Avanti Trains

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Snape]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they next expect to meet Avanti Trains to discuss payments made to the company under the service quality regime.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)]

My Lords, officials regularly meet Avanti to discuss its performance against service quality regime targets and how it will make improvements for passengers and to the customer experience. To date, no payments have been made to Avanti under the service quality regime. The evaluation to determine the first service quality regime performance fee for April to October 2023 is currently under way.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that, at a recent internal meeting at Avanti trains, various slides were produced for its management? I have some of them with me at the moment and I shall quote from them. Managers joked about receiving “free money” from the Government and performance-related payments being

“too good to be true”.

The presentation went on to say that the Department for Transport supports the firm and added:

“And here’s the fantastic thing!—if we achieve those figures”—


that is, the Government’s punctuality figures—

“they pay us some more money—which is ours to keep—in the form of a performance-based fee!!”

Does the Minister accept that this is a situation where the Treasury takes the revenue, the passengers take the strain and the directors take a bonus for providing the worst train service in the UK? This is not a policy; it is lunacy.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

As I referred to in my opening response, no payments have been made to Avanti under the service quality regime thus far. The department considers the comments from the leak to be a very serious issue, and expects the highest standards of culture and leadership from Avanti’s operators and senior management. We are extremely disappointed by the tone expressed in the leaked presentation. Officials have met their counterparts at First Rail Holdings, Avanti’s parent company, and spoken to the managing director to convey the seriousness of this issue. The Rail Minister has also met the chief executive of FirstGroup.

East Coast Main Line

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

A lot of these changes to the trans-Pennine route are part of the Making Journeys Better plan, outlining how TransPennine Express under DfT OLR Holdings will work to make things better. Having completed an in-depth review of the business, these services are expected to be restored from December 2024. I will have to come back to my noble friend on his question about the railway station.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the problems of the east coast main line, important though they may be, pale into insignificance for those of us who have the misfortune to use the west coast main line? Given the fact that Avanti trains’ punctuality levels in the last six months of 2023 plumbed the depths of 43.5%—the worst in railway history, as far as I can ascertain—can he tell the House what those improvements outlined by the Secretary of State were before it was given another nine years of inflicting misery on the rest of us?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

As the noble Lord knows, the department awarded a new National Rail contract to First Trenitalia to continue operating the west coast partnership in September 2023. The decision to award the contract to it was contingent on the operator continuing to win back the confidence of passengers. The Rail Minister and officials have met regularly with First Group and Avanti’s senior management to understand the challenges and hold them to account for issues within their control. In fact, I understand that the Rail Minister met with them only this month.

Private Crossings (Signs and Barriers) Regulations 2023

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest which is not in the register of interests, in that I am a patron of Avon Valley Railway, and the questions being debated this afternoon may well apply in the case of Avon Valley. I want to refer to the points the noble Lord has made and their potential implications elsewhere.

Noble Lords will have seen that I have an Oral Question tabled for 8 February on traffic marshals and the backwards and forwards crossings on this estate. One of my many Written Questions has been about trying to establish what alternatives are available, other than these costly traffic marshals, to mitigate the risk of pedestrians crossing where cars are moving at less than 5 mph. I noted the speeds that the noble Lord referred to and that we are talking here about a much lesser speed. When I queried the cost of the traffic marshals—remember, this is going to run for several years—I was told that the annual cost of a traffic marshal was £65,600 a year. A four-year programme means that we are talking not far short of a quarter of a million pounds. I then asked about the cost of the traffic marshal supervisor and was told that it was £91,700 a year. I have not yet asked what the cost will be of the manager of the traffic marshal supervisor and the like.

I will be very interested to see the costs in relation to these signs. I have been told that there are no alternatives to these traffic marshals, yet, as the noble Lord says, there are 35 pages of guidance. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the options identified in those 35 pages may well be available to use on this estate, and might cost substantially less than the figures I have been given for what we are spending.

