Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the amendment. We had an extensive debate on this in Committee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, has referred to my local authority again today. There are basically three settlements now in local government. It is nice to know how much money you will get for three years, but a lot of new legislation is introduced in those three years. The Government do not stand still for three years. The amount of money that local authorities will receive for three years is announced, and it is all floors and ceilings and all very technical. My authority is on a floor, as are the local authorities of 15 other counties, and will receive only 2.7 per cent. The Government may bring in new legislation and say that money is available, but that money does not get through to those authorities at all. The authorities must cope with the same amount of money that they have received for three years, plus 2.7 per cent, under not only this legislation but all other legislation that is introduced in that time. This varies a little—as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, there are demographic changes—but the true effect of this money does not come through. There will be another Comprehensive Spending Review and another resetting of things for the next three years, but I do not know whether things will be any better. Indeed, I suspect that they will be even worse than they are now. I do not normally support specific grants or ring-fenced money but, as the noble Baroness said, under legislation such as this, the money must go to where the expenditure happens. As I said in response to another amendment, we spend £75 million altogether on transport in Essex. That money subsidises buses, community transport, school buses—you name it. We try to get best value by seeing how we can use the money to get a better service and how we might introduce some of the other things that we talked about today, such as helping disabled people use facilities. If we are never going to get any extra money—we are not likely to get any more, the way things are going—bringing in this new legislation will not help us. There must be some way, not only in this piece of legislation but in others, of getting the money that Ministers announce. When you ask Ministers about that, they do not know. I hope the Minister knew before we told him the last time that some authorities do not receive any extra money. Ministers may think that they have put £200 million or £500 million into a pot, but none of that materialises for many of us. Ministers look at you as though you are daft, but it is true; we do not receive that money, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, has said. We must find some way of delivering the money if this legislation is to be fair. We all support this; we all want to make it work. We even want local authorities to have some of the discretionary things that we have talked about today—I know I do in Essex—but we must at least have a little of this money to be able to do that. I therefore hope that the Minister will respond to some of the points that we made in Committee so that the money actually goes to local authorities that need it to provide this service.