Transport Secretary John Prescott will be asked to step into the row over bus service cuts, following last night's editorial in the Telegraph & Argus.

Bus company First Bradford Traveller came under heavy fire at a meeting of the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport consultative committee for reductions in bus services, including early morning journeys from Holme Wood.

The T&A carried a story about the problems of a family unable to get to work and our editorial said the Government needed to look again at the terms of reference of operators and at the way the subsidies system operated.

Committee member the Rev Geoffrey Reid told the committee: "I hope everybody will see a copy of the T&A which carried the most socially responsible editorial I have seen for a very long time."

He said he would send a copy of the paper to Deputy Prime Minister Mr Prescott and ask him to act on the editorial.

"The Government says it is seriously committed to public transport and I feel that action should be taken," said Rev Reid.

The committee decided to urge Passenger Transport Authority officers and the company to hold talks in a bid to reach a compromise.

The committee was told a number of bus services had been cut and changed because the PTA could not afford to subsidise them and the company believed they were not viable.

Ex-bus driver David Jackson told members his wife and daughter started work early in the morning and had previously been able to get buses from their home at 5.20 and 5.50am.

Now the earliest bus is at 6.20am.

Mr Reed said: "It is suggested that there are only the two options and there is nothing in between. I hope that the very least we can do is to put on record that it is very bad news for the people of Bradford. It is a very pessimistic report."

Councillor Bob Sowman said services had been heavily subsidised by the PTA which had spent millions of pounds over the past ten years.

He said: "The subsidy for some services had been withdrawn because the PTA cannot continue funding them."

But he told Bradford Traveller operations manager Khadim Hussain: "There is another criteria - exercise your social conscience."

He asked how regeneration could be encouraged in Bradford when people could not get buses to work.

Mr Hussain said they would liaise with the PTA over the issue.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.