Transport Decarbonisation Strategy

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I reassure the noble Baroness that the £27 billion figure is not a road-building programme; it includes operating and maintenance of the strategic road network. She mentioned a two-pronged approach; this Government are taking a three-pronged approach, which we feel is better. The first area is technological improvements; for example, HGVs are very difficult to decarbonise, so we are going to spend £20 million on a zero-emission freight trial. The second area is regulation, where we are going to ban the sale of diesel vehicles from 2030. The third area is new behaviours—a modal shift. How do we get people on to public transport, cycling and walking?

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend and her department are going further and faster. As part of that process, would they consider being much tougher on diesel hybrid cars, where the emissions are far worse than the manufacturers’ present figures, so that we can get emissions down to the right level?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend is right that we really must look at these plug-in hybrids and make sure that they do what they say on the tin. On ending the sale of diesel cars and vans in 2030, we will also consult on what zero-emission capability looks like, because some that would be for sale after 2030 could be said to have zero-emission capability—it is up to people to respond to that consultation and tell us what that actually means so that we can get carbon emissions down.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage
Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot hope to match the oratory of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, when he moved and spoke to these amendments. I have a great deal of sympathy for what he said, but I urge him and other noble Lords to look at the report from the Select Committee, which took this aspect of the Bill extremely seriously.

We heard detailed evidence from the Woodland Trust about biodiversity, particularly about the loss of ancient woodlands. Can the Minister define exactly what an ancient woodland is? There seemed to be some doubt in the committee about what it was and how much of it was being lost through the building of HS2a. It seemed to us that the Woodland Trust’s demand that any ancient woodland being lost should be replaced at a ratio of 30:1 was somewhat excessive. Does the Minister agree with that? The distinguished chairman of the committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, made the point that replacement to such an extent would take a considerable amount of existing farmland and would certainly not be in the interests of the countryside generally. Can the Minister say exactly how much ancient woodland is being lost as a result of the HS2 scheme?

The committee received assurances from the promoters of HS2, who insisted that they had planted, and intended to plant, new woodlands, though perhaps not to the extent that the noble Lord who moved the amendment would like. I would be interested to hear the Government’s view. The committee was not entirely satisfied with the promoter’s response on the replacement of woodlands, but the case for their replacement is not helped by exaggerating the amount of ancient woodland being lost through this project.

On the proportion of new and replacement trees from abroad, the committee sought assurances from the promoters that such replacement would be kept to a minimum. Again, those assurances were received. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what proportion of British native species she envisages will be replaced under the scheme and how much of it will come from other countries. I cannot comment, because I do not have the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, about the dangers of importing seeds from places such as the Netherlands, but if organisations such as the Forestry Commission and Natural England are prepared to accept a proportion of replacement trees from the continent, it seems to me that we should accept their assurances.

My noble friend Lady Young wanted to turn the high-speed train—perhaps an unfortunate name for it—into a medium-speed train by curving the line and having it less straight. I gently remind her that one of the reasons we are building HS2 is the curvature of the existing lines caused by the reluctance of landowners in the 19th century to permit the railways to pass through their land. The two things go together. If we are to have a train service that exceeds the speed of our existing services, which is at least one of the purposes of HS2, expecting it to go round curves would make unsatisfactory the reason for building it in the first place.

My noble friend asked some important questions about biodiversity which the committee was anxious to look at, but I stress that we were collectively and unanimously of the opinion that, although HS2 could do more, it was certainly making a substantial contribution to the replacement of any trees that would of necessity be destroyed by the project. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what progress has been made so far on this aspect of the Bill in light of the amendments before us.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, how appropriate it is that we are discussing these amendments during International Year of Plant Health and, more particularly, National Tree Week. It is rare that we get that lucky match.

I will speak to all the amendments in turn. On Amendment 5, which would insert a new clause on biodiversity net gain, I have very little to say except that I support my noble friend. It seems illogical that a flagship project should not behave in the same way as other projects, as envisaged in the Environment Bill which will come to us shortly.

