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Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [HL]

In general I support the amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. However, first I want to wish the Minister a happy new year. We are going to be talking a lot in the coming months so we should start on a good note. Although I know I should not do it too much, I shall draw on my position as Leader of Essex County Council when speaking to these amendments. As the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has said, much of this concerns capturing accurate data in order actually to deliver a smartcard. While we all support the aims of this legislation, the timescale for the Government to deliver it is tight and I want to offer them some help by explaining what is already happening in Essex. I do so because I agree totally with the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, that smartcards are the long-term answer and we need to develop this system. It is the obvious way to stop misuse of this legislation, to have effective administration and control of public expenditure. I would like to say what happens in Essex. Essex County Council co-ordinates a very effective concessionary fares scheme. It involves 12 district councils and a unitary authority—1.6 million people. We are developing considerable relationships with some of the leading experts in intelligent transport systems around the world; so we have already done a lot of work on it. We have established a forward programme of work that will easily be adapted to smartcard technology. We are demonstrating a project in Essex that could be rolled out nationwide. We are adjacent to London and are likely to work with London on it. We were going to come on to this later, but there was a suggestion that the Secretary of State might need to operate the scheme nationally. I suggest that local authorities could develop—and I am happy to volunteer Essex to pilot the scheme—a smartcard regime that could be operated by local authorities nationally. You could have an identical card with different logos. The south-west, the north-west, Manchester or London could have different logos on the same sort of card. We have already made progress on this. We are developing it. We have all sorts of contacts around the world regarding what is happening and contacts with companies developing this. This is probably not the appropriate time, but we could pass on our developments and volunteer our help in turning it into a national scheme. That is my contribution to this part of the discussion. I would like to hear what the Minister has to say to that.