Transport (Wales) Bill

I thank the Minister for his remarks. He has not satisfied me at all. If he thinks that the current arrangements for bus services are satisfactory, he is very far away from the people who use the buses. The Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission have given him information which seeks to protect their interests. It is not very convincing. The arrangements are plainly unsatisfactory. People in the bus industry do not seek, largely, the protection of the block exemptions because it is exceedingly bureaucratic and expensive. As I said earlier, we are not talking about many people. I have suggested to the Government an alternative, much more user-friendly system of regulating bus services which seeks to put the interests of the user at the front rather than the sectional interests of either the bureaucracy—the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission—or the interests of large companies, and to do so in a flexible way. As to what is a public interest test and who should determine it, it should be determined not by the thoroughly narrow economic tests presently used by the Office of Fair Trading with its significant share of the market—which seem to take ages and ages to apply—but on the basis of common sense. The traffic commissioner would not need to be trained; he would simply judge whether the proposed arrangements were likely to be in the public interest. I use those words because they are ordinary words which ordinary people understand.