High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill
Lord Berkeley ExcerptsMonday 30th November 2020
(3 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Act 2021 View all High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 142-R-I Marshalled list for Report - (25 Nov 2020)
Lord Berkeley
Leave out “now received” and insert “not received until a Select Committee has been appointed to consider Works Nos 62, 67, 67A, 67B, 67C, 67D, 69, 69A, 70, 70A, 93, 101B, 101C, 101D, 101E, 101F, 101G and 101H and Footpath Stone Rural 33 and related works as listed in Schedule 1 and the House has debated its report and a Government response; that no member who has spoken in proceedings on the bill be appointed to the Committee; that the Committee be given power to receive oral evidence and to appoint specialist advisers; and that the Committee report within three months of appointment.”
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, in moving this amendment at an unusual stage in the proceedings, my purpose is to debate how small changes are made to the Bill, not the route, either by the Government or by petitioners and the use of Transport and Works Act orders. I am grateful to the Minister for the meeting that she arranged with her and the Minister for High Speed 2, Andrew Stephenson MP. We had some useful discussion. The extraordinary thing is that it is not possible, under the current rules of this place, to debate a Select Committee report. In discussions with the helpful clerks, the next best solution that they came up with was that I move an amendment. I will explain what it does in a minute. I am afraid that it would cause delay, but I believe it offers some alternatives. We will see where that goes.
My purpose is to reopen petitions on phase 2a that asked for Transport and Works Act orders as a solution to the small changes that they were proposing. Both Select Committees, because of the custom and practice here, agreed that this should not be allowed. I will explain that in more detail.
Current practice allows for additional provisions or small changes to a Bill. They are approved in revised form in both Houses but, if the additional provision—I shall call them an AP—is proposed in the second House, it means going back to the first House for approval. This adds delay, so it has become custom and practice that an AP cannot to be accepted in the second House. The committee made that clear and I do not criticise it for so doing but, when petitioners propose changes that they believe will be beneficial, cheaper and reduce the impact on a local area—including one to change a viaduct into a tunnel at Wendover, Stone and Woore, in phase 1—their feeling is that attempt to get a fair hearing in the second House, which is usually the House of Lords, was not fair. They were not able to cross-examine the promoters and staff and came away rather unhappy.
My amendment, which is the only solution open to me to get the debate on TWAOs going, is to set up a committee of the House to look at areas of the Bill where petitioners had suggested the TWAO option, which is allowed under paragraph 8.118 of the Companion. The difference would be that the committee would hear evidence with an open mind and would be unfettered from not being able to recommend alternatives that would require an AP or TWAO. The committee’s remit would be confined to those issues where TWAOs were suggested by petitioners and not the whole scheme. It would hear evidence and would I hope be supported by an independent adviser who could advise the petitioners.
The key to the new committee, and we should reflect on this, is that it would recommend changes, but not how they would be implemented. That would be up to the Government, who could decide on a TWAO, or an AP with the additional time it takes, or they could refuse to do it at all. They can do that anyway.
The petitioners who I talked to expected a greater hearing. We discussed this in Committee. The committee clearly felt that it was acting within the constraint of solutions that would not require additional provisions or Transport and Works Act orders, so the petitioners thought that the process was unfair. This is not good for this project, future projects or communities that feel unfairly treated.
There is a solution: to use the TWAO that is provided for in Clause 49 of the Bill. In Committee, the Minister gave a very useful description of what the process entails, so I do not have to repeat it now. However, what worries me is that there does not seem to be any consistency in the use of a TWAO. The Government seem happy to decide when a TWAO should be used and when it should not. I am not in any way taking sides as to the rights and wrongs of each case, because that is how the process must work, but it is necessary to have a process that is fair and seen to be fair and consistent.
Perhaps I may give one or two examples, again without repeating what we discussed in Committee. In phase 2a, there is what has become known as the Stone railhead issue. As noble Lords have said, there has been a lot of discussion about that, and about issues such as the provision of evidence by HS2, the stability of an 11-metre high earth structure and things like that. I think the Select Committee’s conclusion in its special report was that:
“If it subsequently proves unfeasible to locate the IMB-R at Stone as the petitioners contend, it will be for HS2 to resolve the issue within the powers of the Bill.”
As the committee refused the option of a TWAO here, if the Government are to do this later, they will presumably have to do a TWAO at that stage. That will cause a great deal more delay. So why was it not allowed during the Select Committee hearing?
The other case is Woore Parish Council, which felt that it needed a TWAO to help with the flow of lorries to the construction sites and proposed the option of using the Keele services on the M6. We will be discussing transport, heavy lorries and other issues in later groups of amendment, but for the local residents the council’s suggestions seemed much better than HS2’s proposals.
I have discussed before the issue of a tunnel at Wendover, but more recently I have received a copy of a letter from Rob Butler MP, the MP for Aylesbury, who has written to the Minister at some length on it. He commented:
“While HS2 Ltd disputes the Wendover proposal’s figures, the company has consistently refused to provide the evidence to back up its stance – be it technical data on the method of construction, or accurate costings”.
He asks in his letter whether the tunnel alternative actually required a TWAO, but the extraordinary thing is that he then quotes a letter from the Minister, who said:
“Our legal advice is that any scheme that conflicts with the specific description of the work in question … is not permissible”,
and you cannot turn a railway into a viaduct or tunnel, or vice versa. But Rob Butler goes on to say that the Government are changing exactly that by extending a tunnel at a place called Bromford, beyond the length explicitly referred to in Schedule 1 to the Act. The extension conflicts with the description of the works in question, and the Government are proposing it with a TWAO. In the end, Rob Butler MP said:
“If I may put it bluntly, either Schedule 1 of the HS2 (London to West Midlands) Act 2017 is immutable or it is not. Given the Department for Transport has given leave at Bromford to deviate from the consented scheme, it appears a mechanism exists for such changes to be enacted without amending the Phase One Act”.
He added:
“If a tunnel can be granted at Bromford, with the use of a TWAO, why cannot this take place … in Wendover”?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate—an hors d’oeuvre to the main course yet to come. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and other noble Lords are aware, the Bill has already been carefully scrutinised by a Select Committee of this House. That committee was convened under the rules for private and hybrid Bills and was chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, to whom we are very grateful and who unfortunately cannot be with us today.
In its report, the Select Committee discussed whether such a committee can make an amendment to the Bill that extends the powers of the promoter—in this case, HS2 Ltd—such as powers to compulsorily acquire land. Such an amendment to a private Bill is known as an additional provision. The Select Committee report states:
“As a matter of practical reality, almost every additional provision which solves or mitigates difficulties for one group of residents along the line raises new difficulties for another group.”
The Select Committee therefore concluded that amendments that extend powers would not be appropriate.
Those adversely affected by an additional provision in the first House have the opportunity to petition against it in that House and in the second House. As both HS2 Select Committees in this House—for this Bill and for phase 1—have noted, it would not be fair to allow amendments in the second House, unless those affected by it could also petition in both Houses. The consequence of this, however, would be that hybrid Bills would be for ever doomed to travel from a Select Committee in one House to another Select Committee in the other and back again in never-ending ping-pong.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, acknowledged all that in Grand Committee, yet here we have an amendment to send the Bill off to another but different type of Select Committee. This proposed Select Committee would have no powers at all to amend the Bill and the process would cause many months of delay to the Bill and create even more uncertainty for residents and businesses along the proposed route. At some point this must stop, a line must be drawn and a decision taken about the construction of this railway. I urge him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I did not get wholehearted support; I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her support. I do not think this has been in vain because some noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe, in particular, have recognised that perhaps the system needs to be looked at, but not in the environment I started this afternoon. I apologise for that. I wanted to have a debate on Transport and Works Act orders, which we have not had, but we can follow that up some other way.
Several noble Lords have told me that I oppose the HS2 project and that this is only a delaying tactic; I want to put that on record. It would not be a delaying tactic if we had been allowed to talk about Transport and Works Act orders, which we are not under the current procedures. I have said many times that I am in favour of new railways, pretty obviously. My problem with HS2 is that it has turned out over the years to be overspecified and the costs have got completely out of control. The money could be much better spent on the regional railways in the north and the Midlands.
Also for the record, I am not criticising the Select Committee. I have said before that it has done a great job. I am not criticising its selection or its chair. My advice from the clerks certainly is that the second House on the occasion of a hybrid Bill is not a revising Chamber; it is a second Select Committee equal to the first one in its ability. If, by any conceivable chance, a hybrid Bill on a railway started in your Lordships’ House, the House of Commons would become the second House. That could be an interesting discussion and probably would not go down very well.
However, my main concern has been and still is that the Transport and Works Act order process is included in Clause 49 of this Bill but the extent to which it may be used appears to be in the Government’s hands rather than those of the committee, in spite of what has been said. I hope we can continue this discussion in your Lordships’ House on an occasion less time-constrained than this Bill and try and get it right for the next one. I hope there is another one coming. My noble friend Lord Adonis thinks it is going to come within the next six months. We will see whether that is the case. Whether it is or not, I think we need to resolve this and the many things we have discussed.
I did threaten to divide the House but, in deference to the amount of work we have to discuss this afternoon, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I add my support for my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment. I remember that when he first brought forward HS2 as Transport Secretary it was as a concept for this new Y-shaped spine, which would dramatically transform connectivity between London, the Midlands and the north. This concept has stood 11 years of the most severe examination. This afternoon, we have an opportunity to tell the Government that they cannot replace a north-south divide in this country with an east-west divide, and that both parts of this scheme should go ahead.
