Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for recent meetings with him and his officials. I have tabled Amendment 61 in this group and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his kind comments about my previous amendment—I thought his revised one looked a little familiar.

Amendment 61 is not only about disabled access to buses, which is why I wanted to debate it right at the start of Report. Rather, it would confirm the importance of the Equality Act 2010 in relation to bus operators, local transport authorities and, of course, passengers. The Equality Act 2010 sets out, in Section 149, the public sector equality duty of public bodies delivering services to people. Anyone under it must have due regard to the need, and take steps to advance, equality of opportunity, not only for disabled passengers.

In this Bill, it is the local transport authorities which are under the PSED directly and plan, implement and monitor bus services in their area, as outlined in Section 108 of the Transport Act 2000. LTAs’ responsibilities are not limited to contracting for certain franchised bus services but include the responsibility for planning services for all their passengers, including the non-franchised. That does not mean that LTAs run the free market commercial bus routes, but they must ensure that everyone in their area has usable bus services.

In Committee, the Minister said that the regulation for public sector vehicles—PSVs—includes the duty to make reasonable adjustments. However, in practice, it is often a “best efforts” provision, leaving many disabled passengers frustrated when they cannot access a bus service. The actual compulsory provision includes wheelchair spaces, announcements and visual displays on the next stop, et cetera, and is way stronger than just reasonable adjustments.

I have continued to meet some pushback in meetings with government officials outside your Lordships’ House on the formal powers that all PSVs have to comply with. There seems to be something of a mindset that the commercial bus services are not included, but it is clear that they are covered by the Equality Act, which does not say that the definition is about commissioned or franchised services; it is any bus service that qualifies as a PSV, and its work must be monitored under another part of the Equality Act—the PSED—by the local transport authority, which will assess whether bus services in its area are meeting the needs of the people.

I have checked the case of FirstGroup Plc v Doug Paulley. The Supreme Court’s judgment, delivered in January 2017, sets out in paragraphs 11 and 12 the position that the bus operator had

“failed to comply with its duties under the Equality Act”

and confirmed that it was a public service vehicle under the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000. The House of Commons Transport Select Committee’s report, Access Denied: Rights Versus Reality in Disabled People’s Access to Transport, published last week, explains in paragraphs 10 to 17 the entirety of the law, including how the Equality Act—and within that, the PSED and the PSV section—and the PSV regulations I mentioned all fit together, as well as retained Regulation (EU) No. 181/2011.

The key to all this is the Equality Act, and my amendment simply restates that, as barrister Catherine Casserley said in evidence to the Commons Transport Select Committee, rights to accessible transport

“should be enforced in the same way as any health and safety requirement. As part of any operation, any business has to comply with a range of obligations. These should be no different”.

The Select Committee concluded that, despite the legal framework, much needs to happen to improve compliance and practice on a daily basis. Disabled passengers agree. We need to remind bus operators and LTAs that the Equality Act duties are at the heart of provision for truly accessible bus services. It needs to be in the Bill.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, I have spoken in the House before about the need to increase bus speeds. In discussion, the Minister has come forward with a method of bringing some discipline to local authorities with bad congestion problems that make the running of a proper bus service almost impossible—I note Oxford, Cambridge and London as among those places where this is the case.

Great British Railways

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister a few questions as my contribution. First, will he confirm that the regulator has objectives, but, in fact, all holders of the post have concentrated on the one about promoting competition to the exclusion of other duties?

The regulator costs the taxpayer £30 million a year and has 350 staff—in fact, it gives rise to much greater costs, as illustrated in the Williams review of the costs of running a railway. Because its decisions have the force of law, they compromise constructing a properly integrated railway timetable with an emphasis on connections, reliability and economic use of railway infrastructure. Is it true that the regulator allocates open access paths regardless of their impact on other trains on the network? Can the Minister confirm that this has delayed improvements to the timetable on the east coast main line for three years, costing the taxpayer a very large sum of money—hundreds of millions of pounds?

Are the regulator’s assumptions about revenue forgone and the generation of additional revenue sound? Have these been tested independently and properly verified? I believe that this is not the case and that, in fact, they are underpaying for access and exaggerating the revenue that they are generating for the system. I am not seeking to deny that there should be access from destinations not previously served by franchise operators, or to strike anybody off the railway map. I am particularly concerned that freight should have proper, guaranteed access to the network.

Railway regulation has not been a good thing for the railways. Indeed, regulation generally, as carried out by previous Conservative Governments, has been shown to be defective in almost all cases and for all utilities. We have to look only at the feeble responses of Ofcom and the power utilities to underline that case.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Grand Committee

I have also added my name to Amendment 50 in the name of my noble friend Lord Bradshaw. Reducing traffic congestion is, ultimately, really important if bus franchising is to enable better reliability of buses, which is one of the key concerns of bus users and potential bus users. With those thoughts, I beg to move.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

I rise at this moment to introduce the subject of traffic congestion. That is the biggest enemy of the bus, and traffic speeds are declining throughout the country. They have now reached a stage where the bus is an unattractive alternative even to walking. This, of course, generates expense, in that more buses have to be provided to maintain any sort of frequency of service. I have spent a good deal of my life in the bus industry and have managed large and small bus companies. I worked for a local authority and I know what I am talking about.

The problem of congestion happens in cities and towns throughout the country. It is a problem that will not be solved by building new roads. Even in New York, where they have built roads wider and wider, they have now got to the stage of having to introduce traffic management, because it is the only way to get over the problems of congestion.

