Hansard

In deciding on the Local Government and Transport Committee's work programme, members believed that it would be useful to undertake post-legislative scrutiny of legislation from the previous parliamentary session, so we decided to examine the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001, which is one of the most significant pieces of legislation that is within our committee's remit. We did not cover all aspects of the act; for example, we did not explore congestion charging, partly because Edinburgh's proposals were subject to a public inquiry and, ultimately, to a referendum. However, to have gone into such issues might have added to the interest of our report.

The main subject on which we focused was quality partnerships and quality contracts for bus services, which have been available since 2001. We knew that no formal quality partnerships or contracts had been embarked on, but we were well aware from constituents and bus-user representatives that many complaints are made about bus services in constituencies around Scotland. Services for some of Scotland's most excluded communities have been withdrawn and claims have been made about cherry picking on key profitable routes, particularly the main corridors into cities and towns. Some areas have too many buses whereas others have far too few. We wanted to get to the bottom of those issues, to find out what was happening throughout the bus industry and to collect views from all quarters. We also considered the concessionary travel schemes that were introduced under the 2001 act.

In addition to the normal parliamentary work of taking evidence in committee in Edinburgh, we decided to organise meetings and community events in Stranraer and Glasgow to collect views from regular bus users in a major city and a relatively rural part of Scotland. I thank not only the parliamentary clerks who supported our work, but the many organisations that offered written and oral evidence and, most of all, the members of the public who participated in the events in Stranraer and Glasgow.

The picture that emerged was mixed. It is true that no quality partnerships or contracts have been established, but that does not mean that no positive developments have occurred in the bus industry. Almost every local authority has partnership working with local bus operators to develop voluntary partnerships, many of which result in better quality and cleaner vehicles with low-floor access, better service frequencies, reduced journey times and better information for passengers. We should acknowledge and applaud such developments.

It is also true that, in Stagecoach and FirstGroup, we have two major private companies in the transport market that play a major role not only here in the United Kingdom, but internationally. Scotland should welcome the fact that two such major companies are based here.

After many years of decline, the number of local bus journeys has grown in each of the past five years. In 2003-04, 449 million local passenger journeys were made, which represents a year-on-year increase of 1 per cent. Since current records began, this is the first time that we have had five years of year-on-year growth.

However, the picture is not all positive. When non-local journeys are included, the overall bus market declined by 1 per cent in 2003-04. In comparison with 10 years previously, the number of people who travel by bus was down by about 15 per cent, which is consistent with the rest of Great Britain except London, which has substantially bucked the trend.

Why is it important to reverse the trend in bus patronage and to encourage more people to travel by bus? First, if we are to tackle the problem of congestion in our major cities, buses are a more flexible alternative to the private car than rail and trams. Investment in new bus services can be swifter because the infrastructure constraints are fewer. Buses already represent the largest segment of the passenger transport sector and account for about 11 per cent of all commuter journeys. The bus is probably the most effective way to connect employment and social opportunities to excluded communities or individuals who have no access to a private car.

We recognise that progress has been made in some local journeys, but the picture throughout Scotland is inconsistent. We uncovered several services that had been withdrawn from communities and many cases of poorly maintained vehicles, insufficient cleaning, poor customer relations and poor customer care in general. There were also many tales of intense competition on busy routes and of very little competition and often no services at all in rural communities and communities that are on the periphery of our larger towns and cities.

To date, no quality contracts and quality partnerships—which I want to consider—have been developed, but the fact that quality partnerships and quality contracts are on the statute book has acted as a means of encouraging bus companies to enter voluntary partnerships in some areas. A positive development that I want to highlight in my area is the partnership that was recently formed between West Lothian Council and FirstGroup. It is probably fair to say that there have been many frosty exchanges between those organisations over the years, but they recently came together at senior level and developed a partnership agreement that aims to grow patronage by 5 per cent over the next two years on the important Bathgate-Livingston-Edinburgh corridor.

Among aspects of the agreement to which both sides have committed themselves and which will improve services along the corridor are the council's taking greater responsibility for replacing shelters, for improving lighting and security at bus stops and for tackling graffiti and repairs more timeously. The council has agreed to provide better information at stops and that there should be better liaison between the organisations on roadworks in order to try to minimise disruption to timetables. The council also committed itself to agreeing contingency plans when roadworks are necessary. First Edinburgh committed to introducing new low-floor buses to the route this month, to agreed emissions standards, to a guarantee that existing frequencies will be maintained for at least a year in order to find out whether passenger growth aspirations are achieved, and to agreements on cleaning standards and the use of closed-circuit television to improve security.

Looking to the future, the new regional transport partnerships should be able to play a key role in developing bus networks and routes more regionally—that role has been missing in the past few years. All the powers that are currently available to local authorities will be available to the new RTPs if they want them.

During the inquiry, there were calls from witnesses—and, indeed, from some committee members—for the bus industry to come under far heavier regulation than is currently the case, and even for some parts of it to return to full renationalisation or some other public sector model. We considered a number of different ownership and regulation models as part of the inquiry, some of which seemed initially to be attractive. For example, the franchise system that operates in London seems to work well and has led to more passenger journeys in London and to London bucking the passenger transport trend compared with other parts of the UK. Lothian Buses, which remains in a form of public ownership, also seems to provide an excellent service to its users at a reasonable cost and returns millions of pounds each year to the City of Edinburgh Council and the other Lothian councils by way of dividend.