Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-335)
MR LES
WARNEFORD, MR
DENIS WORMWELL,
MS NICOLA
SHAW, MR
MIKE COOPER,
MR PETER
HUNTLEY AND
MR JOHN
WAUGH
28 JUNE 2006
Q320 Chairman: Jolly good, you must
have such a nice time you do not know if you get any complaints.
Mr Huntley?
Mr Huntley: Ditto, Chairman.
Q321 Chairman: Mr Waugh, who complains
about your buses?
Mr Waugh: It is an insignificant
number.
Q322 Chairman: Do you train your
drivers?
Mr Waugh: Yes, they are trained.
Q323 Chairman: And how long do they
train for?
Mr Waugh: It is on-going basically.
They start with two or three days' training when they start with
us and then they get training on and off the job as the years
go on.
Q324 Chairman: Should local authorities
have control over your fare prices?
Ms Shaw: No.
Q325 Chairman: Come on, somebody
put your nose over the parapet! Mr Warneford, you have just sold
a bus company recently. You must be rich enough to run the risk
of disagreeing with somebody.
Mr Warneford: I must say I am
personally not, Chairman, but should they have control? No.
Q326 Chairman: Why?
Mr Warneford: Because they would
have to take all the revenue risk.
Q327 Chairman: I see. Mr Wormwell,
yes or no?
Mr Wormwell: No, I think revenue
is key to this. We do operate the services, set the fares and
take the risk on the revenue.
Q328 Chairman: Ms Shaw?
Ms Shaw: I agree with the previous
witnesses except I also think we take the cost risk and the two
parts of the equation are important.
Q329 Graham Stringer: What outside
of London are the public getting for increased subsidy going into
the bus service and where there are less passengers and poor reliability
and punctuality figures? What should I say to the people I represent
when there is more money going into buses and there is a worse
service and their taxes are going into it, either nationally and
locally? Why should there not be some accountability of that?
Ms Shaw: We seem to have got into
the notion that London is the only place where we have seen growth
in bus patronage. That is certainly not the case. In York, in
fact we are getting greater growth than we are getting in London.
There are places outside London—
Graham Stringer: There are certainly
towns and we have had evidence on that, but in every region except
for London bus patronage is in decline, these are government figures,
and yet the money is going up. So can you tell me what I should
say to the people I represent who pay their taxes, including nationally,
what accountability there is for that money going into your bus
companies?
Q330 Chairman: Briefly please. Mr
Wormwell?
Mr Wormwell: I would just say
the subsidy is going down in the West Midlands.
Q331 Chairman: That was not the question.
The question was what would Mr Stringer say to the people voting
for him about this subject. Mr Waugh?
Mr Waugh: The question should
be directed to the local council and council staff who are dishing
out the money. I find it absolutely amazing that they do not actually
audit the buses themselves. They have not cancelled any contracts—
Q332 Chairman: Are you talking about
auditing physically? Do you think they should send their people
round the streets to start auditing how many buses turn up and
how late they are and how many people are on them?
Mr Waugh: Or they should buy it,
as we do. We buy audited figures every month. At the end of the
day they are paying all this money out and they have no idea,
as far as the local authorities are concerned, what they are getting
for that money. In fact, I would go further than that. When they
have forums when passengers gather and shout at the generally
assembled bus operators and council staff, the minute people complain
about the service they are getting on the buses the council officers
are saying, "Take it up with the bus companies," but
who is buying that product? The people who are doing the buying
on their behalf are the local authorities.
Q333 Chairman: They do not have the
right to dictate, do they? We are talking about quality contracts
again so we are going round in circles here.
Ms Shaw: The local authorities
through the tendered services are dictating the services that
we provide. One of the points we make is that the costs of providing
the services have increased and those costs are necessarily reflected
in the tender price.
Q334 Graham Stringer: But there is
a great deal more money going into buses which is not to do with
just letting the contracts. They are only letting contracts in
the deregulated part of the system by fuel subsidy and via improvements
to bus shelters and everything else, so there is a considerable
amount of money going into buses.
Mr Huntley: I think it is important
that we differentiate between subsidy and the other forms of public
sector payments to our industry. Concessionary fares are not a
subsidy as far as I am concerned to my business. If the pensioner
comes along and pays a fare, I get the fare. If the local authority
decides it wants a scheme whereby it pays the fare instead of
the pensioner, then I end up with exactly the same amount of money.
That is not a subsidy in my books.
Q335 Chairman: You do if it is the
same number of pensioners, do you not Mr Huntley. If you get a
vast number more coming on because they are paid for, actually
you are doing quite well.
Mr Huntley: Then the local authority
absolutely discounts the amount it gives us. It does that very
astutely. We get on average for our free travel 46% of the fare.
They are already reclaiming from us more than half of the fare
to allow for the growth in pensioners, so that is not a subsidy.
On the fuel duty rebate, I can understand how that can be perceived
as a public subsidy. I just put it in the context that this happens
to be an administrative arrangement for our industry. If we were
the rail industry or the air industry we would simply pay no tax
and nobody says the government is paying a subsidy on air fuel
or rail fuel. In our industry it happens to work that we pay the
tax and we reclaim part of it, and for some reason that seems
to fall as a subsidy rather than what the other industries are
allowed.
Chairman: I can assure you this Committee
has lots to say about subsidy across the transport industry, Mr
Huntley, whatever form it takes. Thank you very much, ladies and
gentlemen, you have been extremely helpful. We are very grateful
to you and we shall look forward to your homework which we would
like to receive quite quickly.
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