Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 32 is designed to probe two issues: the motivation behind the move to a strategic highways company and the extent to which the Minister will be able to affect its day-to-day operations. We are concerned about the cost implications of putting the Highways Agency at arm’s length because doing so could result in significantly increased managerial pay. In fact, there have been comments by informed individuals to suggest that that is certainly one of the attractions of the proposal. It will free the company from the constraints of Civil Service pay. We are also concerned about the issue of additional VAT payments. At present, considerable sums are returned on the basis of the role played by the Highways Agency, but as a company, of course, it will not receive such concessions and will have to meet its VAT obligations in full. We are concerned about fines because we are not at all sure about how any fines would be levied, and on whom. We are concerned about poor value cyclical investments, and we are concerned about the reduced flexibility of the Government in the area of spending in the future.

We recognise that the point of this attempt at improving the infrastructure basis of the Department for Transport as far as roads are concerned is about guaranteeing that certain sums will be spent in the future so that infrastructure projects which clearly need a long time-line of assured expense will have that guarantee. However, we also need some assurance from the Minister that the absolutely critical issue of ensuring that the necessary flexibility, either when situations change or the perspective of Ministers alters, is available. According to the transparency page on the Highways Agency website, at present the top five jobholders all make significantly more than £100,000 a year. One would have thought that in the context of pay in the public service and the other advantages of being in the public sector—the oft-quoted security of pensions, although that is becoming less advantageous as time goes by; job security, although by heavens one cannot talk to many civil servants and get the impression that they feel they enjoy job security—people on salaries of over £100,000 could be expected to discharge a significant area of responsibility. Let us consider whether the pay at the top of the strategic highways company will be boosted by any additional income streams. The Government have quite clearly indicated that these proposals have nothing to do with a long-term perspective on road pricing; we had that discussion at the end of our sitting last week. However, if there are no additional income streams, the taxpayer will be paying those potentially increased wages of the staff.

The impact assessment lists pay and remuneration under the heading “Institutional constraints under central controls”. I want to know what central controls those are, or yet again is a model being followed that we know all too well, in fair weather and in foul, of creating a non-governmental body and seeing its salaries inflate so that they match the private sector, which can always be relied upon to have a significant differential between the top few and the very many who do a great deal of the work and are responsible to them? Is that what we are going to see again prior to privatisation? I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friends on this amendment. It may well be that in her reply the Minister will refer to more than one of the five documents that she referred to in last week’s Committee sitting and kindly e-mailed to us the next day. I have now read them but they do not tell me a lot about the questions that we were asking. I hope that before we get to Report we will have the detail—I think that the Minister suggested that more would be forthcoming—of the relationship between a strategy, if there is to be one, a licence for this company, directions and guidance, articles, duties, governance and things such as that. However, in the case of this amendment, who is going to decide how much the staff of the new company are paid unless it is the Secretary of State?

As my noble friend said, it is beginning to look as though the only reason for making this change is so that the staff can be paid more than they are at the moment. It may be that the people who proposed this looked longingly at the remuneration and bonuses received by the senior staff at Network Rail in recent years without seeing that that is changing quite dramatically to a lower figure. Of course, once Network Rail is fully owned by the state, it may change even further. It would be interesting to hear how we are going to know who is in charge of remuneration, management, financial arrangements and staffing if it is not the Secretary of State. Therefore, I think that this is a very good amendment and I fully support it.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank my noble friend and her private office for the help that we were given after last week’s sitting with the supply of the documents to which she had referred and to which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has also just referred. I am very grateful. I, too, have read them, and the draft licence in particular, with all the caveats surrounding it, which I totally understand, is a very helpful indication. It might have been helpful if I had known about it when we were discussing the purposes of setting up this body and what its objectives would be.

I would have expected a remuneration committee to be the sort of thing to be covered by the articles of association. Indeed, the paper that the Minister has circulated, entitled Strategic Highways Company: Approach to the Articles of Association, makes reference to the,

“Model Articles for a company limited by shares”.

Of course, this company cannot be the same as that because, in a sense, it is rather different with all the shares owned by the Secretary of State. However, I would have expected the whole question of a remuneration committee to be covered by the articles when they are finally drawn up and issued.

It is absolutely within the powers of a board of directors to decide how that is going to operate, but I think that it is not unreasonable that the Secretary of State should keep a very close eye on this issue. Some of the remuneration that has been paid—not only in the private sector, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, implied, but sometimes also in the public sector—has been a bit absurd and given rise to a good deal of criticism and uneasiness. I should have expected the Secretary of State to want to keep a close eye on what the company is doing. As I understand it, it will primarily be for the articles of association to spell out this sort of thing, and I would be most grateful if my noble friend would be willing to confirm that.

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[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has said, but of course the problem with the Bill is that under the Government’s current proposals the Office of Rail Regulation—perhaps with a better name—will be not a regulator but simply a monitor. There is no equivalence between the ORR’s relationship to the railways and what is currently proposed. We will come to one of my amendments later on that would allow some degree of regulation of quality, standards, the performance of the road network and road safety. At the moment, though, that is not what the Government envisage, and I would hope that the Minister would explain why. As the noble Lord has indicated, equivalence in our strategic network would appear to be common sense.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I also support these amendments. It is very difficult to see how the Secretary of State can fine himself, which is effectively what will be happening. As we know, that actually would not happen because long before it got to that stage—not that we know how it will get there, because that appears in Clause 5(2) and we have not seen the documents yet—the people running the SHC will get the sack, they will be told to change their policy in order that they comply with the road investment strategy or they will comply with the directions and guidance. So to some extent I think that this clause is a complete waste of time, although it would be nice to see what the Secretary of State said about the circumstances that may require the payment of a fine.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and my noble friend Lord Whitty that we need to debate in more detail why this is not done by an independent regulator. Independence is the answer, and the independent rail regulator has the trust of the industry and, I think, of government; I am not sure about the other regulators, but we are talking about the ORR today. If it had those powers and it could use them, everybody would feel very happy that it had looked at the expenditure, efficiency, safety and everything else to do with the highways and come to an independent conclusion.

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[Baroness Kramer]

I thank your Lordships. I want to make clear that the Office of Rail Regulation in its role as a highways monitor would advise the Secretary of State on these issues. Perhaps it would be helpful if I took your Lordships through the thought process that took us to the current arrangement of enforcement, because we recognise that there are different ways to approach enforcement.

In looking at the system of fines we followed quite a usual practice, which is to keep the setting of performance standards and objectives together with the enforcement of that performance regime. That tends to be the line most experts in this field would recommend, because it means the enforcer, having been involved in setting those standards, has confidence that the regime as a whole is fair and that enforcement is justified. It is quite difficult for a body that is not setting those standards to then enforce them. Given that the company’s funding will come from the Secretary of State, it seemed to us right that he should be the one to set the performance expectations for the company and consequently to enforce them, following the general principle that I just described. That is the role that we have set in place here.

There have been other views. For example, I note that the report of the Transport Select Committee in the other place recommended giving greater powers to the monitor, closer to the functions discharged by a regulator. It is quite clear, as we have discussed before, that the role that the ORR would play with regard to the SHC is, by definition, different from its role in rail. For example, it is clear that there are no passengers who are paying fares, as there are with rail; there is no equivalency with the roads that would be under the responsibility of the SHC. There is no competitive arrangement between the various operators. For example, there is not the relationship that exists between Network Rail and the operators, which obviously has its tensions. We looked at it as rather a different role, and that is why we came up with the structure that we have here.

I agree with the comments that have been made on fines. Any fines that are paid by the SHC—I hope that it would not get to the point of paying fines, but it happens—will come out of the money that the company can spend on improving the road network. We have always assumed that the fines would be much more reputational in nature, rather than a heavy punishment. They are much more aimed at signalling poor performance, rather than transferring large sums of money out of the company. Obviously we want constant improvements in the road network.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, asked again about changing the title to be used from the Office of Rail Regulation to the office of transport regulation. I think that we have said that one of the interesting things about the role that the ORR will have—a role in relationship to rail and a role in relationship to road—is that it may, over time, lead to more thought about how the various modes interrelate. However, at this point we do not think that we are at that stage. It will be interesting to see how this monitoring role evolves. We will need to see how the SHC carries out its work and how that process evolves, so there may be a point in the future when that name change is appropriate.

I also point out that there is nothing to prevent a name change. It is not provided for in the Bill because the body has an advisory role with regard to roads, but it is open to the ORR to use a different trading name if it so chooses. Therefore, if it wanted to call itself a transport regulator, it could choose that as a trading name.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I want to go back to the performance criteria that she mentioned in relation to fines and things such as that. She mentioned that there was a reputational issue, and of course exactly the same would apply to Network Rail—a fine on it would be significant in terms of reputation. However, can she give the Committee any idea of the sort of criteria that would be used? Presumably, road closures for maintenance is one of them, but might they include happy cyclists, happy motorists or happy pedestrians, or something like that? Is she able to expand on any of the criteria either now or in a letter if necessary?

