Mr Clive Betts
MP for Sheffield South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“I wholeheartedly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, both its content and its tone. I would like to ask about his discussions with our colleagues and allies in other countries who are looking to implement similar sanctions.”
“I offer two congratulations: first, to my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the First Secretary, on her well-deserved promotion—I am sure she will do an excellent job. Secondly, I congratulate her and the Prime Minister for their real commitment to devolution, which I have wanted to see for an awfully long time.”
“I apologise for the fact that—as I have explained to you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will have to leave straight after my question to chair Westminster Hall. I thank my right hon. Friend for doing this very challenging piece of work. I think that the theme of fairness, for the people who need benefits and for taxpayers, is right.”
“On the other hand, so many constituents with really serious conditions get turned down for PIP, and can get it only if they struggle through the appeal system, sometimes without any help at all. So the system is not fair to anyone at present.”
“When the previous Government let the contract, we were in a situation in which procurement could not properly take account of the past record of companies, and I understand that the Government have now changed that.”
“I will dive very deeply into the question, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chair of the Committee sends his apologies for his absence; he is presently in a Committee meeting.”
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“We look forward to seeing the Minister and the Secretary of State at the Select Committee to discuss these matters early after the recess. It seems there are some genuine improvements in the proposals, particularly, as described in paragraphs 50 and 60 of the explanatory notes, the clauses that give greater strength to local plans in looking at individual planning applications. There are two areas where the Bill might be strengthened. The first refers back to what the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) said. Yes, developers will have to set out what they intend to build, but what sanctions will the local authority have if developers do not follow those promises? The second is about what happens if a developer does not observe conditions attached to a planning permission.”
“The Minister has talked about more powers, and it is clear that more areas will be given powers similar to those currently held by, for instance, the existing combined authorities. Can he specify what those powers will be, for the benefit of those mayoral combined authorities? Will he set them out very simply, so that we all know what additional powers the Mayors will have?”
“Overall, there are real problems with the cost of living that simply are not dealt with by the Government. On levelling up and regeneration, I would just ask: where are the powers and where is the money? Yes, there are some good details that we want to work through with the Government—on planning, compulsory purchase orders and social housing regulation—but there are still many challenges not addressed in the Queen’s Speech that we will need to come back to.”
“Okay, we can be disappointed that we have not actually got a commitment to produce legislation, and I would have hoped for at least a draft Bill, but this issue is complicated and we must get it right. In particular, we must get right that landlords cannot use rent increases as a way of forcing out tenants when they do not have section 21 powers to rely on. One thing the Select Committee has pressed for, which the Government have not committed to, is the idea of a housing court. A housing court would simplify procedure to help both the good landlords and the good tenants—the good tenants being harassed by bad landlords, and the good landlords whose bad tenants will not pay the rent—to have a simplified way to get redress. I hope the Government might look at that again.”
“I am pleased that the Secretary of State said the other day that he wanted to see more social housing built, but again, where is the money? Where is the money? The Government are going to have to put in more grant to get the social housing built. If we are going to build the 300,000 homes we have talked about, at least 90,000 of those—probably more—are going to have to be social housing, and we are nowhere near that. I just say in passing that I hope the changes to the infrastructure levy in the Bill do not mean a reduction in the number of social houses built by developers, with the ending of section 106 agreements. That is another challenge. Finally, on private renting, I welcome the Government’s commitment.”
“The Select Committee has seen and heard of some appalling examples of the really awful conditions that some social housing tenants are living in. The housing ombudsman has done some excellent work on mould and dampness in homes, and every local authority should be taking that into account. I would say that, yes, in the past—and the Grenfell inquiry has highlighted this—there has been an attitude that social housing tenants are somehow second-class tenants in second-class housing, and we have to do everything we can to improve the standard of housing. There was also the idea that people did not really want to be social housing tenants, did they, so we would not build any more council houses and housing association properties.”
“Local authorities have been complaining about the very difficult process they have to go through, and if we are going to see real regeneration and redevelopment of our city centres, as the demand for retail floorspace drops, we are going to need easier compulsory purchase powers. I think they are in the Bill. I do not know all the details, but at least the Government seem to have listened and to have taken that seriously, which is to be welcomed. On social housing, I welcome the improvements to regulation that are going to come. We have not seen all the clauses, and the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), is coming to the Select Committee on Monday to talk further about that.”
