That this House has considered funding for bus service improvement plans in the North West.
Thank you for chairing the debate, Ms Nokes.
In Warrington, we are proud of our municipal bus company. It provides connections between our homes and communities, between jobs and opportunities, between healthcare facilities and between our friends and families. For those without cars, like me and thousands of my constituents, buses are essential, and good, reliable bus services are a huge part of the wider picture of reducing carbon emissions and dependence on foreign oil.
Because millions of people across this country rely on buses—they cannot just hop into a car if services are slashed—and they cannot find extra cash if fares rise, bus cuts mean being cut off. Deregulation and a decade of Tory decline have meant that more than 3,000 bus routes and more than 350,000 passenger journeys have been lost. The majority of short trips, under 5 km, are made by car. As a result, our region has a significant air pollution issue. In the Liverpool city region alone, more than 1,000 deaths a year are linked to that silent killer. On public transport, 80% of journeys are taken by bus, yet bus fares have risen by 40% and routes have been mercilessly cut nationally. The millions of people who use buses and the communities who depend on them have been ignored for far too long.
I thank my hon. Friend for opening such a vital debate. One route in my patch that has been or is about to be decommissioned is the No. 62 from Runcorn to her patch, Warrington. That just shows that reregulation is vital. I hope that the judicial review today comes out on the side of those who want to give regulation teeth.
I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. As he says, services being cut means communities being cut off from one another. The millions of people who use buses and the communities who depend on them have been ignored for far too long. They have been an afterthought in decisions made far away in Westminster by politicians who have no understanding of them. The shockingly bad services left behind have made public transport increasingly unviable. In Warrington over the last decade, almost 50% of services have been cut. That is absolutely appalling. It means that people in our community—in particular, elderly residents who do not drive—are completely cut off from other parts of the town.
Just a year ago, the Prime Minister and the Transport Secretary launched the “Bus Back Better” strategy and they pledged to provide a great bus service for everyone everywhere. They promised that it would be one of the great acts of levelling up. This was the ambition: £3 billion of transformation funding was supposed to level up buses across England towards London standards, with main road services in towns and cities to run so often that people would not even need a timetable, and better services in the evenings and at weekends; and to provide simple, cheap flat fares that people could pay with a contactless card, and daily and weekly price capping across operators and rail and trams, too.
In Warrington, our Labour-run council has shown real ambition with a plan to increase bus use by between 5% and 15% through excellent council working with partners to make buses more frequent, faster, reliable, cheaper, easier to use and better integrated. This is a local community backing buses.
I want to make a plug if I may, Ms Nokes. The hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) may be well aware of the advances being made in top-of-the-range buses—for instance, Wrightbus buses in Northern Ireland—hydrogen buses, and the technology that is in use there to make bus travel more environmentally friendly and more environmentally effective. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to invest in a reliable, frequent bus service like that in order to get people to forgo car journeys in the knowledge that they will get to their destination in time? Hydrogen buses are the buses of the future; they are not hampered by breakdowns.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and absolutely agree that greening our transport infrastructure is a really important part both of meeting our climate objectives as a country and of ensuring that people have good-quality services they can rely on. I am proud of the fact that in Warrington we have bid to become one of the country’s first all-electric bus towns. Hydrogen for transport also has a really important part to play. With a lot of hydrogen production taking place across the north-west and in the Liverpool city region in particular, it is something that we are very excited about locally. I know that hydrogen trains are being manufactured in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury). We are excited to be leading in the north-west and hope this can be rolled out more widely.
As we await the funding announcement in full, it looks as though Warrington will be one of the lucky places to receive this investment from the Government. Across the length and breadth of the country, particularly in the north-west, many are counting the cost of broken promises, because for all the rhetoric about levelling up, the small print reveals that “Bus Back Better” is in tatters. A letter sent to local transport authority directors by the Department for Transport on 11 January makes it clear that the budget for the transformation of buses—a pot from which local regions can bid for funds—has shrunk from £3 billion to £1.2 billion for the next three years.
