Robert Courts
Main Page: Robert Courts (Conservative - Witney)Department Debates - View all Robert Courts's debates with the Department for Transport
(5 years, 12 months ago)
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Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this important and extremely timely debate.
I declare an interest: I am the chairman of the all-party group on community transport, which is backed and whose secretariat is provided by the Community Transport Association. Many hon. Members here are members; those who are not are very welcome to join. This is far more important than simply a parliamentary matter. In my constituency, I have four excellent community service providers—Our Bus Bartons, West Oxfordshire Community Transport, Volunteer Link-Up and the Villager—and they are all thriving. Only last week, I opened a new bus as it was handed over to the Villager service. Those services are all terrified about the impact of the Department’s proposed actions under the consultation.
I am very grateful to the Minister, who is very interested in this area. He has visited Our Bus Bartons with me, listened in person to the concerns and spent a great deal of time listening to my volunteers in person. I know he is concerned about this issue and he is doing his best, but there is an extraordinary problem here. The reason why all those volunteer-led services exist is that commercial providers have withdrawn. Is it not an extraordinary perversity that, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said, under pressure from commercial providers, which do not want to operate in these areas, it may be difficult or impossible for such volunteer-led services to run?
We have heard some excellent speeches today. I just want to mention a couple of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), but there are in fact three barristers here.
Robert Courts
My hon. Friend says we will get six opinions—I am sorry all the barristers are agreeing with each other.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham is absolutely right that there is clearly space for interpreting the law here, and that is exactly what we have to do. The sections 19 and 22 system, which has existed for so long, is a classically British compromise. It has created a benign environment under which community transport can operate. It is essential that we continue to go through the regulation and the law with a fine-toothed comb. Simply put, we cannot allow a situation to arise in which community transport providers are not able to operate.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
Will the hon. Gentleman join me in thanking all the groups across our county that do this, and especially Christopher Gowers from Wolvercote? Many of them cross our constituency boundaries, because our communities are interwoven.
Robert Courts
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I mentioned Our Bus Bartons, which from my constituency runs a service to not only the Banbury constituency but Oxford Parkway railway station. It provides vital links, not just to stations but to doctors’ surgeries, for people to go shopping or for young people to go to work. The impact and essential value of the services simply cannot be overstated. She made that point very clear.
I, too, thank all the volunteers, without whom the services would not run. They put an incredible amount of effort into ensuring that when commercial services were withdrawn, communities could step in and fill the breach. We must make sure that that can continue to happen.
Rural isolation is a real challenge for any of us who represent a rural area, and I know that the Government are combating it and worried about it. That is another essential reason for community transport to continue.
I gave a full response to the consultation, in which I made some of the more technical points that I do not have time to make now. I urge the Minister to engage with the all-party parliamentary group and all of us, because we want to help. We must find a way through to ensure that community transport can continue to thrive, as it has done so far.