Clause 196 (Hansard, 20 July 1972)

§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Keith Speed)
I beg to move Amendment No. 780, in page 135, line 7, leave out 'and' and insert: (b) to make further provision with respect to the control of a Passenger Transport Executive by the Passenger Transport Authority; and

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu)
With this Amendment we are to take the following Government Amendments: Nos. 781, 782, 783, 784, and 785.

§ Mr. Speed
There was considerable criticism from both sides of the Standing Committee that the Bill as drafted did not go far enough to ensure full democratic control over passenger transport executives. My hon. Friend the Member for Tavistock (Mr. Michael Heseltine) undertook to introduce further Amendments to place that control beyond doubt. Those Amendments are Nos. 781 and 782 which relate to Schedule 24(4). As drafted the paragraph inserts into Part II of the Transport Act, 1968 a new Section based on analogous provisions in the Transport (London)Act, 1969 which provides for increased and more precisely defined controls over the activities of passenger transport executives. Among these is the power for the passenger transport authorities to give general directions to the passenger transport executives on matters appearing to the authorities to affect the exercise of their duty to provide a properly integrated and efficient system of public passenger transport to meet the needs of the area.
These arrangements were subject to two limitations. First, the term "general direction" has come to have a specific and rather restrictive interpretation in its application to the nationalised 985 industries. Amendment No. 781 by deleting the qualification "general" removes this analogy and the implied restrictive interpretation. The second apparent limitation was in describing the subject of directions by the authority on matters related to its general duty under Section 9(3) of the 1968 Act. The purpose of the Amendment is to remove this apparent limitation and to make it clear that the directions may refer to matters appearing to the authority to affect the executive's general duty as well as its own. It is achieved by Amendment 782 inserting a reference to the executive's duty into Section 9(3) of the 1968 Act.
Amendments Nos. 783, 784 and 785 are consequential upon the two main Amendments. It is also necessary to amend Clause 196 since the amended paragraph of Schedule 24 will go beyond the assimilation of Part II of the 1969 Act. Amendment No. 780 covers this by inserting a reference to the control of the passenger transport executives by the passenger transport authorities. There is a difficulty in all these matters, as was discussed in the Committee, in that the passenger transport executives are responsible for the day to day administration of extremely large commercial organisations. In certain parts of the country they will become even larger. The West Midlands PTA is a good example because the Coventry Corporation transport will be assimilated into the PTA.
Nevertheless, there has been criticisms particularly from the West Midlands and elsewhere that the existing provisions covered by the 1968 Act were not anything like tight enough to ensure the democratic control that both sides of the Committee wanted. It cannot be argued that this is exactly like a normal subcommittee or committee of a local authority and I cannot give that undertaking as such. I can give an analogy of the sort of situation which might exist in a seaside resort where the entertainments committee and the entertainments manager run a commercial operation. The manager would not necessarily expect to have detailed interference in the day-to-day commercial activities but he would be answerable to the authority as a whole within clearly laid down guidelines of policy and there would be control by the authority over the entertainments manager. That is the sort of 986 analogy we have had in mind in drawing up the Amendments. Provisions are now much tighter and will meet many of the complaints which were quite rightly raised by both sides about democratic control over the passenger transport executives.

§ Mr. Denis Howell
I wish to place on record our appreciation to the Government for seeking to meet the wishes of the Committee on this matter. It is a matter of first principle. It was stated as such by hon. Members on both sides who believed that a local authority service should be completely controlled by the members of the authority. I shall not weary the House by going over the cases which caused us to raise the matter.
I had intended to ask the Under-Secretary for a categorical assurance that the Amendments now mean that the passenger transport authority has the same relationship to its executive as is the case with every other local authority service. We have had an almost 99 per cent. assurance on that point and it would be churlish to press it further, so I shall not do so. The Under-Secretary was on difficult ground when he drew an analogy with the entertainments committee. I was chairman of an entertainments committee in the local authority and I know that more time is spent on deciding what symphony shall be played at some classical concert or which variety artist shall be booked for some festival of entertainment than almost anything else in the history of the corporation.
I thank the Under-Secretary and his colleagues, and especially the Minister for Local Government and Development, for meeting the Committee so generously on this matter.