Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of funding for local bus services across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
In England, the majority of bus services outside London operate on a commercial basis. Where commercial service provision is insufficient to meet the needs of local communities, local authorities can subsidise bus services where this represents value for money. This ensures that service provision is aligned with local needs. In instances where bus services cross local authority boundaries, the Department for Transport expects the relevant local authorities to work closely with operators and passengers to ensure the delivery of bus services that reflect local need.
The Government recognises the importance of local bus services to ensuring communities can stay connected and has announced over £4.5 billion to support and improve bus services since 2020. This includes over £2 billion to help local authorities deliver their Bus Service Improvement Plans, of which Central Bedfordshire Council and Hertfordshire County Council have been allocated over £4.4 million and £32.7 million respectively between 2022/23 and 2024/25.
The Government also makes over £200 million available to bus operators every year through the Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) to help them maintain their networks. A further £42 million in BSOG funding is provided directly to local authorities to help subsidise socially necessary bus services that might otherwise be commercially unviable. Central Bedfordshire Council receives £136,394 and Hertfordshire County Council receives over £1.2 million of this funding every year.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what funding his Department provides to local authorities to ensure the maintenance of cross-boundary bus services in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
In England, the majority of bus services outside London operate on a commercial basis. Where commercial service provision is insufficient to meet the needs of local communities, local authorities can subsidise bus services where this represents value for money. This ensures that service provision is aligned with local needs. In instances where bus services cross local authority boundaries, the Department for Transport expects the relevant local authorities to work closely with operators and passengers to ensure the delivery of bus services that reflect local need.
The Government recognises the importance of local bus services to ensuring communities can stay connected and has announced over £4.5 billion to support and improve bus services since 2020. This includes over £2 billion to help local authorities deliver their Bus Service Improvement Plans, of which Central Bedfordshire Council and Hertfordshire County Council have been allocated over £4.4 million and £32.7 million respectively between 2022/23 and 2024/25.
The Government also makes over £200 million available to bus operators every year through the Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) to help them maintain their networks. A further £42 million in BSOG funding is provided directly to local authorities to help subsidise socially necessary bus services that might otherwise be commercially unviable. Central Bedfordshire Council receives £136,394 and Hertfordshire County Council receives over £1.2 million of this funding every year.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to increase the availability of practical driving tests.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) priority is to reduce car practical driving test waiting times, whilst upholding road safety standards. To increase the number of available test slots, it is conducting tests outside of regular hours, including at weekends and on public holidays, and buying back annual leave from driving examiners.
Since April 2021, measures put in place by the DVSA to reduce waiting times for its customers, together with the ongoing recruitment of driving examiners, is creating on average over 42,900 extra car test slots each month.
The DVSA has deployed all eligible managers and administrative staff back on the front line to do driving tests from the beginning of October until the end of March, which will create around 150,000 additional test slots.
As of 27 November 2023, there were 546,702 car practical driving tests booked, and 96,449 driving tests still available within the 24-week booking window.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, when he last held meetings with railway union representatives.
Answered by Wendy Morton
Ministers last met railway union officials in March on the challenges facing the railways and the need for reform. [Since this meeting RMT’s General Secretary has stated that they would not meet this Government.] Ministers encourage the unions to keep negotiating with the railway companies as the employers, to resolve this dispute. The Secretary of State outlined this clearly in his letter dated 16 June 2022 to the RMT General Secretary.
The Secretary of State is being updated by industry on a daily basis on the latest developments in negotiations. Ministers’ top priority is to end the dispute and minimise disruption. That means joining daily calls with the Civil Contingencies Secretariat to improve readiness across government, including mitigations for impact on critical supply chains, and also considering policy options including legislating to minimise the impacts of future strikes.
