HS2 Ltd: Costs

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Vere of Norbiton

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As the noble Lord well knows, the decision has been taken to run it into Euston. My colleague the Rail Minister has had a number of meetings with members of the private finance community to start developing plans and options to get that finance together. Battersea Power Station, for example, attracted £9 billion in private sector investment. It is not beyond the wit of man to do something similar, perhaps even more, for the Euston quarter.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that we need to take a very close look at the legislative process for large infrastructure projects and at the whole planning system?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question, but it goes slightly beyond the topic at hand. After the hybrid Bill for phase 2a of HS2, both Houses looked at the hybrid Bill system. It is something that we should continue to refine and improve. However, some infrastructure projects are so large that a hybrid Bill is really the only option.

Draft Revision of the Highway Code

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Vere of Norbiton

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

That is exactly what I am trying to say. A “should” or “should not” that is in the code can be used. Going back to my noble friend Lord Attlee’s point about an HGV and a cyclist going around the corner and having an incident, whoever is at fault, the fact that they were going against the Highway Code would be a factor if it were ever to reach court. But this is not necessarily about the changes—

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, it was not my point; I think it was made by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. But I would like to intervene and point out that an HGV driver is trained to never endanger a vulnerable road user. The only problem arises when the HGV driver, for one reason or another, is not aware of the vulnerable user’s position.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for pointing that out. I apologise for assigning the wrong speaker to that point, but it remains the case that noble Lords should be cognisant about what the Highway Code is and is not, and what certain rules in there are or are not. Some reflect what the underlying law says, and others are in the code because they are guidance on how one operates the road system. I will not dwell on that further, otherwise I could go into a long treatise on road safety and how it works. Let us not do that, because I want to come back to communications.

We are going to use the free channels as much as possible, via the press notice and our trusted stakeholders, and we will then use the THINK! campaign. The code will come out over the weekend, once the parliamentary process has been completed. Therefore, our paid campaign will start in February; the noble Lord is quite right. It will be badged under the very successful THINK! campaign, and over half a million pounds has been targeted towards that. The communications plan has been tested with all trusted stakeholders. It is slightly different from the old days—the Clunk Click days—because, of course, audiences have massively atomised, so they may not see something on a terrestrial television network. Quite frankly, I have not heard of many of the channels we use either, but I am reassured that people actually watch them.

I turn very briefly to some of the points raised. On the timing of the communications, there is the initial hit in February. Obviously, we will continue with that and will have another burst as we head into the summer because that is when cycling becomes a greater issue.

Should e-scooters be allowed on British roads, we would revise the Highway Code accordingly.

I will come back to the issue of rural roads. I spoke to my noble friend Lady McIntosh yesterday about this, and she asked if I had ever driven on a rural road—yes, I have, and one of the things I am astounded by is the speed at which people travel on those roads. We know that they were never designed for cars. They started off as tracks from one village to another. Many vehicles hare along them at great speed, and they are some of our most dangerous roads in the country. I am afraid that if you cannot overtake a horse because it is on a rural road—I take my noble friend Lady Hodgson’s point that the horse rider might want to just move over periodically—you will just have to wait behind the horse. It is okay; nothing bad will happen. You should do that instead of trying to squeeze your way past and haring off into the distance on a very dangerous rural road. We have to calm down on those sorts of roads, because they are incredibly dangerous. They kill far more people than cyclists are killed. We really need to get back that respect for cyclists, horse riders, pedestrians—all the people who are out enjoying the countryside.

On my noble friend Lord Young’s point, I can say that we have recently revised LTN 1/20, which sets out how cycling infrastructure should be constructed. That will, of course, enable us to spend the money—about which I am going to write to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, because I sense that I am running out of time and the House has a Bill to be cracking on with.

I will very happily write with further details. On the point on the shortage of paper, I had no idea that that was the reason, but I am aware that we do not update the Highway Code in paper copy very often. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, will be aware, we updated the Highway Code for the smart motorway changes. Again, we would not have reprinted it after that, but most people do not access the Highway Code via a printed copy.

I will certainly go back and look through Hansard, because so many good points were raised and I have not been able to cover them all. I am grateful to all noble Lords.

