My Lords, in this set of amendments we are dealing with the watchdog. We will come on to the monitor in the following clause, so I shall try to narrow what I say to the watchdog role and the body that legally today is known as the Passengers’ Council, or whatever name it chooses for the future.
I think that we have made it absolutely clear that the Passengers’ Council, or “Road User Focus”, or whatever name it chooses as its trading name, will deal with the role identified in the Bill. It anticipates having to represent and to be a voice for that very wide range of users that we have described in the past few minutes of our discussion. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and others were suggesting that we apply it to non-users and to surrounding communities. We are then back in the territory where it is hard for a group to be a voice for users. That is necessary in the kind of structure that we have here with the SHC. In other parts of the Bill, it is clear that there is an important role for the SHC itself to be working closely with local authorities. That was reinforced in some of the agreements that have been drawn up and were announced on Monday between the Highways Agency and local enterprise partnerships, which will carry over into the role of the SHC. We have all kinds of mechanisms, including a great deal of detail, about how environmental issues will be addressed and how the SHC will relate to local authorities. There will undoubtedly be implications that come out of the RIS.
Therefore, I see the role of watchdog as being very much a voice for the road user. As I read the clauses here, if there were issues such as modal shift, I think that that would be an area that the Passengers’ Council, in whatever guise it has for these services, could, if it chose to do so, explore and advise on, but very much from the perspective of the road user.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked about complaints. At present, complaints go to the Highways Agency, and our concept is that that will carry on and pass through to the new SHC. When a body acts as the SHC will be doing, it is important that complaints go directly to it. It must hear those complaints, it must be aware of them and it must take them on board. It must not be allowed, as it were, to offload that responsibility to a watchdog. “Road User Focus”, or whatever it is called, will be able to see through to those complaints so that it can access the data and use them in its work. However, I very much want to see the complaints
going directly to the SHC because that will be one of the most important ways of ensuring that it provides the service that is needed.