Lord Whitty
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Lord Whitty
“Duties of the Secretary of State
Duties of the Secretary of State shall include—(a) drawing up and granting of a licence to a strategic highways company as provided for in section 1, but this duty may be delegated to the Office of Rail Regulation,(b) drawing up and presenting from time to time, and at least every five years, to Parliament for approval a Roads Investment Strategy as provided for in section 3,(c) issuing from time to time directions and guidance under section 4 both to the Office of Rail Regulation and to the licensed strategic highways company,(d) reporting periodically to Parliament on the performance of the strategic highways network.”
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, In moving Amendment 1, I will also speak to the other amendments in my name in this group and comment on some of the others too.
I had hoped that after a lengthy discussion in Committee the Government would have come up with their own draft to address the deficiencies of this part of the Bill, and to clarify the relationship between and responsibilities of the Secretary of State and the various bodies covered by it. Regrettably they have failed to do so. However, they have produced a lot of new documents, many of which are very informative. I thank the Minister for that and for the various briefing sessions that she and her officials have held since that date. However, I have to tell her that, in relation to the issues I am about to raise they have, if anything, confused the situation.
For the benefit of newcomers to this debate, this part of the Bill is intended to place roads investment in a new context by creating a road investment strategy for England and by hiving off the Highways Agency into rather more arm’s-length companies—the strategic highways companies. I very much approve of the first aim but I am not at all sure that the second aim concerning the companies is right.
Noble Lords who are long in the tooth will remember that, going back a bit, I was a roads Minister. It is a pretty dreadful job and is always subject to representations by Members of Parliament and others on which roads should take priority, how much more should be spent and so forth. I would welcome a consistent road investment plan with a strategic direction sustained over a number of years as part of a wider sustainable transport policy. The key point for the Government appears to be that the road investment strategy in the Bill will be somehow free from short-term changes, albeit that some of the documentation that the Minister has provided us with, including the draft licence to which I shall return, says that the Secretary of State can vary the strategy at any time, and, of course, the Treasury still decides the funding—so good luck with that.
In principle, I support the road investment strategy but am unclear why it is absolutely necessary for it to be delivered by new strategic highways companies, and why a corporatised Highways Agency would do the job so much better than the present system of delivery, especially since the Government seem to have denied themselves ways of making a company more effective than the Highways Agency. I do not particularly support all these issues but the Government have clearly said that this is not a stage towards privatisation. Indeed, the Bill makes that clear, and I agree. However, they have also said that the company cannot raise its own capital, with which I disagree as that could smooth out any predations by the Chancellor. The Government also say that it is not allowed to engage in anything approaching road charging, although I note that that part is not yet included in the draft licence to which I referred, so watch that space.
Therefore, the benefits of having a separate company are a little unclear. Nevertheless, I recognise that there could be significant advantages in establishing a company, such as coherence of approach, an ability to engage in contractual innovations and possibly less direct pressure from MPs and other vested interests, although I am sure that the Minister will not be entirely free of that. Such a company could develop a long-term strategy on road safety, to which I will return on later amendments, and on issues such as telemetrics in traffic control, traffic management, road design and meeting environmental standards. However, it will deliver only if that company is itself set in a coherent institutional framework, which is normally the case for any large state-owned company. We need clarity of accountability, including the accountability of Parliament. Regrettably, the Bill does not provide for that.
The Bill refers to the possible appointment of a number of companies as strategic highways companies. The Government have made it clear that they are in reality talking about only one company. However, the Bill talks about the possibility of more than one. When questioned, the Minister and officials rather darkly referred to legal advice from counsel, even though it is clearly contrary to the policy and intention of the Government to have more than one company involved. Amendments 3 to 7 in this group, the first of which is mine, seek to ensure that the Bill makes the intention absolutely clear, and therefore we will be able to judge the Government against that.
More profoundly in the long term, the operation of a new set-up has a lack of clarity about the relationship between the Secretary of State, the company and the monitor or regulator. There is going to be an enhanced Office of Rail Regulation, in which presumably some changes will be made, and there is the matter of accountability to Parliament. The Bill refers to appointment of a company, but during the proceedings in Committee, the Minister, on many occasions, when questioned about the relationship between the Secretary of State and the company, referred us to the licence, which was then already in its sixth draft, and is now a lot longer at 35 pages.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for dealing with these issues so comprehensively. We all share the frustration of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, but we recognise the efforts which the Minister and her officials have put in to keeping us informed. The problem is that so much relies on what is in the draft licence and it is confusing for many of us if that document is constantly changing as we are going through this Bill. If the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has expressed displeasure, the powers that be should be trembling in their shoes and take notice.
