My Lords, having heard the exchanges on both sides, I wish to raise a couple of points with the noble Baroness who moved this amendment. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, made a relevant point when
he talked about the difference between accidents involving buses and those involving trains and aeroplanes. The Croydon tragedy has just been mentioned. All I will say about that is that three separate inquiries into that tragedy are taking place at present. If a similar number of passengers had been killed by a bus overturning on a bend, there would not be three separate inquiries but an inquest into the deaths. That might go some way to underline my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s point but it also supports the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that we have different procedures. Just because we have different procedures does not mean that we are any less concerned about bus safety.
5.30 pm
The noble Baroness’s proposed new subsection (1)(a)(iii) states that the confidential safety reporting scheme has to be,
“entirely independent of any bus operators’ control”.
There are hundreds of smaller bus operators in this country. Again, I give way to nobody in my concern for safety with regard to bus operations. I reassure my noble friend Lord Berkeley that I travel on buses from time to time. Indeed, during a previous debate on the Bill I was unwise enough to criticise the sounds and display on a particular bus route and pointed out that hearing the audio at every bus stop was considerably annoying if you are on the bus for 40 minutes. For that I was quite roundly denounced by one or two noble Lords who are in the Chamber at present and, while I did not exactly receive hate mail, people on Facebook and its ilk—I am not a participant—certainly expressed some strong views about my comments. Indeed, it was suggested that I should be barred from LRT henceforth because I had had the temerity to say that I found the noise somewhat obtrusive. I therefore hope that I can reassure my noble friend that I travel on buses from time to time.
I point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that the amendment would place a considerable extra burden on private operators, particularly smaller ones. Of course, most of the companies that operate in London are major bus companies with garages in various other parts of the country, while that is not true for smaller operators. Has the noble Baroness thought about the additional burden that would be placed on such operators, and would she consider exempting operators with a significantly smaller number of vehicles from the amendment?