Following the earlier debate on 9^th September in the House of Lords about Bus Franchising, David Walker, the Bishop of Manchester on the 12^th September made a contribution together with his colleague, Lord Snape called Peter Snape from Labour.

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, the Minister of State (Department for Transport) called Peter Hendy submitted a response.

Here is the link from all of the House of Lords session.

Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I declare an interest: I got the bus on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and today, and shall be getting it tomorrow. As I live in Greater Manchester, I have been a real beneficiary of what the previous Government allowed for franchising in my city and its surrounds. The buses have become more reliable: I can now go to a bus stop and expect a bus to turn up within 10 minutes, not 40 minutes, which I sometimes had to wait for before.

I have two questions. First, I am old enough to remember when local authorities in Greater Manchester often had joint boards. The wonderfully named Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley and Dukinfield joint board provided buses in parts of what is now Tameside.

Lord Snape: Green buses.

Bishop of Manchester: They were indeed green. I remember them very well. I wonder what the possibilities are for rural areas that are not part of a combined authority like Greater Manchester. Will local authorities have the capacity to combine together to franchise bus services jointly, rather than doing it by themselves?

Secondly, we made great progress in Greater Manchester; we got the buses and the fantastic Metrolink tram system. It would help to integrate the whole thing if we gained control of local rail services at the same time. For many people, local rail, as well as buses and trams, is necessary to make journeys. Could the Minister give any indications of plans to allow the franchisement of local rail services in places such as Greater Manchester?

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill: I thank the right reverend Prelate for his comments. I particularly note his support for the effects of the initial tranches of franchising in Manchester, which have indeed increased service and produced better reliability. He refers to the very old organisation of public transport in Manchester. Many of those magnificent vehicles are in the Manchester transport museum at Queens Road.

These days, the increasing number of combined authorities are of a good size to take advantage of this Government’s franchising proposition. It is, in effect, bringing together local authorities of sufficient size to be able to take advantage of the benefits of a network. I do not have an answer to whether this will allow individual local authorities to join together, but I am happy to write to the right reverend Prelate about that.

The right reverent Prelate raised the subject of the integration of rail services. We have already made a lot of progress with the Mayor of Greater Manchester, and with the Mayor of the West Midlands, in integrating rail services into the local transport network in information and in ticketing. Although this is not the subject of today’s discussion, I have no doubt that there will be some announcements on that. He is right to aspire to an integrated local network that is modally agnostic and includes rail and, in Manchester’s case, metro and buses.