Welsh like dere
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THE BUS service deregulation White Paper have been welcom cil.
In its detailed response, the WCC said that competition is normally the most effective way of ensuring suppliers of goods and services give consumers what they want.
It welcomes the intention to restructure the industry into smaller, more independent companies, but it expresses no views on the merits of private or public ownership.
It welcomes the proposed registration of services operators propose to run, either with a Licensing Authority or a county council, but it thinks the LA or county should have powers to investigate anti-competitive practices.
Where services cannot be provided by the market, the WCC welcomes the proposal that they should be separately identified and subsidised by local authorities and that they should be subject to competitive tendering.
It says there is a need to safeguard consumers from excessively high fare levels and thinks that the county councils should be obliged to specify the fare levels for a proposed route when inviting tenders.
As a further safeguard it would like the county councils to be able to invite tenders for any service which has been registered with the LA at fares which it regards as excessive or with vehicles it regards as unsuitable.
It also suggests there may be a case for protecting subsidised services against competition from other services.
• Bus users in the industrial North are subsidising their better-off counterparts in more prosperous South-East England, Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley has claimed.