Stockton to Darlington Railway Anniversary

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I completely agree with my noble friend that this Government have been reopening abandoned routes, electrifying lines, investing in high-tech, refurbishing stations and building new tracks and trains, such as the Elizabeth line. That is what we intend to continue to do.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, would the Minister like to celebrate 2025 by telling us that we will have Royal Assent for the Great British railway legislation that we are still waiting for? It started as the Williams plan. It then became the Williams/Shapps plan, and presumably now it is going to be the Williams/Trevelyan plan. Might it ever be the Williams/Vere plan if we wait long enough?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I do not know—perhaps in my dreams. The Secretary of State is clear that the Government’s commitment to modernising rail and transforming the industry remains. We will of course legislate when parliamentary time allows.

Seafarers’ Wages Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in the gap. I declare an interest as honorary president of the United Kingdom Maritime Pilots’ Association and a former harbour commissioner of the port of Fowey in Cornwall.

I am a young boy here compared with the noble and learned Lord, but we had something in common about 15 years ago when there was a problem with lighthouses around the UK. Ships going into UK ports fund those lighthouses and we found that ships going into UK ports were also funding the Irish lights, nearly 100 years after independence. It took a great deal of effort from Ministers of both parties to get the Irish to accept that they should fund their own lighthouses from the revenue from ships going into Irish ports. Of course, lifeboats are a completely different matter, but it was a useful bit of work done by the lighthouse authorities.

I certainly support this Bill. A briefing came to me from the RMT, which calculated that P&O’s labour costs had been reduced by 30% as a result of what it did. That does not bode well for the poor people who used to work for it. Worse still, it could set a precedent for other competing ferries to do the same thing. It is all to do with the changes brought by Brexit, but we are where we are. I have a few questions, which I am sure will come up again in Committee, but I welcome the Bill, which is a good start.

On this business of 120 days, with the ferries that go to Spain from the UK, it is probably not the same ship all the way through the year—sometimes they go only in summer. Can the Minister say how their visits would be counted and qualified?

There are also the freight ships that go across—most are ro-ro, but not all—between the UK and the near continent, although I see that freight is included, which is really good. However, why are cruise ships left out? Some cruise ships just go around the UK, probably because of the Covid regulations of the last few years. Surely, the people who work on them deserve the same protection as those who operate the ferries, at whom this Bill is directed. Also, what about the deep sea ships, the deep sea containers and bulk carriers—which, as the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, reminded us, we talked about the other day?

They all have people working on them who, surely, if they are operating in UK waters, deserve the same protections. If people start saying that ship owners cannot afford to pay their crews decent wages, noble Lords might like to refer to an article in the Sunday Times last week which showed that the shipping industry made a net profit of £188 billion last year—so they can probably afford to pay their seafarers a decent wage and let them see some of the benefit.

There is also the question of the offshore oil sector and the boats that support it. So there are many questions there. I am not going to go on because I think I have reached my time limit, but I give notice that I shall have a number of amendments to put down in Committee. I think we need to talk in particular about the role of the ports, as several noble Lords have said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, the Bill is clearly not the star of the show today. We have heard so many wonderfully warm words, and I was touched by so many of them, not only from my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay but from all noble Lords who paid him tribute. But I must at least try to get the House back to focus on the Bill, and that is what I intend to do.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions and, as ever, I feel a letter coming on. We will try to get it out as soon as we can. I do not know that it will be before recess, but perhaps by the end of next week. I will try valiantly to answer as many of the questions raised as possible. I know that we will be heading into Committee on the Bill on, I think, 5 September, so it will be upon us before we know it. Thinking about it over the recess might be a very wise idea.

I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, that the Bill is too narrow. We must balance that with the statement of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, who said, “Oh, the Government are always reaching for legislation”. That is what we are trying not to do in this case; we are reaching for this legislation because it is necessary and fills a gap, but many of the other things we will be delivering in our nine-point plan do not need legislation, so we will not put them in legislation. Noble Lords know that we are overwhelmed with legislation; do not even get me on to secondary legislation, which we must also make sure is completely fit for purpose so that we do not end up overregulating and having too many debates on things that, frankly, do not need legislating. I am content with the scope of the Bill and the extent to which it applies.

