HC Deb 15 June 2004 vol 422 cc196-204WH 4.15 pm
Mr. Steve Webb (Northavon) (LD)

I look upon community transport as the one bright star in the transport firmament. To oversimplify ever so slightly, the roads are in gridlock, the trains do not run on time and buses are expensive, but at least there is community transport. That has been the one great encouragement in the past few years in transport for my constituents. I welcome the seed corn, pump-priming money that the Government have contributed towards helping my constituents to benefit from new and improved community transport schemes.

Four schemes serve the South Gloucestershire unitary authority, two of which are prominent in my constituency—Vale Link community transport, which serves Thornbury and the Severn Vale, with Yate, Sodbury and District community transport, serving the Yate area and surrounding villages.

I pay tribute to the paid staff of those organisations, and to the many volunteers who make them something very special. They are the people who will take someone to the eye hospital for an appointment at 6 o'clock in the morning. They are the people that a person should get in touch with in a transport crisis over getting to a new college course on Monday, when the council has rung on Friday to say that it will not pay for transport. They are the people who help in an emergency or on a regular week in, week out, basis. They enable many of my elderly or disabled constituents, or those who are young with families, or who live in far-flung villages, to feel that they are part of the community They deserve enormous credit.

I—like, I am sure, the Minister—want these community transport schemes to have a long-term, viable, sustainable future, rather than, as has happened so far after the initial flush of funding, to lurch annually from financial crisis to financial crisis. For example, Vale Link community transport has in two consecutive years issued redundancy notices to staff. That was the only way in which it could cover itself, because it was not sure that the money would be available on 1 April or 6 April to keep it going. That is unsettling for staff who sometimes leave because they cannot live with such uncertainty, and for the passengers.

To give a flavour of the value attached to the services—I shall not quote great screeds although I have many letters—I shall refer to a letter I received earlier in the year. The lady tells me: I am writing on behalf of myself and other elderly, sick and disabled people … I lave been told that the Vale Link … are under threat of being withdrawn owing to lack of funds … I have Parkinson's Disease and rheumatoid arthritis, and although I bought this bungalow because it was on a good little local bus route, I am not fit enough to use it. I am only able to cope here alone with the help of the Dial a Ride. That is the difference that the service makes to that lady. She lists all the things that she does with its help—the essentials such as visits to the doctor and the hospital, but also to her poetry group once a month. The issue is partly one of access to essential public services, and partly one of taking part in community life. The lady writes: I would be housebound without the help of this service. I also mentioned Yate, Sodbury and District community transport, and I have a letter about that from a lady who writes: I am nearly 80. I use it for shopping. I cannot carry heavy loads. Also, they have days out which I enjoy … It is used also by schools, youth and varied groups, and it will be a great loss to all who use it. She mentions social visits, going to medical centres, and so on. I have shoals of such letters, as I am sure the Minister can imagine, from grateful constituents who appreciate the fact that community transport schemes have been started, often with substantial Government pump priming, but who want the Government to ensure that community transport has a long-term, viable and sustainable future.

When I have raised the matter in written questions, the response, as I am sure the Minister is aware, has generally been that the Government got the schemes going, and that they are thereafter for local authorities. That argument is fine as far as it goes. If the ongoing revenue funding—not for buying buses but for keeping the thing going—had also been transferred to local authorities, on a scale that would keep them going, that would be great. However, I think that the Minister would accept that that has not happened.

There are ways in which central Government help local authorities and community transport groups, and I shall mention a couple of them, but they are not up to the scale of the problem, given the transport pressures on local authorities. To put the matter in context, commercial bus companies are under increasing financial and competitive pressure to concentrate on the money-making urban main routes; that leaves councils to fill the vacuum of rural and connecting services to the main routes. We expect councils to run more of such services, while also expecting them to pay to keep community transport going, and the money will not stretch to allow them to do all those things. There is a danger that we are telling councils, "If you want to keep community transport going, you will have to take off th( rural bus service you have been subsidising." I appreciate that councils must prioritise and that local people should determine local priorities, but the money must be there to make that possible.

If community transport is to be long term and sustainable, what can the Government do? Is it just a matter of saying that it is up to local authorities? The Government support the rural bus challenge with predominantly capital funding to get it going, but South Gloucestershire's most recent bid was turned down. Some bids from other authorities were granted not just capital funding but continuation funding for up to seven years. A lot of effort goes into the bids, and not all can succeed, but there is an inconsistency in that sometimes people are told that they cannot bid for continuation funding. Yet some of the successful bids have the words "continuation funding" in the title. It makes one wonder if those who know how to play the game get a better result. People feel slightly aggrieved about that.

