Section 10 of the Concessionary Bus Travel Act 2007 contains a power to introduce mutual recognition of concessionary bus passes across the UK. We have no immediate plans to implement it at this stage. Introducing UK-wide recognition of passes would be a highly complex undertaking and not without cost.
The Government's immediate priority has been to improve the concessionary travel entitlement of those eligible in England and I feel it would be useful to have a period of stability while the new England-wide concession beds in.
The Department for Transport is not responsible for issuing passes and so does not maintain records of how many applications individual authorities have received.
The last information held by the Department was that as of 30 November this year, East Riding of Yorkshire's card supplier had dispatched 62,781 new smartcard concessionary passes for older and disabled people.