Route masters: the re-regulation of bus services in Tyne and Wear.

AuthorPhillipson, Bridget
PositionRE-EMBEDDING THE BRITISH ECONOMY

On 21 October 2014 the North East Combined Authority (NECA), representing the seven local authorities in the North East, unanimously resolved to press ahead with plans to give taxpayers a better deal from their local bus services (North East Combined Authority, 2014). The commitment by the NECA to pursue plans to re-regulate the industry through the proposed introduction of a London-style Quality Contract Scheme (QCS) represented a significant success for my four-year campaign for better bus services in the North East. I want to maintain the political momentum for the campaign ahead of the next step in the process--assessment of the proposals by an independent QCS board scheduled for next spring. We finally have a chance to bring about positive change in the provision of bus services in the North East--change that could have wider and lasting implications for industry across the entire country, and I am determined to see that objective achieved. 'The Big Bus Campaign' started after local residents in my constituency of Houghton and Sunderland South asked me for help to protect a vital community bus route that was about to be cut. Over the last four years it has grown into a regional community-driven initiative aimed at ending almost thirty years of failed deregulation in the provision of local bus services, gaining the support of a broad coalition of North East councillors, council leaders and the general public along the way. The purpose of this article is to explain why such a campaign was necessary and how it was successfully carried out in the hope that other regions can learn from the pioneering example set by the North East. I believe that Labour activists across the country can also adapt their own campaigns to reflect the wider political issues that the campaign represented.

I will first outline the history of bus deregulation during the 1980s in order to contrast the then Conservative government's ambitious expectations for privatised bus services with their deeply unsatisfactory state almost thirty years later. This will also show why a new policy for local bus services has become necessary to help drive regional economic growth. I will explain in detail why I believe that a QCS will provide the best basis for such a policy, how the scheme will work and the benefits it is expected to bring to the region. A detailed analysis of the campaign will follow to show how it re-energised the political landscape of the North East, revived its strong tradition of collective action and provided lessons for local Labour authorities and Members of Parliament (MPs) across the country.

Deregulation in the 1980s

Prior to 1980 passenger-carrying motor vehicles were regulated through the Road Traffic Act 1930, which had remained virtually unchanged for fifty years. It established a system of road vehicle licensing overseen by regional Traffic Commissioners responsible for both quality and quantity control. Publicly owned operators were granted licences to run services defined by a route, timetable and a specified fare scale, while local Passenger Transport Authorities (PTAs) had a statutory responsibility to provide a coordinated network that met local needs, which meant some unprofitable (often rural) routes were maintained through public subsidy. Despite the durability of the system, the rise of car ownership had resulted in a large decrease in the numbers of passengers using the bus network (Butcher, 2010, 1).

The Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s was opposed to public ownership in industry, and her government applied the same logic to bus provision as it had to other publicly-run industries. In her memoirs, she explained the ideological underpinnings of such a policy:

Privatisation... was fundamental to improving Britain's economic performance. But for me it was also far more than that: it was one of the central means of reversing the corrosive and corrupting effects of socialism. (Thatcher, 1993, 676) Thatcher's government believed that deregulation and privatisation would reinvigorate the bus industry and reduce public expenditure. The Department of Transport published a White Paper in July 1984 that blamed the monopolisation of bus services across the country on a highly restrictive licensing system that denied customers a real choice. Instead, the government proposed an optimistic alternative:

Without the dead hand of restrictive regulation fares could be reduced now on many bus routes and the operators would still make a profit. New and better services would be provided. More people would travel. This is not idle speculation. (Department of Transport, 1984, 2) The government believed that, with competition putting the customer in charge, fares would be reduced as operators fought for each and every patron, while the subsidies paid by local authorities would also decrease as routes became profitable again. But some local authorities had already reacted to the challenge of increased car ownership. The South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, for example, bucked the trend of declining passengers through the implementation of a low fare policy, which led to a year-on-year increase in passenger numbers over the decade prior to 1985.

Speaking during the second reading of the debate on the proposed Transport Bill in the House of Commons, Secretary of State Nicholas Ridley argued that, in three trial areas where road service licensing had been removed, fares had fallen, service provision had risen and the subsidy requirement had been dramatically reduced (Ridley, 1985, c. 195). Shadow Transport Secretary Gwyneth Dunwoody was dismissive of this evidence. She argued that a proper consultation had not been carried out and that the Bill was being pushed in a 'hurried and incompetent manner' before the Select Committee on Transport could publish more comprehensive findings. She derided the Bill for its focus on 'two pet obsessions of the Secretary of State': privatisation and deregulation (Dunwoody, 1985). Ridley was confident, however, that those two 'obsessions', as Dunwoody called them, would halt the decline that had afflicted the bus industry for the past twenty years:

The Bill is about competition. We want to see operators free to provide the services that the customers want. We want to see competition providing an incentive to be efficient and to offer passengers a better quality of service. The customers may want greater efficiency, lower fares, smaller buses going into residential estates, greater comfort or a more polite and helpful driver. Competition is the key to these improvements. It is the key to increasing patronage. (Ridley, 1984, c. 192) The Bill became law on 30 October 1985. Road service licensing in Great Britain was abolished, as was the local authority obligation to coordinate an integrated transport network. Operators were only obliged to provide 42 days' notice of their intent to run a service and satisfy basic safety standards in order to obtain a licence. They were free to control those services as they saw fit; there was no obligation to...

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