Bus Services Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, this is a very important amendment. Either we take our commitments on climate change seriously, or we do not. As we go into a new phase with the administration of bus services, it seems almost unthinkable that this is not taken for granted—that this is not in the front line and a practical issue on which we can make a positive contribution. But it is not only on the great issues of climate change that we should consider this; it is also in terms of local health. I have no doubt whatever that in some of our conurbations the burdens on the health service are increased by pollution in our local cities. We are only adding to the problems and the cost of the health service if we do not make provisions of this kind. The buses are there—it is not as if they are not—so it is a very sensible and important amendment, and I hope that it is acceptable to the Minister.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, all noble Lords understand the importance of emissions controls, but when the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, decides what she is going to do with her amendment could she tell the House what she thinks is more important—fuel efficiency, related to carbon emissions, or pollutant emissions such as PM10 or PM5 or nitrous oxides? Does the Office for Low Emission Vehicles determine which is the priority, fuel efficiency or pollutant emissions, or do the Government tell the office which is the priority?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I once again thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I am a tad disappointed in the response that I am hearing. The Government have taken a balanced view in line with their intent, reflected across the Chamber, to tackle the issue of emissions. I fear that what the Opposition propose or support in the amendments in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, will in certain areas where there is no issue put a prescriptive obligation on local authorities. The other question, which we have discussed outside the Chamber with both noble Baronesses, is that of the smaller operators, which will be more challenged by the setting of such particular prescriptive limits. When we look at legislation we must look at its application in a national context—notwithstanding the fact that some operators provide essential services, which will be disadvantaged by this proposal—and in other areas where these prescriptive obligations are set, where there is not the same issue prevailing.

I fully accept—as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, mentioned—that there are now, in terms of manufacturing of course, vehicles being produced. May I suggest, perhaps as I have previously on this Bill, a small olive branch? I think that we are on the same page here; we all want to tackle this important issue. We can look to see how, within the guidance that will accompany the Bill, the issue raised by noble Lords about OLEV can be reflected.

I feel, and I emphasise again, that the amendments presented by the Government are not just about devolution. They are also about, as I said in my opening comments, economic viability and ensuring that we get the level of take-up on some of the issues. I fear that other amendments, as they currently stand, would disadvantage passengers and perhaps even end up stopping partnership and franchising schemes happening in certain areas. I think that the Government’s amendments strike the right balance but, as I said, in the spirit in which this Bill has been discussed, we can certainly ensure that the issue of OLEV is better reflected and specified in the guidance.

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[Lord Bradshaw]

I hope the Minister may be able to agree with me on this occasion, which will make a slight change to the proceedings. The Competition and Markets Authority has adopted a very strange response to the letting of railway franchises and has created, in the case of the northern franchise and Arriva buses, a situation which has cost the taxpayer and the companies millions of pounds in looking at the overlap between Northern’s rail services and those of Arriva buses. The northern train franchise had gone out to consultation some time before. The Competition and Markets Authority had sight of that, and after some extremely complicated negotiations, the franchise was let. Immediately, the Competition and Markets Authority started to nitpick over the franchise, saying there was a bit of overlap here and a bit of overlap there. In none of the cases was it a significant issue.

In the Bill, the Competition and Markets Authority is nominated as a consultee in some cases. The purpose of this amendment is to say that if there is a consultation over a franchise, or for that matter over an advanced quality partnership or a railway franchise, there should be some restriction on the ability of the Competition and Markets Authority, having been a consultee, to reopen the matter. It wastes a huge amount of time setting up a franchise if the authority comes back again to raise points that are small or trivial in contrast to the large scale of the businesses concerned. I have not said it should not get involved, but I have tried to lay down in this amendment some conditions or limitations on when it should become involved, and I believe it should have to have received significant complaints. I do not think it received any in the course of its intervention between Arriva trains and Arriva buses. Secondly, there would need to have consequently been a significantly adverse effect on competition.

