ON MAY 4, electors ousted councillors David Nimmo Smith, whose Oxfordshire cabinet post included transport, and Rodney Rose, who preceded David in that post.

Most people care about transport but few put it first in an election. We cannot assume people’s votes depended on the transport policies that Government austerity forced on Oxfordshire.

But Oxfordshire has cut bus subsidies from £5.5m in 2009 to almost nothing since 2016.

This has made operators scrap 60 bus routes, leaving a record number of places in Oxfordshire with no bus service.

Andrew Jones, the Government’s buses minister, opposes all bus subsidies.

Under him, nowhere that lost its bus in 2016 would get it back before the next General Election.

Ever-tighter EU exhaust limits mean new diesel buses emit only a tiny fraction of the poisons emitted by buses built 15-20 years ago.

But too many old, highemission buses remain in service.

In 2008, the Government launched the Green Bus Fund, which helped bus operators to buy new buses with hybrid or other propulsion that cost more but emit less.

But a successor government ended that fund in 2013. In 2009, the Government launched a huge scrappage scheme for old cars, but not old buses.

Now another scrappage scheme is proposed for diesel cars, but again not old buses.

For this General Election, Bus Users Oxford asks each party for policies that would restore good bus services to communities that have been cut off, and help operators replace old highemission buses with new lowemission ones.

HUGH JAEGER Chairman, Bus Users Oxford