My Lords, I am ever grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Snape—if only, on this occasion, for reminding the House that bus fares went down under the Conservative Administration, ending with £2 as the maximum fare cap.
I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, seeks to call our good faith into question. My concern about her amendment is not that she wants to continue to promote this excellent Conservative policy, which we would have implemented had we been elected; it is with its practicalities. It is a pity that there is not a proper opportunity to interrogate it now, but I find the notion of a voluntary £2 fare cap appearing in statute very strange, especially on an unfunded basis. However, I look forward to hearing what the Minister will say about it.
I will briefly speak to my Amendment 59 before turning to other amendments. I do not intend—if noble Lords will forgive me—to address every amendment in the group, partly in the interests of time; I hope that is not rude of me. My Amendment 59 concerns the fact that last year Louise Haigh, the then Secretary of State for Transport—in, I think, her very last official action before she sank into political oblivion—announced bus funding for the country, to which the Minister has referred a number of times since. Three-quarters of that funding was given to local transport authorities on the basis of a completely new formula, which had never been consulted on and which nobody had been given any advance notice of.
When I protested about this at the time and asked for an explanation of or rationale for the formula—because distribution formulae are very important—the Minister said:
“The Government are entitled to make decisions about how they wish to spend money”.—[Official Report, 19/11/24; col. 127.]
That was the substance of his answer. That proposition is broadly true: we often ask whether the Government will spend, for example, more money on defence or welfare, or less on aid or transport. They are the big issues that the Government are elected to make decisions about. However, when it comes to the distribution of money to other public authorities—those pots having been decided—two other considerations need to be taken into account. The first is—although I am not attributing this to the Government—the possibility that formulae are manipulated to favour certain local authorities over others; the second is a simple obligation of fairness to local authorities that they understand how their funding is being calculated and how they are being rewarded.
My amendment seeks to require the Government to set out, in the near future, not only a formula but a rationale for the bus funding distribution, including some notice of its distributional effects as well as the alternatives that they may have considered. This would contribute greatly to good government and transparency. I do not propose to divide the House on the amendment, but I hope that it would have had support, because it would have acted as a very good example to many other departments.
I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. Buses are dangerous. Somebody told me a statistic 20 years ago—it is one of those statistics that does not appear in regular series—that was so astonishing that I had to ensure that it was robust. It stated that, at least in London, 50% of women aged over 65 presenting at A&E had suffered an injury inside a bus. The reason is straightforward: if you are inside a bus with modern brakes and the brakes are applied, one can be thrown about the bus, including when going to a seat, coming from a seat or simply standing—many of us, I think, will have had this experience, although not all of us will have fallen over. Because those responsible for health and safety have made brakes sharper and more effective, as that would appear to make the bus safer, there is not always consideration for what happens to the people inside. That needs to be looked at.
It is also true that buses cause injuries to people outside. They sometimes have large mirrors that stick out. Have people thought properly about that?
I had some involvement in the construction industry—not directly, but in a non-executive capacity under various roles—and I was struck by the complete transformation that has taken place in that industry over the past 20 or 25 years. Some 30 years ago, it was expected that people would lose their lives on building sites or that they would suffer life-changing injuries, but a determination on the part of the industry to change that—to have a vision zero—means that, nowadays, a death or serious injury on a construction site is not only very rare but shocking and pored over, and people try to learn lessons from it. That attitude, which is what I believe the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, wishes to bring to the bus industry, is commendable. It perhaps requires a change in mindset—there are examples; the noble Lord drew attention to the Mayor of London’s activities—and it should be a national programme. If he wishes to divide the House on his amendment, the Conservative group will support him.
Closely related to that is Amendment 58, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Woodley. I am very disappointed that the noble Lord, for whom I have a high regard, is not in his place and has not been able to speak to his amendment. Colleagues on my Benches have spoken very clearly about the importance of safety, not in the sense of being shaken around in a bus by the brakes but in relation to the threats, particularly to women and girls, of violent assault or intimidation on public transport—or, more specifically for today’s debate, on buses. Clearly, the recording of data to support responses to that should be mandatory and taken forward in the way suggested by the noble Lord’s amendment. That too is an amendment that, if he were here to press it, we would have supported—and we still will, in principle, if there are some means by which it could be voted on.
Finally, I turn to an amendment not in this group but debated earlier, which will be called shortly. Amendment 53, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, relates to an audit or review of bus services to villages. When it was debated, I said very clearly from this Dispatch Box—and I am very happy to say it again—that the Conservative Party is the party of villages. If the noble Baroness chose to divide the House on her amendment, there can be no question but that, on this occasion at least, the Conservative Party would stand solidly with her and follow her through the Lobby.