Amendment proposed: 71, in clause 38, page 41, line 23, after “England” insert—

“(e) the impact, or potential impact, the establishment of Rural Bus Hubs on services to villages.”—

This amendment would require a review of bus service provision for villages to include an assessment of the impact of rural bus hubs, if already established, or the impact which establishing them may have on villages.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 2, Noes 8.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

With this it will be convenient to discuss new Clause 53—Minimum bus service standards: review—

“(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must conduct a review into the minimum bus service standards required for communities in England.

(2) The review conducted under this section must—

(a) take into consideration the different requirements of communities of differing population sizes across England, including rural and urban communities,

(b) explore the regulatory powers and funding arrangements that would be required for Local Transport Authorities to implement guaranteed minimum bus services for every community with more than three hundred residents across England.”

Clause 38 places a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to conduct a review, within two years of the Bill’s enactment, on the level of bus services being provided to villages in England. The clause was inserted into the Bill via a non-Government Amendment in the Lords.

The Government expect local transport authorities to consider the needs of everyone in their area, including those in more rural parts. Although the Bill aims to improve bus services, the review required by the clause would not be practical to deliver. Measures such as franchising and setting up a local authority bus company are significant undertakings that will take time. It is unlikely that a review after two years would allow enough time to capture and assess the impact on rural areas. The full impact of a franchising scheme or a local authority bus company is not expected to be seen until the scheme or company has been operating for some time.

Moreover, although I accept the positive intention behind the measure, it is already addressed by the Bill and wider Government policy. The Government are seeking to reverse the long-term decline in bus services, partly by ensuring that the impact of any changes to bus networks is fully assessed and options are fully explored before a service is changed or cancelled. That will be achieved through measures on socially necessary local services, which will help protect and improve services in rural areas.

Beyond the Bill’s reforms, the Department’s support programme includes a focus on rural-specific challenges, with a dedicated Bus Centre of Excellence conference on quality rural bus services this month, and the first two of our franchising pilots, in York and North Yorkshire and Cheshire West and Chester, announced at the spending review. The Government therefore oppose the clause.

I support Clause 38, which would require the Secretary of State to conduct a review into the provision of bus services to villages in England within two years of the Act being passed. Members will have heard many of my points about the clause in previous speeches, including on Amendment 71, which I have pressed to a vote already, but the clause as a whole is not only sensible but essential. I am very pleased that those in the other place added it to the Bill and I hope it will be retained today.

In North Norfolk I have more than 100 villages and hamlets. From Alby and Antingham to Wiveton, Wickmere and Worstead, they are all treasured communities but face challenges with rural transport. Too often, rural communities are treated as an afterthought when it comes to public transport planning. I know this at first hand and my constituents experience it day in and day out. I am sorry to say that the last Government did not do enough in the years that they had to tackle the issues that rural communities face. It is time we stepped up to the challenge of rural mobility.

Villages across England have been cut off by decades of under-investment, deregulation and short-term decision making. The clause acknowledges that rural isolation is not a minor inconvenience, but a daily barrier to work and education, healthcare and opportunity more broadly. The clause rightly demands that the Government take stock of the current state of rural bus provision. It requires an assessment of how many villages are being served by regular bus routes, and it asks important questions about who is being affected—which demographics, which regions and which types of communities are being left behind.

As I said when speaking to my amendments and new clauses on rural bus hubs, having a service to every village might not be the right approach for every area. In many places, moving towards a hub-and-spoke model might be the best course of action. This review would help to identify that and allow us to better understand the current state of play and what steps can be taken to improve the situation.

The clause also rightly mandates consultation with key stakeholders—local councils and transport authorities —who are best placed to speak to the lived reality of rural transport as currently delivered. Without proper scrutiny and transparency, bus networks in rural areas will continue to wither. This review clause is a modest but vital safeguard that ensures we do not look the other way while whole communities are cut off.

