Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. My interest in animal welfare and good-quality meat comes from the south-west and talking over many years with the butchers who supply good meat. The two problems which noble Lords have identified are: the distance of travel, which is a very serious animal welfare issue; and the fact that over the last 20 or 30 years the supermarkets have put pressure on government to close as many small abattoirs as possible, so that they can get a greater share of the market. Also, as we have discussed in your Lordships’ House before, you must have a vet to witness the abattoir’s work, yet there is a shortage in the competitive supply of vets. One company appears to have a very large share of the market. I wonder whether Ministers should not go a little further and look at the whole question of competition in this field and, most importantly, the distance of travel.

I live on the Isles of Scilly. We have some very nice farmers there and some very nice cattle—which taste extremely good too—but they have to go to the mainland. On a small ship going up and down in the waves, these animals are pretty unhappy. For years, the farmers there have been lobbying to have an abattoir on the islands. Finally, after years, the new Duke of Cornwall has agreed to provide some land on St Mary’s where an abattoir can be built. It will therefore be a much shorter journey from the off islands to the abattoir. All the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has mentioned are still there, but it is a much shorter distance. I hope that that the Government will look at all these things and make sure that we have a competitive market for this which is also very animal friendly.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, there are 100 million animals killed for meat in the UK every month, which is quite a statistic. There are 75,000 people who work in abattoirs and associated institutions. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord, Lucas, raises an important issue. Whether this is the right way to address it I am not quite sure because, as other speakers have said, we are talking about a systemic issue here. I often speak about our broken food system. At the heart of that broken food system is factory farming and the giant chicken and pig institutions which are associated with giant abattoirs, logically enough. We are approaching a land use framework, to be coming from the Government. Many noble Lords think that this does not get mentioned enough. If we think about land use and abattoirs, this all needs to fit together in a systemic way, whatever model you think should apply. Obviously, I have views on that.

I want to cross-reference what I was doing in your Lordships’ House about 12 hours ago. I was talking about the climate emergency and the impact of rising temperatures. I note that in 2022, the Government produced guidance that animals should not be transported except in temperature-controlled environments when the temperature—or the perceived temperature, taking account of humidity—is higher than 30 degrees Celsius. That might not historically have been much of an issue in the UK, but it is only going to continue and become a larger issue if you are moving animals. The longer the distance, the more you are unable to do it in the cool hours of the day.

We need a much more localised food system, which means small independent farmers and small independent abattoirs. Five small abattoirs closed in 2024 alone, and the figure is down to 49 from 64 in 2019. There is a real issue here, but it must be looked at systemically in the round, not just as abattoirs on their own. We have a huge animal welfare issue here. We also need to think about workforce. I found some statistics suggesting that the average age of a slaughterer is 63.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, these Benches support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and thank him for raising this. We also thank him for tabling this amendment in good time so that this Committee could consider it.

This amendment seeks to designate livestock markets and abattoirs as critical national infrastructure. This is not merely a technical adjustment but a vital step towards securing the future of our rural communities, ensuring robust food security and upholding the highest standards of animal welfare across our nation. The Liberal Democrats have been consistent about the critical importance of maintaining and investing in small abattoirs and local livestock markets. We see them not just as commercial facilities but as essential pillars for rural economies, fundamental to animal welfare and crucial for food traceability. They are the very backbone of our local food systems and they in turn enable ethical meat production, allowing for shorter supply chains and reduced food miles, about which we have heard something already.

We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about the closure of small abattoirs: operations in England fell from 64 in 2019 to 49 in 2023. This has exacerbated pressures on our rural communities, leading to significant challenges—including thousands of farm animals being culled, with the meat unable to be sold due to a lack of workforce. I will not get into the Brexit legacy, but this is clearly part of that too. According to a 2022 Food Standards Agency report, small abattoirs are closing at the alarming rate of 10% per year and within a decade may disappear altogether. This is not just an economic loss but a profound waste and a blow to animal welfare, as animals often face longer and more stressful journeys to distant facilities.

In the House of Commons during the passage of this Bill, my honourable friend Sarah Dyke MP, whose family are sixth-generation farmers in Somerset, highlighted the impact of regulatory and cost pressures, such as the 20% rise in meat inspection fees, which disproportionately affect these vital facilities. We have consistently called for the replacement of the small abattoir fund, which was removed in November 2024, and have proposed a £1 billion addition to the farming budget to sustain and enhance these networks. Yes, it was all fully costed when we made this proposal, with revenue-raising measures. We even advocate for innovative solutions, such as authorising mobile slaughter units to improve access in remote areas.

The inclusion of abattoirs and livestock markets as critical infrastructure would provide them with the protection and longevity that they desperately need within future planning and development strategies. Our 2024 manifesto explicitly committed to:

“Investing in rural and coastal infrastructure and services, including local abattoirs”


and livestock markets, to bolster community resilience and food security and to support younger workers in rural areas. This underpins our commitment to a comprehensive new animal welfare Bill, which we would love to see, ensuring high animal welfare standards throughout the food supply chain.

This is about providing the stability and recognition that these essential facilities deserve. It is about more than just buildings. It is about safeguarding the livelihoods of our farmers, ensuring humane treatment for animals, and building a more resilient, transparent food system for all. Think of it as a circulatory system of our rural economy. The abattoirs and livestock markets are the vital arteries and veins. Without protecting this core infrastructure, the entire body of our farming sector, and local food supply, will struggle to thrive—or worse, begin to fail. By acting now, we can revitalise and safeguard our rural heartlands for the generations to come. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic to what the noble Baroness said but, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, I am not sure that another statutory body is the right way to deal with this. Thinking back to my experience in the NHS, I cannot think of the number because there have been so many whistleblowing initiatives. There have been edicts and circulars, and I think we have some legislation as well. But I think we would find it hard to say that we think the NHS has a culture in which whistleblowers feel confident to come forward; they do not.

The noble Baroness has raised an important question, which I hope the Government will consider. We need to start talking to the leaders of organisations to understand what the issue is in relation to whistleblowers. It is, of course, partly the point that the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, raised; sometimes whistleblowers can be awkward people and therefore have already built up a feeling against them. Sometimes they could be making trouble, but very often they are raising legitimate points.

Part of the problem is the punitive culture for senior managers in much of the public sector. Why do NHS chief execs discourage whistleblowing? It is because we have a punitive culture. The turnover rate of CEOs in the health service is frightening; it is so rapid. Somehow, to deal with whistleblowing, you have to look at a much wider issue of whether we set conditions in which leaders have greater freedom to develop and grow their organisations from the current micromanagement they often come under. We also need a culture in which, if CEOs really do encourage their staff to raise concerns, the system then does not come down.

There is clearly a tension. I am sure that many CEOs know that, in their hospital trusts at some point, there are unsafe services. They know they do not have enough clinical staff. The penalty for admitting it, however, is to have regulatory intervention and managerial intervention from above which basically says, “You get on with it. We are much more concerned about finance and throughput”. Unless we are realistic about why senior management does not encourage whistleblowers, the reality is that any of these kinds of initiatives will not be effective in the end.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I briefly and with pleasure offer support for the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who is the House’s acknowledged expert and champion in the area of whistleblowing. Reacting to some of the comments made, the noble Baroness said she would prefer to see an overarching system rather than operating within the frame of this Bill. With the huge changes the Bill is potentially making, it is clearly very important that, if things are going wrong, we are able to see them and whistleblowers can safely speak out.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, raised the health service. It is useful to reference our earlier debate on the infected blood scandal. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, went through a very long list and ran on a theme she has long been running on; we have this cascade of continuing scandals and crises with all sorts of harrowing outcomes. I do not think she mentioned this, but issues such as sodium valproate and vaginal mesh are quite recent and possibly ongoing. There is a systemic problem with the structure of government and the way it is working. We are potentially giving the Government much more power here.

I want to fulfil my traditional Green role and add to the thoughts about the impact on the environment and when environmental issues go horribly wrong, as they potentially will. I note that since we were last in Committee the Government have brought in some changes to the highly controversial Part 3, which the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, referred to. In response to those changes, the Office for Environmental Protection has said:

“We are clear that even after the material amendments the Government proposes, the Bill would, in some respects, lower environmental protection on the face of the law”.


The OEP is saying that if we are lowering environmental protections, there is a real risk—“environment” usually means human health impacts as well—and environmental whistleblowers need to be able to speak up and point out what is happening. These are people from within organisations who may be the only ones who really know what is happening.

Finally, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for mentioning HS2 so that I do not have to.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for tabling this amendment. It is a clear and well-intentioned proposal that raises important questions about how individuals can share concerns relating to NSIPs. We on this side of the House recognise the value in exploring such concerns and that they are heard and addressed. Clarity in that process is undoubtedly important. However, at the same time the question of establishing independent bodies through amendments is not straightforward. There are practical and structural considerations that merit careful thought, particularly around proportionality, as my noble friend Lord Grayling mentioned.

I want to focus on what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said: this is an issue of culture. No bureaucracy can overcome the wrong culture, and we need to fix the culture if we are genuinely going to have people listening to whistleblowers. So, while we welcome the opportunity for Ministers to set out how the concerns will be raised and responded to—and clarification will be helpful in understanding whether further mechanisms are needed—it will be most interesting to hear from the Minister how he will change the culture.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it will probably not surprise the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to know that I oppose his amendment. It is well known in your Lordships’ House that the Green Party opposes new nuclear power plants. Proponents of new nuclear power should be careful what they wish for and consider the whole issue of public consent and concern.

I commend the noble Lord on managing to get this amendment considered at an extremely timely moment, given that this week the Government are seeking to go ahead with Sizewell C. As the Financial Times notes, it is

“the costliest nuclear reactor in the world”

and will see the UK taxpayer bearing huge costs and risk, with government loans of £3.8 billion and a £36 billion loan from the National Wealth Fund.

I declare an interest in that I know many of the people who have opposed the Sizewell C project and, I have no doubt, will continue to do so. There are many reasons why they oppose it. Cost is the obvious one, but there are also the local environmental impacts and concerns about future security, sea level rise and water use—a whole list of things. Safety is a big issue that people have continuing concerns about with nuclear power; it is no wonder when you consider the list from Chernobyl to Fukushima to the continuing concerns regularly highlighted by the International Energy Agency about Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine. The public are very much concerned about trust and safety.

Many in your Lordships’ House are undoubtedly familiar with the phrase “policing with consent”. When we were discussing physician associates, I spoke about regulating with consent. What has happened since with the Leng review and the many concerns expressed showed that there was a problem when the previous Government went ahead without real consent and clear understanding within the health sector. If you are looking at nuclear power, those who propone it would want to see that there is construction with consent and reassurance of security. Taking away regulatory justification is not going to play very well.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I listened with interest to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I can assure her that, having heard last week from both the chairman and the chief executive of the Office for Nuclear Regulation, who appeared before the Industry and Regulators Committee on which I serve, I was very satisfied that their regulatory process and policy would more than satisfy the consumers and residents of the area of Suffolk near the Sizewell nuclear power station.

The secret of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is in its title:

“Removal of duplicative regulatory justification decisions”.


We do not need duplicative regulatory justification decisions if, in the singular, they protect the safety of the public to a sufficient degree. I was very satisfied by the answers to questions on safety that we received in our committee last week from the senior management of the ONR. I strongly support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

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[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. I declare my interest as the owner of a listed building and thank the Heritage Alliance for its briefings.

Other noble Lords have already, much more eloquently than I could, put the problem of this clause to the Committee. I highlighted exactly the same quotes as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, from the Commons Committee stage, alongside the Minister in the other place saying that:

“We absolutely want to ensure a better process, with those bodies consulted and their concerns addressed”.—[Official Report, Commons, Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee, 13/3/25; col. 219.]


It is not clear to me where in this clause and in all the changes that it makes those bodies concerned with heritage will be consulted and their concerns addressed. Therefore, I add my voice to those who have serious concerns with Clause 41.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I share those concerns. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and others have forensically dissected this clause and demonstrated that it is, to use a technical term, a right mess.

Manor Castle is in Sheffield, for those who do not know. Sheffield is a city which has suffered enormously from the destruction of heritage, both industrial and earlier heritage. On this last day, I take your Lordships to August 1644, when there was a 10-day siege of Sheffield Castle. The castle fell. Having been held by the Royalists, it was besieged by the Parliamentarians, and Parliament—this place—ordered the castle to be destroyed. To add insult to injury, in the intervening period the castle market was built on top of the site. That has now been demolished and archaeology is being done on the site. The end point of this is a story from the last few months, when the archaeologists uncovered abatises—a word that I have just learned—which are sharpened branches that were put around the ditch by the defenders in an attempt to hold off the Parliamentarians.

This is not just a history story. This is a city that is uncovering an important, exciting piece of its past which has survived miraculously and against all odds. This is a story of how important discoveries such as this are to cities’ identities and local heritage is to the identity of a place. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, set out, we cannot allow centralisation and the taking away of local control, which might see us lose stories such as this.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, as we have heard, the Bill stands to disapply heritage regimes for transport infrastructure developments. There is, therefore, a risk that this could harm heritage assets without proper scrutiny and probably go further than the stated ambition of the Bill. I am therefore delighted to support Amendment 54 in the name of my noble friend Lady Pinnock, who has outlined the technical issues, as has the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in talking about his amendment.

We all understand that building transport infrastructure is important to our economic growth. In particular, new public transport is important to support people moving away from cars where possible. However, we have got to make sure that, in building faster and more efficiently, we do not lose critical heritage. This amendment and debate are important because they flag the importance of recognising our architectural heritage and conserving the historic environment alongside the need for new infrastructure. It is a practical approach, and I urge the Government to support this small but, in some ways, significant change.

As we have already heard, in Committee in the Commons, the Minister acknowledged that these changes could have unintended consequences and committed to respond to concerns raised by my colleague Gideon Amos MP by Report—yet nothing has been forthcoming. No further comments were made by the Minister on Clause 41 during that debate. I await the response from the noble Lord the Minister to this important topic of our heritage assets and the answers to the many important questions that have been raised.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 57C in this group, which proposes some alternative ways of solving the same problem, so I do not propose to go into it in great depth. The point of this debate is that this is something we should be moving to find a solution to because, although it us not particularly simple, it is not particularly difficult, either.

Many of us have come across simple cross-pavement charging arrangements, which people seem to be installing ad hoc. It would be a good idea if this became something that was regularised, because we want the street to be a properly controlled environment. On the other hand, we do not want to make it expensive or difficult for an individual householder to obtain what we intend to be a general provision. But, if we are looking at a system where a lot of people have this facility, we should also be looking at how we are going to manage parking in this space. There is not much good in having an electric charging facility if someone else has gone on holiday and left their van in the space you need to charge your vehicle. An efficient use of an electric charging system is that it is used by more than one person, so how will we enable householders to allow other people to charge in that space?

Neither of these are things with instant solutions, but, if we are looking ahead to a time where we all have electric vehicles—particularly people who live in flats or other arrangements where the parking outside the building is not going to be sufficient—how will we provide that? Can we provide it in a way which is better than the one we have at the moment, where, for one reason or another, mostly because it is provided by people who have no personal interest in the facility, the prices paid by people for on-street charging are very high? If someone has installed it for their own use, they are much less motivated to charge a huge price for someone else to use it. They are much more likely to say that any margin is a good margin. So I very much hope that we can look at democratising on-street charging. I am not saying it is easy, but I am saying it is something we need to make progress with.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed a number of amendments in this group, so while noble Lords will know that I do not normally speak on transport, I am speaking on my noble friend’s behalf this afternoon.

I begin with the very interesting comment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas: the efficient use of a charger would mean it being used by more than one person. I would go rather further than that and say that what we want is an efficient use of cars: them being used by more than one person. The practical reality, of course, is that most cars spend the vast amount of their time stationary, occupying public space when they are parked on the road. Coming to an arrangement is where Amendment 66, tabled by the noble Lady Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, comes in, requiring

“local planning authorities in England to publish and regularly update a three-year electric vehicle charging infrastructure plan”.

That charging infrastructure plan would ideally very much look at that car club kind of model, which could potentially free up large amounts of space in our cities to be put to much better use than simply being occupied by a stationary vehicle 96% of the time—that is the last figure I saw of the amount of time that cars are stationary.

