Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 13th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I suppose you could say that this is a modestly frivolous proposal because I do not suppose for a moment that the Minister will agree to it, but I thought it would give us an opportunity to take a little excursion into the history and byways of English bus history and to consider how it is that institutions, once established, can take root in a fashion that means they are almost impossible to abolish. Indeed, they can even engender a degree of affection that means they become almost inbred in the national consciousness, not that there are many people outside the transport industry who are conscious of the traffic commissioners. It is worth bearing in mind that they arose in the bad old days of corporate capitalism and monopoly capitalism, which prevailed particularly in the 1920s when what Americans called trusts were thought of as the rational way of delivering goods and services in the private sector. We adopted that idea, creating monopolies wherever we possibly could in the private sector, unregulated monopolies in many cases, and encouraging them.

So it came to be that the thought that capitalism unbridled would produce reckless and wasteful competition arose in the bus industry nationally—or among those observing the bus industry—that it needed to be properly organised on a rational basis and that the way to do this would be to appoint an authority that would be able to decide who could run a bus, where they could run the bus and what fares they could charge. As this was a gentle form of English socialism, it was not a national authority but rather 12—I think it was 12— regional authorities in the shape of a traffic commissioner, whose job it was to do all this work and decide who could run a bus and where.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I have seen the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is not addressing it; he is giving us a history lesson. We had this in the football debate where we had 25 minutes of someone describing the difference between a badge and a crest. It was an excellent presentation on the fleur-de-lis and the history of football crests, but it served no purpose whatever towards the football Bill and, at the end, the amendment was withdrawn. I think that sometimes Members need to be mindful of the time and effort that other Members put into sitting in these Committees and should perhaps use a bit less frivolous description just to prolong the meeting. It is absolutely contrary to the spirit of how these Committees are supposed to work. To probe the Government is fair, but to go into a history lesson on the role of traffic commissioners is unacceptable.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is missing the point slightly. We talk about who is running the buses; people who see the way that Bee Network buses are run in Greater Manchester will unlock the questions that the noble Lord is asking. How do we get to rural routes? How do we cover the distances to schools? How do we go where the privatised bus companies will not, because the profit is not there? Where do you find the money to fill those gaps to make those routes work?

If you bring the buses under your control, the profit that would go to big companies is reinvested. That then funds rural routes and routes to hospitals and schools and for the disadvantaged. It is a simple mathematical thing: instead of putting profits in the hands of shareholders, you put them in the hands of local authorities, which can then do exactly as the noble Lord wants, which is to run the buses profitably.

It is a myth—people have seen what has happened in Greater Manchester and will happen in Yorkshire and other areas—that a transport authority with very little vision will decide that it is easier to go its own way than to deliver what is clearly a better, more punctual service, with better public satisfaction and cheaper fares. Those are the benefits of going down the road that we have taken in Manchester, and I hope the Bill enables other transport authorities to partake of it.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I beg the Committee’s indulgence for a moment to respond to that magnificent expostulation of a classic Marxian view of the world. It is very hard to see how the noble Lord has found himself on the Liberal Democrat Benches when he believes that one has just to eliminate the profit for the surplus released to pay for everything you might want. The truth is that you need an awful lot of subsidy to run socially necessary services to places that have insufficient passengers to justify commercial services. Those subsidies are necessary, whether you release the modest profits that bus companies make or not.

Most of the country relies on private bus operators. Manchester is a special case because of the density of the population. We rely on private bus services and those companies need to flourish. The Government are not remotely thinking about their interests; they are an afterthought. It bodes very ill for the future of bus services in this country that the Government are so inconsiderate of them.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Goddard of Stockport]

2: Clause 4, page 3, line 2, at end insert “, and more than one day”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe the Government on whether there is no longer any minimum period from which the provisions proposed by a franchising authority may be mobilised.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 2 and support my noble friend Lady Brinton’s Amendment 6, as well as my further amendment in this group, Amendment 12. I am seeking to probe the Government with my amendment as to whether there is no longer a minimum period from which the provisions proposed by a franchising authority may be mobilised.

In layman’s terms, can a local authority vary bus routes quicker than in the provisions for the Bee Network of Greater Manchester? The original term under the law then was six months to vary a bus route. That caused real difficulties for Greater Manchester when it was ready to implement new routes connecting communities, new rural routes, and much needed direct bus routes to, for instance, the specialist cancer hospital in Manchester, The Christie, and Wythenshawe Hospital. This legislation would not allow that to happen, and I seek clarity on whether the Government have acted to remove that anomaly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I support my noble friend Lord Bradshaw. That is part of what we have done with the Bee Network in Manchester. We now have park-and-rides in parts of the borough where you can park your car all day and the bus comes and takes you straight down the very busy routes. We have increased bus lanes and camera alterations mean that as the bus arrives, traffic lights respond to it. It is that certainty, especially for people going to hospital and other places, that they know they can get there if they leave the car, perhaps a mile or a mile and a half away. It stops congestion at peak times throughout the borough. It is that foresight that local authorities have to embrace.

