Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Amanda Hack and Jerome Mayhew

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I have concluded my remarks on this group.

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. Before I came to this place, I sat on the highways and transport scrutiny committee at Leicestershire county council, so I have spent a lot of my professional life talking about buses. As is not out of the ordinary for someone living in a rural or semi-rural constituency, however, I have also spent a lot of my personal life talking about them, as cuts and broader threats to our services are often the subject of conversation around the dinner table.

We all have residents such as those my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland spoke about in our previous sitting. For example, my constituent, Jacky, fought hard to reinstate the bus service in Whitwick in my constituency, and won, ensuring that people can get to the local doctor and pharmacy. That is a socially critical service. A few years ago, the service between Coalville in my constituency and Hinckley in the neighbouring constituency was withdrawn at short notice in the middle of an academic term. North west Leicestershire and Hinckley both have further education colleges, and that essential link between the two was withdrawn in the middle of people’s courses. If the local authority had responded to campaigners then, it would have realised that the bus route between those two urban parts of Leicestershire was a socially necessary service.

In big cities, cutting one service leaves a dent, but in rural areas such as mine, it leaves a crater—and craters have been appearing all over my constituency. Bus services were cut by 62% under the previous Government. What bus providers and councils see as cutting costs, we see as cutting lifelines to education, jobs and healthcare—cutting connections with our communities. Members can imagine my constituents’ frustration when they heard a few weeks ago that notice had been served on a route between Ashby and Loughborough. The local authority has found an alternative to protect the service, but the timings are such that students now have to catch their bus even earlier to get to college.

Bus services are not just about transport; they are about opportunity, inclusion and dignity. When a young person in Measham cannot reach their college in Loughborough, or an elderly resident of Ibstock cannot get to their medical appointment, that is not an inconvenience but an erosion of their independence. We cannot afford to keep asking our communities to do more with less. That is why I welcome the Bill’s ambition. Finally, we have committed the resources that are needed to protect socially necessary services in my community and many others.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Debate between Amanda Hack and Jerome Mayhew

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Jerome Mayhew]

Clause 7, which is reasonably long, introduces a number of additional tests for the granting of service permits. Subsection (2) inserts a new subsection (5A)(a) and (b) to section 123Q of the Transport Act 2000. Paragraph (a) provides that the franchising authority or authorities may grant a service permit for a cross-boundary service—this is the meat of it—if satisfied that

“the benefits to persons making the journey on the proposed service will outweigh any adverse effect on any local service that is provided under a local service contract in the area to which the scheme relates.”

Paragraph (b) sets out that the franchising authority or authorities may grant such a service permit if they are satisfied that

“the benefits of the proposed service to the economy of the relevant area”—

that is different from paragraph (a), which referred to benefits to persons taking the journey—

“or to persons living in that area, will outweigh any”

adverse effect on the local service provided under a local service contract. The first paragraph refers to the benefit to passengers on the cross-boundary service and the second to the benefit to the area.

I suppose what sits behind this is the abstraction argument, which we are familiar with from the railway. In fact, those lucky enough to be at Transport questions this morning will have heard a brief rehearsal of that argument by the Secretary of State in respect of open access applications on the railway. The essence of the argument is that when a new service is proposed for a particular area, in addition to just saying, “Isn’t this is a jolly good idea? We’re getting further provision, more choice and no doubt price competition as well, and new constituencies and demographics being served by buses”—or, in the other example, by rail—before agreeing to it, we need to look at its impact on existing services. It is argued that it would be unfair if we have already contracted a franchise agreement or service operation agreement for buses, or we have a franchise operator on the railway, such as London North Eastern Railway—actually, that is not a good example, because it has open access competition. Let us take High Speed 1, where Eurostar has its operations, and imagine that we said, “We’re going to provide a new service.” Virgin, for example, is applying for an operating licence for HS1. We would then say, “What would be the impact on the provision of the existing services? Is this new service going to supply a currently unmet need, or is it going to provide two services fighting over the same customer?”

