Transport Committee

Oral evidence: Work of the Secretary of State for Transport, HC 83

Wednesday 17 June 2026

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 17 June 2026.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Ruth Cadbury (Chair); Steff Aquarone; Dr Scott Arthur; Mrs Elsie Blundell; Jacob Collier; Olly Glover; Alex Mayer; Rebecca Smith; Laurence Turner.

Questions 234 to 339

Witnesses

I: Heidi Alexander MP, Secretary of State for Transport, Department for Transport; Jo Shanmugalingam, Permanent Secretary, Department for Transport.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Heidi Alexander and Jo Shanmugalingam.

Q234       Chair: Welcome to this morning’s evidence session with the Secretary of State for Transport. It is the latest in a series of regular sessions we hold with the Secretary of State, putting questions to her about policy across her Department’s remit and following up on some previous work. Please introduce yourselves.

Heidi Alexander: Thanks ever so much for the invitation to come and speak to you again, Chair. I am the Secretary of State for Transport.

Jo Shanmugalingam: I am the Permanent Secretary.

Q235       Chair: You appeared in front of us in November last year. Could you very briefly summarise the main achievements that you have managed to progress since you last came, and any key areas where you have not been able to progress as you would have wished?

Heidi Alexander: Thank you to you and the Committee for all the work you have done to support the many changes we are making to the transport system, particularly on the Railways Bill. Your recommendations were very helpful in that respect. We are making good progress on improving public transport, investing in our roads, and enabling the transition to cleaner and healthier journeys for people across the country.

I would highlight a few areas. If you look at the work we have done on rail, we have frozen rail fares for the first time in 30 years. That was introduced in March this year and runs until March next year. We are running more services; we are seeing passenger numbers still increasing on the railways; we are seeing fewer cancellations; we are obviously making progress with a number of large infrastructure schemes, including things such as the trans-Pennine route upgrade; and we set out plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail in January, which was long awaited.

When it comes to the buses, I have been particularly pleased that we have been able to fund the roll-out of more zero-emission buses, maintaining the £3 bus fare cap, and we have plans to make buses more affordable for families this summer. It is also good that we have published the Better Connected strategy, which is the integrated national transport strategy.

However, I am really focused on the bread-and-butter issues that I know that people are concerned about: making sure we fix our broken roads and use the record £7.3 billion that we have given to local authorities as effectively and efficiently as we can. We have launched a structures fund. We have also published the road safety strategy, which was much needed after a period of 12 years when there had not been an update.

There has also been good progress with things such as record months for electric car sales and making sure that we are progressing the roll-out of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. I was particularly pleased last week to launch the third cycling and walking investment strategy, with a real focus on how we can get more children walking and cycling to school.

On the more negative side, obviously the situation with HS2 is still very challenging. We have reset the programme. We have de-scoped the programme to reduce risk in it as well, so that we will not be running trains at 360 kph. It would be 320 kph, which would still mean they go as fast as a Japanese bullet train. On rail performance, I would say that while we are making progress across the country, performance could be better in some areas when it comes to reliability. I would want to see more progress on that. On the issue of driving test wait times, they are still too high for people and we need to get those down.

Q236       Chair: We will be picking up on all that. In terms of the next six months, what are your key priorities? Rather than a whole list of actions, what is a very small number of top priorities for you? Just as importantly, are you confident that you have adequate resources to deliver those?

Heidi Alexander: What is different about me being before you today compared with six months ago is obviously the impact of the conflict in the Middle East and the pressure that has put on prices associated with fuel. If I was not focused on what that meant for drivers and operators of public transport—buses, rail and the airlines—then I am not sure I would be doing my job properly. That is a major focus because while there has been positive news in terms of a peace agreement, the impact of the disruption to oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz will have a very long economic tail. That is still a big priority for me over the next six months.

However, that should not distract me from the day job. The three main priorities we have around ensuring that the transport system supports economic growth and enhances people’s everyday experience of the place they live are really important. When it comes to economic growth, we will be consulting on a revised Heathrow expansion national policy statement over the summer. I am very grateful to you, Chair, for setting aside time for the Committee to scrutinise that in the autumn as well.

I want to maintain a focus on how we achieve value for money from roads investment. There is £7.3 billion going to local councils to do preventive road resurfacing and fix potholes. That money needs to be spent efficiently and effectively. I am still very focused on improving public transport. We need to make a success of the Kids Go Free bus offer in the summer, which is going to mean that children between the age of five and 15 can travel for free on the buses.

Of course, we are still progressing with bringing the train operating companies into public ownership. We have Chiltern happening in September, Great Western in December, and I would like to make progress on getting the first phase of East West Rail into service. They are a personal priority for me. You do not want me to give a long list, so I will stop there. Perhaps Jo might pick up on the resourcing issue.

Jo Shanmugalingam: Obviously we have our spending review settlement, but in terms of the capacity of the Department, we have made quite significant changes over the last year. We are about 15% smaller in terms of the number of people we employ. That is a mixture of two things. First, there are structural efficiencies: we had a voluntary exit scheme at this time last year. Secondly, as we may come on to later, we have moved some staff to DFT Operator, and we will move some further to Network Rail as part of the transition to Great British Railways. My focus now is making sure we are as efficient and effective as we can be to deliver the Secretary of State’s priorities.

Q237       Laurence Turner: There have been a number of reports that there may be changes to the departmental budget as a result of the need to fund the defence investment plan. Are those reports accurate? What level of change might we be talking about?

Heidi Alexander: I hope you will understand that I am not going to get into detailed commentary on speculation that we have seen in the media. The Government will be setting out their approach to the defence investment plan shortly, and we will detail the approach to funding as part of that. It is right as a responsible Government, as the priorities and threats change in the world.

We obviously have the conflict in Ukraine; we have had the conflict in the Middle East as well. It is right that the Government consider the balance of spending. I hope you will appreciate that these are live discussions, and it is too early to say because those discussions have not concluded across Government.

Q238       Laurence Turner: If there was to be a change in the spending review settlement, what would your priorities be in terms of which programmes to protect?

Heidi Alexander: I really do not want to get too drawn into the detail of this because as soon as I say that I would protect one thing, the response will be, “Well, you’re not protecting something else.” I hope you will forgive me if this answer is not as clear as the ones I would normally seek to give you. We have a large capital budget as a Department, second only to that of the Ministry of Defence. A lot of the schemes we are progressing with are already in contract and many are actually already in construction, so we are limited in terms of the changes we can make to our capital programme.

I want to ensure that we protect the things that improve the everyday experience for people of everyday journeys. I am acutely conscious that we have a very big maintenance and renewals challenge at the moment. That is both on our roads, with motorways that were predominantly built in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s—when you look at local roads, we are all aware of the maintenance challenges there too—but equally on the rail network. To ensure that we can provide resilience, we have to make sure that we continue to invest in renewals and maintenance.

There are questions about funds that have yet to be allocated to specific schemes. When the Prime Minister says to me, “Actually, the scale of spending that we need for the defence and national security of our country is bigger than we anticipated 12 to 18 months ago,” as a responsible member of the Cabinet in a G7 nation, I should look hard at what funds I have yet to allocate and whether there are any adjustments and tweaks that can be made. Of course, we also have processes to go through in the Department each year when we do business planning and planning for the next year. We have another spending review coming up. We will need to get into the detail of that.

Q239       Chair: We have had the Department’s estimates laid in April, and we were told this was going to be accompanied by a strategic plan that outlines the Department’s objectives and intended outcomes, funded at the spending review. Why has that still not been published? Even if we cannot see it, what can we learn from it?

Jo Shanmugalingam: Yes, we published the main estimates in the main estimates memorandum in April. Thank you also to the Committee and the Clerks for help with simplifying how we present our main estimates to make them as clear and helpful as possible to everybody.

Chair: If it is not clear to us, it is not clear to people in general.

Jo Shanmugalingam: Exactly. Regarding strategic plans, as we discussed last time with the outcome delivery plan, the Cabinet Office publishes all departmental plans together. We hope and expect that it will do that shortly. If you look at the main estimates memorandum, it has how we are spending our money, and critically, it has our performance metrics. For each of our strategic outcomes, enhancing growth in place, we list the performance metrics, which we will then report against in our annual report and accounts.

When you see the strategic plan, the additional bits will have a bit more explanation of why we have those strategic objectives and what we are seeking to achieve. Obviously, the main estimates memorandum is about our spend, so it has our plans for all the other levers we have as Government, then brief information on our evaluation plan, our principal risks, and how we approach project delivery. The heart of the substance is as already set out in the main estimates memorandum, but I very much hope the plans will be published shortly.

Q240       Chair: Shortly?

Jo Shanmugalingam: I am afraid it is not something we can control. They are published all together by the Cabinet Office for all Departments.

Q241       Chair: Right, okay. Are they for the current financial year?

Jo Shanmugalingam: Yes, exactly.

Chair: Which we are already well into, and we have not seen them yet. Okay. That makes it difficult for scrutiny, but thank you very much.

Q242       Steff Aquarone: My question is on integrated transport. We heard from expert witnesses who welcome the Better Connected strategy, but there was not quite enough clarity on how it is actually going to be delivered. Jo, what changes are you making to the way the Department is organised in order to deliver on that strategy?

Jo Shanmugalingam: We have 40 commitments in Better Connected, and we have a senior civil servant allocated responsibility for each of those. We therefore track and monitor progress against each of the commitments.

Our strategy and policy committee looked in February at our overall implementation plan, and we are looking at the monitoring and evaluation plan within the Department shortly. We are also changing how we work—we might come back to integrated ticketing—bringing together the different bits of the Department that can make that real difference to the support we can provide as central Government, to enable local areas to provide the integrated ticketing services they want and need.

Q243       Steff Aquarone: Clearly part of the integration may be some gentle integration of budget lines within the Department for Transport, but it is bigger than that, is it not? We heard one evidence contribution in our hearing from a witness who said that we think the Swiss can afford integrated transport because it is a rich country; actually, they would say it is a rich country because it has excellent integrated transport. Secretary of State, what are you doing to lobby for the cause of integrated transport with other Departments in particular? This is a big potential game changer, is it not?

Heidi Alexander: Yes. The key themes of Better Connected are all about people, place and partnership because the reality of the transport system that most people will experience in the country will often be determined by the role that the local transport authority or the council play—or, if people are living in big city regions or combined authority areas, the policies and programmes of the mayors of those areas. That is why we chose those three themes for Better Connected.

I work very closely particularly with MHCLG—the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government—and the Treasury. Look at the work we did about the Northern Growth strategy and the contribution that Northern Powerhouse Rail can make to that: we have embedded the rail infrastructure proposals to improve those connections in Yorkshire between cities such as Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and York as the first phase, that new railway between Manchester and Liverpool, and then improving cross-Pennine connections further.

That was all predicated on how we could support the financial square mile of the north of England in Leeds, both through rail improvements and making sure it is properly integrated with Mayor Tracy Brabin’s plans for West Yorkshire mass transit. How do we ensure that regeneration around Manchester Piccadilly that would be enabled by the creation of a new station there and that new rail link down to Manchester Airport? You cannot just look at this in silos. You need to make sure that all parts of Government are coming together to unlock the economic opportunity that that new infrastructure can bring.

Q244       Steff Aquarone: That feels thematically aligned to the concept of integrated transport. Lots of progress can clearly be made through better joined-up working. This is also about investment and investment in growth. Governments can do a lot to limit economic growth. There are very few things they can really do to deliver economic growth in reality, but I would gently suggest that transport is one of them. Do you think the Treasury understands that case?

Heidi Alexander: I do. If you think about the £45 billion commitment that we have made for future decades on Northern Powerhouse Rail, with over £1 billion to be spent in this spending review alone, the Chancellor fully understands and appreciates the transformative effect that investment in transport infrastructure can have.