I recognise that the grants cannot go on forever. My local authority is starting to say that it cannot go on bidding for money for another bus if it does not know whether it has the long-term revenue funding to back it. That is the nub of my concern.

There have been welcome changes: community transport can now access the bus service operators' grant, for example, and the money is going directly to community transport. I welcome the Government's change of policy in that respect, but how will the services get long-term sustainability? I group my responses into two areas: the first is not so much about the Government getting out of the way, but about freeing up innovative local authorities and community transport groups to do new things and to find new sustainable long-term funding.

The Government need to recognise the potential of community transport to provide services that link in to the commercial bus routes. Bus companies increasingly say, "If you can get to the main road, we will run a fast, reliable, commercial bus service down the main road, the bus lane or the quality bus corridor." However, it is possible to have community transport such as a community bus service that runs on fixed routes, with some variation—perhaps a demand-responsive element—to link to that network. Potentially, it is possible, but there are all sorts of barriers.

For example, I believe there is a rule that where a community transport service wants to feed into the main network, it cannot use a paid driver. I can understand why, 15 to 20 years ago, there may have been such rules, because we did not want subsidised services to compete with commercial services, but in rural areas now it is nonsense to think that anyone wants to run such services. It is not a case of public money crowding out private services; they just ain't there.

That being so, could we lift some of the section 22 restrictions, which state that a paid driver cannot be used? Volunteer drivers can be used for individual journeys, but they would not be willing to do an eight-hour day, five or six clays a week. Paid staff are needed, and rules need to be relaxed to allow services to operate without the bureaucracy. I understand that section 19 rules say that it is all right to have a driver as long as he is a member of the group; some communities have therefore had to sign up everyone in the parish to be a member of the community transport group so that one of them can drive the bus. I think the Minister would agree that that sort of bureaucracy blocks creativeness. What I propose would not result in unfair competition with the commercial sector but it would enable community transport to provide new and better services and access for people in rural areas, without the bureaucracy, giving them sustainable, long-term security.

The Government need to make it clear that the rural bus grant, which they give to local authorities every year, can be used explicitly for community transport schemes, as there are often rules and regulations about what the money can be used for. There might even be a presumption, or openness to a presumption, that the first port of call for the rural bus grant money should not be to pay commercial providers to run a few extra buses on infrequent services on, say, a Sunday, only to find that the public do not use that service and that it is then taken off because we are simply paying people to run empty buses. The money should be used explicitly for community transport. Would not it be better to use the money to provide a service that better matches demand?

The Government could also consider local transport plans. I understand that the next round of plans will include the key themes of social exclusion and accessibility. Community transport has the potential to meet some of those demands. If there is a transport problem in a rural area, the answer may not be a capital project, or a new road, bus stop or junction, but a revenue solution to make that rural area accessible by paying for a community bus service. That could be an explicit part of what a local transport plan should contain. If the Government gave a positive signal that they were looking for those sorts of ideas, we would go a long way.

There is an issue with how far local authorities can afford to take up the slack where Government funding has ceased. That issue was raised in this Chamber nearly a year ago by my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) in a sort of all-party debate on transport, to which the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) responded, in which the same issues and questions were raised. For example: how do we convert something good into something long term and sustainable?

Another problem is that of tapering Government support. Clearly, people knew when they made a bid for the money that it would not last for ever, but there was a rush of applications, and many things started at the same time that are now running out of money at more or less the same time, and the funding to take up the strain is not there. My local community transport group says that charities and trusts are pretty good at stumping up money for capital items. With a fair wind, it can get the money for a bus, but it cannot get the ongoing funding for a driver. That is what central and local government is about: the ongoing security of services.

One message that I have received is that the people who run community transport, and those who use it, want certainty, security, stability and predictability. They want to know that services will not be affected come February or March, when we have the annual panic and crisis, when money is borrowed or a few thousand pounds are found from another budget. They want to know that the services have the long-term stability that they have a right to expect.

My key messages to the Minister are as follows. First, one of thanks to the Government for helping to get things going. Secondly, I request that some of the bureaucracy, such as regulations, and limitations on community transport, is removed in order to address long-term funding needs creatively. Some local authorities are saying, "Well, we can't find this sort of long-term funding. We can't find ways of getting money to community transport, so we are not really going to engage with this agenda." South Gloucestershire unitary council is not taking that approach. It wants to be creative with local community transport schemes and to find ways to use them as service providers for social services and education, so that it can get core revenue streams going into them. It also wants to mesh in with the rest of the network, use paid drivers in rural areas—where that is the answer—and to use community transport schemes as part of a local transport plan, as an alternative to capital projects.