It is a good idea that if money comes from the Government, it comes with a proviso that you are providing evidence that you can reduce traffic and increase productivity by moving people from A to B without, as my noble friend Lady Pinnock said, waiting hours and hours for a bus that could eventually cost you your job. I fully support my noble friend’s amendment.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to four amendments in this group, Amendments 30, 31, 32 and 69, although, again, I will speak to them out of numerical order. This week I stand down as chairman of the Built Environment Select Committee, and this morning I chaired my last meeting. It is quite curious that somebody very kindly gave me as a memento and a keepsake an original edition of the government-commissioned report, largely written by Colin Buchanan, Traffic in Towns. It warned that traffic would clog up towns and get in the way and strongly suggested that measures should be introduced. The interesting thing, perhaps, is that the report was published in 1963, 60 years ago. It was a very influential report, but obviously not influential enough if we are still, essentially, making the same claim today. It is possible that there is a political explanation of why the measures that Traffic in Towns proposed have never been implemented as fully as might be wished.

Avanti West Coast

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I will have to write to the noble Lord about the amount of Delay Repay. I have statistics here about the number of trains on time and the number of trains cancelled. Although the number of trains being cancelled has been reducing, it is still far too high. Passengers dislike cancelled trains even more than they dislike them being later than in the timetable. I will write to him and put a copy of that letter in the Library. However, I think that the evidence of Delay Repay is the same as the evidence of the performance statistics—that the performance is just not good enough.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, Avanti has a simple objective in life: to supply three hours of train from Manchester to London. It is not complicated. It is a straight line. I will give a snapshot of this weekend. On Friday morning, the 8.43, a peak-time train, was cancelled with 20 minutes’ notice. On Saturday, five trains were cancelled due to a lack of staff or extra maintenance being required on trains. This morning, the 8.43, a peak-time train, was again cancelled. Five more trains back to Manchester were cancelled this afternoon. It is utterly unacceptable. I feel for the staff, who try to give us a good service every day on the up and down journey, but the management is lamentable. If you gave Avanti a local pub in London with a 24-hour licence, free beer and free food, it would still not make a profit. It is astonishing. I am lost for words.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[A noble Lord]

He is not.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I am rarely lost for words. Seriously, the customers are at the heart of this, day in, day out, with children, having the service that the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, has described. It is unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will take cognisance of what is going on. This is nothing to do with the weather, strikes or lines. This is incompetent management.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is clearly not lost for words. However, it is not within my gift to award free tenancies of public houses in London—probably wisely. A lot of what he says is right, and I will reflect on that with the Avanti management on Friday. My only cautionary note is that the effect of the storms on Friday and Saturday has led to significant disruption to most of the railway in northern England and certainly in Scotland. I have some sympathy with train operators in those circumstances, because there are occasions on which their staff cannot get to work simply because of the effects of the wind and associated damage. One should therefore be a bit careful. As a former operator of public transport, I know that it is sometimes difficult to get the right staff in the right place at the right time, when those circumstances happen. When they do not happen, however, you would expect train operators such as Avanti to have sufficient staff to be able to resource the service and have some reserve of resilience to keep it going in difficult circumstances. I sympathise entirely with what the noble Lord says.

High-speed Rail Services: West Coast Main Line

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, it is this side. I have been waiting for a train for 20 minutes.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for asking the first friendly Question on railways in the almost 10 years that I have been in this House. He hits the nail on the head. What matters is capacity; this was never about speed. Many times, you get on a train at Euston and the train manager says, “If we don’t leave in two minutes, we’ll be behind the slow train to Milton Keynes or Watford”, and, similarly, from Crewe. Will the Minister liaise with the elected mayors of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham and keep trying to work with them? They are the people who understand more about the need to move people around for business, pleasure, leisure and life opportunities.

Also, in the spirit of glasnost, can the Minister keep this House involved in future progress? As the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, just said, the money must come from somewhere. It has been found for the pay offer for the rail drivers. Perhaps it can now be found for the public who travel on those trains.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Of course the combined authority mayors have a very important part to play in determining the rail services in their areas. This Government are absolutely committed to discussing with them, on the capacity of the railway, the balance between long-distance travel and travel needed within those areas to create growth, jobs and housing. On future progress, the Government must review the railway as a whole. It is a network. As we do so, no doubt we will be asked questions about it and this House will be fully involved.