E-scooters and E-bikes

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The dialogue with the noble Lord continues. As he said, we had a very fruitful meeting recently, following the earlier debate in the autumn on the whole question of cycling. The practical difficulty of insurance is simply that clearly people do not need a licence for these things, and a requirement for insurance would itself need enforcement—on which he is better qualified to opine than I am. There is a real difficulty with some of the propositions around licensing and insurance, which we will have to fully consider. He is right that, in the absence of insurance, if there is an accident and people are injured or worse then there is a real problem, but we have to crack this in a practical manner.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, on average, the London Fire Brigade is called to an e-bike or e-scooter fire once every two days, some of which lead to loss of life. My noble friend Lord Redesdale has a Private Member’s Bill, the Lithium-ion Battery Safety Bill, which is designed to tackle the issues of substandard battery design, unsafe battery chargers and dangerous conversion kits. Will the Minister undertake to examine that Bill in detail, with the intention of providing government support to get this legislation on to the statute book as soon as possible?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I will certainly undertake to look at that in the way that the noble Baroness suggests. In October, the Department for Business and Trade launched the Buy Safe, Be Safe campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of buying faulty and unsafe e-bikes, e-scooters and components such as batteries for the very reasons she suggests. These fires, some of which are catastrophic and have caused fatal injuries, are completely unacceptable, and the people selling these things ought to be brought to order.

Train Crew Shortages

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Randerson]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the reasons for the shortage of train crew reported across several train operators as the explanation for the cancellation of services.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the current level of train cancellations is dreadful for passengers, and driver, guard and train manager availability has been driving much of this. The railway we inherited has unacceptable levels of staff shortages. We have commissioned detailed work to understand train crew numbers and availability. The previous Government had no useful knowledge of staff levels, recruitment, training, overtime and planning efficiency across individual operators. That work and the Government’s commitment to wider rail reform will drive better staff numbers and more efficient utilisation of those resources and reduce cancellations in the future.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer and am glad to hear about progress. However, recently, Northern Trains, which is directly government run, and Great Western Railway, which is still in the private sector, have repeatedly given a shortage of train crew as their reason for cancellations. As a previous Secretary of State said, nationalisation is “not a silver bullet”, but it will surely lead to a more coherent approach to employment terms and, hence, a better service for passengers. When and how do the Government intend to harmonise terms and conditions for employees and, therefore, to create a modern rail industry, providing modern standards of service, particularly at weekends?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords—

Road Transport (International Passenger Services) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Grand Committee

The instrument will revoke assimilated EU legislation, removing passenger transport cabotage rights for EU operators in the UK, which will level the playing field for UK operators. I hope noble Lords will join me in supporting these measures, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his detailed introduction. There is a long background of negotiations on this legislation. The Explanatory Memorandum says that this SI

“will in effect maintain the status quo”—

that status quo was very hard fought in the days after the Brexit referendum. We have spent many hours in this Room debating the fallout from the detail of that situation.

Paragraph 5.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the instrument will

“update the UK’s domestic … legislation by removing assimilated EU legislation”

on road passenger transport. Of course, UK bus and coach operators will continue to operate within the context of the framework of EU and international legislation generally. As the Minister said, there are three types of commercial bus and coach services: the occasional, the regular and the special regular services carrying specified categories of passengers, such as pupils.

It is good news that there is now a right for bus and coach operators to transport passengers through the EU to Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Are new signatories to the agreement likely to come on stream in future? This is a fairly limited market as it stands.

The key change in this SI relates to cabotage—the carrying of passengers in the UK by foreign-based operators. Paragraph 5.10 of the EM explains that international operators participating in the UK

“are currently permitted to undertake cabotage”

under assimilated EU law. This right is being removed. My second question is: how many services, roughly, are affected by this? How common is the operation of cabotage by EU operators? I assume that the answer is that it is not very common, because one thing that slightly surprised me was the fact that there was no consultation on this SI. I declare my interest as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Is this an important new right, or is it a marginal benefit?

As always, it is in Northern Ireland that the really intractable questions arise, following the Brexit vote and its implications. I am pleased that Northern Ireland operators will be able to operate cabotage within the island of Ireland, and vice versa. That is the only logical thing to do. I recall that, a few years ago, when I was a member of the EU sub-committee, we took evidence from a bus operator—although not in relation to this specific issue, of course. The bus operator said that his scheduled service crossed the border 13 times from one end to the other. The proposal at the time, from some enthusiastic Brexiteers, was that Britain should flex its muscles post Brexit by changing our clocks in the spring and the autumn on a different day from the EU. Businesses in Northern Ireland, and indeed in the Republic of Ireland, were very exercised by the practical issues, and the bus operator pointed out how impossible his timetable would become if we operated in a different way with time zones.

