Graham Stringer
Main Page: Graham Stringer (Labour - Blackley and Middleton South)Department Debates - View all Graham Stringer's debates with the Department for Transport
Monday 27th March 2017
(7 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Bus Services Act 2017 View all Bus Services Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 27 March 2017 - (27 Mar 2017)
Mrs Miller
I am not arguing against having local strategies, but a number of issues to do with the provision of services have a national resonance. The Government have identified this problem in the provisions on information that is available to bus passengers when they are on buses. That is nationally applicable. I am simply asking the Minister whether he will confirm what further thoughts he has given to ensuring that what is good enough for train operators is good enough for bus operators in respect of disability access.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
I support the amendment and want to reflect the huge consensus in Committee on this issue. We divided on a number of matters, but it was a relaxed Committee and the Minister gave reasoned answers. The Bill represents a first step towards a change in attitude to buses. It was brought about following negotiations between the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and various metropolitan areas. A deal was reached whereby elected mayors could re-regulate bus services. I hope that this is just the first step.
I ask the Minister to reflect on this issue in a developing situation. The new Prime Minister has brought in an industrial strategy, and there is a strategy for the railways, as has been mentioned, as well as a strategy for aviation. It is rightly difficult to think of areas where large amounts of public money are spent where it is not the responsibility and the right of the Government and elected representatives to define the objectives that that public money should provide.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman mentioned a connection between directly elected mayors and bus deregulation. Does he see any logical or sensible connection between the two? Is there any reason why the two should go hand in hand?
Graham Stringer
It was a pragmatic decision taken by the then Chancellor and the combined authorities in metropolitan areas. There is obviously no rational basis for deciding to have a different bus system in Greater Manchester from that in Southampton, for example. What would be the rationale for that? Clearly, there is none.
The point I was making is that, having taken the first step—not necessarily consistently, but in a sensible way in the metropolitan areas—it is right to look for a strategy that would help us to get rid of a relic of ideological Thatcherism from the early 1980s, which was seen in the Transport Act 1985 that deregulated buses. What the absence of strategy says is that we do not care how many millions of pounds have gone into the bus industry since 1986 when the 1985 Act came into force. I do not know, but I would have thought that over 31 years we are talking about a large chunk out of £100 billion being spent without any policy direction at all over that spending.
What we have been left with is a rather sterile debate. On the one side it is said that buses are declining and they would have declined in any case over this period. On the other side, there are those who think that that decline was not necessary. They say that without on-road competition, which has failed, with better competition at the tender stage and with a clearer decision on what bus services were needed and what fares should be charged, we would not have lost so many bus routes and bus passengers as we have. Not having a strategy over the last 31 years is saying that it does not matter that two thirds of bus passengers have disappeared in Greater Manchester and that bus fares have gone up considerably more than the rate of inflation. But these things do matter.
As both the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) have said, the vast majority of the people we represent, particularly the poorer people who do not have access to a car, rely on buses to get to work, to get to a hospital and to see relatives at weekends, but after deregulation, many of those bus routes no longer existed. How could we not have a strategy in view of that? How could we abandon those people?
Victoria Borwick (Kensington) (Con)
Following on from what the hon. Gentleman says about a strategy, it is important to ensure that we have better records on bus safety. I ask the Minister to look again at what record keeping we have on this issue. Of course we publish the number of people killed or seriously injured, known as the KSI, but many other injuries are caused by buses. I can speak only about the London experience, but it would be really helpful if, as we put into place our overall plans for transport, we think of some way of recording minor as well as major incidents, so that we can provide everyone with assurances about the safety of buses.
Graham Stringer
That is a pertinent point. However, a bus strategy would cover all the issues: personal safety, disabled access, fares, and where buses were running. It is clear from the interventions and the speeches that we have heard from Conservative Members, both today and in Committee, that that is where the central view of the House lies, and I think that that will be the direction of travel even if the new clause is not accepted on this occasion.
Graham Stringer
I do indeed recall the time and effort spent on the Committee’s reports with my hon. Friend. They show that competition does not take place on the road—that is a myth—and that we have left the public purse vulnerable to parasites like Brian Souter who have taken money out of it while putting up prices and reducing the service.
There will be a rearguard resistance from people who have benefited from the system, but we, as parliamentarians who have a duty to look after raised taxes, should support the consensus in favour of a bus strategy that I believe exists in the House. After all, there are strategies throughout the rest of our transport system.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Like the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), I was a member of the Bill Committee, and was pleased to contribute to what was, as the hon. Gentleman said, a consensual discussion. It was very well piloted by the Minister, to whom I was grateful for sending a Double Decker chocolate bar through the internal mail. Sadly, owing to the internal mail system, it looked more like a bendy bus by the time it was opened, but I was grateful none the less.