There is always that very interesting balance in maritime between the Government being very focused on domestic priorities, for the protection of domestic workers operating with very close ties to the UK, and what is an extremely international market for maritime but which is governed by international laws, conventions, agreements, all sorts of things that make up the maritime ecosystem. We are very clear that we do not want to be upsetting that ecosystem and we are content that this Bill does not do that. We are also very clear when it comes to, for example, access to ports in an emergency or for the welfare of the people on board, a vessel would never be barred from entering a port in such circumstances. Therefore, I am content that this reaches that appropriate balance between the domestic priorities and the broader maritime framework, which is set mostly internationally.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked why there was no longer a harbours Bill. There was a name change. It is nothing more significant than that. I was expecting something called a “harbours something-or-other”, but there was a name change and, lo and behold, we are calling it something which much better reflects the intention, since our target is the seafarers, not the harbours. We are all after the people, and therefore it was quite right that we changed the name.

I think that I have covered the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, as well. I take his point, and he is hugely experienced regarding our international reputation. As we have set out in our nine-point plan, we will be working with international partners. We will not be putting this in the Bill because it is not within our gift to deliver it. That does not mean that we will not work extremely hard; at the moment we are engaging with eight European countries on seafarers protections and welfare more generally, and to explore the creation of the minimum wage equivalent corridors. I do not say that this will necessarily be easy, but there are many like-minded seafaring nations which would want to see certain agreements being reached. Discussions are currently at an early stage, but we are pursuing them as a matter of priority.

A number of noble Lords mentioned the conflict that might exist between ports’ commercial interests and their statutory duties. We are clear that we must be cognizant of that but also, because the Secretary of State has the power to issue directions, it is the case that in the event of any doubt that those two things were not being performed correctly, I am afraid that the MCA and probably the Secretary of State would have things to say. However, I must reiterate that when it comes to the ports, we do not really want them to do very much at all. By the time that we have passed the secondary legislation for the declarations, the declarations will be standard, they will have been consulted on, and we will have discussed them with the various stakeholders, so it will be a very transactional relationship. They have a transactional relationship with visiting vessels already, so it is just one more cog in that particular transactional relationship.

Therefore, the ports will not be performing any sort of enforcement function at all. I note the comments from my noble friend Lord Balfe but, as I said, we are quite clear on what we want the ports to do. I look forward to talking through the secondary legislation when we discuss the process in more detail. If we get the secondary legislation right, if the process is really effective, then the role of ports will be minimised.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked about the term “non-qualifying seafarers”. This is going to get a little complicated, because we are trying to capture non-qualifying seafarers; they do not qualify for the national minimum wage and we want to make them qualify for the equivalent, which we are setting up. We want all workers on vessels with close links to the UK to be covered. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, that we are focused on improving the rights of seafarers, both in the UK and by working with international structures.

The noble Lord, Lord Mann, mentioned some quite broad elements around workers’ rights and pay and conditions. The Bill seeks to amend the law in a limited and specific way. I will come back to this again and again in Committee: it is about workers with close ties to the UK, in UK waters. That is our focus in getting the Bill through Parliament. He mentioned a Bermuda judgment on pensions, but he is testing my knowledge so I will have to write on that matter.

I sense that we may have some discussions in Committee on the question of services as well. We considered all sorts of different frequency definitions, various types of vessel and the sorts of services they offer. It all got bogged down very quickly and could have ended up causing significant distortions to the market, as people try to change what their vessel does to fit into a different category. We do not want that; we are after simplicity here. We really are.

We decided on 120 days, which is equivalent to once every 72 hours, because we felt it was the right balance between workers on board having a close tie to the UK—I will come back to that a lot—and capturing as many of the vessels that we want to capture. We have analysed past data, which suggest that a large majority of ferry services would be captured in this scope. DfT statistics suggest that, had the policy been in effect in 2019, approximately 98% of passenger ferry voyages would have been captured and 70% of non-passenger ferry voyages carrying freight would have been in scope. Very few bulk, container and other such services would have fallen in scope—for example, for 1999, 7% of fully cellular container voyages to and from UK ports and a tiny proportion of the dry/liquid bulk services would have been in scope. I think we have the right balance.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned cruises. If it is a UK cruise that stays in UK waters, it will be paying the minimum wage, because that is already in the regulations. However, if the cruise ship is going far away, it will not be covered, because it does not have close ties to the UK, is not back and forth or visiting our shores very frequently. That is the distinction we have made.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am very grateful for the noble Baroness’s comments. She spoke about ships that do not have close ties to the UK, but we are talking about workers on those ships and whether they have close ties. It would be helpful if she could define that now or in writing.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Is it not really about the service? We cannot legislate for UK workers working in international waters or in any country in the world. That is what we must balance here. If we wanted to include cruises, we would have to include every vessel that pops into UK waters. The administration of that would blow up; it is not going to work. We will debate this in Committee, but I think we have reached the right balance. I do not know that noble Lords will be able to convince me that we have not, but I am willing to let them try.

