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Bus Services

As a trade unionist I believe in equal pay for equal work, and my hon. Friend made a fair point. In London, we do not now have to have migrants from northern cities to do our work, which shows what good pay can do to maintain local jobs in cities. I want to highlight briefly one example in my constituency of an extremely good transport provider. Hackney Community Transport is a social enterprise that runs transport services in Hackney. It has been so successful in reinvesting in the transport service and in being a good operator that it now operates two local Transport for London routes—394 and 153. The 394 is particularly close to my heart because it was an initiative from local people which was taken up by Transport for London and provided by a local provider. I helped to launch that bus route. The bus route had a low turnover of staff before that was the case for other London bus companies because it worked hard to make its working conditions family friendly. In doing so, it has managed to have an above average number of women working for it not just as bus drivers, but at all levels in the company. That is partly because of flexible working patterns. Drivers who are also carers can opt to work early or late, but never both. They do not have ridiculous split shifts, which exist in too many other bus companies. It is not surprising that Hackney Community Transport was named social enterprise of the year last year and its chief executive, Dai Powell, was named in the honours list. The Transport and General Workers Union has launched a London bus workers charter—I was a veteran of the London bus engineers charter some years ago—which shows that there is still work to be done. One essential is to maintain the level of pay increases. The difficulty in London is that many key workers cannot afford to buy housing and to live in the inner city. We must ensure that pay keeps up with inflation and house prices. We need greater safety. I have touched on working times, which is a key issue, but safety for drivers going about their business and ensuring that there are intercoms on buses and so on are also important. Another key issue is pensions, but I shall not reiterate the points made by my hon. Friends, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Ian Stewart). Pensions are critical and too many bus drivers and bus workers are second-rate citizens in that respect. Providing good pension rights is a way of keeping good staff and maintaining a low turnover. We must also ensure that bus workers have rights to affordable housing alongside other key workers in our city. We saw what happened in London before the changes were introduced and there are lessons for the Government to learn. As a member of the Transport and General Workers Union, I am proud of the work that it is doing. In London, there has been a 32 per cent. increase in bus journeys, in contrast with a 7 per cent. decrease in the rest of the country, as my hon. Friend said. We have improved bus services and seen huge improvements to the environment, to our health and in congestion. In London, control has gone to a local transport body, with sensitive services run by good local providers, such as Hackney Community Transport, with better pay and conditions, which are critical to ensuring good bus services, family-friendly working—there is still more to do on that—training and investment. In short, we have seen the future in London and we have seen that it works. I commend the model to my hon. Friend the Minister.