There is much in new clause 1 that is attractive, but I think that, given the improved local data requirements in the Bill, it should be perfectly possible to fix the strategy on a local basis rather than needing some form of Government top-down approach. The essential aim of the Bill is surely to bring about more localism.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
It will be useful for me to cover all the amendments in one, hopefully fairly detailed, set of replies.
New clause 1 would require the Secretary of State to develop and publish a national bus strategy—which we discussed at some length in Committee, where I am glad the discussions were considered, reasonable and helpful—and to consider a reduced fare concessionary scheme for young people aged 16 to 19 as part of the strategy. New clause 2 would require the Secretary of State to publish a report setting out the possible steps to support local transport authorities to provide concessionary bus travel to apprentices aged 16 to 18.
While the Government fully appreciate the importance of public transport for young people, particularly those living in more isolated areas, we also recognise that the cost of transport can be an issue for some young people, including those who are participating in apprenticeships. One reason for the introduction of the 16-to-19 bursary fund was to help with transport costs. Funding is allocated to schools and colleges and is used to support disadvantaged young people who need the most help with education and training costs, and the 2015 evaluation showed that nearly 400,000 young people were being supported. However, the statutory responsibility for transport to education and training for 16 to 19-year-olds rests with local authorities, enabling them to make decisions that best match local needs and circumstances. Many authorities and operators already offer discounts for passengers in that age group.
Both issues relate to funding. In Committee, I made it clear that the Bill is not about funding; it is about providing authorities with new tools to help them improve local services in a way that best suits their areas. As part of the 2015 spending review, my Department is protecting the bus service operators grant at current funding levels until 2020-21, already providing significant certainty of funding for bus services without the strategy proposed by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner). The funding is provided directly to local authorities and to bus operators and is not broken down into categories of service or by route. Attempting to do so would be a burdensome exercise that could risk embroiling central Government in the fine detail of local bus service provision.
At the heart of the question about a national strategy is the fact that the Bill relates to local bus services. It is not about a top-down, national plan. Buses are local by definition and play a key role in local transport planning. That is why we are seeking to support local councils with more powers. A national plan is not the answer. More powers for local authorities are part of the answer, and they are what the Bill provides.
Graham Stringer
One of our few disagreements in Committee was about what should be determined locally and what should be determined nationally. When the Government are spending billions a year on bus services, does the Minister not think that they should take an interest in there being more bus passengers and more bus miles and in what the fares should be? That could be stated as part of a strategy. In that respect, what is the fundamental difference between buses and trains?
Andrew Jones
I am happy to agree entirely that buses are a critical part of any local transport mix. I am a great champion of bus travel, which has been made clear in all my work as a Minister and in Committee. However, this is about a local issue, not a national solution. I made a joke in Committee that one of the great truths of business is, “I’m from head office, and I’m here to help.” I often was that person from head office, and I was not always quite so welcome.
This should be about local transport needs, not about a national top-down strategy. Are the Government neutral? Of course we are not, which is why we introduced the Bus Services Bill and protected the bus service operators grant, but ultimately this is about local authorities working in partnership with local bus operators to deliver the right services for their area.
Graham Stringer
The Minister is being typically generous in giving way. If it is about local decisions, why will he not devolve the bus service operators grant to local authorities or elected mayors?
Andrew Jones
Some of the grant is already devolved to bus operators, but the key reason not to devolve it further is that it goes direct to bus operators, which very frequently operate routes that cross council boundaries. Council boundaries and bus routes are not the same thing. Transport to work has nothing to do with a local authority’s geography, so it would potentially be a bureaucratic nightmare to change the system.
Having said that, we are considering how to reform the BSOG operation. The grant pays a flat 34.57p a litre in subsidy, which is why it used to be called the fuel duty rebate. We are considering how to incentivise better practice, rather than just rewarding bus operators for using fuel, which is not good practice.
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I rise to support amendments 14, 16 to 23, 15 and 24 to 28, which are in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends. Amendment 14, which is very straightforward, would ensure that a local transport authority could not make a franchise scheme if passenger benefits can be provided by a quality partnership scheme, an advanced quality partnership scheme or an enhanced partnership scheme.
Amendments 16 to 23 are mainly drafting amendments, but it is important that a franchising authority should be satisfied, rather than that it should just have considered the issues in a franchising assessment. As we heard in the debates on clause 4, it is clear that franchising should not be an easy option. A local transport authority should not be allowed to take a simple punt at franchising without having given full and detailed consideration to all the other options available. There will of course be other options, not least the partnership arrangements that we have looked at, and to which we will surely return in the near future.