I turn briefly to enforcement, which is a really important point. This is where the MCA will step up to enforce the system as a whole. We expect the cost of enforcement to be about £359,000 over 10 years. That is a relatively small amount in the context of the work of the MCA, because it can be done alongside its many other inspections.

The framework around the surcharges will be set out in secondary legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, was concerned about the ports setting the surcharge, but they will not. If a port for whatever reason had a ship approach and thought, “That’s a friendly ship; we’re not going to charge it a surcharge”, the Secretary of State could direct it to charge the surcharge. That gets round the issue where you might have a port and a ferry service operated by the same operator. The Secretary of State’s beady eye will be there to make sure that it does as it should.

I will come to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, about minimum fines. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, raised a point about a port being an enforcement authority; it definitely is not going to be. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, asked about criminal charges. It will be for the ship operator, which is standard for maritime, to suffer any penalties relating to the Bill.

I am going to finish off with my favourite topic—secondary legislation. I think someone said “good”; I am not sure who it was. I am really offended, but I am going to talk about secondary legislation just so we can suffer a little longer. This is important because I have noted that Grand Committee is on 15 September, and we will not have full draft regulations by then. I am sort of thinking that this is probably not the worst idea in the world. We will have detailed policy notes, but as we go through Committee and debate the sorts of things we are proposing to put into secondary legislation, I think having detailed policy notes will be sufficient to aid our thinking, and issues may certainly come up in the discussion that we may want to reflect in the regulations or perhaps draft the regulations in a slightly different way.

I believe I have covered some of the questions asked by noble Lords today.

Merchant Shipping (Additional Safety Measures for Bulk Carriers) Regulations 2022

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Grand Committee

To conclude, approval of these regulations would ensure that the UK meets its international obligations. The UK has already agreed to the amendments in the International Maritime Organization and these regulations will ensure that the UK is able to enforce the requirements. Ultimately, the regulations improve the safety standards for bulk carriers. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for introducing this very important instrument. It is quite complex and long. The problem which caused these new regulations to be introduced was the tragic sinking of the MV “Derbyshire” in 1980—the noble Baroness is shaking her head, but I think that is what it says in the briefing—and it is now 42 years later. What has happened in the meantime? I hope this is not another of the potential regulations from the marine section in her department which seem to have been delayed and which we have discussed before. These regulations are very important and I would like to know what has taken so long. I am sure the Brexit negotiations have had something to do with it.

The noble Baroness is absolutely right in what she says about the need for stability, double-skinned vessels and fixed covers. I would be grateful if she could confirm whether the regulations apply to what are generally towed barges—I would call them barges, but I suppose they are vessels, technically—such as those used for disposing the Crossrail spoil down the Thames about five years ago. Because they were moving on the tidal sea, they had to have covers that were strapped down, which was absolutely right, and I am sure they all complied. But there are now people doing business around the south-west who believe they can profitably rescue lithium ore from some of the mines or beaches of Cornwall. One such proposal was to take this in a vessel around Land’s End for processing in one of the ports on the south coast. I trust that that kind of transport is covered by this instrument, because it is pretty rough around there and these are very important safety rules.

I will not go through the whole instrument, because that would take a very long time and be very boring, but Part 4 on enforcement is interesting. It lists 10 different regulations, which are all to do with enforcement and which all, with one exception, apply to the owner and the master. Who does the enforcement? If the owner or master is found guilty, what level of fine would be applicable? I assume there would not be a prison sentence, but perhaps the noble Baroness could confirm that.

I have a slight problem with the way some of these things are enforced. Some years ago, I was a member of the harbour commission in the port of Fowey in Cornwall, which, of course, welcomes china clay ships and exports bulk ships—which are obviously covered by the regulations. It is not one of the cargoes referred to, but it is a dry cargo and a powder, so I am sure it is included.

