Rural Bus Services
Debate between Tessa Munt and Richard Drax(10 years ago)
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Richard Drax
I welcome anything along those lines. I agree with my hon. Friend, and I am sure the Minister can expand on that point and say how far such an arrangement has progressed. We welcome any initiative that creates a better and more integrated bus service, not least for those who are stuck out in the sticks.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
I want to draw the attention of the House and, in particular, the Minister to the fact that in my area someone trying to travel to Taunton from Street in Somerset can get caught out, because different bus companies run different services at different times of the day. That competition means that someone who buys a ticket, unwittingly thinking that they can use it for the return journey to the village from which they came, can find that that is not possible if the service is run by a different company. It is completely ludicrous that people should end up having to buy a new single ticket to return on exactly the same route. Some of the suggestions that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) made might solve that problem.
Richard Drax
I agree, and I think my hon. Friend has answered her own point: our hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) has made some suggestions. I would entirely concur with anything that creates a better, more integrated system that is not as convoluted as she describes.
Local authorities nationwide have already announced savings of almost £20 million. I use the word “savings” rather than “cuts” intentionally, because I accept, as I know the Minister does, that we face difficult times and we are not out of the woods yet—although the economy is showing signs of turning—so we all have to live more reasonably, and certainly within our means. I welcome a lot of what is going on. This country has to learn to live within her means, because clearly we cannot do otherwise. However, I feel that the provision of bus services—better integrated, we hope, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) has said—will not disappear, and certainly not in my rural Dorset.
Routes to remote parts at the most unsocial hours are the most vulnerable to being lost to savings. In a recent reply to me, Transport Minister Baroness Kramer wrote that
“local transport matters must be determined locally and that the Government’s localism agenda is about giving people the freedom to create effective working partnerships.”
In insisting on a localism agenda, we must ensure that we do not inadvertently starve councils of the resources to provide a proper bus network, especially for the most vulnerable in our society. In rural areas, I would categorise not just the elderly and the sick as “vulnerable”. They include, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) mentioned—she beat me to the punch—those holding down a job, trying to find work or attending college or university. Just because they live in the countryside, they should not be disadvantaged so far as their future careers, what they want to do and where they want to go are concerned.
Richard Drax
He was, he was—in which case, I apologise profoundly. I mentioned the bus service operators grant, which is, in effect, a fuel rebate, and which is being gradually reduced. One bus company managing director has told me that if the Government continue to cut the grant, bus services will be even more seriously affected.
Tessa Munt
My hon. Friend mentioned jobs. A number of my constituents who live in Cheddar, Axbridge and Chippenham work in Bristol, which is on the other side of the local authority boundary. When Somerset county council makes decisions about transport, it needs to worry only about the areas that it covers, but some of my constituents will have to give up their jobs because, owing to the one-mile gap between the Somerset and North Somerset bus services, they have no means of travelling to work in Bristol. There are only 10 or 12 of them, but the Government should bear in mind the cost of supporting them in some way with taxpayers’ money because otherwise they cannot reach their workplaces.