Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [Lords]

In my constituency, those companies have left whole communities without any buses at all because they are concerned with making money, rather than with social responsibility. The hon. Gentleman is elderly, as he says, so he must remember the system under which bus companies and the Tyne and Wear Metro operated; there was through-ticketing and through-timetabling, which worked very well. When the Conservative Government did away with bus regulation, that system went away overnight. That led to absolute chaos for a short period, and to the system described earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland).