Clause 17 - Arrangements for network management
Traffic Management Bill
11:00 am
Mr Tony McNulty (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Harrow East, Labour)
The problem is that my contract is a personal contract between the 86,549 voters of Harrow, East and me. It is up to those voters whether I endure in my post. Nobody imposes the five-year term of that contract on me. I know what that contract is when I enter into it. It is right and proper that there be a single MP for that area and that the contract endures. It is not for central Government to dictate to local government how duties should be achieved, other than through what we have set out in guidance and in the panoply of other matters in the Bill. We have said clearly that we want the relevant duties to be in statute. We want them to be fulfilled, and there are sanctions in case they are not. We need a designated officer to secure those duties, which is the right and proper way to go. It is up to local authority authorities to determine the pay, the bread rations and whatever else of that manager. That is entirely proper in the general scheme of things, given the relationship between central Government and local government.