Bus Services

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley, and I add my thanks and congratulations to the Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman). She comprehensively set out the evidence taken by the Committee and the conclusions that it reached, and I was proud to be part of that investigation.

I wish to pick up on one or two points in the report, add some experiences from my local area and give one or two international examples that I have researched. I was struck by the variation in the ways that local authorities around the country responded to the admittedly challenging economic circumstances in which we now operate. Some authorities have taken a hatchet to bus services. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) gave evidence of that from his area. Other authorities have responded innovatively and positively and worked hard to protect local bus services.

I shall give an example from my own local authority in Milton Keynes. It predates the comprehensive spending review. Just after I was elected, in May 2010, the local bus operator, Arriva, completely reorganised its network and timetables. It said that it had had a consultation on that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) said, it was anything but a consultation. Indeed, some people turned up on the first Monday of the new system, expecting their usual bus to turn up, but it was not there. In the first chaotic few weeks of being a new Member of the House, my mailbag and e-mail inbox were flooded with complaints from patients who could not get to their GP surgery, from students who had missed exams and from shoppers who could not get to their local shops. There were all sorts of problems. That was one of the first big local issues that I had to deal with. I was lucky enough to be able to secure an Adjournment debate in the Chamber in the first few weeks after the election. The Minister may recall responding to it.

I am happy to report that many of the problems have now been remedied. The situation is not perfect, but through work with the local council, with Arriva and with the new bus users group that was set up, many of the problems have been solved. I raise that as an example because consultation is vital. Bus services need to be responsive to the needs of the local area, and those needs may change as time goes on. It is important to talk to the users—the bus passengers—but also to the local service providers, such as the GP surgeries, local colleges and schools and retailers, so that a local bus service is provided that people want to use and that generates additional traffic.

Another issue in relation to which good local consultation is vital is concessionary fares. We have talked about the concession card. I am glad that that has been preserved, but of course it applies only to off-peak services, and one problem identified to me locally is that pensioners want to use buses in the peak time. Some still wish to work; we are all being encouraged to work for longer and longer. They also have to get to some services before the 9.30 am cut-off. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), indicates from a sedentary position a financial issue. I am happy to report that in Milton Keynes we have come to a deal. This relates to the point about consultation. The local authority and Arriva have worked together to provide not free bus travel for pensioners before 9.30, but a concessionary fare of 50p a journey. During consultation, people who would be using the buses said that they would be happy to pay a fare at that level. That was found out through a very effective form of local consultation.

As other hon. Members have said, it is important to share that good practice throughout the country, because some local authorities clearly have not taken that approach. The evidence from my area is that the local authority has done that. I strongly urge the Minister to take up the recommendations that the Select Committee made about a consultation toolkit and a mechanism for disseminating good practice throughout the country. I have a fairly open mind about what the best forum for that is. It may be the Department itself, the Local Government Association or another forum. Clearly, there are examples of good and bad practice, and we need to ensure that the good practice is rolled out as far as possible.

I want to touch on not just current bus services, but the planning for future bus services. Milton Keynes is a fast-growing area, so what applies to us may not be relevant in other areas, but with house building forecast to grow quite significantly in future years, I think that such planning will be an important issue in many areas. I am talking about planning properly for new bus services. I want to highlight the Oxley Park area of my constituency. That is a new-build housing estate on the western edge of Milton Keynes. The good part was that there was a plan for a new bus route going through it, with stops all the way along so that people could easily get to the centre of Milton Keynes and to other key destinations in the authority area. That was all well and good, and it was financed by some section 106 money and through other agreements with the house builders to put in that facility.

The problem has arisen because the design of the estate had to meet density targets. The houses are crammed in; the main road through the estate is quite narrow; and there is not sufficient car parking space. That means that the bus drivers have to go through a chicane of parked cars. Sometimes they cannot get through at all. There are issues of road safety: there are many young families in the area, and kids naturally want to play outside. There is also a noise problem because the houses have been built right up to the pavement. The buses, with diesel engines, make a noise, and the service runs until quite late, so I have had many complaints from residents saying that they cannot get to sleep because of it. That is providing a disincentive to bus use—people are campaigning for the bus route to be removed.

However, with proper planning—I welcome the provisions of the Localism Act 2011 on better community involvement in designing new housing areas—we should be able to plan new housing areas with bus routes in a way that does not cause problems and in such a way that people want to use them. I hope that the Minister will liaise with his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government and take that suggestion forward.

