Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their contribution to this short debate. I recognise that we all benefited from the debate in Committee, which helped to frame these amendments in somewhat different terms from the originals. We are, however, covering old ground;the Bill is about extending the geographical scope of the statutory minimum concession to guarantee that older and eligible disabled people can access important services outside their local authority by bus for free. The Bill is not about extending the concession to other forms of public transport, such as trains, trams, the Underground and ferries. I recognise that noble Lords are not pressing the Government quite as far as in Committee, but, as I pointed out then, local authorities have the discretion to offer travel concessions on other forms of public transport, and the Bill preserves that flexibility. As I also said in Committee, the Government have no plans to extend the statutory minimum concession to other forms of transport. There would be costs involved, and any extension would have to be fully funded, as the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, recognised. Estimating just how much it might cost to extend the concession to other modes is difficult, and we have not done that work yet, but clearly we are talking about significant sums. As the noble Lord has heard, we reckon that extending the scheme to rail would cost about £250 million a year. It might cost about £15 million to extend the scheme to trams. The Government have already committed to spending £1 billion on concessionary travel to improve the mobility and well-being of older and disabled people. Until we have worked that through and got the system in place, it would be injudicious to seek to extend the forms of eligible travel. Older and disabled people already qualify for one-third off most rail journeys, as the Department for Transport requires train operators to participate in the senior and disabled person railcard schemes. This is an extensive and important step forward in providing concessionary fares. It will cost a substantial amount of money. The Government are not unsympathetic to the noble Lords in pressing for extra consideration; however, the scheme has to be fully costed. If the Secretary of State wanted to extend the national concession to other modes of public transport, he has the ability, under Part 2 of the Transport Act, to do so. At this stage, though, we are merely considering whether the resources are available for the extension, and it is only right that, until we have worked through this particular concession, we should postpone consideration of other modes of travel. The Bill will not inhibit that consideration when it is eventually passed.