Bus Services: England

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my city colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), on securing this important debate. Bus services are extremely important to everyone in the Potteries and right across England—notably for those in deprived and remote communities, but also for those who are wedded to their cars. Road congestion would be even worse for those people if bus services did not take some of that strain.

We all have a stake in bus services being attractive and successful. Of course, that does not mean that bus services are always the optimal solution to road congestion, because often local rail or trams will be more efficient than buses in that regard. However, it does mean that buses are a necessary part of the mix, and we need to ensure that they are attractive enough to tempt more people out of their cars.

I very much support the initiative proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North on the fare cap, which is causing severe issues for many of our constituents. I visited Strathmore College, in my constituency, on Friday. It provides education to young people with special educational needs, and college staff told me about the challenges of the 9.30 am start, and the impact on their young people’s ability to access education. I was talking to the principal there, Kate Ward, about some of the travel training that they are providing to young people, and the impact that the 9.30 am start has on them. I very much support my hon. Friend’s campaign to address that issue.

The focus of my comments in the debate will be on non-metropolitan areas of England, outside London. This particularly means north Staffordshire, which includes, but extends further than, the Potteries bus network, which itself extends further than the city of Stoke-on-Trent. If that sounds complicated, I should also add that the city is cut in two by Network Rail management areas, which all adds up to public transport solutions being harder to come by than public transport problems in north Staffordshire. The decline of bus services in our area over many years now is partly because we lack seamless public transport services and partly because we suffer some of the worst road congestion in Europe. We need to increase demand for bus travel in order to keep services financially viable in the future.

That gives me a welcome opportunity to plug my private Member’s Bill to preserve and enhance high streets through mandatory improvement plans. The Bill received its Second Reading in the other place last Friday, ably moved by my noble Friend Lord Whitby, the former leader of Birmingham City Council. Optimal accessibility by bus to designated and improved high streets under my Bill will surely be a part of any local authority’s considerations in its high street reviews. That will be particularly important in the market hub towns identified by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that have high streets of importance to surrounding rural areas. In proximity to my constituency, these include Cheadle and Stone. Many residents living in villages throughout parts of north Staffordshire, such as Forsbrook, Tean and Alton, have raised with me the lack of effective bus services.

Locally, I am glad that the bus service improvement plan, on which we, as MPs, were active and contributing consultees and for which we helped to secure Government funding, is making it cheaper to travel by bus. The fare is £3.50 per day now—or £12.50 per week—in the Potteries “smart” area, which I think will be a massive bonus for attracting more people on to the bus network. The plan combines with work from the transforming cities fund, which we also helped to secure, making it easier to catch a bus, and more desirable to travel by bus.

However, unfortunately it has been painful for us, as MPs, to see how slowly our city councillors delivered on any of the funding that we worked so hard to secure. The package needs to be delivered with greater urgency. I thank the Department for its patience, and I hope Ministers will continue to press the city council to get all the promised and funded schemes over the line without any further watering-down of ambition by the current Labour council leadership.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

I hesitate to interrupt my hon. Friend, because I am aware that he is making a number of points, but I take his point about the council. I just want to make it very clear that we will continue to press the council to respond and produce the results that it clearly needs to produce. I also echo and endorse the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) that responsibility for concessionary fares absolutely lies with the local authority.

[Jack Brereton]

I thank my hon. Friend—actually, I think he is right honourable.

[Guy Opperman]

I am not.

[Jack Brereton]

Well, he should be. I thank him for the work that he has been doing in the Department to push on some of these issues. That has been a great assistance, and I know he will continue to work hard for us in the Department.

On the TCF package, we were promised that if funding was won, the city council would deliver a more efficient bus-rail interchange at Stoke station. Works are starting on the site this week, but we need further action to reinstate some of those cross-city bus routes that serve the places that rail cannot reach without people having to change and wait at our city centre in Hanley.

It will be a betrayal if the city council fails to deliver effectively the package promised. Our local buses now routinely take card payments, in line with 93% of buses across England. In fact, the worry now is not that buses will not take cards, but that they will not take cash in the future. We must nip such fears in the bud, and I would welcome any comments from the Minister on ensuring that cash payment will continue to be accepted on buses well in the future.

Under BSIP and TCF, it is now far more usual for Stoke-on-Trent bus stops to be elevated above the standard kerb height so that wheelchairs, prams and so on can be more easily wheeled on and off services. Those who find the step up and step down from the bus more challenging no longer struggle so much—except, of course, when the bus cannot pull into the bus stop because someone has decided to park there, often hurling abuse at the bus driver who tries to move them on. Thankfully, it is rare that these things turn violent, but the range of antisocial behaviour we see on public transport, whether against drivers or against other passengers, seems to be widening. That is why I particularly welcome Government funding for new transport safety officers to help reduce ASB on buses and trains throughout Stoke-on-Trent.

