The Times - UK (2022-03-15)

the times | Tuesday March 15 2022 2GM 23

News

Bus tickets in Greater Manchester will
be capped at £2 for adults and £1 for
children under plans for a “London-
style transport revolution”.
Andy Burnham, the mayor, plans to
bring buses in the city under public con-
trol in a move he says will act as a “blue-
print” for other city-regions.
Greater Manchester was handed
power to control buses in 2017 although
the plans have been delayed by the
pandemic and legal challenges.
The bus operators Stagecoach Man-
chester and Rotala had fought the im-
plementation of the Greater Manches-
ter Franchising Scheme, but lost their
case last week when a High Court judge
ruled that the move was not unlawful.
The region will be the first area out-
side London to have a regulated bus
system since the 1980s. Burnham said
the reforms would end the “era of
people paying £4 or more for a single
journey”.
Wigan, Bolton and parts of Salford
will be the first areas to get regulated
services from autumn next year. Roch-

Metro mayor caps bus

fares at £2 a journey

Ben Clatworthy
Transport Correspondent

dale, Oldham, Bury and areas of north

Manchester will follow in spring 2024.

Stockport, Trafford, Tameside, south

Manchester and the remaining parts of

Salford will join the scheme by the end

of 2024.

The new tickets would work in the

same way as London’s £1.65 Hopper

fare, which allows unlimited bus

journeys within an hour. At present a

20-minute journey from Middleton to

Manchester city centre costs up to

£4.50 one way.

Burnham said: “My ambition is that

it will be simpler, cheaper and more reli-

able to get around on public transport.”

Fares, timetables and routes will be

set by local authorities instead of

private operators. It is estimated that

transitioning to the model will cost

about £135 million.

Introducing the capped fares

depends on ministers in Westminster

granting Manchester’s application for

£70 million from the bus service im-

provement fund. Burnham has tabled

plans for a £1.2 billion programme of in-

vestment in public transport which will

include a fleet of electric buses, new bus

lines and London-style ticketing.

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BREAT

The chairman of the government’s race
commission has criticised a university’s
decision to withdraw its offer to
award him an honorary degree after
a contentious report he wrote on
discrimination.
Dr Tony Sewell, 63, chaired the
Commission on Race and Ethnic
Disparities, which published the report
last year. It said that although Britain
was not yet a “post-racial society”, there
was no evidence that the country was
institutionally racist.
Nottingham University decided to
offer Sewell an honorary degree in late

Race tsar attacks university’s honour U-turn

Nadeem Badshah 2019, before the publication of the
report. However, in December it
informed him that the offer had been
withdrawn because he had become the
“subject of political controversy”.
Sewell, who runs a charity called
Generating Genius, which helps black
children to get into higher education,
accused universities of stifling free
speech “like the Soviet Union”.
He told the Daily Mail: “I have helped
thousands of black children from poor
backgrounds to get into universities.
I’m a one-man levelling-upper.
“But [Nottingham University] said it
would no longer be appropriate to
award me the degree because they

didn’t want to offend the students at an

award ceremony.

“How can you offend students with a

report which says the equalities watch-

dog should have more power, that stop

and search should be improved and

that we need to get more people from

ethnic minorities into university?”

Referring to the singer R Kelly and

the comedian Bill Cosby, who have

faced sexual assault allegations in the

United States, Sewell added: “These

are the type of people you decide to

withdraw honours from. But they [the

university] have acted like cowards,

subject to lobbying groups.

“I thought the work of a university

was to deal with complex issues. [But]

universities in England are like the

Soviet Union. There is no free speech.”

The government is expected to

publish its response to the report by the

Commission on Race and Ethnic Dis-

parities this week.

The research says that social class

and family structure have a bigger

impact than race on how people’s lives

turned out. Sewell added: “This is going

to be life-changing for ethnic minor-

ities and I just feel positive that we’ve

been able to change the world.”

Some of the findings were criticised

by MPs and race equality campaigners.

The charity chief accused lobby groups,

who dismissed the report without

reading it, as hating “black success”. He

added: “Some groups feel they can tell

black people how to be black and [are]

in effect indulging a form of racism by

doing that.”

Nottingham University was

approached for comment.

Dr Tony Sewell

chaired the

Commission on

Race and Ethnic

Disparities