§ 9.20 a.m.
§ Mrs. Audrey Wise (Coventry, South-West)At this very moment, the West Midlands county council is seeking to increase bus fares in the area under its jurisdiction. I believe that the submission made by the county council last November in its application for transport supplementary grants shows clearly the attitude of the council to the whole question of public transport—and that that attitude is extremely unsatisfactory.
The figures in that application relate to the current year, next year and on to 1983–84, in relation to the proposed financial provision for highway maintenance and the rate contribution to be made to public transport. On highway maintenance the rate contribution in the current year is £3.8 million; next year it will be £6.9 million; by 1983.84 it will be £18.7 million.
649 The proposed rate contributions for public transport go in exactly the opposite direction. The figure for the current year is £15 million, for next year £13 million and for 1983–84, £5 million. The contrast is absolutely staggering and totally unacceptable to anyone who believes that public transport is a vital service.
Last year my constituents and the rest of the West Midlands population had to tolerate very high bus fare increases—in some cases up to 40 per cent. This year the proposal is rather more modest—for an average increase of 15 per cent.—but as the two lowest fares are intended to remain unchanged, fares for medium and longer distances will be harder hit. So some people again will have to pay very high increases.
It is agreed that inflation at the moment is considerably less than 15 per cent. It is nothing less than sabotage of efforts to contain the inflation rate if the county council can go ahead with increases of this large percentage.
Last year the council forecast that the increase which would then take place would reduce the rate contribution from what would otherwise have been £20 million to £15 million, but I understand that that figure will be challenged and that it is believed that the real figure of rate contribution will turn out to be no more than £121 million at most. So the excessive fares increases made last year have produced a greater increase in revenue than was forecast. Yet the county council proposes this considerable fresh increase, far higher than the rate of inflation. That is completely unsatisfactory.
I have already ascertained by questioning the Secretary of State for Transport that, when the traffic commissioners consider bus fares, they can take social as well as commercial factors into account. Two points need to be considered carefully in cases such as this. One is whether a financial case for an increase can be made out; the other is what social factors are involved.
Even if it is true that a financial case can be made out, the point which then must be decided is whether it is better and more equitable and socially desirable for the increased costs to be met by 650 passengers at time of use or from the rate contribution. It is by no means necessarily better for the additional costs to be met by passengers at the time of use. This is not even equitable. It shows a very superficial attitude to public transport.
Even those families who have ears expect a public transport service to be available. They expect to have public transport for other members of their families. They expect to have public transport available if their cars break down or are being serviced. They expect the buses to continue running so that they may use them intermittently when it suits them. Yet the county council of the West Midlands apparently thinks that people in that position should make very little contribution to the maintenance of a bus service. This is a totally wrong concept. Public transport is a vital public service, and the community as a whole should contribute to it. If it does not, inevitably the bus service will decline, because there is a factor of diminishing return. If fares go up too much, people find other means of transport where possible for essential journeys, such as travelling to work, or they cease to travel, and ceasing to travel can have serious social consequences.
I suggest that the impact of excessive bus fares does not affect all members of the community equally. Women are very much more adversely affected. In the provinces counts of passengers at any time of day, whether at peak hours or during the remainder of the day, show that the overwhelming number are women. Any increase in fares bears more harshly on women, as does any diminution in service. Women in families with only one wage earner and with toddlers can find themselves virtually housebound because they are unable to afford the price of travel. Socially this is extremely undesirable.
Coventry will be hit even harder than the rest of the West Midlands if this proposed increase in bus fares goes ahead. Coventry has the infamy of being the only district in the West Midlands which does not take advantage of a concessionary fare system for disabled people. It means that disabled people in Coventry will be affected fully by any fares increase. It means that for my constituents the proposals are even more serious than they are for people in the rest of the West Midlands.
651 We are also disadvantaged because the intention is to discontinue the present system whereby books of tickets may be purchased at a discount for future journeys. I do not labour that point. It is a detailed and technical one, and it may be that there are sound technical reasons for the discontinuance of this practice. But this means that an additional increase will be borne by Coventry which will not be borne by the rest of the West Midlands. That is why I felt compelled to raise this matter today tinder the transport supplementary grants provision of this Bill.
I hope that my hon. Friend will give me an assurance that the Government share my view that public transport is an essential service and will say that they are giving no aid or encouragement—still less applying pressure—to the West Midlands county council to undertake any increases, particularly increases of this high order.
I hope that my hon. Friend can give me these assurances. If he cannot, that news will be received with great disappointment and discouragement in the West Midlands. If he can give me these assurances, it will be welcome as a further factor which will be used to discourage the West Midlands authority, even at this late date, from pressing forward with its proposals.
It is commonly thought that the West Midlands is an area of high wages. I have before me figures disproving this completely. For the West Midlands high wages are, unfortunately, features of past decades. At present, if we compare average earnings in the West Midlands with those in the metropolitan county of South Yorkshire we find that the West Midlands metropolitan county is no less than £2 behind South Yorkshire for adult manual males, according to the latest available figures, published in March of this year in the new earnings survey, broken down by region.
