Welcome to this morning’s evidence session. This is a one-off session with the Secretary of State for Transport and we are grateful that she has come. We left her a few months, this time, to get settled into the job, so I am sure she is on top of all the issues. As I think people know, we will be scrutinising the work of the Department for Transport, and the Secretary of State’s priorities for the months ahead. Can I ask you both to introduce yourselves?

Thank you very much, Chair. My name is Heidi Alexander and I am the Secretary of State for Transport.

I am Jo Shanmugalingam, the second permanent secretary at the Department for Transport.

Welcome. I know you were hoping to make an announcement at the Committee. We are honoured that Secretaries of State use Committees to make announcements, but I hope that you will be able to do it in an answer to our questions, if that is okay. That works better, because we prefer that Secretaries of State and other Ministers don’t make speeches at the beginning of their evidence to the Committee. I am sure you appreciate that. My first question: “Move fast and fix things” was your motto when you first started. Is it still? How is it going?

Certainly that was the motto that my predecessor, Louise Haigh, gave the Department when she arrived after the general election last year. It is a good motto, because wherever you look there are problems on our transport network. I have been determined, since taking office, to crack on and fix the problems that people are experiencing on roads, trains and buses—no matter which part of the transport network they use. While I think “Move fast and fix things” is a good motto, after 14 years of the last Government, people want action. Actions speak louder than words. That was why, within days of being asked by the Prime Minister to take on the role, I announced which train operating companies would be the first to come into public ownership under our new legislation. We introduced the buses Bill and made sure that we got funding to protect local routes. We have announced record investment in local roads maintenance—an uplift of £500 million to local authorities so that they can crack on and fix an issue that we all know only too well as the source of many discussions on the doorstep: potholes and road maintenance. We introduced the SAF— sustainable aviation fuel—mandate to green aviation in January. We introduced new flexibilities to the zero emission vehicles mandate a couple of weeks ago. We have also bitten the bullet and taken decisions on planning applications that have sat on desks in the Department for far too long. I hope I have done the motto proud. As I say, actions speak louder than words.

Absolutely. On one specific issue, since we took evidence in December about the unacceptable waits that people face for driving test slots, waiting times have actually increased. When will that be fixed?

The waiting times that people experience at the moment are totally unacceptable. Despite the action that the Minister for the Future of Roads announced in December last year, we have seen waiting times for access to driving tests hit new highs. Of course, DVSA delivered a record number of driving tests last year—1.95 million. There have been some changes in behaviour. That is why, as you alluded to, Chair, I was keen at the start of the session to make clear the new instructions that I have given to DVSA to make further progress. I have instructed DVSA to pay additional overtime incentive payments to everyone delivering extra driving tests to try to crack through the number of people waiting. We are asking DVSA staff who are qualified to conduct driving test examinations to consider voluntarily returning to the frontline and carrying out tests. That will mean they will not be able to continue to carry out their current roles in DVSA full time. We are going to double the number of permanent trainers for new driving examiners. We will also be consulting on changes to the driving test booking system, to try to deal with the issue of the bots that are, frankly, exploiting learners at the moment. We think that, taken together, those measures could result in tens of thousands more driving tests happening this year. To answer your specific question about when we expect to return to the seven-week target for waiting times, we think that the package of measures that I am announcing today could result in our meeting the target again in summer next year.

Thank you. That is good to hear. However, some of those measures were already in place. Among the evidence we had last time was the fact that those qualified to be examiners were added to the examination roster. Unfortunately, that took people with strong experience of the examination system off the management role. That then caused management and productivity problems and issues at the driving test centres. We have a great disparity of pass rates between different driving test centres. On overtime, one issue that was raised was that there is not enough flexibility in job opportunities, because some people in this sphere like to work part time, or work flexible hours. Yet all the new recruits—partly because of training costs—are on full-time contracts. There is not a lot of scope for increasing overtime. I am surprised that that is not already an option for those who want to work longer hours. The difficulty—the reason this is not as easy as it sounds—is that a lot of examiners come from the pool of driving instructors, many of whom, whether they are employed or self-employed, have more control over their hours; and, of course, the pay rate is higher. You say that it will be cost-neutral. We pointed out that, as with a lot of Government charges, the rate that people pay for a test has not increased since 2010. Other Departments are increasing their core Government charges that have not increased with inflation. Are you going to review that? Finally, we are all shocked about the booking system, and bots and third parties being able to do what the Eavises have managed to stop for Glastonbury tickets,but, frankly, that is a function of the over-demand and shortage of supply. While it would be very welcome, in itself it will not stop the problem. Sorry, there is a series of points there.

There is a lot in there, Chair. You are right that additional overtime payments, and the use of what are known as warrant card holders—DVSA staff qualified to do examinations but currently doing other work—were initiatives that the previous Government had in place for a period of time. There is a balance to be struck, because you will not be able to do some other types of policy work, which those individuals would be doing. I think, though, that the situation has hit such a crisis that we need to take those measures now. In my conversations with the DVSA, I am persuaded that they will be able to manage the process appropriately. You are also right to express the view that there is a desire for part-time examiners. The second permanent secretary might want to say something about that. It is a subject that we have been looking at. The basic point is that we need to recruit and retain more driving examiners so that the pool of people who are available to conduct driving exams is bigger. We don’t know whether the level of demand we are hitting for tests is a new normal, but we have seen a change of behaviour, with people booking their tests earlier in the learning journey. I assure you, Chair, that where Government systems act as a brake on growth and people’s aspirations, we will act. That is why I have taken the decision to introduce the measures that I have outlined to you. Jo, do you want to say something on the part-time issue?

Yes, more generally, we think that the overtime measure in particular will make a material and immediate difference. It means that an individual examiner could do 40 extra tests a month if they chose—a third more than their normal roster, on a full-time basis. That, effectively, buys time while the structural changes announced in December, and the further ones announced today, have an effect. One of the December announcements was a change in booking conditions to increase the period for a free cancellation from three to 10 days. That came into effect only on 8 April, so we are not yet seeing the benefit of those changes. Again, increasing the number of permanent examiners will give us the opportunity to look at how we can, as you say, bring the widest variety of people into the workforce. We absolutely need to do that to make a sustainable difference and break the cycle that we are still in today.

Can I press you on one of the many points that the Chair raised about the cost of the driving test? I am conscious that it is pretty unpopular for politicians to suggest that Government should put up their prices, but, with regard to the behaviour that you alluded to about booking earlier, I have learned anecdotally from talking to people who are in the queue at the moment that they book as soon as they start their driving lessons, because they know there is a delay. They take the test whether they are ready or not, because it is cheaper, in some parts of the country, than a driving lesson, so why wouldn’t you? Why would you bother cancelling? That means that either more tests are taken by people who fail because they are taking them prematurely, or, worse, people are passing by chance when they are not safe and ready to drive. Am I right in thinking that secondary legislation is needed to adjust the price of the driving test, and is that on the radar as a way to adjust the behaviour that you described?

We have not ruled anything out at this stage, but if we were to consider raising the price of taking the driving test people would, rightly, say, “We want a decent system in place for accessing that.” There is a chicken and egg element to all this. I would need to check on the legislative process by which it would happen.

It is a statutory instrument, yes.

It is a statutory instrument—so secondary legislation. The DVSA is running a campaign encouraging individuals to consider whether they are ready to pass, because if we can reduce the number of failed examinations it will reduce pressure on the system overall; but we are looking at all measures. A broader point is that I was astonished on coming into the Department at the number of fees and charges that have not been increased at all in the last 14 or 15 years. No politician wants to ask people to pay more for things, but to cover the operating costs of different systems it is sometimes necessary. We have not taken any firm decisions either way on the issue you raise.

But people are in fact paying three, four or even five times £62 to get a test, and the cost of lessons, which suggests that there is leeway to bring the cost up at least to meet inflation. That might bring a little bit more income into the DVSA. As you say, you want your announcement to be cost-neutral. It is just a suggestion. We will now move on to spending.

Me again—sorry. The Committee is very interested in your Department’s submission to the spending review. When it comes to your organisational structure, in particular staffing resource, now seems a good opportunity to reflect on what job the Department is trying to do—in particular with big decisions on rail and buses—and whether the design of the departmental structure is the best fit for that. I wonder if you could comment on that and talk about staffing levels. Are we going to see changes in staffing levels, staff location, and those sorts of things?

I am happy to start, and then perhaps Jo will want to pick up some of the detail. You and other Committee members will be aware that the Government have set an objective to reduce the administration costs of government by 10% by ’28-29 and 15% the year after. We have not talked about headcount reductions as such, because we think that that will result in some perverse incentives. You could reduce the central headcount of a Department by paying more consultants, for example, which would not necessarily be the right thing to do for the public finances or the effective operation of the organisation. When we talk about staffing numbers and levels it is important to remember that a previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, set a target to reduce civil service headcount numbers, and we saw those numbers shoot up by 130,000. Focusing on how we spend money more efficiently is right. Having said that, if you look over the last five years, the central Department’s headcount has gone up by about a third. I am not sure whether that is justifiable in the medium to longer term. We initiated a voluntary exit scheme last autumn and anticipate nearly 300 people leaving under that, out of a total of about 3,700 staff in the Department. There are some changes in government. The Government Car Service is transferring over to the Cabinet Office. With the setting up of Great British Railways a number of DFT staff will transfer to the new organisation. We are constantly looking at ways in which we can rewire the state and make it more efficient, but we also need to make sure that we have the right skills and the right people in the right jobs.

The Secretary of State is obviously right. The Department has grown—the central Department quite considerably—over the last six or seven years, as have most central Government Departments. The voluntary exit scheme is part of our beginning to get smaller, and we expect that to continue. As the Secretary of State said, because this is about cost and not headcount, in some cases it can mean insourcing. Cat Little recently wrote to the Public Accounts Committee about potentially bringing 7,000 digital contractors and consultants into government, because that will offer us better value. As we just discussed, we have 3,500 in the core Department, and 15,000 civil servants in total across the family of agencies. We want there to be more driving examiners covered by the fees. We will look at how we get best value for the services and the outcomes that the Government want to deliver.

