My Lords, on reflection, I think that this Bill—and I have now studied it a lot—is really nothing to do with the quality of bus services generally. It is a device which has been drawn up by officials because the Chancellor promised to devolve the operation of bus services in certain areas which elect a mayor so that they can go for franchising. If you read the Bill carefully, I think you will find that it will be very difficult for them to achieve that, because there are a lot of obstacles in the way of any franchised service.
My main concern is for areas outside metropolitan areas. The bus service is in a terrible state. All sectors are now recording declines in services. They will get worse, because cuts are being made all the time. When I spoke at Second Reading, I said that more money must be found from somewhere. I realise that the Government are not willing to spend any money and that therefore this is about redirecting the money which is spent. At Second Reading, the Minister drew my attention to the fact that bus service operators grant was to be devolved to local operators. This is a very particular question: is bus services operators grant to be devolved only to the areas that get franchising? Will rural areas get any share of that money? Will it be ring-fenced if it is devolved, because if not, if it is added to various block grants, it will be absorbed in meeting the Government’s underfunding of all sorts of other services for which local authorities are responsible.
I, too, received the rural proofing in the impact assessment. It is absolutely pathetic. The document is huge, but the intellectual input into it is minuscule. All it says about rural proofing is, to summarise, that local authorities have to decide for themselves how the resources allocated to them are spent. If they want to spend them on bus services, they have to take that away from another cause.
I suggest that the Minister carefully considers the effects of isolation and loneliness on people living in remote rural areas—and there are a lot of them. I use buses every day. I travel on one some days, and there are a dozen old rural dwellers who I know are lonely. The only time they get out is when they go on a bus. I am sure they all voted for Brexit because they are of that generation, but that rather does not cover the point—I am not sure they would be grateful and would suddenly support the other side if they restored their service. Their service is vital; I honestly believe their lives would be hugely diminished without it.
5.45 pm
One thing the Minister did say in his letter to me is that there is reconsideration being made to the concessionary fares scheme. I think the last paragraph of his letter refers to this. I urge the Minister to look at this because, first of all, he says—and this is Civil Service-ese—that the Government continue “to review the policy”. Well, we have heard those words ever since I have been here and, I imagine, for the last century. But, there is a glimmer of hope in the last paragraph,
which says: “As you may be aware, on 26 April 2016 we laid a Command Paper on the post-implementation review of the statutory reimbursement arrangements for concessionary travel”. Now, that review might explore the issue of whether the money which is available for concessionary fares is well-directed, because I would put a plea in for the fact that more of it ought to go to the rural operators, whose expenses are much higher, than to the urban operators, where it might reduce their costs by a fraction but would have no significant effect on the number of people using bus services.
We should come on to talk later about congestion, because that is another very serious problem, but if the Minister would answer those questions for a start, I would be very pleased.