This is possibly not an SI of the greatest significance, but it is nevertheless one to be welcomed because of the common-sense approach in relation to Northern Ireland and the fact that British operators will now be in the same commercial position as EU operators for cabotage.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I have a question for the Minister about this generally positive instrument. It is about electronic travel authorisation. If a bus comes from Great Britain to the Republic and into Northern Ireland, electronic travel authorisation will be required, as I read it. Can the Minister confirm this? Many of us see this as a disincentive and an obstacle to tourism. People visiting Ireland from outside the EU and from outside Ireland need, as I read it, electronic travel authorisation to come into Northern Ireland—that is effectively a visa. Can the Minister confirm that? If he does not have the information available, he can write.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 20th November 2024 Lords Chamber

I am not doing this to score cheap political points and I do want the Government to succeed. If they genuinely believe that the Bill will succeed in its mission, they should back the amendment. If the Bill really is about an improvement in the service, they should keep the amendment in. Despite what the Minister said, I have enormous faith, and this Minister is far more suited than anyone else to make the trains work, to fix the problems and to deliver reform, but no man is an island. Without the purpose clause, what are we doing this for? There needs to be a reminder—a guiding light—to show what should be the Bill’s ultimate mission. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I do not follow the Government’s logic so far. They accepted our amendment, in the names of my noble friend Lady Brinton and others across the House, on disability access and the equality issue. That was and is a hugely challenging issue for the railway and for the Government, and a very expensive one to fulfil. Yet they reject this simple statement, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, just pointed out, is simply a statement of purpose.

We are very grateful to the Minister for the discussions and for the way he has moved to address our concerns. But, as the Government have said, nationalisation is not a silver bullet. Across the world, there are examples of both publicly and privately owned railways that provide an excellent service. Unlike both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, we on these Benches judge a railway not by its ownership but by its efficiency: how good a service provided to passengers is and putting passengers at the heart of things, always. Incidentally, we welcome the Conservative Party’s new-found enthusiasm for passenger efficiency.

This amendment would make it clear that the primary —but not the only—purpose of the Bill is to improve passenger railway services. This should be a statement of the obvious, so I am mystified as to why there is any debate about incorporating it in the Bill. I am also concerned about the points the Secretary of State made in the other place yesterday. It is unrealistic to assert that you can interpret the amendment, specifically the words

“improve the performance of passenger railway services”,

as meaning that the Secretary of State could decide to run fewer services on time, which is, in essence, what she said. I add that if the Government are not happy with the precise wording, because they believe it could be misinterpreted and misused, they could, of course, have offered to amend it.

We would have preferred the issues of ownership to be more closely linked with improvements, passenger standards and other key issues that need to change if we are to have a robust 21st-century rail service. The Government, in our view, have therefore put the vehicle ahead of the delivery. However, we accept that they have a mandate; we accept that there is more than one way to deliver these improvements. We will be listening carefully to the Minister’s response, and I hope that he will be able to be more persuasive than the Secretary of State, because his expertise and reputation are always taken very seriously in this House. If he is able, today, to commit the Government to improvements to passenger services at the core of future legislation, at the core of the responsibility of the Secretary of State, we will be able to support the Government. Passengers desperately need to see improvements, having had a decline in service for so many years under the previous Government. So let us get that commitment on the record; let us get it in legislation, if possible, as soon as possible, so that the work can start.

Very briefly on Motion B, we acknowledge the primacy of the other place on financial issues, but we hope that the Government will continue to apply the flexibility that current legislation affords them so that they will not, unnecessarily rapidly, bring to an end very successful franchises.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall endeavour to be brief. I repeat what other noble Lords have said in expressing my gratitude to the Minister, as I mentioned at Third Reading and when the Bill passed, for his courtesy and collaboration in our debates on the Bill.

The Government’s problem is this: they wish to reform the railways. There is a great deal of support in your Lordships’ House, across all parties, and generally among the public for a reform of the railways. We would like to discuss what the Government are going to do on a number of issues. Had they brought forward the measure in this Bill as part of a large and comprehensive Bill introducing those reforms to the railways, we would have had the opportunity to have those discussions. We would have been able to discuss, for example, the role of freight, and the tension between the priority given to passenger services and freight services that inevitably exists in a constrained system. We would have had the chance to discuss the continuation of open access and competition on the railways. We could have discussed the devolution of the operation of train services to regional and local authorities, such as exists in London and might exist in other parts of the country. We would have been able to do all those things as part of a comprehensive reform Bill.

But the Government have decided not to bring forward a comprehensive reform Bill, of which this is part; they have decided to take this step first—that is, to seize control of the train operating companies—and the great Bill of reform is promised for the future. The Government say that it will be brought forward within 12 to 18 months—that is a challenging target. As I have said, tediously, in the past, over and over again, even after that Bill has gone through its parliamentary process and passed, it will still take several years for it to be implemented.

