Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

I hope that this information is helpful, but I would be more than happy to arrange a meeting between the noble Baroness and officials if she would like further clarification of the arrangements that local authorities are able to avail themselves of in this area.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the major problems with the bus industry is the lack of adequate reimbursement of concessionary fares? The burden of reimbursement has fallen on local authorities, which have virtually no money. This is a very important point, and it undermines the viability of the bus industry.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, but I think several factors have impacted on the use of buses and the ability of local authorities to run satisfactory services. I shall certainly ensure that the point he has made is registered in the Department for Transport, and I am grateful to him.

Business and Planning Act 2020 (Pavement Licences) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradshaw (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I strongly support the remarks just now by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner. We have, as he said, been here before when, last summer, the Government launched the “Eat out to help out” campaign. At that time, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said, my noble friend Lady Northover moved, with all-party support, to tie the extension of eating on the pavement to non-smoking areas. This was rejected by the Government because they did not wish to hinder the development of the initiative at short notice. This year, the same excuse will not be an acceptable reason for inaction, because a year has elapsed, but the Government prefer to listen not to local authorities or the Local Government Association, which has to make the permits work, in very many areas, including my own, in Oxfordshire, but instead to the voices of big business, brewers and the tobacco industry. They do not listen, necessarily, to the small shopkeepers and restauranteurs owners but to the very big interests behind them.

Does the Minister recognise that, during the pandemic, many smokers have quit, but it is very easy for such people to resume smoking? Then there is the effect of passive smoking on those around, on the staff and on children. Can we afford to inflict a rise in the number of smokers on our population already cursed by Covid? The proposed regulations, with their ambivalent attitude to smoking, will make the difficulties that local authorities have with enforcement worse, and will be mightily unpopular with the majority of actual users.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I intend to speak about buses. The Government’s recent proposal, Bus Back Better, is a welcome spotlight on an industry that has not been the subject of significant legislation since 1985. The proposals have been broadly applauded by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Women’s Institutes and the APPG representing county councils, all of which have been calling for action to halt the decline in bus services, particularly in rural areas. The expectations raised by the proposals are high. I received through my door on Saturday a brochure from the CPRE appealing for money to press the case for the 56% of small towns it investigated that are becoming transport deserts or are close to becoming so.

I want to examine how the Government are proposing to spend the money available—some £3 billion—and the likely outcomes. It is proposed that much of the money will be spent on purchasing new hydrogen or electric buses. A modern diesel bus built to Euro 6 standards costs the operator about £250,000. In terms of amenity and comfort, these will be very good and the emissions standards very high. An electric bus costs around £450,000 and a hydrogen bus £560,000. An operator buying one of these new buses is expected to pay the base cost of a new Euro 6 vehicle plus 25%, with the Government covering the balance of 75%.

That is not an attractive deal for the operator, who will lose the premium that he now receives for operating a low-carbon bus and the fuel duty rebate, which together account for 20p per kilometre. In Scotland there is provision to meet the cost of this ownership gap, and I urge the Minister to make inquiries north of the border because I am afraid there will not be any orders for new buses without some movement on the part of the Government. There will have to be some sort of green bus service operator grant. If the department’s object is to reduce immediately the amount of diesel oil being burned, a very modest infill of rail freight electrification would achieve that by removing a large number of HGVs from the road.

How much of the available money will be spent on new buses and how much on the ambitious programme of service improvements? Organisations such as the CPRE are anticipating hourly services from small towns, giving access to jobs, hospitals, shops, leisure facilities, education facilities and other amenities throughout the day. There is the question of timescales, with bus improvement plans beginning in October, when many newly elected councils will not meet to consider the matter until July. There are competition issues to be resolved, and the role of the traffic commissioners. Some highway works will be necessary, as well as some new bus priority measures.

Many local authorities are desperate to make the new arrangements work. There is much to do, and I ask that sufficient time is allowed for the House to examine these welcome proposals in detail.

Housing Strategy

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradshaw (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate for the opportunity to discuss on a non-political basis the position of homes and I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Greaves, with whom I worked very closely.

What I think about—I have listened very carefully to the debate—is who are these 8 million people who live in homes which are not fit to live in? Many of them are the people who do the jobs which are at the bottom of the pile and yet are so essential to the well-being of most of us. They are people who drive buses, empty dustcarts and sweep the streets, who do the mundane jobs on which all of us depend, and yet it seems we cannot afford to house them comfortably or properly

While I welcome the initiative described in Coming Home, I am worried that, if houses are let go at less than market value, a means must be found of ensuring that those houses remain within the public sector and can be let again to other people rather than that the people who buy them make a lot of profit and the houses become unaffordable to anybody else.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, called for a long-term strategy, as did my noble friend Lord Shipley. It is the only way in which we can come to a new dispensation where the land that is acquired by public subsidy or from charity law is land with social value that must be safeguarded for the future. Otherwise anything we do will be only a short-term solution to our problems. I accept that there are tremendous social problems associated with poor housing. I am sure that the only way out of this situation is the way described in the report, but on a much larger scale because the number of houses that can be built on church land is relatively small, but we can think of lots of other land which is semi-public sector land, for example, land belonging to Oxford colleges. If this is realised, it should carry some sort of social contract with the public that they should get a share of the benefits.

I hope that this report bears fruit and that we will see legislative action. I wish the Church the very best in its endeavours.