It is important that we have a Competition and Markets Authority, but it should concern itself with real matters of competition in or between industries that restrict competition between large-scale participants. I do not think the law was ever meant to deal with very small-scale altercations between bus companies and train companies. In any event, Arriva gave undertakings that it would not alter fares in a way which diminished competition—not that in most cases any real competition existed. I hope the Minister may give us a reasoned answer to this, because what we have in mind is a lot of unnecessary and expensive bureaucracy that is likely to surround the franchising services. Provided that they have had the opportunity to be involved beforehand, it is quite wrong that after the event, they should be able to come back again and raise what are virtually trivial points. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for introducing his amendment. I find it quite interesting and I look forward to what counsel the Minister gives us. I understand why the noble Lord has put the tests in new subsections 5A(a) and (b), but I am worried that subsection 5A(a),

“unless … it has received complaints about the operation of the franchise”,

could be used as part of a spoiling process by an aggrieved third party. On subsection 5A(b),

“unless … there has consequently been a significant adverse effect on competition”—

admittedly, it talks about an adverse effect—the problem I have is that it is bound to have an effect on competition because it eliminates competition. So I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord’s amendment, subject to what the Minister says, but if we are going to go down that route the tests might need better drafting. It will be very interesting to see how the Minister advises the House.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, the noble Earl is raising a legitimate concern but, as much of the Bill is in a skeleton form with guidance to follow, I would have expected the spoiling process that he is warning about to be addressed in those guidance notes.

I remain seriously concerned about the tone and content of the CMA letter about the Bill to the Department for Transport, to which I drew noble Lords’ attention in Committee. It sets what I regard as an impossibly high bar: franchising should be allowed only if it is the only way to improve services. That is effectively impossible to prove. It is reasonable to ask local authorities to demonstrate that franchising is designed to improve services or that services need improvement. However, it is not possible for them to prove that there is nothing else they could possibly do, other than franchising, that would provide that improvement.

The Department for Transport has responded to the CMA, saying that it accepts the recommendations of the CMA letter in full. I am anxious to hear from the Minister in some detail about what impact accepting the recommendations will have on the Bill and its subsequent guidance. The CMA view seems to run counter to the thrust of the core aspects of the Bill, rendering it in practice likely to become yet another overcomplex piece of legislation on buses—sadly, along with the two attempts made by the previous Labour Governments—to reverse the impact of deregulation. We support the Government’s intentions with the Bill and we think they are working very strongly on the right lines, but we are concerned that inadvertently, as a result of the CMA’s response, their approach might be undermined.

Our concern, expressed in these amendments, is that the CMA could be seen to be overpowerful in this context. Given that it is clearly at odds with the thinking of the Department for Transport in some respects, it is important that the CMA is not allowed to become judge and jury in these cases. If it is consulted beforehand, it should not be allowed to come back after decisions are made unless there are genuine causes for concern as to how the franchise is working.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have to say that I remain unconvinced by the arguments advanced by noble Lords in support of the amendments and, once again, I urge my noble friend the Minister to resist them.

As I said in Committee, combined authorities with elected mayors or any other local authority with an elected mayor are very different beasts from local authorities which have not gone down the route of an elected mayor. These authorities have thrashed out a devolution deal with the Government and are fully accountable to their citizens, so will be granted the powers to introduce local bus franchising. Even the mere suggestion that a local authority is thinking about franchising will cause uncertainty for industry. Of course that uncertainty could go on for years, indefinitely perhaps—a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Snape.

There are few things that serve to stifle innovation and investment more than uncertainty. All the while, bus operators would have no incentive to adapt their services to meet the needs of their passengers. Who would blame them, given that they could be out of business should the local authority actually make a decision and use the powers? Services would inevitably deteriorate and passengers would be the losers.

Local bus franchising, and indeed the whole concept of devolution, are not steps that can be taken lightly. There needs to be due process and proper scrutiny. Those areas with agreed devolution deals have taken that brave political step. It is absolutely right that there be a separate process for areas that have not secured a devolution agreement, and a process that will require the affirmative procedure giving Parliament the final say is, in my view, exactly what we need. I really cannot support these amendments and my noble friend will have my full support in resisting them should they be pressed to a Division.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, listening to my noble friend Lord Snape and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, makes me think that some of the reasons they are putting forward are really to do with the fact that they do not like the idea of franchises at all. I can accept that view. I think that franchises could be a very useful contribution to better bus services in many areas. However, I do not understand why a mayoral authority, but nobody else, is allowed to do this without the permission of the Secretary of State. Maybe the Minister can explain it. I mentioned Cornwall, which is one of the few authorities that, as far as I can gather, will be allowed to do it. If one thinks that all mayoral authorities are the epitome of perfection and all the other schemes in proposed new Sections 123B to 123F in the clause need a great deal of supervision from the Department for Transport, one could look at the “Rotten Boroughs” column in Private Eye every fortnight and count up which ones are mentioned most often for having allegations of sleaze, fiddle or something else. I fully support this amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s answers.