The first bit of good news is that the Minister very clearly indicated that the Government have no plans to appoint more than one company and that, whatever it says in the Bill, she was prepared to come forward—I think she said at Third Reading—on the issue of a separate vote of Parliament being required if more than one company were to be appointed in the future. That would go some way to clarifying the position. I still do not totally understand why it is expressed in this way, given the Government’s clear intention in any case. However, I thank the Minister as it partly deals with an issue which is troubling a number of people. The present view is that a single English road network company would be the most effective way of delivering improved roads and transport systems. If a subsequent Government decided that it should be regionalised, a whole lot of other issues then arise. A parliamentary brake on them doing that at least goes some way to meeting that point and I thank the Minister for that.
I am partially reassured by what the Minister said on parliamentary accountability, but I am still not clear whether that means that the Secretary of State can be asked in Parliament about the same range of things that he or she can currently be asked about. In other words, is there any change? That important issue will undoubtedly be raised by MPs of all parties when the Bill reaches the Commons.
The central issue of why my noble friends and I felt we had to raise the whole context in which the company was being set up, and the relationship between it and the Secretary of State, is the use of the term “licence” and the use of the content of the licence to explain everything about how the Government intend to conduct the new structure. I think that the Minister came as close as she dared in saying, “Well maybe we should never have called it a licence in the first place”. I think that if she took that further step, we could all sit down and applaud. However, it is very confusing because the Bill refers to “appointment”, which in some cases is the granting of a licence. Therefore, although it is a single state company and not a commercial company in the normal sense, and although there are examples of licences being given to state-owned companies, I think that using the term “licence” in one place and “appointment” in another without describing the process through which the Minister has to go or how the regulator is to enforce the terms of that licence is wrong.
Lord Berkeley
I shall be brief in speaking to this group of amendments because we have discussed at some length the licence for the strategic highways company. My Amendment 9 is a provision similar to what Network Rail now has. I was interested in the Minister’s comment that it is a licence for a commercial model and that the strategic highways company is not going to be commercial. I do not know whether Network Rail was ever commercial in her definition of the word, but it certainly is not now and I notice that the Government have not tried to change the licence to reflect any alteration. Perhaps she has a quick view on that. The draft licence that we received on 3 November was certainly an improvement on the previous version, for which I am very grateful.
The only other thing I wish to comment on in this group is my Amendment 17, which is to do with the duties of the strategic highways company. Whether they should go in a licence or in some other document, I do not know, but the draft licence from the Department for Transport is a licence to build roads, to take into account environmental concerns and to do it reasonably efficiently. Given experience of legislation over the years, there is a need to have in the Bill, for preference, or in a licence, if it must be that way, a wider role and wider responsibilities for this company to go cross-modal. That includes looking at road and rail—I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group—passenger as well as freight, efficiencies, travel choices, developments in sustainable locations, as sustainability is very important in all this, and different modes to secure the economic, social and environmental gains jointly and severally. I do not think that these are in the draft licence at the moment. If the Minister would look at this again and see whether some—preferably all—these issues could go into a licence, I would be much happier that the strategic highways company was going to be part of a wider transport and environmental structure, taking into account the needs of customers, the environmental needs, roads, railways and developments in local transport. With that short introduction, I beg to move.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I have Amendment 10 in this group. Again, as in the previous debate, my noble friend Lord Berkeley has put his finger on another lacuna in the Bill. Nowhere does the Bill spell out the functions and duties of the proposed strategic highways company. There is a whole schedule, 26 pages long, which largely consists of adding,
“or a strategic highways company”,
but does not actually say what that company should do. I find this extraordinary and not consistent with earlier circumstances in which we have set up public bodies or corporations to do a particular job, some of which are still doing it, where there was clarity in the legislation as to those functions. Those functions have to be economic, social and environmental these days. The Government should at least consider making sure, at later stages, that the Bill spells out the central duties of the companies. I hope that the Minister will take that away.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, again we have a wide range of amendments in this group. I shall focus on the issues that have been raised by the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Whitty. We derive from these amendments that they see advantage in the company being issued with a licence: we covered that discussion a few minutes ago. I want to be clear that safety and other duties are being transferred to the company by virtue of its appointment as the highways authority for the strategic road network. These, together with essential environmental duties in existing legislation, will apply to the company. I also make it clear that the new company will be bound by the network management duty in the Traffic Management Act 2004, a duty which would be difficult to perform without co-operating with other local highways authorities.
