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Westminster Hall
Wednesday 15 March 2006
[Mr. Martyn Jones in the Chair]
Buses (Deregulation)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Alan Campbell.]
9.30 am
Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley) (Lab): Before I get on to bus deregulation, I want to say I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Minister is retiring from the job. I wish her well in what she does in future. In the surprisingly long time—22 years—that I have been dealing with Transport Ministers, I have come across some, from both main parties, who were less than competent, and I am pleased to say that my hon. Friend is not like that. She has done a good job. Although I suspect that we shall not see eye to eye in this morning's debate, I am sorry to see her go and wish her well.
The purpose of the debate is to explore why, in the part of the public transport system provided by buses, which account for 84 or 85 per cent. of journeys in the system, there is effectively an apartheid regime between London and the rest of the country. I should like to use our time to see whether there is any justification for maintaining one system in London, which works, produces good public transport and benefits passengers, and another system in the rest of the country that has the opposite impact.
We have already convinced the vast majority of Members of Parliament outside London that their constituents would benefit from a regulated system. Last autumn, Communicate Research did a survey of all MPs and found that 84 per cent. of Labour MPs and a majority of Members of Parliament were in favour of extending to the rest of the country the regulated system found in London. The only thing to surprise me about that was that only 84 per cent. of Labour MPs responded in that way. I have never found one who did not want regulation in the passenger transport and shire areas of the country.
The background is that, in London, bus use is increasing, and in every region in England it is in decline. The most dramatic decline is in south Yorkshire where, since deregulation, bus use has dropped by 62 per cent., which is extraordinary. It is not a matter of an even spread of usage—the people who use buses are among the poorest in the country. Nine out of 10 people who use buses are in the bottom income bracket, and 60 per cent. of bus users have no access to cars. Therefore, if something goes wrong with the bus system, we are allowing the mechanisms that increase social exclusion to continue to operate.
I cannot talk about the regulated system in London as being more effective and producing better public transport without talking about the increasing funding gap. I shall mention it only once. Over the past seven years, in the north-west, although similar statistics will be found in every region, capital expenditure—not the revenue for buses—has risen from £157 million to
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£295 million, whereas in London it has risen from £226 million to £667 million. That is another background unfairness.
Before I try to analyse the possible reasons for what has happened, I should like to give some statistics. I suspect that I could spend the whole hour and a half available to us giving out appalling statistics about transport usage, but I want to use the headline figures showing the changes that have happened, and to ask why they have been allowed and how we can stop the process going further.
Fares in the English passenger transport executive areas have gone up 86 per cent. since deregulation. In London, they have gone up 36 per cent. Over the past five years, fares in the PTE areas have gone up 9 per cent. In London, they have gone down 4 per cent. Patronage since deregulation across all the PTE areas has gone down by about half. In London, it has gone up by just over half. In the past five years, patronage in the PTE areas has gone down 8 per cent. whereas it has gone up more than a third in London.
We need to understand why there has been such a dramatic difference between London and the rest of the country. I do not believe that it is justifiable, but we should consider ministerial responses to the figures and some statements from officials. The Government have three responses to the shocking figures that I have mentioned. One is that we are not going back to pre-1985 days and re-regulation. That is a complete red herring. I have never heard anyone say, in the debate on this matter that has been going on as long as there has been deregulation, that they want buses brought back into public ownership and a return to the exact regulation that existed before 1985. What most of us want is a system similar to London's, or preferably a better one, because when a system is adopted it can be improved.
Secondly, the Secretary of State for Transport regularly points out success stories. His favourites seem to be York, Oxford, Brighton and Cambridge. He asks why, if those towns or small cities can improve patronage on their buses, big areas such as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle cannot. There is one obvious reason. His examples are much smaller areas, dominated in nearly every case by one operator, with one centre, so that traffic restraint can work—people do not have much of a choice in those areas.
That situation can be compared with what happens in a polycentric urban conurbation such as Manchester. The city of Manchester has the highest percentage bus usage of any of the metropolitan areas, but Bury, which my constituency borders, has one of the lowest in the country. It is necessary to take account of different circumstances when attempting to make like-with-like comparisons. The west midlands and Greater Manchester clearly have much more in common with the London conurbation than with York or Cambridge, which are much smaller.
Do the people in those towns like what is happening? I suspect not. A letter to the York Evening Press from Chris Nelson, complaining bitterly about price increases that he had to pay in York, asked
"are these higher fares just because First is the only bus operator in York, and people such as the elderly, single parents, or others on low incomes have no other choice of transport?
Park and Ride fares in York are simply extortionate—no other way of putting it. You have to pay the equivalent of a day ticket just for a return fare."
He goes on to say that the system in York does not work. It is, therefore, neither wonderful nor comparable, and it is not a good reason for saying that the same could happen in Greater Manchester.
The third ministerial reason is that London is different, and it is—it is about two and a half times larger than Greater Manchester or the west midlands. In terms of buses, however, it was no different before regulation, and the real change is that there is now a regulated system in London and a deregulated system outside. Before deregulation, 48 per cent. of all public transport journeys were in the PTE areas and about 27 per cent. were in London. That situation has reversed, with nearly half of bus journeys in London and only 27 per cent. in the PTE areas. That is a dramatic switch round. Comparable areas, which had similar penetrations of bus usage, are now completely different. One reason for that is the regulated system, and the other is that there is three times more subsidy per passenger in London than in the rest of the country. Those, then, are the ministerial reasons.
I advise hon. Members who want to understand some of the thinking of the Department for Transport to get hold of a transcript of the Public Accounts Committee's proceedings on 23 January. At that sitting, the Committee gently kebabed the permanent secretary at the Department. He is a good civil servant, and I make no criticism of him. Indeed, he is a man of integrity and intelligence, but he was trying to defend what is more or less indefensible. He did not quite plead the fifth amendment, but in many cases he pleaded ignorance of what is happening to transport in our major urban conurbations. Let me go through some of the reasons that he gave.
