Railways Investment: North of England

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, we are working closely with Transport for the North to help transform the economy of the north of England through Northern Powerhouse Rail. That will significantly improve the capacity, frequency and journey time. I can reassure the noble Lord that we are fully committed to Northern Powerhouse Rail. We have invested money into Transport for the North, and are looking forward to its business case which will be published at the end of this year, and which will set out details of routes and indeed costs.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have some very good experience of travelling by train in the north. However, does my noble friend agree that the pricing of rail tickets is very confusing—even making it difficult for our excellent parliamentary travel office? There are different levels of service and different interpretations, for example, relating to what represents “off-peak” in different franchise areas. Could new investment, whether in the north or elsewhere, include sorting that out?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that we need to do more to simplify rail fares. I mentioned in the earlier Question the easier fares consultation carried out by the Rail Delivery Group. Train operators are obligated to sell the most appropriate fare available, but there is a wide range of tickets on offer and we have made a commitment to removing that complexity and the perverse pricing we sometimes see from ticketing. We would like to see online retailers give passengers much clearer information at the point of purchase and, as I said, we look forward to the findings of the RDG consultation.

Stonehenge Tunnel

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, the £2 billion that we are investing in south-west roads will improve issues across the south-west. I am afraid that I do not know about the exact details that the noble Baroness has raised, but I will find out and write to her.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have lived just beyond the stones all my life and am absolutely delighted with the progress that is being made and with the improvements that English Heritage has made to visiting Stonehenge as a site—we should celebrate that. I would like to ask: assuming that work starts in 2021, which I obviously very much hope, when will the road be open?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, assuming that work starts in 2021, which we are very much working towards, it will be complete in 2026.

Rail Update

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I apologise if I did not keep a straight face throughout the Statement. I was a little distracted by the noise from the Benches on the other side. On bidders for the west coast and east coast, the noble Lord is absolutely right that there was a direct award for the west coast and we are considering the options for the east coast. Those are both short-term plans and in 2020 we will be opening them up to further bids. We look forward to receiving them to deliver what the passengers need.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that there is the past and there is the future, and I know that there has been a lot of agonising in the department on the future of franchising. Will my noble friend summarise the improvements to the franchising process that the Government are planning, including Network Rail’s role, to avoid the kind of problems that have been identified in relation to National Express, Stagecoach and so on? Can we look forward?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I would absolutely love to look forward. As I set out, we are making improvements within the department. There was, obviously, a problem; the franchises failed and we are learning those lessons. We are introducing measures to deter overbidding and looking at our financial modelling and stress testing. We hope that, with this added testing, we will be able to forecast and exclude bids which are likely to default. We are continuously improving our risk-assessment process to reduce the likelihood of overbidding in the future. As I said, we are working with Network Rail to ensure that it devolves its services and performs better in future.

Local Congestion: Investment

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of investments in local roads on traffic congestion and productivity in local areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, as set out in last year’s Transport Investment Strategy, our investment seeks to reduce congestion, raise productivity and support new housing. We estimate from investment appraisals that local major road schemes approved by the department since 2012 will produce an average of £4.50 return for every £1 invested. The department’s evaluations found that local major schemes have been successful in delivering reductions in congestion, often leading to better access to employment and local businesses.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the Minister. I am glad about the investment in motorways, bypasses and some of the other things to which she refers, but do we deal adequately with local congestion, which is hitting productivity and increasing air pollution and is frustrating for those of us sitting in traffic jams? Is she aware that the challenge fund rules under which smaller councils apply for capital are costly and a bureaucratic deterrent to spending the money that the Government have rightly made available for local roads?

[Baroness Sugg]

My noble friend raises an important point, and I know that she met recently with the Roads Ministers to discuss this. We have been investing heavily in motorways and it is right that we concentrate spending where it is needed most, but we know that other important roads have long gone underfunded. That is why we are consulting on introducing a major road network from 2020. That will provide a share of the national roads fund to invest in bypasses and road widening to help improve congestion. My noble friend also raised the point of the complexity of these processes. There are many different schemes available for additional funding to local authorities—which, of course, is welcome—but they can be complex. In last year’s Transport Investment Strategy, we committed to providing targeted support to local authorities to help develop their bidding and delivery capability in order to ensure that they get the appropriate funding.