I do not necessarily want my noble friend the Minister to answer my observations today, but I am just recording that I have an interest in the costs, which have implications for matters I will be pursuing on another occasion.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Berkeley in his objective. It seems to me, as I suspect it does to other noble Lords taking part in this debate, that this is a typical example, if I may say so, of departmental overkill. For some reason, the regulations, which cover the national railways separately, are to be paid out of Network Rail’s budget. That will be taken care of, presumably, in the grants made to that organisation. But despite representations being made by the heritage railways sector, the regulations are now to apply to every farm track, crossing and so on across the country, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hayward.

These are not matters of minor expense so far as the heritage railway business is concerned. Perhaps I should rephrase that: most of these railways are not businesses, because they are run largely by volunteers. The Department for Transport consulted the HRA and was warned about the total cost of these regulations, but it went ahead anyway. The department’s own estimate of the cost is £1.5 million to £3 million. That is a substantial amount for such organisations, which, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley said, are hardly profitable under the present circumstances. Indeed, the future of some of them is under direct threat.

As my noble friend indicated, crossings, whether on the mainline railway or the heritage railway, are there to protect not the railway traveller but the motorist from the consequences of their own folly—and sometimes not particularly successfully so. It appears that a minority of motorists is prepared to ignore railway crossing signs. In those circumstances, the road network surely ought to make a proper contribution, rather than it being left to the railway industry the whole time, particularly given that, as I and my noble friend have indicated, the lower speeds of heritage railways, which are restricted to 25 mph, make the likely dangers considerably less than on the mainline railway.

I do not expect a direct reply from the Minister today, but I ask him either to write to me or to set out in the Official Report the duties of the ORR as far as the road network is concerned. It appears to be only too ready to intervene on railway safety; indeed, the last time I met the ORR, it proposed an increase in railway freight rates in a particular area of this country because, it said, the railway industry was charging less than it should. As far as I am aware, it does not intervene in—how does one diplomatically put it?—the rough and tumble of the lower end of the road haulage industry. Why, therefore, should it take such a deep interest in railway matters, which, in many cases, I do not consider it capable of doing? Will the Minister set out the ORR’s duties so far as the road network is concerned, allowing those of us who take an interest in these matters to compare the two and, in the interests of fairness, make future representations about the ORR’s involvement in the railway industry?

As the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, indicated, the extra signs that will be demanded under the regulations will apply to the smallest railway crossings. Again, this is really taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I would like to hear from the Minister how many accidents and fatalities he thinks this provision will impact, including the number of casualties that take place because of road users on little-used roads crossing heritage railway lines. Are we prepared to stand by as 1,500 people per year are killed on our roads? Without taking any great action, thousands more will be seriously injured, yet here we are inflicting these regulations on the heritage railway industry.

While £3 million might not be a lot for the Department for Transport, it could tip many of the smaller heritage railways over into bankruptcy. I hope that it is not too late for the Minister to think again. I plead with him and his department to look again at the activities of the ORR. It appears to be more concerned with intervening in matters in the railway industry, whether heritage or mainline, than with what happens to the road network—indeed, it does not show any concern for that at all.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the South Tynedale Railway. Earlier today, in my capacity as chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, I signed off on its response to the Government’s call for evidence on overregulation, which closed at 4 pm. I put it to the Minister that perhaps the best response to the close of consultation might be to withdraw this proposal and to come back with something that is a bit less mean-spirited and a bit more proportionate.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Passenger Railway Services) Regulations 2023

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am delighted to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, back to the Labour Front Bench, as I am sure the whole House does. I agree with everything he said, except to make the point, as I did with the previous Labour Front Bench speech, that it appears to be more of an argument for my fatal amendment than for a regret amendment. I also very much agree with him about the need to change the way in which our railways are run. If we bring them back into public hands and run them for public good, not private profit, that would be a very good foundation for resetting our industrial relations in the operation of our railways.

