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Local Transport Bill [HL]

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 18, 147, 148, 152, 153 and 156 to 158. Again, these are relatively minor and technical amendments. Amendment No. 18 relates to quality partnership schemes and specifically the power for the Secretary of State and the Welsh Ministers to make regulations about admissible objections. As noble Lords may recall from earlier debates, the idea of admissible objections is that bus operators should have the opportunity to object to requirements relating to fares, frequencies or timings in a quality partnership scheme which they believe are unachievable or commercially unviable, but they should not have the opportunity to veto local authority proposals on spurious grounds. It is therefore envisaged that the traffic commissioners will play a role in determining whether operators’ objections are admissible, in cases where the operator and the local authority cannot reach agreement. The Government have in mind that a traffic commissioner may need to call on an independent expert to assist him, in which case it may be necessary for that expert to be paid for his or her assistance. Amendment No. 18 simply enables future regulations to provide for such payments. Amendments Nos. 147 and 148 are about the powers of the traffic commissioners where a bus operator is failing to run his services properly. The Bill already includes a new power for the traffic commissioners to order a failing operator to expend money to improve his services. The amendments make it clear that the traffic commissioner can be more specific about the precise improvements on which the operator is to spend money delivering, and that he can also require money to be spent on improving facilities such as information at bus stops. Amendments Nos. 152, 153 and 156 to 158 relate to bus passenger representation. Clause 69 already empowers the Secretary of State through secondary legislation to confer new functions on the Rail Passengers Council—commonly known as Passenger Focus—to allow them to represent the interests of bus as well as rail passengers. We considered this issue a moment ago in our debate on the previous group of amendments. The amendments now under discussion provide flexibility to allow the remit of Passenger Focus to be broadened to cover matters relating not only to bus and coach services but to tram services and passenger transport facilities. The department will consult on whether Passenger Focus should represent tram passengers in due course. On Question, Motion agreed to.