Clause 19 - Power to require information relating to network management
Traffic Management Bill
2:45 pm
Mr David Wilshire (Spelthorne, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 174, in
page 8, line 16, after 'period', insert 'not exceeding 3 months'.
I hope that the Committee will not end up watching dawn rise over the Thames before we reach the point the Minister wants us to get to.
Amendment No. 177 makes the same point as amendment No. 174, only it is expressed differently. I will speak to amendment No. 174, but I hope the Minister accepts that my comments also relate to amendment No. 177, because that will save me from repeating myself.
Both amendments seek to impose time limits. A report must be produced within a specified period not exceeding three months. I accept that I have plucked three months out of the air for the sake of debate, but it is a reasonable period and the principle is more
important than the figure. I do not care whether the Minister would prefer two or four months. Like the Minister, I have been in local government and suspect that he, too, may have found that work can take some time to be completed if there is no means of persuading people to pull their finger out. A three-month period would do just that.
Amendment No. 177 says the same thing about giving an authority time to make representations. If we say, ''You must have time to make representations,'' it could mean any length of time. I have had cases in which someone said that we could not proceed until someone else had commented, which meant that those cases lasted for ever and a day. There should be a cut-off point wherever the Bill says that something must happen. I may table amendments to that effect to other provisions. However, for the purposes of this debate, the cut-off point should be three months.