Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak first to Amendment 6, which seeks clarification following the debate on changing an “auditor” to an “approved person” in assessing bus franchise schemes. It would ensure that within three months of the Bill becoming an Act, the Government will publish the qualifications required for an approved person under the Act and would also lay a regulation with that information in it prior to the commencement of the clause. This is because Clause 9 amends Section 123D of the Transport Act 2000 to remove “auditor”, a term synonymous with an appropriate level of qualification, registration and probity, with the more generic term “approved person”. An auditor, by contrast, must be a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy.

The Minister said in response to my noble friend Lady Brinton’s question at Second Reading:

“The intention is not to deregulate approved persons but to widen the range of them. I completely agree with her that they should have some qualifications. An unqualified person should not be able to make a judgment about whether a franchising scheme is right”.—[Official Report, 8/1/25; col. 790.]


The powers and responsibilities of the approved person are significant. Clause 9(2)(1) states:

“A franchising authority, or two or more franchising authorities acting jointly, may not proceed with a proposed franchising scheme unless they have obtained a report from an independent approved person on the assessment of the proposed scheme (see section 123B)”.


I understand why the Government would like to broaden the scope of those able to provide assurance that an approved person will have, at the very least, a CIPFA qualification or its equivalent. However, one of the problems of loosening very specific language in previous legislation is that without sight of exactly what the new qualifications are some organisations will take advantage of the new scheme. From these Benches, we would want any new franchise proposal to have been assessed and reported on by a qualified person because this is about significant public money and assurance. On that point, I hope that the Minister can clarify today what qualifications the Government would expect for such a person in order to reassure these Benches.

My noble friend Lord Goddard clearly set out Amendments 2 and 12, which aim to ensure that we learn from the Manchester franchising experience and that best practice is shared more widely, making franchising more dynamic and responsive. Clarity is absolutely needed on whether there is a minimum period from which services or changes to services proposed by a franchising authority may be enacted. I hope the Minister can answer this point and provide much-needed clarity today.

Amendment 61 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, regarding the qualifications needed for officials working in franchising authorities who will be responsible for designing, negotiating and enforcing any franchising schemes, is welcome, given that it is important that staff have a clear understanding of health and safety issues. The noble Lord, Lord Woodley, raised a number of points linked to employment rights, and I look forward to hearing a response to his specific concerns.

The amendments in this group from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, are a mixed bag, with many seeming, quite frankly, to be trying to put more obstacles in the way of any local transport authority that wishes to introduce franchising. They feel like an ideological response rather than genuine concern about bus service provision across the country. The noble Lord suddenly does not seem to believe in localism. I am not sure that he would have had the same opinion in his previous life as a local councillor and a deputy mayor of London.

If all local transport authorities want to move towards franchising, so be it. This is about devolution and local authorities deciding what suits their local communities. It is highly unlikely that everywhere will move towards franchising, but they should have that option. To want potential intervention from the Secretary of State feels an unnecessary and bureaucratic top-down approach, whereas this is supposed to be a bottom-up approach to bus services. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the points raised.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make a couple of brief points. I apologise to the Committee that I am Boxing and Coxing with another meeting this afternoon and that I did not table my amendment for today’s Committee. Formally, I support Amendment 17 tabled by my noble friend Lord Woodley, but I will put it in a broader context.

The amendment deals with the relationship between franchising companies and franchising authorities and the trade unions, which is vital, but, as I said at Second Reading, we need a provision for planning the workforce of bus services across Britain in the same way that we do in other industries. I say to the Minister and his colleagues that the Government are attempting major reorganisations of several industries—energy, railways, buses—yet in the proposed legislation, there is no clear commitment to forward workforce planning. I would have tabled an amendment to that effect, and I hope that the Government will come forward with that in any of the Bills that I refer to, but particularly this one.

The workforce in buses has declined by 25% over recent years. With all due respect, it is a very skilled but elderly workforce. Not many new people are coming into it. We need a new forward system as part of this Bill and the processes it starts to ensure that there is an adequate workforce-planning dimension. Part of that involves the arrangements with the trade unions, which my noble friend Lord Woodley points out in Amendment 17, but it is broader than that and has to be national as well as local. I hope that before the Bill reaches its final stages it will have a clear strategic commitment to workforce planning for bus services.