We were in economic difficulty at the point when my noble friend Lord Adonis first proposed HS2. We had just been through the financial crisis and the banking meltdown yet, at a time of great fiscal difficulty, here were a Government putting forward a transformative scheme for the country. One of the great things about it was that my noble friend Lord Adonis was able to secure cross-party backing for the whole concept. That is why it survived throughout the decade of the 2010s, first with the coalition and then with the Conservative Governments.
The need for this giant step forward in connectivity in Britain is even more compelling today than it was in 2009, because, since then, regional inequalities have grown. We have Brexit, which, whatever we think of it, will cause problems for regions in the north and Midlands that are heavily dependent on manufacturing. Now we have the prospect of permanent scarring of our economy as a result of the Covid crisis. One thing on which I think we can all support the present Government is their aspiration for levelling up. If we take that aspiration seriously, what on earth is the case for losing heart on this tremendous concept of transforming connectivity in England?
The economic argument holds true. Across Europe and North America, cities are the most dynamic places of productivity, growth, innovation and opportunity. Bringing cities together through better transport connections will increase and multiply those benefits. I saw some data the other day that suggested how the big cities of Britain were all much less productive than their comparators on the continent. This transformative proposal for connectivity would help reverse that. The imperative to go ahead is as strong as it ever was.
I speak as someone who does not live directly on the line. My dad was a railway clerk in Carlisle. When I was a lad, I think there were four express trains during the day from Carlisle to London. The first one left at 8.30 am and got you into Euston just before 5 pm. It was quite nice, of course, because if you could afford it, you could have both lunch and tea in the restaurant car, but it was an exceptionally long journey in the 1950s. Now, as a result of the west coast main line modernisation, the journey time has been reduced to three hours and 20 minutes. With HS2, it should be reduced further to around two and a half hours. Just to show how these things link together, one of the proposals of the borderlands project, which the Government last week agreed should be accelerated, is to spend the money on making sure that the platforms at Carlisle station are long enough to take HS2.
This scheme can affect most parts of Britain in a positive way. We should not go back on it now.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I join every other noble Lord who has spoken in reminding the House that services between Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds are pretty awful at the moment. They are very slow, they are probably unreliable, and they do not help with the levelling-up agenda, “one nation”—as my noble friend Lord Adonis called it—or anything else. It is easy to reflect now on whether the Government should have gone for phase 2b east before they went for 2a, but it is too late for that, and does it really matter?
Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I have some sympathy for this amendment given my experience as a member of the HS2 committee. The representations that we heard from petitioners were basically very local: they were individual petitions—people who had particular grievances and concerns—and, to the extent that there was any collective representation, at the parish council level. It is a pity that broader questions of whether the county council, highways authority and those responsible for transport locally had looked at how the impact of HS2 could be mitigated, given that we do not want to stop it or change the line of the route, did not come up at our committee. I therefore have some sympathy with Amendment 4.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, this is an interesting amendment. I shall just concentrate a very few remarks on proposed new subsection (2)(c) and (d). The first thing to say is that I do not think that anybody is serious in expecting them to build extra stations on phase 2a. Crewe is a very good junction and it must involve, possibly on other lines, building extra stations if it can be justified.
As part of the Oakervee review, I also, with the team, visited Crewe. I think the Select Committee went there as well. It brings into focus the fact that the Select Committee quite rightly looks at local things and people’s concerns, but who looks at what one might call the regional connectivity? I will give one example. We were sitting in the office in Crewe talking to HS2 and Network Rail representatives and it became quite clear that the design of HS2 to go through Crewe station was effectively preventing even an hourly service from Shrewsbury through Crewe to Manchester because of the point layout. I got the impression that HS2 did not care at all about that. Network Rail said, “You’re stopping us doing even what we can do at the moment with difficulty”. I do not know where that should be discussed, or whether it should be in a report, as the amendment proposes, but there ought to be an opportunity to discuss it. It is not a matter for petitioning, but I will be interested to hear what the Minister will say about it.
Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 4 because HS2 has come in for criticism about the quality of its consultation with local residents. Although it has impressed on us how much it has improved, I am sure that there is probably still some way to go. I am particularly concerned about the impact of the construction process, which may not be obvious to either HS2, or to local residents, before it starts. Construction of a project of this size and this kind is not a transitory process, in that it will impact on some communities for years. It is not like your next-door neighbour building an extension, where it is bad for a few months but then the disturbance goes away. This could last for years.
The amendment specifies traffic and the impact on the environment. Although both issues were raised in Committee, we still need some answers from the Minister. We have heard a lot, and will hear more today, about the impact on ancient woodlands, but other aspects of the environment are of equal importance, for example wetlands. The amendment also includes an important reference to new links to HS2 itself. I am not suggesting—it never occurred to me—that that means stopping on the way, as that obviously would be a very slow way to run a high-speed railway. Treated properly, HS2 will be the catalyst for a widespread upgrading of our existing Victorian railways. I was taking this amendment to mean improving links into HS2, to the stations that have been specified.
Amendment 8, which is in my name, is also in this group. It specifically refers to that aspect. It provides for an annual review of connectivity in our rail network and the impact of HS2 on that. I have already spoken this afternoon about the importance of using HS2 to unlock capacity to allow more intensive use of existing lines by commuters and for other local journeys, as well as to provide room for the transfer of freight from road to rail. The northern powerhouse and Midlands Connect rely on that. I suggest that progress on this needs annual review because the Government—any Government—need to be kept under pressure to maintain the momentum for change. The review is to be laid before Parliament within six months of its completion. Once again, that is to avoid backsliding.
There is also a provision so that the impact of the pandemic is taken into account. This is specifically to address the impact on demand for public transport, which has clearly fallen sharply in recent months, largely because people are worried about safety, although public transport providers have made huge efforts to ensure it is safe. However, demand will return, albeit maybe in a different pattern which providers will have to adapt to. Anyone who thinks that we will suddenly not want to travel has misjudged human nature and failed to take the lessons of history. I am keen that above all we encourage people back to travelling by rail. There has been a lot of discussion about building back better, and part of that is ensuring that new services are fit for the future, and ensuring that HS2 is the catalyst to enable future UK Governments to deliver on climate objectives, by taking cars and lorries off the road and replacing planes with trains.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I think that the Minister has demonstrated how much consultation there has been over the years. I do not want to go into that, other than to say that most of it has been good. However, I go back to paragraphs (2)(c) and (d) proposed in the amendment of my noble friend Lord Rosser. Once the Bill receives Royal Assent, people will start to think, “Okay, it’s being built. What’s going to be the end result?” I can see my noble friend’s concerns: it gets built but the connections to it by rail, with or without extra stations, either have not been thought through or nobody will know who is responsible for them. Will that satisfy the consultees? I am not sure that having an annual report is the right thing, but I hope that the noble Baroness will consider what should be done to satisfy people that, when the line opens in 10 years’ time or whatever, all these things will have been addressed. If there are changes that people think are desirable, they could have started so that there is not another 10-year gap before something happens.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for raising that point. It is really important, so I will ask my honourable friend Minister Heaton-Harris, the Rail Minister, perhaps to write to him setting out his ambitions for rail nationwide, particularly how his ambitions for rail interact with the ambitions for HS2 and how that then produces greater rail connectivity.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I too support these amendments, particularly Amendments 5 and 6. The destruction of ancient woodland has been exacerbated by the frankly disastrous public relations of HS2 on phase 1, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned. It has done nothing to endear HS2 to residents up and down the line of phase 1. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has outlined the problems very well, along with my noble friend Lady Young.
I will concentrate on something that my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone asked, which is whether you can avoid ancient woodland by slowing the trains down. It is a rather simplistic explanation on my part, because there is nothing to be done on phase 1. The line is there, HS2 has started clearing everything and we have seen the results. When it comes to the next phases, 2b west and 2b east—if it happens—which we have debated at length today, it would be possible to avoid much ancient woodland if Ministers look at the routing of the line. My noble friends Lady Young and Lord Snape talked about speeds, but obviously the faster a train goes, the straighter the line it goes on must be, not only on plan, but on profile. When you do not want too many humps and bumps, your cuttings and embankments get bigger and you take more land, including, possibly, a lot of ancient woodland.
Many noble Lords have been on the French high-speed line between Paris and Lyon, which was the first one built. I once had the privilege of being in the driver’s cab and found it to be rather like a fairground switchback. It was designed to avoid not only woodlands, also valleys and hills, to save on the cost. Even so, it goes at 270 kilometres per hour, which the French thought was fast enough. We prefer 400 kilometres per hour, because obviously we are a bigger country than France and want to be the best in the world, which is total rubbish. Even if we stuck to 270 kilometres per hour, the French speed, we could probably do something, but I hope that when HS2 and the Government plan phase 2b west, to Manchester, and phase 2b east, to Leeds and Sheffield, if it gets built that way, they look at the speeds and see how the alignment can be done to avoid ancient woodland, at an early stage before the Bill is published.
That is why I could not support my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment saying that everything had to be done in a hurry and within six months. As the Minister explained in her response, these things take time, and during that time, those of us who have an interest in avoiding ancient woodland and anything else that we feel needs preserving must look at it and relate it to the design speed of the alignment.
I suppose my last, rather facetious, comment—or maybe it is not facetious—is about phase 2a. The Bill is published, we are debating the Bill on Report tonight and it will probably get Royal Assent quite soon. Of course, if there are any ancient woodlands in the way—and I am afraid I do not know whether there are—one could suggest to Ministers that they make a slight deviation on the route of the line, using a Transport and Works Act order, which I also spoke about earlier. I am sure the Minister will not like that idea, but it is an option and it could be looked at.
Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 1) (Amendment) Order 2020
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(3 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this short debate, and I congratulate the Minister on at least updating previous documentation and giving us a sight of what will be needed for the next six months or, probably, a year. It is all highly complex, as other noble Lords have said. I declare an interest as a member of the EU Goods Sub- Committee. We have taken evidence from many of the people involved in this flow issue over the last two or three weeks, including Unite the Union and many of the business groups whose members get involved in it.
The situation is really serious, from what I understand. I shall not repeat what other noble Lords have said, but I hope we will get a comprehensive response from the Minister when she winds up—or at least she could, perhaps, write to us afterwards. I have always thought that one of our problems is that we spend a lot of time talking—quite rightly—about what is going to happen in Kent, but very little time talking about what is happening on the other side of the channel. That is before we even get to the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland situation.
We recently took evidence from the Port of Rotterdam and the Port of Calais. They were very polite about us, as you would expect, but I got the distinct impression from the representative of the Port of Rotterdam that they thought that everything on their side of the water would be all right, but they did not have much of a clue about what will happen on our side. The message they were getting from their colleagues was that the situation was—shall we say—confused. They probably would have been rather ruder if they had not been giving evidence to our committee.
On that issue, perhaps the Minister could explain the location of the controls between Dover and Calais. This applies to trucks going in both directions. We have heard that the French immigration—or emigration—people will deal with the drivers’ DIT work before they get onto the ferry. However, we then heard that, in fact, the French customs and immigration people would deal with incoming freight at Dover. As the Port of Dover told us, there is no room there—that is a minor detail. We need to know where all the different controls will take place and in both directions. That applies if and when Manston and Sevington and all the other places come into force, because of traffic jams. On the Calais side, there is much more space, but I would like to know where every control is taking place there.
This leads me on to a subject on which many noble Lords have spoken: the location of restrooms—some people call them restrooms; I call them toilets. Where will they be? Again, we got some rather sad evidence from Highways England, which is responsible for motorways in Kent. It is good to know that there will be portakabins and good facilities in Sevington and Manston, but the problem is that, going down the motorway, there are four lanes on the M20 and there might be a situation where there are two lanes in one direction and two lanes in the other, but it is difficult to know where you could put even a portaloo down there. You cannot really put them on the verge, because people will stop on the hard shoulder and, when they are moving, that is highly dangerous. Of course, once they have stopped and there is a traffic jam that lasts for goodness knows how many hours, where will the facilities be? It is very hard to solve, unless portakabins are to be airlifted in, which sounds pretty stupid. We need some answers
My second question for the Minister is about enforcement, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Snape. When stopping a truck, or even going up to a stopped truck, and dealing with the kind of fines mentioned by my noble friend—the £300 and everything—the first question is: who is liable to pay it? Is it the driver? Is it the forwarder? Is it the owner of the goods, the owner of the tractor unit or the owner of the trailer? All of these could well be different people. How long does it take a police officer to administer a fine or a charge? As my noble friend said, £300 is a lot of money. Where are they going to stop the trucks to do it? I do not know whether the Minister has an answer to this question, but I suspect that the answer is that this will not be done—they cannot do it because they do not have enough people. Then, we will get into a really chaotic situation.
I echo previous noble Lords in saying that we have known about this for four years. We had hoped that the single market would allow a freer flow of goods, but there were going to have to be some checks somewhere. There will be checks not just at Dover and the Channel Tunnel but at ports all the way up and down the country, to which drivers may well want to divert to avoid reported jams at Dover and the Channel Tunnel. Are we in a situation where we are going to get chaos everywhere? If so, it is we and our businesses who will lose out.
From having talked to many of the firms involved, I know that, in spite of the fact that we may have 80% of the drivers and trucks coming from eastern Europe and being driven for eastern European companies, if they get held up too much, none of the people or customers will want to try that again. As a consequence, the big and small firms that use these services to move their goods across borders several times in the course of manufacture may well say, “Enough’s enough, we’re going to move it all to the continent”. I hope that I am wrong, but we have to get this right, and at the moment the industry clearly does not think that we have. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill
Lord Berkeley ExcerptsThursday 12th November 2020
(4 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Act 2021 View all High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 142-II Second marshalled list for Grand Committee - (9 Nov 2020)
Lord Berkeley
“Independent peer review
(1) The Secretary of State must commission an independent peer review of the High Speed Rail (West Midlands to Crewe) project.(2) The review must include consideration of the project’s—(a) environmental impact,(b) costs, forecast revenue and economic impact,(c) engineering, and(d) governance.(3) In this section, “independent” means it is carried out by persons who are independent of—(a) Government,(b) HS2 Ltd, and(c) persons contracted or subcontracted to carry out any of the scheduled works.(4) In this section, a “peer review” is a review conducted by experts of equivalent professional qualifications, expertise and standing to the persons responsible for each aspect of the project set out in subsection (2).(5) A report of the review under subsection (1) must be laid before Parliament and have been debated in both Houses before commencement of the scheduled works.”Member’s explanatory statement
The purpose of the amendment is to require the Government to commission and publish a wide ranging audit of all elements of the scheduled works, costs, forecasts and economic impact and done by professionals who have not links with the Government or the promoters.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, the amendment is in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. On our previous day in Committee, we discussed regular reporting and had a good debate. This amendment is slightly different, because the emphasis is on independent peer review. I remind noble Lords that this project has been around, discussed in another Parliament, for probably 10 years and things have moved on. We have learned a lot. There have been changes, which we all know about. It is probably time for Parliament to commission an independent review so that it knows what has been asked for, what will be built, how much it is going to cost and so on. In particular, we have had a lot of debate both on the Floor of the House and in the Select Committees on the environmental impact, costs, forecast revenue before and after Covid—well, not after yet—the economic impact, the engineering and the governance.
I do not wish to express any opinion on whether what we have now is good or bad. What is needed is an independent opinion—independent of government, of HS2 and of the various contractors. The experience in the Oakervee review last year was that when we tried to seek independent opinions on whatever we were looking at under the terms of reference, we found it quite difficult to identify people or organisations that were not or had not been in some way linked to HS2 or the Department for Transport. I am not being critical, but it is pretty important if one wants an independent review that those conducting it are independent and not worried about where the next contract will come from, for example.
I shall not say much more except to remind noble Lords that probably one of the most important things that I am focused on is costs. There have been three or four times when Department for Transport officials or HS2 staff have basically said that they do not know what the costs are. One HS2 executive, when asked why they had not been transparent on costs, memorably replied:
“If we’d told Parliament the real costs, they’d probably have cancelled the project.”
That is a very bad reason for going ahead with a project. I know that my noble friend Lord Adonis will say that I am trying to get it stopped, which I am not; I just think that it is time now to get a one-off, independent review so that Parliament and other people can then monitor progress and hold the Government and HS2 to account if they feel it necessary. I beg to move.
The Earl of Lytton (CB) [V]
My Lords, I do not have much to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, so ably said, and the amendment is largely self-explanatory. It will become apparent as further amendments are moved that there is a strong case for an amendment such as this, which is why I added my name to it.
For all the many pages written on matters of safeguards, it seems that few outside the cerebral world of the department, HS2 and its contractors are entirely convinced that HS2 Ltd will honour the spirit as opposed to the letter as it sees it. Too much of this Bill appears to rest on HS2 Ltd’s self-assessment, in which the Government as ultimate funder and promoter are a party. Costs have soared, as we have heard. Budgets for things such as land acquisitions seem to have been woefully inadequate. Timelines have become stretched; procedures have been subject to novel interpretations, and a good deal of unnecessary uncertainty and doubt about aspects of the scheme have crept in as far as those outside but affected by the scheme are concerned.
This is a scheme by the nation for the nation, and it should embed best practice and be seen to be doing so. I am pleased to support the amendment because it goes to the heart of public confidence in the manner in which this truly mighty project is being managed.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for that intervention, but what he notes are the counterfactual opportunity costs of not having to do those upgrades. I am not sure how they would factor into a standard cost/benefit analysis, but it is certainly the case, as he pointed out, that they would be fairly costly and that HS2 brings not only speed but capacity.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken to this group of amendments, and I will try to be as quick as I can, because I know we have a lot to get through today. The comments by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about the need to have an effective HS2 board are absolutely right; that may well be one solution. As the Minister said, things are improving—we must see how it goes, but it is a good start.
It was interesting that my noble friends Lord Snape and Lord Adonis talked about having too many reports on railways. They are quite right but, as they both said, the Minister is undertaking one at the moment on the east side of phase 2B. That follows the Oakervee recommendation; paragraph 3.7 says that the Government should
“establish a further study to be completed by summer 2020”—
well, it is a bit late—
“to develop an integrated railway plan embracing 2B alongside an integrated railway investment programme for the Midlands and the North”.
That is a really good idea, but now to expect to have one enormous hybrid Bill covering the whole lot, as my noble friend Lord Adonis is suggesting, is not really sensible. It would be double the size of the phase 1 Bill, and that took long enough anyway.
I also respond to my noble friend Lord Snape—or perhaps it was my noble friend Lord Adonis—about the people on the Oakervee review. It is worth reminding ourselves that we had only two months to do this, and the terms of reference were slightly unusual for such a study and did not include anything about the environment —we added something, probably at my suggestion. That was one reason for suggesting that another review, done independently, might be a good idea to cover those matters. I will not go into the likely or actual opinions of the members of the review panel, because, as a result of their diaries, they were unable to spend a great deal of time on it, although they contributed a lot. Anyway, we are where we are, and the Oakervee review got published. There is always an issue with independence. A couple of people who I suggested should join or provide evidence to the review said, “If we do that, we might get blacklisted by the Department for Transport for future studies”. I will not name names, but that was a fear that people had.