[Earl Attlee]

In response to the question posed by the noble Lord to me and the noble Lord, Lord Snape, I say that we oppose extending the right to franchising without the authority of the Secretary of State to provide certainty for the operators unless the local authority can get permission from the Secretary of State.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, many of the amendments to the Bill have dealt with issues of detail and degree, but not so with this amendment, which is appropriately numbered 111. It involves a fundamental principle. I am bewildered why the Government are clinging to this nasty and mean-spirited clause which is totally at odds with the purpose of the Bill as a whole. Indeed, earlier today the Minister reaffirmed to us that this is a devolutionary Bill.

We on these Benches strongly support the principles behind the Bill. They will give local authorities more control over local bus services after three decades of decline since the deregulation of bus services in the 1980s. We have been fully supportive of the Government’s attempts to strengthen the role of local authorities in setting up both partnerships and franchise agreements. We believe that the structure being created through the Bill should raise the game of bus operators and at the same time should encourage local authorities to be much more proactive in recognising and supporting the role of bus services in their communities—local authorities will thus be able to raise their game as well to ensure that they are all as proactive as the best now are. We will have more Readings and fewer Oxfordshires, for example. So it is truly amazing and counterintuitive for the Minister to cling to this clause which takes away powers from local authorities in a Bill that is designed overall to give them more powers.

I am not convinced by the Minister’s arguments so far on why the clause needs to be in the Bill. I have listened carefully to him and read Hansard to analyse the thinking behind the clause. As the noble Lord has just pointed out, municipal bus services actually do rather well. I say to the Minister: go with the evidence. Municipal bus services, of which there are approximately a dozen, consistently feature in among the 10 best-performing bus companies in Britain—I give him just two examples: Nottingham and Reading. There are also very good examples of municipal bus services which work in partnership with commercial operators, bestriding the divide between local authorities and commercial operators. Such municipal operators are the remnants of the system that existed prior to deregulation. I remind noble Lords that, despite still having the power to set up bus companies, local authorities have not rushed out in the past 30 years to set them up. Rarely has there been anything other than a gradual dwindling in the number of such companies. Why are the Government determined to intervene now?

We have to bear in mind that bus services might need the intervention of local authorities in the future. Local authorities might want to set up new bus companies. For example, a rural authority, faced with the collapse of its local bus company, might want to run its own limited service, integrating specialist transport for schools and social services with regular bus services.

What part of Conservative dogma does this clause serve? There is no doubt that we are legislating here for decades ahead—the previous Act was 30 years ago. The Government need to be flexible and far-sighted. On these Benches, we are certainly not in favour of large-scale renationalisation of bus services, but we are a devolutionary party which believes that local authorities should have ultimate responsibility for ensuring that local bus services are provided where they are needed. For that, they need all the powers in their armoury, so I ask the Minister to let them retain them by deleting Clause 21.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, despite the passion shown by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, I am afraid that I am still not convinced by the renewed arguments for removing this clause. No one denies that existing locally owned bus companies are by and large a success story—I said as much in Committee. They have a great track record of securing awards and a very high satisfaction rate among their passengers. I can see nothing in this Bill that would change that and I wish those municipal bus companies every success as they continue to deliver for their customers.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked: “What is wrong?” The only reason why a local authority would wish to set up its own bus company now would be to put it in prime position to win a franchise contract, a contract that its parent company, the local authority, was awarding. That would make something of a mockery of that franchise competition. Why would another bus operator go to all the expense, in both time and monetary terms, of submitting a bid for the franchise knowing that it was up against another company that was owned by the awarding authority? It would be a done deal from the start, so other operators in that area might as well shut up shop straightaway. I therefore disagree with the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that Clause 21 is not consistent with the objectives of the Bill. It is necessary to make the Bill work properly. Of course, a local authority company would also have to invest resources in submitting a bid, but those resources would come from the local authority, so the body awarding the franchise would have paid for its own company to bid. That does not seem right.

