Local Bus Services

Tom Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I think that comment dates from another time. I agree that the sort of prejudice against public transport in that comment is deeply unhelpful. I think that a man or woman who finds themselves on a bus at the age of 46, as I did this morning, has achieved a great deal in life. I want buses to be seen as an aspirational form of public transport, not something that people take only if they cannot afford something better.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

Very briefly, for clarity and in defence of Baroness Thatcher—[Interruption]—that is a quote that will haunt me for some time—she never actually said those words, which have been attributed to her. It was actually Loelia, Duchess of Westminster.

[Mary Creagh]

I aspire to a country in which even the Duchess of Westminster travels on the Clapham omnibus—or even the Westminster omnibus.

We know that the rise in bus fares has disproportionately affected the frail and the vulnerable, as well as young jobseekers and those on low incomes without access to a car. We know, too, that in some rural areas, bus services have all but disappeared—the result of this Government’s deep cuts to supported services, which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) mentioned. Freedom of information requests by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) uncovered the fact that local authority bus subsidies across shire counties were cut by 23% in real terms between 2010 and 2014. Conservative Northamptonshire county council cut its subsidy by 55%, and Conservative-run Suffolk by 50%.

In cities outside London, there is a chaotic mix of local control over trams and metros, private provision of buses and nationally operated rail franchises—no integrated ticketing, no real-time information and no fares information at the bus stop. The bus companies say, “Ask the driver”, but can we imagine going to Tesco for a loaf of bread and being told that we have to take it to the checkout to find out the price? There is often no usable map of the bus networks and their connections. Instead, different bus companies compete for fares.

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[Mr McLoughlin]

The simple fact is that, if my memory is correct, it is legislation enacted in 2000 that allowed quality contracts to come in, yet none was introduced during that time. [Interruption.] I am saying no, but I will check the exact date.

I should point out that it is this Government who are making the difference—even Labour in the north know it now—and I am proud of our record on buses. So perhaps today, I can put straight a few of the facts; indeed, we might end up even agreeing. Let me spell them out. The motion today says that buses matter to the economy. Of course they do, which is why we have been investing heavily in them. The motion also says that bus use outside London is falling. I have some good news for the House and the hon. Member for Wakefield: actually, it is not falling at all; it is going up, reversing the trend we inherited from the last Government. In the last year alone, there have been 4.7 billion bus journeys in England, the highest number since records began. There is growth outside London as well—up 1.5% on last year. Buses in England are busier. In 2013-14, 16.1 billion passenger miles were travelled on buses in England, up from 15.2 billion in 2009-10—an increase of 900 million journey miles.

[Mr Tom Harris]

But if the Secretary of State excludes all London bus journeys from those figures, historically—from the point of deregulation in 1986 to the present day—bus passenger numbers outside London have plummeted.

[Mr McLoughlin]

No. As I have just pointed out, the trend has been reversed—[Interruption]—in the last year for which figures were available, and not just inside London but outside it too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

Earlier this evening, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) offered us a quotation which she wrongly, but understandably, attributed to the late Baroness Thatcher, about the man who, finding himself on a bus beyond the age of 26, can count himself a failure. As I pointed out at the time, it was actually said by—we think—Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, but it is, as I say, understandable that it has been attributed to Mrs Thatcher over the years. I have made the same mistake myself in the past. I have a long-standing interest in transport issues, and that was one of the quotations that I gave to illustrate the dastardly Conservative attitude to public transport users.

The fact is that there is a class element in this debate, and we should recognise that. When I was a Transport Minister, it was often said, although never minuted, that suits did not use buses. That was meant to remind me how important it was for us to persevere with the Government’s programme of encouraging the growth of tram services in parts of the country. Trams were seen as a halfway house between a train and a bus. Wealthy professional people would use a tram, but would not use a bus. The problem is that over the years, especially since deregulation in 1986, bus services have become the poor relation of public transport. According to the latest Government figures, 60% of public transport journeys are made on a bus, but I suspect the figure is much higher; it certainly has been in the past. The trains and the railways get far more press coverage than the buses, however, and trains get far more attention in this House, too, and the trains receive far more public subsidy than the buses ever have, and rightly so—we all understand the reasons why.

