Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

Like the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I live in a rural area. I travel on the bus every day and I have noticed that, for the bus services in the county of Oxfordshire that have been cut and which the county council has decided in future not to subsidise, the people who were using the bus services concerned were mostly concessionary fare holders. I could get on a bus with 16 or 17 people yet nobody was paying a fare. But those 16 or 17 people valued that bus as a contact with civilisation. I am quite clear that these are not people who have a car; many do not have access to a car, but they formed the staple part of the bus route. The bus operator was able to extend the day somewhat in the knowledge that he would receive a subsidy and a reasonable concessionary fare for carrying the people using the bus.

I know that the Government are not likely today to spray money at the problem, but I ask them—and I have put this in Amendment 114, which we are not discussing today, because it seems to me that there is a case—to make concessionary fares weighted in favour of deep rural areas. The gearing is such that a fraction of a penny on major bus services, if targeted at deep rural services, would solve the problem without the Government having to spend any more money. There are problems, but I do not believe that they are insuperable. I know that operators have to be no better off and no worse off. That is very difficult to tell, but we can assume that if an operator has the subsidy withdrawn and its concessionary fare level is kept low, the natural result will be that it is worse off.

There will also no doubt be some obstruction from those operating bus services in urban areas, but I am talking about taking a very thin top-slice off the concessionary fares that are used in urban areas and devoting those to deep rural buses, where subsidy has been withdrawn and where this appears to be the only way of maintaining a decent bus service. Otherwise, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has said. I too have some doubts about whether the beleaguered local authorities will have the resources to undertake the survey, but it should be among their duties to look after not just the core of their county but the peripheries as well.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who I thought made an excellent case for Amendments 1 and 113 in his name and, in so doing, I should say that I am the vice-president of the Local Government Association. I simply add a little for the Minster to take away, because the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, talked a great deal about the importance of bus services for employment opportunities and for training purposes.

In the consultation that is talked about—a huge amount of consultation will take place on this Bill, not just in terms of this amendment—one type of organisation that should be automatically consulted is employers’ organisations. There can be huge problems for people who often are on a low income, live in remote places and have no access to a car and who, therefore, need to be able to get to employment and training opportunities, often at unsocial hours, by public transport. Therefore, it is important to consult those people. Proposed new subsection (4)(d)(iv) in Amendment 1 refers to,

“organisations, or types of organisation, specified by the Secretary of State in regulations made by statutory instrument”.

I hope very much that employers’ organisations and jobcentres will be included in that list.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Bradshaw]

3: Clause 1, page 2, line 40, at end insert—
“(11 ) Where a local transport authority or authorities make an advanced quality partnership scheme, the Secretary of State may by order make provision to confer upon that authority or authorities the functions to enforce traffic offences. (12) The Secretary of State may make an order under subsection (11) only if a proposal for the making of the order in relation to the local transport authority or authorities has been made to the Secretary of State by the appropriate authority or authorities.”

[Lord Bradshaw]

It will not come as a surprise to any of your Lordships to know that the bus industry is in quite deep crisis. The number of passengers is falling, bus speeds are declining, and the quality of service that buses offer is getting worse. Considering that we want more people to use buses, the causes of the congestion afflicting the bus industry need to be addressed.

In a letter to me on 8 August, the Minister said that mayoral combined authorities will have the ability to seek additional functions or equivalent legislative provisions to enforce moving traffic offences if they wish. The enforcement of moving traffic offences is an extremely important power. Provisions were made in the Traffic Management Act 2004 for that power to be granted to local authorities but London and recently Cardiff—which is outside the scope of our discussions this afternoon—are the only two places to adopt this ability to tackle the points of traffic congestion that really hold up buses.

Oddly, the Minister’s letter makes no reference to authorities that seek not franchises but advanced quality partnerships. If the Government are willing to grant those powers to franchising authorities, they should be willing to grant them to authorities that decide instead to go for advanced quality partnerships. My amendment would give effect to this so that, if a local authority wanted, it might apply to the Secretary of State for permission to adopt the provisions in the Traffic Management Act.

