Railways: Fares

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bradshaw]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have conducted any comparison of the level of railway fares in the United Kingdom compared with those in countries elsewhere in Europe.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the most recent major study that included comparisons of the level of railway fares in Europe was published by Passenger Focus. It showed that, although the overall picture is mixed, Great Britain compares favourably with other European countries in respect of many ticket types, particularly on longer-distance tickets purchased in advance. The study compared some other factors, such as frequency of commuter services into major cities, in which Great Britain also compared favourably.

[Lord Bradshaw]

Does the Minister agree that, although the fares are supposed to go up by RPI plus one, there are countless incidents of fares rising by much more than that—for example 9% from Sevenoaks to London. Will he ensure, and also ask his right honourable friend to ensure, that, when a cap is placed on fares, it is a cap that people can understand? The majority of people do not understand the way in which the fares baskets are compiled, which allows such breaches of common sense and of what is commonly understood.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I agree that it must be difficult for ordinary passengers to understand how ticket pricing works. The increase in regulated fares is implemented by train operators as an average across a basket of fares. This flexibility allows some fares to be increased by up to 5%—although only 2% on Southern—more than the average, while other fares must increase by much less or even be held flat to comply with the regulated average.

Railways: High Speed Rail

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, first, we thoroughly support the recommendations. They are about capacity. However, you cannot talk about capacity and ignore the freight dimension, and the freight dimension has been totally ignored by the opponents of HS1.

Secondly, I want to talk about railway fares. We must be careful that we are not building what will be described in the media as a “rich man’s toy”. Is the Minister aware of recently published research which says that British railway fares are in fact lower than those in France, Germany and elsewhere on the near continent? Only fares at the highest peak here are more expensive than in Europe. Will the Minister contact the Rail Regulator and ATOC to see if we can stop these very large increases, often in commuter fares, which are so far above RPI plus one? Fares at RPI plus nine are not uncommon. The next time fares are revised we should attend to the fares basket, on which the fares are calculated, so that people are hit less. Commuters in places such as Manchester and Leeds have seen very little improvement to their services. They have rotten rolling stock that should have been got rid of years ago, and yet they are being called on to shoulder the burden of the investment when it will be a long time before they see any benefits.

Lastly, and briefly, outside the railway industry is where the benefits lie. If you look at Crossrail you will see already that the land and property values are rising very fast, but the railway gets no benefit in terms of the attribution of these in any economic forum.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, first, my noble friend touched on the needs of freight. He is absolutely right, because one problem that we face if we do nothing is running out of capacity on the west coast main line for both passengers and freight. So it is a major driver that we absolutely have to do this project to provide sufficient capacity for freight, because there simply are not the train paths for people to put on the services that they would like to run.

I am looking forward to answering an Oral Question on Thursday regarding railway fares, and my noble friend has been asking me numerous Written Questions about how the fares basket is calculated. One question that it is important to answer is: will it be more expensive to travel by HS2? The issue of fares will be considered in more detail as the project develops. However, our assumptions on the viability of HS2 and the expected fares income do not factor in or depend on a premium for high-speed services.

Airports: Heathrow

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

I think that the noble Baroness is suggesting that an extra runway would solve the problem. However, I should point out that Charles de Gaulle airport experienced a cancellation rate of 40% despite having four runways.

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, I have managed all sorts of transport terminals and routes. The only way to deal with the problems at Heathrow would have been to put in a contingency plan which reduced in advance the number of flights taking off and landing. Proper contingency planning is needed so that passengers are advised well in advance not to leave their homes, not to leave their hotels and not to sleep on the terminal floor. Will the Minister encourage the CAA and other aviation authorities to introduce such plans?

[Earl Attlee]

My noble friend is quite right in his analysis of a possible solution. Indeed, that is what happens. A committee called HADACAB determines whether we need to cancel some flights in advance in order to provide capacity to do things such as keep the runway clear. In addition, in future, as a result of the Civil Aviation Act 2012, the Civil Aviation Authority will be able to set resilience conditions on the operator’s licence, but that will not be until April 2014.

Airports: Capacity

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, this problem was not unforeseeable. It has been coming for many years, including when noble Lords opposite were in government. We need to get a consensus and find a lasting solution that will survive a change in Governments.

