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Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I understand that but it does not alter the burden of my case against the amendment. The problem is that it would shift the position with regard to what we are trying to achieve in the Bill—which is that the ORR will determine how much of what is wanted can be afforded—into a situation where the Secretary of State would pick up the tab for compensation where failure had occurred. That would be the impact and effect of the amendment. I am not quibbling about a small drafting point. I have always been grateful for the generosity of the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, when, from time to time, we have nitpicked about certain amendments from the perspective of the greater resources that are available to us than may be available to noble Lords on the opposite side of the House. However, this is a point of principle on the question of the resources that are allocated to the railway. The amendment is explicit in subsection (2D) which states that,

to pick up the bill for a shortfall in compensation for decisions taken in regard to Scotland. That cannot make sense as regards what is sought in the Bill.

I entirely concede the point that all three speakers who contributed to this debate emphasised. Of course, I recognise the obligation to have security within the industry regarding compensation in circumstances where changes are effected which have deleterious consequences. The amendment would not lead to the writing of cheques for staggering sums because we would not expect to see such a situation develop too often. Nevertheless, the principle behind the amendment is that the Secretary of State may be confronted with the need to write a blank cheque regarding compensation. That surely cannot be the intention of those who see merit in the Bill and that is why I reject that absolutely fundamental point.

I turn to Amendment No. 6, which is grouped with the amendment that we are discussing. My noble friend Lord Berkeley referred to Amendment No. 6. As noble Lords are aware, Section 21 of the Railways Act 1993 allows the ORR to prepare and publish model clauses for inclusion into track access agreements as it considers necessary. This amendment would introduce no new powers, nor, as it is permissive in nature, create new obligations on the ORR to prepare such a model clause. Section 21 of the 1993 Act is wide enough to permit the ORR to prepare and publish model clauses on this subject if it considers it appropriate to do so. We recognise the thrust behind the amendment but we have the legislative power to meet the relevant requirement. Therefore, Amendment No. 6 is unnecessary.

Viscount Astor: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. I tabled this amendment late on Friday and he may not have had time to consider it with his usual care. The noble Lord claims that the amendment would result in blank cheques being
 
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written. However, that is not the case. The amendment would do nothing of the sort. I am afraid that the noble Lord misinterprets the amendment. The only situation in which the Secretary of State would pick up the bill is if he did something which diminished the rights of those who held contracts. That is all. The difficulty that we have is that the Government can cut with one hand, but those who have contracts will not be able to fulfil those contracts because of the cuts made by the Government. There is no mechanism under the Bill in that situation for ensuring that those rights are protected. The Minister did not really address that point, nor did he adequately explain how those rights should be protected.

I will obviously consider carefully what the Minister has said, and I hope that he will also carefully consider my response. He may be able to address those issues further, and we may be able to have some conversations about them before we get to the final stages of the Bill. I am not trying to give a blank cheque to anyone; I would be the last person to do that. I hope that the Minister will understand that that is the last thing that we on this side of the House want to do. There is not adequate protection in the Bill, which is an important problem. We feel obliged to insist on that at some point. Obviously, I want to try to be reasonable; the Government want the Bill, and we support the Bill in principle. I hope that, over what may be a fairly short period of time in the next few days, we may find some way of agreeing.

I shall withdraw the amendment, I shall put it down for Third Reading, and in the mean time we shall see whether we can have any conversations that allow us to come to some agreement. I see that the Minister wishes to rise.

5.30 p.m.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, of course I am only too prepared to discuss this issue further. He will recognise that we have a significant difference over this point. If it is a question of an element of misinterpretation, we may make progress. I shall be only too pleased to meet him.

Viscount Astor: My Lords, as always I am grateful to the Minister. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 4 and 5 not moved.]

Lord Bradshaw had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 6:

"Consequential amendment to the 1993 Act


In section 21 of the 1993 Act, at the end of subsection (1) (which gives the Office of Rail Regulation the power to prepare model clauses for access agreements), insert "including a model clause providing for compensation for or mitigation of the effects of an access charges review under Schedule 4A."
 
