Lord Moylan (Con)

My Lords, I shall speak briefly on Amendment 114A, which is genuinely probing. The effect of the amendment would be to ensure that parking enforcement and the charges associated with it remain with the lowest-tier authority, as they currently are, and are not subsumed into a combined county authority or strategic mayoral authority and with them, presumably, the money that flows from them. A matter of minutes ago, the Minister said that local leaders know their area best, and it should be local leaders who are responsible for enforcement and the funding that comes from it. If the Government’s intention is that that responsibility and funding stream should migrate away from local authorities that have had it in the past up to these new combined authorities, they should say so now. If that is not their intention, it would also be helpful to know that because, once we have established that clearly, it should be possible to return to the matter on Report with a proper conservative approach. There are two other amendments in this group, one of which is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and concerns pavement parking—a matter of considerable concern to people who are blind or mobility impaired in a number of ways. I look forward to hearing the case for that amendment, which I think it is going to be spoken to, and to the Government’s response. Finally, there is an amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, which, putting it in blunt terms, seeks to extend civil enforcement powers for parking from London to the rest of the country. Again, I will listen very carefully to the proposal, but I am not unsympathetic to it in principle as I currently understand it, and I look forward to what the Minister has to say in response. With that, I beg to move.