On Amendment 6, my heart is with it, but I fear that in this and other amendments one is looking at the environment a bit too much with a telescope; it needs to be done slightly more broadly. There are other irreplaceable habitats, so why single out ancient woodlands? There needs to be a balance overall for the environment. If we avoid ancient woodlands, which I am all for, are we doing more damage to the environment by going another way? At the end of the day, that requires a balance. If we put into legislation just one item, that we will not destroy any ancient woodland, there could be adverse and perverse effects which we have not taken into account.

Amendment 7 relates to British native species. What are British native species? There is a list on the Woodland Trust’s website. I am glad to see that the only softwood is Scots pine, so there will be no chance of Norwegian pine, thuja, sitka spruce or anything else being planted; if there is to be any softwood, it will have to be Scots pine.

When it comes to our broadleaf woodlands, let us not forget that 70% of them are still represented by only five species, and disease is wiping out one of them: ash. We need more diversity in our woodlands.

Holidays: Cancellations

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I do not have an estimate of how many people have been compensated by insurance companies, but I can tell noble Lords that the Competition and Markets Authority is another way that consumers can report businesses which are acting unfairly, and it has received tens of thousands of complaints. For example, action arising from those complaints resulted in TUI agreeing to refund all customers who were owed a refund by the end of September.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest, having had a holiday cancelled. Does my noble friend agree that while the ATOL scheme is excellent, waiting 90 days to receive repayment is far too long, and will she join me in condemning British Airways for its appalling, obstructive attitude towards making repayments?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The ATOL scheme is very valuable and exists as a safety net to enable people to get their money back if they cannot do so from other sources. While it may take 90 days, consumers can feel reassured that they will get their money back eventually.

Hammersmith Bridge

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord has outlined the challenge that I face with great detail and correctness. In the short term, we need to look at ferries and whether in due course the bridge might be opened to pedestrians and cyclists after remedial works. It is a complex task but not one that is beyond the wit of man, and I think that we can crack on and do it. He also mentioned funding. Over the past 16 months while the bridge has been closed, Hammersmith and Fulham Council and TfL have both been able to find various sums of money. I accept that they have not said that they can bear the full cost of the restoration at £141 million, but in March this year the Mayor of London said that he had committed £25 million. I am not sure where that money went.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, among the many reports that my noble friend has on her desk, has she seen the Hyder Consulting Ltd report of 1997 which highlighted all the problems that the bridge now faces? It underlines the neglect of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which has not done anything for the past 23 years. Notwithstanding the fact that the bridge is a grade 2* listed property, will she keep on the agenda the idea that the bridge could be dismantled and re-erected in, say, Bishops Park, and a road bridge fit for modern-day traffic put in its place?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

In terms of long-term solutions, nothing should be off the table, but at this moment we do not fully understand the extent of the damage to the bridge. I am grateful to my noble friend for mentioning the 1997 report. I have to admit that I have not seen that one, but it will be another for my library, for which I am grateful. I point out that the department has brought in National Rail. You may ask what on earth it has to do with a road bridge, but it has a lot of cast-iron bridges, knows what it is talking about, and its engineers will help us to fix the problems.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

I will address my noble friend’s point in a moment if I may. We intend to commence Clauses 21 and 22 shortly after Royal Assent to provide legal certainty that licences are still required for the release of beavers into the wild. Now, these matters are devolved and I understand that Welsh Ministers are currently considering whether to make a similar amendment in relation to beavers in Wales.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

Could my noble friend confirm that “a person” in new paragraph 5, which she is amending, is also a trust and a limited company?

[Lord Deben]

I am sorry to put this point but it is a worry and it comes from my own period as Minister of Agriculture. I remember a case in which the rules about poisoning squirrels in Scotland were different from those in England. One has to make the delicate point that neither beavers nor squirrels know when they cross the border. I therefore hope that we have adequate methods of dealing with this issue, simply because it makes a nonsense of this if we do not have a common view where we have a common land border. I know in many people’s minds this is a trivial comment, but it is an issue for all these devolved concerns. I wonder whether we are totally satisfied with the careful relationships between the nations and the English Government—otherwise, people will find themselves technically liable for having broken the law, simply because of the fact that animals move where they wish to and do not obey anybody’s law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to say a few words about the relationship between fracking and our ancient woodlands. Sadly, I fear that it is not really appreciated by everyone responsible for planning and building projects of all kinds just how precious our ancient woodlands are. Individual trees, if lost, can be replaced. It is true that there is a huge loss to its surroundings because it takes many years to replace a mature tree, but it can in time be replaced, as can avenues and shelter belts, however much they are missed initially. Indeed, some might argue that they are better off being replaced when they get to a certain stage.

