Aviation (Consumers) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in this debate. I feel rather lonely as one of the few English Members here; we have north and south Wales’s finest and other Members as well, and on the Whip’s Bench, of course.

I will add briefly to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jones. When I was the special adviser in the Department for Exiting the European Union, this issue was a bone of contention in what later became the trade and co-operation agreement. There was a lot of shroud-waving about this because, of all the issues that were litigated and debated in the run-up to the European Union in/out referendum in 2016, the most acute was how people’s holidays would be affected when they were travelling to and from Europe. For those of us who believed in Brexit, it was always the case that we were not going to enact domestic legislation just for the sake of it, but would assimilate good, practical, sensible and pragmatic legislation where appropriate. I think this is an example of that today.

I particularly welcome the fact that this legislation not only is being enacted in domestic law, particularly on the issue of long delays, but seeks to uplift important case law, including the Sturgeon v Condor Flugdienst case. That goes wider than simply a long delay to a flight; it also considers the material impact that that has on travellers. I therefore strongly welcome the instrument.

It is good that this complements other legislation the Government have brought forward, and they should look at it as protecting the travelling public from monopolistic or oligopolistic behaviour. I know it is not quite within the bailiwick of this statutory instrument, but noble Lords will have seen this week examples of alleged drip pricing by Ryanair, which is price gouging of customers, who are often in a very difficult position—they do not have perfect knowledge in perfect competition, which is the basis of the economic free market. They have excess charges applied to luggage, seat selection, travel insurance, and food and drink. The Minister will have the strong support of many noble Lords from across your Lordships’ House if the Government take a robust attitude to legislation and regulation on this, because it is also an important subject.

It is vital to address delays, particularly for disabled folk, older people and families, but we must not see incremental price gouging and oligopolistic behaviour by rapacious airlines. I hope that the Government—of whatever party after the election next year—address this very important issue.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, for more radical legislation on this. The pandemic and the problems that the aviation industry has had in recent years have revealed the shortcomings of the protections that consumers currently have.

I also welcome this legislation. I am pleased to see the level of interest it has exerted here. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, as part of the Welsh community here today, talked about the problems that Cardiff Airport has faced. As a resident of Cardiff, I welcomed last week’s news that Ryanair will fly two routes out of Cardiff—a new set-up that will do something to replace the loss of the Wizz Air flights.

This legislation deals with a significant problem in aviation. I noticed that the Explanatory Memorandum says that, in 2019, 1.5% of UK flights were delayed by more than three hours; that is 31,000 flights. By 2022, that had gone up to 40,000 flights, which was equivalent to 2.6% of flights. In the first nine months of last year, nearly 19,000 passenger complaints were registered. Those are complaints by passengers who have been unable to get satisfaction or any resolution to their problems from the airline. It is very much the case that some airlines are far worse than others at dealing with these problems. This set of problems needs to be dealt with, and I welcome the Government turning their attention to them.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Passenger Railway Services) Regulations 2023

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, my criticism of the proposed legislation is a quite simple one: it will not work. I listened to the Minister who, I have to say, went through his brief faster than any train I have been on recently. It is not a new idea. It was considered by the Thatcher Government and rejected. It was considered by the Cameron Government and rejected. It will not work. The problem is that this has been put together by lawyers who have no concept of how the railway industry actually works, or how train crews are rostered and how people are laid down for their various duties. The rostering of train crews is done at local level. The management and the local district committee—the shop stewards, if you like—sit down at every timetable change in May and December to decide the future rosters. The trade union side will obviously not sit down and discuss rostering under this minimum service level. As for choosing the name “minimum service level”, what else have we had in the railway industry for some time but a minimum service level?

It is not just the Labour Party and the trade union movement that are against this. The Rail Safety and Standards Board has said that it has considerable reservations about rail safety in future. That is not an organisation that one would normally regard as particularly left wing in its outlook. What the Government are proposing will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What happens if a minimum service level driver is rostered and declines to pass through a picket line at a particular depot? Will the Minister prosecute the driver or the trade union of which he is a member? The chance of conflict because of this barmy legislation cannot be emphasised too much. I said earlier—I do not wish to detain the House—that it is not just the Labour Party against it. I commend the Minister to read a paper prepared by Nicholas Finney OBE for the Centre for Policy Studies, that well-known left-wing organisation. He attacked the whole concept because, like me, he says it will not work. Maybe he will be regarded as a destructive member of British society. He is, or was, the chairman of the Wantage Conservative association, so if someone like him feels that this legislation is impractical, the Minister really ought to look again.

