Bus Industry

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who is well known for his knowledge of these matters. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests, which is not entirely accurate. It refers to my employment with the National Express Group but I retired from that body in the past few weeks. However, I have a declarable shareholding in that company. I was very interested in what the noble Lord had to say. He started off rather well but was inclined to undermine his own case as he went along. He referred to ““territorial monopolies””. I used to chair the biggest bus company in Birmingham, so maybe I fell into that category. However, let me explain to him the reality of operating services alongside some of the smaller operators, which he started off by defending. He stopped defending them when he referred to Greater Manchester, where a smaller operator behaved in a way that, I am afraid, many of them do. In Birmingham, route 50, on the south side of the city, was one of our busiest routes. Travel West Midlands, the company of which I was chairman at the time, ran a frequent service every six minutes for much of the day. One of the smaller operators came on to the route, as it was perfectly entitled to do under the legislation. It ran number 50 buses with the same destination blinds as our own buses, and tickets and passes were accepted on them perfectly legally and legitimately. But its buses could be described as coming from the bus equivalent to the railway museum. Unlike the drivers of Travel West Midlands, its drivers were not in uniform. Needless to say, union recognition was unheard of in that company; it was sweatshirts, tattoos and a fag in the mouth. That is the kind of company that the noble Lord, inadvertently or not, is defending when he urges the free entry of such companies into the bus business. That is exactly the sort of company that caused so much damage that it had to be put off the road comparatively recently by the traffic commissioner in Greater Manchester. Last year’s Labour Party conference was held in Manchester, a city I know quite well. I served on the city’s passenger transport authority 30 or so years ago. I was fascinated—horrified as well—by the operations of GM Buses, the private operator which the noble Lord started off by defending, on the Wilmslow corridor. Exactly the same kind of thing was occurring there. The buses, incidentally, were packed. With a maximum fare of one pound, they were full of students. They did not care that the buses were clapped-out old relics and that the driver was demonstrating his tattoos and his ability to smoke20 cigarettes a day during the course of an eight-hour shift. They were interested only in getting into the bright lights of the city centre. It was no great advertisement for the bus industry, but that seemed to be the sort of thing that the noble Lord was advocating in the first part of his speech, no doubt inadvertently. There are some perfectly legitimate and well-run small operations. North Birmingham Busways is run by many ex-employees of the company I used to chair. They obviously felt they could do better by starting up on their own. They ran rather elderly Leyland vehicles which were kept in tip-top condition, and their drivers were always smartly turned out. They developed some new routes which we had not been business-minded enough to develop as well as running alongside some of our vehicles. No one could have any complaint about that kind of operator. They are, alas, in my experience, in the minority. I welcome the Government’s document Putting Passengers First. I do not think that any responsible bus operator could object to the proposals and changes that it sets out. I congratulate the department on managing to resist the hysterical—and I choose my words carefully—campaign waged by the passenger transport executive groups which have never forgiven politicians of any hue for not reverting to the pre-1986 situation in vehicle ownership and fleet ownership and in the setting of fares and services. I am pleased that the Government resisted much of that campaign, because the campaign was based on a false premise. As the noble Lord indicated, the decline in bus usage started a long time before 1986, for reasons that had nothing to do with the ownership and condition of the vehicles or whether the driver was in a smart uniform. Since the 1950s, congestion and the private car—the two of course go together—have led to the steep decline in bus usage. I am glad to say that this decline has been stemmed in recent years in various parts of the country, although not always with the assistance of some local authority people who profess to be in favour of greater regulationof our bus services and object vociferously to the1986 Act. I must here inject a slightly political note. The noble Lord and his distinguished party, together with the Conservative Party, run the city of Birmingham. I wish he would pop up occasionally to Birmingham and tell some of his colleagues in the so-called ““progressive alliance”” that removing bus lanes and playing along with the private car network is not a sensible way to run transport in that city. But the progressive alliance is behaving in such a way and—in the opinion of many from that city, regardless of whether they are involved in the bus business—it is about as progressive as the Monday Club. But, no matter, that is the situation in the city of Birmingham. I would be grateful if the noble Lord would use his undoubted talents to change the situation. Reverting back to the document, I think it eminently sensible that the voluntary agreements between the operators and the local authorities should be strengthened. I welcome the way in which the Government are attempting to do this. There is a very successful bus priority scheme in Coventry involving PrimeLines Travel Coventry. I mention that because I was the chairman when it was introduced—it is pure vanity on my part—but the scheme has worked very well. Not only did we change the livery of the buses—Coventry City play in sky blue and we thought that would be a good idea—but also, in partnership with Coventry City Council and the passenger transport authority, a very successful prime line service was introduced. However, because of the competition rules we were unable to talk to another operator—a perfectly legitimate operator—which wanted to introduce equivalently modern buses on that scheme. I am glad that there will be provision for sensible arrangements to be made, not to rig fares but to ensure that buses do not leave within two minutes of each other with a gap following. I give an unreserved welcome to the changes. I am pleased that the Government have seen sense andare advocating proper partnerships. If passenger transport authorities want to fight a campaign that they can win and that will be supported by the bus industry, they should become highway authorities and stop the kind of nonsense that is taking place under the so-called progressive alliance in the city of Birmingham.