(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
May I start by saying how grateful I am for the opportunity to raise concerns about the potential reduction in services and increase in fares that will result from the Government’s decision to withdraw the coach concessionary travel scheme? At the outset I would like to thank the organisations, including Mencap, Age UK and National Express, for the help and advice they have given on preparing for the debate. I congratulate and thank my colleagues who have worked hard on this issue, including my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who tabled early-day motion 2181 on the matter, my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who has led a formidable campaign against the cuts to the scheme as Labour’s transport spokesperson, and the many Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), who have campaigned hard on behalf of the many constituents who have written to say what a huge difference the scheme has made, enabling them to stay active and see friends and family. I also commend the Express & Star, Britain’s leading evening newspaper, for the great campaigning work it has undertaken to highlight this important matter and fight for a fair deal for pensioners and the disabled.
The House will know that the coach concessionary travel scheme provides half-price coach travel for disabled people and those aged over 60 in England and Wales. The bus service operators grant allows some operators of coaches and local buses in the UK, as well as community transport schemes, to reclaim some of their fuel costs. Excluding concessionary travel, it represents the main source of bus support currently funded by the Department for Transport. The provision of travel concessions on coaches does not come under the general concessionary fares legislation that applies to local bus routes. Instead, there is a non-statutory arrangement that enables long-distance coach operators to claim the grant for offering concessionary fares to all passengers aged over 60 and those who qualify as disabled.
The concessionary fare is available on selected coach services to destinations within England and Wales, and to Edinburgh or Glasgow from England and Wales. It is calculated as up to 50% at off-peak times and up to 30% at peak times. Disabled passengers should always be offered a concessionary fare, but they may be asked for proof of eligibility. More than 11 million people are eligible for the concession and around 3 million concessionary journeys were made on coaches across England in 2009-10 alone.
It was announced in the Government’s comprehensive spending review that the grant will be maintained at current levels until 2012 and then reduced in phases between 2012 and 2015. The cuts apply only in England, as the Welsh and Scottish Administrations have pledged to retain their provision of the scheme. The total reduction will be 20%, with savings amounting to approximately £17 million, forming part of the Government’s £254 million cuts to the bus service operators grant overall. As a result, the current non-statutory arrangement that enables long-distance coach operators to offer concessionary fares to older and disabled people will cease at the end of this month. Pass holders will still be able to benefit from the scheme, but they will have to book their journeys before midnight on 31 October and travel on or before 31 August next year.
Let me turn to the impact of the reductions. The Department for Transport acknowledges that the funding enables bus operators to provide more services and at lower fares than would otherwise be possible, and its own equality impact assessments show that the proposed changes to the bus service operators grant could result in operators increasing fares and/or cancelling routes deemed no longer financially viable due to declining users. The Department acknowledges also that cuts to the grant would adversely effect the equality of opportunity for, and discriminate directly or indirectly against, disabled people.
Despite that, the Department defends its decision, claiming that disabled people will be “insulated” from fare rises, as they will still be entitled to local concessionary fares, but the truth is that the cut to coach services comes on top of significant reductions in Government funding for local bus services, so many of those pensioners and disabled people with free bus passes will no longer have a bus on which to use them in their local areas.
At the same time, coach operators face some of the largest financial challenges that they have encountered in years. The DFT is looking to coach operators to continue to offer the concessionary fares increase on a commercial basis, but fuel prices mean that many operators are unlikely to be in a position to continue to offer concessionary coach fares at their current level once the grant is reduced.
National Express, for example, the biggest long-distance coach provider benefiting from the grant, with at least 30% of passengers receiving concessions on 18 routes, has drawn up plans to replace the scheme by introducing a £10 concession card that will enable passengers who are more than 60 years old or disabled to qualify for one third of the cost of coach travel, but they will not be able to use it to travel to or from an airport. That new scheme is obviously welcome, but the company itself points out that it will not match the terms of the Government-funded half-price concession, and, if a company such as National Express struggles to offer an equivalent concessionary scheme, it seems unlikely that smaller providers will be in a position to do anything like maintaining existing concessions, so passengers are bound to see increased fares and reduced services as a result of the changes.
As I said earlier, more than 11 million people are eligible for the concession, and about 3 million such journeys were made in 2009-10. As the Express and Star showed, 1.2 million pensioners and disabled people in the west midlands, including 77,000 in my borough of Dudley alone, will lose their half-price travel if the cut goes ahead. But it is not the statistics that make the impact of the cut clearest; the truth is that if pensioners and disabled people lose their right to half-price travel, their ability to get out and about, visit family and friends, go shopping or have a day out will be severely restricted.
