Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

17:42

Moved by

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, before I come to the Bill, I will pay my respects to Baroness Randerson. Since being appointed to your Lordships’ House, Baroness Randerson served as a Government Minister and spent almost 10 years as her party’s transport spokesperson. During this time, she showed a mastery of the transport brief, making important contributions to wide-ranging debates and holding successive Governments to account.

After becoming a Minister in July, I enjoyed exchanging views over the Dispatch Box and in private with Baroness Randerson. I was very grateful to work closely with her on the recent Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill—now Act—the first Bill I have taken through as a Government Minister, and she showed her characteristic attention to detail, inquisitiveness and determination to ensure that the legislation left this House in the best shape possible. I know she was enthusiastic about the Bill in front of your Lordships’ House today and would have wanted again to make sure that it left this House in excellent shape. On that, I will do my best.

As your Lordships will be aware, Baroness Randerson had a distinguished career prior to her introduction to the Lords, serving in the Welsh Assembly, now the Senedd, as the Member for Cardiff Central for 12 years and holding a ministerial post in the Welsh Government. I am honoured to have had the opportunity to work with her, and I know that her commitment to public service will be long remembered. I send my condolences to her family, friends and colleagues in this House.

Moving to the Bill, I am pleased to present the Bus Services (No.2) Bill for Second Reading today. It is not to be confused with the Bus Services Bill, which was introduced as a Private Member’s Bill in the other place. I declare my interest as a licensed PCV driver and that the charity of which my wife and I are trustees holds a number of community bus service permits used for the Imberbus service, which raises money for charitable purposes.

Buses are the most popular mode of public transport and are essential for growth, jobs and housing. However, we have seen in England that passenger numbers and bus service levels have been in decline, with 1.8 billion fewer annual bus journeys outside London in 2023-24 compared with 1985-86. The Transport Act 1985 radically changed the bus industry by privatising the National Bus Company companies and deregulating services outside London, restricting the powers of local leaders to decide what is best for their local area. This Government intend to reverse this.

In London, passengers have long benefited from public control of the bus network, with lower fares and frequent and reliable services. The 1.8 billion passenger journeys made in London in the year ending March 2024 demonstrate how critical the network is to London. This figure accounts for over half of all bus journeys in England. Outside London, two of the existing local authority bus companies, in Nottingham and Reading, are ranked second and third for the highest number of bus journeys per head in England. The success of London, Nottingham and Reading is not a coincidence. Passengers will use good services. It is therefore only right that these options are available to all local transport authorities.

As a Government we are committed to delivering better buses. In the 2024 manifesto the Government set out a clear plan to improve bus networks. This Bill marks an important contribution to supporting the Government’s missions to kick-start economic growth and break down the barriers to opportunity. Changes that the Bill makes will enable safer, more reliable, inclusive and accessible networks that provide the connections that passengers need. This, as I said, is essential to accessing vital jobs, education and healthcare in cities, towns and rural areas across England.

The Bill is about providing local leaders the ability to choose the best way of running services in their area, a choice not currently available everywhere in England. Local authorities should be able to decide how best to run their services, choosing the right operating model that works for their communities. This will help improve bus services and grow usage, meaning that it will be passengers who benefit. The Bill is focused and narrow in scope. Its measures apply primarily to local bus services in England. School services are also in scope due to the single clause relating to enhanced criminal record checks for drivers of school services.

We have already taken a first step in reforming bus services. We brought forward the Franchising Schemes (Franchising Authorities) (England) Regulations 2024. These came into force on 18 December and enable all local transport authorities in England to franchise their bus services. These powers had previously been limited to mayoral combined authorities and mayoral county combined authorities. The Bill builds on these regulations and marks the next step in our ambitious plan towards a better bus network. The need for reform is clear—to reverse the decline in passenger numbers and services that have been depleted over many years, and particularly recently.

Transport for Greater Manchester’s journey to bus franchising has shown the potential benefits of greater public control. It is timely to be presenting the Bill during the week in which its journey has been completed. Manchester has already seen patronage increase by 5% since public control began to be rolled out in 2023. Elsewhere, local authority bus companies such as Nottingham City Transport have delivered award-winning services to passengers. There are also great examples of local transport authorities working in partnership with the private sector to deliver excellent services, such as in Brighton, Norfolk, Bournemouth and Poole, and Wiltshire. Sadly, there are also examples of towns and cities with little or no evening or Sunday services, and rural areas with no services at all. There will be no one-size-fits-all approach. Different cities, towns and rural areas have different needs. The Bill is about ensuring that local areas have all the tools they need to improve bus services for their communities.

Bus services are the lifeblood of communities. They carry people to hospital appointments, to school and to their jobs. This is especially true for women, those who are young, those on low incomes, ethnic minorities and the elderly, all of whom rely on buses more. Given the strong case for change, the principles behind the Bill should, I hope, receive cross-party support. The manifestos of all three main political parties acknowledged the importance of buses. There is also strong public support, so I sincerely hope that noble Lords on all sides of the House can get behind the Bill as a vital step towards fixing our fragmented and variable bus networks.

I know from speaking to many noble Lords that they believe in improving the bus network for the better, whether that is improving accessibility or rural services, or protecting routes. The Bill seeks to address all these issues and keep passengers at the core of its aims. It is a government priority. The ambition is clear, and it is hoped that the Bill will deliver greater consistency in bus services across the country. Its objectives include protecting passengers from anti-social behaviour and violence, reducing fare evasion and expanding powers to local authorities on bus funding.

I am sure that some noble Lords will question how the Bill moves forward from the last fundamental shift in bus legislation. It is true that the Bus Services Act 2017 gave new powers to local transport authorities to create enhanced partnerships and allowed mayoral combined and mayoral combined county authorities to pursue bus franchising, but these franchising powers did not extend more widely. New local authority-owned bus companies, formerly referred to as municipal companies, were also banned by that Act.

This Bill builds on the 2017 reforms, while also reversing the ban on local authority-owned bus companies. This will help deliver a wider set of options for local areas. Local transport authorities—LTAs—know the needs of their communities and they are best placed to decide what shape their bus services should take.

I will briefly enumerate what the Bill does. It is split into 11 areas. First, while the recent franchising regulations removed the limit on which local authorities could franchise, the clauses on franchising in the Bill will streamline the process, including by removing the Secretary of State consent requirement. The intention is to introduce flexibility and to reduce the amount of time it takes for LTAs to franchise their bus services if they choose to do so.

Secondly, a provision in the Bill will require LTAs to specify requirements which must be followed where bus operators under enhanced partnerships wish to vary or cancel a service that has been identified as a socially necessary local service.

Thirdly, for local areas where enhanced partnerships remain the best option for local services, the Bill will strengthen these partnerships, allowing for improved working between LTAs and bus operators.

Fourthly, the Bill will repeal the ban on establishing new local authority bus companies, giving local authorities the chance to use their local knowledge to run services in their area and opening up powers currently limited to the five legacy local authority bus companies.

Fifthly, LTAs will be given the power to design and make grants to operators of bus services in their areas. They will have greater freedoms to decide where that money is directed.

Sixthly, provisions on bus registration will improve the availability of information for passengers. This includes new statutory powers to require LTAs in franchised areas to provide information about local bus services with the aim of helping to improve reliability for passengers.

Seventhly, the Bill includes measures to improve safety on buses by giving powers for LTAs to bring forward by-laws to tackle anti-social behaviour and powers to enforce fare requirements.

Eighthly, it is important to increase the safety and accessibility of stopping places, so there is a measure giving the Secretary of State the ability to set out expectations for bus stops and bus stations in statutory guidance.

Ninthly, the Bill closes an existing loophole through the inclusion of a safeguard for school services. This requires the operator of a public service vehicle to check an enhanced criminal record certificate for drivers who carry out closed school transport services more than three times in any 30-day period.

Penultimately, there is a power in the Bill to mandate training of bus staff, including bus drivers, on tackling crime. This is intended to tackle incidences of violence against women and girls, as well as anti-social behaviour. There is also a measure for training on disability awareness and assistance.

Finally, to meet the commitment to move towards sustainable travel, there is a measure on zero-emission buses to accelerate their rollout by introducing a restriction on the use of new non-zero-emission buses on registered local bus services. But, in recognition that the industry will need time to adjust to this change, this will not come into force before 1 January 2030.

This is a comprehensive and focused Bill that reforms and develops critical aspects of bus services. Stakeholders, including the bus industry, have been engaged throughout policy development to ensure that the provisions are fit for purpose and address the key challenges that the industry faces.

The Bill’s application is largely to England only. This is the case for the critical measures relating to bus operating models, such as franchising. Certain clauses will also apply to Wales and/or Scotland where necessary, but the Bill as drafted will not require any legislative consent motions from the Welsh Senedd or Scottish Parliament.

Before I conclude my opening remarks, I reinforce that reform does not end with this Bill. This journey has many stops. Following Royal Assent there will be further regulations required, including on franchising, bus registration, fare evasion, staff training and zero-emission buses. These are needed so that that which the Bill has enabled can be set out clearly for industry stakeholders and local authorities to follow. My department will continue to engage with all parties.

I recognise that franchising is a choice, but that this route is not currently well trodden. My department is therefore developing guidance to increase capability and capacity in those authorities that are striving to franchise, and this guidance will follow the Bill.

While the Bill does not introduce new funding, I am sure that noble Lords will wish to debate funding through the parliamentary process. It would be remiss not to mention the Government’s Budget commitment to over £1 billion of funding for buses in 2025-26 to support and improve services and keep fares affordable.

To conclude, this Government will reform the bus network to deliver improved services for passengers across England. This supports our growth and opportunity missions, providing a clear strategic direction for buses and proper integration and co-ordination. The Bill presents an unprecedented opportunity, learning from the 2017 Act, to create a safer, more reliable and transparent bus network, with local leaders having more powers to decide what is best for the local area that they represent. This will be a step forward in reversing the decades of decline that have become synonymous with bus travel in this country. There is much to be done and this will not be an easy journey, but industry stakeholders and local authorities alike are invested in creating an improved bus network that users can be proud of. This Bill is a vital component in our plan to reform buses. I beg to move.

17:57

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. We look forward to working constructively with him to improve this Bill, alongside my noble friend Lord Moylan, who will be leading for His Majesty’s Official Opposition.

I hope noble Lords will allow me to say this. Given that this is the second bus services Bill introduced in this Parliament so far, it seems right that you wait a while for one, and then two come along at the same time.

The Bill’s primary goal is to deliver on the Government’s manifesto commitment to give new powers for local leaders to franchise local bus services. It gives local authorities the ability to run and own their own bus companies. In the manifesto, these measures are presented as a reaction to higher fares, routes disappearing and unreliable services. It is therefore only right and proper that we hold the Government to account on exactly how these new powers will address those issues directly. We have concerns that the Government are taking an ideological approach to public transport reform without considering more pragmatic ways to deliver the improvements that are needed. We will also seek to explore whether local authorities have the skills and experience in place to franchise bus services effectively and the appropriate funding to do so.

There is also the question of oversight. In government, we retained the Department for Transport’s oversight of local bus franchising, and we will seek to understand why the Government feel it necessary to remove these existing oversight mechanisms.

The Bill includes a whole range of measures changing the way our bus services work nationally. Whether it be zero-emissions buses, safeguarding rules for school bus services or mandatory training for drivers, we will scrutinise the provisions of the Bill closely to ensure that it will really deliver the improvements we need to see for passengers who are reliant on their bus service.

The previous Conservative Government had an excellent record of backing our bus services and we have long recognised the importance of bus services for poorly connected rural communities, as well as the crucial role the services have to play in the growth and prosperity of cities such as Manchester.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Earl for giving way. Can he tell us all the great advantages to the bus industry brought about under the last Conservative Government? Can he give the House the figures of the decline in passenger carrying in the bus industry over the 14 years they were in power?

