09:30 Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)

That this House has considered decarbonising rural transport.

Transport is the United Kingdom’s highest-emitting sector and is responsible for a quarter of our emissions. If we want to achieve net zero by 2050, we need to reduce emissions from our cars, vans and lorries, but we also need to recognise that rural transport is different from urban, and that reliance on cars is so much higher in rural areas. Therefore, we need to include rurality as a factor in more decisions on how we move to decarbonise our transportation.

East Sussex County Council has an excellent bus service improvement plan, one of whose objectives is progressively to support operators to increase the number of zero-emission buses used on the network and to upgrade diesel buses to Euro 6 standard as part of the drive to achieve net carbon neutrality by 2050.

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in order to fulfil that objective, further Government funding opportunities will be required to introduce battery electric buses or hydrogen fuel cell buses, and for retrofitting to Euro 6 specification, and that decarbonisation of rural transport should not be restricted to local buses but should include trains? Does she further agree that the extension of HS1 from Ashford to Rye, Hastings and Bexhill, which will decarbonise and make the journey faster, is essential?

My hon. Friend is entirely right that all of us in rural constituencies have plans that we need our councils to deliver to facilitate the decarbonisation of our rural transport network. The challenge we face is that, unfortunately, there is not always the funding to support those fantastic rural transport schemes, although I hope the Minister will reassure us on that point. I will come to some of my own suggestions for the bus network in Devon.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Limited public transport options in rural communities mean that, as the hon. Lady says, many residents depend on their car for everything—getting to work, going to the doctor, seeing family and friends. Does she agree that any strategy to decarbonise rural transport needs to improve connectivity so that social isolation is not inadvertently increased?

I agree entirely that there are so many more challenges around rural connectivity. If we are to continue to rely on our cars, we need to decarbonise them, but the roll-out of electric charging points in rural Britain lags behind that in towns, and when the distances we travel per day are so much greater, investing in an electric vehicle is a far harder decision to take.

I spend a lot of time in this place talking about connectivity, often the communication kind, but our transport connections are vital. The lack of decarbonised public transport is impacting on decarbonising our travel.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing a really important debate. When it comes to decarbonising public transport, bus use is massively important in rural communities like hers and mine. I am sure she will agree with me that the Government’s £2 cap on bus fares is a positive thing and it is positive that it has been extended to June, but even more positive would be to extend it beyond that. But it is of no use whatever if someone lives in a community where there is no bus service. When I think about places in my own community such as the Cartmel peninsula and areas in Cumbria such as the Eden valley, there is a lack of options when it comes to bus services—far too few or none at all—so it would make sense to give local authorities like the new Westmorland and Furness Council the power to start and run their own bus services to fill in the gaps and people could spend their £2 on bus services that actually exist.

I agree with the hon. Member. There is so much more that could be done. With so many of these rural transport issues, we need local solutions and for local communities to be able to share their best practice, because there are some great local bus solutions up and down the country. I have a remote district council that is detached from the county council, which is where highways sits. How do we join up those pieces? More could be done to come up with innovative solutions, which already exist in places, but are not universally available. Indeed, bus travel in my constituency is not universally available, let alone decarbonised, and that makes things as basic as getting to school both expensive and problematic.

In the peak of the tourist season, overlaid with parking challenges and air pollution, huge queues of visitors and locals try to get to our beautiful beaches. Although the availability of public transport is my primary concern, decarbonisation of it is an entirely different matter, as rural bus journeys are significantly longer than urban ones. Capital investment in suitable vehicles is by definition going to be higher in rural Britain.

To begin to decarbonise our transport network, we need to look to transport hubs, where active travel can potentially be the first or last mile. To do that, our buses and trains should be better at taking bikes, hubs should have better bike storage and there should be electric vehicle chargers, if travellers are connecting to buses or trains, alongside public toilets.

I was coming on to say that facilities such as public toilets are a vital part of transport hubs. Barnstaple’s bus station toilets have not reopened since March 2020. If we are serious about encouraging public transport usage and decarbonising our transport, we need to recognise that longer journeys, with longer waits between buses and trains, require these additional facilities to be present, particularly for our older residents. The lack of hubs that are safe, warm and have the right facilities makes using public transport far harder in locations such as North Devon at this time.

Far too many routes in rural Britain are single-carriageway, 60-mile-an-hour roads. If we are to tackle that head-on, to facilitate safer cycling and walking on those roads, we need additional paths to be constructed to facilitate things such as safe school journeys on foot or bike. Although today’s debate focuses on decarbonisation, we could also consider the health benefits of an active travel mode to work or school, which often seem to be somewhat neglected.

