Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Judd

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I too very much welcome this Bill. It is an opportunity to discuss, debate and I hope improve what I think has been one of the rather forgotten parts of the transport industry. I was interested in the background that came from the Minister and from the noble Lord, Lord Low, regarding comments made by Andrew Jones MP, the Minister, about the intended growth numbers on buses.

The main thing that is missing—there are probably many others—is a long-term vision and a strategy. There is one for railways, one for roads—the strategic road network—and I shall come on to the Government’s published cycling and walking strategy, but there does not seem to be one for bus transport. As we have heard from many noble Lords, it is a growing part of the demand for transport. It is interesting that only 18 months ago—in a Written Answer on 24 November 2014—the Department for Transport was forecasting a 25% drop in bus usage by 2040. There is a similar growth in car usage, so are the Government expecting bus usage to go up or are they just hoping that there will be fewer buses on the road to stop their big fat cars going down?

Today, the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, of which I am secretary, had its annual parliamentary bike ride to try to encourage more people to cycle. We also launched a response to the Government’s excellent cycling and walking strategy. It could be better but it is not bad. It was interesting that this morning the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, who famously in about 1980 told the unemployed that they should get on their bikes, wrote to the co-chair of our All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, Ruth Cadbury MP, in the following terms:

“I was sorry to read in your recent circular of your proposal to increase peak hour traffic congestion in central London on Wednesday”,

which is today. This is because of the bike ride. He continued:

“Not only is that a nuisance, but by increasing congestion it will increase pollution”.

We had 150 bikes going through Hyde Park, increasing the pollution. He suggested that we should “cancel this foolish exhibition”.

More recently, Iain Duncan Smith as a Minister in 2010, told the unemployed in Merthyr Tydfil that they should get on a bus to Cardiff where there were plenty of jobs. I do not know whether it is a long-term view of the Conservative Party that only the unemployed and disadvantaged—presumably this includes the disabled disadvantaged—should have to go by bike.

It would be nice to see a strategy that was a bit more positive and recognised the great importance of buses in moving people around, as many noble Lords said. That is also reflected in the number of Questions and Statements about this issue in this House and the other place. We can compare the number of Questions about rail services with those about bus services. I have not worked it out, but it is probably about 20:1. Actually, buses are probably more important for many people than rail services. There are more than 4 billion passenger journeys by bus a year. It is just that there is a pretty awful service in many places outside London, as many Lords said. There is a lot more to do. I would love to see the Minister commit to introducing and publishing a draft strategy for buses. It would be even nicer if that were put in the Library before we move into Committee. That would help us all, including the industry, to work out what investment plans it should have and how it should respond to this Bill, and, I hope, move things forward a bit faster.

Turning to a few issues that we need to address in future, several noble Lords mentioned through-ticketing. It is very nice that Clause 7 of the Bill says that a local transport authority or others,

“may make a ticketing scheme”.

Now, of course, “may” covers a multitude of sins. Why should they not have a ticketing scheme? Why should we not be able to buy a ticket from here to Cornwall—like my noble friend Lord Woolmer, I shall talk about Cornwall in a few minutes—on several different bus routes? If you are clever, you could probably get that as a pensioner for nothing but that is a separate issue. Why should we not be able to buy tickets in advance? You can on the railways. You can get a through-ticket from Penzance to John O’Groats, or wherever, if you really want. You can also get tickets on local services. We even have the Gatwick-London service on Oyster now. Why should we not have the same on buses and be able to integrate them with trams and railways? That really should be possible. I know it is possible technically. There are even people talking about buying railway journeys across Europe with one ticket, which is quite a challenge. We should change “may” to “must” in the Bill, and also include the smaller services in rural areas. We can debate whether that extends to Uber or any other taxi service but there is a lost opportunity here.

I will not comment much on Cornwall, even though I live there, because my noble friend dealt with it so excellently. However, you have small operators and big operators, and there is an opportunity for what we might call open-access operators to operate on similar routes to franchised operators. That is extremely challenging on the railways. Whether it can be made possible on the bus services I do not know but we will need to investigate that. Of course, we do not really have a regulator of bus services, as we do for railways. Who will act as regulator? Will it be the councils? Yet, no councils will be vetting franchises because apparently they are not clever enough. They should be able to, as other noble Lords said. There is also the question of whether community interest companies have a role to play in operating not-for-profit smaller services— minibuses, shared taxis—or even bigger buses in rural areas. Again, what authority—if there is one—will specify the content, services and everything else? Does there need to be one? That is a debate we must have.

The Minister has not said anything about the role of Transport Focus, which a year or two ago had its remit extended beyond railways to include buses. That body does an extremely good job and is independent. It occasionally has a go at services and Ministers in its reports. I hope the Minister can tell us that it will have an independent role in monitoring performance, quality, fares, reliability and all the things that customers want.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

I am fascinated by, and very sympathetic to, the arguments my noble friend is putting forward. Does he agree that one of the interesting and vivid examples of the interdependence of bus and rail services for those of us who are regular rail users is the number of times at weekends when we set out by rail but have a very good experience of bus services on the way?

[Lord Berkeley]

My noble friend hits the nail on the head. One could say many things about that. The railways must get a lot better at keeping services going or diverting trains by some other route. I have travelled to Cornwall a lot and on some routes the operator has the bus services much better organised than was the case five years ago. However, there is always room for improvement. My noble friend is absolutely right, but at least in that case you are still using the same ticket, whereas if you got on a bus from one station to another you would probably have to buy another ticket.

I turn to the Isles of Scilly service, which I mentioned briefly in the debate on the Queen’s Speech. My noble friend Lord Judd has hit the nail on the head because if you want to travel to the Isles of Scilly between Sunday and Monday on the excellent Great Western Railway’s sleeper service, it conveniently arrives five minutes after the “Scillonian” has departed from Penzance. I have been on about this for about five years. Why cannot the relevant service leave an hour earlier? Apparently, it is again something to do with digging up the railways. It could leave an hour earlier because not many people have pressing business in London at 11.30 on a Sunday night. However, that has still not happened. One has to question why. I may or may not table an amendment on this issue—this is a buses Bill—but if the words “and ferries” were added to the Bill, you could cover some of the issues relating to the ferry service between Penzance and the Isles of Scilly, which operates only in the summer when the prices shoot up, and try to co-ordinate the timetable with the rail service to Penzance. However, that seems to be beyond the means of most humans.

There will be a lot to debate in Committee. I welcome the opportunity offered by the Bill to have some good discussions. I congratulate the Government on bringing forward a measure that is more useful to most inhabitants of this country than one on launching rockets into space, which I think is the only other Department for Transport Bill that we were promised in the Queen’s Speech.