Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, does the Committee and the industry a great service by moving this amendment. I have bored your Lordships before with stories of my involvement in the bus industry. My experience as a director and chairman of a former municipal bus operator was that there was a significant undermining of those services by the sorts of operators that the noble Lord has just mentioned. Much of this unfair competition has disappeared over the years. The intention of many of those smaller operators was to cause so much of a nuisance to the larger undertaking that it would offer them lots of money to go away. In the West Midlands, we were fairly resolved not to play that game. Indeed, during my time as a bus company director at least two smaller operators in the West Midlands were run by people who had been fired from our company for various misdemeanours. They got their hands on some older vehicles and ran them between 7 am and 7 pm. The thought of running early-morning or late-night services never struck them. Not only did they pay inferior rates, they did not provide the trade union recognition, canteen facilities or maintenance facilities that the major operators—such as Travel West Midlands, the company I worked for at the time—provided as a matter of course. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has put his finger on a very important point. We seek reassurance from the Minister that the unfair competitors that I have just outlined will not be allowed to flourish or, indeed, to exist in future.

There was always a problem in that councillors of all political hues used to say that if those operators were not there then we would be operating some sort of monopoly, and there should be competition. But when those operators were there, the councillors would say that their buses were absolutely dreadful and should not be on the road at all. We spent some years trying to please everybody but pleased nobody. I would welcome reassurance from the Minister that we will not return to those days and that reputable operators operating a quality partnership of the type outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, will not face the sorts of conditions that we had to put up with in the early days of deregulation.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and my noble friend Lord Snape have a very good point when it comes to discussing big operators and little operators, because there are competition and quality issues. In Cornwall, where I live, there has, in recent years, been one major operator and one smaller one. On two occasions in the past five years, the smaller operator’s bus garage was torched. Whether it was deliberate or not I do not know, but the fact remains that something nasty went on there. The small operators ran a very good service—as did the big one—and it was good that they were both there. But somebody had something against them. That is something that we must all be careful about, because at that level it is not something for the competition authorities.

I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, spoke to Amendments 19 and 68, and I do not quite understand his amendments. He wants to leave out, in the case of Amendment 68, a reference to,

“such other incidental matters in connection with franchising schemes as the Secretary of State thinks fit”.

I agree with him, because I am suspicious of that: it allows the Secretary of State to do whatever he likes, if he does not fancy doing what is in the rest of the legislation. I would support omitting those words—but I wonder whether the noble Lord or one of his colleagues fancies explaining what this is all about.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I think I can probably help the noble Lord by speaking specifically about Amendments 19 and 68. One of the problems with the Bill is its scattergun approach to giving the Secretary of State additional unspecified powers. As the noble Lord has clearly picked out, these are two examples among dozens of broad powers. The Government have made a list, from (a) to (f), and then they say, “In case we’ve forgotten something, we’ll just give the Secretary of State the power to deal with life, the universe and everything”.

By putting these amendments before your Lordships, we hoped to probe exactly what the regulations might look like. To take up the theme of the Delegated Powers Committee report yet again, I say that the powers are too vague. The Secretary of State is being given very broad powers without specifying properly, even in the Explanatory Memorandum, what those powers will be used for.

Ideally, draft regulations should have been available by now, at least on one or two aspects of the Bill. It is hopelessly optimistic to think that they might be coming out any day now, because we have only just had the impact assessment, and we are still awaiting the response to the Delegated Powers Committee. But that is what we should be doing—looking at drafts to find out about the tenor of a Bill as broad and as dependent on regulation as this one is.

The success of advanced quality partnerships, and of enhanced partnerships and franchising, will stand or fall on the quality of the regulations. If the regulations are too onerous, the Bill will fall into the trap of the 2008 Act and prove impossible for local authorities to manage and implement, and will therefore fail. But the regulations have to be sufficiently ambitious and robust to deliver a true improvement in service.