That takes us back, interestingly enough, to the original regulation of bus services in the 1920s. A major argument for the need for bus regulation in the first place was the common complaint that there could be one route with 15 different buses on it, all from different bus operators competing furiously for a key route, and for the less well-travelled routes and perhaps the suburban or rural routes, there would be no bus provision at all. The argument ran that we could not leave it up to the private sector to fight it out and let the market decide where services should be provided; we needed a degree of regulation so that we could have decent provision on the main thoroughfare and provision elsewhere. I think I am right in saying that the term “traffic commissioner” was first created following the review in the 1920s, and those commissioners still exist to this day. As we progress through the Bill, we will see reference to the traffic commissioner, which is a historical overhang from the initial regulation of the bus network in the 1920s.

I return to abstraction. The argument goes that it would be unfair to provide a new service where the impact of that would be negative on existing services or on other factors in a local area. The Secretary of State’s argument—admittedly in the context of rail, but it is relevant to this argument—is that it would be unfair to provide such a new service, but I challenge that base assumption. The person who is being left out of that consideration is the passenger. New services provide new opportunities for the passenger. Yes, it is true that new services may act as de facto competition for existing service providers, but as we know from every other aspect of our lives, competition tends to improve performance.

Before I came into Parliament, I was a businessman running a consumer-facing company. I hated competition, and I did everything I could to stifle it, because I knew the impact it would have. I will not tell the Committee the things I used to do—I should think there would be a by-election—but the point is that existing providers hate competition, because they have got a comfy little operation, they know what their activities are, they know what their likely revenue will be, they know how they deal with their customers, and they do not like change.

When competition comes in, businesses are forced to sit up and say, “Oh my goodness! This is an existential threat to us as an operator. How are we going to respond?” Businesses in aggregate respond in a number of different ways. Some of them are nicer to their customers and improve their customer service to hang on to their customers and ensure they are not tempted across by the new provider. Others reduce their fares to attract custom. Then we get a price war, as we often read about in the press—we get price wars between Tesco and Asda, and Lidl and Aldi. Those who benefit are not the businesses but the customer, who gets either better customer service or lower prices. They certainly benefit from wider provision of opportunity, because they have two services available to them instead of one, and that puts the providers on their mettle.

My submission is that new provision of whatever description is inherently a good thing, even if there is an argument about abstraction from existing providers. I suppose it comes down to the core beliefs of Government Members as opposed to Conservative Members, who at heart—my heart, anyway—believe that competition and the challenge of a competitive market is a good thing. In the vast majority of cases—not always—it brings benefits to the customer and forces a focus on the end user rather than the supplier.

If I were to traduce Labour Members’ political opinions—perhaps I am putting words into their mouths—my criticism of the Labour party more widely and its approach to legislation as demonstrated in this clause is that its instinct is to support the supplier and the operator, rather than the customer, particularly in heavily unionised sectors. We touched on this point a little bit in our last sitting on Tuesday, when I was discussing the Bee Network in Greater Manchester and the decision on whether to increase the hourly rate for bus drivers.

At the time when the contract was being let, the commercial rate was £12.60 an hour. The Mayor for Greater Manchester insisted on an hourly rate for bus drivers of £16 an hour. I rehearsed the arguments both for and against. We can look at it in two ways—we can think it is a wonderful thing that bus drivers are being paid more, but it also means that bus services are considerably more expensive to provide in Greater Manchester than they are elsewhere in the country because salaries—wages—are more than 60% of the costs of running any bus operating business. That is the heart of it. Who are we after? Are we supporting the suppliers or are we supporting the customer—the passenger?

That brings me to amendments 46 to 50, standing in my name. Amendment 46 would have the effect of removing the requirement in section 123Q(5)(b) of the Transport Act that

“the proposed service will not have an adverse effect on any local service that is provided under a local service contract in the area to which the scheme relates.”

Given my preceding comments, we can see why this is so important. As it currently stands, we have a measure that prohibits the provision of a new service if that service were to have any adverse effect on pre-existing services under a local service contract in the area to which the scheme relates. That is a very low bar—it is almost a veto—for the provision of new services, because one can imagine that it is very easy to assert that the provision of a new service may draw customers away from one that is already being provided.

The amendment seeks to simplify the process for granting service permits. Demonstrating that a change will not have any adverse effect is an enormously high bar and is evidentially onerous. Removing section 123Q(5)(b) from the Transport Act, as the amendment would do, speaks to the Government’s desire to streamline the process and make it easier for the supply of new services, for innovation, and for new entrants to enter the market.

