HS2 Reset

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s Statement on HS2 yesterday. It has good detail and a lot of the plans that the Government intend to do. I was also pleased that the latest cost estimate of about £100 billion to get it to Birmingham, is much closer to the one that Michael Byng and I have been peddling for some years. I also welcome the new chief executive and chair of HS2 and, of course, the Ministers, who are both relatively new.

The worry I put to my noble friend is that the four new people at the top, excellent though they will be, have an incredibly difficult job ahead of them. One of the biggest problems is to unpick or change the mouthwatering contracts that most of the contractors have been given by the previous Administration, which means it will be very difficult to know what the future output costs will be and how they will be monitored. So, can one or two people—very good people, with two Ministers in charge—plan this without a much greater root-and-branch change in the Department of Transport and HS2? I hope I am wrong, but I think there is a lot of work to be done there as well.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that. There is no latest cost estimate. One of the things we are absolutely resolved to do is not to have such a cost estimate until Mark Wild and the people he is bringing in have been through this project in such detail that an estimate can be reliable. It is not at all satisfactory to have contractors working on such huge contracts without a full understanding by a decent sponsor of what they have delivered as they deliver it, how much it has cost, and what the remaining work is. That is also a feature, because the contracts were let too early and the design was not certain, so all that work needs to be done.

My noble friend is right that four new people by themselves cannot do all this—not by a long chalk. But noble Lords will, I hope, have read Mark Wild’s letter in detail, in which he sets out that, fundamentally, HS2 is unfit for purpose and he will have to restructure that company, alongside getting proper estimates of cost and timescale. He will need some help doing it and much of my and the Secretary of State’s discussion with him in the last weeks and months has been about how many people he needs to do that, who they are, whether we can trust them and how quickly we can get them in. Those elements are all important.

One of the really important things in this is that, I think for the first time for a long time, we will have a chair and a chief executive of HS2 who are communicative, collaborative, straight and honest, and we can have a discussion with them about where this is going and what it is doing. One of the characteristics of this company so far and of the Crossrail company for most of its life is that they were both arrogant enough to believe that they knew what they were doing without any supervision and without telling anybody what was really going on. In both cases, it went badly wrong. Mark knows that he has to change the culture of the company. There clearly are some good people there, but they need to be led and directed properly.

European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to apply to reinstate the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to introduce this short debate. I have an interest to declare in that I live in the Isles of Scilly much of the time, to which the only passenger access in the winter is by air. There are a few problems there, which I shall come on to. In my short speech, I shall cover the many safety benefits of EGNOS, the benefits for pilots, the history of it and what happened before and after Brexit. I still see the cancellation of EGNOS at the time of Brexit as a very unwise and, frankly, stupid decision, but I shall come on to that.

I will first introduce what EGNOS is, because it may be that not all noble Lords understand what it is. It is a geostationary navigation overlay service, which enhances the standard GPS signal and provides accuracy, integrity and other improvements. In simple terms, it is a way of being able to land your plane at and take off from a small airport without all the very expensive, but very good, equipment that major airports have around the country and the world. If you do not have EGNOS, you cannot fly. It is not unique; it is used all the way across Europe. I think there are 700 airports using EGNOS-enabled LPV, and in the United States there is a great deal more of it.

Just before Brexit, the UK introduced EGNOS at a handful of airports, including Guernsey, Alderney, Cambridge and others, and many airlines had installed the equipment in planes that would enable it to work. The estimated cost for installation then and, I think, now is about £35 million a year to cover the whole country.

In my many discussions with Ministers—including with some colleagues here—we have always been told that the Civil Aviation Authority was dead against this. It was unsafe, it would not work and it would like to see something else. Last week, I had a very useful meeting with the CAA to hear from the horse’s mouth, if one can call it that, what its view was, which I shall try to summarise. It is a technical necessity, not a political concession. All it needs, I am told, for us to rejoin is a service agreement with the European Commission.

During those discussions, we had many chats about alternatives. Ministers in the previous Government said that we ought to go for something else: a sovereign UK satellite-based augmentation system, or SBAS. We went to see it, and the only problem was that it would require a £1 billion investment over 10 years—assuming that the Government would commit to 10 years’ funding, which is probably rather unlikely—and the operational costs would be even higher than EGNOS. Many people have asked why we should introduce a new system when we can get the whole EGNOS system for £30 million, which is one-third or more of the price of the other one. It is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. Maybe the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be interested in that after her announcements yesterday.

To summarise the benefits, it is not just a “nice to have”; it is an essential safety and commercial add-on to safe flying. I fly as a passenger to the Isles of Scilly. Other noble Lords have much more experience in this. It is quite clear from talking to many pilots that they cannot fly in unpredictable weather because they cannot navigate properly. There are regional airports on coasts in many places, but if you cannot land and take off safely, your businesses are not going to enjoy it very much. Then we have to think about local communities. We have air ambulances around many parts of the country, including Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and I know of many cases where they have not been able to fly because there has been no EGNOS. All in all, there are really good reasons for reinstating it.

I shall try to summarise where I think the CAA has got to, which was extremely helpful. It said that it is working closely with the Department for Transport and the UK Space Agency on the operational benefits, airspace modernisation, resilience and future readiness. Basically, from a regulatory point of view, it ticks all the boxes. We all know how good the CAA is at organising safe flights and everything.

