Local Transport Bill [HL]

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Local Transport Bill is an important part of the Government’s strategy to improve public transport and tackle congestion. This is a very significant piece of legislation: local transport matters to millions of people in their everyday lives; an efficient transport system lies at the heart of a productive economy; and our local transport choices also affect our environment. Before I get into the main body of my text, I would like to record my thanks to all noble Lords who have taken part in briefing sessions over the past week. I also thank the many organisations which kindly circulated briefing documents on the Bill—they have been unusually helpful and they suggest that we will have very constructive debates today, in Committee, on Report and at Third Reading. I pay particular tribute to the RNIB, the LGA, the Countryside Alliance, Help the Aged, the CBI and National Rail, which very kindly circulated their thoughts and comments—most of them positive—on the content and progress of the Bill so far. Bus services are a key part of our local transportation system. More than 4 billion bus journeys are made each year, or two-thirds of all journeys by public transport. They play a key role in connecting people to essential goods and services, to jobs, to leisure, and to friends and family. The Government are therefore investing substantially in local bus services: government spending on buses is expected to reach some £2.5 billion this year, up from around £1 billion a decade ago. The Concessionary Bus Travel Act, which received Royal Assent earlier this year, will guarantee free off-peak bus travel for older and disabled people throughout England from April 2008. As a result of these and other steps, we have at last seen the long-run historic decline in bus patronage level off in recent years, but we still need to do more. The Bill includes various proposals aimed at delivering bus services that are more closely aligned to passenger needs, building on the lessons learnt from an extensive review of bus policy led by Ministers and officials in the Department for Transport. It is clear that in certain parts of the country bus services are improving and patronage is rising. But in too many places these successes are not being replicated, patronage remains on a downward trend, and services risk falling into a spiral of decline. More often than not, successful outcomes have been delivered through strong voluntary partnerships that have been forged between local authorities and bus operators. But some authorities and operators have found themselves constrained in what they can achieve under existing competition law. What becomes a particular concern for some local authorities is when they wish to enter into discussions with more than one bus operator. The Bill therefore includes a revised competition test for these voluntary partnership agreements, specifically designed to give greater clarity and certainty to participants. It also removes the threat of financial penalties where the Office of Fair Trading finds that an agreement, although entered into in good faith with a local authority, breaches competition law. These measures should increase the potential for voluntary partnership agreements to be entered into, particularly in areas where there is more than one incumbent operator. The Bill would also strengthen the framework, established in the Transport Act 2000, for quality partnership schemes. It would remove existing restrictions, so as to allow these schemes to include provisions about frequencies, timings and maximum fares—things that matter a great deal to passengers—while stopping short of enabling authorities to impose unreasonable requirements on operators. It will enable facilities and standards of service in a quality partnership scheme to be phased in over a period of time, and also includes measures to help prevent quality partnership schemes being undermined by destabilising competition from operators who are not participating in the scheme. The Government recognise that partnership arrangements will not work everywhere. In some circumstances, it may be in the public interest for local authorities to take greater control over local bus services. The Transport Act 2000 included provisions for local transport authorities to make quality contracts schemes—essentially the London-style model of bus franchising. The Bill sets out a series of public interest criteria which would need to be met in place of the existing ““only practicable way”” test that has proved too high a hurdle in practice. The intention is to ensure that quality contracts schemes are a realistic option where they are in the public interest. Punctuality and reliability also matter a great deal to passengers, and traffic commissioners have an important role to play in monitoring performance and taking action where services are not operated as registered. The Bill would strengthen the traffic commissioners' role in a number of important ways. First, it would enable local authorities, as well as bus operators, to be held to account for their contribution to punctuality performance. In some cases, action—or inaction—by the local authority can be a contributor to poor bus punctuality through, for example, poorly planned roadworks or inadequate enforcement of bus lanes. Secondly, it would allow the traffic commissioners to impose a broader range of penalties where bus operators demonstrably failed to provide a punctual service. The Bill would allow the traffic commissioners to order an operator to invest a given sum, equivalent to the fine that would otherwise be imposed, in improving services or compensating passengers. That will preserve a clear financial incentive for operators to maintain good performance, while allowing financial penalties to be applied in a way that benefits passengers. The Bill also includes provisions to modernise the traffic commissioner system, through the appointment of a senior traffic commissioner with statutory powers to issue general directions and guidance to other commissioners. That would help to ensure consistency of approach across the traffic commissioner network. The Bill would also provide for greater flexibility in the deployment of traffic commissioners, and would make them more accountable for their work and the way in which they carry out their duties. The Government believe that there is also a need to give bus passengers