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Damning report shows privatised bus system is ‘failing passengers’ and ‘undermining rights’

A DAMNING report has condemned Britain’s privatised bus services as “expensive, unreliable and dysfunctional.”

Today’s Alston report describes a system driven by profiteers’ greed, subsidised by billions of pounds in taxpayers’ cash, stranding people most in need of reliable bus services, and now in crisis.

It was co-authored by former United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston and New York University human-rights academics Bassam Khawaja and Rebecca Riddell.

Mr Alston said: “Over the past 35 years, deregulation has provided a masterclass in how not to run an essential public service, leaving residents at the mercy of private actors who have total discretion over how to run a bus route, or whether to run one at all.”

The report criticises the government’s new national bus strategy for England, which it says “merely tinkers with the existing system, offering ineffective half-measures that fail to address the structural cause of the country’s bus crisis.”

Welcoming the report, the general secretary of transport union RMT Mick Lynch said: “This report is completely right in its assessment that privatisation and deregulation has created a bus network which is ‘expensive, unreliable and dysfunctional’ and does not work for passengers.

“For many, bus services provide a vital link to their communities, and, as the report highlights, poor bus services restrict access to work, education, healthcare and food — and certain parts of society, including people living in poverty, older people, women and disabled people are particularly affected.”

He said privatisation had “failed completely and called for control and management of public bus services to be returned to local authorities.”

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