Channel Tunnel Security Regime

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 30th July 2014 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have plans to set up an independent review of the Channel Tunnel security regime to consider whether it is proportionate and appropriate to current threats and risks.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to have this debate on Channel Tunnel security. I make no apology for it. Although subjects such as the threats and other security issues should probably be confidential, the issues of implementation, proportionality and others that I shall speak about can benefit from some debate. As background, I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group and I worked on the development and construction of the Channel Tunnel. It opened 20 years with airline-type security arrangements, which at the time was probably the only model around. Now is the appropriate time to review this, because new operators and services want to start but are often held up because of security, immigration or technical issues. All these need discussing, but I shall concentrate today on security.

I welcome the fact that the UK and French Governments recognise the need to formalise the security arrangements so that all operators know what to expect. I was pleased to attend a meeting in Paris two weeks ago to discuss this idea with the two Governments’ representatives, who were about to publish something called a declaration of intent. It is useful that they are consulting the industry but they are not really looking at change. They are seeking views on whether they should carry on with the same thing they have done for 20 years and although they talk about proportionality and necessity, they do not always get there.

For background, the traffic through the tunnel comprises: Eurotunnel’s own shuttle services for cars, lorries and coaches; rail freight, with two operators at present; and through passenger trains by Eurostar, with planned services by the London Sleeper Company and German Railways. The two Governments state in their presentation of this declaration of intent that security measures must be practical, proportionate, effective and sustainable. I would agree with them on that but when you get into the detail, it is not what is happening at the moment and I do not think that it is what they intend to happen in future. They are rightly seeking to protect the infrastructure of the tunnel and the people using it but seem to be ignoring proportionality as well as the commercial reality for operators which, faced with very high costs, often decide that they are not going to try to run services at all—because they are just not viable with these costs.

The declaration of intent discussed various threats, and I shall concentrate on two—bombings and what they are pleased to call “marauding active shooters”, meaning people with guns. Some of these affect infrastructure, some people, and some both. I suggest that the level of checks between the different modes of transport through the tunnel, and compared with other rail tunnels, is very inconsistent and certainly not proportionate.

Regarding damage to the infrastructure, when I was helping to build the Channel Tunnel we worked out that it would need a 40-tonne bomb to make a hole big enough to get the sea in. You cannot carry that in a suitcase. If that is what they are trying to protect, there is no point in checking every suitcase because you are not going to catch that bomb. That kind of a bomb would have to go in a lorry shuttle or a freight train. So it is odd that only one in three lorries are checked before they get in the tunnel, whereas freight trains at the moment have 100% checks twice—that is, six times more checking than lorries get. What is the justification for the difference? I think we should be told. We then move on to people—or small bombs and shooters, as they call them. Why are 100% checks done on all the passengers and luggage on Eurostar, when one car in five is given a cursory check on the shuttle? Do we really believe that Eurostar passengers are more likely to have a shoot-out than those on a car shuttle?

I would look at proportionality even more closely in comparing the Channel Tunnel with the trains on the Métro and Underground. We were told in Paris that there was a big difference between trying to shoot one coach full of Eurostar passengers and one coach full of shuttle passengers. That seems pathetic to me; it is the same nasty result. But when you compare it with the Underground or the Métro, when was the last shooting on either of those? There was a shooting incident on the Paris Métro on 20 July, when the police chased somebody. In the UK, there was that very nasty incident when the Metropolitan policemen shot a Brazilian in the Tube. We have not had any in the Channel Tunnel. We could be told that that is because of security, but should we really accept that? The logical consequence is that everyone on the Underground should be checked 100%. Of course, we are told that it is not practicable to do it on the Métro, because it would stop people using it, but that it does not affect passengers much on the Channel Tunnel so we will do it anyway. That is the problem: it does affect passengers and the economy of the businesses. I have not had an answer as to why passengers in the car shuttles should be treated differently from Eurostar passengers. If you carry a gun in a car shuttle, presumably you will not be checked.

The key for me is the viability of the longer distance services, with German Railways coming from Frankfurt—I have talked to them often—as well as the Eurostar from Amsterdam and Marseille. The London Sleeper Company is planning to go to Frankfurt, Zurich or Milan overnight, with a high-speed, double-deck sleeper. However, you cannot introduce those security regimes for people coming back into the UK at every one of the stations that the trains might stop at. The solution adopted so far is that when you are going out to Marseille or Amsterdam, or wherever, you get checked at London and that is no problem. But coming back in, at the moment, the only solution is for everyone to get out of the train at Lille or Brussels. They hump their suitcases upstairs through security and board another train one and a half hours later. All that time is lost in their journey, which results in many more people booking tickets going out than coming back, but that is not the answer. For rail freight, additional stopping at + for a second check probably costs well over £1,000. That is disproportionate.

The worst thing is that this regime requires even catering trolleys on the train to be within a secure environment. But there is no secure environment for catering trolleys on First Great Western trains going through the Severn tunnel. They still go through a tunnel. I am sure that all operators look after these things but why do we have to have this enormous bureaucracy of checks? Is it proportionate? It is having serious and adverse effects on the provision of new and existing services, on the costs to the operator and on the hassle factor for passengers.

