Bus Services: North-east England

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for securing this important debate.

The Government’s lack of covid-19 support for our Tyne and Wear Metro means that bus services will certainly be cut in our region by £7.5 million next year, and I will explain why. As Members will be aware, the Metro is the third most used light rail network in the whole UK, with pre-pandemic passenger levels of 36 million per annum. Reducing service levels is just not an option for the Metro, but because central Government will not step in and play their part, our councils are being asked to take the burden of £4.1 million of extra payments to keep bus services afloat and help Nexus balance the books. We all know how cash-strapped our councils are, but they are having to pay more and more to cover the gaps that the Government are ignoring and widening. The Government would be wise to remember that our constituents can see that this is happening. It is not exactly levelling up, is it?

Again, our local authorities are being told to bear the brunt of keeping our public services afloat. Most recently, we were given nothing in the Budget on transport, because we have not got a metro Mayor. Meanwhile, down the road, £310 million is being pumped into transport in the Tees valley. I wonder what we should take from that. Are the Government going to hold our area to ransom because we do not have a devolution deal? People in our region have a specific need for bus services, and constituents frequently write to me about the poor bus provision across Sunderland and Washington.

During a recent roving street surgery in Oxclose in my constituency, nearly every household raised the issue of the poor bus service—in fact, it was the issue that was raised most on the doorstep. That was true not just for that area but across the whole of Washington. The issue was also raised at a public meeting I held in South Hylton, which is over in Sunderland, and I have been contacted by constituents in Usworth Hall, an estate with no bus services at all. With commercial companies providing bus services, it is little surprise that, despite being necessary, non-profitable services continue to disappear as local authorities struggle to fill the gaps.

The point of public transport is to offer a safe means of getting places, even during unsociable hours. That is especially necessary as car ownership levels in the north-east’s left-behind neighbourhoods are among the lowest in the country, while rail services range from being limited to being non-existent for the majority of the areas that I represent. So there is high reliance on bus services.

However, as we have heard, bus provision is declining and the communities that I represent are literally being left stranded. Limited rail services for many communities in the north-east only heightens the need for immediate and good bus provision, especially with the Government snubbing rail improvement projects such as the much-needed reopening of the Leamside line, which I know a lot of people in this room support.

The Chancellor has often said that no Government could budget for a pandemic. Well, neither could Nexus or our local authorities, and the effects of the pandemic are still being felt. It is surely the duty of Government to support public transport in its recovery. This is not a Government without money, as was made very clear by the Chancellor’s Budget just last month, with its announcements of tax cuts on short-haul flights and champagne. The decision not to support the Tyne and Wear transport network is a political one, which will see residents lose out every day and the local economy lose out in the long run.

So why are the Chancellor and his team so scared of putting their money, which we know they have, where their mouth, which we also know they have, is? For all their talk about levelling up, they are making their intentions clear by their inaction. Therefore I implore the Government to listen to Nexus, local authority leaders and all of us here today, and to ensure that bus provision in the north-east sufficiently serves our constituents every day of the week.