It really surprised me that, although it had done all this work in the last two or three years—the reports are available on the website—at the end of 2024 it will hand over responsibility for the next phase of the SBAS initiative, which is EGNOS, from the Department for Transport to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the UK Space Agency. It is jolly nice to have the Minister from the Department for Transport here answering questions, but is that the right department?

I have put down several Written Questions in the last few months, and they were all answered by my noble friend Lord Vallance of Balham. It is worth reading one out: what is the cost of reinstating our membership of EGNOS? The response from my noble friend was:

“The Government is considering options for UK access to a satellite-based augmentation system, following our withdrawal from the EU’s European Geostationary Navigation Overlay (EGNOS) system. This work is ongoing and no decision has yet been made. The Government engages with the European Commission and European Space Agency on space programmes but has not specifically discussed access to EGNOS”.


My question to the Minister is: why have they not discussed this and when will they? People are just sitting there while businesses and transport are suffering. We just seem to be getting nowhere.

A very interesting comment came from one of my colleagues in the other place, the Labour MP Stella Creasy. She said that it made no sense to separate the EU and the UK from an aviation perspective. She is right because, if you look at a map of the different aviation systems around the world—there are all kinds—one for just the UK would very much be the smallest.

Are we prepared to sign agreements of 12 years for fish and four years for produce, just taking EU rules without any challenge? Why do not we not sign one for aviation? I do not know whether it would be for four years or 10, but I suspect that it would be much longer, because once people have got used to having EGNOS again, they would struggle to change it.

I hope that, when my noble friend responds, he will say that we are about to start proper negotiations on EGNOS with the European Commission and other agencies in order to produce a service agreement. A service agreement is not a political agreement; it would get us back into the fold and help a large number of people who rely on short-haul or small planes to get around their business in a very sensible way, with minimal delays. I look forward to my noble friend’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. Rather than filibustering for a few minutes while I refer to the knowledgeable officials behind me, I think I had better write to him about that. I can see an answer coming: it says, “Not sure. We’d need to check”. That is very wise.

I turn to the constant developments in technologies, particularly in drones and uncrewed aircraft. This is an important, evolving area, and the full range of requirements are still being mapped out. There may well be applications where SBAS and EGNOS could be useful. As the Government have ambitious plans for the UK to be a global leader in creating a future-of-flight ecosystem fit for the future, ensuring that we can fully realise the social and economic benefits of new and emerging aviation technologies, we must continue to think about this work. It could be said that I am saying that we are just not doing anything, but we are doing something. These rapid developments, particularly in drones used beyond the line of sight, may well provide an increasing case for this technology and for EGNOS in future.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend has given us a very interesting progress report on any discussions taking place with the European Union, the CAA and others, but no decisions have been made. Can he give us any estimate about when the next decision might be achieved?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. It is a good question because developments in drones, particularly drones beyond line of sight, uncrewed aircraft and flying taxis have been much in the news recently. There are many applications way beyond traditional air applications. There is activity for drones beyond line of sight not only on the railway but in better policing. Those things would affect a judgment about an investment in this and whether the continuing cost of it is worth investing in. I urge my noble friend not to ask us to be too peremptory in making a once-and-for-all decision when technology is changing as, because of that, the justification for doing this might increase and we might get to the answer that my noble friend wants.

I am grateful to all noble Lords for their thoughtful and constructive contributions, which reflect the strong interest in maintaining the UK’s continued leadership in aviation safety and innovation. We remain committed to ensuring safety and efficiency. We recognise the real value of systems such as EGNOS, but we must also consider the financial implications and seek solutions that offer the best value for money.

On the contributions of noble Lords about the cost of it, or the cost when it was around £35 million—I cannot confirm whether that might be the current cost or not—if the previous Government could not justify it, in these difficult financial circumstances we have a duty to justify public expenditure. However, noble Lords will have heard me say that we are considering it not only for the benefits from EGNOS for the purposes described in the discussion today but because the future of drone and uncrewed aircraft technology is rapidly developing. I hope noble Lords will appreciate that we are strongly considering it. I am grateful for all that they have said.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister’s private office, the Bill team and the other civil servants involved in the Bill, who have dealt with the Official Opposition with promptness, courtesy and responsiveness in an exemplary way. I also thank the Minister for his openness and engagement with the Opposition during the Bill. That contributed greatly to its swift and efficient passage through Committee. The Minister sets an example that many of his colleagues on the Front Bench could follow in relation to transparency, engagement and so forth, which could help with the dispatch of our business in your Lordships’ House. I thank the Opposition Whips team, in particular Abid Hussain and Henry Mitson. I express particular thanks to my Whip throughout all this, my noble friend Lord Effingham.

I am trying to be positive when I say that this is not the worst Bill introduced by the Government so far, but none the less it remains a pretty poor Bill. It does damage and removes private entrepreneurialism from the bus sector, where, as we know, private enterprise and the spirit of private enterprise are the only keys to economic growth. It is here primarily to gratify the unions and certain local authorities and not to do very much indeed for passengers. Most importantly, it gives powers to local authorities that they are neither equipped nor funded to exercise. To that extent it is, as I have said earlier, a somewhat bogus Bill.

