Local Transport Bill [HL]

This is an intriguing amendment for one or two reasons that I shall illuminate. In a quality contracts scheme, the traffic commissioner in essence has a passive role. The role of enforcing compliance with the terms of a quality contract, for example, falls to the local transport authority rather than to the commissioner. All the commissioner can do under existing legislation is penalise an operator who runs a service in a quality contracts area without the authority’s permission. Clause 43 was introduced to give operators an opportunity to register services in addition to those provided under the quality contracts scheme. It would be entirely for the authority to decide whether the service could go ahead. The traffic commissioner would merely register any service that the authority was willing to accept. This is a rather less bureaucratic alternative than giving the authority the power to issue permits for additional services, as Transport for London does in London under the Greater London Authority Act 1999. It was never the Government’s intention that the traffic commissioner should interfere in the decision whether a particular service should be part of a quality contracts scheme or be allowed to operate outside that scheme. What intrigues and surprises me is that the proposal embodied in the amendment would run counter to upholding the right of local authorities to take their own decisions. I am really rather intrigued as to why the noble Lord, with his local government hat on, has come up with a scheme that would provide the traffic commissioner with what some might see as a rather dangerous, interfering role. Is that really what the noble Lord wants? I am not quite sure why he wants to do that.