Revised Draft Airports National Policy Statement

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Spicer

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, was perhaps more honest than most. A lot of the PR that comes from Heathrow and much of the aviation industry suggests that every new increment will always be the last and it never is, because there is always a rationale and always money to be made from continually trying to expand capacity, particularly when the underlying strategy is to strip flights out of other airports in the UK. That ownership is no longer held in common has added great fire to that underpinning strategy.

I hope that the Government will reconsider again the whole notion of a third runway at Heathrow; there are other and better options. I understand that it is in some ways a sop to business because business tends just to assume that a third runway would be good without looking into the detail. This seemed a way to pacify businesses infuriated by Brexit.

[Lord Spicer]

The noble Baroness is making a very interesting speech, but how will we get in and out of the country—we are an island—as the population becomes larger and we do not expand our airports?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, there are many regional airports—I personally look at Birmingham as the most obvious way to expand and it is part of our regional strategy. There are many alternatives to the third runway at Heathrow that were not considered by the Davies commission. There are mechanisms. Rail will be taking a different part of the strain domestically in future, so we are part of a changing pattern.

I do not want to keep the House longer.

[Lord Spicer]

You are passing the problem to Birmingham.

Airports: London

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Spicer

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their policy on the development of London’s airports.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

In Our Programme for Government, the coalition announced the cancellation of plans for a third runway at Heathrow, and the refusal of permission for additional runways at Stansted and Gatwick. However, we recognise the need for a long-term airport capacity solution to ensure continuing international competitiveness in the coming decades. Therefore, Sir Howard Davies was asked to chair the independent Airports Commission, which will submit its final report in summer 2015.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, does the Liberal Democrat policy not to build runways at London’s airports, whatever the circumstances, drive a coach and horses through the policy that my noble friend the Minister has just announced?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, it is absolutely important that as a Minister in the Department for Transport I make sure that the commission is always recognised as having full integrity and independence. Therefore, even when pressed with this question at my own party conference, I have always refused to give any answer other than that the Government will comment after the final report is submitted in 2015.

Airports: Heathrow

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Spicer

Monday 31st March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have made any assessment of the future ability of United Kingdom airlines to operate out of Heathrow Airport.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have made no such assessment. The future ability of United Kingdom and other airlines to operate at specific airports is a commercial matter for airlines and airports. The Government publish aviation forecasts for the UK, including air transport movements and passenger numbers, most recently in January 2013. The independent Airports Commission will report in 2015 on any recommended requirements for additional capacity to maintain the UK’s global hub status.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that it is because of the uncertainties about capacity at Heathrow that British Airways is undecided about whether to keep a big hub there? Would that not have been unthinkable in the 1980s, for instance, when Heathrow was the No. 1 international airport in the world and when I was Minister of Aviation?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, Heathrow is an incredibly successful airport where many people vie for slots. The commission has been clear that there is no crisis of capacity in the south-east now, although it concluded that we will need one additional runway in the south-east by 2030 and, in all likelihood, a second by 2050. In the mean time, the noble Lord will note that the UK has the third-largest aviation network in the world after the USA and China. London serves 360 destinations, in comparison to Paris at around 300 destinations and Frankfurt at 250.

Localism Bill

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Spicer

Monday 12th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, this amendment follows on nicely from the previous amendment. It also illustrates the general confusion over the structure of transport in the London area. The purpose of the amendment is to remove from the Department for Transport the responsibility for rail franchising within the inner suburban area of London and transfer it to Transport for London. It is wholly within the spirit of the Bill to take from the centre and give to a regional or more local body powers that it can exercise more effectively and more efficiently for the benefit, in this case, of passengers.

Noble Lords will know that at present Transport for London effectively either manages or in some way regulates the Tube, the Docklands Light Railway, bus services, river transport services and taxi services, but when it comes to rail, it has only a very limited purview. It directly manages London Overground, which is one very minor line, and it will have oversight of Crossrail once it is completed. However, when it comes to the inner suburban rail services that criss-cross much of the London area, Transport for London’s role is extremely limited. The Department for Transport lets and manages the franchises and Transport for London can simply specify and pay for either an increment to that service or—terrible bureaucratic word—a decrement to that service. Essentially, the consequence of that has not been very beneficial to passengers.

