Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I was very pleased with the support, sympathetic noises and comments that I had from other Peers when I first tabled this bus safety amendment and I have brought it back at Third Reading, with thanks to the Minister for not disallowing it. The amendment was drafted with the assistance of the Campaign for Better Transport’s “Save our Buses” campaign and benefited from written evidence submitted to the Transport Committee by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, or PACTS. It was largely rewritten by the campaigner Tom Kearney, who has been the victim of a bus crash.

The amendment seeks to do two things. First, it would help with confidential reporting, meaning that bus drivers would have access to a system that has long been happening on the railway and within the air industry. This is called the confidential incident reporting and analysis system, or CIRAS, and it means that bus drivers could report anything about faults or problems that they perceived with their vehicles or their routes.

Secondly, it would allow for the quarterly publication of bus casualty data. When we were on the London Assembly, the Greens persuaded Boris Johnson, when he was London Mayor, to improve operational safety performance monitoring and reporting of TfL’s bus routes by adopting this measure. As a result, confidential safety reporting has been in place in London since 4 January this year. TfL has also made its bus operators’ subscription to CIRAS a precondition for running a bus service contract. These safety practices have made London’s bus system, which is about 25% of the UK’s entire bus fleet, substantially more safety conscious. London also has access to casualty data reporting, which has been in operation for nearly three years, since January 2014. TfL publishes bus safety data every quarter, clearly identifying the bus operator involved, incident location, type of injury, sex and age of the injured party, general cause, mode of transport involved, and borough and month in which it happened.

The importance of confidential safety reporting is shown by the statistics now published by Transport for London. The latest statistics suggest that every TfL bus driver has a 0.2% chance per annum of killing someone; a 63% per annum chance of injuring someone; and a 0.016% chance of sending someone to hospital every single day. Given that safety incidents impose costs and cause delays, one would think that bus operators would be motivated to encourage such reporting by their employees. Surprisingly, even though London’s bus operators have franchises across the UK, only their London franchises are subscribed to CIRAS. While I support the idea of localism, it seems strange to me that London’s bus franchises should have a manifestly better operational safety reporting system than any other locality in the United Kingdom.

In the rail industry, 2015 marked the eighth year in a row with zero rail crash fatalities. This year of course we have had the Croydon tram fatalities. I do not know whether the Croydon tram was operating under CIRAS conditions; I would be interested to know whether it was, if the Minister knows and can tell us. We have acted for many years to prevent rail crashes and deaths, so I fail to understand why we so readily accept crashes, injuries, incidents and deaths on our roads.

As a result of the Minister’s previous comments, I have redrafted this amendment so that the section on confidential safety incident reporting conforms to existing rail standards and CIRAS’s name no longer appears, which would mean that it is not quite so time-limited as it might have been before. I hope that these tweaks will remove the barriers to the Government’s acceptance of this incredibly common-sense proposal. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot recall what position I took on the noble Baroness’s amendment in Committee, but I am not sure that it is one that we should accept. The reason is simply that air crashes and rail crashes are extremely complex events and it is not always clear what has caused an accident. The accidents that the noble Baroness refers to are road traffic accidents where, generally speaking, it is obvious what caused the accident. This is not an amendment that I would support.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his generous reply. Obviously he did not go as far as I would have liked and I hope the House will allow me a little leeway in demolishing—or commenting on—some of the comments that have been made during this debate.

Earl Attlee: complexity. I have never driven a train or a bus but, as a train is taken along tracks with no steering wheel, it could be argued that a bus is more complex to drive and that there are more complex issues on roads. So that is quite a feeble argument.

Lord Snape, I did not quite follow what you were saying but I can assure you that, from an extra burden point of view—if you are talking about a financial burden, for example—if a company has a turnover of up to £1 million, it would cost it £300 to subscribe to the scheme. If its turnover is from £1 billion to £2 billion, it is £12,000. That is not onerous. You might argue that the data collection is onerous—but I would say, “No data, no measurement”. We cannot judge whether a company is safe if we do not have the data to look at. So this is money well spent.