[Lord Bradshaw]

I hope that the noble Earl will ponder the following: a great deal of the heat in the debate about air capacity is caused by the bidding war that has broken out between various airports and airlines. Will the noble Earl ensure that the Davies commission will, to the best of its ability, be governed by the fact that we should create extra capacity only when a real need is demonstrated?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am confident that the Airports Commission, headed up by Sir Howard, will consider all relevant matters.

Public Bodies (Abolition of the Railway Heritage Committee) Order 2013

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on the way in which he has introduced the debate and set out the proposed new arrangements, and I thank him for the kind comments he made about me. I shall reciprocate by saying some nice things about him and two of his ministerial colleagues in a moment.

I start by declaring some relevant interests, all of them unpaid. Until 2009, I was chair of the Railway Heritage Committee. I am president of the Heritage Railway Association and I am a trustee of the Science Museum Group and serve as chair of the newly-established Railway Heritage Designation Advisory Board, to which the Minister referred. I am also an officer of both the rail and heritage rail all-party groups. As the Minister said, the order provides for the statutory designation powers of the Railway Heritage Committee to pass to the Science Museum next year, assuming of course that this House and another place pass this order.

This has been a bit of a tortuous journey, but it is one which I hope will have a happy ending. It started badly. The first anyone knew of the Government’s intention to abolish the Railway Heritage Committee came in a leak to the Daily Telegraph on 23 September 2010, which listed all the public bodies down for abolition. This was followed on 14 October by a statement from the Department for Transport saying:

“The Government believes that the RHC cannot be justified as no equivalent protection applies to the heritage of any other transport sector”,

and that the RHC will therefore be abolished. That was it. There was no consultation whatever leading up to that decision, but this was followed by a huge outcry in the specialist press and in the heritage world, and scores of letters were written to Ministers and MPs asking the Government to think again. Interestingly this unease appeared to be shared by no less a person than the Prime Minister. Writing to one of his constituents on 25 October, Mr Cameron said:

“I understand the significant role railways have played and continue to play in the life of the nation. I also recognise the value of preserving evidence significant to our railways heritage”.

The continuation of statutory powers of designation is of particular importance to the heritage railway movement. This covers around 111 working heritage railways and tramways, as well as 60 steam museum sites. There are more than 399 stations on these lines—more than on the Underground network—and there is a fleet of around 800 preserved steam locomotives. Artefacts that are designated, and thus preserved, often find a new life on the heritage railways, and that brings many benefits to local communities and to local employment, skills training and tourism.

The Railway Heritage Committee’s existence and operation stemmed from three distinct Acts of Parliament, two of them passed by Conservative Governments and one by the recent Labour Government, each supported by all political parties. The Railways Act 1993 set up the Railway Heritage Committee at the time of the railways privatisation. The Railway Heritage Act 1996 brought artefacts and records that had passed into the private sector back into the scope of the committee after attempts by Ministers to set up a voluntary scheme was seen to be unsuccessful. That is a point that we need to bear in mind when we hear about voluntary arrangements in future. The Railways Act 2005 conferred NDPB status on the committee following the demise of the Strategic Rail Authority, and the 2005 Act also brought military railways owned by the Ministry of Defence within its scope.

The principle that the nation’s railway heritage is worth preserving goes back a long way. At the time of the railways nationalisation in 1948, the big four private railway companies were meticulous in passing over their principal heritage items to the newly established British Railways. Section 144 of the Transport Act 1968 transferred responsibility for the British Railways Board’s historical artefacts and certain of its records to the Department of Education and Science, and in 1975 the National Railway Museum was established in York. Had the abolition of the RHC gone through as originally intended, much of that good work would have been lost. Not only would nothing of significance to the nation’s railway history have been preserved in future but all 1,300 artefacts and thousands of important historical documents previously designated would have had to be de-designated, with many of them being put at risk.

Fortunately, it was possible to discuss these matters sensibly with Ministers, and I am happy to praise the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach—I am pleased to see him in his place—who sought me out after the Second Reading debate on the Public Bodies Bill, and also Theresa Villiers, the then Minister of State for Transport. I should also mention in dispatches the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, whose role in this was also extremely helpful. Quite quickly, we were able to agree an alternative way forward which retained the statutory powers of designation by transferring them to the trustees at the Science Museum, and this is provided for in this order.

