Fragmentation?
ONE OF several provisions of the 'Buses' White Paper, for which a Bill was still awaited as this was being written, is of course the transfer of the National Bus Company to the private sector. Taking the National Freight Corporation as an example of an organisation which has been privatised and saying that there is no good reason why local bus services should be provided by a national corporation, the Government has stated its intention to transfer the operations of NBC to the private sector. It was keen not to transfer NBC en bloc, as this would have resulted in a private-sector 'monopoly' (though to what extent NBC is a monopoly is very much open to question) rather than a public one. In particular one has seen what happened under express deregulation; although designed to give the private operator the chance to gain much headway into the express market, it has had the effect of consolidating NBC's success with its National Express network. Certainly the might of National proved instrumental in its success, although sheer size was not the sole reason for its success. It proved well able to meet the needs of passengers at least on trunk routes, and gave higher frequencies, generally a more comprehensive service in that most routes operated every day and that duplication was provided where necessary, proved better at marketing and had other advantages such as a good. nationwide booking network, convenient terminii and by relying on local subsidaries for vehicles was better able to spread its overheads. With a few exceptions the independents which have stayed in on express work have been those prepared to accept that 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'.

Thus being keen to avoid a repetition of the results of the 1980 Act the Government required NBC to be broken into 'parts which can be disposed of as free-standing companies'. Quite what that means is not altogether clear; presumably anything from an outstation to a complete region could be seen as 'a free-standing company'. The thinking behind the Government's desire to privatise NBC is quite obvious; firstly there is simply the desire to reduce the state's involvement in industry at all levels and secondly it is keen that this timefit really is the private operator which will benefit from deregulation, and thus any successors would not be permitted the muscle that NBC itself has shown able to bring to bear to ensure its survival. Thus in order for the Government to achieve its objectives it would seem to be essential for NBC to be broken up, presumably into small chunks, and privatised before deregulation. However NBC's new chairman, Robert Brook, has indicated that this will not in fact be the case and that NBC will survive into the era of deregulation. 'We are on a much longer time-scale than we originally thought', he said in an interview for NBC's house journal. Bus News. Thus, he said, NBC companies will have to face up to deregulation and cannot assume they will be privatised by then. It would also seem that the Government is now less keen to fragment NBC too much. So far NBC, which is charged with the task of planning its own disintegration, has put forward a plan for four groups of companies with further divisions for leisure, engineering and property, and whilst this plan has'not actually been accepted by the Government it has, according to Mr Brook, 'widened the whole area of debate'. Thus the only thing which would appear to be certain is that NBC will be privatised, though in what form and when is less clear.