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Public Service Vehicles (Accessible Information) Regulations 2023

This might be one of those grey areas. My officials say that it is right that the driver could provide the information, but there is a minimum and a maximum volume for that information. I suppose that the driver could provide it, but I do not think this would be widespread across the bus industry, given that much of the technology links audio and visual together and the computers behind it project that information at the same time.

Information at bus stops is a key part of the national bus strategy. It is not the responsibility of the operators; they provide the information that is used for those real-time scoreboards at bus stops, but bus stops are operated by local transport authorities, as I am sure my noble friend knows. The BODS is the DfT’s means of collating as much real-time information as is available and making it available to local transport authorities, which can then put it into bus stops. Some of the BSIP funding we issued to successful local transport authorities recently will go into boosting the information at bus stops. I agree that it is very helpful to know when your bus will arrive.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned contrast. There will be further information on that; we have discussed it with campaigners and representative groups in this area. It will be in the guidance, which will come out this summer. There will be training for drivers; it will not be centralised as such, but the operators will be encouraged to make use of the REAL training syllabus and can sign up to the inclusive transport leaders scheme to make sure that staff have the knowledge and skills to support all disabled passengers.

The regulations apply to a service and not a vehicle. Therefore, if a vehicle is being used in different services—it might sometimes be running a scheduled service and sometimes be doing something else—it would still have to provide the information set out in the regulations.

I shall finish on enforcement, as I am conscious that I have spoken a fair amount. There are two main ways of enforcement. First, the Government will be able to

check progress via the annual bus statistics, which come from industry, so we can chivvy people along as such. However, if elements go wrong for a certain customer or there is persistent non-compliance on a particular route or vehicle or by a particular operator, we would expect that passenger to escalate a concern to Bus Users UK outside London and to London TravelWatch inside London. That is the standard method; in my experience, passengers are very good at escalating concerns, particularly as this is such an important issue. We expect that bus operators will want to make their passengers aware of when they have fitted this technology in their area.

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It can then get bumped up the chain from Bus Users UK and London TravelWatch to go through alternative dispute resolution or a complaints handling process. Eventually it gets bumped up to DVSA and if it thinks it is serious enough, it goes to the traffic commissioner. If it gets to the traffic commissioner, that is probably a bad thing for the operator, and I imagine that that will not happen very often because the traffic commissioner has the ability to take away its operator licence or to put other sanctions in place. It is not the Government’s ambition to enforce this heavily. We want operators to comply so that this does not have to be heavily enforced because at the end of the day, if you end up with traffic commissioners taking licences away, essentially they are taking buses away, and we do not want that.

I will conclude now, but I will write with any further information that I have.

Motion agreed.