Bus Funding

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, another week and another highly operatic Statement from the person in the other place who wishes to be known as the passenger-in-chief. But, unlike the Statement we had last week, this one has some substance. Its purpose is to announce how the Government are going to spend on buses the approximately £1 billion allocated for that purpose by the Chancellor in her Budget a few weeks ago. About £750 million is to be given to local authorities and the other quarter to bus companies.

There is an important methodological change in this that I would like to explore with the Minister, which is that the Secretary of State announced that previously councils had to compete for funding—wasting resources and delaying decisions. In making that statement she puts her finger on something that has come to the attention of quite a number of noble Lords, not least those who are members of the Built Environment Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, which I have the privilege to chair, which is that the widespread use of bidding by local authorities is time consuming, costs money and is particularly wasteful for local authorities that bid and receive nothing at the end of the process.

Perhaps there is a case for something being done about this—perhaps. I also understand that Governments want to know that the money they are allocating will go to good projects that stand up to scrutiny, so there is a balance to be struck. None the less, the right honourable Lady has made a point of interest. She has said that funding will be allocated based on a “formula”, saying:

“We are taking a fundamentally different approach. We have allocated funding based on local need, population, the distance that buses travel, and levels of deprivation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/11/24; col. 43.]


I know what a formula looks like: it has pluses and minuses, multipliers and weightings, and it shows how money is to be allocated according to certain criteria. I would love to explore this formula and know more about it, but it has not been published. That is the most astonishing thing. We do not know what the formula is or how these criteria have been melded together to produce an outcome. Indeed, what do these criteria mean? Local needs—how many Governments are going to allocate money that is not related to local needs? Population—does that mean that areas with higher populations get more or less money? If it means they get more money, what is that saying to rural areas, which are very dependent on buses? The distance that buses travel—what does that mean? Again, in rural areas buses may travel very long distances. Does that mean that they get more money or less because it is the shorter distances that are being rewarded? Levels of deprivation—I think we have a reasonable idea what that means.

What does it all mean? Was it consulted on? I think we should know. Local authorities might have wanted to have a say in how this money was allocated and how a formula was developed. Was an independent assessment made of what its effects and impacts would be? Were alternatives considered by Department for Transport officials before this particular formula was alighted on? How crucially does it relate to what the Deputy Prime Minister might do when she comes to allocate money to local authorities? It is very likely that she too will say that the bidding system is discredited and she wants to move to a more formulaic allocation of funding. As I say, there is an argument for doing that but it depends fundamentally on the credibility of the formula used, which means that it has to be exposed to light.

Finally, I do not mean to be rude about anybody, certainly not the Minister or his Government, and I also know that £1 billion is just loose change for a Government who are determined to spend their way to growth. But we on this side of the House would still like to be assured about a formula that nobody can see, which depends on criteria that need to be interpreted and are not in any sense plain, and which could simply be a way of spending money to reward your mates. Is that what is going on here? There is every reason to think that it might be.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to welcome the Statement made by the Secretary of State in the other place. Bus services outside London have been allowed to atrophy and die for far too long. They are vital to society and our economy. They are used by the poorest, the oldest and the youngest. Although we love to talk about trains here, buses are the most used form of public transport.

The funding information in the Statement, as far as it goes, is welcome, as are the commitments to reform. The situation with buses has been too complex, too fragmented, too short-term and too competitive. In practice, the competition has led to money going to, in effect, the councils that are best at filling in the forms rather than those most in need.

Courtesy of the Campaign for Better Transport, I have some illustrative statistics. Why should Swindon get £3.98 per head for buses and Reading, just down the road and not dissimilar in size, get £168.68 per head? No formula would explain that. Of course, Reading has extremely good buses as a result of extremely good funding.

There are currently six different funding pots. We need one single integrated fund with “long-term” written all over it, so can the Minister explain in more detail exactly how the current six funds will be amalgamated and repurposed?

I turn to the £3 bus fare cap and its impact. It is, of course, effectively a 50% fare increase in an industry that has already seen fares rise by 59% since 2015, so it will have a huge impact. Yet there were reports at the weekend that the Secretary of State had said that maybe it would be linked in some way to the rate of inflation. Will the £3 cap be applied in the same way as the £2 cap, or will it be amended in some way? What analysis have the Government made to lead them to abandon the £2 cap, which appeared to be working well?

In many areas, particularly rural areas, demand-responsive and Dial-a-Ride services are vital. I ask the Minister, because this is not mentioned in the Statement: what will the Government do to encourage these services to ensure proper co-ordination between local authorities, bus operators and other bodies, such as NHS trusts, so that rural areas get a better deal from the providers at various levels in their area and a structure that local people can rely on?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for their comments on this Statement, which was made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport in the other place yesterday.