I have a final point which I believe is very important: there is nothing new in this clause. All it does is extend the bar on establishing a bus company to types of local authority that did not exist when the Transport Act 1985 was passed; for example, unitary authorities. The UK bus market has coped very well for the past 30 years without district councils being able to set up their own bus companies, so why the outcry now? I think that I have answered my own question: a combined authority or unitary authority, having secured the necessary powers, would want to establish its own bus company now only to gain a foothold in the franchise process and wipe out the competition. That is not an acceptable way of proceeding. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will vigorously resist the amendment and support Clause 21.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I rise to support the amendment and to rebut utterly what the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has just said. I think he has a rather narrow view of the sort of situation that can arise. I spoke only today to a Green Party councillor from Cannock Chase in Staffordshire who told me that several private bus companies have dropped their less profitable routes, so communities are now stranded. People who do not have cars have no option for travelling apart from begging lifts from neighbours who do.

[Earl Attlee]

Is it not open to local authorities to subsidise the route in question?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

Why not run them more efficiently in the first place? Public ownership can be very cost effective and much more so because it caters to the needs of the people that it represents. People are saying to councils, “This is what we want”, and private bus companies often do not give it to them.

Limiting the power of local authorities to help their communities, as the noble Earl suggests, is a very undemocratic thing to do—perhaps that is not surprising in an undemocratic House. Clause 21 spoils what is a laudable and well-intentioned Bill. I beg the Minister to ignore what he has heard from behind him and to listen to this side of the House. It is a case of representing people and giving them fuller lives, which private bus companies, because they are in it entirely for profit, just do not see. I beg the Minister to accept the amendment.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this short debate. I do not accept the arguments from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that there is going to be a stampede of councils trying to set up municipal bus companies. I note that no one from local government—

[Earl Attlee]

I do not remember saying that there would be a stampede. I just suggested that there might be a problem.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I think the noble Earl said that a lot of councils will set up bus companies to tender for all these routes, and I do not believe that for one minute. I also note that no one from local government on the Government’s own Benches came to their defence or supported their arguments. The only way a bus company would be set up is in the situation outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. To prevent that is very regrettable. It is disappointing that the Minister is not prepared to move on this. In that case, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much support this amendment. My noble friend has set out very clearly why it is necessary. It is useful to reflect on the continuing difference in the way road and rail accidents and injuries are considered. I recall a few years ago when the Government were forming Highways England—I think that is the name of it now—several of us tabling an amendment which stated that the Office of Rail and Road, as it became, should be responsible for road safety. It was soundly rejected by the Government because it would have shown up just how unsafe the roads were, are and probably will be in the future.

I think my noble friend said that were 64 fatal bus collisions; I cannot remember whether it was last year or in a year. That compares with none on the railways, or maybe one in some years. Yet nobody even seems to think the subject worth collecting statistics on. She mentioned £2 million for every fatality, which is a figure that has long been used in the transport industry, be it in rail or road. It usually means that if the cause of the fatality can be identified and avoided from happening again for less than £2 million, you would spend the money on it, and if it was more than that you might not. If the value is the same, one’s only conclusion can be that the Government think that the value of a bus passenger’s life is less than the value of a rail passenger’s life when they die in a bus accident. This is a very dangerous situation to get into. We are not going to have an Office of Rail and Road looking after road safety tonight, but this amendment is a very good start to a debate that will probably go on for many years. I fully support it.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, this is a new issue raised at a late stage in the process, but nevertheless it is extremely important. This is a critical point for confidential reporting. It is no good just very thoroughly investigating serious, fatal accidents but not looking at the near misses, because there are many more data to be extracted from near misses. Today’s near miss is tomorrow’s very serious accident. Sometimes when things go horribly wrong, there are little things leading up to it; it is not just an out-of-the-blue serious incident.

On the previous amendment, the best argument of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was the need for localism. While the Minister should take on the principle and the need for confidential reporting and strongly encourage it, under the principle of localism he would be better to leave local authorities to decide whether they need to put this into their franchise agreement or not.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I fully support Amendment 112. Ensuring the safety of passengers and the general public must be a paramount concern and this amendment places three obligations on operators and one on the relevant authorities.

The Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System is an independent reporting system that helps to bring high standards to industry and allows staff to report matters of concern confidentially, with the assurance that they will not have their identity revealed. Operators will be required to sign up to the scheme and confirm that they have advised their staff of the right to use the confidential reporting facility. Secondly, the operators agree to collect and monitor the bus casualty data in a manner set out by the authority. Thirdly, they agree to make this data available to the authority. The obligation placed on the authority is to publish the data collected on a quarterly basis on their website. This will ensure that safety data from operators are in the public domain and, where there are safety issues, actions can be seen to be taken to deal with it. I hope the Government will support the amendment.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, your Lordships set up the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee to look at precisely this issue. These are transitional and consequential provisions and it is not clear to me why there should be any matter that needs to be looked at in Grand Committee. I am also not clear whether the committee recommended that we should resort to the affirmative procedure. It would be very helpful if the noble Lord, in responding to my noble friend’s advice on this matter, could say whether the committee advised the affirmative procedure. Furthermore, if the party opposite won the next general election so that the noble Lord was the Minister and I was the opposition Front Bench spokesman for transport and I thought that a similar amendment was appropriate on a piece of transport legislation, would he accept my amendment to go to the affirmative procedure?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, Clauses 22 and 23 give the Secretary of State the power to make, by way of regulations, consequential, transitional, transitory and saving provisions. Clause 22 provides that the power conferred by that section includes the power to amend, repeal, revoke or otherwise modify both primary and secondary legislation. The clause also specifies that regulations must be made by way of statutory instrument and any regulations that amend or repeal primary legislation must follow the affirmative procedure. Any other regulations under this clause which, for example, amend secondary legislation are subject to the negative procedure.

The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee referred to Clause 22 in its report about this Bill, but only in the context of the power to “otherwise modify” primary legislation by way of making regulations that are subject to the negative procedure. As the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Andrew Jones, explained in his letter of 1 July to the chair of the DPRRC, the Government’s starting point is that regulations which make textual changes to Acts should be subject to affirmative procedure. However, when non-textual modifications would be made by the regulations, the Government continue to believe that the negative procedure is appropriate. The DPRRC did not raise any issues with negative procedure being used for regulations that make consequential changes to secondary legislation, or indeed for regulations made under Clause 23.

Amendments 114A and 114B, which would require all regulations under Clauses 22 and 23 to follow the affirmative process, would introduce a disproportionately burdensome mechanism for changes of the sort which would be made by the regulations to be scrutinised. The Government take the view that it would not be an appropriate use of parliamentary time to require all regulations that make consequential, transitional, transitory or saving provisions to follow the affirmative procedure.

I shall give a quick example. Clause 23 provides that regulations may, in particular, make transitional provision about ticketing schemes under Section 135 of the Transport Act 2000 which exist before the Bill comes into force. Clause 7 contains provisions that introduce advanced ticketing schemes in England. Through our discussions in Committee and Report, these provisions received rigorous parliamentary scrutiny. Any provisions made under Clause 23 would only make provision about how existing ticketing schemes in England are dealt with when the new advanced ticketing schemes provisions come into force. To resolve this issue, regulations may provide that existing schemes can be treated as advanced ticketing schemes. The intention of Amendment 114B is that such regulations would be subject to affirmative procedure. As I said already, I believe that this would be disproportionate. The Government take the view that regulations dealing with such provisions are eminently suitable to the negative procedure. The Government will continue to argue that the current level of parliamentary scrutiny set out in Clauses 22 and 23 is appropriate. I hope that with that explanation the noble Lord feels minded to withdraw his amendment.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I was very pleased with the support, sympathetic noises and comments that I had from other Peers when I first tabled this bus safety amendment and I have brought it back at Third Reading, with thanks to the Minister for not disallowing it. The amendment was drafted with the assistance of the Campaign for Better Transport’s “Save our Buses” campaign and benefited from written evidence submitted to the Transport Committee by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, or PACTS. It was largely rewritten by the campaigner Tom Kearney, who has been the victim of a bus crash.

The amendment seeks to do two things. First, it would help with confidential reporting, meaning that bus drivers would have access to a system that has long been happening on the railway and within the air industry. This is called the confidential incident reporting and analysis system, or CIRAS, and it means that bus drivers could report anything about faults or problems that they perceived with their vehicles or their routes.

Secondly, it would allow for the quarterly publication of bus casualty data. When we were on the London Assembly, the Greens persuaded Boris Johnson, when he was London Mayor, to improve operational safety performance monitoring and reporting of TfL’s bus routes by adopting this measure. As a result, confidential safety reporting has been in place in London since 4 January this year. TfL has also made its bus operators’ subscription to CIRAS a precondition for running a bus service contract. These safety practices have made London’s bus system, which is about 25% of the UK’s entire bus fleet, substantially more safety conscious. London also has access to casualty data reporting, which has been in operation for nearly three years, since January 2014. TfL publishes bus safety data every quarter, clearly identifying the bus operator involved, incident location, type of injury, sex and age of the injured party, general cause, mode of transport involved, and borough and month in which it happened.

