Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Snape and Earl Attlee

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I will say just a few words about this group of amendments. I do not wish to repeat anything I said during the passage of the Bill. My scepticism about franchising without proper funding is on the record. I say in passing—contradicting myself—that if the rest of the country received the sort of money that London receives for its franchising, it might be worth while. Without that sort of financial backing, I do not think it would be.

I thought that the Minister was, for once, less than generous with his comments on Amendments 8 to 11. If it is sensible to ensure that the auditor is independent of the franchising authority—which it is, in my view, and I said so during the passage of the Bill—why did he oppose it at the time? I would like to think that it was my own wise words that swayed the other place to change the Minister’s mind for him, but I fear I would be deluding myself. The fact is that the Minister was against the amendment on independence, which I supported during the passage of the Bill. If I may say so, there have been some comments about his stature. His stature did not diminish—like me, he can ill afford for such a thing to happen. But I am surprised, given his customary fairness, that he did not refer to the fact that he had obviously changed his mind about the amendment.

Like other noble Lords from both sides, I hope the Bill does improve bus services. Again, consulting passengers is something that we do not often do. The latest independent survey of thousands of bus passengers throughout the country indicates that around 80% of them are satisfied with existing bus services. In my view, that does not reflect the sort of discontent with bus service standards that was mentioned during the passage of the Bill. But there was virtual unanimity among those passengers about the problems of congestion, which are countrywide. If the Government are not prepared either to tackle congestion themselves or to give local authorities the proper powers to tackle it, those fears widely expressed by bus passengers are not likely to be allayed. I talk about the war on motorists that this Government’s Ministers have sometimes waged. In my view, this is not helpful so far as improving bus services is concerned.

I repeat that I hope the Bill brings about the improvement in bus services that the Government so obviously desire, and that the amendments that were passed in the other place, as well as the debates that have taken place in your Lordships’ House, have helped improve the Bill from when it was first introduced.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I too was uncomfortable with the idea that the appointment of the auditor should have rested with the franchising authority. This would have allowed the franchising authority to be judge and jury of its own proposals—to mark its own homework, if you will. Auditing a franchise assessment is perhaps one of the most critical steps on the road to franchising. If the auditor says that the franchise stacks up and meets all the other—let us face it—quite onerous requirements, there is little more to be said. For that reason, the person carrying out the audit should have no ties with the franchising authority and certainly no vested interest in seeing the franchise proceed, or otherwise. On something as important as this proposal, which could see bus operators lose their businesses, surely we must have something that is very transparent and democratic—and, perhaps just as importantly, is seen to be transparent and democratic. In my view, these amendments do just that.

However, I wonder whether I might push my noble friend the Minister a little further to ensure, perhaps through guidance, not only that the auditor is independent of the franchising authority but that he or she has no recent commercial relationship with the authority. That would really cement the concept of a truly independent auditing process.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Snape and Earl Attlee

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I have every sympathy with this amendment, although I doubt its practicality. I do not know whether the noble Baroness who has just spoken saw the BBC “Countryfile” programme about four months ago. It was about rural bus services and was very interesting. Indeed, at Question Time I asked the Minister whether he had seen it—I do not know if he remembers—and he replied that he had better things to do on a Sunday evening than watch television, which I understood. However, all the answers to the questions that the noble Baroness has just read out from that pre-prepared speech were given over the course of that programme. The fact is that resources for local authorities to run bus services, particularly in rural areas, have been decimated by the Government. The Minister partially acknowledged that that was the fact at Question Time after this programme appeared.

My noble friend on the Front Bench talked about the impotence of local communities to provide these services. That impotence is the direct result of those reductions in local authority funding. The reductions have been country-wide but have particularly hit the rural areas that the Conservative Party professes to care about most. Those are the facts, and designating certain routes as community routes will not make any difference in restoring those services of concern. It is about money. Under the 1985 Act, the noble Baroness or anyone else can set up a bus service anywhere they like. However, people do not do so in rural areas because it is not thought possible to make a profit there. One could argue, as the noble Baroness did, that in life there are things other than profit, but most bus companies, small and large, depend on making a profit if they are to continue.

In moving the amendment, my noble friend on the Front Bench talked about designating community bus routes. One could argue that as all bus routes run through communities, they could all be so designated. However, I fear that if the Government accepted this amendment, operators big and small would be even more cautious about running services in the areas just graphically outlined by the noble Baroness, particularly if they have to operate for a minimum six-month period. If I were still involved in a bus company and someone suggested running such a service, telling me that although there was no guarantee of making any money it was regarded as an essential service in that area and would have to run for six months, I would be inclined to say, “Forget it”. I am not sure what the thinking is behind tying a route to a six-month timescale, but it makes it less rather than more likely that such a service will be introduced. In any case, what would happen to services such as the New Forest explorer bus network, which runs for short periods—in fact, serving those communities—but for less than six months? What would happen to park-and-ride schemes that are run at holiday periods? Operators would surely think twice about introducing services such as those if they had to operate them for six months at a time.

In the debate on the last group of amendments, we made it clear that in some cases the service registration function has been taken away from traffic commissioners and given to local authorities, but the amendment proposes that traffic commissioners should be responsible for the designation mechanisms for these services. That is a bit of a contradiction in terms, and in fact I am not sure how it would operate in some areas. The brutal fact is that it is for local transport authorities to decide whether a service is of community value and, if they so decide, it is open to them to support it. Obviously, many of them do not have the money to do that but the fault for that lies with those responsible—the Department for Transport and the current Government—rather than with bus operators generally.

I close as I started: people will not run a service—community or otherwise—if it obviously does not pay and if the local authority involved does not have the function to enable it to run the service in the first place.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I completely concur with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Snape, has said, apart from the fact that there is not a bottomless pit of government money. However, I take on board and admire everything else that he said.

[Lord Snape]

Of course there is not a bottomless pit of public money. It is for the Government to decide the priorities for government expenditure, and I urge the noble Baroness who spoke just before me to press the Government to see the realities of life in rural areas before they take the axe to local government funding any further. I am pleased that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, agrees with me, although I am not sure whether that will do anything for either of our careers.