I am almost speechless at the stupidity of the Government bringing forward this legislation. I repeat that it will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come, and I beseech the Minister even at this late hour to take some proper advice and not to make this into a lawyer’s dream.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I regard these regulations as even more inappropriate than the other sets of regulations that we have just discussed, and even more clearly designed just to provoke an adverse reaction from the workers concerned.

In the previous regulations, the Government relied on the argument that the workers concerned—border security staff and ambulance staff—provide an irreplaceable service. The same is not true of railways. If the trains are not running we can usually catch a bus instead, or maybe drive. Obviously rail strikes have an economic impact, but it is not of the same order as that caused by ambulance or border staff strikes. You take away the right to strike only in extreme circumstances, and these are not extreme circumstances.

The Transport Committee in the other House, which is chaired by a Conservative MP and has a Conservative majority, has criticised these regulations and the Government’s plans for the railways. It questioned whether those plans would do anything to improve relations with rail employees—I think we can more or less answer that question here. The committee questioned whether there might be unintended consequences, in that this could lead to other, more disruptive forms of industrial action, such as wildcat strikes. It also asked whether minimum service levels would lead to better service for customers than that already provided by train operating companies on strike days. It was deeply unimpressed by, and expressed its dissatisfaction with, the Government’s one-sentence answer to its suggestions.

Tomorrow, as the Minister will undoubtedly be aware, is strike day on Great Western Railway. As on previous strike days, we regular travellers are informed that a minimum one-hourly service will be provided between 7 am and 7 pm. In my experience, when the company says that a train will run at a particular time, it generally adheres to that timetable—which is not always what we get on our railways these days. So a minimum service is already being provided.

Another obvious concern is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, rail services are extremely complex, with major impacts of one part of the service on other parts of the service, and an obvious interaction with devolved services. Providing a safe minimum service level is therefore very complex. As the Transport Committee noted, the Government have not provided the necessary detail on how they will provide the safe level of service required. In particular, the operation of signal services is so specialised that the provisions will effectively mean that individual staff will have to be specified as being required to work, if a minimum service is to be provided. In other words, those staff will have the right to strike removed from them. In effect, they will lose their rights.

This is bad legislation, badly planned—and so far, as attempted by the Government, badly implemented. I am fairly certain that it will do absolutely nothing to improve either the services for rail passengers or the situation of our train operating companies, which are fighting to provide a reasonable service in difficult circumstances.

Merchant Shipping (Counting and Registration of Persons on board Passenger Ships) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

However, I generally welcome these regulations, complex though they are, and I hope that in the long term they turn out to work very well.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his assiduous attention to these issues. I need to make it clear to the House that I am a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which drew the attention of the House to our concerns at the less than clear responses to our questions on behalf of the Government.

There are two issues that I want to raise. First—and this follows on directly from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Greenway—these regulations are undoubtedly a casualty of the long-standing backlog that has been built up by the Department for Transport in its international maritime legislation. We in the UK are a maritime nation; we pride ourselves on our maritime traditions and they are an important source of our economic strength. The mess that we have got into in keeping up with the latest legislation on maritime issues, almost all of which is associated with safety, is a source of national embarrassment. The Minister, newly in this role, has my profound sympathies. His predecessor worked to try to deal with this issue, but there is still a long way to go.

In probing behind the official obfuscation of the Government’s explanations, the opaque replies to the SLSC basically lead me to the conclusion that the Government’s new online system is not ready—that they have fallen behind in the work—so the delay is basically nothing to do with giving the industry more time to adapt and so on but is all to do with just not being ready. I am sure the Minister will come back to me on that if I have concluded inappropriately.

My specific question to the Minister is: can he explain exactly how, in technological terms, the numbers on board and personal details are reported now? Surely in this day and age, it already has to be through some form of electronic communication. In the tragic event of a situation where people have to abandon their vessel, surely the ship’s master does not leap over with a paper logbook; it all has to have been done electronically. Are we right to assume that there is an electronic system but that it is not done officially to the right format, in the right scheme of things or on the right computer programme?

The second point I want to make is that this is all about safety, and we must not lose touch with that. This is not about petty bureaucracy but safety, and it is essential that, when an accident occurs—sadly, they do, on a regular basis—rescue services know immediately how many people they are looking for and exactly who those people are. Are there any children, any elderly people or anyone with particular health problems?

