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Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [HL]

I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, for his best wishes for the new year, which I reciprocate. I am glad to see that he is starting off in a most constructive vein. He has partly made my case on the amendments by indicating that there is much work still to be done on the development of the eventual smartcard ticketing that is required, but I am very grateful to him for his constructive suggestion. It may well be that the department takes it up. Certainly, we have a considerable amount to do The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, was generous enough to say that 2010 would be an appropriate time by which to have a fully operational smartcard. I cannot give him that assurance, but I recognise the significance of the date. I am only too eager to facilitate any help he needs with his particular cards. I want to emphasise that I understand that on the whole these are probing amendments. I reassure the Committee that the Government regard the aim of the amendments of the noble Lord, Bradshaw, as entirely laudable. We are entirely supportive of these proposals, but do not think that the amendments are necessary or desirable. The Bill makes provision for the specification of the permit in regulations; so we will be able, entirely properly, to use secondary legislation to implement the nature of the fully fledged national scheme on smartcard principles—possibly after the help of Essex local authority and the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, if that proves to be an illustration of how this can be done, or possibly through other routes. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, did not want to pre-empt future debates, but he made reference to the fact that the Bill provides for the Secretary of State to take responsibility for all this if necessary. I want to reassure the Committee that we have this objective in mind. Equally clearly, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, was perceptive enough to recognise that if we made this a requirement of the legislation our target date of 2008 would be unrealisable. No one in this Committee, no one who spoke at Second Reading and no one in the country would want to see a delay in implementing this wholly beneficial measure because of substantial technical problems in introducing the most desirable form of permit, which is a smartcard. Nevertheless, in the Bill we indicate that one of the bases is the permit, because that is the concept with which we have to work at present. It isan all-embracing concept, and one that is readily transformable into the smartcard. I assure the Committee that we will work towards those objectives as rapidly as we can, and that we are at one with the spirit behind them. I think it will be recognised, however, that if we accepted the amendments, which are numerous but follow the same theme, that could potentially lead to difficulties with regard to early implementation of this legislation. We are not prepared to do that. I emphasise that we are not fixed in our views on how to arrive at the desired state. We are mindful of the fact that there are many players in this situation, not least, as the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, has reminded us, the local authorities, who play a significant role. Although we will discuss later whether the Secretary of State might be empowered to implement the scheme, we also recognise that there is much merit in working through existing schemes and existing local authorities and establishing best practice as the basis for the nation. By ““the nation””, in this case, I am referring to England, as Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland already have their schemes. I could go into a great deal of technical detail in explaining to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, why I could not accept each of the amendments at present, but that would be otiose when we are discussing the desirable principle upon which these permits should be implemented. I give the obvious rider that we could not possibly introduce the scheme in 2008 on the basis of smartcard principles, but we intend to work towards those objectives as early as possible. The Bill provides the permissive framework, subject to the will of Parliament, whereby we will be able to implement the most desirable form of smartcards at the earliest possible time. I hope the noble Lord will accept, in the spirit of that response, that he can safely withdraw his amendments today.