Local Transport Bill [Lords]

Yes. I would not want to say that Transport for London is perfect in all aspects, because it certainly is not, but there is a coherence to the London network that does not apply elsewhere. I have constituents who have got a job somewhere because there is an early-morning bus to get from their village to the nearest town, but the company running the service then notifies the traffic commissioner that it is going to withdraw the service. Where does that leave that person and their job? Such unpredictability means that people cannot rely on buses, which is why people who are failures, in Mrs. Thatcher's words, use buses. They have no alternative. I want buses to be the best they can be, which they are in many towns, so that we can get people using buses because they are good. Buses can be good, and can make a real contribution to our public transport system—far more so than at present. We need to move towards such a situation, and the loosening up of the regime for quality partnerships and contracts gets us some way towards it. I want to talk about the mixed picture in the country because the situation is not uniform. The London system works well, but there is a subsidy involved. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer); even before the Mayor's subsidy, there had been a stabilisation in ridership—the word we are expected to use this afternoon. Nevertheless, a heavy subsidy is involved, so that is a downside. In Brighton and Hove, Roger French is the managing director of a very good and innovative bus company that is not necessarily supported by the local authority. He certainly has not been supported in the way he ought to be by East Sussex county council. Other passenger transport executives and local authorities are forward looking—I include Manchester in that. Manchester PTE has a very forward-looking collection of people, who are not necessarily well served by the bus companies. I would categorise Norfolk Green, the Norfolk bus company, as a good one that has the support of the local authority. The patchwork arrangement throughout the country means things can be very different, meaning that different solutions are required for different areas. Deregulation was a mistake, but absolute re-regulation is not necessarily the right policy, given the position we are starting from and some of the successes in the country. The trick is to get more people on buses, which means hitting those targets to which I and the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) referred to a moment ago. Getting people on to buses would also help in dealing with climate change because that is better than having lots of different road vehicles all following each other. The key to the Bill, and its heart, is the relationship between the bus operator and the local public transport body. Getting that balance right is the difficult bit. I am not sure that the Government have got it right yet, but they have had a stab at it. We need to explore the matter in Committee to ensure that the balance is just right. We do not want to give bus operators too much power or we would have a continuation of bad practice, but we do not want to give local authorities too much power because they might eliminate—perhaps by default or by accident—some of the good practice that exists. Getting that balance right is the difficult part. The concept of having partnerships and contracts is right. The concept of cross-subsidy is right; we can now have socially provided services subsidised by profitable services. That is a good idea, and the fact that we lost that opportunity during the past 20 years is part of the problem, particularly in rural areas. We must not remove what works well, and we do not want successful routes diverted to serve odd roads because some constituents want those roads served; that would minimise the success of the main route bus service. We do not want the livelihood of small successful operators to be removed, which theoretically could happen under the quality contract regime. I have some sympathy for the Conservative position on that, if I understood it correctly. I referred to Norfolk Green earlier, and the Minister is familiar with its case. It has a well-patronised coastal route service between Fakenham and Norwich. It is a small company, which has established that route and patronage of it through its own efforts. It is possible, if a quality contract zone were established, that that route would be taken away from the company. The employees would be protected, thanks to amendments to the Bill passed in the Lords, but the company would not be. That is a genuine issue. We must ensure that individuals who have done well in a deregulated world and have provided a decent service do not lose out as a consequence of moves to make a more coherent stance in local government for bus contracts. We have to be careful how we frame the legislation.