[Baroness Kramer]

What we are doing now is basically setting up implementation vehicles. That is the purpose of this language. The content of the road investment strategy will undoubtedly lead to performance criteria. It is very hard to set performance standards without that document in front of us, and obviously we hope to see it some time in the autumn. I think that we have to pass the hurdle of having a road investment strategy before we can sensibly ask a Secretary of State to set those standards.

I am being reminded that it is very likely that breaches of the licence conditions would be the kind of standards used by the Secretary of State. It is possible that he might set standards so that there is a penalty, for example, for the failure to control costs or to achieve delivery. Quite a range of performance standards might be selected but I think that we are rather too early in the process, without having the RIS, to put sensible names to them.

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[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I will be brief on this amendment because the main discussion of Passenger Focus is in the next group of amendments. My amendment is simply about the name. I prefer my formulation to that of my noble friends Lord Berkeley and Lord Judd, because my amendment makes it clear that it is actually the users—the consumers—of these services who are represented by the council. I think that that point is more ambiguous in the title they are proposing. We need a new name, so I commend my formulation and beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am going to confuse the Committee because my Amendment 42, which we will come on to shortly, suggests that the name should be the transport infrastructure and services council. However, after I tabled this amendment I had a discussion with the chief executive of the Rail Passengers’ Council, who said that a much better name than anything anyone has suggested before, including the Government, was the transport users’ council. I will just throw that into the ring and see what the Minister and other noble Lords think of it.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

It sounds a very good name. However, might there not be some confusion with another body with the same initials—the TUC?

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[Baroness Kramer]

Perhaps I may just explain. We have had a number of conversations about the wider community who make up road users, and we have talked about the possibility of having lists. Such an approach would create problems because there are always additional thoughts about who should be included in the list. As noble Lords will see in Hansard, we started out with a discussion that covered obvious road users such as car drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. People have certainly come to me and said, “You’ve got to include Segways in it”, “We certainly need to include horse riders”, and, “What do you do about mobility scooters?”. Many potential issues arise once you start getting into list mode. What we have tried to do throughout this whole process is make it clear that we, and indeed the Passengers’ Council, have a very wide interpretation and intend to capture everyone who actually uses the road in one way or another. Just creating a detailed list gets us into more trouble than having just that broad understanding. That is why we have kept with this name.

As I said, there are ongoing discussions. Noble Lords have excellent ideas and are in frequent communication with the community. We would be very glad to share with the Passengers’ Council the names that have been proposed today to see whether it is inspired by them to identify what it thinks would be the most appropriate name for it to use. I do not think that we want to start making legislative changes at this stage, when there is so much flexibility provided for in the system we have.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, the Bill refers to the Passengers’ Council, which is clearly wrong, and we have all come up with different suggestions about what it should be. However, as the Minister is in discussion with various groups and the department, will she commit to coming back on Report with a suggestion of what it should be? Otherwise, every time we get to this point we will have an argument and say, “Well, it is not the Passengers’ Council because it does not represent trucks”. If we could move this matter on, it would be very good for everybody.

[Baroness Kramer]

I should point out to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that it is the Passengers’ Council today; that is its legal name. If we were to include a different name in the legislation now, it would not be clear to anybody which group of people it applied to. We are identifying the organisation. It might be appropriate for that organisation to make changes to either its name or its trading name to meet the new set of responsibilities that it will have. However, if I were to put in some other name today it would not be clear that it applied to the Passengers’ Council, a body for which everybody in your Lordships’ House has great respect.

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Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

42: Clause 8, page 5, line 25, leave out subsections (1) and (2) and insert—
“(1) In all Acts and secondary legislation the Passengers’ Council is renamed the “Transport Infrastructure and Services Council”.
(2) In this section “relevant activities” mean, in relation to specific highways, activities to—
(a) protect and promote the interests of users of such highways,(b) protect and promote the interests of communities impacted upon by such highways, and(c) promote the need to reduce impacts of such highways on the natural and historic environment.(2A) In this section, consideration of users of highways shall include consideration of—
(a) potential users, who, in the absence of safe infrastructure or convenient services, do not currently use or cross over such highways, (b) the potential for modal shift to more sustainable modes of transport, and(c) the potential to reduce the need to travel, including by making more efficient use of vehicles, such as through better logistics, and through better land use and travel planning along such highways.(2B) The Transport Infrastructure and Services Council must carry out relevant activities in relation to highways for which a strategic highways company is the highway authority.
(2C) Those activities may include investigating, publishing reports or giving advice to the Secretary of State on—
(a) how a strategic highways company’s exercise of its functions or achievement of its objectives under a Road Investment Strategy is relevant to the interests listed in subsection (2A),(b) any other matters which the Council considers to be of use in relation to relevant activities.”

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 42, I shall also speak to some of the other amendments in this group. The intention of this group is to discuss in more detail the role of the watchdog, what it might do, who it might look after and some of its objectives. We discussed this in outline during Second Reading.

We should start with Amendment 51, because that defines who the users of this road network are. One of these days I shall start putting pedestrians first, then cyclists and then motor vehicles to make people realise it is not just for fast cars. However, as other noble Lords have mentioned, there are also horseriders and perhaps in the future Segway users and all kinds of things. The monitor—Passengers’ Council or whatever we call it—should look after the interests of all those.

As to Amendment 42, it would be useful to expand some of the relevant activities to take into account the needs of not only the users but the communities that are affected by roads, and also to put in this objective to reduce their impact. There is then the issue of looking into modal shift, which I make no apology for coming back to again. Reducing the need for travel is something very few Governments ever look at. They currently look separately at forecasts for road, for rail and for air. Cycling does not really come into it, and neither does the thought of looking into the possibility of modal shift and what would be needed for that to be achieved. The end of proposed new subsection (2A)(c) covers this with reference to,

“land use and travel planning along such highways”.

Passengers’ Council produces some excellent data and reports on transport trends in the railway industry. I am sure that it would do the same thing on highways if it gets the chance to do so. It would be nice to think that some of its reports could then be used by either the Office of Rail Regulation or the Secretary of State in looking at the performance of the companies and whether they get fined, as we debated earlier. Again, it would be much better if it were done by the ORR.

This watchdog has an enormously important role to play. The Minister has already indicated that its role would be completely different from those of the organisations looking after the interests of current users, such as the British Horse Society, the Freight Transport Association, the Road Haulage Association, the Cyclists Touring Club, the pedestrians’ association, the AA and the RAC. I have probably forgotten a few and the Minister will not want a list anyway. However, I would like her to confirm that these organisations will not see their roles changing very much. The passenger watchdog should produce something that is more strategic and detailed in its analysis while also looking at some of the wider benefits and disbenefits which I have tried to outline in the amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I warmly support what my noble friend has said. I should say at the outset of our deliberations that I am sorry that I was not able to be here for the first meeting. I should also underline that I am a strong supporter of the CPRE and that I am involved in the capacity of honorary officer in a number of environmental agencies, not least those dealing with our national parks. All of that is relevant.

We should go back to the mainstream of the argument that we had on the previous amendment. The roads should serve the community. We are a closely knit island with a lot of complex interests to reconcile. Direct impacts and consequences can arise from a new piece of legislation which may quickly become unintended consequences. It is therefore terribly important to get right, at the beginning of a Bill, the approach and ground rules for any strategy that is to be established. An example is the realm of public health. We keep saying that we want more people to take up cycling and walking. It is perfectly clear to me that the role of any regulation in this sphere should be to ensure that not only are those objectives reconcilable with other policies in the public realm, but that they can be furthered.

But then there are all the people who do not use the roads because they are intimidated by and frightened of them. Their interests also need to be looked at very carefully. There are communities which have to contend with increased noise on roads arising from more feed-ins and feed-outs from strategic routes. We need to have some imagination and clarity of thinking right at this early stage about the wider social purposes which the regulator should be looking at in the fulfilment of the Government’s policy. At the moment, looking at the responsibilities of Government and quite apart from their aspirations as expressed for, as I have just said, public health, there is a conflict. We keep narrowing the scope down to, in effect, passengers and drivers, when the much wider community is involved. It is therefore sensible to make this clear at the outset in the tasks set out for regulation.

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[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I, too, have memories of motorways. The M25 went around the north of the constituency that I represented, in Enfield. The only tunnel constructed on the M25 was there, in order to protect the interests of my constituents. Subsequently there was an additional tunnel in order to protect a great deal of Epping Forest, which I also greatly supported. However, our negotiations and discussions were nothing to do with planning authorities; we had to deal with the Department of Transport and the excessive, terrifying costs of what is involved in tunnelling. That is why the M25 is a circular route 125 miles long but has only one tunnel, which is constructed as far as the immediate neighbourhood’s interests are concerned. It was nothing to do with planning; the Department of Transport had to answer.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I do not want to prolong this discussion for much longer, but some of us, in setting out a role for the Passengers’ Council, are trying to ensure that it produces the right data and looks at alternative options before the company goes ahead and develops new roads. With regard to the planning system, I do not believe that the Passengers’ Council should have a role at all, but I believe that it has a role in producing the data to justify—or not—what gets done and to look at alternatives.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have tabled two amendments but I want to comment briefly on what has been said. I find myself slightly between the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and my noble friend Lord Judd. As Roads Minister for three and a half years in the last days of Swampy, I know what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is talking about. We have to separate out the planning process from the monitoring of the operational process. On the other hand, I agree with my noble friend Lord Judd that when we are talking about users of the road network, we are talking not only about the people who that day happen to be driving a car or a lorry on that network, but also about all the people who depend on that network or whose premises and lives are affected by it. We therefore need to interpret “road user” in the broadest possible sense. Without straying into the planning system, I think that some of what my noble friend said should be reflected in the Bill.

My two amendments deal with different issues. Amendment 47 refers to the setting up a complaints system. One of the most effective jobs of Passenger Focus in relation to rail, and latterly buses, has been in dealing with a complaints system. Its effort has pushed the responsibility for dealing with complaints back on the railway and bus companies. It is there to pick up what those companies failed to do in terms of complaints. Similarly, we have never had the equivalent system in relation to strategic roads. It is important that a complaints system is seen as one of the responsibilities of whatever we eventually call the Passengers’ Council.

My second amendment is a probing amendment, which I will not press. It relates to Clause 8(6), which refers to a relationship between the Passengers’ Council and local authority rights. It says that the new consumer body could have responsibility for matters relating to local authority roads if the local authority asks it to. That is a bit cock-eyed. Either we make it responsible for complaints about all local authority roads, which I do not really want to do, although my amendment would have that effect, or we leave it as the user body for the strategic road network, which would be tidier. After all, complaints about roads for which the local authority is responsible need to be dealt with largely within the local authority context. There is plenty of scope for complaints to local councils about local authority roads.

If some local authorities want the Passengers’ Council to be there for consumers but others do not, there will be confusion. My local road, the A30, in 10 miles goes through Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset. If only one of those councils agrees that the Passengers’ Council should be the consumer body, we would have to pinpoint exactly where the complaint arose—over a traffic jam, police incident, or whatever—and we would end up with a patchwork of bodies. Some councils would say that the Passengers’ Council was responsible and would shove off all complaints to it, while others would continue to deal with the complaints in their highways departments. Subsection (6) extends the Passengers’ Council’s role into local authority roads, which may be a step too far. My amendment should probably have been worded differently, but I want to hear what the Minister says in her summing up.

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[Baroness Kramer]

My understanding is that “Road User Focus” will be able to see right through to the complaints to see what they are and whether they are being appropriately handled. At the moment, complaints are not a large issue for the Highways Agency. Of all the letters sent to it last year—I do not have the total number, unfortunately—only 16 needed outside help in resolving them, which represented about 2% of the letters received. So it has a good complaints system in place and a good track record on resolution, and that will pass over to the new company. However, as I said, it is important that the watchdog should be able to see all the way through that process. I am sure that it will choose how it engages with that—it is not constrained by the language in Clause 8.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I wonder whether I may probe the Minister a bit more. With the railways, on most trains there is a notice in each coach that says that if you do not like what is going on and want to make a complaint, first, you contact the train operator and, if that does not work, you can go to the Rail Passengers’ Council. The users of the railway service read this every day and the Rail Passengers’ Council will pass a complaint on to Network Rail if that is appropriate. On the highways, you are sitting in your car or your truck or on your cycle and there are not the same opportunities for knowing whom to complain to. Therefore, to some extent, it is not surprising that the number of complaints is probably a great deal lower than it is for the railways, but the principle needs to be there, which is why the comments of my noble friend Lord Whitty are so important. If you do not get the right answer from the SHC or the passenger train operator, you need to have an independent body to appeal to who you know will guarantee to give you a decent answer within a reasonable time.

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[Baroness Kramer]

I would say first to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that the watchdog is just one part of the total family of entities here, which include the monitor, the Secretary of State and the SHC. It is therefore right that it should have a very specific role, which is to represent the road user. I have underscored over and again that it is not the car driver and the passenger but the whole body of people who we understand as making up “road users”. That is important. I rather object to lists because they tend to miss various categories of road user, which would be neither fair nor, frankly, right. That is why I prefer the broader term of “road user”, and I repeat that it is not meant to be confined to the driver and the passenger; it embraces a much broader group.

Secondly, we must make sure that the watchdog has a manageable job of work that it can do effectively. It is meant to be a voice for road users. If we give it a much wider breadth of responsibility for local communities and other kinds of objectives that we want to achieve, it will struggle to provide the voice that is needed to ensure that the road user is heard. I think we can say that historically many road users do not feel that they have had a voice, and they want to make sure that it is there for them in the future because that is appropriate.

Let us look at the equivalent on the rail side of transport. We do not ask Passenger Focus to explore the needs of communities through which our railways pass. The body is focused very much on the needs of the passenger, and that is why it delivers. I therefore disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham. Passenger Focus is a highly respected body that is considered to be doing an incredibly good job and is very effective. We want to try to replicate that effectiveness over on the road side of transport.

The issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about the relationship between roads and communities, as well as the issues raised by others about roads and the environment, are entirely legitimate and important, but they should be handled using strategies other than through the particular role of the watchdog. It is important to make sure that the road user defines the tasks of the watchdog. For those reasons, I resist this proposal.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this very interesting debate. We have covered a wide range of possible roles for the watchdog. I shall read what everyone has said and we may come back to this issue on Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 42 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

52: Clause 8, page 6, line 12, at end insert—
“Network Rail.”

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 52A. This is to do with freedom of information. In Clause 8(8), I see that the Passengers’ Council is going to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. I did not know whether or not it was at the moment but presumably it is not, otherwise that wording would not be there. I thought that it would be interesting to explore whether the infrastructure operators of rail and road would also be subject to FoI. Local authority roads must be subject to FoI at the moment because they are local authorities, as, I assume, is the Highways Agency, so it would be logical for the SHC to be in the same position. I believe that the Minister said that Network Rail would be subject to FoI after 1 September when it became fully owned by the Government. I personally think that it should be, for tidiness and transparency reasons, but it would be good to hear the Minister’s comments on this to see whether I have misunderstood anything. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. This is an opportunity to clarify some points on the subject of freedom of information. As he will know, on 17 December 2013 the ONS announced that under new EU statistical rules, which come into force on 1 September 2014, Network Rail will be reclassified to the public sector. The Department for Transport is working with Network Rail to decide on the details of how Network Rail will operate in the public sector. A framework agreement explaining these decisions will be published before 1 December—that is, well before the Report stage of the Bill.

The framework will address a number of issues, which are likely to include our intended approach to the Freedom of Information Act. It has been pointed out to me that there is a strong preference to announce the whole agreement rather than drip-feed announcements around individual measures, so all announcements associated with that will be part of a single package. As I say, they will come out on 1 September, so the Committee will know exactly what the position is on FoI before we come to Report. I confirm that the Passengers’ Council is not currently subject to the FoI Act, and we are correcting that by adding it to the Bill. The Office of Rail Regulation, however, has always been subject to the FoI Act. Following the publication of the framework agreement, which makes comments on this, if the Committee feels that its concerns have not been addressed then it may wish to return to this issue, but obviously there will be clarity around it before 1 September.

The strategic highways companies will be public authorities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 by virtue of being companies wholly owned by the Secretary of State. Public authorities are subject to the freedom of information duties under Section 1 of that Act. I argue that in the Government’s view the amendment is not needed, and I ask the noble Lord to withdraw it.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the Minister for that helpful reply. With regard to Network Rail, I think that she said 1 September, rather than 1 December, is the date when the transfer will take place, if I understand it correctly. I am pleased with that clarification and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 52 withdrawn.

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[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I have amendments grouped with those of my noble friend Lord Whitty, and I agree with a great deal of what he has just said.