One day, somebody came in and said, “We’ve just seen a Russian ship come in ready to be loaded with china clay, and we’ve seen a hole about six inches large in the bottom of the hull with a couple of rags stuffed in it.” The tide was wrong, so everybody could see it as they went past. If it had been a different tide, heaven knows what would have happened. The ship probably would not have sunk, although it would not have helped the china clay very much.

On enforcement, it is clear that most of the initial reports will come from the harbours and ports where ships come and go. I have come across this in other parts of harbours legislation. Some ports are, one fears, not very enthusiastic about reporting small defects for fear that the ships or cargo might not come back and they will lose income. Obviously, the MCA deals with it when it reaches it, but it clearly needs to know about it.

It would be interesting to know whether the Minister has any information on how many such incidents have been reported in the past few years, how many were against British-registered ships, of which they probably are not many any more, and how many were against foreign-registered ships. It is terribly important that the regulations, which I thoroughly support, are enforced fairly but comprehensively in every port, big or small, around the country. The regulations are very good, I look forward to the Minister’s answers and I congratulate her on, eventually, bringing this instrument forward.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the legislation being updated to ensure that we meet our international safety obligations for bulk carriers; it is clearly right to do so. There was an eight-week consultation, which elicited only one response, resulting in no changes, so it is good that there was full consultation.

However—the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, covered this point—there seem to have been no substantive amendments to the regulations since 2004. The 2018 amendments were minor, yet the design of bulk carriers has been transformed since the turn of the century, and ships are much larger, so it is extremely important that our legislation is up to date. We welcome the fact that this SI sensibly establishes a system for keeping us in step with international standards for the future.

The Explanatory Memorandum, at paragraph 3.2, explains the conclusions of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which discovered a massive backlog of EU maritime legislation that had never been incorporated into UK law. This seems to go back more than a decade, which suggests that we have not been internationally compliant, which would be a worrying situation for a maritime nation. I therefore ask the Minister whether what I have just said is true; I should appreciate confirmation.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made a number of points, one of which was about enforcement. I have two questions on that. As I understand it, there are 28 bulk carriers registered on the UK flag, and they are all, apparently, already compliant. Paragraph 4.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that bulk carriers registered under other flags must also comply while in UK waters.

Worldwide, there are many thousands of such bulk carriers. It would be helpful for the Minister to say how many carriers under other flags are entering UK waters, let us say in the course of a year, and what checks have been done and will be done to establish that they comply with the convention. Clearly, in the context of many thousands of bulk carriers across the world, only 28 are registered with a UK flag.

Secondly, the statutory instrument has a long and complex list of exceptions in Regulation 7. Is the Minister convinced that it will be effective given that number of exceptions, and are they all based on international precedent and regulations which are adopted elsewhere? In other words, is that list of exceptions our list that would apply only to this country, or are we establishing exceptions based on what other countries also do?

I welcome generally the statutory instrument—the proposal is absolutely right—but it has raised a number of questions and it would help if they were clarified.

HS2: Speed Restrictions

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to avoid significant settlements, and consequent speed restrictions, on the route of the HS2 rail line in the area above the Cheshire salt mines north of Crewe.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, HS2 Ltd has undertaken ground investigations to increase the understanding of geological risks associated with settlement. This work supplements examination of information from the British Geological Survey, historic boreholes, salt extraction operators and action groups. This information has informed the current design.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that helpful Answer. She will be aware that underneath the area where the line goes north of Crewe, there are caverns that are 200 metres high, and only 25% of the salt is remaining and the rest has been extracted. It has been settling for 100 years and probably will continue to settle for that length of time. What is HS2 going to do to ensure that the line remains straight and level, which is necessary for high-speed rail work?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Of course, HS2 is well aware of what has happened underneath the Cheshire Basin, and I noted in my previous Answer that groundworks have been undertaken. I am pleased to reassure the noble Lord that that is not the end of it. Plenty more work still needs to be done. A full programme of ground investigations across the entire route will happen between 2023 and late 2025. HS2 is confident that the line can be built on this route at an appropriate cost.