We have improved the Bill in your Lordships’ House. We have added a purpose clause so that we know what it is meant to be about and what standard we can hold the Government to. We have ventilated further the £2 bus cap and what the consequences are of removing it, which is a further amendment that passed. We have also brought into the Bill the very sensitive issue of special educational needs transport and the effects that the reduction in the threshold for national insurance contributions has on that sector and its survival—which is so important. As I say, that is now part of the Bill as it goes to the other place.

We have removed unnecessary language—dangerous language—about what was expected from bus drivers in dealing with crime. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has said, we have also seen amendments to review services to villages, which we were glad to support. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has introduced an amendment which focuses on improving the overall safety of buses and the way in which bus services operate. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, sadly not in his place—as indeed he was not when the amendment was moved on his behalf by my noble friend Lord Moynihan—has added important protections to the Bill in relation to violence against women and girls.

Finally, it is worth noting the flanking action by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, which saw improvements made to the Bill in relation to floating bus stops, the back of which I think we would all like to see. So, it leaves your Lordships’ House a better Bill.

The Minister said something about the Bill coming back. I see no reason for it to come back. All those amendments are very worth while, and I hope that the Government will embrace them in the other place and simply move on.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my voice to the many noble Lords who have thanked my noble friend the Minister. It is his first Bill. He is a real expert on buses and transport generally, and the House owes him a debt of gratitude for the way he has dealt with the Bill. We have made changes, as other noble Lords have said. It has been a very friendly and useful debate. The key thing is for us all to try to encourage more people to use the buses, whether that is in the countryside or in towns. That is the key; the Bill will go a long way to encouraging people to do that.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall of course be far more enthusiastic than the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on this excellent Bill. I expect it will be back, but this is the briefest of replies. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on the floating bus stop issue, my honourable friend the Minister for Local Transport is, in colloquial terms, “on it”, and I will write to the noble Lord about how far he has got following this session.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My noble friend has pointed out the correct figure. I am not sure what the European and Commonwealth speed record for bike-mounted corporate lawyers in Lycra is, but I am sure it is well over 30 miles per hour. When bus passengers are trying to catch a bus—perhaps at night or when it is raining—we are expecting them to cross a cycle path without incident.

As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, suggested, there is a solution. I catch a bus from London Bridge daily. There is a cycle lane across the bridge which ends to allow buses to pull into the pavement to pick up passengers and drop them off. Cyclists know to go round the bus, bus drivers know how to pull in gently and passengers do not have to cross traffic or a cycle lane. I have seen no incidents or near-misses in my nearly three years of travel from there.

Floating bus stops are a laudable attempt to make life for cyclists safer—but, in fact, they put everyone in danger. They are a huge mistake and legislation to remove them must be in the Bill.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak as a cyclist—one of the first to do so in this debate. I cycle regularly to your Lordships’ House and many other places. I agree that some of the floating bus stops that noble Lords have described, especially around here, are awful—but others are quite good. The problem is that the danger for cyclists going round the back of a floating bus stop has to be measured against the danger of overtaking a bus that is trying to pull in in front of you, because you do not know how many other cars, lorries or buses will overtake you on the outside. I do not have any figures for how many people have been killed or injured by overtaking buses as they pull into bus stops, but it is significant. We need to look at this in a balanced way rather than just saying, “Get rid of floating bus stops by all accounts”.

As noble Lords have said, the floating bus stops on Westminster Bridge are awful, but, leaving the design aside, it does not help that the cyclists cannot go in the cycle lanes there because there are too many tourists. We are talking about too many people wanting to use too much road space, but it does not always work. Coming back the other way by St Thomas’, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned, it is much easier.

For me, crossing from a pavement to a floating bus stop—with a ramp, I hope, as opposed to a step—is not very different from crossing any other road with a cycle lane and finding that the cyclists are not stopping or obeying the light. We need a proper design that works, rather than rushing into a series of different ones that may or may not work.

I have cycled quite often on the continent and I have given examples of what happens in Berlin, which is the most wonderful place to cycle. First, there is a pavement—the footpath—then there is a cycle lane, and then there are one or two traffic lanes. What happens if there is an obstruction on the cycle lane due to a building site or something? The traffic lanes are reduced from two to one to allow the cyclists to travel and overtake safely—ditto with the pedestrians.

The biggest problem—this came up in the Question from the noble Baroness yesterday—is that people do not comply with the law and there is no enforcement, whether that is enforcement for cyclists and scooters, electric or otherwise, or for freight cyclists. I find that cyclists with freight on the back have a particular habit of rushing around and not obeying red lights. I do not know why; most of us obey red lights, but these freight cyclists make a habit of going diagonally across and hoping for the best. One of these days people are going to get killed.

I love the London cycle routes that have been put in over the last 10 years—most of them are very good. However, you can go out the A10 towards Stratford and see the different designs of bus stops, cycle islands and other types of arrangements for the bus to pull over in front of you, and each one is as dangerous as the other—you have got to be very careful.

I cannot support any of these amendments, but I urge the Minister to agree to commission a proper study of how best to align the needs of pedestrians, disabled and blind people, tourists—who do not, I think, understand what “stop” means—cyclists and other road users, and combine it with enforcement. Until we get some enforcement, such as that in Germany, Belgium, Holland and even Paris now, we are going to get more of these debates, which, while very interesting, are not solving the problem.

