TRANSPORT chiefs representing Merseyside warned MPs savage cuts will leave pensioners with free bus passes – but few buses to travel on.

A shake-up of the highly-popular national concessionary travel scheme (NCTS), which means the cash is no longer ring-fenced, will have “dramatic consequences”, an inquiry was told.

The change means Merseytravel must now rely on councils to hand over the funding, at the same time as town halls wrestle with frontloaded cuts of 28% in transport funding.

The issue is crucial because the passenger transport executives (PTEs) in the six biggest urban areas, including Merseyside, receive up to half of their budgets from the scheme.

In evidence to the Commons transport committee, PTEG, which represents the six executives, warned of a “potentially explosive combination in metropolitan areas”.

It added: “The danger is NCTS will begin to eat into the funding available for concessions to other groups and for wider bus network support.

“This could have dramatic consequences, whereby older people in the metropolitan areas end up with a free pass for a quickly vanishing network of services, while young people and children face their concessions being withdrawn.”

That is the reference to the scaling back of free bus passes for students and for journeys to school by some cash-strapped authorities.

PTEG protested ministers were wrong to allow grants for free bus travel for the elderly to be swallowed up in general council funding.

It said: “The Government has firmly committed to this policy and should, therefore, both provide an adequate level of funding and ensure funding is effectively targeted.”

Until now, it had been believed big cities would escape the worst of bus cuts.

Mike Cooper, the managing director of Arriva Bus UK, which operates most services in Merseyside, told the MPs: “It is death by a thousand cuts.”

Mr Cooper said two-thirds of bus passengers are travelling to work, to college or to go shopping, adding: “They [the cuts] will affect communities.”