There is, however, one aspect of the new arrangements which is not entirely satisfactory and it is the reason I am moving this amendment to the Motion. This is the question of scope. The list of organisations covered by the statutory powers of designation does not adequately cover the modern railway industry. The previous Government recognised this when my noble friend Lord Adonis was Secretary of State. In 2008 and 2009, the DfT carried out an extensive consultation exercise to gauge the degree of support for extending the scope of the RHC following changes in the structure of the railway industry since 1996. There was virtually unanimous support for this proposition. Indeed, Transport for London specifically asked that London’s Underground railways should come within the committee’s scope, as did, perhaps surprisingly, the railway trade unions, which, whatever their discontent with the privatised industry, very much saw themselves as part of the railway family. As a result, a new statutory instrument was drafted and circulated in 2010 but, sadly, was never tabled following the change of Government.

Reverting to where we are today, the Minister has referred to the consultation on the new arrangements that the department undertook earlier this year. This produced almost unanimous support for retaining the powers of designation and transferring them to the Science Museum. One reason why there is so much support within the railway industry for the RHC is that it has always worked happily with the industry and with the grain of the industry. The industry members see it as a helpful partner which not only relieves them of much of the burden of worrying about preservation matters but complements their own very serious commitment to railway heritage.

Writing to Theresa Villiers on 1 August this year, Peter Hendy, the Commissioner for Transport for London, repeated that TfL would welcome inclusion under the scope of the new designation arrangements. He said that he made this point for a number of reasons. I received his permission this morning to quote directly from his letter, which states:

“First it demonstrates the strength of commitment we in TfL have towards our unique railway heritage, and our determination that nothing of significance to the nation’s railway story should be lost. Secondly, bringing TfL within scope would solve an anomaly, in that some of TfL’s operations, having formerly being British Rail services, are in-scope—for example, London Overground—whilst the Underground is not. Thirdly, not being in-scope adds to our regulatory burden, because management time has to be expended unnecessarily on dealing with requests from members of the public—especially railway enthusiasts—to preserve artefacts, when it would be much more efficient and cost-effective to refer such demands to an independent body possessing statutory powers, able to judge objectively what is important”.

These seem to be pretty compelling arguments. They were good enough to persuade Mrs Villiers repeatedly to ask her officials to come up with a formula which would achieve what Mr Hendy and the rest of us wanted. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, was not unsympathetic either in conversations with my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham and me.

The legal advice seemed to rest on the fact that to extend scope required a negative statutory instrument, while the abolition of the RHC had to be done by affirmative order. However, bearing in mind that a draft SI had already been prepared in 2010 to achieve exactly what is needed now, it seems to be a pretty feeble reason for not taking the steps before the designation powers transferred to the Science Museum. Mrs Villiers never sent a reply to Peter Hendy or me because she was promoted in the government reshuffle on 4 September. Instead, it seems that within hours letters were put in front of the new Ministers saying, effectively, “Nothing doing on the scope issue”, and they were signed by Simon Burns and Stephen Hammond and sent to Peter Hendy and me.

We are advised to rely on voluntary agreements with organisations wishing to come within scope. The advisory board which I am chairing at the Science Museum will do its best to come up with a suitable short-term solution. However, the Minister knows very well that this cannot be permanent and that a new SI will be needed before long. This amendment to the Motion is about a missed opportunity to get this right from the start. However, I stress that the decision to retain the RHC’s existing powers of designation is warmly welcomed, and I thank the noble Earl for his part in achieving it. I beg to move.

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, I will add to what the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has said. I have a feeling that many people might think that we are interested only in collecting engine numbers, steam trains and old things. I was present at the National Railway Heritage Awards last week, and among the winners were some remarkable feats of engineering and advanced technology. These included the repainting of the Forth Bridge in such a way that it should not need doing for 25 years, and the magnificent fourth span at Paddington station which pushed technology a long way. I also mention that much of this work is supported by the industry itself and by a huge number of volunteers. It pushes science and preservation forward and, because of the attractiveness of a lot of this to tourists and our own people going about the country, it is worth preserving for reasons other than sheer nostalgia.

Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I understand the point that the noble Lord is making but we are bound by the WTO trade rules and EU state aid rules.

[Lord Bradshaw]

Does my noble friend agree that there really are two types of renewable fuel? There is that produced from food crops, which are converted, and that which is collected as waste products from places such as fish and chip shops. There is a much greater utility in the second type than in the first. I somehow feel that the Government must go to the World Trade Organisation and the EEC, or somebody else, and make a clear distinction so that they can reward properly the people who are doing a service in stopping the deposit of waste into drains and onto land.

