Local Transport Bill [HL]

My Lords, during the dying days of the previous parliamentary Session, I spent many hours in your Lordships' House dealing with the then Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill. I found it a fairly dispiriting experience, because I disagreed with almost everything that the Government sought to achieve in that Bill, so it is a relief to discuss a Bill on which I am fundamentally in tune with what the Government seek to achieve. I would like clarification on some issues today, and to introduce some thoughts that might not have occurred to the Government. Until July, for six years I was a member of the Commission for Integrated Transport, and was involved in producing a report last year looking at the whole question of transport provision and governance. Having taken evidence from around the country and talked to many people, we came to the conclusion that the failure thus far had been because there was not an effective sub-regional tier of decision-making for transport issues. Existing regions are too big, and local authorities are on the whole too small. The Bill goes some way to address that, although it misses out on the most fundamental point—how money is raised. This is not a time to go into detail about local government finance, but it seems a crying shame that we are so centralised that the great cities of this country such as Manchester and Liverpool have to go cap in hand to government, year after year, to fund the transport projects that they believe are right for their areas. I wish to concentrate on the impact that the Bill will have on local decision-making, because there is certainly quite a patchwork of systems across the country. Responsibility for particular areas of transport lies in different parts of local government. My main experience is in shire counties such as Suffolk, where I was a councillor for 15 years. There, most transport responsibilities sit with the county council and the system works pretty well, although the fact that off-street car parking and concessionary bus fares lie with the district council causes problems from time to time. The real issues are in metropolitan areas—the sort of areas covered by Transport for London and the PTAs—where the split responsibilities have been much more problematic, with public transport in the remit of one group of people and the highway network in the hands of another. It is certainly evident that, across the country, the areas where the most progress has been made—not just with public transport, but in the likes of walking and cycling—are those served by unitary councils. Places such as Brighton, Reading and York all spring to mind. All the levers of decision-making and policy there lie in one set of hands. In many of the areas covered by the PTAs, we have reached an impasse. Bus operators are saying that they will not invest any more in quality until the highway network is changed to give bus priority and is upgraded. Councils are refusing to put in bus lanes until the bus operators improve, and the PTAs are stuck in the middle, trying to improve the service for their passengers and finding that they are unable to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, explained well how difficult it would be to achieve a quality contract under the current arrangements, because the legal hurdles are now so difficult. The noble Lords, Lord Snape and Lord Marland, do not think that quality contracts are a good idea anyway. I do not propose to get into that debate but, until we sort out the question of responsibility for the highway network, it will be difficult to improve bus services even to the point of a quality partnership. Until we get the partnership right, we certainly cannot think about moving on to contracts. I welcome the provision for the new Integrated Transport Authorities to have powers to deal with the highway network in their areas. That will make a fundamental change. However, I hope that the noble Lord can clarify something from the Bill for me. I am not clear on whether the new ITAs will automatically take over highway powers or whether there has to be a review before they can do so. I would appreciate it if he could clarify the timetable for the reviews. As we heard from my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, we cannot deal with congestion until the question of highway powers is sorted out. There will always be conflicts between a local perspective and the more strategic perspective of the PTA. Both points of view are perfectly valid; the question is about how you arrive at a system where both sides can be heard but that does not stop progress. I welcome the strengthening of the PTAs by turning them into Integrated Transport Authorities, and particularly by giving them the general power of well-being and the provision to alter their boundaries and create new transport authorities. How will the reviews be carried out? Will they be from the bottom up—at the request of local areas—or directed by the Secretary of State? How will he avoid destabilising the existing arrangements? We have to remember that PTAs have complicated arrangements for contracts, often stretching many years into the future. For example, Merseytravel operates not just buses, but ferries and the Mersey tunnels. It even has its own train set. I have a few questions about the governance of the new authorities. If the noble Lord does not have time to respond today, I hope that he can write to me. How will the transport plans drawn up by the ITAs fit in with other planning documents such as local development frameworks? Will local plans have to fit in with the strategic vision, or will the strategic vision be some conglomeration of the local plans? How will the new ITA structure fit in with the local strategic partnerships, which are such an important part of local authority governance now? Those bodies will be the ones that agree targets and funding with the Government, and it is important that we understand how the new ITAs will fit in with that. What will the relationship be between the ITAs and the emerging regional agenda and multi-area agreements? Beyond that, how will ITAs work with national transport providers such as Network Rail and the Highways Agency? I would also appreciate some comments about the governance of the new bodies. Can the noble Lord assure the House that the constituent parts of ITAs—the local authorities that send representatives to them—will continue to be party-politically balanced and to run their own governance arrangements, and will not be forced to go down the route of local authorities and have a single person with all the executive power? Can he explain how the Government think that the non-elected nominees to those bodies will be chosen? If an ITA wishes to bring in stakeholders from its area, that seems fine and a matter for it, but having nominees imposed by the Secretary of State would be a step too far. Will those people be allowed a vote when they are on the ITA? Given the not insignificant levy that the PTAs and ITAs will be setting—not precepting—on constituent local authorities, it is important that the people who do that are in some way democratically accountable. For someone who comes from a rural area, it seems to me that the Bill’s provisions will do very little for transport and public transport in rural areas, which is a problem. The big difference is that in rural areas public transport is about accessibility, not congestion or the environment. It is about the quality of life for the significant minority of people who do not have access to a car, and unfortunately the Bill does not address that. I do not share the concerns that have been expressed by some noble Lords about congestion charging in rural areas. Whatever we feel about congestion charging, it will be enormously controversial and no local authority will undertake it lightly; its political future will depend on that. I cannot imagine a situation in which a rural local authority would introduce congestion charging on rural roads other than perhaps in, for example, national parks where there might be some issues of overuse. Beyond that I cannot see that noble Lords need worry about congestion charging or road-use charging in rural areas. The key to getting this right is ensuring that public transport improvements extend into the rural hinterlands so that residents of rural areas do not feel that they are paying for improvements that go only to improve life for people who live in towns. I hope that the Minister will be able to answer at least some of the many questions I have asked, but I am happy to receive some answers in writing. I look forward to the Committee stage.