I am not going to repeat all the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I have one question for the Minister, raised by the TUC briefing and I have also seen it in other contexts. If there is a partial service running as required under the minimum service levels, we all know that there are likely to be significant overcrowding and safety issues. I am sure many Members of your Lordships’ House picked up this piece of paper and thought, “Well, I’d love some minimum service levels on the trains I ride on non-strike days”. We know how crowded trains can get when they are cancelled for other reasons. Can the Minister assure rail workers that they can continue to apply work-safe principles, and stop working if it is no longer safe for the trains to continue to run? It needs to be clear that they will not face legal consequences for making a safety decision. We do not want what are often not particularly well-paid or senior staff in a situation where they make decisions with the feeling that such consequences hang over their head. I beg to move.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, my criticism of the proposed legislation is a quite simple one: it will not work. I listened to the Minister who, I have to say, went through his brief faster than any train I have been on recently. It is not a new idea. It was considered by the Thatcher Government and rejected. It was considered by the Cameron Government and rejected. It will not work. The problem is that this has been put together by lawyers who have no concept of how the railway industry actually works, or how train crews are rostered and how people are laid down for their various duties. The rostering of train crews is done at local level. The management and the local district committee—the shop stewards, if you like—sit down at every timetable change in May and December to decide the future rosters. The trade union side will obviously not sit down and discuss rostering under this minimum service level. As for choosing the name “minimum service level”, what else have we had in the railway industry for some time but a minimum service level?

It is not just the Labour Party and the trade union movement that are against this. The Rail Safety and Standards Board has said that it has considerable reservations about rail safety in future. That is not an organisation that one would normally regard as particularly left wing in its outlook. What the Government are proposing will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What happens if a minimum service level driver is rostered and declines to pass through a picket line at a particular depot? Will the Minister prosecute the driver or the trade union of which he is a member? The chance of conflict because of this barmy legislation cannot be emphasised too much. I said earlier—I do not wish to detain the House—that it is not just the Labour Party against it. I commend the Minister to read a paper prepared by Nicholas Finney OBE for the Centre for Policy Studies, that well-known left-wing organisation. He attacked the whole concept because, like me, he says it will not work. Maybe he will be regarded as a destructive member of British society. He is, or was, the chairman of the Wantage Conservative association, so if someone like him feels that this legislation is impractical, the Minister really ought to look again.

I am almost speechless at the stupidity of the Government bringing forward this legislation. I repeat that it will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come, and I beseech the Minister even at this late hour to take some proper advice and not to make this into a lawyer’s dream.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I regard these regulations as even more inappropriate than the other sets of regulations that we have just discussed, and even more clearly designed just to provoke an adverse reaction from the workers concerned.

In the previous regulations, the Government relied on the argument that the workers concerned—border security staff and ambulance staff—provide an irreplaceable service. The same is not true of railways. If the trains are not running we can usually catch a bus instead, or maybe drive. Obviously rail strikes have an economic impact, but it is not of the same order as that caused by ambulance or border staff strikes. You take away the right to strike only in extreme circumstances, and these are not extreme circumstances.

The Transport Committee in the other House, which is chaired by a Conservative MP and has a Conservative majority, has criticised these regulations and the Government’s plans for the railways. It questioned whether those plans would do anything to improve relations with rail employees—I think we can more or less answer that question here. The committee questioned whether there might be unintended consequences, in that this could lead to other, more disruptive forms of industrial action, such as wildcat strikes. It also asked whether minimum service levels would lead to better service for customers than that already provided by train operating companies on strike days. It was deeply unimpressed by, and expressed its dissatisfaction with, the Government’s one-sentence answer to its suggestions.

Tomorrow, as the Minister will undoubtedly be aware, is strike day on Great Western Railway. As on previous strike days, we regular travellers are informed that a minimum one-hourly service will be provided between 7 am and 7 pm. In my experience, when the company says that a train will run at a particular time, it generally adheres to that timetable—which is not always what we get on our railways these days. So a minimum service is already being provided.

Another obvious concern is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, rail services are extremely complex, with major impacts of one part of the service on other parts of the service, and an obvious interaction with devolved services. Providing a safe minimum service level is therefore very complex. As the Transport Committee noted, the Government have not provided the necessary detail on how they will provide the safe level of service required. In particular, the operation of signal services is so specialised that the provisions will effectively mean that individual staff will have to be specified as being required to work, if a minimum service is to be provided. In other words, those staff will have the right to strike removed from them. In effect, they will lose their rights.