Drivers’ Hours and Tachographs (Temporary Exceptions) (No. 4) Regulations 2021

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Vere of Norbiton

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I could possibly give an entirely new speech on this but I would probably not be popular if I did—my Whip agrees with me.

The RHA wanted something entirely different—we know that. It always wanted us to open the floodgates and allow EU drivers to come in. Indeed, I am looking at the noble Lord and trying to remember whether any good ideas have come from the Benches opposite as to how we solve the HGV crisis. I believe Keir Starmer wanted to open the doors to 100,000 EU drivers—that was the Labour way of solving this crisis. We have taken a very different stance. As the noble Lord will know, no EU drivers are willing to come flooding in anyway, as I have said many times. We have set out a range of short, medium and long-term actions. Some are very substantial; for example, we removed the HGV levy. That saves hauliers lots of money, and from that money they can pay their staff more. We have also frozen VED. As I have said right from the outset, there is not one thing that will fix this; it is a whole succession of things. Some are short, medium and long term, some are big and others are little; that is why we have 32 actions. I am proud of those 32 actions and I believe that they are fixing the crisis.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I am especially grateful to the Minister for explaining how limited the relaxation is to the drivers’ hours. It is very helpful for her to clear up the issue of the 27% infringement rate. I have always been very well aware that when the DVSA stops a commercial vehicle it is normally acting on intelligence, so it is not surprising that it finds a high rate of infringement both on drivers’ hours and vehicle condition. It does not go and stop a Tesco’s lorry, for instance.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, talked about the complexity of the drivers’ hours regulations. They are indeed very complex if you want to go right up to the limit. If you do not need to go right up to the limit, they are quite simple.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, talked about the lack of a strategic statement. The problem the Minister has with facilities is very wide-ranging, and the planning system is a very major obstacle to providing better facilities. I do not think £32 million will go very far; it will not be easy to change the planning system, and this is not even a matter for my noble friend’s department. However, I am extremely grateful for her responses and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

HGV Driver Shortages

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Vere of Norbiton

Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I thank the noble Viscount for his suggestion. We in the Department for Transport are great supporters of rail freight. We have made significant investments in rail freight. It is not suitable for many of the goods moved by road, but where it is suitable we have various grants available to slightly subsidise the cost of rail freight and get that freight off the roads.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I have a C+E HGV licence. I am also an out-of-date HGV driving instructor.

The chickens are coming home to roost. For years we have treated HGV drivers like dirt. Why would anyone want to become an HGV driver? We literally expect them to urinate and defecate away from fixed facilities. Go and look at the A34 trunk road, see how many lorries are parked up with the driver inside and think about what he is going to do in the morning.

We persecute HGV drivers with regulation. I do, however, have one suggestion for the Minister. I have an HGV licence, but I cannot use it commercially because I do not have a Driver CPC—a certificate of professional competence. If the Minister relaxed that requirement, she would have access to a large number of HGV drivers very quickly.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Gosh, do I have some jobs for my noble friend. He is, however, absolutely right: it may well be that some of these hundreds of thousands of people with HGV licences do not want to return to the sector because, historically, it has been seen as a sector that does not treat its employees very well. The only way to fix that is to get the haulier sector working with the customers and the supply chain in the distribution centres. The Government have already produced an internal report on lorry parking. We will look very carefully at what we can do to go beyond the changes to the planning system that we have already put in place.

I take my noble friend’s point on the Driver CPC. The House may remember that we were able to extend it last year, but that was using EU legislation. I will do what I can on the Driver CPC. It is a good safety mechanism, but we might be able to do something, although significant changes would require primary legislation at this time.

Road Safety

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Vere of Norbiton

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

The Government do not agree that the case has comprehensively been made. However, as I have already stated, we will be conducting research into this area and will consider the results. I thank the noble Lord for his welcome of the road safety statement. It is fine work and will see us through the next two years, with numerous action plans for our four key user groups.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Government’s decision to take another look at the proposal for graduated driving licences, which was dropped some time ago, is welcome, as is the proposal for eyesight tests for more senior drivers? Both are welcome and are likely to lead to an improvement in road safety.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My noble friend has mentioned two of our key user groups for the road safety statement, the first being young road users. We will look at and research both a graduated learner scheme, which is the period up to when people pass their test, and then graduated driver licensing, which will consider driving at night and whether young users can carry passengers. We are also looking at eye tests, which would be free for older road users.

