Local Transport Bill [HL] Bill

No, I shall not forget that. I thank noble Lords for their very important and lively contributions. There are always two views, if not more, on important issues such as this. My noble friend Lord Rosser asked me to respond positively to his amendments. I hope he will believe that I am responding positively, but perhaps not quite in the way that he anticipated. My noble friend Lord Snape also raised some very important issues concerning the scope and possible consequences of the amendments. My noble friend Lord Rosser has enormous experience in this area. He rightly set his amendments in the context of the national importance of skills and improving skills and referred to the ground-breaking Leitch report. I, for one, am proud of the Government’s record on encouraging skills throughout our country. My noble friend raised some very important points about driver skills. We certainly recognise the importance to the bus industry of having a skilled workforce and of the industry being able to recruit and retain in sufficient numbers skilled drivers, mechanics and other essential staff. In this regard, I take the opportunity to welcome the work of GoSkills, the sector skills council for the passenger transport industry, in raising the profile of skills and training in the industry, building on much existing good work by the industry. The Department of Transport works closely with GoSkills and has given it financial support over the past two years. I agree that local authorities and the industry should work together on these issues, and I want that to be more than a platitude, as I hope will be recognised throughout our deliberations on the Bill. Indeed, one product of them working together closely has been the publication by the Bus Partnership Forum—on which local government, the industry and the department are represented—of a best-practice guide on staff recruitment and retention in the bus industry. The guide shows what can be done on this issue and I commend it to all those involved with this aspect of the industry’s performance. A copy is on the Department for Transport website. It is also important to note that in the autumn of 2008 the requirements of the EU training directive with regard to a certificate of professional competence for bus drivers will be introduced in this country. Introduction of this new requirement, on which the Driving Standards Agency is in the lead, presents a significant opportunity to ensure that skills and training standards across the industry meet modern needs and that they continue to do so with the requirement for ongoing periodic training. Against that background, the two amendments are not necessary or appropriate. The legislation on quality partnership schemes in the Transport Act 2000 is drafted in broad terms. Operators must undertake to provide services to a particular standard. The definition of ““standard”” is not exclusive, and there is no reason to think an authority could not, in appropriate circumstances, specify driving standards. The Bill, as my noble friend Lord Rosser has said, makes a great deal of detailed provision about frequencies, timings and maximum fares which are outside the current scope of a standard of service as part of the quality partnership scheme. That is because there are particular difficulties and sensitivities that need to be addressed—one of the reasons, no doubt, why they were not dealt with in the 2000 Act. However, there is no similar problem about making provision for drivers’ skills or a host of other issues that contribute to the standard of a bus service. If we start to specify that, we shall end up having to specify everything that a scheme could possibly include, and inevitably we will forget one or two. The amendment, while very well intentioned, would not improve the Bill. My noble friend’s second amendment would add a provision to the definition of a quality contract. As drafted, the amendment would make that not an option but rather a mandatory feature of every contract let under a quality contract scheme. Among other things, it implies that there is always a driver skill deficiency that needs to be improved and that one cannot get satisfactory driver standards without a quality contract scheme or a quality partnership scheme. As I have said, evidence suggests that that is simply not the case. The driving test for passenger-carrying vehicles, PCVs, is itself very stringent, as many Members of the Committee will know. There are training requirements to be met, including regular refresher training. The accident rate for buses is extremely low compared to any other form of travel by road. With a response that I hope is positive, but which may not go so far as my noble friend would like, I hope I can persuade him to withdraw the amendment.