Clause 18 - Guidance to local traffic authorities
Traffic Management Bill
2:45 pm
Mr Tony McNulty (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Harrow East, Labour)
I may have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's last point and it can be thrown in the pot for discussion. I make no apology for having no guidance here now, not least for the reasons that he suggested. It would have been presumptuous of me—nay, arrogant—to produce such guidance before the
Committee had even started. The last Government governed by diktat every now and then, but we seek to be as expansive, involving and inclusive as possible. We want the guidance to emerge with the Committee's collective wisdom. In addition, as I think I said before, we seek to hold the widest possible consultation with interested parties, such as utilities, local authorities and local government associations. We shall undertake to conduct that process as quickly as we can.
I have laid a paper before the Committee that describes roughly what will be in the guidance, but that by no means includes an exclusive list. We certainly intend to publish that information in the widest sense of the word, not the narrow sense. I am sure that it was a great honour for my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) to receive a copy. The information is due to be published. We seek a far wider dissemination of it in the consultative stage and, ultimately, in the final stage. Quite what the form will be beyond the normal practice of ensuring that highway authorities have the information, putting it on the website and whatever else, I do not know. However, I undertake to ensure that the information will be published in the widest sense. The document will be a public document.
The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) is right that the ''shall'' in subsection (2) is supposed to apply with force rather than be optional. Regardless of whether obtuse things prevail in Cumbria and not in Cornwall, all the relevant parties under the Bill will be obliged to satisfy us with their network management duty. They have no choice or flexibility other than in how they do that, but the fact that they must do it is provided for in the Bill. With those assurances, I recommend that the clause stand part of the Bill.