This is bad legislation, badly planned—and so far, as attempted by the Government, badly implemented. I am fairly certain that it will do absolutely nothing to improve either the services for rail passengers or the situation of our train operating companies, which are fighting to provide a reasonable service in difficult circumstances.

Birmingham Highways Infrastructure Private Finance Initiative

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Snape]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they expect to conclude the review of the 2010 funding agreement for Birmingham City Council’s Highways Infrastructure Private Finance Initiative; and whether they intend to honour the agreement to continue funding the PFI until 2035.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are currently considering the business case for a revised contract for Birmingham highways maintenance following the failure of Birmingham’s original PFI deal. Highways maintenance is a critical and statutory function for all local authorities and the Government will continue to support them to fulfil this function. A decision is expected imminently.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, while I am grateful for the response and it reflects great credit on the Minister—I congratulate him on his new appointment—this matter has been dragging on for many years. The original contract was signed in 2010. The Department for Transport supported the city council in the removal of the contractor in 2019, but when will the Government approve the full business case and pay up the £50 million a year which they committed to do when the original contract was signed back in 2010?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that supplementary. The Government recognise that the delay in reaching a decision is far from ideal and is causing challenges for the council. I am sure noble Lords will appreciate that this a big investment decision that needs to be looked at thoroughly. The Government want to make sure that they have looked at all options to support Birmingham City Council’s highways maintenance programme.

West Coast Main Line

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am content that the Avanti contract has gone through all the relevant processes. It has been structured such that there is an initial three-year period, which I think is right, to enable Avanti to provide the investment that is clearly needed. That investment is in driver training and rolling stock. I am sure many noble Lords have noticed the upgrade in Avanti trains when they have travelled on them recently; I find them very comfortable indeed. There is an ability after three years for the Government to give three months’ notice. Within that intervening period, senior officials from the Department for Transport will meet management on a weekly basis to make sure that the recovery plan and all the elements the new management has put in place are being followed.

There are also enormous incentives for Avanti to improve—£14.3 million-worth of incentives. That is what the performance-based fee is; if Avanti does not hit its targets, it will not get that fee. It is absolutely right that that is there, it will incentivise Avanti and we will work alongside it so that it can continue to improve its performance.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, would the Minister accept that I am one passenger on Avanti trains who is completely baffled by this decision? I do not wish to rain on the noble Baroness’s parade, but when you have been at the bottom of the league table for punctuality and cancellations for as long as Avanti trains has, the only way is up. Could the Minister tell the House which other train operating companies expressed an interest in this particular franchise? Is it the case—as I suspect—that none of them did, largely because most rail managers are fed up to the back teeth with the micromanagement by her department or, even more likely, by the Treasury?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Actually, this is exactly what this contract is trying to achieve. By giving a three-year horizon for Avanti management to properly plan, it will not be necessary to micromanage Avanti. The Department for Transport will continue to support it and, as I said in my opening Answer, the net advocacy scores show that customers are supportive of Avanti. I am sorry that the noble Lord is not, but the numbers speak for themselves—and these are customers speaking and not the Department for Transport.

High Speed 2

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for pointing out the enormous benefits that Birmingham is currently seeing. All across the route of phase 1, there are shovels in the ground, with 350 active construction sites and 29,500 workers. The focus is on delivering high-speed rail services between London and Birmingham.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister go further in acknowledging the common-sense view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin? Will she also reflect on the fact that, so far, almost a third of the around 140-mile line between London and Birmingham is either through tunnels or on viaducts? We are spending a vast amount of money trying to please people who oppose the project and who have opposed it right from the start. Is it not about time we took a leaf out of the book of the French railways? At the time they built their high-speed line across France, they said: “When we are draining the swamp, we do not consult the frogs”?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very interesting point. It is right—and this is not only for High Speed 2 but for many major infra- structure projects—that local interests can sometimes cause the cost of projects to increase. I need only mention, for example, Chesham and Amersham, where I think there is a Liberal Democrat Member—and they are deeply behind HS2, apart from any candidate who wins a by-election. Sometimes, to please certain groups of people, additional expense must be had, and sometimes that is absolutely valid. That is the difficulty with building major infrastructure. But the planning permission that goes into it and the DCO process—or in this case the hybrid Bills—have to reach the right balance, and sometimes one has to question whether it is in the right place.