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

If the noble Lord, Lord Snape, will allow me to continue, I can tell him that under our watch we invested a record £3.5 billion into the bus network to support the post-Covid recovery with that critical lifeline. In answer to his question, we delivered the fantastic “Get Around for £2” scheme, nationally backed by hundreds of millions of pounds. That scheme is a testament to the previous Conservative Government’s commitment to support our bus network as it recovered from the dreadful effects of the pandemic.

Let me also tell the noble Lord that it is impossible for us to hide our disappointment that this Government announced last year that bus fares would increase by 50% as of 1 January this year. That was a choice by this Government that will hit millions of hard-working people across the country.

We also led the way on bus franchising, taking a pragmatic approach while retaining the appropriate government oversight. Our Bus Services Act 2017 gave many local authorities the power to adopt a franchising model, as well as establishing enhanced partnerships.

It was the Conservative Government who gave a mayoral authority area such as Greater Manchester the go-ahead to establish its own bus services, which are now part of the Bee Network. It was the Conservative Government who provided more than £1 billion of central government funding to support the establishment of the Bee Network.

In contrast to our approach, the current Administration have tied themselves to a position in the manifesto that we would summarise as, “There are problems with our bus network; franchising will fix it”. We disagree. While franchising may be appropriate in areas such as Greater Manchester or Greater London, it may not be appropriate elsewhere.

The Bill reads as though it has been written by individuals who are not entirely familiar with rural and non-metropolitan areas. Given that franchising is not appropriate in every case, we believe there must be oversight and will seek to explore this in Committee.

Under the Bill, the key players in the Government’s bus policy will now be local authority executives. We pay tribute to every single one of the excellent councillors who work tirelessly for their communities across the country. But many of those councillors will tell you that their authority does not have the skills or necessary funding to run its own bus company. Speaking in the Local Government Chronicle last year, Andrew Carter, the chief executive of Centre for Cities, welcomed franchising powers for cities but flagged that having money to run the bus services is “crucial”.

As we have already highlighted, Greater Manchester received more than £1 billion of central government funding to set up the Bee Network. The bus funding announcement at the end of last year delivered just £1 billion for the whole country.

During the passage of the Bill, we will scrutinise the resources and skills that local authorities have at their disposal to establish whether the Government have put the right measures in place to help those authorities deliver the promised improvements in services. We are also keen to hear the government plans for bus services in areas that decide against taking advantage of franchising powers. Local people deserve better-value services, regardless of the model of provision their local leaders have chosen. The issue of local government funding links into the cost of franchising. We know from areas that already operate franchising models that this is a costly business, with London subsidising its bus network heavily. My noble friend Lord Moylan will speak about that in more detail than I can here, but it is critical that the Government accept this and put the right level of financial support in place if their “franchising first” approach is to be successful.

The Bill includes measures on transparency and accessibility of data on services and performance, enforcement powers on fare evasion and anti-social behaviour. It also seeks to improve bus stops and bus stations for disabled people. By what date will the Minister commit to improving bus stops? Surveys suggest that almost a quarter of people are put off taking the bus because shelters are inadequate.

The Bill mandates enhanced criminal record checks for drivers on school services, as well as regular training for bus drivers and other staff on disability, tackling crime and anti-social behaviour.

The Bill includes provisions to restrict the use of new non-zero emission buses on registered local bus services at some point after 1 January 2030. How can the Minister ensure that we will not see a recurrence of the recent report of electric buses in Glasgow grinding to a halt as the cold weather drains their batteries, or the almost 1,800 electric buses recalled from fleets in major cities last year because of fears they could catch fire if unattended?

The above items are not manifesto commitments for the Government, and the scope of the Bill is wide in these areas. We intend to probe the Government’s plans surgically because we want to ensure that local authorities, bus operators and the public at large can hear more on exactly how the Government intend to proceed. Where issues arise, we will seek to improve those elements of the Bill as part of a collaborative and constructive approach to its scrutiny.

As I said at the start, His Majesty’s Official Opposition have long recognised the critical nature of our bus services. We will do everything we can to deliver improved services. We will approach the Bill with a one team ethos, challenging the Government where it is logical and sensible and, crucially, where the passenger benefits. We will probe the plans as fully as possible so that together we can send an improved Bill on to the other place.

18:08

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

As I rise to speak, I first want to acknowledge the great contribution that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, made to this House over many years, not least on transport legislation. I thank the Minister for his tribute. She was such a good friend to me and had acted as my mentor ever since I joined this House last year. Although the time I had with her was so much shorter than it should have been, I benefited greatly from her guidance and wisdom over the last few months and I will miss her wise counsel.

Lady Randerson was the transport spokesperson on these Benches from 2015. and established herself as a strong champion for passengers and for improved and accessible public transport. She was a much-respected Minister in Cardiff Bay and Westminster and held many other posts, including the chancellorship of Cardiff University. Her humour, wisdom and intellect will be hugely missed by the Liberal Democrat family, by the wider House and in the political life of Wales and the UK. On these Benches, we are already feeling her absence deeply—not least right now, when she should be sitting next to me and taking part in this Second Reading debate. The House will miss her contribution today; she was working on it only last week. We will do our best to continue that work.

More than 1.6 billion passenger journeys were made by bus across England, outside London, in 2023. As we have already heard, buses are essential for people to get to school, college, work or appointments and to have access to shops and leisure. A good bus service provides wider economic and social benefits for local communities, businesses and public services.

In its independent bus user survey, Transport Focus found that the timeliness of bus services is one of the key factors for a good experience for passengers, as is the quality of the bus driver in providing the service. I hope that this legislation will help deliver the quality bus services that passengers desire and protect lifeline bus services, which serve rural communities in particular.

We on the Liberal Democrat Benches welcome this legislation, which looks to improve bus services across England, grow the number of passengers using buses and ensure a more reliable network connecting people and places. We recognise that bus services in many communities across the country fall far short of the required standard and level of service. In particular, we welcome the aims to empower local leaders to choose the bus operating model that works for their local area and to provide powers to underpin those models. There is no one-size-fits-all approach given that, on the one hand, we have places such as London—although it is excluded from this legislation—working with a franchise model, and, on the other hand, we have urban towns and cities operating a decent bus network in some places and, in others, less so. Then we have rural areas with different needs and costs associated with running even a very basic service. Each area will want to adopt an option that suits its geography and community.

Rural areas remain severely underserved when it comes to bus services, with provision often unreliable and inadequate. In North Shropshire, an estimated 63% of bus miles have been cut since 2015. These reductions are having a significant impact on communities. Too often, elderly people are forced to rely on family members for transport when what they really need is a dependable, accessible bus network that allows them to travel independently. Without this, many struggle to reach vital amenities such as shops, health services and hospitals. An extraordinary example is the local campaign to establish a bus route from Fleet in Hampshire to the local hospital, as no such service currently exists. With a population of 40,000-odd people in Fleet and its neighbouring towns, the hospital car park often experiences a 45-minute queue, yet there is no bus service.

Adding to the challenge of infrequent bus services is the lack of adequate technological infrastructure. In many rural constituencies, real-time bus information is either unavailable or inaccurate. Bus apps, which could help the user experience, are rendered useless by poor mobile signal, and basic bus information at bus stops can be non-existent. This situation must change. Reliable public transport is not a luxury; it is a necessity, especially for those who are most vulnerable. By addressing these issues in this legislation, we can ensure that rural areas are better connected, thus supporting residents and improving their quality of life.

Alongside empowering local leaders, we also welcome the provision to devolve powers to local transport authorities to design and pay grants to bus operators. Yet new Section 154A provides the Secretary of State with a delegated power to issue statutory guidance on the exercise of the payment and design powers that are to be devolved. This seems contradictory. Can the Minister clarify whether this is genuine devolution or local authorities simply implementing what the department requires?

As noble Lords will be aware, current bus funding is complicated, with different funding pots across the country: from bus service improvement plan funding, BSIP+, Network North BSIP, zero-emission bus regional areas, ZEBRA 2, local transport funds, BSOG and so on. There are so many areas. As we have seen, Portsmouth has a strong enhanced partnership: through bidding, it has managed to secure £235.76 per head of population for its bus services. This can be compared to places such as Swindon, which has secured a mere £3.98 per head. The Campaign for Better Transport highlighted these discrepancies in its recent report on bus funding. For greater clarity, can the Minister say whether funding will be provided alongside this devolution, with local transport authorities able to decide how best to support financially their local bus services rather than being directed from Whitehall? Genuine devolution to ensure that local bus services meet the needs of local communities, with funding to make it happen, is absolutely essential. Powers with no funding will not transform our bus services.

An unfortunate area that is missing from this Bill relates to fares. The final-stage impact assessment states:

“There may also be benefits associated with increasing bus usage through lowering fares”.


It also states:

“Increased fares, unreliable services and fewer routes would likely drive more people away from buses, further reducing passenger numbers”.


This is critical as many of the most financially vulnerable people rely on bus services to access key amenities in their community. The increase in the bus fare cap from £2 to £3 creates real issues for passengers, particularly those on low incomes. Many rely on buses for daily essentials and a £1 rise per journey adds up quickly, straining already tight budgets and forcing difficult choices between transport and other essentials. For rural communities where alternatives are few, the impact is even greater. Without addressing this in the Bill, we risk isolating those most in need and deepening existing inequalities.

This must include cheaper bus travel for young people, making education, training and job opportunities more accessible. It would reduce the financial strain on families and encourage independence, helping young people to engage fully in their communities. Affordable transport also promotes greener travel choices, cutting carbon emissions and easing road congestion. I hope that the Minister will be able to advise us how affordable fares will be addressed going forward. As this Bill progresses, we will want assurance that it fully addresses the needs of remote rural areas, assists the transition to net-zero buses, and includes strong and improved accessibility provisions for disabled passengers.

I am pleased to see that the Bill responds to the experience in Manchester, which has re-franchised its bus services. It has taken a considerable time—more than six years—to get there and there were a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, but I am delighted that the Bee Network is now going from strength to strength. Although many of these issues are addressed in this legislation, going forward, there may be room to tighten the wording in some areas to ensure that it is clear. We will pick this up in Committee.

We are also pleased that a safeguarding loophole is being closed where drivers could drive school buses without an enhanced criminal record certificate. That is absolutely essential. It is extraordinary that we have such loopholes today.

Finally, an issue I have been interested in for some time is demand-responsive buses, which have been trialled successfully in places such as Sutton and have the potential to help deliver a good bus service in some areas. Can the Minister clarify that these services can be supported by this legislation and that a local authority could run such a service if it desired?

Overall, we welcome many of the changes proposed in this Bill and look forward to debating it in more detail in Committee.

18:19

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, in recent years I have chaired two transport commissions for the Welsh Government. The first focused on congestion issues in south Wales, while the second explored the challenges faced in having an effective public transport system in largely rural north Wales. During these investigations, I learned a great deal about the problems bus passengers encounter with the current bus network and I fully support the way forward set out in this Bill.

From the perspective of users outside London, the current bus network is plagued by numerous issues. These include inadequate coverage, inconsistent service frequencies, a lack of user-friendly information, and poor reliability and punctuality. In Wales, I found there was strong demand for a network of effective bus connections between key origins and destinations, including transport interchanges and railway stations. This is particularly important for access to people’s places of work, local hospitals, and higher education. In rural areas, journeys to and from local towns and villages are also crucial.

However, in practice, co-ordination of timings and routes often falls short of what is necessary. This hinders connections to other buses and train services that people look for and renders many journeys impractical by bus. Bus services are frequently confusing and difficult to use, resulting in longer journey times compared to cars. They also have a reputation for poor value for money.

Several factors contribute to these concerns, but, in essence, the problem is the absence of a well-managed and integrated network. Outside of London, generally but with some recent exceptions there is an absence of a guiding authority overseeing the coverage and integration of routes, timetabling, ticketing, and information. I am afraid that the current privatised model has prioritised popular and profitable routes. The resulting unevenness in services means insufficient attention is paid to the needs of those without access to a car.

For these reasons, I have been attracted by the potential benefits that could be achieved through extending the franchise model outside London. This model offers the opportunity for an effective bus network to operate within an integrated public transport system. The benefits can be realised in both urban and rural areas. A well-functioning bus network can significantly help people by facilitating journeys that cater to their travel needs and making bus travel more convenient, rather than simply dealing with the issue of the popularity of particular routes.

As more good jobs become available in city centres and large towns, it becomes ever more important that they are accessible to outlying areas without the need for a car. The franchising model opens the possibility for authorities to design efficient systems that maximise the network’s value by integrating timetabling and ticketing. It also ensures that the network and services appeal to a diverse range of potential travellers and are much better adapted to people’s needs.

The present Bill addresses these issues and I welcome that, but I would like to emphasise some aspects that I found to be important in the work I was doing. At its heart, there must be a data-driven analysis of the journeys that are currently being undertaken by car, whether they are for work, hospital trips or recreation. We now have access to mobile phone data that tells us a great deal about movements of people in an area. Analysis can show the opportunities that are currently unavailable to individuals without access to a car. Often, this shows how people in this position miss out on good jobs or career advancement, or hospital visits. It also provides a picture of where more frequent services and better connections could be used to tempt drivers out of their cars.

It is also crucial to ensure continuous access to open data on bus service performance and to make this data available in a useable form to help people plan their journeys. This data should be easily accessible and available in a single location. Effective data is vital for potential bus passengers to plan their journeys efficiently, as well as for those evaluating the success of route and timetable decisions taken by the authority.

Another important aspect is a ticketing system that enables people to move between services with a single ticket, preferably with a daily cap on ticket prices. I am afraid that complicated fare structures are another significant disincentive to travelling by public transport.

Of course, as has been mentioned today, funding for franchised bus networks is a significant concern. Current bus subsidies are already under pressure, and I suspect an improved bus network will also require some additional funding. Multi-year funding would help provide stability and certainty for the travelling public and operators.

The Bill will allow local authorities to manage their own bus services. While this can be successful, and I understand why there is pressure for it, my own view is that it is also crucial that private operators can bid for contracts awarded by the authority. This maintains a vital level of competition within the system. Evidence suggests that bidding for routes might be a more effective way of producing genuine competition than the present deregulated bus system.

Finally—and this is something that applies very much in north Wales—many important bus journeys involve moving between local transport regions. For these journeys, we need the option of longer-distance, limited-stop regional bus services. This is especially important in areas without a local railway network. Regional bus services in those circumstances are crucial and should be seamlessly integrated with local bus networks. Where possible they should be routed through transport interchanges and railway stations. This integration is essential if public transport is to remain competitive in terms of timeliness compared to the motor car.

I am pleased to say that the Bill touches on each of these issues. In many ways, it addresses many of these real issues and recognises their importance, and I wish it well.

18:26

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I reiterate the regret, expressed by the Front-Bench speakers from all parties, that Lady Randerson is not with us. We shall all miss her. Another person I shall miss is my noble friend Lord Prescott, whose funeral comes in a few weeks’ time. I served as a Transport Minister with him, and he would have some firm views on this Bill, I am sure.

As the Minister has indicated, buses remain, despite everything, the public transport form used most in this country, but the difference between the bus service in London, where I spend half the week, and the rest of the country, including the rural area in which I live, is stark. We need to extend some of the aspects of Transport for London, which the Minister is familiar with. I had occasional complaints about London’s transport during his time there, but in general it is much better than the situation in the rural areas of the south-west and many other areas of England and Wales.

That is wrong and this Bill begins to change it. The fact is that successive regimes have not taken the opportunity to improve the situation significantly. I acknowledge that the 2017 Act, to which reference has been made, made some improvements in franchising; on the other hand, it effectively closed down the scope for direct ownership of municipal bus companies, which this Bill, thankfully, revises.

I emphasise my support for the Bill and my respect for the Ministers—the previous Secretary of State and the current one—who have got the Bill into the legislative programme at a very early stage. That means we can work it through, address the secondary legislation that will be required and get a good bus service operating in most areas of the country within the lifetime of this Parliament.

I agree with the framework, although it will need some tinkering with, the relationship between franchising and local authority ownership, and the role of the Department for Transport. The framework is right—though like the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and others, I would have preferred to see more substantial support, and definitely multi-annual long-term funding and some rationalisation of the form in which funds come from both local and national government—and, in general, the Bill is moving in the right direction. However, I wish to raise three issues which are not significant in the Bill, and might well require yet another Bill—the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, has already used my joke in that respect—but which need to be part of the reformation of the bus system in the country outside London. Broadly, they involve the passenger relationship, in particular the ticketing system, the workforce and environmental provisions. I will take those quickly, one by one.

Concerning the passenger system, the majority of passengers outside London—certainly in rural areas and in many of our smaller cities—travel for free because they are old-age pensioners or students. People are not attracted to getting on the bus, so they use their cars in areas which would, objectively, be much better served by them taking the bus to the shops or to work. Among the reasons for this are the unreliability and frequency of the bus, and the interchangeability of the bus on routes that they have to take.

I referred to my time as a Transport Minister. I had one achievement that I have been very proud of: I was the very first person to use an Oyster card. I think it was in 1999, at St James’s Park station. We introduced that and extended it from the Tube to the buses and suburban trains. We need a similar system in other parts of the country, so that you would buy one ticket that you can use for a month or a year, and buy it at whatever regularity you feel fits your purposes, and then move from one bus to another without any difficulty. The cost is relatively small. Many of us will have realised that, once we have an Oyster card, we use it and use the car less, and probably walk less as well. We need something similar for areas outside London, particularly outside our cities.

A couple of years later, I introduced another system: the over-65 pass—or the old gits’ pass, as I used to call it, though I do not use that phrase so frequently these days. We introduced in a transport Bill in 1999 that these passes would be valid throughout the country. Although I occasionally face consternation from bus drivers when showing them my Dorset pass, it allows me to travel anywhere in the country for free. We need the same for those who do not qualify as students or old-age pensioners. They would have to pay for it, but the convenience that results would be a big attraction. We could regain the millions of bus passengers who have been lost over the last 40 years since deregulation and the growth in the use of cars.

We also have to ensure that we have an adequate workforce. The workforce has declined by 25%, in line with the usage of buses. The key factor here is that most of the drivers are relatively old and will retire relatively soon, while new drivers coming into the trade are relatively few. We need a system that attracts younger and newer drivers, as well as getting other drivers back into the bus trade. That is essential if we are to expand the whole range of services, which I hope the Bill will lead to. As far as this Bill is concerned, the only reference to training relates, rightly, to the safeguarding and protection of passengers. That is important, and I am glad to see it in the Bill, but we need a provision to ensure that there is adequate training across the country for drivers, mechanics and other staff, so that we have an adequate workforce for this service.

The third area, the environment, is mentioned in the Bill but not sufficiently. It is interpreted explicitly and specifically in relation to having zero-emission buses. That is an important aspect of the environment—it is right that it should be in the Bill and I agree with the timescale—but it is only one aspect. It will be important to see on our streets, as we are beginning to see in London, zero or near-zero-emissions buses, but that is only part of it.

Another serious issue is that buses contribute to congestion and pollution, particularly on our urban streets. That requires a rather better system of traffic management, which preserves and extends bus lanes, rather than what is happening in many of our cities at the moment. That is partly because of the extension of cycle lanes—I see my noble friend Lord Berkeley sitting here—but these should be introduced at the expense of motoring lanes, not bus lanes. The result, in London and elsewhere, is buses being delayed in traffic in what were previously free-flowing bus lanes. We need to make sure that traffic management in the towns and cities in which our buses have been constricted gives priority again to the introduction and sustaining of bus lanes.

Those are some of the things which I hope the Minister will assure me can be introduced within the framework of the Bill by secondary legislation, rather than in an additional Bill. They are essential to attracting people back to using buses, and to ensuring that buses are not idling in their lanes because of traffic jams, polluting the atmosphere, as well as holding up the rest of the traffic. We need to make buses much more attractive in this respect, so that they are quick, reliable, clean and healthy. If we can do that, and get at least a significant proportion of people back into using buses, then this Bill represents a very good start. I congratulate Ministers on it and will support it.

18:37

[Lord McLoughlin (Con)]

My Lords, first and foremost, I declare my interest as chairman of Transport for the North, as set out in the register. I very much associate myself with the remarks made by the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, on Baroness Randerson, who was a formidable transport spokesman. She never missed the opportunity to make the case in this House for better transport links, both in her area and in the world. The House will be the poorer without her presence.

Much reference has been made to the last buses Bill, which was in 2017. I had some responsibility for that, as the Secretary of State when it was introduced to the House of Lords in 2016, but I was not around as Secretary of State by the time it completed all its stages. I accept a responsibility for its birth, but I am not sure that I am quite responsible for its final framework when it passed.

The background to how that particular Bill came about is quite interesting. It was partly a Bill promised in a deal done by George Osborne, Sir Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein on the whole way in which devolution and mayoral powers were to be introduced and eventually transformed. We have had a lot of reference this evening to the Bee Network in Manchester, which really was the trailer, and that Bill allowed it to happen. We see it now in operation, with clear leadership from Andy Burnham as to what he wants and expects, leading a drive to see more people use public transport. It is worth remembering that a double-decker bus can take something like 70 cars off the road, and possibly be quite effective in reducing congestion.

I also think it is important—it has come through in today’s debate—to think about what we do not require. We do not need a straitjacket, because we need to allow local flexibility. I remember my mother’s life being transformed when a bus started to run around the estate. It enabled her to go into town, do her shopping and get back on a small bus that ran through the estate. That was not a community bus, but community bus transport is an area in which we can see possible improvements, particularly in rural areas.

When I was Secretary of State, I brought in a scheme to support community buses. They had to be small organisations; the larger ones could not take advantage of the scheme because of certain competition rules. Those were partly EU rules. We are free from those rules, so I urge the Minister to look at that scheme and see whether it can be resuscitated, because I think it is important.

There is no doubt as to the important role that buses can play, both in local economies and, as the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said, in the opportunities for employment prospects. There is also the fact that it is still one of the most used forms of transport today—not the train but the bus. I have seen the figure of 11 million journeys a day. The Bill extends bus franchise powers beyond metro mayors to all places and accelerates the franchising process, so there will need to be some very specific guidance.

In reading the debate on the Bill in 2016, which became the 2017 Act, I was interested that there was some criticism that it gave the Department for Transport a few too many powers as far as delegated legislation was concerned. As chairman of your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I read with interest some of the attacks made on that Bill about those delegated powers. But there are some areas where delegated powers are absolutely essential, because things change and we should not be forced to wait for further primary legislation.

Buses remain the most used form of public transport in England. However, bus journeys have been in decline for many years in most of England. They dropped from 4.6 billion in 2009 to 3.6 billion in 2024. Journey numbers are also yet to recover to pre-Covid levels. In the year ending March 2024, bus usage was around 12% lower than in the year ending March 2020. It is important to remember that public funding accounts for 44% of all bus industry income. That is with the overall concessionary bus pass, other allowances and grants given by the Department for Transport. The rest of it comes from fares. This is similar to pre-pandemic funding levels.

Bus mileage is used as an indicator of how many bus routes there are. In England outside London, bus mileage in the year ending March 2024 was around 29% lower than in 2005. However, bus mileage in London has remained fairly stable over the same period, so London has managed to keep a level of service that the rest of the country has not seen. As far as the north is concerned, the latest figures for 2024 show that the north has 33% less bus mileage since 2010, including a 22% reduction since 2019, the last full year prior to the Covid pandemic. Bus patronage in the north grew to 703 million passengers in 2024, 8.1% more than in 2023, but was still some 18% lower than in 2019.

As we see more devolution, with more powers going to metro mayors and a growth in the number of metro mayors, they will take much more interest in how these services are being run and the opportunities there will be. I hope we can look at what happened in Manchester and understand some of the difficulties it faced, but also give guidance as to how the other areas can take forward their plans. We should not give a straitjacket saying that this should happen in all areas, because some areas will be different, particularly rural areas and county areas. What you can do in Manchester, Leeds or Sheffield is not the same as what you can do in some remote parts of Lancashire or Cumbria. Those areas need to be addressed as well, and opportunities in those areas need to be found.

