Bus Funding

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right to refer to the innovation by the Harrogate Bus Company. There are two ways in which this formula, which I think is serviceable rather than rough and ready, works in operators’ favour. One is that it is proportionate to bus mileage, so places in which the present bus operator has done well will have more bus mileage, which is a good measure of saying roughly how much bus service there is. The other is that local authorities will get a capital allocation that can be and normally is used to support the purchase of vehicles. This formula works for good bus companies as it works for good local authorities, and I think it will be self-evident that the innovations that the noble Lord referred to will be replicated elsewhere.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, in a diocese such as mine, which covers Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, where many people look outside the county for services—for example, many people in Bedfordshire go to hospitals in and work in Milton Keynes, in another county—lack of integration of the bus services is causing quite a lot of problems. How is the new system going to lead to more and better integration? Secondly, what consideration has been given to finding, I hope, free bus passes for school children, since our towns are absolutely gridlocked at rush hour, at a time when we need children to get on the buses, get exercise and learn independence rather than being driven one by one in cars causing huge jams?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his question. The question of cross-border bus services is not altered, at least by this settlement, compared with previous settlements. But it is a question that the Government intend to address through the wider buses Bill, which will come before this House shortly. To some extent, you rely on local transport authorities to collaborate with each other, because the movement of passengers is quite often across local authority boundaries. We will have something more to say about that in due course.

The congestion caused by children travelling to school is a very common phenomenon in towns and cities throughout Great Britain. It is open to local transport authorities with the revenue element of this funding to devise schemes for cheaper bus fares for children and the Government will, of course, encourage them to do so, providing it is the right thing for their local area.