Great British Railways

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Snape]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they intend to bring forward legislation to create Great British Railways and progress contractual reforms for train operators.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, we will progress legislation to establish Great British Railways when parliamentary time allows. New passenger service contracts will balance the right performance incentives with simple, commercially driven targets that will ensure a central role for the private sector in delivering for customers.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, the short response to that would be to ask why it has not been done before. The current subsidy to the railway industry is about three times more in real terms than it was to the much-maligned BR in the 1990s. Legislation to bring forward an organisation that will put together the disparate but essential parts of the railway industries, such as track and train, is long promised and long overdue. The present system pleases neither passengers nor staff.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am seeking a question in that comment. I can say that the number of passenger journeys is now significantly higher than ever it was under British Rail. Between January and March 2023, there were around 400 million journeys, which is an astonishing achievement. There are so many things that we can get on with when it comes to Great British Railways—just one example being the long-term strategy for rail. We have received hundreds of responses to the consultation for that, which we will be publishing later this year.

Trains: Wifi Provision for Passengers

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I would hope that my noble friend would have got the ticket in the wallet on her phone because she would have needed it to go through the station anyway. Free wifi will remain available at stations and as I say, no decisions have been taken. We have asked the train operating companies to prepare business cases.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, if the wifi is taken off our unreliable Avanti trains, how will I be able to let the Whips’ Office know that I will be missing a three-line Whip? Is this not another example of the pettifogging interference in the railway industry by civil servants, many of whom know nothing about it but love playing trains in their spare time? Is this not yet another example of those in her department who know the price of everything and the value of nothing?

Bus Funding

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Statement. She puts on a brave face, but it is a very sad picture on buses. Anyone who was out campaigning in the recent local elections will know that the poor state of bus services was at the top of people’s complaints about local things. When you explain to people that local authorities actually have little power over the buses in their area—of course, this should be put right—they are surprised by that lack of influence, but it does not stop them being worried about this.

I am pleased to see that the Government are looking beyond the end of the next month, at a longer-term funding plan. I am pleased to see that amounts of money are specified here, so we will be able to hold the Government accountable on how, where and how effectively this money is spent. But it is a lot less than we hoped— I remember the sentence in Bus Back Better about the aim that you would not need a bus timetable.

I have some specific questions about this, because it is important that it is used as well as possible. How much of the money specified in this announcement will be targeted at the rollout of zero-emission vehicles? The figures I looked at recently showed that, although there had been some progress in developing a zero-emission fleet, it was very variable from one part of the country to another and it was still a tiny fraction of the total fleet.

Also, I am pleased to see that the money in the new funding will be focused on communities that did not previously benefit from BSIP allocations. One of the criticisms we made was that those areas with the most vestigial—if I can put it that way—and smallest bus services were not in a position to apply for the funding, so the funding went to areas with better bus services. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain how the Government will ensure that the funding goes to those most disadvantaged communities. I use the word “disadvantaged” in relation to bus services.

I am very pleased to see that local authorities will be consulted as well as bus operators. The previous criticism I mentioned was that the new funding was going to be impossible to access for areas with very little in the way of bus services. If the Government are to spread it out more fairly, what will they do to enable those areas that no longer have the expertise in their local authorities to make the applications?

The Statement goes on to the issue of the £2 bus fare cap, which is good news. However, one of the problems with it is that, although one welcomes the take-up, it was very uneven from one area to another—some bus companies did not bother to take it up as an offer. What are the Government doing to learn from their experience so far? The Government are obviously keen to develop and use this further—that is laudable—but what are they doing to ensure that there is wider adoption, with more bus companies using it and more local authorities adopting it?

What analysis have the Government made about the people using the buses in the areas where the £2 bus fare was applied? There is anecdotal evidence about the numbers of people using it who were already using the buses anyway and are now getting cheaper fares. That is great for them, but one of the Government’s aims was to attract more people on to the buses. It would be useful to learn whether the Government have done any analysis to see what type of passenger this approach is attracting.

