My Lords, in this exciting ideological divide I find myself, curiously, much on the same side as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, rather than the side of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, or even the Government.
We have been here before. In 1514, we enacted a Bill to regulate the fares charged by water taxis on the Thames and it ran into exactly the same problem that the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will run into, which was that there was nobody to enforce it. Who in the Department for Transport will turn up and enforce the regulations made by the DfT if TfL, which has an enforcement department, is cut out of it?
The Act of 1514 became, in effect, a nullity. Undeterred, Parliament returned to the subject in 1555 to have another go and this time more sensibly. We delegated the power of setting these fares and enforcing them, as far as river-borne traffic was concerned, to what were known as the rulers of what became the Company of Watermen and Lightermen. The regulation of horse-drawn traffic in London, including things like cabs and taxi meters, has—as far as I am aware, and until the creation of Transport for London under the GLA Act of 1999—always been the responsibility of the Metropolitan Police. Again, that is a local body and one well acquainted with enforcement.
Now, for the first time in at least half a millennium of legislation, we appear to have the notion from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that all regulation should be set by the Government and from the Government the not terribly dissimilar notion, as was pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that while Transport for London should be allowed to draft, in effect, the statutory instruments and must submit them immediately—“immediately” is the word used—to
the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State, with no time limit, requirement or obligation on him or her, then has to approve, amend, change or reject them. Why? What is the advantage to the Government or to the travelling passenger of doing this? Why are the Government not under the same obligation to act immediately, or at least within set time limits, in dealing with the SIs sent to them by Transport for London?
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We should learn our lessons from history. This sort of regulation and enforcement is best done at local level. We have a body in place in the form of Transport for London, which has considerable experience of regulating the analogous taxi trade, so why would we want this to be done by the Department for Transport, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and why do the Government feel that they need to bring these provisions before Parliament, when they do not expect taxi fares to be set in a like manner? What is the objective here?
When I raised this at Second Reading, I thought it might give a friendly hint to the Minister perhaps to moderate or withdraw that clause. Far from doing so, it appears to have alerted him to what he considers to be a lacuna in the Bill and he has come back with a government amendment to make the department’s grip on this process even tighter. The Government should think about this again and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, should think about the practical effects of his proposal.