I recognise that, as was mentioned earlier, there are examples across the UK of great rural transport schemes. However, as with so many matters around rurality, as discussed in the debate that I led on levelling up rural Britain, it is harder for these examples of best practice to be shared between councils and communities. I hope that as we move towards decarbonising our transportation, more support is given to overstretched councils to share best practice and roll out solutions to rural as well as urban Britain and find funding solutions that give councils the ability to deliver a decarbonisation plan that reflects rurality, alongside an acceptance that the costs per capita will differ. In areas reliant on their tourists, the population swells enormously in the summer, which, again, is rarely reflected in funding settlements or even the calculation of carbon pollution.

Rural Britain deserves to see its transport decarbonised. Our productivity is reduced because of the poor transport links. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister has plans in his Department to ensure that rurality is rapidly included in future funding announcements and that there are long-term settlements lying ahead—it was so warmly welcomed to have rurality mentioned in the current round of active travel funding—because we all want to level up and decarbonise transport in rural Britain.

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09:47 Jim Shannon (DUP)

We have seen the expansion of “green” transport to protect and preserve our atmosphere and environment, and we must continue to do this as time goes on. The hon. Lady outlined that. The issue must be addressed not only in England but UK-wide to ensure that we are consistent and equal in our efforts to decarbonise rural transport. I realise that the Minister is responsible only for England, but my comments will be on Northern Ireland, as they always are, and what we have done there.

I am pleased to record a recent development by Wrightbus, whose headquarters are in Ballymena, in Northern Ireland, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley); indeed, my hon. Friend talked about this last week at Transport questions in the main Chamber. Wrightbus has secured a major order to supply 117 zero-emission buses across England, thanks to an investment of £25.3 million by the Government. That is an example of the many things that the Government are doing.

The new additional funding brings the vision of a net zero transport network one step closer to reality. The double-decker battery electric buses are 44% more efficient grid to wheel, saving energy costs and carbon. That is another example of how we are moving forward. The fact that the buses are manufactured in Ballymena means that the whole United Kingdom has the chance to benefit from that advantage, and hopefully other companies will be able to do the same.

The funding is an additional investment from the zero-emission buses regional area scheme, which was launched in 2021 to allow local transport authorities to bid for funding for zero-emission buses and supporting infrastructure. The Government have a policy that is working. Obviously it is a first stage, but I believe the policy will be able to go a lot further.

We need ideas for decarbonising public transport in more rural areas, where the population is more dispersed. As others have said, we do not have the continuity or regularity of buses that we should have in rural communities in order to incentivise people to leave their cars and use buses. We in the countryside—especially where I live in the Ards peninsula; indeed, in the whole of the Ards peninsula—depend on our cars, whether they are diesel, petrol or, in my son’s case, electric.

It will always be challenging and expensive to provide the decarbonisation of public transport, but many residents have brought to my attention that some rural buses routes are extremely limited anyway, and I want to put that on the record. There is hope that installing hydrogen buses in rural areas will further discourage people from using cars, which is certainly the intention. People with cars can jump in them and go—they do not have to wait for a bus to come along—but others are probably in a position where they can do that. The use of hydrogen buses and other approaches tend to focus on densely populated urban areas, as there may be a critical mass of people to support public transport services, so it is great to see some Government commitment and willingness to ensure that efforts are made to decarbonise our rural communities too.

I hope that the Minister can join me in congratulating Wrightbus, take the comments of Members from across the House into consideration, and ensure that there is equal opportunity for rural decarbonisation across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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09:56 Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat)

I am sure we are all aware that domestic transport is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. The Department for Transport’s 2022 statistical estimates report that cars emit more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than trains and coaches, for the obvious reason that trains and coaches convey more people, so maximising the number of people in a vehicle for each journey is a really important part of meeting our emissions targets. The example that the Department gives is a long-distance one: on a journey between London and Glasgow, the average petrol car emits over four times more CO 2 than the equivalent journey by coach for each person, or 3.3 times more CO 2 per passenger than an electric car, once it has been taken into account that we do not generate all our electricity in a totally green way.

In rural areas, it is proving really difficult to get such efficiencies and cut the greenhouse gases that we emit because of the high level of dependency on private cars, which are mostly non-electric. Our bus services are already very poor and have been driven to the verge of extinction by the covid pandemic, and it is well documented that usage has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels. In Shropshire, services have continued to be cut since 2020 because they are no longer considered commercially viable. Obviously, we are not just talking about the tiny hamlets where everyone accepts it would be uneconomical and unsuitable for a large bus to trundle through; market towns of under 20,000 or 30,000 people are suffering as well.

