Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 13th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I suppose you could say that this is a modestly frivolous proposal because I do not suppose for a moment that the Minister will agree to it, but I thought it would give us an opportunity to take a little excursion into the history and byways of English bus history and to consider how it is that institutions, once established, can take root in a fashion that means they are almost impossible to abolish. Indeed, they can even engender a degree of affection that means they become almost inbred in the national consciousness, not that there are many people outside the transport industry who are conscious of the traffic commissioners. It is worth bearing in mind that they arose in the bad old days of corporate capitalism and monopoly capitalism, which prevailed particularly in the 1920s when what Americans called trusts were thought of as the rational way of delivering goods and services in the private sector. We adopted that idea, creating monopolies wherever we possibly could in the private sector, unregulated monopolies in many cases, and encouraging them.

So it came to be that the thought that capitalism unbridled would produce reckless and wasteful competition arose in the bus industry nationally—or among those observing the bus industry—that it needed to be properly organised on a rational basis and that the way to do this would be to appoint an authority that would be able to decide who could run a bus, where they could run the bus and what fares they could charge. As this was a gentle form of English socialism, it was not a national authority but rather 12—I think it was 12— regional authorities in the shape of a traffic commissioner, whose job it was to do all this work and decide who could run a bus and where.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I have seen the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is not addressing it; he is giving us a history lesson. We had this in the football debate where we had 25 minutes of someone describing the difference between a badge and a crest. It was an excellent presentation on the fleur-de-lis and the history of football crests, but it served no purpose whatever towards the football Bill and, at the end, the amendment was withdrawn. I think that sometimes Members need to be mindful of the time and effort that other Members put into sitting in these Committees and should perhaps use a bit less frivolous description just to prolong the meeting. It is absolutely contrary to the spirit of how these Committees are supposed to work. To probe the Government is fair, but to go into a history lesson on the role of traffic commissioners is unacceptable.