Just fancy that 2

Hurrah for Parliamentary Privilege.

This from yesterday's House of Commons railway debate:

Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley) (Lab):
When Network Rail closes a line for improvements or because something has gone wrong, it puts on buses, and calls that — it is a dreadful word — “bustitution”.

Twelve of the 13 major rail franchises that bus companies run effectively use themselves as agents.

Arriva uses Arriva; National Express uses National Express; FirstGroup uses FirstGroup; Stagecoach uses Stagecoach and so on.

That means that anyone bidding does not get the bus service operator grant because it goes to the agent of the main company. There is very little control over the costs.

I have talked to representatives of bus operating companies that have been put out of business because they do not believe that they can compete with bodies that effectively award the contracts to themselves.

They are told that it is a matter of quality as well as price, but when one talks to the bus drivers, one finds that the agents pay two and three times what the competitors would pay.

There is a cost to Network Rail and there is, therefore, a cost to the public purse.

I have talked to several bus operators. One — Fraser Eagle — was recently put into administration. It believes that that has happened because of those unfair, if not corrupt practices by train operating companies that also run the buses

Here endeth Parliamentary Privilege...