Yes, I agree. We have absolutely seen that in North Shropshire and across the rest of the county. It is causing us a number of different issues, in addition to those of climate emissions. Already in my constituency, it is no longer possible to access one of our two key hospitals in Telford from Oswestry without changing services at least twice. There is no direct public transport service at all between Market Drayton, a town of around 12,000 people, and the sizeable town of Telford, where there are all sorts of extra services that people might want to access.

The lack of a usable service not only means we emit far more greenhouse gases than we used to or, more accurately, than we need to, but there is a social and economic cost. For instance, the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen, near Oswestry in North Shropshire, is a top-class orthopaedic hospital with a dedicated veterans’ centre that takes patients from all over the country. We are extremely proud of it. Recently, however, the hospital is struggling to recruit and retain its staff and one of the factors in that is the lack of a bus service back into Oswestry for those working early or late shifts because those end-of-day services have been axed from the route. More widely, the issue is driving young people from our towns, increasing the proportion of elderly residents, and harming the economic vibrance of the high streets.

The focus on active travel is sensible, because it has both an environmental and health benefit. However, there are many reasons that is not a suitable focus for rural communities when it comes to decarbonisation. Does the hon. Member share my concern that while the Government’s active travel strategy seems to acknowledge that, they have yet to set out any further specific guidance?

We are on the list for the Access for All plan. We have made our bid, which I hope will be successful, but it takes years and years to come through. If we are trying to get to net zero by 2050, the Access for All process really does need to be speeded up and, let’s face it, most places do not have a railway station or a railway line. Many of those stations have been axed from rural market towns and would be totally uneconomic to reinstate, particularly as those towns largely have housing estates over the former track, so we need to have a nationally led bus strategy that addresses people getting out of their cars and on to buses.

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10:09 Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)

The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) mentioned zero-emission buses and the requirement for further Government support. I could not agree more, and I will touch on that later. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) made an excellent point about social isolation, and how we need to be careful that rural decarbonisation solutions do not entrench those issues or make them worse. She also made a salient point about capacity issues in our rural electricity grid.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)— I call him the hon. Member for Strangford and Westminster Hall West—gave an excellent speech, as usual. My biggest surprise was that he said he liked something green; that may also be a surprise to some people watching, certainly in Scotland. He mentioned the time it takes to charge a car. In a recent debate in this place, we spoke about the charging issues in Northern Ireland. As an EV owner myself, I would have been unlikely to make the switch if I lived in Northern Ireland, such is the paucity of public chargers over there. He also mentioned the importance of the UK Government’s ZEBRA—zero-emission bus regional areas—scheme, and obviously he has Wrightbus in Northern Ireland. The implementation of that scheme is frankly shocking, but I will touch on that later.

Scotland has led the way on transport innovation over the years, and our track record on rail decarbonisation is yet another example of that. The world’s first electric railway locomotive was powered by batteries and invented in Scotland. It was designed by Robert Davidson of Aberdeen and first tested on the Glasgow to Edinburgh line. If we fast-forward over a century, one of the first battery trains to be used in regular passenger service was deployed on the Aberdeen to Ballater line. It is powered by clean, renewable electricity provided by the hydro board.

Today, the Bo’ness and Kinneil railway is seeing testing of a class 314 train formerly used as a workhorse on the Strathclyde lines. It has been converted to hydrogen-fuelled operation, and it is being put through its paces by the University of St Andrews, Transport Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Ballard Motive Solutions. That kind of innovation is one part of the deployment of investment and policy decisions that make Scotland a leader in the decarbonisation of rural transport.

The Scottish Borders were hit harder than most areas by the post-war retrenchment in rail. Peebles, Eyemouth, Kelso, Duns, Hawick, Selkirk and Melrose—I am starting to sound like a Bill McLaren rugby commentary—were all linked by rail to the wider country and the world. However, post-war mistakes in rail management across the UK, and the Beeching axe, left the borders with no rail links at all for 40 years, until the Scottish Government reopened the Borders railway in 2015. That new route is among the first in line for the next tranche of electrification on Scotland’s railways. After 40 years of isolation from the rest of this island’s rail network, the borders are seeing a bonanza in rail, integrated public transport and decarbonisation, which is surely unmatched by any comparable rural area on these islands.

The Scottish Borders are just one example of how decarbonisation is not constrained to our urban areas. We have seen the Invernet service, which provides commuter rail in the Inverness area, as well as the opening of the Inverness Airport railway station. Reopening the station at Beauly, which has a population of just over 1,000, generated more than 50,000 passenger journeys a year pre covid.