M56 Motorway (Junctions 6 to 7) (Variable Speed Limits) Regulations 2022

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2022 Lords Chamber

I put down this regret Motion for two reasons. I had greatly welcomed the Secretary of State’s commitment at the start of the year, and I really regret the Government’s failure to implement the clear spirit of the commitments he made by ensuring that this stretch of the M56 is not brought into use without a safe number of emergency areas. I also put down this regret Motion to express concern at the continuing poor quality of some Department for Transport legislation, or at least the EMs associated with them. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s additional explanations of why this SI is flawed in the ways that I have pointed out.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support most of what the noble Baroness said in introducing this short debate. We are starting to hear that the Government are changing metres into feet or miles, but that is completely irrelevant. I suspect that, as the noble Baroness said, this regulation and the policy behind it—if you can call it that—will cover the whole of the country before long. I believe that there are already 236 miles of smart motorway, and that 200 more miles are planned.

I will say a few words about safety, because that is what it is all about. The distance between the places where you can get off the motorway must relate to what happens to your vehicle and the fact that you need to stop. The noble Baroness mentioned a variety of distances between 2,500 metres and 1,000 metres, but there will be situations where even 1,000 metres is not long enough; it depends on the gradient, the speeds and everything else. It is relevant that the AA has banned its recovery crews from dealing with cars that have broken down on smart motorways because it is too dangerous. There has to be a solution. I do not know what the right distance is; it is sad that the Government have not got some proper data on all this—probably over five years, as the noble Baroness and the Transport Committee suggested—so that we have some information to talk about and to see how safety is affected.

Two things are pretty obvious. The first is around the enforcement of speed on these motorways. There may or may not be variable speeds, but it needs to be much more effective and consistent. The electronic vehicle detection machine is supposed to be the Government’s flagship—in other words, if a vehicle breaks down not in a layby but in the left-hand lane, variable message signs immediately come up, saying “Slow down: lane is blocked.” But the figure I have seen shows that this works in only 62% of the examples where a vehicle has stopped, presumably in the nearside lane. That is much too low, because it means that, for the other 38%, there is a good chance that the vehicle behind will run into the one that has stopped. I cannot see why that cannot work properly. The Government should avoid bringing any more of these into effect until they can get this vehicle detection system working.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. As the noble Baroness said, I am pleased she is here, because she has a lot of experience on roads and transport. This is a terrible mess. Frankly, when the Government ignore the House of Commons Transport Committee’s sensible report, and receive the comments that the noble Baroness mentioned in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report, it is as if they just want to ignore the whole lot and battle on regardless. I hope I am wrong.

[Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises some serious and good points. However, I gently remind noble Lords of how these smart motorways came to pass. I recall that, in my time in the European Parliament as the transport spokesman—obviously covering road, rail, aviation and maritime—the huge push for smart motorways came from the regulations and directives in the European Parliament some years ago. This was not just about the UK. We found that many member states were having problems with capacity due to the growth in traffic, and it was about trying to look at a way that we did not have to build motorways in different parts of the country but just expand the ones that we had.

I fully acknowledge that there have clearly been some awful accidents due to the fact that there was no hard shoulder. When motorways were built in the first place, it was known that there could be a risk of accident—obviously, there is always the risk of accident—and it was paramount that there needed to be a safe space to go. I also understand that in some cases where there have been accidents, it has been very much a technological failure because the notification above the lane that it was closed, or the X, was not showing. People have then got confused, and of course some of the results of that have been appalling. There are also appalling accidents even for the miles of motorways where we have hard shoulders, which is why we have tried to make sure that people are alert if they pull in and why we now tell people to get out of their cars, notwithstanding the size of the lorries that sometimes have to pull in.

Can my noble friend say whether the Government are looking at how, for example, the technology can work, notwithstanding that we have spent millions expanding these motorways? I use the M6 with great frequency when I drive down here, and the M56 too, which the noble Baroness mentioned, and we have miles of full lanes where we are doing 60 miles an hour. We have had years of this expansion—obviously not of infrastructure—for all the right reasons on the motorways, to get the capacity, and we have been under terrible restrictions with roadworks; it is now even more infuriating that we have four lanes but are still all crawling along half of the time.

Notwithstanding the issue of technology, which clearly needs to be seen to be working and to work properly so that people and organisations have confidence, I look forward to the response from my noble friend. We need to move this on. As the noble Baroness opposite said, there is clearly a need for more laybys to access. This will take some time, because more roadworks will have to be started, but it is imperative that those can be put in place as quickly as possible.

