Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

69A: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Report: access to the EGNOSWithin three months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a report setting out— (a) plans to improve regulatory capability for Instrument Flight Procedures including UK access to the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), and(b) a timeline for switching on the EGNOS in the UK by the end of 2026.”

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for this manuscript amendment; something went wrong with the Public Bill Office. I shall be very brief at this time of night. I just want to emphasise that we have been talking about general aviation for much of the day. There have been some really useful comments from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, my noble friend Lord Barber and the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and some good answers from the Minister, for which I am very grateful. However, general aviation still needs one thing that has not been mentioned so far: the global navigation satellite system, which enables people to train and do whatever they need to do in places of bad visibility.

My reason for tabling this amendment was that I received, at the end of last week, an interesting paper from the Royal Aeronautical Society called GNSS Services Supporting Civil Aviation in the UK. It is eight pages long—noble Lords will be glad that I am not going to read it all out. It gives the history of the GNSS from when we left Europe, and therefore left EGNOS, to where we are now.

Basically, it says that since then the Cabinet Office and a lot of other departments have been looking at alternative systems to EGNOS, one of which was Inmarsat, which I have visited. The House of Commons Select Committee took evidence on the UK space strategy and UK satellite infrastructure. It said:

“We urge the government to publish a National PNT Strategy and set out what ground and space-based components will be used”.


Nothing much seems to have happened, and the conclusion of this paper is that we have lost 15 years’ development by not going ahead with EGNOS.

EGNOS is still there. I am told that it can be reinstated very cheaply—somewhere between £30 million and £40 million—whereas the alternative, according to this paper, could be somewhere between seven and 10 years away. We really need this for training pilots and other people involved in navigating when the visibility is bad. It is not just for people having joy rides; it is for business, passengers and training, so why not do it? That is why I put this amendment down, in the unlikely hope that my noble friend the Minister will say yes. I hope it gives food for thought and I shall send him this paper so that he can study it in more detail. I beg to move.

[Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, co-signed by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. We have had discussions on this over the last couple of years.

When I was a member of the European Parliament, I was a rapporteur on GNSS—global navigation satellite systems. That was key when we were looking at how we were covering airspace and airports, et cetera. Switching off EGNOS when we left the European Union affected somewhere in the region of 27 airfields around the United Kingdom, including areas such as the Highlands and Islands, and the Scilly Isles, not just where fixed-wing aircraft go but where helicopters fly in. Therefore, it has reduced the landing limits—for landing and take-off—and the operational aspect, not just for passengers but when they are taking in goods or freight. It is an extremely important issue.

Under the last Government and this one, we have not got very far on this. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that we need to seriously look at this and reintroduce something like EGNOS, because it is important for the United Kingdom. To have done this and then just left it has not been helpful at all. I certainly support what the noble Lord said and I hope that the Minister will seriously look at this again, because we need to reinstate this system.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for this amendment. The Government are actively reviewing the case for access to the European geostationary navigation overlay service, or EGNOS. This includes engagement with organisations that have been affected by the loss of the service, as well as those who could benefit from it in the future. I noted in Committee the importance of the service to connectivity; for example, for outlying islands and throughout all seasons of the year.

The output of the current work is expected later this year, but any move to rejoin EGNOS would in any case require agreement with the European Union. It would not be appropriate to pre-empt that review by accepting this amendment. For these reasons, I am unable to accept it. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw it.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for that short debate and for my noble friend’s response. I did not expect anything else, but he will get a copy of this paper and I hope—indeed, I am sure—that he will be true to his word and follow it through and that we will have one or two more debates on it in the future.

Amendment 69A withdrawn.

Railways Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and hear his comments about, in particular, training on the railways, which, incidentally, has been, I think, modernised dramatically by HS2. But that is a separate issue.

I shall say a few words today questioning the point of this Bill. That may seem a bit dramatic, but I have been working on the railways for nearly 50 years, since I was building the Channel Tunnel, and I have noticed that the railway has effectively been controlled by the Government for at least 20 years, as many noble Lords have said, on timetabling, charges, ticketing, investment in the track and the rolling stock for many trains. They may have said that it is in the private sector, but in fact it is controlled behind the scenes in many instances, so I wonder whether we should be talking about ownership or control. We have control at the moment, and listening to many noble Lords speaking this evening, it occurred to me that most of the changes that they quite rightly recommend could be done without primary legislation.

I spent several decades, if not more, working in the rail freight industry, in the European industry more lately and in ALLRAIL, which is an association of companies across Europe which believe in open access and competition in passenger services. I suppose I can claim some small input into the European Commission bringing liberalisation to the continent after it was seen by me in those days, and I still think it is, as an important element here. We were telling our friends on the continent, “Why don't you follow the Brits?”. Now it is the other way round, but we will see how that goes.

