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8 Jan 2007 : Column GC16

(a) the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee;(b) associations representative of travel concession authorities; and(c) such other persons as the Secretary of State thinks fit.”

The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 11 and the other amendments in the group are probing. I acknowledge immediately that they would have the financial implications that we have been talking about and I am sure the Minister will be able to enlighten us on how much they would be. However, I shall put on record the principle behind the amendments. They would allow for the provision of door-to-door transport for those unable to access mainstream public transport and would also allow a companion to accompany them who, under this scheme, would be exempt from cost.

Even where more accessible vehicles have been introduced on public transport routes, they will never be a viable option for some disabled people, even with assistance. Concessionary fares should therefore also be available on community transport and door-to-door services.

Other disabled people may need door-to-door transport because of the inaccessibility of the pedestrian environment already referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Low, or because it is a rural area and too far to go on foot. For example, there may be a lack of dropped kerbs or barriers on the footway—all the things that impact on making it difficult for people with disabilities to walk.

The amendments would also allow for a companion to travel free with a disabled person, both inside and outside London, where it is necessary for the disabled person to be able to make the journey because of their impairment. Not all disabled people are able to access mainstream public transport on their own and it is not only people with physical or sentient disabilities who are so affected. There are also particular issues for people with phobias or who experience high levels of anxiety or disorientation in busy or unfamiliar places. Those people may also need someone with them for support.

Concessions should be available to allow a companion to travel free of charge where it is necessary to access mainstream public transport. That is already provided for under both the Welsh scheme, on which the amendment is based, and the scheme in Dorset. I beg to move.

Lord Low of Dalston: In supporting the amendment, I draw attention to the problem caused by the infrequency and lack of availability of buses, which is a particular problem for people living in rural areas. Organisations representing older people have welcomed the move to

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free cross-border transport in England in 2008 and, in due course, across the UK, but remain concerned that people living in areas without bus services or those unable to use buses will continue to be disadvantaged.

The Minister laid considerable stress at Second Reading on the role of concessionary travel in promoting social inclusion. It seems inequitable that the concession continues to exclude older people who are particularly vulnerable to social exclusion because they are dependent on forms of transport other than the bus, whether because they cannot use public transport for mobility reasons or because they live in a rural area with no access to a car. It is currently estimated that 27 per cent of people over 65 living in rural areas have no access to a car. We also know that rural areas are those where a proportion of the older population is growing the fastest.

In a recent survey which asked what alternative transport arrangements people would have to make to access similar services if their local post office closed, Age Concern found that only 46 per cent of respondents said that they would use the bus; 36 per cent said that they would use their car or that of a relative or friend; but 33 per cent said that they would need to use a taxi, with smaller numbers ticking the box labelled dial-a-ride or community transport schemes. Obviously, if we add up those percentages, we see that some people were ticking more than one box.

There is thus a powerful case for extending the scheme to modes of transport other than the bus. The Bill continues to provide powers for local authorities to offer more generous provisions than the statutory minimum but we know from past experience that local discretion simply results in a postcode lottery. Funding pressure on local authorities to meet the requirements of improved statutory concessions has also resulted in the withdrawal of more generous schemes.

Thus there is a case for extending the Bill to provide access to transport for all people over 60. Age Concern has estimated that a concession for community transport would cost in the region of £25 million, and that has been confirmed by the figures referred to earlier by the Minister when we were discussing Amendment No. 3. At the moment we do not know how to estimate the cost of those who are able to access buses but whose problem is the frequency or availability of the service.

Age Concern would like to see a provision in the Bill for people to have the choice of applying either for a bus concession or for tokens to an annual maximum that would enable them to access alternative forms of transport, such as taxis or, more probably, community transport schemes. Some local authorities, such as Portsmouth, already offer such a scheme. If such provision is not seen as possible at this stage, perhaps the Government could produce a report within the next year or so on a concessionary solution for people who do not have bus services in their area or who, for various reasons, are unable to use buses.



