- No fault-evictions: PM must deliver on his government’s promises
- Welsh Lib Dems react to “farcical” rise in train fares
- Crumbling schools: Govt must stop sitting on its hands and speed up rebuilding
No fault-evictions: PM must deliver on his government’s promises
Responding to figures that show no-fault evictions spiked by almost a third last year, Liberal Democrat Housing spokesperson, Helen Morgan MP said:
Rishi Sunak’s failure to bring forward the ban on no-fault evictions is having devastating consequences for vulnerable families across the country.
No family should lose their home through no-fault of their own. Yet, under this Conservative government that is exactly what they are allowing to continue.
The Prime Minister needs to do something that does not come naturally to him, deliver on his government’s promises.
Welsh Lib Dems react to “farcical” rise in train fares
The Welsh Liberal Democrats have described the latest rise in train fares by the Transport for Wales as “farcical”.
The Welsh Government has announced that rail fares in Wales will rise by 4.9% from the 3rd of March, claiming that the rise was needed to allow Transport for Wales to meet higher costs and continuing investment.
Commenting, the leader of the Welsh Lib Dems Jane Dodds MS said:
This latest hike in rail fares by Transport for Wales is simply farcical and will do nothing but drive people further away from using the train network.
This is the same rail company who, last October, received a £125 million bailout to maintain operational costs.
How many more times will they bail out Transport for Wales before admitting that something needs to be changed?
How many more times do the Welsh public need to pick up the pieces before the Welsh Labour government admit their mistakes?
How can they expect people to pay more for late trains?
Our train network here in Wales is not up to standard, delayed trains and cancelled services have made the lives of Welsh commuters even more difficult.
We need long-term solution-based investment into our rail network, not the same old quick fix.
Crumbling schools: Govt must stop sitting on its hands and speed up rebuilding
Commenting on today’s news that an additional 3 schools have been identified as having RAAC and 119 schools need to be rebuilt, Liberal Democrat Education spokesperson, Munira Wilson MP said:
It is a national scandal that children are being taught in crumbling classrooms. Children in the schools affected by RAAC are facing massive disruption to their education day in and day out.
Learning in temporary classrooms, dealing with cold and draughty conditions and not having specialist teaching facilities like science labs and design technology spaces is having a direct impact on these pupils’ learning experience and their educational outcomes.
This Conservative Government must stop sitting on its hands and speed up the rebuilding programme to ensure that these schools are all rebuilt as quickly as possible and provide practical advice and support to minimise the disruption to pupils whilst work is ongoing.
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16 Comments
Do we seriously still have nothing to say about the labour party ditching it’s flagship climate policy? Is it our intention for the green party to scoop up all the disaffected labour voters that Starmer’s government will create and relegate ourselves to bieng a party for soft Tories only.
Like David LG, I am disappointed to hear and see nothing at least as yet about our party’s response to Keir Starmer’s U-turn on spending £28 billion on a Green agenda. This is surely an opportunity for us to speak up for our own policies on managing climate change, as well as pointing out that we have plenty of plans to offer the country on all significant matters, due to our twice-yearly Federal Conferences where debates are held and policies agreed by our membership. A democratic method of producing policy, not much imitated by either Tories or Labour.
Katharine is right. There is a gap in the political market on three issues : the Green Agenda, Europe and the two child Benefit Cap.
A fourth party liberal Leader wanting to lay to rest the debris of the PO scandal could come out punching with authenticity by articulating a liberal agenda on all three issues.
Silence is no longer an option ……nor is tip toeing through the tulips. An election is coming in less than twelve months. It’s a question of get on or get out.
David Raw: Absolutely right. The party is now polling behind the Reform Party. How long must this go on before someone listens and a change is made. The voters are not interested in gimmicks. There seems to be a group of people who are determined to remain in control whatever the cost. There have been some good by election results but plenty of results where the party polled about 2% or less.
Cameron (2010): We can’t afford to do anything because of the mess left by Labour.
Starmer(2024): We can’t afford to do anything because of the mess left by the Tories.
Is it any wonder that so many take the view that “they are all the same” and there is no point in voting for anyone?
On topic: Transport for Wales have a ‘capacity checker’, but never seem to join the dots and add an extra carriage to routes where EVERY train shows up as expected to be very busy (ie rammed like sardines).
They also have terrible scores (last autumn) for punctuality/reliability (59%), value for money (51%) and frequency of services (54%).
So Jane Dodds is absolutely right to call out the fares increase.
Still not a word on how our party can offer the necessary policies to work towards Net Zero, combatting climate change, if the Labour Party won’t. Or is it all on social media and X? I doubt if the leadership is speaking out, because Sky will usually report if so. Come on, Ed!