It is all over now, and we have had a good discussion. Of course, I will not press the amendment and I look forward to continuing discussion on reports and information, cost/benefits and the environment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
“Non-disclosure agreements
(1) The nominated undertaker, or any subcontractors thereof, must not enter into any non-disclosure agreement with any party in connection with the scheduled works unless the assessor of non-disclosure agreements related to the scheduled works (“the assessor”) has certified that it is in the public interest.(2) The Comptroller and Auditor General must appoint a person to be the assessor.(3) The assessor must be—(a) independent, and (b) a current or former high court judge, higher judge or Queen’s Counsel.(4) In this section, “independent” means independent of—(a) Government,(b) HS2 Ltd, and(c) persons contracted or subcontracted to carry out the scheduled works.(5) The assessor must undertake his or her work with a presumption in favour of transparency and public accountability in matters connected to the scheduled works.(6) The assessor must review any non-disclosure agreement between the nominated undertaker, or any subcontractors thereof, and any party in connection with the scheduled works and in place before this section comes into force to certify whether it is or is not in the public interest. (7) The assessor may not determine that a non-disclosure agreement is in the public interest for the purposes of subsection (1) or (6) except for the reason that it is justified because of exceptional commercial confidentiality.(8) If the assessor certifies under subsection (6) that a non- disclosure agreement is not in the public interest that non-disclosure agreement immediately ceases to have effect.(9) In this section, a “non-disclosure agreement” means any duty of confidentiality or other restriction on disclosure (however imposed).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to require HS2 to subject all proposed NDAs to independent scrutiny.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, this amendment on non-disclosure agreements is relevant to the Bill but covers a much wider scope of government policy than just HS2 or even transport. This amendment was tabled in the House of Commons and got some very interesting discussion going. There is a lot of interest in NDAs and their scope around Parliament around at the moment. There is a lot of concern in the health service, as some noble Lords may know. An all-party group on NDAs has been formed under the able chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who will speak to this grouping.
I emphasise again that I am not trying to see NDAs banned completely, but I think some limit to who is subject to them and what they are used for might help transparency in discussions taking place, particularly in Select Committees on the Bill. The worry from people trying to petition has been that businesses and local authorities have been asked to sign NDAs that have prevented them from getting the information they feel they need from HS2 to be able to petition effectively.
This includes denying information to the elected members of councils. I gather that 31 local councils had NDAs on HS2 in place. It is important with issues that concern local areas, such as road movements, which we will come on to as well, and the effect on industrial estates, to ask how the public interest can be served if information is limited and councils cannot tell even their elected members what they are discussing. I do not know whether the withholding of all this information was intentional, but it is important that access to it is not denied to councils, landowners and businesses to prevent them discussing options and issues.
The idea of banning NDAs completely is obviously not very sensible and I am not proposing that, but what I am proposing is—I am sorry to use the word “independent” again—a process not only for HS2 or its successor but for other railways and projects, as well as the NHS, to make some kind of assessment of whether or not something is in the public interest. I suggest that the assessor should be a current or former High Court judge or someone similar.
I am sure that we will have a lot of debate on this. It is not a showstopper, but a lot of people would gain comfort from knowing that they are able to get the information they need in order to hold a debate on what they want to talk about. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has withdrawn from speaking to this amendment, so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken to these amendments. I think we are in grave danger of having a debate about what is black and what is white; these are the kinds of things where there is actually a lot of grey in between. I do not think that a sweeping statement saying that all NDAs are wrong is at all helpful, and I do not support it. Similarly, as my noble friend Lord Rosser said, if there really are 340 NDAs for HS2, there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that they are not all necessary for the good promotion of HS2 and its ideas and discussions. How many of them are more to avoid embarrassment? I do not know whether the Minister will be able to respond to my noble friend Lord Rosser’s request for the reasons but, if not, perhaps I could join the meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and talk about it further.
It has been a useful discussion, but I emphasise that, however it is taken forward, public interest and transparency have to be looked at alongside confidentiality. What I thought was really inappropriate was when I was told that the borehole information at Wendover was confidential. Why should borehole information for anything be confidential, especially when we have a very good geological survey of the whole country?
With those comments, I thank noble Lords who have spoken and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, while I support everything that has just been said on this amendment, I do not want to repeat anything. There is a connectivity problem with HS2. If it were decided—wrongly, as has been amply outlined by my noble friend Lord Adonis—to truncate the eastern leg of HS2 somewhere in the east Midlands and, presumably, electrify the existing line so that HS2 trains will join the existing main line at some unspecified point in the east Midlands, there would be an immediate connectivity problem.
In the days when I worked for the railway, on the operating side, the regulation of trains was a fairly simple matter. Trains were broken down into various classifications: A, B, C, et cetera. Class A was an express passenger train, and signallers would normally give priority to such a train, regardless of circumstances —late running, bad weather, et cetera. Since privatisation, of course, things are somewhat different. It never ceases to amaze me sometimes, standing at Birmingham New Street station, to watch a late-running Pendolino train for London Euston being held in the station while a local train booked to leave behind it leaves on time and therefore in front of it, delaying the express passenger train even further. When I ask signallers and people responsible for operating the railway these days why these incidents take place, I am told, “Well, the lawyers will say that that was its booked path and if we delayed it further, there would, of necessity, be compensation payments”.
I raise that technical side for this reason, as far as this amendment is concerned: in Clause 34, “Objectives of Office of Rail and Road”, there are details about railway matters. If we are to have high-speed trains mixed in with existing passenger and freight trains, I just remind noble Lords on both sides that this will happen regardless of the completion of the Y-shaped layout planned for HS2. There will be another regulation problem thrown up by the addition of such trains to the existing traffic. Without going into any great detail, the Select Committee discussed the provision of an altered junction on a short stretch of the west coast main line that would have meant that high-speed trains, instead of joining the “down” fast line on their way to Crewe, actually joined the “down” slow line—again, as the result of the understandable desire to reduce expenditure—cutting over to the “down” fast line some small distance further north. That adds another complication so far as train regulation is concerned, on, as we have already discussed, an already crowded west coast main line. That situation, of course, would be repeated and worsened if the Y-shaped east Midlands leg of HS2 were truncated, as my noble friend Lord Adonis fears.
I have a question for the Minister, going back to Clause 34. I quote from the Explanatory Memorandum:
“The Railways Act 1993 imposes on the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) a duty to address certain objectives in the execution of its non-safety functions. These objectives do not currently contain any explicit requirement for the ORR to facilitate the construction of Phase 2a of High Speed 2. Subsection (1) adds such a requirement and thereby clarifies the ORR’s role for the benefit of the ORR and rail operators.”
My question to the Minister is, what role will the ORR have as far as connectivity and train regulation is concerned? I do not expect her to have the answer off the cuff, and I would be grateful if she would write to me. It is an appropriate matter, I hope she agrees, to raise in connection with this amendment and I hope we can find some way of answering this particular problem concerning the role of the ORR in future.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of these two amendments. They are vital to getting the best out of HS2. Amendment 11 was moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who mentioned 20 trains an hour in and out of Moor Street, and there is a great deal that needs to be done around Birmingham to improve local services there. She and other noble Lords mentioned the problem—or the not very good services—and the tracks that head from Birmingham eastwards towards Nottingham and Derby. I think there is quite a strong argument for either upgrading the existing lines or at least building HS2 section 2b there.
I have more of a problem with making decisions now about what should happen to HS2 between Derby and Nottingham towards Leeds and Sheffield. There are various ways of doing it, such as just upgrading the existing routes or improving the east coast main line, which I know my noble friend Lord Adonis is greatly against, as he said on Monday. However, all these things need to be looked at because when we were doing some of the consultation, such as it was, for the Oakervee report, it was quite clear that the demand for services in the Midlands and the north was primarily for shorter distance and to a large extent east-west, and therefore getting across the Pennines somehow is very important. Whether it is HS2, Network Rail or Transport for the North does not really matter as long as there are services there and further south from Birmingham to the Derby area. The key is to have frequent, reliable services going faster, but whether they need to be separate or together with HS2 is something I think the Minister is looking at in her study.
For me, HS2 is, as my noble friend Lord Adonis said, not a network but a line which starts in London, splits in two and goes to Manchester, and perhaps a little further north to connect with the west coast main line, and to Sheffield and Leeds. The network is there to connect with much improved local services, and therefore the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is very important. It needs to link with, I hope, improved local services.
I also support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Rosser to some extent. It is very important, but we are almost going back to the discussion we had about the Transport and Works Act and hybrid Bills and whether local authorities in the present set up have enough resources and are given enough time in Committee to make their arguments. That is something that I am sure we will continue to discuss over the next few weeks.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)
I call the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. Lord Bradshaw? We will move on and I will call the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and return to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, if we can connect with him. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst. As members of the committee, we heard some familiar feelings from many of the petitioners. During my time in Westminster, I have served on committees on four hybrid Bills. Without exception, people affected by works of this kind go through various stages of concern, fear and outrage that their property could be taken, altered or knocked down. It is an inevitable consequence of projects of this size. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, I thought that those who appeared in front of the committee were treated pretty well by HS2 and its representatives. Like him, I saw many of them withdraw those petitions before it was necessary for us to come to a decision.
