Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)

It was a long time ago; the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and I completely agree. I wanted only to say that I do not claim particular credit for it; if you lead a team, you should give credit to the team that you lead and not take it all yourself. The noble Lord’s more important points were about inclusion and accessibility. I absolutely recognise the points he made about the accessibility of the bus service to people with disabilities. I note his contention that Clause 22 does not go far enough, but I promise—and I am sure we will discuss it in Committee—to look at the degree and extent to which this clause can answer his points. He must be able to see that the intention of Clause 22 is to improve bus stopping areas and for the Secretary of State to give some guidance, which ought to be mandatorily taken into regard by local transport and highway authorities. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised points about community control and who is in control. As I said, the point of this is to return control to local transport authorities. He also raised a question, which he largely answered, about what happens if local transport authorities do not do their job. One would hope that the citizens of the local transport authority would vote them out for not doing their job. That is the remedy. I do not think that the Secretary of State coming down on local transport authorities like a ton of bricks is a satisfactory alternative; we want to return control to the people who should rightly have it. Incidentally, there have been bus routes down the Embankment since the trains went. I used to travel on route 109, but it does not go there any more. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also raised some important points on the Bill. She raised Clause 9 on approved persons, which we will discuss in Committee. 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. The noble Baroness asked whether Clause 11 complies with the procurement regulations. I am advised that I am able to tell her that it does. The noble Baroness welcomed Clause 19 and referred to assistance data. I will take that away and see what can be done. Bringing data on bus service usage into the 21st century is quite important and I am sympathetic to the idea that, as long as it is not a burden to bus operators, or indeed local transport authorities, collecting data is the right thing to do, so that we know what is going on. I note very clearly the noble Baroness’s comments on Clauses 24 and 25, that diversity training is not the same as the rights for disabled people, and on what we did, with her great assistance, in the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill, referring to the Equality Act. I will go away and reflect on that. Lastly, I come to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, who has some extraordinary views about socialist paradises and returning to the era of the Attlee Government. I find it particularly extraordinary because I know that the noble Lord has such a strong view about the autonomy of local authorities. The Bill intends to return bus services to the autonomy of local authorities and for the Secretary of State not to intervene so much in the provision of services. I have to tell the noble Lord that there is currently a huge disparity in the provision of bus services across Britain. I was not only responsible for the bus service in London, as he knows, but, for a measurable length of time, I was responsible for the bus services in what was laughingly called south-east England but apparently included Norfolk, Northampton, Leicester and Southampton. Even within one bus group, 20 years ago, there was an extraordinary variation in the provision of services and the extent to which bus operators sought to maximise the network and the return on it, or cut off individual journeys, to the extent to which some towns and cities in Britain find themselves short of or even without bus services after 7 pm and on Sundays. I think I know roughly how to run a bus network, and one of the things you should do, which is the feature of the best bus services run by the private companies outside London—I can mention some places, but I will not—is to seek to service the network and to take people to school, hospital, work, leisure and home. It is in those places where those services have drifted away that something else needs to be done. That is also true of rural services. The noble Lord alleged, quite wrongly, that the Bill does not deal with demand-responsive transport. It very much does—that is one of the remedies open to local transport authorities, as it should be. It is not a particularly cheap methodology but it is there to be used and, in fact, there are some startlingly good examples of it. He refers to it as though it is an urban feature but his own Government instituted an experimental regime in Cornwall, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, knows, has produced rather a good bus service in Cornwall by having features of Cornwall Council’s activities that amount to franchising in the same way that the Bill will allow to happen. I have come to the end of my allotted time. There is a limit to what I can answer here. As I set out earlier, the Bill is primarily about empowering local leaders wherever they are. It is a privilege to bring this forward to your Lordships’ House for Second Reading. I thank all noble Lords who have participated in today’s debate. I welcome the support of those who have spoken in favour of the Bill’s measures and look forward to continuing the debate on the Bill in Grand Committee.