I turn first to the noble Lord’s comments. He correctly identifies a methodological change in the way this money has been allocated. The formula used is simple but, the Government think, fair. It relates equally, in thirds, to the level of population, so the greater the population of the local transport authority the more money; to bus mileage, so the greater the bus mileage, the more money; and to the index of multiple deprivation, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which is the official measure of relative deprivation in England. That is a much fairer method of allocating money for a service that, as the noble Baroness said, is disproportionately used by people on lower incomes, women, the young and old, and is the mainstay of public transport in Great Britain.

The Government are entitled to make decisions about how they wish to spend money, but the point I most want to make is that the previous competitive system has all the disbenefits the noble Lord referred to—the time spent bidding, the costs, the use of consultants and the uncertain outcomes—whereas this method provides a much more certain way of allocating this money and is much fairer across the whole of England. Of course this money is not loose change; it is a substantial amount for a vital public service in Britain, but use of this formula is a much fairer way of allocating this money. In fact, a competition arbitrated by nameless officials on criteria that, frankly, have not been clear to the local authorities in the past is a much more likely source of rewarding “your mates”, as he refers to them, than this formula.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, welcomed the Statement, and I thank her for that. There are, of course, differences in the allocations to local transport authorities, and I can probably account afterwards for the difference between Swindon and Reading. I will attempt to do so to her in due course. The allocations have been allocated by this formula and represent, in the Government’s view, a fair method of distributing a considerable amount of money. While there are some headings in the allocation—capital, revenue, some money for helping source officer help and so on—local authorities that receive the money are free to use it in the way they want. The principle the Government are delighted to have is that the capital sums can be used for new vehicles, bus stops, information systems or bus stations and the revenue can either support fares initiatives, in particular for the young—some combined authorities have kept the maximum fare at £2—or support services to enable a fair distribution of bus mileage throughout their towns and areas.

The reference the noble Baroness made to the £3 fare and the 50% fare increase is, of course, not so. Most bus journeys are short and are carried out in urban areas. With the £3 maximum, there are many fares that will not go up at all. The reference to inflation has been made by the Government to ensure that fares under £3 rise only by the rate of inflation, whereas the previous £2 limit encouraged some operators to put up their fares by far more than inflation to the £2 limit. The analysis of the effect of the maximum bus fare will be published by the department in due course.

Finally, the noble Baroness referred to demand-responsive transport and dial-a-ride. Local transport authorities that receive this money are able to spend it on bus services in the way that they want, so they are able to support demand-responsive services if those are the right way of dealing with their area. The principle is that local transport authorities know much better than government how the money is best spent. Therefore, this money has been distributed with great freedom to allow them to spend it in the right way for their area, to create economic growth and to support jobs and housing in the way that local transport does.

Aviation Safety (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for his useful introduction. I stress that I perceive this SI as important because it introduces amendments to bring the UK into line with ICAO standards and practices. It will allow commercial operators to use more advanced and efficient fuel-planning systems, which will lead to the saving of fuel and lower emissions, which is in itself very important indeed, and will lead to significant savings for those operating in the business.

Secondly, this SI will also permit the use of new technology and procedures at take-off and landing in what you or I would call poor visibility but what the aviation sector calls “all-weather operations”—that is a masterful understatement—which will, of course, mean much safer aviation.

Thirdly, this SI will introduce improvements to mandatory crew training and safety checks. I have a question for the Minister: does that tightening up on safety deal in practice with the grey area between commercial pilots and leisure pilots in general aviation? I am sure that those in the aviation industry knew all about this issue, but it first became publicly known after the air crash that led to the death of Emiliano Sala, a player at Cardiff Football Club. It involved a pilot who was not qualified for commercial aviation and not licensed to fly at night. It turned out, according to the news stories, that this was a frequent blurring of the edges; there was general agreement in the House that that should be dealt with. If this SI goes as far as dealing with that blurring of the edges, I would very much welcome that.

There is a general concern that the Department for Transport may have fallen behind on updating aviation legislation, just as it did with maritime legislation, because, according to the report by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—I am a member of that committee, although I did not attend the particular meeting that produced the report—we have been out of step with the ICAO requirements for anything from four to 12 years. According to that report, the Department for Transport says that this time lapse has not posed a safety risk. That may be questioned, I think: if one is updating safety legislation in a whole series of bits of legislation, one assumes that one is doing it to make things safer. In any event, this has put UK operators at a competitive disadvantage because, for example, the EU implemented it nearly three years ago.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also states that the UK has filed differences—that means that we are not in alignment with ICAO standards and regulations—in 9% of cases. That is a significant minority. The Department for Transport also told the committee that it was up to date with other international agreements. I am delighted to hear that, and I invite the Minister to confirm it here today. Maybe the department has now had time to look more thoroughly. My concern is the waste of precious time in improving fuel efficiency, but I am also concerned that the UK is not fully up to date with the latest safety techniques, especially in relation to helicopters, which are notoriously complex to fly.

