Parliament’s returned from the long summer recess, the party conference season is almost on us, the Brexit negotiations don’t appear to be going too well, and Theresa May’s told us she’s not a quitter, is in it for the long term and intends to lead the Conservative Party into the next general election. Life in Westminster is returning to normal. Although quite what constitutes ‘normal; in these weird political times, I’m no longer sure.
Theresa May’s protestations that she has never said that she would stand down in 2019 after the Brexit negotiations are completed, may have a ring of truth about it.
Trouble is, I’m not sure this is the view of many in the parliamentary party, or wider party membership, so disastrous was her performance during the recent general election campaign.
Over the last few weeks I’ve chatted to a number of Conservative MPs, and none of them expect her to lead the party when the next election takes place. There will probably be an open demonstration of sympathetic loyalty and support for her at the party conference, but this will be more for the cameras than any genuine display of unity.
For the bus and coach industry life seems to be reasonably calm.
That said, almost every time I glance through the trade press, I see an article suggesting that this or that local authority is flirting with the idea of bus franchising, and it seems that bus franchising is high on the Welsh government’s agenda.
Whenever I hear these stories two questions keep on popping into my head – how will these authorities pay for it, and are they able to take the financial risks involved?
Nobody has yet answered these questions satisfactorily for me, and until they do I for one can’t see franchising happening any time soon, Greater Manchester aside (and even here I understand that Andy Burnham, Manchester’s recently elected Labour Mayor, has his doubts).
But it does serve to remind us that bus operators need to be constantly on their mettle, constantly striving to improve services.
I am no fan of franchising, but I am a fan of continually holding operators’ feet to the fire and keeping the pressure on to provide a quality service, reasonably priced, not least because they are in receipt of a nice chunk of taxpayer subsidy via BSOG – although it continues to bother me that a so-called commercial market should require any subsidy at all.
The decline in bus patronage continues to be used by some as evidence that deregulation hasn’t worked.
But it’s worth reporting that statistics published by the Department for Transport over the summer showed that the proportion of households without a car has fallen from 38% in 1985/86 to just 23 % in 2016.
Yet again the evidence, as opposed to the rhetoric, shows that bus usage is determined by factors outside of the regulatory environment.
