COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 14 July 1977)

§ Baroness STEDMAN

My Lords, I beg to move that the House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 13. It is linked with Amendments Nos. 23 and 24 and, with the permission of the House, I should also like to speak to these. Previous Amendments, which I discussed in moving Amendment No. 1, provide for new and more flexible arrangements in that they would allow local authorities to grant authorisations for journeys partly within and partly outside experimental 1006 areas. A local authority may thus wish to grant a special authorisation for a journey that is in part outside its own area.

To ensure proper co-ordinated control, the new subsection in Clause 2 therefore provides that, in the case of such a special authorisation, the consent of any other local authority involved to the grant of the authorisation would be required. Otherwise, the authorisation would be of no effect outside the area of the granting authority.

The new subsection therefore follows the same approach as was embodied in the two subsections which are now being deleted, in adapting the Bill to meet the new circumstances of journeys outside a designated area. Because of the way it works, there is no longer any need to make special provision to cover the case where there might be contiguous experimental areas. This new subsection will mean that such a situation will automatically be covered by precisely the same kind of requirement as applied under the original provision. My Lords, I beg to move.