Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Parminter and Lord Berkeley

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, these are interesting amendments which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has said, cover a wide range of issues. It is definitely time to revisit the issue of damaged roads. Road vehicles are getting heavier and their tyre pressures are higher, but that may be balanced by improved suspension systems, making this a complicated calculation. Of course, higher speed incurs more damage to vehicles of all types. It is reasonable that vehicle excise duty, in the absence of any sort of road user charge, should reflect the different types of damage caused to roads as well as congestion and pollution. We need also to take into account something else which has come to the fore in the past few years. Worsening road surfaces are having a serious effect on cyclists. If the Government want more people to take up cycling, it must be safe for them to do so. A large pothole can cause a cyclist to fall off their bike and hurt themselves, and at night the potholes cannot be seen because they are so deep. It is a serious issue and now would be a very good time to address it.

On proposed new paragraphs (2)(c) and (d) in Amendment 64, we are where we are with the undertakers. I suspect that that is one reason why we do not do more with our roads. Constructing trams in cities is so expensive because the private sector undertakers take anybody to the cleaners if they want to build anything. I do not see an easy solution, except that they need to be kept up to the mark and ensure not only that the quality of the reinstatement is good but that the time it takes is kept short. Some emergency potholes and road works are there for weeks.

On new paragraph (d), damage to the roads in the past couple of winters probably reflects the same cause and effect as damage to the rail network: the weather has been very bad. The motorways mostly stayed open, as did the existing high-speed rail link because they have been designed and built in the past 50 years to cope with the current forecast weather conditions and using more modern drainage systems—slopes on cuttings and so on—which are appropriate. Most of the other roads and the classic railway system has suffered from being built 100 or 150 years ago. It is time to look at all that again, and it would be interesting to see the results. I hope that the Minister will look on the amendment with favour.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

I support the Minister looking closely at the amendment from my noble friend Lord Bradshaw for two reasons: first, because of the point he made that we need roads of good quality, whether you are the user of a car, a cyclist or some other person travelling on the road. We are facing far less revenue coming in to the Treasury to pay for them and need to find other sources of funding. That seems to be a reasonable proposal.

Secondly, I follow on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about cyclists. I speak as someone whose husband suffered a serious cycling accident two years ago—the police do not know whether it was because he went into a pothole or was hit by a car and then hit a pothole, but potholes were clearly involved in that accident, and he still has no recollection of what happened. There is an increasing number of good reasons to encourage children on to bicycles. I speak as someone who cycles my youngest to school when I can. It is madness for us to want children to be encouraged to go out to cycle for the health benefits that that gives them if, by the time they are adults and cycling to work, the roads are in such poor condition that it is not safe for them to go on them.

We need safe and well funded roads, which means that the Government are going to have to be creative in how we find that money. I think that the amendment offers an opportunity for further discussion and debate.

Infrastructure Planning (Waste Water Transfer and Storage) Order 2012

Debate between Baroness Parminter and Lord Berkeley

Monday 28th May 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, there is clearly widespread support for this order, as the Minister said. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in another place recommended that the Government go down this route and the responses to the consultation contained widespread support, including from the local authorities that would be affected by the Thames tunnel proposals. Therefore, on this side of the coalition, we support the order. It is important to remind ourselves why it is being brought forward. It is not about trying to speed up any decisions; it is about making a process that is timely and minimises unnecessary cost but remains democratically accountable.

This is a new type of engagement for the public in terms of how they respond to major sewer proposals; in the past DCLG has been very good at public education campaigns about how the public can engage which allays fears that these are processes that are somehow to speed things up and stop them being involved. Will the Minister be speaking to his colleagues in DCLG to ensure that a proper public consultation campaign is undertaken so that people realise how they can engage in this new major infrastructure order?

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I spoke about this project—well I did not actually speak, my noble friend made my speech for me because I was on the sleeper to Scotland. He did an extremely good job especially when it apparently diverged from our party policy, but there we are. I do not have a particular problem with the concept of an order such as this amending the planning process because I have always supported the Infrastructure Planning Commission and its successor. I did, however, have a chuckle when I read the impact assessment for this project: in answer to the question of what was the CO₂ equivalent change in greenhouse gas emissions in millions of tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, the answer was “not applicable”.

When I worked out that for the Thames tunnel— I do not know whether Thames Water is still going to move all the spoil away by road—that was going to be 500 trucks a day, the idea that that would not produce any CO₂ was laughable. Of course, many other bits of CO₂ will come out of the construction, let alone the operation. The matter might be a little detailed but it needs looking at again.

Since the debate on 27 March, things have moved on and Thames Water has produced a second consultation report. It has made some changes but I do not think it has recognised that it may have an unnecessarily expensive scheme. The eminent water engineer, Chris Binnie, produced a report, about which I shall speak in a minute and which could reduce infraction fines by obtaining improvement much sooner than 2023, which I believe is the latest date for the scheme to be completed. We must not forget that the cost is now something like £4.2 billion, plus I think that the estimate of infraction has gone up to £1.5 billion. There is, of course, always a risk of cost overrun in tunnelling. Further, there is the estimated £80 per annum for 30 years that every Thames Water customer will have to pay, with or without the extra subsidy from the Government that was agreed a couple of months ago. Therefore, I suggest that the Government ought at this stage to take a step back and reflect before spending nearly £6 billion of taxpayers’ money, which may not even satisfy the European Commission’s requirements. Indeed, we do not yet know what those requirements will be until the Court has concluded its deliberations.

Mr Binnie’s report refers to a possible fine of £1.5 billion. He believes that the fish issue can be addressed much more cheaply and that the same applies to the problems of sewage, litter and health impacts in the London docks. He says that these rather smaller issues could be addressed within two or three years, although one of them will not be resolved until 2023, which is more than 10 years away. However, all this is dependent on the European Court’s judgment, which will go back to the European Commission. Therefore, I argue that it is well worth trying to introduce some interim measures. That would probably reduce the fine significantly as the matter is assessed on a five-point basis and if you make improvements, the fine goes down.

This project has gained a momentum of its own, as do many big projects, some of which one likes and some of which one does not like. This theory of mine as regards projects gaining a momentum of their own goes back many years. Ministers like to put their names to big projects but these projects do not always survive political pressures. That is true of Governments of all parties, and 2023 is a very long time away, although I am sure that the Minister opposite does not fall into that category. However, I am concerned about where the independent advice is to be found in all this. I understand that the person in Ofwat who is responsible for this project used to work for Thames Water and that the person responsible for the technical advice on this scheme used to be responsible for the Mogden sewage works. I also understand that during the hearings that the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, held a few months ago, Thames Water referred to Ofwat and the Environment Agency as its team. This should not be a team. The regulator has an independent role. It is all wrong that they should all be one happy family when they are spending £6 billion of taxpayers’ money. Nobody is looking at alternatives. The Minister said in his introduction to the debate that this was the best scheme, having considered alternatives, but who is considering the alternatives?

I suppose it is not surprising that people are not looking at alternatives but this needs to be done. If one looks at some of the mitigating measures produced by Mr Binnie and others, there are probably many of them. We also need to make sure that if the Thames tunnel scheme goes ahead, it achieves the results we want. However, we do not know what the Commission will decide in this regard. I hope that the Minister will advise his colleagues that it is time to take a step back and look at alternatives. I would very much welcome a quick meeting with him to go through this in more detail. In the mean time, I shall not oppose the order and wish it well. However, I am not sure that I wish the project well at this stage.