Ken McClymont, a disabled constituent, told me:
“Taking a coach is usually the best value and most flexible means of public transport for me to use. Any changes to local services or ticket prices will have an impact on my ability to travel. I should be very grateful if you would encourage the Department for Transport to work with the coach industry to fully understand and reduce the impact of the scheme’s removal or at least delay the scheme’s withdrawal until the full impact on people like me is understood.”
Mike Nicholls from the Wolverhampton pensioners convention said:
“Rail travel is already escalating out of our reach and now coach travel will as well.”
One woman contacted me to explain how the concession enabled her to visit her granddaughter in Sussex and great-granddaughter in London several times a year. Now, those trips will cost her several hundreds of pounds more every year.
Mencap has warned that the proposal will have
“a significant and disproportionate impact on people with a learning disability. The introduction of a concessionary fare for the disabled and elderly people is recognition of the additional financial barriers individuals face... This could leave many people in the situation of choosing between stretching already tight budgets or not travelling at all. For many people with a learning disability, this could be the only means of getting out and about to visit friends and family, go shopping or generally exercising their own independence.”
The charity says that the proposal will have a
“major impact on many aspects of disabled people’s lives”
because transport
“helps to achieve greater mobility and independence.”
“However,” it says,
“most people with a learning disability do not drive and half of all families with a child with a disability do not own a car. This means that people with a learning disability are reliant on public transport. A lack of access to transport denies people with a learning disability the right to a basic level of independence, choice and opportunity, which many others take for granted.”
Age UK says:
“Making longer journeys is about to get more difficult for many older people. Removing the concession will mean higher prices and some people will think twice before travelling. People in later life that are at risk of facing loneliness and social isolation will be further put off from leaving their home.”
And look at the comments from their members. One lady wrote:
“I travel a lot by National Express as with the concession it was affordable and as a widow I felt safer and more comfortable on the coach and don’t have to worry about my luggage...looks like that will soon be coming to an end”.
Another said:
“Bearing in mind that most of the National Express coaches that I get to go down to babysit in the school holidays are mostly full with concessions I can see buses running half empty or even complete services being taken off. I think that this is a really bad decision and very short sighted. This is the tip of the iceberg and if they get away with this we all know what will go next.”
We all know that the deficit has to be tackled and savings have to be made, but all these organisations and elderly and disabled people across the country are asking the Prime Minister to honour the promise he made before the election when he said:
“Labour are trying to frighten old people by saying we’ll take away bus passes, or winter fuel payments. Well I can tell you we’re going to keep those things.”
Age UK, Mencap and coach operators across the country are all asking the Department to think again or at least to delay the plans. Age UK got it right when it said:
“There has been no public consultation on the change to coach concessions, which means disabled and older people have been excluded from the debate and decision-making process. The government should seriously consider delaying plans to cut the concession to allow enough time to consult properly with both concession pass holders and operators. With proper consideration an alternative solution could be agreed.”
Mencap is urging the Department for Transport to delay the proposed cuts and to consult coach operators and pass holders to determine a way forward that protects the scheme. Mencap believes that a more desirable solution could be reached by balancing the savings that are required with mitigating steps to preserve concessions for people who rely on the scheme so that they can remain independent and be able to make essential journeys. National Express is still asking whether the Government would consider its offer to maintain the existing scheme at a lower rate of public subsidy.
Even at this late stage, will the Minister agree to delay this cut and commit to proper discussions with organisations such as Mencap and Age UK and the elderly and disabled people they represent? Will she meet me, representatives of these organisations and operators such as National Express to discuss how these vital services for some of the UK’s most vulnerable people can be saved?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
I thank the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) for raising this issue in the House today and I congratulate him on securing this debate on concessionary coach travel, which is a very important issue. From 2003, the coach concession has entitled the over-60s and eligible disabled people to half-price travel on many long-distance coach services, but the coalition has made it clear that our priority has to be reducing the budget deficit we inherited from the Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was a member. In order to achieve this, several difficult decisions have had to be taken, including this one on concessionary coach travel.
The deficit crisis we inherited has inevitably meant that some funding streams have had to be ended. But the consequences of failing to deal with the deficit would be worse, including spiralling interest rates and the kind of crisis enveloping other European countries; more and more taxpayers money being spent servicing debt; and a massive legacy of debt left for future generations. Given the scale of the crisis we inherited from Labour, it simply was not possible to insulate concessionary travel completely from the measures needed to reduce the deficit. Funding for bus and coach travel had to take a share of the cuts that we have to make, and so the decision was taken in the spending review to end the coach concession scheme from October this year.
I recognise the concern this decision causes to those who valued the coach concession and I welcome this opportunity to respond to some of the points made by Age UK and Mencap. We are listening carefully to what they have said, and I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), will be happy to meet them to discuss this matter further.
