Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, having attached my name to Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, I will speak briefly while noting my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has overwhelmingly made the case for this, but I want to reflect on a number of things. She referred to the importance of reliability, and I can share her reflections on how rare that is. I was in Gloucester on Friday with Learn with the Lords and I waited for a bus—and it turned up at the time it was supposed to. I was quite shocked. It is such a rare occurrence, particularly when you are in a town that you do not know and you hope to rely on the timetable but you have no idea whether it is going to work. We cannot continue to have that situation.

Of course, that is an issue for visitors and for tourism but, overwhelmingly, it is an issue for local people. It is about reliability. I know of many people who have not been able to take jobs. We are greatly concerned at the moment about the shortage of labour supply in some areas, but you cannot take a job if you are not sure whether there is a bus or that the bus is not going to turn up reliably. You tell your employer, day after day, “Well yes, I was at the bus stop at the right time, but the bus did not turn up”. That is simply not a sustainable position.

On the idea of having local control, buses are a public service. They are essential to the operation of our communities. They should be controlled and run by local hands for the public good, not for private profit. There is no doubt. I do not believe that anyone can get up and say that the situation we have now, with buses being run for private profit, has been anything but a disaster. It is time to give back and—dare I borrow a phrase?—allow local communities to take back control of their bus services.

I can certainly assure the House that the Greens are firmly behind this amendment. I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, to push it through if we do not get a strong response from the Minister because I think that, were we to hold a referendum—dare I use that word?—across the country, we would get an overwhelming win for this amendment to the levelling up Bill.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to state our strong support on these Benches for this amendment; indeed, had I been confident in advance that I was going to be able to be here to speak this afternoon, I would have added my name to it.

In 2017, I put down a similar amendment to what was then the Bus Services Bill. The similar issue was one that we raised from these Benches in Committee. This levelling up Bill gives us an opportunity to halt and reverse the decline in bus services outside London, which has been evidenced since the so-called deregulation of bus services in the 1980s. I will not repeat the points made by noble Baronesses, but it is clear to us all that urgent and radical action is needed to stem the crisis.

The problem in 2017 with the Bus Services Act was that the Government could not bring themselves to concede that deregulation had played a key role in the decline of bus services. The Act allowed franchising and other forms of additional control for local authorities but only for larger authorities; it did not trust smaller authorities to do this. With support, there is no reason why they should not be able to do this. Further, the Act did not allow local authorities to set up their own bus companies, which is totally contrary to the evidence. Some of the very best bus companies in Britain are those heritage bus companies that are still owned and run by local authorities.

Let me give one example of the sort of thing that might happen if local authorities had this power. If a local authority of modest size finds that its local commercial company is going to cut the vital bus services that enable links between the town centre and the local further education college, it might set up its own bus company specifically to enable young people going to that college, as well as shoppers going into the next town, to use those services—it does not always have to be on an enormous scale. Who understands better than the local council what will work in local neighbourhoods? The local council is the organisation that understands local traffic patterns, the best routes, where to find most people with no access to a car and so on. If we truly want to level up, we have to improve bus services, which are disproportionately used by the oldest, the youngest and the poorest in our society, in order to enable them to access work, education, health and other vital social services. I support the amendment.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, for introducing her amendment. I am happy to say that the sentiment behind it is one with which we agree. What is more, the kind of powers that the noble Baroness is seeking already exist.

All local authorities are required to improve their local bus services through the delivery of a bus service improvement plan, BSIP, to qualify for government funding. Local authorities must decide whether to deliver improvements on the ground via a statutory enhanced partnership with their local bus operators or to pursue a franchising assessment that would allow them to operate their buses through local service contracts, in the same way that Transport for London operates buses in the capital. The Transport Act 2000, brought in by the last Labour Government, provides automatic access to franchising powers for all mayoral combined authorities in England.