Transport: Burnham’s nation-wide bus fare cap should follow in Scotland but only a sticking plaster solution

New Prime Minister Andy Burnham today announced that that most single bus fares in England would be capped at £2 from 1 January 2027. Bus campaigners in Scotland have reacted to the news, urging John Swinney to follow suit in Scotland but stressing that relying on a fare cap will only ever be a temporary solution.

In the run up to the 2026 Holyrood elections, the SNP manifesto promised a phased nationwide roll-out of the existing bus fare caps already in place in some areas including the Highlands and Islands, and it was announced in June that this would be rolled out in phases, starting with areas across the Central Belt including Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire. 

However, Burnham’s action to ease the cost of living looks set to be funded through an extra £454 million, including funding for devolved governments. This raises questions as to whether the planned phased rollout in Scotland could be superseded by a blanket approach to enacting the fare cap. 

Emily Donnelly, Senior Transport Campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland said:

“It is good to see Andy Burnham recognise the cost-of-living impact people face from expensive bus fares, and take decisive action in his first days in the job to ease this burden on people who need to use the bus to go about their daily lives – to get to work, the hospital, see family and friends, go to the shops. 

“But while fare caps reduce the cost of fares for the customer, public funds pay the difference. Meanwhile the private bus companies continue to rake in millions of pounds in profits each year, even ending up on the Sunday Times Rich List in some instances, making a fortune off ordinary people by running lifeline public services at a premium. 

“This expensive model of intervention is also doubly worrying when it appears that the funding for it this week has been created by switching international climate finance grants to loans – a decision that would have a detrimental and unjust impact on those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis. 

“The only way to deliver genuinely affordable, accessible, reliable and sustainable public transport run for communities – not for commercial interests – is by bringing bus services into public ownership.

“What we need now in Scotland is an urgent universal rollout of the fare cap – avoiding the postcode lottery of phased implementation which we have seen so far, that leaves behind communities like in Aberdeenshire paying a premium for lifeline services indefinitely. But beyond that, this fare cap should be seen as a temporary, urgent sticking plaster solution to ease people’s bills and commutes – not as a fix-all.