Bill Esterson
Main Page: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)Department Debates - View all Bill Esterson's debates with the Department for Transport
Bus Services: England
Bill Esterson Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for securing the debate. I thank also the other hon. Members for their contributions. It is fair to say that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and I do not agree on much, but I have managed to identify some areas where we do. I join him in paying tribute to bus drivers and other public transport staff who, as he rightly said, served through the pandemic—before and after. They put their lives on the line and some of them died. He reminded us of the important role that people in public transport play.
We also agree about the importance of buses in England. Millions of people depend on them and they are by far the most used form of public transport. Regardless of our policy disagreements, we can at least agree on their significance in his constituency and mine, so I genuinely thank him for securing the debate.
England’s crumbling bus network is symptomatic of the scale of astonishing decline that the Government have presided over. The statistics say it all. The bus network was deregulated in 1985, and there were 1.5 billion fewer bus journeys in 2019 than there were in 1985. Since 2010, 300 million fewer miles have been driven by buses per year and thousands of bus services have been cut. In the hon. Member’s patch alone, bus miles have halved in the last decade—one of the highest falls in bus numbers in the country, as he acknowledged. Some parts of Stoke-on-Trent are barely served by buses at all.
Although I welcome the better news that the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) shared about attempts to improve the service, this is a very serious story across the country. In 2023, an outspoken local politician in Stoke-on-Trent said that the state of the buses and the figures were
“damning on the poor performance of operators like First Bus”
and that
“we need to…let current operators know they’ve been put on notice.”
Those were the words of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. In fact, he has been an outspoken critic of his local bus operators on multiple occasions, even going so far as to lecture Ministers that
“First Bus continues to cut routes”
and it is
“time that First Bus does its bit”.—[Official Report, 13 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 489.]
The experience that he describes demonstrates the reality of bus deregulation under the Conservatives, and completely exposes the failure of the Government’s sticking-plaster approach to address the problems of a creaking bus network.
Bill Esterson
The hon. Gentleman anticipates the second half of my speech, because I will come on to that. Before I do, the criticisms by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North are a tacit admission that we need bold reform. On the question of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), only Labour will be able to deliver that.
Despite the pleading of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, deregulation has not compelled First Bus to pull its finger out. Instead, it has robbed communities of a say over the vital bus services on which they depend. Micromanagement from Whitehall makes it ridiculously complicated for local authorities to access the kind of funding streams that he and Conservative Members were alluding to. It simply has not achieved results.
The current system has led to thousands of vital bus services across the country being axed. Bus services are a shadow of what they once were because unaccountable operators remain able to decide for themselves where services go and how they run. The Government preside over shockingly bad bus services. We have a Prime Minister who prefers to travel by helicopter and private jet, and who has no experience of the buses and trains that the rest of us use, so is it any wonder that public transport is in such a mess?
Turning to Labour’s plans for Government, we know that a reliable, affordable and regular bus service is the difference between opportunity and isolation for millions of people. Labour will give every community the power to take back control of their bus services and will support local leaders to deliver better buses and to do so faster. Labour’s plans will create and save vital routes and services, will end today’s postcode lottery of bus services, and will kick-start a revival of bus services across England.
Paul Howell
Will the hon. Member give more information about precisely how he will achieve those objectives?
Bill Esterson
I am enjoying these interventions because they are prompting the next stage of my speech, which explains exactly what Labour’s plans are for Government. In our first term, should we be fortunate enough to serve—I take nothing for granted; I am not complacent about it—Labour would pass new legislation to support local transport authorities to take back control of their bus services. We would do that through a better buses Act, which would remove the costly, time-consuming barriers that restrict the ability of local transport authorities to control their bus services properly.
Labour would also reform funding structures to give local leaders more flexibility over bus funding and to allow them to finally plan for the long term—no more short-term cliff edges. Such approaches would address the difficulties that Conservative Members identified in their speeches.
Paul Howell
I am interested to see how that plays out in terms of consistency. We have a new North East Mayor in my part of the world who has just said that she is going to look at franchising, but when I sat in the Transport Committee last week, the union leaders in front of us were absolutely against franchising. I wonder whether there is any consistency in Labour’s approach.
Bill Esterson
The short answer is that there is, because we recognise the need for flexibility and different options—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are reacting to what I say. Although we see the local franchising process as the presumed option, it is not the only option that will be available under a Labour Government.
