Bus fares debacle

The story behind the funding of the national concessionary bus fare scheme is stranger than fiction, writes Cllr David Sparks.

If the script writers of Yes Minister or The Thick of It had submitted the story of concessionary bus fares, it would have been rejected as being unbelievable – too far out for even the craziest political satire.

As chair of the LGA regeneration and transport board, it has been my responsibility to deal with the concessionary fares scheme since its inception as a simple suggestion to grant free bus travel to those aged over 60.

Right at the beginning, we acknowledged that no-one had sufficient psychic powers to say how many over-60s would get on a bus at any particular time. Obviously, in such circumstances, there would be teething problems.

It was always a safe bet that the level of central government subsidy would be insufficient to pay for the total number of passengers travelling under the scheme – leaving local councils to pick up the bill.

Our solution was to have a sum set aside to fill any gaps. At every briefing, conference and meeting, the LGA repeated this simple point.

Minister after minister listened politely but to no avail, because this was when we entered the world where fact became stranger than fiction.

A world with smart cards such as Oyster, and technology such as SatNav, has the means to predict and measure accurately the cost of the scheme.

The strange thing is that these tools have not been used on the scale necessary, even though the need to employ this technology was recognised at the beginning. It was implicit in the initial package that this would be done in sufficient time to allow for more accurate forecasts of demand, thus avoiding significant gaps in subsidy.

However the biggest fiction was that we were engaged in a rational exercise.

True, we always presented rational arguments to the minister – and had a reasoned ministerial response. It was particularly interesting to witness the erosion in the enthusiasm of the response as the minister stayed in post long enough to have more than one meeting. I am sure we had three ministers in 12 months at one stage.

The reality was that our simple and rational solution of setting a sum aside to sort out problems would never satisfy the Treasury. In this world of fact becoming fiction, there is one undeniable fact – Treasury rules!

• Cllr David Sparks is chair of the LGA regeneration and transport board and leader-elect of the LGA Labour group