Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [Lords]

I remind the hon. Gentleman of the very wise words of Adam Smith. He was an honest Scotsman, and this, of course, is a time to be singing the praises of such men. His profile is now to be found on our banknotes, and in one remark he observed that, when three or four business men gather together, a conspiracy against the public was waiting to happen. So it has proved with bus privatisation. We now have a small number of big operators. In my region, we have recently seen the sale of a body of operations in the town of Darlington, which Stagecoach had managed to capture after years of competition. The whole operation has now been sold en bloc to another national-level operator. We are not now dealing with a variety of bus companies that are all small and locally based. I know that such things exist, but the bulk of bus operations are now run by a small number of big national operators with some of the characteristics of a cartel. The block sale of all the operations in Darlington from Stagecoach to another operator in the past fortnight indicates the kind of things that happen. Similarly, if the Government were to accept the responsibility for running the national statutory concession, the issues of reimbursement could be resolved. The Government could then negotiate forcefully with the limited number of big operators that is the reality of modern bus networks. The debate about the unfairness of the grant regime could itself be resolved and the Government could be reassured that grant given for the purposes of supporting the statutory concession would not be recycled inside local authority finances to pay for other activities. Again, if the Government met the costs of the national statutory concession, all this churning of grant through council and passenger transport authority budgets, with all the knock-on effects for council tax, could be resolved. There would be an additional attraction for the Government if they took on the responsibility for operating the national statutory concession. They could produce a nationally branded scheme. Such a scheme could be supported by smartcard operations in the way that some Opposition Members have sensibly suggested, but even if it was not, a nationally branded scheme would be a much better incentive for the recovery of bus networks, which must be one of the objectives of the Bill, apart from simply operating the concession itself. A nationally branded scheme would bring some benefit to the Government of the day and some clarity about how schemes were funded and supported. Of course, outside the national statutory scheme there could still be proper debate locally about extensions to the national scheme. For example, in London the freedom pass kicks in at 9 am. In the county of Tyne and Wear, it kicks in at 9.30 am. There is a debate to be had about how the national scheme, which functions from 9.30 in the morning, could be brought forward to 9 am. Those debates could be had locally without being confused by the wider arguments about the fairness of the grant support. The rights conferred in the Bill will create new demand for bus services up and down the country. The Bill will lead to an expansion of bus services up and down the country. If the national statutory concession is nationally funded, the extra demand that will be created can then be supported by the Government. It would not be a problem for local council tax payers or local authorities. The rising level of bus use and the improvement in the quality of bus services that we hope will result from this Bill would then be seen as it properly should, as a collateral benefit, not, as it would be if we kept the present obsolete structure of formula funding, as a problem rather than a benefit. It will be impossibly difficult to achieve through annual grant awards by formula proper support for the rising use of buses and the extension of bus networks unless the national statutory scheme is operated, funded and negotiated by the Department for Transport. That is the purpose of my amendments, and I commend them to the House. Indeed, the Government must have contemplated that course of action anyway because otherwise they would not have provided for that possibility in clause 9. I very much hope that the clause will not prove to be a residual, fallback position, but that the Government can build on it to introduce a nationally branded scheme, which is nationally funded and nationally negotiated, so that all the local difficulties that have been the by-product of doing something that in itself is commendable and good can be avoided.