Similarly, our forests are planted for their timber—technically a crop, albeit a long-term one. While they provide an excellent contribution to the environment over a period of years provided the right species are planted, they are routinely felled for timber and replanted.

Our ancient woodlands are centuries old. Thankfully, they have survived, largely by chance. They are precious in a unique way and are quite simply irreplaceable. It is essential that they are given very special treatment, which recognises their importance, the contribution they make to our environment, and the truth that once they have been destroyed, however clever we are, they can never be replaced.

Whatever the pros and cons on the subject of fracking, the simple existence of our ancient woodlands need not be a barrier, provided the companies concerned understand their importance and the public concern for them. I quote the Woodland Trust:

“While we believe that, as long as the geological fracturing activity associated with fracking takes place at great depths underground it is very unlikely to have a direct impact on any ancient woodland located above the fracturing sites, we do have concerns about the potential significant impacts resulting from the construction and operation of the drilling wells necessary to enable fracking to take place, and the associated infrastructure that may be put in place to access and transport shale gas/oil. We would therefore like to ensure that areas of ancient woodland are specifically protected so that licences may never be issued for fracking within or adjacent to these highly precious habitats”.

The Minister said that the protected areas have not yet been decided upon. I hope that she will think very carefully about our ancient woodlands. I urge her to indicate in her response, if she can, in the clearest possible terms that the Government accept that our ancient woodlands need very specific protection.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that these amendments do not do very much for the Bill. All these points were going to be covered anyway. I do not think that the process over the past two weeks has done politicians any good at all. It was a hurried amendment in the Commons and the Government, under Liberal pressure, gave way. We now have a cobbled together lot of amendments which did not give the other case a decent chance for discussion. If anybody reads last Monday’s Commons Hansard, it is not an impressive debate. We have not had a sensible opportunity here, although the whole framework of what we are discussing has been discussed ad nauseam in this House.

I would like to ask my noble friend, particularly about item 6 in column 1 regarding what will take place in other protected areas, how many miles of coal-mine tunnel are under protected areas in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty? Of course, we must remember that these would not have been allowed under this amendment: the fracking pipeline is only about 6 to 9 inches, whereas a coal-mine tunnel is considerably more.

My noble friend Lord Framlingham has just mentioned ancient woodland. Will marine nature reserves will be classified as protected areas? How many more restrictions will there be on the industry? My noble friend the Minister was absolutely right when she said that health and safety risks can be managed with best practices. We need to show those best practices for the rest of Europe to follow.

Returning to point 6, is this a precedent for future development? If you are not allowed to drill a 6 to 9-inch pipeline a thousand feet down, presumably the Government will not build HS2 which will go smack through the middle of the Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty. There will be 11 kilometres of tunnels there. It will do considerably more damage than any whipstocking under an AONB from a small well. Presumably we will not have any more development. The Liberal party has closed the door on development in national parks and closed the door on the opportunity of growth. I think that a lot of people will use item 6 as a precedent in order to stop any future development at all.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I follow the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about geothermal plants. People may have read an article in the Times last week on 2 February about the Eden project, which is trying to develop the geothermal plant mentioned by the noble Lord, drilling several miles underground. It says in the article—it is quite surprising to me—that the water that will come out will eventually be 180 degrees centigrade, which is well above boiling point. That is wonderful. It would heat 4,000 homes and all the biomes of the Eden project. I hope that this geothermal drilling—which is purely water based, I think; there are no chemicals or anything else—will not be caught by these various amendments. To quote Michael Feliks, chairman of the Renewable Energy Association’s geothermal group:

“It would be a shame if geothermal energy ended up as collateral damage in a debate about shale gas fracking.”