On all the hybrid Bills that I have served, without exception and across party, Members of both Houses have been aware of the sense of loss that people go through when their property is affected. We buy houses, too; we cherish our own homes and feel terribly strongly when projects such as this affect us.
Dealing with large organisations is never easy; I speak with some feeling here. I spent last night and the best part of about two hours this morning trying to get some sense out of Virgin Media, so I know how people feel and how irritated they become at saying the same thing to different people in the same organisation, but, by and large, it seemed to us on the committee—I think I speak for all of us who were on it—that HS2 did its best.
When Theo Clarke MP appeared before the committee on behalf of her constituents and others affected by this project, the chairman handled the matter in an exemplary way. The committee chairs on all the four hybrid Bills in which I have been involved have been pretty good, but the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, given his experience, was excellent in the way he handled both petitioners and HS2. Without knocking any heads together, and in his calm way, he got them to come to some sort of compromise. Therefore, like previous speakers, I do not see any need for this amendment. I just say to the Minister that if she can satisfy the noble Earl’s correspondent on every single one of those complaints, she will not be an Under-Secretary for very long.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I have heard many noble Lords say that there is not a problem because the Select Committee, if it received complaints, dealt with them. I suspect that, if there was a problem and people got as far as petitioning about it, the committee would have made sure as best it could that it was solved, and that is very good.
However, I have also heard many examples of people not being paid, and some landowners who have found that HS2 was trespassing on their land, and maybe doing damage to it, not being paid for months or even years. That has been a common thing—and I suspect that both examples are equally valid. The real issue here is that, if there is no problem, the amendment does no harm to anybody. If there is a problem, it will encourage HS2 to behave, and pay for what it intends to occupy permanently or temporarily.
I suspect that the issue may have been something to do with the timing: the Select Committee sat for a certain time and the HS2 Bill has been around for several years. In the intervening period, what do people do if they suffer hardship? There is a lot of evidence, which I think that the Committee has heard before, that the budget that HS2 was given for land purchase by the department, and which the department was given by the Treasury, was woefully inadequate—probably about 50% of what was needed. That is probably one of the reasons, apart from having too much work to do, and maybe incompetence—I do not know—for late payments. HS2 and Ministers will have to do all in their powers to make sure that that it does not happen again for the next phase or two. There may be lessons to learn. In the meantime, I cannot see what is wrong with the amendment, which might incentivise HS2 and other businesses to behave in what is normally thought of as a normal business relationship.
Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue. In a way, this amendment goes alongside the previous one on NDAs. You wonder why the use of NDAs is apparently routine in an organisation on this scale. The problem with routine use of NDAs is that, while no individual one is possibly downright wrong, the whole oversight of the scheme gets suppressed. Therefore, it becomes difficult to see those early symptoms of things not working as they should.
We must also bear in mind that it is very easy for an organisation the size of HS2 to look overbearing, unfeeling and unreasonable. It is therefore very much in everyone’s interests that it operates as a good business with the highest ethical standards. It is, after all, a programme and a business for the future, producing something that will be at least 10 years in the making. Therefore, it needs to have modern, responsible business practices.
I suggest to the Minister that, while I am sure she will not want to accept the amendment, it would be an idea for the business practices of HS2 to be given a good look, with this amendment and issue in mind.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Rosser. We had a considerable discussion at the Select Committee about this matter; we felt then, and I certainly feel now, that these are matters for the local highway authority rather than a Committee of the House or the Minister herself. If the representations made by the parish council to Shropshire Council as the highways authority are powerful enough, surely they will be acted on. If they are not acted on, obviously the remedy is in the hands of local people at the next council elections. Beyond listening with some degree of sympathy to the petitioners at the time, we felt that, and I certainly feel now, that these matters are best discussed and debated and agreed at local level, and that this is a matter for the local highway authority. From that point of view, I do not see why the Minister should accept an amendment that would delay construction until these discussions have concluded. Given the Covid epidemic, I presume that that will be the reason why things have not progressed as quickly as we might have hoped. Still, I repeat, these matters are best debated and agreed at local level rather than in Parliament.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, there is a lot of merit in this amendment. As my noble friend Lord Snape says, it should not be necessary because local authorities should be required to deal with HS2, but clearly, in some cases, this does not happen. There is a similarity between what my noble friend Lord Rosser is trying to achieve with this amendment and what we will probably be discussing under Schedule 23 stand part. That is that, before any work starts, there should be a condition survey of the road and the traffic so that one can see what changes, if any, have been brought about by the construction and then, as necessary, deal with it. It is easy to say that local authorities should deal with it, but there needs to be a fallback that, if that does not work, the Minister’s door is always open so that he can deal with it and, if he thinks it is a reasonable request, he can instruct or advise HS2 to do a little more local engagement and respond to what may be justifiable complaints or concerns from the local authorities or residents.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, the Committee will be very much indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for that very full, comprehensive and interesting introduction to the party wall legislation as it applies to HS2. I have been involved in party wall disputes, but on a domestic basis. I assure the Committee that, even at a domestic level, people get very upset about it. It is really important that fairness and transparency is identified all the way along: the result may not be everything that all parties want, but there is definitely a feeling that a fair hearing has been had, that those who caused the problem are having to pay for it and those who suffer are given reasonable but not undue benefits.
I read the article in the Property Journal and I recommend it to all noble Lords, because it is a simple introduction to what I think the Committee must believe is quite a complicated subject. My purpose in speaking now is to try to ensure that a reasonable and fair solution is found to this, because we run the risk, I am told, that if it is not sorted out, there could be some class actions around for people who live adjacent to or above bits of HS2. The example I will quote comes from phase 1, but it is not surprising, because many party wall issues will not appear until the construction is getting close to starting. The text in the legislation is the same in both Bills, so I can give an example to explain what the problem is from my point of view.
I was alerted to this legislation by an eminent engineer, Sam Price, who petitioned against the phase 1 Bill about the approach to Euston, and I helped him a bit with other things, as some noble Lords may remember. One example was a house on the west side of the approach as trains come into Euston, a road called Park Village East. There is a very high brick retaining wall which has stood there for many years, but HS2’s current scheme—I appreciate that it is one of two current schemes—was to excavate down from the footing of that wall, about 10 metres down, and create something that, in cross-section, looked a bit like a birdcage, but of course it was very much bigger than that, with lots of concrete walls, diaphragm walls, concrete structures and everything. There is a fear that this high brick wall, which basically supports the road and the Queen Anne houses behind it, probably does not have any foundations, because it has been there so long.
The owner of one of the houses discovered that HS2 was planning to support this wall, before it started the excavation, by drilling horizontal soil anchors underneath the house, from the wall towards the back of the house, over the length of about 10 houses, and they are big houses. These holes, which might have been two levels of holes at about 1 metre centres, were designed to hold the house up and stop it settling. We can have views about whether that would be suitable, but that does not really matter. My friend Sam Price asked where under the party wall Act is the obligation for the residents of those houses to be given notice that HS2 wishes to do this work. The answer is that they have not been given notice. They hear about the work on the gossip, but not much else.
We looked at this a bit more with the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who is a real expert, as I am sure the Committee has understood. It seems that the legislation in the HS2 Act has been developed from the Crossrail legislation—of course, much of Crossrail was underground —which itself was developed from the party wall legislation that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, mentioned. From a quick reading of some of the issues that went on with Crossrail, it appears that there was a major problem near Hanover Square with party wall legislation. I suspect that has something to do with the two or three-year delay to Crossrail and Bond Street station because that has not been resolved. I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that that is it. The problem is that this legislation on HS2 removes the obligation of an adjacent developer to serve advance notice on an owner whose property might be affected and removes the need for a joint condition survey undertaken by a professional surveyor. That is the first nub of it.
The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, commented that when it comes to being the final arbiter engineers are splendid people, but—. I speak as an engineer, and I think he is absolutely right. Engineers are very good at engineering but they are not surveyors and they are not party wall surveyors. That is an error in the Bill, because the final arbiter should be from the RICS, as in the 1996 legislation. I do not know whether the drafters consulted the RICS but I doubt it.
As it stands, this legislation is very unfair on residents. They will have no alternative but to go down the legal route. They should not be trying to stop HS2, and I do not think they will, but they deserve to be treated fairly. I am afraid I compare it to this. If we think about phase 1—just the section between Euston and Old Oak Common, although there are many other tunnel sections near Birmingham in phase 1 and further up the line—under this legislation the only remedy these people have is a class action, if they can afford it, against HS2. That will be a horrible delay. I am not trying to delay it, but I am trying to get fairness. I refer to our debates over the past few years on the postmasters scandal, which ended up as a class action. It was finally decided that the Post Office had acted illegally and £60 million was awarded against the Post Office, but the lawyers took £58 million of it so the poor old postmasters got nothing. We really do not want that.
The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has described the problems very well. I have met some of the experts he has read and I commend them. They are really looking for a solution to this that will not delay the project but will stop people trying to go to court because they feel badly treated. I think there is a solution, but I echo noble Lords’ requests for an urgent meeting with the Minister and whoever so that we can take this forward.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Berkeley persuaded me to add my name to this amendment. Having listened to the debate so far, I do not owe him any favours. I suppose that we should congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, on his comprehensive knowledge of these matters. He mentioned the Crossrail Bill, which I served on. Fortunately, we did not get involved in the realms of the Party Wall etc. Act at the time, which is perhaps surprising. It also enabled my noble friend Lord Berkeley to return to another of the many other bees in his bonnet, which is the early part of HS1 between Old Oak Common and Euston. I do not think that that has taken the Committee any further forward as far as the debate is concerned.