You touched on the agencies. Without being distracted by consultancy debates, those arm’s length agencies are an important part of the overall remit of the Department. Do you see many structural changes happening, other than the obvious ones with GBR?

The Government have asked us—the Prime Minister has been very clear—to look at the role of where government is conducted, and at making sure that Ministers have the right oversight. We have a simpler way for citizens and businesses to interact with government, which we might come on to. We have a massive change coming, with Great British Railways, and huge simplification, and we will always carry on looking at how we make conduct of our transport responsibilities as simple and straightforward as possible.

Yes, very much so. Chair, it might be helpful if I were to say something about the way I am approaching my spending review discussions with the Treasury, and what I am prioritising within that. It is important that we prioritise investment in transport that will deliver economic growth in this Parliament and contribute to the delivery of the 1.5 million homes that the Government have committed to. I also want to find a way to improve the everyday experience of people using our transport network, no matter how they choose to travel. We need to get the basics right as well, because we have a lot of ageing assets on our transport network at the moment, if you think about when our motorways and railways were built. Basic maintenance is critical. In putting together the proposals from the Department for Transport for the spending review, I have looked at the breakdown by region of our capital submission: how does the amount of capital that we would ideally like to deliver transport infrastructure compare with the overall size of the population in the region? The outcome I would look to achieve through the spending review process would be for those two things to be broadly in balance. Clearly, I am in negotiations with colleagues at the moment, so, much as you might try to tempt me to give specific answers on specific schemes, I won’t be able to do that today, but I reassure you that the point about regional balance is very important. I am also alive to the fact that the economic benefits of investment in transport infrastructure can bleed across areas. Taking London as an example, the population from the south-east that travels into the capital every day for the purposes of work is very large, so looking at spending per head of population, London looks quite well provided for, but it has a very large commuter hinterland as well. To answer your basic question, yes, we are very mindful of regional balance in our approach to the spending review.

That leads on quite naturally to what I want to ask. In respect of the projects that were inherited last year, we heard in July that unfunded transport commitments were a significant share—about 15%—of that wider £22 billion gap. In the review of those projects, what progress has the capital review panel made, and when can we expect to hear the outcome of that process?

It is probably quite important to give a little context about the capital review panel that my predecessor appointed last summer. Obviously, it was at the point when the dire state of our inheritance with regard to the public finances became obvious. She put together a panel, headed by Rachel Skinner, to advise on strategic priorities for capital investment—not individual schemes. They provided some advice to her, in advance of the Budget. They have done another short piece of work in advance of the second stage of the spending review. I am pleased to say that some of their findings broadly align with the work that the Department has been doing on the spending review. Given that we have now entered the negotiation stage with Treasury colleagues, I have written to everyone who provided their services free of charge to thank them for their work. We have closed down the capital review, and the outcomes they contributed to, in the advice that they gave strategically, internally, within the Department, will feed through to the spending review process that we are now in.

I see. Can we expect to see some kind of summary published of the conclusions that the panel came to, about strategic priorities?

I think the intention of my predecessor was that the review would be an internally-focused piece of work. We don’t intend to publish a document, because that was not the way they operated, but it will inform the negotiations that we are having in the spending review. To reiterate the point, it was not about individual schemes; it was a more strategic piece of work.

On that point around individual schemes, I understand that you have said you aren’t going to talk about the outcomes for particular schemes today, but can we take it from your update that that scheme-by-scheme ranking, reprofiling scrutiny, took place within the core Department in conversation with the Treasury? Was that the process?

You would expect me, when I came into post in December, to sit down with officials in the Department and look closely at all the schemes that were on the books, be they road projects or rail projects, and look at the benefits that those schemes offered, the costs, and the stage of delivery that they were in. Clearly we are going to complete the very significant capital investments that are already under way—HS2 between Birmingham and London, the trans-Pennine route upgrade, and the work on East West Rail. We are putting together the third road investment strategy as well. It would not be true to say that there is a big spreadsheet of priorities, listed 1 to 257, anywhere in the Department, but, obviously, given what I said in response to a previous question about the strategic outcomes that I seek to achieve from the spending review—delivering economic growth in this Parliament, helping to unlock homes, and improving people’s everyday experience of the transport network, plus achieving regional balance—the individual assessments of those schemes will mean that some perform better in delivering against all those objectives.

When you look at the sum of those projects, are those that are supported by outside organisations fully within scope? I am thinking particularly about the mayoral proposals for rail enhancements north of Birmingham.

Since joining the Department I have prioritised engagement with our Mayors—people like Richard Parker and Claire Ward in the midlands, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram in Manchester and Liverpool, the great collection of Mayors that we are now blessed to have in Yorkshire, and Kim McGuinness in the north-east. They have not been shy about telling me what investments they want in the transport network. That demonstrates the extent to which our regional Mayors understand that transport is holding back the potential of their areas and communities. In our spending review we are looking at everything in the round. We also need to think beyond the spending review, because transport infrastructure projects, by their very nature, take a long time to design, build and get into operation. Especially with large rail or road schemes, it is important to think strategically, feeding into the 10-year infrastructure strategy that will be published alongside the spending review, but, I would argue, thinking beyond that time horizon as well. Under the last Government, we had a lot of promises and lofty ambition, but the money was not available to deliver it. We need to build confidence in the supply chain. We need to give certainty about the pipeline of infrastructure investment that the Government want to bring forward, over what will be a decade of national renewal.

I will finish by referencing the point that my colleague Catherine made about regional disparities. I understand, and you have said today, that you want to take a balanced approach. I just ask that historical imbalances be taken into account. In the midlands it always felt like the midlands engine was the afterthought to the northern powerhouse, and the figures that have been quoted today bear that out. There has been a lot of interest in the future of the midlands rail hub. A major part of that proposal, the Kings Norton upgrade, is in my constituency—to declare an interest. I understand that, when a Department is looking at priorities, you might be looking at a fair balance within a particular set of packages, but there is a historic lack of investment that needs to be remedied in what some people think of as the squeezed midlands.

I take your point. It is a point that has been made to me by various sources. I met very early on with Ken Skates, who is the Welsh Government Transport Minister, along with Jo Stevens, the Secretary of State for Wales. They were making a very similar case to you, pointing out that historic rail investment in Wales has lagged and asking whether, through the spending review, we could address that point. It is something that I am alive to. What I cannot do is make any promises today about what the outcome of the spending review will be. What I can assure you is that schemes that will significantly improve the experience of people travelling on the public transport network and on our roads, and which will unlock economic growth and help deliver new homes, are very much the subject of discussion between me and Treasury colleagues at the moment about what the priorities are and what we can afford to deliver over the next four years.

Capital expenditure across Government is set to increase. Why is the Department for Transport going to spend less on capital projects in 2025-26 than in previous years?

The capital budget for the Department for Transport in 2025-26 is £21.8 billion. That is broadly in line with the levels that have been spent in recent years. I think it was £22 billion in 2023-24 and just under £20 billion in the financial year just ended. Some of the fluctuations that you see on individual years can sometimes be accounted for by specific things in historic years. If you look at inflationary pressures on HS2, or a one-off uplift to local roads investment, that can slightly skew the figures. I am very clear that we are maintaining a really good pipeline of investment at the moment. With some of the schemes that I mentioned in response to previous questions—whether it is making sure that we get on and complete HS2 between Birmingham and London, the trans-Pennine route upgrade or the fact that we have not been frightened to take decisions on some of those big infrastructure projects—we have the highest level of capital expenditure in government. That is important, given the impact on economic growth that transport investment has, but that does not mean to say that we should not look to drive efficiencies in that as well. We need to make sure that the taxpayer is getting a really good bang for its buck when it comes to the money that we spend on building new, and enhancing and maintaining our transport network.

That is correct, but the money for major capital infrastructure does not just have to come from the taxpayer. Many of our competitor countries have shown that they are way ahead of us in terms of imaginative and different ways of bringing in private sector investment. You are absolutely right that major infrastructure delivers growth. We can see that in the success of Crossrail/the Elizabeth line, and what that has generated in jobs, property values, new developments and so on. What assumptions have been made in the spending review submission from your Department about a greater extent of different types and levels of private sector funding in transport infrastructure investment?

It is a fair point. Historically, as a country, we have made some use of private finance initiative and private sector concessions, thinking of the Mersey Gateway bridge and the M6 Toll. In London there are examples like the DLR extension and the Silvertown tunnel. As part of the spending review, we are considering two specific projects from a private finance perspective, one being the lower Thames crossing and the other being the way in which we deliver the new station at Euston. Euston is a very complicated piece of transport infrastructure to get right. Not only is it about the new HS2 station, but it is about the existing railway station which we know people have huge frustrations with. We have the underground station there and a lot of development potential around that site. Both on lower Thames crossing and Euston, we are in discussion with Treasury colleagues about private finance. We have not taken a decision on the type of private finance model to pursue. We will be working on that very closely with colleagues across Government in the coming weeks.

On a similar point, now that the lower Thames crossing has been given the green light, or had development consent and—it pains me to say this—looking at some other large projects like HS2 where something has gone quite badly wrong with the delivery of that project, what lessons are you looking to learn from HS2’s experience to make sure that there isn’t a repeat with similar large-scale investment?

It is obviously the right question to ask because we inherited an absolute mess on HS2. As someone who chaired the Crossrail project in the last two or three years of its existence before we brought the line into use, we said at that point in time that we would not make the same mistakes again. It is, frankly, heartbreaking to see the same happening on HS2. There are quite considerable differences between the lower Thames crossing and HS2. The lower Thames crossing is geographically constrained. The scope has been very tightly defined and has undergone a number of reviews. If you think about the fact that the previous Government spent £2.5 billion on phase 2 of HS2, which never happened, that is an awful lot of money that could have been spent on improving other bits of the transport network. One of the mistakes of HS2 was not having sufficient design work done before construction work actually started. Then you see changes being made through the process, and that inflates cost. I believe that is a point that the new chief executive of HS2, Mark Wild, has made. Having the scope nailed down to start off with is absolutely critical. Rather than setting up a new arm’s length body to manage the project, in National Highways—the promoter of the scheme—there is an organisation that has a strong track record of delivering big road infrastructure. They have links with the supply chain. They have a strong understanding of the work that is necessary. Also, the operational interfaces with a road tunnel and a freight tunnel, which is what this would be, are actually quite different from a railway. If you think of all the interactions that the civil engineering works on a railway have, with signalling systems, rolling stock and the day-to-day running of the railways, it is not the same. While we will, of course, learn the lessons from HS2—we commissioned James Stewart to do a review of governance and that report has now been provided to me—we also need to keep in the back of our minds that there are some differences between the lower Thames crossing and HS2.

I am very keen to see an increase in rail freight. One of the things that we consulted on in the rail consultation document that we published a couple of months ago was not only putting a duty on Great British Railways around freight, but setting targets for growth in rail freight. Getting huge lorries off our roads and moving that freight via rail, or by water, even, is good for the environment and good for easing congestion. What I would say about the lower Thames crossing, though, is that it is a strategically important freight route linking the short straits and the channel crossing at Dover up through to the midlands and the north. Currently a lot of that traffic is coming over the Dartford crossing, which is now of a certain age and will have resilience issues in future. While, yes, there is lots more to do to move freight away from road and on to rail, it is important that we address that particular issue in that part of the country given the importance it has as a strategic freight route.

The question is how you would get freight across the River Thames when it comes to rail. If you think about the rail links, that is the issue around the Thames estuary. Creating links from Kent to Essex on the road network is critical. I speak to a lot of Mayors of big cities who want, some of the time, to see less rail freight in very densely populated parts of the country, so you have to think about what the actual rail network is. That is not to say that we should not be looking creatively, through GBR when we establish it, to get more freight on to the railways. That is a big, strategic priority of mine. We are working with the freight industry more broadly on a new plan as well, but we are baking it into the set-up of GBR right from the get-go.

The integrated national transport strategy should set out the vision for transport across England. It should focus on how we better design, build and operate the transport network to meet the needs of the people who are using it. I want to be clear that this is not another infrastructure strategy. We have the 10-year infrastructure strategy that we will be publishing alongside the spending review. There will be more work that my Department is doing, both on the roads investment strategy, RIS3, and the rail investment pipeline looking forward. What is distinctive about the integrated national transport strategy is its focus on people and integration. We sometimes don’t think enough about the door-to-door experience of people making journeys, even frustrating things like going to a new place and not having the right parking app on your phone and having to download a new app. What is the experience of turning up at a railway station only to find that you don’t know where the bus stops are or that the buses have stopped running? How we integrate better between modes is critical. Government have a convening role to play to make sure that local authorities have access to the best information. Solutions in Swindon will not be the right solutions in Derby. Actually, we need to equip local leaders, be they council leaders or Mayors of our combined authorities, to be able to make the right decisions that mean that the transport network makes more sense for the people who are using it. I want to see the needs of different people who are using our transport network thought about as well. We have an ageing population. We have increasing numbers of people in the UK who are living with disabilities or long-term health conditions. It is actually thinking about how we get a transport network that works for everyone. That is what I see the work on the integrated national transport strategy as being about. We put out a call for evidence. We had about 6,000 responses. We did 11 regional road shows. I am going to be doing some more targeted panels with groups that were unrepresented in that process to make sure that we have really good input. There has been a lot of engagement and a lot of interest in this.

Later this year.

I would expect the integrated national transport strategy to be clear about how transport planning, the planning system and the delivery of homes and spatial planning work together. We are doing that work on the new freight plan. I have talked about the work that will be happening on things like the roads investment strategy and the rail investment pipeline as well. There won’t be other particular plans apart from those I have mentioned. In February we suggested changes to the national planning policy framework and that we need to be more vision-led as opposed to just operating with a predict and provide approach. We need to think about the places that we are trying to create. If we are building new homes on the outskirts of a town, we need to make sure that we have bus routes there from day one that are operating so that you do not bake in particular types of travel habits because the public transport simply is not available. That is the broad direction we are going in.

Thanks for coming along this morning. I want to explore a little bit more about what you were saying to Catherine about accessibility. Obviously, you will have been really excited to receive the Committee’s report on transport and accessibility and we look forward to your response to that. You spoke quite generally about how it is important. Are you able to give examples of how this Government have changed their approach to accessibility?

I have been struck, since coming into the Department, that this is an area that has not had the attention that it should have had in recent years. The last Government’s inclusive transport strategy dated back to 2018. There were a lot of lofty aspirations but the actions which followed simply did not match up to the rhetoric. It is important that we change that. Through the Bus Services Bill we have introduced some new standards around bus stop accessibility. We supported Lord Blunkett’s amendments in the Lords around statutory design guidance for floating bus stops in particular. We have committed to publishing a rail accessibility road map in advance of the creation of Great British Railways. We have set up the aviation accessibility task and finish group, chaired by Tanni Grey-Thompson. I had a good meeting with her a couple of weeks ago. I expect the recommendations from that group to come to me later this year. We have also done things like extending the payments for small coach and bus operators, to make sure that the information you actually get on the bus is accessible to everyone, whether that is about fitting new audiovisual screens or putting in hearing loops on buses. More broadly, we have established a new centre of excellence in the Department. Jo is nodding and might want to say something more about that.

We are doing work to make sure that we are always, as the Secretary of State said, thinking about people and different groups of people in our policy development and delivery. We have brought together our work on the public sector equality duty with wider work that helps us think about individuals. We have developed and published transport user personas, which are a sort of methodological way of enabling us to think about different users. We very deliberately have a behavioural scientist as our chief scientific adviser because, particularly for us in transport, it is so critical to making sure we actually deliver the system and services that people need.

That is important because we can design the best system in the world, but it is how people interact with it that matters. Going back to bus stops, of course a lot of people cannot access their bus stop because there are cars parked on the pavement. When can local authorities expect to get the power to enforce a pavement parking ban, if they so wish to do?

This is an issue that has been left to languish for far too long. It was one of the first conversations that the Minister for the Future of Roads, Lilian Greenwood, had with me when I joined the Department in December. We are committed to publishing a response to that consultation. I want to make sure that local authorities have effective and appropriate measures to be able to help them tackle the problem. We are looking to publish that consultation response in the coming months.

People probably want more than a response to the consultation. They probably want a timeline for those powers being given to local authorities. What is the barrier to that happening? I know you are busy—I think you are anyway.

I definitely am.

What is the barrier to making that happen? You have served in London for a long time. You know it can work because it works in London. I represent Edinburgh. It works there. What is the barrier to creating that more equal country?

We need to work out what approach we would like to take—whether it is one that is perhaps more limited and involves secondary legislation, or whether it is more extensive and might involve primary legislation. We would need to look through how we might then work that into our broader programme. It is something that I know Lilian, the Minister for roads, is very passionate about. I am committed, as a first step, to getting that consultation response out in the coming months and then moving quickly thereafter.

I am sure you are passionate about it too.

Yes.

We have talked about your predecessor a lot. She was also committed to giving the CAA more powers to protect consumers, particularly around accessibility. I think that will have to involve legislation. When can we expect to see that?

We are looking at strengthening the consumer enforcement powers of the CAA. We have committed to doing that. We are looking for legislative opportunities in both the current Session and future Sessions of Parliament. At the moment, as I understand it, the CAA has a mixture of consumer enforcement powers. Some of them are quite soft, about writing letters and providing guidance. It can take legal action through the courts, but that can often be very time-consuming. I know that it took Ryanair to court a couple of years ago when there was some industrial action around pilots. That took three years to conclude, and all the time consumers were waiting without any compensation. This is on the list of things that we want to get sorted. As I say, we are looking at the appropriate legislative opportunities.

I think your predecessor was looking into reducing the need for legal action and just giving the CAA more powers to act. I get that airlines might have concerns about that.

There is a case for bringing the consumer enforcement powers that the CAA has in line with what other regulators have, such as the CMA.

Accessibility is a big issue. We have our report, and I am sure you are working on the response to that this afternoon once you get back to your office. It cuts across so much of what the Committee does that it would be good to get a commitment from you to come back and perhaps discuss that report and other issues right across the accessibility spectrum. It would be good to hear more about the excellent work from the Department.

Of course. I am always very happy to update the Committee in whatever form is most appropriate and most convenient. We will be responding to the report that you have published in line with the deadline. I think we are due to report to you next month—in May. I have looked at it very carefully and will continue to do so, and I give you my commitment that I take a very strong personal interest in this.

We will probably appreciate regular updates. Catherine, you had a specific rail-based question that is very pertinent.

This is a very thorny issue to sort out. I spent a lot of time working on the Elizabeth line in London. While you have a level platform-to-train access in the central section of the Elizabeth line, where the platforms and the stations were constructed completely brand-new, on some of the other platforms on the outer limbs of that route the fact that the platforms were constructed many decades ago means there is often a gap between the platform and the train. That is not least because sometimes freight runs on those tracks as well, and the size of the freight train is difficult, so that the infrastructure work for some of the platforms to actually make level boarding possible, even when you have well-designed, accessible trains like the new Elizabeth line fleet that I know are being manufactured in your constituency, is a massive and complicated jigsaw problem to get right. There are a number of schemes to address the height differentials on platforms. Both for disabled passengers, and frankly for able-bodied passengers, some of the gaps between the trains and the platforms are enormous. Even if you are not necessarily frail but do not feel particularly confident on your feet, that can be a massive thing to navigate. If we want to get people back to using the railway network, the design of new trains is critical, but so is how you do enhancement projects at stations to address the basics of things like platform design and the lifts to get to the platforms in the first place. That is why we are proceeding with things like the Access for All schemes on the rail network as well. To reassure you, I met with Tanni Grey-Thompson a couple of weeks ago and discussed the work that she is doing on aviation accessibility, and have seen on social media some of the problems she has been experiencing with the train operating companies. I have immediately raised those issues with the managing directors of the train operating companies in question. If Tanni is experiencing it, there are thousands more people across the country who are experiencing it as well. It is simply not good enough.

Yes, albeit that the point I made to start off with still stands. Even if you have level boarding on new trains, the physical infrastructure of the platforms at some stations on the routes that those trains will be using will mean that, some of the time, not all of the stations are fully accessible.

Maybe that is a role for GBR in terms of the station infrastructure.

I was interested in what you have just said, Secretary of State. Obviously, that is a really laudable aim to have, but we have kilometres and kilometres of platforms that would need changing. It is coming under Government ownership. Given the wider conversations about money, I am conscious that anybody listening in this morning who is disabled might be thinking, “Gosh, this is going to revolutionise things.” I am thinking about Paddington, for example. It is a huge step down off the train. To change 12 platforms at Paddington though, to make that work, is a laudable ambition, but what timeframe could that realistically be delivered by? Are we talking decades away, to be realistic with what we are suggesting?

You make a very fair point. It is the point that I was seeking to make in response to Catherine’s question. You can make targeted enhancements to stations where there is particularly high usage, I suggest, but you have to prioritise that investment pipeline because the scale of the rail network is such that, with the best will in the world and even with very significant budgets, you are not going to be able to do everything straightaway.

If I may, I think it is also why you have prioritised £10 million extra funding for the Passenger Assist service, to make sure that is working effectively immediately, so that where people need assistance it is available consistently and they can rely on that assistance being there.

And as our report was subtitled, it is rights against reality. Too often, the reality doesn’t always fit in with the policy or the procedures. That needs to be got right throughout the whole system. Thank you, Secretary of State. We are now going to move to questions on different transport modes. We start with aviation.

We all understand that driving growth in our economy is important in so many different aspects. What is the Government’s strategy for airport expansion?

We will support airport expansion when it delivers economic growth, where it delivers jobs, where it improves the passenger experience, and where that airport expansion is in line with our legally binding environmental obligations, be that on carbon, on noise or on air quality. We are committed to securing the long-term future of aviation in the UK. We realise the benefits of international connectivity that our airports bring. If more people are going to fly, which is certainly where the current demand trajectories are pointing, we need to make flying greener and less carbon intensive. That is why we have put such focus on things like the development of the sustainable aviation fuel mandate and the commitment that we have made to introducing the revenue certainty mechanism. You will also be aware that the Government have invited proposals from Heathrow for a third runway at that airport. We have committed to urgently reviewing the airports national policy statement that the previous Government put in place. We are also using the making best use policy to drive decisions around airport expansion at other airports that have runway capacity that they could use better. That is what led me to take the decision a couple of weeks ago to approve the expansion of Luton airport and, a couple of weeks prior to that, I took a minded-to-approve decision on Gatwick, albeit that I am waiting for some information to come back from Gatwick airport before taking a final decision on that.

Is there an overarching vision for aviation? Is there a written document that exists or is going to be produced?

There isn’t a document called “The Aviation Strategy”. If I was persuaded that such a strategy would be useful to the sector, I would consider publishing one. We have been focused on some of the key challenges that the aviation and airport sector have been speaking to us about, namely taking decisions on the planning applications that have been in the system in some cases for quite a long time, as well as inviting those proposals for Heathrow. We are committed to modernising our airspace. That will also have an impact on the carbon intensity of aviation by enabling flights to pursue more direct routes and reducing the amount of time that planes are actually in the air. As I said, there is the really important point about decarbonising aviation. When there are limited resources within the Department, I want to focus on actually making things happen. Getting the SAF mandate introduced in January and the commitment to legislating for the revenue certainty mechanism are things that we are really focused on. As I say, if the sector came to me and said, “This would be helpful,” I would consider it, but it is not currently in the work programme for the Department as of today.

Going back to the third runway at Heathrow airport and the four Government tests, which you touched on—I am sure you don’t need reminding of these, but, for the record, they are air quality, noise pollution, climate change obligations and the countrywide benefits—are you satisfied that the third runway would meet those tests?

I should be clear about the fact that there is no live planning application at the moment. I cannot give you a definitive answer because I do not have a planning application in front of me. My role as the planning decision maker on airport expansion plans is to look at the economic benefits that expansion can bring and weigh them up against the impacts on the environment, be that carbon, air quality or noise. We need to go through the process of reviewing the ANPS. That will be the document against which any development consent order application from Heathrow, from the promoter of any scheme, will be considered at Heathrow.

With London being one of the best connected cities globally, but the share of flights to Heathrow coming down, why is increasing Heathrow’s capacity the right thing to do? Previous reports have said that a third runway at Heathrow would have a detrimental impact on regional airports and jobs at regional airports. How do they sit alongside each other?

Despite the pandemic, capacity at both Heathrow and Gatwick is almost running at its limit at the moment, to be honest. Last year was Heathrow’s busiest-ever year and demand is expected to continue to increase there. If we do not address the issue about capacity constraints at Heathrow, we risk losing out to other international hub airports—the likes of Charles de Gaulle and Schiphol, for example. I saw some interesting stats about the number of regional airports that connect into Schiphol as opposed to connecting into Heathrow. I think last year something like 17 regional airports linked into Schiphol for long-haul flights, but only nine regional airports linked into Heathrow. What we do not want to see is Heathrow’s status as a global hub airport eroded. It is really important for air freight as well, for some of the things that come in on air freight, medicines as well as some types of food. We think that the expansion of Heathrow will benefit regional airports. When airlines are looking at their own commercial operations, subsidising some of the regional routes which are less profitable than the long-haul routes is also critical. The last Government’s ANPS sought to protect those regional routes. I see no reason why the expansion of Heathrow will not be good for regional airports. Some of the regional airports have expressed that point to me.

Finally from me, something that was highlighted to the Committee during a recent piece of work on the incident at Heathrow airport is their operating fees, which are seen by some as being very high. With any expansion, what action can the Government take to make sure that regional connectivity is maintained and that some regional operators are not priced out of the market?

I have probably addressed that point in one of the points I have already made about the way in which airlines often cross-subsidise some of the less profitable regional links through having the ability to fly more long-haul routes. The charges that the airport applies to airlines are regulated by the CAA, as you know. The CAA are going through their process of agreeing the conditions for the next regulatory period, called H8, for Heathrow airport. While we work closely with the CAA, it is an independent matter for them to determine the fees that Heathrow can charge the airlines.

Thank you. The issue of not having a single aviation strategy is one that, as you know, I have raised with you in Transport questions. Sitting on your table, or soon to be or probably will be, is a series of applications—some of which have already gone through—for many millions of additional passenger journeys across the UK, sometimes by airports more or less competing with each other. Unlike what you just said to Baggy in response to his last question, not that long ago the DFT itself came up with figures that showed that growth at Heathrow would actually disbenefit regional airports and airlines, and therefore those local economies. Do you not think it is time that there ought to be an aviation strategy, and one that might also link to UK tourism strategy? Of course, the vast majority of the people flying, and set to be flying, are UK residents taking their spare cash spending abroad to the net deficit of £42 billion. Do you not think it is time to have an airports and aviation strategy for the whole of the UK?

I have to be mindful about the work that I am asking the Department to do, to be honest. The Government have invited proposals for a third runway for Heathrow, and we have made a commitment to reviewing the airports national policy statement. That is a really big and important piece of work. At the point when I walked into the Department there were live planning applications on my desk, some of which had been deferred a number of times. This Government have made a commitment to get on and take difficult decisions. That is precisely what I have done over the last couple of months. We are doing a massive piece of work on decarbonising aviation and bringing forward legislation on a revenue certainty mechanism for sustainable aviation fuel, which would in effect give investors in sustainable aviation fuel a guaranteed price and return on their development in future. That is really important because, at the moment, we only have one commercial production facility of sustainable aviation fuel—Phillips 66 at Immingham—and this is a massive potential growth industry. It could provide high-skilled quality jobs as well as reducing the carbon intensity of aviation. If I am tasking the teams with doing all of that work, plus being mindful of the discussion that we started this session with about the resources of the Department and making the Department as lean and as efficient as possible, there is a balance to be struck between writing lots of strategies and actually getting on and doing the work. I haven’t detected a huge desire from the airports and aviation sector for a new strategy. They want us to get on and deliver.

But, as you said, our transport strategies are there to serve our economy, not to be our economy in themselves. Thank you for your answer.

On this regional airport piece, you referenced the contrast between Schiphol and Heathrow, and the regional connections. I think that is at the heart of the issue that Ruth was getting to. I don’t speak for Edinburgh airport, I have to say, but what I think they are concerned about with the expansion of Heathrow is that they are going to lose some of their point-to-point routes. People who are currently able to fly direct from Edinburgh to wherever will have to go via Heathrow, through the plans that you are inviting Heathrow to submit. Is that a good thing for Edinburgh airport? You seem to be saying that you are listening to airports, but have you reached out—not you personally—or has your team spoken to all airports to understand what their concerns are and what opportunities they see in this? There are opportunities for all airports. Has that happened?

The Aviation Minister, Mike Kane, has a programme of engagement with all the airports. He is very diligent and hardworking. I have spoken to a huge number of airports myself, as well as the airlines. In change there will always be pluses and minuses. If you are flying further to a European hub airport to then get a connecting long-haul flight, it might be better for you to be making that journey within the UK. Clearly, one of the other things I want to do is make sure that we improve the public transport accessibility of our airports so that for domestic journeys the choice will not always be plane first. If you can have a quick, affordable train link to an airport to take a direct flight, that will obviously be preferable. We have set up something called the aviation futures forum to bring together Ministers and industry leaders to look at how the sector can contribute towards the Government’s missions. There is a huge amount of engagement going on.

In the public transport connections to airports, passengers are a focus for that, but airports employ many thousands of people, so getting it right for them is really important. I guess the problems at Heathrow in March highlighted issues around the resilience of national transport infrastructure. Is a privately operated entity—perhaps the hard way—giving you a better understanding of how the Government need to intervene with privately operated pieces of national transport infrastructure? “Intervene” is, perhaps, the wrong word; being more mindful may be a better way of putting it.