[Earl Attlee]

My noble friend is largely right. That is why fuels derived from waste products get two renewable transport fuel certificates, whereas short rotation first generation crops get only one certificate. However, there is a difficulty and the policy needs to be designed so we do not get indirect land use change problems. My honourable friend Mr Norman Baker is working closely with the European Union to get a solution to that problem.

Roads: Roadworks

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw]

The matter that causes most trouble on the roads is the fact that utility companies do not seal up the work that they do, so there is an ingress of moisture that in turn bursts the road surface. Will the Minister ask his right honourable friend in another place to see whether the agreements with the utility companies can be tightened up to ensure that they reinstate the roads properly after they do their work?

[Earl Attlee]

My noble friend makes an important point: reinstatement is an important issue. There are guidelines and local authorities should normally check that the whole reinstatement process is being done correctly.

Railways: London Midland Rail Franchise

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, it takes at least a year to train a driver. If we try to cut it down, we face the horrors we saw at Ladbroke Grove some years ago when an undertrained driver caused 30 deaths. London Midland has a full number of drivers in training and will bring forward a new timetable in December covering most of its services. Instead of talking about punishments and retribution, could we prevail upon the train company to put all its efforts into using all available media methods to apprise customers of any cancellations as far in advance as it can?

[Earl Attlee]

I entirely agree with everything my noble friend says, particularly his point about customers making sure they check with National Rail Enquiries shortly before their journey to give themselves the highest chance of not arriving at the station to find the trains are not running.

West Coast Main Line

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, I am not going to join the chorus of criticism. That is water under the bridge, the situation is going to cost a lot of money, and it may take a long time to resolve.

I have some experience of models, how complex they are, and how very few people actually understand what is inside them. You virtually have to have a degree in econometrics to understand them, and to some extent it is in the interests of the consultants that it should be so, because it keeps them in work. The whole issue of subordinated loans, which is connected with long franchises, means that you are asking the banks to put up a lot of money into the very distant future. We know that the banks are risk-averse and a new method must be found of covering this liability, or else it will bring all long franchises down.

I would like an assurance from the Minister that all the stalled franchises will continue good housekeeping, small investment schemes, support for community rail trusts, and all those things in the time before a new franchise procedure is launched. I warn him that it is going to take a long time, possibly two or three years, to get a viable scheme going.

Is it not better, rather than having very long franchises, to build into the franchise process a reward for delivery of excellent service, whereby each year you get something off the next bid? If you have five good years and then rebid, you may get a 5% advantage over any other bidders. That would underwrite continuity, which is appreciated by the staff and the customers.

I have one final question: will the noble Earl give attention to the large-scale orders that are imminent from rolling-stock companies? I am talking about big money. These will not go ahead unless the department gives some reassurance to the rolling-stock companies that the franchises they let are going to use the rolling stock. That is extremely important, particularly for lots of jobs in Derby and Preston.

[Earl Attlee]

My noble friend Lord Bradshaw made some important points but, of course, for answers to many of them we will have to wait to see what the Brown report says. However, I agree that we need to be careful to keep what is good about the current franchising system. At this stage, in advance of the report, I would not want to comment on how long it will take to get the franchising system running again. Rolling stock is of course a separate issue from the franchising problems, but he makes an important point and I will draw it to the attention of my right honourable friend the Minister of State.

Bus Industry

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Bradshaw]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have for further developments in the bus industry.

[Lord Bradshaw]

Punctuality and reliability are the main concerns of passengers. The obvious way to resolve this is to implement Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004. It has been on the statute book for eight years and has not been implemented. Yet, if there is any single thing that the Government can do to improve the operation of buses in towns and cities, this is it. The Welsh Government have introduced measures to ensure that the Act is implemented, and they have done all the legal work that may be involved. It can be transcribed into English law quite easily and much less expensively than I have been told before.

The second issue that I want to bring to noble Lords’ attention is the precarious state of rural services and services used in many areas by holidaymakers. It is all very well for people to say, “We are not in the tourism business”, but the buses that the holiday visitors use are in fact the same buses as those that convey, in particular, pensioners with discretionary travel arrangements. No duplicates are likely to be provided next summer because the operators cannot afford to run them, and they receive no proper recompense for them from the Government. Buses will be overcrowded in those areas, and regular fare-paying passengers will be left behind because the seats will have already been taken by people who do not pay fares.

