Clause 20 - Intervention notices
Traffic Management Bill
3:00 pm
Mr David Wilshire (Spelthorne, Conservative)
Whether you were in the Chair or not, Miss Begg, I do not know, but it has been pointed out that the official Opposition team contains three very eminent people and a Whip. You will get the idea of what we are doing.
Turning to amendments Nos. 176 and 178, the Minister will have a sense of déjà vu because these are things that I regularly talk about. Clause 20(1) reads:
''If the appropriate national authority considers that a local traffic authority may be failing properly to perform any of their duties'',
it can do various things. I do not like the idea that an ''appropriate national authority'', late on a Thursday or a Friday afternoon, can, on a whim, decide that it will do something. It should have good reason to do it.
I should prefer the provision to include the wording ''reasonable grounds to believe'', rather than simply ''considers''. That authority could ''consider'' for all sorts of reasons, be they bad or not, or no reason at all. I have used that argument regularly, and I have heard the Minister's answer regularly. He did not persuade me last time, and I predict that he is unlikely to do so now.
Amendment No. 176 makes that point, and amendment No. 178 to clause 20(4) would mean that any national authority ''reasonably considers'' information specified in the notice, rather than just ''considers''. Otherwise, I envisage a situation in which someone simply says something—on a fishing expedition for information that they fancy obtaining—that is neither sensible nor reasonable. Under the amendments, such a statement would have to be reasonably connected with the purpose of the clause. The other amendment in the group is No. 177, to which I spoke earlier.