| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Redwood: If my right hon. Friend reads the amendment clearly, he will find that it includes the words
- "within the authority's area",
Mr. Forth: Again, that should be a matter for the local authority itself. Why do we need a form of words to be put on the face of the Bill to tell a local authority to do something that it should be perfectly capable of deciding for itself? I do not think that this is a particularly circular argument, or even, dare I say it, a repetitive one, as I have now moved on to amendment No. 10 as opposed to new clause 2. Surely the local authority should be allowed to make its own decision about whether standard provisions should be included, even within its area. It is just conceivable that, if a local authority covered a densely populated urban or suburban area as well as an element of rural hinterland, it might be appropriate to have different provisions for different parts of the area.
Who would feel it incumbent on themselves to come along and put in cold print on the face of a statute these prescriptive requirements that intrude on the decision making of an elected and accountable local authority? A philosophical conflict is built in to what my right hon. and hon. Friends want to say about local authorities in the overall sense—with which I thoroughly agree, and which I applaud—and the thrust of what they are saying in new clause 2 and amendment No. 10. All in all, I am a bit unhappy about this, and I am very unhappy to find myself at odds with my right hon. and hon. Friends. I hope that, after the Minister has attempted to persuade the House of his position, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will take the opportunity to reconsider what he has brought to the House, to think about the overall context in which he is offering it to us, and to avoid any suggestion that this might be a blot on his otherwise immaculate reputation.
Mr. McNulty: Perhaps I can steer a path between the extremes expressed by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), and the eminently sensible contribution from the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). That is not an unusual thing to say, especially for those of us who spend our time haunting this place on Fridays. The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst seems to save up his sensible suggestions for Fridays, but today he is clearly having a good day on a Tuesday, for which I am enormously grateful. He is right to suggest that these proposals are otiose, but I must provide a sting in the tail to his argument. If he is putting forward the broadly
social libertarian local autonomy argument, I must part company from him, albeit gently. I agree with the thrust of what he has said, but his suggestions must be implemented within a framework of regulation and guidance.The new clause is otiose, as the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst suggests, and it tramples over local autonomy. I would also part company with him over his description of today's Conservatives as confident, bright young things compared with what they were in the past. We have to part company at some point.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham gave the game away when he suggested that he wanted to send a signal that this scheme was not about stealth taxes or revenue raising, and that it was merely seeking to cover the cost of administration, as I suggested in Committee. With the greatest of respect, legislation is not the place for sending signals. The Bill should do what it purports to do and no more. The right hon. Gentleman can send signals in a little column in The Spectator or the Wokingham Gazette or Bugle, but not in the Bill. That would be as inappropriate as the—what is the polite word?—rantings of the hon. Member for Christchurch about the figure of £55 per household. Just because something is repeated often enough, or appears often enough in The Mail or The Express—
Mr. McNulty: The Mirror or The Sun, whatever you like—anything at the murkier end of what purports to be the media in this country. Just because such things appear often enough, it does not mean that they are true.
Mr. Forth: On that very point, does the Minister recall "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"? Does not that belie what he has just said?
Mr. McNulty: I do not think that we put a price on that in quite the same way as the hon. Member for Christchurch did when he suggested that the measures would cost £55 per household. So, the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst and I have parted company again, which disappoints me as we usually get along so splendidly.
Many of the points made by Conservative Members fall into the trap of seeing the amendment, and all the clauses to which it refers, in total isolation from the rest of the Bill. They included the suggestion that the proposal is a devious scheme to get more money for local authorities, of whatever persuasion. When we consider the measures that the Conservatives constantly refer to in their fight-back for the drivers of middle Britain, and when we consider in detail the implementation of these schemes, there is not a whole lot of difference between the political parties in terms of what they do out there in the big wide world. There is no difference at all, save for the propensity for casualties in their areas.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham suggested that local authorities up and down the country would deliberately carry on street works for as long as possible just to extract as much money as possible from the contractors. That is in stark contrast to the provisions of
clauses 16 and 17, and to all that we have said about network management duty. If an authority tried to utilise a permit scheme, suitably applied for and allowed, simply to clog up the streets—which by definition it would—simply to secure a revenue stream, it would not work because of the network management duty.
Mr. Redwood: Will the hon. Gentleman firm up that promise? Is he saying that Ministers will have to ensure that the local authorities insist on speedy street works and will impose only administrative charges on people and not unrealistically high fines?