Much of the UK’s transport infrastructure is operated privately. It is important, especially when it comes to critically important national infrastructure, that the Government work with the operators of that infrastructure to prepare for and try to prevent disruption. There is a lot of close working that goes on between the DFT and organisations like the National Protective Security Authority and the National Cyber Security Centre. When incidents happen, we work very closely with the private operator. To take the example of the fire at Heathrow, within hours of that fire breaking out, my officials, who had been in touch directly with Heathrow, were on the phone to me. We were working with the CAA to look at how we could help recover the situation. What could we do? Did we need to lift some regulations on night flights to help recovery. What could we do, working with National Rail and National Highways to manage the issues around people getting to the airport and the disruption they experienced?

When you were working through that on the day, did you have the feeling that plans were in place for such an eventuality and it was a matter of just pulling them off the shelf and deploying them, alongside all the strategies you have? Or did you feel there was a challenge as things were unravelling? “Unravelling” again may be the wrong word—“unfolding”.

Within hours of that fire starting, I had a direct phone call with the chief executive of Heathrow airport. I understand he came and gave evidence to this Committee. He talked about the resilience plans that the airport itself has in place. I was confident that there was a team at Heathrow who were prioritising safety, to be blunt. He pointed out to me that even the traffic lights weren’t working at Heathrow on that morning, so the idea that you would invite thousands and thousands of passengers in at a point in time when you did not know when flights would be taking off and landing again was a fair point. They obviously had to restructure the energy supplies that went into the airport to get it back open. I felt very confident in the team at the DFT that was liaising with them. As soon as incidents like this happen—two weeks prior to that, we had the collision of vessels in the North sea—the response that kicks in from Government to work with private operators of transport infrastructure is well developed and is something I have confidence in. Of course, we need to look across Government about the learnings from this particular incident. That is why the Energy Secretary has commissioned NESO, the National Energy Systems Operator, to do a review about what happened there so that we can prevent it from happening again. I am not saying there is nothing to learn. Of course there are things we can learn, but there are well-tested and proven processes in place. Is that fair, Jo?

Absolutely. The other one you saw kick in overnight was from NATS, who deployed their existing plans to deal with all of the planes that were en route to Heathrow at the time, to make sure they landed safely in the UK and in neighbouring countries.

Of course, there is no shortage of reviews looking at what happened, but there is none from the DFT. Are you happy that the reviews that are already running will answer any questions you might have about the situation?

Yes. There are two reviews. There is the NESO review that has been commissioned by the Energy Secretary and the review that Heathrow themselves have commissioned, led by their independent board member, Ruth Kelly. I understand that is due to come back in March. We are in discussions with Heathrow about them sharing that report with us.

More generally, we are currently, obviously, looking at national resilience overall. Work commissioned by Pat McFadden, as CDL, is looking at the Government’s overall approach to national resilience and anything we need to learn and improve for the future.

I am conscious of time. When these reviews come to us all, I am sure we will have further questions of the Department for Transport regarding national infrastructure and resilience.

I would like to come back on something that Scott said about public transport and the regional airports piece. It is a reflection and a bit of a challenge. We have talked a lot about rail links to airports, but a lot of regional airports are nowhere near a train station and you need a bus to get there. What methods might the Department be using to ensure that those regional airports have a future. You might live a long way from Heathrow, which is going to get this third runway, or Luton or Gatwick or wherever. My constituency is in Devon. The nearest airport is Exeter. There is no bus from Plymouth to Exeter, from Plymouth to the airport. How would you address those sorts of challenges at regional airports that are not accessible by trains without a strategy on regional airports?

Buses to airports comes back to what the local transport authority is doing properly to plan the bus service in its area. One thing we are doing through the bus services Bill is giving more opportunities to local authorities to go down the franchising route quickly, the enhanced bus partnerships. I expect good local transport authorities to look at how they can ease congestion to places of significant employment and also provide a service to their communities. That is probably the way it needs to be tackled, through the part of government that has responsibility for overseeing the provision of local bus services. I also expect the airports to have a sustainable transport plan to set out how they will increase the number of people coming to use their services, using sustainable modes of transport.

Thank you. As we have less than an hour left, I ask that everybody is concise. I know, Secretary of State, that you want to cover the full spread of your brief, as do we. We are going to decarbonisation with a series of questions, starting with Baggy.

The Climate Change Committee has pointed out that low carbon aviation technologies are at quite an early stage of their development. Does that not make airport expansion environmentally risky?

Of course there will always be risks with new technology, but there are also great opportunities. When it comes to airport expansion and the climate, I often think about the fact that I do not have children but I have nieces and nephews and I want them to have the experiences that I have had in my life, to be able to travel and to fly. It is a good thing for people to be able to visit other parts of the world. We all represent communities where businesses trade internationally and where families are often spread across continents. But I don’t want my niece and nephew to grow up in a world that is ravaged by climate change either and more extreme, frequent weather events. We have a moral responsibility to run as fast as we possibly can to green aviation. Yes, there are risks, but there are opportunities. That is why we have introduced the sustainable aviation fuel mandate. It is why we are legislating for the revenue certainty mechanism. It is why we are pushing forward with airspace modernisation and setting up the UK Airspace Design Service to tackle some of the airspace challenges to start off with around London, where there is a real need. It has to be positioned in what else we are doing, as a Government, to decarbonise. The zero emissions vehicle mandate, for example, is the single biggest policy lever in government to decarbonise. Even though we have made some minor changes to it in the last couple of weeks, that still remains the case.

Can I press you a little bit more on airspace modernisation? What can we do to make that happen faster, given the significant impact it could have? Can we use AI, for example, to help map out where the easy wins may be? Can we do it quicker basically?

Modernising UK airspace is a terrifically complicated 3D jigsaw puzzle. That the Chancellor announced the UK Airspace Design Service a couple of months ago and the support fund is a really positive thing to try to have a more integrated and co-ordinated approach. I expect that service to be looking at all forms of technology to try to make sure we do this right, and we do it properly and as rapidly as we can, because the benefits can be felt across the whole of the aviation sector. For communities affected by flightpaths, this issue will always be difficult. If you can reduce the duration of planes in the sky and have more direct flightpaths, that is a good thing overall for carbon intensity of aviation.

The Government have stated that, given a constrained carbon budget, “where emissions rise in one sector, the UK will have to achieve corresponding falls in another”. Given the commitment to aviation expansion and the fact that sustainable aviation fuels, at the moment, I believe, account for just 0.2% of global fuels, what impact will that aviation expansion have on the carbon allowances of other sectors?

It is probably worth saying that the expansion of Heathrow airport, a third runway at Heathrow, and the expansion of Luton airport, the expansion of Gatwick and the expansion of Bristol is taken into account in the modelling for carbon budget 6, which runs between 2033 and 2037. The Government need to publish an update to our delivery plan later this year. There is no legal requirement to set specific targets for specific sectors, because there needs to be flexibility across them, but we are doing a huge amount across our work in transport to decarbonise, not least with the zero emission vehicles mandate I mentioned previously.

Thinking about other forms of transport, you have mentioned cars and vans and so forth. Turning to railways, the new German coalition Government agreement includes the following commitment, as published in Railway Gazette International last month: “The coalition now defines rail electrification as a measure to address climate change and will no longer use cost benefit ratios to determine whether wiring schemes will go ahead.” What are your thoughts on that policy? Should we have that in the UK as well?

The electrification of the rail network is critical. Unfortunately, some of the plans that the previous Government put together have proved unaffordable. We are going through a process of reviewing that at the moment. We think that battery trains and electronic trains that can use overhead lines are the way forward. I was at Newton Aycliffe a couple of weeks ago, at the Hitachi factory there, looking at the production of their tri-mode trains, which can operate in diesel, with the overhead lines, and switch to battery as they are pulling into a station. Not only is that reducing carbon emissions, but it makes it quieter for people who live around the station. You are right to say that electrification is absolutely key. We will be looking at how we can incorporate that through the spending review in our plans for enhancements to the railway as we move forward.

We also look at the total context of carbon emissions. Rail is 0.4% of total UK emissions versus, just for us in our other sectors, maritime at 3%, aviation at 8% and roads at 23%. We obviously have to look at where we will be able to make the biggest contribution to the Government’s overall carbon objectives.

Sure. Hopefully, as was mentioned earlier with rail freight, there is an opportunity to do far more in rail freight. I was told recently at a conference that we only have 9% of our freight on railways, compared to 31% in Switzerland, for example. We are going to have to decarbonise the railways, maybe to help decarbonise roads by moving freight from road to rail. Would you agree that is an aspiration we should have?

I am certainly supportive of moving more freight from road to rail. In setting up Great British Railways, we will create an organisation that has a single guiding mind around how best to use the finite capacity on our rail network. Clearly, we want to attract more people to use our railways, away from car journeys that could be done on the railways instead. We have to find the right balance between the provision of passenger services and freight. By creating Great British Railways, one organisation is given the overall strategic oversight to make judgments about what is in the best public interest.

We have some more questions about that coming up a bit later. This is the last one from me on this section. We have talked about electrification and battery trains and tri-mode, and however many other modes, but what is your view on the role of hydrogen in decarbonising the rail sector? There are parts of the rail industry that are interested in the potential of hydrogen.

At the current time, we do not expect hydrogen to play a particularly significant role on the network. It has relatively high cost and relatively low energy density. We have been looking more at the contribution that electrification and battery trains can play. Jo, do you have anything else you want to say on hydrogen and rail?

Yes, it is exactly that; just looking at the technological choices, what is happening in the market anyway with rolling stock, line electrification or battery—particularly where battery can support existing fleet, existing diesel and reduce and improve air quality in urban centres—are looking like more effective solutions than hydrogen in the UK.

Catherine has a very quick question.

Yes, we would be looking at all of those impacts in the round

Thank you. We will move on to EVs.

Do recent changes to the ZEV mandate risk weakening the market signal needed to drive investment in EV infrastructure and supply, particularly in the lead-up to 2030?

