Bus Services Bill [Lords]

Ben Howlett Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

In a sense, the hon. Gentleman argues against himself. He complains about competition in those areas, but at the same time says that bus companies have been able to exploit monopoly positions. That is inconsistent. We will see whether the next Mayor of Manchester manages to demonstrate that he or she can do a better job than the private sector. That is the test. Let us see whether they can deliver that. If the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) is successful in his campaign, we will watch with interest.

This is not just about mayoral authorities but about authorities elsewhere. I want to be clear that, while we are open to plans from other authorities to take franchising powers, we will give them only if they can demonstrate that they can do a better job than the current one. A compelling case needs to be made before any other authority receives consent. The key point is that we have the point of accountability with the Mayor, who will have a legal duty to demonstrate an enhanced service, or a point of accountability in the Government, who likewise will judge whether a proposal will deliver that enhanced service.

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

One of the great successes in London was the introduction of smartcard ticketing, which increased the number of passengers on public transport. Will our excellent Conservative candidate for the West of England Mayor, Tim Bowles, be able to introduce smartcard ticketing using the Bill?

[Chris Grayling]

Smartcard ticketing is important, and the Bill should give the powers and flexibility to introduce it. I want not smartcard ticketing that links simply to one mode of transport, but integrated ticketing on a common platform, so people do not have to have a different card for every city. One of the good things we see is bus companies almost entirely using ITSO technology. The same technology is now used for smartcards on most of our railways, so we have the potential for interoperability and to make our transport system properly integrated.

Ninety per cent. of buses operating local services in England are fitted with smart ticketing. Major operators have committed to introducing contactless payment on all their buses by 2022, but the vast majority of bus fares are still payed in cash. Some operators even require exactly the right change. In response to my hon. Friend’s point, we are updating in the Bill the existing powers to establish multi-operator ticketing schemes to recognise that latest technology. The Bill will allow a local authority to require all operators within its area to sell and accept a particular multi-operator smartcard. Under the powers, local authorities will not be able to set the price of the products—they cannot fix the fares, but will be able to determine the technology, which is important in ensuring that we get integration locally.

That might be enough to improve services for passengers in some areas, but if not, the Bill offers further options. For example, new enhanced partnership schemes enable greater integration of ticketing. They allow authorities and operators not only to agree the price of multi-operator tickets, but to set common ticket zones or concessions and to join other modes, with their agreement, to offer an integrated ticket.

I will pick up briefly on the open data point made by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh). I want to make it simpler for passengers to plan their journey and to know when their bus will arrive and how much it will cost. She is absolutely right that there is enormous variability across England, and it is essential that that changes. Where the service is good, passengers have access to real-time information, but where it is not good, they do not, and it is important that the former becomes universal. The open data provisions in the Bill are designed to allow public transport app providers, such as Citymapper and Traveline, among others, to develop a new generation of products that will do precisely that.

The Bill will also introduce new arrangements for local authorities and bus operators to work together in partnership. Partnerships between bus operators and local authorities appear to be working well in some areas and passengers are happy. Liverpool, for example, the city of origin of the right hon. Member for Leigh, the Labour mayoral candidate in Manchester—an unusual achievement, if I might say so—has developed strong partnerships with the private sector. It might be something that the next Mayor of Manchester, Conservative Councillor—[Interruption]—Sean Anstee, will decide to introduce when he beats the right hon. Gentleman to the post. [Hon. Members: “He didn’t know his name!”] The note is about something completely different.

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[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). As ever, he is an eloquent campaigner for his constituents. I admit that I am excited about this Bill and have been excited for a long time, largely because of the size of my inbox and the number of times I have had to visit the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), about contact from constituents on bus matters or about bus regulation. I look forward to hearing from him about my hobbyhorse: cycle racks on the front of buses, rather than on the back, of which I know he is a staunch advocate.

I support the Bill, which will provide local authorities, including Bath & North East Somerset Council, with the means to improve local bus services. In a city such as Bath, where air pollution is an increasing problem, anything that makes it easier and more convenient for my constituents to travel by bus, or for people from outside Bath to travel in on a bus, should be encouraged. I am therefore pleased that the Government support local bus services and continue to invest in greener transport. I recently unveiled First Bus’s eight new hybrid double-decker buses, which do not break down on some of the steepest hills going up to Bath’s park and ride and up to the university. They will have a huge impact on air quality across my city and in other parts of the authority area.

The bus industry offers significant potential to improve our environment and the way we travel to and from work or relax at the weekend. Given the number of tourists who visit my constituency and those of other hon. Members, it is important to think about buses as not just a local transport issue, but an economic issue that offers opportunities to grow jobs and utilise economies of scale. Creating a financially sustainable economy of scale will help to drive down costs for passengers, which has ultimately been a great success in London. Areas such as Brighton, for example, have also been able to create economies of scale, and passenger numbers have increased and prices have been driven down as a result.

When he is the new Mayor of the west of England, the great Tim Bowles will hopefully be able to work with our local authorities to introduce a smartcard ticketing system in an economy-of-scale franchise—that is to be confirmed—which ultimately helps to deliver real benefits to passengers across the area. However, local authorities need to be able to make changes that help to address their residents’ needs, as local authorities are better aware than anyone else of what will improve the local provision of those services.

