My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for dealing with these issues so comprehensively. We all share the frustration of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, but we recognise the efforts which the Minister and her officials have put in to keeping us informed. The problem is that so much relies on what is in the draft licence and it is confusing for many of us if that document is constantly changing as we are going through this Bill. If the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has expressed displeasure, the powers that be should be trembling in their shoes and take notice.
The first bit of good news is that the Minister very clearly indicated that the Government have no plans to appoint more than one company and that, whatever it says in the Bill, she was prepared to come forward—I think she said at Third Reading—on the issue of a separate vote of Parliament being required if more than one company were to be appointed in the future. That would go some way to clarifying the position. I still do not totally understand why it is expressed in this way, given the Government’s clear intention in any case. However, I thank the Minister as it partly deals with an issue which is troubling a number of people. The present view is that a single English road network company would be the most effective way of delivering improved roads and transport systems. If a subsequent Government decided that should be regionalised, a whole lot of other issues then arise. A parliamentary brake on them doing that at least goes some way to meeting that point and I thank the Minister for that.
I am partially reassured by what the Minister said on parliamentary accountability, but I am still not clear whether that means that the Secretary of State can be asked in Parliament about the same range of things that he or she can currently be asked about. In other words, is there any change? That important issue will undoubtedly be raised by MPs of all parties when the Bill reaches the Commons.
The central issue of why my noble friends and I felt we had to raise the whole context in which the company was being set up, and the relationship between it and the Secretary of State, is the use of the term “licence” and the use of the content of the licence to explain everything about how the Government intend to conduct the new structure. I think that the Minister came as close as she dared in saying, “Well maybe we should never have called it a licence in the first place”. I think that if she took that further step, we could all sit down and applaud. However, it is very confusing because the Bill refers to “appointment”, which in some cases is the granting of a licence. Therefore, although it is a single state company and not a commercial company in the normal sense, and although there are examples of licences being given to state-owned companies, I think that using the term “licence” in one place and “appointment” in another without describing the process through which the Minister has to go or how the regulator is to enforce the terms of that licence is wrong.
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As we pass through the subsequent stages of the Bill, the department and the Minister will need to consider whether they ought to change the terminology
entirely and refer, as the subtitle of the draft document now does, to “directions” and “guidance”, with the way in which the appointment is carried out being a clearly separate issue. If the Government were prepared to go along those lines, we might not need quite such a complicated change to the Bill as our amendments taken in total would indicate, but I think that the Government need to think further about how they present this in the Bill. At the end of the day, however much those in the industry understand it and however much subordinate documents spell it out, unless the relationship and the terminology are clear in the Bill, we will run into serious trouble down the line.
I, for one, would quite like to see this company established in some form or other but, as I said earlier, I do not think that we have yet got it right. However, the Minister has moved some considerable way in my direction today. She and her colleagues probably need to move a little bit further before we see this Bill back after the Commons has considered it. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.