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Local Transport Bill [Lords]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. May I give the apologies of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, who is unwell today? Reliable, high-quality public transport makes a real difference to people in their everyday lives. We depend on it to get to work, to the shops, to essential services such as schools and hospitals, and to visit friends and family. It can help to promote social inclusion, particularly as the most vulnerable in our society often depend on public transport to the greatest extent. Good public transport also helps to tackle congestion, contributing to improved economic performance and the fight against climate change. The bus has always been the workhorse of the transport system. Back in the 1950s, up to 13 billion journeys across the country were made by bus each year. Sadly, for the rest of the last century, the number of people using buses fell year on year. The previous Tory Government's solution in the mid-1980s was to deregulate the bus market outside London. Too often, that led to services being cut back, and in some places aggressive competition in the form of bus wars gave the industry a bad name. That is why bus patronage fell from 5.8 billion journeys a year across the country in the mid-1980s to below 4.4 billion by the late 1990s.