Transport (Wales) Bill

moved Amendment No. 15:"Page 4, line 31, at end insert—" ““(   )   In respect of bus services operating within or mainly within Wales, operators may enter into agreements to operate through joint services and issue joint tickets and shall not be subject to the Competition Act 1998 (c. 41), but shall be subject to a public interest test as set out in section (Traffic Commissioner for Wales)(2)(b).”” The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 15, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 19. This concerns bus services and I shall not reiterate what I said previously. Since deregulation of the bus services, corporation twin-bus operating is not allowed. The competition authorities have agreed to grant block exemptions to certain people if discussions take place with the Office of Fair Trading, and sometimes they levy a charge for that. We must remember that we are talking about only a relatively small number of passengers who want to make connections. Most bus operators do not meet together and they certainly do not discuss joint timetables and through-fares. Yet, in a properly connected transport system, those are the very factors that people wish to be taken into account. Somehow we have got ourselves into a difficult position, mainly because we are employing competition law which was intended to regulate industries such as steel and ready-mix concrete to try to regulate bus services. It is certainly not designed to cover small local agreements—which inevitably they are—between local bus services, especially in a place like Wales. I therefore propose that the bus services in Wales should not be subject to the Competition Act 1998, but instead be subject to a public interest test. Is what they are doing in the interests of the public or in the furtherance of a monopoly? I have no wish whatever to assist people in monopoly practices, but, if a bus is travelling any distance in Wales, it is important that there are opportunities for proper connections, through-journeys through-tickets and other things which might be for the convenience of passengers. Similarly, I hope that the bus and train operators will co-operate together without involving the officials of the Assembly. On the public interest test, we must ask ourselves who will police it. That brings me to Amendment No. 19 and the traffic commissioner for Wales. There used to be a traffic commissioner for Wales, but, as an economy measure, the post was taken away. I believe that there is a strong case for a traffic commissioner for Wales. We are aware of a considerable number of illegal operations by people in Wales but we believe that the traffic commissioner could be the judge of this public interest test: is what the bus operators are proposing in the public interest? It would enable a local person to do one other thing that is necessary in the bus industry—that is, to stop silly competition where someone registers a bus to leave on the hour and then someone else comes along and registers a service three minutes before that, leaving passengers to wait another 57 minutes for the next bus. So, although there are two buses an hour, they both leave at almost the same time because they are competing for the same market. The traffic commissioner could be given the power to say to companies, ““If you are going to enter into this market, you shall do so at a time that is most likely to be convenient to the passengers””—which would halve the interval between services—rather than allowing them to engage in something which I, and I think most other people, would regard as destructive competition. I am putting forward these ideas, which we take seriously. I hope that the Minister will give thought to them and come forward at another stage with something which may satisfy us. I believe that this is in the interest of transport users in Wales. I beg to move.