Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group, Amendments 120A to 120C. They are part of a theme that has been talked about before: the degree of devolution and centralisation of existing powers. In general, the Bill is a welcome move towards greater devolution, and my amendments were tabled in that spirit. Amendment 120A relates to the approval of workplace parking levies by mayors. Back in 2000, the Transport Act was passed, which allowed mayors to implement workplace parking levies but left the final approval with the Secretary of State. The only occasion on which this appears to have been used was in Nottingham some 10 years ago. In the spirit of devolution, my argument is quite simple: we should try to remove barriers wherever possible and consider them where there is an appropriate level of democratic oversight. For example, Leeds City Council is apparently considering using the powers in the Transport Act 2000 in its city centre to support the funding of the West Yorkshire tram. The proposal in my amendment would give established mayors the power to approve a workplace parking levy in their area as part of genuine devolution. I do not understand why those powers require such a senior political level of clearance. That does not seem to be within the spirit of a greater devolved system of governance. My Amendments 120B and 120C are in the same vein and would allow mayors to approve Transport and Works Act orders in their area. Transport and Works Act orders are the major planning approvals for schemes, such as new trams. All these must be centrally approved by the Secretary of State, whether it is a multimillion or multibillion-pound cross-country scheme such as the trans-Pennine route upgrade or a local tram service extension, and the requirement to go to the Secretary of State can add significant time to projects. It took over three years for the one-mile Birmingham Eastside extension to get sign-off from the department. If we think about this and put it in perspective, other European countries can go from initiating a project to completion in around four to five years. We must do all that we can to speed these processes up. Clearly, there has to be some further oversight, but letting local areas get on with building and liberating central government from having to approve lots of different things seems a very sensible move. Mayors are increasingly going to take powers away from the centre and will be running and responsible for large geographic areas, particularly the new county combined mayoral authorities—some, like Sussex, are going to be almost 100 miles long and 50 miles wide, which is a very large slice of the countryside. It seems to me that, if we believe in devolution, we should let them get on with the job and approve schemes in their area, as is the case in other countries. The change to Transport and Works Act orders would simply allow that, which will enable us as a country to grow, and grow our economy. I think most of us in this room would agree that the economic benefits that flow from expanding and improving the quality of our transport connections are enormous. From the beginning of the development of rail networks, we have seen extensive benefits come about from expanding the network and moving into other areas, and I am sure that doing that quicker and faster will speed up improvements in our economy and economic growth. I argue that we should have greater devolution for these sorts of decisions and not leave mayors having to scramble around and make sure they catch the wind with the Secretary of State at the right time to get final approval and sign-off for schemes that really do not need to have that degree of centralised control. I beg to move.