The issue of young people’s fares is extremely important because it is at that age that people consider buying a car. The railways have a national scheme for cheaper travel for young people. I am certainly not asking for a free travel scheme for those people, but there should be a national scheme, and I should like to know whether the Government are doing anything to bring that about.

The Government speak about the need for fuel efficiency and say that that is one of the reasons why they wish to terminate bus service operator grants. There is a much better way—it is to encourage bus operators, through various funding mechanisms, to use a scheme called RIBAS. There is a similar scheme on the market which monitors drivers’ performance, all their driving techniques, their speeds and other things. I urge the Government to give consideration to this as a much more useful means of improving drivers’ behaviour generally and cutting fuel costs. I know of one company that operates the scheme whose fuel costs have reduced by 5%.

Can the Minister tell me what is considered to be a reasonable level of profit for an operator who is trying to keep his fleet of buses up to date and his staff properly trained? It is all very well for people to talk about bus barons as if they had gold flowing out of their pockets but, in fact, a number of reputable small operators simply cannot afford to keep up with the business and are actually thinking of selling up. In my own area of Oxfordshire, one independent operator went out of business last week.

Making bids for various funds costs a lot of money. The better bus area fund provision excludes population centres under 100,000, which directly discriminates against out-of-centre bus operations. The rural or inter-urban bus operator is desperately waiting for the Government to come forward with a comprehensive and reasonable scheme to suit them.

The Competition Commission and the competition authorities have had an extensive inquiry into the bus industry. I should like to know how much money the Government estimate that has cost the taxpayer and the bus industry, which has had to provide information for the inquiry. The results are, frankly, pathetic. Just one or two small extensions to the powers of traffic commissioners could have done more than was achieved by the Competition Commission at a much lower cost. I urge the Minister to go back and tell his honourable friends that their—I am not sure how to describe it—reluctance to give the traffic commissioners power is really rather silly. I think that it probably smacks more of interdepartmental in-fighting than it does of a concern for a competitive and healthy industry.

We are also very concerned about the compensation culture, which is costing bus companies a lot of money. I am fairly certain that many insurance companies are complicit in the knock-for-knock arrangements, whereby they settle a claim even though one of the parties is innocent and that party then calls on his insurance company to make good the loss.

At the last estimate, anti-social behaviour—for example, damaging buses—cost the industry about £574 million. Most of the cost of crime related to crimes against the individual—either a passenger or a member of staff—with the remaining 39% being costs to the operator resulting from damage to vehicles. Although they may be repaired very quickly, such damage inevitably means that a bus will not be in service for a day or two, and that is extremely expensive for the operator.

I should like to know—if anybody does know—how many members of the Cabinet or, for that matter, heads of county councils ever travel on a bus outside London. I accept that they might get on a bus in London because it is convenient to do so. However, the people who run bus services and send money to the bus companies to subsidise passengers have very little experience of what life is like, even though the bus is by far the most popular means of public transport in the country.

I know of an excellent operator who has invested in many new buses, but this year his fuel prices are 58% higher than they were last year due to the reduction in the bus service operator grant. He has already had to raise fares three times this year in a poorer area of the country, and that is a serious matter that needs to be addressed.

The industry is short of skilled staff to deal with both modern diagnostics, which relate to the engine and the fuel system, and the very complicated ticket machines which are being introduced. There is simply not the skilled staff available to deal with these matters. I would like to hear whether the Government have any proposals on this.

Some local authorities—I believe that Cornwall was one of them—have decided to specify the bus services through the procurement department rather than through their transport staff. The procurers will not accept non-compliant bids. That works against the grain as the specification needs to be in the hands of people who understand bus services. Much of the consultation that the Government have put out on the bus industry—a new one came out last month—never seems to make the case for the proposed changes. The consultation is about implementation but the decision has already been made about what will be done. That needs to be changed so that people understand what the Government are trying to achieve.

Lastly, and this summarises the whole thing in a way, in local authorities transport is a discretionary duty. Local authorities face a 28% cut in grant and they have to have higher regard for their statutory duties. Libraries and, particularly, bus services are two areas that are being starved of money. Again, I would like to know what the Government propose because if any more money is delegated to local authorities from national funds, it is likely to find its way out of the bus industry into other services.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. I do not have any financial interests to declare in these matters. I should point out that I chair the Bus Appeals Board, which is a purely voluntary post and I have over the years worked for both the National Express Group and First Group on the bus side.