Can the Minister update us on where the new Government stand on our previous withdrawal from the EGNOS satellite system operated by the EU? That is something that we have discussed in this Room on several occasions. The withdrawal from EGNOS has undoubtedly put smaller airports, such as Bournemouth and the Isles of Scilly, at a disadvantage, because they have been unable to operate safely in poor visibility. I would welcome it if the new Government were looking again at that costly decision for the aviation industry. I believe that the problems with training for commercial pilots also involved the issue of access to EGNOS. If the new Government have not addressed that issue yet, I urge them to look at it in detail.

Finally, paragraph 4.9 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the instrument

“applies to aircraft registered in the UK wherever they are”.

Can the Minister confirm the flip side of that, if I can put it that way—that if an aircraft is operated in the UK, wherever it is registered, it will be subject to the same safety criteria? The same accident to which I referred earlier also revealed, as a result of CAA investigations, that there was a gap between the safety of those aircraft registered in the UK and the standards, for example, of those registered in the USA. Those are legitimate issues of concern.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be disappointingly brief. I thank the Minister for arranging a briefing with his officials, and I thank those officials for the time that they gave. Various pertinent questions have been raised in the course of this short debate, and I look forward to hearing the Minister answer them. I had one question that I raised with his officials, relating to the extent and effectiveness of the consultation exercise with the smaller operators in particular. I understand that, if the Minister is unable to give an answer to that this afternoon, his officials are preparing to give a written answer to that question later.

The previous Government prepared these regulations. At their heart is not a question about alignment of texts or legality but the question of safety in practice. We are all agreed that we want aviation to be, as the Minister said, one of the safest modes of travel. It has been for a very long time, and we want it to continue to be so. The Minister has assured us that these regulations represent a further step in ensuring safety in aviation and, on that basis, this side is more than happy to support them.

Rail Performance

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, when a Secretary of State comes to the House of Commons to make a Statement, I have always imagined it to be a rather portentous matter; something serious must be afoot. I note that the Minister has not exercised his right to read this Statement to the House and I can understand why, because it is almost completely vacuous. There is nothing in it at all, really. They must be having a very quiet time in the House of Commons if they want to sit and listen to this.

We learn of a few modest but welcome improvements. We learn that there are going to be new signboards at Euston. We know that people will have their tickets accepted across publicly owned train operating companies in the event of disruption. We are even told that there are “green shoots emerging” at LNER—I thought that that phrase had rather been cast into history, but possibly it is better than “leaves on the line”. But the performance improvements that the Secretary of State claims credit for in the Statement are not all what they seem.

Cancellations on CrossCountry have been reduced but the Secretary of State does not reveal—or she does slightly reveal if you read it carefully—that this has been achieved largely by reducing the number of time- tabled trains. Cancellations have also improved on TransPennine Express, we learn in the Statement, but she does not mention that, according to the Office of Rail and Road, delays have increased. The passenger-in-chief, as she wishes to be known, claims great progress as a result of her “getting around the table with unions”. Those of us who remember her first encounter with the unions recall that she barely stayed long enough, I imagine, even to sit at the table before she conceded all their demands.

This is not serious stuff from the Government about the railways. The serious stuff was put very squarely by the Minister earlier this week, and it is that the railways cost as much as they did before Covid but they have only 80% of the revenues. That is the problem, that is how he summarised it, and that is what the Secretary of State should be coming to the Commons to talk about, not green shoots at LNER and possible improvements in cancellations on TransPennine Express. She said, as the Minister himself said earlier this week, that there is to be a consultation on the Government’s plans. He said he hoped it would be published before Christmas. She says it will be soon. We look forward to it. We will be judging it according to the standard of whether or not it addresses the problem. The railways do not have enough revenue. We want to know what the Government are doing about it. Statements such as this are merely faffing around.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that this is a real time filler of a Statement, and I will not waste the time of this House by repeating some of the points he has just made that I had picked up on. Instead, I will ask the Minister some questions that flow from the rather superficial things in the Statement.

The Statement refers to ticket simplification but that is obviously still a long way off and what is being offered is a very modest measure. What passengers want to see is some kind of outward sign that the Government are taking seriously the fact that they are getting a very poor service at a very high price.

Fares went up by 5% this year and are scheduled to go up by a similar amount in March. I urge the Government to look at that again. Indeed, I challenge them to look at it again and to freeze fares in March at the current levels in recognition of the fact that rail services are not good enough to justify fare increases.