By 2045, every rail line in Scotland bar the West Highland and Far North lines, and the Girvan to Stranraer line, will be fully electrified. That is quite an achievement in a country where modernisation was ignored by this place for decades, until devolution and the Scottish Parliament came along. Clearly, 100% electrification would be preferable, but the economic reality is that electrification cannot always be justified in rural areas. However, that must not mean that more sparsely populated locales miss out on decarbonisation, and lines without full electrification will see the roll-out of innovative and game-changing trains such as battery electric and, potentially, hydrogen trains.

It is not just our rail network that is being transformed through funding from the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland. Fully 20% of the funding and buses on the road as a result of the first round of ScotZEB—the Scottish zero-emission bus challenge fund—went to operators in rural areas, from Campbeltown to Lockerbie and Aberdeenshire to Dumfries and Galloway.

In addition, Loganair has set a target to have a fully zero-emission fleet of aircraft serving Scotland’s islands and rural communities by 2040. Orkney is the hotbed for trials of electric and hydrogen-fuelled planes, with the islands expected to see the first scheduled zero-emission services as it becomes feasible to start rolling out the technology for passenger service. Those air links are a lifeline for the communities they serve, and making them net zero will play a crucial role in Scotland’s journey to being a net zero country by 2045. All this is evidence that decarbonisation is not just about urban and suburban travel; with the right strategy and package of investments, we can push modal shift in rural areas too.

Rural Scotland is also powering ahead in decarbonising private transport. Among the local authorities with the highest per capita penetration of public charge points are Orkney, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Argyll and Bute, Highland, Shetland, and Dumfries and Galloway. Most of the time in those areas, there is no alternative to private motors, so we want to support infrastructure to ensure that EVs are a practical solution. All those areas have seen a massive increase in public chargers over the past few years; since 2019, their numbers have more than doubled in Orkney and increased by 177% in Argyll and Bute. They are also up 194% in Highland, marrying up with the A9 electric highway, which links the highlands and the central belt. If we are serious about rolling out chargers to the level needed to hit our targets to phase out petrol and diesel cars, the number in rural Scotland needs to continue to increase at its current rate. The Scottish Government have shown the way, and it is for others—particularly the DFT—to learn from their lead.

Scotland is showing that rural decarbonisation can be achieved if the will is there. Making integrated transport a key policy objective, as well as relatively modest investment, can produce huge dividends for communities that were previously isolated from the public transport network. We know that in rural communities there will always be a need for cars in a way that simply is not the case in more urban areas, but providing alternatives to private transport when it is practical to do so and ensuring that the investment is targeted in the right places can help to drive modal shift and drive down emissions, and provide a more sustainable transport system across the board into the bargain.

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10:20 Simon Lightwood (Labour)

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing this debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. The hon. Member’s opening remarks underscored the importance of decarbonising our transport, especially in our rural communities, and the contributions from Members throughout have demonstrated why we need to take urgent action in this area. Indeed, decarbonising our transport sector is one of the most pressing challenges to overcome if we are to meet our net zero goals.

As the hon. Member for North Devon said, many people in rural communities are very dependent on cars, and we must continue to encourage the transition to electric vehicles. We have some good momentum as we transfer away from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles. That is one of the primary ways to decarbonise our transport. The RAC estimates that there are now 712,000 zero-emission electric cars on our roads, along with more than 400,000 plug-in hybrids.

As the shadow Minister covering buses, it would be remiss of me not to mention the vital role that the sector is playing in decarbonising our transport. That is especially the case in rural areas, where buses can be a lifeline for many, especially the elderly—connecting people with friends and family, and getting people to work, hospital or school.

Furthermore, buses need to be transitioned from diesel. The Government announced that they would deliver 4,000 zero-emission buses in this Parliament, but, as I pointed out during Transport questions in the Chamber last week, only 341 have been ordered and just six are on our roads. At that rate, it will take 23 years to meet the Government’s target. Many bus operators serving rural routes will be relying on Government grants to decarbonise their fleets, so the lack of progress with the scheme is hampering the business planning process and efforts to push forward with bus company investments.

I am pleased that we have had the opportunity to debate this important issue. It is clear that our rural communities want to play a part in the clean transport revolution, but they need more support to do so. Whether we are talking about buses, cycling, walking or cars, there are opportunities for decarbonisation, but rural areas are lagging behind. The Government must match their rhetoric with a proper plan to deliver what they have promised, so that we can see those zero-emission buses on our roads, have enough electric charging points to encourage people to transition, and encourage people to cycle and walk more. The Government must get their act together, and quickly; otherwise, it will be our rural villages and towns that suffer the most.

