Disappointment over Bill’s slow progress

06 August 2008
 
The Passenger Transport Executive Group is ‘disappointed’ at the delay in the Local Transport Bill completing its passage through parliament.

A PTEG spokesman said that the cities ‘want to take advantage of the powers on offer, as soon as possible’. But, ‘on the positive side, this gives us more time to talk to the Department for Transport about improvements to the Bill’.

The PTEs have been heartened by the support from MPs for a simpler approvals process for quality contracts, and are hopeful that changes can be made when parliament re-convenes in October.

Seventy-one MPs, mainly Labour backbenchers, have signed an early day motion, calling ‘for the Bill to be strengthened to ensure that the franchising through quality contracts is determined by the locally-elected authority’.

The MPs agree with PTEG that ‘two tiers of quango adjudication could result in a veto by quangos of elected politicians’ plans to improve a key public service’. Also, Labour MPs tabled an amendment recently to make the approvals process consultative. Instead of transport authorities requiring the consent of an approvals board and then the transport tribunal, they would consult the former, and the tribunal would provide a means of appeal.

The Liberal Democrats also tabled an amendment which would make the approvals board ‘a consulting authority’ that could recommend, rather than make modifications to a quality contract scheme, as the Government proposes.

Local transport minister, Rosie Winterton, had claimed that a ‘belt-and-braces approach’ to approving quality contracts was necessary ‘to make it more difficult to go to judicial review’ (Surveyor, 3 April).

Labour MPs are also gunning for the clauses in the Bill ‘inserted after lobbying by the bus industry, giving operators a veto over the inclusion of maximum fares, frequencies and timings in quality partnership schemes’.

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