It should be noted that my noble friend did not sign any of the cross-pavement charging solutions. I know that Caroline Russell, the Green London Assembly member, would not forgive me if I did not make the point that, whatever we say about charging across the pavement, the first priority has to be pedestrians, particularly vulnerable pedestrians. We must make sure that anything that is installed or allowed does not create even greater difficulties, on what is already a very difficult streetscape on many occasions, for pedestrians, particularly vulnerable pedestrians, with wheelchairs, buggies et cetera. I note, perhaps declaring an interest, that when I was in Camden I would regularly try not to trip over the electric cable that my boss at the time trailed out of his house and across the pavement out to his car on the street. Because he was my boss, I was not quite allowed to do anything about it.

I want to focus mostly on Amendments 64 and 67, which are about heavy goods vehicles. This is a crucial issue for the environment and for public health. At the moment, fewer than 1% of new HGVs sold are electric, and there are 500,000 HGVs in the British fleet. At the moment, they are emitting the equivalent of 20 megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year—the same as 2 million homes. They are also particularly bad in terms of emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which have very significant impacts on public health. That tends to particularly strike in poorer, more disadvantaged areas—think about the homes along busy main roads, which tend to be where people who already have poorer health live. There is also the point that EVs are much quieter, which has significant public health impacts, and they are also better to drive. One of the things we have in terms of HGVs is an ageing driving population, and something that is easier to drive is a significant issue there.

I also note that the Government currently have a plug-in truck grant, with a discount for those who purchase them of up to £25,000. There is a push there, and the Government are spending money on it, but what is lacking at the moment is the general charging infrastructure, and these two amendments seek to have a programme and to make sure that when new depots and other infrastructure is being built, they are covered. I note that at the moment there is still an issue about the speed of charging, but megawatt charging is on the way. When we come to later amendments that my noble friend also signed, we also have to think about the infrastructure of distribution of electricity, to make sure that it is able to cater to that very heavy demand. I think there are very strong arguments here for a concerted, planned and organised approach. What we have now is extremely ad hoc, and in far too many cases we are seeing people literally trailing a cord across the pavement, which is a really bad idea for all kinds of reasons.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, the fact that there are so many amendments on the issue of electric vehicles and electric HGVs shows, to my mind, that the Government have slightly missed a trick in not using the Bill as an opportunity to do more to roll out EVs and EV lorries and small vans, and on door-to-door delivery mechanisms, particularly as the targets and the timelines are coming up so quickly.

I hope the amendment will cause the Government to reflect on that and that more progress can be made in this Bill, because it is a real opportunity. It would be remiss of the Government not to seize it, because it lies at the heart of what they are trying to do in the stated purposes of the Bill. I very much welcome the amendments put forward by my noble friend Lady Pidgeon. I will speak particularly to Amendments 57 and 58, but I generally support all the amendments in this group.

Private cars are responsible for some 13% of the UK’s total CO₂ emissions—some 60.2 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2023. They are the largest single source within the transport sector, which as a whole is responsible for around 30% of our emissions. Road vehicles, including cars, make up the vast majority of them. Emissions from cars have been declining since 2005, but we still have a long way to go if we are to hit our climate targets, and the time we have to make these changes is fast running out.

The take-up of electric cars is, thankfully, growing. As of mid-2025, around 4% of the approximately 34 million registered cars on UK roads are EVs, totalling about 1.3 million. This goes up to about 7% if we include hybrid vehicles. The Climate Change Committee has been clear that we have further to go and need to do more. Rolling out EVs and making them affordable and practical is a key part of our pathway to net zero. We need to work together as politicians to make sure that we can overcome all the practical obstacles we have heard about, including the cost of affording the car in the first place. We need to make sure that, when people own these electric cars, they can afford to charge them and get the benefits that come only from being able to do so via their home charging points—at night and on a proper tariff that saves them money. If we do not do those things, people will just not make that transition away from petrol and diesel cars in time. We need to make those pull factors work for people. It is really important.

We have seen price reductions in the vehicles, increased government support and the continuing rollout of national charging infrastructure. Taken together, all these measures are helping to change consumers’ choices. We welcome the other efforts that the Government are making: the UK now has 73,000 public charging points—that is welcome—and the charging network rollout is helping to overcome some of the real fears with these things. The projection is that we could have 25 million EVs on UK roads by 2040. The biggest barriers to the take-up of EVs commonly cited are a lack of charging infrastructure, range anxiety—although that technology is improving—and the higher costs of running the cars. This is what we have talked about—making sure that people can plug them in at home.

We really welcome these amendments. It is not good enough that people are facing £3,000 of costs to get this planning stuff done and are waiting 12 to 15 months simply to run a cable across the pavement. As my noble friend said, 40% of people do not have a driveway at home, so cannot do this. This really needs to happen.

I also welcome all the amendments on HGV charging. This is particularly important for last-mile delivery and smaller-scale vans so that we can continue to tackle the scourge of air pollution, which is so damaging to our young people in particular and is such a radical cause of asthma. Luckily, we are beginning to see changes in that space.

We welcome these amendments and we think this really needs to happen. We encourage the Government to go away and think about how they can do more to bring about a joined-up policy on these issues through this Bill. There is more that can be done through the proposed legislation to help bring about the changes that we all want.

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Of late, we hear people reaching for a magical, mythical potion or a radical solution, in the hope that that fixes things, or for quick publicity that becomes paper around your fish and chips the next day. A simple tweet saying “Down with the nimbys” is not a solution. Here is an amendment which seeks to tackle the real issues at stake. It would support development and put nature in, and it would be positive, practical and lift the vision. It would be simple, costless and effective, and help to deliver what is in the NPFF. It seeks to work with the environmental improvement plan and would be part of biodiversity net gain. It would put in more nature and help developers and local authorities. This amendment does not seek to retrofit what we have built already or to change the past. It looks to the future and seeks to build communities that people want to live in. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the evident enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and I thank him for moving this amendment.

With an amendment with the headline of planting trees next to new roads, I have to begin by pointing out that, if you are talking about highways and so on, we should not be building new roads. All too often, we are destroying wonderful pieces of nature. I am thinking of standing beside a wonderful oak tree, which would have been a sapling when Elizabeth I was on the Throne, that was threatened by the Norwich link road, Western Link. Luckily, it appears to have been saved by barbastelle bats. Sometimes the bats do win.

Nonetheless, I very much support this amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, has made the case for it strongly. I declare an interest, as we are talking about old times, as one of those campaigning to save Sheffield’s trees, which helped to highlight to the nation the benefits of street trees and how important they are to human health and well-being. That is what we are talking about here, as well as biodiversity and nature.

Given the time, I will say just one other thing. I think the noble Lord alluded to this, but it is worth stressing that when we think about trees and other plantings, we think that it is good for the trees, but it is absolutely crucial for other wildlife. We should be ensuring that roads are, as much as they can possibly be, wildlife corridors. Birds are the obvious thing to think about here, but many noble Lords will be aware of the phrase “insectageddon”. The populations at the base of our food web have been collapsing, and plantings beside roads and in urban areas should provide some sort of refuge and restoration here.

I referred previously to the fact that we are not meeting the legal target to reverse the decline in nature by 2030, which of course is in the Environment Act. I will just say one final thing. Noble Lords might be thinking that I am getting fairly small with insects, but I also want to focus on the importance of a rich microbial and fungal world. Just yesterday, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks produced some really important work pointing out that very few fungal biodiversity hotspots are in protected areas, and we need to have a healthy environment. We need to think about all elements of life in the web in which all our bodies actually live. This is just a small step, but I think it is a very sensible and practical one.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I really appreciate this amendment being tabled and the manner and the style in which it was presented. I welcome the noble Lord’s comments and speeches in this space.

Amendment 60 requires guidance around the planting of trees on highways to be issued within six months of the Act coming into force. As the noble Lord said, this does not require great expense. We feel that it is a helpful, useful measure. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord that this is not about development versus nature. Actually, we need both, and both need to be conjoined and considered together, because we, as people who live in the new developments, who need to thrive and not just survive, need these things to work. They are better for all of us. They reduce health inequalities, they make us happier and healthier, and they make our lives more pleasant.

One example came to my mind on this: the work that was done on the upgrade to the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon, which opened in 2020. As part of the upgrade programme, 850,000 saplings were planted by the Highways Agency. Unfortunately, it was done in extreme heat and in poor soils, as a result of which three-quarters of the trees—roughly half a million—that the Highways Agency planted died. They are being replanted, at a cost of £2.9 million, which raises an issue about how we replant nature. Again, I do not want to go into Part 3, but there are obviously issues with trying to replicate nature or move nature from one place to another, and this is a very stark example of that.

Going beyond that, local communities really got involved in this area and I want to thank them, because people went out and planted trees themselves, cared for and nurtured them, and did a great job in trying to put right some of the mess. Some of the trees that were planted were the wrong types of trees; they did not have enough soil around them, so they dried out; the soil they were planted in was bad; the saplings were too young—generally it was not very well done and the trees that were planted were not cared for and nurtured. What tends to happen is that there is a concentration on numbers—it is a numbers game. Every party had a tree-planting commitment in its manifesto—“My tree-planting commitment is bigger than yours”—and that is not what we need. We need trees to be cared for and nurtured.

I suggest politely to the Government that they should focus not on numbers planted but the numbers in five years’ time. How many trees, five years after the planting, actually survive and are counted? If there are not enough, more planting should be done. Trees are really important. This is a valuable opportunity for the Government to look at the strategies and for us to have a broader look at how we do this. So I really welcome this amendment.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am at risk of losing my carefully nurtured reputation as an environmentalist and a nature lover. This amendment was beautifully presented by my noble friend Lord Gascoigne, but perhaps somewhat extravagantly. We were told that having more trees would improve driving. Does anybody believe that? Just think what experiment you would have to conduct to be able to prove it.

Not every tree is as attractive as you might think. Right across the road from my front door, there is a mulberry tree. Most of the year it is survivable, but at the moment it is absolutely fatal. It is dropping its half-formed mulberries on the pavement, causing danger in every direction, as well as being terribly ugly. The householder was out today with a hose trying to sweep it off the pavement, I assume because he was worried about liability. Just around the corner we have some very fine plane trees in Queen’s Gate that must be 150 years old. They are aggressively pollarded. Why? It is because they suck so much water out of the clay that they cause subsidence in the houses adjacent. As it is the council’s liability if the street trees pull the houses down, to protect itself it pollards them aggressively to reduce water demand.

There is a right place for trees. Bedford Park in west London, built as a semi-rural extension, would look ridiculous without trees and of course must have them, but other fine Italianate terraces looking like palazzos are made ridiculous if you plant the odd sapling in the carriageway because you cannot fit it on the footway due to the voids under the pavement built to house coal. Everything must be judged very finely and at local level.

The idea here is that the source of wisdom on this should be a civil servant in MHCLG, producing guidance which includes, to my horror,

“standard designs, and planting palettes”.

What will that produce? It will be one ash, one poplar and one oak sapling—box ticked and that is the developer done. You will have the same trees planted in the same configuration in half the developments in the country. There are people who can produce guidance on trees, and I would encourage them to do so. There is a professional body representing local authority arboriculturists. People who really work with trees, know trees and have great affection for them have a great sensitivity to what is appropriate to plant in a particular location. Guidance from that source might be very sensible and valuable. I would encourage that, but not, I hope, box-ticking.

Let us have trees in the right places and remember that they are good in some places but bad in others. Let us have variety in the right place and perhaps fewer mulberry trees overhanging the footway, but let us not bureaucratise this with guidance from the ministry with little drawings.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I should declare that for the past year or so I have been working with the Horticultural Trades Association, which represents environmental horticulturists under the Industry and Parliament Trust scheme. The industry is very keen to improve the quality of planting. We have talked about housing, but I do not know if the noble Lord has seen, for example, the planting near warehouses or commercial estates. Far too often, there are one or two exotic species which have no value at all for wildlife. The Government could of course work with the industry and those experts to produce the guidance, so it would not just be them; it would be a co-operative effort.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

That would be an indispensable approach, if this were to go ahead, but we are fundamentally forgetting local authorities and local planning departments in this. The arboriculturists to whom the noble Baroness refers are exactly the sort of people who should be involved and are the right source of information for this—more so than the Government. If the Government are to be involved, it should be at a very considerable distance from the whole process, offering encouragement, advice and light support rather than providing the guidance itself. Otherwise, I welcome everything else that my noble friend said and I am very happy to have a further discussion with him in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

I will speak briefly to the three amendments I have in this group.

Amendment 63 is about increasing solar panels on new transport infrastructure. This could include new or refurbished railway stations or rail lines, bus and tram stations and depots, major road building or upgrade projects, and other public transport hubs. As a country, we have so much to learn from others. For example, Switzerland has just started a new scheme of installing solar panels on the actual railways; PV panels will be rolled out like carpet between the tracks in one of their western cantons. Germany plans to install solar panels along motorways, tapping into 250,000 potential sites to boost renewable energy. France is trialling solar panels on its railway estate.

The European Commission, in a 2024 report, looked at the potential for the large-scale deployment of vertical solar panels on Europe’s major roads and railways. It concluded that the electricity generated from such PV installations would not only be cost-effective in electricity markets but serve as a viable alternative to fossil fuels in transportation. Tapping into solar PV energy along transport infrastructure can therefore significantly contribute to the EU’s energy transition, and we should do the same here in the UK. There are examples of good practice—at Second Reading, I mentioned Blackfriars and Denmark Hill railway stations—but we must do more, and that is why I tabled the amendment.

Amendment 106 is a requirement for all new car parks to include solar panels. As I highlighted at Second Reading, across the country there are vast expanses of roof space that sit idle, while exposed to sunlight. Installing solar panels on car parks could generate clean energy, reduce grid pressure and power local EV chargers directly. France has already mandated solar panels on large car parks. The Government’s recent consultation on solar panels feels like we are trying to catch up; this amendment will make that a reality, and I hope that the Minister will be able to support it.

Finally, Amendment 68 is about the prioritisation of electricity grid connections for EV charging infrastructure. This includes, as I discussed in an earlier group, the need for a focus on commercial as well as private vehicles. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, although she is not in her place, for putting her name to this amendment. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will again speak extremely briefly. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed Amendments 68 and 106.

I already referred to Amendment 68 when discussing the need for the Government to ensure that the electricity network providers prioritise grid connections for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, particularly for freight. As I said in an earlier group, that is particularly important. It will potentially have a large draw on the grid, so this has to be planned from an early stage to make sure there is enough there to cater for HGVs.

If we were going to have a contest for the most popular amendment tabled to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, I think Amendment 106 might be it. I have heard a number of people saying, “Don’t put solar panels on farmland, put them on car parks instead”. It is a pity we are doing this before the holidays, because, when we come back, many people will have undoubtably been in continental Europe. France, for example, has a rule that all new and existing car parks with more than 80 places must install solar panels. So, this is a very modest amendment, when you compare it to what France has legislated; this is only talking about new car parks. It is absolutely common sense about where we should be putting those solar panels, for all the practical reasons, in terms of the extra shade they provide, protection for cars and to meet the Government’s energy targets.

Road and Rail Projects

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my question is about the accuracy of the Statement. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me that it is accurate. I refer to the third page, under the headline “Major road network”, and the Government explaining

“why we extended the temporary cut in fuel duty at the last Budget”.

That temporary cut has been going on since 2011, since when the fuel duty level has been frozen at or below 2010 rates. This has cost the public purse £130 billion thus far and, if it is not temporary and is to continue until 2030, will cost £200 billion. Of the beneficiaries of that, the top quintile by income gets 24% of the benefit—that is all those Chelsea tractors—while the poorest quintile gets only 10% of the benefit. Some of this money might, for example, be spent on at least keeping the £3 bus fare or going back to £2 bus fares. Can the Minister assure me that this is only, in the Government’s mind, a temporary cut in fuel duty?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Baroness will know the answer to that. As I said at Questions, taxation is a matter for His Majesty’s Treasury. The Chancellor will determine taxation policy from time to time.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

52: After Clause 30, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of the operation of the English national concessionary travel scheme(1) Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must conduct a review of the English national concessionary travel scheme (ENCTS).(2) The review must assess—(a) the overall effectiveness and impact of the ENCTS for eligible persons,(b) the impact of the timing restrictions of the ENCTS for eligible persons, and(c) the approximate cost of removing timing restrictions of the ENCTS to allow eligible persons to use the scheme on travel 24 hours a day and seven days a week.(3) In conducting the review, the Secretary of State must consult relevant stakeholders, including local councils, transport authorities and relevant user groups.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to review the current English national concessionary travel scheme.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, for the benefit of those with sight impairments, I should declare that my name is Natalie Bennett, or Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle. I am the other Green—and we are doing an unusual bit of tag-teaming here, because I did the Second Reading of this Bill when my noble friend was off on medical leave. Interestingly, I raised in my Second Reading speech the issues covered by Amendment 52, which talks about the way in which the national concessionary travel scheme does not meet the needs of lots of people who very much need to be able to use it.

As I said at Second Reading, the restrictions mean that the scheme does not start until 9.30 in the morning. Many people have medical appointments that require them to travel before that time, and many people are providing childcare, often for relatives, which requires them to travel before that time. I described making concessionary travel a 24-hour event then as a modest investment that the Government could make. What we have now in Amendment 52 is a modest amendment, because it does not require the Government to do anything; it calls for a review of the scheme. I have told stories based on experiences that have been shared with me, particularly by some very doughty transport campaigners in Sheffield—but that is all anecdotal. This amendment would demand that there is a review of the scheme to see how it is meeting people’s needs and to help to uncover the costs of expanding the scheme.

This is a very simple amendment—a review amendment. It is not the intention to divide the House on it, but I hope that the Government will take it on board and I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

I conclude my remarks by thanking all noble Lords for their contributions to improving the Bill, which has been possible through productive engagement during the Bill’s passage. We have identified amendments that will help improve bus services for passengers, help local transport authorities run their bus networks, deal practically with the issue of floating bus stops and generally ensure that the Bill functions as intended. As we move towards Third Reading, where I look forward to discussing any outstanding issues with noble Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very detailed and careful response and thank all noble Lords who contributed to what has been a rich and rather lively and passionate debate on issues that really matter to bus users, whether they are able to access the bus at all because of cost and whether they are safe in the environment of the bus. I am sure many people will be pleased to hear that I will not run through every amendment, but I want to make a couple of comments in response to what the Minister said.

First of all, on Amendment 52 and the concessionary travel scheme, I am slightly encouraged by the noble Lord’s pointing to the Government giving consideration to a review—although he said that local authorities have the option of subsidising the general English scheme, and of course we know how incredibly cash-strapped local authorities are; I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I also take encouragement from the noble Lord’s response to Amendment 54, about a review of the costs and use of bus travel by children. The noble Lord said that the Government remain committed to exploring the issue; I encourage them to explore north of the English border to Scotland, where the Green-introduced free travel for under-22s has proved extremely popular and successful.

I will just mention very briefly the excellent amendment on Vision Zero from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. Vision Zero matters to me much, for very personal reasons, and I think we should see it everywhere. I take the points that the noble Minister made about various safety measures, but Vision Zero is something beyond that. It means knowing that people will do the wrong thing, and creating an environment where that is not going to leave them dead or seriously injured. That is not just the same thing as safety measures, and it is important that that is understood.

Finally, I will also mention—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

—as was addressed by a number of noble Lords, the issue of reporting of assaults on buses. The Government have a target of reducing violence against women and girls by half. This is a method for doing it. As many noble Lords from around the House have said, this would be an important step, and I hope the Government will take it on board for the future. But in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 52.

Amendment 52 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

53: After Clause 30, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of the provision of bus services to villages in England(1) The Secretary of State must, within two years of the day on which this Act is passed, conduct a review of the level of bus services being provided to villages in England.(2) The review under subsection (1) must assess—(a) the change in the level of services to villages since the passing of this Act,(b) the number of villages in England not served by bus services,(c) demographic characteristics of villages in relation to the level of bus services available, and(d) the impact of this Act on the provision of bus services to villages in England.(3) In conducting the review under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult relevant stakeholders, including local councils and transport authorities.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to review provision of bus services to villages in England.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

This amendment was debated earlier and we heard expressions of support, so I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

Disruption at Heathrow

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am willing to have great sympathy with the noble Baroness and her experiences. People’s travel is important to them, whether it is personal, recreational or for business. The Government recognise that it is very important for the British economy for the major airport in Britain to run smoothly—there is no doubt about that. There is also no doubt that it is a challenge to deal with so many customers who are disrupted at one time. It is not just one plane-load of passengers; it is a huge number. Well over 1,000 flights were cancelled and delayed on the Friday that the airport was closed.

That is a challenge that both Heathrow Airport Ltd and the carriers, including British Airways, ought to be able to rise to. They are two commercial companies, and there is a limit to what the Government can do between them. I have seen some passing comment in the media in the past couple of days about what compensation is due between the two parties. I hope that is reflected in what trickles down to the customers of the carriers, because otherwise it looks like rather an unseemly debate from various commercial organisations.

There is a limit to what the Government can do, but they want people to move smoothly through Heathrow in particular, because it is so important to the British economy. I think that both parties to which the noble Baroness refers would say that one issue with Heathrow is that it is very full of planes and people. Therefore, it will not be a surprise when Heathrow comes forward with an expansion plan, simply because it is much harder to deal with very large quantities of passengers when there is virtually no expansion space left—and I have some sympathy with that. We must rely on both companies to do their jobs properly and seamlessly. Passengers should not feel that, somehow, they are at odds with each other, given that a successful aeroplane flight depends on both doing their jobs properly. They will know that anyway, but we will see what the reports say, and we will see what the carriers do in respect of customers who, in some cases, have been very badly delayed.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Statement refers to the ownership structure of Heathrow, which was also referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Harris. It was of course bought by the Spanish firm Ferrovial in 2006 with a huge pile of debt and was finally sold in 2025 to a French asset manager and to wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Singapore and China. The similarities to our water company ownership, and all the failures associated with that, are very obvious. It is also worth noting that the ownership vehicle company has seen 21 changes in director since May last year, and it announced just a month ago that it would pay its first dividend in five years.

In that context, does the Minister think it adequate that, while there is a government inquiry into the energy side of this issue, this inquiry has been commissioned by Heathrow itself, which has been left with the entire responsibility for seeing what has gone wrong? Where is the inquiry into the Civil Aviation Authority to see whether its approach to Heathrow has been sufficiently resilient, given that it has resulted in actions like this?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The British public are entitled to expect the airport to run properly, no matter who owns it. We are also entitled to expect that, as a major piece of public utility, it is capable of examining its own systems and recommending whether or not they were adequate. The CAA will look at the report. I do not currently see a reason why the Civil Aviation Authority itself needs to be examined. If we are not careful, we will examine everything, in circumstances where it is pretty clear that the airport was responsible for its own systems and there was an outside power issue. The two inquiries will look at both those things. The Civil Aviation Authority will draw some conclusions from the Kelly inquiry. It is responsible for economic regulation and safety; it is not responsible for running the airport itself. We have to expect Heathrow Airport Ltd to be able to do this itself, and we will see where that goes.

The Secretary of State and I have no doubt that it will examine this with rigour. It is an exceptional experience. It is not the case that the airport regularly falls over in this respect. It is entitled to look at this itself, and we are entitled to look at the results and see to what extent improvements can be made, and what its risk appetite is to do so. We will wait for the outcome of these reports to make that judgment.

Airport Expansion

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I assure the noble Baroness that the criteria that she has set out for airport expansion proposals are indeed those that the Government would use to look at any application for a development control order. We do not have that application yet because this is in the early stages. However, the proposition that connectivity drives growth, jobs and housing in line with the Government’s missions and the plan for change is no different in respect of air connectivity, which also drives economic growth.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in responding to my honourable friend in the other place, Siân Berry, on the question of how this could possibly fit within the Government’s legal climate commitments, the Government suggested that the answer was sustainable aviation fuel. That currently represents less than 0.1% of aviation fuel, and it would take an awful lot of fried fish and chips if we were going to rely on used cooking oil. Does the Minister stand by the claim that somehow we will see a massive explosion in sustainable aviation fuel?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I suggest that “a massive explosion in sustainable aviation fuel” is probably not what the noble Baroness meant literally. But seriously, the answer is yes, as this country can be a leader in sustainable aviation fuel, which can support thousands of jobs, and the plan is for it to make up a much larger proportion of total aviation fuel. The Government are committed to our legal obligations to reach net zero in 2050, as set out in the Climate Change Act. The analysis that my department has done suggests that a third runway is compatible with net zero, because sustainable aviation fuel will make a difference. The Government are proceeding with it, and there is a lot of investment in advanced fuels to get technology to move forward.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill and join the widespread tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that we have heard from the Minister and around the House.

