Bus Services (Yorkshire and Humber)

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing the debate. As we heard in his passionate and well-informed contributions, the Government have given young people a pretty rough ride, and not just in Yorkshire and Humberside. We hear a lot from Ministers about the importance of getting young people into work or full-time higher education, but, unfortunately, their actions seem to disprove their words.

The number of those who are not in education, employment or training has soared in recent years and is now more than 1 million. That is perhaps not surprising when we remember that the Government have trebled university tuition fees, scrapped the education maintenance allowance and taken an axe to the future jobs fund. However, there is another barrier: transport and, in particular, bus services.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said, transport is less prominent and less talked about, but it is equally important in the equation. Indeed, for many young people, the high cost of transport is the biggest challenge of all. The UK Youth Parliament, for example, voted to make “Make Public Transport Cheaper, Better and Accessible to All” its priority campaign for 2012. The Youth Select Committee, which is made up of young people, chose transport as its first topic for inquiry. Therefore, it is not only young people in Yorkshire and Humberside who see transport as vital, but young people throughout the country.

Some older people, such as myself, might be surprised by that, but it makes perfect sense. Young people need to be able to get to their place of work or college, and to get there in a cost-efficient and pleasant way. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) about that. Without affordable bus services, young people are simply unable to take up opportunities in education, work or training in the first place.

I hope that you will forgive me, Mr Howarth, if I use an example from my constituency. A constituent came to me because she was worried about her sister, who had to make a journey of 11 miles to a sixth-form college. As a result of an increase in the bus fare, her sister had to choose between paying for a meal at lunch time or taking public transport to college—there are, of course, no free school meals in sixth-form colleges. That is not a decision any young person should be forced to make.

Young people throughout the country have seen the funding available to help with their travel costs taken away, and the bus services and routes that they so desperately need cut back. The Association of Colleges carried out a survey that found that 72% of students take a bus to college. The average journey is 9 miles, and young people cannot walk that distance there and back. The survey also found that 94% of colleges believe that the abolition of the EMA has affected students’ ability to travel to and from college. The cuts to bus services and the increases in fares are simply making matters worse.

The Campaign for Better Transport estimates that 70% of local authorities are looking to buses as an area in which to make cuts, with some councils planning to lose all their supported bus services. The situation has intensified as the 20% cut in the Government subsidy to bus operators—the bus service operators grant—takes effect on top of the 28% cut to local transport funding.

However, at the same time as thousands of people struggle with soaring bus fares, the big five bus companies —Arriva, FirstGroup, Stagecoach, National Express and Go-Ahead—are making record profits. They control more than 71% of the UK bus market and, between them, had operating profits in 2011-12 of more than half a billion pounds. That is perhaps not surprising when we consider that bus fares outside London have risen by more than twice the rate of inflation over the past year and by a third in just five years. At the same time, one in five supported services has been lost.

The bus companies need to work with the Government to deliver a concessionary fares scheme for young people aged 16 to 19 who are in education or training out of the not insubstantial profits that they are making in this heavily subsidised industry. That is the action we need to stop NEET rates spiralling out of control and to ensure that young people can continue in education and training post-16.

The cost of bus travel has increased by 24% since the industry was deregulated in 1987. The Government must accept that their reckless cuts to the UK’s public transport system are a false economy. Those cuts are clobbering young people and preventing them from getting on in life. As my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge said, we need only look at the problems that are caused when people are out of education, training or employment between the ages of 18 and 25, as well as the debt that leaves them in, which is often not recoverable, to see that the Government’s cuts are definitely a false economy. We are wasting lives and wasting potential.

The Government need to take action by introducing a concessionary fares scheme, and they need to do that immediately. They need to factor the views of young people into their plans, as we have heard is happening in Rotherham. I wish people in South Yorkshire all the best with their bus summit, which demonstrates how important this mode of transport is to them.

The Government need to talk to the UK Youth Parliament and the Youth Select Committee to hear at first hand what young people’s problems and solutions are. For many young people, as PTEG’s recent report “Moving on” said, the bus is public transport, yet young people have such a bad experience with buses that they turn their backs on the sector at the earliest opportunity. If we listen to them now, they might remain bus passengers by choice, not just by necessity. That would be the best outcome for us all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

I do not accept that. I repeat my earlier point: the hon. Lady’s Government had 13 years to reintroduce whatever it wanted, and did not do so, despite some cajoling from my colleagues and me at the time. However, the fact of the matter is that quality contracts remain on the statute book. The 2008 Act has not been changed in any shape or form. What we have done is to reintroduce further incentives for partnership working, which we think is right. After all, partnership working is the key to success. It is unlikely that we will see more people on buses in a local area if either the local authority or the transport operators are being difficult, so their working together is an essential prerequisite.

It is not true to say, as the hon. Lady claims, that there is a penalty for developing quality contracts. The quality contract regime has not changed at all. What we have is a reward for partnership working, which is an entirely different proposition. It is not true to say, as the hon. Member for Leeds North East has said, that BBAs and quality contracts are mutually exclusive; they are not, and I have just read out the relevant piece of the guidance that demonstrates that to be the case.

The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) talked about cuts in a way that made me feel that Armageddon had arrived. This is the fact of the matter: the overall bus mileage in England fell by just 1% between 2010-11 and 2011-12. I regret any fall in bus mileage, but 1% is not Armageddon. She might also want to know that, in 2011-12, there were 4.7 billion bus journeys in England, which is the highest figure since deregulation in 1986. Therefore, the suggestion that the bus industry is on its knees is perhaps not borne out by the statistics.

The hon. Member for Makerfield complained about the cut in bus service operators grant. I have to say again that, while I regret any cut in support for the bus industry, the fact of the matter is that we ensured that there was a soft landing by giving the bus industry around 18 months’ notice of the 20% cut. At the time—it is on the record—the industry said that it would be able to accommodate that because it had been given sufficient notice. That is in stark contrast to the lack of notice given by the Welsh Assembly Government, run by her party, which gave virtually no notice at all of changes to BSOG for operators in Wales.

The hon. Lady also complained about the profits of bus companies. As we are in a 1980s mood today in many shapes and forms, let me say that I detected a return to 1980s Labour-style theology, where profit is a dirty word and has to be removed from bus companies. That appeared to be the substance of what she was saying.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

In no way did I imply that profit is a dirty word. I merely said that some of the profit should be invested for the good of the passenger, to keep them as passengers in the future.

[Norman Baker]

The point the hon. Lady misses is this: it is in the interests of the bus companies themselves to invest for the future to generate more passenger traffic by having newer buses and a better service. That is indeed what they are doing. For example, the average age of the bus in this country is declining. We are seeing massive new investment in buses, not least of all through the Government’s green bus fund. The way to get more passengers is to provide the service that people want. Everybody in the bus industry understands that and they do it really quite well, as the figures on mileage and the number of bus journeys demonstrate very adequately.