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Manchester Bus Travel

My hon. Friend makes an objective comment and I agree with him. Such a major scheme should have had not only consultation but pre-consultation and discussion. That did not happen. There was an exhibition in the sixth-form college where I have my offices, but it attracted only 50 people. Within my constituency, and just outside it, probably between 15,000 and 20,000 people are affected by the scheme, so there is a suspicion of bias. Two hundred people have written to me supporting the extension of the consultation and asking for traffic impact assessments. That has not been done. The engineers have looked and said, "There is sufficient capacity on the major routes and those routes near them, so it is all right." That provides an incentive for rat running, rather than looking at the impact of the scheme on my constituents. One of the surprising things was the number of people who wrote to me—perhaps it is not that surprising. Some mentioned the potential impact of rat running, which has to be envisaged and does not happen at the present time. However, people who live on the main road, Rochdale road, are more strongly opposed to the scheme because their businesses and ability to access their homes will be badly affected. The final nail in the coffin of the suggestion that the consultation was effective and successful is that almost nobody to whom I spoke or who wrote to me, including some well-informed residents groups such as the Trinity group, or the Collyhurst village group, knew about the scheme until I talked to them. The consultation has been defective, to say the least. I want to ask my right hon. Friend the Minister a number of questions. Some of my points refer to the integrated transport scheme. I know that the Government supported the Local Transport Act 2008, and they have put money into helping integrated transport authorities move towards quality contracts. Can the Minister do anything else to help the Greater Manchester integrated transport authority move towards a quality contract that would deal with some of the problems in a way that the cross-city bus scheme does not? Has he got a breakdown of Exchequer expenditure and local expenditure and how it would be used in the scheme? Will he tell us whether the bus service operator grant could be transferred to the integrated transport authority? Although integrated transport authorities have little control over buses, if the bus service operator grant were transferred to them it would give them a real handle on how to deal with those bus companies that exploit my constituents. Does he agree that Greater Manchester is not making the progress that it should towards an integrated transport authority because it is led by a Liberal Democrat and supported by Conservatives? Both west Yorkshire and south Yorkshire are making more progress. My final point is that there is clearly no benefit for my constituents. They will get the pollution, the rat running and the noise, but very little improvement in the time it takes to get into the city centre. All the benefits, if there are any, will go elsewhere and people are likely to get a worse bus service. Some of the junctions on roads where people live will have increased capacity. The junction of Moston lane and Rochdale road is dangerous at the moment, and together with local councillors, I fought hard to get improved pedestrian crossings on that road. If the junction capacity is increased, it will become more dangerous. I look forward to the Minister's reply to the general and detailed points about this scheme.