Transport Levying Bodies (Amendment) Regulations 2017

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, the draft regulations that we are considering today, if approved, would enable the combined authorities for Tees Valley and the West Midlands to collect appropriate levies from their constituent councils to meet the costs of carrying out their transport functions.

The five constituent councils of the Tees Valley Combined Authority—Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, and Stockton-on-Tees—and the seven constituent councils of the West Midlands Combined Authority—Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton—have led a local process to improve their governance arrangements, which culminated in this House and the other place agreeing orders that saw the establishment of the Tees Valley Combined Authority on 1 April 2016 and the West Midlands Combined Authority on 17 June 2016.

These orders gave effect to the desire of the local authorities in these areas to improve their joint working, including on transport matters. Orders have since been made to provide for mayors to be elected on 4 May for both the Tees Valley Combined Authority and the West Midlands Combined Authority, and once elected the mayor will be the chair of the combined authority. Combined authorities are designated as levying bodies under the Local Government Finance Act 1988. Under that Act, the Secretary of State is able to make regulations in relation to the expenses of combined authorities that are reasonably attributable to the exercise of its functions, including those relating to transport.

The draft regulations before the Committee today would amend the Transport Levying Bodies Regulations 1992 to take account of the creation of the two combined authorities in the Tees Valley and the West Midlands. They have been drafted to reflect the proposed approach of the local areas and have been agreed by the two combined authorities. The levy could fund any of the transport functions that sit with the combined authority in question. The functions of each combined authority are set out in its establishment order, and any subsequent order that confers functions and transport functions are clearly identified. Transport functions of the two combined authorities include developing a local transport plan, as well as a range of passenger transport related functions. It will be for the combined authority to decide how to fund these transport functions in accordance with the establishment order and any subsequent orders.

The constituent councils will need to consider how they fund any levy issued by the combined authority as part of their budget process, whether by council tax, government grants or other sources of revenue. They will need to take into account the impact of council tax levels in their area, including when determining whether any council tax increase is excessive.

In the case of the West Midlands, the regulations effectively constitute a name change. On the creation of the West Midlands Combined Authority, the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority was dissolved and its functions were transferred to the combined authority. Like the ITA before it, the West Midlands Combined Authority will continue to levy its constituent authorities for transport purposes. It will also continue to apportion this levy by agreement, or on the basis of the population of the constituent councils.

The Tees Valley Combined Authority is different because there was no integrated transport authority in place in that area. Therefore, these draft regulations have to establish how any transport levy would be apportioned between the constituent councils if the combined authority could not reach agreement. In the event that they cannot agree, the combined authority will apportion the levy by taking into account previous levels of transport expenditure by the constituent councils.

These draft regulations help to facilitate the provision of transport arrangements as part of the wider governance changes across the two areas. I commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I strongly congratulate the Government on their move towards combined authorities and the development of the mayoral model, which will lead to the election of mayors in two months’ time. That will bring to fruition the extension of the very successful mayoral model in London to the other major conurbations. Just as it has led to a positive revolution in transport for London, I hope that it will bring about the same for the other conurbations. I know that the Minister has played a significant part in encouraging these developments.

There is, however, one issue on which I would like to hear more from the Minister: the relationship of this order, and the ability of the combined authority and mayors to raise money themselves, with the designated grant that the Government are giving to enhance spending on transport connections in some of the areas he mentioned. Yesterday, the Chancellor announced almost £400 million of funding for the Midlands engine. When I read the release, I was struck by how detailed and prescriptive the list of specific projects was that the Chancellor was seeking to fund—right down to specific sums of money for the Pershore relief road, smart ticketing technology and so on. Given that when he is elected in two months’ time the new mayor will come in with a big mandate and, one hopes, a significant plan for improving transport in the West Midlands, I wonder how far it will be open to him to decide his priorities and what he intends to do, or whether he is in fact bound by yesterday’s announcement by the Chancellor and the department to be simply the clerk who processes the list of projects. If he is not in a position to give me a specific answer, I would be very happy for the Minister to write to me on that.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my usual interests as listed in the register: I am an elected councillor, although not in these areas, and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. We are happy to support the regulations before us today. I do not have a huge amount to say and so do not intend to detain the Grand Committee. I am very happy to talk when I have something to say, but there is no point in doing so when I have only one or two points to make.

By way of background, I am conscious of where these regulations originated. Back in 2012, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority was able to issue levies to meet the cost of carrying out its transport functions. In 2015, a number of other integrated transport authorities were established and, again, they were able to issue levies through the measures in regulations. Therefore, we support these regulations for the new combined authorities of Tees Valley and the West Midlands. As we have heard, they will be electing their mayors in a matter of weeks. It is certainly correct that the authorities can levy their constituent councils to raise funds so that they can go ahead with their proposals. I understand that all the councils have been consulted and are very happy with what is before us today.

I am interested in the question my noble friend raised in respect of yesterday’s Budget announcement of what are very prescriptive projects in the West Midlands. What powers will the elected mayor have to vary those or do something different? Again, if the Minister cannot answer that today, I am happy to receive a letter in due course. With that, I am content to support the order before us.

High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this is a huge investment and the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, need not apologise for putting down his amendment or opening this debate. Given the views that he holds, I think he is absolutely right to require the House to come to a decision after a debate and without simply proceeding straight to a vote before such an investment is made involving an important strategic departure from our transport policy.

The noble Lord and my noble friend Lady Mallalieu made two claims: first, that this project is somehow undemocratic because it has not properly been considered by Parliament and the people; and, secondly, that I and those who followed me were somehow bewitched by trains doing what they seem to do in most of the rest of the world—that is, running at 200 miles per hour and linking up the principal cities of countries with economic geographies similar to our own. Perhaps I may deal with those two points in turn.

I was responsible for publishing the Command Paper that began the process for HS2 in March 2010. I can tell the House frankly that there was a debate inside the Government at the time as to whether we should publish the Command Paper before or after the election. I can also tell the House frankly that a key factor in that discussion was whether the route should be published before the election or after it. The route had been prepared in detail by High Speed 2 (HS2) Ltd and indeed, following all the scrutiny since 2010, it has survived with hardly any variation, except for the addition of a considerable number of tunnels.

I was very firmly of the view—and the Prime Minister at the time, Gordon Brown, came to the same view—that it would be profoundly undemocratic to announce an intention to build such a major infrastructure project as HS2 knowing what the route would be but hiding it until after the election from the people and, in particular, from those who lived in the constituencies affected. So we published the route before the election.

All three major parties had a commitment to HS2 in their manifestos for the 2010 election. Because of the public meetings that I conducted in the 2010 election, I know that it was—how can I put it?—a very live issue in that election. I remember addressing one meeting where I said that I thought that HS2 would be on my tombstone and somebody from the back shouted out, “Not soon enough”. So there is no way that this scheme was disguised from the people in the 2010 election, and an overwhelming majority was returned supporting HS2.

That then led to exhaustive consideration by the House of Commons and a Select Committee of the House of Commons. There were thousands of petitions against the scheme and the Select Committee considered the Bill in detail for the best part of two years. When the House of Commons had considered the report of that committee, it voted by 399 votes to 42 in favour of the passage of the high-speed 2 Bill. After another general election, HS2 was in the manifestos of the major parties, and all the detail relating to it, including the detailed parliamentary consideration, could be considered by voters

It is hard to see how the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, can sustain a charge of a lack of democracy in this process. It has been almost a model of democratic engagement: there have been two general elections; two parliamentary committees; thousands of petitions, which were considered patiently by members of a Select Committee in both Houses; and two votes in the House of Commons—on Second Reading and Third Reading—in which the Bill passed 10 to one, with very large numbers voting.

We now come to my bewitchment. To clear up one factual error, it has been stated that at the beginning HS2 was about trains running very fast and that it became about capacity when that argument fell apart. That is completely untrue. The opening words of the 2010 Command Paper which launched HS2 are:

“the Government’s assessment is: … That over the next 20 to 30 years the UK will require a step-change in transport capacity between its largest and most productive conurbations”,

that is, London, West Midlands, the north-west, and Yorkshire. It continues that alongside such additional capacity—let me repeat those words—

“alongside such additional capacity there are real benefits for the economy and for passengers from improving journey times and hence the connectivity of the UK”.

The argument could not have been clearer. Capacity was the first and overriding consideration. But because a new railway was being built it was clearly sensible and right that Parliament authorised it to be built with 21st-century technology not 19th-century technology, the cost difference between the two not being great in any event.

The noble Lord and my noble friend spoke as if there might be a free lunch—if we do not build HS2 we will save large sums of money. I freely confess that constructions costs are high. If someone could wave a magic wand and reduce them I would be glad to hear from them and I think the House and Parliament would be well served. The two key points in relation to the costs are these. First, if HS2 is not built then other, very expensive interventions, which will probably end up costing about the same amount of money, will be needed to systematically upgrade the west coast main line to meet the requirements of the next generation. Those upgrades will not produce anything like the capacity that could be produced by building a new railway to 21st-century specifications.

The first function I performed as Minister of State for Transport was opening the refurbished west coast main line. That line is often described as Victorian. It is in fact pre-Victorian; it was opened for the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838. Only four miles of the line—between London and the extension north from Birmingham, built after the coronation—are straight, because it had to be built around the estates of Members of your Lordships’ House. I can assure the House that in earlier hybrid Bill Committees, noble Lords were extremely good at getting compensation for the building of the line—much greater in real terms than is available to those affected now, which is of course part of the reason that the project is controversial. They were also good at making the line take detours.

Upgrading a pre-Victorian railway is a very difficult task. It has been described to me as like performing open-heart surgery on a moving patient. It is also very expensive and complex. The completion of the last upgrade of the west coast main line, which produced only a fraction of the additional capacity that HS2 will produce, cost, in pre-2010 prices, £10 billion—in post-2010 prices that figure would be significantly higher. Of that £10 billion, £1 billion alone was for paying the railway company not to operate services at all in compensation for the disruption. For HS2, with the scale of the work that would be required, the proportionate figure would be larger still.

If an alternative scenario to HS2 were to be carried out—upgrading the existing railway—the estimate that was made for me by officials in 2010, and which has been done again since, is that you would have to spend half as much as on HS2 for a quarter of the capacity, and of course the sum is a moving target because of construction costs and inflation. The idea that this is good value for money is for the birds. It is good value for money only if the limit of our horizons for the modernisation of this country and of the transport links between our major conurbations stops in 10 or 15 years’ time. If we are doing what I regard as our job as parliamentarians—looking to the longer term—then it is very poor value for money.

I should add that the alternative scheme involved the complete rebuilding of Euston station, which will need to be done anyway. The great monstrosity that is Euston station was built for half its current capacity in the 1960s. I am glad to say, for those with a sense of history, that the Euston arch will come back when the station is rebuilt. The scheme also required hugely difficult and expensive work that would involve weeks on end of closures to realign tracks and signalling, extend platforms at all the main stations going north from Euston and so on. Those of your Lordships who used the west coast main line when the last work was being conducted will know that the disruption was chronic for the best part of a decade. We would be looking at something significantly worse than that if we were to seek to modernise the west coast main line on the scale required for the additional capacity.

It is not just the west coast main line that would be affected. In order to provide that 25% extra capacity, the Chiltern line would need to be substantially four-tracked throughout. I am not the most popular person when I appear in the Chilterns to explain the benefits of HS2. However, I can tell your Lordships that if you were to go the Chilterns to suggest that the existing railway be four-tracked, all of which goes above ground and which would have a significantly worse impact on the environment than HS2, I wish you luck in conducting those public meetings.

The choice that we faced was between building a new line between the major conurbations of the country to provide three times the existing capacity and the essential economic backbone for interchange between those great conurbations for the next generation, or conducting yet another patch and mend of a pre-Victorian railway at huge expense and offering a fraction of the capacity. I believe the decision that we took, which the coalition Government and now the existing Government have stood by, was exactly the right one, looking to the long term. The big mistake that has been made was the failure over the previous 40 years to adequately modernise the railways and, instead, to make do with patch-and-mend solutions that were hugely expensive and did not meet the exigencies of the case.

