Buses: Funding

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement.

Our bus services are in crisis. Bus users across the country listening to the statement today—waiting for a bus that never turns up and robbed of a service they depend on—will be wondering, frankly, whether the Minister is oblivious or in denial, and whether he understands the scale of the Government’s failure, even on their own terms. His party made promises that voters were entitled to think would be kept.

Two years ago, in the middle of the pandemic and when its effects were well known, the Conservatives launched their bus back better strategy. With great fanfare, they pledged a great bus service for everyone, everywhere. They promised it would be one of the great acts of levelling up. They pledged buses so frequent that people would not need a timetable. They said the Government would

“not only stop the decline”—

in bus services, but

“reverse it”.—[Official Report, 15 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 50.]

Those promises made long after the effects of Covid were clear, and what has happened since? Last year, services fell by the second fastest level on record. Today, there are fewer buses on the road than at any time on record. Of the 4,000 zero-emission buses the Minister’s party promised, just six are on the road. Can that really be what the Prime Minister means by “delivery, delivery, delivery”? For bus passengers across the country, it sounds like “failure, failure, failure.” They are counting the cost of a party that simply has not kept its word and of 13 years of Conservative failure. In that time, 7,000 bus services have been axed. Those services were indispensable for connecting people to jobs, opportunities, friends and family. These lost connections have held back our economic growth, worsened our community life, and deepened our productivity problem. The Government promised transformation, but they have delivered a spiral of managed decline. Today’s announcement does nothing to stop that.

The funding announced to “support services” until 2025 is actually a significant cut—23% less than previous rounds of recovery funding and far short of what the operators have said is needed simply to maintain services. The consequence—whether or not the Minister will admit it—will be hundreds more services on the scrap heap. Even on the Government’s own terms, that is yet another extraordinary failure.

The Minister cannot hide from the reality with which so many people are living day to day. A woman in Hampshire told me she has to leave home three hours early for her hospital appointments to ensure she is there on time. There are students in Stoke who do not go into their town centre any more, because the bus back finishes at 7 pm. There are kids in Burnley who no longer have a school bus. What does the Minister have to say to them? Does he think their situation is acceptable after 13 years of Conservative Government? What hope does he have to offer them? This announcement shows that he is content simply to tinker around the edges of the broken bus system, to leave intact a system that gives local people no say whatsoever over the services they depend on, and to leave this country as one of the only in the developed world that hands operators unchecked power to slash routes and raise fares, with the people those decisions affect cut out altogether.

For years, communities have demanded that we fix the situation, and Labour will. Our plans will put communities firmly back in control of the public transport they depend upon. We will give every community the power to take control over routes, fares and services, and we will lower the unnecessary legislative hurdles that the Tories have put in their way. We will back the evidence showing that areas with local control and public ownership deliver greater efficiency, increased passengers and better services. Bold reform is needed, and 13 years into this Conservative Government, bus services are locked in a spiral of decline that communities are powerless to stop.

Today’s announcement shows that the Conservatives’ answer to this failing status quo is more of the same. After more than a decade of broken promises, the public will once again rightly conclude that the Conservatives cannot fix the problem, because the Conservatives are the problem.

[Mr Holden]

It was delightful to hear the shadow Secretary of State’s prepared attack lines, because I do not think she actually listened to the statement. We are exceeding the bus back better commitment by £500 million. I note that the hon. Lady did not mention the fact that Sheffield city region is getting £3.15 million today—[Interruption.] If the hon. Lady would let me speak, rather than shout at me from a sedentary position, she might actually learn something. Stoke, which she mentioned, has already had £31.6 million in BSIP funding. Hampshire, which she also mentioned, is also getting £3.6 million today.

The hon. Lady talked about her plan for the devolution of powers, but we have already done that. She does not seem to be paying any attention to what is happening in her own area of South Yorkshire, which has received £570 million. Greater Manchester is receiving over £1 billion over five years. That was never delivered by Labour in government, but delivered by this Conservative party right across the country. There are sustainable transport schemes and city region sustainable transport settlements—all delivered with money from this Government—[Interruption.] She shouts that this is about Labour Mayors, but we have done deals with Conservative Mayors and Labour Mayors. I do not care about party politics; I want to deliver for bus users right across this country.

That is different from the ideological approach taken by the hon. Lady, who seems to think that if everything was under total state control, everything would be better. We know from the past that that is not true. We want to deliver for people up and down the country. That is why we are extending the £2 bus fare, delivering for people on the lowest incomes right across the country. I know that the hon. Lady is in the pocket of the train drivers’ unions, but I suggest that she stand up for working people right across the country, the majority of whom use bus services.

Today, we are delivering £500 million of extra support and for an extra two years, not only for the cost of living, but for bus services right across the country. I think the hon. Lady would do well to follow our example and think of the long term, rather than ideological and political attacks.