—the Scottish zero-emission bus challenge
fund—went to operators in rural areas, from Campbeltown to
Lockerbie and Aberdeenshire to Dumfries and Galloway.
In addition, Loganair has set a target to have a fully
zero-emission fleet of aircraft serving Scotland’s islands and
rural communities by 2040. Orkney is the hotbed for trials of
electric and hydrogen-fuelled planes, with the islands expected
to see the first scheduled zero-emission services as it becomes
feasible to start rolling out the technology for passenger
service. Those air links are a lifeline for the communities they
serve, and making them net zero will play a crucial role in
Scotland’s journey to being a net zero country by 2045. All this
is evidence that decarbonisation is not just about urban and
suburban travel; with the right strategy and package of
investments, we can push modal shift in rural areas too.
Rural Scotland is also powering ahead in decarbonising private
transport. Among the local authorities with the highest per
capita penetration of public charge points are Orkney, Na
h-Eileanan an Iar, Argyll and Bute, Highland, Shetland, and
Dumfries and Galloway. Most of the time in those areas, there is
no alternative to private motors, so we want to support
infrastructure to ensure that EVs are a practical solution. All
those areas have seen a massive increase in public chargers over
the past few years; since 2019, their numbers have more than
doubled in Orkney and increased by 177% in Argyll and Bute. They
are also up 194% in Highland, marrying up with the A9 electric
highway, which links the highlands and the central belt. If we
are serious about rolling out chargers to the level needed to hit
our targets to phase out petrol and diesel cars, the number in
rural Scotland needs to continue to increase at its current rate.
The Scottish Government have shown the way, and it is for
others—particularly the DFT—to learn from their lead.
I cannot let pass an opportunity to highlight Scotland’s
transformational active travel budget, which will reach £320
million—10% of Scotland’s entire travel budget—by the end of this
Parliament. Bear in mind that that is in a country one tenth the
size of that served by the DFT, whose £200 million budget was
heralded—no offence to the hon. Member for North Devon. That £320
million investment will upgrade our network for walking and
wheeling across the country and, in particular, give extra
opportunities for integration with the rest of the public
transport network. It is game-changing. I urge the DFT to match
that commitment, rather than throwing yet more money into the
bottomless pit that is Greater London transport spending.
Scotland is showing that rural decarbonisation can be achieved if
the will is there. Making integrated transport a key policy
objective, as well as relatively modest investment, can produce
huge dividends for communities that were previously isolated from
the public transport network. We know that in rural communities
there will always be a need for cars in a way that simply is not
the case in more urban areas, but providing alternatives to
private transport when it is practical to do so and ensuring that
the investment is targeted in the right places can help to drive
modal shift and drive down emissions, and provide a more
sustainable transport system across the board into the
bargain.
As I have done many times before, I commend to the Minister the
work that the Scottish Government are doing and invite him to
study closely what is happening in Scotland, so that the UK
Government can follow Scotland’s lead and apply the lessons to
rural communities here in England. The UK Government’s reluctance
to invest appropriately in this area—as with so many other
areas—limits Scotland’s ability to go even further even faster,
and it is time for the DFT and the UK Government to get their
collective finger out on these issues.
10.20am
(Wakefield)
(Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and
to speak for the Opposition in a Westminster Hall debate for the
very first time.
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon () on securing this debate and
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. The
hon. Member’s opening remarks underscored the importance of
decarbonising our transport, especially in our rural communities,
and the contributions from Members throughout have demonstrated
why we need to take urgent action in this area. Indeed,
decarbonising our transport sector is one of the most pressing
challenges to overcome if we are to meet our net zero goals.
I am proud to represent the Wakefield constituency, which has
both the city of Wakefield and a large rural community, with
villages such as Netherton, Middlestown, Durkar, Hall Green and
Woolley. I know first hand the challenges those areas have in
accessing transport, and I understand that many of the solutions
that work in cities may well not work as well in rural
communities.
I will address a number of the various transport sectors that
Members have referred to, but I will start with active travel,
which is a sure-fire way of improving air quality, reducing
congestion, improving physical health and, of course, lowering
carbon emissions. Research shows that the benefit to cost ratio
of investments in walking and cycling are estimated at
5.62:1.
However, one of the biggest barriers to active travel, especially
in our rural communities, is safety. A recent survey found,
unsurprisingly, that most people prefer to cycle where it is
safe, and the same can be said for walking. Improving real and
perceived safety is an effective way of encouraging more people
to walk and cycle, and the Government and local councils must do
what they can to improve routes and roads to facilitate that.