I have one other point about local consultation, and it relates to finding innovative new ways of delivering services. Milton Keynes is largely an urban area—85% of the population of the local authority area lives in the urban centre of it—but it covers quite a wide rural hinterland as well. There are quite a number of small villages on the outskirts with very small populations. Most of those people drive, but there are a few people for whom a bus service is a lifeline, although it is not commercially viable to provide a regular bus service that one person uses every other day. As far as I am aware, the council has not come to any conclusions, but it is exploring innovative new ways of not having a bus service but helping people to use a local taxi service at no additional cost over what the bus fare would be. I am talking about a more responsive service, which they will want to use, as opposed to a static timetable that may be inconvenient for them. Again, that is where local innovation can come to the fore. There will be plenty of other examples across the country, and those good ideas can be shared.

I want to move on to a more general point about strategic planning in relation to buses. Buses have always been the poor cousin of the transport system. Having to use a bus is almost looked down on, but that need not be the position. I shall give an international example. In the summer recess, I was invited to go to Switzerland by Swiss Federal Railways. That was primarily to look at its railway system, but as part of the visit, we looked at its transport system and planning as a whole. On one of the days, we went to visit the small city of Zug, just south of Zürich. It has put in a new commuter railway line from the city centre to the outskirts. We travelled on that and got to the suburban station. We then watched what happened. A train arrived from the centre of town. Everyone got off and went to the adjacent bus station, where six buses were waiting. Five minutes later, they all dispersed to the housing areas around the station. Fifteen minutes later, they all came back in, and the passengers had five minutes to cross to the railway platform. The next train then went back into the centre of Zurich. The system was integrated, with some public and some private operators, who worked together to provide a reliable and regular service.

Another thing that struck me from that example was the sheer range of passengers using the system. There was everyone, from smartly suited business men to students and shoppers. Everyone was using it—it was a good cross-section of the local community. The system was so well regarded that people wanted to use it. No one was thinking of driving into the centre of town, because they knew that they had a reliable system. We in this country have been poor at that. I am not going to make a party political point—I think Governments of all colours have failed to grasp the option of having a much more integrated across-the-zones transport system. I hope we can have more of that.

I will again cite a local example—the welcome announcement in the autumn statement that the east-west railway line will be built from Bedford, through Milton Keynes, to Oxford and further south-west. I campaigned for that in this Chamber two weeks ago—I had secured a Westminster Hall debate to call for it—and I am delighted that it has been delivered within two weeks. I might have to be careful in what I wish for.

In developing that line, which has a strong case in increasing rail use and encouraging people off the roads and on to rail, how much better would it be if, as part of the planning, the services were integrated with the bus systems in Milton Keynes, Oxford and other places along the route? People who live elsewhere in Milton Keynes who want to travel to Oxford will therefore be able to decide that they can get bus x to Bletchley station and then straight on to a train, rather than say, “I am not sure when I will get there if I get a taxi to Bletchley. I will be better off using the car.” With proper planning, the new transport infrastructure projects can be even more successful than they will be.

Such optimism needs to be part of the bus industry. I was slightly perturbed, when we were taking evidence from some bus operators, that they were not seeing the opportunities in the current climate. I cannot predict what fuel prices will be like in the future—I am not a betting man, but if I were, I would suspect that they will remain high for some time. That surely is an incentive and opportunity for bus companies to say to people, “You do not have pay £1.35 for a litre all the time. You would be much better off getting a bus to your destination.” If bus companies think innovatively and work with local authorities and others to provide new services, there is an opportunity to grow the market.

I am optimistic about the future of bus transport in this country, but we must seize the opportunity. The economic circumstances are challenging—I am not going to get into a debate about how we got here and what the future will be. We have to accept the reality that economic circumstances will be challenging. However, there are opportunities to grow the system and the usage of buses. The Select Committee’s recommendations are helpful in nudging that forward, and there are good international examples that we can follow. I hope that our contribution in the report will help persuade the Minister to take those arguments forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

Yes. We will have clarity from the commission, and clarity from the Government on BSOG, in the early part of next year. We will then be able to answer questions in more detail based on what the commission has said.

I think that it is unfair to paint the autumn statement in the negative way the hon. Member for Hartlepool did. He said that things would get worse. I do not want to have a debate about the finances, as this is not the place to do it, but I will give one statistic. The day after the general election, our interest rates were higher than Italy’s. They are now lower than Germany’s, which suggests that the Government are handling the economic position rather better than he gives us credit for.

