Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord True Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I have tremendous sympathy with many of the points made by her and the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and I am sure we will look at these matters very carefully during the course of the Bill. I declare an interest as a leader of a local authority who rides the 33 bus to work every morning. Generally a very good service it is, I may say, including exactly the kind of information that is so helpful to passengers, and which I hope will be extended from London and Manchester to many other areas under the Bill.

I am very struck by the point about audio-visual. I remember that when I used to go to Berlin in the old Cold War days—it was a fascinating place, quite extraordinarily liberated and alternative—when you got on to public transport it was absolutely rigid and regimented, and you noticed that a voice announced “Nollendorfplatz” and so on. That was so long ago— 30 to 35 years—and I thought then that audio-visual was a good idea, but it still has not come in universally across this country. Let us hope that that will happen.

My authority is not a passenger authority, although we have nearly 90,000 households. Our services are provided by Transport for London, about which we have heard a little, and which does many good things that we are recommended to imitate. The trouble is that TfL is a very large, almost impenetrable and, in many cases, unaccountable body about which, I confess, I have not always been polite in your Lordships’ House. However, I had the great pleasure the other day of sharing views with its new top man, Mr Brown, who I thought was a breath of fresh air. I might have expected that, on remuneration three times the whack of the Prime Minister—a benchmark that I hope will not be followed by the other authorities that might emerge under the Bill. Although Transport for London does a good job, in its structure it is not always as accountable to local people as it might be—I will return to this a bit later. I hope that in these new arrangements we will not replicate the defects as well as the strengths of that.

Generally, I support the Bill. Increased bus use in London has been hugely welcome, and bus use must be encouraged further, which we all hope the Bill will do. It is therefore great to see the Bill before the House, and I thank the Minister. It will open up new possibilities to improve bus services across the country, and as was fairly said from the other side of the House, give us the chance to learn both from the successes and the failures of the system as it has evolved over the last decades. Learning on the job is what we are about in public administration, and we should do that candidly, recognising the good and the bad that there is in all systems.

I do not want to upset my noble friend on the Front Bench but, funnily enough, I have no ideological objections—noble Lords will not be surprised, as I am the leader of a local authority—to local authorities running buses or running anything at all, if they can show that they can do it economically and effectively. Therefore, perhaps the Minister will explain, as others have asked him to do, the rationale of Clause 21, which, I remind the House, says that, “A relevant authority”—that is, a local authority—

“may not, in exercise of any of its powers, form a company for the purpose of providing a local service”;

that is, a transport service. It goes on to say that that applies,

“whether the relevant authority is acting alone or with any other person”.

Even as a partner, the Bill sets out to slam the door on local authority innovation.

That takes us a long way from the power of general competence, which I so welcomed when our last Administration brought it in. Does that mean—I read out the words, which sound very hard—that a local authority would be prevented from promoting or participating in a small, energy-efficient, seasonal shuttle service to improve links between a station and tourist attractions or parks: the kind of service which will not be provided by commercial bodies? It would be a pity if such small-scale innovations were forbidden by what reads as rather leaden language in the Bill. Perhaps we will be able to explore that further in Committee.

I have great affection for the old buses I used to go to school on, which were run by a local authority: West Bridgford Urban District Council, which was the only urban district council running buses then, which it had done since your Lordships passed a Bill in 1913. I can still see those brown and buff buses coming along. They described the livery as crimson lake and cream but we knew it as “choco and custard”, two of our favourite foods. We did not have anti-child-obesity rules in those days. Those were local municipal services, run by a small local authority, and they were profitable, decade after decade. The council ran them at a profit, and I do not see why that should not be possible or not allowed.

In the 1960s, when buses were challenged by the rise of car use, which we now want to prevent, profitability became more difficult and the local authority wished to change to coaches and a one-man operation, but sadly, that was blocked by the trade unions, as so many things were in the 1960s. The result was that the service was sold off to Nottingham City Council, which still runs buses. I can tell noble Lords, from my experience last week, that it does it rather well. I hope that we can at least have a better explanation as to why that ban should be in the Bill.

To go back to where I was on London, the moral of my reflection on the dear old West Bridgford buses is that public bodies can run services, and public services can inspire great affection, but transport must be responsive to its customers and able to innovate.

With regard to being responsive, I referred to London, as did the Minister. What influence will lower-tier local authorities within the planned new authorities have over decisions relating to buses? By the way, I agree with those who said that the obsession with elected mayors is completely ridiculous. We are all for devolution and so on, but can someone stop sending Bills to my noble friend Lord Heseltine before they come before Parliament? We can do things well locally without elected mayors.

Within the TfL area, TfL has exclusive powers over, for example, the placing of bus stops and the design of street furniture. To give one example, securing the moving of a bus stop in one of our town centres took over a year due to bureaucracy, with the proposal going back and forth between the person at the top—the commissioner of TfL—and all his people and the local authority. It was completely ridiculous. I do not know whether the Public Bill Office will say that the Bill does not apply to London but it looks as though the Long Title of the Bill will allow that. However, let us hope that it does not come to that.

With regard to the delay in moving bus stops, we recently had a case where bus shelters, which provided shelter, were removed, without consultation, by the superior authority—TfL—and passengers got drenched. When we raised an objection, we were told by the people at the top that they were worried that their bus drivers might drive into the larger shelters, so they had replaced them with smaller ones. Perhaps the bus drivers could have been trained not to drive into bus shelters. Can we be sure that, in these new co-operative arrangements—with or without mayors—that are emerging in other parts of the country, lower-level authorities such as Richmond Council will have slightly more say in local design and activity than is the case in London? I hope that will be carefully considered.

I hugely welcome the improvements in accessibility for disabled people, and I very much agree with what the noble Baroness said. Sadly, too often I have seen selfishness from people with buggies on buses. My dear old grandmother would have called it “heathen” behaviour. It is a great pity that one has to resort to the law to get decent civility in giving priority to those in need.

I hope that these new, emerging arrangements will allow more choice and more public and local involvement. Let us have a bit more input into the design of buses. I am sorry that the hop-on, hop-off bus did not go forward. I thought it was great during the first few days of its operation, but then we were not allowed to hop on and hop off any more. When we have these franchising operations, will local authorities be able to say, “Please give us buses where we can have windows that open”, and, “Can we have buses on which people can sit looking forwards instead of backwards through the back window of the bus, where the ordinary passenger can’t see anything?”? Design is very important and I hope that there will be some influence over that in the franchising arrangements.

Finally and briefly, what is the definition of a bus in the Bill? I cannot find it. It is probably in the original statute but does it include a river bus? To me, that is a bus. One problem that we had in London in the early days was that there was no bus integration between water transport and land transport in the original plans for joint ticketing and so on. In other areas of the country, the River Trent in Nottingham, for example, is very wide, and there are places with seaports and harbours. If we are looking for these kinds of arrangements, it is important that we integrate water transport from the start.

With those reflections, overall I think the Bill will extend choice. Despite my remarks, we have so much in London that is good and which I hope we will see exported. I am delighted that my noble friend has brought the Bill forward and I very much look forward to giving it strong support in your Lordships’ House.