I do not know why the Government are trying to go the opposite way. In my book, in many instances, they are trying to stifle competition. Many noble Lords have talked about competition. It is an important issue, so I have questions for the Minister, and many more, I expect. Is GBR going to save money by bringing efficiencies beyond what we have at the moment, all effectively government controlled? Many noble Lords have said what is wrong with the railway, but it is already government controlled.

Will GBR bring an increase in passenger numbers and freight volumes? I know the Minister says it will, but where is the evidence? On many routes, open access operators have delivered significant passenger growth. It does not happen on all lines, where the operators have tried, failed and stopped because there was not enough revenue. I got the impression that part of the content of the Bill is to prevent open access passenger and freight operators and make life as difficult as possible.

The Bill appears to me to be an attempt by the Government to implement what is, frankly, a dogma of nationalisation without looking at the alternatives. There are many alternatives, such as open access with a proper regulator. We have a good regulator at the moment, but he is going to have his hands tied behind his back if we are not careful in the Bill. He is not able to regulate access to the tracks, because he cannot decide who gets the next access to the tracks or whether it is passenger or freight because that is done by GBR, which is also going to be the operator of the trains. It seems to me that, if we are not careful—obviously, we need to dig into this a bit more in later stages of this Bill—the extent of the monopoly being created by GBR should probably be referred to the CMA. But I suspect that is not for today.

There is also a lot of criticism about Network Rail—or not, since many of the comments made by noble Lords refer to Network Rail rather than any of the train operators. Will the Minister say what evidence there is that Network Rail’s performance will improve? Last week’s report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on Network Rail’s performance on the Northern Powerhouse Rail project is hardly reassuring. Northern Powerhouse Rail is a much smaller version of HS2, which we have talked about ad nauseam. It is a very important project, and my noble friend the Minister has spoken about it in your Lordships’ House on many occasions. The PAC is

“not confident the Department for Transport … has learned all the lessons from past failures”

in its management of other rail projects. It carries on to say that there are clear risks that the full programme and its benefits cannot be delivered within the £45 billion funding cap. HS2 was a disaster, and we are all hoping that Northern Powerhouse Rail will be done properly, but the PAC’s conclusions are worrying.

Another couple of issues are the charging and compensation scheme in the Bill, which seems to suggest that operators, and therefore passengers, are not compensated for delays outside their control, which might be weather or whatever. They are compensated at the moment. Is that a good thing to change? We can debate that.

So we have a lot of work to do to talk about the future of the competition issues and the Rail Regulator. The concluding aim must be that GBR should act fairly and non-discriminatorily. Network access should remain impartial and independently challengeable—and I mean independently. Capacity should not be reserved indefinitely for unspecified future GBR services. Charging should be neutral and predictable. Existing rights should be protected. Public money should be subject to genuine value-for-money tests. We have a lot to debate, but I hope that my noble friend will be able to convince your Lordships’ House that the Bill is necessary and that most of the issues raised by noble Lords cannot be addressed without legislation.

HS2 Ltd: Consultants

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how much HS2 Limited paid consultants in the last year; and on which aspects of the project they worked.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, HS2 Ltd spent £77.8 million on consultancy in 2025-2026. This targeted advice was used to support the fundamental reset and its scope and cost. This is a significant undertaking in terms of complexity, pace and scale, and could not all be done in-house. Under new leadership, HS2 Ltd is being transformed into a simplified, more cost-effective company, with more than 300 back-office roles already removed and an absolute focus on delivery.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I express my condolences to the family of the train driver who died in the accident last Friday, and, of course, to the relatives of those who were injured. I am not going to say any more, because that is for another day.

I am grateful to my noble friend for his Answer, but my figure for how much the Government have spent on consultants is £22 million, with a further £18 million to £19 million over the next 12 months. I have to ask my noble friend, what are they doing for their money? They are on a cost-plus contract, and the design has long since been since been finalised. What are they getting for their money apart from wasting taxpayers’ money?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I should say from this Dispatch Box that the Government, too, are immensely saddened by the events in Bedford last Friday. Our sympathies are wholly with the relatives of the deceased driver and all those affected by the accident. The Secretary of State for Transport will be making a Statement later in the other place.

In respect of the spend on consultants, the spend in the 2025-26 financial year is for a fundamentally different purpose than any money previously spent on consultancy for HS2. The company was not in control of the contracts it had let or of what work had been done. The effort to find out what work had been done for the money that has been spent—roughly two-thirds of the original budget has been spent and only one-third of the work has been done—is testimony to the way in which the project was managed. Getting control of it means finding out what was done, and that is what this money has been spent on.

Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th June 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

65B: After Clause 6, insert the following new Clause—
“Air ambulance operations: regulations(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the purpose of supporting the operation of air ambulance services in civil aviation.(2) Regulations under this section may, in particular, make provision about—(a) access to airport and aerodrome facilities;(b) access to airspace and air navigation services;(c) the treatment of air ambulance operations in aviation planning and operational decisions.(3) Before making regulations under this section, the Secretary of State must consult the CAA, air ambulance operators, airport operators and such other persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.(4) Regulations under this section are to be made by statutory instrument.(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would allow the Secretary of State to make regulations supporting the operation of air ambulance services in civil aviation.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to these amendments today. Before speaking to the individual amendments, I would like to reflect on how great it has been to hear so many comments about general aviation, which tends to get left out on occasions. All my amendments in this group apply primarily to general aviation.

Amendment 65B is designed to give encouragement and support to the air ambulance team, which does an enormous amount of good work not only in places such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly but all over the country—and not just over the sea.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, this grouping covers resilience, infrastructure and connectivity. I begin by addressing my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s Amendment 65B. I listened carefully to the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, on this subject. The Government support the life-saving work of air ambulances and the department, alongside the Civil Aviation Authority, regularly engages with air ambulance charities to understand their unique needs. Air ambulances already operate under a special regime from the Civil Aviation Authority that allows them privileged access to airspace and ensures that they can land wherever they need to in order to carry out their life-saving work. If my noble friend or the operators have any concerns about how this is working, the Minister for Aviation in the other place would be more than happy to hear them and deal with them. I hope that reassures my noble friend that his amendment is not needed.

On my noble friend’s Amendment 65B, the Government recognise the importance of satellite navigation services to support operations in all weather conditions. As my noble friend notes from his observation of the Answer to a Written Question in the other place, the Government are actively reviewing the viability of these services, including our access to the European geostationary navigation overlay service, or EGNOS, and the output from that is expected later this year, as he said. I will not pre-empt that review by accepting this amendment. I have not personally spoken to Elon Musk on this, or indeed any other subject, but I am sure that the Government are considering the full range of possibilities to do what EGNOS delivered in the past. I hope my noble friend understands that I cannot pre-empt the outcome of that review.

Finally, I thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley for his amendment relating to an airfield advisory team. The CAA carries out extensive engagement with aerodrome operators and values the insights and feedback that they provide, which play an important part in informing policy development in this area. At present, there is no clearly established rationale for creating a statutory panel for this group of stakeholders, particularly when similar arrangements are not in place for other stakeholder groups. Introducing such a panel could risk creating an imbalance by conferring a status on one group over others. But, having noted the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Harper, I will take the issue away and inquire further about this team and the reasons for its disbandment. I hope that my noble friend will not press his amendment.

I should add clarity to my comments in Committee on Tuesday, to which my noble friend referred. I said this in my speech:

“Requiring training would not be appropriate for all airfields”.—[Official Report, 16/6/26; col. GC 114.]


I then gave some different reasons, which my noble friend quoted, for why training might not be possible at some airports. It was certainly not intended to suggest that no airfields would be suitable for training, as that would be unacceptable. I hope that that makes things clear.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his answers, which I shall read carefully. I still think that it would be useful if we could have a quick meeting with him before the next stage, particularly to be told a bit more about what is happening on EGNOS and whether Mr Musk’s alternative is a sensible one. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 65B withdrawn.

Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I start with an apology. I could not be here for Second Reading because I was gale-bound on the Isles of Scilly due to the failure of the air services. Therefore, it seems an appropriate time to look at the whole subject of general aviation, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, to see what can be done. I have been lobbying hard for improved navigation and improved services to the Isles of Scilly, where I live most of the time, for about 10 years; I shall come to that in later amendments. It is 10 years since we left Europe with Brexit and cancelled our membership of EGNOS, which I shall come to later.

It is important that general aviation is included in the Bill, and I support much of what the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Moylan, have said. I am not sure about the European Union amendment, but we will come on to that later. It is worth reminding ourselves that the long title of this Bill says that it is to:

“Make provision for the protection of purchasers and users of air transport and airport services”,


and it then mentions

“air traffic and air navigation services”,

all of which are part of general aviation, just as much as they are part of the rest of the aviation world. It is right to have something at the start of the Bill which demonstrates that this is an important subject which needs full consideration.

Much of what is in the Bill is really good, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, all the issues relating to general aviation need discussing, such as training, access to small airfields—on the islands or different parts of the country—and how things compare with what has been going on in Europe. I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and certainly part of the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and look forward to discussing these issues more in subsequent amendments.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest, as set out in the register, as non-executive chair of RVL Aviation. I strongly support the purpose clause which my noble friend Lord Moylan has set out because I think most of the discussion on the other amendments will look at passengers by talking about airlines and concentrating on the experience of passengers. I draw attention to the fact that his Amendment 1 also talks about the international competitiveness of the sector, economic growth and the rights of those who purchase air transport services. My understanding of his amendment and of Clause 1 is that the definition of air transport services is not just passengers but those people who purchase freight and cargo services. I see the Minister is nodding assent.