@Cassie: Trains these days tend to come as single integrated units with a fixed number of carriages. It’s not like 50+ years ago where carriages were to some extent independent units and BR had lots of spare ones sitting around so you could just basically build a train by adding the carriages you wanted. To add an extra carriage today, you’d basically need to send the entire trainsets back to the manufacturer to be modified. That said, not just Wales but much of the UK generally faces an awful shortage of trains/trains that are too short. That’s the sad consequence of lots of penny-pinching over the last 20+ years by the DfT, which generally allowed TOCs to order only the minimum number of trains it thought it could get away with. That’s a problem that we really need to prioritise sorting out – but realistically, it’s going to take years 🙁
Thanks for explaining that, Simon, I had no idea.
Rather than sounding off about on/off nebulous Labour pledges that most voters won’t miss (who knew what the specifics were in the first place?), we’d do better to come up with/promote some proposals of our own to improve trains and bus services. Things that directly affect millions AND would help the planet.
The incentive to use trains that are too short is not just the cost of hiring the trains. Network Rail charges the TOCs by the length of the trains.
That said, TFL which does not have the same structure has found itself in a vicious circle of not having enough spare tube trains that it can afford to take trains out of service for long enough to upgrade their motors all at once. That means they always have some taken out of service for a single failed motor which means they don’t have enough spare capacity …
Totally agree about proposals to improve bus/train services. Unfortunately I’m not sure there’s any path to that that doesn’t cost £loads in investment.
A couple of ideas:
Aside from the obvious stuff like improving rail capacity so we can run more trains – and as @Cassie rightly draws attention to – getting longer trains – a good and possibly cost neutral-ish start would be simplifying fares so what you pay depends mostly on the distance travelled (Currently there are so many different conflicting tickets that for many train journeys it’s all but impossible for a non-expert to work out which ticket is the cheapest).
Make the cost of a single half the cost of a return: Too often a single costs almost the same as a return, making it totally uneconomic to use the train for any journey that isn’t a simple out-and-back one.
We should also integrate bus and train fares. I mean, it’s absurd that even in London where Oyster/contactless/TfL rules, if your journey is part bus and part train, you’ll still get charged twice – once for each mode.
And (more expensive) making sure that train-style live departure information across the country is available for all buses as well.
Simon R: It is cheaper to run a bus than a train. People who cannot afford train fares would be penalised if bus fares were the same.
Even under BR return rail fares were often only slightly more expensive than single fares, depending on the time of day, such as off peak fares. Season tickets are normally cheaper on a daily basis than buying a ticket every day because the railways need to attract regular users. People sometimes buy single tickets as they hope they might get a lift home. If they were half the price of a return the railways would lose revenue so the cost of the rail subsidies, mostly paid by non rail users, would rise even more.
The constant cut after cut. This most certainly has left our country vulnerable and failing.
Ovo had nearly £900 on my energy account in credit. I was told that’s how things are done now. The cut back in basic standards will make health standards lower.
I’ve been made aware some find the £19 for baby milk not affordable and the reusing of baby nappies.
We need a rail system, the constant search for profit is not progressive or positive.
@nvelope2003: Sorry I was perhaps not clear: When I referred to integrating bus and train fares, I didn’t mean making the fares the same: I simply meant that if your journey is part-bus, part-train, you should be able to buy one ticket rather than have to pay a bus fare and then pay a separate train fare – which today often means your total fare is abnormally high for the distance. I agree with you that bus-only journeys should generally be cheaper than train-only journeys of the same distance.
I can’t see that making single train fares half the cost of a return would make much difference in revenue: Because single fares today are such poor value, it’s likely that very few are actually sold. Making them the same price-per-mile (and therefore half the actual price) of returns would mean people making non-return journeys are more likely to use the trains, providing at least some additional revenue to offset any loss from cheaper tickets.
@ Simon R,
Yes a common ticketing policy would make a lot of sense. Many towns don’t have a rail connection. Maybe they’ve never had one or their station, and maybe the branch line with it, has been closed.
For starters, it would make sense to treat a bus link to the nearest station as a virtual railway line and offer just one ticket for the entire journey. If through ticketing is possible on journeys involving more than one franchise there is no reason why one part can’t be a ‘virtual’ line.
If the planners were really smart they could even timetable the buses to connect with the trains!
Banning no fault evictions is an essential part of reforming our housing. Tenants need the security of renting without fear of being evicted at the landlord’s whim. If they leave the market so much the better so the rented sector can become part of an integrated housing policy.