Dereg: End is Nigh

The end of bus deregulation is upon us. Well, not exactly, but you’d agree it does make an eye-catching headline.

Bus operators may in future be able to co-ordinate their timetables. That’s the result of a recent amendment to the Local Transport Bill proposed by the Lords. Before the Bill went to the Lords, such co-ordination was only likely in the event of a local authority-inspired partnership.

So. Co-ordinated timetables, eh? Without the facilitating good offices of a transport authority? Operators able to do this for themselves? Such moves would be anathema to the government of the 1980s responsible for deregulation legislation; and to the dawn raiders at the OFT. The amendment, if enacted, is so fundamentally averse to the pinciple that the public interest is served only by competition not co-ordination that we’re *tempted* to suggest it’s the end of deregulation (except it isn’t). We’d like to speculate that this is perhaps what might’ve ended up in the Transport Act 1985 had the aftermath of the 1983 Cecil Parkinson affair sent a so-called ‘wet’ to Transport, rather than Nicholas Ridley.

Co-ordination’s what the public wants. Repeatedly, the passenger sees little sense in timetables that remain uncoordinated. They view buses not as the commercial services they are, but a public asset.

And, we all know ‘the public gets what the public wants’, to quote a certain 1980s punk rock song, but so's that we don't all end up in a Jam, in order to prevent two operators effectively ganging up on a third or to prevent price fixing, there remains a public interest test. And operators remain free to compete.