I would highlight another area as an example. Consider the planning permission granted for Universal Studios in Bedford in December last year. Our strategy around East West Rail links Oxford and Cambridge with a new station at Stewartby, which will be the closest station to that theme park. There will be a new station at Wixams on the Midland Main Line and improvements to the road infrastructure at the Black Cat junction around there. We are looking at this in a holistic way and making sure that where Government are investing money, they are also working with the private sector to unlock opportunity.

Look at that Oxford to Cambridge growth corridor, the transport plans that underpin it and the job opportunities that exist with something such as Universal, making it a destination. We have granted planning permission for the expansion of Luton Airport as well, which will be the airport closest to that, to drive inward tourism to the country. This is all of us: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport working with housing communities and local government on the planning framework, working with Treasury to make sure the investments are there, but also making sure that people can get to and from a new destination such as Universal easily.

Q245       Dr Arthur: Many of our towns and cities are congested, and that has economic impact. Steff was just talking about the economy there. Do the Government have a target of reducing non-essential car use?

Heidi Alexander: We have not put a target in place, but what we have made clear through our Better Connected strategy is that we want to provide better choices for people to choose sustainable modes of travel. If you look at the reform agenda that we have, whether it is on the railways with the establishment of Great British Railways and the investment in the rail network, or the improvements we want to make to the bus network, we want public transport and walking and cycling—active modes of travel—to be a better choice for people than having to always depend on the car.

I am acutely aware that it is very different in different parts of the country. I remember a conversation with my own husband about the fact that we would get rid of our car when we lived in London. I was then selected as the candidate in Swindon South. If I am being totally honest, the quality of the public transport network in the town I represent would make it very hard for me to do my job if I did not have a car.

If you look at what we are doing, whether it is through Better Connected or through the cycling and walking investment strategy, we want to invest in things such as safer crossings and safer cycle routes, so that we can get to a place where people can swap out some short car journeys they are doing in towns and cities.

Q246       Chair: The question was about overall targets. We all know what choices are available. What is the Government’s aspiration, particularly in the context of an expectation of a 10% increase in road traffic across all modes and 12% on the SRN? That is just going to deliver more and more congestion, which does not exactly help economic growth. Is that increase an intention or expectation of Government?

Heidi Alexander: We are also enhancing the road network.

Q247       Dr Arthur: Do you mean adding capacity?

Heidi Alexander: In some places, yes.

Q248       Dr Arthur: Is that the right thing to do?

Heidi Alexander: If I take the example of the Lower Thames Crossing, which is a strategic freight route with lorries that come over into the port of Dover and need to make a journey up to the Midlands and the north, we need additional capacity there. It is right that we make that investment, working with the private sector to relieve the huge congestion you see around the Dartford Crossing.

There will be some interventions that we make through the road investment strategy that will actually provide some further capacity on key choke points on the road network. It is right that we do that, where it is essential. When new development is happening, whether that is new residential development or new commercial development, you obviously need to be able to support the journeys that that development requires.

Q249       Dr Arthur: There will always be locations where you can justify improvements, but 12% across the board seems incredible. Do you think Swindon could take 12% more traffic? I hate to make it about your constituency.

Heidi Alexander: That is why I say that what we have set out through all the work we are doing, highlighted in the integrated national transport strategy and Better Connected, is to prioritise improvements in sustainable forms of travel, such as public transport.

Going back to the former discussion, that is we are investing heavily in the rail network to improve connectivity and capacity. It is why we are investing over £3 billion in improving bus services; that money that goes to local transport authorities to support the bus network. It is why we are giving leaders more control over defining local bus services. If they want to go down the route of franchising and setting up a municipal bus operator, they can do that.

The whole focus of what this Government have done over the last two years is about delivering a better public transport system that will be more attractive and affordable for people. Let us not forget the first rail fares freeze in 30 years. We also have the £3 bus fare cap in place. I want people to feel enabled to do more short trips in towns and cities using sustainable forms of travel.

In rural areas, if you look at what we suggested in Better Connected, we are doing a pilot in the Hope Valley called Mini Switzerland, which is about integrating the basics of timetables. If you want to use the train to get somewhere but you cannot rely on the bus turning up to get you there, then you will perhaps be more minded to use a car. That is the focus of what we are doing.

Q250       Dr Arthur: All that is great and we love it all, but when we get to 2035, the prediction is that car use is going to increase by 12%. That feels like failure, despite all this fantastic work. Do you think 12% more cars on the roads in 2035 is a success?

Chair: Do you not accept that that is going to create more congestion? I have been in London since the M25 opened, and as a community leader I worked with once said, “When you throw seeds out to pigeons, there are always more pigeons than there are seeds.” We do not have seeds in Trafalgar Square any more.

At a time of constrained supply and unlimited demand, any increase in capacity is going to end up with congestion. I accept the logic for the Lower Thames Crossing, but accepting this forecast suggests that the only expectation is to keep increasing capacity on our roads, rather than actually having calculations and plans for that level of modal shift in order to contain that growth in forecast demand. No?

Heidi Alexander: I repeat what I have previously said: I have no intention of telling people how they should travel. I am not setting an overall traffic reduction target, but I feel that lots of people—including me—suffer from what you might call car dependency.

What the Government are doing across their wide range of work, whether it is on rail, buses, or walking and cycling, is about enabling choice and giving people more choice. If I get to 2035 and I have 60% of kids walking, cycling or scooting to school, that will have the knock-on consequence of reducing the number of people using their car for the school run. As a consequence of that, we could make progress towards tackling those shorter trips in denser cities.

Q251       Chair: You are not amending the forecast. You are saying that the forecast is the forecast and that is what you expect?

Jo Shanmugalingam: I would like to add something very quickly. One of the changes that the Secretary of State has been key to across Government is moving away from what is traditionally called “predict and provide” on the road system. That is not the approach the Government are taking. We have moved to this vision-led approach to transport planning and integration—for all those reasons the Secretary of State set out—looking at particular areas of the Government’s overall ambitions and objectives, working with local leaders and making sure the transport system facilitates that. It is not just responding and reacting behind time to what is naturally happening through the transport system. We can shape those communities and the choices that people have.

Q252       Olly Glover: I have a bit of a thought on the discussion we have been having. It was good to hear what you said, Permanent Secretary, about trying to move away from “predict and provide”. Most people who look at this stuff would suggest that has not been successful over the decades. Is there not a bit of a contradiction here? The Department is forecasting a 12% increase and yet the Government would not set a passenger growth target for the Railways Bill, which suggests a real variance in thinking between modes.

We had Lord Hendy before this Committee a few weeks ago. He was pressed—by me, I will declare—about the Avanti West Coast summer service cuts. He was saying he wished other operators would do the same, almost suggesting that there is a poverty of ambition about a greater ability to fill vacant seats on the railway, which for long-distance operators definitely has a big opportunity to relieve pressure on the M6. Is there a bit of a contradiction in thinking here or am I misunderstanding?

Heidi Alexander: No, there is not a contradiction. We are in danger of confusing two separate things. You use the example of not setting a passenger growth target on the railways and somehow suggest that that is in contradiction to an estimate of where traffic may go in the future.

The reason we have not set a passenger growth target is that if you are complying with the duties of the Railways Bill, a consequence of that will be to attract more people to the railways. We have to cast our mind back only four years to when covid happened. Nobody could predict that coming, but usage of the railways plummeted overnight and no one was on them, for understandable reasons.

We could spend a lot of time setting targets. I am more interested in practical interventions to attract people to public transport. That is why we have focused our attention on affordability. Let us not forget that in the 14 years of the previous Government, rail fares went up by 60%. We are the first Government in 30 years to freeze it. It is why we have maintained a £3 bus fare cap and made that a priority. Judge us on our actions about what we are doing to attract people to the rail network, with more direct connections for people and more services running. Those are the actions of a Government who are serious about promoting sustainable travel.

I referenced some investments that we will be making to the road network through the third road investment strategy and things such as the Lower Thames Crossing investment. We have also had to take the difficult decision to cancel a number of road schemes, which we did in the year after the general election. There is consistency to our approach. The proof will be in the pudding in terms of how many people are using the railways, and those numbers are going up. We are seeing good feedback in terms of bus user passenger experience. Would I like more people back using the buses than is currently the case? Yes, of course, but our programme of reform can get us to that place in the years ahead.

Q253       Chair: I have two questions. First, is the economic cost of traffic congestion a factor in the Treasury’s economic modelling? Do we see those figures? Secondly, are you going to be measuring modal shift? In the integrated transport strategy, are you going to be measuring who is shifting from which modes on to which modes, by what rate and where?

Heidi Alexander: The economic costs of congestion are a consideration for the Treasury.

Q254       Chair: They are a consideration, but are they measured and reported?

Heidi Alexander: Jo may know more detail.

Jo Shanmugalingam: We work very closely with the Treasury and share all our analysis and our national transport model, which looks at congestion but also how we then report through the official statistics on use of different modes, by different groups of people, for different purposes.

Q255       Chair: Is measuring the modal shift an expectation of the integrated transport strategy?

Heidi Alexander: We have not set out to measure modal shift. We are working on the way in which we monitor progress towards achieving those 40 commitments that are set out there. If we make good progress towards achieving those 40 commitments, then the result will be more people using public transport and more people choosing to walk or cycle more often.

Chair: Olly gave us a very specific example of people who might shift from road to rail on the M6 given certain conditions, what it would take, and then measuring that. I will leave that there.

Q256       Dr Arthur: This is quite incredible, though. We think about active travel, car use, rail and bus. There is lots of stuff happening, but there are no targets. Maybe I like a target too much, but do we need targets to drive performance on this?

Heidi Alexander: Investing in the public transport network, which is what we are doing, is actually more likely to yield outcomes. If you take what the previous Government did on their cycling and walking investment strategy, for example, they had targets galore but did not hit them. The reason they did not hit them was that they took £200 million out of the active travel budget.

I want to make sure that we are properly funding different parts of the public transport network so that people have a more reliable, more comfortable, more accessible and ultimately more affordable experience. That is why we have taken the decisions that we have in the last couple of years. We will carefully monitor progress in achieving those commitments in the Better Connected strategy. I am always happy to come back to this Committee and talk more about it.

Jo Shanmugalingam: If it would be helpful, we could provide the Committee with a note on the National Travel Survey and the information that gives us. We use it within the Department, and it is about how people are travelling and why. We assess the reasons for different journeys, and that totally underpins the strategic decisions we make. I am happy to give that to the Committee.

Dr Arthur: I was going to ask about modal targets but you have asked that already, Chair.

Chair: Sorry—I hijacked you.

Q257       Dr Arthur: It is fine. Very quickly, National Highways plays a key role in both delivering major road schemes and facilitating development at scale. It is a really important organisation. Do you think it is equipped to deliver integrated transport as well? That is a key part of what is needed, is it not?

Heidi Alexander: Yes. National Highways is responsible for the strategic road network. It is really important that what it is doing integrates properly with other modes of travel, whether that is mass transit in particular areas or rail. In the third road investment strategy, we have also introduced a dedicated fund to enable progress to be made on development sites that have been stalled. This is a £165 million accelerator fund for growth and housing, because we need to focus on how we make those changes on the strategic road network to unlock those big development sites. That is something positive moving forward.

We have new acting leadership in National Highways at the moment. Nick Joyce has moved from the Department for Transport to act in that role temporarily. Jo and I have asked him to go in and give us his views on making sure that the organisation is set up for delivery.

Q258       Dr Arthur: I will change the subject to fuel duty. You talked earlier about the £3 bus cap, freezing rail fares and all the rest of it. Another cost of living measure is freezing fuel duty. First, do you think that is the right thing to do or do you think people who are really feeling that, who are using transport in the UK, would benefit from that money being spent elsewhere? Secondly, does it conflict with your efforts to decarbonise transport? Would the money have been better spent, for example, on cutting VAT on EV charging?

