Buses (Deregulation)

I add my congratulations to those already been expressed to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) on securing this debate, and I echo the kind comments that have been made about the Minister. Those of us who have been pursuing this matter for some time will probably have to go through the process again with her successor. I shall try to reduce the length of my speech by missing out some of the statistics that my hon. Friend used. In west Yorkshire where I come from, it is clear that quality and standards have fallen dramatically since deregulation. Fares have risen by almost 50 per cent. in real terms and the number of passengers has fallen by 40 per cent. However, as he said, the position in west Yorkshire is probably far better than in the other passenger transport executive areas, where patronage has fallen overall by 48 per cent. The experience in my constituency, as in so many others, is that companies can pick and choose what services they provide, and that they make escalating profits while providing a poor service. Services are chopped and changed, buses are missing or late, and passengers feel angry and powerless about that, for all the reasons that my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) analysed quite forensically. Passengers turn to Metro, their MPs or councillors, but find that we are equally powerless in this situation. In my constituency, there is effectively a monopoly provider in the shape of FirstBus, which operates all the commercial services. Evening and Sunday services are funded by Metro on a subsidised basis. The local network—this picture has been described already—comprises high frequency routes such as service 4 to Pudsey, 16 to Farsley and 42 to Old Farnley, together with a combination of routes on the busy Leeds-Bradford corridor. The remainder of services are attended to largely through Metro. In the nine years that I have been the MP there, the area has been subjected to successive service changes, all of which were based solely on the generation of profit. As my hon. Friend said, we have moved from a situation in which there were loss-making routes, which were shed by the operators, to one in which the routes are making a profit, but not enough profit in the eyes of First. Recent changes to services such as the 97, 647 and 651 in the Guiseley and Yeadon areas have resulted in a significant reduction in links with nearby Bradford, which is a major urban centre on the doorstep of my constituency. That has caused tremendous hardship for regular users of those services. Through Farsley, there is a regular service every 10 or 15 minutes, yet half a mile away, older people living in a sheltered housing complex have lost their vital link into the Farfield estate. There is no obligation—we know this full well—on commercial operators to undertake any sort of customer consultation, so links to local facilities such as health centres, post offices and supermarkets are often ignored when operators plan their services. The bus network does not respond to social needs, whether they are long-standing or have emerged over time. It is an indictment of the system that there are no links for, probably, 40 per cent. of the people who use Wharfedale hospital directly from the communities of Horsforth, Yeaden and Guiseley. Recently, a major primary care facility was set up at Eccleshill in Bradford. Its catchment area includes a large proportion of my constituency, but there are no public transport links for them. Although Metro provides some of the funding for services in my area, constraints on public finance mean that those funds are limited. In the bad old days, as we might refer to them, before regulation, there was a cross-subsidy, and the surpluses made on profitable routes could be reinvested in routes that were socially desirable. Despite its drive to improve profits locally, First seems to be incredibly slow to reinvest in the renewal of its bus fleet. I understand, from Metro, that about 45 per cent. of First's fleet is low-floor and Disability Discrimination Act compliant, and that the average vehicle age is about seven years. That is not the sort of modern-day service that people should have to cope with. Limited monitoring is available to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, which means that much of the monitoring has to be carried out by Metro using manual observation. I understand that First in Leeds operates 99 per cent. of services. Since October 2005, Metro has been increasing the amount of monitoring that it does, the results of which reinforce my hon. Friend's indictment. First in Leeds is operating 79.7 per cent. of services on time—not more than one minute early or five minutes late. That sort of service causes passengers to vote with their feet and, as the hon. Member for Southport says, to opt for other forms of transport, including the private car. Fare levels are controlled by local bus operators, which are therefore in a position to make up for the loss of patronage that they have created by the way in which they have run services, which are also affected by demographic changes, network changes and low-quality service delivery. Between April 2004 and January 2006, in Leeds, First increased off-peak fares by 36 per cent. and peak-time fares by about 11 per cent. Industry cost figures for the period up to June 2005 show a 9 per cent. increase, so we can see that there has been a continued diminution and deterioration of services, but constant profit and growing fares. As my hon. Friend said, the Government often talk about contestability and value for money, especially in relation to education, schools and the NHS, and the public sector is forced to compete with the private sector. In west Yorkshire—and, I suspect, in other PTE areas—we do not have a market that promotes competition and efficiency, and drives down costs. We have a system that promotes inefficiency and drives up costs. Metro PTE is able to influence directly only about 20 per cent. of the services for which it provides a subsidy. There is little competition for tenders, so it is difficult to test value for money. In west Yorkshire, in the 12 months to September 2005, of the 87 contracts for local bus services that Metro offered to companies, 70 were returned with a single bid, although every contract was bid for, unlike in my hon. Friend's area. Since 2002, lost mileage on tendered services has more than doubled in west Yorkshire. Tendered services usually operate at times of low traffic volume, so congestion is not the reason for lost mileage, although it is often quoted as the reason by operators. That simply is not true in this case. In her reply to my Adjournment debate last November, my hon. Friend the Minister talked about successful partnerships in Brighton, Cambridge, Nottingham, Oxford, Telford and York, and about impressive growth in areas such as Bedford, Exeter and Peterborough. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley analysed why those comparisons are not appropriate and never will be. That indicates that the Government still have not got to grips with the sophisticated problems facing bus transport in major conurbations. This might be a belated question, but why is it that the Minister and her colleagues can never add Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester to that list? My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley did an admirable job in demonstrating the difference. The Minister and her colleagues put their faith in partnership and robust second local transport plans. There seems to be a strong assertion, or at least an implication—my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley referred to this—that PTEs should be doing more and that they are deficient, but I am never quite sure what that extra something is supposed to be. I would certainly welcome some enlightenment on that from the Minister, her successor, or anyone else who cares to shed light on the issue. Partnership can and does work to an extent. It is not as though PTEs such as Metro are not willing to engage in that. In west Yorkshire, we have one of Europe's largest guided busway initiatives, a high occupancy vehicle scheme, and a public transport box in Leeds city centre that has cut journey times on some routes by between 10 and 30 per cent. PTEs are not resistant to partnership, but it simply is not enough. Surveys in west Yorkshire found that one in four frequent bus passengers experienced unacceptable lateness, or the non-showing of vehicles in the previous week, and that 49 per cent. had the same problems in the previous three months. Complaints to Metro about bus operators have doubled since 2000. Between 2003 and 2004 alone, complaints increased by 40 per cent. People often say to MPs about public sector providers such as the NHS, ““Eeh, if you ran a business like that, you'd soon be on the rocks.”” Yet the bus system is a business, and it is being allowed to run like that. It is still not providing the service that our constituents demand. I was going to say a little more about the hurdles that PTEs have to overcome to get quality contracts. The Minister has heard the argument before. The threshold is set too high. The ““only practicable way”” requirement will simply not be met without a great deal of difficulty and legal challenge. The threshold must be lowered. I apologise for the time that I have taken, but we have to find a way to achieve a better and fairer balance between passengers and profit.