Bus Services Bill [Lords]

Mike Kane Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Smartcard ticketing is important, and the Bill should give the powers and flexibility to introduce it. I want not smartcard ticketing that links simply to one mode of transport, but integrated ticketing on a common platform, so people do not have to have a different card for every city. One of the good things we see is bus companies almost entirely using ITSO technology. The same technology is now used for smartcards on most of our railways, so we have the potential for interoperability and to make our transport system properly integrated.

Ninety per cent. of buses operating local services in England are fitted with smart ticketing. Major operators have committed to introducing contactless payment on all their buses by 2022, but the vast majority of bus fares are still payed in cash. Some operators even require exactly the right change. In response to my hon. Friend’s point, we are updating in the Bill the existing powers to establish multi-operator ticketing schemes to recognise that latest technology. The Bill will allow a local authority to require all operators within its area to sell and accept a particular multi-operator smartcard. Under the powers, local authorities will not be able to set the price of the products—they cannot fix the fares, but will be able to determine the technology, which is important in ensuring that we get integration locally.

That might be enough to improve services for passengers in some areas, but if not, the Bill offers further options. For example, new enhanced partnership schemes enable greater integration of ticketing. They allow authorities and operators not only to agree the price of multi-operator tickets, but to set common ticket zones or concessions and to join other modes, with their agreement, to offer an integrated ticket.

I will pick up briefly on the open data point made by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh). I want to make it simpler for passengers to plan their journey and to know when their bus will arrive and how much it will cost. She is absolutely right that there is enormous variability across England, and it is essential that that changes. Where the service is good, passengers have access to real-time information, but where it is not good, they do not, and it is important that the former becomes universal. The open data provisions in the Bill are designed to allow public transport app providers, such as Citymapper and Traveline, among others, to develop a new generation of products that will do precisely that.

The Bill will also introduce new arrangements for local authorities and bus operators to work together in partnership. Partnerships between bus operators and local authorities appear to be working well in some areas and passengers are happy. Liverpool, for example, the city of origin of the right hon. Member for Leigh, the Labour mayoral candidate in Manchester—an unusual achievement, if I might say so—has developed strong partnerships with the private sector. It might be something that the next Mayor of Manchester, Conservative Councillor—[Interruption]—Sean Anstee, will decide to introduce when he beats the right hon. Gentleman to the post. [Hon. Members: “He didn’t know his name!”] The note is about something completely different.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Now that the Secretary of State has found out the name of the Conservative mayoral candidate for Greater Manchester, and given that the Labour candidate has said what his policies are, can he name one policy on transport from the Conservative candidate in Greater Manchester?

[Chris Grayling]

The note is actually about my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).

I will tell the House what my colleague in Manchester will do. He will deliver an efficient system, end some of the failures of Labour administrations of Greater Manchester and build on the excellent work done by Conservatives in councils such as Trafford. We will work together to deliver improvements on the Northern rail franchise that will benefit Greater Manchester and the rest of the north and we will discuss ways to improve further the Metrolink, in which the Government have invested. I am proud of the work the Government are doing in Greater Manchester. The Ordsall Chord, the construction of which, funded by the Government, has already begun, will deliver trains between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria for the first time, creating a wholly different experience from the days when I commuted into Manchester city centre by bus from the other side of Salford.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I have two problems: they cannot both be Mayor—they are both candidates—and I do not want us to get into electioneering.

[Mike Kane]

Who is the Lib Dem candidate?

[Chris Grayling]

I suspect that none of us knows the name of any Lib Dem mayoral candidate in any part of the country. That certainly unites us today. On Andy Street and Birmingham, I would say that Birmingham is a great city that would really benefit from the wisdom and expertise of an experienced business leader, rather than a failed Labour MP.

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[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

I rise to support this enabling Bill, which has the potential to reinvigorate bus services across the UK and in Greater Manchester. Bus use has changed over the past 30 years. Since 1985, usage has fallen by half in metropolitan areas and by 30% in Greater Manchester. Meanwhile in London, where the franchising of routes was introduced, the number of bus journeys has increased by well over 200%. For almost a generation, service provision has been based on commercial profit-making routes, with local authorities being able to subsidise loss-making but socially critical routes. However, such services are increasingly under threat. In Cheadle, the X57—a vital service for my constituents that runs from the centre of Manchester to the small rural village of Woodford—has been all but lost. Various reasons have been cited, including falling passenger numbers on a service that is bedevilled by congestion along its route, which causes problems for the timetable.

When people move from buses to cars, congestion increases and services ultimately suffer. It is therefore imperative that we take the opportunity afforded by the Bill to reinvigorate our bus services. The Bill will enable local authorities—particularly Greater Manchester, with its devolved powers—to address current service shortfalls, to tackle congestion on our roads, and to provide a vital link for people to access work and town centre facilities. All that will further support our local economies.