It is a completely different thing. It is drilling, and it should be allowed under the normal planning procedures rather than coming into this Bill at all.

Forestry: Independent Panel Report

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate for securing this important debate today. It is always good that this House, which is so knowledgeable on forestry, has the chance to debate it. I declare an interest as a surveyor, although not one who has practised for some time; however, when I was practising, I did quite a lot of forestry.

I want to focus on three parts of the Statement that my honourable friend the Minister of State made on 31 January about the future of forestry. My heart lifted when I read that the Government are going to review the “wider forestry functions”. This is a wonderful opportunity to sort out the Forestry Commission. I have disliked it ever since I started to learn about forestry; it is judge, jury, prosecution, defence and practitioner all in one. It is totally inappropriate these days that all those functions should be held in one body. It plants the wrong trees in the wrong place and regularly lags behind the pace of change of the private sector, which is totally in hock to the Forestry Commission and has to follow its bad practices of even-aged, single-block woodlands, followed by the dreadful desecration of clear felling. Nothing could be more unnatural. We are not good at forestry in this country, but we are very good at growing trees in straight lines, sawing them flat and bulldozing the remains into piles. That is not what I call forestry.

For 40 years, I have been saying that we should move to mixed, uneven-aged forestry, with no clear felling. I have advocated that, and I hope that now is the right time for Her Majesty's Government to insist that at least half the state forests should be converted to this type of management. That would require massive retraining and education to make our foresters proper foresters in this country. We would have to bring in overseas experts, who do this well, to train them—but if the Forestry Commission and the state sector were doing this, it would encourage the private sector to do it and fulfil all the aims of what the right reverend Prelate is trying to do. You would get better disease control, better diversity and better wildlife, as well as better economic return from following that type of management, if done properly.

I move on to the future of forestry. To paraphrase part of what my noble friend Lord Courtown said, “It’s the economics, stupid”. There is only one tree in this country that is economically viable, and that is a Sitka spruce. Some 80% of the timber produced in this country is from that tree. There is a good market for its timber, and it is producing some 3% to 4% annually biological growth. That used to be a poor return, but today it is a very good one when compared to other investments. The land prices continue to rise. As my noble friend Lord Courtown said, there is a differential between agricultural land and forestry land.

So Sitka spruce is good, but what about the rest? They range from variable to just acceptable to disastrous, unless one has top quality hardwoods. Ash and larch are a disaster at the moment because of disease, and oak might well go that way soon. So let us look at what has happened to prices. The coniferous standing sales average price index shows that there has been a 58% decline in real terms since March 1985 to September 2012. That is a staggering loss for landowners and, until that situation is rectified, there is only one economic tree available.

With regard to hardwoods, the right reverend Prelate said that we must have a plan for the whole of this century. That is about three-quarters of the time it takes to grow a decent stand of oak, so we are not looking at a 100-year programme but at one of at least 200 years. Of course, our hardwoods have been decimated by two world wars. The whole planting system is out of kilter and we have a lot of catching up to do. Perhaps one chink of light is thinnings, which have been a disaster area for so long, but they are beginning to show some sort of return because so much is now being used for fuel.

My third point is that we need to plant more land. However, we must plant the right trees in the right places. The Forestry Commission has planted 72% of its land with conifers, but in the private sector the figure is only 17%. That is a much more interesting figure. If we plant 50% more woodland, as the right reverend Prelate says in his report, what will it mean? He also wants the land cover to rise from 10% to 15%. That would roughly take us back to what this country had at the time of the Domesday Book. To plant that amount of land would require about 650,000 hectares, which is about the size of Cumbria. For noble Lords who are not very good on anything north of Watford, that is more than the size of Kent, Surrey and Sussex put together. It is a fair chunk of the country.

