JEREMY Corbyn plans to give all local authorities south of the border the right to take bus services into public ownership if Labour wins the General Election.
The Labour leader told the CBI of his latest pledge to wrest back some control from businesses after his plan, announced last week, to create a nationalised broadband service.
The Labour leader insisted it was "nonsense" to call him anti-business as he made the pitch that Labour was the party to deliver the investment and Brexit deal that bosses desired.
He told the organisation's annual conference in London that he planned to give councils in England and Wales the power to undo some of Margaret Thatcher's privatisation of the bus network in the 1980s.
Mr Corbyn explained how Labour would be "empowering local authorities to develop bus services where they don't exist" by extending powers to bring routes into public ownership or franchise "to all".
So far, only metro mayors have had the power to re-regulate buses under the Bus Services Act 2017.
"Bus access is something that's very, very important to all of your workforce," declared Mr Corbyn.
"And, of course, to communities as a whole, and if we want to develop suburban and rural areas economically then there has to be a good quality public transport system for them," he said.
While Labour's official manifesto launch is not until Thursday in Birmingham, it is understood that bus pledges could also include a policy to fund free bus travel for all under-25s.
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