Lord Lansley (Con)

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 3 and speak to Amendment 5 and a number of others in the group. We may find this naturally flows from the discussion we listened carefully to on the previous group. Some of the themes might well re-emerge, not least the question of the desirability or otherwise of a mixed economy in the provision of rail services. We have just approved, for these purposes, Clause 1. Under Clause 1, we have agreed that “section 23 (passenger services to be subject to franchise agreements)” is to cease and that, in future, securing the provision of services will be the responsibility of the Secretary of State under the new Section 30. Clause 2 revises Section 30 for these purposes. At the moment, it is a section about the duty and the absence of franchise agreements, but it would become, under Clause 2, the public sector provision of services. The other thing that is probably important to note is that under Clause 1 we have deleted the existing Section 25, so that there is now no longer a prohibition on public sector operators—all of which is naturally part of the process of implementing a policy, which, as the Minister has told us, is the narrow objective of the legislation. Why have I thought it appropriate to bring forward these amendments? They are probing amendments to try to examine whether the Bill, even from the Government’s own point of view, is future-proofed against the circumstances that may arise and the objectives that they may seek to achieve.