Space Industry Bill [HL]

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 16th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, at this stage, I declare my financial interest in GKN and Smiths Group, both of which probably have some activity in the space industry, although I am not currently aware of it. I associate these Benches with the amendments and the overall thrust, which I am sure that the Minister is beginning to get, that there is considerable concern about the exercise of delegated powers. As the previous speaker mentioned, that will come up in a series of later amendments.

I defer in my knowledge to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who is expert in these matters, but it is clear that we want to get the balance of affirmative and subsequent negative delegation right, and the excuse or otherwise that parliamentary time may not be available for the return of legislation is probably insufficient. Again, I hesitate to say this in front of the noble Lord, but safety is often dealt with by safety cases rather than a line by line, “You should do this, you should do that”, style of legislation. It does not require line-by-line scrutiny by government or Parliament.

With those points in mind, we associate ourselves with the amendments. We ask the Minister to review the Government’s position on delegated powers and are interested to hear how he stands on the amendments.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I was unable to speak at Second Reading on this important Bill, but I have had a helpful exchange with the Minister on the powers in it and his plans for consultation in future.

Following on from the comments made by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, I have a question and a comment. First, he argued for parliamentary procedure in relation to guidance. I would find it helpful to have a little more detail as to what sort of guidance is envisaged, so that we can look critically at whether any parliamentary procedure is appropriate. Secondly, I share his concern at the double barrel—having an affirmative resolution for the first regulation and a negative resolution for subsequent provisions—because it could be open to abuse and give too much power to the Executive on important matters. I would welcome further study of this provision, as has been suggested, before Report.

I am worried about the powers in the round—in this Bill and the Data Protection Bill—and I think that delegated legislative provisions will also become an issue when we come to the plethora of Brexit Bills later in the Session. It would be very useful, in this less contentious Bill, to make sure that we have the right provisions.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for allowing me the opportunity to explain the Government’s approach to statutory guidance under the Bill. I also thank him for his work on this Bill and for his role in the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. As he said, the Government have taken on board many of the recommendations of that committee, following its scrutiny.

The purpose of guidance is to aid policy implementation by supplementing the legal framework. It is not intended to circumvent this legal framework set out in primary or secondary legislation. The main benefit of the guidance is the flexibility to amend quickly and take account of changing events. For example, recently with Monarch Airlines, the CAA had to provide extensive guidance about passenger consumer rights under the ATOL scheme. This included what protections there were for consumers and how they could go about making an ATOL claim. This guidance had to be produced very quickly to support those impacted by the airline’s failure, and it is a clear demonstration of the flexibility of having guidance not made in regulations.

I should add that the approach we are taking under the Bill is consistent with that in aviation. Various standards, technical information and information regarding best practice can change annually. It would be difficult to keep up with changes if the guidance had to be approved by Parliament every year. There are parallels, too, with the approach taken on health and safety and other technical sectors. For example, in the nuclear sector, guidance sets out how people can comply with the requirements imposed by the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.

I assure noble Lords that the Government’s approach to the statutory guidance will be transparent. The initial sets of statutory guidance will be consulted on to allow scrutiny and comments from anyone with an interest. Where the guidance relates to regulations we will consult on it at the same time as consulting on the draft statutory instruments. Perhaps it might be helpful, in response to the questions from my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lady Neville-Rolfe, if I set out what we believe the split to be between the regulations and the guidance under the Bill. There may be matters on which the regulator does not wish to prescribe a particular way of working but wishes to help operators with guidance. For example, in relation to safety assessments, the regulator will be primarily interested in the outcomes rather than prescribing specific processes or methodologies. That is in line with best practice in health and safety where regulations will set out what must be taken into account and the requirements to be met in carrying out a risk assessment. Guidance will recommend a certain approach to carrying out that risk assessment.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, raises the point around the DPRRC recommendation on Clause 9. As I have already mentioned, the purpose of the guidance is to support the implementation. The recommendation in this case focuses on the need for parliamentary scrutiny of guidance given by the Secretary of State to the regulator. We believe that we need the flexibility for guidance to the regulator as well as for guidance to other persons. In aviation, for example, the CAA is required to take account of the guidance on environmental objects when carrying out its air navigation functions.