The Statement includes an update on LNER and refers to improvements in driver availability on the line. Unfortunately, that is not a general picture. Both Great Western Railway and Northern Trains regularly cite non-availability of drivers and train crew as a reason for cancellation. Can the Minister tell us what the Government are doing, across all train operators, to deal with failures of recruitment and training? That is clearly what must be happening at the moment. I fear this situation could get worse as train operators come towards the end of their franchises. I am interested in the Government’s strategy to stop this system, which is bad and getting worse.

Finally, the Statement references an improvement in industrial relations, but the Government face a big challenge as the nationalised train operator moves to one harmonised set of terms and conditions. What are the Government intending to do to ensure that the inevitable levelling up of terms and conditions properly modernises the industry and does so at a cost that taxpayers and passengers can afford, and when will they do it?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their comments. I start by saying that I could not disagree more with either of their descriptions of the Secretary of State’s Statement in the other place. All my experience as a public transport operator is that people really care about the service that they are offered on a daily basis, and I think that we should welcome the Secretary of State making a Statement about things that are happening on the railway for the service of passengers. It is really very welcome. It is very important that it is recognised as a Statement by the Secretary of State for passengers, about what is going on.

I disagree with the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that these things are trivial. It is absurd, frankly, that on many journeys in northern England which are served by two companies—both owned by the Government—tickets are valid only on one of them and passengers might get fined for getting on the wrong-coloured train. Ticket acceptance, both in normal times and when services are disrupted, ought to be completely obvious, but the railway does not allow it, not even when the companies have the same owner—it is just extraordinary.

The noble Lord referred to CrossCountry cancellations being reduced. The reason they and the timetable are reduced—much to my irritation and that of the Secretary of State—was that the company which ran it suddenly found that it did not have enough drivers available. It appeared to be extraordinarily sudden, and I will come back to that in due course. The noble Lord mentioned delay minutes on TPE, but sadly his counterpart in the other place had not looked in a sufficiently granular manner at the statistics. In the last 12 months, as well as cancellations going down on TPE, delays have reduced; the statistics that were quoted were four-year statistics. I do agree with the noble Lord that it is more than this, and that is why we have said consistently—and I have been able to say consistently in discussing the Bill on which we have just had Third Reading—that there will be a much bigger Bill. But it is really important that things happen now, because people are travelling on the railway every day and they care about the service they are offered. They are offended by the stupidity of some of the existing rules which are the result of the balkanisation of the railways, and we should fix them.

Of course, the major ticket simplification that the noble Baroness referred to is a long way off, but it is one of the purposes of the Bill that has just had its Third Reading. Until we can control the fares structure and the information about fares and ticketing, it will not be possible to reform the fares system in the way that people want. The noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, has reminded me several times of his ambition to do that in his time as Secretary of State for Transport and his frustration from not being able to do it. The fact is that we will not be able to do it until we have got hold of information that is currently commercially confidential, even though it is on a risk that has been taken wholly by the public sector since Covid.

The driver availability issues are legion, so it is worth talking about them briefly. LNER has improved because we have solved the industrial dispute. Drivers are now working rest days and cancellations are now virtually zero. However, there are cancellations on other train companies, which are caused by a railway-wide shortage of drivers—a shortage of people and a shortage of the knowledge to drive all the routes and knowledge of the tracks on which they drive. It seems astonishing, but we have had to commission work to find out how many drivers the railway is short of, because no previous Government collected that information in order to deal with it.

The Government are doing a huge amount. In the business plans of all the train operators next year, one of the inputs that I want to see is how many drivers are being trained and the availability of those drivers. I can tell your Lordships that, over my nearly 50-year career in public transport, the first thing you want to understand is how many staff you have, what they do and where they are. The fact that we cannot account for that over the railway as a whole demonstrates that we do not have workforce planning in anything like the way that we would want.

The noble Baroness made some assumptions about the future of terms and conditions on the railway. In Committee and in other discussions on the Bill, we have not made our minds up yet about what to do. However, she is right that we need a modernisation of those conditions. I used to feel uncomfortable with the pay and conditions of Tube drivers when I ran Transport for London, but it took me some time to realise that at least they were rostered for seven-day weeks. Most of the railway asks people to cover work on Sundays on a voluntary basis, which is, if not Edwardian, Victorian. Nobody sought to change it, but we must change it, because it is unacceptable both to ask the staff to give up their work rest days and to ask the passengers to tolerate a service where people are not rostered to cover what is in the timetable.

