Starmer announces England’s bus fare cap will be extended but rise to £3 in 2025
Keir Starmer has announced that Labour will raise the £2 bus fare cap in England to £3 next week.
Asked about rumours around changes to the cap in Wednesday’s budget, the prime minister said:
On the £2 bus fare, the first thing to say is the Tories had only funded that til the end of 2024 and therefore that is the end of the funding in relation to the £2 capped fair.
I do know how much this matters, particularly in rural communities where there’s heavy reliance on busses, and that’s why I’m able to say to you this morning that in the budget, we will announce there will be a £3 cap on bus fares to the end of 2025, because I know how important it is. So that will be there in the budget on Wednesday.
Key events
A little bit more context around the bus fares cap in England. It was introduced by the last Conservative government at the beginning of 2023 as a three month scheme, budgeted at £60m. It initially capped single bus fares at more than 130 bus operators serving more than 4,600 routes, saving almost a third of the average single ticket price. Some smaller operators declined to participate.
In September 2023 government analysis claimed that the overall price of bus fares in England, outside London, had dropped by 7.4% between June 2022 and June 2023, largely as an effect of the scheme.
Bus fares in London are capped at £1.75.
Robert Jenrick, the Conservative leadership hopeful, has described the Labour government’s decision to extend the bus fare cap in England for another year, but raise the maximum price to £3 as “clueless”, adding “Starmer must think people who get the bus aren’t working people.”
Tories: England bus fare cap extension and price rise means ‘£10 a week extra to get to work under Labour’
Shadow transport secretary Helen Whately, the Conservative MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, has criticised Keir Starmer’s announcement that the bus fare cap in England was set to be extended for another year, but raised from £2 to £3.
In a post to social media, Whately said:
That’s £10 a week extra to get to work under Labour. Clearly bus users don’t count as “working people” either.
In December 2022 the then-Conservative government announced that the £2 bus fare cap in England “will run until 31 December 2024.”
In his speech in Birmingham announcing the extension and price rise, the prime minister said “I do know how much this matters, particularly in rural communities where there’s heavy reliance on buses.”
Keir Starmer has posted to social media to say that “This budget will help to get Britain working. It will pave the way for reforms that tackle the root causes of economic inactivity, so those who can work, will work.”
This Budget will help to get Britain working.
It will pave the way for reforms that tackle the root causes of economic inactivity, so those who can work, will work.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) October 28, 2024
Earlier, speaking in Birmingham, the prime minister had said the UK is “the only G7 country for whom economic inactivity is still higher than it was before Covid”.
He continued:
That’s not just bad for our economy. It’s also bad for all those who are locked out of opportunity. So the Chancellor will announce £240m in funding to provide local services that can help people back into work.
The Green party of England and Wales’s co-leader Carla Denyer has responded to Keir Starmer’s speech in Birmingham by reposting some comments she made yesterday calling for more taxation on the super-rich, saying:
14 years of Tory underinvestment have left public services on their knees, our economy broken. We can’t afford five more yers of this. It feels like Labour are stuck in second gear on the motorway. They could deliver on the change they promised if they’re prepared to tax the super-rich.
14 years of Tory underinvestment have left public services on their knees, our economy broken. We can’t afford 5 more yrs of this
It feels like Labour are stuck in 2nd gear on the motorway. They could deliver on the change they promised if they’re prepared to tax the super-rich https://t.co/6JgBM6b0HB
— Carla Denyer (@carla_denyer) October 28, 2024
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice has also been on the airwaves today talking about Wednesday’s budget. He described Labour’s plans as a “targeted assault on wealth creation,” saying “We’re all gonna get absolutely hammered and assaulted on Wednesday.”
Starmer promises ‘no short cuts’ to rebuilding country after inheriting neglect of previous government
Keir Starmer has promised “better days ahead” and said the era of Tory neglect and “making working people pay the price” for their policies was over.