With the very large increase in the number of cyclists using the road network now—noble Lords may have seen the cycle route along the Thames from here, going eastwards—I feel quite frightened on that lane in rush hour, because there are so many of them going along and they are going quite fast. We can debate whether it is good for a cyclist to be frightened of other cyclists. Things will change, but we have got to be very careful before we start moving infrastructure without being quite clear as to the benefits to each class—if we can call it a class—of user, to make sure that we get it right and that we do not get, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, the conflict from safety. Safety is the be-all and end-all, and it must start there, but enforcement is one of the most important things.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I support the intention behind the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I agree very much with the broad thrust of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, particularly about enforcement. I have cycled many miles on the bicycle paths in central London, and indeed I experienced a serious injury when a runner ran into me on the Embankment, at the very point that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was talking about, going from here to Waterloo Bridge.

I accept that floating bus stops are frightening to pedestrians, but, as was pointed out, they are also extremely frightening to cyclists. As many people have commented, the one on the far side of Westminster Bridge is particularly awkward. Cyclists confront people getting on and off buses, who have no knowledge about the complicated configuration of the footpaths, bicycle paths and islands; this is particularly the case for visitors, who often seem to be completely confused. On the other hand, a decision to force cyclists to ride around a bus carries different but extremely serious risks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I will intervene briefly, if I may. One group of people involved in these discussions has not been heard from so far, and that is the bus drivers themselves. I have no financial interest to declare these days in these matters, but over the years I have worked either as a consultant, director or chairman for three different bus companies. When you talk to bus drivers about their daily problems, you find that their views about cycle lanes are well worth listening to. Many of them say that they do not open the doors sometimes until they have checked the cycle lane to their nearside mirror.

Although it is not very popular to say so—I do not wish to fall out with my noble friend Lord Berkeley—it is about time someone acknowledged the fact that a substantial number of cyclists on our roads are, quite frankly, maniacs.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I agree.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

I made an exception for my noble friend straight away, because I knew he might react.

Stand on the corner of Parliament Square and watch them. There are cycle lanes and traffic lights, and a substantial number of cyclists ignore the traffic lights—because in their view nothing is coming—and set off around Parliament Square. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on the amendment that we are discussing. We ought to acknowledge the fact that, unless there is some sort of enforcement, as my noble friend suggested, the minority of cyclists who behave in that way will continue to behave like that.

Mention has been made of the cycle lanes and the two bus stops at the other side of Westminster Bridge. Only last week, I happened to be crossing the bridge in the direction of travel towards the House, on the left-hand side, where the cycle lane and the bus stop is, in the opinion of earlier speakers, supposedly the safer of the two. There are Belisha beacons and a zebra crossing by the bus stop—a very small one that crosses the cycle lane. As I crossed one day last week, I had to dodge a cyclist—in fact, there were two of them, pretty close together—who ignored the Belisha beacons and the zebra crossing. I said something to the first one as he passed—I presume the second one was associated with him. He responded, and I do not know exactly what he said, but the second word was “off”. That sort of behaviour is all too predictable for a certain minority of cyclists.

I hope that, when he comes to respond, my noble friend the Minister will acknowledge the very real fears, particularly of those who are partially sighted or blind, and that these problems are real and that it is long past time that we tackle them.

E-scooters: Trials

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Your Lordships’ House will know that there have been several Questions on this subject in recent weeks, and certainly in one of them I referred the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to the regulatory regimes of 21 European countries, which, sadly, have huge variation between them with regard to minimum ages, whether you have to wear a helmet, and so forth. So the Government need up-to-date evidence. Evidence raised in 2021 could have informed legislation in 2023 and 2024, for example, but that did not happen, but now we have to inform ourselves. In the meantime, it is quite clear that hazards are involved as the noble Baroness describes—although, of course, enforcement is a matter for local police chiefs.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that half the trouble with e-scooter and e-bike rentals, and with buying them, is the batteries, which catch fire for no particular reason when they are not linked to the equipment concerned? Is not it more important to have some proper standards for quality and for the way in which batteries are fixed to cycles and scooters so that they do not cause the trouble that they have done; for example, causing TfL to ban non-folding electric bikes from its trains—and why non-folding? I hope that the Government will be able to look into this soon.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. On batteries, last October, the Department for Business and Trade launched the “Buy Safe, Be Safe” campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of buying faulty and unsafe e-bikes, e-scooters and components such as batteries, for the very reason he suggests. Noble Lords who have seen the recent film of the spontaneous e-bike fire at Rayners Lane station will understand perfectly well why Transport for London has taken that view, because anybody standing remotely near that incident would have been severely injured, if not killed, by the spontaneous explosion and subsequent fire.

Commercial Vehicles: Safety

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The standards of professional vocational drivers in Britain are very high. The tests that you have to pass and the continuous professional development, which is broadly similar to the continuous professional development applied in European countries, are also very strong. Enforcement activities are run by the Vehicle Inspectorate, which is part of the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency. It is much more sophisticated in targeting enforcement than perhaps it once was, including making sure that those who drive commercial vehicles from other countries on our roads are consistently to the same standard of safety as our own vehicles and drivers are. I will leave the detail of how it enforces what it does to it, but it appears to be very successful enforcement activity.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the safety rules apply to all cars and heavy goods vehicles? Do they also include vintage Army vehicles, to which the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, referred?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The safety requirements that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, asked me about are those applicable to new vehicles. The standards of safety that apply to all vehicles on the UK’s roads are the latest standards that applied at the time at which they were manufactured, of course, improved by the regular testing system. There are reasons why historic vehicles cannot always comply with modern standards. There is a silver lining in that, which is that most very ancient vehicles cannot go very fast. My experience of the vehicle testing regime is that it is rigorous but respectful of the age of vehicles and their original manufacturing condition.

