Local Bus Services

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Despite the Secretary of State’s rather Panglossian presentation, the contributions to today’s debate have shown up the failings of our bus network outside London—failings that need correcting now. Members outlined the challenges that we face, and endorsed this party’s belief in the great potential that an energised, accountable bus network could offer people across England, bringing some relief to their cost of living and transport crises.

We have heard excellent contributions from those on the Opposition Benches today, not least from the Chairman of the Select Committee who skilfully deconstructed the myths of deregulation; from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) who has passionately raised issues with his local operators; from my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) who has done likewise; and from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) who pointed out that a third of Durham’s budget has gone missing under this Government. In a measured and thoughtful contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) talked about the decrease in the number of bus journeys since deregulation in 1985. I say with some hesitancy that the Secretary of State has simply got his figures for outside London wrong. In 2010, the figures were 2,401 billion, compared with 2,291 billion in 2013.

The previous Labour Government started the process of revaluing the bus services that had been deregulated and largely disregarded by the Thatcher and Major Governments. I remind him that in 1997, the Government subsidy for bus services stood at less than £1 million. By the current decade, it had risen to more than £2.3 billion. This Government did not inherit a situation in which buses were a second-class service with a disintegrating network and fleet of vehicles. Sadly, the coalition Government’s double whammy—savage cuts in Department for Transport spending, the 20% cut in operators’ and local government grants—shows that they have been indifferent to those effects. They have retreated to a silo vision of what the bus can do rather than see it as the inclusive driver of economic growth that it should be.

In most areas across England, this coalition Government’s strategy is failing. I have already said that outside London, bus use has reduced and fares have risen by 25%. On-road competition is effectively non-existent in many cases, and the Competition Commission has estimated that the broken market is costing taxpayers up to £300 million a year. Rather than different private companies, or even Whitehall, taking decisions about public transport, our plans would put local areas in the driving seat. Currently, no one is able to provide consistent information to passengers on their bus services or to monitor the performance of bus operators effectively since this Government stopped the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency collecting data on punctuality and left transport commissioners with restricted powers to penalise operators who do not provide such data.

Local co-ordination could include measures to support disabled passengers in franchising agreements, but while this Government have dragged their feet on that process, we will have to do that at local level and build on the excellent accessibility campaigns of Guide Dogs for the Blind, Leonard Cheshire Disability, Whizz-Kidz, the Royal National Institute of Blind People and others.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) a former distinguished leader of Manchester council, gave the Government a timely reality check on the issue of hunt the subsidy. That is the answer to Members on the Government Benches: they should start believing in the principles of competition instead of supporting and succouring people who run the present system on subsidy. That is the issue before the House today. I brought this matter up in a debate in Westminster Hall less than a month ago, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) provided us with an example. The deregulation system often promotes crude, crazy cartels or de facto monopolies with inefficient bunching on the most used routes and little is done to expand usage on new routes. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said, 45% of that is dependent on subsidy. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) echoed that point in a series of excellent interventions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) outlined the case of a local woman studying for a degree in hospitality who is unable to take a job in the city’s hotels because the bus services finish so early that she would not be able to get back home. That built on what my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) said in his excellent debate in Westminster Hall in June when he quoted a constituent whose local buses stop at 7 o’clock:

“you can’t go to the theatre, adult education, swimming…visit friends, support elderly relatives…anything!”

The constituent added that even though there are medical centres open late in town,

“you can’t have a late appointment if there isn’t a bus running that late. It’s like living under curfew”.—[Official Report, 17 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 34WH.]

I heard a similar story when I visited Staffordshire this year and heard from our local campaigners about the people who are losing out the most.

Often it is not just individuals but whole communities who are left isolated by inadequate bus services. I have heard from our candidate in Redcar, Anna Turley, about the village of Lazenby. The village used to be one stop on a profitable route, though it required a detour from the main road to reach it. The bus operator has decided to cut out this inefficiency, and with it, the village. Local people on the minimum wage who are having to hire taxis are now paying the price. Those are just the kinds of short-sighted, damaging decisions that communities in charge of their local transport will be able to overturn. Profits will be pooled and reinvested so that, in the interests of all local people, we can unlock the economic growth that comes through access to skills and jobs.

[Luciana Berger]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Marsden]

I do not have time, I am afraid.

Access to affordable transport shows up time and again as a major concern for young people, whether in National Union of Students surveys or in what they have told me in Blackpool in schools and colleges, and at listening events.

Our policies will promote opportunities for people to shift from using cars for short journeys to public transport—that can be a key element in our climate change commitments. They will help in rural areas, where the elderly often experience services being cut and, as a result, have to pay for a taxi to the theatre, which costs 10% of their weekly pension. They will help to bring local authorities and local enterprise partnerships together and engender a real localism, alongside our bold pledge to deliver £30 billion of devolved funding to local authorities in the next Parliament. By engaging with business at every stage, we will make sure that transport, and buses in particular, help to create this virtuous circle, working with LEPs, chambers of commerce and others in a common endeavour. Greater local controls over services such as transport are part of our fundamental response to the English question. Unlike this Government, we do not believe in just one or two initiatives to cover up the reality that their Departments continue, too often, to work in centralised silos.

Labour’s proposals also offer opportunities to communities and local authorities whereby outside visitors—be it to seaside and coastal or rural and inland attractions—are key ingredients of their economic prosperity. These changes will boost people’s confidence in inputting their views. Thanks to the previous Labour Government, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South, we are seeing the benefit of this—in Blackpool, for example—and we will see it even more under the new system.

[Luciana Berger]

I am sorry that I did not get to make this point in the debate. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that young people in particular are incredibly affected because this Government took away the education maintenance allowance? The cost of buses in Liverpool is so prohibitive that young people are unable to make choices about their education as they cannot choose colleges that are, in effect, too far away because too many bus routes are involved.

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She makes a point that she and other Labour Members have been fighting for.

Let me linger for a moment on the word “bus”, which derives from “omnibus”, the great innovation of the Victorian city. “Omnibus” means “for everyone”, but apparently the bus is not omnipresent in the hearts or minds of this Government. Their DFT business plan does not even mention buses by name, and the Transport Secretary’s recent speech to the Tory conference had just a two-word reference to the bus. That is the difference between them and us, and the difference between their policies and the biggest initiative to devolve power and opportunities to communities across England in 100 years. We get it; they do not. They do not see the transformational power that could come with integrated local transport systems. They have not seen the bus as a key agent of change to revitalise our public spaces. Our devolved vision is not only more integrated, but comes with more money—three times as much.

This Government are bequeathing the people of England a fractured landscape in the NHS, in skills and in transport, but we are embarking on a journey to empower people and places across England to work together, and we are placing the bus at the centre of that, as has been done so well in London. Ours is a promise and an opportunity for all—for coast and countryside, for small towns as well as large cities, for north and south, for rural areas and suburbia—and the Labour party will deliver it.