Let me make one final comment. My noble friend said that there were other pressing investment requirements for the railways, and she is correct. The London to Brighton main line, which was mentioned earlier, is one among many lines that have huge capacity constraints, and I am entirely supportive—as is the National Infrastructure Commission, which I chair—of what has been called the east-west Crossrail of the north; that is, the upgrading of the lines between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull. But these are not choices. We can actually manage, as a country, to conduct more than one big infrastructure project at a time—most other developed countries have been managing it for the past 50 years. The idea that it should be an ambition beyond the reach of this great country that is now looking to forge a path in the world on its own as a great economy is, of course, nonsense. It is perfectly possible for us to carry through and pay for HS2 over the next 15 years, the completion of Crossrail, the next Crossrail scheme, the Crossrail of the north and other essential modernisations. What we need is proper planning, the right level of ambition and to stand by our duty to the country to see that we do not have to put up with, in the next generation, second-rate infrastructure that holds back the economy in the way that we did for too much of the post-war period. That is the issue that faces us, as a House and as Parliament. I hope that your Lordships will rise to the challenge.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, it is nice to be thanked for one’s work. I see several Lords from the eclectic group who served on that committee, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, whom I must congratulate on the way he handled both the hearings and the committee.

I have recently been reading a book—I hope this slight digression will be acceptable, as it relates to this amendment—called Mr Barry’s War, by Caroline Shenton, one of the archivists. The bit that I like is when she talks about an attempt by Barry and a group of architects—someone called William “Strata” Smith, a great geologist, was also involved—to find stone to build this place. They travelled all over the UK. They get to Lincoln, with its magnificent gothic minster, the Ancaster stone quarries—said to be Roman—then Grantham, Stamford and nearby Burghley House. Once they get through Kettering and Northampton by coach, they,

“made their way back to London by the novel means of Robert Stephenson’s thrilling new London and Birmingham Railway, which had opened along its whole length just five days previously on 17 September. This was the first London intercity rail line, and Euston station the first mainline terminus in a capital city anywhere in the world. Its magnificent Doric Propylaeum”—

I do not know if I pronounced that correctly—

“or entrance archway, made of millstone grit, stood for 125 years until pulled down by modernist planners in 1962”.

I could not help feeling that that was rather a propitious bit of reading prior to this debate.

We did not debate the overall cost—that was not in the committee’s remit—but we certainly debated some costings by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and his expert witnesses. I regret to say, however, that they did not stack up. Neither did Old Oak Common. I had to smile when someone said, “It’s just an interim stop”. We all know that if it finishes at Old Oak Common it will be a real stretch of the imagination to believe that that will be interim.

The noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, said that the route had not been decided. It has been decided, and we had a debate, I assure noble Lords, on whether it would be more desirable to terminate at Old Oak Common. That was not the view of the committee after listening to a range of expert witnesses and for some of the reasons cited by my noble friend Lord Faulkner.

We can all have a view, if you like, about people’s motives and intentions—I will assume that they are motivated by the best of all reasons—but one thing you cannot assume is that the process would be speedy, for either the first or the sixth amendment. This will be a lengthy process, and, as has been said, we are now seven years—I was going to say “down the track” but that is an unfortunate pun; if only we were. We have some way to go. As someone who, like the noble Lord, served on Crossrail, I remember just as many criticisms of that. Now it is all enthusiasm, but it was not at the time, I assure noble Lords; there were just as many doubters and naysayers.

My view—and you have heard from other colleagues on the committee—is that we gave this a thorough examination, and I am certain that we also debated it in Committee. I cannot remember how many times I have heard this debate. As a former Attorney-General once said, repetition does not necessarily enhance the value of your contribution. I am beginning to feel that way in this case. I hope noble Lords will not support these amendments; I do not believe they add anything to the existing analysis. As I recall, in the recent Grand Committee debate the Minister reported to us that the National Audit Office has run its calculators over this. Every time there has been a challenge on the costings done by HS2—the classic one was on the tunnel costings in Wendover, which we may unfortunately return to again—they were independently checked. The proposed tunnelling at Colne Valley was independently validated and HS2 was found to be correct in those circumstances. I listened carefully to the argument but I incline to the views expressed by so many of my fellow committee members, and by my noble friend Lord Faulkner.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I echo my noble friend Lord Faulkner’s thanks to the Select Committee. There are no greater tasks which Members of your Lordships’ House take on than being members of these hybrid Bill Committees, which are like the Committee of Public Safety. I think they were sitting for four days a week over many months. Those noble Lords made a huge commitment to the work of the committee and at this very late stage—this last stage of the Bill’s passage through the House—we should certainly not seek to substitute our judgment, on the basis of a short debate, for the exhaustive examination which your Lordships’ Select Committee gave to this issue, among many others which are on the Marshalled List for later in our debates.

I hesitate to arbitrate between my noble friends Lord Faulkner and Lord Snape on the beauty of Old Oak Common, which depends very much on whether you have a great admiration for railway architecture of the Victorian age. It will become a thing of great beauty when the High Speed 2 station and all the wider development is completed there, but that will take some time. I do not think anybody could pretend now, when passing through it at not particularly high speeds on trains coming out of Paddington, that it is a great beauty spot—it is next to Wormwood Scrubs. However, a critical issue for us to consider this afternoon is its utility as a transport interchange. That was the issue considered by the Select Committee.

It is important for the House to understand that once HS2 is completed, we would be talking about all the traffic from Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and the East Midlands coming in to one terminus if you allow only for Old Oak Common to be built. That is the equivalent of the entirety of the intercity traffic which currently goes into Euston and a good part of the intercity traffic which goes into King’s Cross. All of that would be going into one terminus station and all served by one line, Crossrail. As my noble friend Lord Faulkner emphasised, the resilience of that arrangement could not remotely be regarded as adequate for all the traffic going from the Midlands and the north into one station.

The estimate has been made that a third of passengers will transfer to Crossrail. I think some will get off at Old Oak Common and transfer on to Heathrow, which will be 10 minutes away in the other direction, but most of them will transfer on to Crossrail going east. That proportion may be higher. It is hard to know what transport patterns will emerge but when that interchange is available, it will be an extremely rapid and efficient connection not just to the City but to the West End as well. The next stops up from Paddington will be Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon and then Bank. It then goes on to Canary Wharf, so it will offer a range of fast and high-quality connections.

However, even if you stretch that third to a half—since no one can be sure what patterns will develop—still a very substantial proportion of the passengers would, on the projections made, wish either to regard Euston as their destination or to interchange there. By having the interchange at Euston we would then serve another large swathe of London directly, including that huge and important centre which Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras will form themselves. Massive development work will be taking place there, which will be attracted there in no small part because of the development of the HS2 station. We also have there the Victoria and Northern lines, and in due course Crossrail 2, which will serve the new Euston terminus as well. When one considers that these termini will have to deal with all the traffic coming not just from Birmingham but from Sheffield, Crewe, Manchester and Leeds, as well as services going further north up to Scotland, it looks as though there will be a requirement for more than one dispersal point.

All these issues were gone into at great length by committees of both Houses. Their conclusion was that the Government’s proposals were correct in requiring an extension from Old Oak Common through to Euston. At this very late stage in the passage of the Bill, to pass an amendment calling for a further review—the only impact of which could be substantial delay and uncertainty—would not be wise.

High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 12th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I recall the old luggage vans, although the Minister is far too young to remember things like that. I was travelling on a train in Australia a couple of years ago which still had a luggage van, and it was used for two things. First, it was used for people to put long-distance small packages on. They were not travelling on the train themselves; they were simply sending their package. That might be a company or a private individual. It was also used in the same way as we check our luggage on to an aeroplane—you checked your luggage on to the train. It transformed the experience of sitting on a crammed carriage with people jockeying for position with their luggage. I fully accept that that model is probably not acceptable or appropriate in the UK, but we need to move on from our fatal tendency to cram as many seats into the space as possible while ignoring the requirements for luggage space. I am sure that your Lordships will all have sat on a so-called express train to an airport—by definition in a scenario where you are likely to have quite a lot of luggage—and seen people sitting with large suitcases on their laps because there is absolutely no space left in the tiny amount of room allocated for luggage on those trains.

I support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, because I think that we need to be more far-sighted on this. His suggestion on flip-down seats is extremely interesting and a useful compromise, because it provides seats where they are needed, when flexible space is not needed, allowing for change in future. Buggies are not going to go away. People are going to go on having children and using buggies and needing to put them on trains.

I want to use this opportunity to explore the issue of wheelchair space. By legislation, there will be such a space, but the Minister will remember that we had the discussion on the Bus Services Bill about what happens when two people in wheelchairs wish to travel together. Wheelchair spaces are very often a solitary allowance, so flexible space would allow additional space for wheelchair users. HS2 will be an absolute boon for wheelchair users; the current railway system is often difficult for people in wheelchairs to navigate, if not impossible. Air travel is very difficult for them. Many people in wheelchairs simply cannot drive a car. So this will be a huge opportunity for wheelchair users to undertake long-distance travel in comfort, and we need to ensure that the trains are designed in such a way that they are flexible enough to accommodate more than one wheelchair user at a time in a carriage.

Given that there has been so much publicity lately about the availability of toilet facilities for people with disabilities—noble Lords will recall the very distressing story of one of our Paralympic athletes who was put in a very undignified position by the fact that the sole disabled toilet on the train was not functioning—can the Minister clarify that these trains will have a modern and respectable level of toilet facilities for disabled people? I would like to feel that all the toilets were accessible for disabled people. By the time it is built, it will be the middle of the 21st century, and we really cannot have only a single available toilet on a train.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley are well taken, particularly in respect of facilities for the disabled, flexible space for carrying light freight and proper facilities for families and those looking after young children. There has been a tendency on the part of the railways to move in the Japanese direction of regarding freight and luggage as a bad thing and making it almost impossible for passengers to carry such items in comfort. I do not think that that is a direction in which we want to go.

However, the area where I am more doubtful is about facilities on high-speed trains or the next generation of trains in general for the carrying of bicycles. It is not that there should not perhaps be some facility at the margin for doing so—though I am not sure, even with the great wisdom and expertise of your Lordships’ House, that trying to design a train by committee is a good idea, so the figure of 10% that my noble friend Lord Berkeley has specified might be a bit too precise. If there is spare luggage space on a train that is suitable for carrying bikes, then that is fine. But the real issue in terms of encouraging much more bicycle use in relation to trains—which is out of all proportion more important than the capacity to carry bikes on trains themselves, which will only ever be marginal, particularly with very busy trains loading and unloading hundreds of people at a time—is decent cycle storage and rental facilities at stations, so that passengers do not need to convey bikes on the train in the first place. With the best will in the world, you are only ever going to be able to carry a handful of bikes on trains, but you can have thousands of bicycles, either privately owned or for rental, provided for at stations. By and large, our mainline stations, which were not designed for bicycles or indeed anything else modern, including in most cases decent retail facilities, have lamentable facilities for storing bikes. It is a telling indication of the big problems that we have in managing bicycles, even with all the improvements in London, that the cycle rental scheme does not embrace most London termini, because how to deal with the big issues of location and of shipping bikes backwards and forwards has not yet been worked out.

The contrast with best European practice in this area could not be more stark. I shall never forget visiting Amsterdam station and other major stations in Holland. Where you come out of the station, you have huge areas reserved for bikes, including rental schemes, along with bike workshops, so that you can get repairs done, and proper supervised bike facilities. It is a completely different situation from the one we have here. We are not yet at the stage of detailed station design plans for HS2 but I hope that, when it comes to the design of these hugely forward-looking stations that we want to see at Euston, Old Oak Common, Birmingham Curzon Street and other locations going north, there will be exemplary facilities for cyclists with significant space made available for cycle storage, repairs and rental schemes. In terms of a path-breaking approach to integrating cycling with railway use, seeing that there are state-of-the-art and capacious cycle facilities at stations is far more important than any provision that it might be possible to make in respect of the trains.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, as somebody who puts his Brompton bike on a train every day when I come here, I partly disagree with my noble friend, not on the substance of the point that he makes—that we cannot accommodate hundreds of bicycles on the train; there is a balance to be struck—but in that there are a significant number of people like myself who ride to the station and put their folding bike on the train and then get off at the other end and cycle a bit further. The other usage that I have is on my annual cycle tour, when I do want to take a bike on a long-distance journey on a train. At the moment, the facilities are very limited; you have to reserve in advance, which is probably what will obtain. While I agree with my noble friend that trying to design a train by committee is not a wise thing to do, it is wise to have this debate and raise these issues, which are important.

