I wish to speak to new clause 35 and amendments 70 and 71 tabled in my name. The Minister has done a very good job of outlining what those proposals seek to achieve, for which I am grateful. I am seeking to remedy the lack of vision for fixing the public transport problems that we face in rural areas.
As I have said, we cannot just throw new powers at rural areas and hope for the best. We have to create workable models for adoption to support areas to use the new powers in the best way possible. There has been great excitement about how to use them to transform the bus networks in our major cities, but in all the conversations here on this issue, rural communities seem to have been forgotten about.
In rural areas, the local bus service is not just a convenience or a “nice to have”, but a real and genuine lifeline. For many, it is the main way they can get to see friends and family, go to medical appointments, and get to the shops and to leisure activities. Bus services keeps many rural villages going. It is no surprise that when the withdrawal of routes in areas like this are proposed, there is fury locally and major campaigns against it.
I asked some of my rural colleagues about their experiences and, unsurprisingly, I was inundated. My hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) has been campaigning to save the X5 between Aylesbury and Hemel Hempstead, which was replaced with an unreliable service that is making it hard for residents to get to key medical appointments. My hon. Friends the Members for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) and for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) are trying to bring back the 84/85 route from Yate to Wotton, a vital route to shopping centres, schools and colleges and for those visiting HMP Leyhill. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) has been working with campaigners to save school bus services in Ancells Farm, with children facing the prospect of long walks down unsafe roads to get to and from school in Fleet.
There are all these communities and campaigns, but we still have not come up with better ways to serve rural areas and protect their access to services. It is telling that when my Transport Committee colleagues and I, several of whom are represented on both sides of this Committee, wanted to go and see some best practice of rural bus networks for our “Buses connecting communities” inquiry—report forthcoming shortly; I am sure everyone will be reading it as soon as it is published—we had to travel to the Republic in Ireland to find them. We simply do not have good examples of successful rural networks here in the UK.
All of that serves to say that it is time for a bold new approach. A good few years ago, when we were researching the Liberal Democrat manifesto for Norfolk’s 2021 county council elections, we undertook research with a number of key local stakeholders to hear what they thought of the local bus network and what we could do to improve it. I personally interviewed bus companies, council officers and other stakeholders. Most importantly, we surveyed local people, including those who do not currently use buses—an often overlooked audience segment. We concluded that we need to combine two of the most successful features of current public transport models to create a new model for rural public transport. Those two things are park and ride services and demand-responsive transport. Pairing them could create a real network that works for our rural towns and villages without the near-impossible task of running an hourly timetable to every village. That conclusion resulted in the rural bus hub scheme outlined in new clause 35.
Rural bus hubs would allow people to get between key towns and villages that they need to visit directly. People in many rural areas suffer from having to take buses in the opposite direction from where they want to go, going to the nearby town or city just to go straight back out again. That adds hours to people’s journeys, the journey is totally derailed if one link in the complicated chain goes wrong, and it is ultimately an inconvenient way to get about. As a result, it does not improve passenger numbers.
Similar to our park and ride networks, rural bus hubs would have facilities to enable those living nearby to travel to the hub independently, either by car or active travel routes. The hubs would have the amenities to charge electric vehicles, and to lock and store bikes safely, so that people could easily return to them to complete the final few miles of their return journeys. The hubs would also be well served by demand-responsive transport for those who are not independently mobile. That would ensure that the network could reach into all areas, including rural villages and harder-to-access communities that may never have had a regular service, if any service, from an existing bus route.
Such passengers, once at the hub, could catch direct, frequent buses to any part of a proper network, getting them to the hub nearest to where they want to go, and linking up with train connections or even hospitals and employment areas. It is a model that could easily be adopted by transport authorities. It would reach the most people possible without seeking to run a regular bus through every village, and it would connect those in rural areas to a proper public transport network that broadens the range of their destinations, rather than just taking them to the nearest city or large town.
My amendment 70 would permit rural bus hubs to fit into the current model of franchising, allowing for specified services to include those running to and from, or between, the hubs. My amendment 71 would add to the review of service provision to villages an assessment of how service in the villages could be impacted by the establishment of rural bus hubs, or how the establishment of the hubs has affected services for villages at the time of the review. That would ensure that, as we assess how villages are faring following the passing of the Bill, we do not simply grow a list of complaints but assess what could be done differently to make improvements and the impacts that those improvements would have.
I grew up in a rural village with a sketchy bus connection. I now live in another, and my children are growing up with the same sketchy connection that I had. That cycle cannot continue. We have to do better for areas like mine, and conventional thinking is not going to cut it. It is time for a radical rethink of how we deliver public transport in rural areas. We have to challenge the old ideas and be willing to seize on something new.
I am sure that the Government will oppose these ideas, but I would gently say that they have not put forward anything equivalent. It is all very well to say, “You could do anything,” but there is nothing of substance to say, “Of all the things you could do, these are the things you might specifically like to consider.” We could feasibly help households to reduce the number of vehicles they rely on, saving them thousands every year. We could encourage active travel by expanding the number of journeys, and the hubs could be a component of that. By expanding demand-responsive transport, we could even remove car reliance altogether, while connecting the carless to a far better range of travel times and destinations than they currently have.
The same old approach is not working. The situation will not magically fix itself with the new franchising powers alone. We have to try something different, and do something to create networked, accessible public transport that works for people, and gets them where they want to go, when they want to go there. I do not think that is asking the world, and I hope that the Government will pledge to look into this idea further to deliver real change for people in North Norfolk, and rural communities across the country.