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Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: I apologise to the Committee that I have been coming in and out but the Committee on the Mental Health Bill is taking place simultaneously. I took part in the pre-legislative scrutiny of that Bill and so I will be coming in and out of this Committee.

It may seem odd that I, who live and work in Wales, would take part in a Bill that affected England but I was asked by Help the Aged to table the amendment in my name. I agreed to do so because of the patient population that I know of only too well who cannot access bus travel. We should not underestimate such people, particularly those who are older, who have bone disease, whose balance is perhaps not always what it could be and who cannot travel on buses. Some of these patients have tried to do so but have fallen and sustained fractures. I know of such cases personally.

As my noble friend Lord Low has said, in areas where there are flexible concessions, they are well taken up, are extremely popular and are certainly not abused. In many areas there are flexible concessions but the individual also has to top them up in order to travel a further distance. Those are also very popular because they allow people to get out of the isolation of lonely living, where they see nothing but the four walls in which they live—day in, day out. It is incredibly important for the health and welfare of our population that they remain as mobile as possible. In some parts of the country there are no reasonable bus services for such people to access.

The principle of the amendment in my name is not to make the Government do anything at this stage but simply to give the Secretary of State powers that he can use in future, if he so wishes. I hope that the Minister will not turn his back on putting such increased powers on the face of the Bill. They would allow the Secretary of State to put pressure on local authorities to look at flexible concessions and to introduce imaginative schemes in their locality. For those that do not, the Secretary of State would ultimately be able to wield a stick, rather than simply a carrot, in trying to persuade them.

It is vital that in a Bill as important as this for maintaining mobility in the population we do not ignore the very people whose mobility and mental health are under greatest threat by allowing them to remain isolated because they are too old or too disabled to fall within the provisions of the Bill and able to use it in a practical way.

4.45 pm

Lord Davies of Oldham: I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken to the amendments in the group. I want to emphasise to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that if I have been less constructive in my response to her amendments, there is nothing personal intended—it is the nature of the amendments that dictate the quality of our exchanges.

I am not sure that I will be much more helpful with regard to this group than I was with regard to the last. I emphasise to the noble Baroness that local authorities have the discretion to offer travel concessions on other forms of public transport, such as dial-a-ride services

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and taxis, and for accompanying companions for disabled persons. A national scheme, however, raises profound issues of cost. The noble Baroness’s amendments do not constrain the extent of these provisions. It is one thing to talk of concessions on buses, which we can define in terms of the services being provided, it is another to talk of offering the same support to taxi services. It is not indicated here that there would necessarily be any mileage constraint on that, nor is it clear who the accompanying person might be, by any definition.

Not that the noble Baroness’s intention is anything but entirely proper and to be supported in terms of objectives of enhancing opportunities for these categories of people, but one can see the open-ended nature of these amendments and the implications for costs. She has sufficient local government experience to recognise—but I am sure a word with her local friend, who also plays such a prominent part in local government, would confirm—that it is unlikely that local government would accept such an open-ended commitment without some idea of the potential costs and how it would guarantee that they were adequately reimbursed.

Local authorities that exercise their role in this area are doing so responsibly and with care. The trouble with these amendments, if they were to be introduced into the Bill in national terms, is that local authorities would lose the discretion and would be obliged to meet the requirement. The Committee will recognise just how extensive those commitments might be. I assure the Committee, however, as I have done on the previous amendments, that the Bill preserves the flexibility for local authorities to offer concessions on other forms of public transport and to offer alternative travel token schemes, if they wish to do so, under the discretionary schemes set up under the Transport Act 1985. There is also a power, under the Transport Act 2000, for the Secretary of State to extend a national concession to other modes of public passenger transport, including accessible community transport services.

We have the legislative powers, therefore, to make progress in these areas. I am obviously hesitant—rather more than hesitant; reluctant—about accepting amendments that appear to impose upon local authorities not areas of discretion, but obligations, some of which look very open-ended indeed. We are not in a position to accept amendments that extend the principles of the scheme that far.

