HAMPSHIRE’S bus wars have reached Parliament with Eastleigh MP Chris Huhne using a Commons debate to slam a firm’s “outrageous, bully-boy behaviour”.
Mr Huhne a Liberal Democrat, criticised bus company Bluestar, which swamped a new route with services to compete with those of smaller rival Black Velvet only to announce it was withdrawing them after Black Velvet admitted defeat and pulled out.
He said the battle for passengers along the Eastleigh to Fair Oak route, which will now lose 100 services, demonstrated the problems with bus deregulation and said there was a “desperate need” to provide local authorities with the powers to re-regulate buses.
The MP said he planned to take the dispute to the Office of Fair Trading to see whether any competition laws could prevent a repeat of the clash.
He paid tribute to the Daily Echo for “picking up the issue and campaigning on it”.
Mr Huhne said: “We have an extraordinary fight going on between the dominant local bus company, Bluestar, and a young, new, innovative competitor, Black Velvet, which to its credit attempted to provide a number of important new services “When those services, which were greatly welcomed by my constituents, began, the dominant company, Bluestar, suddenly took an interest in the same routes and decided that it, too, would run services just three minutes ahead or ten minutes behind those already provided in an attempt to scoop up all the business.
“What happened is that the new, innovative and young competitor, Black Velvet, was driven out of these routes... frankly, that is outrageous, bully-boy behaviour on the part of the dominant bus company.”
Bluestar has denied acting in an “aggressive” way and insists all of its decisions are made “from a business point of view”.
Boss Andrew Wickham has said: “Claims of bullying are simply untrue.”
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