The importance of confidential safety reporting is shown by the statistics now published by Transport for London. The latest statistics suggest that every TfL bus driver has a 0.2% chance per annum of killing someone; a 63% per annum chance of injuring someone; and a 0.016% chance of sending someone to hospital every single day. Given that safety incidents impose costs and cause delays, one would think that bus operators would be motivated to encourage such reporting by their employees. Surprisingly, even though London’s bus operators have franchises across the UK, only their London franchises are subscribed to CIRAS. While I support the idea of localism, it seems strange to me that London’s bus franchises should have a manifestly better operational safety reporting system than any other locality in the United Kingdom.

In the rail industry, 2015 marked the eighth year in a row with zero rail crash fatalities. This year of course we have had the Croydon tram fatalities. I do not know whether the Croydon tram was operating under CIRAS conditions; I would be interested to know whether it was, if the Minister knows and can tell us. We have acted for many years to prevent rail crashes and deaths, so I fail to understand why we so readily accept crashes, injuries, incidents and deaths on our roads.

As a result of the Minister’s previous comments, I have redrafted this amendment so that the section on confidential safety incident reporting conforms to existing rail standards and CIRAS’s name no longer appears, which would mean that it is not quite so time-limited as it might have been before. I hope that these tweaks will remove the barriers to the Government’s acceptance of this incredibly common-sense proposal. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot recall what position I took on the noble Baroness’s amendment in Committee, but I am not sure that it is one that we should accept. The reason is simply that air crashes and rail crashes are extremely complex events and it is not always clear what has caused an accident. The accidents that the noble Baroness refers to are road traffic accidents where, generally speaking, it is obvious what caused the accident. This is not an amendment that I would support.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I do support this amendment; my noble friend has set out the need for this confidential safety reporting very clearly. I do not accept the comment from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that rail and air accidents are complex and therefore need confidential safety reporting but that road is quite simple—you have an accident and it is quite clear who caused it.

There is also a marine confidential reporting system, which noble Lords may know about. You could argue that you hit something or you hit another ship and it is clear what the cause was, but I think that it is a slightly simplistic argument. We are talking about a confidential reporting system that may include something that is wrong with the equipment—whether ship or aeroplane—that a person is operating. There may be something he or she feels that their employer should have done something about and has not. One likes to think that, with confidential reporting, that could be put right without employees’ putting their jobs at risk. That does not always happen but in other sectors such a provision is an incentive to report issues. I think the systems are exactly the same as between air, road, rail and marine. As my noble friend said, it is interesting to note that confidential reporting has worked well with the railways. Indeed, she has changed the amendment to reflect the situation that operates on the railways.

A few years ago, both the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and I tried to get the Office of Rail and Road, as it is now called, to take responsibility for road safety on the trunk road network and the motorways in the same way as it does for the rail network. We argued that the conditions on the respective networks were much the same. That office had the expertise not just to say, when investigating an accident, that things could be done better, but to go into all the information, statistics and safety rules and bring in one consistent policy, at least for road and rail. I argue that air and marine are slightly different areas but road and rail are very similar land surface forms of transport.

I consider that the confidential reporting mechanism gives comfort to drivers and other staff employed on buses. They are mostly operated by one person, the driver, so we are talking about just drivers. I think that it would also give comfort to passengers. It is evident that most London bus services are extremely good. However, I think that other bus operators sometimes put their drivers under pressure to bend the rules, whether on drivers’ hours, speeding or not looking after their passengers properly. If confidential reporting were in place, people would have the ability to make complaints if they wished to do so. It would also give operators an incentive not to abuse the system and to improve the quality of journeys generally, which is what this whole Bill is about.

My noble friend said that bus operators in London have introduced confidential reporting. That is wonderful but there is no reason why London bus passengers or employees should be treated any differently from those in the rest of the country. Another reason for introducing this Bill is to bring the quality of services in other parts of the country in line with that of the service in London.

This is a good amendment which we have discussed several times at various stages. Frankly, if the Minister rejects it now, I would have to ask him whether the Government consider that bus accidents, bad driving by bus drivers or bad quality of bus services—buses are a form of public transport, as are rail, ferries or air transport—and the necessity of having good-quality, safe bus services are less important for buses than for other forms of transport, perhaps because not so many Members of your Lordships’ House travel by bus as by other forms of transport. I hope that is not the case. However, if the amendment were rejected, that would be my perception. As I say, this is a good amendment and I support it.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his generous reply. Obviously he did not go as far as I would have liked and I hope the House will allow me a little leeway in demolishing—or commenting on—some of the comments that have been made during this debate.

