Bus Services Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-06-29
Topic: Transportation
Tariq Ahmad (Conservative, Centre-right): I will take the noble Lord’s intervention—it sounds like a bit of a school report: "Has improved, but needs improvement". I take that on board. As I have said, I am very cognisant of the need to ensure effective analysis of the Bill. We may not agree on every element of it but it is important that information is provided. I have certainly sought in the early discussions that we have had with noble Lords to stress—it is something that I will stress again—that it is a priority for me to ensure that we not only share relevant information but do so in a timely fashion. If I were sitting on the other Benches—long may that not happen—I would be making an equally valid case, as noble Lords have New Section 113C in Clause 1 stipulates that the local transport authority cannot make an advanced quality partnership scheme unless it is satisfied that the scheme is likely to achieve one or more of the following: improve the quality of local services; reduce or limit traffic congestion, noise or air pollution; increase the use of local services or indeed end or reduce the decline in the use of local services. Amendment 1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, would require the local authority to be absolutely sure that any proposed quality partnership would have the anticipated effect. I believe that, in terms of its practicality, this amendment would make it almost impossible for local authorities to say in totality or with absolute certainty what impact a particular scheme would have before it is introduced. I believe that this more stringent requirement would make the local transport authorities more risk-averse when introducing advanced quality partnership schemes. As a result, authorities may well choose to introduce schemes that fall short of fulfilling their full potential or not bring them forward at all Amendments 2, 3, 4, 5 and 5A deal with the content of the tests that I have mentioned. Under the Bill, local authorities may not make an advanced quality partnership unless they are likely to achieve an improvement in the quality of local services, a reduction or limitation of traffic congestion, noise or air pollution, or an increase in the use of local services. It is then for local authorities to decide what package of standards to introduce under an advanced quality partnership scheme to achieve one or more of these outcomes. These standards will depend on local need and may or may not include requirements relating to ticketing, rural bus services and pollution. The circumstances of individual areas vary and I think that it is right that the advanced quality partnership schemes should be able to reflect this I agree, however, with several noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon that these are important issues. Local authorities need to think very carefully about whether they should include standards in each of these areas in the advanced quality partnership scheme. We intend to recognise this in statutory guidance on these new partnership schemes, which will be issued under new Section 113O of the Transport Act 2000.