My response to both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness is that these things are important. I welcome the Secretary of State making the Statement in the other place, because people want to know not only that we have a great plan to reform the railway but that we are doing something about it now. She said what we were doing and some of it is good news.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am hugely grateful for the robust and detailed scrutiny from all sides of this Chamber on what is an important and landmark Bill. The Government were clear in their manifesto commitment to bring passenger services back into public ownership, and we shall not pass up the opportunity to do so. We have taken a significant step towards achieving this over these last weeks. Six and a half years after the timetable crisis of May 2018, I am delighted that we have finally begun the process of reforming our railways.

I shall briefly update the House on the position of the devolved Governments. There has been constant and constructive engagement undertaken to date with both the Scottish and Welsh Governments, in keeping with this Government’s commitment to reset the relationship with the devolved Governments. I am pleased to confirm that the Motion has passed each respective Parliament. This demonstrates the unified belief in the necessity and relevance of this Bill.

I thank all colleagues involved in this process. It has been a privilege to take this Bill, one of the first major pieces of legislation for this Government, through this House. On a personal level, I am grateful to be part of the process to improve the industry, which can deliver so much for growth, jobs, housing and the Government’s missions, and to which so many are vocationally committed.

I owe thanks to my noble friend Lady Blake, who so admirably and impressively stepped in to act on my behalf for the Bill’s Second Reading. Her guidance and support on the Front Bench have been of great help.

We will finally have trains that are run for the public by the public. The Secretary of State for Transport said in the other place that her aim is to move fast and fix things. The Bill is the first step towards unravelling a failing, fragmented system and instead places the interests of passengers and freight front and centre. There is a lot of work ahead, and separate legislation will be introduced later to address the much-needed wider reforms. I extend my gratitude to a number of noble Lords who have dutifully engaged with and examined the Bill.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on his substantive appointment as the shadow Minister and on his unique and effective style of questioning. It is by no means the first time the noble Lord and I have worked together; he will recall in particular election night in 2010 when, under his and the previous Mayor of London’s political direction, we joyfully took Tube lines back into public ownership—another example of a failed transfer of public assets, in that case to a public/private consortium. However, I should remind him that we needed no reports or further constraints in making the Tube better as a result. We both knew that public ownership itself would bring greater accountability and improvements in performance, and in order to achieve that the noble Lord himself was appointed chair. I hesitate to mention it, but it was a direct appointment without competition. I have no doubt that the noble Lord will feel a similar sense of triumph today as this Bill passes to the other place.

I pay tribute to his colleagues, the noble Lords, Lord Gascoigne, Lord Lansley and Lord Young of Cookham, and I thank them greatly for their most constructive and courteous engagement. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for her valued contribution, and I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Pidgeon, Lady Scott of Needham Market, Lady Finlay and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for their input in the Chamber and our separate meetings. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has of course seen it all and is a great champion and mentor for a joined-up, coherent railway.

I place on record my gratitude to the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Grey-Thompson. Their powerful contributions to the debates were moving, thought provoking and essential. I will not take lightly what they have shared in this Chamber. My hope is for us together to build the passenger experience for many, including the disabled, into a source of shared pride rather than a confidence-sapping lottery.

I say to my noble friends Lord Sikka, Lord Liddle, Lord Berkeley, Lord Snape, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Hanworth that their wisdom is hugely beneficial, so I extend my thanks to them for sharing it and for their counsel. Additionally, I thank all the officials who have supported me, especially the Bill team, who have worked so hard. Their names are Emma, Matt, Sophie, Heidi, Dani, Emily, Tom, Gabriel and Marisa, and I thank them all. Finally, I thank the Lord Speaker and the parliamentary staff.

This Bill is the first step in changing the culture of the railway and how it works in order to put passengers and freight back at the heart of the system. Only by these means can we start the great process of the reform of our railways to deliver passengers and freight better across Great Britain. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and his team, who have been exceptionally generous with their time in offering advice and assistance on the Bill. The Minister has been willing to give many of the details that we sought about the much-anticipated big Bill that we expect next year.

In addition, the Minister offered an important amendment to the Bill, which he has just referred to, on disability access. That was in response to an amendment in the names of my noble friend Lady Brinton, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Holmes. These new legal obligations will have significant implications for train operators and the rail network generally, and we are very grateful for that commitment, which will make a real difference to the lives of people with disabilities.

From these Benches, we have made it clear that we would not have adopted the same approach as the Government. We would not have divided the issue of ownership from the details of how the system will be organised and how the parts will fit together. The Secretary of State stated on Monday, absolutely correctly, that nationalisation is no silver bullet. In essence, most of the amendments that were put forward, both from our Benches and from the Conservative Benches, simply sought more information on how it would work and where the powers would lie.

As Liberal Democrats, beyond our concern about disabled access, we wanted assurances that passengers would be at the heart of the reforms and that devolution would not just be tolerated but be allowed to grow. We appreciate that the Minister did his best to reassure us on those issues; in particular, he moved some way on devolution. We therefore look forward with enthusiasm to the big Bill, when we can promise him very thorough scrutiny.

