Local Transport Bill [Lords]

Precisely. My hon. Friend has exposed the aim of the Conservative party, which is to defend the vested interests of private bus companies rather than those of the travelling public outside London. Since deregulation, bus fares in passenger transport executive areas have doubled in real terms and patronage has halved. The profits—the bottom lines—of the buscompanies are two or three times as great as before. Companies are making the same profits outside London as they are in London, where there is a better public service. Not for the first time in the Conservative party's history, it is on the side of vested interests and against those of public transport and the travelling public. The hon. Member for Wimbledon is not just trying to fight the evidence from an ideological position. As may become clear when we discuss later amendments, he is also fighting against local democracy and local decision making. He recalled the arguments advanced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central in Committee about the need to protect the process of moving from judicial review to quality contracts. The arguments were advanced for perfectly good reasons. The bus companies that are making two or three times as much profit since deregulation are going to fight like ferrets in a sack to prevent the introduction of quality contracts. It is not a question of partnership in most of the passenger transport executives. There is, however, a major principle in opposition to the pragmatic facts that my right hon. Friend had to consider. Labour Members believe that matters that can be determined locally should be determined locally, by locally elected people. The hon. Member for Wimbledon would clearly prefer such matters to be determined by appointed people such as traffic commissioners, if that is possible. I believe that my new clauses 7 and 8, and the Government's new clauses 13 and 19, solve the practical difficulty posed by the need to respect the wishes of locally elected people by proposing the establishment of a super-consultative body, the quality contracts scheme board, which must be consulted by means of a special process. It will be able to judge whether the public-interest criteria have been met, and, if there is agreement, the position for which we argued in Committee will be achieved. Bus operators will be able to appeal only on matters of process and procedure, which is as it should be. I have one worry, and I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to comment on it. There is some ambiguity to the way in which the QCS board can view public interest, and one can go into all sorts of detail about whether a proposal is viable or is meeting the better public transport criteria—these are difficult issues. I have been either associated with or a part of local government for most of my adult life and I am a great supporter of local democracy, but I acknowledge that—very occasionally—local government introduce crazy schemes. I hope that there will be some guidance on this measure, even if only in response to my hon. Friend saying that it is intended to weed out any extraordinarily badly conceived or wacky scheme that local authorities might propose by making it possible to say to them, ““This simply isn't going to work, chums, and you should go back to the drawing board””, and that the intention is not to go into intricate details such as, for example, the percentage differences in the cost-benefit analyses of one route as opposed to another. This is an order of magnitude issue, and I would like some reassurance from my hon. Friend on it. I do not intend to press my amendments to a Division, however, and I shall support the Government new clauses. On the TUPE amendments, I never had any doubt that the Government wanted to get TUPE right. This is a difficult issue, as there might be a gap between one operator moving out and another operator coming in. I understand that a defining time for when a quality contract comes into operation appears in the Bill, but does not appear in the amendments. I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to say whether there is any significance in that, whether it is a difference without meaning, and whether it might be better if we were to use the same clear definition throughout the Bill. On the operator of last resort and amendments Nos. 98 to 100 and Government new clause 9, as we argued in Committee, an operator of last resort is necessary; otherwise, large areas of the country and considerable proportions of the population could be left without any public transport. I do not share my Government's worry that such operators might try to re-municipalise bus services—I would welcome it if they did. However, leaving aside that possible back door to municipalisation, there is the possibility of a gap lasting longer than nine months plus three months on appeal. This is a particularly testing issue and bus operators might make a challenge on human rights or procedural grounds, leaving an area without services for longer than that period. My hon. Friend the Minister rightly proposes to allow quality contracts to start during this process. Where an integrated transport authority or a transport authority is searching for new operators because the operator has pulled out of an area, I do not think the market will be attracted to the area for what might be only a very short period. If there is a dispute in the courts, I can foresee times the process taking longer than 12 months. Will my hon. Friend reconsider that? The first nine months, to be used under normal circumstances, may well cover virtually all situations, but if a fight was going on, a three-month extension with all the safeguards that he has included may well not be long enough. Again, however, I shall not press my amendments on that point. Finally, a matter that is not currently dealt with in the Bill, but may well be later in secondary legislation, is the deregistration period. The short period of deregistration is one issue that has destabilised public transport in many areas, and I would welcome a clear statement from my hon. Friend of whether the deregistration period will be increased, and to what. I hope that it will be doubled compared with the previous period. In many ways the engine of the Bill is improving bus services and allowing local determination of transport priorities, such as the control of bus fares and networks. My hon. Friend the Minister and his predecessor have done a good job of proposing improvements to the Bill.