No, I don’t think they do. I think we have the balance right between giving flexibilities to the vehicle manufacturers, and giving confidence and certainty to consumers and the operators of charge point infrastructure. We have maintained the phase-out date of 2030 for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. We have maintained the targets in the trajectory towards that point, albeit that we have given manufacturers increased flexibilities in order to hit those targets. For example, if a car manufacturer is doing well in cleaning up the rest of its fleet, its non-EV fleet, it can use credits from its performance in that regard to count towards the achievement of the headline target. Also, if it is under-performing in one year, but believes that it will out-perform in future years in EV sales, it can borrow against the future. Giving certainty about the types of hybrid car that can be sold between 2030 and 2035 is critical. We have confirmed that full hybrids will be sold through until 2035, as well as plug-in hybrids. That has been broadly supported. It was an important balancing act to get right because car manufacturers are facing some challenging global economic headwinds at the moment, not least those that are exporting to the US. It was right that Government listened and we acted, and I think we have the right balance.

What analysis have you done about the affordability of the plans, particularly for lower income families? Obviously, when petrol cars and diesel cars stop being built, hybrids even, there will be a real tip in the market. I am sure it will get covered on the infrastructure of roll-out. It is often people who live in a terraced house—white van man driver lives in a terraced house. How will we make sure that people who do jobs that are really important, and need to get their families around, are not squeezed out of the car market as a result of these changes?

On vans, we have said that petrol and diesel vans can be sold through until 2035. Obviously, one of the points I would make is that the vast majority of car sales that happen in any given year are second-hand car sales. We are now seeing a lot of demand in the second-hand EV market; they sell more quickly than any other type of vehicle on Autotrader, I am told. There are new EV models coming on to the market this year that will be more affordable new car purchases. I recognise that if the transition is to be successful, it needs to be affordable. People need to feel confident that the charging infrastructure is there as well, so that they can make the journeys they normally make with confidence. Those two things are at the heart of the Government’s strategy.

Very briefly on that, before it goes more to the infrastructure, you have talked about the second-hand market for EVs. What analysis have you done about the second-hand market for petrol and diesel cars? If you do not have EV charging points at your home, because of where you live, or because of your financial situation, what analysis have you done about the likely prices of second-hand petrol and diesel cars, which may be more accessible for people in the initial few years of the changeover?

We look in the round at all of these issues. We have grants for installing charge points at home. We still have some plug-in vehicle grants for purchase. We are working through the spending review on what other options there may be to boost demand further.

EVs are still only 3% of the cars on the road at the moment. We see a very healthy market in petrol and diesel second-hand cars and we would expect that to continue over the next decade and beyond.

Can I ask Alex to come in now and then Scott, if your question still needs asking?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Sticking with electric vehicles, the Public Accounts Committee’s recent report on the roll-out of EV charging infrastructure found a lot of geographical discrepancies in the number of charge points. It also suggested that the roll-out had been slower than anticipated in terms of spending the money that your Department had provided. Do you see it as the role of the Department to fix this? If so, how?

We are investing £200 million in charging infrastructure. That sits alongside a pipeline of about £6 billion-worth of private sector investment through until 2030. We need to go further. We need to go faster and we need to fill in the geographical cold spots for charging infrastructure, be that on the strategic road network, where progress is being made, or working with local authorities to ensure that those who do not have access to a driveway to charge their vehicle have suitable options available locally. Jo, you have done a lot of work on charging infrastructure. Is there anything you want to add?

Yes, the National Audit Office agreed that we are on track at the moment at an aggregate level for the roll-out. In terms of local, on-street charging, what you see at the moment is a result of demand, effectively, where commercial providers and particular local authorities have seen opportunities. The big intervention we have made, the local electricity vehicle infrastructure scheme, is just beginning, so the current state is before the benefit of that. Going back to previous questions, the criteria for the allocation of that funding, which has gone to all local authorities in England, has precisely taken into account existing charging infrastructure, the number of houses with off-street parking, as well as deprivation and rurality, to make sure that all parts of the country are able to have access to the infrastructure they need. What is needed will be different in different constituencies in different parts of the country, because of the mix of housing and what we see on the strategic road network.

On the LEVI funding that you just mentioned, I appreciate it came with capacity funding. Do you believe that there are the skills, particularly around procurement, in the local transport authorities to make the best use of that funding?

We are really pleased with how the LEVI scheme has worked so far. As you say, we set up the LEVI support body to pull together the skills and expertise. We provided resource funding. We provide a certified training scheme for electric vehicle charging infrastructure offices in local authorities. We are seeing that this scheme will have a much bigger impact than previous efforts, which have not had that support around them. It meant that local authorities that had the capability already were able to take advantage. Those who didn’t, therefore, could not, so the disparities we talked about earlier were more likely to persist.

On a wider level, obviously there are a lot of people wanting electricity, more and more increasingly. What discussions are you having with other Departments to make sure that grid capacity will be available for the transport electric infrastructure that we need?

Routinely, I have discussions with colleagues in DESNZ, with the Energy Secretary, and with MHCLG from a planning perspective. Last week, DESNZ announced some changes to the queue of grid connection projects, which will be really important for making sure we have grid connections to deliver rapid charging hubs, for example, in key areas, or for infrastructure at ports to ensure that vessels can come in and dock at berth and have an electric supply point there. You have to get the balance right between ensuring that new sources of energy generation can be plugged into the grid, and getting the grid connected to the consumer end points, where that is required. That has been a discussion that I have had already directly with the Energy Secretary. The announcement that was made last week was good news.

Yes, absolutely.

I am keen to move on because we have hardly touched on several key areas. Elsie, local transport.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you both for your time today. Decisions on local transport planning might seem quite technical to some people, but they can obviously have stark impacts on people’s lives. In my constituency, for example, I have been campaigning for a new express bus service into Manchester city centre. Certainty from the Department, when it comes to local transport plans, would enable local authorities to make better funding decisions for the longer term. We have been waiting for new LTP guidance for some time. Will that be communicated soon?

Yes, I expect to publish it after the spending review and to align it with the work that we are also doing on the integrated national transport strategy, and to look at some updated guidance around quantifying carbon reductions. That will all be coming later this year.

Excellent. You pre-empted my next question. It previously seemed very close to being published, that quantifiable carbon reduction guidance. You can confirm that it will be published at the same time as the LTP guidance?

That is the plan we are working on at the moment. A number of local transport authorities have already put together some very good local transport plans. My officials in the Department will always be very happy to talk to any local authorities who, in advance of those documents being published, would like some advice. We have also, of course, got on and announced funding available for local transport authorities. We are not allowing the fact that the guidance has not been published to stem the flow of money to get on and deliver local priorities.

Secretary of State, we had an excellent session at this Select Committee in January with Chris Boardman, the Commissioner for Active Travel England. However, certainly at that time, he expressed concern that the funding being offered would not be sufficient to achieve the Government’s active travel goals. I appreciate that since then the third cycling and walking investment strategy has been announced, with additional funding. Is that really the sort of “unprecedented” funding commitment that your predecessor promised for active travel? Will it really deliver the step change we need to get more people walking and cycling?

It is a start. I know Chris well and he does brilliant work with Active Travel England. I am a big supporter of that organisation. We have put £300 million into the cycling and walking strategy. That stands in very stark contrast, I suggest, to the previous Government, who took money out in repeated years towards the end of the last Government. We will be working through the money that is available over the next three years in the spending review process. I feel very passionately about it myself because we are becoming very quickly a more sedentary nation. The fact that people might do 10 or 20 minutes of walking or cycling—people who do not do any other form of physical exercise—is really important for the nation’s health, whether that is walking your kids to school, or walking 400 metres to a bus stop as opposed to 4 metres to jump into your car. We need to start thinking about transport as a public health intervention as much as an intervention that can stimulate economic growth. Those are certainly the conversations I am having with colleagues in the Department for Health and Social Care, in Treasury and in MHCLG at the moment.

On the subject of walking and cycling to and from school, we had a Westminster Hall debate on that yesterday, which was very well attended. Many colleagues across the House would very much agree with your sentiments there. Moving on to rail, Chair, if that is all right. South Western Railway, c2c and Greater Anglia will all be transferred to the DFT Operator Limited in the coming months. What steps are you taking to ensure that the Department has the resources and expertise to manage those transitions smoothly?

We have actually set up a new directorate within the DFT to manage the rail reform process. We have recruited a new director general, Richard Goodman, who started in the last couple of weeks. We work very closely with the DFT Operator, which is, if you like, the initial holding company for the train operating companies that come into public ownership. I meet very regularly with the leadership of DFTO, Network Rail, our own railway reform director general and the chair of shadow GBR, Laura Shoaf. DFTO has increased in size and is increasing its capacity because, obviously, as these train operating companies come into public ownership over the coming months, there is a really important piece of work to do to make sure that we are not waiting for the establishment of Great British Railways to get on and improve performance on the railways. This is happening today and it is a key priority for me. We are making the right changes in DFT and DFTO to ensure that the public will start to see an improvement.

On the subject of improving what there already is, the operators that are being taken in-house first are quite an interesting mix. Obviously, South Western Railway has many challenges, but c2c and Greater Anglia are generally high performing. You have previously said that you “will not hesitate to take decisive action” with operators whose performance falls out of contractual standards. Are there any poorly performing operators that you anticipate might be brought into public ownership ahead of their contract expiring because of that poor performance?

What we have said about our public ownership programme is that we will bring the train operating companies into public ownership when either their contract with the DFT expires or what is called the minimum core term in that contract expires. If we do it that way, we do not have to pay financial compensation to the train operating company. Given the constrained public finances, that is the right approach. Obviously, performance across the rail network is not where I want it to be. I have had recent meetings with the management of Avanti West Coast and Northern. I am acutely aware of the frustrations that people who use CrossCountry trains feel. The way in which the previous Government set up the contracts was very generous to the train operating companies. If truth be known, it makes it quite hard for a train operating company to default on the contract, as much as we have cause to be able to take it into public ownership and terminate the contract without paying compensation. That is the balancing act we are going through at the moment. If performance became so intolerably bad in a particular train operating company, we have flex in the public ownership programme to be able to change it, but, as of today, there is no train operating company that I would say is in default and, therefore, I could bring them in today.

Given those contracts that you inherited and their terms.

Indeed.

