Lord Snape
Main Page: Lord Snape (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Snape's debates with the Department for Transport
(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
Yes, I can. There will be probably three different tranches of funding. Some areas—those that produced the best BSIPs, matching all the stated outcomes set out in the national bus strategy—will get transformation funding. A second tranche of local authorities will go into the improvement category, whereby they are on their way to preparing the sort of BSIPs that take into account all the outcomes from the NBS. Other areas will probably need more support, in terms of capability and capacity, so that they can fully understand how buses can meet the needs of their communities. We understand that no place must be left behind. We hope to provide support to areas where the BSIPs are not fully developed but where there is huge potential to do so.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, can we have a straight answer to this question? How much have local transport authorities asked for under the Government’s bus service improvement plans? Is the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, right that only £1.2 billion is available for these plans? Are we once again to put up with the Prime Minister’s sloganising? “Bus Back Better” bears no resemblance to reality if the figures the noble Baroness gave are accurate.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My Lords, we asked the local transport authorities to be ambitious and, goodness gracious, they were. That is absolutely right. Indeed, I am not sure I have ever done a competition in the Department for Transport that has not been significantly oversubscribed. In aligning the amount of money we have, we have to really look at how that money will be used and whether it meets the requirements in the national bus strategy. I will mention no names at all but, for example, one local authority bid to build a new road from the bus funding. That does not necessarily strike me as exactly what we need out of the bus funding. My officials are making sure that the areas we fund with taxpayers’ funding get the best bang for our buck.