Mr Brian White (North East Milton Keynes, Labour)

A number of the Minister's earlier responses make amendment No. 154, in which I ask the Government to bring forward the guidance on a national basis, superfluous. He has already said that that will happen, although I was curious about why he did not use ''shall'' rather than ''may''. That is an arcane question.

I have a couple of questions about amendment No. 153. My purpose was to try to tease out of the Minister whether the guidance will ensure that there is consistency about which roads and classes of road will be subject to the permit scheme. I want to know how people who use the different schemes are talking to the network managers, how they will avoid 400 different schemes and 400 different sets of forms and how the people who will negotiate on road closure are not going to have to do one set of negotiations on one side of the boundary and another set on the other.

Will the Minister say how the guidance will cover those decisions so that there are no costly disputes. The focus must be on minimising congestion and disruption, rather than on discussions about the negotiations happening in different authorities, which will be costly for, particularly, the utilities, who will discuss that point with the local authorities.

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