My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 125 in my name, which as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has just explained, changes “may” to “must”. We strongly welcome the move to open data. For far too long, we have all accepted, possibly with some grumbling, a situation where there is a plethora of information on train services, but very little information—outside London—on bus services.
I note the comments of the Delegated Powers Committee on the lack of clarity about what will happen to this information. Although the Explanatory Notes tell us that the powers given to the Secretary of State in this clause would,
“enable a single repository of information to be created”,
and that,
“The information … would be open to the public and could be used by software developers”,
in fact none of that is clear from Clause 17. Clause 17 is in effect an orphan clause, with no apparent reason or purpose. The amendment would ensure that the regulations “must” make the purpose of all this information clear and therefore that it “must” be free to users and passengers.
I support Amendments 124 and 124A in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I also support Amendment 124B because it is obviously logical to extend the information so that it includes numbers of complaints and performance statistics. However, I have some sympathy with bus operators: I have some concern about information on lack of punctuality, because in the bus industry that is largely the result of traffic congestion, which is not the fault of the bus operator. I fear that, if lack of punctuality is reported baldly, general traffic situations could adversely affect judgment on the efficiency of operators. I am interested to hear the Minister’s comments on the use to which the Government plan to put open data.