Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they are taking steps (1) to ensure that maritime infrastructure projects, including shoreside electrical power, can speedily connect to the National Grid, (2) to build infrastructure for shoreside electrical power at UK ports to help decarbonise shipping, and (3) to enable cruise ships to connect to shoreside electrical power when docked at UK ports to assist them in reducing emissions in port.

Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

On 22 November 2023, the Government published the Connections Action Plan (jointly with Ofgem) and the Transmissions Acceleration Plan. These reforms will speed up connections to the grid and the build of new transmission infrastructure in Great Britain. This may help unlock and speed up investment in new maritime infrastructure projects in Great Britain that are reliant on upgrades to the grid, including shore power projects.

In addition, the government announced £29.5m of R&D funding will be allocated to shore power projects at the Port of Aberdeen, Atlantic and Peninsula’s Falmouth Port and Portsmouth International Port under the Zero Emission Vessels and Infrastructure R&D competition. As well as helping to reduce shipping emissions at these locations, including from cruise ships that call at their shore power enabled berths, these demonstration projects will also provide valuable evidence to inform future industry investment, research, and policy and regulation development.

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many tourists visit England each year (1) on a cruise ship, and (2) to go on a cruise holiday; and what percentage of all tourists these numbers represent.

Answered by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Our data on cruise passengers do not include a breakdown of passengers by nationality. The table below shows the total number of passengers arriving in the UK on international cruises between 2018 and 2022.

Total Passenger Arrivals on International Cruises:

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the use of fuel and energy consumption data to ensure that CO2 emissions and fuel or energy consumption values remain representative of real-world emissions over time for manufacturers of new passenger cars and new light commercial vehicles, as required by EU Regulation 2019/631.

Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

The Department is considering how to collect real-world CO₂ emissions data, including consulting on whether such data should be captured through the MOT, and will continue to engage with interested parties as the methodology is finalised. The data collection methodology must be finalised before the first annual report can be produced.

The Department will assess real-world representativeness of CO₂ emissions and fuel or energy consumption values, once the methodology for collecting real-world data has been agreed with industry and subsequently introduced into law.

The Department is considering how fuel and energy consumption data could inform amendments to type approval testing procedures and certificates for petrol and diesel cars and light commercial vehicles. Specifically on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the Department intends to update the calculation procedure for their carbon dioxide emissions to respond to the widely recognised gap in their real-world emissions performance compared to official approval values. This will be consulted on in due course.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government when they will publish their first annual report on how the real-world emissions gap will be addressed for the period 2021 to 2026, as required by EU Regulation 2019/631 on setting performance standards for new passenger cars and new light commercial vehicles.

Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

The Department is considering how to collect real-world CO₂ emissions data, including consulting on whether such data should be captured through the MOT, and will continue to engage with interested parties as the methodology is finalised. The data collection methodology must be finalised before the first annual report can be produced.

The Department will assess real-world representativeness of CO₂ emissions and fuel or energy consumption values, once the methodology for collecting real-world data has been agreed with industry and subsequently introduced into law.

The Department is considering how fuel and energy consumption data could inform amendments to type approval testing procedures and certificates for petrol and diesel cars and light commercial vehicles. Specifically on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the Department intends to update the calculation procedure for their carbon dioxide emissions to respond to the widely recognised gap in their real-world emissions performance compared to official approval values. This will be consulted on in due course.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the real-world representativeness of the CO2 emissions and fuel or energy consumption values of new passenger cars and new light commercial vehicles, as required by the Article 12(1) of EU Regulation 2019/631.

Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

The Department is considering how to collect real-world CO₂ emissions data, including consulting on whether such data should be captured through the MOT, and will continue to engage with interested parties as the methodology is finalised. The data collection methodology must be finalised before the first annual report can be produced.

The Department will assess real-world representativeness of CO₂ emissions and fuel or energy consumption values, once the methodology for collecting real-world data has been agreed with industry and subsequently introduced into law.

