Covid-19: Transport Industry

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend mentions the figure of £5 billion: well, the Mayor of London would say that, wouldn’t he? As part of the first bailout, the Government commissioned a government-led review of TfL’s finances and I am afraid that it did not make happy reading, even prior to the pandemic. Multi-year fare freezes are indeed a great vote winner, but eventually one has to make very difficult choices, so the Government will be ensuring that the Mayor of London makes those choices in order to get TfL back on to a financially sustainable footing so that we can protect the interests of the UK taxpayer.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD) [V]]

My Lords, to judge by both personal observation and hearsay, not much effort is being made by train operators to collect revenue due to them. Will the Government make sure that they understand that it is a duty to collect fares from passengers?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. This is the first time I have been made aware that some train operating companies are not collecting the amount of revenue that they should. To my mind, having also travelled on trains recently, they seem to be functioning very well and nothing much has changed in respect of revenue collection.