Local Transport Bill [Lords]

First, I wish to say how much I enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer), who is obviously an expert on the subject. I am not, alas, but I want to make a few points. I declare an interest: I am, by nature, a bus enthusiast. I actually enjoy travelling by bus. On the No. 148 and the No. 12 in the mornings, I have my best ideas—they are few and far between, but I do have them occasionally. The buzz word nowadays is ““integration””. I remember spending a family holiday in central France and southern Brittany back in the mid-1980s. The brand new car that I had bought a month before going on holiday broke down irreparably. I had to leave it there and travel back, with a baby and a young girl of three, by train from central France. We were in a rural setting, and I was absolutely dreading the journey. We went from one village to the next by train and then stopped, occasionally changing to a bus that was waiting to take us to the next railway station. Even now, I think that that is the benchmark for integration, even though it was back in the mid-1980s. I would love to see that situation mirrored in rural Wales, and I hope that one day it will be. It behoves us all to do what we can to ensure that public transport is available, reasonable and convenient. I made an intervention on the Minister earlier about consultation on subsidies. There are members of the Select Committee on Transport in the Chamber, and I understand that it suggested until about eight months ago that the issue of subsidy should be part of the Bill. Although I had a full reply from the Minister, it would appear to fly in the face of advice given by the Select Committee. Local authorities are obviously in a good position to play a major role in transport—that is quite clear. Like many people in this Chamber, a frequent complaint that I hear in advice surgeries is of a lack of co-ordination in the provision of public transport. That brings me back to the idea of integration. Sometimes a bus service where I live arrives at a town, allowing less than 30 minutes before the last return service from that town. At other times, an unduly long wait is in prospect, which is also quite hopeless. Travel to work is also an important issue. The situation is made more confusing by the existence of the cross-border factors that are common in rural Wales. My constituency of Meirionnydd Nant Conwy is covered by two county councils. They do their best to provide good bus services, but the area also has two train operators running two separate lines. I welcome the parts of the Bill that deal with integrated transport schemes, and I hope that they lead to an improvement in due course. The regulations under clause 18 will give Welsh Ministers responsibility for ensuring that services are properly timed, with reasonable fares, frequencies and so on. The quality contract schemes were discussed earlier, and I accept the contention from the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley that they will be complex. In Wales, however, they will be a matter for Welsh Ministers, and clause 18 sets out the criteria—frequencies, timings, fares, as well as maximum and minimum intervals between services and so on—that must be taken into consideration. If those criteria are implemented properly, the bad examples to which I have referred will become less frequent—in the area that I represent, throughout Wales and, of course, beyond. I hope that the Bill will ensure better co-ordination of bus and train services in the future; otherwise, the offer of free travel to senior citizens will be something of an empty promise. Furthermore, it is plain that the co-ordination of good services is an economic imperative. A growing number of people—although perhaps still too few—would prefer to use public transport if it were reliable, timely, safe, clean and relatively inexpensive. It should also meet all the other criteria that we all take for granted, and there is no doubt that those criteria will weigh heavily on the minds of those who, under the legislation, will approve transport schemes. There is nothing new about subsidies. Clause 64 amends the Transport (Wales) Act 2006 and extends the powers to subsidise public passenger transport services to cover standards of service—the frequency or the timing of a service, the days or times of day when it is provided, and the vehicles used to provide it. The latter condition, of course, has to do with the quality-safety issue that we discussed earlier. I hope that another criterion can be inserted into clause 64, as there needs to be a requirement for co-ordination with other local services. Integration of that sort is very important, especially given that we do not have passenger integration authorities in Wales. The clauses dealing with road charging have led to fierce debate, even though they have been included in previous legislation. It is an understatement to say that the proposals have caused an argument, as the question of road charging seems to be one of the main reasons why the official Opposition will vote against giving the Bill a Second Reading. The amendment uses rather extravagant language. It states that the House should decline to give the Bill a Second Reading"““because it transfers revenue-raising powers to the National Assembly for Wales without proper constitutional justification and in doing so allows Wales to be used as a test bed for the Government's untried, untested national road pricing scheme.””" Is that hyperbole, or what? If the Conservatives are serious, they should tell us when any such scheme has ever been set up. To give Ken Livingstone his due, my journey every morning on the No. 12 bus is 10 minutes shorter than it was before he brought in his reforms. It is all very well to say that Wales could be a test-bed, but London has been used in that fashion anyway and, by and large, the operation has been very successful. It is disingenuous to hide behind the idea that we in Wales are suddenly to becoming guinea pigs. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) asked why we in Wales should have to be subjected to the road pricing scheme. With respect, the answer is that the National Assembly for Wales said that it wanted it, because it wants to think about the environment, as it wants to set an example. Cardiff is a conurbation, albeit a smaller conurbation than many others, and it could be a beacon of good practice. We could start something new. We could show that such a scheme can work not only in London, but elsewhere. However, I take her point about the need for an alternative public transport strategy to be made available as soon as possible after the introduction of the scheme, or even when the scheme is introduced. That point is well made. With regard to the Conservative view, a gentleman by the name of Andrew R.T. Davies, an Assembly Member in Cardiff, actually pleaded with the First Minister for the power to be brought to Wales. I shall quote from the Hansard of 11 March, just a few days ago. He said:"““One power that the Assembly Government is trying to seek from Westminster is over road charging, via the Local Transport Bill. Do you think that any of these schemes””—" schemes to which he had referred—"““merit road charging, given that the Deputy First Minister said that only new projects would be considered for road charging?””" He was pleading for road charging in his constituency, and said that it was high time that road charging was introduced. I hoped that the Conservatives would have a settled view on a matter as important as road charging, but I do not for one moment accept that road charging is any kind of stealth tax. It is rather too obvious to be a stealth anything, really. If it works properly, its benefits will be equally obvious. To go back to a point that I tried to make earlier, any moneys recovered under a road charging scheme would be hypothecated for further road improvements, so in that respect we are not talking about a levy, with money being put into the general pot. There are safeguards that come into play. Clause 115 allows for the creation of trunk road charging schemes in Wales, giving the National Assembly for Wales additional powers to pass Assembly measures under fields 5 and 10 of schedule 5 to the Government of Wales Act 2006. In other words, the clause allows the Assembly to impose charges on vehicles on Welsh trunk roads, in cases where Welsh Ministers are the traffic authority. One such trunk road is the A470, which runs the length of Wales from my constituency all the way to Cardiff. I do not think that Welsh Ministers are getting ready to impose charges on the entirety of that road. I hope that they will be thinking of roads near built-up areas—perhaps those areas where new bypasses are required—roads that carry large volumes of traffic, and certainly areas where there is an alternative public transport option. Common sense dictates that the areas should be those with viable public transport. The rather extravagant language of the reasoned amendment would make one think that we in Wales are suddenly to be crushed by an almighty shock in the next few months. Frankly, I do not foresee that, having read the Bill fairly carefully. Clause 114 is important because it states that any moneys derived from road pricing would go straight back into schemes. Again, there will be a requirement on Welsh Ministers to consider asking the local charging authority to consult on, or allow a Welsh Minister to hold an inquiry into, a local charging scheme. That is appropriate. If a local charging scheme is to be imposed, a Welsh Minister will decide whether there will be a public inquiry, and I think that that is absolutely right, to go back to the point made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley. Meaningful consultation must be a core part of the Bill, and appears to be so in relation to the Welsh clauses. By and large, the Bill will be useful. It will empower the National Assembly to do far more to provide good, sustainable, affordable public transport in Wales, but some legitimate concerns have been expressed about omissions from the Bill. The Freight Transport Association sent us all, I am sure, a briefing which refers to civil parking enforcement. The FTA says that that has led to a meteoric rise in the number of penalty charges issued in London to companies making legitimate and essential deliveries in the capital. It goes on to say that evidence from FTA members suggests that that effect is spreading well outside London as civil parking enforcement is adopted. The Bill might have been an appropriate means for changes to be made. The concern seems to be genuine. The FTA states:"““Penalties are often given for legitimate unloading—the maximum time may be exceeded because deliveries are consolidated””." Further elucidation of those views might be forthcoming in Committee. The point is well made by the FTA that there is nothing in the Bill to promote the delivery and movement of freight. Perhaps that will also be considered in Committee. The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) called the Bill a curate's egg and said that we should not swallow it whole. Swallowing eggs whole is best not done because there is the risk of indigestion and it is not good manners. I have one or two misgivings about the Bill. I do not suggest that it should be given carte blanche, but there are far more good things than bad in this curate's egg. My colleagues and I will therefore vote against the reasoned amendment. On the admission of the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet earlier, there are several good things in the Bill. I agree. A policy of throwing the baby out with the bath water would be rather unwise.