Yes. My colleague, Rebecca, has a question about contracts and money.

Thank you, Olly. Secretary of State, at the start of this hearing, you said actions speak louder than words, which is great. One of your first actions was to announce which rail franchise could be nationalised. However, since then, we know that one of those actions—the negotiations for the nationalisation of South Western Railway—has seen a major error, in effect, particularly around the fleet contract by the Department, which it is said will cost passengers £250 million—£50 million a year. I am interested to know what actions you, as Secretary of State, have taken to mitigate that error, if it is true that it exists, ahead of the spending review. You have talked about the constrained public finances. Can you, importantly, provide assurances to passengers that those increased costs will not be passed to them as increased ticket prices beyond what is reasonably expected every year—the normal inflationary one? What will happen to that additional cost and who will bear the brunt of it?

The situation with the rolling stock on South Western Railway is that the arrangement for the rolling stock and the expiry of that contract aligns with the expiry date of the South Western contract to operate the trains. That is not the case on all train operating companies. Normally, negotiations around rolling stock renewals take about two to two and a half years. This process could have been started by the previous Government a long time ago. We are in a commercial negotiation at the moment. Some of the figures I have seen reported in the press, I do not recognise. Given that we are in a commercial negotiation, I’m not going into the detail of that now. The way in which the rolling stock leases were organised is symptomatic of the “Step back and let’s see what happens” approach of the previous Government. That will not be a mistake that we make again. With the set-up of Great British Railways, I want us to look at having a proper rolling stock strategy so that not only can we give confidence to the supply chain, which provides many thousands of important jobs up and down the country, but we can find a way to get good value for money for the taxpayer. It is a very significant amount of money that we are currently spending on these contracts. I have asked the managing directors of MTR and First to come in and see me, as a matter of urgency, to tell me what they will be doing to address the problems with the South Western rolling stock before it comes into public ownership on 25 May.

Should those additional costs be there because of what has happened with that contract, regardless of when it happened, can you provide assurances that additional money will not be added to ticket prices for the public?

At the moment, we are in a commercial negotiation and I’m not going to get into the detail of what the additional costs will or will not be. In setting rail fares, we will always look at what is right to do for the travelling public and what the wider rail network needs around money to operate and invest in the trains and infrastructure to ensure a reliable and frequent service for people.

I don’t think the Department for Transport should be the operational manager of the railways, but Ministers should set the strategic direction for Great British Railways and hold that organisation ruthlessly to account. I have seen a number of times the analogy of the abolition of NHS England. The Government have not abolished the NHS. The NHS, not DHSC, still employs people, and its managers still take operational decisions. That aligns with what we are doing in Great British Railways. We are simplifying the horrendous maze of organisations that has been involved in running the railways in recent years. There are 14 train operating companies, Network Rail, the RDG, bits of the DFT and bits of regulators. What we need to do is strip away that complexity and make it simpler so that we can address some of the weird and perverse incentives that have existed in that system and get an organisation that takes the right decisions in the public interest, be that for passengers or freight operators. That is what lies at the heart of the establishment of Great British Railways.

In the consultation that we ran a couple of months ago we proposed a statutory role for devolved Governments and mayoral strategic authorities in helping to plan and develop the rail network. Established mayoral strategic authorities will have the right to request further rail devolution. GBR will need to balance local and national interests, and we have international services running on some parts of our rail network as well, but it is important that there is a single organisation that can take those decisions. I will need to think very carefully about the financial and commercial implications of further devolution of rail services, because we subsidise the day-to-day running of the trains to the tune of £2 billion a year. That is before you think about the money that is put into the infrastructure of the railways—the tracks and signalling—so I would need to be persuaded that, if I were to devolve further rail services to a mayoral combined authority to run and operate a train, I would not be carving off more profitable parts of the rail network. I need to find a way to reduce the rail subsidy over time. If proposals that came forward were revenue-neutral and provided a better experience for passengers, I would consider them. I see the value of having better local integration between different modes of transport, so there is an important role for devolved Governments and Mayors in the newly reformed railways, but we will have to work through some of the detail.

We know that ticket retailing is part of the rail ecosystem that works really well at the moment. You have talked about an open, fair and competitive marketplace going forward. How do the Government intend to deliver this, and what protections and safeguards do you envisage as part of the Railways Bill?

You are right. While it is proposed that GBR will have the ability to sell and retail its own tickets online and bring together the ticket-retailing function that the 14 train operating companies have, there are some really good companies operating in the private sector. This is not about trying to put those companies out of business; we want those businesses to do well. We want them to be able to operate internationally as well. I have had a good meeting with Trainline, for example. We will be looking very carefully at the responses to the consultation about how we make sure we have a thriving mixed market for retail ticketing going forward.

What would be the cost of a Government-run ticketing system? Obviously, they are all done by separate companies at the moment. If you bring that in-house, do you have any idea what the cost would be?

I do not have figures on that with me today. What we want to do is reduce the existing duplication. I hope there would be some cost savings associated with that. One of the discussions that I am having with officials at the moment is how we set up new systems in the most cost-effective way. If there is one system that is working particularly well, rather than creating something new, could that be adopted by Great British Railways? I am happy to write to you with more information.

To follow up on the regional point, do you envisage that GBR will have any formal regional structures?

It is something that we are working through at the moment. If you are running an organisation the size of Great British Railways, there will need to be a sensible management structure in place. We have now recruited some alliance directors for Southeastern and South Western, which is where you bring together the operation of track and train; you have one person who is directly responsible and wakes up in the morning, as Lord Peter Hendy says, thinking, “It’s my responsibility to make sure the system is working properly.” It may be that we look to replicate some of the existing regional structures as we go forward and set up Great British Railways, in terms of the individuals who are responsible for managing the tracks and trains in those regions. Obviously, a lot of detail needs to be worked through and I am very happy to come back to the Committee and talk further about that.

There is an obvious discrepancy between Network Rail regions that exist at the moment and mayoral combined authority regions.

Correct, and that is why I said there is detail to be worked through and I am happy to come back to talk to you about it.

There is detail and there are overall principles. There was a lot of concern when the consultation came out on the future of GBR and the rail reform Bill about a potential reining back of the public sector duty. It was principally—but not only—the concerns of people with disabilities and their campaigners. Can you assure the Committee that there is no reining back of the public duty responsibility for the rail system in the way GBR will be delivering its services in the future?

One hundred per cent. The public sector equality duty will apply to GBR. It does not currently apply to the train operating companies. We made it clear in the consultation document that accessibility will be at the heart of Great British Railways. I know that the rail Minister has responded to your letter, Chair, setting out that we are working through the detail of what sits in statutory duties and licence requirements at the moment. I see GBR as an opportunity for a step change in the way accessibility is put at the heart of how we plan and deliver our railways.

You said you recently visited Hitachi’s plant. I think that would have been to see the Grand Central trains being manufactured. It is a £300 million order, which is excellent, but they are an open access operator. Edinburgh to London is also served by Lumo, which provides an excellent service. That is another open access operator, but the consultation on GBR will set access; the gatekeeper will be GBR rather than ORR. Should Hitachi and open access operators be concerned about that?

I have been very clear that there is a role for open access operators in the reformed railway. We should bear in mind that, in the overall number of journeys on the railways, open access operators account for less than 1%. The visit I made to Newton Aycliffe was to see the new trains that will be part of the Grand Central service. That was a decision by the ORR to extend their access rights for 11 years. We supported that as the DFT. We have also recently supported proposals for the Wrexham, Shropshire & Midlands Railway. Where an open access operator can add value, will not divert excessive revenue away from the public operator and might open up new markets and new routes that will not have a negative impact on the ability of the rail network to recover when incidents happen, we want those applications to continue to come forward.

Will GBR be making the decisions there?

I was about to come to that point. It is important that there is a single guiding mind about who is taking decisions about access to the network. I come back to the point I made previously that at the moment the taxpayer subsidises the day-to-day operation of the railways to the tune of £2 billion. We have to be mindful of that when we give access to private companies that will abstract fare revenue from the public sector operator. What we consulted on was giving the Office of Rail and Road a robust independent appeal mechanism. While we have consulted on GBR taking the initial access and charging decisions, there needs to be a fair process in place so that, if an open access operator felt that GBR had not dealt with their application fairly, there would be an appeal route and they would be able to go to the ORR.

We will make sure that those safeguards are in place. We need to go through the responses to the consultation and get the legislation finalised and before Parliament, so it is appropriate that when GBR is set up both open access operators and freight know that there is a fair process in place for them seeking access to the network. We are not proposing to take away anyone’s existing rights. As a Government we have, for example, supported the extension of 11 years to the Grand Central rights. If it opens up new markets and provides a service that the public sector provider is not operating, that is good for the passenger. I want GBR to be doing what is right for the passenger and for the freight industry, but having the ability to take a strategic look at what capacity there is and how we best use it to advance the national interest.

A lot of towns like Heywood and Middleton in my constituency have been disconnected from the rail network for far too long, with no rail stations linking us to the city region’s economy. How do you think that absorbing Network Rail into Great British Railways could release the economic potential of towns like mine that have been held back by a lack of rail infrastructure?

What is really interesting is looking at things like the rail network enhancements programme in Network Rail which often looks at improving and building new stations, improving accessibility at stations and at the frequency of services at existing stations and in which areas they ultimately terminate. All of that can be looked at through Great British Railways. We have also set up separately from Great British Railways a new property development company, bringing together the operations of London and Continental Railways and the property function in Network Rail to accelerate development around stations. Stations should be hubs of economic activity. There are lots of stations across the country, whether in Rotherham, Peterborough or Swindon in my own constituency, where there is huge potential, sometimes using land immediately adjacent to the station that is in public sector ownership. It is about both the physical infrastructure and services that are being run by the railways and unlocking the wider potential that I think could be really important for towns like the ones you and I represent.

In a recent evidence session the Committee heard from Lord Hendy who said that the purpose of recent conversations across shadow GBR was not to form another great beast like Network Rail. In my experience, Network Rail has not always been responsive to the infrastructure needs of constituencies like mine, as I was just saying. People need to be able to access rail services. As you said, they also need to be able to live close to rail stations. We need to be able to expand the network and build around stations as well. You touched on that, but it would be helpful to understand some of the ways you think GBR will be able to operate differently from Network Rail and address some of that.