Noble Lords may be a little surprised to see me as transport is not usually my territory, but I can reassure them that my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb is recovering very well from her hip operation. She will hopefully be back on Monday. I expect that she will take forward later stages of the Bill, but in the meantime your Lordships get me.

Introducing the Bill, the Minister reflected on the fact that three parties had promises about bus services in their manifestos. I will have to add to that and say that the Green Party put bus services absolutely front and centre of its manifesto. I will highlight two things from that manifesto. One was a focus on village bus services. It promised a service to every village in the land. The second thing was free bus travel for under-18s. I point noble Lords to the success of the Scottish Greens. From their place in government, they were able to bring in free bus travel for under-22s in Scotland. That has seen a real step forward in introducing young people to bus services and building it into a standard part of their lives. That free offer has been really successful, really useful and really valued.

Quite a number of noble Lords have said, “Well, there’s the cities, and they can do these things, but we’ve got to be realistic about what rural areas can do”. It is important not to underrate the capacity of rural bus services and rural institutions to oversee them. I will give a practical example. After the shock of the Covid pandemic, the Green-led Herefordshire county council made all buses free at weekends and put on extra weekend services. They used £1 million from the Covid recovery fund to do that. Of course, we are talking about Herefordshire, a heavily rural area, with towns and villages. Nearly 170,000 journeys were taken on the 12 new Sunday bus services and, after the scheme ended, five of the most popular services continued to run seven days a week. So, if you provide the services and give people the real cost benefit of those services, they will adopt them and make them a regular part of their lives. That is as true of rural areas as it is of city areas.

Coming to the broader picture, I will revisit a figure that I suspect several people have already cited: in 2023-24, there were 3.6 billion passenger journeys. Buses are how people get around. But this figure has seen a massive decline. The mileage for the year to the most recent March was down a quarter since 2010. We have heard a lot of hot air over recent decades about the claimed “war on the motorist”, but, instead, we have actually had a butchering of the buses. I started with the figure from 2010, because I am afraid we know where the responsibility for that butchering of the buses lies: the party that was in control at the time. Behind that has been an ideological position where bus services, particularly outside London, have been run for private profit rather than for the public good. This is one more privatisation disaster that has absolutely failed. To a limited degree at least, the Bill is, happily, finally undoing that loss of local control and local democracy that was represented by privatisation.

Like a number of noble Lords, I will briefly focus on how buses are particularly important to lower-income households, jobseekers, women and older people. They are crucial for public health—I do not think anyone has used that phrase yet—because we have a widely acknowledged loneliness epidemic. If we think about one prescription to tackle that, bus services being readily available to people is an important part of that measure.

On that, I want to pick up a particular point with the Minister. We are coming back to funding, and I understand that this may not be central to the Bill, but it is an important and relatively cheap point. The statutory concessionary bus fare for free travel for pensioners and disabled people runs on weekdays between 9.30 am and 11 pm. We all know about medical appointments that may require travel before 9.30 am, and we know that many older people often provide childcare to enable family members to take paid employment. They may well need to travel before 9.30 am. Will the Minister look at making what would be quite a modest investment to ensure that that concessionary free travel is available to everyone, which would surely have a high level of public benefit?

Many people have raised the rise in fares from £2 to £3. It is worth highlighting that the £3 level is, under current government arrangements, due to end in December this year. That does not give people a long-term sense of planning. Surely, the sensible thing to do would be, ideally, to go back to £2 but at least to provide long-term certainty—for operators, local councils, communities and individual travellers—that the £3 bus fare will stay.

Like many noble Lords, I received a large number of briefings and will highlight those from the Green Alliance, the Campaign for Better Transport and the Urban Transport Group. The Green position, and that of those briefings, sets out that the Bill is heading in the right direction but is not going nearly far or fast enough. One thing that is missing is the failure to encourage the recovery of lost routes. Local authorities need to be able to identify where the holes are and to fill them in, but the Bill does not provide for that. Absolutely rightly, there is also a call for a bus service guarantee, to guarantee that all communities have a minimum level of bus service. That comes back to the village point that I started with.

Noble Lords would expect me, as a Green, to focus on the need for a firm date for zero-emission buses. This is such an obvious step both for public health and for reliability and certainty. For new buses, high levels of reliability are really important, as well as clean air.

Finally, we have talked quite a bit about bus stops. I will jump on a favourite little hobby horse of mine: the assumption that everyone has a mobile phone that will give them reliable information about bus arrivals. That is not true in London; it is not true at the bus stop that I use most mornings. Having signage at bus stops where possible, or at least proper guidelines and timetables, is crucial to enable people to use buses.

I have to highlight the situation in South Yorkshire, which has been terribly hit by that butchering of the buses. We have seen a bus mileage decline of 42% across the region. The bus services in South Yorkshire have got close to what you would have to describe as collapse. There is a plan to take franchising forward, but it will take a very long time. The Bill will possibly assist, but I would be interested in anything that the Minister can say particularly about helping South Yorkshire to put back those crucial services, in an area where people really need them to get to work and get around.

I will raise a point that I do not think anyone else has raised specifically. Some noble Lords may know about a campaign—it is starting in London but should apply around the country—for a London bus driver Bill of Rights to be included in the TfL framework bus contract. I am aware that this Bill does not cover London, but the issues that this campaign raises none the less apply for bus drivers around the country. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, pointed out that bus drivers are an ageing group of people, and we need to make sure that this career appeals to people coming in for the future.

I give noble Lords advance notice that, on 29 January, a march will start from Victoria station, where, a year ago, a pedestrian was killed by a route 13 RATP bus operating under contract for TfL. At least 87 other victims have been killed in preventable bus safety accidents in London since 2016. Of course, this is of great concern to the drivers, given the conditions of the contract, which they feel are dangerous. I note that the drivers will be marching to Parliament Square, so look out for them on 29 January.

The Bill does not have any of the data transparency or safety reporting requirements that the House of Lords tried to incorporate in the Bus Services Act 2017, so my noble friend will very likely bring up that issue in particular at further stages of the Bill.

Transport Infrastructure: North of England

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am afraid I do not have information about the length of the runway. I am sure that the proposition to reopen the airport takes into account its existing configuration, and I am sure that the public bodies concerned with it are confident that the airport, whatever length of runway it has, can support the local economy with the appropriate air services.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Manchester Airport is planning for an expansion of 150% in passenger numbers. Stansted wants to increase from 28 million passengers to 43 million. Leeds Bradford Airport has been looking for a 75% increase in passenger numbers. Yet, in July, the Committee on Climate Change told the Government that they must:

“Stop airport expansion without a UK-wide capacity-management framework”.


Is this not just more public money going into what have to be white elephants in terms of both demand and, crucially, our need to cut our climate emissions, particularly in terms of the promise that Sir Keir Starmer just made at COP 29?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

In relation to regional airports, there is a pressing demand from business to improve economic growth in those cities and regions by better and more convenient connectivity. The extent to which that means more flights is a separate question, but the support given to an airport such as Doncaster in order to make business better and create economic growth in that region is entirely consistent with the Government’s objectives.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

That is why I have asked for Clause 83 not to stand part and laid Amendment 53, which would at least establish a statutory advisory panel with the purpose of designing a national minimum standard for accessibility of self-driving passenger service vehicles, and Amendment 57, which is consequential to it. The key thing about Amendment 53 is the involvement of disabled people. We in the disabled community have a saying: “Nothing about us without us”. Where coproduction works best, we are involved right from the start in the design, so that the voice of the disabled passenger can be heard and understood before it is too late to change it. I thank the Minister for his offer of a meeting and I hope that we can meet before Report. In the meantime, I hope that he can respond more favourably than he did at Second Reading.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and to agree with everything they said. In offering support to all the amendments in this group, I will make a couple of additional points.

