Local Transport Bill

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport (Douglas Alexander) has made the following Ministerial Statement. I am today publishing a draft Local Transport Bill for public consultation and parliamentary pre-legislative scrutiny. The draft Bill contains legislative proposals to help tackle congestion and improve public transport. Copies of the draft Bill, a consultation paper and other accompanying documents are available in the Libraries of the House and the Vote Office. Our transport system plays a crucial role in our economy and society and, in an increasingly interconnected world, efficient transport networks are now more important than ever. We also need to ensure that we continue to balance the needs of the economy with those of our environment and society. We have made huge progress over the past decade, but we need to ensure that our legislative and institutional frameworks keep pace with the many changes that are going on in the world around us. The Eddington transport study, published in December last year, provided a number of timely recommendations to enhance the delivery of transport in the UK’s cities. These recommendations were aimed at better equipping us to address the high potential future cost of congestion and ensure transport can continue to sustain economic growth. I am committed to ensuring that we are well equipped to meet not only today's transport challenges, but also those of 10 or 20 years’ time. The draft Local Transport Bill is a demonstration of that commitment. It is a key part of our strategy to empower local authorities to take appropriate steps to meet local transport needs in the light of local circumstances. The draft Bill sets out our legislative proposals to: enable local authorities to improve the quality of local bus services, building on the measures set out last December in Putting Passengers First; reform the arrangements for local transport governance in our major conurbations, to ensure strong local leadership and a coherent approach to transport across individual local authority boundaries and across different transport modes; and reform the existing legislation relating to local road pricing schemes to ensure that, where local authorities wish to develop local schemes, they have the freedom and flexibility to do so in a way that best meets local needs. It will also help to ensure that any schemes are consistent and interoperable from the road user’s perspective. Consistent with our longer-term strategy on road pricing, the draft Bill would not provide the legal powers that would be needed for a national system of road pricing: we have made clear that decisions on that can be taken only in the light of further practical experience of local schemes. Further, separate, legislation would be needed if in future a decision was taken to move towards a national scheme, and there would need to be a full and informed public debate. Publication of the draft Bill provides an important opportunity to ensure that we get our proposals right through public consultation, and for Parliament to scrutinise the legislation in draft. We need to learn from and build on the diversity of experience of transport professionals and transport users across the country, and I encourage all interested parties to participate in the consultation process.