Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I support Amendment 33. I have tabled other amendments which will make a similar point. I also raised the issue in our previous sitting. It amazes me that the Bill specifies bus operators and a number of other organisations for consultation on a regular basis, but not bus users. Bus users are specified in that way in one place; the rest of the Bill refers to “such other persons” as local authorities think fit. That is not good enough for a Bill which purports to put the passenger at its heart. The point of the Bill is supposed to be to increase the number of passengers and improve bus services. You will not, of course, improve bus services if you cannot increase the number of passengers. To be able to do that, bus services have to be more sensitive to the needs of passengers. The difference between a good, effective bus service and one which is trotting along almost empty is how much you have consulted people about where and when they need the service.

I draw the Committee’s attention to the latest report from Passenger Focus. As a result of its survey, it makes the point:

“At present, passengers believe they have no involvement in determining how bus services are provided; few could think of any examples where they had been given the opportunity to be consulted, and therefore even fewer where they had been actively engaged”.

It goes on to say that they could all “recall significant changes” to bus services but had no recollection of being asked about them. Many years ago, I was a local councillor. I clearly recall how important it was to get the details of bus services right: where the bus stops were, the timing so they fitted in with local trains, and so on. Those are crucial decisions which passengers—who are, after all, the ones doing the journeys—are able to advise on.

I urge the Minister to listen to this plea, which has already gone out in previous debates and will go out again on a number of other amendments: please specify bus users; be precise about this; and enshrine in the Bill a role for bus passengers and their representatives at whatever level. Even down at the lowest and most informal level, bus passengers need a voice. The amendment talks about an increasing voice for bus passengers. We need a good, strong voice there right from the very start.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I too have a later amendment which deals with this subject, so I will be brief. I agree with what my noble friend and the noble Baroness have said. What ought to be in the mind of the Government is the kind of bus service and its relationship, not only with those who currently use buses, but with those who might do so if the service was significantly better and integrated with other means of transport. My noble friend Lord Berkeley spoke about plans in Cornwall to link together the train and bus timetables more effectively. I have to tell him that in my area of Dorset they are not integrated at all. Quite frequently, even in the main part of the day, you get off the London train and there are no buses for another hour and a half.

It ought to be a precept from the word go for these new and enhanced arrangements that there is effective passenger representation in the decision-making process. I quibble slightly with the noble Baroness in that I think that probably has to build up over time. You need an organisation in there right at the beginning, but the way in which my noble friend has phrased the amendment puts an obligation in the new contract or the new franchise for the operator to make part of that improved performance be an improvement in taking into account the views of passengers. As Transport Focus—as it is now called—surveys have shown, there is a pretty pathetic level of trust and appreciation among bus passengers about services at present. So we are starting in most parts of the country, outside London, at a pretty poor low. It is therefore important that this is there in the Bill and that it underlines the whole philosophy of the management approach of the new operator, and that ought to be specified at this early stage of the Bill.