I certainly concur with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on disability. It is not just about the number of wheelchairs—it is about ensuring that you have level surfaces so that you can go from platform to train in an easy and effective manner, rather than what you see at the moment. I think that we briefly raised that in one of the Select Committee sittings, but I am not absolutely sure about that. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, this is my last amendment in this section and it is to do with timetabling. Again, we had this experience with Crossrail and the great western route. We were pressing for a long time, saying, “You’re adding extra trains on to the great western. Where will all the freight trains and the intercities go, as you’re not building any more tracks?”. I said they had to produce a timetable. The first timetable produced for the great western between Reading and London was wonderful but it had only Crossrail trains on it. They said, “That’s the timetable” and I said, “What about the other trains?”. They said, “Oh, we haven’t put them on”. I said, “If you’re running a railway, you’ve got to put every train on the timetable. Don’t be silly, go away and do it again”. After about a couple of years, they came back and said. “Here it is”.

I gave their timetable to my experts and said, “Is the freight capacity that the Government have committed to on the timetable?”. They said, “Well, you’ve got 22 freight trains a day on it and you asked for 26”. I said, “Where are the others?”. They said, “Crossrail says they are on the timetable”. They were, but for a different line that went across the great western route on a bridge, so it was completely irrelevant. I got pretty angry then and said, “Can they go the other way?”. They said, “We haven’t checked that but it’s on the timetable”. They were adamant that they had to get priority for the Crossrail trains to Reading on the slow lines. They really wanted all the other trains to go on the fast lines. I got as far as telling some Members of Parliament in Cardiff and Bristol that they were going to have one train an hour and not two, because Crossrail was going to take all the paths. Eventually, the infrastructure manager was told by the Government to do a comprehensive timetable, which is Network Rail’s job. That is what should happen.

Here, we have HS2 and the west coast main line. As I said on Tuesday, you have six tracks at Handsacre junction going into three for a bit, so there may be a traffic jam of trains. It is reasonable to have a draft timetable produced either by HS2 or Network Rail, or hopefully by both, to demonstrate how many of the trains that everybody wants to run can actually run up there. I argued against Handsacre on Tuesday but if it happens, we have to have a timetable because otherwise something will go wrong. It should be up to the regulator to decide which trains have priority and who can run them.

This is very much a probing amendment. The Minister may say that it is happening already, although I would slightly challenge that. If it is not, perhaps he could say a few words to the relevant people to make sure that it does happen quite quickly and that there is good consultation with all the operators. I beg to move.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, unless I mistook what was going on, I have a feeling that the Minister has already replied to this amendment. I feel that the reply he gave to Amendment 22 was in fact a reply to Amendment 24A, hence the reference to freight paths and to keeping arrangements flexible in advance and not making commitments this far out. It may be that he has more to add on these issues.

I would make just two points. It is not clear to me why my noble friend thinks that publishing a draft timetable nine years before the line opens is a good idea. This would build up a whole set of debates, expectations and controversies long before the likely pattern of demand and usage is clear. Was there some particular reason why he was so keen that this work should be done so far in advance of the opening of HS2?

The second point that the Minister replied to earlier was about freight use, but of course it is not envisaged that there will be any freight paths on HS2. Perhaps my noble friend will say why he thinks there should be, because the released capacity on the west coast main line will provide very significant additional freight opportunities, and of course freight trains do not run at the speeds achieved by passenger trains, so they would significantly disrupt the operation of the high-speed service if they operated during the day. Moreover, as the Minister also said earlier, I understand that the custom and practice on most high-speed lines is that maintenance work will be done overnight and it is therefore essential that the lines can be closed for that purpose. So I was not quite sure about some of the points made by my noble friend—why he wants either to set these in stone now, or in the case of freight, to build up expectations that there would be freight services on this line, which is quite unlikely to be the case.

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords, I rise briefly to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and to support what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is trying to say. This is a long and complicated process and however far in advance one talks about timetables, surely there is little point in building something if it will not deliver what one wants at the end of the day. One must look at the end as well as the beginning to make sure that one gets the system right.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, just to be clear, the illustrative timetables have been published already and, indeed, have been a part of the business case. What my noble friend’s amendment refers to is a comprehensive and detailed working timetable, which, as I say, will greatly build up the expectations of those who will benefit and lead to big and controversial campaigns by those who will not. In some areas, particularly with regard to freight trains, I am assuming that they would not feature in any event.

[Lord Framlingham]

I hate to labour the point. I can understand why detailed timetables would not be wanted, but surely identifying possible bottlenecks and flaws well in advance is absolutely essential.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report stage: House of Lords
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Snape]

I bow to my noble friend’s expertise on the geography of this stretch of railway line. I was aware that it was a single track; there was much mocking at the time because it was and it led to the North London line, with the consequential speed restrictions and additional traffic. There was concern that this was not an adequate link, but it is a link nevertheless. I am not blaming the Minister for having the line built—I might blame him for various other decisions he has taken—but perhaps he could tell us whether it is feasible to add signals to this line and give us some connection. Surely the Midlands, the north-west and north-east of England, and perhaps Scotland, deserve better for their taxes than to be told when they arrive in Euston, “Put your bags under your arm and catch the Northern line if you wish to proceed further towards Europe by train”. Surely the Minister and the country can do better than that.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the Secretary of State who started HS2, and as a member of HS2 Ltd. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for missing the beginning of her remarks. I know the whole Committee will want to pay tribute to the Select Committee, which put an astonishing amount of work into the Bill. I cannot think of a more onerous duty that Members of your Lordships’ House take on than being members of hybrid Bill Committees. At the very least they require some kind of parliamentary medal for endurance, which I hope will give them some special form of extended life that ensures they will definitely see the opening of this line all the way through to Manchester and Leeds in 2033. That is the least they deserve.

There are two different issues here and it is important not to mix them up. The first is through trains from Paris to the great cities of the Midlands and the north, which my noble friends Lord Snape and Lord Berkeley rightly said was envisaged in the original scheme for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. The trains were built, but the services were never run. The second is the lamentable connections between Euston and St Pancras. The two issues are separate for this reason: with the best will in the world, the economic case for running through services from Paris and Brussels to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds is very weak indeed.

If I may detain the Committee with a story, when I was Secretary of State I tried to persuade Eurostar to run services to Birmingham once the upgrade of the west coast main line had been completed, which would have made it possible to run a service once that and the High Speed 1 line to St Pancras had been completed. It ought to have been possible to run a service from Paris to Birmingham in three and a half hours, which I thought would have been competitive with the plane and played a very big part in changing the whole mentality of people in respect of high-speed rail and connections with the continent. I simply could not persuade Eurostar to run even one service a day without public subsidy because the traffic projection figures were so low.

If noble Lords stop and think about what has happened on that line, it is not so difficult to fathom. Although HS1 has been a great success in engineering terms and has played a useful part in linking two of Europe’s great cities, it is way off all the projections of traffic between London and the continent. I do not think it is yet even at half the level of the projections of what the traffic should have been. There is still only one service an hour between London and Paris for most of the day. Often those services have quite light loads. The London to Brussels service, which is also about hourly, is often barely half-full. Eurostar told me that there was not enough traffic to fill even one train a day between London and Birmingham and it would do it only if I was prepared to give it a very large subsidy. I had so many other parts of the railway I was seeking to subsidise, including many of the parts that my noble friend Lord Snape has mentioned because the lines in the Midlands and the north require great subsidies to be maintained, that I simply could not justify a public subsidy to do it.

It is important to be frank about this because everybody pays lip service to the benefits of linking HS1 and HS2. On the face of it, it seems absurd that there is not a connection between the two but because the service would be so intermittent—with the best will in the world, only a few trains a day would run on that service—I very much doubt it would be taken up in any big way. While we have cheap airlines that offer very frequent services to Manchester and Birmingham—both are highly successful airports, which are expanding and have significant capacity that they can make available to flights to the continent—it is unlikely that such a line would be viable.

As a footnote, it is always the unexpected in life which changes the course of events, including in transportation. The big unexpected event of HS1 was the massive development of domestic services on the high-speed line—all those Javelin trains—which has made the whole thing much more viable than it would otherwise have been and was not expected on anything like that scale. The other great unexpected gain of HS1, which nobody projected at the time—and who knows what the unexpected gains of HS2 will be?—was the Olympic Games. When the decision was taken to give the Olympics to Stratford, a critical part of the decision was the connectivity that the Javelins provided going out of St Pancras. I am not criticising the decisions to build HS1 or the Channel Tunnel, which were visionary and historic decisions, but unfortunately a link between HS1 and HS2 would be hugely expensive —running into many billions because it would have to be tunnelled. The economic benefit would be limited without massive subsidies. Given the huge costs already in the HS2 scheme, it would be hard to justify those expenses.

My noble friend Lord Snape referred to the plan for a kind of patch-and-mend link between HS1 and HS2 using the North London line. There was a plan for that in the original HS1 scheme, linking to the conventional lines. There was also initially from HS2 Ltd a plan for it in respect of the HS2 line. It has to be said that nobody much liked this. It would have been a very slow connection, weaving its way up to the North London line, across and down, which would have made the line even less competitive with the airlines. When the trains were running, it would have used a lot of capacity on the North London line, which, as noble Lords will know, is now an integral part of the Overground service and a major freight artery. That would have been highly inconvenient. Even that required the building of a substantial single-bore tunnel at a cost of more than £1 billion. The view was taken that rather than expend a large sum of money on a very unsatisfactory patch-and-mend link between the two, which would barely be used in any event, it would be better to wait until some point in the future when our relations with Europe reach a new and glorious period, in which traffic between the major European cities flourishes on a scale never seen before and might then make it economically viable to construct a link between HS1 and HS2.

However, only a tiny fraction of those people who wanted to connect between Euston and St Pancras would have been using direct services to the continent in the first place so the issue of connectivity between Euston and St Pancras, which I think everyone will accept is still highly unsatisfactory, is there in any event. There is a long-term solution: Crossrail 2, which will have a single station serving Euston and King’s Cross St Pancras, and will connect the two underground. That will make it much easier to get to them; it will give big dispersal capacity at Euston when phase 2 of Crossrail is completed in 2033, which is hugely important; and, as I say, it will connect the stations because the entrance at one end will be at Euston and the entrance at the other will be at King’s Cross St Pancras.

Although this degree of work has not yet been done, my assumption with the planning of Crossrail 2 is always that it will be possible to use it also as a pedestrian tunnel with a travelator for getting from Euston to St Pancras. The transport planners are not wildly keen on that idea because it will add to the cost of Crossrail 2 and they want a more limited scheme that has access only for transport users. But it looks patently obvious that if you have a Crossrail 2 station serving the two stations, and you have this underground link, putting in a simple travelator and making it possible for people to connect between the two stations underground must be sensible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I appreciate the sentiments behind what the noble Lord says, and as I have already articulated, the Government did look at connectivity. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, made a very valid point that before you build something, you have to look at the business case and the viability of it. I do not know what the future demand may be for links from other parts of the UK to the continent, and that may well be looked at on a future date. As I have already alluded to, building HS2 opens up doors of opportunity, in terms of the infrastructure connectivity and of course the speed of the link that it provides. I am sure that at some future point those will be looked at again. However, various reports have been conducted. I believe the Higgins report in 2014 advocated abandoning the link between HS1 and HS2, specifically on the issue of costs. That really underlines the Government’s thinking.

