Former Conservative MP for Milton Keynes South
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) on securing this important debate. I have worked on the subject of zero-emission buses for some time, both in my current role as Chairman of the Select Committee on Transport and in...
Is it the case that train operating companies stand ready to invest significantly to improve passenger journeys, but a disincentive is the break clause in current contracts? Ahead of wider reforms that the Transport Committee is scrutinising at the moment, may I urge the Minister to review those break clause arrangements and incentivise that investment now?
May I press the Minister a little further on the reliability of the airports’ contingency plans when we have failures such as this one? As he has alluded to, this is not the first time that this has occurred. I would be interested to know what lessons learned from previous handlings were deployed on this occasion, particularly for supporting passengers who are elderly, have disabilities or...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I add my congratulations to my comrade from the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), on securing this important debate. Rail rolling stock manufacturing in the UK has a bright future in the medium to long term, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) pointed out. In the coming...
I am pleased that the Secretary of State and the Minister are taking charge of negotiations with Alstom, Hitachi and others. I appreciate that as commercially sensitive discussions are ongoing, the Minister is constrained in what he can say, but they need to be resolved soon. The wider issue is the peaks and troughs not just in rolling stock procurement, but in railway industry investment...
It is a pleasure to make a short contribution to this debate. As the Minister alluded to, the Transport Committee conducted the scrutiny of the draft national networks NPS. We concluded it in October last year and published our recommendations. Before I get into the substance of my remarks, let me take this opportunity to place on record my grateful thanks to the Clerk of the Committee,...
The recent Budget contains welcome additional funding for east-west rail. What are the Minister’s intentions for that additional funding? May I suggest that he work with the Bletchley towns fund board, of which I am a member, on using the money to provide an additional eastern entrance to Bletchley station, which will improve accessibility and enhance regeneration?
It is a great pleasure to be able to contribute to this debate. I should flag that the Transport Committee conducted an extensive inquiry on self-driving vehicles and published our report on the subject last year. Our principal recommendation was to bring forward legislation to give the industry and investors the certainty to continue their work. We are very pleased indeed that the Government...
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department provided funding to the Turner Prize (a) directly and (b) indirectly via an organisation in receipt of funding from her Department in 2023.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if her Department will commemorate the 120th anniversary of the BSI Kitemark.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department makes an assessment of the (a) quality and (b) durability of (i) pothole repairs, (ii) resurfacing and (c) other maintenance of local roads.
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, whether he has had discussions with his Tunisian counterpart on that country's Parliamentary Committee's approval of a draft bill criminalising the normalisation of relations with Israel; and what assessment he has made of the potential impact of that bill on regional relations.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of levels of staff (a) retention and (b) morale at HMP Woodhill.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, when he plans to allocate the next tranche of funding under the Zero Emission Bus Regional Area scheme; and whether his Department is considering changes to the structure of the scheme (a) in general and (b) in order to incentivise local authorities to place bus orders more quickly once they have been allocated funding.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to Q417 of the oral evidence by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Roads, Buses and Places to the Transport Committee on 29 June 2022, HC 161, when his Department plans to publish a call for evidence on municipal bus companies.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 19 January 2023 to Question 122440 on Buses: Exhaust Emissions, whether he plans to publish the results from his Department's monitoring and evaluation project for the Zero Emission Bus Regional Area scheme.
