Environment Audit CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers

Introduction

The RMT is the largest of the rail unions and organises 80,000 members across all sectors of the transport industry. We negotiate on behalf of our members with some 150 employers.

RMT would like to draw the Committee’s attention to the attached report A Fare Return which was commissioned by the RMT and which deals specifically with the accessibility of Britain’s railway including affordability and the need for a “whole journey approach”.1

In our written evidence to the Committee, we will seek to highlight the following points:

Access to public services depends upon affordable public transport options, particularly bus and rail.

Transport costs are a major barrier to using public transport for a number of social groups, including young people, older people, low income families, people with disabilities and jobseekers.

The government’s policies on rail fares, permitting rises well above inflation, will deter many individuals and families from taking the train to access services, employment or training.

The 20% cut to the Bus Service Operators’ Grant from April 2012 and the 28% cut to local authority funding are devastating local bus services, with one third of local authorities in England confirming that around 1,300 bus services have been either reduced or withdrawn as a result of government cuts.

“Transport poverty” exists in the UK and should be measured annually by the Department for Transport so that it can be effectively tackled.

How are the government’s current transport policies affecting the accessibility of public services (ie whether people get to key services at reasonable cost, in reasonable time and with reasonable ease)?

Rail

In relation to the rail network and the accessibility of public transport, RMT believes:

That fares are a major barrier to the accessibility of public transport.

That additional commercial freedom will lead to additional fare increases.

That additional fragmentation will lead to additional fare increases.

That personal security of passengers affects the accessibility of the rail network.

Fares

Rail fares are arguably the greatest barrier to the accessibility of public transport.

Britain has Europe’s highest commuter fares for both day returns and season tickets, and for the price of a completely restricted advance purchase ticket in Britain a passenger could generally get a fully flexible ticket in other European countries.

Commercial freedom and fares

The government’s proposals to increase the commercial freedom enjoyed by the private rail industry will inevitably lead to additional fare increases in the future, and also the neglect of less profitable parts of Britain’s rail network.

The establishment of the Rail Delivery Group, and the concurrent increase in regulated fare fares by RPI + 3% (6.2% from January 2013), clearly demonstrates the direction in which both the operation of the industry and the cost to passengers are being dragged.

Fragmentation and fares

RMT believes that more fragmentation will lead to more fare increases but the government advocates the further fragmentation and privatisation of the railway by recommending the breakup of Network Rail and the sale or leasing of its assets to the private train-operating companies. These proposals, if implemented, will increase costs and reduce efficiency leading to poorer services and higher fares. Further fragmentation will also have an adverse impact on the ability of the railways to contribute to strategic objectives such as helping economic growth, moving freight from road to rail and reducing carbon emissions.

One report, Rebuilding Rail, which was written by the Transport for Quality of Life think-tank published in 2012, and commissioned by the rail unions ASLEF, RMT, TSSA and UNITE, demonstrated that an average of £1.2 billion per annum is leaked from the privatised rail network, and that were this leakage addressed through the reintegration of the railway it would be equivalent to an 18% reduction in fares. The report showed that over £11 billion has been lost from the rail industry as a result of fragmentation and payments to shareholders since privatisation.

One example of both commercial freedom and fragmentation being proposed is the Scottish government’s desire to subdivide the Scottish rail network in terms of routes, fares, what is economically viable (profitable) and what is socially necessary (not profitable) in addition to creating entirely separate franchises for services such as the Caledonian Sleeper Services will be disastrous for Scotland’s railway.

RMT believes that the Scottish government’s intention to take a dual focus approach to the main franchise will see the introduction of different levels of specification and regulation on what it considers to be economically viable (profitable) or socially necessary routes.

Essentially this means shifting most of the responsibility for the socially necessary routes from the train operator onto the taxpayer and passenger, leaving the franchisee with the most profitable routes to exploit.

There is a clear danger of performance measurement differing on “economically viable” and “socially necessary” routes.

RMT believes that this agenda will greatly reduce the accessibility of the rail network through both the provision of services and fare increases and subsequently the accessibility of other public services. RMT believes that public transport should always be considered socially necessary and that this is particularly the case when the accessibility of other public services is being considered.

Personal security and accessibility

A lack of security for the travelling public can also significantly impact on the accessibility of the railway. There are direct associations between staffing levels and personal security.