I have two questions for the Minister. First, why was this particular schedule added to the Bill, bearing in mind the rural nature of the line that we are supposedly discussing, phase 2a of HS2? I repeat that no mention was made of any party wall difficulties during the passage of the Bill through the Select Committee. Perhaps the noble Earl can tell us how many properties he thinks will be affected by Schedule 23 if it is included in the Bill. However, it seems to me that we could be discussing the vagaries of the property world for some considerable time without taking forward the Bill that we should be discussing, which covers phase 2a of HS2.
High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill
Lord Berkeley ExcerptsMonday 9th November 2020
(4 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Act 2021 View all High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 142-II Second marshalled list for Grand Committee - (9 Nov 2020)
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Select Committee and the chair for the report. At least two colleagues who are speaking to this amendment—the noble Lords, Lord Snape and Lord Liddle—were on the Select Committee and I think it did a good job. My only concern is that the House has not had the opportunity to receive the report formally and debate it, but that is something for a different day.
I do not support this amendment, but not for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, might think. Whatever the timings of phase 2a—we can debate those at length—I think the Government are right to think again on 2b, particularly the east side. I hope they will also think again on the last part into Manchester. Several noble Lords have talked about the importance of regional services and I suppose my vision would be to see the north—and the Midlands—get a rail service that is as good as the commuting service around London. I think most noble Lords would agree that there is a big difference between them at the moment. That really affects the customers. You have to remember that most rail customers in those areas are doing short or medium journeys every day—or they were before coronavirus—and a lot of them are doing them by car. If the services were better, more reliable and more frequent, maybe, I think a lot of them would transfer to rail, which is good for the environment.
We have to debate whether it is more important for people in those centres to get to London more quickly or to go elsewhere. I was struck, going around with a short consultation for the Oakervee report, how many of the people we talked to in the regions were actually just as interested in going north—from, say, Leeds to Newcastle—as they were in going to London. As my noble friend Lord Liddle has said, he can get to London very quickly but he could not get to York quickly if the House ever moved there. He is actually arguing, with me, that the importance of regional services needs to be incorporated into the rethink of HS2—if this is what is happening.
The other thing about the present HS2 design is that it is wrong to terminate at buffer stops at Manchester and Leeds. The trend across Europe for many years has been not to have buffers if you can run trains straight through, because that saves a lot of space and perhaps a lot of cost, and gives much more flexibility. Of course, it is better for the passengers, too. Brussels, Lille and Lyon Satolas are examples. I could explain them all, but I do not think I need to. I hope that the Government will therefore take the time to listen to the various interests in the north and the Midlands and come up with a plan that integrates local and regional services with any faster link to London that they plan.
My other reason for wanting to speak today is to do with money. I am not going to start arguing about how much HS2 might or might not cost, but there is a question about how it might be financed. My understanding has always been that government would like to see HS2 financed in the private sector, certainly when the construction has moved forward. Of course, this is what happened with HS1, which, I think, was sold off to the private sector for about £2 billion.
HS1 is now in quite serious financial trouble because its revenue from Eurostar is evaporating, as are the Eurostar services. I am told that there will be only one return journey a day to Brussels and one to Paris from the beginning of December. Okay, the Javelins are still running, thanks to government support for domestic services, but I have to ask what the Government are doing to preserve the Eurostar service and HS1 while the coronavirus is stopping people travelling.
As the Minister will know, I have been asking for a long time how much money the Government are giving to the different modes of transport internationally from the UK to other parts of Europe and the Republic of Ireland. I am always told that that is confidential, but I can help her with that if she does not want to tell me. I can tell her from publicly available information that the Government are spending about £1.4 billion on helping the ferry services and the ports support Brexit, which I have no complaint about. There was the £12 million for the non-existent ferry service, which noble Lords will remember. Ministers seem very keen to spend a lot of money on the airlines. The Secretary of State made a speech on 19 October on sorting out airport slots. I am not sure why we need to sort out the slots, because nobody is flying much these days. The Government are spending £55 million on furlough for aviation employees, deferring loans and taxes, and providing £1.8 billion through Covid corporate financing, which, apparently, is 11% of total national funding under that programme, covering the whole sector.
We have to ask: why are the Government not doing anything to help the cross-channel passenger rail service? Noble Lords may know that, across Europe, the Commission has recommended that every member state reduce infrastructure charges or eliminate them entirely. France has done it for freight, and I hope it will do it for passengers. Eurostar, however, is losing £1 billion in revenue this year. This really cannot go on. What will it do? If it goes bust, presumably, it can sell the trains to the Germans because they work in Germany quite well. If ever anybody wanted to start going by train across the channel, it would probably take five years or so to get new trains. Surely there is a solution. HS1, when it was owned by the state, made about £2 billion for the Treasury. Surely the Treasury could give a little bit of it back.
I raise that issue in the context of this amendment to question gently: what is the point of building a new high-speed line north of London—be it 1, 2a, 2b west or 2b east, in any order we like—if the Government show so little support for high-speed rail as to allow HS1 possibly to go bust? If that happens, who in the private sector will invest in HS2 when they see the shabby way the Government are apparently treating the investors and owners of HS1 and Eurostar? I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Berkeley
“( ) A TWA order which relates to an extension or works referred to in subsection (2) may also provide for any provision of this Act to cease to have effect to the extent that the content of the TWA order replaces it.”Member’s explanatory statement
This is intended to clarify the extent to which a Transport and Works Act Order may be used to alter the proposals under the Bill, and the means by which one may be obtained.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
This is very much a probing amendment so that we can have a debate about the role that Transport and Works Act orders play in and around a hybrid Bill. I will talk about one or two examples but I want to stick to the principle. This has been raised many times during the passage of many previous hybrid Bills, and the problem does not go away. This particular Bill and the transcript of the Select Committee hearings give us some interesting issues to debate.
As I think all noble Lords know, a hybrid Bill is a public Bill which includes private interests. A Select Committee is therefore appointed in each House and follows very similar procedures, except that if anyone—including the Government or a petitioner—wants to propose small changes to the Bill, in the House of Commons, which is usually the first House on these occasions, that is quite often done by an additional provision. However, it cannot be done in the Lords, for very good timetabling reasons. The only other option is for it to be done by way of a Transport and Works Act order process. That is provided for in Clause 49, and my small amendment seeks to clarify the extent to which it could be used. However, to some extent that is not really the question I want to debate and put to the Minister.
Going back to the phase 2 Bill, which is what we are talking about, we have talked before about the Stone railhead. It has been discussed in the House of Commons and in debates here, and when the Minister kindly had a meeting with a number of noble Lords last week it came up then. However, I do not want to discuss that—except to say that some people, the promoters, believe that it will save £98 million and could be completed three years earlier, but that is a question for debate. Something similar has happened on phase 1 regarding Wendover, which has also been rejected by the Government because they will not do a Transport and Works Act order there. It is said that that would save £300 million and save between one and three years, with enormous environmental benefits; I know that because I used to live around there.
I do not want to discuss the pros and cons but I want to explore why the Government have decided that there should be no alterations to hybrid Bills in the second House, even arguing that alternatives that require a Transport and Works Act order, the only option open to petitioners to the second House, should not even be discussed in the Select Committee. I understand why they might not want that, but the extent to which Mr Strachan, the government counsel in the Select Committee, went to long and repeated lengths to tell the committee that it really should not go for a Transport and Works Act order was extraordinary. I could read out several paragraphs but I will save the Committee, except to draw attention to paragraphs 146 and 165 on 16 March. I can find no instance in the transcript of the Government instructing the committee that it should not use the Transport and Works Act, but I would say that it was almost threatened by the government counsel that it really should not do so. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who chaired the committee so well, said in paragraph 9 of Appendix 2 in the committee’s report that
“certain petitioners have suggested that changes similar to those that might be made by additional provision might instead be effected through an order under the Transport and Works Act 1992; that would involve a process which is separate from the parliamentary process on this Bill, and it is highly unlikely that we could be persuaded that there was any recommendation that we could … make.”
I find that extraordinary, given that the Transport and Works Act option is included in Clause 49, something that Mr Strachan did not draw to the committee’s attention. Since he spent the whole day introducing the project to the committee, which I am sure was necessary, it is surprising that he did not raise it.
Even more surprising is the precedent in phase 1 where the Government are proposing a tunnel in place of a viaduct, I think, at a place called Bromford by a Transport and Works Act order, claiming that the tunnel will increase its length by almost double, remove the need for complex engineering and so on. I believe that the Government are proposing another one at Calvert. My contribution is going to go on for some time, incidentally, so if the Chair wants me to stop then I will. These procedures that the Government are doing are exactly the same as the Wendover one. It seems to me that the decisions are taken out of the hands of the committee in order to be made by the Government and their own promoter, who have very good reasons for resisting change. That limits the ability of petitioners, who on the whole do not have highly paid lawyers, to put their case against what I would call guerrilla warfare by government counsel to close down debate, making the Government both judge and jury. I have been involved in Transport and Works Act processes and hybrid Bill processes and I find that conflict very odd.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, I have had no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. This was a probing amendment. I shall never convince my noble friend Lord Adonis that I am not trying to stop HS2; I think we will carry on debating that for many years. My probe—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, I am very sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I am sure that he can hear that a Division is under way. The Committee will adjourn for five minutes to allow noble Lords to register their vote.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I had not intended this to be something on which to divide the House; it is a probing amendment. I said that I would never convince my noble friend Lord Adonis that I am not trying to stop this; I am just trying to suggest some ideas of how to ensure that petitioners feel that they have been treated fairly, because there will be many more of these hybrid Bills in the future.