“I think build out is a key issue there that the Government have not addressed, but where has the target for 300,000 homes a year by the end of this Parliament gone? That was the Government’s target. Would the Minister for Levelling Up Communities like to say whether it is still the Government’s target to build 300,000 homes a year by the end of this Parliament? That seems to have fallen off the agenda, and that is really disappointing because we do have a housing crisis in this country. To again be complimentary to the Government, I think they have listened when it comes to the whole problem of compulsory purchase.”
“Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) mentioned, is the issue of build out. Why are the Government not taking measures in this Bill against those who get planning permissions—there are hundreds of thousands of them around the country—and then do not build the houses they have permission for? Why are we not penalising them for that? Ministers have argued the case for that in the past, but there is nothing in the Bill to do it. Why not? We had the Letwin report, which recommended something like this, years ago, and it still has not been done. When we began talking about planning reforms with the previous Secretary of State, the whole idea was to build more homes. It was said that the planning system was holding everything up.”
“We have to change that, and get the community to look at where houses should be built and where other developments should take place in the area as a whole through the local plan. That does mean helping authorities, which are being stripped of resources in their planning departments, to undertake more work in getting all local plans up to date and in place in the next couple of years. I am generally not in favour of ringfenced grants, but I think there is a case for having a one-off grant to planning authorities to enable them to do a real job of getting local plans up to date and getting their community engaged in them to take some of the heat and some of the contention out of the planning process. There are a couple of issues of slight disappointment. One, which the right hon.”
“We have, I think, moved to a situation where we are going to have simpler processes for local plans, and I think that is welcome, although we have to look at the detail of how they will be worked through. They will be digitised, and that is helpful. In clauses 50 and 60, I think, we have got to a point where, in individual planning applications, the local plan is going to be given greater weight, and I think that is helpful as well. There will be a degree of certainty for communities and for developers—both are important. We have to get more of the public engaged in the local plan process so that it actually means something, because currently people tend to get engaged once a planning application comes in for a site near them.”
“There really is not any fundamental change here to alter that, and I am sure we will come back to and press that as a Select Committee. There was going to be a major planning reform a few months ago, was there not? The previous Secretary of State announced it: the Government were going to tear up the planning rules and start again. It has now come down to a few clauses in the Bill. I am not dismissing that, because I think there are actually some quite good proposals in there. [ Interruption. ] Well, they are quite good because I think the Government have come round to the view the Select Committee took, which is why they are probably quite helpful. First, we have got rid of the three zones. It was never going to be possible to rewrite every local plan in 30 months, and we have got away from that situation.”
“I have found mention of other areas that currently do not have combined authorities, particularly county areas, getting them in the future, which is welcome, but I cannot actually find any additional powers. The Select Committee has been much more radical. We have said that we should look at this the other way around: should not all decisions be made at local level unless there is a good reason for making them at national level? When the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Harborough, came to the Select Committee, he said that that was a bit radical. Well, it is, but I actually think we need a radical solution to deal with the fact that we are one of the most overcentralised countries in western Europe. That is the reality.”
“How can we level up and get equality of funding unless we either find additional funding to bring the poorer areas up or transfer money from the richer areas to the poorer areas? It has to be one or the other. What are the Government going to do? Currently, they are really doing neither. Secondly, I ask: where are the powers? Earlier, I asked the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), what additional powers are in the Bill to level up and give more authority to combined authorities, Mayors and individual local authorities. He could not answer the question because actually there is no answer. I cannot claim to have read every single one of the 196 clauses in the Bill and the 17 schedules to it, but I cannot find any mention of extra powers.”
“Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) in his place, who, until recently, was the Mayor of South Yorkshire, previously the Sheffield city region. I thank him for the excellent work he has done on behalf of the region, and my constituents in particular, over the last four years. He knows that the amount of money spent on bus services in London is about 10 times per head more than it is in South Yorkshire. We have the powers to run our bus service in the same way, but not the money. I say to the Minister that this is about either an extra sum of money that the Chancellor will have to find or rediverting money from the richer areas to the poorer parts of the country. It has to be one or the other.”
“Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), got it when he came to the Select Committee; and Andy Haldane got it even more—he basically said that we should not have those individual pots of money. We need proper resources and proper budgets to be given to our Mayors, combined authorities and local authorities to spend according to the needs of their area. I ask the Minister for Levelling Up Communities, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), what levelling up really means in financial terms. Does it mean that the Chancellor has an extra sum of money to announce which will be spent in our poorer areas to bring them up to the level of the richer parts of the country? One particular example is the buses in South Yorkshire. I see my hon.”
“The Government have not given an adequate answer to that. To return to levelling-up issues, I have two major concerns. First, where is the money? That has been a challenge right the way through. If the Government are about levelling up, they are about levelling up Government spending across the piece. Pots of money—levelling up pots, high street pots and town pots—will not make any real difference by themselves, particularly in the context of the massive cuts to local government funding that the poorest areas that need levelling up have seen in the last 10 years. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities sort of got that message; the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon.”
“I obviously want to contribute on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech and has now been introduced, and the measures on social housing, which the Select Committee have been dealing with in recent months. First, however, as a constituency MP, I ask: where are the measures in the Queen’s Speech to address the cost of living crisis that is affecting all our constituents? When we talk about levelling up, we should recognise that those in the greatest poverty, who were struggling before energy bills rose, are struggling even more now. Frankly, they look at the eye-watering profits that have been announced in recent days by BP and Shell and wonder why we are not taxing those super-profits to help to cushion the effect of rising prices on their bills and households.”
“I apologise for returning a little late; I have been speaking at a housing conference and had to rush back. On this question of a target, the Government have a target, as the Minister has just said. Can she confirm that it is to build 300,000 homes a year before the end of this Parliament?”
“I apologise for coming in late, Mr Hosie; I had a meeting that I could not avoid. My hon. Friend is right to mention the bus review, because an attack on these proposals is an attack on all the people who contributed to that review—the 6,000 people who told us what was wrong and what needed putting right. If the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) is going to make a serious contribution, does he not have to set out what, of the £400 million or more that was bid for by the combined authority, he thinks was excessive; which bits he would have taken out; and how much he thinks it would have been realistic to bid for? That is what we need to hear; not vague accusations that the bid was too much on the one hand, and that it was not ambitious enough on the other hand.”
“If we are to do anything more with franchising, other than having a different way of organising the buses, and to have a way of improving bus services, then it requires extra money from Government; and I do believe that if money is put in, it should be put under the transport authority’s control. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) to lobby his Ministers. If we are to deliver the sort of bus services that we want, with a service where the public are in control of their own public services, through franchising, we need that extra resource from Government. It is as simple as that. Without it, there will be failure, and a lot of upset and discontent among our constituents.”
“Franchising can help, and taking buses back into public control was clearly supported by the people we consulted as part of the bus review. However, it does not, of itself, improve the service. It can do a little bit, in moving the resources around into a more efficient and effective way—by moving some buses from oversubscribed routes to routes that do not exist at all, in some cases, because they have been removed completely. However, in the end, with companies such as First Bus in Sheffield, which loses money, there is no way to manoeuvre the routes to get better services from companies that are losing money without putting extra money in. That is the fundamental issue.”
“I will be very brief, Mr Hosie; I thank you for allowing me to contribute briefly. I support what my hon. Friends have just said. First of all, in a cross-party way, I absolutely support franchising. I was critical of the Labour Government in the noughties, when I thought they should have moved faster on that. The Local Transport Act 2008 was not sufficient to give authorities the real powers they needed, and the current transport legislation is an improvement. It gives the powers to mayoral combined authorities—although I think it ought to also give powers to other transport authorities—but the problem is that it is no use giving authorities Transport for London powers without Transport for London money. It just will not work.”
“I accept that a lot of what the Minister is saying is correct—that those who are responsible should pay and leaseholders should not—but he missed out one group that has been particularly affected by Grenfell: social housing tenants. Why is the Minister not prepared to offer them the same financial support as he is giving to leaseholders?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. He is being very generous, but these are important and quite complicated issues. There is a general welcome for the Government’s attempts to take a more proportionate approach and for moving away, albeit over a period of time, from EWS1 forms to PAS 9980, which can cover whole blocks rather than individual properties. The two questions that the Select Committee has not had answers to are, first, whether the Government will look at making the building regulator responsible for deciding which blocks need this new assessment rather than the building owners, who might have a particular interest in saying no; and, secondly, whether he will ensure that the professional indemnity insurance scheme also applies to assessors on the PAS 9980 assessments as well as to those on the EWS1 forms?”
