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Mr. Stringer: I shall ask the Committee's permission to withdraw the amendment but, before doing so, I suggest that my hon. Friend might not escape being associated with the word ''bustitution'' for very long. It flows too easily off the tongue and he may one day be attributed in the next annexe to the Oxford English dictionary as the originator of the word, rather than be upbraided for a slight grammatical error on Radio 4.
We have had a useful debate, and I am grateful to those hon. Members who thanked me for tabling the amendment. I take the reassurances that my hon. Friend the Minister has given us. However, I ask him to reflect a little further on some of the issues that have been raised in the context of the regulatory impact assessment. When one reads it, one sees that it basically compares the cost of buses with that of rail in PTE areas in Britain. It leaves one with the impression that the main motivation in such matters is cost. Of course, cost is always important, while we are responsible for raising taxes, but it is not the only issue. I am grateful for the assurance that he gave about bearing in mind the elements that are already in local transport plans relating to the consequences of transport.
More widely, on transport and the objectives of social and economic regeneration that are not in local transport plans, when I asked my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State at the last Transport questions whether the definition should be expanded, he said that we should focus on transport issues. In fact, using the definition of transport as conveying goods, people and vehicles from point to point, virtually none of the four objectives in local transport plans is objectively about transport issues: they deal with the consequences of transport. People want better transport for social and economic reasons. None the less, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. Stringer: I beg to move amendment No. 63, in page 42, line 3, at end insert—
'(1C) Where a scheme has been introduced under subsection (1A) and the Passenger Transport Authority considers that the scheme could beneficially be extended to the whole of its area, it may so extend the scheme.'.
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I am happy to move this amendment, which is a probing amendment that seeks to find out what is in the Minister's mind. How far can quality contracts go? When a train service is stopped, will the quality contracts allow bus substitution between the two or 10 train stops that have disappeared, or can they cover a wider area? I am deliberately taking two extreme examples of how far the scheme can be extended, ranging from the whole of a metropolitan area to a very small area.
I would be surprised if members of the Committee were aware of the train service that leaves Stockport once a week and trundles round south, east and north Manchester. It reverses in and out of stations and eventually arrives at Manchester Victoria. People who are not familiar with the geography of Greater Manchester can be assured that no sane, sensible person would ever use that service; there are perfectly good train and bus routes from Stockport to Manchester Piccadilly, where one can get a tram or bus or walk to Manchester Victoria, which takes a fraction of the time that the journey would take on the other route.
I am told that the reason why the service exists is that it is simpler to run that Saturday service, which is occasionally substituted by taxis and buses, than to go through the process of closing it down. That is one reason why I welcome the central part of the Bill. The route goes all over south, east and north Manchester. The only people who use it are those who are interested in going on unusual train journeys. It is no use whatever to the travelling public of Greater Manchester.
The amendment seeks to discover how far, if at all, a quality contract scheme would be allowed to extend if that service was withdrawn. The route would have only a small financial benefit and no transport benefit. If buses were provided, no one would use them. The amendment proposes that when a scheme has been introduced and the PTA considers that it could
''beneficially be extended to the whole of its area, it may so extend the scheme.''
Will the Minister say what limits there would be?
Another extreme case—it does not involve a rail system that meanders all over an urban conurbation—is that of a rail service that stops at one or two stations. Such a service could easily be replaced by a bus service, which people would use if the route was previously a useful transport corridor. How far could that be extended? If the route is in a limited area, with just two stops, for example, what will a quality contract mean? Does it differ from a service being put out to tender? A quality contract in the London sense means producing a list of routes and asking bus operators to tender for them. In both cases, it is difficult to see that one would be getting a quality contract, rather than just a tendered service, which the public sector would probably have to pay for. How far could that quality contract be extended? I would be very interested to know.