However, as my hon. Friend will be aware, South Yorkshire is an outstanding example of an authority which has managed to maintain its fares at a reasonable level. Doing that has led to the maintenance of its service and to approval of its operations by the local community. In every way it is a successful example of public transport and public enterprise.
652 South Yorkshire people, with their wages higher than those of my constituents, have also the advantage of this good transport system. I hope that my hon. Friend can bring himself to urge the West Midlands to emulate the example of South Yorkshire in keeping fares down. I know that at one stage the Government felt that this was a dangerous policy. I hope that now the proof of the pudding has been found in the eating and that South Yorkshire is seen as a good and successful authority, working to the benefit of its people.
I trust that the traffic commissioners, when they consider this matter, will give full weight to the fact that transport is a vital service. They must realise that people depend upon public transport for their social life and even for an extension of their family life, by way of visiting relatives. An impoverishment in public transport as a result of high fares and reduced services is an impoverishment in the life of the community which should be unacceptable in 1978.
I hope that my hon. Friend can give me the assurances I seek.
§ 9.34 a.m.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. John Horam)I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mrs. Wise) has been able to raise this subject—particularly at this hour rather than somewhat earlier this morning. It is, whatever time of day we discuss it, an important subject which plays a large part in people's lives.
I agree with my hon. Friend that a high proportion of women with families use buses. The sort of fare increases which have been made in recent years have fallen particularly hard on them, especially in a period of pay restraint. So I fully agree with what my hon. Friend has said in that respect. I can give her the assurance that we share her view about the importance of public transport and that it is an essential service.
We have been so worried about the continuing rise in bus fares that we have reversed our policy. The policy put forward before we published the White Paper on transport last summer was that support for buses should decline. We have reversed that. We are now seeking to 653 maintain bus revenue support. The total amount of bus revenue support is running at about £150 million a year, and we intend to maintain that, taking the country as a whole.
If we had gone on with the previous policy, metropolitan counties would have been down to having £22.5 million only in 1980–81, whereas they will be able to spend up to £77.5 million under the policy, we are now pursuing—the policy, taking the country as a whole, of broadly continuing support for buses at the same level as today.
We do not accept that this policy can be used as a justification for massive fare increases. As my hon. Friend pointed out, there was a substantial increase in bus fares in the West Midlands area last summer. This has been followed by an application for further increases—up to 25 per cent. but averaging 15 per cent.—in this current month.
The West Midlands county council is pursuing a policy of reducing support for buses. It has cut its support from £13.4 million last year to £12.2 million this year, and my hon. Friend indicated that support for other aspects of transport was going in the other direction. That is a matter for the West Midlands county council, but it is its own choice. We have made it plain to the council—though far from putting any pressure on it—that we regard it as important that it should meet its obligations without resort to fare increases above the rate of inflation.
It is inevitable that there will be some increases, given the general increase in prices and the increase in wages. Costs will go up to some extent, inevitably leading to some increase. Nevertheless, we have tried to adopt a policy over the country as a whole which will mean that, with good housekeeping and an imaginative approach to scheduling, it should be possible to avoid excessive increases.
I noted from what my hon. Friend said that the situation bears particularly hard on Coventry, because the city has had since 1968—it was introduced by the corporation's own bus undertaking and subsequently retained by the passenger transport executive—a system of multi-journey tickets, in effect, a general discount facility and not a concessionary scheme as such, which helped the population generally. I understand that that is 654 now being withdrawn, which is particularly hard to bear when one is having to face two successive substantial fare increases as well. The withdrawal of that facility as well as the general fare increases will, of course, be subject to the traffic commissioners. The council will have to get over that hurdle.
On the final point raised by hon. Friend, I make an appeal to the council because, as she said, Coventry is the only authority in the West Midlands which does not provide concessionary travel for disabled people. As she knows, a local authority has the power to provide concessionary fares for the elderly, the blind and the disabled. The decision whether to use that power is for local authorities.
But we issued a circular at the beginning of this year indicating our view of the policy which should be pursued by local authorities. We have made it plain that we think that at least there should be half fare for all these three categories, and in particular that there should be additional facilities for disabled people because they, unlike elderly people, will, in many instances, be trying to get to work and therefore they need half-fare facilities not just at off-peak times, which is the general rule, but at peak periods. Equally, they may need to have with them their invalid chair, and we urge local authorities to provide for such chairs to be carried free on buses. In addition, disabled people may need to be accompanied, particularly on longer journeys, and we ask local authorities to look sympathetically at that problem. We have asked local authorities to consider all those matters relating to disabled people, and I urge the West Midlands to look at this most carefully because Coventry appears to be deficient in this respect.
I should add that we have made the money available through the rate support grant for full support for disabled people, just as we have for elderly and blind people. In fact, we are making available an extra £31 million over the whole country, and it is important that we get a proper scheme which is universal in its application. If that happens, we can get rid of the complaint that there is one scheme in one area but people just over the boundary in another authority cannot benefit from it, though they see their 655 friends benefiting. We attach great importance to this. We have made the money available to the local authorities, and we have urged them, and I urge the West Midlands, to iron out this particularly bad anomaly.
Those are the three points which my hon. Friend raised on this very important matter of bus policy in general. At the end of the day it is for the West Midlands to decide its own policies, but I have made plain the Government's view on these matters.