Amendment 54 is my chief amendment and is designed to ensure that the monitor focuses not simply on the financial cost of the strategic highways company’s activities—that is, the bill to the taxpayer for the SHC—but on its wider non-monetisation impacts such as landscape, biodiversity and social distribution. We need breadth to the monitor’s analysis of the performance of the company. The text is based on guidance in the Treasury Green Book on appraisal, so I am merely suggesting that where the Treasury thinks that the proper appraisal of an activity should include these features, I want them to be included when considering the SHC.

The other amendment in the group is a minor one about removing all exemptions in documents. We do not see why these powers should be restricted in the documents that are made available, but that is a relatively minor aspect. Amendment 54, however, is of considerable import.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I have tabled two amendments in this group, but I shall speak to the whole group because all the amendments consider the role of the monitor—the Office of Rail Regulation or whatever it may be. I get the feeling that Ministers are rejecting any comment that might enable the SHC, or the government policy that surrounds it, to climb out of its roads silo. There is probably a rail silo because that is the way the railways work. There is also clearly a road silo, so what these and several previous amendments are trying to achieve is the ability to look at cross-modal choice and to consider the issue of sustainability, which seems to be forgotten about for much of the time. The ORR would have the opportunity and the capability to look at the alternatives and it would be able to consider the costs, which of course it is meant to be monitoring.

Monitoring something is not quite the same as pushing for greater efficiencies, a point I made when speaking to a series of amendments that we considered last Thursday. What the ORR has achieved with Network Rail is a reduction in its costs by 60%. If the new construction and maintenance costs of the highways were to be reduced by 60% in a period of 10 years, either we would have quite a few more roads that were in better condition or the Treasury would be very happy—or both. It is an opportunity that will be missed unless the regulator is given more powers. That is the point of Amendment 57. The compromise would be that the ORR would report to the Secretary of State within three years with ideas on how it might do its job properly.

There are several other issues. My noble friend Lord Whitty mentioned safety. During a Question for Oral Answer earlier today a noble Lord talked about road safety and the issue of HGVs. Safety on the roads may have got better, but it is still disastrous compared with safety rates on the railways. It is not just about people being run over; it covers a multitude of different issues for which I believe the ORR could come up with some new ideas. I have separated out two amendments related to level crossings so that they will be considered later, though I am not sure when. However, level crossings are a major safety issue for the railways. There is really no reason that I can see for not putting all these together under one safety rule—based, in my book, on the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. I know that that was being debated in the Deregulation Bill yesterday and some rather distressing issues were brought to the fore.

Safety is one thing but pollution is another. Recently we were told that the pollution measurements in Oxford Street are three times the EU limits. There would not be any harm if the ORR were able to look at that as well.

Finally, on funding, the Office of Rail Regulation is funded by the industry: 50% by Network Rail and 50% by the train operators. I cannot see why the ORR’s monitoring of road activities should not be funded partly by the company running the infrastructure and partly by the users. That would be a good balance. There is absolutely no reason why that should not happen except, I suppose, that Ministers would be frightened of the road lobby. However, there would be a consistency between road and rail, and there is an opportunity here for at least getting the funding for the ORR on a consistent basis between the two.

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[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I thank your Lordships for a wide range of amendments that address the monitor at the Office of Rail Regulation. If I understand the comments that I have heard correctly, I think there is great respect for the body and the work it has done on rail; obviously, we intend that the same expertise and focus should now apply to the road infrastructure, the strategic highways company.

From the Government’s perspective, there is tremendous value to be had in subjecting the costs and performance of the new SHC to serious external scrutiny: that is what the monitor is meant to provide. At last week’s sitting, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, mentioned some of the challenges that he faced in his time as a Transport Minister in keeping down the costs of road schemes, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has referred to the success, in which the ORR has played a part, in bringing down the cost of rail schemes. We recognise that this is an ongoing challenge that the Government have to face. Looking at what the SHC will do and comparing it against past performance or international benchmarks will be important. The monitor exists to provide that information. It has the power to require the company to provide data on its performance; it will have the capacity to maximise performance and see where the company has excelled and where it has fallen short; and the Secretary of State will be obliged to listen to what it says.

We are also absolutely determined to ensure that the monitor is a transparent organisation, so its advice will not be quiet, secret reports passed to the Secretary of State. We are clear that publication will be the norm for the work of the monitor. The public have a right to see what the monitor is saying about the performance of the company.

The questions today clearly go to how far the monitor’s role should extend. Before I go into the detail of specific amendments, let me address some points of principle. I see the obvious attraction to saying that in its work on roads, the ORR should match the role that it discharges on railways, but there are such fundamental differences between the two systems that I think that it is hard to continue that argument in depth. Regulation of the railway means regulating the track, the rolling stock and the operator. On roads, in effect, only the equivalent of the track will be covered. The monitor will not be regulating HGVs, cars or drivers, so those roles remain with the Secretary of State. It is as though it will have just one part of the range of tasks that the ORR has in dealing with the railway. On the railways, there are paying customers; on the roads, there are not. Yes, people pay vehicle duty and, obviously, fuel tax, but that money is direct to the Treasury; it is not a dedicated amount of money that goes through some direct channel to the SHC.

That means that the railways have a complex funding system that has to be orchestrated by an independent, impartial body. Roads are funded almost entirely by the Government out of general taxation. It seems almost impossible to apply the same system to roads and rail. If we did so, we would end up with a great deal of confusion rather than simplification and effectiveness.

[Lord Berkeley]

The Minister is absolutely right that there are differences, but a specific role of the ORR—its roles are specific; they do not quite have a barrier around them, but it is close to that—is to monitor the costs and efficiencies of Network Rail, which is the infrastructure manager, and then to fine it if it does not achieve its targets, as we heard last week. The ORR does things on capacity, too. When it comes to running the trains, passenger trains are run by the Department for Transport or are franchised out, while freight is independent, as we all know. However, when it comes to infrastructure, there are great similarities. There is the civil engineering of new build both on railways and on roads. On the railways, the ORR has a role of seeing whether the embankments stay up or the bridges fall down—one hopes that they do not. A similar thing could happen with the Highways Agency network. On the railways, the costs are to do with the quality of the track; on the roads, they could be to do with the quality of the road surface, which is just as important. There is also the question of the time during which infrastructure is closed for maintenance. Network Rail produces figures, which the regulator sometimes complains about. There are similar problems on some of the motorways when they are closed for maintenance. On the straight issue of infrastructure, therefore—if we leave out the train operations and everything else—I think that there are enormous similarities. I hope that the noble Baroness agrees with that.

[Baroness Kramer]

Clearly there are similarities, which is one reason why we turned to the ORR—it has a lot of expertise that it would be able to translate to the road side. However, I think that I have made it absolutely clear that the key benefit that the ORR will bring will be the ability to subject to real scrutiny the costs and the performance of the new company. That includes the asset management issues that the noble Lord has described. Its role will be to do that work and then to use it to advise the Secretary of State.

We are choosing that route because the Secretary of State remains at the heart of the system, as the Government are in effect providing all the funding. We think that that makes a fundamental difference in finding the appropriate structure. As I said in response to earlier amendments, those who have expertise in regulation consistently stress to us that the enforcement of a performance regime goes hand in hand with the ability to set that regime. That is a responsibility that we are putting on the Secretary of State, both because of the funding and because of the role that he plays in setting the road investment strategy. Since the policy and the RIS will be the Secretary of State’s and since he is providing the funding—pretty much wholly, in this case—we believe that this should be his decision. Therefore, the monitor doing all that work acts, in effect, in an advisory role. That will be a very effective arrangement.

Let me move on to some of the other issues that have been raised, such as whether the ORR should be promoting multimodal choice or increasing links with rail. I would argue that these areas should be part of the Secretary of State’s responsibility and I suspect that we will see them reflected in the RIS when it comes forward. It is at the government level that we are committed to developing a comprehensive transport policy that covers the whole range of issues that we have discussed today. The draft documents on the company’s governance, which we published on 23 June, and the licence condition make it clear that the company must abide by a continued commitment to deliver sustainable development, for example. Again, there is clear language on road safety and clear language on working with communities and local authorities. So the roles will work out in such a way that the Secretary of State develops the policy, and the role of the monitor is to assess the efficiency and performance of the company running the network. That revolves around judging delivery and capacity, principally by reference to the objectives to be achieved by the company, as set out in the RIS. The amendments propose a very different approach, whereby the monitor’s role involves much broader speculation on whether or not the company is following the right policy, whereas I would argue that it is the Government’s responsibility to determine the right policy.