The Bill contains stringent tests, but I think it would be very easy for a local authority to say that it has considered whether a proposed franchise regime would contribute to its transport policies; whether it has the capability and resources to operate the scheme; or, just as importantly, whether it can afford the scheme and that it represents value for money for local taxpayers—in other words, our constituents. It is quite another thing, however, for the authority to say that it is satisfied that its proposals will do these things. Surely, given the importance of the step the local authority is proposing to take in implementing a franchise scheme, it is not too much to ask whether it is convinced that its proposals will do exactly what they intend. That is what my group of amendments sets out to achieve.
Amendment 15 simply complements amendment 14, although it looks at the issue from a slightly different angle. I will not say anything more about amendment 15, except that we cannot really have amendment 14 without amendment 15. Amendment 15 requires a franchise assessment to specify the benefits of a proposed scheme for passengers and to explain why those benefits can be delivered by a quality partnership scheme, an advanced quality partnership or an enhanced partnership scheme.
Amendment 24, probably the most important amendment in this group, is all about compensation. The key is to bring into play a degree of fairness. The Bill is silent on the matter of compensation and I think that is wrong. I know what the Minister will say in his response. He will probably say that he will go along with the Transport Committee when it said in its recent report that there is no case for compensating operators who lose their business. I am fully aware that compensation would not have been available under a quality contract scheme, but the days of quality contracts are severely numbered. The fact that there was no compensation under that scheme does not mean to say that it is not right to have compensation for the new arrangements. The loss of business would be bad enough for the large plcs, which would have to redeploy their staff and their assets, but what about the smaller operators?
Graham Stringer
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. Will he explain—so far, he has not done so—on what basis compensation would be given when every bus company is able to compete to run buses via a franchising process?
Sir Henry Bellingham
I am not an expert on this, but the small and medium-sized bus companies in my constituency tell me that they are very concerned indeed. They have established their businesses on the back of a lot of hard work, and they have taken a lot of risks. One company that came to see me said that its directors had re-mortgaged their homes and invested their life savings to ensure that the company grew. They stand to lose—not because they have not performed properly, not because they are a bad company, and not because the passengers have decided that they no longer want to use those services—if they do not win a bid to continue to do what they have been doing successfully for many years. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that this is a fair measure and I ask the Minister to consider it.
The wider point is this: what message does it send to businesses looking to invest in the UK? We want businesses to come to the UK to invest. We should be saying to them, “You’ve come to the UK to invest, and if local authorities take your business off you there will at least be some compensation.” This measure will, in the longer term, represent good value for the taxpayer, because it shows that taxpayers’ money will be put to a good use. If businesses are put out of business because of measures in the Bill, then surely there should be some recourse to compensation.
Mrs Ellman
I want to talk about the new clauses and amendments relating to franchising, including amendments 14 to 23, 26 and 27.
The strength of the Bill lies in devolution, and its proposal that decisions on how to provide local bus services should be devolved to local transport authorities, which should consider what works best in their areas. It is important to remember that the Bill has come about because of dissatisfaction among members of the public—people who want to use buses—with the way in which the current system operates. There have been a number of attempts to change the Transport Act 1985, which deregulated transport services, but none of those attempts —which have been made under successive Governments—has resolved the problem. The Bill is important because it tries to address the difficulties that the public have experienced, and to create a thriving bus sector.
The Transport Committee examined the Bill in detail from the perspective of passengers. We welcomed the possibility of new and smaller entrants to the bus market, but what worries me about the new clauses and amendments is they may prevent the proposed devolution from taking place. There are two aspects of that. The first relates to combined authority areas with directly elected mayors having the power to proceed with franchising. There is a lack of clarity about the regulations that will be introduced, or imposed, to impede the ability of the mayors to do that. Will it be an absolute right, or will onerous, complex and perhaps unknown regulation be imposed? I hope that the Minister will clarify that issue, because it relates to a fundamental part of the Bill.
Secondly, the Bill proposes that transport authorities in areas that are not run by combined authorities with directly elected mayors may have powers to introduce franchising in certain circumstances. The amendments make that proposal extremely complex. It would be impossible to assess whether the transport authorities would be able to proceed with franchising if they wished to do so. The Transport Committee looked at good practice, and concluded that transport authorities should consider existing ways of operating in partnership with operators before moving to a franchising system, but we did not think that that should be part of the regulations. This proposal introduces new hurdles, but it is not fully specified what those hurdles are, or—this is equally important—how they would be assessed before the authority could adopt the franchising system. That, I believe, strikes at the heart of the Bill.