High Speed Rail (Crewe–Manchester) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

1. That if—

(a) a High Speed Rail (Crewe–Manchester) Bill is first brought to this House from the House of Commons in this Session of Parliament (“the current session”), and

(b) the proceedings on the Bill in this House are not completed in the current session, further proceedings on the Bill shall be suspended from the day on which the current session ends until the next Session of Parliament (“Session 2023–24”).

2. That if, where paragraph 1 applies, a bill in the same terms as those in which the High Speed Rail (Crewe–Manchester) Bill stood when it was brought to this House in the current session is brought from the House of Commons in Session 2023–24—

(a) the proceedings on the bill in Session 2023–24 shall be pro forma in regard to every stage through which the bill has passed in the current session;

(b) the Standing Orders of the House applicable to the bill, so far as complied with or dispensed with in the current Session or in the previous Session of Parliament (“Session 2021–22”), shall be deemed to have been complied with or (as the case may be) dispensed with in Session 2023–24;

(c) any resolution relating to the Habitats Regulations that is passed by the House in the current session in relation to the Bill shall be deemed to have been passed by the House in Session 2023–24; and

(d) if there is outstanding any petition deposited against the bill in accordance with an order of the House—

(i) any such petition shall be taken to be deposited against the bill in Session 2023–24 and shall stand referred to any select committee on the bill in that Session; and

(ii) any minutes of evidence taken before a select committee on the bill in the current session shall stand referred to any select committee on the bill in Session 2023–24.

3. That if proceedings on the Bill are resumed in accordance with paragraph 2 but are not completed before the end of Session 2023–24, further proceedings on the Bill shall be suspended from the day on which that Session ends until the first Session of the next Parliament (“Session 2024–25”).

4. That if, where paragraph 3 applies, a bill in the same terms as those in which the High Speed Rail (Crewe–Manchester) Bill stood when it was brought to this House in the session 2023–24 is brought from the House of Commons in Session 2024–25—

(a) the proceedings on the bill in Session 2024–25 shall be pro forma in regard to every stage through which the bill has passed in Session 2023–24 or in the current session;

(b) the Standing Orders of the House applicable to the bill, so far as complied with or dispensed with in Session 2023–24 or in the current Session or in Session 2021–22, shall be deemed to have been complied with or (as the case may be) dispensed with in Session 2024–25;

(c) any resolution relating to the Habitats Regulations that is passed by the House in Session 2023–24 or in the current session in relation to the Bill shall be deemed to have been passed by the House in Session 2024–25; and

(d) if there is outstanding any petition deposited against the bill in accordance with an order of the House—

(i) any such petition shall be taken to be deposited against the bill in Session 2024–25 and shall stand referred to any select committee on the bill in that Session; and

(ii) any minutes of evidence taken before a select committee on the bill in Session 2023–24 or in the current session shall stand referred to any select committee on the bill in Session 2024–25.

5. That if a High Speed Rail (Crewe–Manchester) Bill is first brought to this House from the House of Commons in Session 2023–24 the Standing Orders of the House applicable to the bill, so far as complied with or dispensed with in the current session or in Session 2021–22, shall be deemed to have been complied with or (as the case may be) dispensed with in Session 2023–24.

6. That if—

(a) a High Speed Rail (Crewe–Manchester) Bill is first brought to this House from the House of Commons in Session 2023–24, and

(b) the proceedings on the Bill in this House are not completed in Session 2023–24, further proceedings on the Bill shall be suspended from the day on which Session 2023–24 ends until Session 2024–25.

7. That if, where paragraph 6 applies, a bill in the same terms as those in which the High Speed Rail (Crewe–Manchester) Bill stood when it was brought to this House in Session 2023–24 is brought from the House of Commons in Session 2024–25—

(a) the proceedings on the bill in Session 2024–25 shall be pro forma in regard to every stage through which the bill has passed in Session 2023–24;

(b) the Standing Orders of the House applicable to the bill, so far as complied with or dispensed with in Session 2023–24 or in the current session or in Session 2021–22, shall be deemed to have been complied with or (as the case may be) dispensed with in Session 2024–25;

(c) any resolution relating to the Habitats Regulations that is passed by the House in Session 2023–24 in relation to the Bill shall be deemed to have been passed by the House in Session 2024–25; and

(d) if there is outstanding any petition deposited against the bill in accordance with an order of the House—

(i) any such petition shall be taken to be deposited against the bill in Session 2024–25 and shall stand referred to any select committee on the bill in that Session; and

(ii) any minutes of evidence taken before a select committee on the bill in Session 2023–24 shall stand referred to any select committee on the bill in Session 2024–25.

