Since I know nothing about Nusrat Ghani, our new buses minister, I’ve made a few enquiries with chums in the Conservative Party – although getting any Conservative MP to discuss anything other than leadership challenges and Brexit is quite challenging these days!
Perfectly nice person
Anyway, I’m told that she’s a perfectly nice person, informal, and easy to get on with. These are endearing qualities in any person, but not necessarily qualities for making a good minister. Although for civil servants it’s always preferable to have ministers who are relaxed, and easy to deal with – which is not always the case – as that leads to more open and honest dialogue and therefore better policy making.
But it takes much more than being ‘nice’ to make a good minister.
I hope that behind Nusrat Ghani’s charm and easy style is a sharp mind, a steely determination and a clear understanding of what is required to ensure that the bus industry can thrive.
I’m assuming that the Confederation of Passenger Transport and the Chief Executives of the ‘big five’ will, in time-honoured fashion when new bus ministers appear on the scene, be meeting Nusrat Ghani if they haven’t already done so.
I’m sure the messages delivered will, in the same time-honoured fashion, be much the same as the messages delivered to every previous buses minister and Transport Secretary.
No doubt too representatives of the Urban Transport Group will also meet with Nusrat Ghani, and deliver their own time-honoured messages which will be rather different from those delivered by operators.
Potentially toxic
So, Nusrat Ghani will quickly discover that bus policy, far from being a quiet sleepy backwater in the general mix of transport policy issues, has the potential to be – and often is – controversial and politically toxic. Not on the same level as the railways, but certainly sufficiently controversial to require regular ministerial attention.
Not that Nusrat Ghani will have any scope for meddling with the general direction of bus policy, being a humble Parliamentary Under Secretary. But she certainly does have the ability to send clear signals to both sides in the bus policy debate.
To operators she must insist on high quality services and proper investment in technologies and products that improve customers’ experience.
To those who still hanker after re-regulation she must make clear that playing politics with buses is totally unacceptable.
Rise above the debate
All ministers want to make a difference. If Ms Ghani wants to make a real difference she should rise above the tired and age-old debate about regulation/deregulation and make sure that local authorities tackle the one thing that really impacts on bus travel – congestion.
Now that would make a real difference to the only people that matter – passengers.