That is important because it is critical to the growth of the economy. Air freight accounts for over 40% of non-EU trade by value, even though it is only about 1% of freight by volume. That is incredibly important to the overall economy, especially for some sectors, such as pharmaceuticals and high-end manufacturing, where we are particularly competitive, and it contributes to our balance of payments. An amendment that means that Ministers, when making regulations, have to ensure that our international trade remains competitive would be extremely valuable.

That is important, because the conversation about rights and the regulatory burden on airlines is often had while not thinking about the cost of those regulations. It does not mean that you do not make regulations if they have a cost; it just means that when you think about regulating, you have to think about the cost, look at the benefit and balance those two things. You also have to look at them cumulatively. My noble friend Lord Moylan touched on that when he talked about the Government’s target to reduce the cost of administrative burdens by 25% over this Parliament.

It is worth putting on the record—this is why the competitiveness of the sector is important—that overall, in 2024, European airlines had a net profit margin of around 3.9%. They are also expected, once all the results are in, to have had a net profit margin of around 4.4% in 2025, with a profit per passenger of around $8 or $9. I accept that that varies hugely by carrier, but it means that we have to think carefully about the costs that we load on to the industry so that we ensure that it remains competitive for both freight and passengers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. I think he will agree that much of what he said—and it was reflected as well in the comments of many of my noble friends—came from the reaction that we both had from the All-Party Group on Aviation. It is a bit of a disaster situation. That group criticised the CAA strongly, not only on training—and everything else that noble Lords have talked about—but on the exam syllabus. The incident training syllabus has apparently not been upgraded for 20 years. This is in spite of examiners and other people asking the CAA to incorporate the charges, to no avail. My plea to my noble friend the Minister tonight is for him to put a bomb under the CAA and convert it into a new, customer-friendly regulator.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments in my name insist on statutory duties that would secure workforce resilience and international regulatory alignment, rather than leaving these matters to open-ended secondary legislation.

Amendment 103 would require the CAA to prepare an annual report on commercial pilot licence holders, including anonymised demographic data, and an assessment of workforce sustainability as a regulatory monitoring tool. The licensing authority needs to understand whether the pool of qualified pilots has been maintained at a level that supports safe and continuous operations. I thank BALPA for supporting this amendment and helping to draft it. An important point that has not so far been drawn out is the need to identify the proportion of pilots licensed to fly commercial airliners who are women—the kind of important data that ensures that there is a workforce that reflects the future.

The amendment would also require the CAA to consider the future availability of a pilot workforce. As we have heard, commercial airline pilots must retire at 65. An authoritative annual assessment by the CAA would flag issues about the future supply of trained pilots.

I feel that we are all currently dancing on the head of a very particular but extremely useful and important pin. Between now and Report, I hope that we can put some of this together—unless the Minister says in the next few minutes that he is accepting all our amendments. We live in hope.

Amendment 104 would place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to pursue UK-EU mutual recognition in relation to pilot and engineer licensing and aircraft parts certification. This came through from one of the APPGs, which had particular concerns about this issue. The absence of recognition mechanisms can create duplicated compliance burdens. We are all familiar with this kind of thing: regulatory friction and delays in maintenance and staffing, all of which matter operationally and economically.

I will not take up any more of noble Lords’ time, except to say that I commend the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. We first served together in 2018 on the first Select Committee on artificial intelligence, so never let it be said that Peers are not sometimes ahead of the curve. Its report was entitled AI in the UK: Ready, Willing and Able? and he continues to pursue this issue with his usual energy. I always support and listen to him on these issues, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, in the last group, I came up with a modest amendment that would have involved increasing the threshold at which strike ballots had to be passed before a strike could be undertaken—a clear consumer protection measure well in line with the purpose of the Bill. In this group, we seem to have wandered off into discussing pilot training, which I do not see as being intimately connected with consumer protection. Everyone is agreed that something should be done to interfere in the market, and that the Government or one of their agencies should take some sort of responsibility for this. It is entirely opposite to the thrust of the response I had on holding strikes. I find it remarkable.

I understand the problems identified by the noble Lords, Lord Barber and Lord Tunnicliffe, and my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower. I understand that these are indeed serious problems. I am willing to go so far as to accept that the Civil Aviation Authority might want to take cognisance of them and have a sense of how extensive the problems are. But it is surely very clearly for the industry itself to solve these problems, and that is what we must insist on. I imagine that the Minister will be as firm in rejecting these interferences with the market as he was in rejecting my modest amendment in the last group.