We should give the Government the right to decide what balance of different transport measures is needed. At the very beginning of this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, expressed real concern that we would set up a system that would take away flexibility from future Governments, which would be unacceptable in a democratic society. This matter also reads into that issue. It is important for the Government to set transport policy, and I am somewhat concerned with the notion that it would transfer over to the Office of Rail Regulation. That responsibility is appropriately with the Government, and the Government are rightly accountable to Parliament for their decisions on issues such as prioritisation and allocating resources.

I want to strike a note of caution on the efforts of these amendments to link decision-making on roads with that on rail. Cross-modal integration is an important part of a successful transport network, and the thought periodically passes one’s mind that here is the ORR acting as a regulator for one transport mode and a monitor for the other, and whether this is not an opportunity to integrate them. However, there are fundamental differences. I come back to the point that rail has a full system of price regulation. If we think through the consequences of bringing the two closer together, we could end up with the ORR’s road advice having to account for rail but not vice versa. There would be a one-sided thought process on modal thinking. However, forcing the ORR to take account of road matters when making decisions on rail matters would fundamentally change decision-making in the rail regulation regime. We are committed to introducing the new role of the monitor without disrupting the ORR’s existing work. I think that noble Lords would agree that the rail structure is working well. To disrupt that and suddenly force plans such as CP4, CP5 and CP6 to be adjusted to deal with road issues would undermine a lot of the good work that we are trying to do here and, frankly, put all the ORR’s current activities in flux, including the price settlement. I do not think that it is anyone’s intention to make a disruptive change. However, I take on board the overall issue, which is that we need to integrate our transport thinking, but that should happen at the Secretary of State level rather than at the level of the monitor or regulator.

If we are considering increasing the enforcement powers of the monitor, as proposed by the amendment, we end up with many similar questions. The monitor has a valuable role to play in assessing the performance and efficiency of the new company. We expect that to mark a radical improvement in the transparency and accountability of the people running the strategic road network. However, this does not go so far as to give the monitor the responsibility for proposing changes to the legal regime around the company. Again, that is the responsibility of Parliament and the Secretary of State. It does not mean that the monitor cannot take a view on these issues, should it wish to do so, but formally making this a role of the monitor that is equal to that of advising on the RIS seems to go well beyond this point.

Looking at parts of Amendment 56, I should note that we think that the proposal to allow the Secretary of State to issue guidance to the ORR on road matters, mirroring the provisions in the rail sector, has value. At present, we expect the monitor and the Secretary of State to have a fairly detailed working relationship negotiated through other documents—not necessarily on the face of the Bill—which will set out what the monitor is expected to do in day-to-day terms and what is agreed to be a proportionate level of oversight for the new company. However, there are a lot of ways of doing this. It may be, in the light of developments to the Bill, that this is a more appropriate way to set out the relationship between the Secretary of State and the ORR. We will continue to look at that.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I also support my noble friend’s amendment. The situation is a classic case of restrictive practices or protectionism—whatever we would like to call it. I thought that this Government were against restrictive practices and protectionism—after all, they have several deregulation Bills—but, as ever, it seems that the Home Office is exempt.

During my Question on HGVs today, the Minister mentioned in reply the work being done in London between VOSA and the police to stop lorries that might be thought to be contravening some regulation or other. In fact, I was invited to witness one of these events a few weeks ago. They do it every day in different parts of London, and it works well; the number of vehicles that are stopped and the number of charges that the Minister told the House about are very impressive. However, there is one thing that has not happened. I said to the Metropolitan Police people and VOSA, “You’re doing all these things, but do you have one common database so that you can work out how to catch these people and do something with them?”. Very politely, the answer was, “Well, no we don’t, because the Met doesn’t allow it”.

The issue of whether the Met is above the law is a debate that we can have on a different day, but it is the same issue as the restrictive practice of saying, “Don’t set foot on my patch, otherwise—although I will not shoot you—I shall make sure that there is trouble”. Surely we should all be working on the same databases and sharing things. VOSA has made major progress here and it is about time that the Met caught up. If an amendment comes back on Report, either from the Minister or from my noble friend, it would be nice to think that a Home Office Minister could be here to answer on this issue and make a proposal.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, I have heard my noble friend Lord Faulkner wax lyrical persuasively on this issue, and I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw talk about it on many occasions. It is clear that the case stands—and stands mightily proud. We have had this argument long enough for a Government to see sense on this. All that I can say to the Minister at this moment of decision is that I shall be showing the utmost loyalty and commitment to my noble friend. The Minister has a noble friend on her side arguing the same case. I advise her to follow my example.

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[Lord Bradshaw]

This is the last of the road amendments but it is not the least. There are great problems with our roads and the way that they are run. The amendment simply asks the Government to agree that within six months of the Bill being enacted, the Secretary of State commissions,

“a body to review the funding and condition of the road network”.

This body should consider four things, including,

“whether the heaviest users of the road network, in terms of wear and tear on the roads, congestion and pollution, should contribute a higher proportion than at present of the funding of the road network”.

We keep talking about the railway because that is in our minds at the moment, but people who travel at peak times have to pay higher fares than those who travel at off-peak times. The train operators who use congested parts of the network pay more, and it is time that a more rational way of paying for the road network was developed.

I am also asking that the methodology for calculating the axle weights of vehicles, used in calculating the rates of vehicle taxation should be changed, or re-examined, which might be better. The present methodology is based on experiments that took place in 1958 in America by the American state highways authorities. These experiments consisted of running a properly laden lorry, with a distributed load at 35 mph over perfectly level surfaces, and measuring the deterioration of those surfaces. The authorities came to the conclusion that it was reasonable to use the fourth-power function and the standard axle as a means of calculating load damage. Lorries do not go at 35 mph, they do not have perfectly distributed loads and the road network is not in perfect condition, as it was in 1958 when the Americans conducted the experiments. I suggest that it is perhaps time that we revisited this whole area and looked at the real position, not the theoretical position in the laboratory conditions in which experiments were conducted in America.

My third concern is whether the arrangements for the utilities, which dig up our roads to lay their pipes and cables, include them making an adequate financial contribution to the remaking of the road surface on completion of such street works. Is the remedial work of a suitable standard, and if not, how could those organisations make an appropriate financial contribution? I know that noble Lords will see, as I do, that outside their own homes the entire road is pockmarked by holes which have been dug by the cable companies, water companies, gas companies and so on. Most of the work is not properly finished and often the edges are not adequately sealed, allowing water to get in and break up the road surface, which is the primary cause of potholes. However, it is no good spending money on just filling up those potholes, the problem has to be attacked at its root cause.

My last issue is the question of the other part of the highways network that is not covered by this legislation. It is not in a satisfactory condition. The structural condition of the road is usually pretty terrible, and what is more, it is declining more and more rapidly.

Those are not issues that I expect the present Government to tackle, but they should be working on drawing up the terms of reference of a review that would look into how to address them. I have referred previously to why this is now urgent. The revenue from fuel tax will decline as cars and lorries become more efficient, which means that the Government will face a mountain of expenditure with a declining source of revenue. Moreover, very fuel-efficient cars are not eligible to pay much road tax. I have noticed since I acquired such a car that I am putting around a third of what I had been into the pot for the upkeep of our roads. That is a serious strategic problem and, while I am not expecting any answers, I am expecting some sympathy and a form of commitment that these issues will be taken in hand. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, these are interesting amendments which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has said, cover a wide range of issues. It is definitely time to revisit the issue of damaged roads. Road vehicles are getting heavier and their tyre pressures are higher, but that may be balanced by improved suspension systems, making this a complicated calculation. Of course, higher speed incurs more damage to vehicles of all types. It is reasonable that vehicle excise duty, in the absence of any sort of road user charge, should reflect the different types of damage caused to roads as well as congestion and pollution. We need also to take into account something else which has come to the fore in the past few years. Worsening road surfaces are having a serious effect on cyclists. If the Government want more people to take up cycling, it must be safe for them to do so. A large pothole can cause a cyclist to fall off their bike and hurt themselves, and at night the potholes cannot be seen because they are so deep. It is a serious issue and now would be a very good time to address it.

On proposed new paragraphs (2)(c) and (d) in Amendment 64, we are where we are with the undertakers. I suspect that that is one reason why we do not do more with our roads. Constructing trams in cities is so expensive because the private sector undertakers take anybody to the cleaners if they want to build anything. I do not see an easy solution, except that they need to be kept up to the mark and ensure not only that the quality of the reinstatement is good but that the time it takes is kept short. Some emergency potholes and road works are there for weeks.

