Local Transport Bill [HL]

We are well aware that competition legislation can place constraints on operators and local authorities from acting in what they perceive to be the public interest. Often it is unnecessary as a constraint and arises from an overcautious attitude to competition law. At the same time, there are certain boundaries that must not be crossed. In the package of draft guidance that we published to inform the debates, the largest single volume is the one that the Office of Fair Trading and the Department for Transport, working together, have provided, dealing with competition aspects of quality partnership schemes and voluntary agreements. While much traditional OFT guidance has been aimed at warning undertakings of what they cannot do, this tries to be far more positive in its approach and encourages bus operators to take full advantage of what they can do. I would like to think that that is a step forward that, I am sure, will be greatly welcomed by local authorities and bus operators. The main purpose of Schedule 2 is to introduce a new variant of the competition test relating to voluntary agreements and other agreements referred to as supporting agreements. This will become the Part 2 test. The existing test in the Transport Act 2000 will therefore be Part 1. That Part 1 test applies to the exercise of certain functions by a local transport authority, rather than to the actions of a bus operator. In designing the Part 2 test, we took as our starting point the criteria that were already in the Part 1 test: that the public interest purposes to be balanced against any adverse effect on competition should be as follows: "““securing improvements in the quality of vehicles or facilities used for or in connection with the provision of local services ... ""securing other improvements in local services of benefit to users of local services, and ... reducing or limiting traffic congestion, noise or air pollution.””" My noble friend’s amendment would add to that all manner of other criteria, which seem to cover virtually anything that could possibly be put in a quality partnership scheme or an agreement, and probably many other things beside. There are two main issues about the amendments. First, I am not convinced that they add anything of substance to the three existing criteria. They are simply examples of things that could be of benefit to transport users, which would be covered by the second and third existing criteria. Secondly, the amendment text refers to ““transport provision”” and ““transport users””, rather than the users of buses. Those are very broad terms that appear to be capable of covering all forms of transport, public and private. That change would not appear to be relevant to the provisions in the Transport Act 2000, with one possible exception, because Schedule 10 relates specifically to bus-related schemes and agreements. So I cannot see how the power to make such schemes or agreements could, say, be used to improve the quality of train services. The only function to which the revised words might have any application is in the making and varying of ticketing schemes, which may be multi-modal. The majority of such schemes are already subject to different competition rules because of the block exemption provisions. Nor do I see that the words ““actual or potential”” users add anything. The schedule applies to the proposed exercise of a function as well as its actual exercise, so by its nature that must extend to potential users as well as actual ones—real ones and virtual ones. I therefore conclude that there is nothing necessary in the amendments; they could probably be confusing. I have already been pressed today on there being confusion where we need transparency and clarity, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. For those reasons, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendments. We can fairly argue that the objectives that he seeks are already achieved by what is in the Bill.