Local Transport Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 116: 116: Clause 73, page 63, line 16, after ““councils,”” insert ““from among their elected members,”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, under Clause 73, the majority of the members of an ITA must be elected members appointed by its constituent councils. This amendment would ensure local determination of whether an ITA should have non-elected members, the appointees and their status on the ITA. The amendment would clarify that any members nominated by bodies other than local councils must be appointed by the ITA. In effect, this would give the ITA a veto over the members nominated to it by non-constituent councils. This is required so that an ITA should be able to develop its own governance arrangements and to rule out any possibility of the imposition of non-elected members by the Secretary of State. When this matter was discussed in Committee, noble Lords from all parties raised concerns on grounds of local determination. My noble friend the Minister sought to reassure them that the Government had no intention of imposing a particular membership on ITAs, and that the ITAs would be able to propose that there should be no non-elected ITA members if they so wished. That point did not necessarily engage directly with the explicit point of this amendment, which is that only the ITA should be able to appoint any non-elected member, thus guaranteeing local determination of ITA membership. That is what the amendment seeks to achieve, and I beg to move.