Bus Industry

Debate between Lord Snape and Lord Bradshaw

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. I do not have any financial interests to declare in these matters. I should point out that I chair the Bus Appeals Board, which is a purely voluntary post and I have over the years worked for both the National Express Group and First Group on the bus side.

The noble Lord started his speech by referring to the two important factors in running bus services being punctuality and reliability. Unlike him, I am not sure which piece of legislation he was referring to but I am sure that he would agree with me that these matters are largely the responsibility of highways authorities, outside passenger transport executive areas or passenger transport executives—the integrated transport authorities as we are now to know them—within our major cities. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will agree with me that punctuality and reliability do not depend on ownership of bus companies.

I find it depressing that people in my own party, in particular, continually call for reregulation although it is more than 25 years since buses were deregulated. Since then, we have had the back end of a Conservative Government, 13 years of a Labour Government and now two and a half years of a coalition Government, and the 1986 Act has not been repealed. We should make the best of what we have. In many parts of the country, not only are bus services thriving, there are lots of successes to point to without getting into arguments of ownership and reregulation.

I spent most of my working life in the bus industry, although that is a rather flattering description of someone who was chairman of a bus company. Many people who drove buses would not have regarded the chairman as being part of their working lives. But I did mix with them and held a PSV, as it was known at the time. In the West Midlands there has been a considerable number of successes in bus operations that have continued in recent years. Within the past year Centro and a passenger transport authority, or the ITA as it now is, and National Express, the predominant operator in the area, signed a ground-breaking agreement that commits the two organisations to working closely together to drive forward about £25 million worth of improvements for bus passengers across the West Midlands within two years. These commitments from both sides—certainly as far as National Express is concerned— include the introduction of more than 300 new, greener buses, improved onboard cleanliness, a smart card system similar to London’s Oyster card and upgrades to bus shelters and other waiting facilities. They also include more real-time information screening, which will be a great boon to anyone waiting for a bus, specially designed shelters and infrastructures, new passenger information systems, onboard announcements —on which I am not madly keen but they are obviously the thing of the future—improvements to the safety and security arrangements for passengers and the introduction of 40 hybrid electric buses to the region.

However, there is a lack of enforcement of the existing legislation, particularly in regard to bus lane provision. In London we are fortunate: there are lots of buses and most motorists know—they soon find out if they do not—that straying into a bus lane will be immediately followed by a minimum £60 fine. Why do we not have that level of enforcement throughout the country? I presume that is the part of the Act to which the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, referred.

[Lord Bradshaw]

Perhaps I may extend that. I am particularly concerned about yellow-box junctions and right turns, which are clogging the roads. Local authorities need to have the power to deal with moving traffic offences. They can film the offence but they cannot do anything about it.

[Lord Snape]

I am grateful for that clarification. I agree entirely with the noble Lord. Why are not the benefits that bus operators and passengers enjoy in London extended to the rest of the country? I hope that when the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, replies he will be able to give us some comfort on this matter. The greenest, most modern buses are not doing the job for which they are designed if they are stuck in traffic. We are not going to persuade people to get out of their cars and on to public transport if that bus is stuck in the same traffic jam as their own cars.

However, it is not all bad news. I hope the noble Earl and my noble friend on the Front Bench will acknowledge that one rarely hears mention of bus passengers in these debates. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, hazarded a guess that not many Ministers travel by bus. I suggest that many Members of your Lordships’ House do so, if only because most of us have reached the age where we get a financial benefit out of doing so.

If one were to ask bus passengers about the standard of service, one might be pleasantly surprised by the reaction. Passenger Focus recently commissioned a nationwide survey of various companies and sought the opinion of bus passengers. I will cite the Go Ahead group survey. I do not think it operates in my part of the world and I have never worked for it, so I cannot be accused of bias. Among more than 3,000 Go Ahead passengers consulted in the survey, there was an 86% satisfaction level. Would any Government of the day receive such satisfaction levels from the populace at large?

Go North-East, a subsidiary of Go Ahead, had an 88% satisfaction level. I mention this because Nexus, the ITA in the north-east, is, I understand, most anxious to introduce a quality contract. Under the terms of the quality contract the ITA will set both fares and standards of service. I do not know whether Nexus or anyone else has asked passengers in the north-east what they think, but if 88% are satisfied with the service currently provided, it is difficult to imagine that local authority involvement would lead to any greater satisfaction. I will be interested to hear the views of both Front Benches on that matter.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, I believe that we should express concern about the price of bus travel, particularly for young people and those seeking employment. All too often Ministers in the present Government—the Chancellor of the Exchequer immediately comes to mind—refer to the unemployed as though somehow it is their fault. When you talk to people who are unemployed—most of us who were in the other place have served the unemployed—the passion, commitment and desire for regular work inspires many of them. However, it is an expensive business to travel to interviews. Only last week a woman told me about going to two interviews here in this city, both of which were held early in the day. That meant she had to pay £10.77 to travel around London because she had to leave during the morning rush hour. Had the interviews been scheduled slightly later in the day, the cost would have been £7-something. For many in your Lordships’ House that £3 would not make much difference, but the unemployed have to decide how best to spend their benefits and it can make a considerable difference.

The Minister will tell me if I am wrong, but I understand that it is possible for people to claim the cost of travel to job interviews. I am told that it is an enormously bureaucratic matter to do so and that it is necessary to jump through all sorts of hoops. Surely the Department for Transport and the department for employment, whatever it is called these days, could sit down and provide some sort of travel voucher for the unemployed to use when they are seeking work. I realise that getting two departments under any Government to discuss financial allocations is the equivalent of the Korean peace talks at Pyongyang, which have lasted for over 50 years, but it ought to be possible to find a less bureaucratic and more humane system than what we have at present.

Unaccountably we have 90 minutes for this debate, but we have been told that we are limited to 10 minutes. Perhaps someone better versed in the rules of your Lordships’ House could explain that, since only four of us are participating. The noble Lord touched on other matters, particularly the distribution of the bus service operators grant. I do not think the Government are aware of the difference between running rural and urban services. The rural bus network is in grave danger of being decimated over the next few years if the changes to BSOG continue. It is an open secret that the Treasury has always regarded BSOG as a subsidy well worth cutting, and having reduced it in the 2011 Budget, there is an intention to actually abolish it before 2015. Such an abolition will lead to the complete decimation of bus services both urban and rural, but particularly in rural areas. It strikes me that the Government will be committing electoral suicide in many areas that are regarded as traditionally Conservative if BSOG is cut further.

I have now exhausted my time. There is some good news about bus service provision, and I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will avoid the view—not expressed by passengers—that the simple answer to any problems are quality contracts and reregulation. That is not the view of those who use the bus to get from A to B.