This amendment is very important to the bus industry which, as I said, suffers severely from traffic congestion. That, among other things, is leading to services being withdrawn because they cannot be operated profitably. More buses are needed to maintain the service, the buses go slower and carry fewer people, and they become less profitable. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, there is a bit of a conundrum at the heart of the Government’s attitude to this. They offer franchising powers to local authorities and, according to the Minister’s letter to my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, they offer additional powers to ensure that such franchising works well. That is logical but surely the most effective and efficient way forward is to ensure that those local authorities that do not want to go for franchising—it will be difficult and complex anyway—are enabled to make their bus service as efficient as possible to avoid the necessity for franchising. If you take that situation together with the views of the Competition and Markets Authority that franchising should be gone for only in very extreme situations—we will return to that later today—there is a bit of a contradiction. I cannot see why the Government are so unwilling to use statutory powers that already exist to implement the provisions of the 2004 Act.

It is not as if we do not have evidence that those powers work. They work in London and I can give noble Lords an assurance that they are beginning to work well in Cardiff. Those powers were given to Cardiff because it was part of the devolution settlement that Cardiff could ask for them. I was actually the Minister in the Wales Office who took that through this House in order to ensure that Cardiff had those powers. Noble Lords will probably be aware that I live in Cardiff so I have personal experience of the way in which the system is working.

Clearly, these powers are having an impact. You can measure that impact in the number of people who are fined for contravening the local road traffic regulations. It is clear that motorists started off with a brazen disregard for bus lanes, yellow boxes, right turns that they should be not making and so on, but that they learned pretty quickly. We know that because the fines start off very high but fall off pretty quickly. By the way, the council also learned because it started moving the cameras round. When it moves the cameras, the amount taken in fines goes up; then, after a while, people have learned and it goes down again. We want a very low level of fines because we want people to obey the rules. This is having an impact. All we are asking is that the Government use existing legislation to give local authorities the tools to do the job, whether they are going for franchising or any other partnership arrangement.

The evidence right across the country, as my noble friend has said, is of increased traffic congestion slowing down bus travel. The impact on passengers and bus companies is considerable. I draw noble Lords’ attention to a discussion I had with an operator in Bristol which said that it had had to put on well over 30 additional buses to maintain existing timetables because of congestion, and that much of that congestion is avoidable—if people do not park in bus lanes or drive along them, and so on. Of course, the financial impact on bus companies of having to put on additional buses is passed on to the passengers. The combination of higher fares and slower journeys deters people from using the buses. To my mind, it is only sensible to use the powers that exist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate on Amendment 3. In moving his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, reiterated that it would give all areas where an advanced quality partnership scheme is in place the powers to enforce moving traffic offences. I agree with him that congestion can have a major impact on local bus services, as other noble Lords have said, but I would also stress that local authorities have many options to address it, from infrastructure measures and technological solutions to the enforcement of moving traffic offences in bus lanes.

For instance, local authorities can designate bus lanes to provide dedicated road space for buses, enabling them to bypass traffic queues. Buses can also be exempted from restrictions such as no-entry signs. This can allow buses to benefit from a shorter, more convenient route than other traffic, sometimes by bypassing locations where there are known congestion issues. These are exactly the sorts of measures that local authorities can bring to an advanced quality partnership as their side of the bargain. I also confirm that English local authorities outside London that can enforce parking violations already have the powers to enforce bus lane contraventions, including moving traffic violations in bus lanes. This means that over 90% of the 293 English local authorities outside London can already enforce bus lanes.

I recognise that the noble Lord’s amendment would broaden these powers further and allow the enforcement of moving traffic contraventions, such as at yellow box junctions. There are already provisions available, as noble Lords know, in Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004 to permit enforcement of other moving traffic violations by English local authorities outside London. Although the Government have made no current decisions on whether to bring these powers forward, we discuss them regularly with the Local Government Association and other key organisations—as I am sure noble Lords recognise, since we have many a vice-chair of the LGA here. Given the existing powers available to local authorities and the existence of Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act, additional legislation in this context, particularly where it relates solely to the narrowest type of partnership, is not necessary.

A question was asked about why only franchised areas or mayoral combined authorities can get this power. First, the devolution orders for mayoral combined authorities provide a legal mechanism to grant these powers to enforce moving traffic offences to those authorities. The mechanism does not exist for all types of authority. I assure noble Lords that we will continue to consider the case to grant these powers to all local authorities. However, for the time being, I cannot accept this amendment. I hope my explanation and the reassurance I have provided will allow the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Bradshaw]

I am very sorry to disappoint the Minister. When local authorities, such as Reading, for example, have powers to enforce bus lanes, they still have great problems enforcing things such as yellow box junctions and right turns. This legislation passed on to the statute book 12 years ago and it is time that it was brought into effect. I wish to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Bradshaw]

12: Schedule 1, page 76, line 39, at end insert—
“( ) In paragraph 5 (investigations of CMA), at the beginning insert “Subject to paragraph 5A,”.”