First, to follow on from debates on previous groups today, it is obvious that, given the general state of our roads and infrastructure, if we are to see automated vehicles operating in the foreseeable future, that will be in only very limited and controlled circumstances—probably in newly constructed areas—and they are likely to be public transport. A great deal of our debates on this Bill have focused on private individuals having their own cars whizzing around, but public transport systems are most likely to be the first affected. We need to see the provision of access by design included as part of that.

Secondly, it deserves to be noted that, for the past year, the Transport Committee has been holding hearings on the accessibility of what we have now. These have exposed insufficient accessibility right across the transport sector, particularly in the need to update regulations to accommodate modern travel methods and equipment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, we are starting from scratch and could get it right from the beginning, so we should absolutely aim to do so. She spoke about relying on the public sector equality duty when it is so clearly failing; we have not heard the final conclusions of the Transport Committee, but a report out last month from the disabled people’s organisation Transport for All titled Are We There Yet?—to spoil the ending, the answer is definitely “No”—surveyed more than 500 disabled people in England on the journeys they had made in 2021 and 2022.

The report found that disabled people make far fewer journeys than non-disabled people—an average of 5.84 a week, which is one-third of the national average across the community. Those disabled people said they would like to make twice as many journeys every week, but lack of accessibility was preventing them doing so and being able to fully participate in our society, in the way that they would like. Finally, the report noted that nearly half of the respondents

“thought that the accessibility of transport and streets”

would worsen in the next 10 years, while only 28% thought it would improve. Your Lordships’ House has a duty and an opportunity to show that it is possible to make things better instead of letting them continue to deteriorate.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest, as I have been involved in accessibility to modern taxis and other public transport over many years. I entirely agree with most of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Holmes. However, with their amendments, I am not sure that we are heading in the right direction. It is clear from Clause 87 that those clauses intending to make the vehicle more accessible are heading in the right direction, but the noble Baroness believes they do not go far enough.

I am not sure that adding an extra automated vehicle accessibility standards panel, as in Amendment 53, would do anything other than delay everything in practice. By the time that such a panel is formed and educated to the standard of familiarity that we all hold with the Bill—or most of us do—I am not sure that it would do anything but delay the whole Bill, when we are already behind others. Although I very much hope that we could be at the forefront both of the existence of automated vehicles and of accessibility, we are of course two years behind other countries in Europe. We have got to catch up. I hope that we can alter Clause 87 to achieve what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and I would like to see, rather than add a completely new panel on top.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 3, 5 and 8 in my name. I thank the Minister very much for the very informative meeting we had, and the Society of Motor Manufacturers was very helpful on any questions he could not answer on technicalities. That and a trip round the streets of King’s Cross in an automated vehicle thanks to Wayve—which was actually remarkably boring, which is what they tell me it is supposed to be—have put my technical questions to one side.

My concerns and my amendments, rather like those from the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Tunnicliffe, are all about safety. The Minister said, as I recall, that safety would be the cornerstone of this Bill and, if we lose the confidence of the public—who are very concerned about safety—we are going to run into trouble and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, there are going to be bumps in the road. If we lose confidence, people are going to lose confidence in the whole concept.

In the meeting, the Government said that, if we set safety standards too high, it will deter manufacturers and companies from coming into the market. But, at the moment, if raising these standards is deterring companies, maybe these companies should not be entering the market anyway and should not be involved in the development of automated vehicles.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I think that cyclists will bear a disproportionate brunt of any casualties. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, they will be the “losers” in this whole equation. I turned to Cycling UK for some amendments, which seem to beef up the safety standards. Amendment 3 says

“leave out ‘an acceptably safe standard’ and insert ‘a high standard of safety’”.

That does not strike me as rocket science. In the same way, Amendment 5 says

“leave out ‘an acceptably’ and insert ‘a very’”

to make

“a very low risk of committing a traffic infraction”.

That is very similar to Amendment 4 from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.

Amendment 8 says that, instead of “better”, the Bill should state that road safety would be

“significantly better for all road users”.

To me, this seems self-explanatory and would mean that safety truly is in the heart of the Bill. This seems like common sense to me and I look forward to the Minister’s answers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who has done sterling work in contributing to this Bill. I apologise for the fact that I have not managed until today to fully engage with Committee stage. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, who raised a crucial issue which, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, really does not seem to be covered here.

I want to take a specific example here of the tragic case—which is far too common—of small children, toddlers up to the age of about seven, being killed on domestic driveways by human drivers. A report from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents which was supported by the Department for Transport shows that, since 2001, 34 children have been killed in domestic driveways, nearly always in their own home. There have been 19 deaths since 2008. In 22 of those cases, the child was killed by a reversing vehicle.

Here we have circumstances where—one would assume—usually competent and careful human drivers were not able to make allowance for what was happening around them. If we are going to think about automated vehicles, we need to think very hard about circumstances where we are not on the road but are in situations where vulnerable people, or animals for that matter, are not going to behave in manners that follow some logical kind of algorithm. That is not how the world works and, if we are going to have automated vehicles, we have to allow for circumstances like that.

I will pick up a point that the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and a number of others made. Whether we have this Bill or not, and whether we have automated vehicles or not, we should be aiming to do vastly better than we do now on road safety. In the most recent figures we have, in 2022 there were 1,711 fatalities and nearly 30,000 when you put the “killed” and “seriously injured” figures together. That was five fatalities per billion vehicle miles travelled. That sounds like a big number, but the figure is up 2% on the last time we had a year like it, which was 2019, the pre-Covid year. So, on the metric we should be counting, we are heading in the wrong direction.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I think that, of the amendments we have before us, Amendment 8, which says

“significantly better for all road users”

is probably the best one; we have a number of ranges before us. Again, I am not sure that this would get past the Table Office, but I believe, and the Green Party very strongly believes, that the Government should be adopting a policy known as Vision Zero. It is the idea that we should have the goal of no deaths or serious injuries on our roads. We know that humans will make mistakes, that pedestrians will make mistakes and that there will be children, animals and all sorts of things. We have to design everything to reduce the risk to as close to zero as we can possibly manage. I do not know whether we could write Vision Zero into this Bill. I can foresee the wrestle we might have with the Table Office now, but I think that

“significantly better for all road users”

at least takes us in the right kind of direction.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I thank Cycling UK for its excellent briefing. We often talk about cyclists as vulnerable road users and this briefing is from Cycling UK, but the most vulnerable road users are pedestrians, particularly young people and, increasingly, older pedestrians who on average tend to move more slowly and are more vulnerable in all sorts of ways. In recent years we have seen a real increase in the dangers to older pedestrians, such as in changes made a few years ago to traffic lights in London that had disastrous, hideous impacts on them. Amendment 8 refers to “all road users”; a lot of the discussion at Second Reading was about interactions between two motorised vehicles, but we have to make sure that we think about all the other interactions as well. We need a great deal more work and thought on this Bill, particularly this element of it.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, this may be the only contribution I make to this part of the Bill, but I wish to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and other noble Lords because this business of safety in Clause 2 seems to be the most pivotal thing in the entire Bill. As the noble Lord said, the public are looking to us to make sure that it is enshrined here.

One thing the noble Lord did not mention is the claim that these automated vehicles will be materially safer than the human-driven equivalent. It is therefore right that it is not “no worse than” or even “as good as”; it has to be “materially better than”. Otherwise, we simply should not go there. As this Bill paves the way for what will have to come through a lot of secondary legislation, that is vital to get across at this juncture. If we do not agree it today, I hope we will at some other stage on the Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, made a really important point about road safety in the debate on the previous group of amendments and elaborated on it in the debate on this group with her Amendment 7. Clause 2(2) says:

“The principles must be framed with a view to securing that road safety in Great Britain will be better as a result of the use of authorised automated vehicles”.


