Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [HL]

My Lords, again, I support the noble Lord, Lord Low, on his amendment. The Minister has said several times today that we are asking him to spend £1 billion a year on this scheme. It seems that we could re-jig this provision to cover the most vulnerable and deserving of discretionary free transport. The Minister said several times that local authorities have that discretion. We will talk about the funding of local authorities in a little while. I suspect that if we have the funding of local authorities right they might want to provide some discretionary transport, but we shall talk about that later. There might be some room at the edges to facilitate this amendment which, I repeat, would help the most vulnerable and needy.