Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [Lords]

I have followed the debate with great interest. My postbag, like that of many Members of the House, contains many letters each week from people concerned about bus services both across the constituency of Broxbourne that I represent and the county of Hertfordshire, in which Broxbourne is located. We have a sort of monster on our doorstep; it is called London. London absorbs a huge amount of resources, and I am interested in how we shall manage the issues of reimbursement and the allocation of resources for funding. Over the past decade, many of our bus services have been sucked into London. If someone wants to get from one part of my constituency to another part or to another part of Hertfordshire, often they have to travel through London. Sometimes they have to travel for an hour and half through London to reach somewhere in Hertfordshire that is no more than 4 or 5 miles away as the crow flies. That poses some questions. If the bulk of the journey takes place in London—although it originates in Hertfordshire—will Hertfordshire taxpayers fund that journey and will the reimbursement be allocated to Hertfordshire or to authorities in London, where the bulk of the journey takes place? I hope that the Minister will respond to that. We need to look seriously at new clause 3 because it would enable us to have a periodic review of how funding is allocated to pay for services. It would be devastating for local council tax payers in Hertfordshire if we ended up funding additional bus services that are routed through London—services that are primarily for the benefit of Londoners, but whose cost would fall on my constituents. I hope that the funding formula does not act as a perverse distortion on the market, drawing even more of our services away from the county and into London. That would be disastrous at a time when local hospitals are being reorganised and are going to be moved even further away from my constituency. We face the closure of Chase Farm hospital in north London and the transfer of services to hospitals further north in the county. If more of our bus providers run services through London, it will be even harder for my constituents, many of whom are elderly, to access services to take them to other hospitals. I have a lot of sympathy with the new clause and I hope that the Government will give it serious consideration.