I was encouraged by the way in which the Minister said that it was not one size fits all. On that, we are speaking the same language. We should give mayors—where there are county mayors or mayors of combined authorities—a good chance for the grants that will be available. We should also encourage different solutions in different areas, remembering that a journey does not necessarily stop at a county boundary. How you overcome that county boundary, so that workplace areas become much more important, will be one of the vital challenges.

For us to meet some of our environmental requirements and targets, public transport will need to play a very important role. I very much regret that the Government felt they were unable to continue with the £2 bus fare cap, but that decision has been made. We still need to find ways of encouraging more people to use the bus service, by giving them the confidence to use it and making it a reliable service. One of the most important things for public transport is for people to know it is reliable. If they know it is reliable, they will use it. If they think it is unreliable, they will not use it.

I wish the Minister well in his task. We are right to hold the Government to account on where the money will come from for future schemes, and exactly how that money is going to support a better public transport overall for the people of this country.

18:47

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill and join the widespread tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that we have heard from the Minister and around the House.

Noble Lords may be a little surprised to see me as transport is not usually my territory, but I can reassure them that my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb is recovering very well from her hip operation. She will hopefully be back on Monday. I expect that she will take forward later stages of the Bill, but in the meantime your Lordships get me.

Introducing the Bill, the Minister reflected on the fact that three parties had promises about bus services in their manifestos. I will have to add to that and say that the Green Party put bus services absolutely front and centre of its manifesto. I will highlight two things from that manifesto. One was a focus on village bus services. It promised a service to every village in the land. The second thing was free bus travel for under-18s. I point noble Lords to the success of the Scottish Greens. From their place in government, they were able to bring in free bus travel for under-22s in Scotland. That has seen a real step forward in introducing young people to bus services and building it into a standard part of their lives. That free offer has been really successful, really useful and really valued.

Quite a number of noble Lords have said, “Well, there’s the cities, and they can do these things, but we’ve got to be realistic about what rural areas can do”. It is important not to underrate the capacity of rural bus services and rural institutions to oversee them. I will give a practical example. After the shock of the Covid pandemic, the Green-led Herefordshire county council made all buses free at weekends and put on extra weekend services. They used £1 million from the Covid recovery fund to do that. Of course, we are talking about Herefordshire, a heavily rural area, with towns and villages. Nearly 170,000 journeys were taken on the 12 new Sunday bus services and, after the scheme ended, five of the most popular services continued to run seven days a week. So, if you provide the services and give people the real cost benefit of those services, they will adopt them and make them a regular part of their lives. That is as true of rural areas as it is of city areas.

Coming to the broader picture, I will revisit a figure that I suspect several people have already cited: in 2023-24, there were 3.6 billion passenger journeys. Buses are how people get around. But this figure has seen a massive decline. The mileage for the year to the most recent March was down a quarter since 2010. We have heard a lot of hot air over recent decades about the claimed “war on the motorist”, but, instead, we have actually had a butchering of the buses. I started with the figure from 2010, because I am afraid we know where the responsibility for that butchering of the buses lies: the party that was in control at the time. Behind that has been an ideological position where bus services, particularly outside London, have been run for private profit rather than for the public good. This is one more privatisation disaster that has absolutely failed. To a limited degree at least, the Bill is, happily, finally undoing that loss of local control and local democracy that was represented by privatisation.

Like a number of noble Lords, I will briefly focus on how buses are particularly important to lower-income households, jobseekers, women and older people. They are crucial for public health—I do not think anyone has used that phrase yet—because we have a widely acknowledged loneliness epidemic. If we think about one prescription to tackle that, bus services being readily available to people is an important part of that measure.

On that, I want to pick up a particular point with the Minister. We are coming back to funding, and I understand that this may not be central to the Bill, but it is an important and relatively cheap point. The statutory concessionary bus fare for free travel for pensioners and disabled people runs on weekdays between 9.30 am and 11 pm. We all know about medical appointments that may require travel before 9.30 am, and we know that many older people often provide childcare to enable family members to take paid employment. They may well need to travel before 9.30 am. Will the Minister look at making what would be quite a modest investment to ensure that that concessionary free travel is available to everyone, which would surely have a high level of public benefit?

Many people have raised the rise in fares from £2 to £3. It is worth highlighting that the £3 level is, under current government arrangements, due to end in December this year. That does not give people a long-term sense of planning. Surely, the sensible thing to do would be, ideally, to go back to £2 but at least to provide long-term certainty—for operators, local councils, communities and individual travellers—that the £3 bus fare will stay.

Like many noble Lords, I received a large number of briefings and will highlight those from the Green Alliance, the Campaign for Better Transport and the Urban Transport Group. The Green position, and that of those briefings, sets out that the Bill is heading in the right direction but is not going nearly far or fast enough. One thing that is missing is the failure to encourage the recovery of lost routes. Local authorities need to be able to identify where the holes are and to fill them in, but the Bill does not provide for that. Absolutely rightly, there is also a call for a bus service guarantee, to guarantee that all communities have a minimum level of bus service. That comes back to the village point that I started with.

Noble Lords would expect me, as a Green, to focus on the need for a firm date for zero-emission buses. This is such an obvious step both for public health and for reliability and certainty. For new buses, high levels of reliability are really important, as well as clean air.

Finally, we have talked quite a bit about bus stops. I will jump on a favourite little hobby horse of mine: the assumption that everyone has a mobile phone that will give them reliable information about bus arrivals. That is not true in London; it is not true at the bus stop that I use most mornings. Having signage at bus stops where possible, or at least proper guidelines and timetables, is crucial to enable people to use buses.

I have to highlight the situation in South Yorkshire, which has been terribly hit by that butchering of the buses. We have seen a bus mileage decline of 42% across the region. The bus services in South Yorkshire have got close to what you would have to describe as collapse. There is a plan to take franchising forward, but it will take a very long time. The Bill will possibly assist, but I would be interested in anything that the Minister can say particularly about helping South Yorkshire to put back those crucial services, in an area where people really need them to get to work and get around.

I will raise a point that I do not think anyone else has raised specifically. Some noble Lords may know about a campaign—it is starting in London but should apply around the country—for a London bus driver Bill of Rights to be included in the TfL framework bus contract. I am aware that this Bill does not cover London, but the issues that this campaign raises none the less apply for bus drivers around the country. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, pointed out that bus drivers are an ageing group of people, and we need to make sure that this career appeals to people coming in for the future.

I give noble Lords advance notice that, on 29 January, a march will start from Victoria station, where, a year ago, a pedestrian was killed by a route 13 RATP bus operating under contract for TfL. At least 87 other victims have been killed in preventable bus safety accidents in London since 2016. Of course, this is of great concern to the drivers, given the conditions of the contract, which they feel are dangerous. I note that the drivers will be marching to Parliament Square, so look out for them on 29 January.

The Bill does not have any of the data transparency or safety reporting requirements that the House of Lords tried to incorporate in the Bus Services Act 2017, so my noble friend will very likely bring up that issue in particular at further stages of the Bill.

18:58

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I share the remarks made by a number of noble Lords about my late noble friend Baroness Randerson. I was her Whip. Her loss to us is incalculable. She was an exceptional politician and a great friend to us all. She will be greatly missed.

Although the Bill does not specifically mention home-to-school transport, it does touch on a vital part of that provision: the transport needs of children with special educational needs—SEND. They, along with many other children in North Yorkshire, will be affected by the changes proposed by my local council over the next seven years.

At present, there are 10,000 children across North Yorkshire who are entitled to free home-to-school transport. The majority of these are what we call mainstream children, but 2,500 of them are the most vulnerable SEND children. That is a quarter of the total, and it uses more than half the whole school transport budget. Most of these 10,000 children live in villages and hamlets scattered round the vast rural area of North Yorkshire. Up until now, they have all been entitled to free home-to-school transport to enable them to attend any suitable school within their catchment area. The vast majority choose to support local schools within North Yorkshire’s boundaries, rather than travel to our neighbouring counties of West Yorkshire, East Riding, Cumbria or Durham.

In July last year, the Government published updated guidance on helping SEND pupils to travel safely. NYC decided, very quickly, to use this as an opportunity to revise its school transport policy in an attempt to save money. It modelled various scenarios, but the model that it chose had a fundamental flaw: it predicted savings of around £4.2 million over seven years, but that was based on 100% of children opting out of home-to-school transport entirely. Until then, NYC had paid transport costs for children, including SEND children, to attend any suitable school within its catchment area. That changed in July last year, when it decided that, for the majority, it would pay transport costs to their nearest school only. That is seemingly a small change, but one that ignores the geography of North Yorkshire and fails to factor in the disruption it would create for families.

The implications of this decision are simply massive. Families may be forced to send their children out of the county to be educated, causing disruption to North Yorkshire schools, which will lose pupils and funding. We are already losing too many of our small schools, and our larger schools could be forced to cut teacher numbers and reduce curriculum choice. In vast rural areas, such as the Yorkshire Dales, many children will be required to travel on remote, high roads, often not gritted in the winter. North Yorkshire prides itself on having good, often exceptional schools. If it decides to send its children out of county to be educated, it will soon find itself struggling to maintain this quality.

In addition, this policy change will result in siblings being forced to attend different schools over the seven-year implementation period. This will cause upset for those children and practical problems for their parents, who are already finding life difficult enough without the added worry of managing different school uniforms, different term times, et cetera. The disruption caused by this policy is giving real heartache and distress to thousands of parents. Rural communities are worried about what this means for young families, a concern shared by the chair of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, which is working hard to keep young people in the dales. Ten parish councils have written in objecting to the policy change, as have teachers, school governors, parents, councillors and two of our county’s MPs.

Yet the irony is that there are no savings here. Indeed, the council will have to find even more money. More vehicles would be necessary over the next seven years to cover the increased number of routes. Children who previously would have been going on the same bus now will have to attend different schools based on the nearest school to their home. Indeed, depending on where they live, half the children in the same village may go to one school and half to another. It just does not make sense. This decision has been made without consideration for the geography of North Yorkshire and without a thorough impact assessment of costs and impact on families. An urgent rethink is therefore required.

The previous Government presented guidance, leaving it to each individual council to decide how best to implement it based on local considerations. North Yorkshire Council has, so far, failed to do that to a level that works for rural communities. Will the Minister consider firming up the guidance so that all councils have a clear idea of what is expected of them and implement their policies accordingly?

All Governments, be it local or national, want to save money, but no one should be doing that on the back of children’s safety and education.

19:05

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I join the tributes paid earlier to Baroness Randerson, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on transport. As someone who has taken an interest in transport matters for many years, in my career in this House and the other place, I know that she was always knowledgeable and helpful. We agreed on so many aspects of transport policy.

I have spent much of my life involved in the transport world. More than 50 years ago, as a local councillor I was appointed to the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive. I was a Front-Bench spokesperson on transport in the other place for a decade or so under John Prescott, to whom my noble friend Lord Whitty referred earlier. It was a fascinating experience, I might say, for anyone who knew John Prescott as well as I did. He is much missed, and I will be attending his memorial later this month.

Let us take a short canter through the history of bus services. The 1985 Act was brought into being by Nicholas Ridley, a man who had a high opinion of his own ability—I do not wish this to sound like any sort of attack—and not without justification. But he was a somewhat controversial figure, and when he introduced the 1985 legislation, he made it plain that he felt that the private sector could play a much greater role in running buses than the municipal one. He portrayed an image of lots of entrepreneurs with half a dozen buses or so introducing new routes throughout the country, particularly in the rural areas. The reality, of course, was somewhat different. The new routes that were introduced were invariably on the busier routes of the major bus operators. I became a non-executive director of a then employee-owned company in the West Midlands, called West Midlands Travel, and I was fascinated to see some of our former employees, one or two of whom had been dismissed on disciplinary grounds, acquiring elderly vehicles, which they then ran on the busiest routes in the Birmingham and West Midlands conurbation.

