Bus Services Bill [Lords]

Andy McDonald Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 27th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

I will pick up where the Minister left off and thank everyone who has contributed to the Bill, especially my hon. Friends who served on the Public Bill Committee, and the officials. I pay tribute to the wonderful work of the Transport Committee and everything it has done on this matter. I also thank hon. Members’ staff for their efforts, particularly Juliet Eales, who is soon to leave the shadow Transport team, but whose contributions have been invaluable throughout the passage of the Bill.

The Bill is ultimately underlined by broad consensus, which has been reflected in the generally cordial spirit of our debates. At its heart, the Bill offers local authorities the opportunity to improve the way in which buses are run in their areas, should they choose to take it. We have fought for this over many years—first, 17 years ago through legislation that failed to make the impact we had hoped, and then from the Opposition Benches for seven years. Since 2010, we have sadly heard, time and again, of bus routes axed, constituents campaigning hard to keep their vital local bus service, and disabled people, jobseekers and students unable to afford the rocketing cost of travel. We have heard these issues, and we have fought for a revision of the bus market to give local areas the power and flexibility to control their bus services as local circumstances best allow.

Although the Bill is not perfect and is certainly not the silver bullet to fix the bus system across the whole country, there is much to be positive about. Mayoral combined authorities will now be able to unlock powers to regulate their bus services, increasing parity between areas such as Greater Manchester and London. We have fought to ensure that those powers can be accessed without delay, and that the process for bringing in those powers will be clear and free from hidden barriers. We had hoped that all areas of the country, whether they have an elected mayor or not, would have access to those powers, but we will have to continue that argument another day.

The Bill provides new partnership options to local authorities for working alongside bus operators. We hope that local authorities will be encouraged to use these new tools to improve journey times and vehicle standards, and consequently to reduce congestion—huge environmental and health issues that affect us all. The Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations requiring buses providing local services to have in place audio-visual information systems. We are so pleased that the Government included this provision following strong pressure from Labour in the other place, and an excellent campaign from Guide Dogs. That measure could make a real difference to people’s lives.

What is missing? Stronger employment protections, clearer accessibility provisions and bus safety improvements. We fought for those and we won the arguments, but we lost the votes. That is the tragedy of being in opposition. The Bill could have been better, and we were disappointed by the lack of movement from the Government in these areas. The Bill is not perfect, but it will go some way to reversing the damage of deregulation that we have fought to fix for three decades. Going some way to reversing that damage is better than going no way at all. For that reason, and on behalf of all those constituents waiting at bus stops right now, we will support the Bill on Third Reading.