Speeches by Aquarone.

“There are improvements, but it is not going to take cars off drives in rural areas.”

“Given what we have heard so far about the role of Government policy, and the autonomy and ambition that you are seeking to pass on to LTAs and local leadership, I am interested in the bit that is in the middle, which is the Department itself. What sort of role, Stephen, do you see the Department’s team that you look af…”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t speak on behalf of the Chair, but I am sure the Committee would be interested in hearing the results of those pilots as soon as they become available.”

“Minister, it is good to hear about the importance of empowerment of local leaders, but that does not necessarily mean that they have the ambition for this that you sound like you have. Certainly, when this Committee sought to find a place to visit—to catch a bus, let alone talk about buses—we had to go to Ireland. We w…”

“Norfolk doesn’t. Norfolk is a car county. That is what their leader told us three years ago.”

“I very much hope you can inspire that ambition to be shared across our rural communities. That is clearly a job in itself. Of course, the backstop to ambition is a minimum level of service requirement. Can either of you tell us about the Department’s view on introducing things like a guaranteed minimum service level fo…”

“I appreciate that, and in a moment we will come on to giving local authorities the power to decide what a socially necessary route is, but are there other mechanisms you intend to use to support local authorities to improve connectivity? I will challenge you on one of the things you said, if I may, Minister. I get that…”

“To be clear, when you talk about transport authorities, you mean combined mayoral authorities.”

“To be clear, we are focused specifically on non-urban areas in this inquiry. We are very keen to hear, in particular, how that works as we go forwards. I am in danger of running into other people’s questioning areas, so I will leave it there. Thank you both very much.”

“Norfolk is a car county, we were told.”

“Stepping back from who pays for it, one of the core principles of the Connecting Ireland programme is about socially necessary services, whatever that means. In my view, it is an incredibly unhelpful definition that causes great confusion, because surely the ambition should be, and the whole point of public transport i…”

“That makes a lot of sense. I recognise the description of the financial constraints, from almost every Minister I have spoken to since the election but, of course, this is a case of investment in increased social mobility, accessibility, decarbonisation, reduction in road miles and potentially economic growth. I see pu…”

“Overall, though, if you bring all the different pots of funding together and think what a transformative vision for rural public transport could look like, it sounds at the moment as if there is not enough money.”

“Do you accept that there is a significant requirement for public subsidy to make these routes work, at least in the first five or six years? That is what we saw in Ireland; the change came four or five years after the initial investment was made.”

“I hear that at some level, but you will forgive me for labouring the point. I do not think you can invest incrementally in transforming a network proposition. You have to go to the very biggest extent immediately, for people to buy into the opportunity. It really is one of those rare examples of, “Build it, and they wi…”

“But you would agree that socially necessary routes require significant public subsidy.”

“Part of the challenge, let’s face it, is that bus services, through fare revenue, are unlikely ever to become sustainable, whether in London or in rural areas. The price of running the service in Ireland is very high. The difference it makes, though, is not to the public purse but to the private purse, because a househ…”

“Many rural villages in my constituency still suffer from poor broadband access, with no clear date for when it will get better and more demands for huge expenditure to get them connected to the network. I think particularly of residents in Banningham, who have suffered from poor broadband access for years and feel they…”

“2. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of rural broadband coverage.”