Local Transport Bill [Lords]

As I said earlier, there were powers in the Transport Act 2000 to allow the making of quality contracts and some partnership schemes. The problem with the quality contracts was that the threshold was set too high. That is the feedback that we have received. In a sense, that is why we are replacing the test of the only practical way of delivering services with the public interest test. The intention was to be able to make the quality contracts possible, in a similar way to some of the arrangements in London, but unfortunately that did not happen in several areas and that is why we are changing the situation. It was a good attempt, but we recognise that it has shortcomings.