Contribution
What bus passengers really want is reliable, affordable and cheap bus travel on a growing network. That is what was guaranteed under the last Conservative Government’s £2 fare cap. It was a commitment in our manifesto, and one that worked. [Interruption.] Opposition Members may jeer, but the National Audit Office said—they might want to listen—in praise of the DFT that the
“DFT’s £2 bus fare cap achieved its aims to make bus journeys more affordable for lower-income households and to increase bus usage”.
That is a policy abandoned by Labour but stood up for by the Conservatives. This Labour Government scrapped it, and they keep on pretending that a 50% increase to £3 is actually beneficial to taxpayers.
There is zero indication of how the Bill will improve passenger numbers or ensure rural coverage. Indeed, the Bill creates an even more fragmented and inconsistent service across the country. Labour has scrapped a national fare cap and failed to replace it properly, and now it expects local councils to pick up the bill without any extra funding. The last Conservative Government delivered real investment for passengers, backing bus services and improvements in the west midlands, and Greater Manchester with £1 billion. I was there with Mayor Burnham, and anyone would think it was all down to him. I am sure Ministers are finding dealing with Andy as interesting as I did. We also did so in West Yorkshire, delivering bus service improvement plans, and working with local authorities to get real results.
The Bill is the opposite of that. It will drown councils in process, drive up costs and threaten rural connectivity while ignoring what passengers really need. Without significant subsidies, councils will naturally prioritise cities and towns over villages, leaving our rural communities even further behind. Just as we have seen in our courts and our prisons, the Government risk creating yet another two-tier system—this time for buses—where city regions are supported and everyone else is simply forgotten. How else to explain forcing operators towards zero emission bus registration without any plans to help make that transition for them?
After hammering rural communities with attacks on family farms, the Government will do exactly the same all over again with reduced services because they are not providing extra funding. To make matters worse, they are undermining the very infrastructure that buses rely on by cutting roads funding in road investment strategy 3 by 13% in real terms and delaying or cancelling critical projects. The Government cannot promise better bus services while cutting the very roads that they and all other users depend on. In tearing up the safeguards around the Secretary of State’s oversight, Ministers are giving councils free rein to set up municipal bus companies without ministerial sign-off or competitive tendering. Let me be absolutely clear: if those companies fail, the responsibility lies squarely with the Secretary of State, with taxpayers left to pick up the Bill.
Moreover, the Bill has completely ignored the shortage of bus and coach drivers across our country. We have called time and again for 18, 19 and 20-year-olds to be allowed to drive buses beyond 50 km a day. Fifteen months ago, the consultation ended. This Government have had 14 months, yet last week, in answer to a written parliamentary question, they said that they are still considering their response to the consultation. It is a straightforward and common-sense change that would help tackle driver shortages, boost businesses and tourism, and get more buses back on our roads. The Prime Minister and his Chancellor have told this House repeatedly that they will pursue growth by any means necessary, yet when an opportunity clearly presents itself, as this has done, they do not seem to want to move at all.
In this week of hugely damaging and disruptive strikes in our nation’s capital—we will see further bus strikes across the country next week—the Government are putting ideology ahead of delivery and siding with the unions over passengers, with a Bill that fails bus users, fails rural communities and fails to guarantee value for taxpayers. That is why we on the Conservative Benches will vote against the Bill tonight, and I urge all hon. Members to do the same.