Lord Lansley (Con)

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group: Amendments 65 and 73. Rather than the broader issues of funding, mine are much more nitty-gritty questions about the transparency of the business plan and how the funding processes for Great British Railways are to work. Amendment 65 is to Schedule 2, which is that part of the Bill where Great British Railways shows us in its business plan how its money is received and allocated towards activities. If I remember correctly, we are in that bit where it has to set out various things. We are at line 27 on page 71: “The plan must set out … the activities Great British Railways proposes … the costs of carrying on those activities, and how Great British Railways proposes to meet those costs”. Strictly speaking, all the things that I am asking for in Amendment 65 might be comprised within that. This is an opportunity for us to be clear about what Great British Railways should do. In a separate group I will come to another issue related to the relationship with local government bodies. In this particular instance, there would be important transparency in Great British Railways being required, when setting out its business plan, to show what contributions are received by GBR itself from GBR companies, presumably by way of profits or revenue remitted to GBR for this purpose, and vice versa: how much is being paid out through GBR companies and how much is being received. Amendment 65 is for that purpose: where the activity is carried out by a GBR company, the contributions received from or provided to GBR in relation to those activities. I hope that is a straightforward transparency issue when the business plan is being presented. A good plan would do that anyway; it is just a case of trying to be clear about that now. This affords me the opportunity to say something to my noble friend Lord Moylan. We discussed on Tuesday the question of GBR companies, and he returned to this issue and chastised me, saying that I was inaccurate. I do not think I was as inaccurate as he might imagine.