Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Julia Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

Shrewsbury has waited 10 years for a Labour Government to bring forward this Bill. Over the course of the last Government, our county of Shropshire lost over 63% of our bus routes, meaning that two out of three buses have been withdrawn. That was due to the savage privatisation that forced bus companies to pursue profits over passengers. For my residents, this meant that bus routes were stripped away from villages and they are now cut off from vital health and education services, work and leisure. It means that we have no buses after 6.30 pm anywhere in my constituency. It also means that we have no buses anywhere on a Sunday. In fact, in Shrewsbury we have not seen a Sunday bus for 10 years.

I do not know how familiar Members are with my wonderful, beautiful constituency, but Shrewsbury is a market town of 65,000 residents. It is the county town of Shropshire and hosts health, public and cultural services for 19 market towns and 400 villages, yet we are the only county town in this country not to have a Sunday bus service. It is a disgrace, and it is a painful symptom of the impact that the last Government had on public services in towns like mine up and down the country.

The lack of evening services puts severe constraints on our night-time economy and the potential for residents to get home safely after work, travel or an evening out. Not everyone can afford to run a car or is medically able to drive. The population in Shropshire is nine years older than the national average, so many older residents have given up their vehicles and find themselves stranded in the evenings and at weekends. In some villages, they are left completely socially isolated.

One of my constituents, Christine Hart, is in her 70s, lives in a residential suburb of Shrewsbury, and is a very active volunteer in her local community. Following her knee replacement operation last month, she became reliant on buses. She could not be happier with our new on-demand electric minibuses in her area funded via the Government’s bus service improvement plan. She is such a convert that she plans to keep using them even after her recovery. However, she explained to me that although she could get to a 5 pm doctor’s appointment, she has no way of getting home because there are no evening buses in Shrewsbury.

I am regularly contacted by employees who tell me that by the time they finish work at 6 pm, they cannot get across to the bus station to catch the last bus home. We are preventing residents getting to and from employment, putting a real block on economic growth. This is corroborated by my local chamber of commerce, which runs a quarterly business survey with its businesses. We receive regular feedback every single quarter that the primary barrier to recruitment is the lack of bus services that run early enough and late enough to support people—young people in particular—to access employment opportunities. My sorry tale from Shrewsbury is of a beautiful place that is very often cut off from the communities and individuals without a car, and the last thing we want to encourage is even more congestion in our historic town centre.

We must try to rebuild our public transport system, which was dismantled by the Conservatives during their time in office. They should hang their heads in shame for every one of the 5,000 miles in bus routes that they cancelled in towns like mine, for every youngster who cannot access a job opportunity, for every pensioner who cannot visit their family on a Sunday, and for every village cut off from public services.

Ten years is a long time to wait to be reconnected to the outside world, but the good people of Shrewsbury will today be celebrating as we debate this Bill, which will give back to local authorities the power to run services for passengers, not just for profit. The Bill has a clause that allows for socially necessary routes to link up medical, educational or public services to the local community at stops and times that empower them, not just the operator.

By changing the law to move away from exclusive privatisation, we can move forward to a responsive, community-led model for our public transport authorities. The Bill will not just improve lives in Shrewsbury, but transform lives, aspirations and the wellbeing of my residents, who have waited a decade for a Labour Government to give us back our Sunday service.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Julia Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Gordon]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I highlight the work that Liberal Democrat councillors, including him, have done over the years to ensure that such provision is made. That postcode lottery is completely unfair.

Economically, the argument is equally strong. We know that disabled people already face higher living costs. Removing the 9.30 am restriction would open up work and training opportunities that begin before that cut-off, and crucially, the cost of doing so is modest. Research by Whizz Kidz showed that it would cost about 1% of the current annual spend on concessionary travel, and we know that for each pound spent on concessionary bus passes, it is thought that over £3 is brought back in economic benefit.

Ending the restriction would deliver more than just transport access. It would promote independence, reduce isolation, improve health outcomes and encourage greater use of sustainable public transport. Charities such as Whizz Kidz have shown that young disabled people overwhelmingly support 24/7 access, with many saying it would help them build confidence, friendship and skills.

The amendment has support from leading disability charities such as the RNIB, as well as cross-party support in this House. Now is the time for this Labour Government to show their commitment to improving access and tearing down barriers to inequality by supporting the amendment. The Minister and I have had many interactions on this subject and I am sure he is not surprised to see me pushing for it again today. I urge him to consider it, whether through the Bill or further down the line in different possible measures and arrangements.

