Transport for London Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Certainly, my amendments—I will go through them one by one—are designed to improve the Bill in the way she suggests. I will add a slight rider to what she says, however, because I think that TfL, as a public authority, has a slighter wider duty. We see that in the way it has disposed of assets in a cavalier fashion, entered into inappropriate deals with property developers and—perhaps most worrying of all in the context of the Bill—set out at this stage to say that its future priority, perhaps understandably, given the amount of money it is losing to the Treasury, will be to maximise the commercial opportunity of the land it holds. That sounds fine, if the money is going to subsidise fare payers. However, if it produces the type of development that is harmful to the London economy as a whole, and to Londoners—for example, by excluding affordable housing from its prime sites—then I think it needs to be brought up short. The problem is that TfL is trying to do several things at once. Yes, I am sure that it is trying to do as much as it can to subsidise its operations, but at the same time it is taking very risky steps in the deals it is doing with property developers. Part of that will be cured by the withdrawal of clause 5, but not all of it.