Draft Local Transport Act 2008 (Traffic commissioners) (Consequential amendments) Order 2013
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
† Djanogly, Mr Jonathan (Huntingdon) (Con)
† Esterson, Bill (Sefton Central) (Lab)
† Farron, Tim (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
† Fitzpatrick, Jim (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
† Freer, Mike (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
† Hamilton, Mr David (Midlothian) (Lab)
† Hammond, Stephen (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport)
† Luff, Peter (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
† Mactaggart, Fiona (Slough) (Lab)
Mitchell, Austin (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
† Morgan, Nicky (Loughborough) (Con)
† Nuttall, Mr David (Bury North) (Con)
Shannon, Jim (Strangford) (DUP)
† Shelbrooke, Alec (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
† Ward, Mr David (Bradford East) (LD)
† Williamson, Gavin (South Staffordshire) (Con)
† Wright, David (Telford) (Lab)
Mark Etherton, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
Sixth Delegated Legislation Committee
Tuesday 4 June 2013
[Mrs Linda Riordan in the Chair]
Draft Local Transport Act 2008 (Traffic Commissioners) (Consequential Amendments) Order 2013
2.30 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Local Transport Act 2008 (Traffic Commissioners) (Consequential Amendments) Order 2013.
Good afternoon, Mrs Riordan, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. The order has several purposes, but its key overall purpose is to allow for greater flexibility in the deployment of traffic commissioners across Great Britain.
Traffic commissioners are appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport as independent regulators of the heavy goods and public service vehicle industries in Great Britain. Their statutory functions can be found in numerous pieces of primary and secondary legislation, but two key Acts set the regulatory framework. The Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981 establishes traffic commissioners, traffic areas and the general regulatory framework around licensing of road passenger transport operators, and the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995 establishes the road haulage operator licensing system.
Most operators of lorries, coaches and buses in Great Britain must hold an operator’s licence to operate legally. Traffic commissioners’ key regulatory functions are to license the operators of lorries, buses and coaches and to consider and take, as necessary, disciplinary action against operators who have not observed the conditions of their licences. For an operator’s licence to be granted, a traffic commissioner must be satisfied that the applicant has sufficient funding, is of good repute and has arrangements in place to be able to operate in a suitably professional manner.
Although the majority of traffic commissioners’ work focuses on operator licensing, they have a number of other functions, including the registering of local bus services and matters relating to the granting of vocational driving licences or taking action against the holders of such licences. The work of traffic commissioners is funded by the fees paid by the industries that they regulate.
The Local Transport Act 2008—I suspect many of us in this room remember well the debates on that measure—includes a number of reforming measures on traffic commissioners. Provision was made for restructuring to recognise the strengthened role of traffic commissioners as a result of the Act. For example, in relation to bus punctuality, the Act allowed traffic commissioners to issue a broader range of penalties to bus operators. Another reason for introducing those measures was to
respond to the concerns raised by the industry about the different standards or processes applied in different parts of the country.For the reasons that I have set out, the traffic commissioner reforms attracted cross-party support when the Local Transport Bill was in Committee, and were designed to strengthen the independence of the regime, with the post of senior traffic commissioner becoming statutory rather than administrative, as it had been previously. The first statutory senior traffic commissioner was appointed in 2009. The legislation before us today will provide that office holder with more flexibility with regard to how resources are allocated by removing, except in Scotland, the statutory link between an individual traffic commissioner and their appointed regional traffic area of responsibility. Given the degree of devolution of the functions in Scotland, a traffic commissioner will be retained who will be referred to as the Scottish traffic commissioner. However, the Scottish traffic commissioner would be able to act on reserved functions in England and Wales, and vice versa, to provide even greater flexibility. The order reflects that flexibility.
It is important to note that what is before us today and the associated commencement order will not directly result in any changes to how traffic commissioners are deployed across Great Britain. Any changes to how traffic commissioners are deployed are, under the Local Transport Act, a matter that must be detailed in senior traffic commissioner guidance and directions, on which the senior traffic commissioner must consult; that was also set out in the Local Transport Act. That arrangement ensures that the independence of traffic commissioners in fulfilling their regulatory functions is maintained. However, any redeployment of traffic commissioners will help to ensure that the fees paid by the haulage and passenger transport industries for the traffic commissioner system are kept as low as possible, which Members on both sides of the Committee will welcome, given the current financial pressures that many in the industry are experiencing. The changes are intended to assist the traffic commissioner system mostly by removing any existing legislative restrictions so as to allow traffic commissioners to operate as flexibly as possible while retaining their statutory independence.
At first sight, 62 pages of secondary legislation seem—and indeed, are—quite substantial. However, although the enabling power in section 6 of the 2008 Act is widely drawn, it is essentially being used throughout the draft order to achieve two basic functions and themes. The first is to replace the concept of the traffic commissioner for a traffic area with the concept of a traffic commissioner, meaning whichever traffic commissioner is tasked by the senior traffic commissioner to perform the function in the case in question. The second is to ensure that where a sequence of functions might otherwise have to be performed by the one traffic commissioner for a particular traffic area, those functions can be performed in future by different traffic commissioners, should the senior traffic commissioner decide to adopt that approach. With that explanation, I commend the order to the Committee.
