Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Burns Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 13th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

I am not sure who is giving way to whom at the present time. I will come to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, in a moment or two, because I would be fascinated to hear his summing up of this matter—I wait with bated breath. Having gorged on those subsidies when he worked for TfL, while his party denuded the rest of the country of bus services, his response will be absolutely fascinating.

I ask the noble Baroness—I hope without causing too much offence—that if these proposals are to be properly implemented, who will provide the finance? It has to be either local or central government. The reality of these matters is that, in the short term, there will not be a massive improvement in rural bus services once this Bill becomes law. I only wish that the opposite were true. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can reassure me that it will be true. However, until we know exactly how funds will be allocated and how great those funds are, I must say to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, that, as ably as she moved this amendment, it is, as far as I can see, rather typical of the Liberal Democrats—all motherhood and apple pie.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I mentioned at Second Reading that I had been chairman of the North Wales Transport Commission in 2023-24. I spent a lot of time in north Wales looking at the performance of the bus services there. I am wholly persuaded of the merits of a franchising system in rural areas as well as in more urban areas, because we all know the problems that the existing system has created. However, I should point out—this follows the previous intervention—that doing this work and deciding which routes need to be run and where people wish to go is a time-consuming business. It will take a significant period to monitor where the car journeys are presently being taken and what kind of network is best going to meet the needs of people. I find the notion that there should be review of this within six months or even two years very ambitious, because in the work that I was engaged in it was time-consuming to get anywhere near a feel of how to create an integrated network rather than just a set of buses that were serving individual parts of the of the area.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords I am grateful to everyone who has spoken in this debate. We on our side are supportive of the importance of taking into account the needs of people dwelling in rural areas. Indeed, we have our own amendment to a very similar effect in a later group, which could have been disposed of here. Our proposal to the Liberal Democrats was that it be wrapped up with their proposals, but that was rejected, so now it is going to be debated as a separate group, somewhat repetitiously, towards the end of the list. So we generally support this.

A lot of what I wanted to say has been anticipated. I know that he does not like the fact that he and I agree on quite a lot of things, but the noble Lord, Lord Snape, has brought a dose of sensible realism to the debate, for the first time, perhaps, in our Committee. He was supported in that endeavour by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, with his practical knowledge of having examined the bus routes, the lack of bus routes and the potential bus routes in north Wales.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said that this Bill will transform bus services. As shorthand for an aspiration, that is fair enough, but the Bill in itself is not going to transform bus services at all, although that might be the aim. What it is going to do is transform the governance of bus services in two ways, both of them subject to the provision of very large amounts of money, which can come only from central Government and which is not apparent at the moment, although we are all aware that a spending review is in hand. Who knows what will happen? You stick in your thumb and pull out a plum. Who knows what is going to arrive for bus services or rural bus services when the Chancellor has completed her work? At the moment, we cannot say. We can say only that a large amount of money will be needed.

The two respects in which the governance will be changed to which I wish to draw attention are, first, that operational decisions about the running of buses are going to be transferred fundamentally from managers of bus service companies, who have a great deal of experience, to committees of councillors with very much less experience. They will take advice, no doubt, and the Government have said that they are going to offer them the advice of the Bus Centre of Excellence to do the sorts of things that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, referred to. They include, particularly, route planning, but these councillors will also be responsible for fare setting, and fares and ticketing is a great skill and art. We might all think that it is terribly easy to decide on a bus fare, but the whole business of fares and ticketing is a professional and skilled business. There is a great deal that they are going to have to do which they will now be responsible for, which previously they were not, with very little skills support because the Bus Centre of Excellence is a relatively small operation.

The other way in which the governance is going to be transformed—and this is what relates to my three amendments in this group, which I will dispose of briefly in a moment—is that for the first time, effectively, the Secretary of State is going to be issuing guidance that will shape the provision of bus services in a way that simply is not the case when bus services are provided privately. As far as I am aware, that is not the case in Manchester, let us say, where there is no great guidance coming from the Government. Manchester has adopted franchising powers already. But there will be guidance and the local transport authorities, in providing bus services, are going to be subject to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, can I use this opportunity to point out that one of the great benefits of the contactless system is the ability to have integrated fares across a region? One of the things that I discovered in North Wales was the frustration of many people—again, particularly in rural areas—when they were taking several journeys to get to their destination. The ability to have this all taken care of within one transaction is of enormous benefit. Of course, as we know from London, it gives also you the opportunity to have daily caps on the prices of tickets and a great deal of improvement in the experience of people who are making complicated journeys, often across different modes but certainly across different bus journeys.

I see this as an important part of the future. If we are to have an integrated public transport system, we need an integrated fare structure as well. The contactless system is an important step on the way to achieving that important part of the pricing mechanism for the future. Despite the issue that we heard about earlier in terms of the £2 fare cap, my own view is that having an integrated system of the kind we enjoy in London is one of the most important things for the future usage of buses.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for their amendments; I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his remarks just now. The Government know how important affordable and reliable bus services are in enabling people to access education, work and vital services. We also know that buses are particularly important for people in the lowest-income households, who make nearly twice as many bus trips as the average, and for younger people, who are much more likely to use buses than other age groups.

The Government also understand the importance of making payment methods on buses accessible and available to all. This is why we have provided guidance to local transport authorities and bus operators on developing their bus service improvement plans, which encourages both parties to work in partnership on improving the provision of fares and ticketing to ensure that the needs of all local bus users are taken into account. To this end, local transport authorities are also encouraged to capture local information about cash usage and electronic payments to inform the development of their bus service improvement plans. The bus franchising powers in the Bill will also give local authorities greater control over fares and ticketing while, through their enhanced partnership arrangements, they can work closely with bus operators to ensure that fares and ticketing policies are inclusive for passengers.

I should just add that, from my own experience as the person who was at the time responsible for the removal of cash payments from buses in London, contrary to the belief of the then mayor that it was the poorest people in London who habitually paid cash, it was completely the reverse: the poorest people in London had already worked out the value of Oyster cards and of daily, weekly and monthly ticketing. In fact, it was the ABC1 males who insisted on trying to pay the enhanced cash fare. When we withdrew it, they immediately moved to Oyster cards themselves. We have already discussed better ticketing once this afternoon, of course.

Amendment 71 looks to have integrated ticketing across the bus network; I note that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, largely took Amendments 71 and 72 together. His sentiments are right: it is good for passengers, as well as for the bus network, its operators and franchising authorities, to have the most modern methods of payment with the lowest possible transaction costs. I completely agree with him.

What we do not want is to try to force people to do things that they cannot currently do while the work in progress that the noble Earl described is going on, to make payment methods as easy as possible. He asked me for a timetable, which I am not sure I can give him, but the multiplicity of back offices across the bus and railway networks in Britain needs to be untangled, and substantial work is going on within the department to enable multimodal ticketing, particularly in Manchester and the West Midlands, outside London. The consequence of that will be—I hope in time, and as quickly as possible—to allow the back office, in the way that he wants and as the noble Lord, Lord Burns, described, to provide seamless ticketing across bus networks. That work continues, and will take some time. He is, of course, right that in London the volume of transactions was so great that the credit card companies were willing to come to the table very easily. Outside London, it is a bit different, but the department is working very hard to do it.

Since the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, rightly says that the Government are moving quite well in that direction—and he also observes, as I can confirm from observation just now, that the English national concessionary pass has the English rose on it, because mine has it on—I submit, on his own assurance that the Government are moving quite fast, that neither amendment is necessary.