Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for listening to and taking away the concerns I raised with my noble friend Lord Shipley on independent audit. It is an important point. These schemes, however welcome, are potentially extremely expensive. The risk, as always, will fall on local council tax payers and therefore robust independent audit is key. We look forward to seeing the regulations and guidance as they emerge.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I remain generally supportive of the thrust of the Bill, but I have been dismayed by some of the measures taken by the Government in the Commons with some of the amendments in this group and others. It is regrettable because during the process of the Bill in this House there has been a high degree of consensus and the Minister has been very helpful in a number of respects. However, in some areas he has been chopped off at the knees by his colleagues steamrolling it through the House of Commons.

I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said on the low emissions provisions. If the Government were concerned about the timescale and the economics, they could have amended the timescale and put in a few qualifications. Instead, they have deleted the requirements in Amendments 2 and 6 that new vehicles should meet new low emissions standards. This is a very poor signal. As the noble Baroness said, it comes a day or two after the Government’s attempt to use the election to defy the previous court injunction that a new air quality strategy should be produced because of the inadequacy of their earlier air quality strategy produced by Defra.

The Government’s record on this is shaky and they are extremely vulnerable. Buses are one of the main diesel-based pollutant vehicles in many of our towns and villages. There was an opportunity to put in the Bill that we would do what a number of local authorities in London and elsewhere are already doing and replace those buses immediately when a new vehicle is brought on with one with high-quality emissions standards. As I said, we could have put in slightly different dates and slightly greater qualifications, but nevertheless that needed to be in the Bill. It undermines the Government’s commitment to do something about air quality on which they have been and will continue to be widely criticised. I regret that and I think the Government will come to regret it too. As was said in this House yesterday by my noble friend Lady Nye, it is a major public health issue. There are provisions for avoiding the purdah prohibitions concerning air quality that were already in the Bill when it reached the Commons. The Government chose, wrongly, to delete those provisions, and I regret that profoundly.

I also regret the deletion or dilution by Amendments 3, 4 and 13 of the provisions we inserted in this House that worker representatives in the bus industry should be clearly consulted on any changes, whether an advanced quality partnership or the new franchising operations. The Minister has continued to make positive noises in that respect, and I appreciated his acceptance of the principle in our earlier proceedings. However, his colleagues seemed to have deleted most of that, which is a mistake. We are talking here, whether the Government like it or not, of a pretty highly unionised sector where by and large there are good relations between the bus companies and their employees. Anything which deletes a continued commitment to those outcomes makes some of these provisions more problematic when they never needed to be. Again, the Government may live to regret that; I hope not. I know that the unions intend to be constructive and by and large welcome the objectives of the Bill, but from a long list of those who are required to be consulted about these changes, the people who are omitted are the ones who actually drive and operate the buses. That seems to me a triumph of ideology over common sense and the Government should not have done it.

The Minister will no doubt be relieved to hear that I intend to intervene only once on this Bill. I have some concerns about the third group of amendments in relation to the reinstatement of the clause which prohibits local authorities from setting up their own companies. That is a restriction on local authority strategic decision-making. I do not intend to belabour that point because we will come on to it in a moment.

I hope that the outcome of the Bill is positive. It is regrettable that these changes have been made by the Government at this relatively late stage because they make it more difficult to achieve what the Minister himself set out as the objectives when he introduced the amendments. Taking the changes together, I hope that in the coming weeks the population will recognise that even in this relatively minor area of legislation the Government have decided, contrary to what was a pretty consensual view in this House, to delete commitments on environmental standards, commitments on the rights to representation of workers, and commitments on flexibility and devolution of powers to local authorities. All of that amounts to an unnecessary and significant reduction in my enthusiasm for what in general is a positive Bill.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I intend to speak relatively briefly on this group of amendments. The Opposition have generally supported the overall aims of the Bill. We have welcomed it and see it as an important step towards increasing the number of bus journeys, particularly outside London where there has been a collapse in the number of journeys in recent years. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, we would have liked the Bill to have gone further, but equally we accept that we have made welcome progress on it; as I say, we support its overall aims. Like other noble Lords, we generally accept the changes on data. The deletion of provisions in respect of emissions is regrettable. Air quality is now a very big issue in terms of people’s health. The number of deaths which can be attributed to poor air quality is something we should all be concerned about and I think that the Government have taken a retrograde step.

My noble friend Lord Whitty mentioned consultation of employees. That is very important and again it is a shame that the Government have largely deleted or watered down the provisions in that regard. Whether the Government like it or not, the bus industry is heavily unionised, which has generally been of benefit to it. The unions work well with the various bus companies and seek to provide a public service. I do not see any benefit in what the Government have done. As my noble friend suggested, I suspect that other forces in the Commons are at work here who do not quite see it that way. What the Government have done is a mistake. I will come on to other things I regret when we consider further amendments.