I want to emphasise that our decision does not in any way reflect our wider view of the importance of coach travel as a mode of transport. Coaches provide an important choice on many inter-urban routes, with services that offer good value for money in vehicles that increasingly offer a very high-quality and excellent environmental performance. However, taking a difficult decision to end the coach scheme has meant that we have been able to protect higher priority programmes, including the national bus concession. Even in these times of austerity, the coalition Government have been able to continue the national concessionary travel scheme for local buses, despite all the scare stories that were circulated by our opponents during the election. This support for the national bus concession scheme is contained in the coalition agreement, and it was reconfirmed by the Chancellor in the spending review.
The local bus concessionary scheme benefits about 11.5 million people every year, allowing free off-peak travel anywhere in England. In 2010-11, 1.6 million concessionary bus trips were made by pass holders in England—34% of total bus trips. This generous concession provides older and disabled people with greater freedom and independence and a lifeline to their community. It enables pensioners and eligible disabled people to have access to facilities within and outside their local area, and helps them to keep in touch with family and friends. That is why it has been a priority, despite the deficit, to protect this concession. However, a deficit reduction programme inevitably means making tough choices between competing priorities. The Government believe that keeping the local lifeline provided by free local bus travel had to be given priority over the coach concession scheme.
The hon. Gentleman complained about the lack of consultation. He will recognise that there was an urgent need to provide a credible deficit reduction plan at a very early stage of the coalition Government. If we had not done that, we would be facing the kind of crisis that has beset some of our European neighbours, who arguably have less serious deficits than we do. The only reason we have achieved the stability that we have in relation to the deficit crisis is that we have produced a credible plan. That required prompt work, which meant that it was not possible to carry out a consultation on this decision. However, an equalities impact screening assessment was carried out, and it was published on the Department for Transport’s website in November 2010. My ministerial colleague the hon. Member for Lewes recently wrote to the chairman of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee about the issue. When the funding for the scheme formally comes to an end on 1 November, a full regulatory impact assessment will be published and copies will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
As with all decisions in the spending review, we have sought ways to ease the process of implementation. This is one of the reasons the Government gave participating coach operators, and the public, 12 months’ notice of the scheme’s coming to an end. We recognised that a period of notice was very important to give operators sufficient time to plan for the removal of the grant and to give their customers reasonable notice of the changes to concessions that we had unfortunately had to make.
It is also important to note that coach operators are, of course, free to continue to offer concessionary travel to older and eligible disabled people on a commercial basis. Another advantage of allowing a period between the announcement that the Government scheme was coming to an end and this decision being implemented was to give coach operators the time to develop new concessionary travel products. Indeed, the Government were pleased to learn this week that, as the hon. Gentleman said, National Express will be offering a replacement concessionary coach scheme from 1 November this year. I understand that it will give those aged 60 and over and eligible disabled people a third off the price of coach travel in England when they buy a concession card.
Although the concessionary coach travel scheme had to go, I emphasise that the Government are still working hard to encourage more people to use buses. We fully appreciate how important they are for a range of groups in society. Bus services contribute to both of the Government’s key transport priorities: creating growth and cutting carbon. By providing an attractive alternative to the car, we can not only cut carbon, but unclog the congestion that can choke our local economies and hinder jobs and growth. Throughout our decisions in the spending review, we were determined that buses and public transport should continue to receive their fair share of funding, within the constraints of the deficit that we unfortunately inherited from the previous Government. A range of programmes aimed at making bus travel more attractive is under way. Again, that is despite the constraints on budgets.
The latest estimates show that in the last financial year, local and central government spent more than £2.5 billion on support for local bus services. That includes more than £1 billion on concessionary travel and £420 million in bus service operators grant. Reductions in that grant are to be implemented next year, but they are far less severe than many predicted and there is reason to believe that the bus industry will absorb them without a major impact on local fares. It is true that reductions in local authority budgets are having an impact on supported bus services in some areas, but by no means in all.
In addition to the formula grant that goes to local authorities to support bus services, the Government have paid almost £47 million to local transport authorities and bus operators to purchase 542 low-carbon buses across England. We are particularly keen to build the capacity of community transport organisations and have provided local transport authorities with £10 million of extra funding to support that sector. That money was found from savings made at the Department for Transport in the coalition’s first year in office. Lastly, we have established a £560 million local sustainable transport fund to support our transport goals of supporting growth and cutting carbon. Many of the successful bids to that fund are providing improvements to local bus services and facilities.
In conclusion, this Government have had to take difficult decisions to deal with the deficit that we inherited from Labour—a deficit as serious as anything that we have seen in this country’s peacetime history. Ending the concessionary coach travel scheme is one of the many melancholy consequences of the economic mismanagement of the previous Government, who borrowed heavily during the boom years and left us in a disastrously weak position when the lean years arrived. Although the coach scheme has gone, we have continued to protect free travel on local buses for older people and eligible disabled people, providing them with vital access to employment, health care and other essential local services.
Question put and agreed to.