Heidi Alexander: It was the right thing to do to extend the 5p cut for another three months to the end of this year, given what has happened to petrol and diesel prices following the crisis in the Middle East. When people are going to the petrol station to fill up, and the vast majority of cars that are on our roads at the moment—roughly 95%—are still using petrol and diesel—

Q259       Dr Arthur: You know that the poorest people in your constituency do not have a car?

Heidi Alexander: I understand that your likelihood of owning a car increases with your income. We have also made money available to bus operators to support them with the rising price of diesel. Back at the end of May, the Chancellor announced a £100 million package, which would support the free bus travel for children in the summer offer but would also assist bus operators with the increased costs they are experiencing, given the cost of diesel. We have had quite extreme circumstances this summer, when you see how quickly the cost of petrol and diesel has gone up. The Chancellor was right to take that action.

We have also continued to invest in supporting the transition to EVs. We launched the electric car grant scheme last year. Over 120,000 drivers have now benefited from that in terms of support to purchase an EV. We are also doing a review of the costs of public charging, to pick up on the other point you made, which will report in autumn of this year.

Dr Arthur: Okay. I was going to expand but maybe I should not.

Heidi Alexander: In answer to your general point, the two things do not need to be mutually exclusive. We can support people when there are very significant cost of living pressures, which is what households have experienced this summer with prices at the petrol pumps. We can also make sure that from a policy perspective we are taking sensible actions to support the transition to electric vehicles.

March this year was a record sales month for electric vehicles. In May this year, we went up to about 27% of new cars sold being EVs. That was a 34% increase on the previous May. We are starting to see some positive impact of the Government’s policy agenda in enabling the transition to electric vehicles, but it is also right to support households with the cost of living pressures they are currently experiencing.

Chair: Sorry, could you make your answers a bit briefer, please, so we can get through things?

Q260       Rebecca Smith: Just specifically on the cost of living impact on fuel costs, let us assume that this happens again and we end up recognising that we are completely beholden to other countries for our petrol and diesel, which if we are not drilling in the North Sea is going to potentially continue. One of the things we have looked at that I am particularly keen on is alternative fuels, as a solution to bringing down the tailpipe emissions. They are never going to be zero, but they are going to be better for that transition while we still have petrol and diesel cars on the roads.

What does the challenge around fuel prices now—particularly fossil fuel prices—mean for that conversation around looking at alternative fuels? You have Formula One doing the first season ever entirely on a synthetic fuel. What conversations are you beginning to have, given that we know that fossil fuels are potentially not something that we have control over in the future?

Heidi Alexander: Jo might want to pick up on the issue of alternative fuels in particular. One of the observations I would make is that one of the ways in which we have reduced the carbon impact of road traffic has been through the RTFO, the renewable transport fuel obligation. That has increased the amount of biofuel that is in the petrol or diesel you buy when you go to the garage. That has actually happened without a lot of people knowing, but it has had a really big impact on carbon emissions associated with driving.

My own personal view is that the transition to electric vehicles—we have obviously extended the date hybrids are allowed to be sold until to 2035—probably not only still offers us the greatest chance of decarbonisation, but also there is huge potential economic activity and positive economic impact that could be associated with us being a world leader in this space. I am keen to maintain our competitive advantage.

Q261       Chair: Are resources being spent on alternative fuels?

Jo Shanmugalingam: As the Secretary of State said, we have the renewable transport fuel obligation. With diesel, the question is not one of supply; it is the global market price.

Q262       Rebecca Smith: I am talking specifically about cars rather than HGVs and things such as that because clearly some progress has been made on that. I am thinking more specifically about cars.

Jo Shanmugalingam: For cars, it is as the Secretary of State said. The place where we really see an opportunity for synthetic fuels, both for decarbonisation and for the UK, is sustainable aviation fuels. We were really pleased yesterday to be able to announce the next stage of the low carbon fuels fund and the further work on the revenue certainty mechanism, following the legislation that was passed in the last session.

Q263       Olly Glover: We have obviously had a lot of chat over the last few months about the impact of the war in the Middle East, which supposedly will be coming to an end. We shall see—we can all hope, of course. Are you confident that you have done enough as a Department to ensure that passengers will not experience mass flight cancellations should the conflict resume, or significant price rises or surcharges this summer as a result of the war and its impact on oil flows, fuel and so on?

Heidi Alexander: Yes. Since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the start of this crisis, I have been having not quite daily but almost weekly conversations with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. He and his Department have had a very close dialogue with jet fuel suppliers to understand how global trade flows are changing—given that prior to the crisis starting, 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas came through the Straits of Hormuz—but also to understand how much jet fuel is coming in. He also asked the four domestic refineries of jet fuel in the UK to maximise their production. In all the contact I have had with the airlines, they have told me that at the moment they are not experiencing any shortage of jet fuel.

What we have heard this week is good news, but it is going to take some time for global supply chains to get back to normal. A lot of airlines hedge the purchase of their fuel, and so the major ones have been protected over the summer. That differs by airline. We decided to introduce some legislation to give airlines greater flexibility on landing slots, because in normal times they would have to use 80% of their landing slots in order to maintain their right to use them in the following year. What I wanted to enable was responsible planning on the part of the airlines because I did not want last-minute cancellations to be happening.

All the indications are that at the moment, based upon the information we have, people should not be experiencing major disruption due to jet fuel supplies in the coming months. I was also pleased to see a number of airlines actually make public that they would not be putting surcharges on. Airlines such as Jet2, Easy Jet, TUI and Ryanair have obviously given a price guarantee this summer.

Q264       Alex Mayer: Continuing with the theme of rising diesel fuel prices, has the Department made a formal assessment of that impact on train, bus and coach operators?

Heidi Alexander: Yes. As I said in answer to one of the previous questions, the Chancellor at the end of May announced a package that was worth £100 million to support bus operators with their additional diesel costs, as well as providing money to enable the Kids Go Free offer in the summer. While some large operators also use hedging when they purchase their diesel, it is some small and medium-sized operators that we have been in contact with and we have been more concerned about. That was part of the discussion I had with the Chancellor, and I am very grateful to her for making that money available for buses.

Q265       Alex Mayer: That is buses. What about trains and coaches?

Heidi Alexander: We are in discussion with Network Rail, and we have shared some work and analysis on what might happen to supply and therefore cost in the future. About 70% of passenger trains rely on electricity for traction and not diesel, and I know that Network Rail has basically forward purchased the vast majority of that. There will be some impact. We will look at that in the round when we are doing our business planning for next year.

On buses and trains, we have been in very close contact with operators and with Network Rail. We will make sure that we do sensible business planning around it all.

Q266       Alex Mayer: When you say that there may be some impact next year, what do you think that might look like? Is that likely to look like higher ticket prices, reduced service levels, or the need for more subsidy? Have you given that thought yet?

Heidi Alexander: It is all too early to say, and I do not want to get into the world of conjecture on this. When you do business planning, you need to look at what revenue you are getting in. The fact that we have still seen good growth in passenger numbers is a positive thing. The consideration about the £3 bus fare cap was a very live one for me when I was discussing with the Chancellor the need for support around diesel costs, because if we want operators to continue to participate in the scheme, they obviously do not have the flex to raise their ticket prices if they are still part of the £3 bus fare cap.

Going back to the point made earlier about how actually it is the poorest in the country who rely most heavily on our bus network, when it comes to people experiencing cost of living pressures it was really important that we provided some assistance with those costs so that no operators were pulling out of the £3 bus fare scheme. We will continue to keep all that under review as we go through our business planning process.

Jo Shanmugalingam: We have brought together 40 people in the Department on to what we are calling the Middle East Taskforce, to make sure we have all the analysis in relation to the sector, to support the Secretary of State and Ministers in this planning.

Q267       Alex Mayer: That covered buses and trains. What about coaches?

Heidi Alexander: Jo, I do not know whether you have detail on that? No. I might have to write to you on that, Alex, to be honest.

Q268       Laurence Turner: There have been a number of reports over the last few days about the ZEV mandate, including reports that an announcement is imminent. Is it?

Heidi Alexander: It might be helpful if I provide a little of context on all this. Last year, having done a consultation, we announced some changes in April to the ZEV mandate, which gave manufacturers greater flexibilities to comply. We also confirmed the 2030 phase-out date for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, and we confirmed that hybrids could be sold until 2035. There is no suggestion that the 2030 or 2035 dates will change. When we announced those flexibilities last April, which came into force at the beginning of this year, we also said that another review would be done in 2027.

We have started some early engagement with the car manufacturers as part of that review process. I understand from car manufacturers that they are experiencing significant challenges at the moment, and so I would like to complete the review of the ZEV mandate due in 2027. I would like to get that completed in the next six months.

We are seeing quite positive EV sales at the moment. I referenced earlier that 27% of cars sold in May were EVs, which was a 34% increase on the previous May. We are also seeing a lot of investment in things such as charging infrastructure. This is a whole ecosystem that we need to get right if we are going to make this transition happen.

The only other point I would make is that this is an area where we need the agreement of the devolved Governments. Before any consultation happens about any potential changes, I need to have conversations with my counterparts in the devolved Governments because we do not want a ZEV mandate that applies to only one nation of the UK. There are good reasons for it being part of a devolved agreement. That is the process we are going through at the moment.

Q269       Laurence Turner: You have anticipated some questions on the process. You mentioned consultation with the devolved Governments. Do you anticipate a public consultation as well on the range of the 2030 target?

Heidi Alexander: The 2030 phase-out date for banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars remains. There are no proposals to change that, and there are no proposals to change the 2035 phase-out date for hybrid vehicles.

The way the ZEV mandate operates is pretty straightforward when it comes to customers and consumers, but it is more complicated for the manufacturers. If I give you the example of this year, the headline target that manufacturers need to meet is 33% of sales need to be EVs, but they can essentially score credits towards meeting that headline target if they decarbonise their non-ZEV fleet fast. If they think they are going to perform well in future years, they can borrow against that future performance. Some have actually brought over-performance from previous years forward.

There is a headline trajectory and an effective trajectory, and there are questions about exactly how that trajectory is defined. At the moment, the trajectory requires manufacturers to sell 80% of vehicles as EVs in 2030. Their point to us is, “If we’re selling, say, around 26% this year, how realistic is it for us to get to 80%? Would it be better if that was slightly lower?” It is essentially about the proportion of EVs and hybrids that are sold between now and 2035 in each year.

It is a complicated technical discussion, but it requires conversations with the devolved Governments. I want to give respect to my partners and colleagues in the devolved Governments to have those conversations in a meaningful way. We would then need to go out to public consultation, and then there would need to be agreement about the way in which we move forward.

Q270       Rebecca Smith: You mentioned this 27% in May as if it was a good thing, but it means that 73% of vehicles sold that month were not EVs. You have also talked about this trajectory between now and 2030 and 2035. We had the Minister in a few weeks ago talking about the EV transition, and there are a huge number of gaps in that implementation. Those figures say that people are not ready to do the transition at the speed in which you are hoping.

What conversations are you having with the Ministers? When we challenged even the Climate Change Committee, it did not have the answers to how we do the full transition across the entire country—not just the nice low-hanging fruit bits of London, Manchester and Birmingham, which all have mayors and devolution: the rural piece, all that. How do we get that 27% across the country in time? At the moment, that figure does not say to me that we are heading anywhere near that.

Chair: There are also the people who do not have their own off-street parking.

Rebecca Smith: When you look at the figures in isolation, it is a great ambition, but if that is not in train with the infrastructure and changes that need to happen, it will not work. It is three years away. Call me a cynic, but the figures are leaning—

Chair: We will have our report on charging soon.

