MediaWatch: The Sun, the Lib Dems, and the 50% Bus Fare Hike that Never Was

“Hidden ‘1p tax’ will cost workers £448 a YEAR in commutes, analysis finds – as Reeves ‘clobbers’ hard-up Brits”.  So runs the frothing Sun headline. It’s punchy but wrong. 

The Department for Transport has hit back at claims from the Liberal Democrats in The Sun that bus fares in England are set to rise by 50%, a stat which is incorrect by a very large margin.

The current £2 cap on single bus fares in England had been due to come to an end on 31 December 2024. Rishi Sunak’s previous Government had only budgeted for the current cap on bus fares to the end of 2024. 

Last week, PM Keir Starmer confirmed that the cap on single bus fares would be kept, but rise to £3, with the scheme staying until the end of 2025. 

Some however have presented this as bus fares rising by 50% – a claim which is untrue.

#mediawatch CrowdfundER

Help us expose the worst of Britain’s media and social media and demand something better

A healthy media is the cornerstone of a functional democratic society. Unfortunately, Britain today doesn’t have one. That’s why Byline Times is launching a new project – Byline Media Watch – to monitor and tackle disinformation in broadcast and social media and take on misleading bias in the press.

Outside the system, we can hold the tech broligarchs and non-dom media moguls to account.

Contribute to the #MediaWatch crowdfunder

Analysis by the Liberal Democrats on Monday claimed that “the average bus commuter would effectively face a 1p income tax hike due to the Government’s changes to bus tickets from £2 to £3.” 

The analysis suggested that the average commuter who takes the bus every working day of the week would face an extra £448 bill because of the change made by the Government.

They compared it to an income tax hike: “That is the equivalent of paying £5,420 in income tax a year, 9% higher than the £4,972 a median earner on £37,430 a year would pay.”

The press release from the party added: “The Liberal Democrats are calling for the rise to be reversed and the £2 bus cap to remain in place to protect rural communities and bus commuters from suffering more financial pain after years of “economic vandalism” under the Conservatives.” 

But the figures, first reported by the Sun newspaper, were based on the false claim that fares – rather than the maximum cap itself – would rise by 50%. 

The methodology was based on 224 journeys for a full time worker being multiplied by £2 – the supposed increased cost of the bus fare rose to £3 per day someone works for journey to work and back. The party claimed it would cost workers £448 extra a year.

But the annual inflation rate was 2.6% in the year to September 2024, the usual date fares rises are set from. The maximum a regulated bus fare could go up by is therefore about 10p per journey: £2.90+2.6% taking a fare up to the new £3 cap. 

That suggests the maximum bus fare increase per year for a full-time worker in England will be around £22. Not £448, as the Lib Dems and the Sun have claimed. The latter’s stats are therefore needlessly worrying for passengers at best, and irresponsible misinformation at worst.

Kemi Badenoch Told to Face up to Conservatives’ Democratic Failings After Years of Sleaze and Rule-Breaking

The Conservative Party’s new leader has appointed a series of Shadow Cabinet ministers whose Government records were clouded in scandal

Josiah Mortimer

A Department for Transport spokesperson told Byline Times: “We do not recognise these statistics. The previous fare cap was due to expire at the end of 2024, with fares set to soar by as much as £13 on the most expensive routes, unless we intervened to keep fares down.

“Fares will only be allowed to increase with inflation in the normal way, and the £3 bus fare cap will lead to savings of up to 80% on some routes, keeping bus tickets affordable across the country.”

The cap means no single bus fare on routes included in the scheme will exceed £3, and routes where fares are less than £3 will only be allowed to increase by inflation in the normal way, so that some fares will remain below £3. 

A spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said the party stands by its analysis: “The bus cap has risen to £3 meaning that as inflation causes the price to rise a bus ticket will cost £3 in the future.”

Since the Lib Dem figures are based on 2024/25 tax bands, and on a policy due to expire at the end of 2025, this “in the future” claim seems like a strange and distant hill to die on…

Buses in Greater Manchester, Liverpool and London – covering around 12 million residents within those city regions alone – are outside the scheme with their mayors free to set fares below the cap. All have committed to doing so, with a single fare in London costing £1.75 (this also includes changing buses within an hour, the so-called ‘hopper fare’). 

In Greater Manchester, where buses are regulated by the combined mayoral authority, the cap is being kept at £2. Mayor Andy Burnham said: “We can confirm that we are sticking with the £2 cap for the whole of 2025 but subject to a mid-year review.

“By maintaining this approach, we will continue to help our residents in these difficult times. While our plan has always involved asking for an increase in the Mayoral precept in financial year 25/26 on completion of the Bee Network, we are confident that our residents can recover the cost within a couple of weeks if they use the system as we hope they will.”

“We understand it is easier and cheaper to maintain a £2 cap in a regulated system and expensive for the Government to subsidise it in a deregulated one, but they have maintained the principle of a cap.”

The Labour Mayor added that Greater Manchester would aim to keep the £2 cap “as long as we can.”

Anyway. Why let nuance get in the way of a good hit piece?

Subscribers Get More from JOSIAH

Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.

So for more from him…

Subscribe to Byline Times