Local Transport Bill [HL]

My Lords, I was intrigued to see that the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, had tabled this amendment again, because I felt that the answer that we received from the Minister went as far as a Minister can go at this stage in giving that reassurance. I share some of the noble Lord’s disquiet, but it is very difficult for the Minister to give assurances, simply because local government finance has now become so complex that very few local authorities—I say this in all seriousness—fully understand how their grant has been calculated. When they query it, it is not uncommon for them to find that the civil servants who put the numbers together do not entirely understand it either. It is very common for both government and local authorities to assert opposite things and for both to be correct, bizarrely enough. Regardless of any promises made by the Minister, it would be very difficult in practice to work out whether an authority had been negatively treated. The most important point here is that individual schemes need to be understood; local authorities will want reassurance about how their income will be treated at that level. I share the noble Lord’s concern that central government has rather bludgeoned some local authorities into considering road-user charging simply by saying, ““If you don’t have a road charging element, we won’t give you transport innovation funding””. Central government has used that rather heavy stick with which to beat local authorities, but unfortunately while we have the current local authority arrangements whereby central government calls the shots, that is sadly inevitable.