Sustainable travel, though, is a different kettle of fish. It is an issue of wider transport strategy and policy, which is a matter for the Secretary of State to determine. However, many issues raised in these amendments that may not currently be covered in legislation to the extent proposed—for example, sustainable development, engaging communities or conducting research and development—will be the subject of binding statutory directions and guidance, which is the long title that we have given the licence issued to the company by the Secretary of State. I am sure that noble Lords will have looked at the recently published drafts.
I have the advantage of a marked-up copy, so I can see how extensively all those issues have now been written into the licence, in very significant detail. For example, on the environment the licence holder must:
“Seek to minimise carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases from its operations; adapt to operate its network in a changing climate; and, where relevant, assist the Government in meeting its wider greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and climate change commitments”.
We can see, in each area, that there is very substantial language. On safety, there is language focusing in great detail on these issues, so that they are deeply embedded, as there is, in other places, on collaboration. So it is there in the licence, or, as we are calling it now, the statutory directions and guidance. To me, it is crucial that they are in that document because, of all the documents, it would be the living document that most impacted the company on a regular basis. We want to make sure that those issues are to the fore and centre, right in the eyeline of the new strategic highways company. Directions issued by the Government have legal force and, together with the independent scrutiny of the monitor, which is there to enforce, will ensure that the company is accountable for what it does.
In listening to your Lordships, I understand that there would be a measure of comfort in echoing some of these key issues in the Bill. To me, it is important that they are in the licence because that is where they will drive behaviour and the enforcement capacity is genuinely there. I can see an argument for making sure that these issues are being given the attention that noble Lords wish, particularly for public reassurance. Two stand out—road safety and the environment—as well as co-operation. I can therefore make a commitment to your Lordships that I could come back before Third Reading with an amendment that would impose those provisions as high-level duties on the company in respect of these fundamental matters. As I say, my personal view is that they are where they need to be to have effect but, if it will provide reassurance to the public in general and your Lordships in particular that they are being sufficiently recognised, this is the way in which to tackle them with a great deal more detail, direction and energy within the content of the statutory directions. We could work a way to put those three high-level duties into the Bill.
In this group are Amendments 22 and 24, which relate to setting the road investment strategy and removing subsection (6), which may provide an element of confusion. However, given that it has not been raised, I will not pursue the matter but would be glad to explain to anyone why we think that those amendments miss the point.
Lord Whitty
“( ) The strategic highways company shall be responsible for the road safety performance of the network and the improvement of the network’s road infrastructure safety rating, which shall be overseen by the Office of Rail Regulation.”
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I shall speak also to the other amendments standing in my name in this group. In doing so, I need to declare a non-pecuniary interest as the chair of the Road Safety Foundation, which today—if I may make a quick advertisement—published a couple of reports on making road safety pay and the state of British roads. I commend them to the Minister, as I am sure that she will learn from them, and perhaps she would pass on my thanks to her colleague, Robert Goodwill, for attending their launch.
Although some good work on road safety is being done in the department and despite the slightly more encouraging words in response to the previous group of amendments, the problem is that safety does not feature in the Bill. However, the creation of a strategic highways company ought to provide an opportunity for a step change in road safety on the strategic network.
It is often said—and rightly so—that our motorways and most, although not all, of our trunk roads are very safe. In relative terms that is true and it is certainly true in terms of passenger miles. However, it is also true that, because of the intensity of traffic on the motorway system in particular and the severity of the incidents that occur, the number of accidents constitutes nearly 40% of all those killed or seriously injured on our roads. The foundation has calculated that that costs the economy of the country the equivalent of £0.7 billion a year in terms of Highways Agency roads alone. The number of dead and seriously injured on the roads exceeds the total number of people killed in all workplaces in the country in a year. That is a very important fact and it is one that the new highways company is going to have to face up to.
There are essentially four elements of road safety improvement: driver behaviour, vehicle design, traffic management and road design. The last two are clearly the responsibility of the strategic highways company, and so they should be. They also influence behaviour and can interact with the better design of cars. The Highways Agency needs to carry over into the new company the responsibilities that it already has for road safety but it needs to give them an additional boost by making it clear that one of the objectives of investing in roads—in design engineering, in traffic management, in the telemetrics that it deploys and in the design of protection barriers and so forth—needs to be maximising improvements in road safety. That is not clear in the Bill.
