Traffic Management Permit Scheme (England) Regulations 2007

I ought to say a few words on this, since I took part in the discussions on the Traffic Management Act when we put it together. First, including the highways authorities in these proposals is very welcome. One problem we pointed out was that much of the intention would be wasted if we did not include the highways authorities, since they are responsible for a lot of the works. After that, however, I am afraid that I immediately start to wonder whether we are just inventing a whole lot of bureaucratic bloat. We discussed the voluntary, collaborative approach that worked very well in Scotland, which was then called Susiephone—I know it has changed its name, and I have no idea what it is called now. Incentives tend to work much better than sticks—regulations. Regulations tend to include delaying processes and stop things happening, whereas with incentives people do things and things happen. They provide a different way of thinking. On bureaucracy, the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, spoke of authorities working together. Back in 2005 when implementing electronic government stuff, trying to get one county and 12 districts to work together on e-procurement was impossible. We finally managed to get half of them to work together and the other half would not take part at all. The issue of common or joint permits going across county boundaries can be quite important if the counties do not collaborate properly. I see more problems, challenges, different timetabling, different forms to be filled in in different ways, and so on. If we have this system, the Minister will have to ensure that the forms are not totally incompatible across boundaries, which can easily happen. I then started to think about the possible downside to this. There is a three-month delay. If one is trying to get a broadband connection into a new place, it is bad enough at the moment to get people to turn up to do it, but on top of that, one has another three-month’ delay while the local authority thinks about how it will schedule it. What will be the benefit? The critical benefit is that it will try to attack the 10 per cent of congestion caused by road works—we are not talking about the primary cause of congestion. We will try to co-ordinate road works better, so that the road is dug up only once instead of three times. That is why a long delay is needed to try to co-ordinate road works. One is also delaying such matters as the green agenda and helping people to work from home. If people cannot get the communications, they cannot work from home. As a result, carbon production will go up. Such things will not aggregate properly. For some reason, the timescales will be wrong. I cannot believe that if it were that simple it would not have been done years ago, collaboratively. I think one will find that the challenges are too great and all that one is doing is introducing yet another bureaucratic layer and no improvements will be seen at the end. What improvements do we think there will be? The hope is for a 3 per cent reduction in congestion, which is one-third of the 10 per cent that is caused by street works. That is quite a high proportion. A lot of co-ordination of activity will be required to make it go smoothly and I do not think that will happen at all. I think we will just be investing in another department. In reality, it is a hidden tax because the permits are expected to rake in £36.3 million for local authorities, which will be very nice for them, particularly as they are no longer being funded so well from central government. They will see that huge advantage. There will be some soft benefits, but the ROI is not very good. If I were a businessman, I would not spend £36.3 million to get a £38.7 million possible benefit. The difference is that that £38.7 million is not a concrete benefit; it is someone saying, ““If we take the amount of petrol burnt by the cars sitting in traffic jams””, and so on. It is yet another hidden tax. This time it will not purely be on the motorist, but actually on everyone trying to get a better water system, better drainage, broadband connections and everything else. It concerns me and I am sorry that I cannot join in the general feeling of how wonderful this is. I am glad that this will be reviewed after a year and I hope someone does a proper cost-benefit analysis at that point.