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Concessionary Bus Travel Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is ever my bent to be encouraging. I am merely indicating that I am not going to have this provision in the Bill because I do not think it is the solution. What I will be encouraging about is this. The Department for Communities and Local Government settlement working group will shortly start discussions with local authorities on the formula grant system and the provision of funding to local authorities over the next few years. Consideration of the funding of the new national bus concession will be taken forward as part of that forum. So there is already a framework for the discussions on which the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, is pressing me. But I hear what he says, as will the members of the Government taking part in that exercise. They will be all too well aware of the strong representations made in our debates on the Bill. I am not convinced that the Bill should be changed to take account of these particular problems. Subsection (2) of the noble Lord’s proposed new clause specifies that a contingency fund will be set up. The extra funding for the national bus concession, up to £250 million a year, already includes an adequate contingency. We are confident that the extra funding we have earmarked is sufficient to cover the total extra costs to local authorities. We are also sensitive to the issue of set-up costs, and the department is working on that in dialogue with the concessionary fares working group. While I recognise the difficulties, what I think the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, is seeking to do is to recast a significant concept of local government finance within the framework of the Bill. There are virtues in the points he has made, but there are other fora in which those have to be deliberated upon and resolved. Reference has been made to Wales during our debate. The current approach whereby local authorities pass on the full costs of their schemes to the Welsh Assembly Government is leading to some very substantial additional costs, and those costs have been increasing every year. In an obvious sense, the Assembly is underwriting all negotiations and all costs being produced by the schemes. We maintain that that is not a good basis on which to ask local authorities to act in developing these schemes. We need to make sure that public funds are spent wisely and, quite straightforwardly, we want an incentive for local authorities to reimburse their costs effectively and by a fair amount. We also want the right of appeal for operators who believe they have been disadvantaged. We have a system where we think the moneys being provided by the taxpayer will be used fairly by operators and taxpayers alike and we are wary of an open-ended position. I am sure noble Lords will recognise the significance of that in the context of the much greater costs in England than obtain in Wales. I recognise the importance of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. This Bill is not the basis for recasting the whole of local government expenditure. We believe that it provides and guarantees a structure within which the resources to which both the Chancellor and the Government are committed for each of the next three years are sufficient to meet the costs of the scheme. They are built into the forward projections on national expenditure. I hope it will be recognised that it would be inappropriate to change the Bill for a concept of local government finance which is still wide open to substantial debate. Indeed, it is not a debate into which we have entered withour partners in quite the way envisaged by the amendment. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.