Lord Horam, you talked about my interesting ideas—I think that was a criticism rather than a compliment—and you also called this heavy-handed. I can only say to you that this is tried and tested in London and it works for the majority of bus companies. You talked about London buses being so good, but they are so good partly because they subscribe to this scheme and bus drivers are allowed to comment on their vehicles and the problems they face. I thank the Peers who commented in a positive way and I shall come to the Minister’s comment in a moment.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has done a fabulous job in moving her amendment and has had success in her reply from the Minister—but will she undertake to study the Companion on the use of the word “you”?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I do apologise. I have no idea about that. Perhaps you would like to give me a seminar afterwards.

The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, questioned whether or not he was consistent between my bringing the amendment last time and now, I can assure the noble Lord that he was completely consistent. He did not like it then and he does not like it now.

I thank the Minister for the productive meeting and it was good to hear that he was sympathetic to the issues. This is a relatively minor change. Other people have called it heavy-handed but it is a minor change. It saves lives. I cannot think of a higher, nobler cause than saving lives—especially those of the people we purport to govern. We are saving lives and preventing injuries and devastation to families—and the numbers we are talking about are not inconsequential. This is a relatively light touch for something that has such heavy consequences. I am of course disappointed that the Government have not snapped up the amendment but I look forward to it being picked up later.

Its impact on society and on the taxpayer is much heavier than we realise. Every crash has a cost—whether it is in delays to business, to the service or to commuters—that we do not assess. When we talk about the cost to industry, we should also think about the cost to the life of the towns, cities and roads where it happens.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for bringing this amendment. I have long form on this one. I first chaired an EU sub-committee in 2001 that recommended we should fall in line with what was happening in Europe and go down to 50. I moved a Private Member’s Bill—this year or last year, I forget—that ended up going through Committee stage and everything. It cleared the Lords so your Lordships, I hope, have not changed your minds and are still in favour of this—as on the previous occasion when an amendment was tabled. However, there was no shift from the Government.

The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, raised a very interesting point about how we come here with evidence and everybody seeks the change, yet the change does not take place and the deaths continue. She mentioned that there has been a plateau in the number of deaths. There was a decline from 2000 to 2010 but there has been little shift, other than last year when it went marginally up. When I concluded my last contribution on this I forecast—I cannot remember the number—the number of deaths that would take place over 2015, 2016 and 2017. In fact, I think I probably underforecast because of the rise last year.

The simple reason for that is that the Government do not have any initiatives of any importance that are going to change the course of events. It is bits and tiny pieces here and there when we should be looking at the policy that has been proven to work in Scotland. We ended up with the Minister last time saying he would have conversations in Scotland. The Minister for Transport at the other end also said that he would have conversations in Scotland and look at the evidence there, but I have had no further reports from the people I know on the outturn of those conversations and I do not even know if they have been held.

Perhaps the Minister will be kind enough to advise us on what is coming out of Scotland. The initial evidence there was certainly compelling enough to indicate that the change was working and that it had effected a cultural change—people were not even driving the following day. One of the problems you get with drink-driving is that people still drive the following morning when they are intoxicated. That had changed in Scotland to a fair extent. I hope it is being maintained.

I hope the Government are taking this seriously and that at some stage we are going to get a lower limit—even Malta, the last remaining European country with a higher limit, is committed to fall in line down to 50; we alone remain. Ireland has changed. Northern Ireland is changing. Wales wants to change. Yet England alone holds out, wanting to be convinced. The evidence of the deaths is there and it is time we did something about it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Committee will permit me to speak even though I did not hear the start of my noble friend’s speech—for which I sincerely apologise to the Committee.

