Clause 1 - Eligibility for travel concessions: age
Travel Concessions (Eligibility) Bill [Lords]
11:15 am
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)
I shall begin by referring to amendment No. 4, which is about the methodology for reimbursement. I served on a local authority that ran a reimbursement scheme based on usage, which seemed to work satisfactorily both before and after the Transport Act 1985. There was an obvious traffic generation issue, but the local authority, Oxford city council, was able to meet the cost of the bus companies, which competed effectively after the Act carried through by predecessors of my hon. Friends the Members for Cotswold and for Tewkesbury. That was an excellent and successful Act in that city. It is possible to devise a scheme that reimburses fully the number of journeys made, rather than one that makes predictions at the beginning of the year and then finds that there is not enough money at the end. That was a parenthesis on amendment No. 4.
I will pose a few questions about possible ways of reimbursing local authorities for the scheme's implementation and ask Ministers whether there are perverse incentives associated with different methods of reimbursement. Let us imagine the situation in three hypothetical authorities. Authority A offers no concessions to anyone under the age of 65; authority B offers the current requirement—a 50 per cent. concession for women, but not for men between the ages of 60 and 65; and authority C offers a 100 per cent. concession for travel to all women, but not to men between 60 and 65. Authority A is breaking the law, but requires reimbursement to be able to meet its obligations under the Bill. Authority B is providing exactly what the Government want at the moment, but will incur additional costs in providing what the Government want under the legislation.
The Government are committed to a 100 per cent. reimbursement of the additional costs of meeting the minimum requirements under the legislation. However, in my example, authority C is already providing more than is required and to extend the rights in the Bill to men, it would require twice the amount of expenditure per man—assuming equal use of public transport. Does the Government's promise to reimburse the full cost of meeting the requirements extend to paying £2 a head in London, for example, for every £1 a head paid on the Isle of Wight? If so, it is a wholly unfair system based on historical provision rather than a rational method of allocating resources between local authorities.
If the Government intend to provide £2 a head to people in London and £2 a head to people on the Isle of Wight, my local authority will not have any objection—but the Chancellor may have. Much additional money will be necessary and it may not end up being spent on bus concessionary travel. Will the Minister clarify the Government's commitment on that? An authority providing the minimum may get £2 a head for doing nothing. If an area did not have bus services but had the potential for them, would £2 a head be provided for every bus journey subsequently undertaken? The point is that £2 a head for London and £1 a head for the Isle of Wight would mean a significant imbalance. Obviously, I use those merely as examples and I am talking in general terms about metropolitan areas and areas that have provided generously on the one hand, and rural areas and areas with less generous schemes on the other. It is pouring money into areas of the country where a large amount of money has historically been spent and not into areas where little money has been spent.