My Lords, I support these amendments and am grateful to my noble friend Lady Jones for setting out the arguments so clearly as to why we do not need the Secretary of State’s approval for any authority that does not have a mayor. Let us be clear about Cornwall. It is not mentioned by name in the Bill, but we have heard lots of statements from Ministers that this one authority—which does not have a mayor and probably never will—will be allowed to have a franchising service. This is quite surprising. Devolution for Cornwall has involved a lot of proposed changes in health and social security. There is no money there, but they are going along with it. However,
as I mentioned on the first day in Committee, they are going ahead now as if they had a franchise, but on a voluntary basis. The bus companies concerned are fully supportive—I talked about integrated ticketing, timetabling, routes and so on—but they are doing it without the need to apply for franchising because it is going to happen anyway. That is the impression I get. So why do the Government believe that they have to impose this ridiculous approval process, as the noble Lord, Lord True, outlined, for authorities that do not have mayors? It seems a complete waste of time. Since it is being done on a voluntary basis, at least in one county, to achieve what I believe will be a very successful outcome, I will be interested to hear the Minister’s explanation of why mayors are good and everybody else is bad. It is a bit like Animal Farm in the early days but I will not go on about that.
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