The Department is considering how fuel and energy consumption data could inform amendments to type approval testing procedures and certificates for petrol and diesel cars and light commercial vehicles. Specifically on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the Department intends to update the calculation procedure for their carbon dioxide emissions to respond to the widely recognised gap in their real-world emissions performance compared to official approval values. This will be consulted on in due course.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that the safety equipment installed on smart motorways has a high failure rate.

Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

Smart motorways operate using a range of safety systems and are designed not to be reliant on one single piece of roadside technology for safe operation.

National Highways has worked hard to deliver a significant improvement in the performance of stopped vehicle detection (SVD), with all schemes now meeting performance requirements.

In their annual safety report published in December 2023, the ORR confirmed that SVD technology is now meeting performance requirements for detection rate, detection time, and false detection. The ORR will continue to monitor SVD performance closely.

Further, National Highways is investing more than £300m to maintain roadside technology and improve its performance during Road Period 2 (2020-2025). This includes £105m targeted at improving its systems and technology on All Lane Running (ALR) sections of smart motorway. Roadside technology on ALR smart motorways is given high priority.

National Highways has well-rehearsed contingency plans for both planned and unplanned outages. These include lowering speed limits, increasing patrols by its traffic officers, enhanced monitoring of CCTV, and using pre-positioned vehicle recovery to speed up attendance and clearance of stranded vehicles.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government, following recent press reports, whether the rate of biosecurity checks on goods arriving from the EU at some ports has in practice been "set to zero" to minimise disruption, despite businesses now being charged for all relevant consignments of goods imported into the UK.

Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller

No, the implementation is happening. The first milestone - health certificates - happened on 31 January 2024. Physical and documentary checks began on April 30th. Medium and high-risk goods posing the greatest biosecurity risk are being prioritised as check levels are scaled up in a sensible and controlled way.

We have not simply copied the EU model but taken the extra time to bring in an effective and innovative system with much lower burdens on business and much less disruption to trade.

Traders should continue to follow the published guidance which sets out BTOM inspection rates.

DEFRA will gradually increase changes in controlled stages to balance biosecurity risk and maintain trade flows whilst minimising disruption at the border.

This will allow the level of goods inspected at the border to be operationally manageable over the introductory stages.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what meetings they have had with representatives of delivery companies in the past six months; and what topics were discussed for their consultation Smarter regulation: proposed changes to legislation for electrically assisted pedal cycles, which ran from 29 February to 25 April.

Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

Whilst a number of delivery companies have responded to the consultation, none have met with ministers to discuss it in the period specified.

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government when their planned Border Target Operating Model will be implemented.

Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)

The implementation of the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM) is well underway in accordance with the published timeline (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-border-target-operating-model-august-2023). The first two major milestones were introduced respectively on 31 January 2024 and 30 April 2024, while the last milestone, which requires Safety and Security (S&S) declarations for EU imports, is scheduled to be implemented on 31 October 2024.

We will announce a date for physical checks on EU and Irish Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) goods imports on the West Coast of Great Britain shortly. In order to provide traders time to prepare, we can confirm that these checks will not be introduced before Spring 2025.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to their consultation Smarter regulation: proposed changes to legislation for electrically assisted pedal cycles, which ran from 29 February to 25 April, what discussions they had with representatives of the fire and police services and organisations representing cyclists, pedestrians and UK cycle manufacturers either prior to launching that consultation or during it.

Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

The Department for Transport engaged with various stakeholder organisations before and during the consultative process. The Department is currently considering the responses to the consultation and a further announcement will be made in due course.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what are their estimates for each of the past five years of the amount of money lost to rail companies by ticket fraud and evasion; and what measures they plan to implement to reduce this.

Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

The Government takes the issue of fare evasion and fraud very seriously. We currently do not hold estimates for the amount of money lost to railway fraud, however in 2023 the Rail Delivery Group estimated that in a normal year, approximately £240 million is lost through fare evasion on Great Britain's railways.

To reduce fare evasion, in January 2023 we increased the value of the penalty fare to £100, plus the price of the single fare to the intended destination. DfT operators are also contractually incentivised to reduce ticketless travel on their network.

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