The Government really need to step up. In 2017, the Department
for Transport provided guidance for local authorities to develop
local cycling and walking infrastructure plans, but there was no
funding available for that. I am pleased that many rural
authorities have developed such a plan. However, my hon. Friend
the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough () recently asked a
parliamentary question to find out how many councils had
developed one, and the answer was just 78, which is only around a
quarter of all local authorities. That is simply not good enough
and the Government must do more to ensure that rural areas have
these plans in place.
Another example is the Government’s consultation on personal
safety measures on streets in England, which specifically covered
rural streets, to seek views on how street design, maintenance
and operation could be improved to make people feel safer. The
consultation closed in August 2021, yet 19 months on the
Government have not responded. I hope that the Minister will be
able to shed some light on that.
As the hon. Member for North Devon said, many people in rural
communities are very dependent on cars, and we must continue to
encourage the transition to electric vehicles. We have some good
momentum as we transfer away from petrol and diesel cars to
electric vehicles. That is one of the primary ways to decarbonise
our transport. The RAC estimates that there are now 712,000
zero-emission electric cars on our roads, along with more than
400,000 plug-in hybrids.
The hon. Member for Strangford () is right that charging points are few and far
between in rural areas. However, people might not think that,
given what the Government talk about. The latest figures show
that we have just 37,055 public chargers in the UK at the moment.
Rural communities are lagging far behind.
(Carmarthen East and
Dinefwr) (Ind)
The hon. Gentleman is making a very valid point. As we make the
transition towards electric vehicles and electric heating, there
is a big issue about grid capacity and resilience in rural areas;
I just do not believe that it will cope at the moment. The
Government have enabled challenger companies to the traditional
distribution network operators—they are called independent
distribution network operators—to bring in their own
infrastructure. The issue in rural areas is that metal pylons for
electricity transmission are extremely controversial. Does the
hon. Gentleman agree that this is going to happen very quickly
and that, as we push the transition, decisions will have to be
made about where to locate the infrastructure? We have to work
with local communities, and in rural areas we need to work on the
basis that the infrastructure needs to go underground.
The hon. Member makes a valid point, and if the Government are
serious about installing 300,000 charging points, they need to
redouble their efforts. At this rate, we would not get to even
100,000 by the date they have set. Monthly installations would
need to rise by 288% to meet that ambition.
Just before the intervention from the hon. Member for Carmarthen
East and Dinefwr (), the hon. Gentleman
mentioned that rural areas are missing out in terms of the
charging network. I made the point in my speech that in Scotland
that is not the case. The areas with the highest penetration of
public charge points per capita are Orkney, the Western Isles,
Argyll and Bute, Highland, Shetland, and Dumfries and Galloway.
That is because the driver was Scottish Government public
investment. Down here, the UK Government have relied on private
investment. Does the hon. Gentleman think that is why rural areas
in England do not have the connectivity that Scotland has?
The hon. Member makes an interesting point, and I share his
concerns about the Government’s focus in achieving their targets.
Obviously, this is a pressing matter for our rural communities,
which are being underserved, and if drivers cannot access
charging points, they will be far less likely to make the
transition to electric.
In London, there are 131 charging points per 100,000 of the
population, but in the south-west region the figure is a third of
that—44 per 100,000. The hon. Member for Strangford will be
interested to hear that the figure is only 19 per 100,000 in
Northern Ireland. Indeed, more charging points were installed
here in Westminster in the previous quarter than in any English
region outside London. The Government must urgently come up with
a plan for how they will drastically speed up the roll-out,
especially in rural communities, otherwise the campaign to get
people to transition their vehicles will be undermined
completely.
As the shadow Minister covering buses, it would be remiss of me
not to mention the vital role that the sector is playing in
decarbonising our transport. That is especially the case in rural
areas, where buses can be a lifeline for many, especially the
elderly—connecting people with friends and family, and getting
people to work, hospital or school.
As the hon. Member for North Shropshire () said, getting to hospital
appointments is really important, but the rural bus network is
desperately struggling, and cuts in Government funding have
hampered rural routes, leaving behind a patchy network that
cannot get people from A to B. I have seen that in my
constituency, where several services have been cut altogether and
others run at a reduced frequency. One service, which is the only
bus covering a village of about 500 people, runs only until 5 pm.
Another village service runs only three buses a day.
People cannot get to work, cannot get to the shops and cannot
attend hospital appointments with services like that, and they
are left having to depend on taxis or the car when the bus does
not turn up. That is creating what the charity CPRE calls
transport deserts, whereby public transport is severely limited,
which stops people being able to do basics such as shopping or
meeting friends. In 2020, CPRE found that 56% of small rural
towns had become transport deserts or were at risk of becoming a
transport desert. I imagine that figure will have risen since
then.
