My Lords, while it is clearly right to explore these issues, I strongly urge the Minister to resist these amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned London, but she will know that London is almost a city state. The circumstances are very different, and with very different funding arrangements. She mentioned the lower profit available to operators in London, but the reason for that is that they are taking less risk than in a non-regulated service.
This is all about accountability. If we are not careful, we might well find ourselves hurtling down the same avenues as we did during the debates on the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill last year. Combined authorities with elected mayors, or any other local authority with an elected mayor, are very different beasts from local authorities that have not gone down the route of having an elected mayor. The appointment of a directly elected mayor provides those authorities with a considerable battalion of powers where they have agreed devolution deals with the Government. That of course includes the power to franchise local bus services.
Authorities with agreed devolution deals already have the necessary consent to pursue their new bus franchising powers and will be allowed to do so when the relevant parts of this Bill are brought into operation. However, I do not believe that that should be the case for other local authorities. They have not been through the process of acquiring what could be said to be a higher status in terms of local accountability. It is a fact that those authorities with elected mayors and agreed devolution deals already have the powers by virtue of that process. We know that the process is not necessarily straightforward and requires hard-fought agreement between the authorities that comprise those areas.