Mr. McNulty: I would like to go all the way with the right hon. Gentleman in that regard, but I cannot because that issue is outwith the full comprehensive nature of the Bill. I cannot say yes to that question in isolation from the whole range of other elements of the network management duty that we went through in detail in Committee. It was clear from our discussions and from what will be in the guidance that that duty is not simply about the flow of traffic or the speed of that flow. It is not just about the absence of congestion; there is a whole range of things involved, as we explored in Committee. I agree with the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst that the new clause is otiose, for some of the reasons that he has given, and others.
New clause 2 would mean that a fee for any application for a permit or the issue of a permit could not be set at a level higher than the administrative costs to the permit authority of responding to a permit application, issuing the permit and maintaining a register of permits. I said clearly in Committee, and I repeat that permit schemes are not designed as means of raising extra revenue for local authorities. They are intended as a way of enabling all potentially disruptive activities in the street—be they utility works, local authorities' own works, the placing of skips or whatever—to be managed in an integrated and co-ordinated way.
Crucially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White) suggested, we have set up a working group on which all those parties sit—the utilities, local authorities and others—and charged them with considering the details of how permit schemes might work and making recommendations to the Government. That will enable us to provide in regulations and guidance that very framework within which—here I come back onside with the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst—those decisions can be made at local level to determine whether those involved want to pursue a permit scheme or otherwise.
I have to say again that the hon. Member for Christchurch goes on and on as though these are schemes—not only those involving permits, but others—that we are about to impose directly by compulsion on each and every highway authority in the land. We are not doing that in any way, shape or form, but we want to work with the parties on which these proposals will have the most direct impact. That will enable us to draw up regulations setting out the standard arrangements applying to the schemes, as well as guidance for those operating schemes and those who
would need to apply for permits. By pure coincidence, the first meeting of that working group is being held today, just around the corner.Among other things, the group will look at exactly what activities would require permits and what level fees should be set at. In considering fee levels, it will look not only at the costs of operating schemes, but, entirely appropriately, at whether it would be sensible to set different fees according to differing circumstances. That involves the flexible standardisation that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst suggested.
It is appropriate to have a framework, clearly established, within which these decisions can be made, but the whole array of ideas on how to go forward with a permit scheme should be left to the local authority. For instance, should all activities attract the same fee or should the fees be varied according to when, where and how they are carried out? Those involved will also look at how, if at all, permit schemes would fit in with existing arrangements such as that for charging utilities whose works overrun an agreed deadline. We want to give the group the flexibility to look at all those relevant issues.
In the light of the group's work, but above and beyond the working party, we will hold, later in the year, a widespread public consultation on draft regulations before those are brought to Parliament. As the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst suggests, new clause 2 is otiose, but I am a fair man. Broadly, we still have consensus in most of the House, although there is clearly disagreement and disarray in some parts. Having made those comments, I will take this away and consider what the hon. Member for Christchurch has said on the issue so that at a later stage in the Bill's passage through Parliament—in another place—we can perhaps provide more information on the Government's intentions.
I say that deliberately, because when the Bill reaches the end of the legislative process, I want it and the subsequent guidance and regulations to be fully informed by the working group and the involvement of local authorities, utilities and other operators. That will enable us to sign off those regulations and the guidance with as much agreement as we can—in some cases, people subsequently decide that there are all sorts of difficulties with such regulation and guidance—as early as we can. Then we can leave it, within the framework of regulations and guidance, to the local authorities to determine whether they want to pursue a scheme. We will have a look at what the hon. Member for Christchurch has said, by all means, but first we should let the working group have a look at the thing.
Amendment No. 10 would appear to require that regulations made under clause 36 must ensure reasonable consistency between permit schemes. The hon. Gentleman is entirely right: I said in Committee that that would be of use—certainly within authorities, but between authorities as well—if there were some commonalities. I do not want to put too many consensual words in the mouth of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, but, as he suggests, much that will be needed in terms of standardisation could be dealt with in regulations.
The regulations would have to set out certain standard provisions that were common to all permit schemes, especially in relation to electronic noticing
systems. I agree with the hon. Member for Christchurch that it is desirable that there should be some standardisation—I have already alluded to that—but it cannot be sensible to have dozens of entirely different schemes operating in different parts of the country. Many utilities, although not all by any means, work nationally and some standardisation is appropriate, but I do not believe that we need such prescription in the Bill, as this issue can safely be dealt with through regulations.The working group, which we have set up to consider the details of permit regulations and the accompanying guidance, has been asked specifically to consider the issue of standardisation. I suspect that there will be some merit in going down that road. The group will make recommendations to us later in the summer on that and other matters, after which we will again go out to wide public consultation on the way forward.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |