Helen Morgan

My hon. Friend is right: there should be more transparency, but there also needs to be more attention to the issue of step-free access in rural areas. I am about to come on to that in more detail. Improving the accessibility of Whitchurch station will bring more people to the town via rail. That obviously could boost tourism—Whitchurch is Shropshire’s oldest continuously occupied town and is well worth a visit, along with the other beautiful and historic towns in my constituency—and bring customers to local businesses, workers to job vacancies, critically, and families to their loved ones. Rural towns and villages have been consistently deprioritised by successive Governments and this Government, I am afraid, are no better, continually focusing investment into mayoral combined authorities’ coffers. Those areas do not face the same fundamental issues that rural areas do. They have regular buses that come within minutes, even on Sundays, and train services that are more frequent than every two hours. If people choose to drive, they can do so without the risk of damaging their tyres because they have bumped into a huge pothole. In a town like Whitchurch, if the bus turns up the round trip to someone’s destination is likely to be more than two hours—even if it is only to Shrewsbury, which is 20 miles away. Investment like the Access for All scheme in rural areas is part of the solution to improving economic growth—to more businesses thriving, more people spending and more money flowing into our economy.