Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of over-staging by bus companies on journeys undertaken using a concessionary bus pass in England.

The destination printed on a bus ticket should not have any effect on the amount of reimbursement that the bus operator receives for carrying concessionary passengers.

This is because reimbursement paid to operators is not based on the full commercial adult fare for a typical journey, but on the average equivalent full fare – taken from a “basket of fares” – that each concessionary traveller would have paid in the absence of the scheme.

Reimbursement payments are also subject to audits of ticket sales data and, if required, ‘on-bus’ surveys of patronage.