Clause 76
Local Transport Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley, Labour)
The purpose of the amendment is to probe the Government’s thinking on reviews and how vexatious reviews are stopped. In an ideal world, one council calling for a review might be completely sensible, but as we have discussed previously, occasionally—more than occasionally sometimes—relationships between councils and bodies can become very bad. There could be a vexatious review with a lot of associated costs.
The amendment provides that two councils need to co-operate and agree before a review can take place, and that the review must include the ITA. If relationships were very poor there could be a situation where a local authority employed a group of consultants at large cost, held a review and did not consult and involve the integrated transport authority. I want the Minister to reassure the Committee that such a situation could not happen, but the amendments are to probe the Minister’s thinking on how vexatious reviews would be stopped.