[Lord Bradshaw]

I hope the Minister may be able to agree with me on this occasion, which will make a slight change to the proceedings. The Competition and Markets Authority has adopted a very strange response to the letting of railway franchises and has created, in the case of the northern franchise and Arriva buses, a situation which has cost the taxpayer and the companies millions of pounds in looking at the overlap between Northern’s rail services and those of Arriva buses. The northern train franchise had gone out to consultation some time before. The Competition and Markets Authority had sight of that, and after some extremely complicated negotiations, the franchise was let. Immediately, the Competition and Markets Authority started to nitpick over the franchise, saying there was a bit of overlap here and a bit of overlap there. In none of the cases was it a significant issue.

In the Bill, the Competition and Markets Authority is nominated as a consultee in some cases. The purpose of this amendment is to say that if there is a consultation over a franchise, or for that matter over an advanced quality partnership or a railway franchise, there should be some restriction on the ability of the Competition and Markets Authority, having been a consultee, to reopen the matter. It wastes a huge amount of time setting up a franchise if the authority comes back again to raise points that are small or trivial in contrast to the large scale of the businesses concerned. I have not said it should not get involved, but I have tried to lay down in this amendment some conditions or limitations on when it should become involved, and I believe it should have to have received significant complaints. I do not think it received any in the course of its intervention between Arriva trains and Arriva buses. Secondly, there would need to have consequently been a significantly adverse effect on competition.

It is important that we have a Competition and Markets Authority, but it should concern itself with real matters of competition in or between industries that restrict competition between large-scale participants. I do not think the law was ever meant to deal with very small-scale altercations between bus companies and train companies. In any event, Arriva gave undertakings that it would not alter fares in a way which diminished competition—not that in most cases any real competition existed. I hope the Minister may give us a reasoned answer to this, because what we have in mind is a lot of unnecessary and expensive bureaucracy that is likely to surround the franchising services. Provided that they have had the opportunity to be involved beforehand, it is quite wrong that after the event, they should be able to come back again and raise what are virtually trivial points. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for introducing his amendment. I find it quite interesting and I look forward to what counsel the Minister gives us. I understand why the noble Lord has put the tests in new subsections 5A(a) and (b), but I am worried that subsection 5A(a),

“unless … it has received complaints about the operation of the franchise”,

could be used as part of a spoiling process by an aggrieved third party. On subsection 5A(b),

“unless … there has consequently been a significant adverse effect on competition”—

admittedly, it talks about an adverse effect—the problem I have is that it is bound to have an effect on competition because it eliminates competition. So I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord’s amendment, subject to what the Minister says, but if we are going to go down that route the tests might need better drafting. It will be very interesting to see how the Minister advises the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bradshaw]

I am sorry, but those assurances do not satisfy me at all. The fact is that the Competition and Markets Authority defines markets very narrowly. It takes a town—Morpeth, for example—and looks in minute detail at what is going on. Of course you can find anomalies, but that does not mean that they are prejudicing choice or competition.

This whole matter requires much further study. I have not seen the letter of 10 October to which the Minister referred, and I will of course study it. He has not given me the assurances I want. He has not referred to the almost disputatious relationship that the department has with the CMA over the northern franchise.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. When he has read the letter, I am very willing to meet him between now and Third Reading to see how we can address his further concerns, if he is not satisfied with the Government’s response. I assure him that our intention in accepting Amendment 34 is that the statutory consultation happens in advance, as we have said in relation to other consultees.

[Lord Bradshaw]

I thank the Minister for that. It would be sensible for me to accept his suggestion of a meeting, but I have serious reservations about the role of the Competition and Markets Authority, particularly as it affects the transport industry. Perhaps, in preparation for the meeting, he will find out how many inquiries the Competition and Markets Authority has made into the local transport market, as opposed to large-scale industries such as steel or cement. He will find that a totally disproportionate amount of its time has been spent investigating the transport sector, often in minute detail.

With that offer of a meeting, I will beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but reserve the right to return to this matter at Third Reading.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.