London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I was a little worried when he began. I thought he had been got at by the Whips Office and had been turned into a more left-wing version, but as he got through his speech I realised that the authentic voice of Christchurch was once again being heard.

I congratulate my hon. Friend, who does such a great service on private Bills, which the promoters understandably would like to be nodded through in the minimum time. I echo his praise for our hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who is not somebody who wants to see legislation nodded through, but engages in the debate and the process. We should commend him for that. Without my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, some rather nasty parts of private Bills would go through without anybody raising an eyebrow. Even if his amendments do not always find favour, it is essential that they are debated and considered, and that people can see their merits or otherwise. I hope that plays its part in making the legislation that goes through this House better than it would otherwise be. So I am grateful to him for the amendments that he tabled.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch set me a challenge to give him some guidance as to which amendment I thought was the one that he should press, so I shall try to give—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that preamble to the remarks that he is now going to make on the Bill. I just remind him and his hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) that it is up to the Chair to decide where the votes are, but obviously the hon. Member for Christchurch will need to consider which amendments he wishes to move or, with leave, withdraw. Mr Davies, if you could come to the amendments, rather than the general skills, excellent though they are, of the hon. Member for Christchurch in considering private Bills, I would be grateful.

[Philip Davies]

I, too, am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. You are of course right, so without further ado I will get straight down to the amendments.

Amendment 21 is one that I cannot possibly support, but I understand where my hon. Friend is coming from. I am not entirely sure—perhaps the promoters of the Bill can let us know—but I presume that the Bill, and clause 16 in particular, was introduced to enable the implementation of “An Electric Vehicle Delivery Plan for London”, a document issued by the Mayor in May 2009. I presume that that document was the genesis of the Bill. Clause 16 currently states:

“A London authority may provide and operate charging apparatus for electrically powered motor vehicles”.

The amendment would make that:

“A London authority shall provide”.

It seems to me that the merits of the amendment, as far as the Bill is concerned, can be determined by asking whether the clause would fulfil the pledge and the ideas behind the Mayor’s document.

The Mayor’s document sets some ambitious targets for the use of electric vehicles. It states that the delivery plan will

“Work with the boroughs and other partners to deliver 25,000 charge points across London by 2015… including a network of fast charge sites—500 on-street, 2,000 in off-street public car parks, station car parks”.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East knows much more than I do about the number of these things in London and their geography, so perhaps he can say whether the Bill, as currently drafted, with the word “may”, would deliver the numbers set out in the document, or whether it needs the harsher wording, with “shall”, to hit those targets, because the document seems to be the genesis of the Bill. Having said that, whether we agree with the Mayor’s ambitions is a slightly different matter.

My view, for what it is worth, is that we should not compel London local authorities to provide and operate charging apparatus in every public off-street car park, as amendments 21 and 22 propose. There might be no demand in certain parts of some London boroughs. We might not really want local authorities doing it themselves anyway. Perhaps we would like other people involved in provision, not least to get some competition going. Competition, of course, is the best way to drive down prices. It seems to me that the monopoly my hon. Friend envisages, unusually, would not be in the best interests of the consumer or the taxpayer, who might end up paying unnecessarily to have charging apparatus installed in places where it is not needed and never will be. Putting such apparatus in every public off-street car park under the control of the local authority seems extremely demanding. It is something that I cannot support. I urge my hon. Friend not to press amendments 21 and 22, and on that basis, I could not support amendment 23, as it is consequential to amendments 21 and 22.

Unusually, my hon. Friend and I have got off on a bad footing, and the situation is not particularly helped by amendment 24; we may have started off badly with amendments 21, 22 and 23, but we appear to be going downhill rapidly with amendment 24. It would strike out subsection (2), which allows a London authority to

“grant a person permission to provide or operate charging apparatus”—

in effect, on its behalf. It seems that, strangely, my hon. Friend wants to prevent the local authority from introducing any private enterprise, in effect ensuring that all such things are state owned and run. That is an extraordinary state of affairs to be asked to support.