Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Wycombe, Conservative)

This begins a different section of this part of the Bill, in that it introduces combined authorities that are not EPBs, as hon. Members can see from the italic print at the top of clause 100. I thought it worth briefly sketching out our general view and giving the Minister notice of any issues that are likely to arise.

We see no difficulty with combined authorities dealing with transport in principle. The concern that arose in the Lords was the prospect of congestion charges or other such charges being imposed on local authority areas without the consent of their voters. Looking ahead to a later clause—I will not go into it in detail—it seems that that is covered in clause 106, but it would be useful if the Minister gave some assurances on that.

From my reading of clause 100, it seems that a combined authority and an EPB must be distinct, and perhaps the Minister will say something about that. Subsection (5)(b) states that no part of the area may form part of

“the area of an EPB”.

If I am reading the Bill correctly, the Department’s intention is that a combined transport authority and EPB will be separate entities, and the Committee will be curious to know why.

Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Yorkshire and the Humber), Department for Communities and Local Government; Doncaster Central, Labour)

I hope that I can give some reassurance on congestion charging. The powers and functions of integrated transport authorities are set out in the Local Transport Act 2008. The Bill will not alter the functions available to ITAs but merely allow them to be brought together with local authority economic development functions in a single combined authority. The Bill will not create any new transport functions for sub-regional bodies when such functions could not already be given to ITAs.

On the hon. Gentleman’s point, combined authorities can act in the same way as EPBs and can take on the same functions. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to have two bodies for the same area. Subsection (5) states:

“Condition D is that no part of the area forms part of...the area of another combined authority”.

The provision is intended to ensure that the boundaries are fairly clear and that there are not all kinds of crossovers. I hope that that is reassuring.