First, the permanent secretary said that local authorities in PTE and passenger transport authority areas would begin to have a service similar to that in London if they would only restrain car use, but that is not really the case. Greater Manchester is spending about £50 million on quality bus corridors, and other urban conurbations are doing the same. However, because the system is deregulated, the bus companies are moving on to the radial routes to make bigger profits, and the network is contracting. Although passenger usage on the radial routes might increase, therefore, there will be a worse service for some of the poorest people in the country
Incidentally, the Government are tough in assessing the benefits of investment in public transport systems such as Metrolink, but no real assessment is done of the usefulness of investment in quality bus corridors, or of whether such corridors improve public transport—the idea that they will bring about improvements is an article of faith in the deregulated, privatised system. In the light of the facts, however, that is not a belief that I share. One justification that Mr. Rowlands, the permanent secretary, uses is that quality bus corridors will help to get rid of congestion, and that is what has happened in London. However, the Department's answers to parliamentary questions show that two thirds of bus delays are caused not by congestion, but by the unreliability of private buses—they simply do not turn up.
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The permanent secretary also says that, although there might be concentrations of bus usage, there are almost guaranteed to be three bids for subsidised routes. However, that is completely wrong. Many of the subsidised routes that PTEs put out to tender are simply not bid for. In Greater Manchester and the other PTE areas, there is only one bidder for many routes. The cost of such tenders has gone up by about 20 per cent.
Arriva, which is no different from the four other major bus companies that dominate the industry, makes no secret of what it is doing. In answer to questions at the Public Accounts Committee, the permanent secretary said that those bus companies were "economically rational" and "passenger maximising", but they are not. They are certainly profit maximising, but that is not the same thing. If they can concentrate their services along routes from which others have been cleared by means of bus priority measures, they will make their profits there and remove their buses from other areas. Although the permanent secretary seemed to be wilfully ignorant of that, Arriva's half-year report stated:
"Outside London our approach, to what is currently a mature market, is to focus on a twin-track strategy of targeting investment to deliver growth and eliminating low margin and loss-making routes."
That means that companies will remove routes on which they make a certain amount of money. The 53 route in Manchester, which was there for 80 years and always had good patronage, has just gone. Instead, companies will run routes up and down the main radial routes, which is bad for public transport.
Whichever way we look at the Department's analysis—that there will be more bids, that there is competition and that quality bus corridors will be the solution—it does not fit with the facts. Should not the permanent secretary understand that, in a market in which the private sector is exploiting the people I represent, bus companies make 50 per cent. of their profits on only 25 per cent. of their business? That should, at least, be cause for concern. The Department said that it did not understand that and that it was not aware of those figures, and I would be happy to give officials the references for all the sources of information in my speech at the end of the debate if the Department is willing to listen.
On the subject of listening, I have tabled parliamentary questions to ask how many times the Department meets individual bus companies and officials and members of PTAs and PTEs. I have been told that meetings happen regularly, but I am rather interested in how often they take place, because there is evidence that Government policy is biased towards the private bus industry and against public officials from PTEs. I therefore ask the Minister whether officials will meet PTE members and whether detailed figures will be given out.
We have reached an extraordinary situation. I have been in favour of buses all my political life because the people I have represented as a councillor and a Member of Parliament have needed them. However, the system that now operates in metropolitan areas means that being in favour of buses is not the same as being in favour of public transport—they can be quite different things. Bus priority measures can be introduced, but the public transport system will get worse. That is quite a shocking state of affairs.
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At the same time, the private companies are demanding more public money. Some £2 billion is going into the bus industry and the companies' profits are going up, but the service outside London is getting worse. Brian Souter of Stagecoach attacks all the PTEs because passenger numbers are going down, but, at the same time, he has his begging bowl out. Like most private sector bus company operators, he says, "You're not doing anything, so please build us park-and-ride schemes with your own money." If the private-sector bus industry were really creative and innovative, it would find those resources itself, instead of making returns on capital in the PTE of more than 50 per cent.—another fact of which Mr. Rowlands was not aware.
A number of other hon. Members want to speak, so I will finish by asking how we can justify a situation in which the travelling public in areas such as Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire have to face four fare increases a year. In London, they face one increase a year—or one fare adjustment, because sometimes the fares in London go down. How can it be good for public transport when in the past four years there have been 9,000 service changes in Greater Manchester? I assume that the figures are similar in other areas. Most people who want to increase bus patronage recognise that reliability and stability in the network are important factors. People need to know where the buses are going, but 9,000 service changes is instability of an extraordinary kind, which leads people to invest in cars and not go on buses.
How can we justify not doing anything about a system in which punctuality in virtually all PTE areas is 76 per cent. and reliability is only 92 per cent.? Those shocking figures are mostly down to the companies, not conditions on the road. How can we justify investing £2 billion but not looking at how we target the operators' grant money? We just pay it out, but do not try to use the tiny levers that are left to get a public transport system. The money is paid out without any controls at all. How can we justify having underfunded, under-resourced traffic commissioners, while companies such as FirstGroup have failed and have had to have hearings and investigations into their failures? The system means that traffic commissioners have to take services off, which is not good for the travelling public, even if they were poor services. When services are taken off in the north of England, FirstGroup registers a subsidiary and carries on as before, with its unreliable, unsatisfactory services.
I do not see how any of that is justifiable. Our public transport system is going in the wrong direction. Most of the evidence is that our urban areas compete effectively internationally if they have good public transport systems. The situation is a brake on what they are doing, and I am worried that we are going in the wrong direction.
Last year, at the request and subsidy of Services Employees International Union, a north American trade union, I went to the States to see how FirstGroup and other bus companies operated, and I was quite shocked. The safety record of the bus companies in this country is not good—I think that 15 per cent. of buses that are stopped by the commissioners have to be taken off the road immediately for being unsafe—but what is happening in the United States is worse. I do not want us to go down that route. I have tabled questions and
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asked for guarantees that, if we go to a yellow bus service, we will not follow the route that FirstGroup has taken in the United States.
I know that the Minister has a brief and is in the last days of being a Minister in the Department, but I ask her to accept that the situation is not justified. None of us wants to return to the 1984 system, which was not as responsive as it should have been, but we do want value for the £2 billion that is invested. We want local control, so that we can say to our constituents, "This is a public transport system that will get you to work on time." Constituents of mine have lost their jobs or not got to hospital for important appointments because FirstGroup did not turn up, at the same time as its profits are increasing. That is simply unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will be as positive as she can be in response to those points.
9.55 am
Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD): I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) for raising this crucial issue, which matters a lot to people throughout the PTE areas and beyond. I reiterate his comments about the Minister, because I have always found her to be extraordinarily helpful and a model of courtesy with all hon. Members. She has not let power in any sense turn her head and will, I am sure, remain precisely the same person when she resigns from the ministerial ranks.
