Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Hampton

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 22, which is a delicate, small nudge that suggests that, if you are trying to replace bus services or create new ones, looking at previous scrapped bus routes might be a way forward because, presumably, they were the last to go. I do not live in a bus desert, but obviously a lot of people do so outside London. It is a sad state of affairs when people are forced to use their cars, as so many are in the countryside. Bringing back bus routes that existed and were clearly used before various cuts would make sense.

The CPRE report, Every Village, Every Hour, nearly four years ago, set out what a comprehensive bus network for England could look like and the scale of investment needed, which, of course, is a bargain in how much it benefits communities, social enterprise and so on. If the Minister has not read that report already, I suggest that he does so. I agreed also with the previous amendments.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which I was delighted to add my name. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, criticised the Bill on the first day in Committee as being mildly nostalgic and backward-looking, a sort of return to the Attlee Government. I have quoted him so many times on this that I really need to start paying him royalties. However, I would like the Bill to be nostalgic and backward-looking. I would love it to go back to the pre-Beeching glory days when buses turned up on time with smiling children. I do not know whether that actually existed.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It did.