The Bill is intended to improve transport services in localities and devolve to local transport authorities the ability to act on the needs of their areas, but the hurdles introduced by the amendments might enable future Ministers to impede its objectives, and I am sure that present-day Ministers would not wish that to happen. I am extremely concerned about the amendments. I hope that the Minister will tell us more about what they mean, and will make clear whether the Government intend franchising to go ahead, as they have stated, without introducing complex hurdles which would make the proposed system extremely difficult to achieve.
Graham Stringer
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), who chairs the Transport Committee. As she said earlier, the Committee has considered this issue on a number of occasions, and—my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) mentioned this—we have never been able to find a reason why London should have one system and the rest of the country should have another. The hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) grins at that, and I do not blame him, because the regulated system in London is superior to the system in the rest of the country.
I listened to the responses of the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) about his not wanting to wreck the Bill, and I take that at face value. However, I do not think the amendments reflect the reality of the nature of bus services, certainly in urban areas. I am not an expert on bus services in Norfolk and suspect the hon. Gentleman knows more than I do about Norfolk, but if he is concerned about small bus companies, he should support this Bill as it is or seek to improve it, because what has happened in the west midlands, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear, Greater Manchester and the great urban areas of this country is precisely the opposite of what he wants: small companies have been driven off the road by large companies.
Ian Mearns
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend about the impact on the small bus service providers. When bus services franchising was introduced, I remember visiting Merthyr Tydfil to see Gateshead football club play Merthyr in a Conference fixture, and—lo and behold—there in Merthyr Tydfil were Go-Ahead Gateshead buses being used in a local bus war to destabilise a local small bus company. So in terms of the impact on small and medium-sized bus companies, that particular horse bolted long ago.
Graham Stringer
My hon. Friend is right: the deregulation of bus services has not led to greater competition and has not benefited SME companies. They have been literally driven off the roads, because on the odd occasions when there has been on-the-road competition, it has led to congestion and eventually a large monopoly operator taking over. FirstGroup, Stagecoach, Arriva, Go-Ahead and one or two other companies have taken control and have therefore been able to exploit the situation through introducing high bus fares and sometimes withdrawing services for other areas.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
I have listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman’s comments on small and medium-sized bus companies, and there is a lot of truth in what he says about the smallest bus companies, but does he agree that the greatest concern is for medium-sized operators? There are not many medium-sized companies in the country, but there are some in counties such as mine, Nottinghamshire, and neighbouring Derbyshire: Marshalls of Sutton on Trent and trentbarton —which the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) will be familiar with—are good medium-sized bus companies and they stand to lose a lot from this. They will grow exponentially if they win a franchise or, in the case of either of those companies, they could find 30 years of hard work going down the toilet with no compensation whatsoever.
Graham Stringer
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, and I will come on to it. He is right to be concerned about that, but I want to develop the logic of the argument that I am making as to why these are not sensible amendments. In large parts of the country, where most bus passengers are, we do not have competition. The basis of the Transport Act 1985 was that there would be on-the-road competition and that would provide good services, and if bus companies lost out because of on-the-road competition, they lost out as in any other capitalist-competitive market situation. That has not happened, however; we have moved to monopoly.
Incidentally, when the 1985 Act was implemented in 1986 no compensation was paid to those bus companies—of which there were a number—running on regulated routes. Mayne in east Manchester, for instance, had run for many years in that area; when it had to compete, it did not get compensation.
We are now moving—through principled objectives, in a different way—to a competitive system, in those areas that choose that, because there will be choices for Norfolk, Greater Manchester and other areas at some stage. As with rail franchising, in a competitive situation, when a company loses out, it loses its business, even if it has invested in it previously. In fact, one of the difficulties with franchising is that we end up with investment up front and a lack of investment at the end; that is just the nature of franchising.
On the point made by the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) about medium-sized bus companies, that can of course be taken into account in the way that franchises are set up, by local choice. Areas can set them up in as many different ways as they wish, so medium-sized companies could be given the right to tender for routes that fit the size of the company if that was what the franchising authority wanted to do.
That brings me to a point I made in Committee, and which was rejected. Rather than the amendments we have here, I would have preferred the Bill to say that the regulations should not be overly burdensome and that they should reflect local conditions. If they were reflecting local conditions, they could take into account those small and medium-sized companies. There is a large point here, however, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh said, the large companies would be more pleased than the small bus companies if these amendments were passed.