There is a quotation, I think from the former Duchess of Westminster, to the effect that anybody on a bus after the age of 30 is a failure. On Monday, coming home after our vote on identity cards, I made use of my Oyster card. It was the first time I had gone home at night on the bus. The bus—the 77A—arrived promptly at 11.15 pm. I got on it, used my Oyster card and found that it was full of a range of people, all of whom were perfectly happy and amicable. I travelled quickly, made a five-minute journey to my destination, got off and was within a few yards of my flat.
I compare that with the experience that I commonly have at home, where I rarely use the bus service. Why? Because throughout Merseyside buses are, by and large, infrequent and expensive, especially for families. The age profile is quite different. The nice thing about getting on a bus in parts of Merseyside is that one never feels old, because almost 80 per cent. of the passengers are pensioners using free travel, which for years the council tax payer has funded. In some ways that is a bracing experience, and quite different from being on a tube in London, where one can sometimes look along a carriage and find oneself the oldest person in it. None the less, the climate is completely different.
Another reason for not using the buses locally is that the routes are often indirect, and my experience with buses in other cities does not encourage me further. For reasons that hon. Members will be able conjecture, a year or so ago I got a bus to Hodge Hill in Birmingham. I was surprised to find myself the only person on a full bus to be wearing a suit, collar and tie. There was a definitely a class element to bus use in that area, which does not exist in London.
One could argue that there is a big subsidy in London, public control and elements of car restraint, for example. I do not have a car parking place at my flat,
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which encourages me to use the bus. However, in areas such as Merseyside, we see a dire, depressing and declining picture. Eighty per cent. of the routes in Merseyside are straightforwardly commercial and 20 per cent. are subsidised. Two companies—Arriva and Stagecoach—operate 90 per cent. of the routes, with some small companies around the edges.
Over the past 10 years, the number of passengers using supported routes has increased by about 4 million, but the number of people using commercial routes has declined drastically by 37 million. It has gone down by 20 per cent., but there has been no change in mileage. The buses are going round as per usual, but they are going round with greater cost and fewer passengers. Supported mileage has increased dramatically since 2000, by about 2 million miles. The subsidy has tripled and the cost per mile of running a bus has doubled.
That is largely because of the commercial operators pulling out and deciding that they do not want to run routes that are not profitable enough. Often, when Merseyside PTA tries to work round that, it uses circuitous routes to satisfy passengers and the paying public. Contrary to expectations, during local transport plan 1, the bus fleet, commercial and other, on average got older. That is despite substantial publicity for public transport on Merseyside and substantial investment by the PTE in infrastructure. There was substantial innovation in, for example, the use of LPG vehicles and bus lanes proliferated galore. Clearly something is not working. I have no reason to believe that things are working a great deal better in Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle or Sheffield. That seems to be the general story since privatisation.
We have gone for and are trying unsuccessfully to thrive with a market model for public transport. The key to improvement, if there is to be improvement, is thought to be competition. The enticement for all Governments is that improvement via competition will negate the need for subsidy, so that subsidies can be reserved for other services—for example, buses in and through deprived areas and the rural bus grant. Essentially, it is a market-driven model or, to be more precise, a profit-led model. It is not a demand-led model. In many cities and towns such as Southport, which I represent, there is a huge demand for late-night public transport to take people back from clubs, pubs and so on, but it is simply not provided. It does not suit the operators to provide it, or perhaps it is problematic, but it is a real social need and there is a real public demand.
The model does not work because, in many places, as other hon. Members are likely to say, there is nothing like real competition; it is more like cartels. From time to time, the bus operators have been referred to the rather limp-wristed Office of Fair Trading when there seems to be a local monopoly in a particular area. It points out that another operator, perhaps 20 or 30 miles away, can be used if someone wants to travel 20 or 30 miles to avail themselves of a bus for which they have no real need. The OFT's rather limp-wristed response has not allowed the benign effects of competition to kick in.
That is all against a background of the Government not, strictly speaking, leaving the market alone. They allow subsidies by passenger transport executives; they allow traffic regulations to impose bus lanes; they allow
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companies to receive profits. They essentially preside over the situation. As the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley pointed out, it is apparent that bus ridership has fallen and the only saving grace for the Government is in London where the situation has been sustained and has improved.
People have despaired of public transport and have found that travelling by car has not become more expensive. The cost of car ownership relative to bus ridership has fallen. Increasing environmental concern has changed the degree of Government tolerance. Furthermore, in some cities, the use of cars has made congestion intolerable even for car users. I know that the Government are having a rethink; I know from veiled comments by the Secretary of State for Transport recently that he is having a rethink.
What appears to have prompted that rethink as much as anything else is the prospect of rolling out congestion charging throughout the country. People know that congestion charging works in London but it works because there is a tube system, a good, affordable bus system and good public transport infrastructure. That does not exist in other conurbations, so the people who would suffer most from congestion charging would be those with less money. They could not easily afford the congestion charge but they would have to use their cars to go to work if there were no public transport system, and they would pay a substantial premium for doing so.
The Government are linking the transport innovation fund—a big pot of gold that local authorities can try to dip into and that carries with it the requirement of making the right noises on congestion charging—with some latitude on the development of quality bus contracts and quality bus partnerships. They seem infatuated with the idea that congestion charging is a solution to congestion. They accept that something must be done about buses. I believe that they will do something about that in the not-too-distant future. I hope that this debate helps them to proceed more quickly with the process of rethinking.
I do not believe that congestion charging and quality bus partnerships, or increasing regulation are necessarily the Siamese twins that the Government believe them to be. I think I am right that, before we had congestion charging in London, the figures for London bus use were enviable compared with the rest of the country and rising. All along, with and without congestion charging, it has had greater public control and substantial public subsidy. I think that London might thrive without the current level of subsidy. Things could improve substantially so that it did not need the current level of subsidy. That could be due to increased ridership, with people such as me starting to use buses, increased efficiency with new buses, and increased familiarity. Many people do not use buses because they do not know where they go. They have the unnerving feeling that they will be whisked far away into the distance and have a longer walk than they would have had to start with.
In the House of Commons and among the wider public, everyone says that they believe in public transport. It is a nostrum from which no one demurs. No one, except perhaps the former Duchess of Westminster, says that public transport is a bad thing. I am not sure that we all believe passionately in the public actually using public transport, but there is clearly no point in having it if it does not entice the public out of their cars and encourage what is today called modal
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shift. There are clear gains for the environment and in terms of congestion. Strangely, there is also a forgotten gain—some of us are old enough to remember it—of social cohesion. When one gets on a bus and finds that it is not full of people waiting to attack with knives, one starts to talk to other people. That is not a bad thing for society. We have talked about social exclusion, but social cohesion is a strange and incidental by-product of people using public transport, except on the London underground, where protocol demands that people talk to absolutely no one for fear of being thought to be insane.
