Local Transport Bill [HL]

My Lords, if that was a little bit of gentle advice, I am not sure that I should like to hear a strict ticking-off. I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, for his contribution and for helping me a great deal. I have a very long speaking note on the Government’s commitment to the Government of Wales Act, the promotion of framework powers, legislative competency orders and the whole philosophy and debate around that. With his eloquent disposition of the success and importance of the devolution settlement, the noble Lord has saved me a very important job. I shall confine my remarks specifically to the amendments before us. I hope very much that I shall be able to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, that we are not talking about a framework power that contradicts the Government of Wales Act and that this is not in any way about injecting a tax-raising power through the back door or through illegal or ultra vires means. By doing that, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment. I have been given a very clear note from the Box which answers the question whether this provision is about imposing a tax. It states clearly that the application of proceeds does not affect whether something is a tax or a charge. That depends on the link between the payment and the service received by the payer. Whether or not a charge or a tax is hypothecated—that is, whether it is limited to a particular purpose by the receiving authority—is not the issue; it is a question of whether a service is received by the payer. I hope that that addresses the question of whether we are talking about a tax here. Specifically with regard to Amendment No. 119B, paragraph (b) of the provision inserted by Clause 110 allows the Welsh Assembly to make provision in Assembly measures in relation to how the revenue from a trunk road charging scheme in Wales is spent, so long as it is, "““towards purposes relating to transport””." The advice that I have is that that is pretty clear. We talked about this matter in Committee and I shall come to it in a moment but, as we have said, these powers do not constitute a tax and this provision does not confer tax-raising powers on the Welsh Assembly. The Government of Wales Act does not allow the transfer of tax-raising powers to the Welsh Assembly. We are clear that these powers refer to a road user charge. There is no field in Schedule 5 to the Government of Wales Act that would allow for legislative competence for tax-raising powers. Such powers are outside the devolution settlement. I believe that it is wrong for us to continue debating this question because the proposed framework is very clear—we are not talking about changing the settlement. We think it is right that if the Welsh Assembly has the competence to make a trunk road charging scheme, it should have the competence to decide how the money is spent in relation to transport purposes. As I said in Committee, Welsh Ministers have yet to decide what role, if any, road charging will play in addressing current and future transport challenges. Therefore, with regard to the noble Lord’s concerns about the potential scheme being set up to deal with a particular problem in a particular location, I can reassure him that Welsh Ministers have yet to decide what role they wish this to play. However, they wish to have the powers available to allow them to adopt a coherent approach towards any road pricing proposals that local authorities in Wales may bring forward or towards any future UK scheme. The Welsh Ministers have also made it clear that if they were to introduce road pricing, it would be targeted on those parts of the trunk road network with the worst congestion problems. It would be important for Welsh Ministers to be able to construct a package of measures around the charging scheme which could include improvements to complementary transport provision, including trains and buses, as well as improvements to the road infrastructure, which I know the noble Lord was concerned about. It is important that the Welsh Assembly is able to spend the revenue from such a scheme in developing any complementary transport measures that are needed for it to work effectively. I hope that gives the noble Lord some reassurance on his concerns about the tightness of that clause. On Amendment No. 119C, Clause 110, as currently drafted, would allow for the revenue from a trunk road charging scheme in Wales to be put towards the purposes relating to transport. This restriction strikes the right balance, allowing for the revenue to be spent on any necessary complementary transport measures to a pricing scheme, while not being so broad—which I know the noble Lord was concerned about—as to allow for frivolous uses, for example the question of Welsh Ministers’ cars. We talked about that in detail in Committee. Restricting spending to trunk roads, as Amendment No. 119C would do, would not allow for any improvements on local roads feeding into the trunk roads within a pricing scheme or, more broadly, for investment in alternative modes of transport or other important improvements. As I said in relation to the previous amendment, road pricing should be seen as a package of measures tackling congestion problems alongside investment in transport improvements, both roads and otherwise. This amendment would severely limit the effectiveness of such a strategy as it would not facilitate those complementary improvements. I will speak briefly to Clause 110 as a whole. As explained in Committee, the clause inserts new matter into Schedule 5 of the 2006 Act to allow the Assembly to make its own legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, explained why it is so important that we allow this measure-making to go ahead. Trunk roads comprise the network of strategic roads managed by Welsh Ministers which account for around 5 per cent of roads in Wales by length. It would be for the Assembly to consider whether it would be appropriate to exercise those powers and if so, how. I hope noble Lords have had a chance to read the Explanatory Memorandum that was published alongside the Bill. Copies are in the Library. A great deal of thought has been put in to how to make these new legislative processes accessible to Peers so they can fully understand the thinking behind the framework powers and legislative competence orders. The arguments I raised previously in relation to specific taxation and revenue issues are also important to remember when discussing the provision as a whole. The provision states that the Welsh Assembly Government must require any revenue raised by a trunk road charging scheme to be spent, as we have heard, on transport. The revenue would be used for the provision of transport infrastructure services in Wales to help develop the transport network in line with the Welsh Assembly Government’s transport policies and programmes, which are at a very advanced level of development. We look forward to a very important publication of the transport strategy soon. Trunk road charges are already within the legislative competence of the Scottish Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly. We are not creating a new precedent; we are simply following the path set out by the devolution settlement in the Government of Wales Act. I hope that I have been able to give the noble Lord some reassurances. He mentioned that he had undertaken some research which I not aware of, and I would be happy to discuss any new information that he has or to meet him further to discuss the practicalities of how the clause is intended to work. If there is any further information that I can offer, I am happy to do so, but the Government are committed to making the Government of Wales Act, the framework powers and the LCOs a success. We believe that the devolution settlement is a great success in Wales, and I hope that, with those remarks, the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.