Finally, I thank the noble Lord for suggesting that I go from the wilds of Wimbledon up to the Midlands and that perhaps my children would want to go to the continent from Birmingham rather than from London. If I relied on the intention of my two younger boys, we would be chugging along on the Thomas the Tank Engine, which would not provide the kind of high-speed rail link the country desires, but I note what the noble Lord said. As I said, the Government have explored this during the various processes behind the planning of HS2 links, and various reports have been conducted. I have already indicated that the different links that were looked at were deemed not to provide sufficient benefits and not to be viable in terms of cost. I hope that provides, if not total reassurance, at least some answer to the noble Lord’s concern. With that, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Adonis]

I just intervene to correct the record. I did not say there was no market—there clearly is a market, as Birmingham, Manchester, Paris and the other great cities of northern Europe are substantial cities. The problem is that the market at the moment is almost entirely taken up by the cheap airlines, and there is simply no way, unless there is a significant change in the economics of the transport sector—which may happen at some point in future—that you could justify the investment, based on the return from a very limited rail service. A wildly optimistic figure of £600 million has been mentioned, but once you start to tunnel around Euston and St Pancras and build connections with the North London line, you are really looking at many billions. I cannot emphasise enough that the single biggest threat to this project is cost overruns in building the core of it, between cities where there is massive traffic—namely, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and London. It would not be a sensible use of public resources at the moment to add in—on a wing and a prayer, because for sentimental reasons we think it would be nice to have one or two trains a day that start off from Manchester and have “Paris” on the front—the commitment to many billions further of public spending.

My noble friend may be able to make a case for it if something dramatic happens to the cheap airlines. I know that through his other connections he is very close friends with many of the operators of those airlines. If they cease to operate their services between Birmingham and Paris, or between Paris and Manchester, where they are offering seats for £10 or £20—sums which we are not remotely going to be able to offer by high-speed rail—then of course the whole thing may change, and at some stage we may be able to build these services. Meanwhile, this is why connectivity is so important. Provided that you have a good connection between Euston and St Pancras, you will get some passengers who do not want to fly who will connect between the two. What the Minister said about investment in resources to get a better walking connection was very welcome. As I say, at some stage there will need to be a fixed connection, and when that comes, it will also facilitate traffic between HS1 and HS2.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Snape]

I hope the noble Baroness will accept from me that I am not making that accusation. I am saying that I do not quite understand the agreement between my noble friend and her noble friend Lord Bradshaw on this group of amendments, but I am sure that they will explain it. I appreciate that there are genuine and legitimate concerns inherent in their amendments. My objection is to speeches that are meant to sabotage the whole project. We have had these debates on umpteen occasions. My noble friend mentioned the Economic Affairs Committee report, which was torn apart on the Floor of the House. I am not saying that my contribution made any difference, but the approach that was taken was enough for me. If we are going to judge every project on so-called value for money, no project would ever meet the criteria laid down by those who were against that project in the first place. Whatever you did, they would say, “This is not value for money”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, some of the objectors to Brunel’s railway were thought quite credible. They gave evidence to a House of Commons Committee saying that trains passing through Box Tunnel on the Great Western main line at faster than 60 miles an hour would asphyxiate those on board. They were not particularly credible then, although they were listened to, and some of the objections that we have heard to this project are not particularly credible now.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, we have had a wide-ranging Second Reading debate. I sympathise completely with the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and all the communities that are affected. The golden rule of any construction project is that people would rather it happened somewhere else. The golden rule of high-speed rail is that people want the stations but they do not want the line, but the line unfortunately has to go somewhere. Every time that this has been looked at, still more of the line going through the Chilterns has gone into a tunnel to mitigate the impacts on the local community. None the less, the construction work will be a major inconvenience for local communities and I in no way underestimate that fact.

The House and successive Governments have had to address themselves to a particular issue. My noble friend referred to the Government to 2010, in which I led the work. I can tell her that it was absolutely not the case that this was generated as a vanity project. It was generated by looking at the options of further upgrades of the west coast main line. Noble Lords need to understand that the last upgrade of the west coast main line, which was completed in 2009, cost £10 billion —of course, inflation would make that figure much larger now. That was a modest upgrade to provide very limited additional capacity compared with what HS2 will provide. Unfortunately, there is no free lunch. We definitely need upgrades to parts of the Southern network —particularly the London to Brighton line, though if the trains were operating on that line at the moment most of the immediate concerns would be met. Upgrades are needed to most of the commuter lines coming into London. However, we are also going to need significant additional intercity capacity. My noble friend said that this is a line that very few people will use—these are the major conurbations of the country. Almost half the output of the entire country is generated between them by London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. It is simply not conceivable that we will not need very significant additional transport capacity between those conurbations over the next generation. We will clearly not be flying lots of planes between them. We do not want to build new motorways: I know my noble friend will have views on the impact the M40 had on the Chilterns.

The only option is a significant increase in rail capacity and that can only come in one of two ways. It is not the case that this has not been examined; it was looked at exhaustively in the work that I and the subsequent coalition Government did. It can come from radically upgrading the existing lines. Options for this have been looked at, including four-tracking the Chiltern line—the impact of which on the Chilterns would be greater, out of all proportion, than HS2—and significant upgrades to the west coast main line. The sums required to conduct those upgrades would be approaching the levels we would spend on HS2. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, referred to Brunel. The London to Birmingham railway, linking the two major cities of the country, is not even a Victorian project; it is pre-Brunel. It was opened for the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838. There are only four miles of the entire line going to Manchester which are straight, because most of it was built to get around the estates of many Members of your Lordships’ House. Building significant additional capacity on that pre-Victorian railway, including the required resignalling of almost the entire line, the relaying of the junctions for longer trains, and the rebuilding of the stations—starting with Euston, which is operating at twice the capacity for which it was built in the 1960s—are vastly expensive projects.

The question to which Parliament must address itself, and have a consistency of purpose on, is not whether something needs to be done—there would be a massive betrayal of our national economic future, particularly post-Brexit, if we do not have sufficient transport capacity between the major cities and economic centres of the country—but what should be done. Taking a longer-term view of investments will produce a step change in capacity between these major cities, rather than more patch and mend. Producing incremental increases in capacity will not be sufficient, including on commuter lines because the building of high-speed lines releases significant capacity on existing commuter lines.

[Lord Snape]

The noble Lord is making a much better non-Second Reading speech than I did. Does he agree that any upgrade of the existing railway lines could not be done at the same time as running the present intensive service? The short-sighted nature of debates in this House and elsewhere means that alternative routes have long since been closed—since the 1960s—so we would paralyse the west coast main line for a decade or so ahead while not having the benefits of any diversionary routes.

[Lord Adonis]

My noble friend is completely correct. Of the £10 billion spent on the last upgrade of the west coast main line, £1 billion was spent on compensation to train companies for not running services. The easiest way to make money if you are running a train service on the existing rail network is to have major upgrade work taking place, which means you get compensated. You get a huge and reliable source of funds for not running any services at all.

I do not want to go through these big arguments again. I come back to the Chilterns. The villages and settlements my noble friend Lady Mallalieu mentioned would not be the successful, vibrant settlements they are without the Chiltern line itself. It was the construction of the Chiltern line that put life-blood into many of these communities. Two sets of decisions were taken at the end of 2009 in respect of these lines, one of which has been hugely controversial, and will continue to be until it is open, when people will wonder what all the controversy was about, which is the construction of HS2. The other big investment that I authorised, which also took some persuading because there were alternative uses of the money, was a significant sum for the upgrade of the Chiltern line, which I assume my noble friend welcomes. That upgrade now enables services on the Chiltern line to run at 90 miles per hour. As my noble friend mentioned, it provides an economic alternative route to Birmingham, which was not possible before. We have just opened the new services going to Oxford, which will transform the connectivity of that area, including the construction of a great deal of housing.

All this is being made possible by significant investment in a major transport artery, including one that goes through an area of outstanding natural beauty. We cannot have successful communities and a thriving economy unless we have decent connectivity. The Chilterns knows that better than anywhere because it has one of the most successful and fastest-growing railway lines, in traffic terms, in the country in the Chiltern line. It is vital that we do not deprive our great conurbations and all those who depend on them, which are the life-blood of the nation, of the essential benefits of connectivity into the next generation.

What we need to do—huge attention has gone into this—is reconcile those big investments and the big projects with the amelioration necessary for the local communities. Nowhere in the history of the planning of railways has seen greater investment in tunnels to ameliorate the impact on the community than what is taking place in the Chilterns. A huge amount of work is going into ensuring that the impact of the construction work is reduced too, but it is important not to confuse these two essential points. The continuing work that needs to be done, which HS2 Ltd should do and which my noble friend is quite right to continue to press it on, is seeing that the impacts of the construction work on the communities affected are minimised. Equally, we as a Parliament need the resolve to see that we have the essential connectivity between our major conurbations in the next generation, without which our economy would be severely damaged.

[Lord Rosser]

I do not wish to make a Second Reading speech, but I simply say that at Second Reading we indicated our support for the Bill and the project. That is where we stand. Likewise, we accept the point made that that does not prevent amendments being tabled and debated to discuss issues of outstanding concern.

I wish to raise only one point in the context of my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s Amendment 3 referring to routes east of Old Oak Common. Do the Government intend now, in this debate, to address the point made in the Select Committee’s report in paragraph 178, or is their intention not to respond to this issue at this time, but when they produce their formal reply to the report? The issue I refer to is the point about the comprehensive redevelopment of Euston and this comment in the Select Committee’s report:

“The new station which will eventually emerge after so much expenditure of public funds and so much misery endured by Camden residents, ought to be a world-class railway station, and the splitting of its design into two different operations seems unlikely to assist in the achievement of that objective. We earnestly urge the Secretary of State to ensure that funding is provided for the second planning stage to proceed as soon as possible”.

What will the Government’s response be to that, and, indeed, to the views of Camden Council on this issue of ensuring the design and development of Euston as a coherent whole? Will they respond when they reply to Amendment 3, spoken to by my noble friend Lord Berkeley, or does the Minister—I would obviously accept this—wish to indicate that that will be covered in the Government’s response to the Select Committee report when it comes out?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

Maybe I can help. My noble friend at some stage probably came down the Channel Tunnel while we were building it. We had boring machines boring the tunnels, but there were two caverns for crossovers, which were mined using something called the new Austrian tunnelling method, which involves more or less what the noble Viscount said. It is a big digger on tracks with a revolving arm and cutters that stick out. Something then gets the spoil that goes underneath it, then you spray concrete with reinforcing mesh on it and put in in situ or precast concrete later. It is supposed to be a lot cheaper; you do not need a boring machine. My colleagues have looked at the costs and they reckon that there is about £750 million to save. It is a very good scheme.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords—

[Lord Snape]

I am replying to an intervention on my speech. I will of course give way to my noble friend in a moment, but first of all I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Berkeley. He was very clear indeed. I have become an expert now on mined tunnels. I give way to my noble friend now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

I simply wished to make a point to the Minister. My understanding is that it is not correct to say that the Select Committee did not consider this issue of a mined tunnel at length. My understanding is that it spent a very considerable amount of time listening to the arguments. I find it inconceivable, with all the expertise my noble friend Lord Berkeley has been able to give us this afternoon, that we could substitute our judgments in the course of a debate of half an hour, or an hour, or an hour and a half for the huge attention that the Select Committee gave to this over many hours, as I understand it, seeking a very wide range of expertise. If it is the case that the Select Committee considered this and that my noble friend Lady Mallalieu was incorrect in suggesting that it was not considered, I cannot see that there is much point in us continuing this debate in the form that we are.

[Lord Snape]

I am rather sorry I got involved in this whole thing now. I make one plea on behalf of the train passengers, who will pay a substantial amount and a bit more besides as a premium. Part of the pleasure of taking a train journey is looking out of the windows. This obsession with tunnelling everywhere through the Chilterns means we will perhaps be denied the sight of my noble friend galloping across the rolling hills of the Chilterns in pursuit of the uneatable. Surely these are sights that people enjoy when travelling by train. Rather than confine train passengers in tunnels for miles on end, would not the noble Viscount be satisfied with some sort of noise barrier, rather than insisting that train passengers on this proposed high-speed line spend their lives in semi-darkness to avoid my noble friend and her colleagues?

