Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Burns and Lord Moylan

Committee stage
Thursday 13th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I mentioned at Second Reading that I had been chairman of the North Wales Transport Commission in 2023-24. I spent a lot of time in north Wales looking at the performance of the bus services there. I am wholly persuaded of the merits of a franchising system in rural areas as well as in more urban areas, because we all know the problems that the existing system has created. However, I should point out—this follows the previous intervention—that doing this work and deciding which routes need to be run and where people wish to go is a time-consuming business. It will take a significant period to monitor where the car journeys are presently being taken and what kind of network is best going to meet the needs of people. I find the notion that there should be review of this within six months or even two years very ambitious, because in the work that I was engaged in it was time-consuming to get anywhere near a feel of how to create an integrated network rather than just a set of buses that were serving individual parts of the of the area.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords I am grateful to everyone who has spoken in this debate. We on our side are supportive of the importance of taking into account the needs of people dwelling in rural areas. Indeed, we have our own amendment to a very similar effect in a later group, which could have been disposed of here. Our proposal to the Liberal Democrats was that it be wrapped up with their proposals, but that was rejected, so now it is going to be debated as a separate group, somewhat repetitiously, towards the end of the list. So we generally support this.

A lot of what I wanted to say has been anticipated. I know that he does not like the fact that he and I agree on quite a lot of things, but the noble Lord, Lord Snape, has brought a dose of sensible realism to the debate, for the first time, perhaps, in our Committee. He was supported in that endeavour by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, with his practical knowledge of having examined the bus routes, the lack of bus routes and the potential bus routes in north Wales.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said that this Bill will transform bus services. As shorthand for an aspiration, that is fair enough, but the Bill in itself is not going to transform bus services at all, although that might be the aim. What it is going to do is transform the governance of bus services in two ways, both of them subject to the provision of very large amounts of money, which can come only from central Government and which is not apparent at the moment, although we are all aware that a spending review is in hand. Who knows what will happen? You stick in your thumb and pull out a plum. Who knows what is going to arrive for bus services or rural bus services when the Chancellor has completed her work? At the moment, we cannot say. We can say only that a large amount of money will be needed.

The two respects in which the governance will be changed to which I wish to draw attention are, first, that operational decisions about the running of buses are going to be transferred fundamentally from managers of bus service companies, who have a great deal of experience, to committees of councillors with very much less experience. They will take advice, no doubt, and the Government have said that they are going to offer them the advice of the Bus Centre of Excellence to do the sorts of things that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, referred to. They include, particularly, route planning, but these councillors will also be responsible for fare setting, and fares and ticketing is a great skill and art. We might all think that it is terribly easy to decide on a bus fare, but the whole business of fares and ticketing is a professional and skilled business. There is a great deal that they are going to have to do which they will now be responsible for, which previously they were not, with very little skills support because the Bus Centre of Excellence is a relatively small operation.

The other way in which the governance is going to be transformed—and this is what relates to my three amendments in this group, which I will dispose of briefly in a moment—is that for the first time, effectively, the Secretary of State is going to be issuing guidance that will shape the provision of bus services in a way that simply is not the case when bus services are provided privately. As far as I am aware, that is not the case in Manchester, let us say, where there is no great guidance coming from the Government. Manchester has adopted franchising powers already. But there will be guidance and the local transport authorities, in providing bus services, are going to be subject to it.