Speeches by Glover.

“That is quite a high percentage.”

“Yes, potentially.”

“It is good to hear your plans for night buses. From my time living in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, it was remarkable how sparse the night offer was for such a large and densely populated urban area. You have hinted at this with your answer about orbital routes—this applies to Greater Manchester as well—but…”

“I have one very quick question. You mentioned that you have tweaked 70 routes. Roughly, how many routes do you have in total?”

“Mr Rhodes, Manchester is the only area in England outside of London to have implemented franchising. How is it working in practice? I appreciate you touched on a bit of that in your introductory remarks, but it would be good to hear a bit more.”

“Wherever I have lived that has definitely not been the case, and I have lived in a wide range of places. Maybe I have lived in unusual places.”

“I had a brief question based on what you were saying about SMEs potentially being squeezed out. Please do correct my ignorance, but the impression one gets of the bus sector is that it is largely dominated by Stagecoach, FirstGroup, Go-Ahead, et cetera, that generally run monopolies in the areas concerned. Again, pleas…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. Our concern about the draft Town and Country Planning (Fees and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025 is that the criteria that would be used for deploying the proposed powers is somewhat vague and too broad. It would be useful to hear more clarity from th…”

“House building is essential to provide the homes that people need, but there are significant problems with our current approach to planning, and it is therefore welcome that the Government are giving time and attention to those topics. My constituency and the areas surrounding it have seen 35% population growth in 20 y…”

“My hon. Friend is right. Buildings need to be staffed, otherwise we will end up like the episode of “Yes Minister” with an empty building. Key infrastructure needs and asks for my constituency include the Didcot-Culham relief road, with better walking and cycling provision than in the current plan. It is a controversia…”

“A key frustration for many is communication and notification of street works. That applies to road users, pavement users and bus customers. How can such communication be improved?”

“Do you have anything to add?”

“It is truly a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I join colleagues in commending my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing time to discuss this vital issue, which I feel is a symptom of a wider malaise in our planning system, as I shall explain. First, regrettably,…”

“My Oxfordshire constituency of Didcot and Wantage is quite geographically diverse. It has large towns, which tend to have a pretty good bus service, and villages with a few buses a day; but a couple of villages only have one bus a week. Using that as an example, what gaps in connectivity do you feel community transport…”

“The new Labour Government have an aspiration to develop an integrated transport strategy. In that context, can you explain the role both community transport and demand-responsive transport can potentially play as first-mile and last-mile solutions?”

“My next question is linked to that. Do you sometimes find that where there are boundaries between local authorities, and a lot of the funding is very much done along local authority lines, there are issues with co-ordinating transport options across those local authority boundaries?”

“It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I start by thanking all the participants in this interesting and wide-ranging debate, and the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) in particular for his comprehensive and very thoughtful introduction. He rightly reminded us that this matter is of gr…”

“I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention and commend him for his commitment to improving skills training when in Government, which he discussed in his speech. I think the challenge of how we get there is significant, and I will come on to discuss that in my concluding remarks. In my constituency there are exa…”

“You have anticipated my next question. The Chair will love you.”

“Mr Sommer and Mr Whittaker, do you agree with that?”