Simon Lightwood

We believe in passing the power and the funding down to local areas to make these decisions. A multi-year funding settlement has been reached and details of that will be provided to local authorities in due course. They already have the power and they will have the funding and the ability to do just that. I thank the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay and the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham for tabling amendment 58. The Bill seeks to remove the existing requirement for local transport authorities that are not mayoral combined authorities or mayoral combined county authorities to gain the Secretary of State’s consent to start the franchising process. This is a purely administrative step and has no effect. It occurs before a franchising assessment has been produced, so the Secretary of State has no evidence at all on whether to support or block a move towards franchising. The Bill’s purpose is to help streamline and simplify bus franchising and, in turn, open up the option of bus franchising to all local transport authorities. Clause 1 is consistent with that aim. It puts all local transport authorities on a level playing field and will speed up the process for those authorities pursuing bus franchising. For this reason, I would ask that the amendment be withdrawn. I will now address amendment 10, tabled by the hon. Members for Wimbledon and for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry), and amendment 59 from the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay and the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham together. I am aware of the recent campaign by the hon. Member for Wimbledon regarding noise nuisance on the bus network, and I can confirm that the Government are committed to tackling antisocial behaviour on buses, including headphone dodging. In Committee, I outlined the existing regulations in place, which set out the behaviour expected of drivers and passengers travelling on buses, so I will not repeat them here. Further to those existing powers, clause 28 of the Bill provides scope to tackle a broad range of antisocial behaviours, and that could include making byelaws to tackle disruptive forms of behaviour. Of course, Conservatives Members would know this if they had bothered to read the Bill, but they obviously had not noticed this when they were talking to the press about headphone dodging. As such, these amendments are not necessary and I would ask right hon. and hon. Members not to press them. I move next to the issue of fare caps. The previous Government left no funding to maintain any form of cap beyond 2024. We stepped in with a £3 cap to avoid a cliff edge and to ensure that fares remained affordable. The fare cap captures around one fifth of bus fares. This reflects passengers’ use of other forms of ticketing, such as a weekly season ticket. As a result of the recent spending review, funding has been secured so that authorities can provide targeted interventions if they so choose. School-only services were fully considered when designing the £3 fare cap scheme, and it was determined that they should not be included. On amendment 23, the Bill introduces socially necessary local services as a measure. The £2 fare cap ended in December 2024 prior to this measure coming into force. The expectation is that it will take some time for local transport authorities to identify socially necessary local services in their areas. An evaluation of the £2 fare cap has already been published by the Department for Transport. It looked at the first 10 months of the previous fare cap. Evidence suggested that the scheme delivered low value for money.