Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Helen Morgan Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and the granddaughter of a London bus driver. Bus services have been reduced to a dire state in my North Shropshire constituency in recent years—most drastically under the watch of the previous Conservative Government. We are one of the worst-served constituencies in England for public transport, having seen a staggering 63% reduction of our bus miles since 2015; that compares with an English average reduction of just 19%. A person in Market Drayton who wants to get to the Princess Royal hospital in Telford, which is a 20-minute car journey, is looking at something like a five-hour round trip on the bus. Only one service operates on Sundays in the whole county, between the market towns of Oswestry and Chester. In short, the current situation is unacceptable.

Just before recess, I met students from Lakelands academy in Ellesmere at Parliament’s education centre and answered their questions. One young woman asked me what we were doing to make bus services better, because she could not go with her friends to any after-school clubs due to her bus not running back to St Martin’s past 3.30 pm. I recently met members of the Oswestry Youth Forum, and they raised similar concerns. Young people in rural communities are now presented with a childhood confined to the small village or town they live in, and they are left with a lack of choice over their education, a lack of opportunity for socialising and taking part in activities outside school, and shrinking horizons. Ultimately, their options for employment can be significantly curtailed—unless, of course, their parents can afford to give them a car.

Meanwhile, older or disabled constituents who are no longer able to drive, or simply cannot afford to, are fully dependent on family members and friends to get them to where they need to be. I think everybody in this House would agree that this is driving deep and fundamental inequality, as well as holding back the economy in rural areas. That is why I am broadly supportive of this Bill.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is painting a picture that will be very familiar to my constituents in Dartford. In my case, we have deteriorating services under Kent county council, with 30 years of Conservative rule meaning that buses have got worse pretty much every year. I have written to the new Reform-led administration in Kent county council asking them to undertake to use the powers in the Bill to improve bus services in Dartford and across Kent. Would she agree that the new Bill offers huge opportunities for local authorities to improve bus services and transport networks for the benefit of residents in my constituency and hers?

[Helen Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I was about to say that I am broadly supportive of this Bill and the empowerment of local authorities to franchise bus services for those reasons. That should enhance accessibility and safety and allow local authorities to establish new bus companies, which they have not been able to do before. It is critical that local authorities can protect and establish routes that ensure access to employment, healthcare and town centres, which is one of the main aims that my own bus services Bill—Bus Services Bill No. 1, if I may be so cheeky—seeks to address, but with these new powers rightly being given to local government, I have real concerns about the ability of rural local authorities to find the funding to drive the meaningful change we so need.

In November, the Government allocated £1 billion of funding for buses, and the then Secretary of State for Transport said that the funding for rural areas would be “unprecedented”, but Shropshire council received just £1.4 million in capital funding and £2.5 million in revenue funding for this financial year. That was the 53rd lowest of 73 allocations for one of the worst-served counties in the country. That funding allocation is a tiny fraction of Shropshire council’s bus service improvement plan, which outlined the need for £73.5 million of bus funding across three years to transform the county’s bus network to an acceptable standard. The cost of franchising is also likely to be prohibitive to local authorities such as mine. The Government who promised a new formula based on need, deprivation and bus mileage to end the postcode lottery have so far made it abundantly clear that living in a rural area means less money, less public services and less opportunity.

There is a clear need for better transport in Shropshire. A third of North Shropshire’s children are growing up in poverty. Our deprivation may be hidden by our beautiful leafy setting, but it certainly exists, and by limiting the opportunities of these children, it is being perpetuated. The council spends around 80% of its budget on care, a percentage that is forecast to rise, and its costs for delivering services are high. At more than 1,200 square miles, Shropshire covers an area 27 times the size of Greater Manchester. The roughly 325,000 people who live there are relatively evenly distributed across the area, adding to the cost of delivery of those services.

I support the principles of the Bill, but there must be recognition of the desperate situation that local council finances are in, particularly in large rural areas such as mine. The looming rise of the bus fare cap from £2 to £3 is especially concerning, forcing people to fork out a significant amount every week for return travel to their job. In rural communities such as North Shropshire, alternatives to bus travel are few and far between. For the financially vulnerable who rely on buses to access services, the impact of the hike to £3 is going to be devastating.

I support the Bill’s aims, and I can see its success in cities such as London and Greater Manchester, but it is essential that rural areas are not left behind and crippled by the cost of delivering social care over a large geographical area, as they have been by previous Administrations. Buses are the best way to reduce inequality for people in rural areas and, critically, to unlock the economic growth they can offer. I hope the Minister will listen and work with his colleagues in the Treasury to help transform the opportunities for people in rural areas.