Transport in the North-East

Debate between Kevan Jones and Gordon Marsden

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) on securing this important debate, and I emphasise that she has fought consistently and doggedly for better bus services for her community. I am pleased to see the strong representation from MPs across the north-east, who have spoken about their support for better-run services that work in the interests of local people. As a north-west MP, I agree that co-operation between the north-east and the north-west is a key part of the process. I do not have time to go through all the points that colleagues have made, but there is clearly a strong consensus among the Opposition about the need to move forward in this area. As my hon. Friend has said, we must look at new mechanisms and new structures.

I understand the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is a doughty defender of his constituents’ interests, and I am sure that those points should be taken forward. It is worth remembering what Nexus has said about the problems with the partnership offer:

“Whilst partnership boards would undoubtedly improve the dialogue between local councils and bus operators, the final decision on routes, timetables and ticket prices would remain firmly in the hands of the bus operators. This creates significant doubt over whether the improvements and savings would be achieved in practice.”

I want to recognise the hard work that Nexus has done over the past four years in pursuit of a quality contract scheme. In many cases, it has innovated where no passenger transport executive has gone before, with, frankly, little support from Government. The final decision must, of course, rest with the locally elected councillors in the combined authority, but the work that Nexus has delivered to them in recommending the quality contract deserves to be received thoughtfully and carefully.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Marsden]

I am sorry, but I cannot give way because of the time. We need to develop franchising schemes that can help to protect our bus services and their key role in society. Buses are too often the neglected foundation of our communities. As the Institute for Public Policy Research pointed out recently, three times as many passengers use buses as use rail. The Passenger Transport Executive Group has established that in metropolitan areas the bus networks generate £2.5 billion in economic benefits, which is five times as much as the £500 million of public funding that they receive. Buses provide economic and social opportunities, linking passengers up with apprenticeships, skills and jobs, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and others have said—not just any jobs, but aspirational, career-building ones. In the north-east, in particular, those benefits are valuable to the more vulnerable in society, who have few other means of getting around: young people, people on low incomes or those who do not want to or cannot afford to get snagged up in environmentally unfriendly congestion.

Too often, government works in silos, and too often, this Government have done so. Ministers must be alive to the possibility that better-run bus services can help to deliver Government objectives. Bus services can be a key factor in reducing energy demands and carbon emissions. The PTEG has shown that the best-used bus services in urban centres can reduce carbon emissions from road transport by three quarters. To meet the Government’s goals, people must have the bus services that they deserve right across the country, not only in London; my hon. Friends have already pointed out the absurd inequality of the funding structures.

Quality contract-type powers have worked before. As someone who grew up in Greater Manchester during the Thatcherite deregulation in the 1980s, I know how the metropolitan county council’s strategic oversight acted as a valuable devolved economic unifier in those areas. The selling off of those companies was accompanied by severe under-investment, which required the incoming Labour Government in 1997 to save what was left of the decimated bus service by boosting support from less than £1 million in 1997 to £2.3 billion in 2012, the latest figure. The previous Labour Government introduced quality contract legislation as a way for properly equipped communities to wrest back some control over services, and we progressively made the process easier.

Although Nexus has embarked on a step change to try to improve its bus services, it has not been given much assistance by the Government. More fundamentally, the Government have completely failed to grasp the value of the bus. It is no exaggeration to say that passenger numbers have fallen in most parts of the country outside London, which is not surprising because the Government have consistently slashed funding. Levels of support will be £500 million lower by the end of the Parliament than they would have been if 2010 funding levels had been maintained. The bus service operators’ grant has been reduced by 20%. According to the Campaign for Better Transport, £56 million of the funding for vital supported bus services has been cut. Freedom of information requests have revealed that council spending on local buses has fallen as a result of local government cuts, with Conservative councils likely to cut the biggest proportion of their bus budget. That has been a disaster for local communities, especially in Tyne and Wear where there are semi-rural areas, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South has said, lack the light rail connections enjoyed by some other regions. I hope that the Minister, who is aware of the difficulties that affect rural communities, understands that problem and recognises that in a place such as Northumberland, which has had to cut its supported services by 19%, things cannot move forward.

An incoming Labour Government in 2015 would support large cities and combined authorities if they wished to establish London-style bus services and structures. We would want to emulate positive approaches to pursuing franchise mechanisms, such as the case we are discussing. The benefits of franchising systems are numerous and vital in today’s circumstances. We need strategically planned bus services that help all our communities, and bus fares that are sensitive to the crisis in the cost of living under the current Government. People have a right to expect cheaper fares through multi-operator tickets, which will give them the lowest fares going, whatever mode of transport they take.

Franchising can offer more frequent and punctual services and build into contracts incentives on punctuality. Such incentives are sorely needed, because Ministers have instructed the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency to stop going out and checking punctuality, which is now left to companies to self-police. The whole passenger transport experience needs to improve, and a franchised approach can take us down that route. Franchising can enable the provision of real-time information on bus stops, stations and the internet, and allow local authorities such as Tyne and Wear to target particular groups of people—perhaps young people—for special concessions.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) vividly pointed out, the deregulated system often promotes crude cartels or de facto monopolies; it can allow inefficient bunching on most-used routes, while little is done to expand usage on new ones; and it often results in the ineffective use of subsidy. It is not the way ahead. Franchising can bring together local authorities, passengers, operators and trade unions to plan and deliver the network. It can create a virtuous circle of co-operation that encourages the devolution of decision making across an over-centralised England. The Government have failed in this area because they have not grasped the elements of the problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South has outlined, the North East combined authority wants to move boldly on behalf of its residents, and it has chosen to look at recommendations by Nexus for a quality contract.

The Government have not come up with any other alternatives, and they seem to have little vision in this area. Buses were barely mentioned—I think they were given three words—in the Transport Secretary’s speech to the Conservative party conference last month. We recognise the role of buses in the heart of local communities. We pledge that under the next Labour Government, those communities will receive our support to find an easier process if they, too, seek to reclaim control of their buses. Through a combination of their cuts to local government, the lack of an overall strategy and their cuts to the bus funding structure, the Government have reverted to an isolated, siloed vision of what buses can do, rather than the environmentally friendly, socially useful, economic driver that buses should be. From what we have heard today, and from what I know, nowhere in the country needs that thoughtful, integrated, community-driven approach more than the north-east.