Keir Mather

It is a pleasure, Mr Turner, to serve under your chairship. I join colleagues in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) for securing this critically important debate, for her continued interest in the area and for holding the feet of Ministers in the Department for Transport to the fire on an important issue. I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond and participate on behalf of the Government. I wish everyone a happy National Coach Week. I will turn later to some of the topics raised by my hon. Friend, particularly decarbonisation and the recruitment and retention of younger drivers. First, I want to touch on the point she raised about coach data, which is critical. She is right to say that the coach sector is relatively unevidenced compared with other major modes of transport. However, the available coach industry evidence suggests that there are about 2,500 coach operators in the United Kingdom, most of them small and family-owned, although she is right to say that no definitive national estimate currently exists. We must work tirelessly within the Department for Transport to remedy that. I hope that hon. Members will be reassured about the Government’s commitment to supporting the UK coach sector, as well as the coach manufacturing sector, which has been raised by Members, in every part of the United Kingdom, including Scotland.