Tabled by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to support
the bus industry in England following the end of the current bus
subsidy arrangements.
(Lab)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend , I beg leave to ask the Question
standing in his name on the Order Paper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Transport () (Con)
My Lords, on 17 February the Government announced that they will
provide up to £80 million to extend the bus recovery grant until
30 June 2023. The department is evaluating the impact of this
funding and working with local transport authorities and bus
operators to develop sustainable solutions.
(Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for her Answer, and I welcome the
money that has been allocated. However, given that 80% of people
who use buses have no alternative—in fact, in Northern Ireland,
the community bus service has been completely cancelled from the
end of April—is it not time for the Government to devolve the
subsidy and funding of local bus services to local transport
authorities to get a consistent and long-term service which will
provide what people need and at a lower cost, and spread over the
whole country the benefits that the Minister has provided?
(Con)
I am not entirely sure that I follow the noble Lord’s thinking
that, just by devolving it, the same amount of money will provide
services at a lower cost. It is the case that local authorities
get funding to support bus services, including from the fare cap,
the bus recovery grant, BSOG and concessions. The simple answer
here is that we have to make local transport authorities and bus
operators work together more effectively.
(Con)
My Lords, the Built Environment Committee noted in its report
last year, which is yet to be debated, that without a
continuation of the grant beyond March route mileage would fall
by as much as 20%. Like the noble Lord, , I am grateful to hear that
the grant has continued. None the less, newspapers report that
overall mileage has fallen by 10% up to only a couple of weeks
ago. Does my noble friend the Minister consider this to be a
satisfactory situation?
(Con)
My noble friend is right that some routes have been changed and
others have been reduced. It is the case that, if an operator
wants to reduce a route, it must put in an application to the
local transport authority, which has the ability then to
subsidise or to tender that route. We have to establish a network
which matches the revised passenger demand following the
pandemic.
(LD)
My Lords, the Campaign for Better Transport has done research
which shows that, in the last two years, between this month and
March 2021, when the Government launched their Bus Back Better
campaign, there has been a 23% cut in bus services in England.
Far from busing back better, the Government are actually
presiding over the death of public transport in some areas. What
are the Government planning to do to reverse this? Will the
Minister commit today to the transformational reform of the bus
service operators grant system, which is clearly not working?
(Con)
I can absolutely say that the bus service operators grant will be
reformed; reforms will be laid out later this year for
consultation. On supporting services, we absolutely accept that
we need to do what we can to provide a sustainable network which
is fit for the future. That is why we have extended the funding
and why we have the £2 bus fare cap. We need to evaluate that
funding and the fare support to see what they have done to
patronage.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, plans for a fantastic new zero-emission bus fleet in
Stevenage and Milton Keynes, known as the ZEBRA project, came
crashing down last week when private sector partner Arriva pulled
out. Twice as many people use buses than trains, but buses need
to be reliable to increase use, otherwise a vicious circle is
created where passengers will not use them and operators will not
run them. A new system giving communities a say on routes and
fares is desperately needed. Will the Minister therefore produce
the much-delayed bus strategy without any further delay and bring
forward legislation, as my noble friend said, to devolve these powers
across England?
(Con)
I am not entirely aware of the strategy that the noble Baroness
is talking about. We have a bus strategy and we absolutely stand
by that strategy. We think that the elements within it work, but
what we are dealing with at the moment—as indeed are many other
transport modes—is a significant reduction in patronage. We
therefore need to think about how we get the best value for money
with the support that we can give, while also encouraging local
transport operators to play their part.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of Transport for the
North. Bus usage has not gone back to the level that it was
pre-pandemic; I think the figures at the end of March 2022 were
2.8 billion passengers as opposed to 4.1 billion passengers the
year before the pandemic. Can my noble friend tell us what
progress has been made with the announcement of the capping of
bus fares nationally? Has that had an impact on usage? What are
the longer-term plans for that cap?
(Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right that the £2 bus fare cap is
an important intervention for us to properly understand the
relationship between bus fares and patronage. There are 140
operators over 4,700 routes that have taken up this bus fare cap
and the Government are investing £135 million in it. We are
evaluating it as we go along, and we will of course make public
those findings as soon as we can.
(LD)
My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that large parts of
rural England no longer have a bus service and are dependent on
community transport systems. In some areas, such as mine in Mid
Suffolk, they have been set up in such a way that concessionary
fares cannot be used on those services, nor do they qualify for
the £2 bus fare cap. Can the Minister look at whether some sort
of regulatory change might be in order so as to make sure that
people who live in such areas are not disadvantaged?
(Con)
The noble Baroness has written to me about this and I have
responded. I cannot quite understand what might be going on in
her area. It is fairly simple: if it is a Section 22 community
transport service that is open to other people, concessions are
allowed and the £2 bus fare applies. If it is a closed service
under Section 19 that is not open to everybody then, rightly so,
the national provisions do not apply. If she has any further
information, I would be very happy to look into it.
(Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, , raised the question of the
bus industry. This is an opportunity for us to congratulate the
bus manufacturers of this country—whether Alexander Dennis in
Scotland, Wrightbus in Northern Ireland or Optare in
Yorkshire—which are producing world-leading buses and using the
latest technology in hydrogen power as well as battery electrics
to lead the world on behalf of this country. Can we congratulate
them?
(Con)
We can congratulate them; they do a fantastic job. Noble Lords
will have seen that the Government announced £25 million of
funding for zero-emission buses only recently—I believe that all
the £25 million in funding went to Wrightbus in Northern Ireland,
which has seen astonishing growth in jobs and skills and should
be congratulated.
(Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend explain what the future of
concessionary bus fares will be? They are particularly important
in rural areas.
(Con)
We have seen a decline in the number of people using
concessionary fares since the pandemic; certainly, those are the
sorts of people who we want to get back on to buses. It is so
important. We are reviewing a number of elements of the
concessionary fare structure and, of particular importance to
local transport authorities, we are looking at and will be
consulting on the reimbursement guidance and calculator during
the course of 2023 to ensure that local transport authorities are
getting the money back from the system that they need to fully
cover concessionary fares.
(Con)
My Lords, seeing as we are considering public money for buses,
will the Government consider the case in urban areas for
switching to lightweight trams, which last for 20 years rather
than 12 and, because they have steel wheels, do not emit toxic
particulates from rubber? Most importantly, they run on
biomethane, and the Government have a commitment to reduce by 30%
the methane produced in this country by 2030.
(Con)
The Government are a great supporter of trams. Indeed, much of
the money that we gave to local metro mayors—about £5.7 billion,
I think, in the CRSTS—is going to extending tram systems in their
areas. Of course, for other local authorities, it is up to them
to bring forward tram proposals, should they have them.
