This Government are committed to ensuring that buses are safe and secure for all passengers and road users, and we expect the bus sector to uphold the highest possible safety standards. The Bus Services Act 2025 helps to deliver safer, more reliable and more accessible bus networks, and we have just published the new Road Safety Strategy, setting out the Government’s plan to make our roads significantly safer for everyone.
My Lords, given that there are around 700 Yutong electric buses in operation across our country and that concerns have been raised internationally that these buses can be stopped or made inoperable through remote interference from China, will the Government issue clear guidance for procurement of such electric buses, including new security requirements, such as firewalls, to prevent our buses being hacked?
My department and other parts of government are looking into the media reports on this from Norway, and the Secretary of State has already committed to updating the Transport Select Committee on this work as soon as we can. We cannot legally mandate that funding given as subsidy is used to purchase British-built buses, but where local authorities are running their own procurement to buy buses directly, they can design these exercises in a way that maximises the wider economic benefits offered by domestic suppliers. We also launched last year the UK bus manufacturing expert panel to support UK bus manufacturing. Through that, we are actively encouraging mayoral combined authorities—many of which will shortly procure bus fleets to support their new bus franchising programmes—to embed best-practice social-value criteria within their procurement.
My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister explain how the roads can be made safer for buses? In the press today, there are reports of two accidents involving school buses and quite a few children injured. Is it not time that we had a system to make the roads safe for buses and for everyone, in the way that happens in many other countries?
I refer my noble friend to the Road Safety Strategy that has just been published—the first for many years—which sets out a whole variety of actions to be taken with vehicles, drivers, pedestrians, other road users and infrastructure, which he refers to, in order to reduce deaths and serious injuries on the roads. Nevertheless, travelling by bus is a very safe mode of travel.
My Lords, given the current weather conditions, buses on icy roads are obviously an issue. Does the Minister know whether we mandate bus companies to have winter tyres on buses? If we do not, should we do so?
I have never heard of any mandate for winter tyres. The speed at which the weather changes, given the climate change just discussed in this Chamber, would make changing tyres overnight a seriously impractical activity. What is needed when the roads are frosty and temperatures are below freezing is adequate gritting and care by local transport authorities. Ministers in my department in the other place have this week been looking into the adequacy of gritting across the country.
My Lords, Covid had a big impact on the number of people using our buses. What is the Government’s latest assessment of take-up of bus use post Covid, and what are the Government doing to promote the use of buses to the public?
The noble Lord is quite correct: Covid had an effect on all public transport demand. The Government have taken a series of actions, including the Bus Services Act 2025, which changes the landscape to enable local transport authorities to provide services designed for the people who live and work in their communities. I refer the noble Lord to recent funding announcements, which include funding for every transport authority in England—unlike the previous Government’s selective funding—and we have now guaranteed funding over the next three years. Consistency of service will encourage the increase of passengers on buses, and we are determined to achieve that.
My Lords, can I take the Minister back to the Question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon? My understanding is that officials in his department, in conjunction with the National Cyber Security Centre, have already carried out an analysis of those Chinese-made buses and confirmed that there is a security flaw which enables them to be remotely dealt with, although there is no evidence that it has happened. Can he confirm that to your Lordships’ House and say what the Government are doing with not just buses but all transport technology to make sure that it is not vulnerable to attack by our enemies?
The noble Lord is clearly in possession of information that I do not have, because my department and other parts of government are still looking at this. But it is a fact of life that all modern vehicles, including buses, are using software to support safer driving, improve diagnostics and provide a host of other services, and updating this software remotely is an effective and efficient way of doing so. That has been the practice for years, but it is a concern and that is why we are looking at it. If something needs to be done, of course this Government will do it.
My Lords, what will the Government provide to the UK electric bus industry to ensure competition in the bus sector and real choices for local authorities and transport authorities? What additional safety features will the Government require for bus fleets across the country to work towards Vision Zero, as initiatives in London and West Yorkshire are doing at present?
I already referred to the UK bus manufacturing expert panel, which has been set up by this Government precisely to support the UK bus manufacturing industry. I also said that we are actively encouraging those mayoral combined authorities which will procure bus fleets to embed best-practice social-value criteria so that they are more able to procure buses made in Britain. If the noble Lord looks at the Road Safety Strategy—I am not suggesting that he is remiss in not having done so, because it has been published only in the last few hours—he will see that it includes real commitments to the safe system, which is the rather less-interesting title of Vision Zero, devised in Sweden. It looks to embed that in every aspect of road safety in Britain, including the operation of buses. We had some discussion here about the safe system in the debates on what became the Bus Services Act. I think the noble Lord and others will be very pleased to read what is in the strategy when they are able to do so.
My Lords, I must confess that, when I saw this Question on the Order Paper, I envisaged a discussion about safety in buses as much as the safety of buses, so I hope my noble friend will forgive me for asking an adjacent question to do with safety in buses. What can he tell us about the way that the training of drivers and the design of buses is now being taken forward to ensure the safety of young women in particular travelling in buses, especially at night?
My noble friend is absolutely right. The Bus Services Act 2025 mandates training for all bus drivers, to make buses part of the safer streets initiative to deal with violence against women and girls. The department is actively producing guidance for bus operators and local authorities about how that is done so that every bus driver in Britain has the ability to spot what is going on and deal with it. Some 96% of buses in Britain now have CCTV, which is a means of providing both evidence and reassurance to passengers that their safety is being considered. I am looking forward, as I am sure my noble friend is, to this training being rolled out to every driver in Britain.