Great British Railways

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for securing this debate. I have to agree with him, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and some of my colleagues that we are in grave danger of losing sight of what we are trying to achieve: a better deal for the passengers and freight customers.

There was a very good article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday, quoting people from freight—I shall mention that in a minute. It goes on to say that Great British Railways will do a good job in co-ordinating but more than one body is involved. There is the infrastructure manager, which will still be owned by the Government. There are the government-owned railway undertakings and open access railway undertakings, and there is freight. That is not a monopoly; it is four different groups of people who need some independent body, which at the moment is the Office of Rail Regulation, to determine who gets priority on the track.

It is very easy to say that there is no capacity on the track. I did not have much chance this morning to read the 30 pages that the Minister sent us yesterday, but access is very difficult in some places, as noble Lords have said. To cite the Daily Telegraph, Tim Shoveller, the chief executive of Freightliner, said that,

“giving a state-run passenger railway the responsibility to allocate routes would undermine its ability to compete with HGVs”.

He says that Great British Railways will

“inevitably favour route applications for its own passenger services”.

That is just a normal way of doing business—and this is why it is so important to have an independent regulator with statutory duties to be able to make decisions on behalf of the whole sector.

My noble friend the Minister’s latest suggestion was that the regulator would be able to recommend to Great British Railways. Recommending to government, as we all know from experience, sometimes works but not always. It is about sustaining investment in the private sector, which is still there in the rolling stock companies and in freight—all freight is in the private sector—and still there in the open access. The last thing about that is that government in this format does not have sole discretion as to which stations should be served and which trains should run where. This is a matter on which many people have different views, and I am sure that many noble Lords will keep on talking about it today.

The Minister needs to think again and retain the role of the Office of Rail Regulation as a statutory consultee in something that to most of us is a competition issue. It needs to be fair and seen to be fair—and I hope that my colleagues in the Department for Transport will look at this and not insist that they can trample over the Office of Rail Regulation and get what they want, because they would rather have an extra train to Edinburgh when, in fact, you could have cancelled one of LNER’s trains and allowed Lumo to go in. Who is to say which is better? It is for the regulator to decide. I look forward to my noble friend’s comments.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 13th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

Amendment 49 picks up on a crucial issue that I highlighted at Second Reading and said would be a key theme from these Benches: ensuring that rural areas receive a proper bus service for those often isolated and smaller communities. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for signing this amendment.

Rural areas remain severely underserved when it comes to bus services, with provision often unreliable and inadequate. As I have mentioned previously, in areas such as North Shropshire an estimated 63% of bus miles have been cut since 2015. These reductions have had a significant impact on communities.

In general, urban local authorities have above-average levels of bus use per head when compared with rural areas. Department for Transport data shows that, for the year ended March 2024, in Brighton and Hove there were 147 passenger journeys per head of population, alongside Nottingham on 126. This compares with rural areas such as Rutland on three per head, Cheshire East on seven, and Somerset and Shropshire on eight per head of population. That is hardly surprising when these areas have seen significant cuts to their bus services in recent years.

Our amendments on socially necessary bus services, which we debated on Tuesday, would help address this issue, but so would this amendment, which would require the Secretary of State to publish a report within six months of the Act on the impact it is having on rural areas. We hope this focus on our rural communities will help to drive the integration and quality of bus services that our rural and smaller communities and villages deserve. This analysis would be a timely assessment, allowing for a prompt evaluation of the legislation and its impact on rural communities, and would help inform decision-makers, including local transport authorities, and ensure that rural communities’ needs are being met, improving their quality of life and access to services.

I draw attention to the evidence submitted to the Commons Transport Select Committee by the Campaign for National Parks, which flags that visitor travel is an important element of rural transport but that this aspect is often overlooked when considering the role of buses in connecting rural communities with nearby towns and cities. It particularly flagged the access to national parks by public transport. This adds another dimension to our amendment when considering rural bus services.

There are further amendments in this group that also look at rural bus services and villages and cover other important areas, to which I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 62. The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which she has just spoken, is a very relevant one, and I think I spoke a little bit about it previously.

I suggest that it is important to know what we mean by public transport. This buses Bill is a great development of that, because it is designed to take people who do not have cars, or perhaps do not want to use cars, to shopping, to doctors and hospitals, to visit friends and relatives or whatever—to get around for communication. Of course, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, it is just as important in the rural areas as in the cities.

One element that I have discussed briefly with my noble friend the Minister is if people cannot get across because there is water in the way. Some of the water has bridges; some does not. Some has big ferries and some has small ferries, and, of course, many of the bridges are tolled. The River Tamar has a tolled ferry and bridge combined. The toll is not very high and you pay it only one way, which is interesting. There are smaller river crossings in Cornwall and many other places where people pay a few pounds to get across. Many people moan at the cost, especially if the tolls are private-sector operated, but they have to cover their costs and most of them are pretty reasonable.

There is a big campaign at the moment about the cost of ferries to the Isle of Wight. There are several of them, as noble Lords know. I do not express an opinion on the campaign or the cost, but people are suffering from an unreliable service, which affects them going to work, college, hospital and so on. For a big population—it is probably more than 100,000—that is quite significant.

