Rural Bus Services

Lord Roberts of Llandudno Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I have some sympathy with my noble friend in that longer-term funding can sometimes indeed be more efficient. However, it should be said that short-term funding and competitions for larger amounts of funding play an important role in how we fund transport infrastructure. In the case of bus infrastructure specifically, we will be looking to local authorities to plan bus priority measures and then we will outline how we can help and encourage them to put those in place.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD) [V]]

My Lords, what keeps many buses, especially on rural routes, going is elderly people’s travelcards. Often, if I am on a bus, I know that most of the people going to the remote villages are travelcard holders. It is better now that it has been extended in Wales to other age groups. So I ask that, in the coming demand on council budgets, we safeguard these travelcards because without them we will not have the passengers or the routes.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, the Government support local authority spending by around £1 billion a year so that older and disabled people can travel on buses; £877 million of that is on statutory schemes, while £230 million is used on discretionary schemes, whereby local authorities decide to extend the scheme to other people. We are well aware of the importance of these concessionary payments to the bus operators, such that they continue services, and we support them.