On new paragraph (d), damage to the roads in the past couple of winters probably reflects the same cause and effect as damage to the rail network: the weather has been very bad. The motorways mostly stayed open, as did the existing high-speed rail link because they have been designed and built in the past 50 years to cope with the current forecast weather conditions and using more modern drainage systems—slopes on cuttings and so on—which are appropriate. Most of the other roads and the classic railway system has suffered from being built 100 or 150 years ago. It is time to look at all that again, and it would be interesting to see the results. I hope that the Minister will look on the amendment with favour.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

I support the Minister looking closely at the amendment from my noble friend Lord Bradshaw for two reasons: first, because of the point he made that we need roads of good quality, whether you are the user of a car, a cyclist or some other person travelling on the road. We are facing far less revenue coming in to the Treasury to pay for them and need to find other sources of funding. That seems to be a reasonable proposal.

Secondly, I follow on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about cyclists. I speak as someone whose husband suffered a serious cycling accident two years ago—the police do not know whether it was because he went into a pothole or was hit by a car and then hit a pothole, but potholes were clearly involved in that accident, and he still has no recollection of what happened. There is an increasing number of good reasons to encourage children on to bicycles. I speak as someone who cycles my youngest to school when I can. It is madness for us to want children to be encouraged to go out to cycle for the health benefits that that gives them if, by the time they are adults and cycling to work, the roads are in such poor condition that it is not safe for them to go on them.

We need safe and well funded roads, which means that the Government are going to have to be creative in how we find that money. I think that the amendment offers an opportunity for further discussion and debate.

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[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

I am sure that the appetites of the Corns are something to be praised in this respect. My point is that I hope that this principle will not be too rigorously followed when dealing with invasive alien species in future.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I bow to the expertise of previous speakers because I am no great expert in species. The previous three speeches have demonstrated that it will be quite a challenge to decide what is in and what is out. The issue seems to be very subjective and no one is fighting tonight, but I expect that the experts will fight in the future.

I have two examples—and I do not know whether they are in or out; perhaps the noble Baroness can help me. I have a quote from the Western Morning News last week, under the headline:

“UK ladybirds are being eaten by their invading cannibal cousins”.

Ladybirds are now cannibals that are eating either the five-spot or two-spot ones—I could go on—and invade at the speed of 200 kilometres a year. Even though they came in 20 years ago, I do not know whether they have reached Cornwall yet. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, will know. Are they included? Have they been here before? Where would it be?

My other example is from three or four years ago when a friend of mine discovered that the Duchy of Cornwall was introducing Japanese oysters into the Helford River in Cornwall—we seem to have been in Cornwall a lot, but I cannot help that—without doing an environmental study or getting permission. Oysters were put in the cages, which all looked very nice, and some people liked them and some did not. However, after a year they all died, which may have served right those who introduced them, but it killed every other oyster in the river—the native oysters. I do not know whether those Japanese oysters would come within the context of this part of the Bill. Those that came from Japan certainly killed all the local ones, and it was of some comfort when my friend took the duchy to court. Its defence was that it believed that, for all practical purposes, it was above the law. I do not know whether that was why the court found against the duchy because the matter is still sub judice. That is an example of someone bringing in a species and perhaps not following it through to see if it was the right one to bring in.

That is why I tabled my Amendment 71. When I was researching it, I thought, “What is a species?”. I looked it up on some web dictionaries, and the best definition seems to be the wording that I have put in the amendment. Does it cover things in the air, be they birds, insects or whatever? Does it cover animals, birds or whatever that walk on the ground? Does it cover things in the water? That is a pretty important place from which we should start. It would be very good if someone could give a definitive answer so that we knew what the context was and where we might go from here.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the main outline of the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. I was a little less keen on the pasty that was identified as being available in Cornwall. I recall my brother-in-law, who is an expert on birds, arriving in Cornwall in the early 1990s and seeing a chough, which I did not see. He was certainly well versed in the significance of choughs to the Cornish position.

The purpose of the amendment that I have tabled is to get some sharpness of definition in the crucial area that we are concerned with. We all know that the issue of invasive species is of great significance. It is one of the causes of the loss of biodiversity and much of the world, and we have seen indications in this country of the extent to which that occurs. The annual cost of invasive non-native species to the economy is put at £1.3 billion, so we are not talking peanuts here.

I shall mention my own experience of this. I heard someone—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—suggest that we could not mention Japanese knotweed. I am going to mention Japanese knotweed quite often. My acquaintance with the problem of Japanese knotweed was to see a person lose the value of their house, in an ordinary suburban area with absolutely no suggestion of any threat at all except of Japanese knotweed. The plant effectively reduced the price of their house from £350,000 to £50,000 in value. They simply had to get out of that house as they did not think that they could afford the costs of controlling the knotweed.

That was my introduction to local difficulties, but when I was in the department I became acutely aware, and I am sure that the Minister is well versed in this, that whenever a group of people come together to discuss Japanese knotweed, the railway industry is going to be there in force, as indeed it was on every occasion when we discussed it, simply because of the sheer cost to the railway system in this country of keeping the wretched plant at bay.

We are not talking about trivial issues as far as the nation is concerned when it comes to certain aspects of non-native species in this country. For agriculture alone, the cost in England and Wales seems to be getting on for £1 billion. That is an awful lot of money being spent in seeking to control a plant. In the European Union, the annual cost of non-native species is €12 billion. We were gratified to hear at the Defra briefing this morning of the extent to which there was international movement and action on this, and that the European community was playing its full role in this. There were one or two interesting exceptions that we heard about, which raised an eyebrow or two; many of us thought that the Danish scarcely merited the kind of exemptions that we in this country could hardly get for particular products and local parts of the economy; nevertheless, the Danes had obviously put up a good case.

However, I want to emphasise that we have to get this right. I know when I say those words that it is not possible to get it right, because it is a continual battle against change, some of it produced by climate change, which accelerates the difficulties.

We support the clause. The reason we want to probe the Minister is obvious enough; the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, did the task for me. Red kites were reintroduced at Woburn, not far from where I live. The first arrival of a red kite on a tree, resting and then taking off in all its glory is something that I treasure. Of course I applaud the reintroduction of certain species, but I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said about his anxiety about beavers. That shows the differences there can be between different parts of the community. People I have been talking to thought that beavers might help to restrict floods because they build dams to do so, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, thought that beaver dams might accelerate the problems. There you are, you pays your money and you takes your choice on that.

Before the Olympic Games, an absolute fortune was spent on clearing the site of my dear friend knotweed. The site had to be cleared of a lot of other very noxious things indeed. One of the great expenses of the Olympic Games was getting the site clear, but Japanese knotweed featured in that and cost £70 million to remove.

We must not underestimate the challenges which such species present. My amendment is tabled in order to get, and I am certain that the Minister will oblige the Committee by giving, a clearer definition of what the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, asked for in the first place.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, we start on quite a fundamental point, on which even the Minister on occasions has not been too secure in the position that she has adopted. When I was asked last night to prepare a short summation of this part of the Bill for wider circulation, I wanted to get things as accurate as I conceivably could, but I found myself wrestling with whether I was referring to one company or companies. Every time that I used the word “companies”, it looked singularly ill placed with the surrounding arguments as far as the Bill is concerned. Therefore, Amendment 1 asks the Minister to clarify what is, after all, a pretty fundamental point, and we would not want to continue our deliberations without having cleared it up.

At Second Reading, the Minister certainly said:

“Yes, it is the Government’s intention to set up just one company. It is standard template language in legislation, I understand, to create the option of further entities. It has no sinister meaning at all behind it. The intention is for a single company, but of course the lawyers always think about what-ifs in the most extraordinary way”—

she did not sound too convinced by the argument herself. However, she went on:

“I guess we did not really kick back against that but, yes, it is one company”.—[Official Report, 18/6/14; col. 896.]

I congratulate her on putting up a pretty stout defence of her position, but even in that stout defence there is a certain ambivalence, as there is in the Bill. That is why Amendment 5 in my name would remove a provision from Schedule 1 that makes rules for when two different strategic highways companies interact, which certainly suggests that the Government are planning for more than one strategic highways company.

It looks a fairly limited argument to say, “The lawyers guard against every development and therefore we may need more than one”. The debate about the Bill will be coloured very significantly indeed if we must take on board the fact that there may be two strategic highways companies. To make the most obvious point, we will want to know how they will interact, and we have amendments down that relate to that. If the Minister is able to clarify the issue and state that, as it is the Government’s intention to establish just one company, she will look at the Bill again to ensure that it is framed in that way, I am quite sure that that would set a lot of minds at rest and make for a much more straightforward discussion.

I assure the Minister that whether there is one or more than one strategic highways company has quite a conditional effect upon the legislation. Our concern is not just about one passing fancy of the lawyers but about something that may be of real substance. Some of my more prophetic colleagues say, “Why don’t you come to terms with the fact that this is all about setting up the strategic highways authority for privatisation? Of course, you will want more than one, and this will neatly fit in with privatisation plans in the not-so-distant future”. Well, I am not a cynical person and I accept what the Government put in the Bill at face value.