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Astor]

I am not going to get into that debate with the noble Lord, but I think I am right in saying that the purpose of HS2 was not to give travellers better views of the countryside but to get them somewhere more quickly and more efficiently, although I am sure it is an added bonus if they have a better view of the country.

To come to the point, there is a difference of opinion among experts. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, does not like to see any criticism of this project and regards the promoter’s and the department’s experts as necessarily right. I do not know whether they are right. I did not say who was right; I said that during the Select Committee hearings there were a lot of conversations between experts that show there is a difference of opinion, as there have been since its report. All I am saying is there is an opportunity for the Minister and his department to look at this again. That is all I am asking. I am not saying who is right and who is wrong, but that there is an issue. It will not delay the Bill or the process. It is about whether the Minister’s department will look at the evidence and see whether it addressed all the concerns and issues.

[Lord Adonis]

I was not seeking in any way to say that one set of experts should be more highly esteemed than another. I was making the factual point that my understanding, which has been confirmed, was that the Select Committee heard experts on both sides. Indeed, it engaged its own experts because it was not going to take the word of one set of experts against the other. It spent many hours reviewing the case and reached its judgment. I was simply making the point that if that is established as a fact, I cannot see how we would be in any position to substitute our own judgment for theirs.

[Viscount Astor]

The Select Committee came to a conclusion, which may be right or wrong. But its members are not rail experts. I admire its distinguished report, but even they would not say they got everything right on every single issue. What I am saying is that during and since the committee, issues have arisen, and there has been further debate and work done on cost. My request to the Minister was whether his department would look at it without in any way holding up the process. Perhaps my noble friend might give this some thought between now and Report. Would that be possible?

Railways: East Coast Main Line

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, this is certainly not a monopoly situation. Quite a number of companies bid on these franchises across the UK. They all start from a level playing field and we consider them completely impartially. With regard to fares, I note that the new franchise operator proposes a 10% reduction of standard anytime fares on longer distances in May 2015.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister who created the East Coast company, I ask the Minister to join me in congratulating Karen Boswell and her fantastic staff at East Coast on providing a first-class public service since National Express left the public without any service on the east coast line five years ago. Can the Minister also confirm that, at 91%, East Coast has a record customer satisfaction rating for that franchise since its creation, and that the East Coast is also the most popular franchise long-distance operator in the country at present? Would she regard it as a failure if the new private operator did not equal or exceed those performance ratings in a year’s time?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I am absolutely delighted to join in the accolades for the staff at the door—they have done an outstanding job and we have always applauded them for it. As they transfer to the new company, I am sure that they will continue to do an outstanding job. They will be offered new training opportunities and new opportunities to develop professionally, which will be extremely exciting. Therefore I am delighted to congratulate them. I am also delighted that the new franchise offers the kind of investment that we want to see, improving service in so many ways, improving the existing rolling stock and bringing on new rolling stock, additional seats and new services—all those kinds of things. We absolutely need improvements in ticketing as well, which is important because of the many people who use the east coast line.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

86A: Before Clause 17, insert the following new Clause—
“National Infrastructure Commission
There shall be an independent National Infrastructure Commission.”

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank Sir John Armitt for his excellent work in leading the independent review for the Labour Party on long-term infrastructure planning. I also thank Robbie Owen of Pinsent Masons for his invaluable work in preparing a draft national infrastructure Bill since the publication of the report. We have been consulting on the draft Bill and have received a positive response from across the infrastructure sectors. The draft Bill runs to 26 pages. Rather than propose all 26 pages as amendments, the House will be grateful that I have purposefully kept this proposed new clause concise and to the point. However, if the Minister tells us that he is prepared to accept the principle of an independent infrastructure commission, we would be delighted to discuss the provisions of the draft Bill with him with a view to subsequent legislation on a cross-party basis.

The case for an independent infrastructure commission is clear. The UK has historically, over many decades, underinvested in key infrastructure, which is why the World Economic Forum ranks the UK 27th for the overall quality of infrastructure in its 2014-15 Global Competitiveness Report. Our long-term infrastructure planning is weak. There is far too much stop-start decision-making and investment, and forging a political consensus in key areas such as airports and energy has proved notoriously difficult. The role of an independent commission would emphatically be not to replace Government, Parliament and the democratic process, but to inform and strengthen them. Under the Armitt plan, an independent national infrastructure commission would carry out an evidence-based assessment of the country’s infrastructure needs over a span of 25 to 30 years, focusing on nationally significant infrastructure —as defined by the Planning Act 2008—and consulting relevant stakeholders. The key economic infrastructure sectors—energy, transport, water, waste and tele- communications—would be considered in parallel, allowing the interdependence between sectors to be thoroughly examined. Projections of economic growth, population and technological change would inform this cross-sector approach. Environmental issues and obligations would be respected and recommendations made by the commission would need to be consistent with achieving the UK’s long-term climate change targets. The result of the commission’s considerations would be a national infrastructure assessment submitted to the Chancellor, who would have a statutory duty to bring it before Parliament within six months, accompanied by any amendments that the Government might propose. We anticipate that the first assessment would be produced within three years of the establishment of the commission.

The national infrastructure assessment would therefore come forward with the Government’s full authority. Ministers would not be bound by the independent commission but changes made by the Government to the commission’s assessment would be clear and transparent and subject to full public and parliamentary debate. The plan would be fully updated every 10 years but it would be open to the Government or a new Government to seek earlier reconsideration, again on an open and transparent basis. The assessment would be debated and voted upon in both Houses. If approved, there would then be a 12-month period in which individual government departments would be required to produce sector infrastructure plans outlining the specific schemes and projects that the Government would promote to meet the needs identified in the assessment. Proposed sources of funding, timeframes for project implementation and preferred delivery vehicles will be required in the plans in order to provide real delivery momentum, credibility and confidence for investors.

Before a vote on each sector plan in Parliament, the commission would provide a statement commenting on the consistency of the Government’s proposals with identified infrastructure needs, highlighting areas where departmental sector plans fell short, which together with the 12-month deadline for producing the plans would act as a significant new discipline for Government to get on with implementation and delivery. Together these sector plans would form a national infrastructure plan for the UK—not a wish list like the current national infrastructure plan, but a statement of priority national projects with key milestones, delivery targets and vehicles and sources of funding set out in each case.

We have shown in recent years that we can deliver on major national infrastructure. The Olympics were delivered on time and on budget and the Crossrail project continues to progress well. Financial institutions are generally keen to invest in British infrastructure so long as risk and return are well balanced, but in key areas decisions have not been timely and investment has been poorly planned, inefficient and inadequate. To take just transport, the history of the railway system and airports in the south-east of England over the past 50 years is a running commentary on the failure of long-term strategic planning. There is a real danger that energy, water and flood prevention infrastructure could soon become so. The problem clearly lies with the quality and timeliness of planning and political decision-making as much as with the delivery. The current Davies commission on airports is a kind of mini-infrastructure commission, set up precisely because of the failure to resolve airport capacity issues in south-east England over the past 15 years under both this and the last Labour Government. We are proposing a similar approach applied more broadly.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord for his amendment, which allows us to outline again the Government’s position on national infrastructure. I must admit that when he started talking about the Armitt review, I was concerned for a moment, as I was settling down, as to whether the word was Armitt or Ahmad. That threw me a bit—but we are clear which report we are talking about here.

We believe that the national infrastructure plan already delivers unparalleled levels of investment. The Government recognise—and the noble Lord acknowledged this—that infrastructure projects have been delivered on time and on budget. He referred to the Olympics. It is noteworthy that the person responsible for delivering the Olympics on time and on budget is the current Minister for Infrastructure in our Government, my noble friend Lord Deighton. I believe that all noble Lords will agree that he has great expertise in this area.

Of course the Government recognise the importance of the long term in looking at infrastructure investment. Investing in infrastructure is a central part of the Government’s long-term economic plan to build a stronger and more competitive economy. For this reason, the Government have introduced the national infrastructure plan, which has brought together our approach to investing in energy, transport, telecoms, water and waste networks into one place. This has brought a step change in delivering UK infrastructure. We are introducing an ambitious new energy strategy to incentivise additional electricity capacity for the UK and support low-carbon electricity generation. In road and rail networks, we are seeing new investment at rates not known for several decades. Our plan provides sound justification for infrastructure projects that have secured buy-in from a broad range of stakeholders.

We have set out long-term capital settlements to align with the national infrastructure plan. These commitments have led to new investment out to 2021, in sectors such as roads and flood defences, and long-term funding plans for projects such as High Speed 2. This has all helped to ensure stability and continuity of infrastructure investment in the decades to come.

I turn to the issue of the independent infrastructure body. The Government disagree with this amendment and have reservations about introducing an independent body without a clear understanding of the impacts of the change. Failure to understand this would create greater uncertainty and risk the successful delivery of UK infrastructure. We believe that resourcing requirements to support a commission have not been fully established or costed. Establishing a new authority for infrastructure would involve significant complexities and would distract from the business of providing the infrastructure that the country needs now and in the future.

It is essential that the Government focus on delivery. The central issue is to ensure that the UK has a robust plan to address the challenges facing our networks in the future. The Government have developed a strategy to meet current and future demand through the renewal of existing infrastructure and to grow a global economy with modern infrastructure networks. In doing this, we have sought to address climate change and energy security. This investment is vital for future economic growth. However, it is not clear how introducing a national infrastructure commission would address these pressing issues.

The Government already have a strong track record in major infrastructure delivery. While a national infrastructure commission is an untested and, as yet, unproven idea, the Government take delivering infrastructure extremely seriously. The latest infrastructure pipeline shows that £383 billion of investment is planned for infrastructure networks over the course of the next Parliament and beyond. The noble Lord mentioned specific transport projects. We have had 45 major road and local transport projects since 2010, and the start of construction on flagship projects, such as Northern Hub and the Mersey Gateway Bridge, as well as substantive progress on Crossrail, provides good examples. In addition, more than £45 million has been invested in electricity generation networks between 2010 and 2013 and contracts have already been signed under the electricity market reform, with a further allocation currently under way. The UK is rated as the most energy-secure country in the EU and is fourth in the world.

I believe that we are in a good place when it comes to infrastructure and investment in infrastructure for the current, medium and long term. With the reassurances I have provided, I hope that the noble Lord is minded to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response. He offers me a tantalising prospect that, if we were to rename the Armitt report the Ahmad report, then he might be prepared to accept the amendment. I offer him that potential deal across the Dispatch Box, though Sir John Armitt might want some hybrid name attached to the report in consequence.

I am disappointed by the response of the noble Lord. In many other areas, such as fiscal and competition policy, we have independent bodies which advise Ministers. Looking at the history of this country over the last two generations, it is clear that we have had serious problems in the planning of our national infrastructure. This is not just in bringing objective evidence to bear on the debate, but in the establishment of cross-party consensus in areas of high priority. We believe that a commission of this kind could significantly contribute to the process.

The area I know well—transport—is a testimony to the problems of failure to address long-term infrastructure planning on an independent and consensual basis. Airports policy has been a yo-yo since the 1960s. There has been stop-start on Maplin, then at Heathrow, and it has taken 15 years to make decisions about increased airport capacity in the south-east of England. Electrification of the railways has been delayed for the best part of a generation because of the lack of any long-term plan. The noble Lord mentioned HS2 and I am glad that a cross-party consensus has been reached on it. However, it was only five years ago—a generation after most of continental Europe and large parts of Asia started to develop high-speed rail networks—that we even started to consider the potential for high-speed rail in this country because there was no medium and long-term planning.