If the only tree that is economic to grow is Sitka spruce, the only land that should be used is in the north of England. The right reverend Prelate now faces a dilemma because he wants trees to be planted much closer to the towns, which is right; there should also be more trees down south. How will those trees be funded? If they are to be recreational trees, which people can go out and hug and which make them feel better—I fully agree that that is essential—who will fund them? Will it be taxpayers? Have the Government got taxpayers’ money for that? Unless the Government give considerably more subsidies and good grants to those landowners who are prepared to use their land for a loss-making enterprise—they will have to look more than 100 years ahead—with the best will in the world, that will not be done.

As this is a very long-term operation, the dark cloud on the horizon in forestry terms is climate change. If anything like the worst predictions come about, we will not be able to grow the kind of trees that we have now and to decide now about hardwoods, which might not be growing in the same places in 50 or 60 years’ time, is another disincentive. That makes it very difficult for the Government to sell that to the private sector and to their own state arm, but we need to take it into account because if this country warms up or we get more gales and more wind blow, we will have to plant different areas with different species. We have not been good at that in the past and I fear that we might not be very good at that in the future.

Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Friday 1st February 2013 Lords Chamber

We indicated our support for the Bill in the Commons and I recollect that I reiterated that support when we discussed it at Second Reading. However, as the Minister knows, we have concerns. They include the experience of people who receive a pilotage exemption certificate and their rank and status; the numbers of such certificates that might be issued; and the frequency with which they might be required to carry out their skills in order to ensure that that experience is retained. On the assumption that the Minister will not support the withdrawal of Clause 2, I hope that he will be able to address the concerns raised by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the concerns that I have raised, which have been expressed to me and which I do not think have been fully addressed.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I did not take part in the earlier debate, because quite clearly it was of a species known as the “Berkeley herring”, which is a close relative of its cousin, the red. I wanted to get on and talk about the Bill.

Let me first chide the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, again—I do so with the best of intentions—for his discourtesy to the House in having every single amendment starred. We had Second Reading two weeks ago. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility to have the amendments so that we could consider them before coming in on a Friday and finding them there on the Marshalled List.

On the noble Lord’s request for a definition, he mentioned that there would be different harbour authorities, that there might even be competing ports and a commercial benefit for one port. He forgot to mention, of course, that there would be pilotage error as well, sadly. We cannot get rid of human error. That is one of those things; we saw it with the “Sea Empress”. The only way of having totally safe waters is to ban every single vessel from them, which of course is a totally impractical way of proceeding. Human error will always be a factor, both on land and particularly at sea. I know that full well from my experiences as a Shipping Minister.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, came up with a definition. It was given to him by the Minister. It happened to be the definition that I quoted at Second Reading. As a result of quoting it at Second Reading, a circular letter was produced by the pilots condemning me for quoting it. I suppose it is not entirely appropriate that any Member of this House should quote a Secretary of State or a Minister from another place. It did not add to the pilots’ arguments one bit. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, was very brave to quote it. Doubtless he will also get a letter condemning him for doing so.

I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, looks again at the Explanatory Notes. The definition is helped by the words there, which I also quoted at col. 915 on 18 January. The key words are:

“capable of piloting one or more specified ships”.

I know that the Government will have taken full legal advice; no Minister would dare go to that Dispatch Box without having done so. The wording in the Bill is safe. It will work. I commend the Bill as it stands, and do not support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, I follow the same line as the noble Earl. In the previous debate, a noble Lord referred to the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, as a “diamond” and “dogged”. Well, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is certainly dogged. If he is as good as his word and lets this Bill go through, I might even describe him as a diamond.

We have been talking semantics here about “deck officer”. “Deck officer” is a term that has been used for many years, as the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie, said. Everybody at sea knows what a deck officer is.

My worry is about the future. I attended the City of London maritime dinner last night, where the lord mayor and the noble Lord, Lord Green, the Trade Minister, made excellent speeches about the great importance of our maritime business right across the board, from shipping to insurance to arbitration to lawyers, and in maintaining the City of London as the world centre for these operations.

On the issue of pilotage exemption certificates, a real problem is looming, certainly in the ferry industry. The demographic graph shows that a lot of the officers are within five years of retirement. Where are the younger officers going to come from? The Bill would enable young and upcoming officers to advance up the tree perhaps rather more quickly by gaining pilotage exemption certificates. It will not happen across the board. There will be a few here and a few there; it will not be widespread. They are our seed corn for manning our ships in future. More importantly, we hope that some of these people will in time become pilots, so it will benefit the pilotage business in the longer term. That is a very important point to make.

Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Wilcox on introducing this important Bill. The great advantage of being tail-end Charlie is that you can tear up the speech that you were going to make because so many points have been made. I was particularly pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie of Culkein, talking about the lighthouses, an area of interest to me. I agree with him that it is crazy that we have not been specific about where the lighthouse authorities can operate. He will know that we have Whale Rock, on which the Northern Lighthouse Board currently has to put two buoys. Trinity House has many more examples. For the lighthouse authority not to have had that certainty needed to be addressed a long time ago. I am glad to see it in the Bill.

I, too, support the enabling of the lighthouse authorities to undertake certain commercial activities within defined limits; that will certainly help. Of course, the marking of wrecks needs attention and is now well covered in Bill. The second half of the Bill needs to be welcomed, and has been.

More controversial are Clauses 1 to 4 about pilotage, particularly Clause 2. I declare my interest, such as it is, as having twice been Minister of Shipping. I was, I suppose, part of the gestation process of the Pilotage Act 1987 when I was Minister for Shipping in 1986; my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara gave birth to that Act, because I had moved on to the Home Office by that stage. I remember full well the long discussions with the pilots’ association. They have done and continue to do a very good job. Of course, the nature of pilotage has changed, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, says. I cannot remember it, but certainly my ancestors could remember that if you had a good easterly gale in the Pentland Firth, you took on a pilot and you did not see him again; he wound up in America. Times have moved on a little since then.

The pilots were one of the most “conservative with a small c” bodies that I had come across, and were reluctant to change. I recall being told in 1986 that if we introduced the Pilotage Act there would be many more accidents at sea and at entrances to the harbour. That has not happened. I can understand the pilots’ concern, but it was misplaced. I also think that it is misplaced on this occasion. As the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, has just said, there are good controls which the competent harbour authority must ensure. My honourable friend, during consideration in Committee of an amendment to the Bill in another place, described the definition of deck officer as:

“‘an officer in charge of the above-deck workings and manoeuvres at sea of a ship or boat’””.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/11/12; col. 539.]

That makes it fairly clear that this is a responsible person for consideration of an exemption certificate.

The useful Explanatory Notes state that,

“the relevant competent harbour authority is satisfied that that person has the skill, experience and local knowledge, and sufficient knowledge of English for safety purposes”—

that is important in Scotland where more people speak Gaelic—

“to be capable of piloting one or more specified ships within its harbour”.

That is pretty straight. I am therefore inclined to support my noble friend Lady Wilcox on this; the Bill has got it right on this occasion. I would hate there to be any reduction in safety at sea. I was the Minister in charge when the “Braer”, not the “Sea Empress”, went down. That was not a matter of pilotage. We all know what happened, and I will not comment further, but it is no joy at all for there to be any shipping accident whatever in our waters, or any other waters. Nevertheless, I still support the Bill as it stands.

That takes me on to my old sparring partner, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I am less sanguine than is the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, about the noble Lord, who was very nice about the GLAs, for a change—which slightly surprised me—but I wonder whether, given what he said, he really wants to get rid of Clause 2. He knows full well that the Bill will not reach the statute book if that clause is removed. I listened earlier to the noble Lord; he was waxing eloquently on the Scrap Metal Dealers Bill and said, “This Bill must not be amended because it will not reach the statute book”. Now he is happy to say, “Let’s take Clause 2 out of this Bill and it will sail through the House of Commons”. I am much more cynical about the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I would not be at all surprised if, deeply underlying that, was the intention that if we get rid of Clause 2, we will not have Clauses 8 and 9 relating to the lighthouse authorities.

Overall, I support the Bill unamended and wish it a fair wind.

Airports (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Friday 9th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I declare my interests again. First, I live in a more remote area than the noble Lord, Lord Empey. Secondly, I was formerly Minister of Aviation.

