Local Transport Bill [HL]

I have no wish to detain your Lordships unduly, but I want to raise two points arising from the Minister’s reply. I am grateful to him for what he said. Many people on both sides of this argument in the bus industry would be grateful for clarification on how he sees the way forward. I caution him on two matters. I do not mean to be insulting, but the Minister rather brushed aside what happens to companies’ assets—I shall come to compensation in a moment. He implied that vehicles can always be deployed if a company loses a contract or a franchising system is introduced, but that is not always the case. I have bored Members of the Committee before on bendy buses in Birmingham and I do not wish to do so again. But they were bought specifically for one route. Usually, it is operators who are condemned for reneging on discussions. In this case it was one of the highway authorities. I do not want to cause too much grief to the Liberal party, but they were part of this decision. However, a particular bus lane was removed and, in a city such as Birmingham, it is very difficult to imagine bendy buses being deployed on many routes. The city does not lend itself to the use of those vehicles. Some Members of the Committee might feel that no city does. However, Travel West Midlands, the company I worked for at the time, consulted bus passengers about the introduction of bendy buses. They prove to be surprisingly popular for women passengers who feel safer on a bendy bus with a television screen and being able to see the driver in front than they feel on a conventional double-decker bus, which is one reason why they were introduced on this route. But they are not readily deployed elsewhere, as the Minister glibly—I do not mean that in any insulting way—implied. Birmingham is not a city that lends itself to the deployment of these vehicles. If they were not used on that route, there would be a great operational problem as to where else they could be used. As regards property, in my experience, many bus garages are in attractive areas of the city. I readily concede that they not particularly attractive buildings and often are not seen as good neighbours. A company of which I was chairman at the time had a garage at Quinton, a suburb of Birmingham, which was subject to lots of complaints about early morning and late night bus operation. All of us who care about public transport like to see it operating for as many hours as possible, but the neighbours of a bus garage might take the opposite view. Eventually, because there were so many complaints, the planning authority held that the company was in breach of its planning permission and wanted to restrict the hours we worked. The company concerned succumbed to the blandishments of a supermarket chain, moved the buses out and sold the property at a rather decent price, as far as the shareholders were concerned, to the supermarket chain. I understand that the neighbours are not particularly happy at having noisy buses being replaced by shoppers seven days a week, some of whom are less than careful about where they park their car in the immediate area. Going back to what my noble friend said, it is easy to say that it is possible to dispose of the assets. That disposal is not necessarily what the immediate neighbours might like. It is difficult to imagine in a competitive world and a competitive industry such as the bus industry that a bus company losing an area to a franchise system under this clause would readily dispose of its assets—whether land, property or buses—to what is seen as a rival competitor. It may decide to sell to the highest bidder to the detriment of the amenities of the neighbourhood. I do not expect my noble friend to give me a comprehensive answer on those two examples. Without sounding smug or complacent, I hope I have indicated to him that this is what happens in reality when one gets involved in these matters rather than when reading a brief which has been prepared by someone else.