Rural Bus Services

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend is right: an empty double-decker bus careening through narrow country lanes simply will not do. One of the solutions that may be appropriate for rural areas is demand-responsive transport. That is why in September 2019 we launched the £20 million Rural Mobility Fund. We asked for expressions of interest and have had 53. I take great heart from that and at the moment we are reviewing those. We probably do not want to launch them now, in the middle of the pandemic, but we hope that will go on to prove what kind of demand-responsive transport works and what does not, and then we will be able to roll it out more broadly.

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

Half of households on low incomes and two-thirds of jobseekers do not have access to a car. Bus services are also crucial to rural economies and small local businesses. However, a study by Warwick University in 2019 found that over a decade the price of travelling by bus has risen by 39%, way above the level of inflation. Does the Minister accept that this has contributed to the decline in bus passengers and that it has been and is damaging, both socially and economically?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

What the Minister accepts is that we must always strive to improve our bus services. In February 2020 the Prime Minister talked about his view for the bus network, with more high-frequency services and better bus prioritisation. With those two things, one automatically gets lower fares. If we can put all those services on cleaner, greener buses, that will be all to the good.