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I have been leading a Parliamentary campaign to get a better deal for bus passengers by making it easier to introduce "Quality Contracts". As part of the campaign, I moved a Ten Minute Rule Bill in the House of Commons on Tuesday 1st March 2005.
The Bill would make it easier for locally accountable Passenger Transport Executives (like Metro in West Yorkshire) to regulate bus services in order to improve quality and performance, and to protect vulnerable off-peak services.
Bus services outside London were "deregulated" in 1986 by the then Conservative Government. They passed in areas like West Yorkshire from local Passenger Transport Authorities to private operators, who were not subject to the same local accountability. Since then quality and standards have fallen dramatically. Fares have gone up by almost 50% in real terms and the number of passengers has fallen by over a third.
Like many other MPs in the region, my postbag is full of complaints from constituents about bus service being chopped and changed at a stroke, or that are late or unreliable.
Yet in a deregulated bus industry there's little that passengers, communities, MPs, local authorities or Metro can do to force bus companies to reconsider their cuts and changes, or to improve their services.
Without proper regulation of bus services companies are free to make profits while providing a poor service to my constituents. This includes people who are entirely dependent on the bus. Pensioners, mums with children and other people without cars have been particularly hard hit in my constituency, as well as those who prefer to leave their cars at home for some trips.
We all suffer in these circumstances. Poorer services deny people a public transport option. This increases car use and creates even more congestion, pollution and road safety hazards in our communities.
At the moment bus operators can pick and choose what service they provide, and chop and change them almost at will in the pursuit of profit. My Bill would make it easier for PTEs to Introduce Quality Contracts over a wider area. In this way the quality and performance of bus services could be properly monitored and better safeguarded. Quality Contracts already operate to good effect in London, where services were never deregulated.
The Bill
In order to introduce a franchise for a bus network (known as a 'quality contract') a PTE has to show that this would be the 'only practicable way' to achieve the objective of an improved bus network. This is a very difficult test to satisfy in law. It leaves operators free to offer voluntary, and potentially temporary, improvements to show that a quality contract is not necessary. The Ten Minute Rule Bill - the Bus Services (Quality Contracts Schemes) Bill - would remove the 'only practicable way' requirement. PTEs would only have to demonstrate that the proposed scheme represented value for money in terms of economy, efficiency and effectiveness
Key facts on bus services
- In real terms fares in PTE areas are now 49% higher than they were before deregulation in 1986 - rising 13% in the last five years alone
- Reliability of services is below the Government target of 99.5% - with the majority of lost mileage not down traffic congestion but to factors under the control of bus companies, like mechanical failure or staffing problems
- Bus use in West Yorkshire has declined by 38% since deregulation in 1986
- Bus use in regulated London increased by nearly 10% in London, and declined in the rest of the country, where services are deregulated, by nearly 3%, over the last year.
- In January 2004 Arriva West Yorkshire was given a formal warning by the Traffic Commissioners because of the poor state of its bus fleet. An investigation by the Traffic Commissioners into First West Yorkshire in December 2003 found that 14% of buses inspected were in poor state and were subject to prohibition orders