In recent years, local authorities have had to step in to support
many rural bus services that have become commercially unviable,
but reductions in their funding have meant that many routes have
been lost. That is why Labour’s plans for franchising could help
many rural communities and give them greater certainty over the
routes they have. I continue to urge the Government to look at
the proposal in more detail.
Furthermore, buses need to be transitioned from diesel. The
Government announced that they would deliver 4,000 zero-emission
buses in this Parliament, but, as I pointed out during Transport
questions in the Chamber last week, only 341 have been ordered
and just six are on our roads. At that rate, it will take 23
years to meet the Government’s target. Many bus operators serving
rural routes will be relying on Government grants to decarbonise
their fleets, so the lack of progress with the scheme is
hampering the business planning process and efforts to push
forward with bus company investments.
I am pleased that we have had the opportunity to debate this
important issue. It is clear that our rural communities want to
play a part in the clean transport revolution, but they need more
support to do so. Whether we are talking about buses, cycling,
walking or cars, there are opportunities for decarbonisation, but
rural areas are lagging behind. The Government must match their
rhetoric with a proper plan to deliver what they have promised,
so that we can see those zero-emission buses on our roads, have
enough electric charging points to encourage people to
transition, and encourage people to cycle and walk more. The
Government must get their act together, and quickly; otherwise,
it will be our rural villages and towns that suffer the most.
10.30am
The Minister of State, Department for Transport ()
What a delight it is to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I
congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon () on securing this debate on
decarbonising rural transport. I am very aware of this issue as a
constituency MP; in Hereford and South Herefordshire, we have
many of the issues that have been described. I do not mean to
disappoint my hon. Friend at the outset, but I am not going to
make Treasury policy here and, least of all, as a former
Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a few weeks before a Budget.
Nevertheless, a wide range of issues have been raised and it is
important to engage with them all.
As my hon. Friend rightly noted, buses are at the centre of the
public transport network, but even more so in rural areas than in
many urban areas. I and colleagues recognise their important role
in providing sustainable transport options and independence to
people who live in the countryside. They also have an essential
role to play in achieving net zero by 2050 and in creating the
cleaner and healthier places to live that we all aspire to
have.
On decarbonisation, I am sure that my hon. Friend will join me in
celebrating Devon’s recent success in joining the
Government-funded ADEPT Live Labs 2 programme for decarbonising
local roads in the UK. I am delighted that Devon will carry out a
carbon-negative project on the A382, including the Jetty Marsh
link road. That is part of a suite of corridor and place-based
interventions, trialling, testing and showcasing applications in
connection with the Wessex partnership, an exciting project that
will be provided with more than £12 million for the three-year
programme.
As colleagues will know, the national bus strategy was published
in March 2021, with the long-term aim of making buses more
frequent and reliable, easier to understand and use, and better
co-ordinated and cheaper. The strategy asked all local transport
authorities to develop a bus service improvement plan, setting
out how they would improve services. It also stated that local
transport plans must be clear on
“how interventions across local transport modes will drive
decarbonisation in their area.”
I am delighted that Devon received £14.1 million in BSIP funding,
£1.87 million of which is being targeted at bus priority measures
that will benefit routes into Barnstaple and to North Devon
District Hospital. I was also delighted to hear about GWR’s work
in my hon. Friend’s constituency, where a bus-branch line has
been introduced between Barnstaple and Lynton and Lynmouth,
co-ordinating bus and rail timetables to offer a more integrated
travel experience for passengers. I hope that there will be more
to come in the following year.
The bus strategy makes it clear that the needs of rural transport
users should be given equal consideration to those of users in
urban areas. However, I recognise that it can be challenging to
provide conventional bus services for rural areas, which have
widely dispersed populations and consequent travel patterns that
are hard to cover effectively. That is why demand-responsive
services, which have been discussed today, can be used in some
places to meet their needs, and work is under way to assess
whether that can be more effective than traditional public
transport solutions.
Colleagues will be aware of the £20 million rural mobility fund,
which supports 17 innovative demand-led minibus trials in rural
areas. They use app-based technologies so that passengers can
book a journey through their smartphone, and intelligent software
then works out the right route to pick up and drop off
passengers, given the demand. The Department has made sure that
the services use accessible minibuses and can still be booked
through a website or with a phone call so that no one is excluded
from using them.
