Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are a great deal of calls for the concession to be withdrawn. I can well understand them and I have some sympathy, although—I may be biased as a parent of children who use the scheme—I feel that it would be unfair to disadvantage those who use buses sensibly. I do not know where the answer lies. Sometimes these things go full cycle and I am sure that I will be told that it was those well-known sons of Beelzebub—the Conservative party—who got rid of conductors on buses and things like that. Perhaps we should look at that. Things do go in cycles, but there is a real, severe problem. Luckily, the scheme that we are talking about offers concessions for the elderly and the disabled, and I think that the concept of hell’s grannies still remains firmly in the realms of Monty Python, although perhaps just occasionally, at advice surgeries, some of us wonder about that. The real problem will be in the detail of the Bill and the implementation. I look forward to hearing the definitions of ““bus”” and ““coach””. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) mentioned the open-top buses in Manchester. The same thing happens in London. Also, we have services that go through Uxbridge—the 724 and the 727—which are quite long distance, but which I would regard as bus services. I do not know whether they will be included. The 727 connects the various airports, so it might be quite useful to have it involved in the scheme. I am not entirely sure that it will be possible to implement smartcards by 1 April next year. I look for reassurance from the Minister on that. One thing that occurred to me was that freedom passes, which are already smartcards, have a separate photo ID card. Those cards are currently issued over the counter at post offices, which, I think we would all agree, most elderly and disabled people find convenient. The national standard being imposed by the Government requires that a photograph be embossed on the card. That means, I think, that applications will have to be sent off and then come back. I think that it would be true to say that that will be much more expensive for users—the administration will certainly be more expensive—and that it might increase the opportunity for fraud. Perhaps this is a further concept in the diminution in the number of services offered by post offices. I understand that the existing London scheme, which is based on the oyster card system, is neither compatible nor compliant with the Government’s required ITSO standards for the new concessionary travel passes. I assume that all the pass-reading equipment on London buses will need to be changed. I am sure that my borough and all London councils will want assurances that the cost of re-equipping London buses with new readers will be met by the national purse, rather than by my council tax payers.