Rail unions have identified over 20,000 jobs in the rail industry that would be “at risk” as a result of a number of recommendations arising from the McNulty Review and promoted within the government’s Rail Command Paper and the Initial Industry Plan. 14,300 of these jobs are on-train staff (6,800) and station (5,500) and ticket office (2,000) staff.

Anthony Smith, Chief Executive of Passenger Focus has stated that “all our research indicates passengers really like the re-assurance only the presence of staff can bring. Taking staff away from stations would represent a very short-term, short-sighted saving.”

Passenger Focus’s National Passenger Survey shows that “personal security” and “availability of staff” are two of the worst three areas of passenger satisfaction at stations. Personal security scored more highly on trains but less than half of all rail passengers were satisfied with the availability of a guard on their train.

Passenger Focus Wales published its report “The Passenger Experience at Unstaffed Stations” in February 2011. Among its main findings were: “with 54% of passengers rating their personal security as good, 9% lower than the ATW average, personal security at unstaffed stations is a concern for many passengers.”

An Independent Social Research report from April 2009 “Passengers’ Perceptions of Personal Security on Public Transport” stated that: “the presence of uniformed staff provided a sense of order and authority, and gave passengers confidence that anti-social behaviour would be challenged. Women and older people in particular were reassured by staffing initiatives, and often commented that seeing staff on trains, stations and at bus stations made them feel safer.”

In respect to specific security issues facing young passengers, the report found that: “reactions to staffing initiatives—especially among older teenagers—were different for young men and young women. Most of the young women we interviewed were reassured by seeing uniformed staff on trains and stations, especially if they were travelling at night. This was the case for the staffing initiatives included on Merseyrail, Southeastern, and the Colchester to Clacton line. As with adult passengers, they liked to see an authority figure who would keep order and challenge anti-social behaviour.”

In her 2005 research report “Women and Transport”, Kerry Hamilton of the University of East London found that: “women feel more vulnerable to attack and harassment than men and their greater concern with personal security ... This deep concern about personal security has important implications for the design of transport interchanges and waiting areas and for staffing levels.”

The report concluded that reduced staffing levels had direct impact on the perception of women’s personal security: “the removal of conductors, as a result of One Person Operation on buses and trains, which was introduced in the 1980s and was generally commonplace by the 1990s, resulted in reduced personal security for passengers, especially women ... Therefore the quality and level of staffing on vehicles and at bus and rail stations is of vital importance.”

In their response to the consultation on the Rail Value for Money Study, the RMT quoted research from a report by trade unions and passenger groups in relation to proposed ticket office closures on South West Trains which found that: “only 55% of passengers were satisfied with the current availability of staff at South West Trains stations. Only 62% of passengers say they are satisfied with their personal security while using South West Trains stations. Evidence suggests that staff presence is key to making passengers feel safer when taking the train.”

The “Women and Transport” report published by the Scottish Executive in 2000 found that: “many transport interchanges are seen to be unsafe by women, and more isolated bus stops and unstaffed railway stations are often avoided after dark.”

Personal safety was the issue that solicited the largest number of responses to the Scottish Executive study. The report found that: “the change which was identified most frequently related to the provision of increased staffing at stations and on public transport vehicles (as well as in car parks and cycle paths) in relation to women’s personal safety needs (57% of these respondents). Although a small number argued that an increased police presence would be beneficial, many more identified the need for an increase in public transport staff.”

In her report commissioned by the Labour Party Everywoman safe everywhere, Vera Baird QC states that “a significant number of respondents to the consultation raised concerns about cuts to travel budgets and services and the corresponding impact on that could have on women’s perceptions of safety.” Removal of station and train staff and closures of ticket offices were chief among these concerns.

The Bus Industry

Three times more people travel on buses than travel on the railways, so government bus policies affect more passengers, particularly in the area that the Committee’s inquiry focuses on. Any cuts to bus funding or services also disproportionately fall on people in lower income quartiles who are more reliant on buses than any other income group.

Most significantly in the bus industry since May 2010 have been the Coalition’s decisions to cut the Bus Service Operators’ Grant (BSOG) by 20% from April 2012 and local authority funding by 28%. This has led to the reduction or loss of over one thousand bus routes, mostly the result of local authorities either severely cutting back or withdrawing completely from the provision of bus services.

Research in 2011 by the Campaign for Better Transport (CfBT), commissioned by RMT, demonstrated the serious problems, including for accessibility that the Coalition Government’s cuts to BSOG and local authority funding will cause, particularly for the following sections of the population, who rely the most on buses.