I am concerned not only at the delay but—I join the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this—because the Government have introduced new exemptions, where it is impractical for a ship to comply. This apparently includes, potentially, where a voyage involves a deviation from the usual route. Surely this may well involve an unfamiliar route for the crew on board, and it is in just those sorts of circumstances when an accident is more likely to occur. Can the Minister explain why that has been chosen as a potential exemption?

Finally, most international sea voyages from the UK are to, for example, Ireland, France, Spain, the Netherlands and so on. These are EU countries. Can the Minister answer a specific query that I have as to how this will work? Once the vessel enters EU waters, will not the EU countries concerned require full and proper records of who is on board and in the full, proper and up-to-date format? Will not those who are working the vessel have to fulfil that requirement, even though the UK Government do not require them to? I may have got the wrong end of the stick on how this will work, but I cannot see the EU allowing a British ship to adhere to different standards once it is in its own waters.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, often described as the lifeboat of the UK economy, the merchant shipping industry plays a pivotal role in ensuring the smooth running of people’s day-to-day lives, aiding the transition of goods and ships while supporting over 180,000 jobs in the UK, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research. On the global scale, the industry facilitates the economy through the wider supply chain, supporting the running of 680,000 jobs.

According to the Office for National Statistics, looking solely at shipping, the sector contributed £6 billion to the economy in 2020, accounting for 19% of the transport industry. I am pleased to share my support for the merchant shipping industry and the introduction of the necessary regulations, which have been long awaited. This instrument will update and modernise the 2021 regulations, implementing corrections in the light of mistakes existing in the earlier legislation. Further, it postpones the deadline for all ships in UK waters to report data on the persons on board by two years.

Subsequently, from 2025, UK-flagged passenger ships, wherever they are located, and passenger ships within UK waters, will have to use an electronic method to report information regarding passengers on board. Search and rescue authorities will then quickly have access to essential information needed in the event of an emergency. This will reduce the loss of, and the risk to, lives at sea.

I therefore empathise with and support my noble friend’s Motion. Indeed, these highly significant regulations are welcome and long overdue. Further, I understand his concerns relating to the inadequate protection for passengers travelling on non-passenger ships. I am pleased that the House has the opportunity to discuss these protections today.

I would like the Minister to provide clarity on three central concerns. First, how did the Government learn of the mistakes in the 2021 regulations and what would be the consequences if they were not corrected? Secondly, given the postponement, how have the Government calculated that there will be no safety risk? Is the Minister not concerned that prolonging its implementation will only prolong the safety risk? Finally, given that the Explanatory Memorandum notes that the consultation on these changes received only seven responses, can the Minister explain the consultation process a little more? Is he satisfied that the results are credible, given how few responses were received?

To support the UK’s global position as a great trading nation, as well as a healthy and thriving economy, is to support the merchant shipping industry. I am positive that this instrument will play a vital role in the future of the industry by strengthening safety protections, and I therefore welcome its laying before the House.

Disabled Air Passengers

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question, but I am afraid that I cannot give an answer to that as I stand here. It is above my pay grade to decide what the legislative business will be for the rest of this year.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, some airports have a much worse record than others. Unfortunately, Heathrow Airport has a poor record, going back over a long period. That is a matter of particular concern because it is our largest airport and it is likely to give the UK a poor reputation abroad. What are the Government doing to ensure that all UK airports come up to a much better standard? Some of them are already delivering—but far from all of them.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The Department for Transport has released a new training module on handling powered wheelchairs, for example; it forms part of the department’s training programme. The CAA is responsible for enforcing UK legislation on aviation accessibility and takes action where needed—but I take the noble Baroness’s point about Heathrow in particular.

Battery and Hydrogen-powered Aircraft

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s wisdom, and, as someone who travels from Wales, I appreciate his comments.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the Government’s Jet Zero strategy set a target for domestic flights to reach net zero by 2040, but instead there has been a big increase in internal flights taken by private planes and helicopters, and many of those journeys could have been made more quickly by train. Can the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to discourage the use of private internal flights? Perhaps he can also have a word with his right honourable friend the Prime Minister to suggest that he might favour other forms of transport rather than private jets and helicopters.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

There are security issues for the Prime Minister, which I am sure the noble Baroness will appreciate. It is still a free world and people can choose how they want to travel, and we must remember that although we are anti-emissions, we are not anti-flying. We must reduce emissions from aviation while retaining our ability to fly.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a really excellent debate. I start by making clear that I welcome the Bill, especially since, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, pointed out, other countries have been getting ahead of us on this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, expressed concern that Northern Ireland would obey the same rules as the Republic of Ireland because they were EU rules but, actually, the international context is heaps bigger than that. This is all in a massive international context.

