5,000 jobs at risk
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MORE THAN 5,000 jobs in the bus manufacturing industry are in jeopardy because of the Government's public transport policy, alleged Hestair chairman David Hargreaves.
Mr Hargreaves was giving the manufacturers' point of view at the "Buses Revolution" conference. He said that there had been no consultation with the manufacturers before the publication of the White Paper. In the last five years the total market for buses and coaches in Britain had dropped from 6,050 to 2,600 and he attributed this to the elimination of new bus grant, the deregulation of coaching and public sector spending cuts.
He declared that in Britain only three and a half per cent of the bus population is replaced each year while in West Germany around seven and a half per cent are.
Government fiscal policies were also damaging the export potential of the British manufacturers and a strong home market was necessary to allow exports to be developed.
In 1979, he said 5,397 new buses or coaches were exported from Britain; by 1983 this had dropped to 800.
More factory closures, redundancies and strikes were the inevitable consequence of Government policy which he said was all about the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement and nothing else.