a stronger voice. In the rail sector, the Rail Passengers' Council provides a high-profile commentary on the performance of the industry and handles individual complaints. Although a number of non-statutory bodies represent the interests of bus passengers, often at a local level, responses to the consultation on the draft Bill indicated broad support for the principle of stronger passenger representation. The Bill would therefore pave the way for the introduction of a more prominent and influential voice for the bus passenger—a statutory body with a strong public role in promoting the interests of passengers across the country. The community transport sector plays an important role in the provision of transport services where there is insufficient demand to sustain a conventional bus service. The Bill will relax existing constraints on the size of vehicles that may be used by operators under community transport permits, and will allow drivers on local services provided under Section 22 permits to be paid. In response to the views of the community transport sector, the Bill now retains the existing system whereby Section 19 community transport permits may be issued by designated bodies. It also includes measures to strengthen the permit system for all community transport permits. The strengthened powers for local authorities to improve bus services in their areas will be most effective if they are supported by the right arrangements for taking decisions at a local level. There is a clear consensus that, in our larger urban areas outside London, the current leadership and delivery arrangements for transport do not work as well as they might, and need to be updated to reflect changing patterns of transport. The barriers to effective transport planning and delivery in these areas include: the lack of a single focus for leadership of city-region transport; the difficulties in co-ordinating different transport modes, particularly given the split between passenger transport authorities and metropolitan district council responsibilities for public transport and roads; and the complex and sometimes unwieldy structure and membership of passenger transport authorities and executives. The Bill would enable local areas to review their existing local transport governance arrangements, and to develop proposals for reform. In contrast to previous legislation in this area, the Bill does not take a prescriptive approach. Instead, it would allow individual areas to develop their own proposals, taking account of their particular local needs and circumstances. Following a locally led review, the Secretary of State would have the power to bring forward secondary legislation covering a variety of matters, including the existing transport responsibilities of passenger transport authorities and executives, metropolitan district councils and the Secretary of State. The Bill would also enable secondary legislation to cover the establishment of new passenger transport authorities—or integrated transport authorities, as they would in future be called. It would enable the boundaries of existing integrated transport authorities to be changed; for example, to reflect the changing patterns of travel since they were first established. Rising congestion on our roads is a consequence of a strong, vibrant and growing economy. However, congestion could have a significant impact on our future prosperity, environment and quality of life. Sir Rod Eddington, in his study into the links between transport and the economy, said that without further action there will be a 30 per cent increase in congestion on our roads by 2025. It is for that reason that the Government are encouraging local authorities to bring forward local road pricing schemes to tackle local congestion problems, as part of a wider package of measures. We have taken no decisions on whether to move towards a national road pricing scheme, but we can learn from the development of local schemes. The Greater London Authority Act 1999 and the Transport Act 2000 established the legal framework for local road pricing schemes in England and Wales. Those Acts provide the basis of the existing pricing schemes in London and Durham. The Bill includes proposals to update that existing legal framework. It would place decision-making clearly at the local level by removing the existing requirement for schemes to be approved by the Secretary of State. It also provides that the net proceeds of all schemes are retained by the local authority and must be applied to local transport for the lifetime of the scheme. It also contains provision to help ensure that any schemes are consistent and interoperable to avoid unnecessary complexity for road users. The Bill would confer a new framework power on the National Assembly for Wales consistent with the devolution arrangements under the Government of Wales Act 2006. That would enable the Assembly to make provision for the making, operation and enforcement of pricing schemes in respect of trunk roads in Wales. The provision has been included in the Bill specifically at the request of the Welsh Assembly Government, who wish to have the powers available that would allow them to adopt a coherent approach towards any proposals within Wales or any future national scheme. It will be for the Assembly to consider whether—and, if so, how—it would be appropriate to exercise those powers. The Bill also includes a provision to allow the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to retrieve data from its foreign counterparts, linking foreign vehicle registration numbers to their registered keepers, and to disclose that data to local authorities and other bodies. That will help in particular with the enforcement of local road pricing schemes and parking and moving-traffic offences. The Bill would extend significant powers to local authorities to deliver transport that better met the needs of their local communities. It has already benefited from a full public consultation, based on a draft version of the Bill published in May, and from extensive pre-legislative scrutiny in another place. We are grateful to all those who have contributed to that process, because the Bill has, in our view, been improved in a number of respects as a result, and has been widely welcomed by local authorities, transport providers, transport users and others. I look forward to today’s debate and I commend the Bill to the House. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)