Buses: Funding

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

My hon. Friend is right about accessibility, and I am fully aware of the issues he has raises with Trimdon. On accessibility more broadly, he should be reassured that with audio-visual alerts on buses we really are rolling out those upgrades right across the country to make buses more accessible to as many people as practically possible. He is fully aware of the £163 million pledged to the north-east for the bus service improvement plan, and I am looking forward to working with him, particularly on the cash allocated to County Durham, to see how we can ensure that, in particular, those delisted rural former pit villages really get the services that they need so that opportunity is spread across our beautiful constituencies.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The reality, though, is that taxpayers today are paying much more than they have ever done for a smaller bus network. That is because bus operators have been allowed to play a failing system for far too long. I will give the Minister an example. The 375, which once ran in my constituency between Stockport and Ashton, was a marginally profit-making service operated by Stagecoach Manchester, but it played the system by splitting the route into two non-profit-making services and asked the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, as it was, for not one but two public subsidies. That, in the end, is what happened to save that service. When will he finally get to grips with the bus operators who play the system?