Transport: Bus Industry

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords who have contributed so much to this debate already, especially the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for initiating it and bringing to the issue his customary expertise and trenchant questions. I am sure that the Minister noted them carefully and will respond to them accurately in his speech, which we await in a few moments. The noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Shipley, have identified key issues that affect and face the industry at present. I particularly liked the points that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made. His optimistic and constructive perspective was that ridership could increase and that, if the correct strategies were followed, we could improve bus services and see more people using them.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, I use a bus daily, but I am afraid that mine is a London bus. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, indicated, London is atypical in these terms, although I hope that it points to what can be achieved if there is sufficient commitment to increasing bus ridership and making the service efficient. In terms of efficiency, of course the quality of the buses and the hours that they run are important. We all know what dogs people when it comes to bus services. Without punctuality, people feel forlorn. They feel exposed to a position over which they have little control and one that is severely disappointing.

We all recognise why London’s experience cannot be readily translated, certainly to our rural areas, although in our major cities a great deal from London could be followed. There is no doubt that, in the example that London offers, the great success is the frequency and regularity of the buses and the knowledge that, when people go to catch a bus, one will arrive. That is important. That is why investment in the information that is available to bus passengers is of the greatest significance. After all, none of us expects to try to catch a train without some accurate information. However, people often wait for buses in much more inclement positions than they ever do at railway stations. Not even the most derelict of our railway stations fails to offer some shelter, but people using buses are often exposed to the weather conditions and wait for buses in very inclement circumstances.

The point that we need to emphasise—I hope that the Minister takes this on board—is that we are concerned with fairness, as far as support for buses is concerned, because buses are used by the less well-off in our population. It is people who cannot afford cars who travel by bus. We all remember the famous statement in the 1980s that, as far as one Prime Minister was concerned, it was only those who had failed who travelled on buses. That caused some resentment in the wider population. I am sure that that sentiment is not held by this Government today. They will be judged on the kind of services that are provided by the Department for Transport for those who are least well-off in our society and most dependent on effective public transport. The bus is of great importance in those terms. That is why the 20 per cent cut to the bus subsidy that is to be introduced by the Government is of great significance.

I have no doubt that the Minister has erected his defences well and no doubt that one of those defences is that we must wait for the Competition Commission’s report. The Competition Commission has many virtues and I am sure that we will learn a great deal from its report, but the question that we are asking the Minister is: can we wait that long? If cuts are coming that will affect bus services dramatically, significantly and early, waiting for the Competition Commission will, I am afraid, mean waiting for advice on how to plug a gap that will already, by then, be a great, tearing hole in the quality of our bus services. Therefore, I hope that the noble Earl will not erect that defence and that he will appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, introduced the debate this evening because of his sense of urgency and concern about bus services, which is shared across the industry and, of course, by passengers and the wider public.

We note that Iain Duncan Smith—a Minister with significant responsibilities given present circumstances—thought that getting a job involved merely taking a bus ride from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff. That journey lasts an hour and the service is not particularly frequent, although it is regular. However, an unemployed fellow was featured in a television programme taking a bus to Cardiff only to find that the most desperate circumstances prevailed in terms of the likelihood of being able to land a job, given that the jobs available were so few and the number of applicants so great. If employers have a choice between employing a local person who can come in and meet their demands at short notice and someone who has an hour’s travel to get to work and an hour’s journey home, the latter has a pronounced disadvantage. Therefore, it will not do to give glib answers about unemployed people using buses to travel to get a job. The Government should think seriously about the nature of the support for the industry. I am sure that the Minister is seriously considering the proposals of the Local Government Association as regards the necessity of providing a single grant for buses. It identified where the weaknesses lie in the present situation. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, identified a very important dimension of that with regard to concessionary fares.

The LGA argues that reform is necessary. After all, we have seen the subsidy increase over the past decade by a very substantial amount. The LGA knows that money is scarce. Before the Government carry out their full depredations on the grant, the money is already pretty scarce. However, the LGA is concerned that the Government should look at the nature of the grant in different terms and think of it as a model for a single pot. I know that that proposal poses all sorts of challenges for the Minister and that it will require serious consideration. However, I make a plea from this Dispatch Box that unless he thinks radically about the way in which we organise our support for buses in circumstances where resources are so scarce, and unless clear reforms are carried through, we will see a deterioration in a service which in many parts of the country is already not good enough to meet the public’s needs, and certainly will not be good enough for those several hundred thousand of our fellow citizens who will need to be mobile in order to get a job.