There is not a single quality contract in this country, and that is because when they were brought in under the Transport Act 2000, it contained a clause that is very similar to measures here, saying that they are the only practical way of delivering a better bus service. That is an incredibly high hurdle to jump, which is why there are no such contracts. Quality partnerships were referred to; I asked the Minister in Committee how many of them there were in the country, and, after a little help from the officials, we discovered that there were 10. So even quality partnerships are not abundant on the ground in this country. We do not need overly burdensome regulations. We want to make this work because it will improve the service for passengers, be more competitive and lead to better services.
We are not discussing them now, but there are huge guidance notes associated with this Bill, which I think tend to be overly prescriptive. I prefer to rely on the good sense of local councillors; they will make some good decisions and some bad decisions, but there are many bus companies with vested interests who are opposed to this, and if local authorities behave in an unreasonable way, they have the right to apply the Wednesbury principle and go for judicial review.
Rather than having lots of prescriptions, and putting ever more hurdles in the way of locally elected people making decisions, we should rely on their good sense. Sometimes they will get it wrong, as sometimes national politicians in Governments and Cabinets get things wrong, but we can rely on them and the common law, which will ensure that if bus companies feel that they are being unfairly treated and that transport authorities are behaving in an unreasonable way, they can take that to court.
So I hope the Minister will reject these amendments. We have held in the balance throughout our discussions the question of what is central and what is going to help local authorities, transport authorities and elected mayors to make these decisions, and these amendments do not help move us towards having a better local transport system.
Daniel Zeichner
There is a wide range of amendments in this group, many of which we support, but some we do not.
I genuinely hope that the Minister will consider new clause 4 on bus safety, despite his comments in Committee. More disappointment has been expressed to me on that aspect of our Committee discussions than on any other, partly because the comments of the Minister in the other place had been encouraging, but also because I cannot believe that there is any disagreement on the value of improving bus safety, and this is widely seen as an effective and cost-effective way of achieving that goal.
I think the Minister suggested in Committee that he might be minded to insert some guidance to encourage bus operators to sign up, but the evidence on voluntarism is clear: to my knowledge, no bus operator outside the London franchises is signed up to any independent, confidential incident reporting system. We have an opportunity now to end that situation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) said, such a system is not expensive. It works in the railway industry, and I have not heard a strong case made against it. It seems to work well and I urge the Minister to grasp the opportunity.
Amendments 14, 16 to 23 and 15 appear to us to be unnecessary and to go against the spirit and devolutionary nature of the Bill. The assessment process laid out in the Bill and the extensive guidance—168 pages—available for it are extremely thorough and tough, and do not need to be added to. Amendment 24 undermines the assessment made by the Government of the issues relating to compensation and sufficient time to enable operators to plan. Provisions already in the Bill fully satisfy all value-for-money considerations. We are pleased that the Minister confirmed on Second Reading and in Committee that the aim of the process is not to put barriers in the way of authorities proceeding to franchising. We fear that the amendment threatens the very heart of the Bill. Amendment 25 also seems to be unnecessary, as additional appropriate independence, rigour and structure for the audit process will be ensured by the Government, to which I think the Minister is about to speak. Amendments 26 and 27 also seem at odds with the devolutionary nature of the Bill, because it should be for elected authorities to make the decisions, based on their local judgments.
We strongly support amendments 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead. The arguments were well made in Committee, and perhaps even more strongly today. In any transfers workers should be properly protected, and we have the opportunity to ensure that. I fear that the Government will choose not to take the opportunity, but I urge them to do so.
Graham Stringer
The Minister says that competition will continue, but does he accept the evidence that the Transport Committee took from the Competition Commission, which was that the commission was unable to find much evidence of any on-road competition?
Andrew Jones
My point is that competition will move, but it will not disappear from the market. Competition now takes place on the road; it will move from the roadside to the tender. I do not accept that competition disappears from the marketplace. I came to this place from a robust private sector background, where competition was the daily bread-and-butter activity, and I am sure that it can have a positive impact on customer service, innovation, price and so on.
Daniel Zeichner
I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) first.
Graham Stringer
Two have come at once! Does my hon. Friend agree that, aside from the reasons given by the Competition Commission, municipal bus companies can provide a benchmark? In a rational debate, we should be able to get from the Government a reason why, when municipal bus companies have performed in an excellent way, they are not allowed to compete. Does he agree that that reason was not forthcoming in Committee?
Daniel Zeichner
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The point about keeping the market honest is important. When I was first elected as a local councillor, the housing officer told me that one of the roles of an in-house operation was to keep the market honest. That is an important role.