Collusion, predation and merger in the UK bus industry 1

When local (‘stage’) bus services outside London were deregulated by the 1985 Transport Act the intention was to promote competition. So it was logical to accompany deregulation with removal of the industry’s long-standing exemption from the UK laws promoting competition, principally those to govern agreements in restraint of trade, first enacted in 1956; to control mergers, as codified in the 1973 Fair Trading Act; and to control dominant large firm behaviour, first tackled in the Competition Act 1980.