As my right honourable friend in the other place John Hayes said in his letter in response to the Committee, the initial guidance on this clause will be subject to a full consultation to enable scrutiny and comment from all those with an interest. Obviously this is an area of considerable interest in the Chamber, and we will certainly reflect on all the points made today. Given these assurances, I ask my noble friend to withdraw Amendment 5.

Roads: Congestion

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reduce inconvenience to individuals, and the losses to the economy, caused by pinch-points and congestion on roads.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are delivering a £23 billion programme of investment in England’s roads to improve journeys, reduce congestion and boost economic growth. The Government are also developing plans for future investment and have announced the proposed creation of a major road network that will see a share of the national road fund, funded by vehicle excise duty, given to local authorities to improve their major A-road networks.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I travelled quite extensively in Britain this summer, and I learned at first hand that serious traffic problems are not confined to major roads or big cities like ours: they are all too common right across the country. As King Edward VIII said, “Something must be done”. Indeed, a perusal of the Department for Transport’s report is not wholly reassuring, showing more interest in the large projects than in these important smaller frustrations. Will the Minister kindly undertake to publish an analysis of such pinch-points, noting the authorities responsible —to which he referred—for putting them right, the plans for tackling them and, most important of all, the forecast completion dates?

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Callanan on his very well deserved appointment as a Transport Minister. I am especially delighted to have taken over his office up in the eaves of the Palace, with vistas of Lambeth Palace and Westminster Abbey.

I start by welcoming the Queen’s Speech and the determination it shows to turn Brexit into an opportunity. I am a strong believer in free trade—frankly, there are not enough of us—and I want Brexit to be used to transform us into a country that creates more businesses selling services and goods around the world. I put services first, including financial services, because services now represent more than 80% of our economy and must be given the right degree of priority. We need to keep the economy firing and, while I agree with the Minister that we need balanced growth across the UK, we need to keep London firing too: it contributes £34 billion in fiscal surplus for the rest of the UK.

When I was last on the Back Benches, I tried to focus on some key areas where I felt that business and the economy were missing out. The first was broadband and digital, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Fox. I found graphic examples everywhere of not-spots and the lack of internet holding business back—indeed, in my case, preventing my children coming to stay with me. The second was technical education. I know from my experience in Germany and in retail that our success in elite education in the UK is not matched in vocational training. I am grateful for the progress that has been made in both areas, but there is a lot more to do in terms of delivery.

Today, time is limited so I shall encourage action in three relatively small areas. As I learned at Tesco, “Every little helps”.

The first area is congestion. I want to make the case for early investment on transport pinch points. In the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor made £2.6 billion available for transport infrastructure. It is really good to see the automated and electric vehicles Bill in the Queen’s Speech and to hear the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham talking about it and about north-east innovation. In the spring Budget, it was announced that £690 million was being competitively allocated to get transport moving. Congestion is reducing this country’s productivity—we fume in jams—not to mention seriously reducing our quality of life. As on broadband, I am collecting a list of the worst offenders: the A36 and A338 in Salisbury; Stonehenge, where I sat with the Glastonbury traffic this morning; Westminster Bridge; Stoke hospital; the A52 in Nottingham; and the A66/M6 at Penrith. I want lots of graphic examples, which I hope people will send me. We need to use the “roundabout fund” to improve our lives and reduce the appalling air pollution to which congestion gives rise. Perhaps the new Minister could consider putting an interactive map on GOV.UK and inviting everyone to contribute so that priorities can be decided quickly and the work actually done.

