Conservative response to Labour's bus announcement

Responding, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: 

“Labour’s war on the motorist continues apace. Labour won’t be able to deliver a modern bus network because they would raid the roads budget and scrap vital new roads and upgrades to fund their fantasy giveaways.

“Corbyn’s Labour would bring gridlock to our roads and gridlock to parliament with their plans for another two chaotic referendums next year.

“Only the Conservatives will get Brexit done and keep our economy strong, meaning we will be able to invest in local public transport while upgrading our roads to keep Britain moving.”

ENDS 

Notes to Editors 

• Labour will take away all money from road building, including to fund free bus travel for under 25s, even if they’re wealthy enough to afford it. The £28.8 billion National Roads Fund is currently funded by hypothecating Vehicle Excise Duty, which brought in £6.4 billion in 2017-18. Labour have said they would fund free bus travel for under 25s at £1.4 billion a year, a Bus Transformation Fund at £1.3 billion a year, a cut to rail fares at £1.5 billion a year and the £2.5 billion resource spending required for their cycling plans, all from VED. These plans total £6.7 billion a year – more than the amount brought in by Vehicle Excise Duty and leaving nothing to spend on improving England’s roads (DfT, Roads Funding Information Pack, November 2018, link; OBR, Vehicle Excise Duty, 13 March 2019, link; The Telegraph, 12 April 2018, link; LabourList, 25 April 2019, link; BBC News, 2 December 2019, link; The Guardian, 1 December 2019, link; Hansard, 17 October 2019, link).

• Even Labour’s union backers call Corbyn’s climate change plans ‘utterly unachievable’. Tim Roache of GMB said: ‘The proposal to do it by 2030 threatens whole communities, threatens whole jobs … Net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is utterly unachievable. We can't go to the country with a plan that is frankly not credible. Is not deliverable’ (BBC, The Today Programme, 24 September 2019, archived).

• The Labour-affiliated GMB trade union have warned Labour’s climate change plans would result in cars being confiscated. ‘The proposal to do it by 2030 threatens whole communities, threatens whole jobs … This will mean that within a decade people’s petrol cars being confiscated. This will mean families can only take one flight every five years. Net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is utterly unachievable’ (BBC Radio 4, The Today Programme, 24 September 2019, archived).

Labour’s record shows they can’t be trusted to deliver better bus services…

• Bus fares rose twice as fast under Labour every year than under the Conservatives. In 1997-2010, bus fares rose by an average of 2.8 per cent each year in real terms. This is twice as much as in 2010-18, when fares have risen by an average of 1.4 per cent each year in real terms (DfT, Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2018 tables, 13 March 2019, link).

• Bus services under the Welsh Labour Government have fallen more than twice as many as in England. Since 2010, bus services in Wales have fallen by 18.8 per cent, compared to 9.3 per cent in England (Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain, Annual Report 2017-18, 3 January 2019, link).

Labour are playing catch up with the Conservatives…

• Creating Britain’s first ever all-electric bus town, leaving cleaner air for the next generation. We will make £50 million available to develop the first all-electric bus town or city. We have already invested around £150 million to replace and upgrade the bus fleet, resulting in more than 1,300 low emission buses on our roads and an extra 263 zero emission buses on the way (DfT, News Story, 30 September 2019, link).

• Launching new low-fare, high-frequency ‘superbus’ networks, allowing passengers more choice and lower prices. We will help local authorities to partner with bus companies to create new superbus networks – in exchange for the local authority investing more in bus lanes, bus operators will run more services, at a lower cost thanks to an all-operator fare cap. The first superbus network will be launched in Cornwall next year (DfT, News Story, 30 September 2019, link).

• Launching a National Bus Strategy, making sure that passengers using the bus get the best experience and best value for money. The strategy will be backed up with more than £220 million in the first year alone and give local authorities which want to create London-style franchised services in their areas more powers and support to do so (DfT, News Story, 30 September 2019, link).