Earl Attlee: complexity. I have never driven a train or a bus but, as a train is taken along tracks with no steering wheel, it could be argued that a bus is more complex to drive and that there are more complex issues on roads. So that is quite a feeble argument.

Lord Snape, I did not quite follow what you were saying but I can assure you that, from an extra burden point of view—if you are talking about a financial burden, for example—if a company has a turnover of up to £1 million, it would cost it £300 to subscribe to the scheme. If its turnover is from £1 billion to £2 billion, it is £12,000. That is not onerous. You might argue that the data collection is onerous—but I would say, “No data, no measurement”. We cannot judge whether a company is safe if we do not have the data to look at. So this is money well spent.

Lord Horam, you talked about my interesting ideas—I think that was a criticism rather than a compliment—and you also called this heavy-handed. I can only say to you that this is tried and tested in London and it works for the majority of bus companies. You talked about London buses being so good, but they are so good partly because they subscribe to this scheme and bus drivers are allowed to comment on their vehicles and the problems they face. I thank the Peers who commented in a positive way and I shall come to the Minister’s comment in a moment.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has done a fabulous job in moving her amendment and has had success in her reply from the Minister—but will she undertake to study the Companion on the use of the word “you”?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I do apologise. I have no idea about that. Perhaps you would like to give me a seminar afterwards.

The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, questioned whether or not he was consistent between my bringing the amendment last time and now, I can assure the noble Lord that he was completely consistent. He did not like it then and he does not like it now.

I thank the Minister for the productive meeting and it was good to hear that he was sympathetic to the issues. This is a relatively minor change. Other people have called it heavy-handed but it is a minor change. It saves lives. I cannot think of a higher, nobler cause than saving lives—especially those of the people we purport to govern. We are saving lives and preventing injuries and devastation to families—and the numbers we are talking about are not inconsequential. This is a relatively light touch for something that has such heavy consequences. I am of course disappointed that the Government have not snapped up the amendment but I look forward to it being picked up later.

Its impact on society and on the taxpayer is much heavier than we realise. Every crash has a cost—whether it is in delays to business, to the service or to commuters—that we do not assess. When we talk about the cost to industry, we should also think about the cost to the life of the towns, cities and roads where it happens.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for his courtesy in giving us his time in meetings, and I thank his officials for their work. We are grateful for the care with which he has considered our amendments and has responded to them, even when he was rejecting them.

We on these Benches support the principles behind the Bill and we are pleased that the Government are attempting to improve bus services. For some 30 years, since the Thatcher Government introduced deregulation, bus services outside London have been a story of decline. In contrast, buses have thrived in London within a much more regulated system. Although franchising may not be the whole answer—indeed, may not be the answer used in much of the country—we believe that partnerships have a much more active role to play for local authorities as well as for bus companies. They mark an important way forward.

Good bus services are an important part of a thriving economy. They are the most frequently used form of public transport and are essential to the mobility of older people, young people and, in particular, those who are less well-off. They are essential to the sustainability of rural communities and for a healthy environment. Air quality is a major issue of public concern, as the Government are painfully aware at this time, so frequent, reliable and reasonably priced bus services are key to discouraging car use. We hope the Bill will improve bus services and I hope our contributions on the issues of emissions, disabled access, youth fares and so on have helped to focus the Minister’s mind and those of his colleagues on ways the Bill needed to be improved and on ways in which a more ambitious approach might future-proof the Bill and make it more robust for the years ahead. I hope our work here in this House has done enough to make it strong enough to succeed in its aims.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, as is customary at this stage in the passage of a Bill, I shall be brief. Obviously the amendment moved by my noble friend the Minister is a good one. As he has said on several occasions, the overall aim of the Bill is to make bus services even better, and I agree with everything just said by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about the importance of bus services. There is much to support in the Bill, not least because it will pave the way for even greater partnership working between bus operators and local authorities. I was especially delighted to see the Government amend the Bill to ensure that passengers will have greater access to bus service information. This will make travelling on buses easier and perhaps a less daunting experience not only for those with disabilities, but for everyone.