I would argue that London is different from much of the rest of the country when it comes to rail. Fourteen per cent of Londoners use the National Rail network to commute daily to work. Indeed, outside of London proper, in the south-east and east of London there are many more who use that rail network to commute to work within the London area. That makes it distinctly different from any other part of the country. There are 10 train operating companies, so it is a highly fragmented service. Demand in the area is so inelastic that the kind of competitive pressures that have effect in the rest of the country are virtually irrelevant when it comes to London, where demand is so high, capacity is constantly at breaking point and there is always a need for additional capacity. So the competitive issue that exists elsewhere is not relevant within London itself.

I said that there were 10 different train operating companies. That means 10 different brandings, 10 different fare structures, 10 different forms of marketing, 10 different commercial strategies and 10 different operating time horizons. As noble Lords will know, the McNulty review recommends that more power should go to the train operating companies and franchises should be longer. So trying to create an integrated London Transport service within this environment, where rail is so fragmented and Transport for London has so little direct power, is very significantly undermined. If your Lordships would like an example of what this does to, as it were, disadvantage passengers, I draw your attention to the Oyster card. I should declare that I am a former member of the board of Transport for London and was very involved with the rail side. Rows went on year after year to try to get any form of Oyster card available on National Rail. Then we got “pay as you go”, which most people have now enjoyed only for the past couple of years. Technically it could have been done very easily, but the issue was never high on the priority list for the Department for Transport, which had to be involved because of the franchising structure. The TOCs saw it as a way to leverage money out of London Transport. The whole process was very much to the disadvantage of passengers. If your Lordships want another quick example, just go down to Waterloo. The next time you are stuck on a train that is slow because there is no space to get into Waterloo station, you will see that there is an empty platform. When Eurostar moved to St Pancras, one of the international platforms was, at great expense to the Government, converted to domestic use. The department has never managed to get its act together to put that into play for passengers. That is another huge, wasted asset. Frankly, this is repeated all over London.

Sometimes I seethe with envy when I talk to transport friends in Berlin as they are able to work with the bus and taxi services so that late-night trains are met by a co-ordinated timetable of buses and taxis, ensuring that train passengers have a seamless journey. The battle in London has been to look at travel as a single journey, whether you use one mode or multiple modes to get to your destination, and to create that kind of integration. It has been phenomenally successful, but leaving out rail makes no sense.

Sometimes people say that people from outside London use the services so they must not be too London biased. We can give them a voice by putting some directors from outside London onto the relevant board within Transport for London. It is also true that the department will continue to have a voice, but the balance needs to be shifted towards an entity which has a genuine interest, in a detailed way, in the quality of service, as Transport for London does.

[Lord Spicer]

Is the empty platform at Waterloo, which the noble Baroness has been describing, the reason why plays are being put on there now?

[Baroness Kramer]

Plays are not taking place on the adapted platform but it would be better to use it for a play than nothing at all. It is absolutely ridiculous.

I have two more points to make. Some people say that there must have been a lot of thought about how the franchises should be divided up and a reason for not giving far more influence over the rail franchising process to Transport for London. The rationale was, “We don’t like Ken Livingstone”. When the GLA Bill went through this House, particularly when TfL was under review, there was an attempt to minimise the London influence. We had the disastrous Tube public/private partnership, which was a key part of the structure and which ensured that Transport for London really could not manage the system as a whole.

There was very little appreciation of the benefits of integration. That is one of the other pieces, if you like, which came out of much of that kind of thinking. We have all moved beyond that and recognise the benefits of integration and the benefits of regional management. I argue that at this time, when the transport infrastructure in this area is desperately overstretched, when we really are in a situation of economic recovery in some areas of London and you practically have to strap people to the roofs of transport carriages, we need to maximise the use of that infrastructure. Therefore, the logic is to change the franchising responsibility, which is what this amendment attempts to do.