Member

We know that a significant number of veterans have real difficulty establishing themselves and finding a stable place within civilian life. Being able to afford bus travel might mean being able to get to work, attend training, access services, get an appointment, visit family or just remain connected in the community. This would potentially be a meaningful part of the support we could provide for veterans making the transition back into civilian life. Some might say, “This is too difficult, too complicated”. Well, we have concessionary bus travel schemes operating right across the UK at a very significant scale. In England alone, there were 8.9 million older and disabled concessionary travel passes in the year to March 2025. Those passholders made 624 million concessionary bus journeys in the year. The Government reimbursed bus operators £795 million for those journeys. Of course, the scale we are talking about here would be a tiny fraction of that, but these systems already exist; there is no need to create new systems.