The Daily Echo 3 April 2008

Written by Sandra Gidley MP on Thu 3rd Apr 2008

There has been a blaze of publicity surrounding the launch, on April 1st of the Government's new travel scheme for pensioners. I must not be churlish so I will admit that many pensioners have enthusiastically welcomed the fact that they will be eligible for free nationwide travel.

It has to be said that the scheme is not good news for everybody so it was with great interest that I attended Help The Ageds reception to celebrate the scheme, only to find that they had launched a campaign to persuade the government that the scheme needed more flexibility.

The individual losers are those who live in an area with poor local transport links. In the past many Borough Councils have offered schemes to help people to get round the poor provision. Some have provided tokens which can be used on buses and by local taxi firms and some have provided funding to community transport schemes or good neighbour schemes which, for a small fee, will provide transport to the local hospital or surgery.

In many councils these extra schemes have stopped. We are told that this is because the loudly trumpeted Government funding was, in may cases, insufficient to cover the cost of the free rail or bus travel that was promised by the Government. Councils were forced to provide these and often had to dig into the coffers to find extra money to cover the funding gap.

Quite simply this often meant that token schemes had to end and grants to community based transport schemes had to end. I do not know if this was an unforeseen consequence of the Government's good intentions but I do know that the new system is of less practical use to pensioners on a low income who live in areas that are poorly served by public transport.

When the tokens were withdrawn from service some council officers explained that this wasn't really a problem as figures showed that many of them were used to fund airport taxis for well heeled pensioners going off on their holidays. So, what? I would contend that these pensioners had paid more than their fair share of tax over the years. You could also argue that the more affluent pensioners are the ones who will benefit the most from the free travel as they will use it for weekend breaks etc.

There are always winners and losers on the merry go round of life but the acid test of any successful transport scheme for pensioners should be whether it allows car free pensioners to shop, meet friends and attend medical appointments. By those criteria the current scheme fails many and I shall be actively supporting the Help the Aged campaign for more flexibility.