8. In paragraphs 1, 3 and 6 above, references to further proceedings do not include proceedings under Standing Order 83A(8) (deposit of supplementary environmental information).

9. In paragraphs 2, 4 and 7 above, references to the Habitats Regulations are to the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

The House will know that this is a standard carry-over Motion, and it is welcome, but I question the timing. This Bill has only recently had its Second Reading in the House of Commons and will probably take another year or so in Select Committee there, so why today? I ask the Minister: is it something that is normal at this stage in a Bill process, or are the Government preparing for an early election and making sure that everything is ready in case there is one?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that this a very standard process. The date is today because it is convenient for it to be today. It is a very regular procedure, as he has stated. So, if I were him, I would not read too much into it.

West Coast Main Line

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the warning about the 0745 Stoke-on-Trent to Manchester but, as she pointed out, the removal of that service is temporary. It will be reinstated. Noble Lords will be aware that there has been a significant uptick in the number of cases of Covid recently, leading to short-term staff unavailability. That has had a knock-on impact on training for new staff coming in to support these services. Avanti West Coast is working very hard to minimise the impact on passengers. All cancellations are regrettable. Often these circumstances are quite fast-moving, and changes are temporary, so traditional consultation does not usually happen. However, usually the train operating companies will work with the local markets and with key stakeholders to understand any impact.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, Great British Railways is coming into effect in, I am sure the Minister hopes, a couple of years. She will be directly responsible for all the trains that are on time and late, as well as for the infrastructure. Does she relish that? If not, who will she blame?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I hope that it will not be me personally, as I am not the Rail Minister, though it will be the Government. However, Great British Railways will be a body set up specifically for all those things that the noble Lord has pointed out, which will be to the benefit of passengers and freight since it will bring everything under one overarching umbrella. Will the Secretary of State and any Rail Minister at that time micromanage the network? Absolutely not. However, there will be one guiding mind. That is our ambition for Great British Railways.

Airports: Delays

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The strategic risk group is now well under way. It meets weekly at the highest level. It is a CEO-level meeting with the Aviation Minister. It is working on all of the mitigations to the risks as they become higher up the priority list and therefore more urgent. The 22 measures are some of the things that have resulted from the strategic risk group and, indeed, from other conversations that are happening, particularly on the operational side of matters. On night flights, the Government are well aware that there is always a balance between the aviation travelling public and the communities that live and work near airports. The current rules extend to October 2025 and the Government have no plans to change them.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not about time that the airlines stopped selling tickets that they cannot deliver? Should they not reduce the number of sales until they are absolutely certain that they, the airports, their colleagues and the immigration centre have enough resources?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

That is exactly what the Government have said to the aviation sector. The Government and the CAA wrote to the sector, both the airports and airlines, to set out the expectations for both over the summer period. The first of those is that summer schedules must be reviewed to make sure that they are deliverable. To that end, the Government are changing the regulations with regard to slots, to introduce a slot amnesty for a part of the summer.

Industrial Action on the Railways

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I recognise that my noble friend is trying to be helpful here, and I appreciate it, but the Government are committed to working with the train operating companies to put in place as many services as we can to minimise disruption to both freight and passenger operations where possible. Shutting the railway for the entire week would be shooting ourselves in the foot. We absolutely need to provide those services for as many people as possible, because we know that so many people are reliant on the railways.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I get the impression that this crisis has just occurred in the past week, but that is not the case. The trade unions have been talking about this for a long time; the Government have been talking about Great British Railways for a very long time. We do not really know the extent to which these two issues are combined and whether the noble Baroness’s wish for change and the examples she gave will be included in legislation, but it seems very odd that we are now waiting until the last day before anything significant is happening.

I do not buy this business that the Government are not a principal. Since Covid, for very good reasons, the Government have been micromanaging the railways, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said. They are not allowing the train operators or Network Rail to negotiate. I do not know whether they mind about that but if they do not, the Government should take it on themselves.