So the Bill is welcome. It is based, of course, on the work of the Law Commissions, which have provided firm legal foundations. As others have said, there is huge economic significance in the successful rollout of automated vehicles. For that to happen, and be successful, we need high levels of public trust and confidence in safety. Hopefully, once we have in due course persuaded the Minister to accept some of our amendments, we will have a robust legal and safety framework that clarifies responsibility for self-driving vehicles, establishes new safety requirements and an inspection and reporting system, and provides confidence in data ownership and security. Those issues have been raised time and again in this debate.

If this works properly, AVs should greatly increase the safety on our roads, but there are plenty of issues along the way in the transitional phases, many of which have been raised here today. The experience in San Francisco, California is very relevant in this respect because it points out that, even in a city with much wider, straighter roads that are basically in a heaps better state than British roads, there can be considerable, and unforeseen, obstacles.

In Britain we have very crowded, mainly poorly maintained roads. That will intensify the issues. There will be many decades when AVs share the road with traditional human drivers. There have been problems in San Francisco with that. Emergency services have been impeded because AVs do not yet have human sensitivity. If we hear a siren or see a blue light somewhere, a long way away, we can all anticipate that it will be something we have to deal with; we will have to get out of the way. It seems clear that AVs in San Francisco have not yet quite got to that point.

Much of the Bill is taken up with issues of legal responsibility—for example, at what I call the handover point between the automated driving and the human driver. The Bill is complex and technical. It introduces a whole new lexicon, which is hardly consumer friendly. It might be designed to provide legal certainty but it does not enhance driver understanding. The Government need to consider what needs to be done to ensure that, in due course, drivers understand the legal points involved, especially in relation to insurance.

There are implications in all this for us during the long transition period, leading up to that point in the future when all vehicles will be automated. I want to point out two aspects: there will be some AVs driving among human drivers from the near future onwards; there will also be vehicles that are partially automated, as many are already. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, recounted some stories that had a resonance with me as the owner of a car that I regard as more complex than the one I had before, because it tries to do things for me that I think I can do okay on my own. I sometimes think that nowadays you need a driver and a co-driver to handle the technology. The serious point about it is that this halfway house in many cars now exists and we are dealing with it on a day-to-day basis.

For the revolution to happen we need, first, a giant database of all the road signs and regulations in every part of the UK. This in itself is a massive task, because the Government have been moving away from absolute direction to local authorities on road signs. I will give the House one example: in 2016, the specifications for the signs for a ford were removed, so that any old sign will do for telling a driver that there is a ford coming up. I happen to know about this. I put a proposal to reinstate the regulations on fords into a Private Member’s Bill ballot, but I did not get anywhere with it. The point is that, for safety reasons, there are good arguments for having proper, regulated sizes for those signs.

The Government have also recently removed some of the pressure on local authorities to introduce regulations to make it safer for walking and cycling. This “We are the driver’s friend” rhetoric means that there will be fewer regulations that encourage walking and cycling, so the Government are going to have to turn their rhetoric on its head to encourage local authorities to take part in this giant gathering of data. It will of course involve a cost to local authorities, and I notice that there is no financial impact on them included in this.

I referred to a giant database, but it is not just about local authorities. All AVs and the cars that already exist with some self-driving features, such as those that park themselves, are all of course collecting data on us every time we drive them. This in itself has privacy implications, personal safety implications and national security implications. It poses questions on anonymisation of data, on the rights of individuals in respect of personal data, on the retention of data and the disclosure of personal data to insurers. I am sure there are some other things as well that I have not thought of.

My noble friend Lady Bowles concentrated on the implications of data control in the industry and the danger of dominance by big companies. She alerted us to the complex issues in the insurance industry and those associated with access to commercially useful data. My noble friend Lady Brinton also raised concerns about the protection of personal data and the issue of sale of data. Both the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and my noble friend Lady Brinton raised potential problems for disabled people and the need to build disability access into regulations from the start. These issues are not apparently tackled in the Bill, along with issues associated with human behaviour—for example, the difference between the fastest among us to respond to a call to hand over from automatic driving to human driving and the slowest. Those slowest may have been paying full attention but just respond slightly more slowly.