My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have long championed the rights of rural communities to fair access to transport. From Cumbria to Cornwall and Norfolk to Newton Abbot, we are fighting for cut-off communities to finally have their challenges heard and their needs addressed. Clause 38 speaks directly to that principle and I urge colleagues across the Committee to support its inclusion in the Bill.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I want to speak in support of Clause 38. As a representative of a rural Constituency, public transport is one of the things mentioned most frequently when I speak to local people on the doorstep or at events. Car and van ownership in North West Leicestershire is higher than the national average, partly due to the lack of public transport options, including bus and rail.

In the light of the support given to expand local services and our ambition in government, Leicestershire has had an additional £8 million and we are starting to see a change, with bus services no longer being reviewed, reconsidered and cut, but being reviewed with a view to expansion. Bus services are important. People talk about services that have been withdrawn; they feel the loss of service.

As transport is so important, one of the first things I did after I was elected was undertake a local transport survey, and 72% of respondents said that the reason they do not use buses is their frequency and the lack of service and choice. I am sure that the challenge is felt in other constituencies, but local people in my constituency said that buses are infrequent, unreliable, poorly timed and often do not connect towns and villages effectively. That was most commonly felt in Moira, Diseworth, Heather, Ibstock, Ravenstone, Castle Donington, Kegworth and Breedon.

People also said that services stop too early, with no evening or Sunday options, impacting leisure and work. One disabled passenger told me that they can catch a bus to work from Monday to Saturday but cannot be available to work on a Sunday owing to the lack of a Sunday service. Public transport rarely facilitates straightforward journeys to colleges, workplaces or local amenities.

People also said that they needed increased frequency, reliability and coverage, especially in our villages but also in new housing areas. A villager in Belton told me that buses can be unreliable. That has put them off using the service, particularly because, the last time they risked it, they ended up stranded and had to get a taxi home. That happens even in our larger conurbations, where just two weeks ago a resident told me they had to wait for more than an hour for the next bus because the one they had planned to catch simply did not turn up.

Clause 38 provides the opportunity to review and assess the challenges to local services, and to make sure that our ambition reaches all parts of communities, including villages.

It is very hard to add anything to that. I fully support the comments of the hon. Member, and of the hon. Member for North Norfolk. Clause 38 is excellent. It is a great addition—it was introduced by Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb in the other place—because it requires the Secretary of State to undertake a review of, essentially, the impact of the Bill within two years of its passing. The meat of the clause is in subsection (2), which states that the review must assess

“the change in the level of services to villages since the passing of this Act,” and

“the number of villages in England not served by bus services”,

as well as the

“demographic characteristics of villages in relation to the level of business services available”,

and finally,

“the impact of this Act on the provision of bus services to villages in England.”

It is the review of, “What have we achieved today?” That report will be useful, because it will kick-start discussion of solutions to rural transport.

The hon. Member for North Norfolk has already referred to Sanders, which is a family-owned regional bus company—I think it has grown such that I can properly call it regional. We also have First Bus in Norfolk. We have a radial approach. We know the impact of the £2 bus fare on ridership in our county: it was very useful, including by enabling residents of Fakenham, in my Constituency, to get down to Norwich—that is a bus journey of three quarters of an hour for £2. It has been an effective policy to increase ridership. We will see what impact the Bill, if it becomes an Act, will have on ridership and provision in the country as a whole, especially in rural areas. I suspect that the answer is that it will have absolutely no impact.

A review would expose the Bill for what it is: virtue signalling without any funding at all to support the supposed ambitions of local transport authorities. If the Government vote against clause 38 standing part of the Bill, that will clearly demonstrate their concern that the Bill is performative, that it will not actually make services better, and that it has in fact been a monumental waste of time, without funding.

Time and again, throughout consideration of the Bill, I have said that the Conservative party is not against franchising; in fact, it is a Conservative policy development. In the right circumstances, it is a good solution—it is progress—but we have to accept that it is expensive. The Government are pretending that they are facilitating a whole load of local transport authorities to franchise, but are not giving them any money to do it, so we are left with a meaningless shell. The review mandated by clause 38 would hold the Government to account. If I were proven wrong by the report, and it lists a huge number of additional services that have been supplied as a result of the Bill, I would happily come back here and eat my hat.