2.36 pm
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab): I agree with the Minister that it is a pleasure, Mrs Riordan, to see you presiding over our business today. I do not expect to detain the Committee for too long. My hon.
Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) was due to respond on behalf of the Opposition, but because of a domestic situation, she is unable to be here, so she sends her apologies.I thank the Minister for the explanation for today’s order which, in principle, we support, so there will not be any disagreement from Opposition Members. However, I read the exchanges in the other place, where the order was debated, and several issues were raised, such as public subsidy against profit margins, and quality contracts against unfair competition. I also noted the answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) to a parliamentary question about traffic commissioners. He said he has
“no plans to change the regulatory role or resourcing of Traffic Commissioners in respect of the bus industry at this time. The Department is due to carry out a review of the role of Traffic Commissioners later in the year.”—[Official Report, 14 May 2013; Vol. 563, c. 177W.]
The question for the Minister is why has the order been introduced now, as there will be a review of traffic commissioners later in the year? Will the review look at issues such as those raised in the Lords—for example, the requirement on bus companies to only give 56 days’ notice of the withdrawal or varying of a service? It was suggested in the Lords that the period should be twice as long. Will the Minister be any more specific about when the review will take place? The answer to the PQ says “later in the year”, which is a little open. It would be helpful to identify whether that is after or before summer recess, or during the September session, so that we can begin looking at it and preparing for it, and can respond as positively and constructively as possible.
If the Minister can respond to those basic questions, I would be grateful. If he is not, we would be happy if he wrote to us in due course about the scope and timing of the review. As he has said, the matter was fully discussed and consulted on, and there is cross-party support for the reform of traffic commissioners and for the excellent work that they do. We all want to see the best services, and traffic commissioners perform a very important role, so we are happy to go along with the order today.
2.39 pm
Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con): I do not want to abuse my position as a late arrival to the Committee, but given the subject of the order, as a constituency MP I must raise one issue with the Minister. Could this legislation have been used to enable traffic commissioners, under the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Regulations 1995, to consult parish councils, as a statutory consultee, on the granting of such licences? Could the legislation also provide the opportunity to extend the definition of “environmental impact” when considering the licensing of goods vehicles? I say that because my constituents are in the unique situation of having a heavy concentration of heavy goods vehicles in licensed sites that are totally inappropriate. Those sites are an accident of history and a product of the second world war, with the growth of industry in the vale of Evesham. Those two issues—the failure of traffic commissioners to be able to consult parish councils, and the failure to take wider account of the environmental impact of lorries moving through totally inappropriate lanes in small villages—have caused deep concern in rural
Worcestershire. I hope that this is not a missed opportunity —I fear it might be—and that there will be another opportunity to return to subjects that are important to my constituents.2.40 pm
Stephen Hammond: I shall try to refer to all the issues that have been raised. Like the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, I read the report of the Lords debate and I noticed the comments about public subsidy and quality contracts. He will remember that I was Conservative spokesman in 2008 and we could go through those arguments again, but you would quite rightly rule me out of order if we went down that route, Mrs Riordan. The order is entirely consequential on the Local Transport Act 2008.
However, I hope it will help the hon. Gentleman if I say that we have already committed to the recommendation from the Competition Commission about the 56 days, which will introduce an extra 14-day pre-notification period for local authorities to discuss the registration with a bus operator prior to the 56 days starting. On the review, there will be one later this year, which is in line with the Government requirement that all non-departmental public bodies are reviewed every three years. On the timing of the review, it will happen during the current financial year, which probably gives the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse some reassurance that he does not need to worry about it before the summer recess. The key point is that the review will take on board the guidance to look at the principles and processes behind non-departmental statutory bodies, as laid out by the Cabinet Office, and much of what is in the order will help to inform the review of operations, particularly around flexibility. Even if there were no review, it is important to secure the flexibility that is granted by the order.
Turning to the points made my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire, this is not the legislation to do the two things that he wants. I will write to him definitively regarding what he hopes to achieve. My best guess is that it would be within the scope of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Regulations 1995, but I am happy to write to him to confirm that. The statutory instrument that we are debating is limited to making a consequential amendment to the 2008 Act, and I hope that he is happy with that reassurance.
Jim Fitzpatrick: I sense that the Minister is about to finish, but I just want to share something with him. When I was a Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry in 2006, one of my responsibilities was as minister for time. When drafting an answer to a parliamentary question, a civil servant told me that something would be done in the autumn, so I asked, “What does ‘autumn’ mean?”. They said, “Any time before 23 December, Minister, because that is when the autumn session of Parliament ends.” The Minister has just extended “later this year” to include 2014 by using the financial year, so I am grateful that he has been able to clarify the fact that the review is not coming any time soon.
Stephen Hammond: I could have said “soon”, “very soon” or “proximate”, but that would have tempted me into a discussion that the Committee would probably
not want to have this afternoon. I am grateful for that advice, however, and I commit to write to the hon. Gentleman when I have greater knowledge of the timing.