The noble Lord started his speech by referring to the two important factors in running bus services being punctuality and reliability. Unlike him, I am not sure which piece of legislation he was referring to but I am sure that he would agree with me that these matters are largely the responsibility of highways authorities, outside passenger transport executive areas or passenger transport executives—the integrated transport authorities as we are now to know them—within our major cities. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will agree with me that punctuality and reliability do not depend on ownership of bus companies.

I find it depressing that people in my own party, in particular, continually call for reregulation although it is more than 25 years since buses were deregulated. Since then, we have had the back end of a Conservative Government, 13 years of a Labour Government and now two and a half years of a coalition Government, and the 1986 Act has not been repealed. We should make the best of what we have. In many parts of the country, not only are bus services thriving, there are lots of successes to point to without getting into arguments of ownership and reregulation.

I spent most of my working life in the bus industry, although that is a rather flattering description of someone who was chairman of a bus company. Many people who drove buses would not have regarded the chairman as being part of their working lives. But I did mix with them and held a PSV, as it was known at the time. In the West Midlands there has been a considerable number of successes in bus operations that have continued in recent years. Within the past year Centro and a passenger transport authority, or the ITA as it now is, and National Express, the predominant operator in the area, signed a ground-breaking agreement that commits the two organisations to working closely together to drive forward about £25 million worth of improvements for bus passengers across the West Midlands within two years. These commitments from both sides—certainly as far as National Express is concerned— include the introduction of more than 300 new, greener buses, improved onboard cleanliness, a smart card system similar to London’s Oyster card and upgrades to bus shelters and other waiting facilities. They also include more real-time information screening, which will be a great boon to anyone waiting for a bus, specially designed shelters and infrastructures, new passenger information systems, onboard announcements —on which I am not madly keen but they are obviously the thing of the future—improvements to the safety and security arrangements for passengers and the introduction of 40 hybrid electric buses to the region.

However, there is a lack of enforcement of the existing legislation, particularly in regard to bus lane provision. In London we are fortunate: there are lots of buses and most motorists know—they soon find out if they do not—that straying into a bus lane will be immediately followed by a minimum £60 fine. Why do we not have that level of enforcement throughout the country? I presume that is the part of the Act to which the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, referred.

[Lord Bradshaw]

Perhaps I may extend that. I am particularly concerned about yellow-box junctions and right turns, which are clogging the roads. Local authorities need to have the power to deal with moving traffic offences. They can film the offence but they cannot do anything about it.

[Lord Snape]

I am grateful for that clarification. I agree entirely with the noble Lord. Why are not the benefits that bus operators and passengers enjoy in London extended to the rest of the country? I hope that when the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, replies he will be able to give us some comfort on this matter. The greenest, most modern buses are not doing the job for which they are designed if they are stuck in traffic. We are not going to persuade people to get out of their cars and on to public transport if that bus is stuck in the same traffic jam as their own cars.

However, it is not all bad news. I hope the noble Earl and my noble friend on the Front Bench will acknowledge that one rarely hears mention of bus passengers in these debates. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, hazarded a guess that not many Ministers travel by bus. I suggest that many Members of your Lordships’ House do so, if only because most of us have reached the age where we get a financial benefit out of doing so.

If one were to ask bus passengers about the standard of service, one might be pleasantly surprised by the reaction. Passenger Focus recently commissioned a nationwide survey of various companies and sought the opinion of bus passengers. I will cite the Go Ahead group survey. I do not think it operates in my part of the world and I have never worked for it, so I cannot be accused of bias. Among more than 3,000 Go Ahead passengers consulted in the survey, there was an 86% satisfaction level. Would any Government of the day receive such satisfaction levels from the populace at large?

Go North-East, a subsidiary of Go Ahead, had an 88% satisfaction level. I mention this because Nexus, the ITA in the north-east, is, I understand, most anxious to introduce a quality contract. Under the terms of the quality contract the ITA will set both fares and standards of service. I do not know whether Nexus or anyone else has asked passengers in the north-east what they think, but if 88% are satisfied with the service currently provided, it is difficult to imagine that local authority involvement would lead to any greater satisfaction. I will be interested to hear the views of both Front Benches on that matter.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, I believe that we should express concern about the price of bus travel, particularly for young people and those seeking employment. All too often Ministers in the present Government—the Chancellor of the Exchequer immediately comes to mind—refer to the unemployed as though somehow it is their fault. When you talk to people who are unemployed—most of us who were in the other place have served the unemployed—the passion, commitment and desire for regular work inspires many of them. However, it is an expensive business to travel to interviews. Only last week a woman told me about going to two interviews here in this city, both of which were held early in the day. That meant she had to pay £10.77 to travel around London because she had to leave during the morning rush hour. Had the interviews been scheduled slightly later in the day, the cost would have been £7-something. For many in your Lordships’ House that £3 would not make much difference, but the unemployed have to decide how best to spend their benefits and it can make a considerable difference.