As I said, there is a big opportunity to make a step change here, but the step change and the need to make this clear also have a down side. If, as I have just said, a single, quasi-independent, separately incorporated company is responsible—on its premises and with its assets—for more deaths than every workplace in the land, there are issues of liability and litigation to be faced up to. In the Bill, the responsibility for that should clearly rest with the company but there needs to be some oversight of it. As with the ORR, which plays a very important role in enforcing rail safety, the monitor/regulator on the road side needs to enforce the safety requirements on the company.
It is also true that all other businesses where safety is an issue are covered by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley said earlier. If the new company is not a Crown company, the exemption does not apply. It is therefore even more crucial that the issue of safety is written and embedded in everything that the company does, and that is reflected in the Bill.
The Minister referred to high-level duties for the company, which she could perhaps at a later stage write into the Bill. That would include, in the context in which she made those remarks, references to safety. Not only does safety investment need to be seen as part of every investment decision, but the investments have to be right, because the rate of return on safety investment is much higher than that on other road improvements in many cases.
My amendments are fourfold. The key amendment, Amendment 15, would put the responsibility for safety clearly and squarely on the company. Amendment 20 would ensure that the standards being set by the Government for the company to perform to include road safety and the setting of effective benchmarks and targets. Amendment 23 would ensure that safety projects for investment in the road investment strategy are appraised on their own merits and not just subsumed into larger projects. My noble friend Lord Berkeley will speak to Amendment 44, which deals with the safety role of the regulator. Amendment 50, in my name, would include road safety in the functions explicitly to be transferred to the strategic highways company. That combination of amendments should achieve the high-level duties to which the Minister referred.
The Government have at least taken some note of the discussion on road safety issues in Committee. They have brought forward Amendment 19 in this group, which refers not to the central role of road safety in the operation of the company but to the investment strategy—not directly to the company itself. It states that the Secretary of State must,
“have regard, in particular, to the effect of the Strategy on … the environment, and … the safety of users of highways”.
The phrase “have regard to” is probably the meekest legislative obligation that could be written into the Bill. This is repeated in Part 5.9 of the draft licence, which states that the licence holder,
“must have due regard to the need to protect and improve the safety of the network as a whole”.
It then goes into a bit more detail, which sounds slightly firmer, but the phrase “have due regard to” makes it sound as if safety issues are not an objective of the strategy but a constraint on the strategy. It needs to be clearly written and embedded in the decision-making of the body all the way through. Some things that the Minister said and some things reflected in the draft licence suggest that that is the Government’s intention, but that needs to be clear in the Bill. Amendment 15, leaving aside the others, would make it clear so that none could gainsay it.
It would be sensible for the House and the Government to accept that road safety is a big issue in our strategic network and will continue to be so. There is an opportunity for the new company, with a coherent, consistent and inviolate road investment strategy, to give due priority to road safety in a much more substantial way. The phrase “have regard to” is very weak; my amendment is much stronger. If the Minister is not prepared to accept it, I hope that the House—or Parliament, at some stage, will accept that formulation. I beg to move.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I shall not reply on the wider issues of the role of the monitor, in which debate on this group has become engaged. I will concentrate simply on the issue of road safety. The Minister, who I thought in her response to the previous group was moving in my direction, has greatly disappointed me in her reply to this one. That belies the good work that her department is doing and has done for many years on road safety and the opportunity that the new company would have to improve it.
I am also sorry that I am falling out with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on the issue of liability. The point I am making is that in certain aspects of road safety—design of roads, traffic management, use of telemetrics and speed controls, information and signing—there is a vital role to be played by the highways authorities, in particular one with the resources, level of responsibility and intensity of traffic which the strategic highways company will have.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
I do not disagree with a single word of what the noble Lord has just said about what should be the responsibilities of the strategic highways company. My fear earlier was that he was extending it to matters which are really the responsibility of other bodies.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, in all areas of safety and liability, there may be contributions by many factors. Frequently there is contribution to negligence by people in other areas. That may apply to drivers as well, but there are some firm responsibilities on those who are responsible for the design, management and control of the roads. That area of improvement in road safety has been the least developed until relatively recently. The improvements which have been made have been made largely as a result of general improvements to the roads rather than by a focus on road safety improvements, except on a few issues.
