Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent steps his Department has taken to help increase the affordability of bus travel.

In the National Bus Strategy, the Government set out a bold vision to transform bus services around the country; a key part of this vision was making bus services more affordable. We therefore introduced a £2 cap on single bus fares in England outside London on 1 January 2023 to help passengers save on their regular travel costs. The Government is investing nearly £600 million to deliver the scheme, including additional funding redirected from HS2 to keep the cap in place until the end of 2024. There are currently over 140 bus operators and more than 5,000 routes in the scheme.

The Department’s statistics show that following the introduction of the £2 fare cap in January 2023, bus fares in England outside London dropped by 6.2% between September 2022 and September 2023, whereas in Scotland, Wales and London, where buses are devolved and not included in the £2 fare cap, fares increased by 9.8%, 6.2% and 6.0%, respectively.

In October 2023, the Prime Minister also announced that a further £1 billion would be redirected from HS2 to deliver better bus services in the North and the Midlands. This funding is in addition to the more than £1.2 billion the Government is already providing to Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) to deliver their Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs). BSIP funding is intended to be used by LTAs to support the aims of the National Bus Strategy to make buses more frequent, more reliable, easier to understand and use, better co-ordinated and more affordable. It sets out the changes we want to see on fares, including for low flat fares (or maximum fares and daily price caps) to be the norm within cities and towns. Each LTAs BSIP sets out how they will achieve these objectives, including plans and costs for implementing new fares and ticketing policies, in addition to the Government’s £2 fare cap, to reduce costs for passengers.