Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

1. What her policy is on the means-testing of concessionary bus travel for pensioners.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)]

I believe that you, Mr Speaker, and the Opposition Front-Bench team will know that my ministerial colleague, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), is unable to be here today as he is abroad at a piracy conference—or, hopefully, an anti-piracy conference.

We have no plans to introduce means-testing to assess eligibility for concessionary bus travel for older people. The right to free bus travel for both older and disabled people is enshrined in primary legislation. In the 2010 spending review, the Government said they will protect the statutory entitlement to concessionary bus travel.

[Mr Betts]

I am pleased the Minister has dropped the Deputy Prime Minister’s ridiculous idea—presumably because he can envisage situations in which a pensioner who qualifies for a pass, under a means test, gets on a bus and produces their pass, and everyone can see that they are poor enough to qualify. We would end up with better-off pensioners not getting a pass because they would be means-tested out, and the poorer pensioners not using a pass because they would be too embarrassed to do so.

[Norman Baker]

I thought the hon. Gentleman might have wanted to congratulate the Government on giving £25 million to South Yorkshire yesterday, or on proceeding with the Rotherham to Sheffield tram-train trial, about which he has been so keen, and which his Government did nothing to advance over so many years.

The Deputy Prime Minister raised no such idea, and I made our position clear to the hon. Gentleman in a letter of 2 April. He is well aware of the Government’s position.