Bill Esterson
I will finish the point rather than taking further interventions. At the moment, those powers are limited to Metro Mayors, but we will expand them to every local transport authority. We will also accelerate the franchising process, cutting it from the six-year slog endured by Greater Manchester down to as little as two years. We will introduce local network safeguards to provide more accountability over bus operators and ensure higher standards for operators wherever they are in England, whether they are under local franchising or not. We are going to end the nonsensical ideological ban on new municipal companies, which this Government introduced in 2017. Labour’s plans could save up to 700 routes, with local network safeguards designed to benefit profiteering at the expense of yet more devastating bus cuts. Our plan is to create up to 600 new routes by expanding franchising powers, totalling an extra 250 million passenger journeys per year.
Bill Esterson
I am going to finish answering the previous two questions by going through our plans, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. Thanks to our trailblazing Labour Metro Mayors, we know how effective franchising can be. London under Sadiq Khan has one of the most sophisticated and best integrated transport networks in the world, and Andy Burnham’s Bee Network in Greater Manchester is already improving reliability and boosting ridership. We want to emulate that in the Liverpool city region with the Mayor, and we are already adopting the approach of local franchising.
After the fantastic election results in the West Midlands, North East England, York and North Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire, there is an opportunity for other areas to join the Liverpool city region and West Yorkshire, as their combined authorities take the steps to pursue local franchising. Labour in regional government is taking bold steps to deliver for its communities, while the only remaining Conservative Metro Mayor—in the Tees Valley—refuses to pursue franchising, even when bus journey satisfaction in the Tees Valley is among the lowest anywhere in the country.
On the point about options, franchising will not be appropriate for every local authority. Labour’s plans are specifically designed to empower local authorities to use flexible funding and strengthened powers to make decisions that affect their own back yard, not through diktat from Whitehall. Our approach will give local leaders the tools they need to improve their bus services, whether through new franchising models, setting up new publicly owned municipal bus companies or significantly strengthened enhanced partnerships. That point is crucial and goes to the question asked by the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell). There are notable pockets across England where enhanced partnerships between local authorities and operators have led to commendable levels of co-operation, excellence and improved performance. Where bus partnerships are working well, we will encourage them to continue. Labour is unapologetically pragmatic—not dogmatic—in its approach. We want to find the best solutions to the terrible state of our public transport system. There is no “one size fits all” approach, in stark contrast to the Conservatives’ ideological obsession with deregulation and privatisation.
Bill Esterson
I am coming to the end of my speech. The Conservatives have presided—[Interruption.] Okay, I will give way.
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
I remind the hon. Gentleman that he has almost come to the end of his 10 minutes, but it is his choice.
Bill Esterson
The Chair has told me not—[Interruption.] May I seek your guidance, Ms Vaz?
Bill Esterson
I think I have understood the question. We are going to speed up franchising and we are going to make it a lot easier for people to do. It took over six years for Andy Burnham to get through the various hoops and bureaucracies in his way, and we have seen a similar problem in the Liverpool city region. We need to speed up the process. It is going to be the presumed option for any local authority that wants to use it, and that is a fundamental shift. Again, we are not being dogmatic but pragmatic.
Labour stands ready to empower local communities with the tools they need to take back control of their bus services, which is in stark contrast to 14 years of shocking decline in our bus network. What Labour will do, if we are in government, is usher in the most ambitious reform to England’s bus network in 40 years.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. You wait ages for a debate on bus services and then there are two in a day. It is understandable and appropriate that, for the second time today, I rise to my feet in Westminster Hall to address the state of the nation in terms of our bus network. I will briefly set out, before I am probably interrupted by a vote, some key thoughts.
I endorse the comment by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) that franchising exists already. Local authorities can do this already—[Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) chunters away, having been laughed out of court earlier on, the key point about Labour policy is that it is very keen to propose franchising but there not a squidge of an iota about money. The money that goes to the Mayors for the franchising is the key difference. What the Labour party is proposing is a franchise policy without any fiscal assistance. In reality that will result in a far worse system. If it was so broken, there were 13 years of Labour government when they could have changed it.
When the hon. Member for Sefton Central gets into government—if we were ever so misfortunate for that to happen—he will realise that what he is proposing is genuinely not a good idea without significant extra funding. Labour will not commit to this, as the funding will not follow, so a local authority would struggle to provide even the quality of the services that it is providing at present.
Enough of such claptrap. I move on. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for bringing the debate to the Chamber. It is entirely right that he set out that the covid pandemic has had a massive impact and that slowly but surely the funding situation and take-up is improving. If we look at base funding as a starting point, we have doubled bus funding in this country since 2010. We are in a situation where the degree of support is off the charts compared with yesteryear. We all accept that operators and local transport authorities have been working in a challenging environment over the last few years, but the key point is that there is great collaborative work happening locally between local transport authorities, bus operators and passengers. The regulatory framework put in place by the Bus Services Act 2017 and the largest public investment in bus services in all time—we have announced over £4.5 billion of support to improve services since 2020—are significant.
