Speeches by Haigh.

“My hon. Friend is right that the 30% cut to his bus services is absolutely shocking. Behind every one of those cuts is a human story of opportunity and ambition curtailed. I have been working closely with Kim McGuinness on speeding up the franchising process. Under the current legislation, Andy Burnham took six years t…”

“I am delighted to confirm that Shropshire’s resource departmental expenditure limit allocation is £3.1 million, so the hon. Lady has already had a further £600,000 out of today’s statement.”

“It sounds like the Somerset volunteers are doing a cracking job. I am very happy to congratulate them and to welcome the £6.8 million of funding announced for Somerset today.”

“The hon. Gentleman raises some important points. It is right that local people have the mechanisms and ability to hold their local authorities to account. One such mechanism that we will introduce through the better buses Bill is a local network safeguard, which will ensure that the voices of communities and constituen…”

“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for standing up, for Portsmouth and its people, as she always does. Today’s funding settlement will be ringfenced towards buses to ensure that Portsmouth gets both the level of funding it needs and, crucially, the flexibility and control to deliver it where it is needed most. Portsmouth …”

“I was delighted to be in Harlow with my hon. Friend this morning to announce record levels of investment for Essex, another area that was badly underserved by the previous Government. Someone mentioned earlier that bus passenger numbers have been increasing since covid, which is true, but concessionary levels are still…”

“The Treasury certainly does not control the Department’s policies, but we are absolutely aligned in our ambition and in our strategic priorities. The manifesto that we just stood on was obviously agreed fully across Government. Because the Cabinet worked together as a team for so long in opposition, we are an extraordi…”

“Absolutely, Dijon-style transport.”

“There are three stations that will need work at Euston. There is the conventional Network Rail station that, as you say, needs a bit of redevelopment; the new HS2 station; and the underground station. Under the previous Government there were several attempts to try to bring that work together. None of their proposals w…”

“First and foremost, all decisions on taxation are obviously a matter for the Treasury. As I said earlier, given the current cost of living pressures, I think it was the right one. The vast majority of buses obviously rely on diesel at the moment, so it would have been a significant pressure on our bus services as well.…”

“Yes, it was very nice.”

“Specifically on that, the arrival of Mark Wild is really important to the organisation. HS2 has been without a proper CEO for over a year, which is not good enough when you consider the scale of the organisation and the public money that it is spending. Mark Wild arriving will be really important. On entering Governmen…”

“Absolutely. We have mayors now who have responsibility for bus services, and have bus funding, but a lot of the highways responsibilities sit with local authorities, so it is not joined up. That has to be considered. As well as the bus funding that was provided, we protected what is known as the CRSTS—the capital fundi…”

“That is one of the measures that is being considered as part of the road safety strategy.”

“I understand that freight often feels very much like the second-rate partner on the network, and there has to be negotiation. At the moment it is extraordinarily inefficient between operators, with passenger services and freight operators bidding for slots. As I said, Great British Railways offers the opportunity to pl…”

“The sheriff principal from that inquiry has written to me and made a recommendation. The DVLA is leading on the response. Obviously, there is a requirement when people’s medical condition seriously alters to notify the DVLA, but the DVLA is considering how to respond to that inquiry and will be providing advice to me b…”

“I met some road safety campaigners only yesterday; I am meeting some more this afternoon. They are really emotional meetings because they are parents who have lost children in road collisions. We talked about a number of things, but one of the things that they were keen to impress on me was that a lot of the discourse …”

“We don’t have parliamentary time in this Session, or a relevant Bill that could be used to regulate e-scooters, but we will look to legislate. It is clearly required. Again, it is not good enough that it has been left in this situation for so long. We have expressions of interest out at the moment for more trials. Ther…”

“Great wine and mustard.”

“Yes, the Department prepared a monitoring and evaluation report of the £2 cap, and will be publishing that report shortly. I can share with the Committee that it slightly increased passenger numbers, but it found that it would be far better value for money if it was more targeted. That is why we kept the cap at £3 to p…”