Mr Tony McNulty (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Harrow East, Labour)

We are not publishing that approach until the end of the year at the latest because we want the current performance criteria to be as robust as possible. That involves a great deal of input not only from the Committee, but more importantly from a range of stakeholders, not least the Local Government Association and other local government organisations. We regard that input as vital given that they will be the recipients of any measures that follow failure of such performance criteria.

It is touching that the hon. Gentleman has such an almost childlike, magical view of legislation, as though there will be no network or traffic management until the Bill is passed, but the world is not like that. A number of things are going on in local government and in Government to improve matters, not least, as I have alluded to before, work on local transport plans. Those plans are being assessed against performance, and this year, thanks to the £1.9 billion of funding that I announced just before Christmas, significantly more elements of performance measurement, reward for good performance and improvement are being dealt with.

A host of other interventions—some public, some private—are going on as we speak in highway authorities throughout the country. It is right to discuss the broad criteria in greater detail in order to come up with criteria for performance assessment that local government agrees to from the beginning, rather than simply imposing them from the centre, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman would like.

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