There are many forms of traffic management. Some local authorities have not even moved to the first stage of decriminalising parking, and parking on the street is, obviously, a big enemy. However, there are other authorities that have been progressive in introducing bus gates, bus lanes and workplace charging. There are hundreds of different examples. I want the Minister to try to devise a system that would encourage local authorities that are increasing bus speeds by adopting traffic management methods.

Funding comes from two sources: a local authority and central government. The funding of the bus industry is woefully inadequate. I know there is a comprehensive spending review coming along. It is important that it understands the large number of people who are dependent on buses. We spend a lot of money on railways and aeroplanes, yet the bus industry gets very little money. As some of those funding streams are bound to come from central government, there should be a condition linking the money to the speed of buses in the local transport authority or franchising area, so that those that introduce measures to improve bus speeds get rewarded by getting a greater share of the money that is available, which is certainly not enough.

The noble Lord, Lord Burns, said at Second Reading that funding should be available over a long period of time so that you are not living from year to year as to whether you know you will be able to afford a bus service in the next financial year. When the money comes, I hope it comes with a few years’ life in it, so that people can invest in the expense of traffic calming and, of course, in new vehicles and the other things that are so necessary.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, if I may respond to what the Minister said, he is asking us to make a huge bet on what he refers to as the benefits of public ownership. Most of us who are of a certain age can remember public ownership, and we remember that the benefits were few and far between. He is asking us to take a leap of faith that this time round it is going to be different, but he will not—

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

The noble Lord has spoken as if public ownership is something evil. I remember, when I worked on the west coast main line, that 90% of the trains ran on time. That is a far cry from what is now the case. It was so different from what he is saying that he really should take a history lesson in what was right about British Rail.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I made no reference to good or evil. I am talking about operational efficiency. I am sure the noble Lord is correct in drawing attention, as has happened several times today, to the deficiencies of the current operation of the west coast main line, but other noble Lords have rightly drawn attention to the fact that there are private sector operators in this country currently operating with the efficiency levels that he refers to, and better—so the private sector has a lot to be said for it as well.

The fact is that public ownership is something about which the country largely breathed a sigh of relief when we moved away from it—rightly or wrongly, whatever the history behind that might have been—and every other European country over the last few years has moved away from exclusive public ownership operation. Even train companies such as Deutsche Bahn, which stood once at the pinnacle of public regard, are now something of a joke in their own country.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 40, which is focused on the issue of policing and safety on the railways. I welcome the Minister to his new role; I look forward to working with him, asking him many questions and debating the issues, as we have done elsewhere over the last 16 years.

As noble Lords have interrogated this legislation, safety has been a feature of our deliberations. However, safety is not just about the infrastructure and rolling stock; it is about the safety of passengers and staff on our railways. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the impact of this Act on the British Transport Police. The British Transport Police provides a policing service to Network Rail, rail and freight operators and their passengers and staff throughout England, Wales and Scotland. It is also responsible for policing other parts of our transport network including the London Underground, the Glasgow Subway, the Tyne and Wear Metro, the West Midlands Metro, the Docklands Light Railway, London trams and even the cable car in London.

What is different about the British Transport Police is that it is primarily funded by the railway industry, not the public purse, and it sits within the Department for Transport, not the Home Office. The train operating companies, Network Rail, other operators and Transport for London, through either police service agreements or different funding agreements, pay for the British Transport Police—its latest budget shows annual funding of around £416 million.

On these Benches, we are concerned about two specific areas. First, we are worried about the impact on policing the network, and the safety of staff and passengers as they use and work on our railways, as these changes to franchising take place. Secondly, we are deeply concerned about the potential significant funding gap, which had not previously been identified, as a result of taking public ownership of the railways. I hope the Minister will be able to provide assurance in this area and explain the Government’s thinking about the future funding of the British Transport Police.

Furthermore, there is the issue of the British Transport Police Authority itself and how it is structured. It consists of 15 members, often with railway expertise from the train operating companies, who ensure value for money for the policing service they provide across the network. It is not clear how this will be structured going forward to ensure the right level of challenge and independence from the Department for Transport, given the department will now be effectively running the railway in public ownership. I hope the Minister can reassure noble Lords that the funding and oversight of the British Transport Police has been considered as part of this legislation, and that he will respond to our specific points.

My noble friends will speak to our Amendments 41 and 6 regarding freight operators and the impact of this legislation on their operation.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, on the issue of freight, the intention should be that the freight service is given dedicated paths in the timetable. The timetable is the key to the whole issue. For freight to have a dedicated path, we need to use the paths that are available, or potentially available, to the best advantage.

To take the east coast main line as an example, it is possible to run quite a lot more trains along that line if the open-access operations are run by 10-coach trains which are divided en route. If the investment in the east coast main line is carried through, and if, for example, the Newark flat crossing is removed, I am sure we can get at least three, possibly four, more paths in every hour. The removal of the Newark flat crossing would greatly enhance the ability of freight to run inland from Immingham.

The Government have proposals before them to undertake very small pieces of electrification which would better connect freight services to the electrified network. They also have proposals, which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has mentioned, to get the route between Felixstowe and Nuneaton working properly. That is an appalling railway—I have ridden across it on a locomotive—and it inflicts enormous delays on freight trains. If there is any money to spend, a good deal of virtue would come from spending on enhancing the freight network and creating more paths on the east coast main line, because they are scarce and very valuable.