Speeches by Alexander.

“In answer to your general point, the two things do not need to be mutually exclusive. We can support people when there are very significant cost of living pressures, which is what households have experienced this summer with prices at the petrol pumps. We can also make sure that from a policy perspective we are taking …”

“Jo might want to pick up on the issue of alternative fuels in particular. One of the observations I would make is that one of the ways in which we have reduced the carbon impact of road traffic has been through the RTFO, the renewable transport fuel obligation. That has increased the amount of biofuel that is in the pe…”

“Yes. Since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the start of this crisis, I have been having not quite daily but almost weekly conversations with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. He and his Department have had a very close dialogue with jet fuel suppliers to understand how global trade flows …”

“Yes. As I said in answer to one of the previous questions, the Chancellor at the end of May announced a package that was worth £100 million to support bus operators with their additional diesel costs, as well as providing money to enable the Kids Go Free offer in the summer. While some large operators also use hedging …”

“We are in discussion with Network Rail, and we have shared some work and analysis on what might happen to supply and therefore cost in the future. About 70% of passenger trains rely on electricity for traction and not diesel, and I know that Network Rail has basically forward purchased the vast majority of that. There …”

“It is all too early to say, and I do not want to get into the world of conjecture on this. When you do business planning, you need to look at what revenue you are getting in. The fact that we have still seen good growth in passenger numbers is a positive thing. The consideration about the £3 bus fare cap was a very liv…”

“Jo, I do not know whether you have detail on that? No. I might have to write to you on that, Alex, to be honest.”

“It might be helpful if I provide a little of context on all this. Last year, having done a consultation, we announced some changes in April to the ZEV mandate, which gave manufacturers greater flexibilities to comply. We also confirmed the 2030 phase-out date for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, and we confirmed…”

“The 2030 phase-out date for banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars remains. There are no proposals to change that, and there are no proposals to change the 2035 phase-out date for hybrid vehicles. The way the ZEV mandate operates is pretty straightforward when it comes to customers and consumers, but it is more…”

“One of the reasons we have committed to keeping the ZEV mandate under review is so that we can take account of how purchasing patterns are evolving. I have set out the work that we will be doing in the next six months on that, looking at that relative balance between the sales of pure EVs and hybrids. One of the other …”

“Officials within the Department have fortnightly meetings with airlines about this to make sure that we have the latest information about what their passengers are experiencing. Obviously, EES is an EU scheme and not a UK Government initiative, so we do not have direct control over it. In March, I met with my EU counte…”

“We need to see how it goes over the next couple of months and we need to be reassured that the planning for the summer period is rigorous, so that people travelling for their summer holidays are able to start that holiday as soon as possible. I would be happy to consider what more we could do with our European counterp…”

“I can understand why it is hard for people to get their head around but the way that Mark Wild has described this to me is that the civil engineering project has taken four years longer than it was originally predicted to do and then the original project team underestimated how long work on putting the systems in, test…”

“It was always going to be the case that HS2 trains would spend a lot of their time on the conventional rail network. Given the previous Government’s decision to cancel HS2 north of Birmingham, making sure that the rolling stock that we deliver aligns with our ability to improve services north of the west midlands is ab…”

“Yes.”

“We need to be increasing capacity on services between Scotland and the north-west and London. We know that the West Coast Main Line—”

“We need to address capacity constraints by considering both timetabling and rolling stock.”

“We have not covered ourselves in glory historically—that is probably an understatement. The lessons of the James Stewart review into HS2 should be well heeded. I took from it that a failure to plan properly in the early stages just results in bigger problems further down the line. You need to set your scope, stick to i…”

“There have been very public failures and we cannot repeat those mistakes. We have done a lot of work to understand what those failures were and learn the lessons, but we can also do infrastructure well and we should be proud of that.”

“I am frustrated by that as well.”