Heidi Alexander: One of the reasons we have committed to keeping the ZEV mandate under review is so that we can take account of how purchasing patterns are evolving. I have set out the work that we will be doing in the next six months on that, looking at that relative balance between the sales of pure EVs and hybrids. One of the other things we have to do—it is why I refer to the importance of the ecosystem when it comes to the transition—is make sure that people have confidence that the charging infrastructure is going to be there.

We have 120,000 public charge points at the moment; we are funding an additional 100,000. We are also doing a review of the costs of public charging because one of the things that people talk to me about is that the third of people who do not have a driveway—including me; I live in a terraced house—need to have the transition available for them. If there is a differential between the costs of home charging versus public charging, how does that play out in terms of people’s propensity to make the switch?

We have seen quite a significant uptick in the purchase of EVs over the last couple of years, but we need to get the trajectories right so that we can move to a cleaner car fleet. We also need to be pragmatic and have honest and realistic discussions with the car manufacturers about how we can make that transition by working in partnership with one another.

Jo Shanmugalingam: Just to put it in context, these are obviously new car sales. Most people do not buy new cars. The second-hand market in EVs is showing really strong progress. There was a 46% increase in second-hand EV sales last week. Autotrader is reporting that three to five-year-old EVs are its fastest-selling category at the moment. In terms of the charging infrastructure, we have the local electricity vehicle infrastructure fund available to all local authorities. Rurality and deprivation are two of the factors we looked at in assessing the allocations, precisely to make sure that charge points are available right the way across the country. There is also the work we are doing on the strategic road network.

Q271       Rebecca Smith: Of that 46% that are second-hand, do you have any reference on how many of those are new entries to the EV market and how many are just being sold to people who already had one? That is the key point. How many people are entering the market for the first time, whether that is through brand-new cars or second-hand cars, and how much of that is just the churn among the converted who have the drives and the ability to do that parking? You do not have to answer that now, but that could be worth looking at.

Jo Shanmugalingam: I am happy for us to come back.

Chair: Hopefully our forthcoming report on the charging infrastructure will be helpful. Right, let us move on.

Q272       Olly Glover: You will both be aware that there have been lots of reports of delays and disruptions during recent school holidays as a result of the European Union’s new Entry/Exit System, abbreviated as EES. How have you been working with European partners and airlines to mitigate the impact of EES checks on travellers? It would be good if you could cover a specific question about that. Do you feel that, collectively with the EU, we have been doing enough to make the most of the EES suspension process, which as I understand it is available to EU member states until September?

Heidi Alexander: Officials within the Department have fortnightly meetings with airlines about this to make sure that we have the latest information about what their passengers are experiencing. Obviously, EES is an EU scheme and not a UK Government initiative, so we do not have direct control over it.

In March, I met with my EU counterpart, the EU Travel and Transport Commissioner in Brussels to talk about this very issue. The EU countries have the ability to pause the biometric checks when there is a lot of pressure at the border, and we know that some airports have done that because it was being phased in between October and April, and then it was going fully live in April.

We experienced some problems in Dover in the May half-term. The French border authorities applied some easements that enabled people to complete the border checks more quickly. We will be working quite closely with our French counterparts because the summer getaway is the next thing that we will all be thinking about in terms of Dover. Ideally, we would avoid the scenes that we saw for a few hours on the bank holiday weekend in May. It is an issue that officials at a political level are acutely aware of and we are doing everything we can to make sure that people can travel easily and freely this summer.

Q273       Olly Glover: I mentioned that the EES suspension process is only available until September for EU member states. Do you feel we should make the case to the European Union that it should be extended, given all the issues, and would you be willing to consider that?

Heidi Alexander: We need to see how it goes over the next couple of months and we need to be reassured that the planning for the summer period is rigorous, so that people travelling for their summer holidays are able to start that holiday as soon as possible. I would be happy to consider what more we could do with our European counterparts to provide reassurance and confidence in the system because it is important for people. I would want to speak to my colleagues across Government on this issue, including colleagues in the Home Office. I would be happy to come back to you with more information on it.

Olly Glover: That would be great; thank you very much.

Chair: Two things: one would be to speed up the triggering of the easement within very few hours, not seven hours, and the other would be for passengers who have already been through the EES system once should not have to go through the whole rigmarole of fingerprints and so on again. I am going to have to ask you to be really brief. Tell us new stuff, not stuff that we can already be assumed to know. There is no need to repeat things you have already said in public or that we know anyway because we have a lot more to get through.

Q274       Olly Glover: I think that admonishment applies to us on the Committee asking you the questions as well, to be fair.

On to a topic that I know will fill you both with joy, as it does us: HS2. When Mr Wild, chief executive, recently came to talk to us, he told us that HS2 had been de-risked to become “A very standard and straightforward railway to build.” He also said that “The civil engineering is 60% to 70% complete.” In that context, do you agree it is quite hard to understand why it is still going to take at least 10 more years, given most of the civils have been done, to lay track, install electrification, and commission signalling just for the section of Old Oak Common to Curzon Street?

Heidi Alexander: I can understand why it is hard for people to get their head around but the way that Mark Wild has described this to me is that the civil engineering project has taken four years longer than it was originally predicted to do and then the original project team underestimated how long work on putting the systems in, testing, and commissioning the railway would take by three years. Those two things together add a further seven years to this project.

I oversaw the commissioning of Crossrail when I was the Deputy Mayor for Transport in London; I started in 2018 and the civil engineering was pretty much completed. They were doing the final fit-out at the stations, and the process of making sure that all the systems—the communication systems and the signalling—were operating, getting the trains running, being tested on the track, and making sure that everything works together took four years between 2018 and 2022. In delivering the reset on HS2 we have tried to set credible delivery ranges for when that first phase between Old Oak Common and Birmingham Curzon Street is going to come online and when the full line between Euston linking into Handsacre and services up to north of the west midlands.

We have to do this properly and I do not think anyone would forgive me for saying today that we could get it delivered in X year, only to come back in two years’ time and say it is going to be two years later. I press the team on how they can do things as fast as possible, which is also why we took the decision to reduce it from 360 kmph to 320 kmph because it was the professional opinion of Mark Wild that that could save us up to a year in delivery, and up to £2 billion in terms of cost. Given the very marginal impact it would have on journey time, I thought that was the right thing to do for the programme.

Q275       Olly Glover: Let us turn to how things will work after HS2 in its truncated form. As I understand it, the current expectation for a rolling stock order reflects the previous assumption that HS2 phase 2 would go ahead. Does the Department have a clear view of the train service and timetable that will be appropriate when HS2 is completed, given the cancellation of phase 2 to the north-west of England?

Heidi Alexander: It was always going to be the case that HS2 trains would spend a lot of their time on the conventional rail network. Given the previous Government’s decision to cancel HS2 north of Birmingham, making sure that the rolling stock that we deliver aligns with our ability to improve services north of the west midlands is absolutely key. There are some live discussions going on at the moment between my Department and the train suppliers Hitachi and Alstom.

I am not going to get into details of those at this stage but no matter what has been said in the press about this, this is a top priority for my Department to get right. We are addressing capacity constraints between Birmingham and Manchester, and we are ensuring that the decisions we make about rolling stock mean we have an integrated rail service for people who ultimately end up on the bit of track between Birmingham and London, which will be the new HS2 infrastructure.

Q276       Olly Glover: I understand your point about not wanting to get into specifics while it sounds like commercial discussions may be in place.

Heidi Alexander: Yes.

Q277       Olly Glover: Okay, you are happy for that phrase, but could you answer this hopefully fairly straightforward question about the goals for the post-HS2 operational reality? For the reality of a train service to London, Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow, is it your expectation that whatever rolling stock and timetable solution is come up with, will that deliver the same number of seats for passengers as today, fewer or more?

Heidi Alexander: We need to be increasing capacity on services between Scotland and the north-west and London. We know that the West Coast Main Line—

Q278       Chair: So it will be more? Is it your expectation that capacity will be increased?

Heidi Alexander: We need to address capacity constraints by considering both timetabling and rolling stock.

Chair: We will move on to Northern Powerhouse Rail.

Q279       Mrs Blundell: Just quickly, following on from my colleague’s comments, you alluded to TfL being heavily involved in the delivery of Crossrail. TfGM delivered one of the largest Metrolink systems in Europe. Do you agree that we have a problem with delivering major infrastructure projects at a national level in this country?

Heidi Alexander: We have not covered ourselves in glory historically—that is probably an understatement. The lessons of the James Stewart review into HS2 should be well heeded. I took from it that a failure to plan properly in the early stages just results in bigger problems further down the line.

You need to set your scope, stick to it, and make sure we have the right quality leadership in place for these major infrastructure projects. There are other big infrastructure projects that have been done really well. People barely talk about the Silvertown Tunnel in London because it was a huge success. You can point to other big infrastructure schemes: the TransPennine route upgrade was on time and on budget.

Mrs Blundell: It is not quite finished yet.

Heidi Alexander: There have been very public failures and we cannot repeat those mistakes. We have done a lot of work to understand what those failures were and learn the lessons, but we can also do infrastructure well and we should be proud of that.

Q280       Mrs Blundell: Moving on to that point on leadership when it comes to Northern Powerhouse Rail, at the Public Accounts Committee in April, the director of Northern Powerhouse Rail in your Department stated, with regard to governance arrangements, we are “On a trajectory to explore and come to a conclusion.” The Northern Powerhouse, NPR, has been a very active conversation since 2014. Why is the Department still working out governance arrangements?

Heidi Alexander: The truth of the matter is I inherited an absolute mess, and the previous Government did not actually provide sufficient funding for work to be done; a small amount of funding was available. We have dedicated £1.1 billion in this spending review.

But we also want to work differently because we need to work in partnership with local leaders, and we are doing that at three levels when it comes to Northern Powerhouse Rail: a city level, talking about things such as the actual route alignment for the new Manchester to Liverpool railway with Mayor Steve Rotherham into Liverpool, talking about the nature of the new station at Manchester Piccadilly. The Mayor of Greater Manchester has big aspirations for an underground station as opposed to a surface station. We need to work through the detail of that.

We are working with local leaders at the city level, but we have also established the White Rose Rail Board, a suggestion from local leaders in Yorkshire, and the Liverpool to Manchester Rail Board. We have put our Minister on those rail boards, which will be part of the governance process. We then also have some pan-northern arrangements to look at taking decisions on things such as funding allocations within the £45 billion envelope.

The previous Government did not do the hard work with local leaders to get buy-in around scope, prioritisation, what happens first, second, and third. In order to set this programme up for success, we need to do that work now, and that is what my Department is doing. Jo might want to say something internally about what we are doing around better control over the governance as well.

Jo Shanmugalingam: As the Secretary of State said, we are learning the lessons of the James Stewart review, particularly his recommendation on HS2. We now have a shareholder board that brings together all the senior people in Government who are effectively responsible for stewarding the HS2 programme. Northern Powerhouse Rail is my responsibility. Beth Russell is the Second Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and particularly supports the Chancellor on these issues, and Tom Riordan in his role as the Northern Growth Envoy working to the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, and the Secretary of State for Transport to make sure we have the Government’s own clarity of decision-making and making sure we build on the success of how we worked with mayors and other local leaders to get to the announcement and the clear plan in January this year.

Q281       Mrs Blundell: When might more details be available on the plan’s timescales and costs of Northern Powerhouse Rail?

Heidi Alexander: We want to provide more information on the indicative funding allocations for both phase 1 and phase 2 by the end of this year, and that may stretch into the end of the financial year. Phase 1 is obviously the Yorkshire package of improvements and phase 2 is the new line between Manchester and Liverpool. There is work already going on around Phase 1; Network Rail is doing some development work that will generate a menu of costed options for the Yorkshire improvements, and we will then work to confirm the precise scope of those, working with the White Rose Rail Board that I referred to.

