John Hibbs, who has died aged 89, was known as the architect of bus deregulation in the UK. It was a combination of personal experience and old-style free-market liberalism that led him to the conclusion that the bus industry, largely state-run and highly regulated since the 1930s, was dysfunctional, inefficient and not serving passengers’ needs.
He was convinced that the involvement of the government was wrong and, in various writings for thinktanks such as the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, advocated a purely free-market position. These papers proved highly influential and helped ministers to frame the acts that successively deregulated the coach industry in 1980 and, five years later, the bus network outside London.
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