Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Alex Mayer Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I rise to support amendments that will serve to ensure the most vulnerable and isolated people in our communities are not cut off from employment, health services, education and leisure. I will start with new clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon), who has just returned to the Chamber. That new clause would remove the start time from the use of disabled bus passes. I must declare an interest, as my own son George has one of those passes. It is a crucial element of helping young people with disabilities to gain their independence, and for teenagers and young adults with additional needs, it is a far more cost-effective option for accessing college and school than providing costly and isolating taxis.

The bus pass that George and many of his classmates hold cannot be used on the way to school—in our case, that is two buses and two fares—but can be used on the return journey. While that causes frustration to parents such as me, for others, it is completely unaffordable. It forces many of them to use the offered council taxis, which are crippling councils. For those who are able to drive, blue badges are not time-restricted; why should those on a bus pass be discriminated against? We know that people with disabilities are less likely to be in employment, so anything that reduces barriers to work should be grasped by this Government. When this issue was raised in an Adjournment debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, the Minister pointed to the cost, but as the proposal would affect only disabled bus passes and not the whole concessionary bus pass scheme, it would apply to only 10% of passes, so the cost is fairly low.

I turn to Liberal Democrat new clauses 7 and 16, as well as new clause 36, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello), which relate to young people. The very first motion I put to my party conference, back in 2014, proposed extending discounted bus fares for young people. That policy made it into the following Lib Dem manifesto, and has remained in some form ever since. I cited a case then that applies now: that of a young person from Bere Regis who secured an apprenticeship in Bournemouth. They were no longer eligible for a free bus pass to access the college course, because for some reason, when the age of participation was increased, the age of bus travel was not. They had to take several buses each day to access their job. The cost of doing so took up such a large proportion of their income, and the service to their village was so poor, that they had to give up their apprenticeship.

If we are to make bus services sustainable into the future, they need to be a genuine choice for young people: an alternative to buying a car or a motorbike. If we are to deal with congestion and air quality and reach our net zero targets, we need public transport to be a real option for everyone. Achieving long-term change typically starts with young people. It makes sense—young people are familiar with using buses for school, so extending discounts so that they have them available as they start in the world of work or higher education is most likely to deliver the long-term change that we need. Students from the Purbeck school and Magna academy have all written to me confused about why they were not eligible for discounted bus fares, even though they were now expected to stay at school. This policy feels like a clear oversight from a previous Government, and one that could be easily fixed by this Government.

I also support my neighbouring MP, the hon. Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan), who has proposed a cap extension for school services. Not extending the cap to those services is incredibly unfair. I have also been lobbied on the issue, particularly by families living in Merley, who are just about within the three-mile window.

During my village tour in the summer—whether I was in Bere Regis, Gaunt’s Common, Shapwick or Hinton Martell—the No. 1 issue that came up was buses. Communities that are cut off from bus services cannot thrive, so I welcome amendments 6, 7, 28 and 29 and new clauses 4 and 15, which would ensure that such communities are considered and—whether it be via commercial services or community minibuses—that small villages are not cut off. It seems ironic that British people always use the phrase, “You wait for a bus and then two come along at once.” For thousands of my constituents in Mid Dorset and North Poole villages, just one every so often would be nice.

[Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)]

My amendment 66 and new clause 46 are not intended to change Government policy, nor to bind the hands of locally elected mayors or transport authorities—quite the opposite. Amendment 66, which my hon Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), the Chair of the Transport Committee, talked about some considerable time ago, would require local transport authorities to set out a clear, transparent formula for calculating whether a service is socially necessary and then to use that formula in deciding how funding is allocated. That reflects recommendation 53 in the Transport Committee’s “Buses connecting communities” report.