The role of the Mayors in helping to plan and manage the railways will be important, because they will often be aware in their regions of the particular parts of the network where this is a critical issue. I think that in setting up Great British Railways—we used this phrase earlier—we need to go back to basics; we need to make sure that it is an organisation that is responsive, accountable and firmly rooted in the communities it serves. Part of that is making sure that it is not a faceless beast of an organisation but that we are working very closely with local leaders and that is certainly the organisation that we want to build.

It also takes us back to the integrated national transport strategy and the importance of the word “integrated” in that, so that whatever mode of transport you start with, be it car, bike or bus, you can be confident that wherever you live in the country you can reliably connect to other parts of the transport system.

The shadow GBR transition team that was disbanded—there was an announcement on 3 April—was doing various bits of work that do not need legislation; for example, reform to fares and ticketing. Will shadow GBR be picking up that work now, and is it still happening?

All of that work is still under way. Shadow GBR is made up of the component organisations that will ultimately be part of Great British Railways. I asked Laura Shoaf, chair of shadow GBR, to lead on five priorities for me in the period before we get the legislation through and GBR is established. One of those is about looking at what we can do on ticketing in both the short and medium term, so that work is ongoing.

The transition team doing that work was based in Derby. When can we expect to see lots of bums on seats in Derby working for GBR?

I want Great British Railways to be established in 2027. The organisation on day one of its existence will be different from the organisation on day 150 and day 200. I anticipate that the establishment of the organisation in Derby will be taking place in 2027, and we are totally committed to your great railway city being the new home of Great British Railways.

That was why rail leaders came together in Derby just two weeks ago and met with you and other colleagues to look at the potential for the HQ and to start coming together in Derby to bring track and train together.

We are hosting Laura tomorrow.

I hope we have time to cover buses, road safety and maybe even maritime.

The Government introduced the £3 bus fare cap on 1 January. Can you explain the main objective of this policy?

The previous Government had in place a £2 bus fare cap to try to stimulate bus ridership again after the pandemic. When we came into government I think it was the right decision to provide that £3 cap in the short term. We know how difficult unforeseen price hikes are for people. They are often the hardest thing to deal with, so providing some certainty over the short term was the right thing to do. It is worth reminding ourselves what this Government inherited when it came to the bus fare cap. Absolutely no funding was available beyond 2024 to maintain any form of cap, so we stepped in. Most journeys on the buses are not made using the fare cap; one in six journeys in England currently benefits from it, because people using the buses regularly often use a bus ticket that applies for a week or a longer period. We think that the £2 cap encouraged some people who might have been on those longer fares to switch back to the £2 fare. We will be making an assessment of the £3 fare cap, but it is a time-limited intervention, which, as you know, comes to an end at the end of this year.

You seem to suggest that the main aim now is to use it to increase passenger numbers. Is that what you are saying?

It was about providing some certainty to bus passengers about what their outgoings would be in order to manage the transition from the £2 cap.

Should people be prepared now to think about the future when it comes to an end?

The announcement about the £3 cap was made and it is due to expire at the end of December.

We are seeing lots of local leaders make their own decisions and use their own funding to cap prices in their own ways, from Norfolk to West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Central Bedfordshire. We expect leaders to continue choosing to take those decisions.

Absolutely. We understand that now two thirds of fares are less than £3, outside London and Manchester, which, therefore, gives us the question of what a better plan going forward might be. Originally, under the £2 cap you had 90% covered; now we have far fewer, so the question is whether it is now a sensible policy going forward.

This is an issue that we will be working through as part of the spending review. The £3 cap costs us over £100 million a year. At the moment, we give nearly £800 million in other forms of support through the bus services improvement plan and the grants we give to operators. As Jo said, some local transport authorities choose to use part of that grant not just to protect essential services but, where they feel it is beneficial, to reduce fares for some groups. That is an option available to them.

When will the road safety strategy be published? We have been waiting for it for some time, but you have had other priorities. Can you give us a date?

Later this year we hope to publish the first new road safety strategy in 10 years.

Is there a particular critical path of events leading up to that, or is it just an estimate at the moment?

We want to get it right. I have been in post for five months. It has been a source of discussion with me and the junior ministerial team. I said that my Future of Roads Minister was very passionate about pavement parking. The second issue she talked to me about was the road safety strategy. In any other sphere of activity we would not think it acceptable that 1,600 people are killed doing something each year. That is the situation on our roads at the moment. We have a duty to act. We want to look at the right package of measures to put in the road safety strategy; we are working on it and there will be further announcements in due course.

Our Chair was on the radio over the Easter weekend in response to coverage of not the driving test per se, but testing for people with eyesight deterioration in later years. Is that one of the things you are considering changing? It is a bit of an outlier compared with other countries. Is that in scope for your review?

This is something I am open to considering. I recently received the prevention of future deaths report from the senior coroner in Lancashire. I know that reading that report will be very distressing for the families of the victims who were killed. That of course was a situation where an optician had suggested to three individuals that they needed to advise the authorities that they had a medical condition which affected their eyesight and they should not be driving. That did not happen. I am open to considering the evidence on the issue.

That is very comforting. While that strategy is developed, it looks likely that National Highways will not meet its KSI reduction targets. Are you minded to make a specific direction to it in the meantime so that it can course-correct by the end of this year?

Part of the interim settlement of £4.8 billion that we gave to National Highways this year is set aside to be focused on further investments to improve safety. We have been clear with National Highways that it must deliver a series of safety improvements. It has set that out in its safety action plan for 2025‑26. Whether there are collisions happening on the strategic road network for which National Highways is responsible, or the local highway network for which local highways authorities are responsible, a death is a death; a serious injury is a serious injury. I do not think we can allow a situation to continue where 1,600 people a year are being killed on our roads.

I have consulted with somebody with great expertise in this area, who happens to be the police and crime commissioner for Norfolk, and sees this as a deep-rooted issue. It is not just about policy or agency action; it is a fundamental oversight in both the design and maintenance of our road networks at both levels but also in policing priorities and the importance placed on road safety improvements by local councils above and beyond road repair and maintenance.

I would have some sympathy for that. When I was deputy mayor of London for transport I published London’s first vision zero strategy. Part of that was focused on a safe systems approach where we looked at not only how to drive safer behaviours among all different types of road users but how to design and deliver safer streets, speeds and vehicles. We introduced the direct vision standard to improve visibility from lorries and other heavy goods vehicles. You are right that the interaction with roads policing and the experience of individuals when they have been involved in a collision, and what learning can be taken from that collision to ensure you do not have the same collision happening in the same place with the same type of road user again, is really important. I am very proud of the work I did on London’s vision zero strategy. We need to work through what is right on a national level. That is the work happening in the Department at the moment, and it is why we have made the commitment to produce a road safety strategy, the first for 10 years, later this year.

The London vision zero strategy was a really good piece of work, but on driver behaviour, it has been put to us in terms of the driving test and the curriculum being taught that three key areas that are major sources of deaths and serious injuries are rural roads, night driving and driving with passengers, which we were told were insufficiently covered by what drivers learn and are tested on. Would you—yes or no—have a look at that, please?

Yes, we are looking at that.

You are looking at it. That’s fantastic.

We are not currently considering a graduated driving licence that would restrict new drivers from driving with additional passengers in the car, but, more broadly, your question about things like night driving, rural collisions and the experience of rural driving is part of the work under way at the moment to consider what actions might be appropriate.

Thank you for your clarity. Before my final round-up question—again, yes or no—are the Government developing a new maritime strategy? If you are, will it improve upon or change Maritime 2050?

A lot of work is happening at the moment. We have published the maritime decarbonisation strategy, and we have introduced the Seafarers Wages Act and those improvements are coming through, as well as the Employment Rights Bill about the experience of people working at sea. We think those are the right actions to be taking. My answer would be similar to that about the aviation strategy. I will consider strategies where they provide a useful function, but I would rather get on and make some of the changes that we are doing at the moment.

As a Derby MP, I have noticed that in the Chamber the ferry service to the Isle of Wight and its reliability and pricing has been raised several times. Is the DFT doing all it can to help find a resolution to that issue?

I am very aware of the issue as well. One of the newly elected MPs, Richard Quigley, has raised it with me on a number of occasions. I have already met him. The maritime Minister, Mike Kane, is hosting a roundtable this week to discuss this very issue with the various ferry operators and local elected representatives. I appreciate how frustrating the issue is for residents of the island, and I look forward to catching up with the maritime Minister to understand the outcomes of that meeting this week.

Part of that is grid capacity, which is an issue for other parts of the maritime sector as well. Is that issue included in your conversations with DESNZ?

DESNZ announced last week the queue for grid capacity and the ability to unlock some priority projects and remove dormant projects in that queue. I am hopeful that that will have an impact on grid connections to ports. I need to check whether it was an issue on the agenda for the meeting this week. I will come back to you, Chair.

Secretary of State, thank you very much for all of your considered answers. I have one last question and you have two minutes to cover it. What will be different in the UK’s transport system at the end of this Parliament with you as Secretary of State?

I hope that trains turn up on time and that the experience of people stood on a platform waiting for a train that never arrives will be a thing of the past. I hope that buses in our local communities will be enjoying a renaissance and that we are able to run bus services that are suitable for the diversity of different communities up and down Britain. I would like drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to see a very noticeable improvement in the quality of their roads and pavements. We have to stop journeys on our roads feeling like an obstacle course. I hope we would successfully be well on the way to transitioning to electric vehicles. If I am being totally honest, I would look back on my time as Transport Secretary as a success if people stepping out of their door, whether in Greater Manchester, Brentford, Swindon, Cambridge, Peterborough or Rotherham, saw that public transport offered a more attractive option than their car. If I can achieve that I will be a happy woman.

Excellent. Thank you very much for today. Feel free to write to us with anything you have not been able to cover that you would have liked to. I think we have all found this session very valuable. That concludes today’s meeting.