Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I join other Members of the House in remembering Lady Randerson. It was with shock and sorrow that I learned of her passing at the weekend. I was fortunate enough to work with her on numerous Bills over the past decade and it was a privilege to be able to call her a colleague.

As this is the first time I have legislated with the Minister, I put on the record my thanks to him for everything he did to make the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games such a success. Transport was critical to the success of the Games. You had only to look at all the media coverage from the moment we won the bid to see that journalists believed that transport would ruin the experience of London 2012. It did not, and, more than that, it was one of the most successful Olympic and Paralympic Games from a transport perspective, and the Minister can take so much credit for that in the team he led at the time. Again, from my perspective, it was a privilege and a pleasure to work with him.

Turning to the Bill, I would like to talk about inclusion and accessibility. As currently drafted, the Bill leaves Clause 22 to do more than heavy lifting in this respect. I intend, with colleagues in Committee and on Report, to do my best to put a lot more power into Clause 22 to enable the task it has at hand.

I would like to talk about the core principle of inclusive by design. What does this mean? It is simple: from the first moment of conception of a service, product, vehicle, computer program or whatever it is, the needs of every potential user are taken into account, so that when that product or service lands, everybody in our society and our community can avail themselves of that good or service. When it comes to buses, much excellent work has already been undertaken, not least through audio-visual announcements and prompts—a clear example of something good and enabling for disabled people that also, as is always the case, benefits all people. For example, an international traveller in London or somebody not from a particular area benefits from those AV announcements. It was an honour to launch the Manchester talking buses almost a decade ago. We have great provision in London but, as has already been rightly mentioned around the House, we should always be conscious and cognisant of the situation right across the country, not least in our rural communities.

Those are the buses, and there is still much work to be done. What is the purpose in making buses accessible if accessing the bus itself is made unreasonably difficult and potentially impossible? This brings me to the whole question of so-called floating bus stops. What are floating bus stops? They are not bus stops at all, as you would know them. They are, if you will, pieces of foundation separated completely from the pavement by a cycle lane, rendering that potentially accessible bus completely inaccessible to board or alight. In reality, floating bus stops are not a great creation or a great enabler of transport and mobility across our society. They are a planning folly, an overly simplistic solution to resolving competing transport needs, inevitably resulting in performance and outcomes that are anything but inclusive by design.

As has already been rightly mentioned, buses can often be a lifeline, providing social as well as actual mobility and economic opportunities, enabling people into the labour market or to go to medical appointments —a bus can potentially play a part in any aspect of our society or economic activity. So-called floating bus stops completely sever that lifeline. Can the Minister explain the point in making buses accessible if it is nigh on impossible for huge swathes of the population to access those buses? Will the Government commit to a moratorium on all new so-called floating bus stops until there has been a clear review of all existing provisions—a key piece of research right across the country where all these floating bus stops have been installed—and a piece of work to set out the retrofitting of all those so-called floating bus stops to bring them back to inclusive by design, on a timeline that does not leave huge swathes of our population excluded from the public realm?

I have spent my life trying to enable buildings, the public realm and services to be accessible if they have not been designed as such—for example, the many buildings designed hundreds of years ago, when people had no sense of inclusion or accessibility. This very building in which we are debating is now pretty accessible, as is the 15th-century college where I studied, as a result of interventions. So much more frustrating is when something previously accessible and inclusive is made not so for the want of having in place the thinking that considers all members of our communities and society, which is ultimately all that “inclusive by design” is: just being considerate of everybody in our communities. I propose a moratorium on all new floating bus stops, a review into all existing sites and retrofitting all of them on a reasonable timeline. Does the Minister agree that a cardinal principle of any bus stop is that you can access the bus and alight directly on to the kerbside?

In conclusion, we do not yet have public transport in this country. We have transport accessible for some of the people, some of the time, but not if you are blind, a disabled person, an older person, someone with young children in a pram, or indeed someone who just does not want to have to run the gauntlet of a live cycle lane, with no assistance provided for them. We have transport for some of the people, some of the time. Can the Minister tell us when the Government will be able to say we have public transport “inclusive by design, accessible by all”? Now that would be something well worth the prefix “public” transport.