It is on that basis that I move this amendment, which would delete “one or more companies” and insert “a company”. In addition, as I said, Amendment 5 would delete sub-paragraph (3) in Schedule 1, which suggests that the existence of more than one potential strategic highways company is not a legal oddity caused by standard drafting—lawyers always make life so much more interesting for us all when they turn to drafting—but a scenario actively envisaged by the drafters of the Bill. It clearly makes provision for what should happen in the event that one strategic highways company should wish to build a bridge connecting to another. One and one still make two and therefore this problem could arise only if there is more than one strategic highways company.

There is understandable concern that the Government are considering a model where the SHC might be franchised out in some not-too-distant future. If that is the intention, it reinforces our many concerns about this measure, but I venture to suggest that this concern is as great as any. Therefore, I ask for reassurance from the Minister that, when I next write about the Bill and try to communicate intelligently with a wider audience, I am able to refer to one company in the singular the whole time and make some coherent sense out of this measure. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment because there are already precedents for having a multiple infrastructure. One is the M6 toll road. I believe that the company running it was given a 90-year lease to maintain and operate it and charge whatever it liked as tolls for the next 90 years, or whatever it was. If, in the future, there is a plan for road tolling, as appears more likely with this Bill—I certainly welcome that and will be talking about it in later amendments—whatever tolling the Government of the day propose, the M6 toll road will not be part of it. Whether that will increase or decrease its traffic, I do not have a clue; it depends on what the charges are. It is a particularly bad example because most of the freight goes on the existing road and damages it quite dramatically—the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has an amendment down on road damage—but this is just one example of what can happen if there is no co-ordination over the whole country.

A second example is that, just after the last election, there were various plans and threats from the then Secretary of State that Network Rail would be broken up into other regions or zones because it was not performing properly. The idea presumably was that there would be competition between those zones for quality, capacity and charging, and for anything else that you come across. Luckily, that did not go ahead. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. The idea of having a different charge for whichever way you go between A and B would be just ridiculous; the business would not work.

The problem here is that, as the Bill stands, you could have more than one infrastructure company. Wales might well choose to be different. I do not think Scotland is part of this legislation, so the charges will be different there. Then there will be all the arguments about doing one thing one way and then leaving the rest of it and coming along and doing something else that is slightly different. There would also be the interfaces and the knock-on and consequential effects, which might be quite serious. I think that my noble friend is quite right in tabling this amendment and speaking so eloquently in favour of it. I do not know why we need more than one infrastructure company to run the trunk roads—there are not that many of them, actually—and why we cannot leave it as a singular company.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, said, I have emphasised before that we have no current plans for multiple strategic highways companies. This is not a sinister issue. We recognise that at some point there may be further companies, but the purpose of that might be, to give a good example, if one wanted a more regional structure for the equivalent of the strategic highways company. As noble Lords know, this Government are committed to devolution, so that is not something beyond the bounds of the imagination, but it is not anything currently contemplated. Our focus at the moment is a single highways company; there is nothing more sinister.

I also point out that one reason why I referred to the lawyers is that in this Bill we have sought clarity. The noble Lord will know from the number of Bills with which he has been associated over the years that it is quite common that a single phrase covers the plural. In fact, from the lawyers, I have this:

“Words in the singular include the plural, and words in the plural include the singular”.

It has been common practice in many Bills to allow for the fact that there may be more than one; it has simply been less explicit than we have been in this document. We thought that for the purposes of plain English this approach would be wise. There is no sinister context to any of this. We simply want to ensure sufficient flexibility for a future Government, so that if they decided that more than one company would be beneficial they would not have to go back and start legislation from scratch. In saying that, I am effectively responding to Amendments 1, 2 and 8, as well as Amendment 5, which as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, said, is consequential to the other amendments.

I want to pick up on some of the issues mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Berkeley—that this is somehow some sinister mechanism for achieving privatisation. Nothing could be further from the reality of this Bill. The SHA is owned solely by the Secretary of State; if he were to cease to own it, it would lose all of its powers. There can be no way in which this company can be privatised. If the Secretary of State were to cease to be its owner, effectively it would cease to have any functions, powers or anything else. It would take a separate Act of Parliament to create a privatised entity. Everyone should be clear on that point.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the possibility that this could be some mechanism that in some way affected tolling, or future tolling. I point out to him that specifically under this legislation, where we have existing toll trunk roads, such as at Dartford, the Severn crossing and the M6 toll, these concessions remain in the same relationship to the Secretary of State as they currently have. They do not develop a new relationship under the auspices of the strategic highways company. We expect the concessionaires will continue to exercise their existing rights and discharge their current obligations. Tolls and congestion charges would therefore be set by a combination of public authorities such as the UK Government, devolved Administrations and local authorities, as is the case today under existing contractual mechanisms. I hope that with those assurances the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Minister and the Committee that I was not here for the previous bit; I am afraid that I am boxing and coxing with the Chamber at the moment, and have probably already offended the rules of the House by nipping out during the Minister’s reply to move this amendment. Some of this amendment is relevant to what noble Lords have just been discussing on the previous amendment. Indeed, the first part of my amendment is a consequence of trying to clarify that we are talking about only one company and not several. That confuses people, particularly in local Government, who anticipate a degree of regional structures down the line. I know that the Minister will have cleared up some of that.

My second point relates to the issue of privatisation, of which the Minister was speaking when I came into the Room. Clause 1(3) of the Bill as it stands is branded as the way in which privatisation is prevented by the Bill; namely, that the designation would terminate if the company were sold or otherwise disposed of. To me, that seems a funny way of doing it. You will have a company which employs all the people who are at the moment employed by the Highways Agency. If it were somehow to be bought, all its duties would be removed. Surely it is far easier to give some parliamentary control over this process. If we are moving to a hived-off company, structured under the Companies Act but owned wholly by the state, and if it is the intention of the Government to keep it that way, why do we not state baldly in the Bill that it cannot be privatised except by primary legislation? That is what is proposed in the second part of my amendment. It may not be ideal, but it is a good deal better and clearer than what is in the Bill.

There are clearly worries. The first thought of most people when they heard that the Government were going down the road of hiving off the Highways Agency was, “This is the first step to privatisation”. There was alarm at that. There might have been in some quarters—but not ones that I have come across—some joy at the prospect, particularly were it to be related to road pricing, which in principle I do not oppose but is politically rather difficult for any of us to support, particularly a few months off an election. It is easier to assert the will of Parliament and say, “This is not privatisation. If there is any prospect of that changing, you will need a new Act of Parliament”. That is what my amendment proposes. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

I support my noble friend’s amendment. I am glad that he is here, because I am not sure that any other of us could have moved it. He did it very well. I want to compare this situation with what is happening to Network Rail, of which I declare an interest as being a member.

I have just come from a meeting with Network Rail where we have been told what is going to happen by 1 September, when it comes under government ownership. That sounds as if it is going to be quite easy, apart from changing all the memoranda and articles and allowing the Secretary of State or the accounting officer in a department to make certain appointments and control things. However, that is being done without much, if any, parliamentary scrutiny, because I do not think that anybody is particularly worried about it. Network Rail has been in the private sector up to now, but it has had £4 billion or so a year from public funds. It has managed to work and not cause trouble; otherwise, this would probably have happened sooner. However, there still have to be changes. I worry about it going in the other direction. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, the consequences need some public debate, because there might be many more people who are worried about it, not least the people who work for the new company while it is government owned. It is reasonable to have some parliamentary scrutiny of a change. Therefore, I support the amendment in his name.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I imagine that the Minister will have little difficulty in responding to this amendment. She is obviously going to continue to deny that privatisation is anywhere on the horizon as far as the Government are concerned—so that is one defence. Secondly, I hope that she recognises that there would need to be significant parliamentary action if privatisation of a significant company such as this were carried out. I am therefore anticipating the Minister quite enjoying responding to this amendment, which I am glad my noble friend has aired.

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[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I support the proposal that Clause 1 should not stand part of the Bill, as it queries whether the clause—which is the whole proposition here—is sufficiently coherent and clear as to what it intends to do. As a Roads Minister, I was responsible for at least one of the proposals for the A303 and remember that we talked to everybody in the community, including several different sets of druids, and told them that the Stonehenge tunnel would be built. However, as I said at Second Reading, no sod has yet been turned and all they have done is close one road.