It is self-evident that the Government's public transport policy on buses so far has produced a flat zero in modal shift outside London. They already have some regulation and use economic levers, so they must consider how they can use regulation and economic levers better. This is not a plea for nationalisation because buses never were nationalised. It is false to suggest that there was an age when the municipal authority provided the entire pubic transport infrastructure. I was brought up in Liverpool where Ribble, Crossville and Liverpool city council bus companies provided popular services and people did not discriminate between private and public providers. We are talking realism. The situation requires that something be done. It is demonstrable that the current economic and legal levers are insufficient. If that does not change, public transport in general will deteriorate.
Mr. Martyn Jones (in the Chair): Three hon. Members have indicated that they wish to speak. The wind-ups will start at 10.30 so perhaps hon. Members will be brief.
10.9 am
Mr. Paul Truswell (Pudsey) (Lab): I add my congratulations to those already been expressed to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) on securing this debate, and I echo the kind comments that have been made about the Minister. Those of us who have been pursuing this matter for some time will probably have to go through the process again with her successor.
I shall try to reduce the length of my speech by missing out some of the statistics that my hon. Friend used. In west Yorkshire where I come from, it is clear that quality and standards have fallen dramatically since deregulation. Fares have risen by almost 50 per cent. in real terms and the number of passengers has fallen by 40 per cent. However, as he said, the position in west Yorkshire is probably far better than in the other passenger transport executive areas, where patronage has fallen overall by 48 per cent.
The experience in my constituency, as in so many others, is that companies can pick and choose what services they provide, and that they make escalating profits while providing a poor service. Services are chopped and changed, buses are missing or late, and passengers feel angry and powerless about that, for all the reasons that my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) analysed quite forensically. Passengers turn to Metro, their MPs or councillors, but find that we are equally powerless in this situation.
In my constituency, there is effectively a monopoly provider in the shape of FirstBus, which operates all the commercial services. Evening and Sunday services are
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funded by Metro on a subsidised basis. The local network—this picture has been described already—comprises high frequency routes such as service 4 to Pudsey, 16 to Farsley and 42 to Old Farnley, together with a combination of routes on the busy Leeds-Bradford corridor. The remainder of services are attended to largely through Metro.
In the nine years that I have been the MP there, the area has been subjected to successive service changes, all of which were based solely on the generation of profit. As my hon. Friend said, we have moved from a situation in which there were loss-making routes, which were shed by the operators, to one in which the routes are making a profit, but not enough profit in the eyes of First.
Recent changes to services such as the 97, 647 and 651 in the Guiseley and Yeadon areas have resulted in a significant reduction in links with nearby Bradford, which is a major urban centre on the doorstep of my constituency. That has caused tremendous hardship for regular users of those services. Through Farsley, there is a regular service every 10 or 15 minutes, yet half a mile away, older people living in a sheltered housing complex have lost their vital link into the Farfield estate.
There is no obligation—we know this full well—on commercial operators to undertake any sort of customer consultation, so links to local facilities such as health centres, post offices and supermarkets are often ignored when operators plan their services. The bus network does not respond to social needs, whether they are long-standing or have emerged over time. It is an indictment of the system that there are no links for, probably, 40 per cent. of the people who use Wharfedale hospital directly from the communities of Horsforth, Yeaden and Guiseley. Recently, a major primary care facility was set up at Eccleshill in Bradford. Its catchment area includes a large proportion of my constituency, but there are no public transport links for them.
Although Metro provides some of the funding for services in my area, constraints on public finance mean that those funds are limited. In the bad old days, as we might refer to them, before regulation, there was a cross-subsidy, and the surpluses made on profitable routes could be reinvested in routes that were socially desirable. Despite its drive to improve profits locally, First seems to be incredibly slow to reinvest in the renewal of its bus fleet. I understand, from Metro, that about 45 per cent. of First's fleet is low-floor and Disability Discrimination Act compliant, and that the average vehicle age is about seven years. That is not the sort of modern-day service that people should have to cope with.
Limited monitoring is available to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, which means that much of the monitoring has to be carried out by Metro using manual observation. I understand that First in Leeds operates 99 per cent. of services. Since October 2005, Metro has been increasing the amount of monitoring that it does, the results of which reinforce my hon. Friend's indictment. First in Leeds is operating 79.7 per cent. of services on time—not more than one minute early or five minutes late. That sort of service causes passengers to vote with their feet and, as the hon. Member for Southport says, to opt for other forms of transport, including the private car.
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Fare levels are controlled by local bus operators, which are therefore in a position to make up for the loss of patronage that they have created by the way in which they have run services, which are also affected by demographic changes, network changes and low-quality service delivery. Between April 2004 and January 2006, in Leeds, First increased off-peak fares by 36 per cent. and peak-time fares by about 11 per cent. Industry cost figures for the period up to June 2005 show a 9 per cent. increase, so we can see that there has been a continued diminution and deterioration of services, but constant profit and growing fares.
As my hon. Friend said, the Government often talk about contestability and value for money, especially in relation to education, schools and the NHS, and the public sector is forced to compete with the private sector. In west Yorkshire—and, I suspect, in other PTE areas—we do not have a market that promotes competition and efficiency, and drives down costs. We have a system that promotes inefficiency and drives up costs. Metro PTE is able to influence directly only about 20 per cent. of the services for which it provides a subsidy. There is little competition for tenders, so it is difficult to test value for money. In west Yorkshire, in the 12 months to September 2005, of the 87 contracts for local bus services that Metro offered to companies, 70 were returned with a single bid, although every contract was bid for, unlike in my hon. Friend's area.
Since 2002, lost mileage on tendered services has more than doubled in west Yorkshire. Tendered services usually operate at times of low traffic volume, so congestion is not the reason for lost mileage, although it is often quoted as the reason by operators. That simply is not true in this case.
In her reply to my Adjournment debate last November, my hon. Friend the Minister talked about successful partnerships in Brighton, Cambridge, Nottingham, Oxford, Telford and York, and about impressive growth in areas such as Bedford, Exeter and Peterborough. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley analysed why those comparisons are not appropriate and never will be. That indicates that the Government still have not got to grips with the sophisticated problems facing bus transport in major conurbations. This might be a belated question, but why is it that the Minister and her colleagues can never add Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester to that list? My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley did an admirable job in demonstrating the difference.