The Bill ensures that local authorities will be able to set required standards of service from bus providers, including on ticketing and frequency of services, both of which are an issue in my constituency, where we have multiple bus providers with multiple ticketing options. I have listened to Members on both sides of the House, and unfortunately our system is not the best in the country. It is a good system—do not get me wrong—but it can definitely be improved. We have heard the examples of Nottingham, Greater Manchester and, particularly, London, and hopefully we will be able to share their best practice in Bath.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend concede that those places are all major conurbations? Part of the Bill’s flexibility, which we all welcome, is that it also works for rural areas and even small market towns. The Westley route in my town is currently under threat due to lack of capacity.

[Ben Howlett]

My hon. Friend is a stalwart campaigner for rural bus services, particularly in Bury St Edmunds. I know the area quite well from when I was growing up.

My area of the west of England is a mixture of Bristol, smaller cities and towns such as Bath, Thornbury and Yate, and rural areas. We have decided that, by increasing the scale, a franchising model would work in our area, because we would be able to integrate all bus services across a larger area and increase the economies of scale. Given the financial pressures that all local authorities are under, we would be able to ensure that the efficiencies are spread over a larger area. We would probably be able to subsidise many more of the routes that are already in existence and pass the benefits down to the passenger by introducing smartcard ticketing. Enabling more people to use the service would hopefully mean that prices ultimately fall. That change could happen because of the Bill.

Smartcard ticketing would bring benefits to my constituents, who use a variety of transport, often across authority borders. My constituents would definitely be more encouraged to rely on public transport for journeys from Bath to Bristol if they needed only one ticket, or ticket type, for the bus to the station, for the train to Bristol and then for the bus from Bristol to their place of work. An integrated system would be the holistic opportunity that we have been missing for a long time.

I recognise what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport said earlier about doing this on not just a regional basis but a national basis so that we can see larger economies of scale and larger interconnectivity between different devolved areas, particularly between the west of England and the west midlands.

Smartcards and contactless payments have made a dramatic difference to way that Londoners travel, and it is about time that that benefit is spread outside the south-east. The changes are likely to see an uplift in the use of public transport and, ultimately, an increase in the revenue that local authorities receive from it, covering any initial cost of installing the new systems.

I am pleased to see provisions in the Bill to require bus operators to provide accessible information to passengers. Many of my constituents have made representations to me in support of Guide Dogs talking buses campaign, which asks for audio-visual equipment to be installed on all buses to ensure that more people, no matter whether they have a disability, can rely on buses with confidence. For people with a visual impairment, getting on a bus is one of the most difficult things, and I know that the Minister has been working hard on this area, as has the entire Department. The Bill takes this issue into consideration, which is incredibly welcome. Without this equipment, passengers with sight loss have to ask the bus driver to tell them when to get off and they run the risk of missing a stop, which can be distressing and potentially dangerous. Hon. Members may wish to take up the opportunity to take a blindfolded walk or bus trip, and I recommend that they do so, as it is inspiring. The Bill requires bus operators to provide audio-visual information indicating the route, the next stop and the final destination. Members on both sides of this House must support that important development, which will make journeys for blind and partially sighted people easier and less stressful.

One problem we face in my constituency is controlling the amount of tourist buses that circle our city, and I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on this. Bath is a beautiful city, so it is not surprising that people want to visit it and see the sights from an open-top bus on a warm summer’s day—or a rainy day, as is often the case, given the west of England’s local climate. The local authority needs to be able to regulate these buses to ensure that their impact is not detrimental to local residents who rely on traditional buses. With the introduction of a new enhanced partnership scheme responsible for traffic regulation conditions, Bath & North East Somerset Council could have to renegotiate the traffic regulation conditions, which have worked well for more than 10 years, tackling environmental issues that had previously been exacerbated by buses. I know that this is an intricate regulatory issue, and I have already made my representations on it, but I cannot stress enough that city-centre residents in my constituency could face problems with multiple tourist buses going round and round in a circle and causing huge congestion and pollution, as we could end up with the law of unintended consequences coming into play. It would therefore be incredibly welcome if the Minister could confirm in his closing remarks how Bath & North East Somerset Council could go about keeping this arrangement, while also being able to benefit from some of the new powers.

Finally, I turn to the part of the Bill that will give powers to new directly elected mayors, such as the one in the West of England. The powers will allow them to take greater control of their services, as Transport for London does in London, with a budget to match. At the moment, there is discussion as to the best use of the transport budget: whether it is best to use it to provide free bus travel for young people or to introduce a smart ticketing operation across the West of England.

I hope that Front Benchers will deal in their winding-up speeches with the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) on the costings of free bus travel for children. It is one thing to propose that for 16 and 17-year-olds in Manchester, but our West of England Labour candidate has promised to introduce free bus travel for all children. We have yet to see any costings for that, and it is a hugely expensive operation. Just in Bath & North East Somerset, the smallest of the three authorities involved, we are talking about £11 million. With a devolution deal of £30 million each year going forward, it seems that the entire budget—the entire devolved operation—could end up being subsumed into one uncosted commitment; although this may sometimes politically be beneficial, it may not be a funded commitment. We will need to be aware of that, so any costings that could be provided from either Front Bencher would be incredibly useful.

I wish to reiterate my support for the introduction of a smartcard ticketing system across the West of England area, and I hope the Minister will join me in that. Our West of England mayoral candidate has made a commitment on that. Such a system would give residents and visitors to the area the freedom to explore more with an easier, simpler ticketing system, just as we benefit from the schemes working in London. This much-needed Bill will further improve the use of buses around the country, and I look forward to supporting the Government on it later as it progresses through Parliament.