However, not all the changes we have made were, I believe, so welcome. Giving any and all local authorities access to franchising powers is, in my view, a mistake. It will just serve to introduce uncertainty into the bus market and bus companies will have no incentive to invest. There will be no incentive to buy new vehicles, to keep passengers happy or to react to their needs, which runs counter to the overall aim of the Bill. This House prides itself on being a revising Chamber and it has certainly revised the Bill, so let us see what becomes of it when it reaches the other place. I hope that the next time we see it, the Bill will do what it says on the tin and enable local bus services to flourish and deliver for passengers.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I will say just a few words about this group of amendments. I do not wish to repeat anything I said during the passage of the Bill. My scepticism about franchising without proper funding is on the record. I say in passing—contradicting myself—that if the rest of the country received the sort of money that London receives for its franchising, it might be worth while. Without that sort of financial backing, I do not think it would be.

I thought that the Minister was, for once, less than generous with his comments on Amendments 8 to 11. If it is sensible to ensure that the auditor is independent of the franchising authority—which it is, in my view, and I said so during the passage of the Bill—why did he oppose it at the time? I would like to think that it was my own wise words that swayed the other place to change the Minister’s mind for him, but I fear I would be deluding myself. The fact is that the Minister was against the amendment on independence, which I supported during the passage of the Bill. If I may say so, there have been some comments about his stature. His stature did not diminish—like me, he can ill afford for such a thing to happen. But I am surprised, given his customary fairness, that he did not refer to the fact that he had obviously changed his mind about the amendment.

Like other noble Lords from both sides, I hope the Bill does improve bus services. Again, consulting passengers is something that we do not often do. The latest independent survey of thousands of bus passengers throughout the country indicates that around 80% of them are satisfied with existing bus services. In my view, that does not reflect the sort of discontent with bus service standards that was mentioned during the passage of the Bill. But there was virtual unanimity among those passengers about the problems of congestion, which are countrywide. If the Government are not prepared either to tackle congestion themselves or to give local authorities the proper powers to tackle it, those fears widely expressed by bus passengers are not likely to be allayed. I talk about the war on motorists that this Government’s Ministers have sometimes waged. In my view, this is not helpful so far as improving bus services is concerned.

I repeat that I hope the Bill brings about the improvement in bus services that the Government so obviously desire, and that the amendments that were passed in the other place, as well as the debates that have taken place in your Lordships’ House, have helped improve the Bill from when it was first introduced.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I too was uncomfortable with the idea that the appointment of the auditor should have rested with the franchising authority. This would have allowed the franchising authority to be judge and jury of its own proposals—to mark its own homework, if you will. Auditing a franchise assessment is perhaps one of the most critical steps on the road to franchising. If the auditor says that the franchise stacks up and meets all the other—let us face it—quite onerous requirements, there is little more to be said. For that reason, the person carrying out the audit should have no ties with the franchising authority and certainly no vested interest in seeing the franchise proceed, or otherwise. On something as important as this proposal, which could see bus operators lose their businesses, surely we must have something that is very transparent and democratic—and, perhaps just as importantly, is seen to be transparent and democratic. In my view, these amendments do just that.

However, I wonder whether I might push my noble friend the Minister a little further to ensure, perhaps through guidance, not only that the auditor is independent of the franchising authority but that he or she has no recent commercial relationship with the authority. That would really cement the concept of a truly independent auditing process.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, as this group of amendments refers to mayoral combined authorities I should probably remind the House of my declaration of interests. I am a locally elected councillor and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Generally, these are wider issues in respect of local authorities and combined authorities but we have now brought them into the Bill. I accept that it is through another department, but there is an obsession in government with mayors and it needs to be dealt with. I have never yet had it explained to me clearly why, to get these powers, you have to have such a mayor. I still do not understand why, although we keep asking. I am sure we will get something today, but I am not sure whether the Government are clear why they have to have this: you may be a combined authority, but unless you have a mayor, you cannot have these franchising powers. We are still not clear on that, and they will have to deal with their obsession with mayors at some point.

This makes a wider point about the question of the devolution of local government in England, which is, to say the least, now very confused. I remember that in an earlier debate the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who is not in his place at the moment—I am sorry, he is in his place—explained that there would now be four tiers of local government in Cambridgeshire. That seems to me at least one or two tiers too many. I accept that that goes wider than the issue of mayors in these authorities today, but it will have to be dealt with.

Franchising is the way forward. It has been enormously successful in London. I am delighted that these authorities with mayors can get these franchising powers and I hope that other authorities, if they come together to apply for them, will be successful. But at some point the Government will have to look at the much wider issue of what bus services they want in England. I think they will have to go further down this route; equally, I accept that they have made a move in the right direction here.