Was Ridley bailed out?
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TRANSPORT 2000, the public transport pressure group, says National Bus Company. chairman Robert Brook and Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley connived to conceal the likely scale of cuts arising from the Transport Bill.
The allegations arose from the cancellation of a Crosville Motor Services press conference and trade union discussion last July after Brook intervened at a time the Bill was being discussed in the House of Commons.
The press conference would have told of drastic cuts that would have been necessary were Crosville to reduce its fleet to that needed to operate no more than a commercial network, But Brook said this week that he had returned from being on holiday during the first two weeks of July, and had asked Crosville's chairman to defer the press conference and meeting.
He felttl 1 e content was unnecessarily alarming as the cuts did not take account of any services Crosville might win as a result of tendering for subsidised routes.
An NBC spokesman denied the cover-up allegation, and said the matter had been the subject of reports in local newspapers in Crosvillc's operating area in July, but had not attracted any national coverage.
According to Transport 2000, the cuts would have taken at least 1,200 staff off the 3,000-strong labour Force, 55 per cent of services would have gone and half of Crosville's 900 buses with them.
The service cuts would have totalled 70 per cent in rural Wales.
Transport and General Workers Union official Jim Morris claims that 20 per cent of the bus fleet will still go if Crosville wins all its tenders.