London continues to dominate the bus statistics, accounting for 52.2% of all passenger journeys in the year to March 2023, but it is encouraging that non-metropolitan England has seen the strongest recovery in passenger journeys over the past two years, with the number up 133.4%. That beats metropolitan areas, where they are up 111.4%, and London, where they are up 106.3%. Over the past two years, bus mileage in non-metropolitan England is up 11.3%, which compares favourably with the 2.1% increase in metropolitan England and the decline of 1.3% in London. But—I pause deliberately, because it is a big but—all three areas saw declines in bus mileage in the latter year of the two-year period. I am afraid that reflects what we are seeing on the ground: some bus routes have been cut from, say, half-hourly to hourly, and rural stretches have been cut altogether.

However, the decline that we have seen over many years may be about to reverse because of the £31 million bus improvement funding that we have secured. We are seeking new and expanded routes, particularly in the evenings and at weekends, across the Potteries. Thanks to the funding, Lightwood, which has not had a service for many years, has just had one reinstated, with the extension of the No. 50. More services in the evenings and at weekends will help shift workers, who often struggle to get to and from their shifts. A number of other services have been extended: the No. 6 has an earlier start at weekends; evening services have been introduced on the No. 11; Sunday services of the No. 23 have been extended to Newstead; the No. 26 has an extra service every hour; and the new 36/36A service in the evenings for Meir and Meir Park will make a massive difference to those areas.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said, local operators are starting to have a much more positive outlook, with First also looking to restore services to communities such as Sandford Hill and Saxon Fields, which lost its services some years ago. I very much also support my hon. Friend’s campaign to get the fleet renewed, because we need investment in new, zero-emission and sustainable buses throughout north Staffordshire. I join him in urging Stoke-on-Trent City Council to take seriously the proposals by First to invest in upgrading the fleet, which will help to attract more people back on to our bus services and help to address some of the serious air quality issues that we have seen in a number of parts of Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire.

It is not just about buses; local rail should also be taking a bigger share of public transport demand in north Staffordshire. Sadly, in accordance with Beeching’s proposals, Stoke-on-Trent lost the entire loop line that served four of the six towns, leaving three with no town centre trains at all, while the fourth town, Fenton in my constituency, lost its stations on both the Crewe-Derby line and the Stoke-Leek line. The suburbs of Trentham and Meir in my constituency also lost their stations. Relying on buses to absorb the traffic, as Beeching claimed they would, has proven to be a great mistake—so notably so that Meir, I am delighted to say, is set to have its station rebuilt under the restoring your railway programme. I continue to push for it to be delivered with every urgency, and connected to local bus services too. Importantly, restoring your railway is a reversal of the Beeching mindset, not just the Beeching cuts. It has been accepted that bus services alone cannot solve the pressing issues of transport deprivation and chronic road congestion in Meir.

In Trentham, the effect of the Beeching axe has been compounded by the decision of the last Labour Government to close the nearby stations at Wedgwood and Barlaston. That very Beeching-mindset move very marginally speed up the west coast main line through the Potteries arc, but only for the benefit of people travelling between Manchester and London. Again, local buses have not filled the gap in the south of the city, and I am pressing the West Midlands Rail Executive and Network Rail to forge ahead with their work towards restoring a station in the south of the city to replace at least one of the three that have been lost.

In Fenton, again, the problem of road congestion and pollution is cannot be solved by buses alone. We need Fenton Manor station on the Stoke-Leek line restored—my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North has been a great champion of that, too. The station was closed to passenger traffic in 1956, but it is now advancing through the restoring your railway fund, and it was committed for delivery in the Government’s Network North Command Paper.

It will, of course, be crucial that those rail infrastructure projects are connected to bus services and that we achieve multi-modal public transport journeys that are as seamless as possible. That should include a station at Bucknall that offers easy interchange with existing bus services along the Werrington Road to places such as Tean, and along Dividy Road to places such as Parl Hall.

In 2022, on average, people in households without access to a car made over six times as many local bus trips as those with access to a car; the figures were 131 trips per person and 20 trips per person respectively. Local bus services account for over half of all public transport trips made by people in households without access to a car. Bus services will continue to be a lifeline, but more effectively so if we can marry them up seamlessly with a growing local rail network. I note that among people in households with access to a car, under half—45%—of all public transport trips are made by bus, which suggests that people with cars are more easily tempted out of them by trains than by buses. The mix needs to be right.

