Critics and supporters of the liberalised industry agree that to date there have been only limited benefits for passengers. Ealier this week Cowie, the Sunderland-based motor dealer, became Britain’s third largest bus operator when it paid pounds 302m for British Bus.But the process has also had side-effects. Graham Allen, Labour transport spokesman, told a conference organised by the party to present its transport policy platform that one of its priorities would be to end the practice of rival bus operators running deliberately overlapping services in an attempt to win market share.
“One fundamental thing is to end on-the-road competition,” Mr Allen said, adding that Labour wanted to provide certainty and stability for the bus industry.Since the Conservative Government began deregulating the buses in 1985, the industry has undergone a revolution which analysts say has slowly led to the emergence of a number of big, efficient bus firms.The pace of consolidation has increased rapidly in recent months. The Labour Party yesterday went on the offensive over transport policy, threatening to re-regulate the bus industry if it won power at the next election and hitting out at the proposed alliance between British Airways and American Airlines. It is not expected that the loans will ever be repaid.Since April, Bremer Vulkan has been broken up into its constituent groups. Ironically, the units that have proved most successful after the meltdown are the same east German shipyards that were deprived of investment by the parent company for so long.. A line of credit was arranged by leading institutions last September, at a time when rumours about Bremer’s state of health were already in circulation.

But the National Court of Audits is expected to issue a highly critical report next week, accusing the Bonn authorities, the east German privatisation agency, Treuhand, and its successor, BvS, of negligence.Germany’s leading banks, most of which seemed happy to pour good money after bad, are also unlikely to escape blame. Though the company is being kept afloat in order to regain some investment sunk into half- finished projects, the city’s unemployment rate will hit a west German record of 20 per cent when the shipyards are inevitably closed.The Bonn government has refused to bail out the company, and has denied any responsibility for Bremer’s corrupt practices. In effect, the EU and government funds were used to cross-subsidise the company’s core groups.Bremer’s demise in a blaze of scandal threatens to turn the once prosperous Hanseatic port of Bremen into an economic disaster zone. Of the DM854m dished out by the EU and German taxpayers, only DM138m is estimated to have reached the shipyards in the east.Attempts to diversify into other activities proved wholly unprofitable, but losses were concealed by transferring money destined for the east into accounts in Bremen. It went into receivership at the end of April, threatening 23,000 jobs.In the past months investigators have revealed a series of irregularities at the company’s Bremen headquarters, ranging from false dividend forecasts to misleading statements to creditors, but these appear to have been dwarfed by the alleged pilfering of public funds which took place over a five- year period.In the early 1990s, Bremer Vulkan purchased a string of derelict shipyards in the former East Germany, and proceeded to harvest subsidies earmarked for the redevelopment of eastern industry. After it posted an operating loss of DM1bn for 1995, the European Commission demanded the return of DM600m worth of regional funds, forcing the company to seek protection from creditors in February.

Police are reported to have discovered a “six- figure cash sum” and “incriminating material” in Mr Hennemann’s second home, which he had kept secret from the authorities until now.
Mr Hennemann, 60, had left Germany’s largest shipbuilder at the end of last year as the first reports began to surface about a large hole in Bremer’s accounts. Friedrich Hennemann was detained after a series of spectacular raids on Bremer offices and the homes of company managers scattered in 29 locations in northern Germany. From Spain to Denmark, member countries refuse to give the EU a look-in when it comes to the way medical products are regulated And so they should.. The former chairman of the bankrupt German shipbuilder Bremer Vulkan spent yesterday in a police cell as investigators widened their search for some DM716m (pounds 305m) of missing government funds and EU subsidies. Pharmaceuticals is one of the few industries which appears completely immune to the harmonising instincts of Brussels. Supermarkets have many virtues, but they are also destoying diversity, consumer choice and decent standards of service on the high street as well as driving many small businesses to the wall.The Office of Fair Trading should give Mr Norman short shrift And so should Brussels, should it feel tempted to meddle This latter possibility seems remote, however. Now this is something the Office of Fair Trading really should be concerned about.

The result is that in some areas the nearest hypermarket has come to take an unhealthily large share of the local grocery trade – 60 per cent in some catchment areas. Retail price maintainance ensures that the nearest Tesco or Asda cannot undercut the Mr Patels of this world and therefore helps them stay in business. Many other small retailers would give their eye teeth for similar protection, but they don’t get it. His role goes beyond that of most local small retailing businesses; he is part of the nation’s health support system.

If you can get all your pharmacy needs from the supermarket, and at half the price to boot, so much the better. But there are good reasons for retail price maintainance in pharmaceuticals, both of the prescription and over-the-counter variety, and they should not be sacrificed to the cause of rampant consumerism.The local pharmacist performs an essential service in his community. Asda’s campaign has a superficial attraction, especially for healthy, affluent, busy, car driving types who like to shop in supermarkets That’s why it gets so much support from the press. It seems a reasonable bet that interest rates have got at least another half point to fall before rising once more.The local pharmacy needs price controlArchie Norman’s assault on that last great bastion of retail price maintainance, pharmaceutical products, is generating lots of favourable publicity for him, but it is a cause the competition authorities would be well advised to ignore. Not that the Government has publicly announced this as his new role of course, but the shift is certainly implicit.The way Mr Clarke sees it, he got base rates down to 5.25 per cent in 1994 without bringing the sky crashing down, so why not do it again? Well, there are reasons, such as the greater strength of the housing market now and the intervening two years of liquidity build-up by households and companies But nothing in the monetary framework sets a limit Mr Clarke can – and will – move his own goalposts.