Work is ongoing throughout the Greater Manchester area to encourage greater public transport usage. While I look forward to an extended Metrolink in the long term, I welcome the recent opening of the £165 million Second City Crossing, which is part of the Government’s £1.5 billion expansion plan for bus, cycle, rail and tram. In the short-term, however, introducing a smarter, cheaper, and more extensive bus service could have real benefits for constituents such as mine.

[Mike Kane]

The hon. Lady makes an extremely good point about the Second City Crossing. We talk about buses and improved public transport across the conurbation, but is it not time for orbital tram routes, which would particularly help constituencies such as ours?

[Mary Robinson]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that what we really need is an integrated transport system that works for passengers, invigorates the area, and enables people to get to work and to enjoy their towns and cities.

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[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a great honour to speak in this debate and to follow the eloquent and thoughtful contribution made by the hon. Member for Bath (Ben Howlett), but nothing illustrates the north-south divide more than how we pronounce the word Bath. Equally, nothing illustrates it more than how envious we are of the system down here in London, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) mentioned. MPs are often accused by constituents of leading a glamorous life, but we have now spent four hours examining this important Bill. It is been a real honour to do it with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), Labour’s mayoral candidate for Greater Manchester, but that is what real politics looks like: politicians taking the time out to make sure we have good public policy that will benefit our constituents.

It is it hard to say it, but I congratulate the Minister. He was derailed by the small matter of Brexit. I know how frustrated he was that the Bill did not come before the House a few weeks ago, and how committed he is to it. We have some differences over what the regulations, loopholes and guidance will look like, and I shall push him on that later, but he has shown great commitment to the Bill.

I want a better deal for passengers, as does the Minister, I am sure. Indeed, there is no doubt that everybody in this House wants that for their constituents. An effective and efficient transport network supports jobs and underpins our local economies and communities, making travel easier for residents and connecting people with they want to go. I know that to be true from first-hand experience.

The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) was exactly right when he said that buses are not the social services. I recently visited a major property developer in Greater Manchester called Orbit Developments, which rents out a number of properties to businesses. It is a successful company that does astonishingly good work in providing high-value office accommodation, but staff there said that its rentable values are not the same as in London because people can get around this conurbation within the hour, whereas in Greater Manchester it can take half a day or longer.

Over the past few years there has been significant investment in transport infrastructure in my constituency of Wythenshawe and Sale East. The development of the new bus exchange at Wythenshawe town centre has brought an extra 4,000 passengers a week. At the bus and tram interchange, the tram route opened a year early, and in its first year carried 1.5 million passengers from Manchester city centre to Manchester airport. I am sure the Minister will know that having the airport in my constituency probably maintains around 100,000 jobs in the region. I am fortunate to have the most visited constituency anywhere in the north of England; 25 million people have come to Manchester airport over the past few years.

My constituency will also get High Speed 2, which is fundamental to this debate. Currently, journey times from Manchester airport to Euston are two hours and 25 minutes; that will go down to 59 minutes with the introduction of HS2. We really are beginning to think holistically about how we connect up the country.

On Friday, I will launch the £15 million enterprise link road for airport city north, in my constituency. Look at the added benefit: Amazon has just created 1,500 jobs on the airport city site, along with Virgin, which has 900 jobs, and Vodafone, which has 650 jobs. I am fortunate to represent an extraordinarily successful bit of the conurbation but, as the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) said, the key thing is how we connect up that conurbation. We need people in other parts of the conurbation to be able to get to the growth areas. There is nothing more important for that than this Bill, which is why I have waited to speak in this debate.

One part of the transport system that has always been ignored is the bus, perhaps because too many of us in this Chamber do not catch one often enough. It has been seen as a Cinderella service compared with the tram or the train, but that should not be the case. Bus services are a critical part of the transport network. Some 80% of all journeys throughout Greater Manchester are taken on the bus, yet, since deregulation, the number of passenger journeys has fallen from 355 million a year to 210 million a year. I cannot speak highly enough of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). Not only was he a great leader of the council for 12 years, between 1984 and 1996, when he battled deregulation, but he has such expertise, showing how deregulation has really disbenefited the economy in Greater Manchester.

There has been a loss of 2.8 million commercial bus miles in the Manchester local authority area since 2006, with around 140,000 such miles lost across Trafford in the same period—those are the two local authority areas that cover my constituency. That worries me because, if the decline continues, people will lose faith in a mode of transport that is essential to everyday life. I really do not blame the bus operators, as I have always supported private sector bus companies operating on our streets, but I do not understand why they are operating in a deregulated market. The first priority for companies in that market is to make a profit for shareholders, because they are forced to do so. That is how the market works, but something is fundamentally wrong if bus usage continues to fall. It cannot be good for operators and it is definitely not good for passengers. That brings me to the heart of the issue: the failure of a deregulated system to deliver a bus network that works in favour of the passengers.

