Lizzi Collinge

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) for securing this important debate. My constituency is semi-urban and semi-rural. Without good public transport, my constituents cannot get around, and the visitors we so enjoy having in our area cannot get in. A lot of people in my community struggle with access to services such as GPs and hospital appointments and with getting to work. That creates more pressure on services such as patient transport services and GP home visits. It also affects the nature of my constituency, in that we have an ageing population, with fewer young families able to move in. My rural businesses and organisations that represent them, such as the Sedbergh Economic Partnership, also tell me that transport connectivity in rural areas is a massive bar to growth, because businesses cannot get the staff they need to expand. Sedbergh itself is struggling at the minute. There has been a bus service change, so the service is now less accessible and frequent. At my suggestion, Sedbergh set up a bus users’ group—I am a big fan of buses and bus users’ groups. In Lancashire we have a fantastic bus users’ group, the Lancaster Bus Users’ Group, of which I am a proud member. I thank the Government for their investment in bus services—£27 million in Lancashire and £4.2 million in Westmorland and Furness. I hope to see my local authorities take on the new powers that the Government will give them, so that we ensure we have rural bus services that serve my constituents, work together, fit together and fit in with people’s lives. I am also a big fan of trains. My constituency has the highest main line train station in England, in Dent. It is beautiful, although it is not actually in Dent village, which causes some confusion. We have some other fantastic stations, such as Garsdale, which is also beautiful, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) will know, and Arnside. However, we have real problems with accessibility, so older people and people with disabilities cannot get the train—when the train turns up. Because these are not areas with huge populations, they struggle to access grant services, such as the Access for All fund. There is real inequity in how some of the funds for station improvements are allocated. Finally, I want to talk a little about active travel, which is important. Active travel means moving ourselves around, whether by wheeling in a wheelchair, cycling on a bike or walking. It is good for our health, and spending more time in London, with its fantastic public transport service, I have walked a lot more. I have actually lost weight since the election—I think that is unheard of—because I am walking so much. That shows the health benefits of an integrated public transport system and proper transport connectivity. I want to highlight a visionary project in my constituency, the Lune Valley Greenway, which is a path that people can walk, wheel or cycle on from the coast at Morecambe right into the Yorkshire Dales national park. It currently goes from Morecambe, via Lancaster, up to Bull Beck near Caton. The ambition is for it not only to go from the coast to the national park, but to link up with public transport systems, so that people visiting our area, as well as people living and working in my constituency, can access the countryside and good public transport. I would love to invite the Minister to visit.