Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of recent changes to funding of bus services on the provision of those services.

Decisions about the provision of bus services requiring subsidy remain a matter for individual English local authorities, in the light of their other spending priorities.

The majority of public funding for local bus services is from the block grant that local authorities in England receive from the Department for Communities and Local Government. However, my Department also provides around £40m of Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) funding directly to English local authorities to help deliver bus services.