Andy Burnham

“It is simple, is it not? We have, in effect, an unregulated system, and because of that companies are able to increase fares outside London faster than they have been increasing in London. That is how they make those profits. There are good bus operators out there, and I would not want to punish them. I have a smaller operator, Jim Stones Coaches, in my constituency —a brilliant bus operator. We would want those good operators to be part of the new regime. It is time to call time on the profiteering off the backs of the travelling public in places like Greater Manchester. The decline in quality and the rise in the cost of bus travel in places like Greater Manchester has, over the 32 years since buses were deregulated, put more and more cars on the roads, to the point where conurbations like Greater Manchester are becoming increasingly congested. As I said earlier, it is cheaper for young people in some parts of Greater Manchester to get a taxi than to use a bus service. That cannot possibly make sense. It tells us that something is seriously wrong with the way that the system is operating. I say to the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet that the people of Greater Manchester deserve a bus system equally as good as London’s, if not better. That is what, using this Bill, we will now seek to deliver. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with amendments.”