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

The shadow Minister raises an important point about competition and the customer being at the heart of bus services. Will he share with us why so many rural bus services have been cut, if the commercial operator is king and the focus is on customers? That is not the experience we feel in rural communities. We have had cut after cut.

[Jerome Mayhew]

That is an interesting point, and the hon. Member is of course quite right. I did preface my comments by saying that competition is beneficial in most areas, but there are some areas where it is not. The counter-argument is that, in this instance, this is about a new operator, which does not have to be a private sector operator, suggesting an additional service. This is not about cutting services. This is about where, for whatever reason, an analysis has been done that there is additional demand—this is not about cutting a service, but about providing an additional service.

The hon. Member is quite right to raise rural areas, as the hon. Member for North Norfolk has done through a number of his amendments. I represent a rural constituency myself in Norfolk. In bald terms, the rural service in Norfolk is not too bad as long as the destination is Norwich. We have a radial provision of bus services from outlying villages directly into Norwich. If someone wants to go across the county to anywhere other than Norwich on those lines, it is very difficult. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire is right that if we look to only the passenger ride and the fare box to support usable and sufficiently frequent services, it is highly unlikely that a purely commercial approach will do it. That is why, in Norfolk and many other places, the innovation of an advanced partnership has worked so well.

Water Bill

Debate between Amanda Hack and Jerome Mayhew

2nd reading
Friday 28th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) for bringing forward this important Bill. I enjoyed his passionate—although a little loud—speech. He is right that the public want better, and I think the actions that we have taken in government show that we want better too.

In recent months there have been so many discussions in the Chamber, Westminster Hall and the other place on how we can fix the broken water industry that the Tories left behind. We have passed a Bill and set up a commission—clear action from this Government. These crucial debates together are ensuring that my constituents get the justice and representation they deserve after the Tories failed communities like mine for 14 years, and not just in the water sector but in so many public services. Sadly, they turned a blind eye to record levels of illegal sewage dumping, cut the Environment Agency budget in half since 2010, and allowed customer money to be spent irresponsibly on director bonuses and shareholder payouts.

The Conservatives avoided so many opportunities to hold the water companies to account, and they failed to regulate to protect our waterways, even after a shocking incident in September 2022 in my constituency. On 12 September, the Environment Agency received reports of a sewage discharge. Contractors arrived at Brooks Lane pumping station the same day to stop the problem, but officers discovered that 1 km of West Meadow Brook near Whitwick had been polluted. The investigation found the sewage discharge had been going on for weeks completely unchecked. There was an overwhelming odour, with a thick coating of sewage fungus covering the riverbed. Human faecal matter was also visible.

Severn Trent Water admitted that its teams had failed to see that the pumps had latched out and were not activated. It also accepted that it had failed to monitor effectively. The damage was so severe that the company took the offer of an enforcement undertaking, giving Trent Rivers Trust £600,000 to support the restoration of the habitat and environmental improvements.

In the same year, 2022, Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, outlined the serious health risks that sewage spills can pose for those using the country’s waterways. The Tories did not heed his warnings and nothing was ever done. Even after this disgusting incident, sewage still poured into waterways in North West Leicestershire: 15,000 hours in 2023—15,000 hours!—and close along to the pumping station there are a number of storm outflows, which continue to release untreated effluent whenever they fancy. I have visited residents and walked with them across several sections where spills take place. It is disgusting, because even when the sewage is no longer being spilled the residual smell lingers and the visible debris continues. Severn Trent does clearance work, but never enough.

As a Leicestershire MP, I also have to mention flooding. We have had so many residents who have been impacted by flooding in our county, not just once, but many, many times, and, sadly, now are never going to be able to return to their homes, such is the impact of flooding in my community. There is no doubt in my mind that if the Tories were still in government, we still would have had no action to address these issues. They would still be taking none of the action needed to clean up our rivers and seas, and there would be no cracking down on the water executives.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

I have not intervened on other speeches, but on that one comment that the hon. Lady has made, has she read the plan for water that was published by the previous Government and is she aware of its contents, which include £56 billion of investment to deal with exactly this issue?