I also recognise the strength of the representations made again by the noble Lord, Lord Low, on the question of the problems of disabled people with regard to the infrequency or inadequacy of local buses, particularly in rural areas. I emphasise to the Committee that there are many users of rural buses and we are concerned to improve the quality of those services. We are providing over £50 million a year to local authorities to help them support rural bus services. The grant has risen from £32 million a year when it was introduced in 1998 and will provide more than £55 million in 2007-08. So we are committed to increasing support for rural buses. I recognise the valid point of the noble Lord, Lord Low, about the availability and accessibility of these services, but I

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emphasise that we are concerned to improve them, both for the disabled and for the general community as a whole.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, spoke to her amendment and emphasised the progress that has been made in Wales. I am well aware of her extensive experience of that. Even before she bobbed out from the Committee, the noble Baroness might have already detected that I was a little reluctant to accept examples from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland in relation to the Bill. This is not because I am discriminating against the Welsh, being Welsh myself, the Scots or the Northern Irish, but simply because their circumstances, the provisions they make, the extent and costs of their schemes, are very different from the provision in England. It is entirely for the Welsh Assembly to make its decisions in these matters—I would be the last to intrude upon such deliberations—but that does not mean that its experience is automatically translatable into the English experience.

I do not see why we should oblige local authorities to offer any particular concession. If we oblige them to do so, by definition we take away the discretionary nature of the schemes they employ. They have the power to make concessions if they wish to do so. Some English local authorities are very large indeed. They have populations which, although not as great as the whole of Wales, are certainly as great as a substantial part of it, and it is only right that they should have elements of discretion too.

As I indicated earlier, we have no plans to extend the statutory concession to other forms of transport or to accompanying companions. Any such extensions are possible in the future. I have no doubt that noble Lords on the Committee and elsewhere and others of like mind—there are many in government who will join with them on this—will look in the future towards the enhancement of the present schemes. Any extensions can be effected under this legislation; we have the provisions in place. It will therefore be recognised that while the amendments may look valuable in extending the scheme, they would not actually increase the powers to achieve their objectives in the future. They would present a hefty bill immediately the legislation became law rather than when a more mature reflection had been made and resources were available.

The noble Baroness will recognise that I am not against the principle she is putting forward—far from it. I am saying that we have the legislative framework within which such a principle could be implemented in due course. To avoid unintended consequences, any decision to extend the national statutory entitlement would have to be fully funded and the impact fully considered. The problems with regard to certain forms of transport and companions will need definition lest the opportunity for abuse completely overwhelms the scheme and the confidence of those who implement it is lost.

This is true also in regard to Amendments Nos. 11 and 31. There is no limit on when services can be used, on whether or not the travel must be local, on the use of taxis and on the other services to be provided for free. Travel is a valuable and important resource and we recognise that categories of our fellow citizens

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benefit significantly from it. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, put the case very forcefully indeed for people whose health might otherwise suffer because they are confined within a limited framework; but, in tackling that problem—I agree it is an issue which has to be assessed and tackled—we cannot create in legislation a framework that offers the potential for such widespread availability and access as to render the situation quite unmanageable from the Government’s point of view.

With our proposed new national concession, the Government’s spending on concessionary travel will be approximately £1 billion a year. We are committed to accessible public transport for disabled people. Regulations requiring buses and other forms of public transport to be accessible have been introduced, but we must be realistic. It would not serve the interests of the disabled or the wider interests of the country to accept amendments that would open the door to such a wide entitlement to travel that would be ill defined and hugely costly.

Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for his reply. I am not indulging in a burst of paranoia; I have seen the Minister often enough to know that he will not accept all my amendments. I am, however, simply feeling a bit tweaked in the early new year that I am not getting anywhere. I can see that I will get nowhere again. I shall say only two things. I did say that the outset that this was a probing amendment and I acknowledged that there were financial implications to it. It was tabled to hear the Minister’s reply to a very important point.

