Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Charlotte Cane Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on British buses.

Today’s debate is so important to the people of Shrewsbury, as we have lost over two thirds of our bus routes in the past 10 years. We are one of the largest towns in the UK, with over 65,000 residents, yet we have not seen a Sunday bus for over a decade. We also have very few evening bus services, which is holding back our nighttime economy, despite being a glorious tourist destination.

The new bus powers for franchising will be a game changer for local councils such as ours in Shropshire. They will give us the opportunity to introduce new bus routes if they are considered to be socially necessary, such as that all-important Sunday service or some additional stops to widen access to our current hospital bus route and the new health clinic facilities coming down the track. It is our belief that these social routes could eventually build up their passenger numbers and ultimately become economically viable in their own right.

To that end, I wish to speak in support of the Bill and new clause 45, which seeks to bring forward requirements on transport authorities to deliver the minimum level of off-peak and nighttime bus services. That could transform access to employment for many of the residents in my constituency. We have only a handful of bus services after 6 o’clock and only one single bus at 8 o’clock, yet we are the county town and host to the county’s health, governance, economic and education services, as well as being a major employer for a county of 350,000 residents. Shift workers, NHS staff and those working in hospitality—as well as those of us who enjoy hospitality—need those buses to run beyond 8 o’clock.

The Shropshire bus services users group has consistently campaigned on the need for evening and the all-important Sunday bus services. Until now, no commercial company would take the risk, but within the last year, bus routes added by my local authority using Government bus service improvement plan money have led to increased passenger numbers and become embedded in our network. To overcome the reticence of private companies to widen their routes at economic risk, the local authority is ready to do that, where legislation allows and where passenger data indicates that all-important demand and socially necessary routes. The new clause would support Shropshire council by underpinning the need to re-establish evening and Sunday bus services, giving the impetus to widen those routes.

To conclude, I wish to remind the Minister, as I do in every speech, that my beautiful town of Shrewsbury lost its Sunday service a decade ago under the last Government, and that it is in both our hands to ensure that we reinstate it under this Labour Government.

[Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 2, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) and has cross-party support. I really hope that that cross-party support holds up in the vote.

As we have heard, disability does not stop at peak times. I represent a rural constituency and our buses are very infrequent, so having a time restriction on a bus pass is even more serious. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on classics, I enjoy a good tale about mythological creatures such as centaurs and the minotaur, but unfortunately for some of my constituents, seeing a bus is almost as likely as seeing one of them.

Remarkably, there are no Sunday bus services at all in most of my constituency. We have one of the greatest cathedrals in the world, but many of my residents cannot get to it for Sunday worship. Some of my villages have no buses at all, and the likes of Coveney and Wardy Hill have one bus per week. Others have bus services every two hours—those services are probably some of the best. If we restrict disabled people to using their passes after 9.30, they cannot catch the 9.20 bus and have to wait for the 11.20, so effectively they cannot do anything anywhere else in the morning. That cannot be right. We have to remove that restriction.

The current situation is not sustainable or acceptable. For rural communities, the situation is so dire that the recent risk of the 9 bus route between Littleport and Cambridge being halted meant that communities faced being unable to get to work or college. Constituents referred to this service as a lifeline for them, and they were right. To have a situation in 2025 where the ending of a single bus route makes entire communities a transport black hole is dreadful. It is just not acceptable. Had residents been properly consulted, I am certain the proposal would have been comprehensively rejected, which is why I support new clause 32 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) to require consultation before any discussions on the alteration or withdrawal of a local bus service. I know the new clause has not been selected, but I hope the Minister will consider it.

The Government’s decision to increase the bus fare cap hit my constituents hard, because many of them have to get more than one bus to complete their journey. I ask both for the cap to be brought back to £2 and for it to be a cap on the journey, not the fare for each bus someone catches. It should not be too much to ask for a basic, functional and affordable transport service for rural communities. Pensioners should not have to miss medical appointments because there is only one bus per hour, students should not have to worry about missing classes, disabled people should not have to miss anything in the morning, and people should not have to move from their home village for the sake of getting to work on time.

This Bill is positive, but the Government need to do a lot more to improve transport services in rural communities such as mine. It would be a start if we allowed the disabled members of those communities to catch buses at any time.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in support of the Bill and new clauses 46 and 66 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer). The Bill represents a step towards giving communities greater control over their local transport networks. Colleagues across the House recognise how vital bus services are for connecting people to opportunities, to each other and to the services they rely on. Sadly, buses are too frequently undervalued because they do not have the visible impact of a train.

It is perhaps fitting that the Bill comes at a time when we are experiencing a tube strike in London, and our colleagues based in London can understand what those of us outside London feel having an entirely dysfunctional public transport network.

I want to raise two points that I hope the Minister and colleagues will take on board as we move towards implementation. In my Calder Valley constituency, which the Minister knows well, we have seen a number of services withdrawn or reduced in frequency, particularly in the upper Calder Valley. Those changes have left many residents feeling cut off, especially in areas where alternative transport is simply not available. I welcome the extension of franchising powers to all local authorities. That is long overdue, and it is a step that gives communities such as mine the chance to shape bus networks to make those networks work for them. I urge the Government to consider how these powers can be supported with the necessary funding and guidance, so that councils can act decisively to protect routes that are essential to community life.

The second point I want to raise is about franchising. I support West Yorkshire combined authority’s plans to bring services under public control and to build a network that puts passengers at its heart. Cross-boundary routes—those that run into Lancashire or Greater Manchester—will not automatically be part of the franchise. While the Bill allows for some alternative arrangements, there is a real risk that those routes could be overlooked. We are a border county and a border country, and I am keen to ensure that the needs of my residents in Todmorden who go to work or school in Burnley are not overlooked. I know WYCA is committed to working with neighbouring authorities, and I hope the Government will support that collaboration. Passengers in Calder Valley and across the country do not plan their journeys around administrative boundaries or transport operations, and we need to be mindful of that.

I am confident that the Bill will provide a better, fairer bus network, and I am proud that it is another example of this Government making people’s day-to-day lives better. But we must ensure that isolated communities across boundary routes such as those in Calder Valley are not left behind. I look forward to working with Front-Bench colleagues to ensure that those voices are heard.