My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 45. Amendment 43 deals with the role of the Passengers’ Council—however in future designated—and the fact that it had initially dealt solely with railways. There was once a proposal to extend it to air passenger transport, which was dropped, but it has been extended to buses. It has developed expertise in those two areas of public transport. It is now dealing with a much wider user group, even if the Minister is reluctant to go down the route of widening it to the whole community, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Judd. It will have to develop capacity to deal with a whole different user group, and that needs to be reflected here. It is also important that the Government commit to finding a way to finance that extension.
Unusually, when the railways were privatised, the taxpayer paid for the user representative body. That was also extended when its remit was extended to buses. In other industries, consumer bodies have an allocation via the licence fee or otherwise. I do not mind which way the Government fund it, but it seems to me important that it is required in legislation, and that it is done over a reasonably lengthy period—in other words, that the new, broader organisation does not have to wait each year to know what its allocation will be next year. There will need to be an allocation at least every three years either by requiring a payment from the licence fee or whatever else, which would be the equivalent of the situation in water or in energy, or by making an allocation out of general taxation. That requirement should be in the Bill, as should be the Government’s preferred method of funding. That will give the conceived stability to the representatives of road users. I beg to move.