Community Transport

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) on securing this debate. I am glad she recognises how essential community transport services are, particularly at a time when her Government are destroying bus services across our country. The shadow Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), visited the hon. Lady’s constituency last year and met a group of residents from the Fields Farm estate who have a bus stop but no bus. I have exactly the same problem in my constituency, so I know how it feels.

We have heard a series of powerful and passionate accounts from hon. Members about the importance of community transport. It seems to me that all hon. Members want to support community transport, but I did think that a political attack on Derbyshire County Council was perhaps inevitable. I understand the motives of the hon. Member for Erewash, and I am sure that equally, she will understand that I have to make a few points for the sake of balance. The council informs me that it is facing cuts of £157 million before 2018. She mentioned the level of reserves, and my understanding is that the council is managing to continue to support bus services by digging into those reserves, which will not be able to go on forever. It tells me that it has had an in-year cut in its public health budget, and of course, like every other shire county, it has a huge problem with the adult social care budget. I understand why an impassioned debate is going on in Derbyshire, and I am sure that it will continue, but I have every sympathy with my colleagues who are trying to deal with a very difficult situation in that county, as they are in other shire counties.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) made a powerful point. I have to say that I was unaware of the Government’s largesse just before the election: £25 million was suddenly available from a Government who had no money. Excuse me for being cynical, Mr Nuttall—I would not want to say anything unparliamentary. I just hope that the Minister can assure us that some of the promises will have been delivered by Christmas time. That would be a good thing to do, particularly for such worthy schemes as my hon. Friend outlined.

The account given by the hon. Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) corresponds exactly with my recollections—in a former life, I was a councillor in very rural Norfolk. Again, I think we all understand just how important the social aspect of community transport is. I would also reflect that if the good people of eastern England had services that were remotely at that level of those in Derbyshire, they would be amazed, because in rural East Anglia we have not seen many such services for a long time.

Having made my political points, I will be charitable and suggest that all of us in this Chamber probably have the same goal—to ensure that everyone, no matter who they are or where they live, is able to connect with their community and get to school, shops, work, hospitals, friends and family. That is why buses are vital, especially for disabled people and those from low-income households. Indeed, almost half of the poorest households in the country do not have access to a car, and people in the lowest income group use the bus almost four times more often than those in the highest income group. Moreover, about 60% of disabled people live in a household with no car, and disabled people uses buses about 20% more frequently than people without disabilities. I am sure that the Minister is familiar with those statistics; I suspect that he quotes them too.

We can therefore agree that we need buses, but the current situation just is not working. In many areas, private bus operators have abandoned bus routes and services that they have found to be commercially unprofitable, leaving many people isolated. Of course, local authorities, as I have mentioned, face deep cuts, leaving them unable to step in. As hon. Members have suggested, those responsible for various modes of community transport have valiantly attempted to perform the vital connective role that buses should play. Community transport serves areas that the bus companies have turned their back on.

However, there is something on which we cannot agree—the Government and Government Members continually refusing to take any responsibility for what is happening and blaming local councils for having to make cuts to transport funding. The Government are passing the buck and forcing local authorities to take the blame for those cuts, while keeping their own hands clean. It is estimated that central Government funding to English local authorities shrank by almost 40% between 2010-11 and 2014-15. The bus service operators grant, which subsidises bus fares for all, was also cut, by 20% in the previous Parliament. It is therefore no surprise that since 2010, 70% of local authorities, stuck between a rock and a hard place, have been forced to cut funding for bus services.

To suggest that councils are playing politics with these community services is slightly unworthy. The Government have been talking the devolution talk on one hand while taking funding away with the other, leaving councils and councillors in a near impossible position. That is not localism; it is a con. Furthermore, the Minister told us in July that he believes that decisions about funding to support local bus services are best made at local level, but in their comprehensive spending review the Government quietly included a further reduction of almost a quarter in central Government funding for local government over this Parliament. When local authorities face funding cuts that are that severe, it is really the Treasury making the decisions about which services to fund, not local authorities, whatever the rhetoric.

Against the backdrop of reduced services, community transport is more crucial than ever in helping people to get around, but as the Campaign for Better Transport has shown, community transport can only fill between 10% and 15% of the gap left by formerly supported transport provision. That suggests that although community transport has a very important role to play, it is only a partial solution to plugging the growing gap left by the Government’s policies and the subsequent cuts to services. We believe that the Government should be much more ambitious for the sector and should aim to develop and expand the role of not-for-profit bus operators, giving them the power to take up routes and services in all areas of the bus market and not only in unserviced and unprofitable areas. Expanding community transport could challenge the virtual monopoly of the bus market enjoyed by just a handful of conglomerates and, most significantly, put passengers before profits. Indeed, the People’s Bus campaign says:

“By keeping routes open and fares low, community transport operators are enabling people to access work and education, tackling social exclusion and loneliness, and can be the lifeblood of isolated communities.”

That is because unlike private operators, community transport operators reinvest profits in services, refocusing bus services on the shared interests of communities rather than shareholders.

A shining example of successful community transport is Hackney Community Transport. Formed more than 30 years ago, it has since expanded into Yorkshire, Humberside and the south-west. That social enterprise provides an aspirational model for community transport and a symbol of just what can be done. It provides more than 20 million passenger trips each year and delivers a variety of transport services: mainstream bus services, school transport, social care transport and more. The bus operator recently raised a £10 million investment—the largest growth capital investment in the UK impact investing sector. That demonstrates the potential of community and not-for-profit transport providers to ensure a fairer bus system by breaking the stranglehold that private bus operators retain over the market and giving communities a voice over the transport that they need to be delivered.

Clearly, buses face huge challenges in our country, and we want to give local authorities genuine power over their bus services. Local authority budgets have been decimated of late, and the Government need to stop wilfully ignoring both the financial pressure that authorities are under and the value of investing in subsidised transport.

We eagerly anticipate the Government’s forthcoming bus legislation and hope to see within it local authorities being given both power and money to deliver much-needed services, as well as a recognition of the huge economic and social potential of community transport. Devolution for Nottingham and Derbyshire is being long drawn out and delayed, and we want discussions to give way to real local powers. We just hope that when that legislation is on the table, it provides for authentic devolution. We will not settle for more of the same. We need a better bus system, but also a community transport system that can flourish and prosper in its own right, rather than propping up ever diminishing bus routes as the Government withdraw support. What an irony that the Prime Minister pledged to retain the bus pass, but neglected to keep the bus.