Baroness Mallalieu
Main Page: Baroness Mallalieu (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Mallalieu's debates with the Department for Transport
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, we believe that local authorities have a significant role to play in ensuring that we protect rural bus services. To that extent, local authorities receive £43 million from BSOG, and in September 2019 we announced a further £30 million of local authority funding. Now we need to ensure that local authorities step up and support the more vulnerable services.
My Lords, in April last year the Lords Select Committee on the Rural Economy was told about the spiral of decline in both the funding and provision of rural public transport. It recommended that the Government should review the different funding schemes, aiming to put them together in a single investment pot in each area, and then let local people develop integrated, demand-led, case-based systems. Has anything been done?
As I mentioned, the Government are working extremely hard on the national bus strategy. The sort of proposals that the noble Baroness outlined are the sort of things that we are looking at. It is very much time for local accountability for local bus services, taking into account the needs of the local community.