The Minister mentioned roads and the roads programme. As many noble Lords with major road developments in their areas know, this is a classic case of stop-go. Every time there is a downturn, there is a massive slashing of projects, only for them to have to be revived again a few years later at significant additional expense because there is no agreed medium-term plan. In 2010, when the present Government came in, there were huge reductions in the roads programme for strategic roads, which have since had to be partly reinstated. A system of national infrastructure planning of the kind that we propose could only strengthen the bringing to bear of objective evidence, strengthen cross- party consensus and give a louder voice to capital spending and infrastructure projects within the government machine itself.

The noble Lord referred to the resourcing requirements of the commissioners, but they would of course be a fraction of the cost of the projects themselves and there are already significant staff who develop infrastructure in individual departments. This would enable them to be pulled together to operate more effectively with some clear central direction.

It is only a matter of time before a commission of this kind is established. As I said, in so many other areas of critical policy, the bringing to bear of expert advice reporting to Ministers and Parliament to provide a basis on which decisions can be taken has been a course that has been followed. I believe it will be followed in due course in the case of infrastructure. I would therefore like to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

86B: Before Clause 17, insert the following new Clause—
“National infrastructure projects: new towns
(1) The objects of a development corporation established for the purpose of creating a new town shall be to secure the physical laying out of infrastructure and the long-term sustainable development of the new town.
(2) In this section, “sustainable development” means managing the use, development and protection of land and natural resources in a way which enables people and communities to provide for their legitimate social, economic and cultural wellbeing while sustaining the potential of future generations to meet their own needs.
(3) In achieving sustainable development, development corporations should—
(a) positively identify suitable land for development in line with the economic, social and environmental objectives so as to improve the quality of life, wellbeing and health of people and the community;(b) contribute to the sustainable economic development of the town;(c) contribute to the cultural and artistic development of the town;(d) protect and enhance the natural and historic environment;(e) contribute to mitigation and adaptation of climate change consistent with the objectives of the Climate Change Act 2008;(f) promote high quality and inclusive design;(g) ensure that decision-making is open, transparent, participative and accountable; and(h) ensure that assets are managed in the long-term interest of the community.(4) In this section “infrastructure” includes—
(a) water, electricity, gas, telecommunications, sewerage and other services;(b) roads, railways and other transport facilities;(c) retail and other business facilities;(d) health, educational, employment and training facilities;(e) social, religious, recreational and cultural facilities;(f) green infrastructure and ecosystems;(g) cremation and burial facilities; and(h) community facilities not falling within paragraphs (a) to (f); and“land” is defined as including all the matters set out in the definition of “land” in Schedule 1 to the Interpretation Act 1978, and also housing including (where the context permits) any yard, garden, outhouses and appurtenances belonging to, or usually enjoyed with, the building or part of building concerned.”

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the building of new towns and major urban extensions is a critical national issue in the face of Britain’s acute housing shortage. The designation of Ebbsfleet as a new town and the recent Wolfson Prize competition for a new town scheme demonstrates the enthusiasm and capacity that there is for developing the concept in modern conditions. All three of the major parties in the House are committed to new town or garden city developments, and I take these to mean the same thing, given the importance of green and sustainable development as part of any new town or urban extension.

This amendment intends to capture the spirit of the post-war rebuilding of the country that was spurred on by the original New Towns Act 1946, creating places that today are part of the fabric of our country, such as Milton Keynes, Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City. However, although previous new town legislation provided powers to deliver new towns, the towns that were built did not always conform to the highest design and quality standards. The objectives set out in this amendment update the existing legislation in the New Towns Act 1981—which has barely been used—to ensure protection for the natural and historic environments, to require high-quality and inclusive design and to contribute towards a low-carbon future. The aim is that no part of a new town will be eligible for the Carbuncle Cup, an annual award from Building Design magazine for the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months.

Developing places in which people love to live is a topic gathering increasing attention as we look to substantial new settlements. The winner of this year’s Wolfson Prize, David Rudlin, proposes a six-point “social contract” for the development of garden cities. The participative decision-making proposed in this amendment is reflected in Mr Rudlin’s winning entry, which proposes that existing towns and cities should be able to bid for new garden city status to build substantial high-quality and sustainable urban extensions. This includes not only high quality standards, but the requirements that new garden cities include major institutions of learning; that they be well connected by public transport and cycleways; and that for every acre of land developed, another will be given back to the city as accessible public space, including forests, lakes and country parks.

When my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton raised in Committee this issue of promoting sustainable and liveable communities in new towns, the government response was odd. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said it was “absolutely essential” that good-quality design and the other key elements of the amendment—open decision-making, cultural and artistic development, and enhancement of the natural and historic environment—be built into new town development, but the Government were worried that to say so explicitly in statute would be “unhelpful”. But how can it be unhelpful to specify things that are so essential but are not in fact contained in the New Towns Act 1981? If they are not specified, that could lead to what David Rudlin calls “mere dormitory suburbs”.

When the Government say it is unhelpful to specify essential features of new towns, I believe they are confusing being concise with being brief. Being concise shows an excellent grasp of the issue, while being brief can demonstrate a lack of understanding of an issue. This amendment clearly and concisely prescribes the factors that development corporations should consider to achieve sustainable development, from environmental considerations to economic ones. The amendment is therefore helpful, not unhelpful. If the Government are to object on the grounds of brevity, I ask them: which factors set out in the amendment do they think should not always be considered when building sustainable new communities? I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, I will be brief. The two amendments—the one we have just voted on and the one just moved by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—are starred amendments. It is treating this House with contempt to raise two serious issues at the very last moment for consideration in today’s business. I am not in the least surprised that in the previous debate only the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Ahmad spoke. No one had a chance to consider what it was about and take advice. Now we have another one.

This is an important issue. As a former Environment Secretary, I dealt with planning matters, and have lived near some of the post-war new towns. I will not weary the House by repeating what I said in Committee about the appalling mistakes made, for instance in Harlow, which turned out to be a byword for the misery of large numbers of citizens who moved from the city centres out to a town that was full of lakes, parks and everything but failed to have any sense of community at all—certainly for decades. I do not in any way underestimate the need for substantial improvements in the system, and I like to think that in recent developments there have been considerable improvements; we have not had a repetition of those experiences.

However, these are important matters and one has to ask oneself: why did the noble Lord leave it until only yesterday to table this amendment and asking my noble friend to give a considered view of the matters that he raises in it? I say again: it is treating this House with contempt.

[Lord Adonis]

I should point out to the noble Lord that this amendment was tabled and debated in Committee.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Why leave it until the last moment on Report? Why did he not put it down it a week or 10 days ago, when most of the other amendments were tabled, so that people would have a chance to look at it and consult? That is my complaint. I have great respect for the noble Lord’s ability, but sometimes he gives the impression that he walks on water.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his intervention and the noble Lord for his amendment. I feel somewhat spiritually awakened by my noble friend’s final comment about walking on water. I hope I can provide clarity on why the Government are not in a position to accept the amendment at this time.

I shall start with our common ground. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that creating well designed, sustainable communities should be at the heart of any new development. In Amendment 86B, tabled by the noble Lord, two main objectives are proposed for a development corporation to be established for the purpose of creating a new town and for the physical laying-out of infrastructure and long-term sustainable development of the new town.

However, I do not think that prescribing the objects of a new town development corporation in detail would help to achieve that objective in a way that allowed for sufficient flexibility locally. There is much to be said for the simplicity of the current objective of new town development corporations, as indeed set out in statute: to secure the laying out and development of the new town.

The amendment proposes that sustainable development should be included in the objects of new town development corporations. Let me emphasise that the Government strongly support the principle of sustainable development. Indeed, that principle is central to the document National Planning Policy Framework, which provides a clear view of what sustainable development means in practice. We believe that creating an additional statutory definition of sustainable development could serve to reduce that very clarity.

I note that no new town development corporations have been created since 1970. However, I am clear that any future new town development corporations, as well as urban development corporations, such as the one the Government are proposing to establish at Ebbsfleet, should have a strong focus on securing sustainable development in a way that reflects local circumstances and needs. I look forward to Her Majesty’s Opposition supporting the creation of the new town at Ebbsfleet, as we seek to establish it in another Bill.

I hope that the clarity I have provided, with brevity, gives the noble Lord sufficient comfort to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for putting on record the Government’s commitment to sustainable development and high-quality design, which is of key importance.

If I may, I shall respond further to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. The amendments were tabled on Monday, which was the day before yesterday, so there was certainly time for noble Lords to engage fully with the issues—and, indeed, for the noble Lord to have read the Armitt report, which was published some months ago. It is not a recent document, by any means.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I am sorry—

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

They say, “Once a Whip, always a Whip”. We are on Report, and no other interventions would be appropriate.

[Lord Adonis]

I was very willing to give way to the noble Lord, because I did mention him. I think that I had a right of reply to his points, given that he said there had been almost no notice of these amendments.

Amendment 86B was tabled by my noble friend Lord McKenzie in Committee—it is exactly the same amendment. The reason we regard it as so important that the law takes account of the issues specified in the amendment, that sustainable development should,

“contribute to the cultural and artistic development of the town … protect and enhance the natural and historic environment … promote high quality and inclusive design … ensure that decision-making is open, transparent, participative and accountable … and ensure that assets are managed in the long-term interest of the community”,

and so on, is precisely because of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, raised: our last experience of developing new towns in this country was not wholly happy. There have been many very positive elements to the new towns and most of them now function extremely well. However, in some cases the quality of the initial design was not high enough. The Minister said that no new town development corporations have been set up since 1970, but we are just about to begin the process of developing new towns and major urban extensions again. The Government have named Ebbsfleet as the first. It is very likely that others will follow, given the need at least to double the rate of national housebuilding. Therefore, it seems to us, and probably to most people in the House, that having a proper set of criteria for the development of new towns is timely. If it cannot be done in this Bill—and we do not intend to press this amendment today—it should be done before we embark on the next new era of garden city development. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 86B withdrawn.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, I ask the Minister to consider what will happen if the bids received under the franchise competition actually give less money—or are worth less to the taxpayer—than the present east coast trains. If the bids are lower than that being achieved by the present operator, that really does sound like the economics of the madhouse. Those who are bidding have the sword of Damocles hanging over them, because open access operators are allowed access to the track at a much lower price than the franchised operator. It appears that the open access operators are massing for an attack on the east coast line.

Lastly, I recommend to the Minister an article in Passenger Transport, a rather specialist magazine. There is a good two-page article about customer service and its effect on staff morale and how the present franchising system does not allow operators to go strong on customer service. If they do so, they risk losing the next bid because customer service, among other things, cannot be put into a financial evaluation.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord agree that it is the height of nonsense to allow the state operators of France, the Netherlands and Germany to bid for franchises in this country, but not the existing public operator of the east coast line?

[Lord Bradshaw]

It amazes me that we as a country permit so many foreigners to run our water industry, our gas industry and our electricity industry. They are vital basic services and I think it is rather foolish to leave them in the hands of foreign operators. We have seen what has happened with prices for water, for example, which have gone through the roof. I am sure that in the public sector, such increases would not have been allowed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Baroness has to address the fundamental issue: why will she not allow a public operator even to bid against the private sector?

[Baroness Kramer]

I will address that point. However, I want to set the context for the discussion because sometimes there is a great deal of confusion around it.

[Baroness Kramer]

I am sorry but, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, will know, these things will be built into the charges. Of course, the addition of new equipment completely changes the profile as it has to be paid for and that money comes from only two places—the fare box or the taxpayer. As I say, that completely changes the profile and I think that many noble Lords will be aware of that reality.

As regards franchising, I agree that the demands we are placing on franchisees to upgrade equipment are far more significant than has been the case in the past. I think the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said that customer service was not rolled into the franchise. I can tell him that it is now and that a significant number of issues concern customer service. We are building on that because the customer absolutely has to be at the centre of the railway industry. It is true that this has not been done historically and that franchises have been engineering-driven, but that is changing dramatically. The noble Lord will start to see the impact of that coming through with the new franchises.