As the hon. Member for North Shropshire () pointed out,
demand-responsive services are not the perfect solution to every
challenge. Other schemes need to be trialled, and have been, but
have proven not to be sustainable. A balance needs to be struck
between providing a useful service that is responsive and
frequent and running too much mileage cost-ineffectively, with
too few passengers. That is why it is so important that each
scheme should participate in a detailed monitoring and evaluation
process, so that the Department can learn about the most
effective approaches.
Some of the pilots use zero-emission vehicles. The scheme in
Essex has been electrified since day one, providing a
zero-emission demand-responsive service to rural areas around
Braintree, and Surrey County Council has started to roll out its
electric minibus route on its Mole Valley connect service.
On buses more broadly, colleagues will know that, in 2020, we
committed to introducing 4,000 zero-emission buses and,
ultimately, to achieving an all zero-emission bus fleet. It is
nice to hear the hon. Member for Strangford () rightly supporting the superb achievements of
Wrightbus in Northern Ireland with regard to not just
electrification, but its work on the Hydroliner, using hydrogen
technology.
The approach to zero-emission buses will support our climate
ambitions, improve transport for local communities and support
green jobs across the country. Since 2020, the Government have
funded an estimated 3,452 zero-emission buses across the UK, some
1,400 of which have been supported by funding from the
zero-emission bus regional areas, which has rightly been
highlighted. Great progress has been made, with more than 500
buses ordered so far under the ZEBRA scheme, including 117
electric buses that have been ordered for four different local
authorities, as announced in the House last week.
Buses are not the only zero-emission vehicles on our roads. It is
right to think about the question of zero-emission vehicles more
widely, as well as the charging infrastructure network, mentioned
by several colleagues, that needs to be as accessible, affordable
and secure in rural areas as elsewhere. Last March, the
Government published their electric vehicle infrastructure
strategy, which set out plans to accelerate the roll-out of the
network. We expect at least 300,000 public charge points to be
installed across the UK by 2030. There are already over 37,000
open-access public chargers on UK roads, with more than 600 new
chargers added to our road network each month on average, and
public charging devices have more than tripled in the past four
years. That is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of charge
points in homes and workplaces. We believe that we are on track
to meet local expectations.
I like the Minister’s comments on the ZEBRA scheme, even though
it has been an utter shambles from start to finish. Scotland has
more zero-emission buses on the road in a country that is a tenth
of the size.
On chargers, the Government launched Project Rapid, and the
Labour Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Wakefield (), mentioned the number of
chargers in the UK. Scotland already has 73% more rapid chargers
per head than the rest of the UK. In the last quarter of last
year, the number increased by nearly 15%, more than double the
rate at which England increased its rapid chargers—the east and
west midlands rate was 4.3%, Yorkshire was 5% and the south-east
was 3.3%. Project Rapid needs to change its name, does it
not?
There is no doubt that the question of how we get lots of rapid
chargers into motorway service areas and other parts of the trunk
network is complex, because it requires long-term solutions based
on translating large amounts of electricity through distribution
network operators and the national grid into those areas. I was
slightly surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman bragging about the
Scottish Government’s achievements. He may want to look at the
Daily Business published in August last year, which said that
Scotland was “bottom” of the EV charging league for growth and
described that as
“an embarrassing blow to the country that hosted the COP26”.
The hon. Gentleman should look not just at the number that have
been installed, which perhaps is not surprising given the level
of income per head that Scotland receives under the Barnett
formula. If my county of Herefordshire was miraculously and sadly
disentangled from its current place and floated north to abut on
to Scotland, the rate of funding per head would go up by over
£2,000, so perhaps it is not so surprising that the funding
settlement is different and that has different effects. The
Scottish record is not one to be proud of as regards the growth
of charge points, and he may want to look again at the numbers he
described.
We have also been looking at public and industry funding to
support local authorities with the roll-out of charge points.
Just last month, we announced a further £56 million of public
industry funding. In Devon, there are currently 442 public charge
points, of which over 100 are rapid and above, which is pretty
much in line with the UK average per person and possibly even
slightly higher in relation to rapid charging. That is a good
start, but there is plenty still to do.
I reiterate the point made by the hon. Member for Paisley and
Renfrewshire North () about grid capacity. Rural
areas are being asked to look at replacing a lot of oil-fired
boilers with electric alternatives, and obviously, we need to
address electric charging points, but grid capacity is a
fundamental restraining problem in rural areas. What are the
Minister’s thoughts on how improvements to that infrastructure
can be speeded up?