I ask the Minister: what next? We have three strikes this week and, if there is no solution, what happens next? She and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, mentioned agency workers, but the last time we had an issue with agency workers related to P&O Ferries. Ministers were quite critical of P&O, to the extent that the Secretary of State said that he would sack its chairman. Whether he actually had the power to sack the chairman is a different matter, but if this goes on and agency workers are brought in, how can the Secretary of State sack himself? That really would not work. I hope that next week or by the end of this week, whatever the reasons, the Government encourage everybody to sit around the table and start talking about change and how it can be implemented while keeping the services going at the same time. As the Minister said, in France—I have a lot of experience of what happened on the railways in France—there is a rule that the trade unions allow one train in four to keep going, whatever the strike, so that there is at least a minimum service.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked: what next? The most important thing, to my mind, is for the unions to come back to the table—to sit down with the train operating companies and Network Rail to reach a resolution.

Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) and Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Pollution) (Law of the Sea Convention) Amendment Order 2022

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Mountevans (CB)]

My Lords, I have no comment to make on the hovercraft provisions but should like to raise two points. I am concerned about possible creeping criminalisation for seafarers. A pollution incident could take place due to a fault in a valve, a pipe or some such—work that could have been done by a shipyard or other third party—or something for which the crew are arguably not specifically responsible. I want the Minister to be very careful about extending to seafarers in this way criminalisation which might not be appropriate.

The second point is that shipping is a reserved power, but the legislation will generate different actions depending on the registered port of the vessel, so that a vessel registered in Aberdeen would not be liable to action, whereas a vessel registered in Southampton would. It would not matter per se whether the incident happened in the UK or elsewhere in the world, but the provisions in Scotland appear to be different and, if the ship is registered in Scotland, British ships could incur different penalties for a similar offence.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her introduction of this very interesting SI. My first question is: why now, apart from the fact that Brexit has happened? We have all been travelling on hovercraft for 40 years or more, and one could assume, therefore, that it has been all right to pollute from hovercraft for 40 years without anyone worrying and you need only one person on the bridge because the regulations do not apply to hovercraft. Can the Minister explain why hovercraft are different? There are other types of fast passenger boats around these days—they are probably called “jet boats”, or something like that. I am not sure why a hovercraft is so different, apart from the fact that it gets its lift from air which does not leak out. It is still a craft and therefore obviously still needs to be subject to the pollution regulations and the manning rules.

On manning, is the intention to make rules for hovercraft the same as for any other passenger vessel, where, I think, the rule is that if you do not have more than 12 passengers, you can have one person as the crew, whatever the size of boat? But then there are various rules according to the number of passengers, size of ships, weather conditions and everything else. Hovercraft generally do not operate in bad weather in the way that many ships can. Perhaps the Minister can explain how the manning regulations would be different on a hovercraft from an ordinary ship in the number of crew wanted.

Lastly, I think that, as the Minister said, the only service now in the UK is the one across to the Isle of Wight, but there used to be one across the channel. If that re-emerges in some shape or form—between the UK and France or another EU country—will we get into the same knot as has happened with P&O Ferries with manning and everything else? I hope that will not involve coming back here with some more regulations; I hope it is already covered. I look forward to her answers.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her introduction, and the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, for pointing out that the situation will be different in Scotland. It will also be different in Northern Ireland, so far as I understand it from my reading of the SI.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

What about Wales?

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

No, the situation will not be different in Wales; as so often, it is a case of “England and Wales”.

I join the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in asking why this is happening at this point. My research suggests that not only is there only one public hovercraft service left in Britain, but there appears to be only one commercial hovercraft service left in the world. If that is the case, hovercraft really are yesterday’s technology. They are even less likely to make a comeback following the huge increases in the price of fuel, because they consume very high amounts of fuel as well as being unreliable as a passenger service, of course, because they are difficult to operate in bad weather—and we get a lot of that in the UK. In modern terms, although hovercraft are exciting and interesting to travel on, they are environmentally unacceptable because of their high fuel consumption.

My suspicious mind led me to wonder whether there was a specific Isle of Wight issue. I would be grateful if the Minister would address in her answer whether specific aspects will be applied to the Isle of Wight service, which, despite all that I have said, is an important part of the infrastructure connections for people living on and visiting the island.

When I had stopped wondering why the measure was being introduced now, after all these years, I wondered whether this was part of the major catching-up exercise that the Minister has bravely embarked on in her department. We know that the Department for Transport has a backlog of marine legislation that long pre-dates her coming into her position there. Is this part of a routine catching up to ensure that we can apply rules to hovercraft that apply to other types of seagoing vehicle? I would be grateful if the Minister could answer my questions now, or in writing afterwards if she is unable to do so immediately.