The 2017 Act referred to by the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, and others was an admission of the failure of that 1985 Act, for much of the country. It was not a failure, in that it was a success in this city. London was singled out as the place for bus franchising, whereas the rest of us were left pretty much to our own devices. Bus franchising is still an expensive business in London; the latest financial figures that I have seen indicated that, up until April last year, TfL was paying around £840 million for bus service provision in this city. I do not complain about that, but it indicates that franchising, whether in London or elsewhere, is not a cheap operation. While I welcome the Bill, my concern is that local authorities, particularly the ones outside the big cities, will struggle adequately to fund any franchising operation, should they wish to do so in their area.

Mention has been made, including in the Bill, of zero-emission vehicles. I have to say that they do not come cheaply either. I realise that the Green Party wants them to be introduced sooner rather than later, although the Bill makes provision for them to be introduced after 1 January 2030. The fact is that a new electrically powered double-decker bus costs in the region of £500,000—imagine buying a fleet of those in the short term. Cash-strapped local authorities—in and out of the major cities—will have great difficulty in paying the franchising bill, essential though it may be. If we are to have a fleet of zero-emission buses, we have to recognise that the Treasury will need to look a bit more kindly on some of the applications for funding so far as the financing of those vehicles is concerned.

My noble friend Lord Whitty referred to the provision of cycle lanes in some of our major towns and cities. Like him, I share an admiration for cyclists, though I cannot say that I have ever had a great desire to join them—indeed, watching the way that some of them behave as they go round Parliament Square, I can honestly say that my views have been somewhat coloured by their attitude to pedestrians and other traffic. But it is nonsense that we provide cycle facilities in many of our towns and cities at the expense of bus lanes. You have only to see the congestion on the Embankment since cycle lanes were provided there. They are, by and large, not particularly well used at this time of the year, for understandable reasons, yet buses carrying over 100 people on many occasions are trapped in traffic because of the lack of proper provision for them.

I have to say to my noble friend that it is about time that we had the courage to look again at the money we allow the car lobby to avoid so far as the fuel tax escalator is concerned. As a Labour Government, so far we have not managed even to restore the 5% reduction, let alone see that the fuel tax escalator is increased on a regular basis, in the way that it was designed to be. Of course, if we demand such provision and for that money to be spent on public transport, we will be accused of being anti-car. We hear a lot from the party opposite about the war on the motorist—“Hear, hear”, says the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. Let me just remind him that this war on the motorist, if that is what it is, was started in 1993 by no less a person than the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He introduced the fuel tax escalator in the first place, and it is only in recent years—I say “recent”, but it has been some 14 years—that is has been frozen, and indeed reduced by Rishi Sunak when he was Chancellor. That is not a war on motorists. Like most noble Lords, I drive a car but, if we are going to properly finance public transport, we must have the courage to say that freezing fuel duty for a decade and a half is not the way to do it.

We will discuss the ins and outs and intricacies of the Bill in Committee but, while I welcome its provisions and intend to participate—my noble friend may groan at the prospect—in Grand Committee when the Bill comes before us, I must say that the good intentions as far as future franchising is concerned are all very well, but unless it is properly financed, it will be no more a success outside London in future than it was in the past.

19:13

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, this is a poignant moment as I reflect that our deliberations on this Bill will be done without our wonderful colleague, Baroness Randerson. To Jenny, public transport was not a theoretical consideration but a public service on which many depend. Her passing is an immense loss to our Benches and to the many causes that she espoused.

I have relevant interests to declare as a councillor in West Yorkshire and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. There is much in the Bill that is welcome. It is a genuine attempt to revive bus services across the country. It is positive that there is an inherent acceptance in the Bill that the 40-year experiment with privatisation has not resulted in a reliable bus network and that significant change is essential. However, the unanswered question in the Bill is whether the Government view the local public bus network as an essential public service to which all residents should have access, albeit at different levels of service. My first question to the Minister, therefore, is whether the aspiration of the Government is to provide such a widely available, reliable local public bus service.

All recent Governments have had policies to encourage a modal shift to cycling and walking. The policy has been supported with regular streams of government funding for cycle lanes—as we have just heard—and improved pedestrian routes. Do the Government intend in the medium term to have an equivalent policy to support a modal shift towards bus travel?

Despite these questions—criticisms, perhaps—the Bill does contain some important steps in the right direction. Local authorities, in the form of local transport authorities, are at the heart of this change. Outside London, as we have heard, bus services have been deregulated since 1986. Local transport authorities have very limited means to influence, or achieve change to, what is provided by commercial operators, or indeed to have the funding to support non-commercial services. The powers in the Bill for LTAs to adopt one of the new models of provision are positive and welcome.

However, this raises questions about local democracy. With enhanced powers should come enhanced accountability for decision-makers. In mayoral devolved authorities this is limited to a single person, the mayor, supported by the leaders of the councils in the area, and a transport committee to advise. As the decisions on local transport are very limited at the moment, this level of public accountability is probably sufficient. However, does the Minister agree that, as LTAs have increased responsibilities, including those of grant-funding powers, more elected councillors need to be involved? Given the government proposals for combined county authorities, does this mean that there will be delays in establishing new local transport authorities in these areas? For these largely rural areas, does this also mean that there will be delays in these authorities taking advantage of the measures in the Bill?

That brings me to the thorny question of funding. If the aim is for local bus services to be more frequent and more reliable, and to reach many more communities more often, this is unlikely to be achieved within the existing funding levels. Providing a bus service to remote villages will almost certainly rely on subsidy. The question to the Minister, therefore, is: will there be increased funding for LTAs to achieve these aims?

As has been said in this debate, better bus services are inextricably linked to economic growth. They provide affordable access to jobs, for example. I despair when I hear from residents in my council ward that the bus service is so unreliable that they have been threatened by their employer with losing their job. The result is that they buy a cheap car, which does not help their bank balance and nor does it aid the environment or congestion. To achieve reliable, affordable bus services relies not only on sufficient funding but on the efficiency and effectiveness of bus operators.

In my experience in West Yorkshire—I could tell the House of my waiting an hour in Leeds bus station at the end of a Friday afternoon, so in a peak period, for a bus that should come every 15 minutes but never came—too many services are cancelled without notice. On occasion, this is the result of road traffic congestion which so delays buses that they are unable to keep to the timetable. Does the Minister agree that achieving better bus services will involve improving reliability, and that that means addressing areas of traffic congestion? Bus lanes are only part of the answer, and not a very good part either. It would be good to hear what the Minister has to say.

Finally, I come to bus stations and bus stops, and the opportunity for by-laws to control behaviours there. Clause 21 has much to recommend it, as passengers are deterred from using buses by poor or intimidating behaviour. I welcome that Clause 21 seems to enable by-laws to control bus stations and bus stops. Clauses 23 to 26, on safeguarding and training, are very important. Too many drivers are on the receiving end of abuse. Equipping them to deal with it effectively will help to retain drivers and keep the public safe.

The Bill recognises how vital safe and reliable bus services are to many in our communities who do not have access to their own car. The reforms proposed in the Bill go some way to shifting the balance in favour of the public who need these services, and that is a good start.

19:22

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff sent me a paragraph from an email from a member of staff in memory of Baroness Randerson, which I will read:

“Baroness Jenny Randerson was a dear friend since I started at the Millbank House Cafeteria in October 2011. I met her sister, husband and grandchildren from Brussels. She supported me when I had my hand surgery. She checked up on me by email. We joked and laughed and she was always positive. I did also send her emails to complain about the number 3 bus”.


So it is to buses we turn, with Baroness Randerson very much in our minds.

I must declare an interest: I love bus travel. The majority of my daily travel to your Lordships’ House is by bus and, as such, I welcome the Bill. I thank all those who sent me briefings: Tom Kearney, of LondonBusWatch; Kevin Mustafa, of the London Bus Drivers’ Bill of Rights campaign; and, as ever, the excellent House of Lords Library. I also thank the Minister and his team for the excellent collaborative briefing of yesterday, which was incredibly useful all round.

I always tell a visitor to London that the best place to see London is from the top of a bus. The 76 route is difficult to beat, particularly the view from the top deck when travelling over Waterloo Bridge at night. The Minister must take a lot of credit for the improvement in bus services in London. When I first came to London in the late 1980s, I used to wait a long time for a number 1 bus, then five would arrive at the same time. This is now unusual. We can look at bus times on dot matrix at bus stops or on our phone. London buses are iconic and work very well, but we need to take care before we send that model around the country.

As the Explanatory Notes say, and as the Minister repeated:

“The passenger should be at the heart of any process”—


but what about pedestrians and other road users? In the Bill, safety is about only crime on buses, and our thoughts are obviously with the family of the teenager killed on a bus in Woolwich yesterday. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has alluded to already, according to TfL’s own figures, in London, an average of three people a day are hospitalised after a bus safety incident, at least one of which is a collision. About every five to six weeks, someone is killed in a bus safety incident—again, mostly from collisions. We know this because TfL is the only bus authority that publishes its safety figures. As we talked about in the briefing yesterday, the Bill mentions data usage but does not mention types of data. I urge the Government to put a necessity to publish quarterly bus safety performance data, as TfL has done since 2014, into the Bill. If we are to learn from accidents, we need to know where and how these incidents happened.

We also know how important drivers are to the services. The Bill mentions staff in relation to training, but not driver safety and well-being. What about drivers who are under increasing pressure to keep on time, handling radio and text messages while on the move, especially in the new 20mph zones? Should driver welfare not be enshrined in the Bill? As someone who knows better than anyone how to drive a bus, perhaps the Minister could comment on that.

I quote the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, in Oral Questions:

“Bus companies sharing their data has been an enormous problem—anyone in the north of England knows that that helped prevent us bringing in an Oyster-style ticketing service across the north. It is crucial that we get this right and that all companies are obliged to share the information”.—[Official Report, 7/10/24; col. 1824.]


It is not clear from the Bill what information is to be reported. I have already talked about safety, and, as we discussed in the briefing, the difficulties of introducing Oyster-style ticketing—or the Oyster-style ticketing of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—in other regions. I urge the Government to encourage this, as it has been revolutionary in terms of travel in London. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rebuild England’s bus network based on the excellent London model. Let us just make sure that that model is as good as it can be.

19:27

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I join other Members of the House in remembering Lady Randerson. It was with shock and sorrow that I learned of her passing at the weekend. I was fortunate enough to work with her on numerous Bills over the past decade and it was a privilege to be able to call her a colleague.

As this is the first time I have legislated with the Minister, I put on the record my thanks to him for everything he did to make the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games such a success. Transport was critical to the success of the Games. You had only to look at all the media coverage from the moment we won the bid to see that journalists believed that transport would ruin the experience of London 2012. It did not, and, more than that, it was one of the most successful Olympic and Paralympic Games from a transport perspective, and the Minister can take so much credit for that in the team he led at the time. Again, from my perspective, it was a privilege and a pleasure to work with him.

Turning to the Bill, I would like to talk about inclusion and accessibility. As currently drafted, the Bill leaves Clause 22 to do more than heavy lifting in this respect. I intend, with colleagues in Committee and on Report, to do my best to put a lot more power into Clause 22 to enable the task it has at hand.

I would like to talk about the core principle of inclusive by design. What does this mean? It is simple: from the first moment of conception of a service, product, vehicle, computer program or whatever it is, the needs of every potential user are taken into account, so that when that product or service lands, everybody in our society and our community can avail themselves of that good or service. When it comes to buses, much excellent work has already been undertaken, not least through audio-visual announcements and prompts—a clear example of something good and enabling for disabled people that also, as is always the case, benefits all people. For example, an international traveller in London or somebody not from a particular area benefits from those AV announcements. It was an honour to launch the Manchester talking buses almost a decade ago. We have great provision in London but, as has already been rightly mentioned around the House, we should always be conscious and cognisant of the situation right across the country, not least in our rural communities.

