While refraining from passing judgment on the editorial entitled When The Playing Field Is All But Level (October 23), for fairness's sake, below is our original reply to questions from The Times on this subject:
"Right up to a few months ago the policy on restricting market access to public transport was official government policy. ADT implemented that policy but the policy was decided on by the government. No secret was made of this. The government first announced its intention to re-assess what were then the fundamentals of market access to the transport business during 2008. Therefore, decisions taken by the ADT and its officials before that time that are not consistent with current policy cannot all of a sudden be blamed on the officials themselves.
"It is the government's strongly held view that it is time for old restrictions to access the transport markets to be abolished. This does not mean that in the past such restrictions may have not been justified. The economic transition from restriction to competition has happened in other sectors of the economy before - communications, food processing and several others are examples of this. Transport is one of the last sectors where access to the market is controlled and restricted and is not even the last sector to be so restricted. By way of example, the market of the distribution of electricity (not its generation) is restricted today in Malta and we believe it should continue to be so because of Malta's specific circumstances. But circumstances in the future may change in a way that would justify a policy shift in this regard. Therefore we do not see how a police inquiry into the actions of people suspected of merely doing their job and implementing the policy of the government of the day can be called for.
"A government's policies are not dogma and by definition must be re-examined over time. Our comments on the decision of the Office of Fair Trading were an acknowledgment that this office is right in arguing that restrictive policies that were valid at the time the case was first instituted are no longer justified. That is why the policies that were valid then, no longer are.
"It would be reasonable to assume that faced with similar cases instituted by people wanting to enter the taxi, minibus or coach markets, the Office of Fair Trading would be likely to arrive at the same conclusions it has arrived to in the cases of hearses and open-top buses. Government policy is now consistent with the views of the Office of Fair Trading and it will not be necessary for us to wait for such cases to be heard to implement the changes we feel are desirable." It is probably best to assume that the editorialist was not aware of the reply we gave because it was heavily edited!
Editorial note: The ministry's reply was seen before the editorial was written. Perhaps the ministry had not read the award by the Commission For Fair Trading before drafting its reply.