I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for his comments and to the Minister for her explanation of Transport and Works Act orders. We all agree on the process and whether it is fast or slow does not make any difference. For me, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, put his finger on it. The question is whether, if a committee wished to see a change that could not be done by an additional provision and would therefore have to be done by a Transport and Works Act order, the committee would be able to give a direction either to the Government or to the House. I have taken advice on this from some of the experts and we do not have an answer, as the noble and learned Lord said.
As the Minister said, there will be a consultation on the hybrid Bill process generally. These are the kinds of issues that we should be looking at. We all want to see railway improvements, subject to a few criteria here and there; if a railway needs a new bit of line and it needs a hybrid Bill, so be it—that is the process that we use. It will help everyone, however, if it is done in the least confrontational and least expensive way, so that the petitioners can feel that they have had a good hearing and have been treated fairly and can be reasonably happy with the result. I look forward to discussing this further, not as part of this Bill, and I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.
Lord Berkeley
“Quarterly reports on environmental impact, costs and progress
(1) The Secretary of State must publish quarterly reports on the scheduled works throughout the period in which those works take place.(2) Each such report must contain an assessment of—(a) environmental impact;(b) costs, including costs of land acquisition;(c) progress; and(d) revenue forecasts and Cost Benefit Analyses,compared to the relevant information contained in the Bill documentation.(3) The first such report must be laid before Parliament within the period ending three months after the day the scheduled works commence.(4) Each subsequent report must be laid before Parliament within three months of the publication of the last report under this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to require the Government to provide consistent, regular and complete reports to Parliament.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, after I put this amendment down, it was slightly taken over by events in the form of an interesting letter from the Public Accounts Committee to the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport dated 4 November. I was interested in the comments made during the various stages in the Commons on this Bill, when many Members of Parliament were critical of the way HS2 handled issues in their constituencies. This came from all parts of the House. From what I have read and heard, this criticism was much more justified because the situation seemed to be much worse than in the case of the promoters of HS1.
One issue was the lack of information, so I thought that it would be reasonable to ask that HS2 and the Government provide quarterly reports that include overviews of the project, the programming schedule, the community and environmental impact of the whole project and more details of each phase. Since then, or probably at about the same time, Ministers have started to produce six-monthly reports, which are a great step forward. I thank Ministers for that. Whether they should be quarterly or six-monthly can be debated, but certain things are missing from all of them—they are identified strongly in the Public Account Committee’s letter. I will summarise one or two, because I think that they could go into the reports. I hope that Ministers will agree to do this, because we do not want to have to divide the House on something like this.
The PAC talks about the programme uncertainties within HS2. There seems to be evidence of that and it is frustrating that there are so few signs that HS2 and the department are taking PAC concerns about transparency seriously. It asked for information and did not get it. There were questions about phase 2b—my noble friend Lord Adonis mentioned this—and the implications for rail connections in the north as well as decisions on Euston Station.
Then there is the question of value for money. We have talked about that before, but it relates to the post-Covid potential demand for travel. The letter points out that, in giving evidence to the committee, the Permanent Secretary, Bernadette Kelly,
“appeared to assume that travel patterns and growth will return to, or be the same as, those before the pandemic. This assumption should be thoroughly tested and explicitly justified, if it remains the Government’s best estimate.”
There was then something that one does not often see in letters from the PAC: a recommendation, although some people would call it a demand. It suggested that,
“you perform an up to date assessment of the different scenarios that could affect the long-term business case of HS2 as a result of the pandemic … Please write to us within six months”.
I have raised in the House on various occasions the question of future demand for all railways. My impression is that Ministers are not taking it seriously at the moment, or perhaps they do not have an answer. Well, nobody has an answer, but I suggest that at least it should be part of some scenario planning: we are not going to get one answer, but we can probably get a range. It is reasonable to ask for the revenue forecasts and the cost-benefit analyses, whether it is every three months or every six months. I hope that the Minister can say that, as part of the six-monthly reports that they are now providing, they will in future add in some of the things that I suggest are missing. They would fit in nicely with the response that, presumably, Ministers are going to give to the PAC. I beg to move.
Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]
My Lords, I perfectly understand the need for the Committee to have a break and a stiff drink after any of my speeches; it is just a pity that we cannot get the stiff drinks any more. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this group. I wish the Government had implemented his report rather than the Oakervee one, but that train has long since left the platform.
I will speak first on Amendment 9, on which I declare my interest as in the register. I am embarrassed to be so high up in the speakers’ list when there are so many experts, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and my noble friend Lord Randall, who are better qualified than I am to talk about ancient woodlands. This is a modest little amendment, calling simply for an annual report on the impact of the work on ancient woodland. I also support Amendment 4 in this group, which is much more demanding than the modest request in Amendment 9.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I think my comments still stand. What the noble Baroness has outlined highlights the importance of a constructive and productive relationship between all environmental NGOs, including the Woodland Trust, and HS2. Building large-scale transport infrastructure is never easy. It is always a very challenging time. People with different interests will want different things and compromises have to be reached. I hope that the noble Baroness will join me, Minister Stephenson and other noble Lords when we go into environmental matters in a bit more depth after Committee stage and before Report. Perhaps I will be able to reassure noble Lords that HS2 is learning lessons and will take them forward into phase 2a.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to wind up the debate on these amendments. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. The debate has ranged widely from those who, frankly, do not trust HS2 further than they can throw it and others who say that it is doing fine on reporting.
It is certainly true that the Government are trying to produce more reports, which many noble Lords think is a good start while others are less trusting—I suppose that in the end it comes back to trust. The environmental effect of a railway could be massively mitigated if the speeds of the trains were reduced so that it could go around ancient woodlands and avoid so many deep cuttings and embankments. That is something which the French learned 30 years ago, and I suspect that it is being learned for phase 2b—certainly for the east side, maybe the west side as well—but my noble friend Lord Adonis will then complain that the trains are not going fast enough. That can be debated.
Some regular reporting is needed to provide the transparency that many noble Lords believe is necessary, me included. It needs to cover each phase, as well as the whole thing, and must cover all the things which are in my amendment and probably a few others as well. Yes, there is an independent construction commissioner, but to some extent that is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, although the commissioner does a really good job.
If we were to sit around the table and the Minister was prepared to do it, I am sure that some amendment or addition to the existing reporting could be achieved. However, the real question is this: is there sufficient trust among noble Lords for it to be done without some independent scrutiny, which I shall discuss when we come to Amendment 6? That is something to reflect on and it all comes back to trust. We have had a really good debate on it. The Minister said that she would be happy to talk between now and Report and we should take her up on it. I am sure that we can reach some compromise on reporting not just what has happened but what will happen in the future, or what is planned to happen, and any issues that may come alongside it.
I again thank all noble Lords who have spoken. We have heard a wide variety of opinions, which is great. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I have listened carefully to the explanation by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, of the problems with compulsory purchase and payments to those affected—mostly by HS1, because so far that is where the experience is available, unless we go back to Crossrail, which I think we will come to later. With his professional knowledge, the noble Earl has told the Committee many things that are of serious concern. If HS2 really wants to succeed then we have to accept, and I am sure we all do, that it has to be seen to be a good neighbour and to demonstrate that, but at the moment there is a serious lack of trust in many areas.
I heard about some of the problems on HS1 probably three or four years ago when it was quite clear that the company was trying to get access to land and purchase it, whether for permanent or temporary works, but basically did not have enough money allocated from the Treasury to do so. All the results that the noble Earl explained then took place. There was one particular and rather unfortunate set of examples where HS2 wanted to drill boreholes to find out what the soil was so that it could design the foundations for bridges, embankments or whatever. Sometimes the landowners were so fed up with not being paid what was due that they refused access. That was then one of the reasons HS2 used to explain why some of the costs had rocketed, because it could not design the foundations until it had done the boreholes. We can believe that or not, but it was an issue, and it stems from HS2 not asking for enough money from the Government, the Treasury or whoever to do the job properly from the start.
I do not know how many cases of failure to pay compensation are still outstanding; maybe the Minister could tell us when she winds up or write to us afterwards. For me, the whole issue demonstrates that the current arrangements are not fair and will cause a lot of problems for people if and when there is another phase. When the land purchase for phase 2a starts taking place, people are going to say, “It wasn’t done right in phase 1 so we’re going to dig our heels in for phase 2.”
One other issue was raised in the House of Commons that I do not believe was answered. Within all the categories of people who think that they are eligible for compensation, what happens to those with boat moorings on a canal that is affected? They may be hard to locate if they go walkabout, but they may not do that. It seems to me that along with tenants, short-term and long-term, and other people, anyone affected should be capable of receiving some kind of compensation on a fair basis.
Lord Haselhurst (Con) [V]
The last thing I would want to argue against is a fairness regime for dealing with compensation. I can only base my impressions of this on the time I spent as a member of the Select Committee. From the moment we were appointed to when, because of the obvious delays caused by the disruption of the pandemic, we actually got down to work, the number of petitions that had been raised by dissatisfied persons or groups had diminished because there had been a settlement. During the course of our proceedings, by the time some of those who had an outstanding petition were due to appear they did not do so because their claim had been settled. So at that stage we heard only what proved to be the difficult cases, and one has to assume that many other people, whether they did so with regret or willingly, had withdrawn their petitions because they had reached a satisfactory conclusion. Of course, while one thinks in a most concerned way about the individual or small community, or the person with a small business who would seem to be in a very difficult situation, generally speaking, most of the claimants were people who had themselves been able to take professional advice. They were not exactly innocents battling against hard-headed professionals in the shape of HS2.