The letter that let the cat out of the bag says:
“Prioritisation is inevitable, given the scale of ambition across the country greatly exceeds the amount.”
We know that bids for almost £8 billion have been submitted by local transport authorities, representing a blueprint for transformation up and down the country, but the levelling-up White Paper confirms that communities will see a fraction of that. Despite that, last month the Secretary of State said it was “absolutely incorrect” to say that funding to transform services has been slashed. One of his most senior colleagues, the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, directly contradicted him. In a letter he said:
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for securing today’s debate. May I give an example of the daily commute of one of my constituents? They get on at Farnworth train station to go to Moses Gate. They get off and take the 521 bus, operated by Vision Bus, for about 20 minutes. They then walk 10 minutes to Ladywood School in Little Lever to drop off their child. To get back into Bolton town centre in time for work, they walk 15 minutes to the bus stop and jump on the 524, operated by Diamond Bus, which takes 25 minutes. Quite often, the buses do not turn up or they are cancelled. People end up being late for work and some have even lost their jobs. Does my hon. Friend recognise that that is a concerning situation for many people in our region?
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I could not agree more, particularly when we look at the deregulation of bus services, with operators in some regions scrabbling for the same fares and most affordable routes rather than what best serves their community, so we end up with a mismatch of multiple operators running the same route.
The Manchester Oxford Road corridor is the busiest bus corridor in Europe, yet people a mile away are left without bus services to get into Manchester city centre. For towns and cities that have multiple operators, it is an even bigger issue. When I lived in Salford, for example, the franchise changed from First to Stagecoach on part of my route. Overnight, my monthly bus pass trebled in cost, because I could no longer buy a First-only bus pass. Because I had to change from First on to Stagecoach, I had to buy one of the much more expensive multi-operator passes. That is an issue across our region. I am glad that the Labour metro Mayors for the Liverpool city region and for the Greater Manchester region are looking to address that within their combined authorities.
From Greater Manchester to Lancaster, places bypassed by good public transport for far too long have been demanding real change. They put forward an ambitious blueprint to use buses to connect people to jobs, families and opportunities, and tackle the climate crisis in the process. Despite the challenges, they have plans to completely overhaul and reregulate the bus network as part of the bus service improvement plan. It was supposed to be about improved accessibility across the network, including level access from train to platform, and it is part of the work that is beginning on networks of cycling and walking routes across our region.
Labour leaders in power in towns and cities nationwide have real ambition to reverse the decline that we have seen under the Tories. We want a London-style system and to make buses quicker, cheaper, greener and more reliable, but we need a Government whose ambition matches our own. It is now becoming clear that, far from matching the ambition of our communities, Ministers have pulled the rug out from underneath them. Will the Minister now own up and admit what the Transport Secretary will not: that many areas will now not see a single penny of the transformation funding? Will she today detail exactly how much local transport authorities are set to see in transformation funding, and come clean that there will be areas in the north-west that will miss out altogether?
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Ms Nokes. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) on securing this important debate on funding—or the lack thereof, as we have heard—and on her excellent introduction. As on many other subjects, she is an excellent advocate for her constituents.
I have spoken before about how the proportion of people in Ellesmere Port and Neston who use private motor transport to get to work is much higher than the national average. Perhaps we should not be surprised about that—we build cars in the constituency, and have done for many years—but I believe it is more a reflection of the poor public transport links that we have in the constituency. The threat to bus services and changes to bus routes are common issues that have come up on many occasions since I was elected. The subject is raised regularly with me by constituents, particularly elderly constituents who rely on public transport to get around, and of course those who travel by bus for work or for education.
The situation is a challenge across the whole constituency, but particularly in the Parkgate and Neston areas. On top of existing services being inadequate to meet my constituents’ needs, it is fair to say that over at least the last decade, there has been a battle to save a service probably once every couple of months. We have not even begun to think about what will happen because of the increase in fuel costs over the last few months—indeed, they spiked over the weekend as well.
