Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young. I agreed with a good two-thirds of his speech. We have to recognise that this Bill follows 30 years of bus deregulation and—outside London—30 years of bus decline.

There has been a fall in bus coverage in almost the whole of England outside London and a big contrast with the situation in London, where franchising has been the rule. There has been a decline in passenger trips in metropolitan areas by more than 1 billion, as well as falls in rural and suburban areas. Of course, the reduction is still going on in services: there have been 2,400 withdrawals and downgradings of routes since 2010. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, referred to Oxfordshire. In my area of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire there are now threats to withdraw several vital routes.

Meanwhile, in London the bus service has gone from strength to strength. Some of this relates to funding, and the Minister acknowledged that—but the Bill does not. There is a big funding gap and a big gap in the Bill. The funding of bus services has gone down by 25% since 2010 and the funding of concessionary fares has been cut by 40% since 2010. In London, again, the funding has moved in the opposite direction.

This decline in bus services post deregulation was recognised quite early on—certainly by the time the Labour Government came to power in 1997. I was the Minister in this House who brought through the Transport Act 2000, along with my noble friend Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, who is no longer in his place. Some of that worked, as far as buses were concerned. We brought in legislated partnerships and in many parts of the country they worked very well—but for larger local authority areas we envisaged quality service contracts, and that part of the Bill, I have to say, completely failed. That was recognised by the Government later on. In 2008, they tried to simplify the process to get some moving, but none have actually occurred. This is the very area where franchising is now the appropriate form and I applaud this Bill’s commitment to it.

The reason that the previous form of intervention failed was partly the complexity in the drafting of the Bill and the regulations. But they were complex because we knew that we would be faced with serious challenges from the large bus companies. That occurred on every single occasion when quality service contracts were tentatively proposed. This even went on until very recently. Even last year, the proposal in the north-east for a quality service contract—or something very like it—was dropped because of objections by the companies. The chair of Stagecoach referred to local councillors in the north-east as unreconstructed Stalinists. I am not sure whether he included the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in that description—but nevertheless the process was stopped in its tracks.

With franchising, we have a new measure which has worked well in London and in many international examples. It puts power in local authority hands and gives a sensible size of area for the franchise to operate in. I recognise that it will be most effective in areas where there is wider devolution to city regions. In Greater Manchester, I know that for many years they have envied London’s abilities in this area and would like the ability to decide routes, frequencies, fares and quality standards for all buses in their city region. The franchising model, which could be extended to a multimodal one that would be appropriate for Manchester, facilitates that along with the setting of fares and requirements to meet reasonable costs.

The elected mayor in Greater Manchester could specify new minimum standards for fares, real-time information, timetabling et cetera. I know that in Manchester my old friend Tony Lloyd, who is acting mayor and may well take up the job permanently, would want to use bus-franchising powers to set routes that work for communities and make sure that the north and south of the conurbation of Manchester, which are rarely connected, should operate together, and that the oversupply of buses on some routes, because of the competition, and the undersupply on others would be corrected by the franchising process.

While the Bill is great for Manchester and other conurbations, why does it require there to be an elected mayor? This is the opposite of localism. It is the opposite of what I would regard as the spirit of devolution. In many rural areas there is no prospect of having an elected mayor, and there are other urban areas which do not like the prospect of an elected mayor. The process could work just as well in combined authorities, whether there was an elected mayor or not. I do not understand this restriction. The Government have promised these powers to Cornwall—my noble friend Lord Berkeley is here and often speaks for Cornwall—so why not to other areas in the rural counties of England? There is a bit of an obsession with elected mayors in legislation coming from this Government. Devolution, city regions and additional powers on the transport front, including those in the Bill, are very appropriate but do not need to be confined to areas that have decided to have an elected mayor.

The other restriction on localism and devolved decision-making relates to the prohibition on new municipally owned or part-owned companies. I do not understand why. We still have a number of quite successful municipal bus companies operating in this country. The Minister mentioned Reading and my noble friend Lady Jones mentioned the success of Nottingham City Transport, which is majority owned. The model also exists in Blackpool, as noble Lords who attended conferences there will remember, and in Halton. I do not know whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer ever takes a bus but it has been pretty successful in that area. Why prohibit it elsewhere, if that is the decision of the combined authorities that will be able to introduce these franchises and take advantage of other parts of the Bill? In fact, internationally, in some of the best-served cities that we visit, the municipalities of the regions own the buses. They include Vienna, Munich, many French municipalities and even parts of the United States.

So why are we very explicitly, in Clause 21, prohibiting the power to set up a company as an option in England? Again, this is the opposite of localism. It could be useful in rural areas, some of which might want to set up a company of their own because those areas are not attractive to some of the major companies. Local authorities and other public services lay on buses for other purposes—schools, social services, disabled transport et cetera—and you could combine all of those in a municipal or county-owned bus service in rural areas.

Rural areas of course are the parts of the country that are most dependent on buses, but they are also, in practice for most areas, where they are most underused and most expensive—as far as people without concessionary fares are concerned—and where they have seen a very substantial decline in both routes and passenger numbers. Concessionary fares are of course being threatened, in which case you could have even more empty buses on rural roads. The rural bus subsidy grant needs to be restored and devolved in some form or other. Rural counties should, as I say, have access to franchising powers and the other powers in the Bill. Rural areas should have the option of setting up on-demand services—what are sometimes locally known as Wigglybuses, which are a combination of buses and taxis—and engaging in other synergies between scheduled and on-demand routes.

We have not yet had an impact assessment of the Bill, and I hope that the Minister can confirm that we will receive that before Committee. We also need an indication of the rural-proofing of the Bill, which I have not seen anywhere in the literature that has been provided by the department, which is otherwise excellent.

Other noble Lords referred to environmental factors. Buses contribute to a degree to the carbon emissions from transport. We have now been set the task by the Government of cutting transport carbon emissions by 15% by 2020, which will be difficult, and buses need to be meeting that. More important, probably, is the air quality aspect, and we need to ensure that there are proper provisions and incentives for refitting and scrapping older buses and for bringing on newer ones that are more environmentally sensitive.

I welcome the ticketing provisions in the Bill, including the emphasis on simplified electronic and through ticketing, which is a very important issue for consumers. Again, London and the Oyster card led in this area, and Oyster itself is now being updated. There is much more that we can do here; ticketing could be multimodal.

When we talk of the benefits to the consumer that the Bill could deliver in terms of convenience, cost and reliability of service, we need to recognise the role of passenger bodies in this area. In the consultation list, for example, there is no reference to what is now Transport Focus, a very commendable body; nor is there any reference to any local equivalent in the franchised areas to what we have in London with TravelWatch. We need some established form of consumer representation in this area.

We also need to consider the workforce. A qualified and experienced workforce is very important, and the noble Lord will know that this remains a very highly unionised area; the main union is Unite. The only point where union or worker representation is touched on at all is in the TUPE provisions—which are welcome, as are the parallel pension provisions—for people who are affected by transfer between one company and another. But of course TUPE only arises at the end of the process, and there should be a requirement for consultation with the workforce all the way through the franchising process, as there is in respect of consumers.

In summary, the Bill is a good move in the right direction, but it needs to go further and to be tidied up a bit. There is too much reliance on regulation, but I am sure that I and other colleagues in this House can work on that as we go through Committee so that we get an improved Bill before it leaves the House.