Other members of the Select Committee will speak now or on a future occasion before the legislation has passed through your Lordships’ House, but I do not think that we had the impression that there were so many difficult cases where the levels of compensation were not adequate. Clearly there are the statutory schemes, along with many others that statute has added over the years, to which different categories of claimant could turn. Again, we felt that, through further negotiation, an accommodation could be achieved between the understandably very different points of view—the promoter on the one side and the person facing a diminution of their enjoyment of the place where they live or work on the other.
It is obviously difficult to create a scheme that covers every nook and cranny. We saw a wide range of cases in the petitions that reached us. Some were down to individuals with, in some respects, a heartbreaking tale to tell, but it was hard to see how legislation could have been crafted in a way that would have eliminated that sense of grievance without setting compensation rates at a very high level. It is the case that HS2 has been accused of splashing the cash irresponsibly in many other ways, but still, given the levels of reserves accorded to it, it has to be careful about the level of compensation that it pays. It has that responsibility.
The safeguard in many cases has been the fact that one can petition Parliament. If you are not satisfied with what you get appearing before the House of Commons, you have another chance, for the most part, with the House of Lords. I like to think that all those with grievances who brought petitions were helped by the deliberations of the committee and the lubrication that we may have added to the process of further discussion between the two sides in order to come out with a satisfactory solution.
Simply on the evidence that we have, those who had complaints felt that quite considerable progress was achieved between the two sides. I cannot be satisfied that a whole new range of conditions has to be created, as covered by some of these amendments. Yes, we have to ensure that the basic principles on which compensation operates are fair, but I certainly do not have the impression that they are grossly unfair in a large number of cases. I dare say that further discussions will take place on whether there can be a responsible tightening-up to ensure that we are not leaving out protection for people who really are hit badly by the construction of the railway and are not getting a fair outcome. I am sympathetic to the purposes of the amendments, but I wonder whether they are a sledgehammer to crack what might not be a very large nut.
Network Rail’s Enhancements Pipeline
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the purpose of the review of rail schemes in Network Rail’s enhancements pipeline; whether that review includes consideration of (1) the viability, and (2) the business case, of each scheme; when the review will be completed; whether the outcome will be published; and whether the High Speed 2 project will be subject to any such review.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, our flexible pipeline approach to funding rail infrastructure enhancements means that we continually review our portfolio of projects, including the impact of Covid, to ensure that they are making the best use of taxpayers’ money. The High Speed 2 project was subject to a rigorous, independent review this year and was comprehensively reset with a revised budget and schedule.
Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. However, it is now six months since the coronavirus lockdown started. Surely the Government have done some work on demand for travel given the continuing trend for working at home and the likely long-term effect that this might have on rail travel, whether it is commuter services or HS2. Is it not time for the Government to produce some initial thoughts on this?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The noble Lord is quite right that there may well be long-term effects on the way that we travel in the future. However, at the moment, we are at the stage where there are many different forecasts and scenarios. As we continue through the pandemic, no single scenario is coming out as the most likely. However, we will consider the future demand requirements for rail on all the enhancement projects in the pipeline.
Trains: East Midlands
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My Lords, the Government envisage a number of further improvements across the wider area that the noble Lord mentions, particularly on the Newark to Nottingham stretch. Midlands Connect and Network Rail are looking at a feasibility study which may see an improvement in times by three minutes. As the noble Lord will know, the issue there is the flat crossing at Newark, where it crosses the east coast main line. More broadly, the Government are doing an awful lot of work in the Midlands as they develop HS2.
Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the interesting answers that she gave the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. Do the Government intend that the upgrades in timing, which will need infrastructure improvements between Birmingham, Nottingham, Newark and the flat junction for freight, and beyond, will be part of the integrated rail plan recently announced by the Government? They would bring local and regional benefits much sooner than the construction of HS2 East, which apparently has now been paused.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The integrated rail plan announced in February 2020 will look at the delivery of high-speed rail alongside all the other rail enhancements across the Midlands, including the Midlands rail hub. Network Rail is already developing work in this area, including connectivity improvements between Birmingham and Nottingham.
Electric Scooter Trials and Traffic Signs (Coronavirus) Regulations and General Directions 2020
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest, as a patron of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking, and a vice-chair of the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Micromobility. I am trying to span cycling and what might be called the new electric means of individual propulsion.
I love scooters and Segways. About 10 years ago, we got the late Lord Montagu of Beaulieu—a great expert on motoring—on a Segway in the car park outside, and he enjoyed it. I cycle in Brussels and Paris when I am there and sometimes use scooters. They bridge the gap between walking and sitting in a polluting car, and they give individuals transport, but all the comments made by noble Lords so far are quite right: people need to obey the law, such as it is.
The key is probably to treat these scooters similarly to cycles, whether electric or non-electric cycles. They should not go on the pavement. People have strong views about whether people should wear crash helmets, but there is no point in putting an ASBO on people who ride scooters, any more than there is on those who ride cycles. Both can be very dangerous and both, as some noble Lords have said, can operate effectively and safely.
I welcome the trial that the Government are doing. It might have been easier if they had just said that a scooter is the same as a cycle, but they did not do that for whatever reason. My understanding is that 30 towns and cities have already signed up to it. In Northampton, there were 40,000 rides in three weeks, so they are very popular. In Coventry, there are 7,500 users. The average journey is 20 minutes and 85% are returning customers, but these are just the trials. In the United States, which we think of as the motorist’s bonanza, 88 million journeys by scooter were recorded last year.
We have to try to educate people, live and let live, and try to find a way to encourage people to cycle safely, because we cannot stop them now—it is too late. We also need to think about the green agenda. When 63% of riders say that they are replacing a car journey by riding a scooter, that is worth having.
I conclude with a story. I know that many noble Lords are quite old and may think this is something for young people, but I have a quote from YorkMix about a man called Tom—he will not give his other name—who travels
“around York illegally on an e-scooter”
and enjoys it. It is much better than an electric wheelchair. He carries on riding
“Because it helps him stay active”,
after being locked down for three months because of coronavirus. I encourage the Government to carry on with the trial to encourage people to use scooters safely and responsibly. Do not give up.
Railways
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I pay great tribute to my noble friend and his time as Transport Secretary. I had the opportunity to go back and look at some of his words in Hansard from when he was Transport Secretary—I think it was 1995 to 1997. There were also some interesting photographs, which noble Lords might want to have a look at, at some stage. My noble friend is absolutely right that we must retain the benefits of private sector involvement in the railways. That is at the heart of how we can make sure that our railways are as effective as possible. Of course, Keith Williams has looked at all these issues and very much recognises that point. The new model that we are developing will ensure that the railway benefits from all that the private sector has to offer in innovation, customer centricity, investment and so on.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, the Government’s message on transport at the moment is a bit confusing: get back to work, commute but do not use public transport, and do not work at home. In addition, there are an awful lot of people disregarding this and working at home. Are the Government looking very seriously at the future demand for rail travel, because of both the coronavirus changes and their zero-carbon commitment?
Civil Aviation (Insurance) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing these regulations. Previous speakers have identified that there is an awful lot wrong with the whole aviation insurance sector at the moment.
The Minister has said it will not change just because we are leaving the EU, but how does this affect the insurance of airlines, airports and other sectors? Does it depend on where companies are registered or located? It is quite clear that there are very different policies coming out of different member states, as well as other parts of the world. This covers safety standards, baggage, compensation and delays—we have seen a lot of these in the last few months. It does not seem to make much difference where the airline is registered; they can have very different policies.
In addition to asking the Minister for some clarification on this, one has to ask what will happen after the end of this year. These regulations give the Government powers to diverge from the European regulations, and maybe the international ones in the future. It is worth pointing out that in the future the only three main groups in the airline business will be the US, the EU and probably China. I do not think the UK will have much of a look-in, so we will have to follow one of them. If we are to produce yet another set of insurance regulations just to make sure that we are seen to be separate, and insist obdurately on not staying in EASA, there will be a very serious and long-term set of consequences for passengers and the insurance industry, as well as airlines.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, I too do not believe a word when the CAA says it supports this. As he says, if it does not support it, it will be out of a job. We have to hope that the Minister can explain in her response what ability the Government will have to change these regulations in future without any consultation with the industry just because they feel it is a good thing.
Covid-19: Walking and Cycling
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking (1) to encourage walking and cycling, and (2) to discourage car use, in cities as the restrictions in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic are lifted.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con) [V]
My Lords, on 9 May the Government announced a £2 billion funding package for cycling and walking. This is the largest ever investment in active travel. It includes £250 million to be spent in the current financial year on measures to get people cycling and walking, such as pop-up bike lanes, wider pavements, safer junctions and cycling and bus-only corridors.
Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer and I congratulate the Government on their commitment to cycling at this time. It is really good. However, although some local authorities are doing very well, there is a big problem with one in Manchester. The Mayor of Greater Manchester and Chris Boardman are launching 200 kilometres of temporary cycle lanes—tomorrow or this week, I believe—which has one big hole in the middle, because Manchester City Council will not co-operate. Can the Minister please encourage Manchester City Council to take part and work with other local authorities to create this potentially fantastic new facility for cyclists?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton [V]
I thank the noble Lord for his warm words of welcome for this funding, which will make a huge difference to cycling. I take what he has said about Manchester City Council. I am in regular contact with the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and I will raise it with him next time we speak, to see whether something can be done. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority has initially been allocated £15.8 million, and it would be good to see that money spent wisely.