My second and related point—because these improvements could make more plots available—concerns housing. Frankly, housing is in crisis. We have to build many more homes and we need to build them in the south-east as well as elsewhere. As the Minister hinted, this must be a key priority for the industrial strategy. We need innovative solutions, such as changes to planning rules and better training and skills—learning from the best. We need to look at loosening the financial rules and allowing local authorities to be more entrepreneurial, in addition to encouraging the private sector. We are building less than in the 1980s at a time when we have more demand for homes. Indeed, unless we act quickly, a whole generation will not be able to afford a house, let alone a garden.

Thirdly, turning to small business, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Prior on his reappointment. The Federation of Small Businesses has made a compelling case for driving down the cost of doing business and for tackling the poor payment culture. I urge Ministers to listen to it. I visited a small business in Darlington recently—not an entirely successful visit. It was run by a great couple but the range of cost increases they faced was making life torture. There was not only the national living wage but recycling costs and myriad pressures. Most troubling, they were already benefiting from the Government’s rates exemption for small businesses. Their concerns remind one how important it is to have competitive tax rates for small businesses.

In closing, I ask my noble friend some questions that are important for small business. First, where are we on the implementation of the various legislative provisions on late payment? Secondly, when will the Small Business Commissioner start work? Thirdly, how and when will the Government deliver on the welcome promise on page 14 of the Conservative manifesto to,

“conduct a full review of the business rates system to make sure it is up to date for a world in which people increasingly shop online”?

The shift to online is changing the economy, changing how GDP should be measured and, most important of all, making life very difficult in our high streets, which are so important for cohesive and prosperous communities.

Progress does not depend just on the big battalions and solving the biggest problems. Our economy is complicated and sophisticated. We need action in many areas and we need it now.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Grand Committee

It is often said that that the United Kingdom does not shape up too well in international infrastructure league tables. The Australians have Infrastructure Australia and Singapore has its Urban Redevelopment Authority—radical reform along these lines is the best way to secure an end to stop-start funding. We do not need to recreate what we already have as an instrument for the roads, in the shape of the Highways Agency, and I am therefore still not convinced that the main proposition underpinning the Bill, as contained in this first clause, is necessary.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I regret that I was not able to speak at Second Reading, owing to other commitments. I associate myself with the noble Lord’s question about costs in relation to the new company.

I also have another question: will this new company be able to raise money in a way that the Highways Agency is not currently able to do? That would of course potentially enable important infrastructure investments to go ahead even in times of stringency. I also associate myself with the comments about the A303, having lived off the A303 all my life and having seen probably 50 years’ worth of proposals for Stonehenge—none of which has so far come to fruition.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I support the proposal that Clause 1 should not stand part of the Bill, as it queries whether the clause—which is the whole proposition here—is sufficiently coherent and clear as to what it intends to do. As a Roads Minister, I was responsible for at least one of the proposals for the A303 and remember that we talked to everybody in the community, including several different sets of druids, and told them that the Stonehenge tunnel would be built. However, as I said at Second Reading, no sod has yet been turned and all they have done is close one road.

I understand the Government’s intention to create a steadier position through having a slightly more arm’s-length relationship, but this is half-baked. It is neither fish nor fowl. This will be a company that is wholly owned by the Government and which—to address the point that has just been made—cannot raise its own money. The Minister has made that clear to me, both in writing and in person. I thought the main advantage of having the hive-off would be that the body could raise its own funds, even if subject to broader controls from the Treasury, but the Minister makes it clear in her letter that its situation will be no different to the current one of the Highways Agency. That seems to undermine the main advantage of establishing an arm’s-length body. The Government’s proposal incurs all the costs, all the confusion and all this great legislation in the Bill and all the schedules attached to it, but it does not, of itself, provide the funding, the strategic intent or the independence from Government and, crucially, from the Treasury. It will not avoid what has been a stop-go process for the past 30 years.