Those are the buses, and there is still much work to be done. What is the purpose in making buses accessible if accessing the bus itself is made unreasonably difficult and potentially impossible? This brings me to the whole question of so-called floating bus stops. What are floating bus stops? They are not bus stops at all, as you would know them. They are, if you will, pieces of foundation separated completely from the pavement by a cycle lane, rendering that potentially accessible bus completely inaccessible to board or alight. In reality, floating bus stops are not a great creation or a great enabler of transport and mobility across our society. They are a planning folly, an overly simplistic solution to resolving competing transport needs, inevitably resulting in performance and outcomes that are anything but inclusive by design.

As has already been rightly mentioned, buses can often be a lifeline, providing social as well as actual mobility and economic opportunities, enabling people into the labour market or to go to medical appointments —a bus can potentially play a part in any aspect of our society or economic activity. So-called floating bus stops completely sever that lifeline. Can the Minister explain the point in making buses accessible if it is nigh on impossible for huge swathes of the population to access those buses? Will the Government commit to a moratorium on all new so-called floating bus stops until there has been a clear review of all existing provisions—a key piece of research right across the country where all these floating bus stops have been installed—and a piece of work to set out the retrofitting of all those so-called floating bus stops to bring them back to inclusive by design, on a timeline that does not leave huge swathes of our population excluded from the public realm?

I have spent my life trying to enable buildings, the public realm and services to be accessible if they have not been designed as such—for example, the many buildings designed hundreds of years ago, when people had no sense of inclusion or accessibility. This very building in which we are debating is now pretty accessible, as is the 15th-century college where I studied, as a result of interventions. So much more frustrating is when something previously accessible and inclusive is made not so for the want of having in place the thinking that considers all members of our communities and society, which is ultimately all that “inclusive by design” is: just being considerate of everybody in our communities. I propose a moratorium on all new floating bus stops, a review into all existing sites and retrofitting all of them on a reasonable timeline. Does the Minister agree that a cardinal principle of any bus stop is that you can access the bus and alight directly on to the kerbside?

In conclusion, we do not yet have public transport in this country. We have transport accessible for some of the people, some of the time, but not if you are blind, a disabled person, an older person, someone with young children in a pram, or indeed someone who just does not want to have to run the gauntlet of a live cycle lane, with no assistance provided for them. We have transport for some of the people, some of the time. Can the Minister tell us when the Government will be able to say we have public transport “inclusive by design, accessible by all”? Now that would be something well worth the prefix “public” transport.

19:37

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the many noble Lords who have paid wonderful tribute to Baroness Randerson. I used to work with her very closely when we were in opposition, and we learnt so much from each other. She is a real loss, and I am so pleased that so many noble Lords have recognised this and spoken about it, because she is almost unique. We shall really miss her.

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for taking the time to meet with me, and no doubt others, before Second Reading of this Bill because it is quite complicated. I have a few questions about it, most of which he will have heard already. We have had the opportunity of going down a good dose of memory lane, particularly with Lord Prescott’s integrated public transport, which many of us thought was a wonderful thing. Something has happened, but let us focus on the fact that much of it was needed to improve co-ordination and the passing of information between trains, buses, trams, minibuses—and we would probably include cycles these days, but I am coming on to that later.

On fares, most important is the emphasis in the Bill on community leadership and control, which we probably did not have before. When I opened the Bill, as I mentioned to my noble friend the Minister, I thought it was all very interesting. Clause 1(2) defines a franchising authority but, as I asked him, what is the definition of a bus or a bus service? We had an interesting little discussion about that. It clearly does not include trains, but we have to think about why. Is it because they use steel wheels as opposed to rubber wheels? What about the new tram system being developed in Coventry, a lightweight tram that has enormous potential? Is that a tram or a bus service? How much of the content of the Bill should apply to whoever is running that tram service? So many of the things in the Bill would apply to them as well, and I suspect many of them would accept it.

My noble friend has quite rightly been focusing on the community aspect. This is about local control, local flexibility and giving local leaders, as it says in paragraph 6 of the Explanatory Notes,

“the freedom to take decisions to deliver their local transport priorities. This is through … Empowering LTAs and reforming funding”—

that is an easy one, or not—

“Allowing every community to take back control of their buses … Accelerating the bus franchising process … Ensuring that the provision of socially necessary local services is considered appropriately”,

and encouraging public ownership.

I hope the Government will stick with encouraging local authorities to provide better local services, which is particularly important in the country. When the Secretary of State launched the Bill on 17 December, she stated:

“The introduction of the Bus Services Bill marks the next step on our journey to overhaul how bus services operate, delivering on our commitment to improve living standards across the country”.


The most important part is the bit about living standards across the country, and I hope my noble friend can give me some comfort that the Bill will include the capability of applying these things to the public transport services that people rely on across the country. We can go into services in much detail, but I do not think it is the time to do that now.

On devolution, there is a certain amount of uncertainty about who can be a local transport authority and the difference between what we would call the LTA, the franchising authority—if it is the same thing—the enhanced partnerships and even service agreements. This will probably all end up in debates about money, but also about who is actually in control. One of the questions put to the Minister was: Is it all very well that we have some local authorities around the country that are doing well, as we have heard about Manchester, and other places that, frankly—we have heard a few examples—are doing pretty badly?

A year ago, I had to go to a funeral in Dorset, so I thought I would catch a train to Sherborne, which seemed to be on a good timetable. The trains go every hour, quite happily, but the connecting bus to where the funeral was came every one and a half hours, not every hour. Conveniently, it left the station at Sherborne five minutes before the train arrived. I do not know whether Dorset Council—which is presumably responsible for that—knew what it was doing, or whether it just hoped that more people would drive their cars, but that is the kind of rubbish that I hope the Government will get a grip on. They must make sure that there is some integration and that the passenger, frankly, gets something they want.

On the money side, paragraph 10 of the Explanatory Memorandum refers to grants and says that the Bill will provide the LTA

“with a power to make grants to operators”.

It is probably very naive of me, but where is the LTA going to get its money from, who decides what it is, how much control will it have over what it asks for, and will they get it? In his excellent speech, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, mentioned that multi-year funding is a wonderful idea, but it is a question of whether it will happen or not. One has to ask, where does the revenue risk come in these different scenarios if the operator then decides it does not want to do it?

I feel that one or two of my colleagues have been getting at me about bicycle lanes—which is quite reasonable. The share of road space between these different needs is part of work which I hope my noble friend will be looking at. I was cycling around Germany about a year ago on something called a cycle lane. There was a bus lane next to it and a footpath on the other side. The cars ended up in one of four lanes and they were quite happy with that. People were obeying the law. Of course, the other side of it was that there was some enforcement, but this needs to be looked at again.

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, talked about buses going down the Embankment. I do not think there has ever been a scheduled service on the Embankment since they took the tramlines out. There are lots of buses on it, but they are full of people who are looking at the sights. The cycle lane is fantastic. It is so heavily used that it is actually becoming slightly frightening in the rush hour.

This is a great Bill, and I am sure we are going to have lots of issues to talk about in Committee. My final question to my noble friend the Minister is: what happens if people living in the countryside manage to create a local transport authority from their local authority and it does not do what they think it should do? The easy answer is that people can get back in their car, if they have one—which is a very stupid statement; pardon me. However, they could elect a different group of people from whatever party at the next local election: people who actually subscribe not only to the bus Bill but to some of the other issues we have been talking about—such as lower fares, greater frequency, and reliability—and try to get timetables for buses and trains that actually talk to each other, and try to make it work. This is what Lord Prescott and my noble friend Lord Whitty were trying to do 20 years ago. Then, hopefully, people will leave their cars at home and use public transport.

19:49

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I want start by echoing the many tributes to our friend and colleague Baroness Randerson, who died so suddenly last weekend. She and I came into your Lordships’ House at the same time, but we had known each other through Liberal and Liberal Democrat politics and gatherings for many years before that. Her commitment to her roles as a Minister in the Welsh Assembly/Senedd, then as a Minister in the coalition Government and, more recently, as a transport spokeswoman for the party was always evident. Her research was broad and deep, her contacts enviable and her knowledge of her topics revelatory. She combined all that with a delightful, practical way that always made working with her a pleasure, whichever side of the House you came from. She is already sorely missed. I want to send love and support to her family and many friends.

It was typical of Jenny that she was working last week, having various conversations with those of us on these Benches speaking today. Thus we are, despite our grief, well prepared because of her as our team leader. It is a pleasure to echo my noble friend Lady Pidgeon’s opening comments—of which I think she would have approved—that, while there is much to commend in the Bill, there are matters that we want to question the Minister about, and we may want to lay some probing amendments in Committee to enable us to have a fuller debate.

I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and thank those who sent us briefings, including the Library. I also thank the Minister for meeting some of us to discuss the Bill.

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. He raised the question of what a bus is. I notice that he omitted rural postbuses. I used to love my Highlands postbuses; they were not very frequent, but at least you knew when they would come past in the most rural communities. I have seen some of them in France, too. I want also to raise the issue of guided buses. I was on Cambridgeshire County Council when the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway was planned, and some—ahem—years on, it is successful, using part of a disused rail line. It is always full, with people using it as a fast way to commute into Cambridge because the busy roads around it are quite difficult.

My noble friend Lady Pinnock reminded us of the history of deregulation of the bus services. What is happening here is also a delayering of the complexities, which is helpful.

The noble Lord, Lord Burns, and others talked about the problems of rural bus services. The rural model is absolutely not the same as the urban. If the Minister takes one thing away from this Second Reading debate, it should be that, because so many noble Lords raised it. Can he say how the Government plan to deal with that problem? The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was right to focus on universal Oyster-type cards. As they are becoming rather old hat these days, I wonder whether new technologies might be a route to doing that. They might also be able to help with concessionary cards, which tend to be quite limited in areas for very particular specialist local types.

It was good to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, of the Green manifesto commitment to bus services. I hope that she is encouraged that, from all parts of this House, we have all aspired to much of what her party’s manifesto said.

On Clause 9, can the Minister explain how the Government will ensure that an “approved person”—which will replace the word “auditor” in the Transport Act 2000—has the right qualifications and membership of a regulatory body, if appropriate. We are talking about public money here—I think that the Minister talked about large grants going to either local government or via other routes. The “auditor” had a well-known and understood qualification and level of skill, so will there be any other deregulatory actions that will result in unintended consequences? He knows this, because I raised it with him when we met, but one of the unintended consequences of deregulating and changing the qualifications relating to fire protection inspections was that fire doors failed during the Grenfell Tower fire—and many others—because the standards had gone with the deregulation. This is not a safety issue, but, where public money is being spent, it is very important that the Government and the public can be assured that it is good value for money.

Can the Minister confirm that Clause 11—the amending of the Public Service Obligations in Transport Regulations 2023, SI 2023/1369—complies in its entirety with the Procurement Act 2023? Clause 11 simplifies the direct award of bus contracts to incumbent operators. I understand that this is only a temporary arrangement, but it could last up to five years, and that is a long time to have something that may not comply. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on that.

My noble friends Lady Pidgeon and Lady Pinnock raised the important issue of how real devolution is to local areas. The latter asked a very key question about the ambition of government. Is it universal across the country? If so, will enhanced resources come with enhanced partnership plans? I suspect that this is one of the areas that we may return to during the passage of the Bill. Powers with no funding are not real powers, and they will fail. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, is also right that a multiyear funding settlement is absolutely essential. Local government has been asking for that from Governments of many political colours for many years.

Noble Lords mentioned the increase of the fare from £2 to £3, and affordable fares are certainly vital. Travelling in Vilnius recently, it cost me less than €1 for 60 minutes on the bus system. You can get 24 hours for €3.50, and for 240 hours it was €12. Technology tells when you check in and check out, so it is not an elapsed time; it is the actual time that you are travelling, and it stops calculating it when you stop travelling. Why does that work in Vilnius? The roads are empty, because the buses are so cheap and so reliable that everyone relies on them. I do not think that the UK bus market is anything like that now, but would it not be good if we could aspire to that?

Clause 19 adds provisions to the Statistics of Trade Act 1947. From these Benches, we welcome the publication of bus statistics to mirror those used in the rail sector. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, asked whether that would include safety information. That is an excellent idea, because it is amazing how behaviour changes when data is collected. I suspect that driver training, by being refreshed, would improve, too. I also want to know whether assistance data—easily obtainable these days because of the assistance apps that rail staff now use—can provide a lot of that data, including the mode of assistance required.

