Bus Services Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2017-03-27
Topic: Transportation
Graham Eric Stringer (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, and I will come on to it. He is right to be concerned about that, but I want to develop the logic of the argument that I am making as to why these are not sensible amendments. In large parts of the country, where most bus passengers are, we do not have competition. The basis of the Transport Act 1985 was that there would be on-the-road competition and that would provide good services, and if bus companies lost out because of on-the-road competition, they lost out as in any other capitalist-competitive market situation. That has not happened, however; we have moved to monopoly Incidentally, when the 1985 Act was implemented in 1986 no compensation was paid to those bus companies—of which there were a number—running on regulated routes. Mayne in east Manchester, for instance, had run for many years in that area; when it had to compete, it did not get compensation We are now moving—through principled objectives, in a different way—to a competitive system, in those areas that choose that, because there will be choices for Norfolk, Greater Manchester and other areas at some stage. As with rail franchising, in a competitive situation, when a company loses out, it loses its business, even if it has invested in it previously. In fact, one of the difficulties with franchising is that we end up with investment up front and a lack of investment at the end; that is just the nature of franchising On the point made by the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) about medium-sized bus companies, that can of course be taken into account in the way that franchises are set up, by local choice. Areas can set them up in as many different ways as they wish, so medium-sized companies could be given the right to tender for routes that fit the size of the company if that was what the franchising authority wanted to do That brings me to a point I made in Committee, and which was rejected. Rather than the amendments we have here, I would have preferred the Bill to say that the regulations should not be overly burdensome and that they should reflect local conditions. If they were reflecting local conditions, they could take into account those small and medium-sized companies. There is a large point here, however, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh said, the large companies would be more pleased than the small bus companies if these amendments were passed. There is not a single quality contract in this country, and that is because when they were brought in under the Transport Act 2000, it contained a clause that is very similar to measures here, saying that they are the only practical way of delivering a better bus service. That is an incredibly high hurdle to jump, which is why there are no such contracts. Quality partnerships were referred to; I asked the Minister in Committee how many of them there were in the country, and, after a little help from the officials, we discovered that there were 10. So even quality partnerships are not abundant on the ground in this country. We do not need overly burdensome regulations. We want to make this work because it will improve the service for passengers, be more competitive and lead to better services We are not discussing them now, but there are huge guidance notes associated with this Bill, which I think tend to be overly prescriptive. I prefer to rely on the good sense of local councillors; they will make some good decisions and some bad decisions, but there are many bus companies with vested interests who are opposed to this, and if local authorities behave in an unreasonable way, they have the right to apply the Wednesbury principle and go for judicial review Rather than having lots of prescriptions, and putting ever more hurdles in the way of locally elected people making decisions, we should rely on their good sense. Sometimes they will get it wrong, as sometimes national politicians in Governments and Cabinets get things wrong, but we can rely on them and the common law, which will ensure that if bus companies feel that they are being unfairly treated and that transport authorities are behaving in an unreasonable way, they can take that to court So I hope the Minister will reject these amendments. We have held in the balance throughout our discussions the question of what is central and what is going to help local authorities, transport authorities and elected mayors to make these decisions, and these amendments do not help move us towards having a better local transport system.