I remain sceptical that the Government have the answers to everything; for instance, whether they will genuinely be able to accept private sector operators under a public/private partnership scheme within devolution. I also have reservations about the cost to passengers of the harmonisation of terms and conditions for staff. But I always accept that the Minister understands his brief comprehensively and is absolutely in good faith in his assurances.

We send this Bill back to the other place with the amendments that were passed against the wishes of the Government and are strongly aware of the Government’s majority in the other place. We are realistic about what will happen, but I say to the Government that it would do their cause no harm to accept the good intentions of the first amendment that passed here, which simply stated that it is the duty of the Secretary of State to improve passenger standards. That is, or should be, a statement of the obvious. I hope they might consider bringing forward an amendment of their own on that.

Finally, I thank my colleagues on these Benches for their support and contributions: the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Pidgeon and Lady Scott, and the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Teverson. Finally, I must thank Elizabeth Plummer, our legislative adviser, who was responsible—as always—for excellent advice and for amendments from these Benches.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, before I turn to the substance of the Bill, and in response to what the Minister said, I remind noble Lords who may have forgotten that the remarkable thing about election night in 2010 was that it initiated a period of approximately a week in which, in effect, the country had no Government at all. Labour had lost and the victors were locked in some room in Whitehall trying to work out terms of their agreement. In those circumstances, there was nobody to stop us doing what we did to Tube lines; it shows that you can move fast and fix things when you get the opportunity.

I am very grateful to the Minister for the courtesy he has shown me outside the Chamber as he has given me assistance in relation to this Bill and for the patience he has shown inside the Chamber. It is always difficult for a new Minister when dealing with a Bill which is open to such criticism, but he has handled it with great good grace.

I am also grateful to the Minister’s officials whom I have met and who have offered me advice and briefings. On our own side, I received support in our Opposition Whips’ Office from Abid Hussain and Henry Mitson, and I am very grateful to them. I am also grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in debate in considering this Bill. I shall not attempt to name them; the Minister has already mentioned their names. We had a very good series of debates on this Bill.

None the less, it is not a good Bill. Everyone agrees that the railways need reform. The privatisation model has produced record growth in passenger numbers. There has been a true rail renaissance over the last 25 or 30 years in this country, but the railway has not recovered from the effects of Covid on its operations and reform is definitely needed. The basis of that reform appeared to be the Williams review, which gained a wide measure of cross-party support. It envisaged an important role for private train operating companies but on a different financial and operational model from the existing privatisation model.

Labour has broken that consensus. Why? It is hard to tell, but it is noticeable that the rail unions have been pushing hard for full nationalisation, which will of course increase their power and leverage over the travelling public. Labour now owns the train set and can call the shots. I suspect it will fall to the Conservatives to fix it again when it all goes wrong, as in 2010, on election night, it fell to a Conservative mayor to fix the problems created for London Underground by Labour’s disastrous PPP.

However, the Bill now goes forward to the Commons greatly improved. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, it would be churlish and wrong of the Government to refuse to accept those amendments or some variation on them. If we see it back here at all, I hope it will be rather different from how it was when it first came to us.

Carbon Emissions: Bus Fleets

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises a good point. The whole purpose of encouraging the production of electric buses is to ensure that the market develops and the costs fall. I do not currently have an estimate of whether the cost of those vehicles will ever equal the cost of traditional diesel buses, but I can say that it is absolutely the right move, and the support given by successive zero-emission bus schemes is contributing to the manufacturing industry keeping abreast of technology and to the general reduction in cost. I will see whether we can find any figures; if we can, I shall write to the noble Baroness with them.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, in 2021, the previous Government consulted on ending the sale of diesel buses, but never made a decision. Will the new Government provide clarity over the date for the end of the sale of diesel buses to provide confidence for the bus industry and franchising authorities and certainty for the supply chain?

Shadow Great British Railways: Chair Appointment

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Yes, it is a reasonable thing to do. This is not the chair of Great British Railways, which will be established after the substantive railway Bill in due course; this is an arrangement to bring some benefits to the railway to counter the now 31 years of fragmentation and balkanisation, and, in particular, to bring together the three parts of the already publicly owned railway: the rail services division of the Department for Transport, Network Rail and directly operated holdings. It is a very reasonable thing to do and it will deliver results.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, Laura Shoaf has been chief executive of West Midlands Combined Authority, and we on these Benches are pleased that she brings deep experience of devolution, which we hold dear as one of the solutions for the future of our railways. Passengers are impatient to see signs of improvement, so can the Minister assure us that the promise to establish a passenger standards authority will be kept? Will the Government also consider establishing that in shadow form, so that it can get on with the job of improving standards for passengers as soon as possible?