I conclude with a plea to local companies to add more bus services to the mix in north Staffordshire that do not involve having to change at Hanley. Restoration of a route from Trentham to Cheadle, via Longton, Blythe Bridge, Tean, and Forsbrook, is a top priority; in peak season, it could run to Alton Towers. Thanks to this Government, with TCF, BSIP and RYR, the progress and momentum are definitely there for north Staffordshire to enjoy a meaningful revolution, frankly, in public transport provision. We must keep the momentum going and make travelling by bus more attractive, more viable and more connected, seamlessly with local rail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. Before I thank the Minister, I will say that we on the Island are fortunate for many reasons, but one of them is that we still have a very healthy set of bus routes by rural standards. Even in my little hamlet in the Back of the Wight, in west Wight, where we are served by the No. 12 bus, we have eight services from Newport per working day and seven in the other direction, if my memory serves me. The last time I used the bus, and indeed our wonderful £2 bus fare, which I will come to shortly, was the week before last, when I needed to get to Carisbrooke castle for the wonderful Walk the Wight event in aid of the Isle of Wight hospice.

Being a Minister is often a thankless task, so it is nice to have a Minister who goes the extra mile for Conservative colleagues and, I strongly suspect, Members of Parliament on the other side of the House. I thank him for helping us to get the electric bus bid for the Isle of Wight over the line. We had to push quite hard, but I am delighted that, following a few conversations with my hon. Friend the Minister—he should clearly be my right hon. Friend —we could get it over the line. I am hugely grateful that he was able to support the excellent bid from Southern Vectis and Richard Tyldsley. It is a great little company. Bus drivers on the Island seem to be incredibly friendly and a decent bunch; it is always lovely to see them and I thank them for running such a friendly and reliable service.

Thanks to the funding that we are getting from the Minister, we have already started testing electric buses on the Island. We will soon have zero-emission buses covering route 1 from Newport to Cowes, route 5 from Newport to East Cowes and route 9 from Newport to Ryde. That will mean lower emissions and better air quality for the Island towns of Newport, Ryde, Cowes and East Cowes.

The Minister will also know, because we have talked about it on quite a few occasions, how popular the £2 bus fare is. According to Richard at Southern Vectis, it has undoubtedly got thousands more people a month using the bus network on the Isle of Wight. It was going to be a temporary scheme, but I was not the only Member of Parliament lobbying the Minister—many of us were, including, I am sure, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), whom I thank for organising this great debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton).

I am absolutely delighted that we have been able to extend the scheme because it is really important to help youngsters on the Island to get around. Pensioners get free bus passes—we know about that—but if someone is on the minimum wage or a young person is starting out in their first job and they do not have a lot of money, taxis on the Island are really expensive. We have a vibrant bus network, so having a £2 max fare in one direction—£4 there and back—makes a big difference.

[Guy Opperman]

My hon. Friend is talking eloquently about the £2 bus fare, which I utterly endorse. It is the simplest and most persuasive way of getting people back on the buses. The most important thing for me, certainly in my constituency and up and down the country where it has been brought in, is that the impact on people with a low income is off the charts. The ability in tough times, which we have clearly been living through for the last few years, to get to work for an understandable figure that is by far discounted on what it was previously is a genuine game changer.

[Bob Seely]

I thank the Minister for his intervention. The last time I had a school visit in Parliament, some of the kids said, “Why should we vote Conservative?” I could have talked about the amazing apprenticeships schemes, but the first thing that came into my head was the £2 bus fare. If someone lives in Wales or in Labour-controlled London, fares are going up. If they are in Conservative areas, for the most part there is a fantastic scheme that helps young people get around.

In conclusion, I thank the Minister for finding the money to make sure that the Isle of Wight was included in his electric bus scheme. It will make a big difference and help to drive down emissions and improve air quality on the Island. I also thank him for the £2 bus fare, which has made such a difference and is getting people back on the buses, not least me.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. You wait ages for a debate on bus services and then there are two in a day. It is understandable and appropriate that, for the second time today, I rise to my feet in Westminster Hall to address the state of the nation in terms of our bus network. I will briefly set out, before I am probably interrupted by a vote, some key thoughts.

I endorse the comment by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) that franchising exists already. Local authorities can do this already—[Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) chunters away, having been laughed out of court earlier on, the key point about Labour policy is that it is very keen to propose franchising but there not a squidge of an iota about money. The money that goes to the Mayors for the franchising is the key difference. What the Labour party is proposing is a franchise policy without any fiscal assistance. In reality that will result in a far worse system. If it was so broken, there were 13 years of Labour government when they could have changed it.

When the hon. Member for Sefton Central gets into government—if we were ever so misfortunate for that to happen—he will realise that what he is proposing is genuinely not a good idea without significant extra funding. Labour will not commit to this, as the funding will not follow, so a local authority would struggle to provide even the quality of the services that it is providing at present.