My noble friend Lord Holmes made points of great wisdom and vision, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, rightly pointed out the assiduity with which my noble friend has brought attention to bear on these important technological issues over a number of years. I do not feel competent myself to make direct comments on them, but I applaud the notion that we should be looking very carefully at the developments that technology will bring. That will include, of course, the abilities and skills required of pilots. I do not want to push it too far, but we have planes that now practically fly themselves—I do not mean that they can do without pilots, but they can practically fly themselves. Of course, in freight, we have drones appearing everywhere and great technological advances being made. That must have an impact on a training curriculum for pilots.

I was astonished to hear the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, say that the training curriculum for pilots was several decades old. I am not sure if I heard him correctly, but if that is so, then perhaps it needs to catch up with modern technology. There are many things that an aeroplane does nowadays that it could not do 30 years ago and that the pilot ought to know about.

I want to make this point again about UK-EU alignment—

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

What I actually said was that the syllabus was 30 years old. I hope the noble Lord understood that correctly.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am very grateful, but does the syllabus not determine the content of the training? It is a matter we can take up outside—it is not something we need to detain the Committee on at the moment—but I am very grateful to the noble Lord for making it clear what he said and putting me right to that extent. I had no wish to put words into his mouth, but I was just struck by what he said.

I wanted to come back briefly to the question of UK-EU alignment on this. It would, of course, be very good if there were mutual recognition between the UK and the EU, but it would also be very good if there were mutual recognition between the UK and the US. I am not entirely sure why there is this relentless focus on the EU. In the days when we had freedom of movement—mercifully, we do not anymore, because we voted against it—mutual recognition would mean that a pilot could move from one country to another and live there and pursue his calling in those countries. That is no longer the case, any more than it is with the United States, so the argument for a specific arrangement with the European Union seems to me to fall largely by the wayside. Apart from that, I thank my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower for his contribution, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in the four minutes remaining.

King’s Speech

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to take the debate back to transport: I suppose that is no great surprise. I certainly welcome the introductory speech from my noble friend the Minister, who listed all the different Bills that we are going to be discussing in this current Session. Northern Powerhouse Rail is a great idea; civil aviation, great. GB Railways: well, we started that. But, of course, the Minister did not mention HS2, because there is no legislation required at the moment. Yesterday, the Secretary of State announced that the costs would exceed £100 billion. That was the figure I gave to the Department for Transport for several years, along with Michael Byng. The department strongly denied it and stated that they did not recognise my figure. Well, now they do.

In his speech half an hour ago, the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, mentioned that this project was started by the Labour Party under my noble friend Lord Adonis. I remember having strong arguments with Andrew at the time. He said, “We’ve got to have the best in the world. We’ve got to go fastest, it’s got to be the most comfortable, all on a straight line linking Glasgow and Edinburgh and many cities in between with London. And by the way, we’re going to start in London”. I asked why, because the existing railways outside the London area were a hell of a lot worse than they were around London. He said, “Yeah, well, the business case is better if you start in London”—and of course that is probably true, but it was not the right reason.

Anyway, it trundled on through however many years of Tory Government, and the Secretary of State finally got angry in her press release yesterday: regretting that taxpayers, communities, contractors and workers have been swindled by the failure of government. She is right. The whistleblowers, other professionals and landowners have all been silenced by some pretty horrendous NDAs. One wonders what the Cabinet Office, the Department for Transport and the Treasury have been doing, because they are all implicated in what may turn out to be a massive cover-up on costs, or even fraud.

The one thing I find particularly surprising is that Ministers are normally required to give permission for projects to exceed budgets: I think it is called a “ministerial direction”. This project is costing roughly six times its original budget, but I can find no record of any ministerial direction—so somebody has been asleep at the wheel, I think, probably intentionally.

We must not blame only the civil servants, however, because Parliament has failed too. MPs and Peers love going to London faster, regardless of cost: we are all guilty of it sometimes. Local services are used by many more people to attend school, college, shopping, visiting friends or whatever—“Yeah, but it’s important to get to London”. You have only to look at the service provided by CrossCountry trains, which must be one of the worst, to see that it does not go to London, which is a big mistake. My noble friend Lady Dacres outlined the need for better local rail infrastructure, and she is absolutely right.

There are lessons here that must be learned. Yesterday, the Secretary of State said they were going on to Euston, but I have not seen any plans. The boring machines are going, but normally when you build a tunnel you know where it is going to end up, and it is a bit unclear here.

We have had a big debate about the type of trains to be used, and there is a fellow called Chris Gibb who is highly experienced in west coast main line traffic. He suggested a much better solution, for which he has been sacked: again, that is no great surprise.

So there are lessons to be learned and I hope the new Government, when they start building the northern powerhouse and everything else, will learn those lessons, keep it small and keep everything within budget.