I will make a point that I have made before, following on from the Shadow Minister’s description of Clause 38 as revealing, and of the Bill as transparently not providing funding for anyone. The clause would also be helpful to demonstrate to small local authorities and local authorities that provide over large rural areas, such as my own on the Isle of Wight, the gulf between trying to realise the objectives behind franchising and having responsibility for delivering them, as a small local authority taking on all that financial risk. So, like him, I support the clause standing part of the Bill, if only to reveal to local authorities some of the issues behind it, and that it is not the all-singing, all-dancing solution that they might think.

I am grateful for the Intervention. I agree with everything that my hon. Friend said.

Moving on, new Clause 53 would require a review of the minimum level of bus services required for communities, within a quite ambitious six months. I leave it to the Minister to respond to that.

It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain, for what may be the final time on this Committee. I thank you for guiding us—particularly those of us who are new to the world of Bill Committees—through this process.

I would like to speak in favour of the Minister’s approach to Clause 38, which, though clearly well intentioned, perhaps would not have achieved what it was aiming to for England’s villages. On Tuesday, hon. Members heard me mention two of the villages I am proud to represent, Slitting Mill and Norton Canes, and what clause 14—regarding socially necessary services—would mean for them. However, not wishing to have favourites, I am grateful to now have the opportunity to talk about what this Bill will also mean for Brereton and Ravenhill, Brindley, Littleworth, Rawnsley, Hazelslade, Prospect Village, Cannock Wood, Bridgtown, Heath Hayes and Wimblebury.

Like so many parts of England, particularly in rural and semi-rural areas such as mine, bus routes in our villages have been shrinking for many years, while fares have risen. However, I would like to highlight a rare piece of good news, which is that, from 20 July—a successful tender permitting—the No. 60 between Cannock and Lichfield, and the No. 74 between Cannock and Stafford, will begin to run on Sundays once again, and hopefully later into the evenings. The No. 60 in particular is the only service for many of my villages, so that extension will be very welcome.

My constituents have sadly become used to bus services stopping at 7 pm and not running at all on Sundays. From listening to the debate, that is a world away from the experiences in the constituencies of some members of this Committee, but it is the reality in much of our country. When growing up in a village, like I did, or living in a village, like I still do, a bus can be a lifeline—something that I am glad to say we on this Committee have discussed extensively—so the withdrawal or reduction of services means more cars on the road, more people isolated within their homes, and, of course, less cash to invest in, or even preserve, routes. That is why I am pleased to hear the Minister’s assurances on this matter.

I do hope that a review of the benefits of this Bill to England’s villages can be carried out in time, but when the time is right, not by an arbitrary timeframe. By that point, the full benefits of things such as franchising and registers of socially necessary services can be properly assessed. For that reason, I urge fellow members of the Committee who represent villages—like I do—to oppose clause 38 standing as part of this Bill, so that the Secretary of State and the Minister can determine the best approach to ensuring that, once again, buses are there for people and communities first and foremost.

On new Clause 53, legislation to guarantee minimum levels of services for communities already exists in the Transport Act 2000. The Bill’s socially necessary local services measure will provide greater protection for existing bus services from being arbitrarily cancelled or reduced. The Department for Transport is also currently undertaking a review into enhanced partnerships, which is set to conclude later this year. We are looking into the potential of developing a set of minimum standards for enhanced partnerships.

I thank members of the Committee for their thoughts on seeking to review the provision of bus services to villages in England. The Government recognise the need to serve villages, alongside improving service, reliability and punctuality, across England, and the role that buses play in linking communities together. We are seeking to reverse the long-term decline in bus services, partly by ensuring that the impacts of any changes to bus networks are fully assessed and that options are fully explored before a service is changed or cancelled.

An evaluation of the Bill, including the impact on rural services, will be completed as part of a wider evidence review of bus franchising. The Government do not want to undermine that analysis by presenting findings before franchising and local authority bus companies have been established. That would not reflect the true impact on passengers.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 7.

Question accordingly negatived.

Clause 38 disagreed to.