Local Transport Bill [Lords]

It could do to a point. There is a difficulty the further back we go. I think that before 2001, manufacturers did not reveal what the emissions of the vehicles they manufactured amounted to. If we go back even further, to historic vehicles, there is no way of measuring their output unless they are brought into a testing station. I do not think we would want to go there for the gain that we would get. We could, if we wished, differentiate the charge for those vehicles if we had a rule that linked the scheme from the time when manufacturers made the information public. I am not convinced that I would want to support such a scheme, but it could be done. A national scheme in the form of one tax replacing all others would have some attraction. I have not set my judgment in stone against supporting such a scheme. I would like to see the proposals first, but it might benefit many motorists. Certainly, it would be more logical than the London congestion charge scheme, which was introduced by a Mayor at the same as he phased out double-decker buses and introduced buses that take up double the road space. If the Mayor is against congestion, why on earth is he doubling the space occupied by buses? I have a couple of specific questions for the Minister. The first concerns clause 50, which applies the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and is entitled ““Carrying of passengers in wheelchairs in vehicles providing local services””. Admittedly this is a fairly small point, and I do not want to suggest that too much hinges on it. Many tourist areas, such as the one that I represent, use historic vehicles to transport the public because they increase tourist interest. I believe that the local authority area represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Goodwill), who is not in the Chamber at present, is the only one in the country to use a Sentinel steam bus to carry passengers. Part of the attraction and appeal of a historic vehicle is its period authenticity. Will such vehicles be exempt from the requirement for alterations enabling them to accommodate wheelchairs, which might completely destroy their character? I should not have thought that there were more than 20 in the country, but where they are used they are valued by the public, and I think disabled people accept that they are vehicles from a bygone age when their interests were not properly considered. I am certainly not aware that any disabled group in my constituency has campaigned for the right to board one of those historic vehicles with a wheelchair. My second question concerns clause 120, which relates to foreign-registered vehicles. According to the explanatory notes that the Minister has kindly published to accompany the Bill, one of the purposes of requiring information about them is"““to promote compliance with test certificates under section 47 or 53 of the Road Traffic Act 1988””." I am a little puzzled about why a foreign-registered vehicle need comply with a British Road Traffic Act if it has a valid test certificate issued in the country where the driver lives and the vehicle is registered. Surely if a Spanish tourist, for instance, visits the United Kingdom for a holiday with a Spanish-registered car that has been tested in accordance with the rules in Spain, a fellow European Union country, he need not take any further measures in order to drive his vehicle on our roads. I do not think that Conservative Front Benchers need apologise for deciding to vote against the Bill. There are some good bits in it, but in the main it represents a missed opportunity. I should have liked it to contain, for example, a moratorium on the construction of speed humps, which are a complete menace. They increase pollution in the form of both airborne particles and noise. We now have far more effective LED-operated flashing signs, and I think local authorities should be told to introduce more of those and stop constructing speed humps. The Bill could have been used to trial a number of innovations apart from road charging. It could have provided for motorists to be allowed to turn left at a red light, as they are allowed to in America—although because Americans drive on the other side of the road, they turn right at red lights. It could have provided for trials of traffic lights during non-busy periods being switched to amber in all directions to allow motorists to cross junctions with care. It could have provided for more use of flexible speed limits. Why should a 20-mph limit outside a school continue to be enforced when the school is on holiday, rather than being changed back to 30 mph? I understand that regulations introduced by the Minister's Department allow that to happen only if the sign is electronic, and that because electronic signs cost more, most local authorities retain the 20-mph limit when schools are not open because it is cheaper to do so. There should be financial assessments of park-and-ride schemes so that we can find out how much they are costing local authorities—which would probably mean the cancellation of the scheme in Bridlington, for instance. There should also be speed-limit audits, and speed camera partnerships should be abolished. All those provisions would have been welcome.