Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Luke Myer Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

My hon. Friend is quite right.

There is some good in the amendments. I come to amendment 58, which would reinsert the Secretary of State’s safeguard. That would not prohibit small unitaries from applying or developing a franchise model; it is about the Secretary of State having the ability to sense-check the commercial ability of an organisation to take the very significant commercial risks that franchising brings with it.

There is another massive lacuna in the current drafting of the Bill. Having expanded franchising to any local authority, no matter how small and whether district, county or unitary, the Secretary of State would withdraw from any power to intervene if things go wrong. We recognise that there is increased commercial risk and that we will ask potentially small local authorities to undertake wholly novel activities of which they have no experience at all, but the Secretary of State is saying, “We wash our hands of this. We do not want to have any power to intervene, even when there is a prolonged failure of services to the public.”

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman suggests that the Conservative position is to support combined authorities being able to take on franchising, yet the Conservative Tees Valley Mayor has flat out rejected franchising powers. I am proud that this Government are bringing forward this Bill to make it easier for combined authorities and other authorities to bring in franchising. In Committee, I raised the example of my constituent Norma Templeman, who has had to fight tooth and nail against the mayor and the bus companies to get buses into her village of North Skelton. How can that be right?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I thought the hon. Member was in favour of devolution. Not all mayoral combined authorities are the same; if we have a mayoral combined authority, we want to have the right system for the area that the mayor represents. If the mayor in Teesside thinks that it is not the right thing for him, I back his decision.

Let me move on to new clause 31, which would give the Secretary of State the power to step in where there has been

“a persistent failure to deliver a service specified by contract.”

It seems genuinely extraordinary that the Government are saying no to that added safeguard. No cost is associated with it; the new clause just says that where there is prolonged failure on the ground to deliver the service for whatever reason, the Secretary of State would have the power to step in and take on the management. Why would the Government say that they do not need that backstop power? They voted it down in Committee, and I do not see them accepting it today either.

All the amendments from the loyal Opposition have a common theme: they put passengers first. This Bill is not really about passengers; it is for a bigger state, more unions and more union involvement, and it is primarily against private business involvement. I understand that that is the ideology of Labour Members, but the problem is that their ideology is demonstrably wrong in this instance, and we see that in the Bill. Without amendment, it will damage our bus services and almost certainly damage our local transport authorities, particularly the smaller ones, if they are misguided enough to follow the encouragement of the Government and go down this route. Above all, I am sorry to say that the Bill will damage the chances of our passengers.