There are many ideas floating around, and we need to know that the Government will not say, "We never intended that to do this," or, "You can't do that because of this regulation," but will let a thousand flowers bloom, so to speak, let local community transport groups be creative and give them the longterm, sustainable future that my constituents and, I think, the Minister, would like to see.

4.29 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) on securing this debate and providing the Chamber with another opportunity to discuss the important role of community transport and how it is funded.

I want to pick up on the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks, as I did not recognise the transport system that he described. He said that roads were gridlocked. I accept that there are occasions when they are extremely busy, but it is nonsensical to suggest that they are permanently at gridlock. Although the Liberal Democrats nationally support congestion charging, Liberal Democrats in Bristol opposed one such measure that Bristol city council proposed a year or so ago. The hon. Gentleman may want to reflect on that with some of his colleagues in that area. The other reason why our roads are extremely busy is because under this Government we have a very successful economy. As many as 2 million more people are working. More people are travelling to work. More people are travelling for leisure and pleasure.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments about community transport. It certainly is a bright star. I am sure that he has received many appreciative letters from people who use community transport. That is reflected in the sort of communication that the Department has had from people, both at local authority level and from the service users. Community and voluntary transport has a key role to play throughout all regions of the country, and in both urban and rural areas. The challenges may vary but the need for transport for those who are socially excluded by reason of income, gender, race, disability or geographical isolation is always there.

The Community Transport Association, which represents the majority of schemes across the country, estimates that there are some 5,000 schemes in the UK, which between them run 60,000 minibuses. The schemes deliver 5 million trios a year for almost 2 million people with mobility problems. In addition to 10,000 or so full-time paid drivers, the sector relies on 250,000 volunteers to provide these invaluable transport schemes. I pay tribute to those volunteers who support such transport schemes. Without their contribution many others would be denied mobility, and would increasingly be socially isolated and disadvantaged.

However, as we have heard today, funding for the sector is not straightforward, and I fully appreciate the difficulties to which uncertainty over future funding and the complexities of funding applications themselves can give rise. For a small operation simply pulling together all the information needed for a funding application can be a daunting and time-consuming task. It has to be repeated time after time for different funders, and the need to "reinvent" the project to meet the relevant funding criteria can be a significant burden. I know that the hon. Gentleman has been involved over a number of years in supporting the work of schemes in his constituency to secure funding.

We recognise that good transport connections are vital to building thriving rural communities. It is central to achieving a healthy economy, a better quality of life and an improved environment. Over the past 30 years, public transport has become a marginal form of transport in many rural areas. In addition, people's journeys have become longer as local shops, schools, and other services such as health care, post offices and banks have disappeared from many communities. For people without access to a car this meant increasing difficulties accessing employment opportunities and essential services.

Many of your constituents, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will not have access to a car. In my constituency some 40 per cent. do not. That is bad enough in an urban area but the problem is even worse in rural areas. Walking or cycling to the nearest services is not an option, particularly for the elderly or those who are disabled in some way. That lack of accessibility is a significant cause of social exclusion in rural areas. We recognised this in the commitments made in both the 10-year plan for transport and the rural White Paper to invest in rural transport, to improve the transport infrastructure and to enhance rural accessibility.

The measures we are taking are having a positive impact. New and enhanced bus services are being delivered across all rural counties. They are improving links between market towns and halting the decline in bus use in rural areas. More than £50 million will be spent this financial year alone on the rural bus subsidy grant. More than 2,000 new and enhanced bus services are now being funded from that grant, supporting some 26 million passengers per annum. We have succeeded in stopping the gradual decline in the rural bus network and provided a much-needed boost to many rural communities.

Additional resources for conventional bus services are not the only answer in rural areas however. We fully recognise the potential contribution of more flexible, demand-responsive services and community transport solutions in meeting local needs. In doing so, in 2001 we extended the fuel duty rebate scheme to a wide range of community transport services, helping them with their fuel costs and providing not inconsiderable assistance. We have made changes to the regulations governing bus registrations, which will ensure that outdated rules and regulations are not a barrier to the introduction of demand-responsive bus services. We shall carefully consider the hon. Gentleman's point about section 22 in the forthcoming review of the permit regime. If the hon. Gentleman wants us to consider other issues, we shall certainly give them careful scrutiny, although we cannot guarantee that we shall take them on board.

Mr. Webb

I am grateful to the Minister, because my point was about a concrete issue. Can he say something about the time scale for decision making and changing things?

Mr. Jamieson

I cannot, but my ministerial colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), is more familiar with such issues than I am, so I shall get him to pen the hon. Gentleman a line.