I catch the bus all the time from my house to my constituency office, to Manchester for a night out, and to the Etihad to watch Manchester City. When doing some constituency work switching on the Christmas lights in Sale Moor village one Sunday evening, my wife and I caught the 41 First bus. The fare was £2.50 each, so it cost us £5 to get one way. Unfortunately, there was no return bus. It was a different operator, so we spent £5 coming back—£10 for a 4 or 5-mile round journey. For an extra pound or two, we should have got a taxi. That route is a particular pinch point in my constituency. First Bus runs seven 41 buses an hour, so Stagecoach has now decided to compete down that route with five 143 buses an hour. We now have 12 buses an hour going through a real pinch point in Sale Moor village. Each company is just trying to run the other off the road, which is not beneficial for passengers.

Deregulation creates a confusing picture. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) summed it up by mentioning that there are 22 different bus types and 140 different ticketing systems in the area. I talked to people from Transport for Greater Manchester, who could not tell me the best system. People need a mathematics degree to work out how best to travel around our conurbation. There is also no maximum cap. As an MP catching the bus to my constituency office and the tram to MediaCityUK, Manchester city centre or Manchester airport—one of my constituency’s major employers—a constituency Friday can be a complicated day, and the costs rack up and up every time. If it is difficult for me, it must be much more difficult for my constituents. There is an integration issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington pointed out. People have to pay a premium for tickets covering two or more companies.

So what can be done to fix the issue? Thankfully, the Bill is the first thing. I thank the Secretary of State for bringing the Bill to the House. I believe that it will go some way to remedying the structural deficiencies in the bus market across Greater Manchester. As has been pointed out, the last Labour Government tried to take some measures, but the Transport Act 2000 did not go far enough, including measures that could not really be introduced because of complications. That could be the failure of this Bill, especially if we get the guidance wrong, so it is important that its provisions are passed, particularly the option for the newly elected mayor to consider bus franchising after a public consultation. The franchise system here in London, as I have pointed out, is second to none.

It is vital that there are no onerous obligations or hoops for transport authorities to go through when considering the case for franchising services. I really would like the Minister to reassure us about that. Yes, it is right that there should be a tough assessment process and a consultation period so that the mayor can make an informed decision, but let us not make the mistakes of the 2000 Act by issuing unworkable regulations and guidance. It is vital that they are clear, transparent and unambiguous, and that they fully reflect the spirit of devolution. I acknowledge the Minister’s commitment to follow through with what was agreed in the 2014 Greater Manchester agreement. Let that not be undone by regulations and guidance.

The provisions in the Bill have the potential to improve significantly transport for residents of and visitors to Greater Manchester, and the option to explore bus franchising is a potential game changer for our city region. A better co-ordinated, more stable network is essential if people are to have confidence in using buses and public transport more widely.

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[Andy Burnham]

I agree that it is not north-south. It is a problem in our political system: London-centricity. Why was London allowed to opt out in 1985 when everywhere else had to take part in the experiment without evidence to support it? Because most policy makers in the House of Lords, this place and the Government civil service live within the M25, they thought that the services were fine and that there was no problem because theirs were regulated, while everyone else was going through chaos. That explains why devolution is necessary. It means that we can fix the problem for the benefit of the travelling public.

I agree absolutely about the cable car. If there is the money here to throw at cable cars that people do not use, that makes the point about the inequality in transport investment. It is just not right.

Investment has been committed for HS2, but we are now considering two other potential major investments: HS3, or northern powerhouse rail, and Crossrail 2. In my view, HS3 is the highest transport investment priority for this country: high quality rail linking the great cities of the north. I would say that it is a higher priority than HS2, but it is absolutely a higher priority than Crossrail 2. If the Government put Crossrail 2 before HS3 in the queue for investment, they will perpetuate the gross inequality of many decades in transport investment in our country.

[Mike Kane]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Does he agree that, for one Crossrail project, we could link Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and the four runways, creating 850,000 jobs and adding £97 billion to the economy?

[Andy Burnham]

I agree—that was the conclusion of the independent economic review. The Government should build HS2 and HS3 as one system. Why build one, go away and do the north another time? Why not build them together as a single high-speed railway and high-quality infrastructure project that will deliver those economic benefits? I say to the Government that we cannot have a northern powerhouse without that kind of investment—it is essential to delivering the economic benefits my hon. Friend described.