Trains: Punctuality

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The previous Network Rail pay settlement, which was carried out but curiously not much publicised by the Government, produced not only a one-off productivity improvement by a substantial amount but continuing productivity, so the staff involved in the pay deal for Network Rail this year are delivering increased productivity compared with that agreed at the time of the previous pay rise. This Government have been able to do that. We have settled over 50 pay deals in the last 12 months with virtually no industrial action, which is entirely contrary to the record of the previous Government.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, can my noble friend explain whether, in addition to making the trains run on time, he has any plans with Great British Railways to offer some food on the trains? My journey from Cornwall took five hours and we were offered sandwiches, but they had not arrived. It was the same last week: we were offered sandwiches, but they did not arrive. The staff are doing their best to serve customers, but if they cannot supply sandwiches, maybe that should be put out to the private sector.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Of course, the irony of my noble friend’s journey to Fowey last week is that it was the private sector train company that failed to supply the sandwiches to him. It is a serious point and his complaint has been well aired, because he wrote to me, he wrote to the managing director of the train company, I think he wrote to the Secretary of State and he has now raised in the House of Lords that the trolley did not have any sandwiches on it. It is a valid point that the customer offer which is made to people should be reliable, and a five-hour journey without anything to eat is not much fun. I hope he got a drink though.

Rail Freight

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Government have been quite clear that setting a statutory target is in the Bill, and we have also been clear that it is 75%. In practice, that protects those freight paths that have been in the timetable for a long time but are not necessarily used other than at short notice. That is the reason for the proposed statutory inclusion in the Bill. For that reason, GBR will not be in competition for those paths. Those paths will have to be reserved in order to allow the target to be effective in the future.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister mentioned the issue of competition for rail freight. I am pleased to hear him say that the Government are keen to grow rail freight, but it is difficult to see, in the text of the Bill, how Great British Railways, which will have control of most passenger services as well as access to the track, will be able to treat fairly open access passenger operators and rail freight operators. Is this something on which the Government have consulted the Competition and Markets Authority to see whether there is any potential for conflicts of interest?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Railways Bill is framed to give Great British Railways the authority, for the first time in over 30 years, to control access to the railway and make sure that it is fairly distributed and serves the nation’s economic and social purposes. That is in Clause 60. Clause 63 talks about GBR operating passenger services. The reason that the freight target is specified in the Bill is so that GBR will have the obligation to leave both freight paths that are used in the timetable for freight trains and those paths that are not used but will be needed for the expansion of freight services and are needed at short notice to be used by freight operators.

Rail Infrastructure Resilience: Storms and Floods

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the resilience of rail infrastructure against future storms and floods.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, my department’s climate adaptation strategy for transport embraces detailed work on the railway infrastructure by Network Rail. That organisation has produced weather resilience and climate change adaptation plans by railway region, looking out not only over the five-year control period to 2029 but further into the 2030s. Those plans identify priority sites for maintenance, renewal and enhancement. Beyond 2029, work programmes will be firmed up and funded in future control periods.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for that Answer and to know how much work Network Rail is doing to mitigate the effect of global warming. But when we look at the south-west, we see most of it cut off for several days—weeks, occasionally—not just by high tides, which are going to get higher, but by river floods. We may get a situation where the whole railway between, say, Newton Abbot and Exeter is closed and not repairable, so is it not time to start a formal study into the viability of inland routes and how they could be developed? That would give people who live in the south-west some comfort that the long-term resilience of the whole rail network down there is being looked at and preserved.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

As an engineer, my noble friend will know that Brunel built the railway around the south Devon coast in 1846 and that it has been under attack by the tides and weather ever since. The most serious closure was of nearly 60 days in 2014, and that was remedied by a large-scale investment project that spent £165 million. That resulted in a railway that was sufficiently resilient to remain closed for only 36 hours earlier this year, despite terrible weather.

The citizens of Devon and Cornwall can be quite comfortable that the future resilience of the railway is being looked after. The alternative route, which stopped operation some 60 years ago, in fact closed temporarily for a much longer period due to the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the south-west. It would not be a sufficiently resilient route, even if it could be afforded to be rebuilt.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 10th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 6 requires, perhaps by way of introduction, a few words on the structure of the subsidy and how it actually works. Bear in mind that prior to all this, as I said earlier, a sustainable aviation fuel mandate was put in place by statutory instrument some 15 months ago which guarantees the demand for the product. There is a guaranteed demand: in simplistic terms, it is like saying that everybody in the country has to eat half a pound of chocolate every day.

If that were to be the Government’s policy and they put that in place, you would expect chocolate factories to spring up. Existing chocolate factories might expand; new chocolate factories would come into existence. So, what is the problem? Why is it that putting the demand in place is not sufficient? Why do you need to go further? Why are factories and investors not producing this stuff for which you have put in place a mandatory and growing demand over the years ahead? I do not know the answer to that.

The Government have decided that putting the demand in place is not enough. To satisfy our somewhat rapacious foreign investor friends, they also need to be given a guaranteed price for the product. Not only is half a pound of chocolate going to be eaten every day, but you will have to guarantee the price in order to get the chocolate factories to work.