The Minister and her colleagues put their faith in partnership and robust second local transport plans. There seems to be a strong assertion, or at least an implication—my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley referred to this—that PTEs should be doing more and that they are deficient, but I am never quite sure what that extra something is supposed to be. I would certainly welcome some enlightenment on that from the Minister, her successor, or anyone else who cares to shed light on the issue.
Partnership can and does work to an extent. It is not as though PTEs such as Metro are not willing to engage in that. In west Yorkshire, we have one of Europe's
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largest guided busway initiatives, a high occupancy vehicle scheme, and a public transport box in Leeds city centre that has cut journey times on some routes by between 10 and 30 per cent. PTEs are not resistant to partnership, but it simply is not enough. Surveys in west Yorkshire found that one in four frequent bus passengers experienced unacceptable lateness, or the non-showing of vehicles in the previous week, and that 49 per cent. had the same problems in the previous three months. Complaints to Metro about bus operators have doubled since 2000. Between 2003 and 2004 alone, complaints increased by 40 per cent.
People often say to MPs about public sector providers such as the NHS, "Eeh, if you ran a business like that, you'd soon be on the rocks." Yet the bus system is a business, and it is being allowed to run like that. It is still not providing the service that our constituents demand. I was going to say a little more about the hurdles that PTEs have to overcome to get quality contracts. The Minister has heard the argument before. The threshold is set too high. The "only practicable way" requirement will simply not be met without a great deal of difficulty and legal challenge. The threshold must be lowered.
I apologise for the time that I have taken, but we have to find a way to achieve a better and fairer balance between passengers and profit.
Mr. Martyn Jones (in the Chair): If the remaining Members who wish to speak before the wind-ups try to limit themselves to four minutes, I think we can get them in.
10.21 am
Mr. David Clelland (Tyne Bridge) (Lab): I will try to be brief. I must start with an apology. I have to go to a meeting with the Lord Chancellor, and he is not a man who likes to be kept waiting. I apologise to the Minister and to the Opposition spokesmen because I will not hear their winding-up speeches, but I will read them with great interest.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) on securing this important debate. It is true that deregulation has been bad for public transport, and I agree with much of what was said by the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh). I suspect that this is one of those debates where there will be a great deal of agreement across the Chamber, at least below the Gangway. We will get to hear what will be said at the other end.
It is certainly true that bus companies tend to have things their own way these days. I agree that something of a cartel is working. In the Tyne and Wear area, Stagecoach and Go North East seem to dominate all the bus services to the exclusion of anyone else. As a result of deregulation, bus use is in serious decline. As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley pointed out, before deregulation, 48 per cent. of English bus trips took place in PTE areas and 27 per cent. in London. Now that has been reversed, with 27 per cent. of English bus trips in PTE areas and 44 per cent. in London. That has to have something to do with the fact that services in London continue to be regulated.
As a result, costs are rising. The price of new tendered local bus services is rising way ahead of inflation. Between 2003 and 2004, the price rose by 12.1 per cent.,
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three times the rate of inflation. That was a marginal improvement on the 15 per cent. rise between 2002 and 2003. The result is cuts in services. Approximately 35 per cent. of local authorities planned to make cuts to supported bus services by the end of the 2004–05 financial year in order to stay within budget.
It is not all bad news: there has been very good news for profits. FirstGroup, made a £103 million operating profit from its UK bus division in 2003–04. UK bus operations account for 37 per cent. of FirstGroup's revenue and 48 per cent. of its operating profit. Returns of 11 per cent. on an investment are not unusual in the bus industry. My hon. Friend has referred to returns of as much as 50 per cent. It is indeed a profitable business.
Reliability and the provision of services have suffered, not least in Tyne and Wear. Services west of Gateshead have been cut and priority services have had to be introduced at public cost in order to provide a reasonable service to the people in that area. Passenger journeys in Tyne and Wear have gone down by 56 per cent. since the deregulation of buses. PTEs are struggling to continue to provide decent services for people, as opposed to the profitable services that the bus companies seem exclusively to be interested in. Nowhere is the budget being constrained more than in the Tyne and Wear area.
I refer my hon. Friend the Minister to the problems besetting Tyne and Wear PTE because of the Government's free fare system, which will be introduced in only a few weeks and is exclusively related to bus journeys. In Tyne and Wear, we are now £5.5 million short of the money needed to run free bus services next month. That is a serious problem. In order to make up the shortfall, the PTE will have to use £2 million of its reserves. It will have to cut concessionary fares for young people and students. Next week, it will have to announce cuts in services to pay for that Government-inspired scheme. That cannot be right and it is up to the Government to resolve the problem.
I congratulate the Department for Transport, which has done everything possible to assist. In fact, it has provided £1.7 million to ensure that the free fare system can be transferred on to the metro. If the free fares had exclusively been for buses, the metro system would have suffered badly. That has resolved a problem, but we still have the shortfall to resolve.
I, too, congratulate the Minister on her term of office and I wish her well for the future. Perhaps she could perform one great last service. Next week the Chancellor will announce this year's Budget. As last year's Budget brought in the free fare system, perhaps he could resolve some of the unintended problems with the scheme in this year's Budget.
Not only is there a funding shortfall for the scheme in a number of local authorities, and most seriously in Tyne and Wear, but the scheme is related only to local authority boundaries. That is causing some difficulties. In this year's Budget, the Chancellor—the Minister might have a word with the Treasury—could introduce a national free fare scheme for pensioners. It could be administered by the Department for Transport. In one of its famous meetings with the bus companies, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley referred, it could negotiate to introduce a national system, so that pensioners could use the free pass
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wherever they went in the country on local bus services. That would be a great service. If the Minister can do that before she leaves, she will be remembered for ever.
10.26 am
Stephen Hesford (Wirral, West) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) on securing the debate. Not only has he got me back on the subject of buses, but this is my first Westminster Hall debate, although we are not in Westminster Hall but in Committee Room 10. I am delighted that that is the subject of the debate, because one of my personal projects at the last election was to work with my passenger transport executive, Merseytravel, to secure a form of re-regulation. If I were to quibble about anything about today's debate, it would be the name. Instead of "Buses (Deregulation)", it should be "Buses (Re-regulation)". I would have much preferred a positive slant on the debate.