Sometimes when facing such threats, we have managed to persuade the bus company to keep the route open. Sometimes the service is retained but rerouted, usually to maximise profit rather than convenience for customers, and sometimes we lose the route altogether. When that happens, it has a huge impact on the people who rely on the services to get to school, get to work, and access medical appointments or other public services.
On funding, in Bolton we need £30 million, otherwise one third of all buses will be cut. That will impact my constituency massively. Proper funding is so important. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Yes, I agree. At the heart of this, clearly, is a bus service that has been under-resourced for many years. There are two problems: lack of support for operators and lack of strategy, so we keep facing chopping and changing decisions based on commercial considerations that do not necessarily serve the communities. The example of the bus service I have just mentioned means that someone who wants to get to the hospital, even though if it is only a mile from their home, must now take two buses. It is too far for them to walk.
What was also clear from the process was that the consultations were not adequate. Numerous comments were lodged by constituents, but they seemed to make no difference to the results. As I set out, the 22 bus service was not even mentioned as under threat during the consultation. It is hard for people to argue to retain a service when they are not aware that it is threatened. Greater transparency is needed from service providers when they enter such consultations.
The last local change to mention was that, last year, the route of the No. 5, which is an hourly service between Mold and Ellesmere Port calling at Cheshire Oaks—a major employer in the area—was altered, leaving the Stanney Grange estate with reduced access. One constituent who contacted me was distressed about the impact that that would have on her learning-disabled son, who relied on the bus service to get out and about. When we made inquiries, we were advised that Stagecoach had served notice and it intended to reprocure the route and consider costs. Arriva received the contract on a temporary basis and, when there was a further reprocurement, it got an alternative timetable as part of the bid. Some of the routes were retained, but many roads previously served no longer are. Unfortunately, again, constituents lose out.
Those are examples of not only a lack of resources, but a lack of joined-up thinking and strategy on what bus services are for. They are for serving our communities and, clearly, this constant chopping and changing, reducing routes and leaving areas out altogether does not benefit our constituents at all. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North said, 10 years of cuts have left bus coverage at its lowest level in decades. Since 2010, more than 3,000 bus routes and more than 350,000 passenger journeys have been lost, leaving people cut off from friends, family, work and education opportunities, and other public services.
Thank you, Ms Nokes. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning.
Since the Conservatives deregulated buses outside of London in the 1980s, services have suffered. That has been felt on Merseyside where, under the current operating model, private bus companies set routes, ticket prices and timetables. It is a system designed around profit, not passengers, in which services can be withdrawn at short notice if they are not profitable enough.
A report last year by the academic Philip Alston, the former United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, found that the deregulation of buses has
“provided a master class in how not to run an essential public service”,
leaving residents at the mercy of private actors who have total discretion over how to run a bus route or whether to run one at all. That is the Conservative legacy on buses. Since 2010, more than 200 bus services have been lost across the Liverpool city region—a shocking statistic.
A number of my constituents in Wirral West have been in touch with me in recent months about a reduction in the service of the No. 71 bus, which runs from Heswall to Liverpool via Irby. I know from that correspondence just how important these services are to local people. Lost and reduced services can impact on people who need to get to work, to hospital appointments, to school or college or to meet friends.
Public transport is immensely important if we are to tackle climate change and the issue of air quality. It is important that we encourage people to use it, and that will happen only if services are reliable and affordable.
Thanks to the hard work of Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram and local leaders, services in the Liverpool city region are on the way to being publicly controlled again. Last week, members of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority signed off on proposals for a franchising system to be the preferred method of running bus services. That will bring the system back under local control, allowing the combined authority to specify the network, control fare policy and drastically improve ticketing. I echo the words of Mayor Rotheram, who described the move as “momentous”. He has long advocated a London-style transport system across Merseyside, which is nothing short of what local people deserve.
Does my hon. Friend concur that the regulation, which Steve Rotheram and the leaders have announced, is mightily vital, but it does need those resources for a first-class affordable public transport system in our patch?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is as if he had read the last line of my speech. It is absolutely vital that local authorities get the funding that they need, so that constituents like mine, and those of Weaver Vale, can benefit.