I have spoken to Amendment 19. Amendment 68 is simply a similar example in the case of franchising. One amendment relates to advanced quality partnerships and the other to franchising. I remind noble Lords of the tenor of the criticism in the Delegated Powers Committee’s report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, since we are talking about the west of England, I should say that I met the person responsible for providing bus services in the city of Bristol, and a rather ridiculous situation has arisen there. The Bristol omnibus company, whatever it is called now, has introduced lots of new buses. It has been summoned by the traffic commissioner because its services are unreliable. Bristol City Council has agreed to appear on behalf of the bus company against the traffic commissioner, because it has concluded that it is impossible to run a reliable service. It puts that down not only to congestion, but to the near free-for-all which has been allowed by the utilities to dig up the roads for roadworks. This is not because there is a gas leak or a burst water main, but because somebody needs their telephone connected. Perhaps the Minister would address the whole problem.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, if the Minister does not accept the amendment to include the need to reduce congestion—bearing in mind what colleagues on these Benches have been saying—it may be that he wants to use it as an excuse not to do anything about congestion. I am sure that is not the case, but we would understand, because congestion in London, as we have heard, is so bad that the buses go slower and slower. The motorist will say this it is because there are too many buses; the bus passengers do not like it, because they could probably walk quicker. But what we really need are measures to allow buses to operate more on time, whether it is bus lanes, traffic lights that give them priority or many other measures that can be used. These all cost a little bit of money, but they are essential. It will be slightly odd if the Minister does not accept the amendment on the basis that it might cost local authorities money to provide the bus lanes that they should have provided anyway. This is terribly important; it applies to London, to other cities and to some places in the countryside. It is quite a serious problem and I think “congestion” needs to appear in this clause somewhere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall intervene briefly to underline one particular point. I agree that pretty much everything the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has said should be taken into account in the setting up of partnerships and in franchising.

There is one point that should be emphasised here and elsewhere in this Bill, and it relates to advanced ticketing and smart ticketing. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, was kind enough to remind me just now, although I acknowledged it on Second Reading, that part of my work as a Minister years ago was never implemented. A big chunk of the failure to implement it is why we have this Bill now, and I congratulate the Government on putting it right. One part was successful, however. I was the Minister overseeing the invention and early implementation of the Oyster card. In 1999, I made the very first commercial use of the Oyster card at St James’s Park station down the road.

The Oyster card has utterly transformed public transport in London. There are other factors, but it is at least part of the reason why we have seen such an enhancement of the use of the buses, and indeed the whole transport system, in London, compared with other parts of the country, both in the cities and in the countryside. It is so much easier to make complex journeys, or even a single journey, within other towns and across the countryside if you already have an advance card. As the noble Baroness said, most buses, even some relatively elderly buses on our rural roads, have the machinery to cope with this or can be adjusted to do so.

This ought to be one of the legacies of this Bill and be writ large across the whole of the bus system throughout the country, with some interaction with other forms of transport as well. It should be developed as rapidly as possible. It should be one of the major achievements of this Bill and of the Minister and his colleagues in the department.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, one thing that my noble friend has forgotten is that these Oyster cards should possibly be called Whitty cards, rather like the bicycles that are called Boris bikes. I am sure he would not want to be related to Boris in that way, but they are a great success.

I am pleased to be able to tell your Lordships that the local authority in Cornwall is going to implement a similar thing. It is very long and based on customer focus, but I will summarise it. The big double-decker buses will have wi-fi and tables so that you can put your laptop on them. They are going to run very frequently on the main routes. Smaller buses will go into the smaller areas. They will link in with the railway timetable, and I think that the operators’ ability to talk to each other will be unique. They are proposing a single ticket structure—one standard, one band. I hope my noble friend will appreciate this. It is going to happen within the next year or two.

This is a real example of a local authority taking an initiative. It sees that where you have several different operators, as there are at the moment, they never fit with the train timetable. They are going to. Nor do they fit with the ferries to the Isles of Scilly, but I am not going to go on about that now.

