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Another go at debt?
Page 26
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TRANSPORT SECRETARY Norman Fowler hopes to make a statement "in due course" on an independent appraisal of the financial effect of the allocation of debt between particular subsidiaries of the National Bus Company.
He promised this in the Commons last week, after Michael McNair-Wilson (Conservative, Newbury) had suggested that the financial burden on the NBC might be eased if there were a reconsideration of the interest it paid on its historic debt, which ran at about £17m a year.
Mr Fowler agreed that the Company felt strongly about the matter. But, he added, neither the Labour Government nor this Government had felt able to agree to such a request.
Labour transport spokesman Albert Booth urged him to take steps to avert a cut of 60 million miles in 1981, involving 4,000 redundancies.
The combined effect of Mr Fowler's transport supplementary grant regime, and last year's legislation, was that the biggest bus company would have to slash the number of passenger service miles operated, charged Mr Booth.
It would be the most massive cut that had ever taken place in a single year, and would throw thousands of bus workers out of jobs. The Minister had acknowledged that inter-city coach services were expanding, and therefore the cuts would affect rural areas and off-peak urban services.
Mr Fowler replied that it would be wrong for the company to operate services where there was insufficient demand, and local authorities did not consider that revenue support was the most cost-effective way of providing essential transport.