Why is it that three of my constituents from Upton recently contacted me to tell me that the 497 service from Saughall Massie to Birkenhead had been withdrawn by Arriva? That caused severe hardship to one elderly couple who cannot get to their doctor as they did before. They have to get two bus services, neither of which are particularly reliable. In September last year, constituents from West Kirby were very distressed when the 82 bus service, run by Avon buses, from Heswall to West Kirby was cut in half, making them wait for two hours on that circular route, which is mostly used by the elderly. In October last year, I heard about the number 17 bus service operated by FirstBus, which is regularly late and has led to problems because the gentleman involved cannot get to work properly.
The background as regards Merseytravel and Merseyside has already been given by the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), so I will not go into that. We receive letters regularly. In my naivety, when I first received letters about such matters, I used to write to the PTE to ask whether it could intervene and do something. It got fed up and said, "Look, Stephen, no, we can't. We can't interfere with commercial services. We can't operate or try to operate those services."
So what is to be done? I want to tread a middle course. I understand that there could almost be a revolution, which would unwind what happened in 1985. I do not think that anyone is arguing for that. My PTE tells me that, under the Transport Act 2000, reluctantly but as positively as it can, it wants to consider quality contracts. I shall pick up from where my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) finished. My local PTE tells me that under—is it section 6? Everyone is looking at me mystified. Are we getting some information?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Karen Buck) : Not on that.
Stephen Hesford : In that case, I shall move on. My local PTE says that under the relevant section a quality contract can be used to bring in a form of re-regulation if that is the only practical way to do so. I am told that it is a cumbersome, bureaucratic process, but I am also told that PTEs, working together, are determined to try to crack that nut. I urge my local PTE to do that; in fact,
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I urge all PTEs to do it, including those in west Yorkshire, the west midlands and the north-east. As I am dipping my toe in the water of this debate, I also ask my hon. Friend the Minister whether any applications—from what I am told, they will come in the summer of this year, so that people can try to make progress in 2008—can be considered sympathetically, rather than bureaucratically.
10.31 am
Paul Rowen (Rochdale) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) on securing the debate and on an excellent contribution. I also commend the contributions made by other hon. Members; we have had a very good debate. I, too, send my best wishes to the Minister. I have been in the House only a short time, but I have always found her very courteous. Although we have not always agreed, we have at least had that dialogue, so I wish her well.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley represents an urban constituency, as I do. Some of the examples and statistics that he gave show why deregulation has been a disaster and why we need a change of policy. Buses are important, although they are often treated as the Cinderella of public transport. They are frequently the choice of the majority: 85 per cent. of all public transport journeys are, and will continue to be in the near future, made by bus. If we are to do something about congestion in urban areas, we must deal with some of the problems that hon. Members have raised.
When the Transport Act 1985 was introduced, we saw the privatisation of the National Bus Company and the municipal bus companies—I am thinking of Greater Manchester Buses North and Greater Manchester Buses South—and what was then termed the freeing up of the market. We were promised more competition, better bus services and cheaper fares. However, we have had none of those benefits. Instead, there was a brief period of bus wars. I am sure that we all remember when buses were chasing each other for custom along the road—always along the most profitable routes, not on estates. Those services do not run at times when people without cars need them to run.
That time has gone and what do we have? We have a private monopoly instead of a public monopoly. Although 80 per cent. of all services in PTE areas are commercial services and only 20 per cent. of those are subsidised, 65 per cent. of all bus services in 26 of the 36 metropolitan districts are operated by one bus company. In 17 areas, the figure is 75 per cent. In my constituency of Rochdale, 65 per cent. of all bus services are run by First. In Oldham, the figure is 84 per cent. In Stockport, with Stagecoach, the figure is 81 per cent. In Sefton, with Arriva, the figure is 78 per cent. In Birmingham, National Express has 86 per cent.
A monopoly in itself is not a bad thing, but if we compare the services in PTE areas with what we have in London, we find that they are characterised by four things: frequent fare increases—four increases last year were mentioned—frequent changes in bus timetables, often with little notice; poor reliability and service; and services operated for the benefit of shareholders rather
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than customers. For example, when Arriva recently announced a fall in profits, primarily because it had lost the northern rail franchise, it said that the bus fares would have to go up. That is not improving the service. That is operating bus services, as has been said, as a cash cow.
Many customer service surveys have shown what we all know: the main concerns of bus users are reliability, punctuality, driver attitudes and service stability. A bus does not turn up only once, and a passenger is lost. If there is to be a modal shift and if we are to meet the target of a 10 per cent. increase in bus use in areas outside London, there must be a change of image and in operation. As we know, that is not happening. We have seen a 19 per cent. fall in bus use in PTE areas; the figure was 3 per cent. last year. At the same time, we have seen a huge increase in bus fares: 86 per cent. between 1985 and 2005. That is not acceptable.
Let us compare the rates of return in PTE areas with that in London. First Manchester's rate of return is 17.8 per cent. Arriva Manchester's is 15.1 per cent. Stagecoach Manchester's is 14.5 per cent. The margin in London is much lower: 8.7 per cent. The situation that I have described cannot continue. We cannot operate a service whereby bus services are changed and fares are increased not to bring about improvements in services but to ensure that profits are protected. If we are to get our city regions operating, we must consider a change in the system.
The Secretary of State said in an answer to a written question from the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley that we could not return to the 1985 situation. As has been said, none of us here wants that. However, we do want quality bus services reliably operated in areas where people need them and at times that will get people out of their cars. If the current system continues, that will not happen.
Quality contracts were mentioned. In answers, the Secretary of State has said that that is the route that we have been going down, but, as has been said, those contracts are extremely difficult and time-consuming to operate. It is pertinent that, since the time to introduce those contracts was reduced last November from 24 to six months, not one contract has yet been applied for. That shows some of the difficulties. The contracts are too complicated; there are too many stipulations. We are told that competition will work, but clearly competition is not working. It is not providing regular public transport.
PTEs need to be able to plan and develop an integrated transport policy. It was said that, with the introduction of congestion charging, that may be possible, but as the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) said, we have to consider what is happening. I am a member of the Greater Manchester passenger transport authority. We have not said that we would oppose such a move. However, we have always said that the public transport network has to be in place before charges are introduced. If not, we will not encourage local people back on to the buses.