Young people

Buses provide young people in further and higher education with vital access to centres of study (colleges, universities, libraries etc), not to mention affordable access to employment, training and other public services. Access to education is particularly vulnerable to rising transport costs. As the government’s Social Exclusion Unit noted in their report “Making the Connections: Transport and Social Exclusion” from February 2003,2 a significant number of young people regularly have to decline further education places because they cannot afford the transport costs.

The cutting of the Educational Maintenance Allowance by the current government will also accentuate the increased problems young people face in using buses to access education, as transport was one of the main costs that the EMA was used to meet.

Older people

Whilst older people have benefited from the introduction of concessionary schemes for bus travel, the extent of government cuts will result in some older people, especially in rural areas, not being able to access bus services at all. As we note later in this response, the number of bus services reduced or withdrawn as a result of current government policy is at least 1,300 to date. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that older people, who are more reliant on buses, will suffer a consequent loss of access to both bus and public services.

People on low incomes

Half of households in the bottom income bracket do not have access to a car—double the national average of 25%. Nearly two-thirds of people receiving income support or jobseekers allowance do not have a car. As a result of this, people on low incomes take three times the number of bus journeys than people in the highest income bracket, where only 10% do not own or have access to a car.

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, quoted in the Passenger Transport Executive Group’s report in 2009 on the effect of bus fare increases on low income families found that the minimum income required to achieve an acceptable standard of living had risen sharply in recent years compared to general inflation because of “significant rises in the price of certain commodities.....such as food and public transport.”3

Jobseekers

Despite Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s claim that jobseekers in Merthyr Tydfil could “get on the bus to Cardiff”4 to find work, the reality is that poor and unaffordable public transport links were the biggest barrier to employment before May 2010. The cuts to the bus sector announced since the Coalition came to power will undoubtedly have strengthened this barrier to jobseekers’ efforts to find paid employment, not to mention accessing public services.

Disabled people

People with disabilities are more reliant on bus services than non-disabled people, and are less likely to have the choice to take a car. Cutting bus services can mean cutting people’s only independent access to transport.

Rural communities

Communities in rural areas have to contend with infrequent, expensive, and in some areas nonexistent, bus services. This causes and increases social exclusion and suffering for many. People who fall into one of the above bus user groups are doubly disadvantaged if the also live in the countryside. We go on to examine the case of FirstGroup’s withdrawal from its bus contracts in North Devon in the next section which further illustrates the vulnerability of rural communities to bus service cuts.

Cuts to bus services and funding

The Campaign for Better Transport is also mapping5 the impact of the government’s cuts to bus services. From information posted by local campaigners on the CfBT map, we estimate that over 1,300 bus services have been either reduced or withdrawn in 53 local authorities (one third) in England since May 2010. This is likely to be an extremely conservative estimate, given that some local authorities, including in metropolitan areas like the West Midlands, are planning to make cuts to bus services at some stage during this parliament.

However, it should also be noted that net public funding for bus services has been on a downward trajectory in recent years, having declined by over 7% between 2009–10 and 2010–11.

The loss of bus routes alone would undoubtedly affect the accessibility of public services but coupled with the ongoing problems associated with over 25 years since deregulation of bus services outside London has accentuated accessibility problems, in terms of bus passengers travelling to public services. The absence of bus fare regulation and the consequent year-on-year rises since de-regulation is a particular problem. The most recent rises demonstrate this clearly. In 2011 the cost of an annual bus pass rose above inflation and in one Arriva service in the West Midlands by a massive 20%. Similarly, bus operators exploited the lack of regulation of fares to increase the cost of a single journey above inflation, with Arriva in the West Midlands again topping the chart with a huge 22% increase on the price of a single journey between Cannock and Walsall.6

We are cynical about private bus operators’ cries of hardship in the face of 28% cuts to local authority budgets. Whilst it is obvious that rising fuel costs, as well as government cuts to BSOG and local government funding, will raise bus operators’ costs, the instant response of either huge fare increases or, in the case of First Group in Devon, cutting and running from their contracts, is only possible due to de-regulation. This will undoubtedly deter passengers from using buses and will inhibit access to public services.

In fact, the recent case of First Group’s departure from its contract in North Devon provides an up to date indication of the cut-throat nature of bus operators’ decisions when there is a reduction in available public subsidy. Despite having made an operating profit of £134.4 million on its UK bus activities in the year to March 2012, the company has decided to pull out of around 50% of its UK bus operations. In North Devon in July this year, this resulted in over 100 RMT members previously employed by First Group being left in limbo by the company’s decision to cut and run, a trick FirstGroup have also pulled on a national rail franchise but which do not affect their recent successful (subject to the current legal challenge by Virgin Trains) bid for the West Coast Main Line contract.