That is what the Bill does. It is not about putting the demand in place—that exists—it is about guaranteeing the price, and the way to do that is to provide some form of subsidy. Of course, a direct subsidy out of the coffers of the Treasury is almost unaffordable in our current circumstances, but it is also unnecessary because the Government have, as we know, discovered in the field of wind farms and solar panels the device of the contract for the difference.

A contract for difference is a way of guaranteeing a price, and it is done by putting in place a counterparty—separate from the Government, but essentially a government glove puppet—which will enter into contracts with these foreign investors to guarantee them a price. They will negotiate the strike price, but on what basis they will negotiate it, what skills they will bring to negotiating it, how they will be certain they are not going to be given the runaround and end up with a very adverse price—none of these things is put in place or explained to us. They will end up with a contract, which will be in place for a number of years. The effect of the contract will be to increase the price of the fuel. The increase in the price of the fuel is very likely to find its way through to ticket prices. So this Bill has an indirect but none the less fairly ineluctable consequence: it will increase air fares.

When you ask the Government by how much air fares will go up—and we are going to do that later, in group 5—they say they have done an assessment and it will be, per year, which I think means cumulatively every year, £1.50 up or £1.50 down. They do not know. It is a fairly small amount and fairly neutral, but it is almost impossible to discern how they reach that conclusion, or to find it very credible, because airlines are complaining that the HEFA they have to buy already, because the mandate is in place—and they were buying it even before the mandate came in—is turning out to be very expensive indeed compared with standard aviation fuel.

It is wrong that Parliament and the Government should burden future generations for unnecessarily long periods with these additional costs of travel and subsidies. Therefore, I propose that any contract entered into strictly by the counterparty—not by the Government but under the direction of the Government—should have a term of no more than 10 years.

Clause 1(7) of the Bill—I drew attention to this in the last group—envisages a sunset clause after 10 years. It is extendable under Clause 1(8), as the Minister said, but it has a sunset clause in it. That, however, is not a limitation on the length of the contracts that might be entered into during that 10-year period. You could quite lawfully enter into a contract with a life of 100 years within that 10-year period. There should be some limit put on that, because these costs will fall not on oldies like us, whose flying days are passing, but on young people over the rest of their lives and their careers. There may well be no justification for it by then. Who knows, by then we may well be paying people to produce a fuel but life has moved on and the fuel is not necessary. Yet we will have to buy them out of that, and that will fall on air passengers. So, a10-year limit on the contract should be quite enough for any foreign investor to start up this process and get it going. They have a guaranteed price for 10 years and after that they should be on their own. That is what the substance is of this amendment, which I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very interesting amendment, because a revenue certainty contract, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, is wonderful for the suppliers. It presumably links in not just the price but the volumes—which may change from year to year —and the sources. The noble Lord opposite mentioned the issue of Drax and where that material comes from every year. Would there be a 10-year guarantee price for that? As the noble Lord, Lord Harper, said, any old agricultural product that was edible could be covered as well. And we have not yet discussed the worry that many people have about the number of trees and everything else being cut down in the Amazon basin, which could also be covered by this. So, a revenue certainty contract is pretty difficult and this amendment is a good start in at least limiting its scope and time.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Moylan set out the challenge—the thing you have to justify—to put the revenue certainty mechanism in place. It was certainly one of the things that I grappled with, and challenged the industry on, when I was the Secretary of State for Transport and we were developing the beginnings of this policy. As my noble friend said, the SAF mandate sets out some guaranteed demand for the industry producing sustainable aviation fuel. The challenge I always put to those thinking about investing in producing the technology was exactly the challenge that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, set out: if you have guaranteed demand, what is the barrier to producing that product?

We discussed this in Committee. The logic is that, for some of these products, it is new technology that requires significant upfront capital investment, and the judgment is that, if you compare it to other similar sorts of investments that these investors are making, the risk is higher than with those other investments. Therefore, if you do not do something to close that gap, you will not see the investment in the technology, particularly here in the United Kingdom, where we want to see the production take place, at least in part, if for no other reason than resilience.

What you are really dealing with is closing the gap between the risks involved in producing SAF and the alternative products that those investors could invest in. I do not think, therefore, that you need an open-ended contract. You need to put some limits around it. I am sure that the Minister will have some responses on what those limits should be, but a very obvious one would be to have a time limit, so that investors have some certainty: they have guaranteed demand and a period when they will get a guaranteed price. That should enable the risk premium to be reduced and enable the investment and production to take place.

If we start from the assumption that it certainly does not need to be an infinite period and should therefore be fixed, the debate is therefore just about what the length of that period should be. Now, the Minister may want to come back and say that the 10 years proposed by my noble friend is the wrong number or limitation period, in which case I would be happy to listen to the arguments that he makes about an alternative period, but I do not think that the right answer is that it can be any length at all, with no cap on it. I would be much more comfortable if we put a cap on it.