As I said, the creation of the company gives us the opportunity of a step change in delivery of road safety on our strategic network. That means giving as clear a signal as possible that this is indeed, to use the Minister’s words earlier, a high duty on the new company. That needs to be expressed unambiguously in the Bill. The words “have due regard to” safety are neither belt nor braces. It is not an objective of the company; nor is it embedding and inculcating that through everything that the company does. If we want to do that, we need to write safety large in the responsibility of the company. If the Minister goes back to her previous remarks about looking at higher duties to be written into the Bill, leaving aside all the other amendments in the group, her adoption of my Amendment 15 would achieve just that. As she has made it clear that she is not prepared to accept it, to try to ensure that road safety is a major function of the new organisation, I need to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Whitty
“( ) Before establishing a strategic highways company, the Secretary of State must consult all highways authorities in the area specified under subsection (1)(a) responsible for roads in that area other than the roads specified under subsection (1)(b), and this consultation must cover—
(a) the structure of the new organisation,(b) the appointment of at least one non-executive director representing those authorities to the board of the new company, and(c) any other matter which the Secretary of State deems relevant.”
Lord Whitty
My Lords, Amendment 16 is about the relationship between the new company and the other highways authorities—essentially the local authorities. It is clear that for the effective operation of the new strategic highways company there will need to be close co-operation with those authorities. I should declare an interest, again non-pecuniary, as a vice-president of the LGA, which supports this amendment. Highways authorities feel that they have not been effectively consulted hitherto. Although they do not oppose the Government’s proposal in the Bill, they consider that Ministers should discuss with them how the company will operate as there will need to be co-operation between the strategic highways company and highways authorities on traffic management and new road schemes. The structure of the new organisation needs to be broadly agreed. There also needs to be some representation on the board of the new structure of those authorities that manage and oversee the other roads in England.
The amendment provides for consultation on the structure of the new company and the appointment of a local authority non-executive director on the board. That would be the minimum that we would need to see for a good and effective co-operative arrangement between the new company and the other highways and traffic authorities. I hope that the Government will accept the amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I should like to speak briefly in support of this amendment, to which I have lent my name. The Government list the “major challenges” facing the strategic road network: stop-start funding, underinvestment, inefficiencies and growing pressure from congestion. If these challenges are so severe, why are more than 90% of our people fairly happy with the condition of the strategic road network and only 30% happy with the condition of local roads?
On the evidence that the DfT is citing to justify its obsession with strategic roads, figure 1 in the summary of reform states that spending on major projects fell sharply in the 1990s and has remained low since, while overall traffic has risen. The figure completely ignores the previous Labour Government’s investment in local roads and tackling traffic in our towns and cities. That is where congestion is obviously most frequently experienced. We spent more than £4.5 billion annually on local roads between 2005 and 2010. That was cut by one-third for 2011-12 by the present coalition Administration. If the DfT wants to talk only about strategic roads, we suggest that it compares the spending on strategic roads with the amount of traffic on them.
Ministers continue to stress that their reforms will deliver a world-class roads network, but throughout the extensive documents that they have published there remains scant mention of the major challenges for local roads, which face a pothole epidemic. Any Member of Parliament will tell you that the transport problem in his area is bound to be represented by potholes in roads. The potholes do not just cause damage to vehicles but affect the pace at which they can travel.
The Government claim that they will deliver more reliable journeys, reduced congestion and less delay and disruption. However, they cannot be listening to local government, which is warning that the new two-tier road system threatens to speed up vehicles travelling significant distances but will lead to greater delays on local roads. I have no doubt that the Minister will say that the department has committed unprecedented funding for local road maintenance—£9.8 billion over the next Parliament and £975 million a year to councils. However, both those figures represent a real decline and more than one-third of the money will be topsliced for the Challenge Fund dreamt up by the department, which means that local authorities spend time and, of course, scarce money on bidding rather than actually fixing the roads.
There is no point in building a world-class strategic road network if 98% of local roads that people use every day are clogged with congestion or are falling apart. That is why this amendment seeks to ensure that the Bill gets the strategic and local road networks working better together and makes a real and tangible difference to tackling congestion. That is why we want to see local representation on the strategic highways company board, which will ensure that the company delivers and complies with its obligations. Local authorities must be actively involved in the creation of the strategic road network.
