The £3 bus fare cap could be scrapped after December 2025, the transport secretary has suggested.

Sir Keir Starmer recently confirmed that the £2 cap, which has been in place in England since 1 January 2023, will rise to £3 at the start of next year.

The government has said the £3 cap would stay in place for another year, until December 2025.

But speaking on Sunday morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Louise Haugh indicated the government was considering abolishing the cap beyond that point to explore alternative methods of funding.

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She said: “We’ve stepped in with funding to protect it at £3 until 31 December next year. And in that period, we’ll look to establish more targeted approaches.

“We’ve, through evaluation of the £2 cap, found that the best approach is to target it at young people.

“So we want to look at ways in order to ensure more targeted ways, just like we do with the concessionary fare for older people, we think we can develop more targeted ways that will better encourage people onto buses.”

Pressed again on whether that meant the single £3 cap would be removed after December 2025, and that other bus reliefs could be put in place, she replied: “That’s what we’re considering at the moment as we go through this year, as we have that time whilst the £3 cap is in place – because the evaluation that we had showed, it hadn’t represented good value for money, the previous cap.”

It comes after Ms Haigh also confirmed that HS2 would not run to Crewe.

The northern leg of HS2, which would have linked Birmingham to Manchester, was scrapped by former prime minister Rishi Sunak during the Conservative Party conference last year.

There had been reports that Labour could instead build an “HS2-light” railway between Birmingham and Crewe.

But Ms Haigh said that while HS2 would be built from Birmingham to Euston, the government was “not resurrecting the plans for HS2”.

“HS2 Limited isn’t getting any further work beyond what’s been commissioned to Euston,” she added.

Last month the prime minster confirmed the £2 bus fare cap would rise to £3 – branded the “bus tax” by critics – saying that the previous government had not planned for the funding to continue past the end of 2024.

He said that although the cap would increase to £3, it would stay at that price until the end of 2025 “because I know how important it is”.

Manchester mayor to keep £2 cap

The cap rise has been unpopular with some in Labour, with Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham opting to keep the £2 cap in place for the whole of 2025, despite the maximum that can be charged across England rising to £3.

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The region’s mayor said he was able to cap single fares at £2 because of steps he took to regulate the system and bring buses back into public ownership from last year.

He also confirmed plans to introduce a contactless payment system, with a daily and weekly cap on prices, as Greater Manchester moves towards a London-style system for public transport pricing.

Under devolution, local authorities and metro mayors can fund their own schemes to keep fares down, as has been the case in Greater Manchester, London and West Yorkshire.

Shelves will not be left empty this winter if farmers go on strike over tax changes, a cabinet minister has said.

Louise Haigh, the transport secretary, said the government would be setting out contingency plans to ensure food security is not compromised if farmers decide to protest.

Farmers across England and Wales have expressed anger that farms will no longer get 100% relief on inheritance tax, as laid out in Rachel Reeves’s budget last month.

Welsh campaign group Enough is Enough has called for a national strike among British farmers to stop producing food until the decision to impose inheritance tax on farms is reversed, while others also contemplate industrial action.

At the weekend the group held a protest in Llandudno, North Wales, where Sir Keir Starmer was giving his first speech as prime minister to the Welsh Labour conference.

Politics latest: £3 bus fare cap could be scrapped after December 2025

Asked by Trevor Phillips if she was concerned at the prospect that shelves could be empty of food this winter, Ms Haigh replied: “No, we think we put forward food security really as a priority, and we’ll work with farmers and the supply chain in order to ensure that.

“The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be setting out plans for the winter and setting out – as business as usual – contingency plans and ensuring that food security is treated as the priority it deserves to be.”

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From April 2026, farms worth more than £1m will face an inheritance tax rate of 20%, rather than the standard 40% applied to other land and property.

However, farmers – who previously did not have to pay any inheritance tax – argue the change will mean higher food prices, lower food production and having to sell off land to pay.

Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers Union, said he had “never seen the united sense of anger that there is in this industry today”.

“I don’t for one moment condone that anyone will stop supplying the supermarkets,” he said.

“We saw during the COVID crisis that those unable to get their food were often either the very most vulnerable, or those that have been working long hours in hospitals and nurses – that is something we do not want to see again.”

Explaining why the tax changes were so unpopular, he said food production margins were “so low”, and “any liquid cash that’s been available has been reinvested in farm businesses” for the future.

“One of the immediate changes is that farms are going to have to start putting money into their pensions, which many haven’t previously done,” he said.

“They’re going to have to have life insurance policies in case of a sudden death. And unfortunately, that was cash that would previously have been invested in producing the country’s food for the future.”

Sir Keir has staunchly defended the measure, saying it will not affect small farms and is aimed at targeting wealthy landowners who buy up farmland to avoid paying inheritance tax.

However, the Conservatives have argued the changes amount to a “war on farmers” and have begun a campaign targeting the prime minister as a “farmer harmer”.

Speaking to Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said he was happy with farmers protesting against the budget – as long as their methods and tactics were “lawful”.

“What the Labour government has done to farmers is absolutely shocking,” he said.

“These are farmers that, you know, they’re not well off particularly, they’re often actually struggling to make ends meet because farming is not very profitable these days. And of course, we rely on farmers for our food security.

Addressing the possible protests, Mr Philp said: “I think people have a right to protest, and obviously we respect the right to protest within the law, and it’s up to parliament to set where the law sits.

“So I think providing they’re behaving lawfully, legally, then they do have a right to protest.”

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Next week farmers are expected to hold a mass protest of about 20,000 people in Westminster against the inheritance tax changes.