Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Holden Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker, and to the Government.

Yesterday, the Minister for nature, the hon. Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), told the House that there was no national bus fare cap under the last Conservative Government. That is not surprising, as the Prime Minister keeps gaslighting the public by saying exactly the same thing. Does the Minister accept that he must ensure that his colleagues correct the record, since there was a national £2 bus fare cap under the last Conservative Government? The Conservative manifesto committed to a £2 fare cap for the duration of this Parliament. This Government are taking the public for fools, as they increased the fare cap by 50%, which is hammering hard-working people up and down the country, costing them hundreds of pounds every single year.

[Simon Lightwood]

It takes real brass neck for the right hon. Gentleman to pipe up on this issue. It was his party that oversaw 300 million miles of bus cuts. In one year alone in which he was a Transport Minister, 2,000 routes were cut across England. This Government have introduced legislation to protect the lifeline routes that were cut on his party’s watch, preserved cheap bus travel for passengers, and legislated to bring back better buses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Could the Secretary of State enlighten the House as to how reversing the last Conservative Government’s 5p a litre fuel duty cut will help the transport system to support economic growth? Is it not the truth that, come September, this will be known as Labour’s back to school tax?

[Heidi Alexander]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that we are freezing fuel duty until August this year. We need to get the balance right in terms of securing income for the public finances, but I also point out that we are investing a record amount in highways maintenance—£1.6 billion last year, which is £500 million more than was spent the year before, under his Government. We will double investment in roads maintenance by the end of this Parliament, and that is what people using our roads want to see.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

At oral questions in September, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) asked the Minister to apologise for failing to bring down the driving test backlog, which Labour had promised to do. The Minister told the House then that there were “early signs of improvement”. Can he tell the House now whether driving test times have increased or decreased since Labour came to power 18 months ago?

[Simon Lightwood]

The Secretary of State announced various new measures at the Transport Committee to continue to bring down the waiting times for learner drivers. [Interruption.] Look, what I would say to the right hon. Gentleman is that his party did virtually nothing to help the situation, and it is this Labour party that is making the structural changes and the real effort to bring down waiting times once and for all.

[Mr Holden]

The Minister has still not properly answered the question and, frankly, should be embarrassed by that answer. Labour promised to reduce average waiting times to seven weeks—[Interruption.] Wait for it. Instead, we are now seeing waits of up to 22 weeks—almost a month longer for a driving test than at the general election. The desperate headline-grabbing announcements about calling in the Army, which in reality will increase capacity by less than half of 1%, and for one year only, will simply not cut the mustard for the hundreds of thousands of people waiting for driving tests up and down the country. Can the Minister tell the House when he expects average test waiting times to fall below the levels that Labour inherited at the general election?

[Simon Lightwood]

Once again we see the brass neck of the right hon. Gentleman. The National Audit Office, in a report published in December, was very clear that

“DfT had limited involvement in helping DVSA tackle driving test waiting times up to mid-2024”—

I wonder what happened in 2024. Prior to that, the Department for Transport largely left the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency to try to resolve the matter itself—

[Mr Holden]

And they’ve gone up!

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Holden, you are getting very excited. Hale and Pace are not setting a good example. Come on.