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The noble Lord said: My Lords, so far as Amendments Nos. 5 and 6, which are in my name, are concerned, we wait to hear the outcome of the discussions with the noble Viscount, Lord Astor. We will reconsider them at Third Reading.

[Amendment No. 6 not moved.]

Clause 13 [Railway functions of Passenger Transport Executives]:

Lord Morris of Manchester moved Amendment No. 7:


"(1A) An Executive, that has been consulted under subsection (1) in relation to a franchise agreement where the services to be provided under the agreement are or include services for the carriage of passengers by railway within the passenger transport area of that Executive, may, before the expiry of a period of 60 days following the date on which that consultation began, make a statement to the Secretary of State specifying—
(a) the services for the carriage of passengers by railway which the Passenger Transport Authority for the area in question considers it appropriate to secure to meet any public transport requirements within that area, so far as relating to the provision of services of the same description as those to be provided under the franchise agreement in question;
(b) any minimum level of quality to which any services so specified are to be provided;
(c) any requirements with respect to the fares to be charged to persons using any services so specified; and
(d) any minimum level of quality with respect to the operation of any station within the area in question which may be required by any such franchise agreement.
(1B) Where a Passenger Transport Executive for an area in England submits a statement under subsection (1A), the Secretary of State shall ensure that the services, and any minimum levels of quality or requirements with respect to fares, specified in that statement are provided for in any franchise agreement into which he may enter in respect of the services in which the Executive have an interest.
(1C) The Secretary of State need not do anything under subsection (1B) if or to the extent that it would—
(a) have an adverse effect on the provision of services for the carriage of passengers or goods by railway (whether inside or outside the area in question); or
(b) increase the amount of any expenditure of the Secretary of State in respect of railways under agreements or any other arrangements entered into with any franchise operator, any franchisee, or any servant, agent of independent contractor of a franchise operator or franchisee, and the Secretary of State considers that the Executive would not fund that increased expenditure."

The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 7, which stands in my name and those of other noble Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 8, 9 and 10.

We have, of course, been here before. At Second Reading, I drew attention to the concerns of passenger transport executives—PTEs—about the Bill's effects on their ability to ensure that the public transport needs of their areas are met. In pressing their case for what these amendments now seek to achieve I was supported by, among other noble Lords, my noble friends Lord Burlison and Lord Faulkner and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, speaking for the Liberal Democrats.
 
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The PTEs' case won further strong support in Grand Committee—when regrettably I was hors de combat—and notably from the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who initiated the debate there on 3 March; from my noble friends Lord Snape and Lord Berkeley; and from the noble Viscount, Lord Astor.

I found two of their speeches deeply evocative. First, that of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who with his long involvement in public passenger transport management, paid warm tribute to the memory of the redoubtable Lord Sefton of Garston. He said:

Some 22 years before then, Bill Sefton was my parliamentary agent when, as Labour's youngest candidate in the 1951 general election, I contested the Garston division of Liverpool. The kindly tribute made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to Bill's achievements in this policy area left me reflecting on how extremely serious it would have been for the people of Merseyside had his mission to Downing Street failed.

Perhaps I could leave it to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to explain just how fortunate those who instructed this Bill's draftsmen are that my late and still widely mourned parliamentary agent is not here to back these amendments today.

The other speech I found so evocative was that of my noble friend Lord Snape. I have known him as someone well worth listening to on public transport issues since the 1970s. Not only did he work on the railways from boyhood, but he was involved in them from birth. His father, whom I also knew well, was a highly regarded representative of railwaymen.

The speech made by my noble friend in Committee exploded the myth that the Bill as now drafted would speed up negotiations between franchisees and PTEs. In truth, as he said, it would considerably prolong them. He was demonstrably right also to stress that, in sharp contrast to the pledge in last year's White Paper to devolve responsibilities to the PTEs, decision-making would be centralised rather than devolved.