On the Isles of Scilly, where I live, there are only 2,500 people but they still have to get to hospital and go shopping when the shops on the islands do not provide what they want. The costs there are pretty mind-boggling. In the summer, you cannot get from the mainland to the Isles of Scilly for less than £100 single. For some people, such as those on the national minimum wage, that is quite significant. If you want to fly, which has the added advantage of being a bit quicker—although it does not like the fog very much and so gets cancelled quite often—the cost sometimes goes up to £150.

This may be a situation where there should be some kind of public service obligation for a ferry, which is probably the cheapest and most reliable form of transport, but the ferry does not go in the winter. You can go on a jet boat, which carries 12 people and takes a couple of hours. If it is not bumpy, it is quite comfortable; if it is bumpy, I leave that to noble Lords’ imagination. Something needs to be done to provide some kind of reasonable public service for the 2,500 people who live on those islands and many others like them.

My Amendment 62 is designed to ask my noble friend to produce a report within six months. I am afraid he will be busy if he accepts all these amendments, but I would very much welcome some response. This is a problem for people who have less access to what is properly proposed in the Bill, which I very much support.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, this is an eclectic mix of amendments. My Amendment 53 focuses on effective governance arrangements, which are key to an effective transfer of powers to local transport authorities, leading to effective delivery of these significant and welcome changes to improve public bus services. The Government’s devolution proposals to create strategic authorities will, I presume, transfer responsibility for bus services from the existing arrangements to these new authorities. At the very same time, those areas of England with a two-tier system of local government will also be undergoing major changes as district councils are abolished and unitary councils are created.

Together, these reforms will result in considerable change in the administration of both local governance and elected governance, decision-making and accountability. Clearly, this is also happening—all three things together—at a time when the responsibility and accountability for public bus services occur and major powers are transferred to local transport authorities. Hence Amendment 53 in my name, which is there to probe what consideration the Government have given to providing guidance and support to those areas of local government that are subject to these significant changes.

Can the Minister share any insight into the arrangements that will be put in place to support councils during this transformation of their local transport responsibilities? For example, it is often necessary to aid effective change with initial additional resources, whether funding or access to experience and knowledgeable advice. The measures in the Bill will transform public bus services but, in my view, what must not happen is transformational change failing or being beset with difficulties for want of preparation on the governance side of the equation.

I feel quite strongly that this is an important area of the change that will take place but that it has perhaps not been given sufficient thought in the Bill, as it is presented to us. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Indeed. I am grateful to my noble friend for that observation. I should have also mentioned the situation in Cornwall, which is more or less franchising and in an area that can be called rural, where the consequence of a decent set of organised services in a rural area has been a considerable increase in patronage. My noble friend’s point about realism is right, and I think the real point of what he was saying is that these things take some time to mature and come into effect.

On rural areas, there is no doubt that considerable damage has been done to public transport by an approach necessitated by the previous Government’s funding mechanisms, which have reintroduced routes that were withdrawn, withdrawn again routes that were reintroduced and given a lack of continuity to services that need it in order for people to rely on them.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for bringing forward Amendment 53 about statutory changes to local council powers. The Government believe that such changes will be wholly beneficial to communities in the United Kingdom. There may be legislation in this Session that alters the powers of local councils to provide them further powers on transport. Given the proximity in timing of any such legislation to this Bill, it would not be appropriate to provide such a review, as the powers would not have had sufficient time to be in force.

I appreciate that this Bill and the English devolution Bill, as well as the forthcoming railway reform Bill, will or may have related provisions to enhance the role of local councils, and we will work closely across and between departments to ensure that they most effectively give local councils control over their own transport networks. In respect of buses, the extensive guidance already available on enhanced partnerships in franchising from government, and the Bus Centre of Excellence, which has been referred to previously, will be available.

Amendment 62 in the name of my noble friend Lord Berkeley would introduce a statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to review within six months the Bill’s impact on certain local transport services. I refer to the remarks I have already made about the length of time it would take to take a good view about changes. I know that my noble friend is a long-standing campaigner on ferry services and the important role they play in connecting communities. I also note his description of the ferry service to the Isles of Scilly as “bumpy”, which is undoubtedly true. I agree that these services provide a crucial lifeline for many communities and ensure that people can access essential services, as he says.

The noble Lord also asked at Second Reading about tram services. Again, they are an important part. However, the meaning of this Bill is clear: it is focused on the provision of local bus services and a tram is clearly not a bus—a ferry is even less so. On ferries, though, I understand that the Isles of Scilly Council has been in touch with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government regarding both this matter and broader support for the islands. I hope that the noble Lord will note that I have said that.

Turning to Amendment 73, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for bringing it forward. The Committee will have heard the noble Lord’s remarks about the handling of passenger complaints. The Government remain committed to ensuring that services are continuously improved with passengers. This amendment is consistent with our approach to rail, for which guidance on how to resolve complaints already exists. I agree with the noble Lords that it is important to deal with complaints properly, but it is my view that, apart from the handling of the original complaint, the resolution role sits with passenger watchdogs. The department is in the process of undertaking work with existing passenger watchdogs—Transport Focus and London TravelWatch—and bus stakeholders to identify issues and make recommendations on embedding standardised complaint-handling processes, ensuring that passengers have clear escalation. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord that the way to deal with complaints is not to file them in the waste-paper basket, but I do not wish to cut across the engagement that is currently under way.

