Clause 44 - Code of practice: authority
Railways and Transport Safety Bill
3:30 pm
Mrs Anne McIntosh (Vale of York, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for that clarification. He used the expression ''unusual circumstances''. It would be helpful to have clarification, because it is much easier to deal with specifics, rather than vague descriptions of what may be usual or unusual. What may seem unusual to the hon. Gentleman may seem perfectly normal to me. Words such as reasonable, normal, and usual take on different concepts and meanings. We are now reaching the core of the code of practice.
The four representatives of the industry out of the nine who sit on the current authority reflect its funding. Will the hon. Gentleman tell us which parts of the industry are represented and which parts are not? For example, does Network Rail have a representative? Do the train operating companies have one, or more than one representative, and does London Underground have a representative?
I hear what the hon. Gentleman said about how the Home Office rules on financial management apply to local authority arrangements for funding local police forces. The code of practice will be different only in so far as it relates to a transport police force. I should be interested to hear how the code of practice will apply to the authority. Who are the current representatives from the industry? Does the Under-Secretary envisage any change to the authority's composition, bearing in mind that it will have only four representatives of the industry.
I think that I understand the point that the Under-Secretary made about the code of practice, in that it will differ only in so far as it relates to a different police force, but can he be more specific about how that difference will be reflected in the code of practice? Which parts of the code of practice relating to a local police force would not apply to the transport police?