Last week was Transport Times’ annual UK Bus Summit. I didn’t go; couldn’t see the point.
For the privilege of spending a few hundred pounds to enhance Prof David Begg’s bank balance I couldn’t for the life of me work out what I was going to hear at the Summit that I – and the rest of the industry for that matter – didn’t already know.
And, from the conversations I have had since the event, it seems my judgement was right. That said, judging by the delegates list I’ve seen, an awful lot of people still feel the need to go to the Summit, so perhaps it’s just me.
Not about regulation
Still, I was heartened to be told by one of my industry chums who did attend that the speaker from Scotland – who, judging by the list of speakers must have been the minister, Humza Yousaf – told the audience that bus patronage had been in steep decline in the days of regulation, so you couldn’t blame any continued decline in patronage on deregulation. Quite so Humza!
But the keynote speech from the buses minister, Andrew Jones, was, I’m told, a pretty uninspiring affair, and his answers to questions from the floor apparently showed a continued and worryingly lose grasp on the details of bus policy, but then I think we’ve all got used to that by now so I won’t labour the point.
The Summit seems to me to no longer serve a purpose. Bus policy has been done to death these past couple of years. What more is there to discuss?
MPs still have to have their say, of course, given that we still haven’t had the Commons’ Second Reading of the Bus Services Bill, and this now looks as if it won’t be until early March.
But once the Bill is through parliament I think we could do without any further debate about bus policy for quite a few years, don’t you?
Risk with delay
This on-going delay with the Commons proceedings is increasing the risk that the Bill won’t get Royal Assent before the end of this parliamentary session.
If that comes to pass, then technically the Bill falls, although I have little doubt that it would be revived in the next session with the usual ‘carry over’ motion. Or would it?
I’ve heard one or two people speculate that Chris Grayling’s tactic is to drag things out so that the Bill does fall – and then with all the distractions of Brexit and so on, why bother to revive the Bill?
A nice argument, but I don’t buy it.
Given all the effort that’s been expended in getting to this point, with a Bill that is relatively benign when all’s said and done, I’m not sure that is really in anybody’s interests. So long as the Commons’ Second Reading is very early in March securing Royal Assent by the end of the session is just about possible.