We need to think about another issue: if you regularly use a car that fully drives itself, you will get out of the habit of driving. Will there be a requirement for drivers to have refresher courses on driving if they have not done it for the last month or year because their car has done it for them? I think this will crop up.

We will in due course want to press the Minister on the rather confusing division of responsibilities between various government agencies, as listed in the Government’s proposals.

Finally, I want to deal with the Minister’s introduction, which referred to trial schemes. There is a giant leap from those very limited trial schemes to the transition period. Make no mistake, we are in the foothills of a massive revolution; we are in the foothills of a change in which we will lose many types of jobs that involve driving. There will be a complete revolution, I believe, in public transport and in ownership of vehicles. For public confidence to be maintained during this revolution, we need the Government to invest in the new skills that will be needed—there will be lots of new skills needed —and the training for them.

We have had a division between the enthusiasts, the realists and the doubters. I look forward to our debate on amendments.

Birmingham Highways Infrastructure Private Finance Initiative

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, commissioners were appointed in Birmingham to restore good governance, and good governance usually includes timely decision-making. Does the Minister accept that by leaving this so late, this is poor decision-making that undermines, for instance, initiatives associated with active travel and zero emissions that are necessary to take Birmingham forward in a modern manner?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I totally agree with the noble Baroness that it is not ideal—I said that earlier. As I said, this has been bogged down with issues between the contractor and Birmingham City Council. The Government have worked to come up with a solution. That will be announced imminently and, hopefully, we will be able to get under way with a new contract.

Vehicle Emissions Trading Schemes Order 2023

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I too am a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee doing a study of this. Unfortunately, I was unable to benefit from the huge wisdom of young people at the school she attended. Had I been there, I would have mentioned that, since we export over 80% of the cars produced in this country, the mandate for sales in this country and the phase-out date has very little effect on British manufacturers. They have to abide by the rules in their export markets. Meanwhile, 85% of the cars we consume are produced abroad.

I want to ask the Minister whether I understand properly how this system will work. Take a year when we are half way through, when the zero-emissions mandate requires any manufacturer’s sales to be at least 50% electric vehicles and no more than 50% combustion engines. Supposing that a manufacturer finds, in the course of a year, that his sales of electric vehicles fall short and the ratio turns out to be 40:60, am I correct that the manufacturer will have to pay a £15,000 fine on all 20 extra vehicles—the difference between 40 and 60—per 100 that are combustion engine? If so, my arithmetic shows that he will effectively have a penalty of £5,000 for every combustion-engine vehicle he has sold. That is a very serious penalty. I do not think people realise quite how serious it is. I am not sure whether the Government have thought through the reaction there would be from motorists if that turns out to be the case, especially as the people who tend to buy combustion-engine vehicles rather than electric vehicles are those who cannot afford expensive vehicles—because electric vehicles tend to be more expensive. They would find themselves paying that fine on usually cheaper, smaller vehicles—to the benefit of the richer purchasers of larger, more expensive, electric vehicles. Am I correct that this is how the system works?

The Minister may say that if manufacturers have excess sales of electric vehicles from previous years they can offset those, and can go out and buy permits from other manufacturers that are, perhaps, only selling electric vehicles. Who will be the manufacturers only selling electric vehicles? They will, by and large, be Chinese manufacturers exporting their vehicles to us. A manufacturer producing only electric vehicles and importing them into this country from China will be able to sell its permits on 50% of the vehicles it sells. It can get £15,000 for each of them and enjoy a subsidy equivalent to £7,500 for every vehicle it sells. Whizzo for the Chinese manufacturers—that far exceeds the effect of the 10% tariff they will have to pay on the vehicles. Am I correct too that we have invented a system that could really subsidise the import of Chinese electric vehicles?