Importantly for this debate, buses are the poor relations once again when it comes to regulation. The disparity between bus services and railway services is no more explicitly clear than in successive Governments’ approaches to regulation, and I include the last Labour Government in that, in which I served. Trains are, of course, necessarily heavily regulated, but there is not so much regulation for buses. The Confederation of Passenger Transport said last week that it opposed Labour’s plans

“for the further regulation of bus services.”

I question that word “further”, because buses are completely unregulated. There is no regulation in the bus industry. The only requirement for any Member of this House who might want to run a bus service is to be able to afford to buy a bus, and it must be roadworthy. After that, they can run a bus service along any route they wish.

[Mr Spencer]

A number of cities have gone down the route of having trams, such as Edinburgh, Nottingham and Sheffield, but they are very expensive. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that money would have been better spent on supporting local bus services, which, of course, can vary or change their route rather than have to follow tram tracks?

[Mr Harris]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The tram in Edinburgh was a disaster from start to finish. I was in Edinburgh over the Edinburgh festival period, and I saw for myself the much-heralded trams and was extremely excited that there was a passenger on one of them; that encouraged me. I do not think trams are the solution, therefore, but bus services are absolutely vital, because buses are the transport mode of choice of most people. They are flexible and relatively cheap compared with the infrastructure we have to invest in for trams and trains.

Outside the capital, there is no regulation of the bus services at all, however. The bus industry has done a good job. I do not want my party to jump on the bandwagon of attacking the whole bus industry because it is entirely private. It is entirely private, and it should remain entirely private. Nobody on this side of the House is saying we should return to the ridiculous old days when local authorities owned bus companies. We do not want to go down that road.

What we are saying is that, because it is such an important mode of transport, it should be regulated. There is nothing wrong with that. The private industry has done some very good work on fares and smartcard ticketing, although I have to say I think the Secretary of State was just a little ungenerous in his comments about the progress that the last Labour Government made on smart-ticketing and on accessibility of vehicles.

Since the railways were privatised in 1995, the number of passengers using the railways, during what was a period of economic growth, has gone up to a remarkable extent—I cannot remember the precise figure, but the rise in that time is between 40% and 50%. It has been a real success story, at least in terms of the number of people using the trains.

Why has that not happened for the bus services? The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) and the Secretary of State were incredibly complacent in saying, “Ah, well, in the last year there was a 1% increase in passenger numbers.” What is the number of people using the buses today compared with 1985? That is the figure we should be looking at. With a 1% increase a year, how many years will it take to get back to the level we were at in 1985? That is what we have to explain to our constituents.

Why have passenger numbers on the buses not been increasing at the huge rate the trains have been enjoying? After all, bus services are flexible. If a bus company wants to increase capacity, it buys a bus, whereas doing the equivalent in the train industry is massively complicated with massive lead-in periods. The bus industry is far more flexible, so why has it not taken advantage of economic growth to increase the number of passengers, as the train industry has done? The simple answer is because it is not run well and because it is not regulated outside the capital. The passenger increases that have happened since 1986 have happened exclusively in the capital, where deregulation did not take place.

[Martin Horwood]

I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but I do not think those of us who were pointing to the increased numbers overall were being complacent. I quoted statistics from the south-west and Gloucestershire which suggested that things are at least heading in the right direction. However, the hon. Gentleman is right that we should all be more ambitious for bus travel.

[Mr Harris]

I wonder whether those figures would be moving in the right direction were it not for the introduction of free bus travel for pensioners. Take those figures out and where are we with passenger numbers? I suspect that even last year’s 1% increase would be non-existent.

I want to say one last thing. This is not a debate about Scotland, but I stand here envious of my English colleagues. We have the prospect of a Labour Government next May, and of regulated bus services throughout England. If only that were the case in Scotland. Successive Scottish Executives, led by the Labour party and now by the Scottish National party, have refused to re-regulate the buses. In Scotland, for some reason, SNP Ministers do not want to introduce regulation. I cannot imagine why. What is it about the anti-regulation arguments of multi-million SNP donor Brian Souter that Scottish Ministers find so persuasive? I hope the example the next Labour Government will produce will cause Ministers in Scotland of whatever political colour to change their minds.