With the Standing Committee on the Bus Services Bill up and running we are entering the final straight before the Bill receives Royal Assent. It’s a milestone that has been a long time coming, when you consider that the idea of a Buses Bill was first mentioned in the Queen’s Speech in May 2015.
When you take out the front bench spokesmen (Andrew Jones as the buses minister and Daniel Zeichner as the Labour frontbench spokesman), the parliamentary private secretary and the Whips, all of who are automatically on these Committee, there aren’t any big hitters on this Committee
That that’s not really a surprise, as no senior backbench MP is going to volunteer for committee membership, as the role is no more than being voting fodder to help the government win any votes called on particular amendments tabled.
From an operators’ perspective seeing Mary Robinson, the new Conservative MP for Cheadle, on the Committee will have raised a few eyebrows, given that she spoke in favour of franchising during the Commons Second Reading debate.
There’s something mildly perplexing about a Conservative MP agreeing with a policy that allows local authorities to take back control over bus services. But since it was, astonishingly, a Conservative Chancellor that let the franchise genie out of the bottle, perhaps one can’t be too harsh on her.
The Committee will be a short, sharp, affair with just six sittings over three days.
That’s pretty quick, thanks to Labour apparently saying that they “want to get on with it.” Again, it’s no surprise as Labour supports the Bill.
So Committee will be done and dusted by close of play on 21 March. The good news is that the government has tabled amendments to the Bill over-turning the changes made in the House of Lords ,so the operators can at least take comfort from that. I’ll give a full report on the Committee proceedings once it’s over.
Last week was Philip Hammond’s first Budget as Chancellor.
It’s no surprise that he’s come in for a lot of criticism over his decision to increase National Insurance for the self-employed, breaking a Conservative election manifesto not to do so.
But for me the real story is that, despite his claims that we need to live within our means and not saddle future generations with ever increasing debt, that’s exactly what he has done.
Over the next four years the government will borrow a staggering £141bn, three-and-a-half times more than the previous Chancellor, George Osborne, predicted just 12 months ago.
And, we won’t achieve an annual surplus, on current spending trends, until 2026; years after we last saw an annual surplus. The figures are eye-watering and this despite the economy being pretty buoyant.