We are also working on the options for Bradford Station and Manchester Piccadilly; we are expecting to make a decision on the location of the new Bradford Station later this year, and to advance work on Manchester Piccadilly by the end of this financial year. We have made a number of compact agreements with the Mayors when we announced NPR in January, and we are making progress on those, including for example, the potential to reopen the Leamside line in the north-east.

Chair: Thank you. We will move on to Midlands Rail Hub.

Q282       Laurence Turner: Secretary of State, you have been a strong supporter of the Midlands Rail Hub, and thanks to decisions taken after the election, the work to redesign and hopefully rebuild Kings Norton Railway Station in my constituency is proceeding, and hopefully works will start in this Parliament. Midlands Rail Hub’s next stage is at Birmingham Snow Hill, where clearance work to reinstate the disused platform 4 is now almost complete, which would relieve capacity constraints at Moor Street directly and indirectly at New Street. Are you able to give us an update on when the investment decision will be taken on reinstating platform 4?

Heidi Alexander: I might have to write to you about the detail of the investment decision.

Chair: That is fine.

Heidi Alexander: We are keen to realise the benefits of the work at Snow Hill as soon as possible, and you will be aware that we are doing this work in a phased way to realise the western impacts before potentially looking to the eastern impacts at a future date. If we can get services improved from Moor Street down to the south-west and into south Wales, that would be really good strategic connectivity for the UK, while also enhancing the more local experience for commuters such as those in your constituency.

Laurence Turner: Thank you. I very much hope the eastern part is not lost. We have to move on.

Q283       Rebecca Smith: When you appeared before us in November, you said that your focus was going to move on to the design of Great British Railways as an organisation, so please can you update us on your progress?

Heidi Alexander: We are making good progress with Great British Railways. We obviously had the Railways Bill pass its Commons stages last week, and it now goes to the Lords. You will be aware that this gives me the powers to set up GBR. We anticipate that GBR will be established probably about 12 months after the Act gets Royal Assent, but we are also making changes in advance of GBR coming into effect so that we have more integrated management in the regions.

When Lord Peter Hendy was in front of the Committee he might have explained to you the three integrated managing directors that we have in place now in the south-east, in Anglia, and in South Western Railways, which was the first one. We will be doing the same for the Greater Thameslink area, given that we took that train operating company into public ownership just a couple of weeks ago. That is starting to unlock some collaborative working that we want to see through GBR, and the fact that we are able to do that in advance of the organisation actually being set up is really positive.

We will be making an announcement about the GBR headquarters in Derby soon, and we are working on the appointment of the chair of GBR, and would anticipate making an announcement about whom the chair of this organisation will be because it is important that they are in post in order to recruit the executive leadership of the organisation so we are ready to go when we get to the establishment of GBR towards the end of 2027.

Q284       Rebecca Smith: What has been the role of the Shadow Great British Railways team? It feels like it is gone very quiet; it did not get a huge amount of mention during the Bill Committee and has not been mentioned here much. Obviously she came before us 12 months ago but since then I have not really heard much.

Heidi Alexander: Laura Shoaf, who was appointed as the Shadow GBR chair, did a really important piece of work for us. We have now closed down Shadow GBR, but Laura has joined the board of the DFT Operator, the publicly owned holding company into which all the TOCs are transferred when they come into public ownership. It was important that she did a piece of work to bring the leaders of the rail industry together to start to understand shared priorities and to start to develop a really customer-focused culture. We have done that.

The industry is now focused on two primary performance measures: trains turning up within three minutes of the time when they should turn up, and looking at the number of last-minute cancellations. She brought people together in that convening role, but now her expertise on the board of DFTO is something that we are really pleased to still have.

But as a separate entity, we did not feel that, as we are getting closer to the establishment of Great British Railways, we needed Shadow GBR to be there because we have to get DFTO and Network Rail working much closer together.

Q285       Rebecca Smith: Just pursuing the organisational structure a bit further, it is really clear that this is going to become one of the biggest public sector employers in the country. Even your description that you have just given shows it is very piecemeal; you have a chair, a DFTO, and each of these chief executives.

I suppose I am looking for reassurance that it is going to be accountable. Also, as you develop those things in quite a piecemeal process—individual chief executives are coming in—how are you looking across the entire organisation without a Shadow GBR to bring in things such as consistent terms and conditions that are not going to cost the taxpayer the earth when all these different businesses come in and have to be equalised? Are they going to be equalised, or not? It is incredibly complicated. My experience of the NHS is that it does not work great, so I am just interested to know what your views are on that.

Heidi Alexander: In the last couple of months we have sought to rationalise the number of different organisations involved. For example, we have transferred about 200 or 300 staff from the DFT into DFTO to reduce the number of individual organisations that will all feed into Great British Railways, and to start to develop the right cultures in the two primary organisations that will come together: Network Rail and DFTO. At the moment, the train operating companies that transfer in remain individual employers. If you think of an organisation such as Transport for London, it has different employers.

Chair: I am really concerned about the amount we have to get through, so could you try to make your answers much briefer? We do not need all the detail, just your top-level points on every question. I apologise but we do want to get through all the topics.

Rebecca Smith: That has not answered my question, but I am getting a bit of a sense of it, so next time you come perhaps we will put this higher up the list.

Chair: We will move on to East West Rail. Very quickly, please.

Q286       Olly Glover: Noting the Chair’s admonishments, we have explored a few times, Secretary of State, the lack of train services between Oxford and Milton Keynes. Is there anything specific you could tell the Committee about progress that is being made, or when anything might happen?

Heidi Alexander: I am frustrated by that as well.

Olly Glover: I am sure.

Heidi Alexander: The planning application that was given consent in December for Universal Studios makes the second phase of the railway into quite a different beast. We have had to finish the work at the stations; for example, Wilmslow needs to be handed over. As I said to you at oral questions last week, Chiltern Railways is leading negotiations with the unions so that we get the staffing right. For me, I really want to get that first phase between Oxford going to Bletchley and Milton Keynes open as soon as possible.

Q287       Olly Glover: Is a timescale available yet?

Heidi Alexander: I do not have an entry-into-service date.

Q288       Olly Glover: I have a very quick question on that: has the Department made an estimate as to the lost ticket revenue and other costs associated with that lack of train service?

Heidi Alexander: We have not as yet, but I have asked the Department to make sure, given that train services are not running at the moment, there is a way in which we can bear down on costs. If we are not getting the revenue in, the worst thing would be to have all the costs going out. For example, we have released a train to support services; it was on West Midlands Trains as well. At the point we get an entry-into-service date we can make a calculation about that but our focus needs to be on getting the trains into service.

Q289       Olly Glover: I have another quick question about the further phase of East West Rail, Chair; I promise I shall recover on the next one. If I remember correctly, you said one of the learnings from HS2 is that proven technology is the best way forward, rather than trying to invent something new.

Heidi Alexander: Yes.

Q290       Olly Glover: Does that apply to East West Rail, given that East West Rail is currently proposing discontinuous electrification, which would involve battery trains running at 100 mph, five trains an hour, which from answers they have given me suggest do not exist anywhere else in the world at the moment. Is that proven technology, and is that wise?

Heidi Alexander: The conversations that I have had with David Hughes, who is the managing director of East West Rail, give me confidence that it is looking at the right technological solutions. We have done discontinuous electrification on other parts of the rail network.

Olly Glover: Not at 100 mph, though.

Heidi Alexander: Those discussions will continue to take place between EWR and my Department. It is probably the best value-for-money way of delivering the scheme but we will make sure that we are robustly testing any assumptions about novel aspects of the way in which that technology may be deployed.

Q291       Olly Glover: I shall move on to avoid testing the Chair’s patience. Over the last few months in terms of rail services that currently exist, we have seen cuts to summertime tables in Avanti and Thameslink on the Luton to Rainham service group. We have seen restrictions introduced on the ability to gain refunds before the day, which undermines the attractiveness of flexible tickets. We have also seen, apparently, a disagreement between GWR and Transport for Wales about new services on the basis of where the revenue would go. Are all these things a taste of what life under GBR is going to be like? Will things perhaps be better?

Heidi Alexander: The last example that you gave about the disagreements between Transport for Wales and GWR about access to track and running of new services will be better under GBR because at the moment it is a decision that the ORR has to take. We are changing the way access decisions will be made through the Railways Bill; there will be a single guiding mind. I have also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Welsh Government, the former Cabinet Secretary for Transport, about how we are going to work together on these sorts of issues to make sure that we are maximising connectivity and appropriate capacity for people who are making those sorts of England-to-Wales journeys.

For the other two examples you mentioned, I am not going to pretend that, under GBR, we are not going to try to find ways to deliver services more efficiently. It is appropriate that a train operator, whether privately or publicly run, makes sure it uses its public subsidy to best effect. We probably need to reduce public subsidy. Therefore we do need to match the capacity to demand on services.

Sensible operational decisions have to be made on those things. I am not going to apologise for taking action to tackle fraud in terms of people claiming a refund for a ticket that they have used. We communicated clearly with people in advance of the changes to on-the-day refunds coming in. I think that was the other example you gave. It is reasonable for us to do so because we cannot tolerate a situation where people are being refunded for a ticket they have actually used.

Olly Glover: We would all agree we would not want that, but perhaps the best way of doing that would actually have people on trains checking tickets. Perhaps you and I could compare stats as to how often that happens between London and Didcot and Swindon, but not now.

Q292       Alex Mayer: The Minister for Rail wrote to the Committee recently laying out the proposed starting point for local and regional structures; you were alluding to it just before. Inevitably, this will mean that some passengers will travel between different business units on a single train. Is there any danger that it actually becomes harder for the passenger to identify who they should be speaking to? At the moment you look at the branding on your train and think, “Ah, I am on a Thameslink one.” In the future, everything will look GBR, so how would you know which local business unit leader to talk to?

Heidi Alexander: We are going to maintain regional branding within GBR. It will be GBR Great Western or GBR Midlands, maybe. It may be GBR Anglia as opposed to GBR. We are not going to have GBR C2C in Greater Anglia. We will make pragmatic decisions so that it is clear to customers.

The one bit of the jigsaw we still need to work through is cross-country trains because by their very nature they cross multiple infrastructure regions at the moment. It is an ongoing piece of work and I am happy to come back to the Committee to update you on it, but we will maintain regional branding because I think it is helpful from a navigation point of view for customers.

Q293       Dr Arthur: Cross-country trains go to Edinburgh, so just call it GBR Edinburgh. That would be fantastic. Jo is nodding as well—so that is that done. Thinking about Heathrow, we have the statement coming later this year. The costs are huge but it is a private sector development. Do you see any public money being spent on road, rail, or public transport connections to it?

Heidi Alexander: Our position on this has been pretty clear and consistent. Airport expansions are privately financed. Any associated improvements to the road or rail network need to be met by the scheme promoter rather than the taxpayer. There is no money dedicated in this spending review to improving Heathrow's rail or road infrastructure, short of us funding some additional Elizabeth Line trains that benefit the wider London region and may benefit connectivity to Heathrow. Our position has not changed on that.

Dr Arthur: Good.

Q294       Chair: The DCO decision on the second runway at Gatwick said that the scheme—therefore the operators presumably—must fund a specific standard of noise mitigation to those newly affected residents under the new runway plus surface access rail improvements on that line. If the same logic applies to the Heathrow third runway, are those additional costs incorporated into the current figure of I think something like £35 billion for the third runway? Have they been fully calculated and incorporated into what the passengers and freight operators will eventually have to pay the landing charges for?

Heidi Alexander: It will be for a promoter of a scheme, the applicant of the DCO, to set out what their proposals are to meet the obligations that we will define in the Heathrow expansion national policy statement. It will be for the applicant to make the calculation about how much those mitigations will cost. As the Secretary of State for Transport, I cannot answer that question because I am not the applicant or the scheme promoter.

