Amanda Hack

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for bringing forward this important debate. It is a pleasure to be back in Westminster Hall to speak about the No. 1 subject in my inbox. Coalville and Ashby are the seventh and eighth largest towns in Leicestershire, so they are not small, but we still struggle with bus services. As the Minister knows, I rarely miss an opportunity to highlight that I do not have a single passenger rail service anywhere in my constituency. The campaign to reopen the Ivanhoe line is still ongoing. Those are just the headlines from my constituency; the reality for our towns runs far deeper. Other rural MPs will know that improving transport links is a never-ending discussion. If a bus service is cancelled in North West Leicestershire, there is nothing else—no back-up, no alternative. People are simply stranded; hospital appointments are missed and shift patterns lost. My constituent went to watch Leicester City play football on a Saturday and caught the last bus back to Ashby at 5.30 pm, just a few minutes after the end of the game. However, when the bus terminated halfway in Coalville, the seventh largest town in Leicestershire, they could not get back to Ashby, the eighth largest, after 6 pm on a Saturday. This is not just about getting to work; it is about our night-time economy and the impact on the growth of our towns. Even when services do exist, they do not always serve people well. New housing estates, which are often just beyond the edges of our town centres, are left disconnected, meaning that residents cannot easily reach the high street, and the high street cannot benefit from the people who live just a few minutes away by bus. When we talk about transport in small towns, we are not talking about getting from A to B; we are talking about whether our town centres survive and thrive. We need to go much further. I was proud to serve on the Bus Services Bill Committee, and of the work that our Government have done so far—I welcome their commitment to getting more funding to local authorities—but I have three questions for the Minister. First, HS2 was supposed to have gone through my constituency without stopping. Despite writing several letters, I still do not have any resolution for the 74 homes stuck in HS2 Ltd ownership. I want to use that money for the benefit of my constituency. Secondly, there needs to be a better path for concessionary fares, as the situation across the country is uneven. I represent an old population, who use concessionary fares more, so that is a problem for my local authority. Finally, I will say that bus services are for leisure as well as for work.