Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) for securing this important and timely debate.
Coaches are often primarily viewed as being used only for holidays and leisure, but that is just a small part of the important services that operators provide. In fact, coaches account for 450 million passenger journeys a year in Great Britain and support 81,000 jobs, generating £6.4 billion of economic value for the economy. Coach passengers are estimated to spend £8.3 billion annually in local economies—and perhaps service stations, to which the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard alluded—through tourism, retail and leisure. Coach companies such as Edward Thomas & Son, which operates in my constituency, provide essential services. They transport children safely to and from school every day, support educational trips and are available for private hire and transport for local groups, organisations and communities.
Coach journeys present an important and often more affordable alternative for travel across the UK, particularly with the current high rail and fuel prices. Without a healthy network of independent coach operators, services will become more expensive to provide and more difficult to access. The coach industry is struggling and we must do more to support it. High fuel prices are a massive concern. Coaches are high-mileage vehicles, and fuel represents one of their largest operating costs, so any significant increase or volatility in diesel prices immediately impacts operators, particularly where fuel contracts have been agreed well in advance at a fixed price. It is really difficult for coach operators to absorb substantial cost increases of this nature without ultimately affecting the costs or availability of their services.
But it is not just about fuel: the general costs of operating a coach company have increased significantly, whether that is the price of coaches, insurance, maintenance, parts, tyres, wages or regulatory compliance. Modern coaches are a huge capital investment and can cost upwards of £250,000—that is massive. To make those investments, coach operators need certainty and support to justify continued investment in their fleets. The Government’s anti-business tax regime, with increased business rates and employer national insurance contributions, has hugely impacted the industry’s bottom line. That is threatening the future commercial viability of the coach industry.
The availability of drivers is also a major challenge, as has been alluded to. The current driver vacancy rate is 14%. Recruiting and retaining suitable professional passenger-carrying vehicle drivers continues to be difficult. Coach driving is a skilled and responsible occupation, but the industry has an ageing workforce, with around 25% of drivers aged 60 or above. Attracting enough new drivers remains challenging, not least because of the Government-led barriers to training new and young drivers, with regulatory restrictions on drivers aged 18 to 20 limiting the journeys they can take. That makes coach driving an unattractive early-career option, which compounds recruitment difficulties as the workforce ages out. It restricts the amount of work operators are physically able to undertake, even when high customer demand is there.
The coach industry continues to be overlooked in Government planning and infrastructure. That has caused the sector to suffer, like so many other industries, from the pressures that the last decade has placed on businesses. It has been left to deal with blows from uncontrollable shocks such as the pandemic, Brexit red tape and the push for net zero, with limited support.
If a coach operator wants to commit to zero-emission coaches, it needs to secure, at high cost, vehicles with sufficient range, and ensure that there is reliable charging infrastructure across its routes. Coaches travel longer-than-average journeys, and there are currently limited charging provisions on motorways and A roads. Operators need greater certainty before committing to the significant investment required to reach net zero. However, unlike cars and vans, coaches are not currently covered by the zero-emission vehicle mandate, and no equivalent statutory trajectory or long-term road map exists for the sector.
We must do more to support the coach industry. We must engage meaningfully with the sector to fix those fundamental issues. If we fail to do so, we will lose this industry and the vital services it supports. I therefore urge the Minister to reflect on all the contributions and calls made by me and other colleagues today.