Regional Transport Inequality

Paul Kohler Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

I was all too conscious at Transport questions this morning not only to ensure that I did not, after last night’s scolding, repeat the heresy of “you” or “yours”, Madam Deputy Speaker, but to keep my questions brief. Consequently, I did not have time to put on the record—for the third time in less than a year—a formal welcome on behalf of my party to the new shadow Transport Secretary. Therefore, notwithstanding the fact that the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden) is no longer in the Chamber, I formally congratulate him on his elevation.

As former Transport Minister, the right hon. Gentleman knows all about the transformative effect of transport, having only recently hopped aboard the overnight shuttle from Durham to Basildon. On that tortuous journey from the north of England to the south-east, he would have glimpsed the huge inequalities in transport provision across our country. Be it trains or buses, roads or air travel, where people live or their business is situated has a massive effect on their mobility. Mobility—the ability to move from A to Z and all points in between—is key to a modern economy and a cohesive society.

The statistics paint a stark picture of, to coin a phrase, a two-tier system. Last year, for example, transport spending in London was over £1,300 per head, compared with under £400 per head in the east midlands. New research from Transport for the North reveals that over 11 million people in England face a high risk of social exclusion specifically because of inadequate transport systems. That represents a 14% increase—an extra 2 million people—since 2019. In the north-east, well over 30% of residents face a high risk of transport-related social exclusion, compared with below 3% in London. And who are the excluded? It will come as no surprise that, as Transport for the North has highlighted, it is disproportionately low-income households, unpaid carers, the old and the disabled. The very people our transport system should be helping the most are the ones facing its greatest barriers.

It is not just the north of England suffering from these inequalities. Minehead in Somerset, for example, is virtually cut off. The railway station closed in 1971, and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) tells me that the No. 28 bus appears to run on a whim. In Stratford-upon-Avon, Stagecoach has stopped running buses in the evening and at weekends, and there is no direct train service between the home of Shakespeare and London, undermining the town’s tourist and cultural economy. Transport is, of course, key to our tourist industry. That is why in Cornwall, the new Lib Dem council has cancelled the previous Tory administration’s plans to sell off Newquay airport, but it now needs more help than is currently being offered by the Government to make the critical investment the airport so badly needs.

Investment in transport is key. Even in London, where Transport for London is the envy of the rest of the country, more investment is needed. Repeated disruption on the District line is caused by some of the infrastructure being up to 130 years old, according to TfL. It sounds grim, but as my constituents are getting tired of hearing me say, we in Wimbledon and the rest of London do not know how lucky we are. Just imagine living in a region where services are sparse or non-existent, bus routes are cut, stations have been closed and the few trains running are routinely delayed.

I am addressing my remarks to the Minister, for whom I have high regard and no little sympathy, because the problems with regional transport inequalities are clearly not of his making, nor his Government’s, but of the past Tory Administration’s. Take buses, for example, where deregulation allowed private operators to cream off the profitable routes and abandon the rest. Between 2015 and 2023, over 1 billion passenger journeys were lost. In the north-west alone, bus routes were reduced from nearly 3,500 in 2015 to half that number in 2024.

Sadly, however, the problem still continues. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) in the south-east of England tells me that three bus services have been cancelled since last summer. In the south-west and north-east, 56% of small towns are now identified as transport deserts or at risk of becoming so.

I do not doubt the Government’s good intentions, evidenced by the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill, but in some respects, things are getting worse. The Government’s decision to increase the bus fare cap from £2 to £3, for example, will only accelerate the decline in bus usage, hitting those who are already struggling the most. The Minister will rightly point to the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill and its many excellent provisions but, as with the soon-to-be-published rail Bill, no amount of legislation will solve the issue of regional transport inequality without the necessary investment. As we saw with High Speed 2 and, more recently, the spending review, those moneys are not forthcoming.

The electrification of the midland main line from London to Sheffield has now been cancelled, while at Dawlish, the critical work to protect the vital Paddington to Penzance main line from the sea has been put on hold despite the very real risks to regional connectivity. The same is true of our road network, where, for example, the promised widening of the A12, which would have supported the creation of 55,000 new homes in the Chelmsford area, has been cancelled.

As the Minister is fond of telling me, there is no magic money tree, which is why the only way to address regional transport inequality is to grow the economy—a growth that is impeded by the very inequality that growth would help to address. That is why the pump must be primed with more investment in our transport system and a far more ambitious approach to growth, which can be achieved not by wishing on a star or by the PM tying himself in knots with his red lines over Europe but by boldly re-engaging with the EU and thereby completing the virtuous circle of an integrated transport system driven by and driving a dynamic and growing economy.

I end by thanking the hon. Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) for securing this important debate and all Members for their excellent contributions.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.