The simplest way to resolve the dispute is for unions to return to the negotiating table.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of reforming the Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations 1989 to allow volunteer emergency first responders use of green flashing lights.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Green flashing lamps are currently the preserve of vehicles used by doctors registered with the General Medical Council and the Government has made no assessment of the effects of allowing an extension of their use to cover volunteer emergency first responders. The Government considers that the categories of vehicles allowed to use warning beacons should remain strictly limited to avoid diluting the safety benefits of these important signals.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 15 November 2021 to Question 70323 on Motorways, whether his Department has made an assessment of the effectiveness of his Department's £5 million national public information campaign entitled Go left.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The first wave of National Highways’ ‘Go Left’ campaign, which commenced in Spring 2021, has been fully evaluated via the Government Communication Service (GCS) evaluation framework which includes pre and post campaign tracking research. Ahead of ‘go live’, the campaign creative was tested though online customer focus groups with a number of different groups of drivers – young, older, female, commuters and disabled drivers. National Highways also tested the creative with key stakeholders such as organisations in the recovery industry.
National Highways measured driver awareness and confidence levels around what to do if they break down on a motorway, with and without a hard shoulder, before, during and after the campaign through a campaign survey working with ICM Unlimited.
Evaluation showed that 48% spontaneously recalled the campaign, which was mostly driven by the TV advert. 89% thought that the adverts were clear and easy to understand, with 89% reporting the ads told them useful information and 58% saying they were told something new. After being shown the advert, the key message taken away was that they should keep moving left (62%).
The second wave of the campaign (in Autumn 2021) will also be evaluated via the GCS evaluation framework, this will include pre and post campaign surveys to measure driver awareness and effectiveness of the campaign. National Highways has commissioned audience research ahead of the second wave, which has showed a high level of retention for the core campaign messages.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he is taking to ensure that drivers understand the guidance on driving on a smart motorway.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The Smart Motorway Safety Evidence Stocktake and Action Plan, published in March 2020 committed to an additional £5 million on national and targeted communications campaigns to further increase awareness and understanding of smart motorways.
In March 2021, National Highways launched a £5 million major national public information campaign, ‘Go left’, to give drivers clear information about what to do in a breakdown. Wave 2 of this campaign was launched in October 2021 with the intention to deliver a further wave in due course.
We also committed to updating the Highway Code to provide more guidance for
motorists on smart motorway driving. Improvements to The Highway Code to improve safety on motorways and other high-speed roads came into effect on Tuesday 14 September 2021, with the publication of a revised edition on the Government website: www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code.
The DVSA sent direct emails to the driver, rider, and vocational training sectors, trainer bookers, professional drivers, vehicle operators, Highway Code email alert subscribers and learner drivers and riders, with nearly half a million people notified of the changes.
National Highways has an ongoing programme to communicate safety guidance to drivers across the strategic road network including the following:
My Rt Hon Friend the Transport Secretary is absolutely committed to making smart motorways as safe as possible and we will always look at what more we can do.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent discussions he has had with his counterparts in Europe on safe approaches to reopening international travel during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Robert Courts - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)
Department for Transport Ministers and officials have met with their European counterparts throughout this year to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and the safe, sustainable resumption of international travel. These discussions have been productive and we will continue to engage closely as we seek to cautiously balance the reopening of international travel with managing the public health risks.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps the Government is taking to support airports with long queues at the border.
Answered by Robert Courts - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)
From the start of the pandemic, we have taken a robust approach to preventing importation of Covid-19, including from new variants. This has involved the introduction of new border health measures which have at times resulted in longer queues at airport border crossing points.
To address this, we have looked to automate and streamline checks at the border. The Passenger Locator Form was automated in May and the rollout of upgraded Border Crossing (BX) systems across the UK has been progressed to an expediated timetable. This includes the upgrade of systems used at Border Force officer desks and the upgrade of eGates. Not only are these measures ensuring compliance with the UK’s extremely robust border regime, they have also helped smoothen the processing of passengers at the border.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what criteria Pakistan needs to meet to move to the amber list for covid-19 travel restrictions.
Answered by Robert Courts - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)
Decisions on Red, Amber or Green List assignment and associated border measures are taken by Ministers, who take into account Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) risk assessments of countries and territories, alongside wider public health factors. Key factors in the JBC risk assessment of each country and territory include genomic surveillance capability, COVID-19 transmission risk and variant of concern transmission risk. A summary of the JBC methodology is published on gov.uk, alongside key data that supports Ministers' decisions.
These are intended to be temporary measures and the government keeps data for countries and territories under regular review.