Q295       Chair: Will those elements be set out in the ANPS?

Heidi Alexander: Clear tests will need to be met in what we will call the Heathrow expansion national policy statement because it is specific to Heathrow, not the Airports National Policy Statement we have now.

Chair: Good, it is about time.

Heidi Alexander: On noise, climate, economic growth and air quality, there will be very clear tests and expectations set out about what any applicant would have to meet in order for their application for a third runway and expansion at Heathrow to be deemed consistent with the policy framework of the Government.

Q296       Chair: It is assumed that the Lower Thames Crossing will be a private-sector project; it will be a tolled road run by the private sector. Beyond that crossing, what other road schemes do you envisage being brought forward under the Regulated Asset Base model enabled by the Highways (Financing) Bill? Will they be brand new roads? Will they be capacity enhancements? Or will they just be where improvements and updating and climate mitigation need to be done? If it is the latter—essential work on existing roads—how will they be financed unless we are going to introduce new tolls to existing roads?

Heidi Alexander: We are not being specific at this stage but it would be new large-scale road infrastructure. For example, it might be new river crossings but we are not being prescriptive or specific.

Q297       Chair: You are looking at new road capacity building, despite our exchange at the beginning of the session.

Heidi Alexander: No, I am saying that it would be possible to use the mechanisms that will be set up via the Highways (Financing) Bill that we will bring forward in this Session. In theory, it would be possible to use that mechanism to fund new road infrastructure, such as a river crossing. Sitting here today, I cannot point you to a scheme on a map where, beyond the Lower Thames Crossing, I have identified this would be appropriate for and it does not change our policy on tolling in any way.

Q298       Chair: Do you mean the policy on tolling being only for new roads?

Heidi Alexander: Historically, we have agreed to tolls on things such as new river crossings and that has been the case with the Silvertown Tunnel, for example. Through the Highways (Financing) Bill we need to set up a system whereby we can have an economic regulator, which will be the ORR in this case, and set up the Regulated Asset Base model and enable, for example, a private entity to take on highways authority functions.

That piece of work needs to happen in advance of a transaction happening to dispose of the existing Dartford Crossing, as well as the rights to build, own, maintain, and operate the Lower Thames Crossing in the future. The process by which the tolls will be set, both in the first settlement period and then subsequently, will be set out as we go through the process of taking that Bill through Parliament.

Q299       Chair: What you are saying is that the Bill will only actually be needed in a very few examples because it is not going to be used for repairs and maintenance.

Jo Shanmugalingam: Exactly. If you think for instance about the Severn crossings, I think I am right in saying both those crossings had bespoke legislation, probably both hybrid. The Highways (Financing) Bill, which I hope you will see shortly, will provide the structure such that you could use it without needing to take bespoke hybrid legislation for future developments of that scale and nature.

Q300       Olly Glover: Hopefully I have a reasonably concise question and maybe answer. The Road Investment Strategy 3 outlines that £1.66 billion has been allocated for the Lower Thames Crossing, which is around £174 hmillion more than previously announced at the spending review in the autumn Budget. Why was that increase not disclosed as a spending pressure in the Department’s main estimate? Are there any other things in a similar category that have not been disclosed as additional spending pressure?

Jo Shanmugalingam: We have made a number of announcements about how we are funding Lower Thames Crossing since the election. First, in the spending review, the Government announced £590 million for the first year of the spending review period. We were still working with the Secretary of State and the Treasury on the overall approach to the financing of Lower Thames Crossing at that stage. We only announced the first year, and made the commitment that at the autumn Budget 2025, we would announce the overall approach so the Treasury committed a further £891 million at that point.

In the Department we have, as we would with any infrastructure programme, looked at what is needed for the programme to get the most efficient and effective delivery, and then whether we are able to allocate funding. The difference you see is choices we have been able to make within the Department to bring forward to this financial year an extra £174 million, effectively to de-risk the programme by making faster progress on those early construction works. It is all included within the main estimate disclosure on National Highways of £4.2 billion.

With any infrastructure programme it is difficult to predict at the start of a spending review period exactly what will be efficient to spend in any period of time. We look at it on a portfolio basis; if you think about RNEP and rail, or where we have stand-alone projects such as this, we can bring forward spend where we can to have the most efficient and effective delivery and that is what the Lower Thames Crossing spending represents.

Q301       Olly Glover: If I could just make sure I have understood, it has been disclosed but in effect it has been moved from one bucket to the project specifically?

Jo Shanmugalingam: Yes. Looking at our overall capital allocation at the spending review, we have then specifically allocated that additional funding that we were able to make available from within the Department’s own capital programme to Lower Thames Crossing because that felt to us the most efficient use of that capital funding in this financial year.

Q302       Laurence Turner: You have recently announced a mass transit taskforce. The Leeds tram scheme has been subject to extended delays to the late 2030s. We have been talking about a South Birmingham tram extension since 1984. Why do you think that light rail schemes cost so much and take so long to deliver in this country?

Heidi Alexander: That is a really good question, and it is exactly why we have set up the mass transit taskforce, chaired by Bridget Rosewell. We have been told that there are a lot of barriers that promoting authorities experience; sometimes they are to do with planning, sometimes it is regulatory. We need to make sure that whichever authority is promoting the scheme and overseeing it has the relevant capability, capacity and expertise to be able to client these projects well and to take sensible decisions about how to prioritise delivery of the scheme.

Modal choices are important as well: bus rapid transit schemes can provide really good outcomes as well as tram schemes with fixed infrastructure. I am pleased that we are doing this work with the taskforce because it is urgently needed but I am also clear that we need to be working closely, especially with our Mayors now, whether that is Tracey Brabin in West Yorkshire, or Richard Parker in the west midlands, to make sure that we can accelerate delivery so that people who have not had the benefit of a mass transit system can actually start to see that option available to them in their local areas.

Q303       Laurence Turner: Very specifically on Transport and Works Act orders, the Department said at the end of May that it would be consulting on devolving that process to mayoral authorities. How quickly do you anticipate that happening?

Heidi Alexander: We need to do a consultation on it. This came up through the Mayors’ right to request arrangements; they said that they wanted to see devolution of consenting powers for Transport and Works Act orders. It is quite a complex legal area because TWAOs are pieces of secondary legislation and so my officials are currently looking at how the process could work for Mayors who do not typically have the ability to lay secondary legislation in Parliament. We want to make rapid progress on this and it is another area in which we can demonstrate our willingness to listen to the case that Mayors are making to us and to try to find ways of speeding this process up.

Q304       Chair: On devolution, the Government’s view is to devolve decisions on both pavement parking and speed limits to local authority areas. Most drivers do not live in the world of local Government boundaries and will not know what the default regulation for pavement parking or default speed limit is in any particular area. How is this going to happen without a plethora of street furniture and signage?

Heidi Alexander: You always have to have appropriate signage so that users of the road and individuals who are parking know what regulations they are complying with.

Q305       Chair: We have the default 30 mph in urban areas with streetlights and 60 mph where there are no streetlights and no other signage. London has the default pavement parking ban without loads and loads of extra signage because that is a national default.

Heidi Alexander: You need signage to make it clear to the travelling public. The other thing I would point to is the work I am keen we explore, highlighted in the Better Connected strategy: finding a way to make data available across the country so that private companies in future could, for example, provide an integrated app where you could have a one-stop shop.

As a user of the roads and car parks myself, I would be happy to put my credit or debit card details on an app and it could then immediately recognise when I am in different car parks, different clean air zones, or going under a tunnel where a toll applies so that easy information is available about what restrictions are in place on that part of the road network.

Chair: The tech is there on mapping technology and that is a fair point. If we all used mapping technology and it was accurate, it would be fine. I do not know about you but I notice that the mapping technology tells me I am in a 30 mph area but the signage says I am in a 20 mph area. It is not keeping up, but I will move on.

Heidi Alexander: I take your point.

Chair: If it works, tech would be the answer to my question.

Q306       Mrs Blundell: Broadening it back out again, how would you characterise your Department’s philosophy on devolution?

Heidi Alexander: There are really three aspects to it when it comes to how we approach devolution. I have always believed that decisions should be taken at a level where the best knowledge resides about the impacts of those decisions and where the ability to implement decisions sits.

I am just conscious that when I am sitting at my desk in Whitehall being asked about the appropriateness of, for example, tolls and the level of tolls on particular bits of the road network in particular parts of the country, although I might get information presented to me by my officials, those sorts of decisions should be more appropriately taken at a local level. There should be a clear national strategic framework but the decisions should be taken at a level where the knowledge is best.

Local authorities and mayoral combined authorities should be given the space to deliver against their ambitions, and there should be greater flexibility for those with stronger capability and capacity. Also, my Department, given that we oversee a capital budget in a spending review that is over £90 billion, needs to remain accountable to Parliament for how that money is spent, but I do not want to spend every day of every week marking the homework of local authorities and Mayoral combined authorities on schemes they are delivering.

We have done some work to reset the thresholds for major schemes and the information that those devolved parts of Government need to provide to us, so that we can then say to Parliament and to the Chancellor that this is money well spent.

Q307       Mrs Blundell: What about fiscal devolution to combined authorities? Should they be able to raise more revenue locally?

Heidi Alexander: This is something that the Treasury is currently looking at.

Q308       Mrs Blundell: Are you having conversations with the Treasury on transport schemes in particular?

Heidi Alexander: I have had some conversations. We have been able to make some progress, for example, with extending the DLR to Thamesmead. That was working very closely with the Treasury and I am sure the Mayor of London will want to say more on that in due course. Yes, I work very closely with the Treasury on this.

Q309       Mrs Blundell: Do you think there are any major blockers on further transport devolution?

Heidi Alexander: I am always willing to have the conversation and the right to request framework that this Government have set up is working quite well. For example, I have been approached by the Mayor of the Liverpool city region about him having more control over local stations, not to define and specify the nature of the rail service but to make better use of the physical building and the commercial assets on those stations. I am really willing to make sure that all the relevant conversations can happen between him as the Mayor of Liverpool city region, Network Rail, and in the future, GBR.

I am always willing to talk, but I need to be sure that we are managing public money well. The only limit to it is where there is really significant infrastructure projects. It is right that we retain control of things such as East West Rail and the TransPennine route upgrade. Clearly GBR is a national organisation and will be a national organisation. It is important that those sorts of things—the strategic road network—are managed nationally but I am willing to have more conversations about what could be devolved in the future.

Q310       Mrs Blundell: Finally on devolution, this Committee has just published its report on the PHV sector and has made several recommendations, including on the matter of out-of-area working, where many local licensing authorities are really clear that they want to decide for themselves who should be able to operate in a given area.

From your response to the Chair in the Commons last week, it seems that the view of your Department is that drivers and operators should be licensed where they intend to provide services. Would you agree that this is something we need to address swiftly if we are able to continue to deliver on the potential impact of transport devolution and strengthen local autonomy?

Heidi Alexander: Are you specifically asking about out-of-area working?

Mrs Blundell: Yes.

Heidi Alexander: We have said that we will consider this as part of the work that we are doing on pre-legislative scrutiny for a future taxi and private hire Bill. A couple of changes have already been made through legislation that we have passed in the last year around setting national standards and enabling enforcement action to be taken against an operator, vehicle or driver, irrespective of where the licensing had taken place.

If I am being totally honest, I am keen to avoid in the discussion about cross-border hiring anything that would make the availability of private hire vehicles less for people who want to make trips. We also need to think about the number of empty cars and empty journeys without passengers because it is not good for the operator if they do not have a fare payer and it is not good for the environment if a car is moving around without people in and also means that someone is waiting longer for a private hire vehicle to turn up. We have to put the consumer at the heart of this.

