Over the last few months there has been a significant number of questions raised by MPs and each has led to answers supplied from the Minister Richard Holden. I first spotted some of these late in January and I first blogged about it then and indeed the link is lower down this piece. There are also several more that took place which are listed below. I spotted the most recent request emerged on Monday this week and it was requested by Holly Mumby-Croft who is the Conservative MP for Scunthorpe and inevitably it was responded by Richard Holden. I then spotted another question that I had not covered in my blog which was actually at late February so I have also included that below. The MP who raised that was Fleur Anderson who is the Labour MP for Putney. The reason I have provided the links to the other blogs is so that we can see what was written by the MPs and the responses from the Government via Richard Holden. So here is the question from this week

Holly: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department has taken to roll out audio-visual passenger information on buses in England.

Richard: We have required buses funded through the government’s Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) scheme to provide audible and visible information as standard.

We also plan to require the provision of audible and visible information on local bus and coach services across Great Britain, and intend to introduce the Accessible Information Regulations shortly.

We have allocated £3.55m to the Real Time Information Group, who will be supporting small operators with the upfront costs of the planned Regulations.

On the 7th of March Tracey Crouch the Conservative MP for Chatham and Aylesford who asked a question which is on this blog a few days ago. Then at the end of February asked this question.

Fleur: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent steps his Department has taken to help (a) improve the accessibility of public transport for people with sight loss and (b) increase the level of audio-visual passenger information on buses.

Richard: We are committed to making public transport safer for visually impaired passengers and have provided £75m to Network Rail to install tactile paving on all remaining station platforms by 2025.

We also plan to require the provision of audible and visible information on local bus and coach services across Great Britain, and intend to introduce the Accessible Information Regulations shortly.

We have allocated £3.55m to the Real Time Information Group, who will be supporting small operators with the upfront costs of the planned Regulations.

Earlier this year I had spotted some other questions and answers all of which were answered by Richard Holden and they were at the end of January when there were four questions and answers that involved Rachael Maskell, Labour who asked two questions and Chloe Smith and Ben Everitt who are both Conservative and each asked a question. The following week Stephanie Peacock asked two questions and Rupa Huq asked a question, they are both Labour and also Julian Sturdy who is Conservative asked a question. Then in the middle of February Greg Knight, Conservative asked a question.

It seems very clear that we need the Government to raise this theme more significantly.