We are also undertaking a complete technical upgrade as we move from an early 20th century railway to a fully 21st century railway. A digital electronic railway will make huge demands on franchise providers in all kinds of ways. This is a very exciting time. There was a question about British companies’ engagement in the railway. We have some of the most innovative companies now—I speak regularly to the supply chains—who are engaged in this cutting-edge research and cutting-edge supply, which will completely change the nature of the trains running on the track. We are coming much closer to engaging with aerospace technology and other areas. Do not think of the railways as an old, staid industry any more. It is a driving, cutting-edge industry, and that change has to come through for us to meet passengers’ demands. I could go on a great deal longer, but I will come back, because you can tell I am an enthusiast about getting these changes driven all the way through.

One of the questions is, “Why don’t we set up a company and let it bid against the others?”. Let us think about that process. If we are to have any other bidders, they have to know that there is a level playing field and that absolutely no advantage is given to the public bidder. This point was, I think, raised earlier. You may be able to set up enough Chinese walls for us to say that we believe this is being done with integrity, but we would have to convince every other bidder. Think about how the railways are financed. That makes it extremely difficult. Would we be providing government-sourced money to our own public company? Obviously, the private companies go out into the capital markets. Or would it be going out into the capital markets and therefore, in a sense, be as far distant from us as virtually any company that we already describe as being a franchisee?

We would have to be absolutely certain that our assumptions on profit, tax, cost and capital in no way advantaged the public body, or we would lose every other bidder on every bid. If we go back and think carefully about what we would have to set up, we would have to set up the company in order to do this. The salaries alone would, I think, be eye-watering.

[Lord Adonis]

I hate to point this out to the noble Baroness, but the company already exists. It is called East Coast.

[Baroness Kramer]

That company, as the noble Lord probably knows, will presumably be TUPE-ed—or not TUPE-ed, because it is a share sale. Essentially, that company will be absorbed into whatever is the new bidder on the east coast. Also, we have people running the company who can run it under its current circumstances. But take a look, if you are putting together a bidding group. The noble Lord will know how expensive it is to put together an effective bid team, particularly with those kinds of salaries. Let us, however, not just look at the salaries for putting together the kind of senior management you would need for an effective bid team, which are probably way beyond anything that we would consider paying. If we did, however, each bid would be a minimum of—what?—£10 million. That is probably about right for each individual bid. Fourteen franchises would be £140 million, without even the assurance of winning a single franchise. I simply point out that there are a lot of complexities in this matter that are not reasonably obvious. We had a system that was broken, we had two bids that did not work and we brought in a company that restored it. We are now going out with an effective franchise and we expect a very good bid. Two of the bidders are essentially British and one is not; we have a wide range.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that it seems that there is still a romance with the old British Rail, without recognising many of its underlying problems and the limited advantages that could be available under another scenario.

There is one other issue that is often raised. It is said that if we ran one company, we would have a comparator against which to look at the others. That takes us back my original point, which is that every franchise is so different that you cannot carry over from one into the other. If you doubt me on that, look at the pattern of bidders: specific companies that feel they can specialise in the needs of particular franchises bid on those. We do not find every bidder coming in on every franchise. They pick and choose the areas where they have particular knowledge and skills that apply to that franchise. Franchises are not generic and should not be viewed that way, so the comparators essentially do not work.

Railways: High Speed 3

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

I fully understand the interest of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, in connectivity. We consider it to be vital. All the options for the route for phase 2 of HS2 are now being studied, including exactly how stations will work. Connectivity has been built into that discussion with intensive engagement with local authorities and various other stakeholders in the area.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the train currently called the TransPennine Express is one of the worst offenders against the Trade Descriptions Act in modern Britain? Can she tell us why the Government still do not have a firm plan to get HS2 to the north, let alone HS3? The current HS2 hybrid Bill stops at Birmingham and the Government still have not even confirmed the route for HS2 north of Birmingham to Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, let alone the legislation. When do the Government expect to introduce legislation to take HS2 north of Birmingham? Will this be before or after work starts on HS3?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I am sorry to hear the cynicism from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, because he has heard the commitment from this side of the House many times. We are moving ahead at a pace with determining the route for HS2. However, we are doing it with very intense engagement with local communities, including connectivity, because it is vital. If the noble Lord goes and talks with the many mayors of the great cities of the north, he will discover the intensity of that discussion and engagement. He will also understand that they recognise that we should have the route narrowed down, I hope, by the end of this year and will be moving forward with legislation. There is no question about the timetable. If anything, Sir David Higgins is looking to get into the north earlier.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for explaining the Bill so clearly and lucidly. On this side of the House, I am delighted to be supported on the Front Bench by my noble friend Lord Davies, who will lead in Committee, and by my noble friends Lady Worthington and Lord McKenzie of Luton.

As the Minister recognised in her opening remarks, we face big infrastructure challenges on transport, on energy and on housing in particular. Although the Bill contains some useful provisions, the position, I suggest to the House, is that we have the big infrastructure needs of the country on the one hand, and this Bill on the other. They are like ships passing in the night, except that the Bill is perhaps more like a dinghy than a ship: it is no match for the high seas and, indeed, parts of it do not even exist. We still do not have the clauses related to fracking, and consultations on that issue and important issues relating to the Land Registry and community electricity are still incomplete—some have not even commenced.

The noble Baroness said, if I noted it down correctly, that this legislation is “still being developed”. If I may say so, that is one of the most remarkable statements I have heard from a Minister while introducing a Bill, which the House would expect to be fully developed at the point of introduction. Instead, we have a major heading, “Fracking”, and a long spiel from the noble Baroness about how this will be vital for the future energy needs of the country, but the following pages are blank. With respect, that is no way to treat Parliament or your Lordships. In the vernacular, the Government are legislating on the hoof—or perhaps I should say on the future hoof, as we do not even know what hoof they are going to be legislating on hereafter.

Still on the big picture, the World Economic Forum recognises infrastructure as one of the 12 pillars of global competitiveness. However, continued weak infrastructure investment has seen Britain’s global rank significantly slip. We are now ranked 28th for the overall quality of infrastructure, compared to 19th in 2006-07, and we are significantly behind our European neighbours, including France, Germany and Spain, with the US far ahead.

That is not to say that there have not been improvements: there have, particularly in rail infrastructure, but there have not been enough. The essential challenge is not to make largely tinkering changes to the law but for the Government to take some big decisions—which the current law does nothing to prevent—on building the new power stations, runways, bridges, roads and, above all, houses that are needed so urgently by the country.

However, we have to scrutinise the Bill before us, so I turn to its main provisions. Part 1 and Schedules 1 to 3 make provision for the appointment of strategic highways companies to manage strategic roads in England, in place of the Highways Agency. The strategic road network represents only 2% of the English road network, yet it carries more than a third of car and van traffic and more than 65% of heavy vehicle traffic so obviously it needs to be well managed. We support giving greater operational freedom to front-line managers but the question is: will the management be better under the proposed company or companies than under the existing Highways Agency? I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could give us some indication of how the very large figure that she mentioned in her speech— £2.6 billion of savings—is actually going to be made up.

The Highways Agency already operates at arm’s length from Ministers. It currently lets its maintenance and construction contracts to the private sector so it is unclear what efficiency gains are being projected in that respect. Its sources of finance depend almost entirely on the state because we have few tolls and fees and no road pricing, and this will continue to be the case under these companies as privatisation has been ruled out—unless of course the noble Baroness wishes to say that there may be future plans for tolls or road pricing. I take it that there are not. In that case, the sources of finance will remain as they are now, which raises the issue of how greater income generation or efficiency will be secured. There are no obvious improvements in the way in which the national and local road networks interact, which is an issue of genuine concern. The key issue is greater certainty over medium-term and long-term funding but there is no need to create a new company to give greater certainty over future funding. The Government could simply announce a detailed five-year settlement for strategic roads in any event.

The noble Baroness’s mention of stop/start was almost as remarkable a statement as, “This legislation is still being developed”. The reason there has been stop/start over the past four years is that the Government stopped and then they started again. They did not have to do that. They could have announced and stuck to a longer-term funding plan, and it is entirely within their prerogative to do so. However, if the simple act of setting up this company constrains the ability of Governments to stop and start in respect of roads investment, it will none the less be worth while. But until we see the detailed five-year settlement for 2015-20 we are not in a position to judge.

On the proposed company, I have four points to make. First, the unhappy experience with the Ministry of Defence government company in the Defence Reform Bill suggests that the success of this model depends on the clarity of the process for selecting the company, the quality of information provided to the company, the scope of services the company is being asked to provide, and how its performance will be measured. Simply setting up a company is no panacea.

Secondly, on the roads investment strategy, the proposal for ring-fencing funding for investment in the roads and a requirement to respond to a high-level output specification in the same way as Network Rail is, as I have said, a good idea in principle, but the legal architecture around it is vague. Where Network Rail is concerned, there is a well trodden process of settlement with the Office of Rail Regulation under the Railways Act regime. There is nothing that comes close to this in respect of roads. It seems to be the Government simply announcing a five-year road settlement. Will the Minister say more about how the settlement will be set in relation to the high-level output specification? Will there be some independent judgment as to whether the resources are sufficient to deliver the high-level output specification? Can she say when we will see the high-level output specification?

Thirdly, on the provisions regarding the Office of Rail Regulation, the proposal is that the ORR’s remit can be stretched to scrutinise the efficiency of the highways companies as well. But the ORR is obviously not sufficiently equipped or experienced to do this at the moment and we need to know how it is rapidly going to become so.

Fourthly, on accountability, Graham Dalton, the chief executive of the Highways Agency, says that these reforms will enable the Highways Agency to “set its own destiny”. That sounds very liberating but what if that destiny, decision by decision, arouses controversy and opposition, as in many cases it will, in respect of road schemes? At the moment, as I know from, to coin a phrase, the scars on my back—the noble Baroness probably has some as well—it is Ministers who mediate when there are controversial issues relating to road schemes, often at quite a detailed level. Stone curlews and their relocation to make it possible to dual the A11 to Norwich is etched on my mind as taking many hours of discussions in my office, and no doubt the noble Baroness can give equivalent examples. At the moment it is Ministers who mediate, and many MPs and Members of your Lordships’ House will, when it comes to controversial issues relating to road schemes and upgrades, want that to continue to be the case.

Under the Bill, there is to be a Passengers’ Council, which is a reform of the existing quango Passenger Focus, but it is hard to see how it will have the credibility and clout that Ministers currently exercise. Furthermore, as I understand it, the Passengers’ Council will be mandated only to promote and protect the interests of users of highways for which the highways company or companies are responsible. The Passengers’ Council will not represent the interests of communities along the road or the natural environment. That is a very important point. Who will represent their interests and take account of them? I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could clarify those issues. There is a lot for us to debate further about the new structure of the Highways Agency.

Moving to other issues, on invasive non-native species, there will be a lot for us to scrutinise in species control orders, the protection of animal welfare and the proposed powers of entry. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has a great deal to say about all that, but obviously we support a proper control regime to effect eradication or control of invasive non-native species where they pose threats to biodiversity, the water environment, economic prosperity or health and welfare.

Turning to planning and land, on major infrastructure projects and the Planning Act, Clause 18 provides that examinations of projects may be conducted by panels of two inspectors. The noble Baroness said that there are large potential savings from that, but as it is to be the lead examiner who decides in cases of disagreement, does that not make the second examiner distinctly second-class? Is that not precisely why it is odd numbers of inspectors—one, three or five—who are appointed at present?

On land, the Bill proposes that the Secretary of State can transfer public land directly to the Homes and Communities Agency and the agency can then dispose of it to developers. We see benefits in having a less bureaucratic, expedited regime for land transfer, but accountability and reasonableness will be important. It is not clear how they are to be provided under the new regime. In particular, is it correct that there will be no need in any circumstances to go through local planning application processes before land is transferred in that way? Is it also the case that the proposed change may allow public rights of way to be extinguished? As the Minister said, concerns have been raised in respect of protected environments and public amenities; for example, the status of forests and land for recreational use. That is a vital issue. I noted what the noble Baroness said about that in her speech. I hope that her assurances are watertight. Otherwise we may need to propose exemptions at a later stage to safeguard vital public interests.