It is important to put this into perspective. One advantage of
rural areas is that, in many cases, more so than in urban areas,
people have driveways or accessible areas where they can put in
charging points. Of course, domestic charging points are growing
rapidly—vastly faster, as one might expect through private
investment, than in the last year or two. It is a rapidly
escalating curve, and rural areas have a great advantage over
urban areas when it comes to charging electric vehicles. Rural
areas will also benefit as improvements in technology increase
vehicle range and reduce costs and range anxiety. It is a picture
that we have reason to be optimistic about without in any sense
being complacent about the need to continue to make rapid
progress.
I want to reiterate my initial intervention on the Labour Front
Bencher, the hon. Member for Wakefield (), and the point made by
the hon. Member for North Shropshire () on behalf of the Liberal
Democrats. The concern is that the grid as it is will not
accommodate everybody charging their cars at home; it will not
cope. It would require significant extra infrastructure to
transmit the electricity into rural areas. If we did that, we
would put pylons everywhere and that becomes controversial. One
solution in the United States is to use transport corridors—roads
and rail—and go underground along those routes, which can be far
more cost-effective. Of course, going underground is far more
expensive than overground pylons.
There needs to be strategic thinking. These issues are devolved
in Wales. Planning matters are devolved, as they are in Scotland
and Northern Ireland, but there needs to be co-ordination and
some thinking about how we can create the resilience and capacity
for rural areas without desecrating them.
I completely agree with the hon. Member that any solution needs
to respect the beauty and integrity of the area concerned. That
is absolutely right, and I thank him for his suggestion, which I
believe has received some consideration, but I will check with my
officials.
There is a wider point. Of course, the demands on the grid are
changing over time, but we have been given no reason to think
that they are unsustainable. The attraction of much modern
technology is that it allows much more load balancing in the
timing of when cars are charged. We expect that to be a valuable
source of strength and stability in the grid as we go
forward.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon is a passionate
advocate for active travel. She knows that the Department
published the second cycling and walking investment strategy in
the summer of last year, which includes new and updated
objectives, such as increased levels of walking, including
walking to school and doubling the levels of cycling. We expect
to invest over £850 million in active travel between 2020 and
2023, which is a record amount of funding. As she knows, last
month we announced an active travel fund of £200 million to
improve walking and cycling routes and to boost local usage and
economic development.
The benefits are not just economic, as has been rightly
highlighted. There are also the benefits of air quality and
improved health, and they play a vital role in decarbonisation.
Funding is important, and we have talked about that, but it is
only one part of the solution in rural areas. We also need to
support increased capability in delivery, and that is why the
Government are providing Devon County Council with capability
funding to support the development of its county-wide rural
trail—its cycling and walking infrastructure plan.
I was delighted to open the offices of Active Travel England in
York a few weeks ago with Chris Boardman, our national active
travel commissioner, and Danny Williams, the chief executive. As
my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon will know from her
APPG, those are people of the highest quality and the ATE is a
very important development—indeed, a milestone—in how we think
about the adequate and highly effective provision of active
travel infrastructure and standards.
There is a mixed picture in terms of need, but not a mixed
picture in terms of the commitment, energy and drive that we are
trying to bring to the entire portfolio across the range of the
different interventions and modes in the cause of decarbonising
our country and our economy.
10.44am
It has been a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Davies.
I thank the Minister for his response and for his Department’s
recognition of rurality, because it is the first time that a
Department has focused on that in its funding decision. I very
much hope that with him at the helm, it can do more in some other
areas that we have touched on this morning, because I know that
the constituents I represent care deeply about their environment
and are really passionate about being able to decarbonise their
transport networks. For that to happen, it is important to find
rural solutions that work and deliver better value for money.
Although I fully respect that the Minister could not possibly
comment on things going on in the Treasury ahead of the Budget, I
hope that he might have a quiet word to say that a longer-term
funding solution would deliver far better value for money in
areas such as rural transportation.
I want to reiterate points from colleagues, which perhaps the
Minister could pass on. I did not focus too much on the grid,
because it is not in his portfolio, but I fully agree with hon.
Members’ comments that the grid is a real concern if we are to
deliver an electric transport solution. The hon. Member for North
Shropshire () talked about hubs and the
number of bus changes that people have to make on longer journeys
in rural Britain. Although I warmly welcome the Minister’s
observation on services to the hospital in Barnstaple, most of
those services involve a change at Barnstaple bus station, where
the toilets are still closed. As we look to rural solutions, we
need to find better ways to ensure that such hubs work. I know
that, like me, he is passionate about active travel, but we all
accept that we will not do all our journeys in rural Britain on a
bicycle. However, we could do the opening or closing mile of
those journeys on one if our hubs worked better.
I thank hon. Members for their time and participation, and I
particularly thank the Minister for his response.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered decarbonising rural transport.
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