Bus Services: North-east England

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for arranging this important debate.

I live in Northumberland. For those people who mentioned the north and the north-east, Northumberland is something like 15 miles north of Newcastle. It is a rural area, but the south-eastern strip of Northumberland is heavily populated and always forgotten. We have to remind people that we are always left behind. People now expect to be left behind because of where we live. It really is not good enough.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) mentioned prices. We live in an area of high social deprivation, where we might get a bus every now and again, and if we are lucky enough to get one we have to pay through the nose. We have just passed the Stagecoach phase; we are on to the deregulated buses if and when stage. I wish we were even somewhere near having a Metro. It is a case of isolation for many people. They cannot get out of the communities in which they live. To travel in my constituency, it is £1.55 for a minor route. To travel seven miles in my constituency from Ashington to Morpeth, it is £6.40. Imagine someone on universal credit or unemployment benefits of around £70 paying £6.40 to get from A to B. There is no cap on it. It is £6.40.

As I mentioned, it is about social isolation. I went through my constituency on a Friday trying to get into different surgeries using public transport. I travelled to North Blyth, Cambois and East Sleekburn, where the first bus service was at 10.14 am. We then travelled from there seven miles—one stop—to the local hospital. It took more than an hour. The return journey for anybody at the hospital, whether they work there or are looking to visit people, must be made before 12.46 pm, because there are no bus services after that. That is outrageous and unacceptable.

I do not have that much time, but this discussion deserves much more debate. I put on the record my thanks, and those of all my colleagues in the northern region, to the key workers and the transport workers, who have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic. Many of them were exhausted before the pandemic and still are. We have huge issues, and we need more investment in bus services and integrated transport policy right through the region. We should not forget Northumberland as an area, but we need plenty of investment in the integrated transport plan and regional funding, because buses are a lifeline for many people in our regions.

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[Trudy Harrison]

Let me talk about the commitment from this Government. Connecting people every day to jobs, studies and vital local services is absolutely why we value buses. The benefits are clear. They are at the very centre of our public transport system, and in 2019-20 there were more than twice as many passenger journeys by bus as by rail.

Covid-19 has had a huge impact here, as it has elsewhere, and the Government have provided an unprecedented amount of support for the bus sector, which the hon. Member for Blaydon referred to. Through the pandemic, more than £1.5 billion has been announced to date. That has been essential to keep bus services running and to get workers to jobs, children to schools and people to vital services. Without that support, bus services would have operated at a loss or would have stopped running entirely.

But we do not just want to go back to how bus services were before covid. There are huge opportunities to change the way that bus services operate and we want to make them better. That is why the commitment to buses is evident in the already mentioned “Bus Back Better” national bus strategy, which was published in March this year. It explains how we will see these services being more frequent, more reliable, easier to understand and use, better co-ordinated and cheaper. The point about comparing and contrasting London prices with those elsewhere in the country has been made many times.

Our central aim is to get more people travelling by bus—to not just get patronage back, but increase it—but we will achieve that only if we can make the bus a practical and attractive alternative to the car for many people.

[Ian Lavery]

The Minister mentioned a number of issues, but one of the real problems is affordability. Opposition Members have mentioned this twice: it costs £6.40 to travel seven miles in my constituency, but travel in the capital is capped at £4.65 a day. The Minister is from the north. When she considers levelling up, she should do what is right for her constituents and mine and ensure that it is affordable for people to use public transport. Affordability is so important.

[Trudy Harrison]

I do not need to be told that; I am quite aware of it. That is why the “Bus Back Better” strategy will look at how we make those fares cheaper and how we will adopt the London-style approach to fares across all parts of the country, but particularly in the north, which I also represent, as the hon. Member said.