My Lords, I shall try to be brief. These amendments are what are often termed “no-brainers”. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, explained, the purpose of these amendments is to ensure greater participation and involvement with passenger groups in the process for developing a franchise scheme and the consultation and throughout the life of an enhanced partnership scheme. During Second Reading, a number of noble Lords commented that there was little mention of passengers in the Bill, so these amendments address that point.
I know that bus operators do a huge amount of work to ensure that they engage with the people who actually use their services. After all, who are they providing their services for? They are for passengers. On what basis would bus operators, and local authorities for that matter, not want to seek the views and opinions of the people who will be using their services?
Organisations such as Bus Users UK exist for the very purpose of giving passengers a voice, and do great work with operators, including holding local bus surgeries where passengers can engage directly with operators. Together with operator and local authority open days, these events are invaluable. Passengers are able to give solid feedback to those actually running the services, and in turn operators can inform and explain their decisions. Those decisions may not always be popular, but to my mind people are much more likely to accept a decision if the reasons for it are helpfully and properly explained.
I hope that my noble friend has a piece of paper in front of him marked: “Agree to consider”, or something similar. Even if he cannot advise the Committee to accept the amendments in the form that we see them today, I hope he will agree with the sentiment and spirit in which they have been brought forward so that we might see some government amendment which would achieve the same effect, at a later stage.
4.45 pm