Clauses 23 and 24 on the Land Registry, transferring local land charges from local authorities to the Chief Land Registrar and extending the powers of the Chief Land Registrar raise a whole host of issues, particularly if the Land Registry is to be privatised, as leaked documents suggest. My noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton will have a lot more to say about that in his speech. Perhaps the noble Baroness can enlighten us as to why a company that returns £100 million a year to the Treasury and is thought to be doing a good job needs to be sold off.

Clauses 19 and 20 propose to simplify the process of making changes to development consent orders and the discharge of conditions attached to planning applications. The Government say that that is due to concerns about delays with planning authorities discharging planning conditions, but obviously there will be concern that that will simply allow developers to ignore planning requirements. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could tell us what evidence there is to support the notion that it is local planning authorities which are delaying the discharge of conditions at the moment. In her reply or in writing, perhaps she might tell us how many decisions regarding the discharge of planning conditions have been delayed and therefore merit this legislation. Is there any evidence to suggest that it is other statutory consultees who are holding up the process and, as this is all related to housebuilding, can she say what impact this will actually have on the level of housebuilding?

On fracking, we do not have the provisions at the moment, as I said, but the Government have put it up in lights. If the intention is to put shale gas production in line with the coal industry, water and sewerage, all of which have access to underground land, then we welcome this in principle. I endorse the potential gains that the noble Baroness mentioned as being well worth securing if it is possible to develop shale gas in this way. But communities need to be reassured about impacts on the environment, including methane levels, contamination of the water table and seismic shifts.

However, the big and immediate issue on energy, whatever the potential long-term gains from fracking, is the need for new power stations. According to a recent survey by the CBI and KPMG, two-thirds of British companies fear that UK infrastructure will deteriorate over the next five years and their most critical concern is about energy. Britain’s supply of electricity is dangerously close to demand. The safety margin of capacity has been shrinking and now stands well below the 20% necessary to ensure against shocks. Thanks to its antiquity and the demands of environmental legislation, roughly one-fifth of existing generating capacity will drop out of the system over the next decade.

As I said in the debate on the Address a fortnight ago, plans for delivering new gas and nuclear power stations are well behind the curve. Ministers talk about a dozen new nuclear power plants but only two are yet proceeding. As for gas, because of a lack of clarity and confidence in the Government’s capacity mechanism for encouraging new supply, we are facing a situation where existing gas stations may be mothballed with little appetite for new plants. On renewables, to repeat what is becoming a truism, there are two Governments at the moment: DECC, under Ed Davey, is in favour while DCLG, under Eric Pickles, repeatedly turns down applications for extra wind capacity. On all this, the Bill is irrelevant. There is already an Energy Act and what we need now are concrete proposals and consents and viable funding arrangements.

It is the same issue regarding a large part of the transport infrastructure that is required. Where are the plans? It is great that Crossrail 2 and HS2 are proceeding but where are the plans for new airport capacity in the south-east of England? All we have is a commission, which is not due to report for at least another year, because for the entirety of this Parliament the Government have not been able even to form a view, let alone take a decision. I am told that later this year, for the first time in 350 years, Britain will no longer have the world’s largest port or airport. That accolade will pass, symbolically, to Dubai.

It is the same situation year after year with there being no plan in respect of the new lower Thames crossing—vital infrastructure to relieve the Dartford crossing, the most congested short stretch on the entire Highways Agency network. I published three options for the new lower Thames crossing five years ago. Since then, three options have been reduced to two but there still has not been a government decision in respect of those two. It does not need a Highways Agency company to build the new lower Thames crossing; it just needs a Government and a Minister who can take a decision and see it through. The new crossing would be entirely paid for by tolls, so there is no public expenditure implication at all.

Above all, the Bill barely scratches the surface of the UK’s chronic shortage of housing. The rate of housebuilding is lower than at any time since the 1920s. Less than half the 250,000 new homes a year required are being built nationally and less than a third of the 60,000 required in London. There are estimated to be 150,000 unemployed construction workers, costing the economy up to £2.1 billion a year in unemployment benefits and lost tax revenue. Yet this situation has been getting worse, with 40,000 jobs lost in the construction industry last year. On current projections based on the low rates of housebuilding, employment in construction will still be 11% below its 2008 peak in 2018.

This is an infrastructure problem with huge social consequences. Rapid house price inflation, driven by shortage of supply, is pricing many out of home ownership, with average house prices nationally close to seven times the average income. With home ownership becoming increasingly elusive, many are turning to the private rented sector where the housing stock is often of poor quality and unable to keep up with demand. Almost one in seven people in the UK now rent, including 1.3 million families with children. One-third of these properties fail to meet the decent home standards, and the number of homeless households has risen to more than 50,000 a year. On almost all of this the Bill is silent, yet this is the biggest infrastructure issue that we face as a country.

As for the Government’s national infrastructure plan, I simply note that at the most recent count 355 projects and programmes—that is, 55% of the total of 646 that are in the pipeline—were not under construction or even part of an active programme of investment. So we face big infrastructure challenges. According to the Civil Engineering Contractors Association, a lack of investment in infrastructure is costing the UK around £78 billion a year in lost output. Our total infrastructure stock as a proportion of GDP is less than India, the US, China, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa and Poland. In March 2012 the Prime Minister said:

“I want to set out a vision for this country’s infrastructure in the 21st century; what we need, how we can pay for it and some specific steps that we are going to take”.

We still need that vision today.

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[Baroness Kramer]

I hope that my noble friend will encourage him to read my comments.

Moving on to more substantive issues, we had actually very little discussion of shale gas. My noble friend Lord Teverson spoke about geothermal extraction. I think that is rather positive. There is clearly an appetite in this House to ensure that this is a successful project. I know that many people are waiting for the detail, and that is exactly right. I would encourage anyone with an interest in this area to look at the consultation that is under way until 15 August because they may wish to participate in it as well as use it to inform themselves of what may happen, since the Government will not be making their final decisions until that consultation is complete and its implications are understood. We do not want to prejudge.

My noble friend Lord Teverson asked for more information on geothermal. I suspect that he knows this area far better than I do, but I remind him that geothermal power projects are eligible for support through the renewables obligation, and that under the contracts for difference the department has set a final strike price for geothermal power of £145 per megawatt hour until 2016-17 and £140 per megawatt hour thereafter. Indeed, there are a lot of measures to exploit geothermal, of which I think everyone recognises the potential.

In the same vein, my noble friend Lord Purvis mentioned the Wood review. We recognise that the oil and gas industry in the UK is of national importance and will be a vital part of the energy mix. While investment levels in the UK continental shelf are rising and near-term prospects are strong, there are new challenges for exploration and production. The environment is, frankly, very different from the circumstances when production peaked approximately 15 years ago. We will be responding very shortly to the Wood review. Details of how this will be carried forward will be available in Committee—I think my noble friend might have thought it would be later but it will be in Committee.

On zero-carbon homes, my noble friend Lord Teverson constantly reminds us that as well as talking about the supply side for energy we must focus on the demand side. This part of the Bill is absolutely critical in this area, and we will see those clauses before the Summer Recess. We recognise, as I suspect all noble Lords did in their speeches, that making all homes zero-carbon “on site” is sometimes not physically feasible or cost-effective for housebuilders. There are technical limits. Of course, we will be exploring the whole issue of allowable solutions. My noble friend Lord Teverson said he was concerned that we were focusing on potential exemptions for small sites, but we must recognise that small housebuilders face a very different economic framework from that faced by the big housebuilders, lacking economies of scale. But it is an important industry throughout the UK and we rely on it heavily for housebuilding in this country, and we must always keep in mind that the industry needs to be successful.

On roads reform, there was a very wide range of questions. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lord Bradshaw—and there may have been others—talked about the importance of ensuring that reforms to the Highways Agency were seen within the context of spending on local authority roads, particularly the maintenance of those roads. It is obviously a very important point. Your Lordships will know that the Government are investing more than £6 billion in this Parliament—£12 billion in the next—on highways maintenance for strategic and local roads, enough to resurface 80% of the national road network and fill 19 million potholes a year on local roads. I also want to make it clear that there are benefits from that integration between the strategic highways network and local roads that come from our proposals for changes to the Highways Agency. The licence agreement for the reformed Highways Agency will include a duty to co-operate that will foster and improve partnership working with local authorities.

The new company will be a traffic authority and have the same legal responsibilities to ensure that traffic runs smoothly on its own network and the local network. These changes will strengthen the interplay between local authorities and the Highways Agency.

[Lord Adonis]

The Minister just referred to the “new company”. Many noble Lords in the debate asked whether we are talking about a company or companies because the Bill says “companies”. Do I take it from what the Minister just said that it is the Government’s intention to set up just one highways company?

[Baroness Kramer]

Yes, it is the Government’s intention to set up just one company. It is standard template language in legislation, I understand, to create the option of further entities. It has no sinister meaning at all behind it. The intention is for a single company, but of course the lawyers always think about what-ifs in the most extraordinary way. I guess we did not really kick back against that but, yes, it is one company.

A number of your Lordships seemed to think that we might be looking at privatisation. Indeed, I was not sure whether or not the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was proposing that, but we are certainly not proposing it on this side. This will be a company with a single shareholder, the Secretary of State. Any change to that would require primary legislation, so there is no backdoor mechanism.

[Lord Adonis]

For the record, my Lords, I was not.

[Baroness Kramer]

A number of other noble Lords asked whether the body would go out and seek private finance. It could do so only with the authority and approval of the Secretary of State, so it is no different from the current situation of the Highways Agency. The Government do not anticipate that that is what it will do. Quite frankly, borrowing through government costs significantly less, and this is an on-books entity. That is not something that this is meant to facilitate, if that is helpful.

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[Baroness Kramer]

The monitoring will indeed be there. That is crucial because of the way in which the SHC is being constructed.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, asked: where on earth do you get those savings from? It is covered in detail in the impact assessment and business case published by DfT on 6 June. It is important to understand that certainty of funding, which will come out of the road investment strategy, combined with the arm’s-length relationship, gives us a structure which is similar enough to the structure which has worked effectively in the rail industry. For example, the Government have committed £24 billion to road investment until 2021. Far more detail on all of this will come out of the road investment strategy.

The road investment strategy is set up in such a way that once established, if a future Secretary of State wants to change it, he or she obviously could—we cannot bind a future Parliament—but it would have to be done transparently, publicly and with consultation. Such pressures are an inhibitor which provides enough satisfaction to the industry to understand that it can look with reasonable certainty over the long term for the funding to be available. That leads to efficiency. We expect the SHC to approach asset management in a different way because it has such clear strategy and certainty of funding. It will also be set up as a company, with the roles that companies have, with its directors and chief executive. The sole shareholder will be the Secretary of State. I think that it will achieve its purpose. One could go over the top and try to reinforce that, but the question is: is that sufficient for the purpose to be achieved? If it is, that is the point at which we should stop.

Yes, the SHC will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so there should be no concern on the issue. I have addressed the issue of multiple companies. My noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer mentioned—I am told that I have only two minutes left. Is that seriously true? If I have only two minutes left, I shall do one thing which is terribly important. I switch completely to address the issue that has been floating through the media and mentioned today: concern that land transfers could affect the Forestry Commission and the national parks. I addressed that issue briefly at the very beginning of my speech. I am looking hard to find the comments; if anyone can hand them to me I will love them for ever.

[Lord Adonis]

While the noble Baroness wrestles with her papers, I invite her to respond to another big concern raised in the debate, which is that there were discussions in government about privatising the Land Registry. Are there are indeed such discussions?

[Baroness Kramer]

I can tell the noble Lord only that there will be no such clauses in this Bill. I can provide that absolute clarity.

[Lord Adonis]

Are there any discussions about privatisation of the Land Registry at a later date?

[Baroness Kramer]

There will be a response to the consultation, but it is not the intention of the Government to provide for that in the Bill or, as far as I know, in any future legislation.