I shall now address the points from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about help for local transport authorities in route planning and fare setting. Of course, he has missed the fact that virtually every local transport authority in Britain has existing experience in both since, for the past 40 years, they have had to tender services that have not been found by commercial bus services to be worth running. I cannot believe that there is a local transport authority in the country that does not have some experience of both route planning and fare setting.

Amendment 79B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, seeks to impose new requirements on the provision of real-time passenger information. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord that ensuring that passengers can access high-quality, real-time information about their services is critical, but he will, I hope, be aware that there are existing obligations on bus operators. The Public Service Vehicles (Open Data) (England) Regulations 2020 provide the foundation for those obligations and, from these regulations, the Bus Open Data Service was launched in 2020 to facilitate the provision of high-quality, accurate and up-to-date passenger information across England, outside London. The Government will continue to work with local authorities and the sector to help drive improvements in real-time information.

I know that the noble Lord will have noted the part of our earlier discussion about the requirement in this Bill to ensure that real-time information is available on an accurate basis; the worst thing you can have is inaccurate real-time information. However, this Bill is also about empowering local areas. Part of that is trusting them to take decisions on what is best for the communities that they serve and working with them constructively, particularly in areas where there are existing regulations to ensure that services are improved. This is why I believe that the noble Lord’s Amendment 79B is not necessary.

Turning to Amendment 79D, again I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for bringing it forward. As he said, it is about working with local transport authorities and airport operators, but I do not believe that the amendment is necessary. My department is currently carrying out a call for ideas for the integrated national transport strategy, which will set out a single national vision. This will have people who use transport and their needs at its heart and will empower local leaders to develop integrated transport solutions. As part of the Bill, we want better links across modes—links that connect people and businesses and support the economy. We are working with operators, local authorities and passengers in that way to deliver more reliable public transport networks in general. The noble Lord will, I hope, understand that I do not wish to cut across the engagement on the integrated national transport strategy that is currently under way.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his remarks in response to my amendment. He said in passing that a tram is not a bus, which is of course true, but it often fulfils the same role as a bus by moving lots of people in relative comfort. A lightweight tram scheme is now being built in Coventry, which I hope will be working in the next few years. It is very much cheaper to build, which is excellent, because it needs lighter track work. However, the question of who decides the timetable and fares of that tram and any bus service that Coventry City Council might wish to encourage will need looking at in future. Has the Minister’s department thought about that?

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 35 to 39, which I have put my name to. I have no problem with any of these amendments, particularly Amendment 56 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in which she talks about data, which I will get on to later. I apologise for degrouping, which I know has been weaponised recently. I degrouped mine because there is a subtle difference, and I did not want the two amendments to compete with each other.

Rather controversially, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, who said that floating bus stops are discriminatory. They are not: they are dangerous for everybody. I cycle, walk and catch buses. I avoid floating bus stops if I can because they are just terrifying. We have a chance to set a template here. I keep banging on about this. London works really well, and we are moving this out to other parts of the country. Accessibility and inclusive design need to be there, so that we can put it out to everybody.

Guide Dogs for the Blind and UCL did a lot of research recently, which they sent us, on floating bus stops. We should get people back on the buses any way we can. There are people sitting here who cannot use buses any more. We will talk later about rural areas, but buses are the ultimate form of travel. They should be quick, easy and pleasant to use. We must do everything we can do to make that everybody’s experience.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate. The debate about floating bus stops—I heard the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and others—all depends on the dimensions and who is around.

The noble Baroness mentioned Westminster Bridge, where the floating bus stop is on the far side of the bridge. The cycle lane there is a complete waste of time because it is full of pedestrians. The pedestrians are going on the road. It is a question of how much space is allocated to cyclists, to pedestrians, to people trying to get on and off buses—often with wheelchairs, which need to be level—and to vehicles. We have something to learn about that.

The opposite example is the other side of Victoria Station, in London, where, probably 20 years ago, a mayor put in a cycle lane but it was so narrow that you had to slow to a dead stop before you could turn a little corner. It is a question of design. A moratorium on these floating bus stops would be a great shame. Many cycle lanes, floating bus stops, and so on need a regular review depending on how many people are using them and how safe they are. Safety has to be balanced between cyclists, people in wheelchairs, able-bodied people and the foreigners who do not understand that we keep left, before we make changes. There are good places for floating bus stops and there are probably some bad ones.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, this one of the most important groups we are debating on this legislation. I will first speak to Amendment 41, which addresses disability training across the sector. Bus services are a lifeline for many people, providing essential access to employment, education, healthcare and social activities. However, for people with disabilities, navigating the bus system can present significant challenges. It is therefore really important when we consider legislation to look to make improvements, to ensure that public transport is accessible and inclusive for everyone. By incorporating comprehensive disability guidance into staff training, we transform the whole passenger experience.

Years ago, I attended bus driver training at one of the bus garages in Camberwell in London. I have to say, to describe it as not fit for purpose would be an understatement. I know significant changes have taken place since then, but we need quality training across the country. For example, training will increase understanding and equip staff with the knowledge and skills to understand the diverse needs of passengers with disabilities, ensuring the right support and assistance. It will also help staff identify and address barriers to accessibility, ensuring that buses and related services are designed and operated in a way that supports all passengers, including those with physical, sensory and cognitive disabilities. When staff are well trained in disability awareness, it leads to a much more positive experience for all passengers, so I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that amendment.

