Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will publish the age at which each issuing local authority offers older person's bus passes for (a) women and (b) men.

Eligibility for the statutory scheme is the same in all local authorities throughout England and is currently rising for men and women in line with the equalisation of the retirement age for both at sixty-five.

However, Local Authorities have powers to implement discretionary enhancements to the statutory concession, including offering a concession to older people below the eligible pension age.

The Department’s annual concessionary travel survey monitors the availability of such discretionary concessions, and the most recent dataset can be found on the Department’s statistics page on the GOV.UK website at:

http://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus08-concessionary-travel/