Queen’s Speech

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also welcome the Queen’s Speech with its interesting number of transport-related Bills. The Minister spoke about the need for investment in infrastructure and about the northern powerhouse, which several other noble Lords have mentioned. He is absolutely right. However, as my noble friend Lady Jones said, there is still a terrible mismatch between spend per unit of population in the south-east and that in the northern powerhouse—I think it is about 10:1.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, challenged the Opposition to say where the money would come from. I can offer two suggestions that may interest Ministers. The first is to cut the specification of HS2, without stopping it or building longer tunnels, or anything else that the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, might have wanted. I think that £10 billion could be saved with no additional provisions, just by reducing the specification. You do not need to go 400 kilometres per hour to save 20 minutes in getting to Birmingham, to then have to walk for 20 minutes from the new Birmingham station to the old one. A lot of money could be saved there.

Another interesting suggestion is to save money by cancelling the Thames tideway tunnel. I am sure Ministers will say that that is impossible. However, the capital cost is about £4.2 billion and the London Infrastructure Plan 2050 quotes Professor Colin Green, professor of water economics at Middlesex University, as saying that if you implemented the integrated water resource management as an alternative you could save £36 billion—and yes, I have got the figure right. That sounds rather a lot, but of course it is over 30 years. Quite a lot of savings could be made there, and maybe that will help redress the balance and bring a little common sense to these big projects.

I turn now from large to smaller projects and the buses Bill. I am not going to go into it in detail now because we will have plenty of opportunity for that. There are some very interesting and welcome governance arrangements in the Bill, particularly for franchising, which are very similar to passenger rail. A local agency, a council or a not-for-profit organisation specifies the timetable, fares and other customer needs and puts it out to tender, awards contracts and monitors performance. They can run alongside open access or commercial services, just like on the railways. Of course, they are all designed to provide an environmentally friendly, economically available and affordable service. I think we could say that that is a sort of powerhouse for all, particularly in the north.

However, I live in Cornwall, which is—I am very grateful—included in the franchise option. Change is needed—the bus services are pretty bad and integration with the trains is sometimes bad—but it does not always happen. There is one place, even further away, that is completely left out: the Isles of Scilly. My partner lives in the Isles of Scilly, so I go there quite often. It does not appear that anything is happening there to move the economy forward. There is of course great tourism, but the transport is pretty awful. The income values are as low as in Cornwall, which receives money from the EU structural fund, as we know, and things will get worse if we follow the line of all the Tory MPs in Cornwall who, with one voice, want to leave the EU. Most of the money for Cornwall and the Scilly Isles comes from the EU. However, that is an aside. In Scilly, there are no council-specified transport projects and no specification on price, timetable, quality or frequency—it does not exist. There is no ferry in the winter. Air services are often disrupted by fog and sometime the islands are cut off for days, with over 2,000 people living there. The charges are also shooting up. Last week, a single journey on the ferry cost £55 and was £82 by air. If you want to take your partner and a couple of kids—the family—there and back it does not half cost a lot of money. Freight costs are 40% higher and the dear old “Scillonian” is 40 years old. It is probably the oldest passenger ferry in Europe unless there are a few limping around the Greek islands that are a little older, but we do not want that. The real challenge for me is that there is one monopoly supplier that, sadly, ignores complaints large and small and fails to engage.

I welcomed what was in the Bill for buses and thought that maybe there could be an amendment to include ferries. I am not sure that the Minister would like that and it would probably not be appropriate. But could one have a kind of franchise for a community-led service specifying quality, fares, frequency, services and affordability rather like what has been done in the Scottish islands, because tourists are honestly put off by the charges. That is the solution. The current monopoly supplier will not consider any outside interference in services, new craft or support or even an interest in a winter service. There is no evidence of a replacement for the “Scillonian”, and it is unlikely unless the fares go up even more. Unfortunately, as happens in so many small islands, there is an unwillingness to speak out so it is something that needs to be considered.

I do not expect the Minister to respond tonight. Perhaps he would like to write to me—I expect he has a few letters to write. Something along the lines of the bus franchising Bill would be a real shot in the arm for the Isles of Scilly. We have gone beyond the stage when Ministers can say that there is a viable service operating at the moment. It may be viable for the shareholders, but not for the people of the Scillies and their visitors.