Highways (Financing) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Douglas Lumsden Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Justin Madders]

If the hon. Lady shows a little patience, I shall hopefully do that for her. The important thing in terms of the Government principles is the guidance from the Secretary of State. That guidance will specify to the ORR the various parameters, and the ORR must have due regard to that guidance. It is clear, from what I have said, that we intend to include something on local discounts in the guidance. Ultimately, we would want that to be reflected in the tolling code published by the ORR. Of course, the ORR is independent and therefore the exact content of the code will be up to it.

As I was saying, the tolling code will set out the principles. It will include requirements around how the tolling regime is structured. It will also cover how final charges are published and communicated to users, alongside governance arrangements, including consultation. As I have said, in making its code, the ORR will have due regard to guidance set by the Department and the Secretary of State. The details of the code are ultimately up to the ORR, and it is necessarily dependent on any guidance provided by the Government and the specific arrangements set out in the licence.

[Douglas Lumsden (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

The Minister spoke about consultation. This part of the Bill also talks about revising and replacing the code, so can he assure us that consultation will also take place on that?

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Within the probing nature of these amendments, I ask the Minister whether a commercial operator should be able to enter and examine or seize items from any private vehicle, be it a private car, lorry, heavy goods vehicle or haulage vehicle. What independent safeguards would apply to that? Picking out the theme from the previous grouping, I suspect we have unanimity on this point: there is no grand criminality in avoiding these toll charges. There is no mass, deliberate effort to evade a fiver, tenner or whatever it might be in order to use any particular road. It must, then, be a pretty extreme position that gives a private operator—a licensee—such excessive and intrusive powers to enter vehicles and seize items from vehicles. That rubs up with the principles of fairness in private property that I, for one, thought we enjoyed in this country.

[Douglas Lumsden]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should remove the threat of equipment being required in vehicles for people to use tolls? We argued previously that ANPR would be the sensible way forward. I have heard today that ANPR will be used for fines, so why can it not be used for tolls? The Government should remove the requirement for equipment to be installed in vehicles, thereby removing the possibility of operators going into vehicles to check that the equipment is working.

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend strengthens the argument considerably. It all comes back to this point of proportionality and fairness, and the system that most of us—certainly the vast majority of our constituents—thought we were operating under already, which such intrusive powers would drive a coach and horses through.

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[Douglas Lumsden]

Does the Minister agree that the threat of entering vehicles and everything else exists only because of the threat of people being required to install equipment in their cars to use the toll roads, and that if he just kept it simple and used ANPR, for example, that threat would go away?

[Justin Madders]

I think the hon. Member misunderstands the purpose of the clause. This not about requiring equipment to be put into particular vehicles. I will describe what clause 29 will actually do. It will give the Secretary of State powers to make regulations to provide limited enforcement powers in relation to vehicles. Those can be used to check whether required documents are displayed and whether tolling equipment is fitted and working properly—that is to say, that it has not been interfered with in a manner that might trigger the offences outlined in clause 28.

Regulations may also allow entry into a vehicle where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that equipment has been deliberately interfered with or that a false document is being used to avoid paying a toll or being identified. This may allow items to be seized and kept as evidence of an offence under clause 28. These powers will be subject to clear limits. Examination of or entry into a vehicle will be authorised only while a vehicle is on the highway. Intentionally obstructing someone lawfully exercising a power of entry will be an offence, and could be subject to a fine or imprisonment. Clause 29 will therefore provide the tools needed to investigate deliberate toll evasion, with the detail and safeguards set through regulations. I commend it to the Committee.

I turn to amendments 61 and 62, tabled by the shadow Minister. As explained in a delegated powers memorandum published alongside the Bill, these regulations will set out the details of the enforcement framework to confer powers. As with many things that concern operational matters, there is a need to remain flexible, hence why regulations were chosen as the mechanism for setting out the detail. The negative procedure for this type of regulation follows the precedent set in the Transport Act 2000. The negative procedure provides an appropriate balance between parliamentary scrutiny and the flexibility required to ensure that the penalty charge regime remains effective, proportionate and capable of adapting to future operational requirements without the need for further primary legislation. I therefore invite the shadow Minister to withdraw the amendments.

On amendment 74, we have had this debate on a number of occasions already. We believe that it is an unnecessary amendment that would have the effect of frustrating Parliament and slowing down delivery of projects under the regulated asset base model. Clause 29 will already allow the Secretary of State to make regulations about the very thing that this amendment asks for. Before commencement, this amendment would lead to Parliament being asked to look at the same thing twice: once as a Government publication and again when regulations were published. We believe that that is an unnecessary bureaucratic approach, and we cannot support it.