“That was going to solve everything, but obviously it was not, even when the Chancellor stood up and offered in his Budget the £1 billion building safety fund and said that was going to give everything the Select Committee had asked for, which it was not and did not. We have moved on since then, so it is welcome that we have now got to a better place, although it is still not quite good enough.”
“We have repeated over and over again that leaseholders who are not responsible should not have to pay, and neither should social housing tenants; they are no more responsible, and the two should be seen together and treated equally. I am pleased with what the Minister said today. I hope it was not just a way to get the debate over with, without pushing away too many difficult questions, and that he is still prepared to look at broadening the scope of the Government’s offer to leaseholders and to social housing landlords and tenants. If that was a genuine offer and he is keen to work on it, that is welcome. We clearly have come quite a long way since the first offer of a £400 million package to deal with ACM cladding.”
“It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. I thank the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), for his kind words about the Select Committee. He certainly encouraged and prodded us to do the first report on leasehold reform. It was, as he said, a first step towards what we hope will eventually be much more significant reform, which I think the Government are committed to. Since the tragedy of Grenfell, the Select Committee has produced five reports. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is in his place, because he has been with us right the way through those reports, all of which were agreed unanimously by the Select Committee.”
“Absolutely. It is important that the money is available to make sure that all buildings are safe, that everyone is safe in their home, whether they be a leaseholder or a social housing tenant, and that the money provided to make those buildings safe comes from the various funds the Government have identified, and is paid fairly and equally to blocks, whether they are in the private sector or the social housing sector. I hope the Government will listen to that view, which has been expressed by the NatFed and the Local Government Association, to which I am grateful for helping with my amendments today. Just to declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and very proud to be so, and I think its campaign, along with the NatFed’s on this issue, is fundamentally right.”
“I entirely accept that developers have promised to do what the Minister described, but what happens when developers have gone out of business and cannot do that? Where does that leave the social housing landlord?”
“Will the Minister accept an invitation to come to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in due course to investigate the areas that are not currently covered?”
“However, unless authorities are supported in the future, with a clear strategy from Government and commitments to long-term funding, we will be back here in two or three years’ time waging the same fight because the spiral of decline has continued; so many people in this country who rely on buses have been left without them; congestion has got worse; we have done nothing to tackle climate change; and we have done nothing to tackle pollution either.”
“We have a pilot that works—what is the point of a pilot unless we get encouragement to roll it out across the country? Many heavy rail networks are underused or, in some cases, unused. We do not have to redo the lines; they are there. We can run hybrid trams on them, so we do not necessarily have to install electric wires for all of them. They can be run partly on the electric system and partly on other fuels, once they get out into slightly less urban areas. I hope I have indicated a lot of the challenges. There has been a real litany of problems—almost disasters—in the last few years, with decline and demoralisation in the sector. Covid has been a massive challenge, and the Government stepped up to the plate there.”
“Although I did not need much reminding, the Minister reminded me that, alongside light rail, we need to have greener buses as a green form of transport—and not just electric buses, but green hydrogen buses. ITM Power in my constituency delivers the green hydrogen—there are different sorts of hydrogen—that is needed to power the bus fleets of the future. It is already doing the refuelling station for Birmingham’s hydrogen buses. We ought to encourage that across the country. I welcome the Government’s zero-emission bus regional areas, or ZEBRA, initiatives and the money being given for electric buses, but where is the commitment to a programme for hydrogen buses as well? We need strategies for light rail and greener buses, but also tram-trains.”
“As part of that funding commitment, will the Government estimate what it will cost to bring franchising in? There are significant upfront costs, which Manchester has already identified. If we are going to use franchising to improve services, there will be a cost. Franchising is not a magic bullet that once fired makes everything all right overnight. It is a good way to deliver bus services in a strategic, co-ordinated, organised and integrated way, but it is not cost-free. We ought to recognise that. Let us have a plan for light rail. The Government need to seriously say that it is a way forward. It is a clean, green form of transport, and it should be linked to cleaner, greener buses as well.”
“If Government have the power, we have to go down and visit civil servants in more than one Department and hope that they might be talking to each other, which isn’t always the case.” Therefore devolution of those powers is absolutely key. Will the Government speed up the franchising process? We have seen how long Manchester, which pioneered it, has taken to go through the process—Manchester is committed, but it has taken forever. It is better than the previous effort, in the Local Transport Act 2008, under which Nexus tried to get franchising in the north-east and was stopped in the courts. It is better than it was, but it is not as simple as it should be. If the Government really want to give those powers, they should enable them to be used more speedily.”
“It is absolutely clear from the levelling-up agenda that local Mayors have to be able to join up their approach to transport with their approaches to home building, delivery of skills and industrial development. Areas need a joined-up approach to economic strategy. Mayors can do it, but Government never will. It would require several Departments getting together. I remember going to Manchester and talking to business leaders some years ago, as Manchester was pioneering the move towards greater localism and local democracy. Business leaders said, “We don’t always agree with the councillors and council leaders, but at least we know where they are. We can go and talk to them. If they have the power to do something, we can have that discussion.”
“Words are no help to someone waiting at a bus stop for a bus that may be coming in an hour’s time that either does not turn up or, if it does, it turns out that their connection to another place has been removed so they cannot get to where they want to go without an awful lot of effort. In the end, they will not bother going, or they will get in their car, get someone to give them a lift or get a taxi out of frustration. If we are serious about this, we have to have clear funding commitments. Will responsibility for that now be given to local transport authorities? We have elected a Mayor—will they be given the powers and resources to do this?”
“There are opportunities for that out in Stocksbridge, in the north of Sheffield, that we can look at as well. There are real possibilities and challenges, but it comes down to how we will fund and deliver the Government’s agenda. I have a number of asks for the Minister. Will the Government set out their strategy for public transport in our urban areas? Developing on where we reached with the national bus strategy, are the Government still committed to those objectives in principle and will they set out a way to deliver them in the long term? If they are committed, will the Government set out how that should be funded? There is no use having grand ambitions about not having to look at a timetable for buses on the main road, or having great evening and weekend services, if there is no money. It is words and nothing else.”
“What is the plan to roll light rail out across the country? We are looking at Beeching restoration services now; there is one from Sheffield to Barrow Hill, through my constituency. We are arguing very strongly for train stations at Beighton and Waverley in the Rotherham constituency next door, and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) is supporting the extension. Instead of running the heavy rail line into Sheffield Midland station, it should run into the centre of Sheffield with a Tram Train service. That would get people out of their cars and get rid of the congestion we get on the parkway going to Sheffield. We should use the heavy rail network, which is already there, to put trams on the system at no cost and to connect it better to our urban centres. That can be done all over the country.”
“Light rail needs Government support and the Government must decide if they want a long-term plan for capital investment in it. I will mention the Tram Train again, because a pilot from Sheffield to Rotherham has been running for more than three years and is very successful. It is a great credit to the then Transport Minister, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) that, when the scheme was going pear shaped because of Network Rail’s incompetence—there is an National Audit Office report to prove that—he stepped in and said, “Yes, although the cost of the scheme has trebled, it is worth it to show that the system works.” It does work. It has been working in Karlsruhe in Germany for nearly 30 years and it is not surprising that light-rail vehicles can run on a heavy-rail system—it works.”
“Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), who is the Opposition spokesperson today, will know that we had a good Supertram system developed in Sheffield and built at the beginning of the 1990s. I am almost tempted not to mention this, but I will: we approved it when I was leader of Sheffield City Council, many years ago, and I am really pleased about that. However, there has not been an extra mile laid since then. I am sorry—a few hundred yards have been laid for the Tram Train into Rotherham. Leeds, just up the road, is a major city but it does not have a light rail system. We are so far behind the curve. Manchester has done very well, with great credit due for that. One or two other cities have also started to develop systems, but overall there simply is not enough funding.”
