Local Bus Services

Mike Thornton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I would be happy to visit Bristol to look at some of the issues there. I know that Bristol is a good cycling city. I have been invited there to try the cycling, so perhaps I can combine the visit.

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

The interesting thing is that the hon. Lady almost dismisses the vast amount of extra money that London transport receives, the hugely increased population, which is larger than that of Scotland, and the compactness of the area in which London transport operates. It is totally different from anywhere else in the country. If one looks at Hampshire or Dorset, one can surely see the difference.

[Mary Creagh]

I do understand the difference between a big city and a little city. I also understand the difference between a big city that is growing by 70,000 to 80,000 people a year and that has a thriving tourist economy and counties such as Hampshire and Dorset, which are dealing with problems of geography, topography and in many cases poorly maintained roads. However, the bus subsidy in London is not that out of kilter, given the number of people per head who travel on buses. It is a hugely used form of public transport. I did not dismiss those differences. I do understand them.

The Secretary of State knows that the current legislation to regulate buses is too onerous, but that has not stopped the determined trying. I pay tribute to the combined authorities in the north-east and west Yorkshire, who I visited last week. There, far-sighted local leaders have spent the past four years trying to achieve better buses through a quality contract. They will have my full support in government.

We are delighted that the Chancellor, belatedly, seems to agree with us that London-style transport powers unlock growth. Does the Secretary of State for Transport agree with him? A small yes, a possible yes, or a sphinx-like silence? Perhaps there is trouble in paradise. If he does agree with the Chancellor, will he explain why any transport authority that pursued a quality contract—in essence, London-style bus powers—was penalised by his Department and banned from bidding for his better bus fund?

This morning, I held a bus summit with city and county council leaders to discuss how devolution can give city and county regions better buses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

Interestingly, we seem to be hearing arguments in favour of quality contracts being imposed by central Government. I am not sure whether that is what the Opposition are after, but it seems rather odd to take away local authorities’ decision making. Buses are extraordinarily important, as everyone who has spoken today has said. The question is: what are we going to do? I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) express her admiration for TfL, but the idea that we could somehow magically roll out that model across the rest of the country seems a little ambitious to me.

As we know, people are usually disabled more by their environment than by their physical condition. We have seen in rural areas a disabling of young people who do not have much money; they are unable to go anywhere or do anything because they cannot afford to drive a car. That is why it is so important to promote the policy of making it affordable for young people to be able to take a bus, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) talked about so ably.

However, there are difficulties. How do we provide a bus service in an area where one large bus might have to travel several miles with only one passenger on board, and how do we make that affordable? That is the difference between subsidies for London buses and subsidies for rural buses. A subsidy for a London bus means that most of the time it will have a significant number of passengers, whereas the same subsidy for a rural bus means trying to make up for the fact that at times it will have no passengers on board. The situations are so different that they cannot possibly have the same solution. The further we get from a major town, the truer that becomes, and when we get to some parts of Somerset and Cornwall the whole situation has changed completely.

There are some answers: more bus shelters; bus shelters with areas for bicycles; feeder routes, with smaller buses feeding on to larger buses; and using local voluntary groups to try to fill the gap, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) explained. However, we definitely need to look at totally different solutions for rural areas, rather than thinking that we can impose a policy that works in urban areas. Part of that is obviously about devolving more decision making to local parish and borough councils. However, we cannot simply sit in this House, click our fingers and have a solution for rural bus services. It is more important to look for a solution there than to look for it anywhere else, because there are no alternatives and the distances are far larger. A person in a city can walk 2 miles for a job, but there is no way someone in the country can walk 10 miles for a job.

Another consideration for disabled people, particularly blind people, is the lack of audio-visual solutions on buses. For some extraordinary reason, every bus company quotes thousand and thousands of pounds for the cost of retrofitting a bus in that way. We know that we can get quite a simple system to make announcements of that sort. My noble Friend Baroness Kramer has set up an audio-visual competition—we will have the results soon—to come up with a solution to make it far cheaper to retrofit buses. That is something the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association supports. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will take note of the results of that competition and help us roll it out across the country.

Returning to quality bus contracts, they can pose a significant financial risk to local authorities, and it seems that nobody arguing for them today has mentioned that. It could also squeeze out small companies, and I think that it is vital that we encourage small companies to take part in this. My personal preference is for quality partnership schemes to allow for the best aspects of a quality contract without the risks and reduced competition for smaller companies. I commend many of these ideas to the House. I would like to see a cross-party investigation into how buses can be improved, rather than argue about whether to have a quality contract, a quality partnership, less regulation or more regulation. We need a solution, not an argument.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I call Pat Glass. It would be helpful to Front-Bench spokesmen if she could shave a minute off her time.