Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

Leave out “agree” and insert “disagree”.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Motion 1A, I will speak to the other Motion that I have tabled in this group. I hope noble Lords will forgive me for being distressingly frank. The background to the Bill is the Government’s payment of the Danegeld, if you like, to their friends in the trade unions and in a network of left-wing local authorities, who have seethed with resentment for many years at the success of the private sector and want to see it effectively eliminated from the provision of public transport services in this country—the same motivation that lay behind the passenger railway services Bill, which we passed before Christmas.

That is why the Conservative group and the House as a whole supported amending the Bill on Report to include a purpose to which the Government could be held to account as to its effect, putting passengers and their needs at the heart of the Bill from the outset. The Government, using their majority in the other place, have deleted that purpose. There is no standard, no accountability, no measure to which we can turn from the Bill itself and say to the Government, “You promised you would achieve this by these measures. You promised that this was the purpose you were setting out to effect and we can hold you to it”. None of that is there. The Bill simply stands on its own, a great experiment with the provision of public transport but with no accountability for the Government behind it. That is the simple fact behind Motion 1A but, as it happens, I do not propose to test the opinion of the House on it.

I turn, then, to Motion 8A, which covers two subsections that have been removed from the Bill, Clause 14(5) and (6), which your Lordships added on Report for a very good reason. The first, subsection (5), related to the £2 bus fare cap. The fact is that the Conservatives pledged to keep this going for another year. The Government removed it. Of course putting the fare cap up by 50% had an effect on the most vulnerable people, because it is the most vulnerable people—those who are low-paid workers—who depend most on buses for getting to work, for example. Yet the Government say, “We don’t need to consider that. We’re going to look at the effect of the £3 fare cap, so we don’t need to consider the effect of the £2 fare cap”. What is the point of looking at the effect of the £3 fare cap unless you can compare it with the effect of the £2 fare cap? Comparison is the very purpose of that study. The Government having made no concession on that—they could easily have said, “We will do something on the £2 fare cap as part of our review of the £3 fare cap”—and I will, when the time comes, test the opinion of the House.

Finally, on the SEND review, we talk about vulnerability. I remind noble Lords of the fragile structure of the services on which SEND pupils depend. It may be that the Government will resolve all this in the long term and there will not be any distinct SEND pupils because, as the Minister said, they are all going to be mainstreamed somehow, so they will not need to travel, but the fact is that today they do. They rely on a network of small providers, engaged by local authorities, that depend on part-time workers, many of whom earned less in each year than was required to be eligible for national insurance contributions. Because of the drop in the threshold from roughly £10,000 to £5,000, they are now caught by those national insurance contributions, which is having a devastating effect on the cash flow of those small operators, many of which now refuse contracts or are withdrawing from them where they are permitted to do so by their terms. The only result of that will be higher costs for local authorities, with fewer providers—the worst possible outcome.

The Government say they have provided money to local authorities to cover those costs—which, of course, they have. I do not doubt what the Government say as a matter of fact; they have provided money to local authorities. So what is the problem with a review that will actually identify whether that provision has been directed towards those local providers, is working and has been effective, and that the sum involved is correct? There can be no problem with such a review—except that the Government are keen to hide something. Again, when we come to Motion 8A, which captures both those subjects—I ask noble Lords to bear in mind that it has two parts to it: SEND and the £2 fare cap are both comprised in that Motion—I will test the opinion of the House.

I think it is time that the Government listened to what this House says. When it sends modest amendments, simply calling for reviews, to the other place, the Government should start listening and not simply turn everything down as a matter of course, which increasingly seems to be the way in which they want to conduct themselves. I beg to move Motion 1A.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words on this issue as the introducer of the £2 bus fare cap and the person who wrote the relevant sections of our manifesto, which committed to keep it for the duration of the Parliament and fund it, importantly, from savings that we were going to make in rail services. We do not spend enough time in this country talking about buses. Two and a half times more journeys are made by bus than by the national rail network. You would not know that from the national press, which is very London-centric on this subject, but in most parts of the country buses are critical, so I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate.

I shall say a word or two about my noble friend Lord Moylan’s purpose clause and his remarks on that. He talked about the Government trying to help their friends in local authorities. What is interesting about this legislation is that, if you look at what has happened to bus services, the real challenge, and one of the problems, is that what happened during the pandemic is that a significant number of people stopped using buses for rather obvious reasons and never returned. That caused a huge financial problem for the bus network and has caused lots of routes that were previously profitable not to be profitable. The thing that is missing in the legislation is that you can offer local authorities the powers to franchise services all you like, but unless the Treasury is going to give local authorities the money to pay for those bus services, all you do is take loss-making services that are being reduced by private sector operators or by local authorities that cannot pay for them, and the local authority ends up having to take them away because it has no ability to pay for them.

When this legislation gets on to the statute book, I will be interested to see whether the Government fund the powers to the level that you would have to in order to deliver an improvement to bus services. I suspect, given the dog’s breakfast the Chancellor is making of the economy and the fact that there is less rather than more money available for public services, that that is not going to happen, but we will see how that develops in the future. I think my noble friend Lord Moylan does not have to worry in one sense, because I do not think this cunning plan that the Government have implemented to help local authorities is going to help them at all.

Specifically on the cap, the Minister talked about the review of the £2 bus fare and said that it was not good value for money. What he missed out was that the Government decided, without having concluded the review of the £2 bus fare cap, to have a £3 bus fare cap, which suggests that they like the principle, but introduced it and picked a number without having done the review on the £2 bus fare cap in the first place. That demonstrates not sensible, evidence-based policy-making but a Treasury-driven “Let’s just reduce the cost of the policy and not look at the impact it was having”.

