Local Bus Services

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not see the irony of his walking through the Lobbies to make massive cuts to his local council’s budgets and then criticising it for making cuts?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

Does the hon. Lady not see the irony of proposing a motion which suggests that other councils should be

“able to make use of London-style powers”,

but contains not one cent of financial commitment? How would the Oyster cards be paid for? What about the massive amount that would have to be invested in machinery? This is pie in the sky. It is great pie in the sky, but money would have to be found from somewhere to pay for it. What would Lancashire do if such a system were introduced? How could the county council deal with it, given that it already wants to cut bus services?

Following a massive campaign led mostly by the parish councils but also by— obviously—myself, along with members of every political party except Labour, including my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), the county council has withdrawn its original proposal. However, it will now review each bus route separately.

I acknowledge that there is a problem with the use of rural buses, partly because of the inability to invest in technology, and I share the dream of rural bus services becoming like those in London,. However, a party less than six months away from a general election is not prepared to say how it would make the initial huge investment. If we agreed to the motion, would we be expected to pay for it by means of increased fares or increased borrowing, or to ask county or city councils to introduce even more cuts? Where is the finance to support this scheme? Although I have massive sympathy for it, I prefer the Secretary of State’s step-by-step approach. It will enable us to do what we should have done years ago and start to introduce a bit more regulation, but, before we do so, let us make clear how we will pay for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my Front-Bench colleagues for securing this debate, which is incredibly important to people in constituencies such as mine. We spend a lot of time in the House talking about important things that do not have a direct or immediate impact on the lives of constituents, so it is good today that we are talking about something that is having such a disabling impact on the everyday lives of my constituents. They simply would not recognise the rosy picture that the Secretary of State and some Government Members have tried to portray today. The more I speak in or listen to debates in the House, the more I realise that we are living in two countries here. Ministers either live in or think in terms of London and either do not recognise or do not care about what is happening in the rest of the country.

I listen every week to the Prime Minister talking up the economy, saying that unemployment is reducing, but the gap between his rhetoric and the reality for my constituents is immense. The number of people who are unemployed or under-employed continues to rise in my constituency and in the north-east generally. To tackle the issue of jobs in the north, we need a transport infrastructure that supports job creation. That is not just large, grandiose schemes that Ministers like to talk about in the House and love to be seen opening. It is about things like buses that make people’s everyday live workable and stops older people becoming increasingly isolated.

Government cuts in the north have hit councils such as mine massively. My county council has lost a third of its budget. If we lost a third of our budgets, we would lose the roof over our heads. It is ironic that a number of Government Members have criticised their local councils while going through the Lobby to cut council budgets massively. In counties such as mine, as soon as the cuts were announced subsidies on buses went. That meant that communities in largely rural constituencies were left with no buses at the weekend and after 6 o’clock in the evening. If a bank holiday falls either side of a weekend, some communities can be left without a bus for almost a week. That cripples people’s lives.

Constituents have told me that they have been sanctioned by the Department for Work and Pensions because they cannot get to a job interview because there are no buses. That is just cruel. That is the sort of downward spiral that affects people’s lives every day. Far too many of my constituents are on zero-hours contracts and one lady told me that she can be called into work at any time. Often that means working the shift from 10 o’clock in the evening until 6 the next morning. If she wants to get there, she has to walk 3 miles. She does her shift and then has to wait either three hours for a bus or walk home again. That is the daily reality of people in constituencies such as mine.

Having no buses has a daily and negative impact on people’s lives in large rural constituencies. People cannot get to work if they do not work 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. Young people cannot get to school and colleges and take the courses that they need and which our economy needs them to take. They cannot socialise in the evenings and at weekends, and that does not just apply to young people. Local health services and GPs are worried about older people becoming more and more isolated in their homes. They have free bus passes but they have no buses to use them on.

Our neighbouring authority has decided that enough is enough, and Tyne and Wear voted in the last couple of weeks to have a quality bus contract. I understand that the Government fought it every inch of the way on this, and penalised it at every point. The bus companies in my part of the world know exactly where the Government’s allegiances lie—they lie with the bus companies that are making massive profits, and not with the people who use those buses.

The Government should be on the side of the people and not of the massively profitable bus companies. Like the big six energy companies, the rail companies and the water companies, the bus companies are making massive profits out of the British public, and they know that they can rely on the support of the Government in that. The people of this country need a Government who stand with them. Let us hope they get one in 2015.