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Local Transport Bill [HL]

My Lords, one of the things that I learnt from my time in local government was that there is great value in getting points in early so that local authorities can take them on board and respond—that there is interaction. So there is no great difficulty with what the noble Lord is suggesting. It would make a lot of sense. Hopefully some of those issues can be resolved because at the end of it, we want to provide decent quality services. The local authority wants that. It is not in the operators’ interest to fail to provide decent quality services. In fact, my noble friend Lord Snape gave a very good example of where important investment comes in. Bus operators can see that there is a market to be tapped, and that it has a commercial benefit for them. Yes, of course we would want to see that take place.