Local Transport Bill [HL] Bill

I welcome everyone to this all-embracing Committee with a whole range of interests. It seems to stretch from the consideration of matters Scottish from time to time through to the detailed workings of the statutory senior traffic commissioner. I am sure that given the breadth of interests already expressed we shall have long and fruitful sessions on this rather uncontroversial Bill. Noble Lords have raised some useful points and issues in this first debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for including his amendment in this group, because it is an adjacent issue. The truth is that there will be a lot of consultation. The traffic commissioner will find him or herself very busy talking to a lot of people. I understand noble Lords’ disappointment that not every detail of who the commissioner might talk to—and how he might talk to them and when—is expressed clearly in the Bill. As anyone who has worked in local government—and there are a few of us in the Committee this afternoon—can confirm, how consultation should be carried out is probably not always best specified and set out in detail; it is something that one has to work away at and it becomes iterative. As we know, primary legislation, in particular, tends to be considered in a rather precise manner and for that reason can be very constraining. That is my first thought on the issue. I listened carefully to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, about the dangers of being out of touch. That is a very important point. However, the world of traffic commissioners will probably change a bit as a product of this Bill and they will have to develop different qualities and a range of relationships, but that should not obscure the fact that much will stay the same in terms of volumes of activity and particular areas of work that the Bill does not look at in detail. Two factors influence our consideration of this amendment. The first is that traffic commissioners are under a statutory duty to discharge their obligations under domestic and, importantly, European law and the Secretary of State must, therefore, ensure that there are sufficient commissioners to fulfil those obligations. That is a specific statutory duty there for the Secretary of State. Those requirements can, of course, change over time—hence the need for flexibility—for example, in response to the changing needs of the industries or new European requirements. The second factor is that Clause 2 would remove the statutory requirement for a commissioner to be appointed to each traffic area, with jurisdiction in that traffic area only. This would create a pool of commissioners able to act anywhere in England and Wales—that partly picks up the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, that the cross-boundary flexibility is needed, for very good reasons—with the additional prospect of individual commissioners working specifically in specialist areas, for example on bus service registration and punctuality. However, we must bear in mind that, for practical reasons, individual commissioners will still be allocated on an administrative basis to an individual traffic area. In practical terms, given the responsibilities of the senior traffic commissioner to move resources around to meet workload peaks and troughs, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Secretary of State to make decisions on the number of commissioners required without consulting them. Therefore, we believe a statutory obligation to do so is unnecessary. It also follows that the number of commissioners required is directly related to the workload. For example, the volume of licence applications and variations is determined by the demands of bus and lorry operators themselves. The resources required to deal with HGV impounding cases will depend on how many are impounded by VOSA. The volume of bus punctuality work will depend in part on the performance of local bus services and the outcome of the ongoing work that the Government are doing with stakeholders to devise a punctuality regime. That will not be uniform across the country. It will vary from time to time and from place to place. As I have already made clear, the Secretary of State, guided for practical reasons by the senior traffic commissioner, must ensure that there are enough commissioners to deal with the workload. While local transport authorities may have views in particular about the bus work of the commissioners in their area, they may not be in a position to see the wider picture across the whole of a traffic area, and across the whole spectrum of the traffic commissioners’ functions. We therefore believe that the amendments offer little to influence resourcing decisions usefully, while potentially imposing additional administrative burdens. I shall now deal in more detail with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, which provides an opportunity to discuss how the interaction between the traffic commissioners and any new bus passenger watchdog might work. I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising that issue. Traffic commissioners have a key role in the Government’s drive to improve local bus services, particularly in relation to enforcing standards of punctuality and reliability. Any new bus passenger champion would rightly have an interest in such matters, and may want to influence key issues such as the setting of standards in this regard. However, it is also paramount that the traffic commissioners’ decision-making role must not be compromised in any way when deciding individual cases, and, in particular, in the exercise of their day-to-day duties. On 4 December we published a consultation paper, Options for Strengthening Bus Passenger Representation. It was designed to create stronger passenger representation by enhancing the role of Bus Users UK, which is a non-statutory body. We are also including powers in the Bill which would enable the Secretary of State, if this option were chosen, to add functions to the statutory Rail Passengers’ Council, which is also known as Passenger Focus. If following the consultation it was decided to expand the remit of Passenger Focus, for example, the purpose of this amendment would be lost. Any new statutory bus passenger champion would be able to make recommendations to the Secretary of State on matters in relation to prescribed public passenger transport. I am sure they would want to make recommendations about punctuality and reliability standards. The Secretary of State also has powers to issue guidance to the senior traffic commissioner on matters of generic process and policy, for which the senior traffic commissioner must have regard. In my opinion this would be a far stronger avenue for the views and recommendations of any new bus passenger champion to be channelled through to the traffic commissioners.