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The hon. Member for Southport, in the 50 per cent. of his contribution that the Minister said he had got right, noted that the Government had reduced to six months the time limit for the consultation on bringing in quality contracts under the Transport Act 2000. That is useful and I welcome the fact that they have done that, but in most, if not all parts of the country, the largest barrier to introducing quality contracts is section 124 of the 2000 Act, which requires the local authority or the passenger transport authority to show that the quality contract is the only practical way of delivering a service. There are examples from the midlands of passenger transport authorities trying to introduce a quality contract and the local bus operator, operating an almost monopoly service, flooding the area with services so that the passenger transport authority and the passenger transport executive cannot show that a quality contract is the only way of providing bus services. As a result, the proposal fails. That is why we have no quality contract schemes at present.
In considering clause 39, I am trying to find out how much of a loophole there is in respect of bringing in quality contracts. The current legislation does not make it easy enough to introduce them into areas where there are serious public transport problems, as there certainly are in every area in which FirstGroup operate buses, and where other bus companies run monopolies. In my constituency, they run a semi-monopoly. The service is—if one does not have to use it—laughably appalling in terms of punctuality and reliability. I refer hon. Members to a recent edition of Private Eye, which contains a list of the FirstGroup's failures throughout England, Scotland and Wales. It points out that recently wheels have fallen off three different buses in my area of north Manchester. In a random inspection, more than 50 per cent. of the FirstGroup's buses were found not be roadworthy. I will not read out the Private Eye cuttings, but they go through FirstGroup's failings in every urban area in this country and in much of Scotland, where it is the biggest provider of bus services.
I am interested to find out whether there is a loophole or whether will we just get a tendered bus service between two points. If a small quality contract works on the basis of substituting the rail service, can it be extended to the benefit of the area? The fundamental point—I have had this debate with my hon. Friend the Minister several times, and we have not yet managed to convince each other of our cases—is that if we want to cut congestion on the roads and pollution, it is sensible to have commercial competition at the point of tendering, as happens in London, rather than on the road, where it leads to damaging transport practices and to many people, including some of the poorest and most vulnerable in this country, not getting the bus services that they should from bus operators.
Dr. Pugh: The hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley is a model of sanity, because there surely has to be scope for the extension of quality contracts. In
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this contribution I hope to increase my percentage of correct remarks—52 per cent. would be an improvement. The routes left when a rail service is taken away, as I said previously, are not inherently rational. After all people walk, and often drive, considerable distances to rail stations in the first place, so a bus service precisely mirroring a defunct rail service is not necessarily the best way to get them to their destination.
When a rail service falls, there has to be some rethinking of how we move people to the places they want to go to, particularly commuters, who have specific demands and requirements. There has to be flexibility—I think that the Minister will acknowledge that there will be flexibility—but if there is, there must also be opportunity for extensions, variations and integration with existing services. When Ministers hear such views, which are implicit in the amendments, they fear some sort of Liberty hall, where we all end up with quality contracts and a bus service such as the rather successful London bus service. Heaven forbid! I am sure we are much happier with whatever we have in our local area following privatisation.
If the Minister is unhappy with the words of the amendment, he must accept the thrust of it, because it is forcefully argued. Bus services, when they appear, cannot simply mimic rail services and be quality contracts at the same time. They may, in fact, be exotic, unworkable, unusable and unwelcome bus services. They have to be slightly better than that. We put up with such services from time to time as a temporary fix when the rail service goes down, but as a permanent requirement integrated into a local transport plan, it does not meet requirements or constitute a quality contract.
I accept that the Minister will consider the amendment and think it a carte blanche for PTEs all over the place to extend the scope of quality contracts in an ill disciplined, uncontrolled way, but there is a salient and important point in the amendment that must be addressed. The Minister said earlier that when Beeching simply advocated bus services instead of rail services, communities usually ended up without a bus service or a rail service. I have a slightly soft spot for Dr. Beeching and I wince a little when people mention him, because he is the only famous old boy of the secondary school I went to, so I cannot speak altogether ill of him.
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