Finally, the beginning of the Statement says that the Government will come back to the issue of concessionary fares. There is no deep analysis in the Statement of how they will get more older people back on to the buses. They clearly left during the pandemic and have not returned in sufficient numbers. Personally, I find it very worrying that they are still not getting out and about.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Perhaps I might first respond to the noble Baronesses. I am sure that the noble Lord is desperate to come in; I await his question with interest.

I could have stood before your Lordships’ House today with the moon on a stick and the noble Baroness opposite would still not have been happy. The noble Baronesses have been calling for a long-term bus funding plan, and this is it. It is not in any way a cut to funding; you cannot cut emergency funding. That was emergency funding and then recovery funding; this is something different. This is more money than buses have had for a generation. It is never going to be enough—£500 million for buses is fantastic news, yet the noble Baroness could not bring herself to be even the slightest bit happy about what it will do for our bus services.

I have heard rumours of what Labour is going to do about powers for local transport authorities, but I do not really understand it, because local transport authorities already have the power to put bus services in place. I am sure that the noble Baroness knows that. Perhaps when these plans come out, they will be pretty much what we have now.

I need to explain the situation to the noble Baroness. There is £300 million in total—£160 million plus £140 million, so roughly half and half. Half will go to local transport authorities, and they will be able to decide which services to tender. They have the power; they have always had the power. Remember, a bus operator has to tell the local transport authority in a confidential period of 28 days before it notifies the traffic commissioners that it intends to take a route away. At that point, the local transport authority can put it out to tender. We have literally given them the money to do that, but the noble Baroness cannot welcome that.

I do not understand what the Labour Party is going to do or what more powers local transport authorities could possibly have, unless Labour wants to renationalise all the buses as well. Perhaps that is where the noble Baroness thinks things will end up. I look forward to hearing from the Labour Front Bench what its plans are because, at the moment, it is completely unclear. That goes to her comments about unfettered powers that bus operators have to slash routes. That is just not true. As I said, local transport authorities can tender them. If the worst comes to the worst and their enhanced partnership does not work—as the noble Baroness knows, they can get into an enhanced partnership, working with the operators and the local transport authority; there is lots of power in that relationship between the two, to flesh out what the network should look like—they can franchise, as in Manchester. It is up to them. They have the powers to do so. But again, apparently all the power sits with the bus operators. I think they would probably say that it does not.

I note what the noble Baroness says about public ownership of some of the bus companies, and the ones that are left are very good. I think Reading is very good and Brighton is very good, but of course there have been plenty that fell by the wayside because they were not very good. There has already been a massive weeding out of the wheat from the chaff when it comes to publicly owned bus operators, so I do not think that is the silver bullet either.

I turn to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who sounded a little bit more chipper about the funding—but, again, not wholly. If I am able to answer some of her questions, perhaps she will feel a bit more positive. The money that is going to the local transport authorities will be for places that missed out on BSIP funding the first time around or those that got very low per-capita spend. We feel that it was not quite fair, and we have more money, so they should have it. There is actually a list about where the money is going, and I will see if I can send that to all noble Lords who are speaking in today’s debate. That list will be very helpful. We have allocated 50% of the funding on tendered milage, weighted by metrics of deprivation and car ownership, and 50% on population, weighted by delivery confidence. That is how we did it. We have put in deprivation and car ownership, to make sure that it is going to places that need it most.

The noble Baroness talked about capability and capacity of local transport authorities. Again, when I was buses Minister, we focused enormously on this. We feel it is so important that they have the capability to build their own networks, which is why we gave them tens of millions of pounds of funding, specifically for developing the BSIPs. It is not the case that, if they did not have a good system and they did not have the capability and capacity, they necessarily did not get BSIP funding; we did give them the funding. There are councils that are run by other political parties to my own that choose not to spend a single penny on tendered services, and that is very disappointing.

We continue to provide capability and capacity funding to local transport authorities specifically so they can put their enhanced partnerships in place. I hope that that money and that capability and capacity funding will work together to help enhance and protect those vulnerable tendered services.

