Grand Committee

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the debate. I am well aware of what was intended in the 2008 Act and have no comments to make on it. However, in the past week the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State announced in the Commons that he was proposing a review of the transport commissioners’ duties. Apparently it is a quinquennial arrangement and the duties must be reviewed on that basis. I will draw two or three matters to the Minister’s attention, with a view to him raising with the Department for Transport certain issues that should be included in the review.

The first concerns the management of highways. This Act also elevated the position of local authorities in the management of the highways. The Minister will recall the use of the words,

“broaden a lot of the penalties”.

The traffic commissioners have a duty to bring before a traffic commissioner’s court the bus operators whose vehicles either do not keep time or run erratically. That is perfectly reasonable, but in a number of cases the operators concerned find it almost impossible to run a regular and reliable service because the highway is obstructed. It may be obstructed by roadworks, which are often carried out in a very undisciplined fashion, or by inconsiderate parking. These are matters over which the local authority and not the bus operator has control.

What I am asking in the first place is that, where a bus service is shown to be unreliable, if the traffic commissioner believes that the highway authority is not discharging its duty to provide a highway along which a reasonable bus service may be operated, they should have the ability to summon the director of highways, or whoever in a local authority is responsible, to give an explanation of the way they are contributing to the operation of a decent bus service. This is not meant to be divisive, but we are moving into an era of partnership working between local authorities and bus operators, and it is reasonable that a balance should be made, and that where a local authority is not playing by the rules, it should be answerable to the traffic commissioner.

The second matter that I will raise—again, I would like it to be addressed in the upcoming review—is the question of goods vehicle operating centres. Traffic commissioners have the duty of approving premises where goods vehicle operators are based. That includes the facilities for maintaining and stabling the vehicles, and having access to the highway. However, the traffic commissioner is not allowed to take his consideration any further than the gates of the depot. Sometimes—this is happening more and more as farms become heavy haulage depots—you will find that heavy lorries are making their way on to totally unsuitable roads. I am suggesting that the traffic commissioner’s discretion should extend to the point where the lorry will meet a main road, and that we should not let our lanes be devastated by heavy lorries that not only destroy the road surface and are dangerous but make for unfair competition.

That brings me to my third issue: the question of the competition authorities. As the Minister said in opening, the traffic commissioner licenses new local bus services but has no discretion whatever about what a local bus service should be. For example, if the noble Lord, Lord Davies, runs a bus service that runs on the hour and the half hour, I can come along and register a service at 57 and 27 minutes past the hour so that I run my bus three minutes in front of his and take all his passengers. I am asking that there should be an element of discretion in the traffic commissioner agreeing to a licence. Where the people who are trying to register a new bus service can be shown to be acting in a predatory way, which is not difficult to judge, the traffic commissioner should insist that journeys are spaced out evenly so that the public get a better service and we do not engage in the thoroughly wasteful bus wars that have been going on since 1985 and still flare up in some areas.

I am quite pleased with the order being laid before us because it makes more efficient use of traffic commissioners’ time, and I hope they will be run better. However, some small additions to their duties ought to be considered in the review that is to take place.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the Minister for his introduction to this statutory instrument. I indicate from the beginning that I thoroughly endorse the principal objective of the instrument—namely, that the link between a traffic commissioner and a geographical area should end and that we should have the degree of flexibility that the SI envisages for the operation of the traffic commissioners and, particularly, the head of the service.

It was suggested yesterday that in the question I asked in the House, which I thought was suitably penetrating, I was in fact too kind to the Minister, so the Minister today will not expect me to be too kind to Ministers on consecutive days. I therefore have one or two points that are slightly more abrasive than my general introduction, in which I just said that I support the thrust of the SI, not least because it builds on legislation that was passed by the previous Administration in 2008 with regard to the commissioners.

I am not quite as constructive as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has been with his questions about the traffic commissioners. I am having difficulty in understanding the timing of this SI. Why are we doing this when the Minister announced earlier this week that he was reviewing the whole question of traffic commissioners? It seems odd to have a statutory instrument recasting the position of traffic commissioners that is predicated on the assumption that there will be a review of the whole situation in the very near future. It looks to me as if that is back to front, and I should like an explanation from the Minister for why the SI has been tabled at this particular moment, although it has merit.

I appreciate the points that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, made. There is no doubt at all that the Minister will appreciate that the punctuality of services is absolutely critical to their use by the public. This is particularly so in rural areas, where people often have very limited cover when they are waiting at bus stops. Therefore, I very much appreciate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. If competition is introduced and two bus companies provide a service, it is better that the commissioner regulates those services to the benefit of the public rather than allow the free wind of competition to enable one bus company to pre-empt the other by running the service just in advance of its competitor. I hope and expect that the traffic commissioners will attend to that issue. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, is to be commended for having raised it and I hope that the Minister will respond to that point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Popat]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, raises an important issue. I am glad the taxpayer is not subsidising the transport operators, whereas the taxpayer is subsidising or making free bus passes available to people aged over 60. So I am glad that the £2 billion is not going to the transport industry directly but is for the benefit of the people who use public transport.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

I understand the point. It does not go directly as a subsidy to the buses. However, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, is indicating that it is not an advantage to the industry that there is a guarantee from the public purse that certain people will have their fares paid for by the Government and be able to travel free—a position that we all endorse and are in favour of. If he does not think that that subsidy is an advantage to the industry, I wonder which world he is living in.

[Lord Bradshaw]

If I may reply to that, the bus companies are not reimbursed for the fare; they are reimbursed for a percentage of the fare, which, on average, is about 40% of what people would pay anyway. So it is not a question of handing over sacks of money to the bus companies. They have to provide more capacity to carry the extra people.