We need to consider changing the rules relating to quality contracts. Passenger transport authorities are working on the issue and are committed to introducing quality contracts, but operated as they are currently,
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they will not be a success. Liberal Democrats want more local decision making. We want PTAs to have the powers that they need to introduce the contracts as part of an integrated transport system. That means similar powers to what exists in London. That is not nationalisation. In 1985, the real difference was not about privatisation or nationalisation; it was about regulation, and that is what we do not have at the moment. We need regulation. Yes, there is the issue of cost. As the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley said, the costs and subsidy for London are much higher. I am not arguing with that. However, if we consider the bus operators' grant that is paid directly to those companies, and some of the margins that they achieve—the profits of companies in the PTE areas are even more excessive than those made in London—we must be able to find a way of operating a similar service without massive Exchequer input. We must think about that, because we have to have a public transport system if our cities are not to be log-jammed with cars.
The current system is not working. It has failed local people. I hope that, in her last few days in her post, the Minister will set in train a thorough review of the existing situation, which will show her that the private monopolies exist for their own benefit and not that of local people. I hope, too, that the Government will use the information from the review to give us a proper, integrated transport system.
10.41 am
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con): Like all other hon. Members, I wish the Minister well when she stands down from her Front-Bench role. Today is the first and last time that we shall have the opportunity to debate together. I note that the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) has been consistent on this subject throughout his long period in Parliament. Today, he has been a forceful advocate for his side of the story—indeed, so far we have heard only one side of the story. I should like not only to address that side but to put forward some countervailing points that we need to bear in mind.
The hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) said that this is a debate about public transport, and we all support public transport. That is true, but what we are talking about is how it is delivered, and how it might be improved continually. In 2000, having recognised that bus travel numbers decreased in many previous years, the Government produced the 10-year plan, in which they set themselves the target of increasing bus journeys by 10 per cent. by 2010. They also said that they wished to improve the punctuality of the whole service nationally. Against that, they set many years' decline in bus usage, increased prosperity, increasing car ownership, the increasing cost of bus travel and the falling cost of motoring. Clearly, the Government have recognised that the target that they set themselves was unattainable—it has been revised twice. We now have a target for not only buses but bus and light rail, increasing usage by 12 per cent. and growth in every region.
I listened with interest to the arguments of the hon. Members for Manchester, Blackley and for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell), who quickly dismissed the successes in some other areas, telling us, for instance, why Brighton's success was not applicable to Manchester. I visited the
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bus company in Brighton two Fridays ago. Just before we dismiss it so readily, let me quote from three paragraphs of a letter from Roger French, the managing director of Brighton and Hove's bus and coach company:
"The key ingredients that we have put into the partnership mixture are frequent services—80 per cent. of our passenger journeys are taken on a bus"
"at least every 10 minutes; simple pricing offering value for money; continued, sustained investment in new buses taking advantage of constantly improving technology and comfort and a passion for excellent customer service . . . The Local Authority's ingredients are the installation of effective bus priority measures on the road; a robust parking management and enforcement regime; effective enforcement of traffic regulations associated with bus priority measures . . . accessible bus stops which are pleasant to wait at with real time information . . . As we discussed the private sector is best placed to deal with the first 5 ingredients . . . and . . . local authorities are best placed to deal with the second 5 ingredients."
One of the problems in the deregulated market in parts of the country other than London is that bus companies are becoming increasingly frustrated at what they see as the failings of the local authorities, and local authorities are frustrated at what they see as local bus companies failing to invest or to be responsive. As I listened to the arguments of the hon. Members for Manchester, Blackley and for Pudsey, I wondered whether, if they met Mr. French, they might think that a lot of what he said may appertain to their areas. I recognise the frustrations that occur. Although the operators have the freedom to decide when and where to run routes, they are banned from co-ordinating services with other operators. The local authorities can offer subsidised, non-commercial services, but there are restrictions on the deals and on what they can negotiate with regard to service levels.
There are many frustrations, but is that an argument for ditching the system, or for improving it? I wait to hear the Minister's response, but I expect that she will bear in mind what the Secretary of State said about buses in Edinburgh:
"the route is more extensive and imaginative now than when the local authority ran the service . . . So I would be wary of saying that we should go back to the pre-1986 situation."—[Official Report, 2 July 2003; Vol. 408, c. 404.]
I am listening to the arguments being advanced today on the advantages of the PTEs, but I am guided by a National Audit Office report published in December 2005, which found that the Government were highly unlikely to meet their revised targets. When one considers the NAO's rationale and the points that it makes, one wonders whether it is saying that we should abandon what is in place at the moment, or modify it.
The NAO touched on better use of concessionary fares. That subject has already been mentioned this morning. As a result of the Government's initiative, at random, I phoned 25 local authorities around the country. None of them told me that the proportion of the money that was being provided under the new national scheme would cover the scheme in its area. I wonder how many authorities the Government have contacted; how the Government can say that the £350 million that they are going to provide will cover the bus concessionary scheme; how many of those authorities are using a subsidy scheme, or a block payment; and how many people, who were able to do so
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before, are now prevented from travelling across concessionary areas. What has been put in place will cause a levelling down rather than a levelling up of schemes.
The NAO report advised councils that they would do well to consider the way in which they procure services. Had I time, I would quote more extensively from the report, because it is useful to bear that in mind. It says that
"the administration costs of procuring bus services are not high. But . . . if authorities currently tendering for individual routes or small packages of routes adopted a more strategic approach . . . they could achieve average savings equivalent to . . . some £26 million."
I wonder whether, in the context of improving the system, the Minister will talk about the ability of local authorities to relax the rules to allow scope for greater co-operation across PTEs and concessionary areas. That might make for some efficiency of provision. She will be aware that the NAO report was extremely critical of the Government in certain respects, including their failure to consider the transport plans that had been drawn up, the increase in usage and the need for proper monitoring of provisions that were being put in place. Will she comment on that?
I am a London MP, and I have heard much today about the paragon of virtue that is London. Those of us who live in London do not necessarily recognise those virtues. Bus usage is up, but fares are also up by 35 per cent. and that figure hides the cost of the concessionary scheme that Mr. Livingstone has put in place. Those of us who are local councillors as well as Members of Parliament have noticed that every year we are told how much we have to provide for the extra concessionary scheme, and that that usually comes off our social services budgets. That damages our ability to care for people at risk.
Mention has been made of Oyster cards. Some of the pricing irregularities are worth noting. London has done away, for no good reason, with the family railcard, so it now costs a family of my constituents, two adults and two children, travelling one stop from Wimbledon Park to Wimbledon something like £9.10 rather than the £3.40 that it cost them less than three months ago.