In a speech in Birmingham designed to trail Rachel Reeves’ budget on Wednesday, the first from the new administration, Starmer:
-
announced that the bus fares cap in England would be extended for a year, but at a higher rate of £3
-
said the Chancellor will announce £240m in funding for services to get people back into work
-
said the country needed to face up to the “fiction” that you can lower taxes and increase public spending at the same time
-
said he could not give a “cast iron guarantee that never again in any budget will there be any adjustment to tax” because “we just don’t know what’s around the corner”
-
said his concern was making sure “there is no more tax in their payslip” for working people
-
sidestepped a question about whether a fuel duty rise would count as a tax on working people who use their cars to get to and from work
Starmer warned that working people around the world had lost faith that politics could deliver for them, but said that did not mean politicians should give up on them, warning that “populism preys on the fears that people have.”
He also accused Rishi Sunak and the previous Conservative government of calling an early election to avoid facing the fiscal situation that his Labour party have inherited.
Warning “there are no short cuts”, Starmer said:
The time is long overdue for politicians in this country to level with you honestly about the trade-offs this country faces
Working people know that hard choices are necessary. They lived through the Liz Truss episode. They lived through the cost-of-living crisis.
So they know that the things they want from us – protecting their living standards, building our nation, fixing our public services – they know that this can only be achieved alongside economic stability.
Keir Starmer somewhat sidestepped a question on whether a rise in fuel duty would count as a rise in taxes on working people, and whether the government planned such a rise.
During a question and answer session with the media in Birmingham, Jack Ellison from the Sun had asked “Every day millions of people across the country will get in their cars and go to work. So would any hike to fuel duty on Wednesday be a direct hit on the working people that you claim the champion?”
In response the prime minister said:
Well, I know this is a particular concern to your readers, and I’m not going to preempt what happens on Wednesday, but obviously this is an issue that comes up at every budget, and you’ll see how we deal with it at this budget.
But I do understand how important it is. I understand what you’re putting to me, and I know how important it is to you, your readers and others.
Keir Starmer has drawn a round of applause from the audience in Birmingham after a rather brusque response to a question from a journalist from the Daily Mail.
Asked whether Starmer thought his government was at odds with the priorities of the public after Kumail Jaffer cited “new polling this morning suggests that the majority of voters would prefer Wednesday’s priority to be lower taxes ahead of investment in public services,” Starmer initially simply said “No.”
He then elaborated:
I think for too long we pretended that you could lower your tax and spend more on your public services. It is about time we faced up to that fiction.
A couple of questions during this session from Sky News and the Times have attempted to get the prime minister to commit to no further tax rises during the course of the five year parliament. Keir Starmer has refused to allow himself to become a hostage to fortune here, saying:
We are fixing the foundations in this budget. So that is the purpose of this budget, to take the difficult decisions.
Now nobody wants tax rises, least of all me, so we will do the hard work in this budget to allow us then to rebuild the country.
I can’t give you a cast iron guarantee that never again in any budget will there be any adjustment to tax, because we just don’t know what’s around the corner. We’ve lived through, in the last five or six years, Ukraine, Covid, et cetera.
But I can tell you that as we stand here now going into this budget, it’s our intention to take the tough decisions here and now up front, in the hope that we can then build and rebuild the country on that stable foundation.
Starmer announces England’s bus fare cap will be extended but rise to £3 in 2025
Keir Starmer has announced that Labour will raise the £2 bus fare cap in England to £3 next week.
Asked about rumours around changes to the cap in Wednesday’s budget, the prime minister said:
On the £2 bus fare, the first thing to say is the Tories had only funded that til the end of 2024 and therefore that is the end of the funding in relation to the £2 capped fair.
I do know how much this matters, particularly in rural communities where there’s heavy reliance on busses, and that’s why I’m able to say to you this morning that in the budget, we will announce there will be a £3 cap on bus fares to the end of 2025, because I know how important it is. So that will be there in the budget on Wednesday.
