Free bus passes for the under-25s – that’s Labour’s latest retail offer to the young, unveiled today by Jeremy Corbyn. It’s a good idea, but still a lot less generous than many older people’s free travel passes. Outside London over-65s get bus concessions; in London the over-60s get not just free buses but free tubes as well, even for high earners still in work. So no one should begrudge this modest offer to the young.

According to Labour, “the move could benefit up to 13 million young people, [helping] them save up to £1,000 a year” – money that low-earning families often can’t afford. Labour has pledged to restore the education maintenance allowance, worth up to £30 a week to 16- to 19-year-olds still in education. Its abolition by the coalition had a devastating effect on low-income families trying to keep teenagers in school and college with no free school meals or travel.

Free buses would be one step towards an urgently needed intergenerational shift against the tide of wealth and income flowing away from the young into the well-protected pockets of the old. The £1.4bn cost would come from vehicle excise duty, using funds currently allocated to road building, which would then be covered by its new National Transformation Fund.

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Money for these free youth fares would only go to councils taking back bus services under municipal control or, like London, taking control but franchising routes to private bus companies. The deregulation and de-municipalisation of buses was one of the great disasters of the Thatcher era, leading to competing bus companies piling up down popular routes – Oxford Road in Manchester is nose-to-tail buses – but neglecting unprofitable routes: private bus operators abandon routes making under 12-15% profit.

By dint of clever ducking and diving, Nottingham and Reading were the only cities that kept their own bus services, now invaluable comparisons with privatised operators elsewhere. They regularly win bus operator of the year awards, and Reading buses make £1m a year profit to plough back into services covering less-used routes. It’s so popular that 93% of bus journeys in Reading are made on Reading council’s own buses.

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But free bus passes for old or young are useless where there are no buses. I met people from a string of Shropshire villages who lost their service when the council abolished its subsidy. Now instead of buses several times a day to Bridgnorth for 5,000 people, there’s just one, once a week, driven by a volunteer. Nationally, 62% of public transport journeys are by bus – yet all political heat and noise is on rail used by the better off.

This policy is a tiptoe towards universal basic services, a policy idea that sprang last year from King’s College’s Prof Jonathan Portes and UCL’s Prof Henrietta Moore. Rather than universal basic income, they suggest providing universal services such as free buses, free wifi and telephones, plus free food and housing for the poorest, as a more effective redistribution.

Their universal free buses would cost £5bn, a price that looks like a remarkably good bargain. The message it sends out – that anyone has the right to travel anywhere – embraces a sense of universal community it would be hard to obtain with £5bn spent on anything else. Bus passes for the old are so popular with Tory and Labour voters alike that no party in its right mind would dare take them away – or even to means-test them for those needing no subsidy from less well-off taxpayers. To offer free buses to all is the right way to make it fairer.

Portes and Moore’s plan estimates that the £5bn cost would cover what they expect would be a 260% increase in bus use. It would redress the injustice – and environmental madness – of what has happened to costs. They quote ONS data showing that between 1980 and 2014, the real cost of motoring, including buying a car, declined by 14%, but bus fares increased by 58% and rail fares went up by 63% in real terms. The LSE’s Prof Tony Travers points out that the British pay very high public transport costs through fares compared with the rest of Europe, where travel is far more heavily subsidised by the state. High time for free buses for all.

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However, the political question is whether Labour announcing yet more spending at this point does anything for Corbyn’s weak economic credibility, as he stays a dismal 10 points behind Theresa May as best to run the economy and lead the country. Labour needs policies that shore up public belief in its fiscal probity to reach beyond its young base – already pollsters find age is the single biggest determinant as to whether someone votes Labour or Tory. Good policies don’t win without good politics.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

• This article was amended on 12 and 26 April 2018. The meaning was clarified of the figures of 93% and 62% used in relation to bus journeys in Reading and nationally. A sentence stating that free bus passes for under-25s would save 13 million young people an average of £1,000 a year has been corrected to make explicit that these figures were the maximum possible under Labour’s calculations.

