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Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [HL]

We seek not to oppose the Bill but to improve it and to make it more useful without adding inordinately to the expense to the Government of the new legislation. This very long list of amendments deals with smartcards. The Bill talks about permits as the means by which people obtain access to bus services at no charge. We believe that permits are very outdated technology, and the opportunity should be taken to convert the permit currently in use in most places to a smartcard. This is worth doing for several reasons. It would reduce the opportunities for fraudulent use by passengers, by bus operators or by bus drivers. More importantly, there is a need to obtain the maximum amount of useful and accurate information about bus journeys so that the subsidy available is accurately targeted. By subsidy, I mean all the public funding of bus services, and particularly the bus service operators’ grant, which was formerly known as the fuel-duty rebate. The question of how the fuel-duty rebate might be replaced has been investigated at least twice—I think it has been investigated more often—on the assumption that the fuel-duty rebate, or the bus service operators’ grant, is paid for the mileage operated, when we are in fact trying to subsidise people for carrying passengers. All attempts at reform have failed because of the considerable obstacle of very little reliable information about passenger mileage, and because any other way of making the information available would be bureaucratic and expensive to administer. The introduction of smartcards, which are held by the passenger, and the necessary smartcard readers on buses would provide the opportunity to target the subsidy very accurately on the passenger carried. The smartcard is intelligent and, if necessary, would enable the facility of free travel to be available at particular times. Governments of whatever colour would find themselves paying for useful outputs rather than generalised inputs. That is a practical consideration in the targeting of a subsidy, whatever you are subsidising. You want to subsidise the benefit rather than the input. That is why I have moved this series of amendments. They provide for the use of smartcards and the provision on buses of smartcard readers. I should also make it clear that it may be necessary to pay for the equipment needed by bus operators. But, having put all this in place, a plethora of information would become available to government. Further, smartcards should be ITSO-compliant to a national standard that should apply throughout Britain and probably elsewhere in due course. What is the Government’s attitude towards smartcards? I am not proposing that we would all have smartcards by April 2008 because I realise that that is impossible, but is it the Government’s wish or even their intention—