“That is the real bottom line. Light rail almost gets forgotten about. I do not know if anyone at the Department is really interested in light rail, as it does not seem to be mentioned very often. It is a clean, green form of transport. However, if we compare the light rail systems in our country with what is on offer in other European cities, we see that we are behind the game by many years. That is not a party political point; I put it on the record that we did not do enough as the Labour Government. We did not do enough on bus franchising either. None of that is party political; Governments have not recognised the importance of the subject. My hon.”
“Operators are looking at taking out some routes completely, removing evening and weekend services, where they exist, and reducing frequency, which will simply lead to another spiral of decline. I say to the Minister that whatever methods are used—enhanced partnerships, franchising or whatever—there cannot be any improvement from the current situation unless there is more money in the system. Without that, it simply will not work. Local councils are strapped for cash and they will not find those sorts of resources. There are challenges about whether Mayors should have a levy on council tax, which is worth discussing—that is what Greater Manchester has done. However, in the end, the Government have to step up. It is no use giving London-type powers to urban areas outside London if they do not also have London-type resources.”
“All MCAs have now moved to enhanced partnerships, as required by the Government in order to bid for BSIP and secure long-term funding. That is a good approach, but signing up to an agreement for partnership does not stop cuts being made. Bus operators, particularly First Bus in Sheffield, are already planning cuts in services, even with the enhanced partnerships and Government funding. Some have been announced in the last few months and more are proposed. Operators have said that if Government funding stops in September, about a third of services will be cut. That is a massive, almost unimaginable number. It destroys the whole framework of the network, which we simply cannot allow to happen.”
“The total amount of money is the same, but the covid support has been taken off that, meaning less than half the original amount is left for the BSIP programme. I say to Ministers that we have to get away from the pots-of-money approach. We made that point to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, who basically agreed with it, and to the Minister for Levelling Up—he got it as well—at the recent session of the Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Local authorities have 130 different pots of money, not just for transport, for which they have to make a bid to Government. That is ridiculous. We need to provide a more sustainable and joined-up approach to long-term funding. Partnerships are happening in many areas.”
“The Government’s initial approach was to offer a £3 billion programme. Some of the money has come in through the sustainable transport scheme. The Sheffield city region has had £570 million, which is not all for buses. There is a bit for light rail and some for road schemes as well; I question how those schemes fall under the sustainable transport remit, but that was the bid that was put in and accepted. The city region has bid for £450 million from the bus service improvement plan. Will the Minister tell us how much money is left in the BSIP programme and when we will find out what has been allocated? We were told there was £3 billion but now we hear it will be only £1.2 billion or £1.3 billion because the Government have taken the money that they spent on covid support off the £3 billion.”
“Improving public transport and getting more people on to buses and light rail is good for congestion; for the climate change agenda, because the number of people travelling on a bus is the same as the number in several cars so less carbon dioxide is emitted; and for pollution, because it means less nitrogen dioxide. We should not forget about NO 2 ,the silent killer, which is more damaging to children than anyone else because it sinks and children breathe the air at a lower level. Those are real issues, and it is right that the Government have sought to focus on them. I mentioned levelling up, and accessibility of public transport is a levelling-up issue. People with lower incomes and more poorly paid jobs tend to be concentrated to a greater extent in some of our urban areas, where levelling up is needed.”
“It is a good phrase and there are some really good statements from the Government in the national bus strategy, such as “we want main road services in cities and towns to run so often that you don’t need a timetable.” I say tongue in cheek, Mr Sharma, that people will not need a timetable in some places soon because the situation is so serious that there will not be any buses to have a timetable for. It goes on: “We want better services in the evenings and at weekends”. Many places do not have them now, but the coming cuts, which I will say more about, will make the situation even worse. The bus strategy is right that we need more buses and more passengers on buses, as well as “dramatically increased passenger numbers, reduced congestion, carbon and pollution”.”
“Clearly, the amount of money that the Government will have to provide in order to even stabilise the system, not improve it, is greater now than it was before covid, because we are in a worse position. Areas with light rail systems have an even bigger challenge, because the fixed costs of light rail cannot be dispensed with. The network is there—the rails, the stations, the trams and everything else. The fixed costs are there, and if there is no recognition of that, not only will the sustainability of light rail become a major challenge but, if authorities keep their light rail systems running, they will have to cut their bus service funding even more, so there are real issues around that. We welcome the concept of the Government’s Bus Back Better.”