£3 bus fare cap could be scrapped after December 2025, hints transport secretary

The £3 bus fare cap could be scrapped after December 2025, the transport secretary has suggested.

Sir Keir Starmer recently confirmed that the £2 cap, which has been in place in England since 1 January 2023, will rise to £3 at the start of next year.

The government has said the £3 cap would stay in place for another year, until December 2025.

But speaking on Sunday morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Louise Haugh indicated the government was considering abolishing the cap beyond that point to explore alternative methods of funding.

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She said: “We’ve stepped in with funding to protect it at £3 until 31 December next year. And in that period, we’ll look to establish more targeted approaches.

“We’ve, through evaluation of the £2 cap, found that the best approach is to target it at young people.

“So we want to look at ways in order to ensure more targeted ways, just like we do with the concessionary fare for older people, we think we can develop more targeted ways that will better encourage people onto buses.”

Pressed again on whether that meant the single £3 cap would be removed after December 2025, and that other bus reliefs could be put in place, she replied: “That’s what we’re considering at the moment as we go through this year, as we have that time whilst the £3 cap is in place – because the evaluation that we had showed, it hadn’t represented good value for money, the previous cap.”

It comes after Ms Haigh also confirmed that HS2 would not run to Crewe.

The northern leg of HS2, which would have linked Birmingham to Manchester, was scrapped by former prime minister Rishi Sunak during the Conservative Party conference last year.

There had been reports that Labour could instead build an “HS2-light” railway between Birmingham and Crewe.

But Ms Haigh said that while HS2 would be built from Birmingham to Euston, the government was “not resurrecting the plans for HS2”.

“HS2 Limited isn’t getting any further work beyond what’s been commissioned to Euston,” she added.

Last month the prime minster confirmed the £2 bus fare cap would rise to £3 – branded the “bus tax” by critics – saying that the previous government had not planned for the funding to continue past the end of 2024.

He said that although the cap would increase to £3, it would stay at that price until the end of 2025 “because I know how important it is”.

Manchester mayor to keep £2 cap

The cap rise has been unpopular with some in Labour, with Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham opting to keep the £2 cap in place for the whole of 2025, despite the maximum that can be charged across England rising to £3.

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The region’s mayor said he was able to cap single fares at £2 because of steps he took to regulate the system and bring buses back into public ownership from last year.

He also confirmed plans to introduce a contactless payment system, with a daily and weekly cap on prices, as Greater Manchester moves towards a London-style system for public transport pricing.

Under devolution, local authorities and metro mayors can fund their own schemes to keep fares down, as has been the case in Greater Manchester, London and West Yorkshire.