Bus Services Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-07-04
Topic: Government Operations
Rosalind Scott (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the amendment stands in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Randerson and Lord Shipley It really does not matter which side of the great debate noble Lords are on—whether they favour franchising, as I do, or whether they are fundamentally opposed to it, as we have heard. Both sides agree that the proposal represents a significant risk of a transfer of risk from the bus operators to the local authority. That risk will be carried by local council taxpayers and, in the new regime, local business ratepayers. I should say from the outset that I am perfectly confident in the ability of local government to manage these processes. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, is right to say that this will not come cheap. Local authorities will need sufficient expertise in order to carry out the proposals, and I think that they will be able to, should they choose to invest that expertise. My concerns are about the mayoral model in this regard. It seems to me that what the Government see as the strengths of the mayoral model—a single point of centralised decision-making and a single point of accountability—can also very quickly turn into a disadvantage. Strong leadership can very quickly turn into headstrong leadership. Therefore, it seems to me that robust oversight is key In the past few years the LGA—I declare an interest as a vice-president—the Institute for Government and the Centre for Public Scrutiny have all done quite a lot of work on this. The amendment is in line with that sentiment and seeks to ensure that there is independence in terms of the information that is given out and against which a local mayor can be accountable I would be the first to admit that I am a bit of a governance geek. That probably comes back to having served on the Audit Commission. However, just to make it clear that this is not just some odd preoccupation of mine, on Friday the Public Accounts Committee in another place published its document about cities and local growth. It is going through these devolution proposals and its intention is to contribute to the public debate and to government thinking at this early stage. Its report raises many of the same concerns that I have just raised. I shall read out a few lines from one of the recommendations because they are important. It states: "We are not confident that existing arrangements for scrutiny at local level of devolved functions are either robust enough or well supported. Robust and independent scrutiny of the value for money of devolved activities is essential to safeguarding taxpayers’ money, particularly given the abolition of the Audit Commission. Local scrutiny committees are an important mechanism; however, given resource constraints and the absence of independent support", there is a limit to what they can do. It then goes on to talk about the absence of "independent institutional scrutiny", and recommends that by November 2016 the Government should come forward with plans to ensure that local scrutiny of devolved functions will take place and will be robust While I confidently expect the Minister to resist this amendment, I hope that he will commit at least to making sure that this report of the Public Accounts Committee is read, understood, and, more importantly, taken into account as this Bill progresses. It is always easier to get it right at the beginning that to retrofit these things into something once it is passed into law. I beg to move.