Local Transport Bill [HL]

I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for his amendment. I have given this a little thought. It took me back to my time as a local authority leader when we used to incentivise different means of payment. His colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, will know all about that, having been in charge of a large local authority for a long time. Clause 99 amends Section 171(5) of the Transport Act 2000 by adding a further example of how an authority can vary its road-user charges. It makes it very clear that local authorities can offer different charges for different methods or means of recording, administering, collecting or paying the charge. Of course, this would allow different rates to be applied where a road user chooses his charge liabilities to be recorded automatically by means of different technologies or to pay by different means, such as by a pre-pay account or direct debit. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, rightly said, direct debit is the preferred method of collection for many organisations. It is probably the cheapest and simplest for people to understand, but not everybody has that facility. Clause 99(2) makes a similar addition to the Greater London Authority Act for schemes in London. It is important that local authorities have the opportunity to provide incentives to encourage the use of efficient payment methods. This clause removes any doubt that such an approach would be permitted. However, local authorities will need to ensure that, in developing their proposals, they recognise the impact that they could have on all groups. The noble Earl rightly drew attention to the needs of different groups. In those circumstances local authorities must act reasonably. If they do not act reasonably they can be challenged for making a decision on the grounds of reasonableness. In designing a scheme they must have regard to all relevant considerations, including the interests of different groups with different abilities to pay. So local authorities have valuable discretion about how they operate. That flexibility enables them to think hard about the impact of road-charging and road-pricing schemes on lower income households. The impact of the scheme will depend very much on its design. I am sure that local authorities will want to assess very carefully the impact of their proposals before they make definitive decisions about how those schemes might impact on different people. On the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I thought that I had made it plain that we wanted to encourage and stimulate the development of schemes where it was much easier for them to be interoperable, where the technology was consistent and so on. Of course there must be some local variations because of local circumstances. The noble Lord made a very important point. As the process unrolls, as guidance is developed and as the technology changes and is refined, those issues will crystallise as local authorities seek to take up the road-pricing opportunities. I hope that the noble Earl will not press the matter.