Ivory Bill

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Vere of Norbiton

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for initiating this debate on whether to ban certain types of exempted, and therefore legally saleable, ivory items through online channels. The noble Lord has read out much of my answer already but it does bear repeating. From the very outset, the Bill was drafted with online and offline sales in mind. The Bill prohibits all commercial activities in ivory, regardless of where those activities take place, subject, of course, to the exemptions in the Bill.

Equally, anyone who breaches the ban, be it online or not, will be committing an offence and will face the same range of sanctions, including a criminal sanction of up to five years in prison and/or an unlimited fine. There are a number of further provisions included in the Bill that will assist in tackling illegal online sales. It will be an offence to facilitate breaching the ban. Therefore, this would include, for example, a UK-based online sales forum which facilitates the sale by allowing sellers to advertise their item, make contact with buyers and accept payment.

In that example, those responsible for such online sales forums, which would include corporate bodies, would be found to be in breach of the ban if they could not show that they had taken reasonable steps to prevent an illegal sale taking place. These steps would include, for example, ensuring that the item for sale is exempt and had been registered or had an accompanying exemption certificate. We therefore expect such online forums to take all actions to ensure that they and their users act in compliance with the ban, in the same way that we expect offline channels to do the same. The Bill also prohibits the deliberate misrepresentation of ivory during a sale—for example, as bovine bone. This issue was raised by the noble Lord and it is very important. Both the seller and the buyer could be committing an offence if one or both of the parties knew or suspected that it is ivory.

Noble Lords will be aware that other items subject to restrictions, such as kitchen knives, are allowed to be traded online. Indeed, I am not aware of any item that is singled out for such a ban depending not on the legality of the sale but on the channel—that is, online or offline—through which the sale is transacted. We believe it would be disproportionate to completely ban the commercial dealing in exempt ivory items online and that it would shut off a relatively transparent means of monitoring the extent to which trading is happening online. As a noble Lord mentioned earlier, there are 2 million to 3 million items containing ivory and it would be utterly wrong to ban the sale or the legal trading of those items online. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord De Mauley pointed out, the auction houses use the online environment as a very valuable way of marketing the items they have for sale.

We agree that enforcement is extremely important. We cannot have online trading in ivory if we are unable to enforce properly. Online sales are a priority for the National Wildlife Crime Unit regarding the illegal wildlife trade. There will be much more on enforcement and funding in due course. However, this issue is so important that I will recommend that we write to noble Lords on enforcement, on what we can do in the online environment and on the resources we intend to put into that enforcement.

I turn briefly to the point raised by my noble friend Lord James of Blackheath about roulette balls. I understand that he has been in touch with officials about this and that they have written to him. These balls will be caught by the ban but, as was mentioned, there are alternatives. I hope with this explanation I have reassured the noble Lord that we have considered—and, indeed, are considering—the matter of online sales and that he will therefore see fit to withdraw the amendment.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, can the Minister explain how we can take action against a forum that is based, say, in the Russian Federation? She talked a lot about the ability to prosecute people for contravening the law—the provisions of the Bill—but it is not clear how we would be able to take action against forums domiciled overseas.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My noble friend is quite right. If a forum is domiciled overseas, it will be up to enforcement to look at those advertising their wares and those who are looking to buy those items. However, we should also consider that in due course, the items for sale online will either be registered or will have an exemption certificate. We will be able to see clearly whether those items are legitimate, and that additional level of security for buyers and sellers is the most important thing when it comes to online sales.

Ivory Bill

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Vere of Norbiton

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

We will be discussing musical instruments in the next group.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened with interest to the debate. On the subject of inlays and escutcheons, what consideration has the Minister given to having a de minimis test of thickness? If the inlay or the escutcheon is less than a certain thickness, surely it has no use for recarving at a later stage. Perhaps the Minister could write to me on that point in due course.