Again, if, at some point in the future, there was a clear justification for changing it, there would be nothing to stop this or a future Government coming back to Parliament to change the position. But I do not want to see open-ended contracts in place, particularly since we have legislated for there to be guaranteed demand. So I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment, unless I hear a very good counter case from the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, there has been a lot of consensus at each stage of this Bill. The Government have shown that they are willing to listen and make amendments as we have debated. They have consulted the sector on different aspects of this legislation. As we have heard, this is an emerging field in terms of technology and production in the UK. That is why we on these Benches feel it is important that we have full transparency, so that we can understand how the revenue certainty mechanism is working, the impact on the sector and how we are developing this new sector in the UK. This also helps the passenger in terms of information.

My Amendment 13 asks for a report covering a number of important areas such as the volume of SAF produced in, supplied to and used in the UK; the types of SAF; an estimate of the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the production; and the uptake and use of SAF by air travel providers. This is about ensuring that the public and industry can see the impact of this policy and the revenue certainty mechanism. It would ensure clarity about progress towards sustainable aviation fuel targets. This requirement for reporting on progress is a simple measure that we believe would help with the understanding of the Bill.

I thank the civil servants who have met my noble friend Lord Russell and me over recent weeks and listened to our concerns. I hope that the Minister will see the amendment as adding value to the Bill, and I look forward to his response. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment, which we discussed at some length in Committee. The amendments then, which other noble Lords supported, covered the relationship between the sustainable aviation fuel used for aeroplanes and the same fuel used for home heating. I declare an interest as having a boiler in Cornwall that survives very well on home heating.

Interestingly, sustainable aviation fuel produced through the HEFA process generates hydrotreated vegetable oil as a by-product. HVO accounts for approximately 30% of the output, a significant amount that should not be overlooked. HVO can play an essential role in helping to decarbonise the 1.7 million oil-heated households that are off the gas grid. Otherwise they use electricity, which is expensive.

Last month, we had a delegation from the village of Kehelland in Cornwall who have all been trying out HVO in their houses for about three years. They travelled, leaving at 2 am, to meet the Minister at DESNZ to present their response to the consultation that we discussed earlier—a 500-mile round trip shows they are pretty committed. But what is interesting is that, in describing their experience of using the fuel, they highlighted how renewable liquid fuels can cut emissions from home heating by up to 88% compared with kerosene—88% is a figure worth having. They work simply as a drop-in replacement. The Government’s consultation said that, of all those considered, this was the most cost-effective option for off-grid consumers.

However, the consultation still questions the feedstock availability for the fuel, which we discussed in earlier amendments today. It is puzzling that the DfT is confident that there is more than enough feedstock to boost SAF production by 22%. The research done by the industry, the EU Commission and the Irish Government indicates that there is enough feedstock—again, we have discussed that at length. I was pleased to welcome the Government’s confirmation in a Written Answer that the targets under the SAF and RTFO mandates

“are set considering global availability of feedstocks and competing demands between transport modes and across sectors of the economy”.

That seems to highlight that there is enough material for both aviation and home heating, so it would be a great shame if we pitted one sector against the other, rather than try to have a bit more of what you might call cohabitation in-between.

To incentivise HVO production, I believe a renewable liquid heating fuel obligation needs to be implemented—that is the solution—triggered under Section 159 of the Energy Act. That would create the necessary market mechanism, in a similar way to the SAF mandate and the RTFO, to give certainty to the industry to distribute HVO to households at an affordable price. I hope that I can persuade my noble friend when he responds to try to ensure that his department, the Department for Transport, and DESNZ are working hand in hand to ensure that we can scale up the production of sustainable aviation fuel to capture the benefits of HVO for home heating. I must not keep asking him for meetings every day, but, if he would accept, it would be very nice to have a meeting with him and our colleague the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, the Minister for Energy Security, to discuss the benefits of this approach. The consultation closes today, so it seems to be the right time to meet.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I have to confess to having been a little perplexed when the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, moved Amendment 13, because I had just listened to the speech of her colleague, the noble Earl, Lord Russell. I thought my noble friend Lord Moylan’s proposal simply to publish and have some transparency about ticket prices was perfectly reasonable, but the noble Earl, Lord Russell, set out a whole raft of reasons why that was entirely unreasonable, incredibly difficult, completely unnecessary, bureaucratic and costly and why we should not bother ourselves with it, and he then proceeded not to support my noble friend’s amendment. Although I disagree with the noble Earl, he made some perfectly reasonable arguments, although not ones that I agree with. I am perplexed because his noble friend’s amendment is very comprehensive and would place some really quite significant reporting requirements on the Government in a way that seems to be completely at odds with the argument that the noble Earl just made.