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10:30 Jesse Norman (Conservative)

What a delight it is to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing this debate on decarbonising rural transport. I am very aware of this issue as a constituency MP; in Hereford and South Herefordshire, we have many of the issues that have been described. I do not mean to disappoint my hon. Friend at the outset, but I am not going to make Treasury policy here and, least of all, as a former Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a few weeks before a Budget. Nevertheless, a wide range of issues have been raised and it is important to engage with them all.

As my hon. Friend rightly noted, buses are at the centre of the public transport network, but even more so in rural areas than in many urban areas. I and colleagues recognise their important role in providing sustainable transport options and independence to people who live in the countryside. They also have an essential role to play in achieving net zero by 2050 and in creating the cleaner and healthier places to live that we all aspire to have.

On decarbonisation, I am sure that my hon. Friend will join me in celebrating Devon’s recent success in joining the Government-funded ADEPT Live Labs 2 programme for decarbonising local roads in the UK. I am delighted that Devon will carry out a carbon-negative project on the A382, including the Jetty Marsh link road. That is part of a suite of corridor and place-based interventions, trialling, testing and showcasing applications in connection with the Wessex partnership, an exciting project that will be provided with more than £12 million for the three-year programme.

“how interventions across local transport modes will drive decarbonisation in their area.”

Some of the pilots use zero-emission vehicles. The scheme in Essex has been electrified since day one, providing a zero-emission demand-responsive service to rural areas around Braintree, and Surrey County Council has started to roll out its electric minibus route on its Mole Valley connect service.

On buses more broadly, colleagues will know that, in 2020, we committed to introducing 4,000 zero-emission buses and, ultimately, to achieving an all zero-emission bus fleet. It is nice to hear the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly supporting the superb achievements of Wrightbus in Northern Ireland with regard to not just electrification, but its work on the Hydroliner, using hydrogen technology.

The approach to zero-emission buses will support our climate ambitions, improve transport for local communities and support green jobs across the country. Since 2020, the Government have funded an estimated 3,452 zero-emission buses across the UK, some 1,400 of which have been supported by funding from the zero-emission bus regional areas, which has rightly been highlighted. Great progress has been made, with more than 500 buses ordered so far under the ZEBRA scheme, including 117 electric buses that have been ordered for four different local authorities, as announced in the House last week.

Buses are not the only zero-emission vehicles on our roads. It is right to think about the question of zero-emission vehicles more widely, as well as the charging infrastructure network, mentioned by several colleagues, that needs to be as accessible, affordable and secure in rural areas as elsewhere. Last March, the Government published their electric vehicle infrastructure strategy, which set out plans to accelerate the roll-out of the network. We expect at least 300,000 public charge points to be installed across the UK by 2030. There are already over 37,000 open-access public chargers on UK roads, with more than 600 new chargers added to our road network each month on average, and public charging devices have more than tripled in the past four years. That is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of charge points in homes and workplaces. We believe that we are on track to meet local expectations.

I like the Minister’s comments on the ZEBRA scheme, even though it has been an utter shambles from start to finish. Scotland has more zero-emission buses on the road in a country that is a tenth of the size.

The benefits are not just economic, as has been rightly highlighted. There are also the benefits of air quality and improved health, and they play a vital role in decarbonisation. Funding is important, and we have talked about that, but it is only one part of the solution in rural areas. We also need to support increased capability in delivery, and that is why the Government are providing Devon County Council with capability funding to support the development of its county-wide rural trail—its cycling and walking infrastructure plan.

There is a mixed picture in terms of need, but not a mixed picture in terms of the commitment, energy and drive that we are trying to bring to the entire portfolio across the range of the different interventions and modes in the cause of decarbonising our country and our economy.

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10:44 Selaine Saxby

It has been a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I thank the Minister for his response and for his Department’s recognition of rurality, because it is the first time that a Department has focused on that in its funding decision. I very much hope that with him at the helm, it can do more in some other areas that we have touched on this morning, because I know that the constituents I represent care deeply about their environment and are really passionate about being able to decarbonise their transport networks. For that to happen, it is important to find rural solutions that work and deliver better value for money. Although I fully respect that the Minister could not possibly comment on things going on in the Treasury ahead of the Budget, I hope that he might have a quiet word to say that a longer-term funding solution would deliver far better value for money in areas such as rural transportation.

That this House has considered decarbonising rural transport.

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