The Minister will tell me if I am wrong, but I understand that it is possible for people to claim the cost of travel to job interviews. I am told that it is an enormously bureaucratic matter to do so and that it is necessary to jump through all sorts of hoops. Surely the Department for Transport and the department for employment, whatever it is called these days, could sit down and provide some sort of travel voucher for the unemployed to use when they are seeking work. I realise that getting two departments under any Government to discuss financial allocations is the equivalent of the Korean peace talks at Pyongyang, which have lasted for over 50 years, but it ought to be possible to find a less bureaucratic and more humane system than what we have at present.

Unaccountably we have 90 minutes for this debate, but we have been told that we are limited to 10 minutes. Perhaps someone better versed in the rules of your Lordships’ House could explain that, since only four of us are participating. The noble Lord touched on other matters, particularly the distribution of the bus service operators grant. I do not think the Government are aware of the difference between running rural and urban services. The rural bus network is in grave danger of being decimated over the next few years if the changes to BSOG continue. It is an open secret that the Treasury has always regarded BSOG as a subsidy well worth cutting, and having reduced it in the 2011 Budget, there is an intention to actually abolish it before 2015. Such an abolition will lead to the complete decimation of bus services both urban and rural, but particularly in rural areas. It strikes me that the Government will be committing electoral suicide in many areas that are regarded as traditionally Conservative if BSOG is cut further.

I have now exhausted my time. There is some good news about bus service provision, and I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will avoid the view—not expressed by passengers—that the simple answer to any problems are quality contracts and reregulation. That is not the view of those who use the bus to get from A to B.

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[Lord Rosser]

As I understand it, there were no quality contracts. The legislation was amended in 2008 because the previous legislation has made it an enormous mountain to climb to implement quality contracts. The noble Lord himself made reference to the local transport authorities that are currently seeking to pursue quality contracts in accordance with the legislation.

At Second Reading in the House of Commons of what became the Local Transport Act 2008, the Liberal Democrats said:

“The concept of having partnerships and contracts is right”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/3/08; col. 220.]

[Lord Bradshaw]

Having twice been baited on the subject, I will say that I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that quality contracts are quite unnecessary if co-operation between the local authority and the bus operator is good. That is why I started with the business about implementing Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004, which was passed by his Government.

[Lord Rosser]

I note what the noble Lord said, but I am quoting from what his party said in the House of Commons—that the concept of having partnerships and contracts was right. If he is now saying that he does not agree with the statement made by his own party in opposition, of course he is welcome to do so. It is clear that on the issue of contracts, the Conservative Party view has prevailed and the Liberal Democrats have shifted their ground, even though the Minister responsible for the bus industry is a Liberal Democrat.

The bus industry, certainly outside London, is facing a difficult time. The cut in local transport funding of some 28% has led to local authorities cutting back on support for local bus services, and subsidies paid direct to bus companies have also been cut by the Government by one-fifth. In some rural areas, council-supported services make up nearly all the network, yet many of those who use buses have no other means of transport. Cutting a bus route or bus services can cut an opportunity to take up employment or to stay on in education and go to college. That hardly seems consistent with the Government’s declared policy of making it easier to gain skills and take up employment.

We have already set out the significant tranche of cuts to the Department for Transport’s budget that we would have accepted to meet our own commitment to halve the deficit in this Parliament. However, unlike this Government, we would have protected support for local bus services. While the level of financial support from government is very important, it is not the only factor that affects the availability and affordability of local bus services. The ability of local transport authorities to play a role on behalf of passengers, and potential passengers, matters as well.

In government, we legislated to enable transport authorities to, in effect, reregulate buses through the use of quality partnerships, which have led to very successful agreements in some areas, or quality contracts. But the experience of some of the ITAs that have begun to use these powers, particularly in relation to quality contracts, suggests that we did not go far enough. Efforts to introduce quality contracts by integrated transport authorities have been met with specific threats by one of our major national bus companies to close bus depots and sack drivers.

