I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require consultation of bus users before changes are made to bus services; and for connected purposes.
Imagine a hard-working member of the public, perhaps working night shifts, whose only means of getting to work is by bus. Night after night, they wait in the dark, sometimes in the cold and the rain—in cold weather—simply wanting to get to work, and through no fault of their own, they find out that the bus they need to get to work on time has been changed. That gives them an impossible choice of being late to work, arriving impossibly early or, even worse, finding it near impossible to get to work at all.
Imagine a pensioner living alone at home for whom the bus is a lifeline to visit friends and family, and to attend doctor’s and hospital appointments. For them, the bus is their transport to living a full life, not just for travelling. However, when the local bus timetable changes—skipping the nearby bus stops, which means they can no longer access buses—suddenly, through no fault of their own, they find themselves cut off from the real world and their support network.
Behind every bus timetable change, there will be passengers who just want to live their lives and individuals who are reliant on a service about which they have little or no say. I am sure we would all agree that buses are an important part of all of our communities. In fact, buses are used for twice as many journeys as trains, and from thousands more stopping places across the country. According to the national annual bus statistics 2022, the number of local bus passenger journeys in England alone was 2.8 billion in 2021-22.
Taking the bus instead of a car twice each month would reduce emissions by 15.8 million tonnes of CO2 by 2050, according to the Campaign for Better Transport, so it is good for the environment, too. I read a statistic recently—I think it was on the NHS England website—that a survey of NHS trusts has shown that about 7.8 million appointments a year, or about 650,000 a month, are missed by people citing transport issues, and I am sure that some of those are related to buses.
Buses are without a doubt the most used form of public transport. They carry millions of people each year, and are a vital public transport link for individuals, the economy, people’s health and the environment. It is hard to believe that, despite their importance, there is no official requirement to directly engage or consult with passengers of a bus service when its timetables are being considered for change. By bus passengers, I mean the people who use the actual bus: those who get on it every day to get to work, to get to appointments, to see their friends and to see their family. People are more than just numbers. They have hospital appointments, they have jobs to go to and they have lives to live, yet they do not currently need to be asked about the services they use.