In commercially damaging the operators, we are cutting ourselves off from the kind of high-speed rail travel that is seamless across the rest of Europe. Governments, and this Government in particular, like high-speed rail—except, apparently, when they try to make it as inconvenient and difficult as possible through the tunnel. The bureaucracy is stopping competition and is anti-competitive. I hope that the Government will recognise that this is all a bit embarrassing for them. A sustainable expansion to the international rail market is not being supported. This raises questions about whether the precautions are proportionate and what can be done in the future. What new ideas are there?

The Channel Tunnel apparently is seen by the Government as of high value for terrorists. They cite loss of life and the economic damage that the tunnel closure would cause, as well as the PR value. But one must remember that the Channel Tunnel has been closed, either in part or fully, several times since it opened—not for terrorism but because of fires, breakdowns and so on. The sea will not come in, although there may be damage to the infrastructure from the kinds of bombs and things that we are talking about. But it would not be closed for more than a few days—not even for that long, I hope—which is the kind of thing that would happen if the Victoria line was closed.

In preparing for this debate, I talked to many experts in the industry. Their worries concern why the Government are engaging with them for new ideas as to what needs to be done and how. The general feeling is that the threat posed by terrorists to the infrastructure and rolling stock in the tunnel is much overstated. Therefore, it is reasonable to ask fairly basic questions. Are the current security measures really necessary and proportionate? Is it necessary for a regime to be as secure as it is? It is not in the long Swiss tunnels, some of which are even longer. Can the security measures, if needed for international rail, be achieved in a different way? There are many ways of doing it. Does the present regime provide a real-world security benefit? While agreeing that the regime needs to ensure passenger safety and the integrity of the tunnel, many in the industry believe that it has parts which are superfluous. There is a lack of critical assessment on the security regime from the industry, which questions its motives—so do I, as I hope that it is not jobs for the boys—and the impact on growth and on alternative proposals.

While the present declaration of intent is a good start, its vision is much too narrow. It does not involve the operators to any real extent; it just tells them what is to happen. It does not provide any justification for applying different rules, compared with metros, the Underground, Channel Tunnel shuttles and through services, or look separately at the threat to infrastructure and people. It does not really seek to justify its requirement; it just pays this lip service to proportionality to provide some justification for what it wants to do anyway.

The key must be to involve the industry in a meaningful way. You can hide behind the need for confidentiality; I said at the beginning of my speech that of course this is necessary for intelligence information. There is also a need for that to be assessed independently to avoid the criticism of creating policies for job creation. However, when it comes to dealing with the threats in different ways, the involvement of the industry is surely critical. The current regime adds costs and therefore makes the UK less competitive. This applies to passengers and freight traffic. It stops better high-speed connections for London and beyond and makes rail less competitive with road and air, which contravenes both government and EU policies.

In conclusion, I urge the UK Government, along with the French Government, to set up a joint independent inquiry into Channel Tunnel security to answer the questions that I have posed and assess the need for proportionality and the options for change, so that the UK economy is no longer adversely affected by unnecessary controls and costs. It should be independent of the current structure and involve operators, customers and others in its deliberations. Finally, it is worth reminding the French Government that the tunnel is very important for the UK economy—it is very much less important for the French economy—and that any issues to do with competition, anti-competitive practices or rules for the sake of reducing traffic should be avoided.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Popat]

I will certainly be happy to write to the noble Lord on a number of his concerns, including, in the light of the police commissioner’s comment, what the Government are doing about fingerprinting. We should take that seriously, although it is an issue for the Home Office rather than for the Department for Transport. I will ask officials to take this matter to the Home Office, which will give an appropriate response.

HS2 is an exciting project for the whole Government and the whole country. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred to freight traffic tracks and I will address that. Freight traffic is an expanding business and we want to make sure that we have the right capacity to help to have increased freight traffic.

[Lord Berkeley]

I thank the Minister for his comments. Perhaps he would also write to me in response to some of my questions. He compared an incident in the tunnel with an incident on the London Underground, as well as the fear of passengers in the tunnel compared with the fear of those on the Underground. The Channel Tunnel Safety Authority is looking at evacuation from the Channel Tunnel into a separate service area. When considering people in the deep Tube having to get out one by one and climbing down into a dark tunnel and onto the track with four rails, I suggest the Channel Tunnel is a great deal safer than the Underground. I do not think that that is an argument for saying that there should be a different regime. Perhaps the Minister will write to me on that.

[Lord Popat]

Certainly, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. We cannot compare the Channel Tunnel with the Underground, other than that they both take passengers. Where the security threat level is raised, the security response can be increased. With the number of people using the Underground, it is very difficult to set the security standard that is necessary. Current security measures for the Channel Tunnel are considered to be proper and proportionate, so the Government see no need to have an independent review. Having said that, I certainly will take the noble Lord’s questions into account and will give an appropriate response.