I do not have a closed mind, but I would want to be assured that all those sorts of considerations have been properly factored into any decisions that we make in the future. That is why we are doing a proper piece of work before we introduce taxi and private hire legislation. I would really welcome the input of the Committee in terms of scrutinising draft legislation so that we can continue this conversation and actually make sure that in the future—if we are lucky enough to get a legislative slot—that we have a piece of legislation that is fit for purpose.

Chair: You have our report.

Q311       Dr Arthur: Your explanation of devolution is good. We want to empower people locally, and so on but sometimes it feels like it is because we do not want to make the difficult decision in the centre of Government. Pavement parking or speed limits are set to benefit the most vulnerable people, yet sometimes they can be controversial. It feels like sometimes we are just not making those difficult decisions and actually encouraging local authorities just to deliver.

The latest is the cycling and walking strategy. It is a fantastic strategy. Money and so on is in it but there is no target. There is just an expectation that local authorities might, if they want to, set their own targets and these may or may not be demanding. Is that just another example of where we are just avoiding difficult decisions?

Heidi Alexander: We have set targets in the cycling and walking investment strategy. We have said that we want 55% of short trips taken in towns and cities by 2035 to be made by people walking or cycling. We have set a really ambitious target around enabling more children to walk, cycle and scoot to school, which is a 60% target by 2035.

Q312       Dr Arthur: How does that shape itself in local authorities? Are they mandated to do that? Are they legally obliged to do so?

Heidi Alexander: No, there is no mandation or legal obligation. We are setting out the direction of travel from Government. I think back to the previous Government’s second cycling and walking investment strategy. It may have had more granular targets in it but we still fail to get anywhere near them and fail to make progress partly, as I might have said earlier in the session, because they took £200 million out of their active travel budget. Even though they put those targets in place, they had no credible plan to actually meet them.

It is more important that Active Travel England has set out a delivery plan alongside the cycling and walking investment strategy and that it says it will deliver X thousand more safer crossings in the next four years, provide X amount of mileage more of safe cycling infrastructure, and set the foundations in place for a national active travel network. I would rather have a discussion with Active Travel England that is going to provide support to local authorities to deliver on the ground, rather than me having an argument around what percentage applies in X particular area, where I cannot possibly, as the Secretary of State, understand the everyday realities of life in that particular area.

I would rather my Ministers and I spend our time thinking about how we deliver so that we get actual change on the ground, as opposed to arguing about targets that, if you take the example of the previous Government, were never met anyway because there was no plan to deliver.

Q313       Dr Arthur: Nobody wants you to micromanage, but somebody could end up in a local authority that is not interested in banning pavement parking, making pedestrians safer by reducing speed limits, and investing in walking and cycling, but you would not intervene in that circumstance. Instead, you would wait for a future election to change that local authority. Is that really the best way to make our communities safer?

Heidi Alexander: The democratic process in our country can actually yield change that people want to see, and if there is an outcry for 20 mph zones in residential areas, I have seen local authorities across the country choose to respond to that because it is the sort of bread and butter issue that gets raised when we go knocking on doors. If you have an appalling tragedy that happens on a road such as someone is killed or very seriously injured, I have actually seen local authorities respond to that type of request for change. The time and effort of Government are best spent setting the overall strategic direction, not arguing about individual granular targets. Spend time focused on what money we are going to spend on what to deliver change in the next three or four years instead.

Jo Shanmugalingam: This takes us back to where we started with the strategic plan. The main estimates memorandum has our key performance metrics; one of those 14 is the average number of people walking and cycling, measured as stages per person per year. For us to be held to account on whether all the action we are taking or enabling others to take delivers the real outcome as measured through that national travel survey.

Q314       Chair: You did not accept our call for a specific transport accessibility strategy because you were bringing in the integrated transport strategy but you agreed that we needed clearly mapped actions, milestones and accountability measures at all levels. However the actual strategy that you have published—the Better Connected strategy—sets out only three concrete actions for delivering accessibility, two of which had already been announced. Do you think that strategy has delivered the accessibility aspirations that you promised?

Heidi Alexander: The three big commitments in Better Connected are very significant and really important. The review the Law Commission is doing—a big piece of work to make recommendations about what the future direction should be for regulations and enforcement—is really significant. We are doing the work on the accessibility charter, which will hopefully enable us to both move quickly and raise expectations of operators to actually go beyond what is set out in the current regulations. We also need to address these data gaps so that we can take better targeted enforcement action in the future.

Look at what we are doing through the Bus Services Act 2017 in terms of mandating disability awareness and assistance training, and at the accessibility duty that we are putting in the Railways Bill. Think about what Lilian Greenwood said to your Committee back in January about how we want to use the process of setting national standards on taxi and private hire to make sure that we are addressing issues for the disabled community there. You will see a lot is going on already and we are ambitious in what we are trying to do.

Q315       Chair: There is a lot going on; you have just listed different modes in which it is going on. If you are doing it in the context of an integrated transport rubric, would that not be facilitating end-to-end journeys, which is what people with disabilities really need?

Heidi Alexander: Accessibility is at the heart of our integrated transport strategy. What I do not want is for this to become siloed and someone else’s problem. I want every operator of every transport mode—the local bus service in Wantage through to the operator of one of Europe’s largest hub airports—to understand that accessibility for the travelling public is not a nice-to-have; it is absolutely essential. Whether it is through the Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill where we are taking forward reforms to benefit passengers there, the work we are doing on buses and rail, rolling out welcome points or getting better training on trains, all this starts to join together to give a better experience across the entire journeys that people are making.

Q316       Chair: The previous Government’s inclusive transport strategy had the ambition to create a transport system offering equal access for disabled people by 2030. Is that your ambition?

Heidi Alexander: Again I come back to the point I was making earlier: we can all put warm words down on a piece of paper but you actually need to deliver real change that people are going to feel the impact of. I am struck by what members of our advisory committee in the Department for Transport have said to me, which is that if every journey could be as good as my best journey then we would not have a problem. For me, a more consistent experience for disabled users of our transport network—so that they can be assured that they are going to be able to routinely make the journeys that they need to be able to make—is one of the most important things.

Q317       Laurence Turner: Something we have looked at in this Committee is HGV driver welfare, in particular the lack of welfare facilities across much of the strategic and local road networks. With there being no plans to reopen the parking and driver welfare grant scheme, what concrete actions are you taking to improve rest facilities and parking capacity?

Heidi Alexander: The matched funding grant scheme has obviously been delivering over the last couple of years. I went to a truck stop on the outskirts of my own constituency a couple of months ago where the rest facilities for lorry drivers are so markedly better than they were previously and that was a £35 million scheme so there will be an uplift. We are also working on a new set of policies through the national planning policy framework to make sure that we are considering freight and logistics developments and their associated infrastructure from a planning perspective better than we have been previously. We are making sure that there is access to transport networks and lorry parking provision and are due to issue a response on that later this summer. On that planning policy side of things, we are doing quite a lot of work.

Q318       Laurence Turner: Might that include obligations on developers of large logistics projects to make facilities available on a shared basis? Something we have heard is that when it is dependent on Section 106 commitments for HGV drivers from across the country, you are not going to be at the top of local authorities’ priority lists.

Heidi Alexander: I would need to check the details of that with officials and come back to you on it but I am aware of the type of challenges that you outline and it is a fair question to ask.

Jo Shanmugalingam: It is important that National Highways is a statutory consultee on planning applications for lorry parking so it is able to take into account the strategic impact of that provision.

Q319       Chair: On driver facilities, will there be a service area on the Lower Thames Crossing?

Heidi Alexander: Jo, do you know the answer?

Q320       Chair: Could you come back to us on this?

Heidi Alexander: I can come back to you on that.

Chair: Thank you. We will move on to driving test ability and how long people have to wait to get a driving test.

Q321       Jacob Collier: Obviously we are very pleased that you agreed with some of us who were campaigning to clamp down on the reselling and swapping of driving test slots. You admitted at the start of the session that driving test wait times are still too long. How is that feeling for people who are still waiting for a driving test slot?

Heidi Alexander: I totally understand people’s frustrations about this and I have been absolutely clear with the leadership at DVSA that this is its number one priority in terms of the next year. We have done a lot but demand is still very high. We have a net increase of 147 driving examiners.

Q322       Chair: Secretary of State, we have asked all these questions and got similar answers about what you are doing. Do you have an aspiration as to how long drivers will have to wait for their test to come down, by what amount and by when? That is what is important. We know about the churn of examiners and their difficulties. Could you answer us about the outcome rather than the specific jobs?

Heidi Alexander: Realistically it is going to take a long time to sort this problem out. By the autumn of next year we should be back down to the seven-week aspiration that we have.

Q323       Chair: What would the waiting time be in the autumn of next year?

Heidi Alexander: The statistics that we have produced and published have not been particularly helpful in terms of average wait times so we are changing the statistics that we are going to be publishing routinely, broken down by driving test centre. My aspiration is to get us back down to a point where when someone is booking a test they are not having to wait months on end to get one, which is the situation for some people in some locations at the moment.

I just want to reassure the Committee Chair that we are taking this really seriously. We have recruited more driving examiners and brought in military examiners. We have reduced the amount of training that driving examiners need so we can get people through the training more quickly. We have taken action to reform the booking process so that only learner drivers can book their driving tests now. We are taking action on those bots and swaps as well so that we have greater clarity on exactly where in the country we need to be recruiting the additional driving examiner resource to because there was so much churn in the system previously.

It is too early to draw completely definitive conclusions on it but from the action that we have taken in the last couple of months we have seen evidence that swap volumes have gone down by 70%. Refund volumes also fell by around a third since 12 May, which indicates that perhaps there is less speculative booking and then re-booking happening. There is a huge amount of work to go on, and as I say it is the number one priority I have given to the DVSA.

Jo Shanmugalingam: We are really delighted with the impact of the new chief executive, Beverley Warmington, who is bringing all her operational delivery experience to really understand the whole complex system. It therefore means that driving examiners in DVSA can spend most of their time delivering these services.

Q324       Jacob Collier: How many new driving examiners have come in since September 2025?

Heidi Alexander: Over 240 people have successfully completed their training but the key figure to be focused on is the net additional driving examiners because if you are losing people and not retaining people, that number means nothing. The net additional figure is another 147 driving examiners employed in May of this year compared to May of last year.

Chair: That is good. We have been on this for 18 months and we are not seeing the outcome changing. We need to move on to buses with Alex.

Q325       Alex Mayer: In your response to our “Buses Connecting Communities” report you said that the Government’s objective is to grow bus usage and you expect this to be the key driver for local authorities. In a report commissioned recently by the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, it was clear that the new mayor’s priorities were actually financial and there is a suggestion in that report that mileage could be cut by 19% by 2035. If a local leader decides to go down the route of cutting buses, is this something that the Government are comfortable with?

Heidi Alexander: That is certainly not the aspiration that I would want for the people of Cambridge and Peterborough but it is the way in which individual, locally elected leaders decide to use the funding that we have allocated to them and the level of aspiration that they have for their bus network. It is their decision given that bus networks operate predominantly locally.

What I would also say is that when people get to the ballot box on the next occasion they will decide whether they are happy with the way in which the mayor of a combined authority has improved the public transport network in their area or not. While it is not an aspiration that I would recommend mayors have, it is for individual mayors to decide their approach.

Q326       Alex Mayer: Theoretically all the mayors of the country could be deciding to cut buses. Do the Government have a policy to try to increase bus usage if that happens?

Heidi Alexander: Our actions judge us by what we are doing with our funding to mayors across the country and local authorities. We have £3 billion that we are funnelling to local authorities for improvements to their bus network. We are also funding mayoral combined authorities through the Transport for City Regions funding to improve their bus networks.

I know the example that you have quoted to me is highly negative. Generally speaking, the vast majority of conversations I have with directly elected mayors across the country are hugely supportive of the changes that we are bringing in through the Bus Services Act 2017. I could list mayors across the country who are wishing to pursue bus franchising.