This issue is of the greatest importance. I understand entirely, of course, why the Bill concentrates on the strategic network but it must not ignore the needs of local road networks. They have to be recognised in the Bill as partners in ensuring that journeys are carried out in the most effective way.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, appreciates that we are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into the local road network and that a significant amount of it is allocated on a competitive basis, as it were, to make sure that the projects which yield the most improvements get priority. I thank my noble friend Lord Jenkin for making the case so clearly as that enables me to shorten my remarks.
The noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Davies, have proposed amendments—the amendments also stand in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie—which suggest that local highways authorities are involved with setting up the strategic highways company, that these bodies are consulted when setting the road investment strategy, and that the strategy accounts for potential impacts on local and other networks. I fully accept that these are well intentioned amendments but I contend that they are not needed.
Let me be clear: we want the company to work closely with other highway and traffic authorities to achieve the objectives determined by the Secretary of State. Without close co-operation, both the company and the local highways authorities would not be able to deliver their network management duty as set out in the Traffic Management Act 2004. However, it is important to recognise that the company will not be responsible for the management of local authority roads, and local authorities would be furious if it attempted to do so.
We consulted publicly in October 2013 on the proposals to create the new company and the future governance arrangements, taking into account the views of local highway authorities in our response. That response, published on 30 April this year, formed the foundation of the proposed legislation. It is hard to see what value an additional consultation would bring.
With regard to board representation, we are creating a limited company with a fully functioning board to guide and hold the company’s executive to account. Therefore, involving local authorities in the detailed running of the company would undermine that effective management and oversight of the company and the strengthened arrangements that we intend to put in place.
Our analysis of investment proposals for the strategy will necessarily account for overall transport impacts due to the close links between the strategic road network and other networks, including local highways. Requiring the strategy to include a detailed analysis of the impact on the condition or overall funding arrangements for local roads, or other networks, is unnecessary. Much of this work is already required, while some of the more detailed implications would be a burden and risk causing confusion by making central government take action on issues which are within the purview of local government to deal with. We are very conscious of devolution issues in this regard. Requiring us to consider the condition of the strategic road network as part of setting the strategy is unnecessary because we have considered the state of the network. We reached the decision to invest more money in maintenance and renewals at the last spending round
I turn to the issue of consultation. Given that we have tabled a set of amendments which require consultation to take place as part of setting and varying the strategy, and combined with the requirements on co-operation and the fact that the company would be fully engaged with local highways authorities, there is no need to specify that the company must consult them. It is already embedded.
I hope I have been clear. I have reflected on the amendments about the involvement of local highways authorities in the running of the company and the road investment strategy. I believe that the objectives of the amendments are achieved already within the Bill and the accompanying documents. I hope very much that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I think, whatever the realities and wherever they are reflected, they are not reflected in the Bill. The local authorities themselves have drawn this to our attention and no doubt to the Government’s attention, which is why they are supporting most of these amendments. The reality is that most journeys on the strategic network start and finish on the local network. Any new schemes, any maintenance, any accidents, any new traffic management systems on the strategic network have an impact on the local network.
For those reasons, very good co-operation is needed. I am glad that there is a reference, to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred, in the draft licence. I am glad that the Minister recognises the need for such co-operation. I would, of course, be more impressed by its being in the licence, if the licence was reflected in the main part of the Bill, and therefore had some at least indirect legislative recognition. The key issue here is co-operation and understanding between the new company and the local highways authorities.
In other pieces of legislation a duty to co-operate has appeared in the Bill, not in any subordinate legislation or subordinate documents. I think there is a strong case for that to be included here. On the structure of the company, I understand the Government’s reluctance to specify who should be on the board, but if the board of the new company does not include somebody who understands the role of local highways authorities, whether or not that is prescribed in the legislation—
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I will not be able to speak again on this amendment. I may not have been very clear but when I talked about the issues I would bring back to put as duties, co-operation was one of the three, along with environment and road safety.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I appreciate that aspect of it. I hope, therefore, that what the noble Baroness comes forward with at a later stage meets the general requirement of co-operation. I was commenting also on the structure of the company, and I understand the reluctance to specify that in the Bill, but some engagement between the governance of the new company and local highways authorities is needed, and that objective was reflected in this amendment.
I sincerely hope that the Government’s amendment on co-operation does the job to the satisfaction of the local highways authorities and that the reality is that the relationship between the new company and the local highways authorities is better than the relationship of the Highways Agency has sometimes been and indeed better than what the department’s relationship with local authorities has sometimes been, despite the amount of money, to which both Front Benches have referred, which is now going to local highway schemes.
I will withdraw this amendment at this stage and look forward to the Government’s proposition later. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.