Andy Burnham’s £2 cap on bus fares has triggered a second major funding row in as many days after the new Transport Secretary failed five times to give details on how the £500 million bill will be funded. The Telegraph has the story.
The new Prime Minister announced on Wednesday morning that he would cap single bus tickets at £2 from January 1st until the end of 2027.
The Government claimed the measure would cost more than £500 million, with around £454 million coming from a range of Net Zero projects and climate finance, including turning overseas climate grants to developing nations into loans that those countries would repay.
The remaining sum of about £50 million will come from Department for Transport funding already set to be spent on buses.
However, Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, failed five times during an interview to say whether interest would be due on those loans, saying: “The detail will need to be worked out. We wanted to make the announcement today.”
Burnham’s opponents accused him of announcing another policy without knowing where the cash would come from, a day after one of Sir Keir Starmer’s closest allies said Burnham was unveiling an unfunded plan to cut VAT on electricity bills.
Alexander told Sky News: “The detail of it needs to be worked through. But in order for loans to qualify as overseas development assistance, the terms of the loan need to be reasonably favourable to the developing country and it needs to contribute to developing that country’s economy.
“So it makes sense to switch the spending, instead of being a grant it will be a loan, and that frees up money to spend on domestic priorities and to spend on our public transport.”
Challenged on whether poorer countries may be anxious about whether any interest was due, Alexander responded: “So this is quite standard to have loans for international climate finance. As I say, the detail will need to be worked out.”
Pressed for a third time, Alexander said: “I’m not going to sit in your studio and tell you how something will work when the detail hasn’t been worked out yet.”
Asked again, the Transport Secretary said she was “not going to give you the detail”, and when challenged for a fifth time, she said the question of interest on the climate loans would need to be “worked through”.
Worth reading in full.
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So he’s “promising” a few (unfunded) quid off your annual bus travel expenditure.
Meanwhile the other hand is planning a large tax increase in your family holiday …. whether you intend getting on a plane for a week in the Med (gotta “save the planet) or a week in a British resort.
I suspect they!ll find some change down the back of somebody else’s sofa.
“…£454 million coming from a range of Net Zero projects and climate finance,”
Eh? Climate/Net Zero boondoggles are huge sponges soaking up subsidies. Exactly how will they pay for subsidising something else?
Price caps: set below free market prices = too much demand, too little supply = shortage; set above free market prices, demand drops, supply increases = glut. Main casualty = consumers.
Of course – I was forgetting. This is entry level economics and Socialists cannot understand economics.
I don’t use buses. Why should I subsidise those who do?
Or to put it another way, he is spreading the benefit to the rest of England, rather than just in Greater London, and Wales etc.
My suggested caption for the photo: “Listen, guys, I haven’t a clue where it’s all going to come from, but let’s just smile and be happy.”
So basically the government’s saying that, at the same time as spending £454m on bus fares here, we’ll also be sending that same money abroad as foreign aid loans. I’m no economist, but basic maths tells me we’ll now need to find £908m instead of £454m. Where will the missing £454m appear from? Will it be in costly borrowing, or will it be prised from the hands of decent working people by HM Customs and Bloodsuckers?
It’s total bollocks as you’ve said – Monopoly money to them and nowt else… sorry went a bit northern there for a second, it must be the manchesterism catching…
Pressed for a third time, Alexander said: “I’m not going to sit in your studio and tell you how something will work when the detail hasn’t been worked out yet.”
Or in other words:
Pressed for a third time, Alexander said: “I’m not going to sit in your studio and tell you how something will work when I haven’t got a clue”
Do people really take time out of their day to go and vote for complete idiots like this?
On the one hand, I am pleased that money is being spent here rather than abroad, but as our debt is rising by the minute, why are we borrowing to lend to other countries? What rate of return will we get on these loans and will we genuinely be repaid or can we expect this to add to future forgiven debt schemes because the poor third world basket cases can’t afford to repay us. More importantly, I have no railway anywhere near me and pitifully few bus services so it really hacks me off subsidising others, especially if the subsidy is for someone doing a very well paid city job.
Don’t forget that people like Burnham are used to living in large conurbations where a choice of public transport options is available around the clock. They don’t have a clue what it’s like to live in more rural locations. I once looked into the possibility of travelling to a choir practice in a small Essex village by bus. It turned out I’d have to get there 2 hours early, find somewhere to stay overnight, and then wait for the first bus home in the morning, arriving home at about 10am. I’d need more than a £2 capped bus fare each way to incentivise me to do that every week!
Here’s an idea – stop the climate grants completely and spend British taxpayers money on British taxpayers.
So 2 announcements from Prince Andrew of 80s Football Shirt and 2 problems with the funding. From my village to a town 4 miles away there is a bus service on a 2 hourly basis but not for long. It takes less than 10mins to drive there and park up. I can get a bus to the village where my mates live for a session in the pub but the last bus is 8pm so it is a walk of an hour to the nearest station.
Just walk home, if you have a sufficient quantity of your preferred tipple it will seem like you just teleported home 👍
Apparently, the Greens have said that lower bus fares mean nothing if the buses aren’t there. The masterful insight! The huge intellectual grasp of the BLEEDING Obvious! I may be running out of sarcasm…….
I live in a medium sized market town with fairly rural surroundings. The buses run empty most of the time. If we want to provide travel to the tiny number of people who don’t drive, we’d be better off giving them taxi vouchers – would give the taxi drivers a bit more to do as well.
By the time that parliament reassembles in September this man will presumably have run out of vacuous, headline grabbing, announcements, most (all?) of which amount to nothing more than a hill of beans. What will he do then? Is there a suggestion box in Downing Street?
The wheels coming off sooner than expected…
Tuppence ha’penny off energy bills, two and six off bus fares (how many people travel by bus? – not many where I live). It’s a pantomime, anyone fooled by this has to be really dense.
“Dense” is not in short supply, like “stupid”.