Amendment 54A in my name and some other amendments propose something on the quality of standards and on frequencies. We should probably also include interchange points, but we have not done so yet. Maybe we should also add something about a percentage of the population not having to walk further than X miles to a bus stop and an hourly or better bus service. There are what you might call faster services between the major centres of population—plus ones that you might say wiggle between villages and take a lot longer, although they do get there for people who do not have access to public transport. I believe that TfL has a bus services plan, involving the public transport accessibility level, which takes this into account, as does Transport for Greater Manchester.

Not all these things need to be in the Bill; the amendments here are perfectly adequate. However, they and the initiative that Cornwall County Council has shown would mean that neither partnerships nor franchises would provide a much better quality of service for all types of people who want to use it. The irony is that although it has been suggested that Cornwall will be able to have franchises in the same way as authorities with mayors—we will come on to that later—it is confident that all this will happen without the need for a franchise.

It is encouraging that the Government have produced a structure. I am sure that we can improve it, but at least it is there, and it should enable the volume of bus passenger traffic to go up, which is what we all want, with a much better quality of service. I commend what Cornwall is doing, but I hope that the Government will seriously consider adding something about the standards and the frequency of service, as well as the quality, and perhaps come back with their own suggestions on Report.

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, perhaps I may add a point to what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said. Any move towards smart ticketing or reduced fares for young people is revenue-generative. It is not a dead-weight cost. In fact, some bus operators are voluntarily introducing reduced fares for young people and they are finding that they can be almost self-financing. Young people have a very high propensity to travel. They will travel at the weekends and in the evening, provided that the cost does not build up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group which go in broadly the same direction as that of the noble Baroness and were intended to apply to existing as well as new vehicles. It seems extraordinary to me that the Bill as first drafted does not contain a need to have regard to environmental standards—even through the word “may”. Over recent months there has been increased attention to air quality in our cities and sometimes in our countryside as well; quite rightly, because the health effect and the environmental effect of air quality deterioration, plus the Volkswagen scandal, and so forth, have underlined the need to move more rapidly on all sources of air pollution, in particular in relation to vehicles.

I should declare that I am the current president of Environmental Protection UK, the successor organisation to the National Society for Clean Air; it was the leader of the successful lobby that led to the Clean Air Act 50 years ago this year, which seriously cleaned up visible forms of air pollution and, indeed, many invisible forms as well. We need now to finish the job and we have the technology, both in retrofit, as the noble Baroness has said, and in new standards. Buses may not be a huge component of air pollution but, per person and per trip, they are large contributors if they are not treated or the standards are not met.

I hope that the Minister will take away, if not the wording of any of these amendments, a need to write into the Bill, both in this section and the subsequent section on franchising which my second amendment deals with, that some of the requirements must relate to the environmental standards of the vehicles and the total environmental impact of the fleets of franchisees or contract holders. If it does not, it is a serious omission and a serious lack of joined-up government between the Department for Transport, DECC and Defra when we are trying to tackle both climate change and air pollution. Whatever final form of words we come up with before the Bill leaves this House, this ought to be reflected in both sections of the Bill.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I have my name to two of these amendments. I support what my noble friend has said. Let us remember that even in London, which probably has some of the newest and now cleanest buses in the country—even if they do not have any air conditioning, which does not seem to affect the emissions, luckily, but does affect the passengers—the then Mayor of London, who may even be our next Prime Minister, had to cover up the monitoring stations along Euston Road before the Olympics in order to keep the levels of pollution below those which had occurred in Beijing during its Olympics. With all the money that TfL had and has, it had to fiddle that. It was not a problem caused by buses but by other vehicles, but it was still a fact. It happens in many other cities and it is essential that some regulations or clauses such as those proposed by these amendments are included in the Bill.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned the EU component of emissions standards. As a good Eurosceptic, I point out that economically you can only do it as a European standard. You cannot have each European state having its own standards. It just will not stack up. To balance that, I also point out that one needs to consider the business case for very low-utilisation buses because there simply might not be a business case for doing it, even if you considered the damage to health.