The actions of First Group will undoubtedly affect access to public services for communities in North Devon, both in the short and long term.

In order to make amends for the damage visited on the bus industry in terms of wages and terms and conditions of the workforce, not to mention lost routes and reduced services, RMT would like to see the restoration of the National Bus Company to provide a public bus service in every region. A publicly owned bus company would be under no obligation to taxpayers and would simply be concerned with providing access to public services, goods and shops. In terms of the government’s notion of “localism” this should surely be the answer to a local bus market that simply isn’t working.

Responses to de-regulation of the bus industry outside London

The failure to even countenance Quality Contracts with local authorities provides further evidence that private bus operators are not motivated by access to public services or any other social aspect to the essential public service that they provide. Indeed, some of the intemperate and hysterical language used by private operators in areas like the North East of England, where the local authority is pursuing a Quality Contract, is frankly alarming, particularly to their employees and passengers:

Les Warnford from Stagecoach made clear he found the approach “outrageous”.

Officers were told by the Stagecoach representative that the plan was considered “blackmail” and “theft to keep local authorities officers in jobs and to steal operators’ businesses”.

In a series of threats, Mr Warnford said that he “would not see his buses taken away by some foreign train operator”, as he believes has been the case with Metro, adding that “Nexus and the transport authority were operating in the same camp as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky”.

He added: “If the transport authority were successful in the European Court, they would need to be prepared to take over bus services straight away as Stagecoach would immediately cease operations. Stagecoach would not hand over any of its depots to Nexus; the company would move its buses elsewhere and make all staff redundant.”

A Go North East representative warned the quality contract scheme could ruin the firm’s plans, saying that it could “threaten Go North East investment in the region and made it less likely Go North East would hand over commercial data for any other purposes.”7

This sort of threatening and aggressive defence of their vested interests is common in the bus industry and suggests that the recent Competition Commission’s report into Competition in the Local Bus Market8 which actually proposed greater “head-to-head” competition between bus companies for bus routes, would result in a repeat of the destabilising and regressive “bus wars” that were waged between operators in the 1990s.

Equally, successive governments’ tinkering at the edges of de-regulation has not worked in favour of passengers or bus workers and we would contend that this has also had a negative impact on bus passengers’ access to public services.

Whilst the Labour government were right to suggest remedies, we do not believe that for a mode of public transport as significant to people’s lives as buses should be left to the whims of the market or the political priorities of councillors. RMT believe that Quality Partnerships and Quality Contracts have failed to provide an appropriate brake on the excesses of bus companies under de-regulation, with only metropolitan authorities possessing sufficient economic and political power to slow the big five bus operators’ relentless pursuit of profit.

As with other modes of public transport, RMT firmly believe that the solution to the problems caused by bus de-regulation is to remove the profit motive and to restore the clear and coherent lines of funding and accountability that come with public ownership.

Are other policies (such as planning, education, health, welfare and work etc) adversely affecting the accessibility of public services and the environment?

The lack of planning laws ensuring that public services are accessible by affordable public transport is a major oversight and contributes to this growing problem.

Similarly, the location of new schools and hospitals should reflect accessibility issues for local populations. Hospitals, for example, are already the most difficult public service to access with a car, so it follows that public transport should be made available to counter this dangerous situation. This would involve a combination of policy changes from within the Departments of Health and Communities and Local Government.

Elsewhere, school transport decisions by central and local government are becoming significant for RMT members and members of other transport unions, as some of the big five bus companies have embarked in recent years on a policy of buying up smaller bus and coach companies to serve as subsidiaries that bid for local authority school transport contracts. This policy will undoubtedly impact on the accessibility of schools.

An example of this is provided by Damory Coaches, a small firm in Dorset that was bought up by Go Ahead in 2011. Go Ahead also runs commercial bus routes in Dorset and our members in both Go-Ahead and Damory Coaches tell us that there is increasing amounts of cross over between the jobs they are asked to do. In the longer term this will undermine the terms and conditions of the workforce.

Go-Ahead have also bought up small bus and coach firms in Norfolk, Suffolk, Northumberland and Buckinghamshire in recent months and are expected to bid for local authority contracts through these subsidiary companies.