I am so delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, wants Clause 22, on floating islands and bus stops, to be strengthened. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, omitted to mention that there are also problems for disabled people in his list of the problems with traffic islands between cycle lanes and the main highway. One joy I have on an island that I get off at regularly is that there is some random street furniture. If the bus driver does not line up exactly, when I am on a steep ramp coming off a bus, I cannot stop at the bottom. So I have to try to whizz round to the side of the street furniture to avoid crashing into it. Frankly, much more worrying are those islands where, if you keep whizzing, you can go straight into the cycle lane, which is a danger to you as well as to cyclists. A moratorium would be good until we can work out what should happen.

Clause 22, on guidance for the safety of bus stopping places, is not strong enough. In subsections (1), (2) and (3), the word “may” is used. A Secretary of State may choose not to do it, and the guidance appears not to be statutory, so bus franchisees could choose to ignore it. Can the Minister explain why “may” is used here, and why the Government would not want the safety of disabled people to be stronger?

The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, raised the important point about accessibility at bus stops. While they are not as dangerous as islands, it is very frustrating being unable to use a bus shelter because there is not enough space on the pavement for a wheelchair to get into the bus shelter. As my noble friend Lady Harris said, children with special educational needs and disabilities are being affected in North Yorkshire. The statistics she cited were shocking. In addition to the question she asked the Minister, I ask: will he agree to meet his education counterpart? It seems that what she described is an absolute breach of the Children and Families Act arrangements for making statements for children with special educational needs. It was always intended that those travelling to and from special schools and special provision would not have to pay for it, because it is often so far away.

Clauses 24 and 25 cover the rights of bus and coach drivers, but only in the context of ensuring that staff are trained. Clause 24 deals with anti-social behaviour. I was somewhat surprised at the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, deeming it unnecessary, along with other oversight mechanisms, saying that he would come back to this and that it would be good to have a debate in Committee about this. Disability awareness is not the same as the rights of disabled people under the Equality Act 2010. That is clear from this Bill and from the Supreme Court judgment in 2016, brought and won by the wonderful disability campaigner Doug Paulley, where the vehicle to ensure accessibility—I do not mean vehicle in the sense of with wheels; I mean the legislative vehicle—for disabled people was enacted through bus driver regulations. They are not the same thing. The entire power rests with the bus driver, and I am afraid some of them treat disabled people raising issues as anti-social behaviour—I have had it in the last couple of weeks—because anti-social behaviour is part of the same regulation, and therefore I suspect it is part of the same training as driver training.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, referred to audio on buses. We need to remember that it is not yet universal, even in London. There is one bus route I use regularly, where I have to sit in a wheelchair space in reverse and there is no audio. It is potluck if you get off in time. Can the Minister say why the Government have not chosen to follow their own example in the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill that your Lordships’ House debated in the autumn? I hope that they are prepared to consider that the Equality Act 2010 is added specifically.

In conclusion, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was right in saying that we need a revolution in bus services in rural areas and towns. It is important that we address accessibility and rights—including, by the way, the drivers’ rights, which other people have spoken about. We need to make sure that the new franchise systems are value for money, truly accountable and truly devolved. From these Benches, we are looking forward to the next stages of the Bill and to the Minister’s response.

20:01

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is difficult—in fact, impossible, really—for me to add meaningfully at this stage to the many personal and emotional tributes that have been paid by noble Lords to the late Baroness Randerson. I knew her since I entered the House, but only rather distantly as a figure who spoke authoritatively and compellingly from the Liberal Democrat Benches on the subject of transport. But over the last few months, as I have taken on this role, I have had the opportunity of getting to know her better. Indeed, if I may say so, I developed over that period a degree of affection for her rather shrewd sense of humour. Others know her a great deal better than I ever achieved, and I regret that I shall not have the opportunity to develop the growing personal regard that I had for her. We shall miss her very much.

I thank the Minister and his officials for the time that they have given to briefing me on this Bill. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate.

I turn to the Bill itself. Over Christmas, I had a message from a foreign friend asking me what it was like living in a socialist paradise, which led me to reflect a little on the nature of the Government. What strikes me about the Government, and it is present here again, is not really their socialism, though there is a degree of that; it is the fact that they are a Government who are almost solely and utterly focused on the public sector. The public sector is the solution to everything, and of course the policies of the public sector unions are determinative. So it is that we come to what is, in essence, a public sector Bill that is fundamentally driven by a rather narrow ideological approach. It is statist and anti-enterprise. It is also mildly nostalgic and backward-looking—a sort of return to the Attlee Government is essentially what we are being offered today.

Our first objection to the Bill, therefore, is that it is bureaucratic. It is anti-enterprise and, through franchising, it is likely effectively to snuff out a number of private sector businesses, which will be reduced to becoming not entrepreneurial entities at all but merely agencies of the state, operating to a fee and doing what the state instructs them to do in terms of routes, services and charging the fares that the state, through the local transport authorities, has set for them.

The Minister knows, from his time as the owner of a private bus company, the benefits to passenger service of private businesses. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, and my noble friend Lord McLoughlin drew attention to the decline in passenger numbers, and the implication that certain noble Lords appear to draw is that it is a consequence of private provision. The same noble Lords, however, do not give credit to the private sector for the massive increase in usage of railways under privatisation. In that case they are probably right as well, to some degree. The point is that both bus and rail demand are subject to stronger fundamental forces. That is the fundamental problem that the Government have in trying to revive the sort of 1950s vision of bus services that we see in this Bill.

The fact is that in the case of rail, the Government hope to benefit from a secular rise in demand for rail passenger services. In the case of buses, they can hope only to prop up what is in fact a secular fall, a decline, in demand for bus services. A number of noble Lords have pointed out that that is very expensive to do. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, gave some illustrations of how expensive it might be. It is a random example and many examples were developed, but one of the first examples given in the debate was by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, who referred to North Shropshire and the cuts in services there. Does anyone really imagine that those cuts can be reversed and restored without heavy public expenditure?

The Government’s chosen case studies, of which they are so proud, include London and Manchester. Going back to November 2024, shortly before her political demise, the former Secretary of State, Louise Haigh, wrote in the Sunday Mirror about London:

“This represents record capital investment to the majority of places and a once-in-a-generation reform plan that aims to deliver London-style buses to every corner of the country—including those areas that are usually overlooked”.


The noble Lord, Lord Snape, said it would cost £850 million a year to sustain London buses. The figure I have is £738 million a year in 2024 but we are in, as the Americans say, the same ballpark. If I may be so bold as to disagree with such an experienced transport commentator as my noble friend Lord McLoughlin, there has in fact been a reduction in bus mileage in London of approximately 5% under the current mayor. There was a plan to reduce it by 7%. I do not think the full 7% was delivered, but it was certainly of the order of 5%. This is palpable to those of us who live in or close to central London in particular. In the case of Manchester, the Bee Network celebrated its first year of franchised bus services in September 2024. Passenger journeys in Greater Manchester grew by 5% in the first year of franchising.

By contrast, however, in the year ending March 2024—I agree this is not exactly the same period, but it is the best overlap I can get—national bus passenger numbers grew by 7%, and those figures are taken from the Department for Transport’s official statistics. I might say also in the context of secular decline that that also illustrates how little can be learned from simply looking at one year’s figures. The idea that Manchester demonstrates a huge success—outstanding, apart from the rest of the country—because of franchising needs to be substantiated. It is not necessarily very persuasive on the numbers given. As my noble friend Lord Effingham pointed out, the establishment of the Greater Manchester Bee Network required over £1 billion of central government investment. If you are spending the thick end of £1 billion a year sustaining the London bus network, you might regard a one-off payment of £1 billion to Manchester as mere small change, but replicate that around the country and you will eventually be looking at real numbers. The upshot is that any promise by the Government to give London-style bus services to the whole of the country is essentially a chimera. It is a bogus offer that the Government cannot afford to deliver.

Let us turn briefly to passengers, which is my next topic, if we move away from costs. We argued forcefully when we debated the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill that the focus of the Bill, its overriding purpose, should be to improve passenger services. It was, after all, a Bill—now an Act—about passenger services on the railway. However, the Government resisted that and overturned it in the other place. Similarly, this Bill makes no commitment to an improvement in services for bus passengers. It simply hopes that by making structural and procurement changes it will somehow achieve that. It has no overall duty on the Secretary of State to seek to improve passenger services. It says simply that perhaps the Secretary of State should.

Is the Bill going to work? In its manifesto, the Labour Party committed to reform the system for procuring bus services and to give local leaders new powers. The reality of the Bill is that the Government are not really giving local leaders new powers, but simply removing the Department for Transport’s role in confirming the appropriateness of franchising in other areas. It is our view that the Government’s decision to remove the Secretary of State’s discretionary power to grant franchising powers to local authorities risks too much, and we believe that the Secretary of State should have the power to intervene where a local authority’s franchising model is failing, as a safeguard to protect services for local people where local leadership is poor.

It is essential to understand the differences between large concentrations of persons living in an urban area and the structure of a market that exists in rural areas. That was the logic behind the 2017 Act, which gave powers to certain conurbations, in effect, to franchise or take more control of their own buses but to deny them elsewhere. Extending that power throughout the whole country is, I am afraid, to take a chance and offer a bogus prospectus to the public. The vast majority of local transport authorities will not have the skills to plan routes, assess demand, set fares and introduce a ticketing system, No doubt we will be told that the Bus Centre of Excellence will be deployed to help them. Perhaps the Minister could tell us when he responds how many people are employed by the Bus Centre of Excellence. As other noble Lords have said, the consequence is that the Bill has no answer to the needs of rural communities.

We believe that some subsidiary elements of the Bill are welcome—for example, closing the loophole in the safeguarding of children who are being transported to school on independent school bus services—but we have other concerns, which I will briefly run through, because we will have an opportunity to discuss them further in Committee.

The first is the relative silence of the Bill on ticketing, which is remarkable. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who is always ahead of the game, said—to the rather older Members of the House, perhaps—Oyster cards are not where it’s at any more. Contactless payment, at the very least, is what one should be looking at, rather than a bespoke Oyster card-type system. But it is remarkable how little the Bill has to say about that and, as she said, about the ability to deploy that payment method outside a particular local transport area. Where is the Bill taking us on that; what do the Government have in mind?

Data collection is very important, but more important is its dissemination. In London, the data collected by Transport for London is available free to all app developers. Do the Government intend the same with the data collected nationally; or is it, heaven forfend, the secret plan of the Department for Transport to develop its own app to disseminate this on an exclusive basis? I think we would like to know.

The training of bus drivers in relation to disability in particular is very important, but as the Minister knows, because I have expressed this to him privately, I am concerned about the implications of the passage in the Bill on drivers being trained to tackle anti-social behaviour and potentially violent activity. It is my very clear view—and I suspect it is, on reflection, his—that it is not right for the public to expect bus drivers to put themselves at risk in order to confront incidents that the police would tackle by deploying two, three or four uniformed officers. We have to be very realistic about this, and we will want to explore the issue when the Bill is in Committee.

Safety is of course terribly important, as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, made clear. It is worth asking to what extent the franchise model contributes to a sort of aggressive bus management that might lead to buses being driven less safely than might otherwise be the case. I said earlier that the Bill has a sort of nostalgic “back to Attlee” flavour to it. One way of illustrating that is that it completely fails to mention anything to do with demand-led transport. The Bill very much envisages a fixed-route, traditional bus service but in fact, in many rural areas demand-led transport might well be and is already proving to be a much more effective way of providing affordable services to communities. The Bill as it stands contains almost no provision for that and makes no reference to it; it will be interesting to see how that fits with the franchising system.

I will conclude. This is an ideologically driven, backward-looking, bureaucratic and expensive Bill. We, for our part on these Benches, shall do our best to improve it.