When I talked to bus companies, I found there were two issues relating to the bus fare cap that were important in driving up bus ridership. One was the obvious one, which is that it reduced the cost. Particularly in rural areas—as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords—where you often have to take a number of parts of a journey with a number of fares, it drove down the cost of those journeys. That is really important for people going to work or accessing education, so that had a big impact.

The other thing was the clarity and the consistency that it provided in communicating the level of bus fare to people, which had, I have to confess, a rather surprising impact. When talking to bus companies, I asked the question, “If we were to take this away, what would you do to your pricing structure?” What was interesting was that they all said having a round-number bus fare had a surprisingly powerful effect on their ability to market services to consumers, rather than people not knowing what a bus fare was going to be and a whole range of complexity. I think it needed a bit more time to bed in, and that is why I support a proper review having been carried out.

To go back to the point I made about funding, what we suggested—to take savings from the reforms that we were going to put in place for rail services and use some of that to fund the bus services—would have rebalanced where people chose to take their journeys. More people depend on bus services for important local journeys. Whether to access education, to access the health service or to access employment, far more people across the whole of the country use bus services to do that than use the rail network.

The Government have done the reverse. The first thing they did was come in and give railway drivers—some of the best-paid public servants—a pay rise and ask for nothing in return; they got no productivity improvements for the rail user. That money could have been spent on improving the quality of bus services across the country. That would have been the right decision, and it is the decision that we were going to make. When we do not see increases to funding for bus services—when we simply give local authorities the powers to franchise but with no money to deliver that—then people on all sides of your Lordships’ House will think that making savings in the rail network and putting the money into buses would have been the right decision. I am sorry the Government chose not to do so.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Harper for reminding us of the importance of funding and the fact that the Bill is almost meaningless unless large amounts of funding are attached to it for local authorities. That is not an original point; it is one that was made forcefully by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, at an earlier stage of debate on the Bill, but we have still heard nothing about the large amounts of funding that the Government are going to have to put into buses in order to make the Bill a reality.

I turn to the Motion by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who happens today to be sitting behind me, and who is apparently my new best friend. I understand—I hope I am not traducing her here—that she is not intending to divide the House on her Motion, but if she did then we would stick loyally with her as we did before. The Conservative Party is and always has been the party of villages, and whoever speaks up for villages in your Lordships’ House will have our support. It is a tragedy that the Government are willing to defer for a whole five years—into a new Parliament, when there is no doubt that they will not be the Government—a commitment to look at the effect of their policies on villages.

None the less, I have made it clear that I do not intend to divide the House on Motion 1A, so at this stage I beg leave to withdraw Motion 1A.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

Leave out “agree” and insert “disagree”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, on Vision Zero, rightly put safety on buses at the heart of this Bill. Who can argue with the aim of zero fatalities on our roads and a culture in the bus industry of safety throughout? The Government’s clear response in taking this forward, including best practice internationally and the new road safety strategy—I think the Minister said it is the first since 2011—really does show action is taking place in this safety space. It is a great assurance to our Benches.

On collecting data on violence on the bus network, we are in absolutely no doubt about the Government’s commitment to this, especially given the awaited VAWG strategy. Given the clear acknowledgement that this data is already collected by the police across the country, and that this new strategy is due, we are satisfied that this concern is being properly addressed, so the amendment is not needed. What is needed is more resources for our police, but that is a debate for another day.

As this Bill seeks to improve bus services across the country, safety in every aspect will be key. We are pleased to hear the way forward to address safety outlined by the Minister.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I was depressed by the remarks of the Minister, but I have been depressed further into almost silence by the astonishing remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. The complacency they both show on these two really important issues is staggering.

Since we last debated this, there has been an appalling crash at Victoria bus station, and what is going to change? Nothing. We will have a road safety strategy that will encompass all modes of transport by road, including foot, bicycle and whatever. That is a good thing, and we should have it, but for buses changes are needed in operator mentality and practice. We see no sign of those happening. They will not emerge from a strategy, but only if the Government say, “This is our objective and we will make this happen”. That is what the Minister is not saying. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, did not hear him not saying it clearly enough.

As for my noble friend Lord Moynihan and all this nonsense about what was discussed when, none of that matters. What matters is what my noble friend Lady Owen said—the actual experience of women and girls travelling on buses. They do not feel safe. The Government again come forward with astonishing complacency about this, saying that it is already being done and there is nothing to be added. It really is not good enough. If the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan choose to divide the House on these matters—I make the point clearly to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that that is their choice; I have known my noble friend for what must be nearly 50 years now, and he has never been my glove puppet during all that time—then we will support them, because we think these issues are very important.

Finally, as far as dark influence within the Labour Party is concerned, it is astonishing that the noble Lord, Lord Snape, should make his naive remarks on the day on which Mr Paul Holden’s book The Fraud is published, a tract dedicated to exposing the conspiracy behind the Starmer Government, the undeclared funding and the actions of Mr Morgan McSweeney in destroying Jeremy Corbyn and inserting Sir Keir Starmer as his substitute as leader of the Labour Party. I realise that the noble Lord, Lord Snape, is a byword for naive credulity among his colleagues, but I suggest that he should get hold of a copy of the book published today and sit down, perhaps this evening, with a stiff whisky by his hand so that he can prepare to anaesthetise himself against the shocks that will be revealed to him. Then he will realise what nonsense he has just said about my noble friend’s amendment.