Alex Mayer: Do not do that; the Chair will not be happy.

Heidi Alexander: We have seen the rollout of new electric buses in lots of those city regions. I detect a lot of ambition; I am just sad it is obviously not shared by everyone everywhere.

Q327       Alex Mayer: Moving on to local authority bus grant formulas, we think that you adopted one of the Committee’s recommendations and included rurality into the new formula. Obviously that is alongside various other things such as deprivation, size and so on. Is there any way of finding out if any local authorities have received higher allocations than they would have otherwise specifically because of that rurality point?

Heidi Alexander: Jo may correct me if I am wrong but this is quite a difficult exercise to do because of the number of changes that we made to the bus funding formula this time round, for example to be able to extract out what an individual authority would have received in particular circumstances had we not then done the deprivation weighting. We have not done a particular piece of work in the Department to compare a before and after but we applied a 10% rurality rating because it is important that we recognise the additional costs of operating bus services in rural areas.

We have also introduced multi-year allocations, which have been welcomed by local authorities so that they have more certainty of funding and can do better planning when it comes to routes and fares. Because of the number of changes we made it is difficult to separate it but we are confident that there are a number of rural areas that will be receiving significantly more because of the changes we made.

Jo Shanmugalingam: The only thing I would add is obviously structurally under the last Government we had competitive allocation of this bus funding. That makes it particularly difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison of the change in the weighting and the new approach that is being taken.

Q328       Alex Mayer: You have mentioned the August scheme for free bus travel for young people as a cost of living measure a couple of times. Is this just a cost of living policy or is it a transport policy as well?

Heidi Alexander: Primarily it is about helping families with cost of living pressures this summer. You will be aware that it is part of a broader package that the Chancellor announced about VAT not being applicable on certain activities this summer so it is about just trying to help people given the cost pressures that they are experiencing. Having said that, it may result in some people using the bus with their children who do not normally use the bus at the moment.

A positive experience on the bus this summer might yield them coming back to the bus in the autumn, which is a good thing from the perspective of trying to grow bus usage and patronage. There could be positive consequences associated with this as well as providing the immediate support for cost of living.

Q329       Alex Mayer: When we were taking evidence about the integrated transport strategy, we heard that the other cost of living measure for transport—the £3 cap—was actually in contradiction to having an integrated transport policy according to the person who was giving the evidence because it was one form of transport only. Do you see any contradiction in that?

Chair: So if you change buses it is £6?

Alex Mayer: Yes, and if you change from a bus to a train it does not help you at all.

Heidi Alexander: It is a positive measure. Could we do more? Potentially but there would be additional costs associated with that. Bearing in mind the financial constraints that we are operating in, a £3 bus fare cap was the right thing to do so that people were not experiencing massive jumps in the cost of their fare. I know that in some cities in the UK there is a hopper bus fare that is in place. I do not think we are going to be in a position to roll something like that out across the country.

What I would say about our Better Connected integrated transport strategy is that a key deliverable that we want to see from that is providing integrated ticketing in our main city region areas across bus and tram. We want to see us—as the Department for Transport—enabling the rollout of that integrated ticketing by providing the back office technology that is needed to support it. Something that mayors in city regions say to us is, “Procuring our own integrated ticketing system is hugely complex. Sometimes we do not have the skills and capacity that we need to do it.”

It took Liverpool about seven or eight years. We need to get the building blocks in place to enable integrated, ideally contactless ticketing across different modes in those big towns and cities. That is part of the Project Coral work that my Department is leading on at the moment. You need the technology there to do it but you also need the funding available, and sadly that is not something that I have available in this spending review.

Q330       Alex Mayer: Alan Milburn’s recent report on people not in education or training suggested that one barrier for some young people getting there was transport and that actually reduced costs on public transport could well help them. Are you having any discussions with the Treasury whereby reducing costs for young people might actually be of overall benefit to the taxpayer?

Heidi Alexander: I am acutely aware that for young people who want weekend jobs—perhaps their first experience of a job—you have villages on the outskirts of towns and cities across the country where there might not be a bus running at all on a Saturday or Sunday.

In the next spending review that we will be going through in 2027, I would like to have an open conversation with colleagues across Government about what might be possible in terms of supporting young people into employment because I recognise it is a barrier at the moment. In terms of the settlement we got for this spending review, I was really pleased that we could maintain that £3 bus fare cap. That is a good outcome. Is my ambition bigger? Yes. Will the public finances allow it? I do not know. Will that be a conversation—

Q331       Alex Mayer: Is that not the point, that this might be a measure that could improve the public finances overall? Are we not just thinking of this as a cost to the Department for Transport rather than a benefit to the nation as a whole?

Jo Shanmugalingam: When we are advising Ministers we absolutely evaluate any intervention on the whole impact it can have on the public finances and the benefits.

Chair: In your conversations with colleagues you have this Committee’s support. We recommended free travel for under-22s because of the evidence we received of the overall benefit that has to particularly the more rural and isolated communities and areas of high deprivation. Good luck and you have our support. Two quick sets of questions and then we are done.

Q332       Jacob Collier: In response to the street works report you said that you would be working with the MHCLG on co-ordination of street works, particularly around new developments. Could you update us on that work?

Heidi Alexander: We are working with MHCLG to add a new section to a document called the “Code of Practice for the Co-ordination of Street Works and Works for Road Purposes.” We want to set out very clear expectations for utilities and new housing developments and we hope to publish that new code of practice next year.

Q333       Rebecca Smith: The Regulating for Growth Bill has been announced in the King’s Speech, obviously looking at tackling the issues around marine autonomy, which is particularly important in my constituency down in Devon. I welcome the news about the sandbox phase for testing. Once enabled by the Bill, how long will that phase last and can you provide reassurance to the industry—particularly around defence—that at some point the experiment pilot phase will end and a permanent regulatory framework will be introduced to speed up innovation?

As a side note, do you have any idea when the Bill is likely to be coming forward? My letter from the Leader of the House thanked me for my support and sidestepped that particularly important question.

Heidi Alexander: I am afraid I cannot give you a date for when the Bill will be coming forward. It is a DBT Bill but we are working very closely on it with DBT, not least because we think there is huge potential in our maritime industries for growth and investment and you are right to highlight the potential of autonomous shipping in that. I am hoping that Jo might have been searching for an answer on how long the sandbox phase would last. I do not know whether we have any information on that.

Jo Shanmugalingam: I do not.

Heidi Alexander: We might be able to write to you in more detail on it.

Jo Shanmugalingam: We are delighted that this was chosen as an example that will be taken forward through the legislation but we can follow up on the specific question about that length of period.

Q334       Rebecca Smith: If you have any intel on which Minister at DBT is taking it I would be very grateful.

Jo Shanmugalingam: We can certainly highlight that.

Q335       Steff Aquarone: It was announced that the rescue officers are going to move to a volunteer expenses model, which means that hourly remuneration for training and operational activities will cease. This is particularly important in my coastal community.

One of your Ministers told the House that Government was committed to ensuring volunteers were at the heart of our seafaring nation and the agency has stated that it will provide future strength and resilience, although many local serving officers believe the opposite may be true. Would you commit to publishing the evidence behind that conclusion?

Heidi Alexander: Sorry, just repeat the question. I got slightly distracted.

Steff Aquarone: We are changing to an expenses-only model. I am really concerned that this is going to impact the volunteer capacity, particularly in my coastal community. There was a claim that this would improve and protect the future strength and resilience of the service. I am particularly concerned that the opposite will be true.

Jo Shanmugalingam: Is it helpful if I start with the reason for the changes?

Steff Aquarone: I know there is a court case that has been completed.

Jo Shanmugalingam: The Maritime and Coastguard Agency lost an employment tribunal and the Court of Appeal upheld that judgment in January this year, which means the volunteer model cannot continue. It was not a choice that the agency had to continue so they had to look at the legal and operational implications and how to preserve and protect that volunteer model, as you say. After looking at it they have decided that the way ahead is to move to an expenses-paid model rather than hourly remuneration.

We know lots of coastguards who do such brilliant work for us as we saw on the bank holiday weekend with all those very difficult issues and rescues. This would not have been their choice but the agency cannot continue with the current model because of the Court of Appeal judgment.

Q336       Steff Aquarone: We cannot run emergency services on the basis of goodwill so surely paying them is the only sustainable option.

Heidi Alexander: The vast majority of coastguard rescue officers do a few hours each week alongside their main job, and actually the flexibility for those individuals to be able to do it in that way is quite important. We certainly do not want people to be out of pocket in volunteering. We know that the primary motivation for a lot of people who volunteer their time in this way is about making a contribution to keeping our sea and coastal communities safe. We could not continue with the model of hourly remuneration given the Court of Appeal judgment.

Steff Aquarone: The rate was the issue, not the concept.

Heidi Alexander: Yes. We have decided to move to a system where it is expenses only. The MCA has done a lot of engagement with its staff in recent months and the proposal is to move to this position in September. The leadership of the MCA have offered to speak to any MPs who are representing coastal communities and beyond who want to talk about this. What we want to do is make sure that we continue to treat our volunteers fairly and with respect. It has been made difficult by the Court of Appeal judgment but we believe we have found a reasonable way through this.

Q337       Steff Aquarone: I gently say that the claim by the MCA is that it will improve the future strength and resilience of the service. I would very much like to see the evidence behind that statement and we could have a separate conversation about how we deal with volunteers. There are alternative models such as the RNLI of course but I am really keen to see the evidence that this will protect and enhance the future resilience and reliability of the service.

Heidi Alexander: I will certainly take that away and talk to Virginia McVea, the chief executive of the MCA.

Chair: It is an important issue for those areas; I know your constituency is affected. Finally we just want to go quickly back to roads. Laurence has an important question.

Q338       Laurence Turner: It feels appropriate to finish with a question about potholes. The Government are funding £7 billion for local road repairs. However as vehicles get heavier and extreme weather becomes more frequent, it feels like we are at risk of getting trapped in a cycle where funding increases each year but so does the backlog because there are more potholes arising than there used to be.

A number of technological solutions are being promoted from new machinery to different mixes of fillers to sealants and grafting tape. What is the Department doing to evaluate and promote the most efficient means of repairing roads to local authorities? It certainly seems like an issue in my area that there will be a repair but it will be of poor quality and very quickly the original problem will arise.

Heidi Alexander: I do not think that money is the only solution here. We have to get better at the way in which we are using the money that is available. We provide guidance for local authorities about how to use an evidence-led approach and the interventions that are going to be best. Sometimes patching a pothole will not be as cost-effective as doing preventative road resurfacing on a stretch of the road. We are also funding a programme called Live Labs 2, which is working with local authorities to enable them to trial more innovative methods when it comes to highway maintenance. That is about testing new materials, methods and technologies in the real world and it is a £30 million programme that we run.

The final thing to say on this is that unlike previous Governments, we have withheld a proportion of the money that highway authorities get in order that they demonstrate to us a certain number of things being true in their local area. These are things such as that they spend all the money that DFT gives them for highway maintenance on highway maintenance, but also that they can evidence that their members of staff have undergone professional development to make sure that they are learning about innovative uses of new technology and new machinery. We will withhold about a third until we get evidence back from the local authorities about how they are using the money that we give them to best effect. We will be requiring them to publish a transparency report this autumn so that everyone can see how local authorities are using that money.

Q339       Laurence Turner: Have the results of those trials at a local level been looked at and collated within the Department? Ideally we do not want local authorities to be constantly reinventing the wheel.

Heidi Alexander: Yes. What we need to do is make sure that we are sharing best practice as well and that is embedded into the Live Labs programme.

Chair: That concludes today’s session. Thank you very much for your time and for answering our questions. If you feel you want to add anything, please write to us with anything you feel you have not covered in your answers this morning.