If the Government were proposing a new corporation that was properly set up and run and which, although still owned by the Government, had its own structural basis and accountability, as well as the ability to finance its activities in various different ways, I could see that there would be a significant advantage. With this halfway house, which is not even a halfway house, I see very few advantages. Therefore, I think that the Government would be more sensible to leave the Highways Agency where it is, give the agency more money and give that over a longer period of time—if that is the Government’s priority—and, if necessary, think up a fuller, clearer, more comprehensive proposition for what kind of highways organisation we need in this land. The answer to that might well be in the territory that my noble friend Lord Davies referred to, because what we perhaps actually need is a transport infrastructure company rather than one that deals with simply 2% of our roads.

If we were to do that, we could start to deliver the investment required for a genuinely integrated transport policy, whereas the Bill, as I am afraid I have said before, seems to be about changing the names on the doors without changing much else.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bradshaw]

I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has said, but will add something. You can argue for or against it, but having chosen to go down the route of rail regulation, there is one thing I really would like to be assured about. We know that the motorist—maybe “road user” is the right term—is to be represented by Passenger Focus. That of course covers the railway, bus and tram industries; it has seen incremental growth, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, had a good deal to do with its genesis. With railways, buses, trams and the other things for which it is responsible, it has a right to get information from the regulated party or from the party for which it is responsible. A train or bus company cannot refuse such a request. I would like to be assured that the strategic highways company, too, will not be able to refuse a request for information from Passenger Focus acting in pursuance of its duties to represent road users. I am quite happy that it should represent them, but I do want it not to be treated any differently from the way it is treated in other industries.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about cross-modal being an important issue. There is a later amendment on the need for co-operation, on which I am sure we will agree. I have some concerns about the notion of duty in that context, because duties impose rights and that can lead to problems. I am also not sure that rail is necessarily the model for road. I always think that when you are looking at a regulatory framework, judgments need to be made in respect of the sector that you are looking at. You need to be careful that they work for that sector, and circumstances are different.

That leads me to my main point. I am always concerned about perverse effects. The clause that is the subject of Amendment 13 could have some quite perverse effects, particularly if it were introduced in this form. Duties, effectively, are like legislation and will give rights, and rights can then generate judicial review, and you could have arguments about whether particular things are sustainable or not. You could then make this process a lot more complicated and expensive, and it would not produce the better agency that is the purpose of the Bill. Will my noble friend comment on this aspect of the proposed amendment?

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 40 in this group on precisely the subject of the duty to co-operate. This very much builds on the Localism Act, under which local authorities have a duty to co-operate with each other. I understand that part of the department’s argument on this will be that the new company—the present Highways Agency—is already a traffic authority and a highway authority and is therefore covered by the Localism Act’s provisions. I am not sure whether that is entirely clear. If it is, then some of the objections that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, referred to would have to apply to the Localism Act as well. If that is the case, can we somehow cross-refer to it?

The Highways Agency has only 2.4% of the road mileage of the country. All of its roads create traffic for the local network and all of the local network piles out on to the motorway at various points. Sometimes the most congested areas of the motorway are congested largely because it is being used as a local road by people for just two exits. There is an important need for the Highways Agency and the traffic authorities to co-operate and that needs to be reflected in the Bill.

However, in view of the environmental and safety aspects, there is also a need to co-operate with the safety authorities and with the Environment Agency, which is concerned with emissions, air pollution, water run-off and so forth. The HSE’s duties on the roads will relate only to employee drivers, but it does have some, and there must therefore be a cross-over.

We have briefly mentioned the interface with Wales. Obviously, at the far end of the network there is interface with Scotland as well, and there needs to be some co-operation with the devolved Administrations. I also referred to the police and traffic commissioners because, in practice, a lot of the traffic management of the Highways Agency is conducted by the police. Therefore, the police should have at least some mention here, although I am not entirely clear whether the duty to co-operate under the Localism Act actually covers police authorities as well. In one sense, even if it does, we should cross-refer to it.