I am disappointed that some time ago I tabled a Written Question, to be answered by my noble friend Lord Ahmad for the Department for Transport, asking when we expected to get useful statistics from the experience of Scotland. Although noble Lords have pointed to positive changes in compliance in Scotland, we really need to see from Scotland figures relating to the number of drivers who are far in excess of the legal limit. The statistics for England are very interesting—I found them compelling when I had to answer on this issue at the Dispatch Box. If the Minister cannot tell me now, perhaps she can write to the Committee, but I should like to know when we will get useful statistics from the Scottish experience. That will be very important in informing the Government’s decision on whether we should go to 50 or remain at 80. It is the persistent, unregulated drinkers who have very serious accidents—but without the statistics from Scotland I think we would be making a premature decision.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

What does the noble Earl mean by “serious accidents”? People are being killed and seriously injured by those who have had a drink. A lot of the time those accidents are caused by people who have had far too much to drink but sometimes they are caused by people who have had a small amount to drink—but their faculties and ability to drive are lessened. So it is not just a question of drinking a lot; it is a question of drinking at all.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness. Any alcohol whatever will to some extent cause a reduction in driving capability and increase the risk of having an accident. I am saying that we need to be careful and take advantage of a full range of statistics from the Scottish experience. I was disappointed with the Department for Transport because it could not tell me at what point it thought it would get useful statistics from Scotland.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the arguments proposed by noble Lords are ones we have heard for many years. The arguments have not changed. Why, therefore, did the party opposite not lower the limit when they were in government? The reason is that it is a tricky issue.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, we are not talking about the past but about now. We have an opportunity to do something now: to save lives and prevent serious injuries. I do not understand this reluctance to face facts. As the noble Lord said—is he a friend?

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, despite the passion shown by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, I am afraid that I am still not convinced by the renewed arguments for removing this clause. No one denies that existing locally owned bus companies are by and large a success story—I said as much in Committee. They have a great track record of securing awards and a very high satisfaction rate among their passengers. I can see nothing in this Bill that would change that and I wish those municipal bus companies every success as they continue to deliver for their customers.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked: “What is wrong?” The only reason why a local authority would wish to set up its own bus company now would be to put it in prime position to win a franchise contract, a contract that its parent company, the local authority, was awarding. That would make something of a mockery of that franchise competition. Why would another bus operator go to all the expense, in both time and monetary terms, of submitting a bid for the franchise knowing that it was up against another company that was owned by the awarding authority? It would be a done deal from the start, so other operators in that area might as well shut up shop straightaway. I therefore disagree with the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that Clause 21 is not consistent with the objectives of the Bill. It is necessary to make the Bill work properly. Of course, a local authority company would also have to invest resources in submitting a bid, but those resources would come from the local authority, so the body awarding the franchise would have paid for its own company to bid. That does not seem right.

I have a final point which I believe is very important: there is nothing new in this clause. All it does is extend the bar on establishing a bus company to types of local authority that did not exist when the Transport Act 1985 was passed; for example, unitary authorities. The UK bus market has coped very well for the past 30 years without district councils being able to set up their own bus companies, so why the outcry now? I think that I have answered my own question: a combined authority or unitary authority, having secured the necessary powers, would want to establish its own bus company now only to gain a foothold in the franchise process and wipe out the competition. That is not an acceptable way of proceeding. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will vigorously resist the amendment and support Clause 21.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I rise to support the amendment and to rebut utterly what the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has just said. I think he has a rather narrow view of the sort of situation that can arise. I spoke only today to a Green Party councillor from Cannock Chase in Staffordshire who told me that several private bus companies have dropped their less profitable routes, so communities are now stranded. People who do not have cars have no option for travelling apart from begging lifts from neighbours who do.

[Earl Attlee]

Is it not open to local authorities to subsidise the route in question?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

Why not run them more efficiently in the first place? Public ownership can be very cost effective and much more so because it caters to the needs of the people that it represents. People are saying to councils, “This is what we want”, and private bus companies often do not give it to them.

Limiting the power of local authorities to help their communities, as the noble Earl suggests, is a very undemocratic thing to do—perhaps that is not surprising in an undemocratic House. Clause 21 spoils what is a laudable and well-intentioned Bill. I beg the Minister to ignore what he has heard from behind him and to listen to this side of the House. It is a case of representing people and giving them fuller lives, which private bus companies, because they are in it entirely for profit, just do not see. I beg the Minister to accept the amendment.