Lord Moylan (Con)

My Lords, on that point, the Minister has made in his response no reference whatever to the private sector. We are talking about circumstances in which buses are provided by the private sector in a particular area and the local transport authority, using powers to be created under this Bill, enters a franchising assessment model with a view to terminating the business of that bus operator—not terminating its activities but terminating it as a business and turning it into, simply, an agent of the local transport authority operating to instructions for a fee of some sort. That is one of the potential outcomes. If you face that threat to your business, so to speak, and if the Government are equanimous in thinking that that is an appropriate threat to impose on the private sector, surely, if the decision at the end of that assessment is not to proceed, that private company deserves a degree of stability. Indeed, without that stability it is very unlikely to invest in any of the things we would like to see happen. Those might concern improved buses or better technology, but also better training for staff, proper recruitment, investment in the workforce and so on. An answer entirely focused on how the public sector might behave totally misses the point of what this amendment is trying to achieve.