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Ms Nokes. We seem to be getting through the debate rather quickly this morning, which means that I can read my whole speech. I am sure you will enjoy it.
I start by thanking my hon. Friends who made the effort to come here this morning to speak on this issue, which is so important—not just to us as MPs but, more importantly, to our constituents. It will, I believe, define the outcome at many seats at the next election; it is that important to many constituents.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for securing this debate, at a time when bus services across the country are at such a risk from the Government’s over-egged promises, which many constituents, I am afraid, feel have been broken. I also particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who mentioned that it has been months since the Prime Minister launched the centrepiece of his levelling-up agenda, the national bus strategy—trumpeting from the hilltops his love for buses and how “Bus Back Better” would address the vast disparities between services in London and the rest of the country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) explained the paucity of funding—I will touch on that later—and how desperately that will affect her constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) explained his almost annual campaigning efforts to save bus routes. I think, unfortunately, he must run those campaigns again this year.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) mentioned the struggles of her constituents over the affordability of fares, and the routes that do not actually meet the needs of local residents. Of course, I also thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his contribution; buses are an important issue in Northern Ireland as well.
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that funding for bus services is essential to improve our economy? We have such disparity of income and grotesque levels of inequality in the country. Unless we do something about bus services, those people who are currently left behind will be even further left behind, as it is harder for them to secure and to keep jobs.
20 of 40 shown
“Funding specifically pledged for transformation has been substantially reduced.”
He concluded that he is “gravely concerned” that, far from seeing transformation, many areas face losing their services altogether.
I mentioned the 50% loss of passenger numbers in Warrington. With the price of labour and fuel currently extremely high, it will be difficult for operators to hold down fares and for routes to continue, particularly those that serve more deprived areas where the profit margins are smaller.
A current example is the proposal by the Cheshire police and crime commissioner to close Ellesmere Port police station to the public. He proposes that those who need to speak to an officer in person will be able to go to Blacon in Chester. When I asked him how those who do not have a car will be able to get there, answer came there none. There is no direct bus route to Blacon from Ellesmere Port—again showing the lack of strategy and of thinking through the consequences of decisions of that nature.
I shall outline a few examples of how my constituents have been affected over the years by changes to bus services to highlight the really inadequate state of affairs at the moment. About four or five years ago, the No. 7 bus service, which catered for a number of retirement bungalows and people with no other option than to get a bus, was rerouted due to parking issues and the Saturday service was removed altogether. The council intervened but could only negotiate an arrangement to keep the Saturday service for 10 months. Unfortunately, the impact of losing a rural bus grant unfortunately was that we the service was not retained thereafter.
In 2019, Stagecoach, one of the main operators in my area, carried out a consultation regarding changes that it was proposing to services, which it sold as meaning better co-ordination and frequency of buses travelling through the constituency between Chester and Liverpool, as well as a Sunday service via Overpool, and more buses for the Hope Farm estate. What resulted, however, was that the 22 bus service, which was a vital route for my constituents in Neston and Parkgate to attend Arrowe Park Hospital in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), was removed altogether due to low passenger numbers. Stagecoach proposed that customers use a different bus service, but the reality of that, one constituent told me, was having to catch three buses, taking more than an hour, just to attend a hospital appointment. That is not the better co-ordination of bus services that was being sold at the start of the consultation.
The proposed changes also left the Groves estate without any bus service at all along Chester Road between the Strawberry Roundabout and the Whitby High School, leaving a number of elderly constituents who use the bus service to get to the town centre and Ellesmere Port Hospital with a lengthy walk just to get to the nearest bus stop. One constituent told me:
“I will be 88 next month and like my friends and neighbours want to remain independent in my own home, but this lack of public transport is not helping”.
That brings home to me just how vital a proper co-ordinated bus service is.
It seems to me that the Prime Minister has no intention of keeping his promise of
“great bus services to everyone, everywhere”,
because, as my hon. Friend said, hidden away in the levelling-up plan is a massive cut to bus funding of £1.8 billion. Figures show that the cost of funding bids submitted by 53 out of 79 local authorities totals more than £7 billion, so it is clear that many areas will miss out. With this Government’s record of picking and choosing winners and losers, I have little confidence that my constituency will benefit from that funding at all.