We need measures, which are not currently available, that would provide some protection to enable transport authorities that want to go down the road of quality contracts to do so without facing a long drawn-out and potentially costly process, and even then still face the prospect of being frustrated for no good reason. It should be for the transport authorities, which have a rather wider role and responsibility for the provision of transport within their areas than the bus companies, to decide whether a quality partnership or a quality contract will best deliver their goals and policy objectives on behalf of those whom they represent, and they should not be impeded in achieving either the quality partnership or a quality contract by actions designed to frustrate by either bus companies or indeed government—which I will come on to.

As the recent House of Commons Transport Select Committee report said, in a fairly lengthy but important quote:

“The Quality Contract option is a legitimate one for a local authority to choose. It must also be seen as credible in order to enable the local authorities to apply pressure in cases where competition or partnerships are not working satisfactorily. Local bus operators should not seek to frustrate moves towards a Quality Contract. That no local authority has implemented a Quality Contract more than a decade after the provisions were introduced suggests that there are significant hurdles to overcome, particularly for the first local authority to go down this route. The legislation itself, as amended by the Local Transport Act 2008, seems satisfactory but the process is still lengthy and risky”.

The Select Committee went on to say:

“We recommend that the Government makes the Better Bus Areas funding available, in principle, to support Quality Contracts as well as partnership schemes”.

However, that is precisely what the Government are not doing. The Minister responsible for buses has decided to exclude transport authorities that pursue quality contracts from accessing the Government’s better bus areas fund, to which the Government are implementing the commitment to devolve bus subsidies. The various strands of bus funding should be brought together in a single pot, which could then come under the democratic control of transport authorities.

However, the Government’s decision on access to the better bus areas fund is obviously designed to make it financially difficult, if not impossible, for local transport authorities that wish to go down the road of quality contracts to do so. How can the Government say that they are in favour of devolving powers and yet be prepared to penalise those authorities that decide they wish to pursue tendering, which they are entitled to do under the law? Tendering as an option is not such a radical idea. It is commonplace in much of Europe as well as in London, where a Conservative mayor has not shown any enthusiasm for dismantling the system. In fact, some of the operators opposed to quality contracts in this country are subsidiaries of wider groups that regularly bid for and secure contracts in Europe.

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[Earl Attlee]

That is a rather wider question, and I would be delighted to write to the noble Lord on that.

My noble friend Lord Bradshaw talked about ring-fencing BSOG. It is vital that local authorities have flexibility to use funds to best effect. However, it is also important not to get turbulence in the bus market when changes take place as we reform the BSOG, so we will ring-fence BSOG for tendered buses for a transitional period.

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, asked about BSOG in rural areas. There are no plans to cut BSOG total. BSOG for tendered services will be devolved to local transport authorities. There are lots of them in rural areas, and therefore more flexibility for local authorities best to support bus services as they see fit. Commercial BSOG outside BBAs will remain the same for now, but how we apply it will be reviewed later.

My noble friend Lord Bradshaw asked how much the Competition Commission inquiry cost the taxpayer. I do not have the figure to hand, but I will write to him. He also asked about better bus area bids excluding population areas under 100,000. We have yet to issue guidance on the criteria for designating BBAs for devolved BSOG. However, we will be looking for proposals that can help to grow the economy and reduce carbon emissions. BBA 2012 was mainly aimed at large urban areas as being more able to meet the criteria.

The final point that I can address is whether there is any incentive for better bus speeds to take driver management systems, such as RIBAS, into account when bus systems are assessed. The criteria against which better bus area bids were judged included reduction in carbon emissions, which indirectly would offer a potential incentive for operators to use driver management systems such as RIBAS, given their positive impact on fuel efficiency and carbon emissions. The long-term goal of decoupling bus subsidy from fuel consumption will incentivise greater fuel efficiency within bus service operator fleets, which, in turn, should incentivise the use of driver management systems.

[Lord Bradshaw]

The Minister has several times referred to subsidy to bus operators in respect of things such as concessionary fares. That is a subsidy to the passenger; it is not a subsidy to the bus industry.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I accept my noble friend’s point.

The Government believe in buses. The vision is for a better bus with more of the attributes passengers want: more punctual, interconnected services, an even greener and more fully wheelchair-accessible fleet and the wide availability of smart ticketing. A more attractive, more competitive, greener bus network will encourage more people on to buses, create growth and cut carbon.