Local Transport Bill [Lords]

No, I will make progress now. Close partnership working in Brighton delivered a 5 per cent. year-on-year growth in ridership and a 10 per cent. decrease in town centre traffic. The Government are wrong to see statutory quality partnerships and quality contracts as ends in themselves. The rarity of such partnerships and contracts is further proof that in many areas, voluntary partnerships can work well for local authorities and bus companies that have the mutual confidence to work together for the benefit of passengers, without the need for the local authority to resort to formal powers to control and regulate services. Far from encouraging that kind of partnership working, the Government recently lobbed a hand-grenade into the relationship between transport authorities and bus operators. I am referring, of course, to the way in which they are introducing concessionary fares. Of course, the goals of the scheme are entirely laudable, but the way it is being put into practice is damaging the relationships that are vital to making bus partnerships work. It is clear that the scheme is leaving local authorities with a huge funding headache and council tax payers with a large bill. Ironically, in some cases, as a result of the local authority funding crisis caused by the concessionary fares scheme, bus routes are under threat, either because the local authority is concerned that it can no longer afford to subsidise routes, or because the bus company finds routes uneconomic as a result of the financial pressures of the scheme. In a further ironic twist, Brighton and Hove—a striking bus success story in recent years—is one of the areas hardest hit by the problems with the concessionary fares scheme. That scheme has all the hallmarks of a proposal rushed through on Budget day without proper thought about how it would be set up or funded. That was playing politics with the bus network in a way that is simply unacceptable.