Draft Franchising Schemes (Franchising Authorities) (England) Regulations 2024

Gareth Bacon Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 General Committees

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank the Minister for his warm words of welcome at the outset.

We recognise that the expansion of bus franchising was a Labour party manifesto commitment, and we are not going to oppose that mandate. In fact, in principle, we support the idea of local areas having more say over the services they can offer local people. But there are some question marks over these plans—questions that my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) raised back in September in relation to the Minister’s statement to the House, and which, I am afraid, we are not yet fully satisfied we have heard answered. Will the Minister therefore answer them today?

First, how much has been budgeted for the increased cost of this plan to the Department for Transport, to support local authorities to prepare these assessments and then to measure them against the criteria, and also to help local authorities plan their franchises when they do not have the experience to do so, which I believe the Minister has said is part of the plan?

Secondly, how much has been budgeted for the increase in costs to local authorities, both in terms of the additional resources they will require to plan and run bus services, and in a business sense? In many rural areas, and even in Greater London, bus services lose money and often require subsidies. Where will that money come from? And, while we are at it, where will the money to buy the buses come from? The Minister suggested that the coming buses Bill would contain regulations about devolving funding—I would like to hear a bit more about that. If the answer is that we have not budgeted for it, or that it is coming from existing budgets, that can only mean council taxes going up, or cuts to local services such as social care or universal services such as waste collection. There would appear to be no third option.

At the end of the day, passengers do not care who is running their bus; they care about the price, performance and reliability of services. We are yet to hear a convincing case for how these reforms will actually make a difference to passengers’ journeys. Are buses more likely to run on time and, if so, by how much more? Will these reforms help to restore the number of rural services? Will they make journeys cheaper for passengers? That seems unlikely, given the 50% hike in fares.

I do not doubt that bus franchising can, does and will work for some areas, but the insinuation of today’s statutory instrument is that it should be happening everywhere. We have yet to hear anything that convinces us that that will be the case, and that is not to mention the fact that the proposal currently appears to be unfunded. I would be grateful if the Minister could assuage our concerns this afternoon.