20:19

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank those who have engaged in today’s lively debate on the Bill. I have listened carefully and with much interest to the excellent points being raised across your Lordships’ House. I will attempt to respond to some but not half as many questions and concerns as I would like to because of the time. We also have Committee, in which we can explore many of these issues in greater detail. In the meantime, I will follow up where I can as soon as I can on some of the issues that I cannot mention now.

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for his introduction, much of which was covered by what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has just said, but I will say one or two things to him in passing. First, on the notion that bus fares increased by 50% from £2 to £3, it is of course a calculation that bus fares of £2 increased to £3, but many passengers do not travel on individual tickets. Also, as the industry trade body said, for the 26% of passengers who travel on individual tickets many fares for shorter journeys remain below £3. The cost of franchising in Manchester is not £1 billion; it actually cost, on a one-off basis, £135 million, much of that paid for by Greater Manchester itself. One of the reasons why it cost so much money is because it took six years, as the process was so convoluted. A clear aim of this Bill is to make franchising easier.

Also, as a point of issue, it is not only electric buses that get recalled by manufacturers. As a bus operator, I can tell your Lordships of many circumstances in which buses have rightly been recalled for safety reasons. I think it is inevitable that zero-emission buses will take over in future, and the Bill seeks to ensure that the industry recognises that. However, he is right in referring to a one-team ethos; I am not entirely sure that that sentiment was reflected in what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, just said, but we will do our best to get a good Bill out of this, I am sure, and I welcome that sentiment.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, for her really helpful remarks. The devolution of funding and the statutory guidance given by the Secretary of State, under new Section 154A, we will debate in Committee. It is not the intention to apparently devolve funding and then put on such rules that in fact it is not really devolved. The intention of the Bill is to allow a much greater level of freedom for local transport authorities than they have had. It is also the intention of the Government in due course to streamline the funding streams above that. I recognise that point completely. Frankly, I am as confused as some noble Lords about how many streams there are. The noble Baroness mentioned some of them, and that would be better, but actually the result of this Bill is that to make it much easier at the point at which the money is distributed, which must be the right thing.

I recognise the points about young people’s fares. There are already local transport authorities that give concessions to young people, and nothing in this Bill will prevent that. The wider point, which we will come to again and again with this Bill, is that this is designed to give local transport authorities more freedom. A number of noble Lords have referred to that this afternoon and this evening. It is the right thing to do because buses are a local service, not a national service. I will come back to the specific remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, at the end, but the clear intention of this Bill is to allow local transport authorities to decide what methodology of providing a service is best for them and then to do it.

I was much heartened by hearing that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, a former Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, welcomed multiyear funding. I will reflect with my colleagues in government on what his experience is of that. We have to wait for the Spring Statement to know what this Government are able to do in the straitened financial circumstances that they find themselves.

The noble Lord and other noble Lords have referred to open data, and I can certainly commit to the fact that open data is the intention of this Bill and of the Government. The intention of open data, reflecting the recent point by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is that it should be free. That is the right thing to do. If you want public transport usage to increase, the data should be available. I have a rather good story to tell the House about open data. At Transport for London, we searched for the person who developed the best open data app for the Underground. I said that I would like to see that person. It turned out that they worked for a bank in Melbourne, and it was not immediately possible for them to turn up in my office. However, it is a really important point.

The noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Hampton, and others, referred to integrated ticketing. I will write to them about that. It is obviously the intention to have integrated ticketing. One of the attractions of franchising is that it enables that to happen. One of the weaknesses of commercial bus provision outside London is the degree to which individual operators would rather offer that technology but only on their own buses, whereas the public and passengers want it to be available on every bus. I know that my noble friend Lady Blake has some experience of that from Leeds and West Yorkshire. It is obviously desirable for passengers, particularly in urban areas, to be able to use any bus and for the ticketing system to be consistent.

A number of noble Lords referred to training. There is already mandatory training for bus drivers. The intention of this Bill is to specify further mandatory training but to deliver it within that regime, which I think is absolutely right. A number of noble Lords referred also to the roads on which buses operate. It is quite right that the reliability and indeed the economics of bus operation are vastly altered by the existence of congestion and the ability of buses to get through traffic, whether through bus lanes or other things. One of the most notable things about the Manchester franchising is that a consequence of putting some of the bus service into the control of the Mayor of Greater Manchester, then to be reflected in the local transport authority, was that a vastly increased focus was immediately available on, for example, getting rid of temporary traffic lights and straightening out traffic management. There have been references this afternoon and this evening to what help can be given to local transport authorities that wish to engage in franchising. The Bus Centre of Excellence has been mentioned. It does not need full-time employees but for advice to be available when needed. One of the features of that is to give advice on traffic management so that buses can take their appropriate place in transporting passengers in local areas.

It is always a delight to hear from the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin. He has made some excellent decisions in his time, including appointing me as the chair of Network Rail, though my wife was not similarly impressed by that appointment. Many of the points that he raised are obviously germane, in particular on the very sharp decline in passenger numbers in the north of England. He said that one size does not fit all, and he is absolutely right—I think that is much more to his point. This Bill enables local transport authorities in cities, towns and rural areas to choose the best way of going forward. It is not necessarily franchising. Even if it is franchising, it is not necessarily on whole routes. Some of it is about franchising in particular areas where a franchise mechanism might produce better public services. The Government do not want to dictate whether you should have a franchise; they want local transport authorities to use the best mechanisms that they can.

It was a delight to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and even better to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is recovering. I look forward to seeing her in her place. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, raised a number of questions that will have to be answered either in Committee or in correspondence. She referred particularly to recovering lost routes. One of the real sadnesses of the last several years is that some bus funding has been available to start new bus routes when the old ones ceased, because they were not able to be funded through that arrangement. But it is better if routes are not stopped and then started again because, in the course of that, you can lose a lot of patronage.

The noble Baroness mentioned South Yorkshire. I can tell her that the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority has completed a franchising assessment, and the consultation on its scheme closes on 15 January.

I listened very carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond. I had an exchange with her previously about the circumstances in North Yorkshire that she raised, and her concerns are known to the Government. I am also aware of a petition tabled to Parliament from a Member for the area in the other place, and my colleagues in the Department for Education will respond to that shortly. I note, out of interest, that North Yorkshire is a Conservative council.

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, referred to matters including the cost of zero-emission buses. One of the reasons for the Bill proposing both an effective ban on non-zero emission vehicles and the date of 2030 is that, as he knows as an experienced bus person, the cost of zero-emission and hybrid vehicles has gone down. The intention is to support sales, which this and the previous Government have strongly supported through funding to bring down the cost of those vehicles, such that they will be available and economical to run when that time comes.

A lot of points were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, about bus services, many of which were germane. I have no doubt that we will discuss them in Committee. She asked whether I agree that, as local transport authorities have or will get more responsibility, more councillors should be involved. I am not sure that it is my job to decide that but, as has been mentioned before, help might be needed with some of these arrangements. I know—actually, it is quite well known—that the quality of passenger transport in local transport authorities depends on their having expertise. On that matter, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. One of the purposes of the Bill is to set out the choices, and the department is putting money and resource aside to help people make the right choices and institute them successfully.

The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, raised several issues about safety. I will consider the points that he and others have raised about whether safety data should be collected. I will certainly write to the noble Lord and I have no doubt that those matters will be raised in Committee.

I do not drive passenger service vehicles in service very often now, but my technique in keeping time was always secondary to road safety. My belief is that that is still widely true in the bus industry, if only because of financial reasons, because bus operators, and for that matter local transport authorities that choose to operate buses, will always be subject to the costs of insurance. We will have a further look at driver welfare and will no doubt discuss it. The noble Lord also raised data sharing, to which I have already referred.

It was extraordinarily kind of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, to refer to London 2012, which now seems quite a long time ago.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

It was a long time ago.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It was a long time ago; the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and I completely agree. I wanted only to say that I do not claim particular credit for it; if you lead a team, you should give credit to the team that you lead and not take it all yourself.

The noble Lord’s more important points were about inclusion and accessibility. I absolutely recognise the points he made about the accessibility of the bus service to people with disabilities. I note his contention that Clause 22 does not go far enough, but I promise—and I am sure we will discuss it in Committee—to look at the degree and extent to which this clause can answer his points. He must be able to see that the intention of Clause 22 is to improve bus stopping areas and for the Secretary of State to give some guidance, which ought to be mandatorily taken into regard by local transport and highway authorities.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised points about community control and who is in control. As I said, the point of this is to return control to local transport authorities. He also raised a question, which he largely answered, about what happens if local transport authorities do not do their job. One would hope that the citizens of the local transport authority would vote them out for not doing their job. That is the remedy. I do not think that the Secretary of State coming down on local transport authorities like a ton of bricks is a satisfactory alternative; we want to return control to the people who should rightly have it.

Incidentally, there have been bus routes down the Embankment since the trains went. I used to travel on route 109, but it does not go there any more.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also raised some important points on the Bill. She raised Clause 9 on approved persons, which we will discuss in Committee. The intention is not to deregulate approved persons but to widen the range of them. I completely agree with her that they should have some qualifications. An unqualified person should not be able to make a judgment about whether a franchising scheme is right.

The noble Baroness asked whether Clause 11 complies with the procurement regulations. I am advised that I am able to tell her that it does.

The noble Baroness welcomed Clause 19 and referred to assistance data. I will take that away and see what can be done. Bringing data on bus service usage into the 21st century is quite important and I am sympathetic to the idea that, as long as it is not a burden to bus operators, or indeed local transport authorities, collecting data is the right thing to do, so that we know what is going on.

I note very clearly the noble Baroness’s comments on Clauses 24 and 25, that diversity training is not the same as the rights for disabled people, and on what we did, with her great assistance, in the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill, referring to the Equality Act. I will go away and reflect on that.

Lastly, I come to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, who has some extraordinary views about socialist paradises and returning to the era of the Attlee Government. I find it particularly extraordinary because I know that the noble Lord has such a strong view about the autonomy of local authorities. The Bill intends to return bus services to the autonomy of local authorities and for the Secretary of State not to intervene so much in the provision of services.

I have to tell the noble Lord that there is currently a huge disparity in the provision of bus services across Britain. I was not only responsible for the bus service in London, as he knows, but, for a measurable length of time, I was responsible for the bus services in what was laughingly called south-east England but apparently included Norfolk, Northampton, Leicester and Southampton. Even within one bus group, 20 years ago, there was an extraordinary variation in the provision of services and the extent to which bus operators sought to maximise the network and the return on it, or cut off individual journeys, to the extent to which some towns and cities in Britain find themselves short of or even without bus services after 7 pm and on Sundays.

I think I know roughly how to run a bus network, and one of the things you should do, which is the feature of the best bus services run by the private companies outside London—I can mention some places, but I will not—is to seek to service the network and to take people to school, hospital, work, leisure and home. It is in those places where those services have drifted away that something else needs to be done.

That is also true of rural services. The noble Lord alleged, quite wrongly, that the Bill does not deal with demand-responsive transport. It very much does—that is one of the remedies open to local transport authorities, as it should be. It is not a particularly cheap methodology but it is there to be used and, in fact, there are some startlingly good examples of it. He refers to it as though it is an urban feature but his own Government instituted an experimental regime in Cornwall, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, knows, has produced rather a good bus service in Cornwall by having features of Cornwall Council’s activities that amount to franchising in the same way that the Bill will allow to happen.

I have come to the end of my allotted time. There is a limit to what I can answer here. As I set out earlier, the Bill is primarily about empowering local leaders wherever they are. It is a privilege to bring this forward to your Lordships’ House for Second Reading. I thank all noble Lords who have participated in today’s debate. I welcome the support of those who have spoken in favour of the Bill’s measures and look forward to continuing the debate on the Bill in Grand Committee.

Bill read a second time.

Commitment and Order of Consideration Motion

Moved by

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill]

That the bill be committed to a Grand Committee, and that it be an instruction to the Grand Committee that they consider the bill in the following order: Clauses 1 to 10, Schedule, Clauses 11 to 31, Title.

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 8.42 pm.