Clause 41
Local Transport Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Stephen Hammond (Shadow Minister, Transport; Wimbledon, Conservative)
Good afternoon, Mr. Taylor. I want to register some other issues about competition and to get some comments from the Minister.
As the Minister said earlier, the Government are working closely on this part of the Bill with the Campaign for Better Transport and she has rightly acknowledged the input of that organisation. I would like to raise an issue that has not been tackled and which concerns the organisation—that the changes made by the clause and by schedule 2 affect the way in which agreements between operators and local authorities are deemed to be in the public interest or not. In effect, they allow competition law to be relaxed so that bus companies can discuss how best to work in partnership.
What has not yet been discussed is how that competition law might relate to the integration of other modes of transport. Although bus companies compete with one another, they also compete with other modes of transport, most commonly the car and the tram.
What can the Minister tell us about how the market might be defined? For example, a merger between two bus companies to create a dominant operator in a given area could be seen as anti-competitive if looking at the bus market alone and it might fall foul of competition law while actually enhancing bus patronage. If the product of the merger were to improve the attractiveness of buses overall, there might be a switch from car to bus, something I am sure the Minister would seek to encourage. In what circumstances might she be prepared to look again at how we might define the market? What consultation has the Office of Fair Trading had with the Department about the bigger picture? Buses do not just compete with themselves, they compete with other modes of transport as well.