I regret and welcome this Bill. I regret it, because I think that it is wrong for this House to debate exactly the same Bill as it debated in March, a mere seven months ago, when it did not receive the support of either Front Bench. It would have been preferable if the noble Lord, Lord Empey, had put down a Starred Question or a Question for Short Debate rather than a Bill. I welcome it, because it gives us another opportunity to discuss what we discussed in March and the House will be pleased to know that I am not going to repeat what I said then.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, said that the raison d’être for this Bill is for the Government to have power to intervene. They have power to intervene now. They have the Public Service Obligations. My noble friend Lord Attlee spelt it out clearly in March this year. It is clear that the Government can operate, but they have to operate within the European law. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, then changed the emphasis and said that it was not really a regional hub that he wanted, but that he wanted to go to Heathrow. He wants to keep that link. If my noble friend Lord Attlee and the Government say that Northern Ireland can have a link to Heathrow, is my noble friend Lord Attlee going to reinstate the Inverness-Heathrow link, and the other 11 domestic links that have been lost to Heathrow over the last 22 years? That would be a huge interference in the market place. You cannot isolate Heathrow. You cannot isolate one airport. You have got to talk about a region. There is Heathrow. There is Gatwick. There is Stansted. There is Luton. All those airports have international flights.

That very conveniently takes me on to the hub. In Clause 1(2) the noble Lord, Lord Empey, wants to get access to hub airports. He and I are both lucky. He flies out of Belfast, and I fly out of Inverness. We can both fly to Amsterdam, and we can get just as good connections in Amsterdam, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said in March, as we can from the London airports. Indeed, in some instances it is cheaper to go to Amsterdam, so we cannot argue that we do not have access to hub airports.

Going further into the Bill, in subsection (3) the noble Lord wants to ensure “adequate services”. That is purely subjective, not the precise wording that one should be using in legislation. In the summer months, we have three services to Inverness from Gatwick; in the winter months, we have two. I do not call that an adequate service. If my noble friend Lord Attlee has to make the decision about what is an adequate service, is it three services—one in the morning, one at lunchtime and one in the evening—or one in the morning and one in the evening, as now? If I take the morning flight, I cannot come to your Lordships’ House. If I take the evening flight, I do not get home until after midnight. I do not think that is an adequate service, but if you were to ask Flybe to retain the lunchtime flight, it would put that company in jeopardy because there are not enough people taking that flight.

The real issue behind this Bill is the number of passengers who are flying. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, touched on this. Since 2007, there has been a 20% decline in UK domestic travel, not just to London airports. Does my noble friend have any comments on that when international passengers are down by 2% over the same period? Has there been an impact assessment on the effects of airport passenger duty? It has risen 160% from £5 per passenger per flight to £13 per passenger per flight. What impact has that had on tourism and on the regions? Is that a contributory factor to the decline in domestic air travel? Does my noble friend anticipate that domestic air travel will continue to decline? Does he think that airports and providers regulated by the CAA are making the right sort of return and that the CAA is therefore regulating them properly? London Gatwick, which is price-regulated, saw a 17% rise in profits in 2001-12. Is that acceptable to my noble friend? BAA saw a 15% rise in quarterly profits in the first quarter of 2012. NATS, which is a monopoly and CAA price-regulated, saw pre-tax profits rise by 119% in 2011-12. Those are costs that the airlines have to meet, and if the airlines had to meet lower costs, the price of tickets would go down, which might encourage more people to fly.

Does my noble friend Lord Attlee agree with the statement by the new owners of Gatwick that they have structured their increased charges to discriminate against smaller aircraft? Airport charges per passenger have risen from £9.72 in 2007 to £20.13 in 2012. That is a fairly crude estimate because it is a highly complicated mechanism, but there is an over 100% increase in passenger charges. Is it right that it should be on the passenger, or would my noble friend agree that it should be on the weight and size of the aircraft, which therefore does not discriminate against smaller aircraft?

These are the sort of issues that would resolve the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, raised. If we are going to keep open the domestic links to London—it does not have to be to London but if that is what the noble Lord wants—we need to get more people flying and to do that we need to be able to reduce the cost. Can my noble friend therefore comment on the questions I have raised?