It is high time that disabled people had the same freedom to travel, the same independence and the same opportunity as everyone else. That is what the amendment would deliver and I urge all Members across this House to support it. Disabilities do not start at 9.30 am, so disabled bus passes should not either.

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on British buses.

Today’s debate is so important to the people of Shrewsbury, as we have lost over two thirds of our bus routes in the past 10 years. We are one of the largest towns in the UK, with over 65,000 residents, yet we have not seen a Sunday bus for over a decade. We also have very few evening bus services, which is holding back our nighttime economy, despite being a glorious tourist destination.

The new bus powers for franchising will be a game changer for local councils such as ours in Shropshire. They will give us the opportunity to introduce new bus routes if they are considered to be socially necessary, such as that all-important Sunday service or some additional stops to widen access to our current hospital bus route and the new health clinic facilities coming down the track. It is our belief that these social routes could eventually build up their passenger numbers and ultimately become economically viable in their own right.

To that end, I wish to speak in support of the Bill and new clause 45, which seeks to bring forward requirements on transport authorities to deliver the minimum level of off-peak and nighttime bus services. That could transform access to employment for many of the residents in my constituency. We have only a handful of bus services after 6 o’clock and only one single bus at 8 o’clock, yet we are the county town and host to the county’s health, governance, economic and education services, as well as being a major employer for a county of 350,000 residents. Shift workers, NHS staff and those working in hospitality—as well as those of us who enjoy hospitality—need those buses to run beyond 8 o’clock.

The Shropshire bus services users group has consistently campaigned on the need for evening and the all-important Sunday bus services. Until now, no commercial company would take the risk, but within the last year, bus routes added by my local authority using Government bus service improvement plan money have led to increased passenger numbers and become embedded in our network. To overcome the reticence of private companies to widen their routes at economic risk, the local authority is ready to do that, where legislation allows and where passenger data indicates that all-important demand and socially necessary routes. The new clause would support Shropshire council by underpinning the need to re-establish evening and Sunday bus services, giving the impetus to widen those routes.

To conclude, I wish to remind the Minister, as I do in every speech, that my beautiful town of Shrewsbury lost its Sunday service a decade ago under the last Government, and that it is in both our hands to ensure that we reinstate it under this Labour Government.

[Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 2, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) and has cross-party support. I really hope that that cross-party support holds up in the vote.

As we have heard, disability does not stop at peak times. I represent a rural constituency and our buses are very infrequent, so having a time restriction on a bus pass is even more serious. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on classics, I enjoy a good tale about mythological creatures such as centaurs and the minotaur, but unfortunately for some of my constituents, seeing a bus is almost as likely as seeing one of them.

Remarkably, there are no Sunday bus services at all in most of my constituency. We have one of the greatest cathedrals in the world, but many of my residents cannot get to it for Sunday worship. Some of my villages have no buses at all, and the likes of Coveney and Wardy Hill have one bus per week. Others have bus services every two hours—those services are probably some of the best. If we restrict disabled people to using their passes after 9.30, they cannot catch the 9.20 bus and have to wait for the 11.20, so effectively they cannot do anything anywhere else in the morning. That cannot be right. We have to remove that restriction.

The current situation is not sustainable or acceptable. For rural communities, the situation is so dire that the recent risk of the 9 bus route between Littleport and Cambridge being halted meant that communities faced being unable to get to work or college. Constituents referred to this service as a lifeline for them, and they were right. To have a situation in 2025 where the ending of a single bus route makes entire communities a transport black hole is dreadful. It is just not acceptable. Had residents been properly consulted, I am certain the proposal would have been comprehensively rejected, which is why I support new clause 32 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) to require consultation before any discussions on the alteration or withdrawal of a local bus service. I know the new clause has not been selected, but I hope the Minister will consider it.

The Government’s decision to increase the bus fare cap hit my constituents hard, because many of them have to get more than one bus to complete their journey. I ask both for the cap to be brought back to £2 and for it to be a cap on the journey, not the fare for each bus someone catches. It should not be too much to ask for a basic, functional and affordable transport service for rural communities. Pensioners should not have to miss medical appointments because there is only one bus per hour, students should not have to worry about missing classes, disabled people should not have to miss anything in the morning, and people should not have to move from their home village for the sake of getting to work on time.

This Bill is positive, but the Government need to do a lot more to improve transport services in rural communities such as mine. It would be a start if we allowed the disabled members of those communities to catch buses at any time.