Public Transport: Remote Communities

Lord Grade of Yarmouth Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I completely agree with my noble friend. People who serve voluntarily in community transport should be absolutely praised for coming out in all weathers for everybody. As I said, and as he is right to say, it is a good solution to mobility in those areas and we will reiterate the use of these things as the mayoral combined authorities are established.

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that one of the great transport scandals in this country is that it costs something like £20 per mile to take the smallest car from Portsmouth to Fishbourne on the Isle of Wight? There is a monopoly there that operates completely against the economic interests of those trying to make a living on the Isle of Wight and, as we call it, the north island.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is certainly correct to identify that people on the Isle of Wight think that this is a problem. When I wrote the Union Connectivity Review report, although it was not specifically about the Isle of Wight, I had more correspondence from the Isle of Wight than I did from Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales.

This Government are tackling this issue. We set up the Cross-Solent Transport Group and Minister Mather, to whom my noble friend Lord Berkeley referred, has recently appointed Brian Johnson CBE, the ex-MCA chief executive, as the group’s independent chair to, first of all, sort out its terms of reference and then focus on locally led solutions to what the noble Lord correctly describes as a perceived and real problem of connectivity between the Isle of Wight and the English mainland.