Local Transport Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1: 1: Clause 39, page 35, line 16, at end insert— ““(6) A person is guilty of an offence under this subsection if— (a) the person provides information in accordance with a requirement imposed by virtue of subsection (5)(c), (b) the information is false or misleading in a material particular, and (c) the person knows that it is or is reckless as to whether it is. (7) A person who is guilty of an offence under subsection (6) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.””.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, on Report, I moved an amendment to what is now Clause 39, which your Lordships’ House accepted. This further amendment ties up a small loose end. Clause 39 would insert new Section 134B into the Transport Act 2000 to make provision for transfer of employees on TUPE terms when an existing deregulated service is discontinued because a quality contract comes into force. The detailed process for managing the transfer would be set out in regulations. Among other things, such regulations could require the operators of existing services to provide the local transport authority with information about the people whom they employ in providing services which the authority intends to be provided under a quality contract. The reason for this is to facilitate the employees’ transfer to a new employer should the contract be awarded to a different operator following the tender process. This information, suitably anonymised, would be made available to tenderers who, if successful, would be obliged to take on any of these employees who were willing to transfer. The clause would also amend Section 26 of the Transport Act 1985 and Section 155 of the Transport Act 2000, so as to enable the traffic commissioner to impose licensing or financial sanctions against operators who fail to comply with the request for information. However, as well as simply not making a return, an operator could provide false or misleading information, either through carelessness or deliberate deception. It is no secret, as my noble friend Lord Snape has made clear in the past, that many bus operators who are totally opposed to quality contracts schemes and might need some persuading to co-operate in a task such as this even if it were in their interest to do so. They might not take much trouble to ensure that the information was correct and complete. They might even deliberately spread confusion to complicate the implementation process. More seriously, if they were among the tenderers, they might see some advantage to themselves in misleading their competitors about the number of jobs, pay scales and terms of employment. That way, they might deter some potential new operators from putting in a bid, or persuade others to bid higher than they need. The question of whether an operator has provided information is one of fact; it is well within the traffic commissioner’s competence to judge whether there were mitigating factors or whether the operator has misbehaved and should be penalised. But providing false or misleading information, particularly if it could be done for commercial gain, really requires a criminal sanction and for evidence to be considered by a court of law. This amendment would make such behaviour a criminal offence, triable in a magistrates’ court and with a maximum penalty at level 4 on the standard scale. That is the same penalty that applies to making a false statement to obtain a public service vehicle operator’s licence, a certificate of initial fitness for a bus or coach, or various other documents issued by the traffic commissioners. The severity of the offence could vary from fairly trivial to very serious. Even trivial offences could cause undue hardship to individual workers, but the courts would use their discretion in the usual way. I beg to move.