My Lords, many of us probably share some of the frustrations of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, as there were a whole batch of documents there before Second Reading. Basically, those were the White Papers or quasi-White Papers from the past year or so—they were about an inch thick. I have seen the documents, but the document to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred was not one of those. Although I have seen that document, I am not sure how I got it. More importantly for the Minister’s answer, I have not seen the draft licence. I do not know whether other noble Lords on the Committee have seen the draft licence. If she is relying on that to explain why we do not need my amendment and the amendments of other noble Lords in this group, I am afraid that I am in the dark on that.
There is a point of principle relating to the licence. In other regulated structures, the licence is issued by the regulator. In some cases, what the licence should cover is specified in primary legislation, while in other cases it is not. In this case, the Secretary of State will issue the licence because, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley said earlier, the ORR’s role is as monitor not as regulator. We will come back to that. It is a responsibility of the Secretary of State, and therefore it ought to be clear in the legislation what should be covered in that licence. If the licence is the means for achieving the aims, that is fair enough, but we need to know what the scope of the licence will be, at least in broad terms. Preferably, that should be in the Bill.
Indeed, even more basically—without wanting to repeat myself, and although this is probably a criticism of legislation more broadly—we are setting up a new organisation here in legislation which has references to pre-existing powers and pre-existing responsibilities. If, in a year or two’s time, anyone wants to know what the basis is of the strategic highways company, there will be no point in their looking at this Bill, or Act as it will then be. Surely, the function of legislation is to make clear, first to Parliament and then to the cognoscenti afterwards, what the role of any new institution that Parliament sets up really is. In my mind, that means that it should specify at least in broad terms the responsibilities and scope of the new publicly owned organisation set up by Parliament. All my amendment suggests is that we should put something in the Bill.
3.30 pm
I apologise for not referring to Amendment 61 directly. The Highways Agency has some road safety responsibilities. They relate primarily to the highway but also to traffic management—which can relate not only to Highways Agency roads but to the interface of its roads with local roads. So it goes a bit beyond the construction of the highway. Given that, I am not expecting all road safety responsibilities to be handed to the new highways company, but Clause 13 refers to,
“any enactment which relates to … highways”,
and “planning”. If my amendment is agreed, “road safety” will be added. Not everything under “highways” goes to the new company and, clearly, not everything that relates to planning goes to the new company. All that I am doing is adding and giving some prominence to road safety, or those aspects of road safety that are relevant to the new company. Therefore, I do not think that the Minister’s objection to that addition is really tenable. My basic point is that somewhere in the Bill the responsibility to the company should be stated. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.