We want still further improvements in rural accessibility, with better targeting of resources by local authorities to meet accessibility needs, greater promotion of rural transport services and a more joined-up approach, linking public transport and the less conventional services that I just mentioned. All such initiatives can help to make more services available to more people.

The Department has a number of initiatives aimed at supporting the community and voluntary sectors in both rural and urban areas, where social exclusion also exists. One of the most significant initiatives has been the extension to community transport operators of the bus service operators grant, which was formerly the fuel duty rebate. Since the introduction of the grant in May 2002, nearly 800 community transport operators in England, including Vale Link community transport in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, have been awarded eligibility. The grant is continuing, not time limited.

On the interests of rural communities, since 1998 the Department has provided significant funding to improve the provision of bus services in rural areas. Our rural bus subsidy grant and the rural bus challenge schemes have been widely welcomed as having a real impact on the transport needs of rural communities around the country. I am pleased to say that the challenge scheme in particular has opened up new opportunities in many areas for community transport operations to play a bigger part in addressing local needs. Although we have helped to stimulate many such initiatives, I should also like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication that community groups have invested in improving quality of life for the many people who rely on them. As the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge, south Gloucestershire has benefited from that funding for rural services, having successfully received awards for four projects totalling £2.1 million from the rural bus challenge and some £294,000 from the rural bus subsidy grant.

We of course recognise that the funding regimes that I have outlined do not provide a long-term funding base for schemes. The hon. Gentleman said that the grants cannot go on for ever, and I agree. However, that was never our intention, and we have made it clear from the outset of the rural bus challenge that it was never intended to be a source of permanent revenue support. The main aim was to get projects under way, which would then become part of mainstream funding. Although I recognise the pressure on local authority resources for revenue support of buses, the overall Government grant has increased by 7.3 per cent. for next year and by 30 per cent. since 1997.

Some authorities have an exceptional record of working in close and supportive partnership with community transport. Others, however, have not yet recognised the value of working in partnership. In particular, many authorities continue to provide funding support one year at a time. That is no basis for forward planning or development.

Now that local authorities have the benefit of funding on a five-year basis rather than annually, we hope that they will pass that benefit to the schemes that they support. One of the things that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has recognised is that security of funding over a long period gives local government a better opportunity to plan. However, those who rely on such funding should also benefit from the certainty of the five-year forward planning.

In the same vein, it is important to engage community transport providers in the local transport plan process at a strategic level in recognition of their contribution to public transport delivery. The LTP guidance to local authorities emphasises the need to encourage active involvement from that sector. However, too many community and voluntary transport providers continue to be treated as some sort of optional extra in the transport mix. Clearly in south Gloucestershire there is evidence of engagement and, as we have heard, projects have been taken forward under the rural bus challenges.

Where do we go from here on funding? We all recognise that community and voluntary transport schemes are vital in the mix of transport provision. The Government want to do all that we can to ensure that they thrive. Funding is, as we have heard today, a key factor in determining how the sector is able to continue and to develop effectively. It is important that all those involved in funding, including national and local government, as well as other funding providers, are aware of how their decisions can affect the future viability of community schemes. It is important that they are able to share their experiences, learn from others, and develop their funding policies with a broad understanding of the sector.

In August last year, the Department hosted a seminar for the major funders of community and voluntary transport. Its purpose was to discuss funding and to consider what we could all do to enable the community and voluntary sector to develop to the benefit of the communities—both rural and urban—that it serves. As a result of that seminar we have commissioned the CTA to produce a good practice guide to funding. It is due to deliver the guide this summer and we intend to make it widely available to all involved. In addition, funding will be considered in the context of a research project that we have commissioned to consider the role of community transport in reducing social exclusion. One of the aims of that work is to identify and evaluate the funding regimes that are available to the sector. I hope that that is helpful to the hon. Gentleman.

Finally, as part of our commitment to the compact with the voluntary sector, we have worked closely with it on "Working in Partnership with the Voluntary Sector—Strategy and Action Plan", which we are soon to publish. That document will outline how the Department has met and will continue to meet the aims of the compact. By liaising with the sector, we aim to obtain views on the Government's transport agenda and to identify and better understand the barriers that voluntary organisations have to overcome if they are to provide a full and sustainable service.

In conclusion, we are actively considering the impact of funding on the voluntary and community transport sector. There is no simple solution, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate. Our role is to provide a national policy, regulatory and financial framework so that the transport system works for everyone. We must engage others, local authorities in particular, in recognising the implications for local communities if community and voluntary transport schemes are not supported.

This has been a useful opportunity to explore some important issues. I am sure that this debate will not be the last that we have on an issue of enormous interest to my Department and to the constituents of many hon. and right hon. Members.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at sixteen minutes to Five o'clock.