That contrast is highlighted by the publication this morning of the Commons' Transport Committee's report on light rail, with its pointed criticism of current limits on local power outside London to control local bus services. The report says they have,

The Select Committee calls for more local decision-making, not less, to secure integration; and the rights of PTEs to prescribe their own rail services are a prerequisite of successful integration. Surely none of us here wants now to compound the problems so clearly identified by the Select Committee.

It is because the case made for the amendments at Second Reading was so strongly reinforced in Committee that it need not be restated at length today. We debate them now, however, in a much different
 
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parliamentary setting. I refer to the imminence of a general election, and the involvement of all parties in deciding which of the Bills currently before Parliament can still by agreement be enacted in the days left before dissolution.

Thus we need to know today, in detail and in this debate, not only the Government's position on the Bill's future—which I am sure will be clearly stated by my noble friend Lord Davies—but that of each of the Opposition parties. Is the Government's position that they will withdraw the Bill if these amendments are carried, or simply that they would prefer the Bill not to include them? Are the other parties determined not to allow the Bill to become law without them? We need to know exactly where we stand with all parties in advance of the haggling soon to begin.

I am now in my fourteenth Parliament and, as a Front-Bencher for 23 of my 33 years in the House of Commons, I had much direct involvement in pre-dissolution haggling. Time and again over the years I heard junior Ministers threaten to drop Bills rather than accept amendments, only to be left eating their own words on instruction from on high. The essential needs always are for candour and clarity from all parties; and never were they needed more than in the case of these amendments today.

Amendment No. 7 would introduce three new sub-sections into Clause 13 to preserve current PTE powers to specify local rail services, and to have them incorporated in franchise agreements. One serious concern about the Bill is that, despite repeated assurances by Ministers to consult them, there is still nothing in its provisions to ensure that the views of PTEs will be taken into account or worked into franchise agreements.

Amendment No. 10 makes it clear that a PTE may not specify services for franchises that include services only to and from its own area. This clarification was made in direct response to the concerns raised by the Minister in another place, and I trust that my noble friend will accept it.

Amendment No. 8 would preserve PTEs' existing powers to be parties to franchise agreements. When this issue was addressed in Committee the Government's response was totally unconvincing. It was based on a mistaken assumption that co-signatory status for PTEs involved additional costs and complexities that would outweigh the benefits of PTE involvement. The outcome has been further to increase all-party support for the amendment.

Co-signatory status on rail franchise agreements is crucial in providing PTEs with important rights of benefit to passengers. They include: the right to consultation on service changes; the right to approve increases in local fares above regulated levels; the right to require participation in multi-modal ticketing schemes, integrated transport schemes and concessionary travel arrangements; the right to receive performance information on punctuality, cancellations and provision of capacity; and the right to be consulted on de-staffing of local stations and improvements to access for disabled people.
 
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Amendment No. 9 deals with disputes and the need to preserve current statutory provision for the Secretary of State to disapply the Strategic Rail Authority's obligations and PTEs' rights under Section 34 of the Railways Act 1993 where any dispute is referred to him. Again, this amendment is in response to concern expressed at the Bill's earlier stages and bears further testimony to the readiness of PTEs to listen and respond reasonably.

Taken together, the amendments would allow PTEs to vouchsafe the best possible transport services for their areas. Failure to accept them would gravely damage their ability to do so.

Yet there is a further compelling reason for these amendments to be accepted. I refer to the proceedings on the Bill in another place on 27 January. MPs from Greater Manchester had tabled amendments of the same effect as those that we are now debating. In doing so, they were reflecting serious public concern all across the conurbation about the threat the Bill constitutes to local decision-making on public transport. All their amendments were guillotined. In the words of one MP, they were,

Thus the only way for Greater Manchester MPs to have any say on an issue of such high importance to thousands of their constituents is for these amendments to be incorporated in the Bill as it returns to the House of Commons.

Nothing could explain more succinctly, or more starkly, the importance of the role of this House vis-à-vis the Bill. I hope the amendments can be accepted, not after haggling behind closed doors but here, by open agreement, on the Floor of the House of Lords today. I beg to move.


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