Local Transport Bill [HL] Bill

The noble Earl has set out an interesting proposal. I certainly agree that there is often merit in ensuring that services in a quality partnership scheme are not varied too frequently, as that could undermine the objectives of the scheme. Thinking of my own experience, I expect a local operator to change its services in the spring and the autumn to reflect different patterns of movement and perhaps also to time with school and college terms and so on. This is not a precise science. The noble Lord is right that the public like to have certainty and knowledge of frequency. I have been particularly pleased in our locality about the use of real-time information, which certainly seems to encourage more passengers; they seem more reassured. Of course, technology means that people can expect to get localised bus timings downloaded to their mobile phones. All those things help to encourage the use of buses and encourage people back on to them. Moving away from that, I do not think that Amendment No. 12 is necessary because of the provisions which would be inserted into Section 114 of the Transport Act 2000 by Clause 12(4). Taken with Clause 42 of this Bill, that would enable a local authority making a quality partnership scheme to place appropriate restrictions on registrations, or variations or cancellations of registrations. Where these registration restrictions applied, the traffic commissioner could not accept an application from an operator to register a service, or to vary or cancel a registration, without first consulting the local authority that made the scheme and any operator that might be affected by the application. If a scheme includes registration restrictions, it must also specify criteria for the traffic commissioner to apply in deciding whether or not an application will be detrimental to the provision of local services under the scheme. Having considered any representations made in response to the consultation and having applied the registration criteria, the commissioner must then decide whether to accept the application, disallow it or require it to be modified in some way. In the case of variation or cancellation, it would be possible for one of the criteria to be that the service must have been operated, without variation, for a minimum length of time. Even if that is not a criterion as such, there may be other reasons why, by applying other criteria, a variation or cancellation might be refused. There may also be cases where within a comparatively short term a variation might be beneficial and should not be ruled out; for example, if a service connects with a local train and the train timetable has changed. We would need flexibility for that. I am sure the noble Earl would accept that one would not want to disallow such a variation simply because six months, or whatever time was specified, had not elapsed since the previous variation. I hope that the noble Earl will accept that there are ways of dealing with this matter under the Bill as it stands, and that he will feel able to withdraw that amendment. Amendment No. 14 covers the same subject and I fully understand the purpose behind it. A longer period of notice of registrations, variations or cancellations would certainly make it easier for the local transport authority and other operators to plan ahead. There have been similar suggestions from various consultees, with various periods proposed. However, we argue that the amendment is unnecessary because the 56-day period which normally applies to local service registrations is not specified in primary legislation but in regulations made under Section 6 of the Transport Act 1985. Any change to the prescribed period could also be specified in regulations. The notice period has already been amended once—originally it was only 42 days and in 2002 it was increased to the current 56 days. The regulation-making power is sufficiently broad to allow different periods to be prescribed in different circumstances, so it would certainly be possible to prescribe 56 days for services wholly outside the area of a quality partnership scheme, and 90 days, or any other period for that matter, for services wholly or partly inside the area. The Department for Transport is intending to review a number of aspects of the existing regulations on local service registration in the light of the new provisions of this Bill and the related policies. One option may be to provide for different registration periods in particular circumstances, but this would be done only following detailed consultation with stakeholders, and there would certainly be plenty of opportunities to set out the case for longer periods of notice for bus registrations, whether in a quality partnership area or more generally. All this can already be done under existing primary legislation and without the need for a specific amendment to the Bill. I think that that addresses the issue that the noble Earl has raised and I therefore hope that he will withdraw his amendment.