Civil Aviation Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Cathcart]

My Lords, I am by and large happy with the government amendments in this group and will talk particularly to Amendments 1 and 7. The wording is not precisely what we asked for, but my noble friend Lord Attlee has clearly listened to the arguments expressed in Committee, on all sides, and has gone a long way to addressing these concerns.

I will say something on Amendments 2 and 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I share his concern that “desirability” is rather limp—I think the noble Lord used the word “wishy-washy”. I would much rather have seen the word “duty” in there, as I feel we all have a duty to the environment in whatever we do and the aviation industry should be no exception. I would like to have seen the licence holder having a duty, using the words of the government amendment,

“to take reasonable measures to reduce, control or mitigate the adverse environmental effects of the airport”.

However, that is not where we are. The Government have used the word “desirability” in their amendment, for the reason given by my noble friend Lord Attlee, and I do not suppose that they are inclined to accept any amendment to that.

Is the Government’s amendment fit for the purpose that we argued for in Committee? I believe that it is. Although there is no mention that the licence holder should have a duty to have regard to the impact of airports on local communities, which is something that I argued for in Committee, I believe that these amendments will deal with the impact of airports on the environment. Importantly, these amendments will provide the CAA with the flexibility it needs to allow regulated airports to invest in sensible measures to reduce the environmental impact of their operations, without fear of legal challenge from an airline, whose main preoccupation, in this regard, is simply to minimise airport charges. That was the kernel of the argument in Committee, and my noble friend Lord Attlee has addressed it. I welcome these government amendments as they stand, and I thank the Minister and his team for listening and responding.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for not being able to take part in the Committee stage of this Bill, although I have read with interest what was said. I congratulate my noble friend on bringing forward these amendments. They have gone a very long way towards meeting the concerns raised.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, understands this House, and I am sure that he will make representations to his party that it is really against the good will of the House to put down nothing but starred amendments from the Opposition. He was a workhorse of the previous Government and I know that he appreciated, as did the House, that amendments put down in good time lead to a better debate than those put down at the last minute. I exonerate him totally in this matter—I do not think that it is his fault. I believe that he has been overruled on this and I am sure that if he had had his way, he would have put the amendments down at an earlier stage.

With regard to the arguments on Amendment 2, the noble Lord rather lost me, as he was not as succinct as usual in putting forward his case. From what I managed to understand, I believe that he does have a point—this was echoed by my noble friend Lord Cathcart—in that we need to make the wording a little stronger. Will my noble friend Lord Attlee look at that again?

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I have never found “desirability” in legislation before and I have been here quite a long time. I find it rather strange. It does not fit with the beginnings of the three preceding paragraphs in this clause, which all talk about “the need to promote” or “the need to secure”, and I believe that we should keep the phraseology in line with what is already in the Bill. Therefore the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has my support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

I find it quite astonishing that, as far as I know, the Bill makes no mention of greenhouse gas emissions. It is vital that an industry which is often attacked for not having sufficient regard to environmental considerations should not be so exposed, and including the amendment would have that effect. The Minister has been very generous so far. Will he continue that generosity?

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I am not certain that I agree with the noble Baroness’s argument that the amendment should be in this part of the Bill. Although I understand exactly the valid point she is making, the amendment sits pretty awkwardly with the rest of this part of the Bill, in Chapter 1, which we are discussing. It does not make good law suddenly to put in a clause like this which is so out of place.

My other concern—and here I admit that, because of the short notice of these amendments, I have not done the amount of work that I would like to have done; that is one of the many disadvantages of the behaviour of tabling amendments late—is that the proposal restricts who the CAA has to talk to. It has to talk to NATS, the Secretary of State, the Committee on Climate Change and air transport service providers. I wonder whether there are others who the CAA should talk to. If it is written down in law that these are the people, it does not have to talk to the other groups.

Although I understand the noble Baroness’s point, this is the wrong place for an amendment of this type. However, the principle behind it is surely right. It might be better if one discussed this and looked at a way of getting it into the Bill in another format and another place.