An evaluation of the £2 fare cap has been published today, so the noble Baroness might want to have a look at that. There are high levels of awareness, with seven in 10 survey respondents being aware of the scheme and one-third of them saying that they felt that the scheme was having a positive impact on their disposable income—all sorts of different things. It is too early to decide whether there is a change in patronage solely down to the fare. Obviously, you have to disaggregate other elements. Other factors may be involved as well but, again, we are keeping a really close eye on that. But, overall, I think that the Get Around for £2 scheme has been hugely positive. I am really pleased that we can talk about it and extend it for quite a long time.

I turn to the issue of zero-emission buses, which is absolutely critical. The Government remain committed to supporting the introduction of 4,000 zero-emission buses. Since February 2020, so far, an estimated 3,452 zero-emission buses have been funded across the UK. In this Parliament, we have awarded £345 million of dedicated funding for zero-emission buses in England. I am aware that the noble Baroness’s zero-emission bus award fell through because the operator was not willing to put up the amount—and that is entirely up to the operator. But that money will go back into the pot, and other operators in different parts of the country will be able to make use of that. We also understand that the award of the grant kicks off a process that necessarily has to go through public procurement rules and so on, and those things take time. It is the case that we have to award the contract, build the bus and get it on the road—so, yes, it will take some time for those particular buses to get on the road, but they are coming. That is a very positive thing, and it is also a very positive thing for our bus manufacturers.

I remain positive about zero-emission buses. I believe that the cost of the buses is falling and that, sometime soon, bus operators may actually choose zero-emission buses without government support, because we will see total cost of ownership about the same. So I think that things are moving in the right direction, and I really welcome that.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, as the former chairman of a major bus operator, I tell the Minister that any financial support for the bus industry is more than welcome. But her announcement today bears no resemblance to the promises made two Prime Ministers ago under the Bus Back Better project. The fact is that, no matter who runs the buses, the question of finance is always going to be there.

I address my remarks to my own Front Bench. There is an apparent belief that all we need to do to create a better bus service across this country is to give powers back to local authorities. Without proper finance, local authorities, which already struggle to provide the services that they have to provide now, will struggle even further.

Can I tell the Minister that the price of the average double-decker is currently around £250,000? A new electric bus costs around £400,000. The short-termism inherent in this package will not incentivise the bus industry to invest over the long term in fleets costing the sort of money that we are talking about here. Although the Minister made the best of a bad job, much of the finance that she has announced today is in fact short-term and not long-term. Without proper long-term financing, the bus industry will continue to struggle.

I hope that as somebody who helped set up what was a rather successful bus partnership between the private sector, in which I worked at the time, and the West Midlands Combined Authority I can say to the Minister, without causing any offence, that, again, finance was the key. We could get that sort of partnership and get successful bus services across the West Midlands provided that we got proper government support. So far, this package does not demonstrate proper long-term support for the bus industry. I have to say to the Minister —I repeat—that, welcome though it is, we need proper long-term planning if the bus industry is to invest properly in the vehicles of the future.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I have to remind noble Lords that this is not the only money the bus sector gets; there are many other streams that should be considered. I think there is just over £1 billion in concessions; there is the existing money, £260 million, from BSOG; and obviously there is some money in the block grant. All in all, we have to be realistic about what the bus sector is going to look like in the future. It will have to adjust to new travel patterns, but there is the combination of this new funding and the existing funding, which will stay in place, and we have committed to having conversations with the operators and local authorities about longer-term measures, which will include a reform of BSOG. I would not be surprised if that reform looked very carefully at emissions from buses. One could put that in place, although an element of BSOG is already based on zero-emission buses.

All in all, I am satisfied that the sector is getting the funding it needs, and we need to work as hard as we possibly can with the operators and local transport authorities to encourage people back to buses, including those who use concessionary fares. I believe that if we do that, if we use the capital spending from the BSIP effectively, and if we have bus lanes and bus priority in the right sorts of places to improve the passenger experience, that combination of input is really good. Sitting there and saying, “Just throw money at the problem” is not it. We have thrown money at the problem. We have carefully considered how much money it needs, and we believe that this is a good future for the bus service.