Then I want to ask whether this will all be worth while. If it will reduce emissions, of which I am all in favour, then great. Questions have been raised about the inbuilt emissions of electric vehicles, which are heavier and more expensive than vehicles with internal combustion engines. I do not want to deal with that point. I want to deal with the fact that electric vehicles save emissions only if they use electricity produced from renewables or non-fossil fuel sources. More than 40% of the electricity we produced in this country last year came from fossil fuels. More importantly, 100% of the marginal electricity comes from fossil fuels. If we increase the demand for electricity by switching from fossil fuel powered cars to electric powered cars, the marginal electricity supplied to them will come entirely from fossil fuels, because you can increase the supply of electricity only from fossil fuels. You cannot summon the sun or hail up extra wind but you can increase the supply of electricity from gas-fuelled power plants. We probably will not actually reduce emissions until we have made all our electricity and have spare capacity from renewables or non-fossil fuel power sources. That is not planned to be achieved until 2035, which makes the phase-out date actually have some logic—at least it ties in with something else.

My noble friend the Minister read out a figure about the expected emissions savings. Does that assume that only 40% of the electricity will come from CO₂-producing fossil fuels or that 100% of it will? I suspect it is the former, whereas logically it could be the latter. I do not propose to divide the House on this issue, and I rather suspect I would not win if I did, but we should have honest answers to serious questions and not treat this whole issue as if it is a matter of virtue signalling.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I will leave it to the Minister to respond to those points. I am confident that he will be able to satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, but I cannot resist pointing out that it is a case not of summoning up more sun or wind but of capturing more sun and wind through solar panels and wind energy.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Sorry, can I explain that to the noble Baroness? I am very grateful to her for giving way. At present, we use 100% of the electricity generated by wind or sun and it still provides less than 60% of the electricity, so if we increased the demand we would have to persuade the sun to shine at night or the wind to blow on calm days to create extra electricity from them now.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

Of course that is not the only option. The other option is to build more solar panels and more wind farms, and I am delighted to see that there is a gradual rolling out of those facilities across the country. The noble Lord is entirely right that as we build more we will use it all, as we should.

I have no doubt about the need for this legislation, because the UK transport sector is responsible for the largest share of domestic greenhouse gas production and has seen relatively little reduction in the amount it produces since 1990, in contrast with other sectors. Cars and vans alone create 18% of the UK’s total domestic greenhouse gas emissions. There are also, of course, strong health reasons to support this legislation, because air pollution in particularly densely trafficked areas is a cause of lung and heart disease, and even has links to dementia.

So the Government’s recent U-turn on their rhetoric about the date for phasing out the combustion engine was at least confusing and at worst reprehensible, because it has slowed down the transition to zero-emission vehicles and has had a negative impact on manufacturers and their investment. They have told me about their concern. The problem is that the media have obediently repeated that change in rhetoric and it has caused confusion.

Rail Fares

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Randerson]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what are their plans to simplify rail fares; and what steps they are taking to increase confidence among passengers that, when they purchase tickets, they will always receive the best value for their requirements.

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

My Lords, the plan for rail proposes the biggest shake-up of rail in a generation. We have already made progress on fares reform, for example, introducing flexible season tickets and delivering on our commitment to extend single-leg pricing to most of LNER’s network. We announced earlier this year that we would deliver pay-as-you-go to 53 more stations in the south-east and, through trailblazer devolution deals, pay-as-you-go pilots in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, following the fiasco of the Government’s proposed closure of all ticket offices, which was of course resoundingly rejected by the travelling public, we urgently need decisive action to improve rail services. Great British Railways has, it seems, been kicked into the long grass but one aspect, ticketing reforms, to which the Minister’s Answer refers, could be done now throughout the whole network without legislation. The one isolated trial and the Government’s plans simply are not good enough to create the reform that is needed, to restore passengers’ trust and to improve value for money. When do the Government plan to introduce single-leg pricing and the overall reform throughout the whole network?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

At the Bradshaw address, we committed to expand single-leg pricing to most of LNER’s network, and this went live on 11 June 2023. This delivers simpler, more flexible tickets that are better value. Passengers can now get the best value ticket for their journey, safe in the knowledge that a single ticket will be half the price of a return. Previously, some single tickets on LNER trains, for example, cost almost as much as a return. Single-leg pricing is much simpler, putting the price of a single ticket at around half the cost of the old return ticket.

Public Service Obligations in Transport Regulations 2023

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, these draft regulations relate to arrangements to support the effective and efficient provision of transport services to customers, particularly in relation to rail passenger services. It will use the powers provided by the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 to revoke what is called EU Regulation 1370/2007 and replace it with the Public Service Obligations in Transport Regulations 2023. In doing so, we will take advantage of the benefits of Brexit to put in place a regime which is better tailored to the transport sector in Great Britain, supporting the provision of services to customers. This will allow us to retain a flexible regime for contracting public transport services, separate to the mainstream procurement and subsidy regimes. It will provide greater clarity and certainty to industry by retaining the interpretive effects of relevant EU case law and underlying principles where this is in Great Britain’s interest. In addition, it will streamline the existing regime by removing duplicative or unnecessary provisions.