Over £2 billion of this funding has been allocated to every single local transport authority in England to help to deliver its local bus service improvement plans, which help to deliver more frequent, more reliable, easier to use and cheaper bus services. I want briefly to talk about Stoke-on-Trent specifically. Clearly, the way the funding has been used is an example of the kind of change that we are seeing. Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been allocated over £33 million from the DFT to deliver its bus service improvement plan, including an extra £1.4 million this year in funding redirected from HS2 through Network North. I am pleased to see that investment bearing fruit, with a number of bus service enhancements being introduced across Stoke-on-Trent. That provides better, more frequent services to help people to get to and from work.
I am not going to go through all the villages that have benefited and all the changes also that have taken place in the other parts of Stoke, as they were outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, but the good news does not stop there. The local affordable fares scheme—the £3.50 scheme—is clearly something to be lauded. There is also the £2 single ticket, which is again subsidised and paid for by the taxpayer, arising out of the HS2 funding. There was talk today about funding, but not a word was said about whether that would continue under any Labour authority or any Labour Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) explained, this is the key thing to transform the ability of low-income people to get to work and get about in whatever community. It is such a transformational thing. That £600 million, again, arises out of and is continued by the HS2 funding.
I listened in great detail to all the speeches, and I noticed that many colleagues were keen to laud and be pleased about the zero-emission bus regional areas funding, known as ZEBRA 2. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight, who has campaigned and repeatedly beaten a path to my door, managed to secure £4.5 million for zero-emission buses on the Isle of Wight with ZEBRA 2.
Self-evidently, colleagues were keen to extol the £3.1 million ZEBRA funding for Staffordshire, albeit that Stoke is not particularly affected. I am surprised not to be lauded for the fact that Devon County Council has received £5.3 million for zero-emission buses. I was genuinely stunned and amazed to receive no thanks from the local MP, the hon. Member for Sefton Central, for the fact that Liverpool City Council, the combined authority, received £9.4 million, and that the Government are funding zero-emission buses to a massive degree. As always, the glass is half empty and there is no laudable attempt to accept that a transformational difference has taken place with zero-emission buses.
We can also look at the local transport fund, which is utterly key for places such as Stoke. That is due to a decision by the Prime Minister in respect of the second leg of HS2. I am still unaware of the Labour position on that, as always, with no word on funding. That is £4.7 billion of extra funding, of which Stoke-on-Trent benefits to the tune of £134 million. I want to address some of the key points about Stoke on the issue of the cap. I entirely agree with the Prime Minister and not with the local authority leader, I am afraid. This is something that can be entirely addressed by local authority funding. As I am setting out in detail, there is a plethora of extra local authority funding that could be used in this way.
Guy Opperman
The hon. Gentleman talks about cuts in 2010. He does not seem to remember Gordon Brown selling the gold, bankrupting the economy, and a note written by a Labour MP that famously said:
“I’m afraid there is no money.”
Guy Opperman
The hon. Gentleman has a brass neck to come to this House and start saying that 2010 was about anything other than a disastrous Labour Government who were rightly voted out. We will move back to Stoke, if I may.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North will be aware that the local transport fund has been transformational. The £134 million can be used for buses and to improve bus routes. It could also build on the substantial investment the Government have put into local transport through the transforming cities fund, where Stoke has again been awarded £34.6 million, as one of the many beneficiaries. I have twice touched on the point about concessionary travel. I regret to say that I manifestly disagree with the local authority leader, and sincerely hope he has the guts to reply, after more than 100 days, to my hon. Friend’s letter.
I am conscious of time and the incoming vote. I have touched on discretionary fares and other key points. It is outstandingly the case that the zero-emission buses will make a huge difference to their areas. I welcome what has taken place on the Isle of Wight and in the other local authorities I have discussed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight rightly said, it is not just in Conservative-run areas or where there are Conservative MPs; it is across the country. On the point about cash, we are aware of the importance of that and would encourage private operators to ensure that alternative payments continue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) made a point about his constituency. It was a pleasure to go to the Fishburn Youth and Community Centre, where I enjoyed a delicious pancake on pancake Tuesday. Clearly, there is some positive news in terms of what Arriva is doing in relation to the X12, but I continue to want to see better work between Durham County Council and the individual provider.
This has clearly been a difficult time, with the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but we absolutely believe that Stoke is doing better and that, with the record funding that is going in, a better future lies ahead for bus services.