The Minister has said that this can be done in future. I presume that these schemes can be extended only by order of the Secretary of State. They would therefore have to be extended by secondary legislation and across the board. Now that this is a national scheme, it would have to be accepted that people wanted it to be applied nationally, rather than by each local authority. The Minister may know the answer. If he does not, I would be grateful if he could ensure that I received an answer before we reach the next stage. This is what we are really looking for.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, put it when speaking to her amendment, this is about the acceptance of the principle that people who are not in a position to manage public transport are therefore in effect being denied access to a reasonable life and a reasonable existence. They might be able to have that access with a companion to help them. That is what I was alluding to when I talked about a companion travelling for free as a concession on public transport.

I heard what the Minister said in reply. We need to look a little further at the permissiveness of other legislation, but the extent of the permissiveness of the current legislation without secondary legislation is also important. I expect that is what we are talking about.

For today, I will withdraw the amendment. Perhaps we will return to this when we have looked at the matter in more detail, but I put on record the fact that I accept that there could be financial implications, so that people understand that I am not simply off on a flight of fancy. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.



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5 pm

[Amendments Nos. 12 to 18 not moved.]

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 [Reimbursement of operators]:

Baroness Scott of Needham Market moved Amendment No. 19:

The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 19 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 20, 21 and 40, all of which are tabled in my name and those of my noble friends. These amendments each concern in a different way the issue of how the scheme will be funded, and it is this aspect of the Bill which is giving local authorities most concern. We therefore see this as an opportunity to explore some of the issues they have raised.

There are two broad aspects to the question of funding, the first of which asks whether enough money will be available; that is, is the quantum sum to be made available for the scheme large enough? This is vital because there is evidence to show that when you alter the concessionary fares scheme, as happened last year in England and before that in Wales and Scotland, demand increases. In fact it would be ridiculous if demand did not increase. One of the reasons for providing this sort of scheme is in order to facilitate bus travel by pensioners and the disabled. Clearly there will be higher costs and one can only estimate how they are going to work out. We know that more people are now taking up passes than was the case previously and that those who hold passes make more journeys. Further, bus fares are rising above the level of the retail prices index, partly because of industry costs which are rising above the inflation rate. However, we must also recognise that in bringing in a group of people who will not be paying their bus fares, it will alter the way in which bus operators look at fare increases. No longer will they feel so worried about increasing fares because they will not have to deal with irate passengers. That has an inflationary effect. Given this, can the Minister explain how the Government will keep under review the actual costs being met by local government generally, which relates closely to what is happening in the bus industry?

Secondly, and probably more important, is the impact of the scheme in specific locations and on specific local authorities. The proposed system for reimbursement is to be via local authority block grant to district and unitary councils. There are two problems with this. First, district and unitary authorities are not usually the transport authorities. In metropolitan councils passenger transport authorities provide bus services, while in two-tier areas they are provided by county councils. There is therefore no requirement for district councils to pass on the sums they receive to the authority providing the service.

Secondly, I think it is accepted that the block grant is a fairly crude instrument based on variable inputs such as population and demographics. What it does

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not measure is the main output; that is, the number of bus journeys made. For the reasons I have given, it is likely that they will increase. The danger is that in areas where high and improving quality bus services are well promoted and provided, demand will increase still further and in a sense those authorities are going to be financially penalised for increasing demand for bus journeys. We know that this happened in the past when the scheme was introduced on a local authority basis. I gave some examples at Second Reading such as in Tyne and Wear, and in Bath and North East Somerset, which is currently facing a shortfall of around £680,000—a lot of money for a relatively small local authority. Devon County Council faced a shortfall of around £2 million. We have to recognise that the impact of the scheme in certain areas will be greater and cannot be dealt with in the average way. So while we welcome the fact that the scheme is to be extended into a national one, something we have called for, there will be difficulties in some areas which can only be described as honey pots, those in which extra journeys will be created. I know that authorities such as Blackpool are rather worried about this issue.

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