I am sick of my area missing out on funding for improvements to the community, bus services and other local infrastructure. If we have ambition for the country, it should be for the whole country. We need real ambition; we do not need any more empty promises. We want a real say in the way services are run. We do not want to keep putting in bids for pots of money and then being left at the whim of commercial operators. We want control of our bus services and we want resources to be able to deliver them properly for the benefit of our communities.
Labour leaders in power in cities and towns across the country have the ambition to reverse the decline we have seen over the last decade. We want a London-style system that is run in the public interest, to make buses quicker, cheaper and more reliable for our communities. When I was first elected to this place, I was amazed that I could stand at my local bus stop and wait only a matter of minutes for a bus to turn up, and that I was paying £1.60. I could not get anywhere on a bus in Ellesmere Port for £1.60, never mind across half the city, which is what we can do here in London. It is chalk and cheese. The whole country should have that level of service. It is an ambition that is right for our country, and it is what I want for my community. It is what we deserve, because bus services are a vital part of our community.
How can we level up if we cannot get anywhere on a bus after 6 o’clock at night? How can we level up if bus services are removed at a moment’s notice by operators, without any regard to the effect that will have on the communities they are supposed to serve? How can we level up if we have no power or resources to direct where and when buses go? Let us get on with some delivery. Let us take back control of our buses and serve our communities the way that we want them to be served.
Transport authorities in the north-west and across the country are waiting to learn their funding allocations for their bus service improvement plans. The Government have said they will announce details on how the funding will be allocated in due course. Authorities have been waiting since October to find out their individual allocations and need to know as soon as possible how much they are getting so that they can put their plans into action.
Analysis by the Confederation of Passenger Transport has suggested that more than £7 billion will be needed to fully deliver the measures that local transport authorities have included in their bus service improvement plans. The Government have set aside £1.2 billion for the plans, creating a huge funding gap between what local authorities want to deliver and the funding that the Government are making available.
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority has asked for £667 million from the Government for its bus service improvement plan. At the heart of the plan are measures to improve affordability, reliability and the environmental impacts of bus services.
The Campaign for Better Transport has said:
“It is doubtful that the current funding available will be sufficient…to achieve real transformation in ambitious authorities.”
When the Minister responds, can she tell us whether she agrees? Will she guarantee that the Government will come forward with the funds that we so desperately need for public transport systems, to make them affordable, reliable, and ensure that they meet the needs of passengers?
Less than a year on, I am genuinely disappointed about the Government’s ambition. It was limited from the outset but has declined even further now, to a point where funding can only realistically satisfy the ambitions of just two transport authorities. There is such a vast gap between the amount of money bid for and what is available that many parts of the country will be bitterly disappointed that their ambitions are not being met.
Let us be clear: prior to the pandemic, more journeys were made on buses than on any other form of public transport—almost 4.5 billion journeys. However, after 12 years of Conservative cuts, the loss of 134 million miles of bus lanes and an inadequate statutory framework, vital transport links have been left to decay. Bus coverage is now the lowest it has been in decades. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that the Campaign to Protect Rural England now uses the term “transport deserts” to describe many rural communities.
It is mostly Labour MPs who have turned up today. However, when I talk to colleagues from other parts of the country, they are equally concerned, whether they be Conservative MPs from Cornwall or parts of the home counties. They are also suffering from those transport deserts. Austerity has seen the Government slash public subsidies for buses, with more than 3,000 bus routes cut across the country, leading to passenger numbers slumping by 10%, while fares have increased, in some places, by as much as 32%—well above even the rapidly-increasing rate of inflation.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West mentioned, underfunding over such a long period by the Government has become so severe that in his report into the privatisation of the bus sector, the former UN special rapporteur, Professor Philip Alston, highlighted a broken and fragmented system, with skyrocketing fares, plummeting service standards and disappearing routes, which often deprived bus users of an essential public service.