In addition to the money for green buses announced this week and for retrofitting existing buses, the Chancellor gave transport authorities another £50 million this week in his statement. I hardly think that this has been a bad week for transport, or for local authorities as far as transport is concerned. It seems to be a good week in terms of what has been handed out.

I mentioned that the Competition Commission’s report would be published shortly. The Department has submitted its formal written response to the provisional remedies, which is available to view on the Competition Commission’s website. In the response, I broadly welcomed the provisional remedies. I believe that they have potential to improve multi-operator bus ticketing in particular, and I welcome the commission’s focus on that issue in its recent inquiry into the bus market. There is no question but that better integrated ticketing can help by enabling passengers to make more seamless journeys. Smart ticketing can also play an important role. That is why I have committed to delivering, with operators and public sector bodies, the infrastructure to enable most public transport journeys to be undertaken using smart ticketing by December 2014, to answer the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys.

I mentioned the Local Transport Act 2008. There has been some concern that the provisional remedies have been ambiguous in terms of the tools in the Act that can enable authorities to increase the quality of services, so let me be clear. Statutory quality partnership schemes, quality contract schemes and voluntary and qualifying agreements remain useful tools for local transport authorities to deliver their public transport policies. That is the present position. The Government have taken no action to undermine quality partnerships or quality contracts. We will consider where we are after the Competition Commission has reported. In the meantime, it is perfectly open to local authorities to use the terms of the 2008 Act. It is available on the statute book for them to use if they decide that that is what they want to do.

The hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) discussed the general price of bus fares. She is absolutely right to express concerns about that. Over the past 30 years, the trend has been that the average cost of travelling by bus has increased more than the average cost of travelling by train or car. We recognise that buses are used disproportionately by poorer people. I want to ensure that we consider that issue in our response to the Competition Commission’s inquiry into the bus market. It is not for us in Government to start telling people how much they should charge for buses in Kettering or anywhere else, but we must ensure that the system and the market work properly, which is what we are trying to achieve as part of our consideration of the Competition Commission responses.

I was interested in the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South about the deal reached between the council and Arriva to provide a 50p rate before 9.30. It is an exceedingly interesting idea that a bus company and a council can come together to create a new, innovative arrangement that meets the needs of local people and, presumably, the bus company as well. We need more arrangements such as that, and I hope that we will see what we can do to encourage such innovation across the country.

[Iain Stewart]

I would like to place it on record that a key body instrumental in brokering that deal was the Milton Keynes Pensioners Association. It required good work on all sides, but the association had an instrumental role in helping that deal be struck.

[Norman Baker]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for rightly putting that point on record.

Several Members raised the importance of consultation. I welcome the Transport Committee’s emphasis on it, and it is right that Members have mentioned it here. It is also right that councils and operators considering changing services consult properly. It is clear from the evidence that the Committee and I have seen that there are some good examples and some pretty ropey ones. The message that I want to give to bus companies and local councils is that they must consult properly and take into account the consequences of any changes that they propose. Actually, if they consult properly, they often get some good and constructive responses and end up with a solution that is better than the one proposed, not just for customers but for the company.

The Chair of the Transport Committee asked when I expect we will know what the Association of Transport Coordinating Officers is doing with its assessment. I mentioned the annual statistics, but the ATCO assessment is happening now, and we expect the results early in the new year. There is no reason why the Department should not share that with the Committee as and when it comes to us, so I will ask my officials to ensure that we are in touch with the Chairman then.

The toolkit has been mentioned by a number of Members. Passenger Focus is gathering evidence from local authorities and bus operators to find examples of good practice. It is receiving good support from the authorities it has contacted and we expect to see a first draft in January, so we and Passenger Focus are making good, swift progress, which is rightly important to Members present.

The only other points that I want to pick up on are two of the issues to which the Chairman of the Committee referred—namely the bus service operator grant and the concessionary fares reimbursement formula. Contrary to the information that has just been provided by the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness, it is a fact that the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK, to which I spoke immediately after the spending review, told me that, in general terms, it felt that the BSOG reduction, given the notice that we had given and the limited amount of reduction, was one that it could in general absorb without fares rising or services being cut. That is what the industry told me. I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman the exact quote if he wants. That is what it said.