My Lords, your Lordships have raised a number of important issues around the powers that are transferred to the new company. The purpose of Schedule 1 is to transfer to a strategic highways company appointed under Clause 1 the statutory duties imposed on, and the powers exercised by, the Secretary of State in his capacity as highway authority. The functions and responsibilities are already expressed in legislation, but they are transferred to the new company on its appointment. These are all the functions that it needs to operate. That may help in understanding why I regard Amendment 4 as an unnecessary addition to the Bill.
Amendment 4 takes us to Clause 13, under which the Secretary of State may transfer additional functions other than an excluded function to a strategic highways company. I think the noble Lord’s purpose was to make road safety functions capable of transfer to the company. We absolutely appreciate the importance of road safety, but we do not require the amendment because, in our view, the only road safety functions which would ever be appropriate to transfer to a strategic highways company would be those which relate to highways. For example, the Secretary of State is responsible for issues which relate to drink driving and the standards that are required of vehicles. In other words, many aspects of road safety are not to do with the highway itself. It would not be appropriate to transfer that range of responsibilities over to the SHC, but only those parts which relate to the highway itself. This is already enabled within the legislation before us.
On a wide range of these issues, I draw your Lordships’ attention to the licence, a draft of which was issued on 23 June and which covers in great detail many of the
issues which have been raised here. There is always a question of whether you put things in the Bill or in the licence. We are constantly adding to and refining the kinds of actions and responsibilities that we want an entity like the new SHC to carry out. We would lose a lot of our flexibility were we to put this in the Bill rather than use the licence mechanism. With the combination of the transfer of duties already provided and the licence, a wide range of these powers are already covered.
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Amendment 6, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, addresses the issue of litter and extending responsibilities to local authorities. Under the current arrangements, local authorities have responsibility for cleaning up litter on trunk roads—the major A roads—unless such roads have been specifically transferred to the responsibility of the Secretary of State. Responsibility for clearing litter from motorways has been transferred. One of the provisions that I believe the noble Lord is trying to introduce in his amendment would alter the functions of the local authority, for which there would be funding implications. Obviously, part of the money that is transferred to local authorities is provided on the assumption that they will clean up litter. This would require expanding the capacity of the strategic highways company to clean up litter, and most of us think it would be done less effectively if we were to try to do all that, never mind that it would disrupt all kinds of contracts that are in place. We just do not think there is a big gain from making those kinds of changes.
Amendment 7, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would change the appropriate national authority to the Office of Rail Regulation. This would remove a role from the Secretary of State which we think it important should remain with the Secretary of State. He has powers under the network management duty to require information from any traffic authority—the noble Lord will understand the SHC is but one of many traffic authorities, so that information can be required from local traffic authorities—and can ultimately take action if any of those traffic authorities are failing to meet their statutory duty. We think that it is crucial that the Secretary of State retain this power and oversight and that it does not seem to be a role that is necessarily appropriate for the ORR.
Working through these various amendments, the underlying concerns are essentially covered, in many ways, or are not necessarily appropriate to the Bill and to the functions as they are envisaged. I hope that gives some comfort to your Lordships and that the noble Lord will feel comfortable withdrawing the amendment.