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Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have some reservations about the amendment. It is a fact that many ordinary bus services which are used by a lot of people are being withdrawn because there is not enough money to pay for them. In my appreciation, in many cases community transport and the like is only provided in the first place because the local authority has committed a good deal of money to subvent it. For people then not to pay any sort of fare may be gilding the lily a little—you are letting them off a little bit but you have already contributed a great deal in putting the service in place. Only this morning, I was told by a bus operator at home, who operates a service along a main road between Witney, Abingdon and Wallingford, conveying several hundred people a day, that the funding for it is to come to an end in June because there is no money to support it. It is somewhat contradictory to argue that there is a need for extra funding for a part of the network to which much funding is already directed while, at the same time, core bus services are being taken out because there is not enough money to pay for them. I return to what I said at the beginning: I believe that the Bill is more about funding and, more particularly, about how that funding is directed to the places that need it—we know that some of it is being misdirected—and rather less about the small amount of money that people are paying for community transport. I am all for community transport but let us not forget that we are seeking to protect the mainstream bus services.