Andy Beadle, South East London Socialist Party and retired bus driver
“Today is the first step on our journey to delivering better buses across the country”, said transport secretary Louise Haigh as she outlined the new Labour government’s proposals for bus reforms.
New legislation will allow all local authorities to introduce a franchising system, so they can decide routes, timetables and fares, with operators bidding to run services for a fixed fee. Currently, only areas with metro mayors can introduce ‘franchising’ to private companies, such as Andy Burnham’s Bee Network in Greater Manchester.
“With local communities firmly back in the driving seat, our bus revolution will save vital routes up and down the country and put passengers first” added Haigh. Such stirring optimism to reverse the long-term decline of the bus industry has seldom been heard since Margaret Thatcher’s ministers legislated deregulation and privatisation in 1986.
Until next month’s budget decisions, which Keir Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves have talked up as being full of “difficult decisions” ie cuts, nobody knows how this will be paid for. It is not clear if the current (limited) £2 fare cap will be extended beyond the end of 2024. Even the last government’s modest support for local authorities to invest in bus services may be discontinued next April.
The planned Buses Bill will reverse the ban on setting up new publicly owned bus companies. Starmer has no plans to provide councils with resources to restore existing services, never mind provide more! An industry spokesperson questioned whether councils retained the “institutional knowledge” to run their own transport operations. Instead, he foresaw a “partnership with private operators.”
Labour’s policy doesn’t even go as far as its planned rail reforms to nationalise passenger services as contracts come to an end. Private operators like First, Arriva and Stagecoach run most bus services inside and outside London, as well as most of the trains. They’d love a set up like Transport for London (TfL), in which private companies bid to run services and extract a profit from city hall. The same is true in Manchester with Bee branding but a number of private companies being paid to do the routes.
On top, bus bosses would enjoy more opportunities to take advantage of systems like the ‘revolving door’ in TfL, which takes in bus executives into highly paid TfL positions then releasing them and their knowledge back into private industry.
Most people forced to use the chaotic, underfunded public transport system outside London crave an integrated system like TfL which, despite costly fares and frequent overcrowding, may seem like an advance on next to nothing. If you’re a campaigner, at least you can put pressure on a local government to take back services from private companies. And bus workers can take coordinated strike action against different bus operators for shared pay and conditions, as has happened in limited examples in London.
Failures of privatisation
Louise Haigh is right when she denounces “decades of failed deregulation” on the buses, confessing Labour as well as Tory complicity while in government. She is also right when she says: “buses are the lifeblood of our communities, but for too many people it has become impossible to rely on local services, as routes have been slashed and timetables hollowed out.”
But, despite the nauseating Tory hypocrisy, shadow transport secretary Helen Whately is also partially right when she says councils would be expected to raise taxes or cut services to fund the proposal for more routes. Labour, Tory and all major parties’ councillors have implemented Tory cuts over the past 14 years, stripping council services to the bone.
Massive investment in public transport and all services is an urgent requirement. Given a serious redistribution of wealth away from the super-rich and kicking out private profiteers, those resources are available for a high-quality, free-to-use public transport system. Socialists fight for the democratic planning of all public services by workers in the industry and by the users.
