So, the two main issues at hand are that:
- Some people are not personally entitled to use a concessionary pass to obtain free travel, but are either using someone else's (fraud) or by travelling as a companion to a companion passholder (not fraud), and,
- Some people are rude (true), and some of those people hold bus passes.
(1)
Up to the pandemic, the National Fraud Initiative identified that the use of deceased or no-longer-valid passes totals to around £1.9 million - £2.2 million annually, set against a general overall spend of £1.1 billion - £1.2 billion on concessionary travel schemes nationally (£780,000 - £880,000 excluding London), depending on what year you look at. So around
0.15%-0.2% of overall spend on concessionary travel is detectable fraud.
9.4 million older and disabled concessionary travel passes were in use England in 2017/18 – with 90% of those concessionary passes given to older people and 10% to disabled people. Of those eligible to have a concessionary pass through age, only 78% have one: while some of this is deliberate non-uptake, for some the bus isn't actually a useful option, and some LAs offer a free Senior Railcard in lieu of a bus pass.
Recouping (for example) £300 per pass would cost between 3-9% (depending on what you include in cost of sale, but card fees alone will be 3%+ and cash handling costs aren't any lower), so between £1 and £3 per pass. This would need to be undertaken every 5 years (along with pass expiry) so assume 20% are applied for or renewed each year. Thus, if we were to shift
some funding of ENCTS to this passholder-paying situation, the overall cost of sale would be between £16 million and £42 million a year, vastly outnumbering the cost of fraud (which is only estimated, and of course would still take place - we haven't fixed this), and you would almost certainly have to procure some administration to manage means testing, which would also
still be required for disabled concessionary travel. Some people would, indeed, be dissuaded, but the overall cost of funding probably wouldn't decrease, due to the unwanted detrimental effect on bus networks. Also, the decreased societal benefit would likely hit NHS costs, social care costs, and spread burden across other civil and voluntary services.
All these numbers are a
bit hand-wavy, but the key take-away is that the cost of pass-payment would be around an order of magnitude greater than the currently apparent loss.
(2)
Moving on...this perceived individual sense of 'entitlement' or pushiness...
- Some people are rude, and of that subset, some are entitled to free travel.
- Some people are not rude, and probably should be boarding first and have a seat, and the best way of doing so is to be at the front of the queue.
- Rudeness is entirely subjective.
That's life, and one's memory or experience of such situations tends to over-represent those which have caused annoyance - this is
brain chemistry, not transport policy. Complaints of this sort frequently trundle on into ad hominem or straw-man attacks based on a non-representative sample of the group in question. At best this is exceedingly tiresome, and at worst this becomes an attack on others' rights and benefits with the express intention of reducing or removing these rights or benefits.
(Back to 1)
Regarding "lad from York", or any of the other substitutes for "a concessionary passholder with a valid companion entitlement", I don't have a great deal of sympathy for those who are agitated about this passholder's chosen companions. The diversity of needs which might cause one to need a companion (and be eligible for a companion entitlement) is
huge and not at all easy to judge at a glance at a bus stop. If a passholder has a companion entitlement, they can choose to bring their best friend, a stranger at a bus stop or Christine Ohuruogu on the trip with them. It's not up to a bystander, or the driver, or the revenue inspection staff, to evaluate the need for a companion, nor the companion's ability to pay for their own travel. The sole requirement of a 'companion' is that they are capable of providing the support required by the passholder. Anyone insinuating that passholders should have to identify a companion, or specify a companion, needs to think about why you might need ad hoc support to travel, and aspire to better understanding and empathy for those that do need and have use of these passes.
On that point, it's
also not up to an onlooker, the driver, or any inspection staff to determine whether a passholder is visiting a sick relative, going to the roller-derby, going down the bookies to bet their giro on the horses, going to foment revolution at their local CIU club, going to foment recession at their local Conservative club, or simply trolling back and forth on a scenic bus route at leisure: no reason for the journey has to be specified.
It is
definitely true to say that there's nearly zero identification of ENCTS passholders going on, but the sheer cost of stopping to inspect every card in dwell time alone would be crippling for bus services. ENCTS fraud of all kinds is a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of cost control. There are far bigger problems to face, both in terms of operational costs, driver retention, other systematic fraud, revenue protection, and developing other appropriate sources of bus funding.
It's worth noting that many operators do not claim ENCTS reimbursement on a per-use basis, and have not done for quite some time: there are other arrangements in place, and it would be more representative to accept that ENCTS is a secondary, usage-driven but not usage-based, funding stream alongside other funding mechanisms, such as Bus Recovery Grant and Bus Service Operator Grant. Thus,
usage fraud might not really be costed as a per-usage loss, as ENCTS is, for many operators, just part of the mix of core funding for supporting bus services.
I'll finish on my original position in
post #39: whether you have "paid in" or not during your non-passholding life is irrelevant, and whether you're off on a jolly or visiting a palliative care clinic has no bearing: the whole purpose of a liberal democracy having a welfare state is to ensure that certain rights and freedoms are available to all, to exercise as they wish. If we've decided that "free bus travel after [age] or given [x] other entitlement" is one of them, and you don't like it, feel free to find a voting majority that agrees with you, and stop anonymously criticising other peoples' lives on the internet.
Sources
National Fraud Initiative:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-fraud-initiative-reports
A useful paper that collects some key ENCTS statistics in one place:
https://bettertransport.org.uk/site...rch-files/future-bus-funding-arrangements.pdf