Whilst we acknowledge that this industrial issue is not the primary concern of the Committee’s inquiry, it is significant because it demonstrates how a market led solution to the long standing concerns of teachers, parents and pupils over the standard of school transport is being pushed through without any consultation or even any impact assessment of accommodating this laissez faire option.

Do decisions on the location of public services adequately reflect available public transport infrastructure and the environmental footprint of the transport needed to access them?

Not in our view.

How significant are any adverse impacts for accessibility and the environment?

RMT maintains that transport is also a public service which requires high levels of accessibility.

The adverse impacts for accessibility and environment are highly significant, given the fact that the accessibility of public transport is key to increasing modal shift.

How effective is the Department for Transport in furthering the accessibility agenda?

The Department for Transport is severely restricted in its role due to the government’s policy of introducing permanent austerity onto Britain’s transport industry.

In relation to the accessibility of public transport the Department for Transport’s Code of Practice on accessible train stations, drafted in co-operation with ATOC and Network Rail states that “one of the most effective ways of making services more attractive to disabled passengers is to provide properly trained staff” and continues that “all railway passengers like to know, in advance of their journey, where to go when they reach the station and how to find the appropriate train service. This is especially true of disabled passengers, who may have particular concerns about ... help available from staff.”

Additionally, the Department for Transport accessibility strategy Railways for All states that “staff are seen by many passengers, and by disabled passengers in particular, as important at times of disruption, especially unplanned engineering works or delayed trains and in improving personal security, all of which increase confidence to travel by rail.”

This is clearly at odds with the government driven cuts to the numbers of railway workers and staffing on trains and stations.

In terms of the bus network, the Department for Transport is not currently effective in addressing accessibility issues, largely because it does not have a regulatory role, even in London where Transport for London oversees the performance of the bus companies on the franchises in the capital.

Whilst the current Bus Minister’s emphasis on partnerships between local authorities and bus operators is a step in the right direction, it is only a small step and remains to be seen whether or not it will lead to any improvements in the affordability, reliability, extent and accessibility of local bus services in every region of England, where the DfT has notional responsibility.

However, a measure of the difficulties the government and the DfT face in improving accessibility and other areas where private bus operators consistently sell bus passengers and workers short, can be taken in Norman Baker’s own local authority in East Sussex, where spending on buses dropped by £310,000 between 2010–11 to £2,110,000 in 2011–12 and 18 bus services have been either reduced or withdrawn. At the same time, the go-ahead has been given by the DfT for the £16 million Bexhill-Hastings Link Road, clearly promoting car use over integrated public transport in the Bus Minister’s own local authority.

We are also concerned that even the modest improvements in accountability, affordability and reliability that Quality Contracts could bring to local bus services will be blocked by the government’s apparent opposition to including in the “Better Bus Areas” (BBA) any local authorities that sign a Quality Contract. BBAs would attract more funding for bus services and the omission of areas under Quality Contract would effectively scupper QCs completely, despite major Integrated Transport Authorities such as Conservative-run West Yorkshire and Labour-run Tyne and Wear making moves towards QCs for their areas.

This illustrates that the DfT is unwilling, at present, to challenge the power that the big five bus operators have assumed in the bus sector outside of London as a result of de-regulation and which will continue to have negative effects on bus passenger access to key public services.

How should the transport-related accessibility of public services be measured?

Transport-related accessibility of public services should be measured by the ability of a passenger to reach the public service, on public transport, at reasonable cost and in a safe and secure way, and regardless of any disability.

This requires an end to unstaffed stations, unstaffed ticket offices and substantial investment in improving the accessibility of public transport.

How can decision-making in government better reflect “social” and accessibility impacts, alongside environmental and other considerations?

Monitoring the age-profile of communities might enable local transport policies to reflect the extent of reliability of local people on hospitals, schools etc but this could also make the local transport budget more vulnerable to political whim, particularly if those funds are not ring fenced.

Do social and accessibility concerns conflict with environmental considerations?

We do not believe that they should conflict, as social need should promote the most accessible and sustainable forms of transport (buses and trains) over the car.

Would a measure of the transport accessibility of key public services, in a similar manner as “fuel poverty”, be useful for policy-making (and if so, how should it be defined?)

RMT believes that a measure of transport poverty should be introduced and should be taken into account when the government is considering matters should as fare increases.

As the recent Sustrans report9 has demonstrated, “transport poverty” already exists in the UK and we believe that it should be measured and mapped by the DfT on an annual basis.

14 September 2012