I believe that these provisions are ill thought through and extremely damaging to local government and local governance. At the same time as the Government are beginning to concede powers—to Greater Manchester, as we read this morning—these provisions are taking away a power which is essential for local government to keep its roads free. Those roads are becoming increasingly congested and increasingly badly maintained.
The law relating to bus operation is that the traffic commissioners who license buses provide that they do not run early or more than five minutes behind schedule. It is extremely difficult for bus operators to keep within the present limits with the present level of enforcement; it would be completely impossible if we got odd people having five minutes to pop in to get the paper and impeding the traffic. That has a large-scale effect. For example, in Oxford, which I know well, the congestion at one stage got so bad that in one of the park and rides they had to put extra buses in and extra drivers. Of course, they got no more revenue, because they were taking the same number of people, who just happened to be sitting in congested areas. I am not talking only about bus lanes; these appear to be covered in the proposed regulations. I am talking about the fact that a large number of buses do not use roads that have bus lanes; the vast majority—I think about 60%—travel along ordinary roads, which are protected in places at least by double yellow lines. I honestly believe that this is not a subject that the Government should be involved in.
There is very little evidence that surpluses are being frittered away or used by councils to subside luxuries. I accept that in Kensington and Chelsea and in Westminster a couple of councils make a profit, but we cannot argue from the particular to the general. A piece of evidence that I have from one local authority shows that actually a very small fraction of people contest their parking fines and a much smaller proportion of them are upheld by the parking adjudicator. Nobody likes getting tickets because they have been watched by CCTV but most people accept that they have done wrong and will have to pay the fine, which is mitigated to 50% if people pay promptly. It is quite impossible to think that the police have resources to do that sort of work; it has to be done by CCTV, and if local authorities can afford to employ parking wardens it is probably at the expense of spending money on something else. I cannot understand why, in this day and age, technology
is not brought to bear on problems. This is not spying on people; it is picking up illegal parking that is obstructing the highway for the ordinary person.
The regulations talk about zig-zag lines outside schools. I know what they are like; they go for about 10 yards either side of the entrance. That is not the problem. If you go almost anywhere you will find a line of cars outside schools and, for that matter, outside hospitals, which is very long and creates huge safety problems. Many headmasters ask local authorities to bring the enforcement ban or some sort of TV equipment to control the problem, because many people who park in those places are just selfish or lazy—or perhaps both. I do not believe that we should pander to that sort of thing.
With this clause, we need to go back to the drawing board and take some advice from people who really know what they are talking about, not relying on something conjured up in Whitehall, probably by somebody who really does not understand the problem.
4.15 pm