I will start by providing some background information about these regulations. While the UK was a member of the EU, Regulation 1370/2007 created a bespoke procurement and subsidy regime for public service contracts in the transport sector. This was in recognition that such contracts are needed in the general interest of the public and cannot always be operated on an entirely commercial basis. The regulation contains some important exemptions from the complex rules surrounding subsidies and procurement. It recognises the special status of public passenger services as critical national networks. It also provides contracting authorities the freedom to let passenger services contracts more efficiently via simpler competitive processes, and when necessary, via direct award. This flexibility helps to minimise disruption to these important public services.

The intent of the regulation is to encourage competition, and this will remain the default process for the award of passenger services contracts. The regulation recognises, however, that in certain circumstances it will be necessary to award a contract without competition by instead making a direct award to maintain the continuity of essential public services; for example, the contracts which were put in place following the pandemic to secure train services. Discussions with experts from the transport sector have identified opportunities to remove some of the ambiguities and conflicting provisions in the regulation. This will provide greater certainty and clarity to industry and contracting authorities.

I now turn to the detail of the regulations. We are using this opportunity to use our post-Brexit flexibilities to revoke and replace Regulation 1370/2007. This will ensure that a robust and reliable regime for public transport service contracts is maintained, which is independent of the mainstream procurement and subsidy regimes. It will also increase efficiency by removing duplicative or unnecessary provisions and clarifying drafting wherever possible; for example, by defining terms which were previously left undefined in the EU regulation. The instrument will also bring the regime in Great Britain into compliance with the subsidy control chapter of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

Crucially, this instrument will preserve the current powers to make direct awards of rail contracts, which would otherwise sunset on 25 December 2023, due to a pre-existing sunset clause within Regulation 1370/2007. This means that without this instrument, the Department for Transport, as well as other contracting authorities such as Transport for London, would lose important powers on which we currently rely to award rail franchises. Leaving the EU has given us the opportunity to retain these important powers, and it is in the best interests of the railways in Great Britain that we retain the flexibilities they provide. The private sector has an important role to play to drive innovation and growth and we remain committed to returning to competition for rail contracts as soon as possible; however this instrument recognises that in certain circumstances it will be necessary to award a contract by making a direct award.

Additionally, this instrument will provide greater clarity and assurance to industry by retaining the interpretive effects of EU case law and underlying principles. Under the retained EU law Act, EU case law will no longer be binding on UK courts after 31 December 2023. Relevant EU case law relating to procurement notices and to in-life changes to contracts, which was not codified by the regulation, has been relied on for clarity by authorities and contractors. This case law is therefore being codified by this instrument as it provides helpful clarity. Likewise, EU principles will no longer apply to underpin public service obligation procurements from the year end. The instrument replaces these with principles based on the new mainstream procurement regime for England and Wales, and with principles based on Scottish procurement law for Scotland. Beyond the changes I have outlined, this instrument largely maintains the status quo. This will provide certainty, clarity and confidence to contracting authorities, operators and passengers alike.

This instrument will put in place a regime for the award of public service obligation contracts in the rail, light rail, bus and tram sectors which is tailored to the transport systems in Great Britain, while largely enabling contracting authorities and operators to continue operating as they do now by maintaining the default position of competitively tendering for public service obligation contracts. It will enable the Government to meet their international obligations and will ensure consistency with other domestic legislation, and crucially, it will retain important flexibilities in the way we award contracts, which would not have been possible had we remained a member of the European Union. I commend these regulations to the House.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introductory comments. These regulations are one set of many that will undoubtedly be required to amend legislation as we establish British legislation separately from the EU legislative framework. It serves to illustrate how complex this process is going to be, and how much intensive work by officials is being required in order to produce it. It also, by the way, illustrates that the original concept of the REUL Bill was absolute pie in the sky.

This is modelled on the principles of the Procurement Act, which itself had some issues for debate as it went through this House. I noted the difference in the way in which Scotland and Wales are referred to in these regulations, because in Scotland, procurement is stated to be devolved, but not in Wales, where procurement is embraced by the same system as in England.