We have already heard some powerful case studies as we have discussed these amendments, in particular the detailed one of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I saw an interesting story in my press cuttings this morning concerning a freedom of information request Transport for All had published in London. It showed that wheelchair users were denied access to London buses 441 times in the last year due to inaccessibility. In some 56 instances, the bus ramp failed, and in 385 the user was refused admission for other reasons. That is why this discussion today is so important: people are being denied access to public transport when they are in a wheelchair or have other disabilities.

Many other amendments in this group have been clearly detailed and powerfully set out by my noble friend Lady Brinton and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. All of them would strengthen the Bill considerably. All are aimed at tackling accessibility issues, whether that is training, bus stops or bus services, but there is a serious issue we are discussing today, and that is bus stop bypasses. In designing something to keep cyclists safer on our roads, so they are not at the point where buses pull out, and to keep them away from motorised transport, a barrier for blind and visually impaired passengers has been created. While keeping cyclists safe is very important, it is also important that we keep blind and visually impaired bus passengers safe. Design has to be inclusive, as we have heard. I will be really interested to hear how the Government plan to address this serious concern, because consistency of design and design standards is essential.

We must look to create a truly accessible transport network that is for everyone. I look forward to hearing the detailed response from the Minister to the many points raised in this important group of amendments.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, if the noble Lord could wait until that particular group comes up, that would be appreciated. We are currently on the first group, which deals with Amendment 1 only. The noble Lord’s amendments will come up later in our proceedings.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, in looking at Amendment 1 and hearing the speeches on it, especially from the noble Lord who proposed it, I ask: what is the point of this amendment? It seems to me to be motherhood and apple pie and nothing much else. You can interpret the phrase “performance and quality” however you want—no doubt many noble Lords will link that phrase to some amendments that they will move or speak to later—but I really do not see it. Here is a Bill to improve passenger services and quality, clearly, but the noble Lord wishes to put in an amendment: Amendment 1. We will probably spend half an hour talking about it, but I hope that my noble friend the Minister has an answer as to why he does or does not like it.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group after my noble friend Lord Effingham spoke, but I am prompted to do so by an earlier intervention.

It is very important that, when you make a large change, as is proposed here—the Government will claim that this is a significant change, I think, and rightly so—you are clear about what you are trying to achieve. We might assume that everyone wants better buses and so ask why there is a need to say it, but you need to be clear about what you are trying to achieve. Of course everyone wants better buses, but what actually constitutes better buses? When the railways were nationalised, everybody wanted better railways. They did not necessarily imagine that, in the 1960s, that would involve slashing nearly all the branch lines in the country and making a dramatic change to the way in which the railways operated by cutting them back.

I am in some sense trying to help the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, with his question on the purpose of the amendment. There is also a further question: if you have an objective, who is to be held to account for that objective? This seeks to hold the Secretary of State firmly to account and put him at the centre of the chain of being responsible for this Bill.

It seems to me that there is nothing else in the text of the Bill that explicitly puts passengers, passenger needs and the quality of the service they receive at its heart. I think that there would be great benefit in doing so. We know that the Government and local transport authorities are responsible to multiple stakeholders—not only the users of their services but their workers, trade unions, local electors and so on. They have to balance the large number of needs and demands on them. The amendment says that the requirements of passengers come ahead of those others and that the Secretary of State would be held accountable if the Bill did not work out in improving passenger services. I find it difficult to see, first, why the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has difficulty understanding that point and, secondly and perhaps more importantly, why the Minister, should he be moved to resist this amendment, would want to do so.

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, just before the Minister responds, several noble Lords have talked about the bus service in Cornwall, saying how wonderful it is. As many noble Lords know, I live there and I often use the buses. There is nothing particularly special about a service that runs on time, publishes timetables and has bus stops that work. They have managed to persuade somebody—I think the Department of Transport—to enable them to finance a group of double-deck buses for the trunk routes. They are very comfortable and even have conference facilities on the top deck, with tables and things. It is still working very well. I think all that was needed was some officials in Cornwall Council who knew what they were doing, led by a good friend of mine, called Nigel Blackler. He managed to persuade the Government and Ministers at the time that it was a good thing—as Cornwall is geographically long and thin with one railway down the middle and a motorway down the middle and lots of others. It is quite possible to do; it has not cost them an arm and a leg and it is very popular. Why not carry on doing it?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

May I ask the noble Lord, briefly, if he believes that the whole success in Cornwall depends on a few people knowing what they are doing and being professional about it—I am sure he is right, he knows his area—would he not want to seek from the Minister the sort of assurances that I am looking for? That is that officers in other local transport authorities that adopt franchising are seen to have similar skills and abilities before they are allowed to do so?

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

If am grateful to the noble Lord. I think it was probably at Second Reading, or sometime, that we discussed the difference in the quality of local authority management between Dorset and Hampshire or somewhere there. It is down to the local authority to make sure that they have the right people. I am sure Ministers will be very keen to ensure that they do have the right people, because otherwise you will get what I found in Dorset. The train goes every hour and stops at a station called Sherborne and, interestingly, the connecting bus departs five minutes before the train arrives. That is just the kind of thing we do not want, but I hope the local authorities will be sensible enough to learn from some of these mistakes.