It is also true that our bus services are the most expensive per mile in the UK. Like all other hon. Members, I can quote the routes about whose failings my constituents regularly write to me. Route 200 springs to mind—it is criticised for poor delivery and poor punctuality and because "it never turns up". A consultation exercise decisively rejected the number 493, but it was imposed on us. It causes traffic chaos through one of my wards every day and I get at least one letter about it every week.
Mr. John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Stephen Hammond : I have a minute left, so I am sorry but I will not.
The paragon of virtue that London has been described as must be carefully considered before we go too far in saying that everything in London is wonderful
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and everything elsewhere in the world is not. The hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley said that quality bus corridors would not necessarily ensure greater reliability or quality, but that does not square with the briefing from the transport authority, which states that journey times on completed quality bus corridors are now 10 times faster in peak areas. I would have wished to go into that in more depth, but I note that my time is running out.
Turning the clock back to the pre-1984 era is not the answer. The answer is to make the current system work and to improve it, and I look forward to the Minister's remarks about how the Government intend to address that.
10.51 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Karen Buck) : I begin by thanking all hon. Members for their kind words on this my penultimate day as a Minister. I should resign more often. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) on securing this debate and on initiating a useful set of contributions. I listened to what everyone said with a great deal of interest. I hope that it will be of some reassurance that I do not intend to try to make the case that everything is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds. The Department recognises that there is a case for change, and I shall outline some of the changes that can be made.
I wish to respond to some specific points, particularly those of my hon. Friend. I assure him that this is not the only opportunity that we have had to hear the concerns of passenger transport executive areas. There is regular official dialogue with PTEs and Ministers—in fact, last week I met bus partnership forum representatives of the authorities as well as the operators—and meetings take place every couple of months at both the departmental and Government office level. I assure him that we do pick up on these arguments. I am aware from those activities and from the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell), for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) and for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) that there is real strength of feeling about these issues and that there are genuine concerns that we need to address.
We all agree on the importance of the bus as a key strand of public transport policy. Buses provide about two thirds of all public transport journeys—4 billion journeys in England, with about one quarter in PTE areas. They play, and will increasingly play, a vital role in tackling congestion and promoting accessibility and social exclusion.
Outside London, bus deregulation has been with us for some 20 years. Those years have not been easy for buses because of the growth in car ownership as well as the factors that hon. Members set out today, in particular the increasing cost base, which is a reality for whoever provides bus services on whatever basis. We must respond to the genuine and almost historically inevitable relationship between economic growth and rising car ownership.
It is fair to point out that deregulation has brought some benefits as well. It is important to keep some balance in the debate. There has been considerable
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investment over the years in new and better quality buses that has not been borne by the public purse. The average age of local buses has fallen to 7.2 years, which is comfortably below the target set by the industry earlier in this decade.
Mr. Leech : Will the Minister give way?
Ms Buck : Once only and very briefly, because of the time.
Mr. Leech : I accept that new buses have been constructed, but they tend to be put on the most profitable routes. All the old dodgy buses are left on routes that struggle to get passengers, creating a situation in which people are discouraged from using those less profitable routes.
Ms Buck : I understand that. It is part of the argument that hon. Members have been making. However, we must recognise that investment has been made that is not from the public purse. That provides opportunities for us to invest elsewhere.
One of the central points that hon. Members made was about the comparison with London. I appreciate and understand, not least as a London MP, that conurbations outside London look enviously at the patronage growth in London under the franchise system. I disagree with the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond): as a London MP and the proud holder of an Oyster card that I use regularly, I believe that due credit should be given to Transport for London and the Mayor for the governance, supported by Government money, that has brought about the increase in bus patronage.
It is not true that it would be possible to duplicate the London experience elsewhere. There are several reasons for that: the demographics, population density and size of London; the limited availability of workplace parking; the historic use of the rail and tube networks, which are part of the general public transport system; and the brave decision to introduce the world's first major congestion charging scheme, which has been part and parcel of the measures to increase bus patronage by increasing bus speeds in central London. All those factors together mean that car ownership in London is far lower than the national average: 36 per cent. of London households have no car, compared with 25 per cent. across England as a whole, and only 20 per cent. have two or more cars, compared with 31 per cent. nationally.
Furthermore, although it is true that there is generous Government support for London transport—rightly so, as it is the capital city—about half of the £2.8 billion per year investment in public transport comes from other sources such as the congestion charge and the council tax payer.
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Hon. Members' comments reflected the fact that experience elsewhere shows that growth can be achieved outside London, particularly if local authorities and bus operators enjoy good relations. I shall not run through the list again because of the risk of irritating hon. Members, but it is not just in historic towns—Brighton and York among others—that we have achieved considerable success. Nottingham is also a good example. Last summer, I visited my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne Bridge, who is not in his place, and observed what was then the fastest growing bus route in the whole of England, and the guided bus way in Tyne and Wear, which is a spectacular success and shows what can be done when the challenge of providing new buses and responding to issues around bus reliability is met.
Time precludes my running through many of the issues, but let me say a little about bus priority measures. It is absolutely the case that any investment that is made in bus services must be considered in the context of improving bus priority to ensure that speed and reliability are enhanced. All the bus operators tell us that that is one of the key factors that attracts people to using bus services.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley mentioned quality bus corridors. I believe that they are a good way of improving traffic flow for buses. They can bring in more custom and allow operators to increase frequency and to invest in new buses. That in turn can improve custom on other routes, and address some of the concerns that hon. Members have about radial routes operating to the exclusion of other services. In fact, measures that increase bus use dramatically on some priority routes can be a way of improving the service overall. Operators can use profits to cross-subsidise other marginal services, thus creating a virtuous circle of improved bus services.
There are many successful quality bus corridors in the PTE areas, and they are often underpinned by quality bus partnership agreements, under which the operator undertakes to provide a higher standard of service. Though voluntary, such agreements have proved to be an excellent channel for improving bus services across the area. We monitor the effectiveness of quality bus corridors through the local transport plan policy and do not rely on inspired guesswork.
There has not been much use of the statutory quality partnership power in the Transport Act 2000. That is partly because, where there are effective voluntary agreements, local authorities have not seen the need to use that power, but we encourage its use—
Mr. Martyn Jones (in the Chair): Order. We must now move on to the next subject for debate.
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