That is a low aspiration. In my view, it needs to be considerably better. The noble Baroness said that she wanted to include private drive entrances, but they were declared out of scope by the clerks. I encourage her to persist. In my profession as a chartered surveyor, over many years I have helped people with their property boundaries, and one point that often comes up is where the private property ends and the highway starts. The customary arrangement is that between the blacktop—the adopted surface—and the front of the property boundary there is usually a verge or sometimes a pavement. Over it, the private driveway has what is known in the cant of the trade as a crossover. It is still part of the public highway, although it may be maintainable by the householder. That is an important distinction. The noble Baroness might go back to the clerks and say, “I want something that deals with crossovers”. I obviously do not wish to make a legal pronouncement, and I certainly defer to the views of the clerks, but that has been my understanding over many years of the principle behind the interface between the highway and private property.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Passenger Railway Services) Regulations 2023

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

As an amendment to the motion in the name of Lord Davies of Gower, to leave out all the words after “that” and to insert “this House declines to approve the draft Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Passenger Railway Services) Regulations 2023 because they expose trade unions to liability of up to £1 million, make trade unions act as enforcement agents on behalf of employers and His Majesty’s Government, are likely to prohibit more than 40 per cent of rail industry workers from taking part in strike action, and fail to ensure that rail services will be safe on strike days.”

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am delighted to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, back to the Labour Front Bench, as I am sure the whole House does. I agree with everything he said, except to make the point, as I did with the previous Labour Front Bench speech, that it appears to be more of an argument for my fatal amendment than for a regret amendment. I also very much agree with him about the need to change the way in which our railways are run. If we bring them back into public hands and run them for public good, not private profit, that would be a very good foundation for resetting our industrial relations in the operation of our railways.

I am not going to repeat all the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I have one question for the Minister, raised by the TUC briefing and I have also seen it in other contexts. If there is a partial service running as required under the minimum service levels, we all know that there are likely to be significant overcrowding and safety issues. I am sure many Members of your Lordships’ House picked up this piece of paper and thought, “Well, I’d love some minimum service levels on the trains I ride on non-strike days”. We know how crowded trains can get when they are cancelled for other reasons. Can the Minister assure rail workers that they can continue to apply work-safe principles, and stop working if it is no longer safe for the trains to continue to run? It needs to be clear that they will not face legal consequences for making a safety decision. We do not want what are often not particularly well-paid or senior staff in a situation where they make decisions with the feeling that such consequences hang over their head. I beg to move.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, my criticism of the proposed legislation is a quite simple one: it will not work. I listened to the Minister who, I have to say, went through his brief faster than any train I have been on recently. It is not a new idea. It was considered by the Thatcher Government and rejected. It was considered by the Cameron Government and rejected. It will not work. The problem is that this has been put together by lawyers who have no concept of how the railway industry actually works, or how train crews are rostered and how people are laid down for their various duties. The rostering of train crews is done at local level. The management and the local district committee—the shop stewards, if you like—sit down at every timetable change in May and December to decide the future rosters. The trade union side will obviously not sit down and discuss rostering under this minimum service level. As for choosing the name “minimum service level”, what else have we had in the railway industry for some time but a minimum service level?

It is not just the Labour Party and the trade union movement that are against this. The Rail Safety and Standards Board has said that it has considerable reservations about rail safety in future. That is not an organisation that one would normally regard as particularly left wing in its outlook. What the Government are proposing will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What happens if a minimum service level driver is rostered and declines to pass through a picket line at a particular depot? Will the Minister prosecute the driver or the trade union of which he is a member? The chance of conflict because of this barmy legislation cannot be emphasised too much. I said earlier—I do not wish to detain the House—that it is not just the Labour Party against it. I commend the Minister to read a paper prepared by Nicholas Finney OBE for the Centre for Policy Studies, that well-known left-wing organisation. He attacked the whole concept because, like me, he says it will not work. Maybe he will be regarded as a destructive member of British society. He is, or was, the chairman of the Wantage Conservative association, so if someone like him feels that this legislation is impractical, the Minister really ought to look again.

I am almost speechless at the stupidity of the Government bringing forward this legislation. I repeat that it will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come, and I beseech the Minister even at this late hour to take some proper advice and not to make this into a lawyer’s dream.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for their consideration of these draft regulations. This is about achieving a balance between the rights of trade union members and the public’s expectation of being able to travel to work or, indeed, for any other social reason. At the end of the day, transport is at the heart of our nation’s success.

A number of questions have been asked, which I will try to address as briefly as I possibly can. This Government understand the difficulties imposed on the public by strikes on the passenger rail network. While it is right that workers are able to take strike action, it is a priority for the Government to protect the public and businesses from the disproportionate impact of strikes, including on people’s ability to make important journeys and on their livelihoods.

The careful design of the regulations, based on evidence from the public consultation and further consultation with stakeholders, means that minimum service levels will deliver a considerable improvement in service levels and experience during strikes. The economic damage to businesses and the wider economy would also be limited, and the industry would have the flexibility it needs to ensure that the minimum service levels are deliverable. At every stage of policy development, my department has carefully balanced workers’ ability to take strike action against the needs of people to make important journeys by rail, such as to get to work and to access vital services such as education and healthcare. Ensuring that this intervention is proportionate has been a central and continual consideration. Subject to parliamentary approval, we expect the regulations to come into force before the end of this year. In-scope employers would then be able to use minimum service levels for any strike action after they come into force, should they choose to do so.

I turn to some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. The Government firmly believe that the ability to strike is an important part of industrial relations in the UK, rightly protected by law, and understand that an element of disruption is inherent to any strike. But we also need to maintain a reasonable balance with the needs of the public and the impact of strikes on businesses and the wider economy. In cases where work notices are issued by employers, this policy will impact some rail workers’ ability to take strike action. As such, the department has, at every stage, carefully balanced workers’ ability to take strike action against the needs of people to make important journeys by rail.

Evidence provided through consultation and engagement with industry indicates that the proportion of workers needed to deliver the minimum service levels will vary by employer and job role. In critical operational roles, for example, we understand that more than 40% of staff are likely to be required to work to deliver a service level of 40% under the categories A and C of the regulations. The extent of the coverage of priority routes under category B also means that the proportion of infrastructure workers required to deliver the infrastructure minimum service level will vary by geography.

On the safety point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, passenger rail employers must comply with safety requirements on the railway. The regulations do not override any existing safety rules or obligations. Moreover, the regulations have been designed to fit within the existing safety frameworks, and the department has consulted with the Office of Rail and Road during development.

Where an employer decides to issue a work notice, the Act requires that the work notice identifies the persons required to work during the strike in order to secure that the levels of service are provided and to specify the work required to be carried out. Employers can identify only persons who are reasonably necessary to provide the minimum levels of service under the regulations in the work notice. We consider that this would include workers who are reasonably necessary to meet legal and contractual obligations relevant to the delivery of the minimum service level, including safety obligations.

It is therefore expected that services delivered on strike days under minimum service levels will be as safe as services delivered on strike days without the use of minimum service levels. Great Britain is a world leader in rail safety. Ensuring high standards of rail safety will always remain a top priority for this Government.

With respect to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, under the parent Act, trade unions must take reasonable steps to ensure that any of their members named on the work notice comply with that notice or the union will lose its legal protection from damages. Workers who take strike action despite being included on a valid work notice will lose their automatic protection from unfair dismissal. It will be for individual employers to determine whether any disciplinary action should be taken against employees for non-compliance with a work notice or legal action against a union that fails to take reasonable steps.

These regulations strike a carefully balanced and proportionate approach to mitigate the impact of strikes on the passenger rail sector for passengers and our economy. The regulations make possible a considerable improvement in the service that can be delivered during rail strikes. This will support passengers to make important journeys, including getting to work and accessing vital services, and will limit negative impacts on the economy. This is proportionately balanced with workers’ ability to take strike action, ensuring that impact is felt when a trade union goes on strike but passengers can still expect a consistent, albeit lower, level of service to be provided.

Therefore, although I am sure we all hope that strike action can be avoided, implementing these regulations will provide a means of addressing the disproportionate impacts that strikes have on the public, communities, businesses and our economy when they take place.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for answering our questions and for what has been the clearest, least-hedged explanation from the Government—that workers can be sacked under this legislation, which of course contradicts what was said in the other place. I am also pleased with what the Minister had to say about how safety rules override the regulations we are debating. However, I hope that the Government will make that fact very clear and publicise it to workers in the rail industry, who may face difficult situations under extreme pressure due to crowded trains and people seeking to crowd on to them, so that people are aware. I am aware of the hour so I will simply stop at this point and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.