Enough of such claptrap. I move on. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for bringing the debate to the Chamber. It is entirely right that he set out that the covid pandemic has had a massive impact and that slowly but surely the funding situation and take-up is improving. If we look at base funding as a starting point, we have doubled bus funding in this country since 2010. We are in a situation where the degree of support is off the charts compared with yesteryear. We all accept that operators and local transport authorities have been working in a challenging environment over the last few years, but the key point is that there is great collaborative work happening locally between local transport authorities, bus operators and passengers. The regulatory framework put in place by the Bus Services Act 2017 and the largest public investment in bus services in all time—we have announced over £4.5 billion of support to improve services since 2020—are significant.

Over £2 billion of this funding has been allocated to every single local transport authority in England to help to deliver its local bus service improvement plans, which help to deliver more frequent, more reliable, easier to use and cheaper bus services. I want briefly to talk about Stoke-on-Trent specifically. Clearly, the way the funding has been used is an example of the kind of change that we are seeing. Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been allocated over £33 million from the DFT to deliver its bus service improvement plan, including an extra £1.4 million this year in funding redirected from HS2 through Network North. I am pleased to see that investment bearing fruit, with a number of bus service enhancements being introduced across Stoke-on-Trent. That provides better, more frequent services to help people to get to and from work.

I am not going to go through all the villages that have benefited and all the changes also that have taken place in the other parts of Stoke, as they were outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, but the good news does not stop there. The local affordable fares scheme—the £3.50 scheme—is clearly something to be lauded. There is also the £2 single ticket, which is again subsidised and paid for by the taxpayer, arising out of the HS2 funding. There was talk today about funding, but not a word was said about whether that would continue under any Labour authority or any Labour Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) explained, this is the key thing to transform the ability of low-income people to get to work and get about in whatever community. It is such a transformational thing. That £600 million, again, arises out of and is continued by the HS2 funding.

I listened in great detail to all the speeches, and I noticed that many colleagues were keen to laud and be pleased about the zero-emission bus regional areas funding, known as ZEBRA 2. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight, who has campaigned and repeatedly beaten a path to my door, managed to secure £4.5 million for zero-emission buses on the Isle of Wight with ZEBRA 2.

Self-evidently, colleagues were keen to extol the £3.1 million ZEBRA funding for Staffordshire, albeit that Stoke is not particularly affected. I am surprised not to be lauded for the fact that Devon County Council has received £5.3 million for zero-emission buses. I was genuinely stunned and amazed to receive no thanks from the local MP, the hon. Member for Sefton Central, for the fact that Liverpool City Council, the combined authority, received £9.4 million, and that the Government are funding zero-emission buses to a massive degree. As always, the glass is half empty and there is no laudable attempt to accept that a transformational difference has taken place with zero-emission buses.

We can also look at the local transport fund, which is utterly key for places such as Stoke. That is due to a decision by the Prime Minister in respect of the second leg of HS2. I am still unaware of the Labour position on that, as always, with no word on funding. That is £4.7 billion of extra funding, of which Stoke-on-Trent benefits to the tune of £134 million. I want to address some of the key points about Stoke on the issue of the cap. I entirely agree with the Prime Minister and not with the local authority leader, I am afraid. This is something that can be entirely addressed by local authority funding. As I am setting out in detail, there is a plethora of extra local authority funding that could be used in this way.

[Bill Esterson]

What about all those cuts in 2010?

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Gentleman talks about cuts in 2010. He does not seem to remember Gordon Brown selling the gold, bankrupting the economy, and a note written by a Labour MP that famously said:

“I’m afraid there is no money.”

[Bill Esterson]

What is the state of the economy now?

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Gentleman has a brass neck to come to this House and start saying that 2010 was about anything other than a disastrous Labour Government who were rightly voted out. We will move back to Stoke, if I may.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North will be aware that the local transport fund has been transformational. The £134 million can be used for buses and to improve bus routes. It could also build on the substantial investment the Government have put into local transport through the transforming cities fund, where Stoke has again been awarded £34.6 million, as one of the many beneficiaries. I have twice touched on the point about concessionary travel. I regret to say that I manifestly disagree with the local authority leader, and sincerely hope he has the guts to reply, after more than 100 days, to my hon. Friend’s letter.

I am conscious of time and the incoming vote. I have touched on discretionary fares and other key points. It is outstandingly the case that the zero-emission buses will make a huge difference to their areas. I welcome what has taken place on the Isle of Wight and in the other local authorities I have discussed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight rightly said, it is not just in Conservative-run areas or where there are Conservative MPs; it is across the country. On the point about cash, we are aware of the importance of that and would encourage private operators to ensure that alternative payments continue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) made a point about his constituency. It was a pleasure to go to the Fishburn Youth and Community Centre, where I enjoyed a delicious pancake on pancake Tuesday. Clearly, there is some positive news in terms of what Arriva is doing in relation to the X12, but I continue to want to see better work between Durham County Council and the individual provider.

This has clearly been a difficult time, with the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but we absolutely believe that Stoke is doing better and that, with the record funding that is going in, a better future lies ahead for bus services.