I understand the Government’s intention to create a steadier position through having a slightly more arm’s-length relationship, but this is half-baked. It is neither fish nor fowl. This will be a company that is wholly owned by the Government and which—to address the point that has just been made—cannot raise its own money. The Minister has made that clear to me, both in writing and in person. I thought the main advantage of having the hive-off would be that the body could raise its own funds, even if subject to broader controls from the Treasury, but the Minister makes it clear in her letter that its situation will be no different to the current one of the Highways Agency. That seems to undermine the main advantage of establishing an arm’s-length body. The Government’s proposal incurs all the costs, all the confusion and all this great legislation in the Bill and all the schedules attached to it, but it does not, of itself, provide the funding, the strategic intent or the independence from Government and, crucially, from the Treasury. It will not avoid what has been a stop-go process for the past 30 years.

If the Government were proposing a new corporation that was properly set up and run and which, although still owned by the Government, had its own structural basis and accountability, as well as the ability to finance its activities in various different ways, I could see that there would be a significant advantage. With this halfway house, which is not even a halfway house, I see very few advantages. Therefore, I think that the Government would be more sensible to leave the Highways Agency where it is, give the agency more money and give that over a longer period of time—if that is the Government’s priority—and, if necessary, think up a fuller, clearer, more comprehensive proposition for what kind of highways organisation we need in this land. The answer to that might well be in the territory that my noble friend Lord Davies referred to, because what we perhaps actually need is a transport infrastructure company rather than one that deals with simply 2% of our roads.

If we were to do that, we could start to deliver the investment required for a genuinely integrated transport policy, whereas the Bill, as I am afraid I have said before, seems to be about changing the names on the doors without changing much else.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I would just like to ask the Minister where this figure of a £2.6 billion saving comes from. The two organisations Network Rail and the new strategic highways company will be quite similar, but one difference between them, which we will come on to in later amendments, relates to the role of the Office of Rail Regulation. Over the past 10 years, the Office of Rail Regulation has required Network Rail to make savings of about 60% of its turnover. That is quite a big saving, which has been achieved, while keeping the service going and the quality improving, because the regulator has very strong powers. If the savings are not made, or if the resulting performance of the network is bad, the regulator can fine Network Rail, as I believe it is planning to do next week.

The problem here is that the rail regulator will not have such powers over the highways authority but will simply monitor. You can sit monitoring things all your life, but you cannot incentivise or require an organisation to make the changes that it should. I am sure that there are changes to be made. I am sure that significant percentage savings could be made over quite short periods. On whether those would be the same as in the case of Network Rail, they probably could be, because Network Rail started off as a nationalised industry, which was probably pretty inefficient to some people. Although the Highways Agency has improved over the years, there is probably a long way further to go. However, unless we can get the ORR to have the same powers not just to monitor but to control and enforce cost reductions, I am not quite sure where we are with this.

Listening to other noble Lords, I am beginning to think that the only benefit from this that I have heard is the idea—which the Minister has, of course, denied—that the Bill is about getting the Highways Agency ready for privatisation.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I should declare an interest in that I, too, am a regular user of the A303. When driving down there, one of the greatest moments for me is being able to see Stonehenge, but I know that the fact that I can do so is not necessarily good for the millions of people who go to visit it. More seriously, perhaps I could also declare my interests for the rest of the Committee stage of this Bill. I am a director of Wessex Investors, which would have an interest in the outcome of some of the planning implications of the Bill, although I do not intend to speak on those particularly. Wessex Investors could also potentially have an interest in some of the energy provisions, as it is starting to negotiate with an organisation on an energy project in the south-west. However, I do not think that any of those affect what I am going to talk about.

I, too, shall be interested in hearing answers to the questions on this asked by the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Davies, but I want to make the point that it is important politically that the Government are saying in the Bill that we have had enough of the stop-start, ad hoc investment plans for roads, and we need to move on to a much more mature and grown-up way of looking at infrastructure in the highways sector. Whether that is absolutely dependent on changing the name and function or legal entity of the Highways Agency, I am not absolutely sure, but I know that the Minister will come back on that when she answers the debate.

However, the good thing is that there is a real intention to start to mirror the situation that applies to rail. My understanding of this is imperfect and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will know far more about it than me, but, as I see it, we have a good example from Network Rail, for which we now have a £38 billion programme over the next five years providing the investment needed to keep this country moving and to move things forward and modernise that network. That seems to be incredibly successful as regards usage and how that has worked over the past decade and into the future. If we can start to replicate that in the way we treat roads in this country, that would be positive.

I am not a great person for advocating huge investment in the strategic road network—apart from for the A303—but that clearly needs to be done in some areas, and on a programmed and predictable basis so that the Government, users and contractors know that it will be rolled out and actually happen rather than be subject to the next budget cut. I therefore welcome that, and hope that the Minister will be able to reply in such a way as to show that this change of the legal status of the Highways Agency will enable that to happen. Clearly, we need to do that.

While I am on my feet, I congratulate the Minister on recent investment announcements for the rail system in the south-west regarding the maintenance facility in Cornwall, the earlier signalling improvements to that line to provide a much better service and, of course—although I do not use it more often than perhaps three or four times a year—allowing the refurbishment of the sleeper service, which is an important economic link for that part of the country.

[Lord Berkeley]

If I may just respond to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, let me say that I, too, congratulate the Minister on what has been announced today about the things happening in Cornwall. To go back to the noble Lord’s comment about the long-term finance, I certainly agree with him that if this change enables the longer-term finance that Network Rail has at the moment, it will be a major step forward. I worry that I do not see that in the Bill—maybe I cannot find it, and perhaps the Minister will be able to put me right. However, I worry further, that although Network Rail has it for the next five years, where is the commitment beyond that for the railways? If that does not happen for the railways, it probably will not happen for the roads. I was going to raise this later, but since the noble Lord raised it, let me ask: is there the opportunity to have a discussion before Report committing the financing of this new agency—the Highways Agency and maybe Network Rail—to a five-year programme? If that does not happen, it would need primary legislation to change it. That is probably a bit of a tall order, but it would be interesting to explore.

[Baroness Maddock (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register, although I do not think that any of them have any particular relevance to what we are talking about today.

Following my noble friend Lord Teverson, of course we all have our favourite roads. Many people will be familiar with the A1 north of Newcastle and the issue of dualling it. Therefore, as I have lived with that, having now been married to the MP there for 13 years, I would be grateful to know how the Bill might help or hinder what has been a rather sorry tale of getting quite advanced on the dualling of that road, and then it all going backwards. It is now going forwards again, but I would be grateful for any information my noble friend can give me on that.

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[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, Schedule 1 is 26 pages long. It is devoted almost entirely to inserting in the Highways Act the name of the company rather than the Secretary of State, or vice versa, and a lot of other administrative matters relating to assets, contracts and so forth. What it does not do—and I think it should—is to describe the responsibilities of the company and the scope of its activities, to which my next amendment relates.

This amendment is a shot at describing what I think will be the responsibilities of the company. This is Committee stage and, therefore, I hope that the department might accept the principle and draft a better description. However, essentially, somewhere in the Bill—I would prefer it to be in the body of the Bill rather than in a schedule, but the schedule is where the detail on the new company is spelt out at the moment—it should state what the functions and responsibilities of the company are.

The amendment refers to the obvious things: the construction, the maintenance and the improvement of the road system; traffic management for that system; and safety for that network. When I mention safety, on which I have amendments later on, I should inform the Committee that, since Second Reading, I have acquired an interest in this area in that I am now the chair, taking over from my noble friend Lord Dubs, of the Road Safety Foundation. Some noble Lords may recall that safety was a significant element when I was Roads Minister. Certainly, it is underplayed in this Bill and should be an important part of it, as are traffic management, speed controls, and so forth.

There is also the environmental dimension. There are problems about the construction and operation of roads. Somewhere in this Bill we need to say more clearly that the company, and not the Secretary of State any more, is now responsible for the environmental impact of the roads which are run by the Highways Agency. That includes the level of emissions which traffic management creates and whether that is going down and making a contribution to our carbon saving. It includes also the level of air pollution, which is largely proportionate to congestion and which, again, the Highways Agency network should be making a contribution to, as well as other things which are not perhaps so obvious, such as the run-off of water from highways, which has a significant effect on water systems—we have just passed a Water Act in which the quality of water is an important issue, including that of groundwater. Although most new schemes provide some better storage and diversion of water, from a lot of the old roads it still goes back into the ground or into the water system.

The amendment also refers to another responsibility, which is for research and development. I think that I am right in saying that the Highways Agency has its own R&D budget, but the Department for Transport also has a roads research budget. Is the whole of R&D on roads now to be the responsibility of this new company, which would probably be quite sensible? The Bill needs to be clear that the R&D on roads, traffic and the impact of roads is one of its responsibilities. A final dimension of the responsibilities that I am suggesting is the necessity to engage with road users and local communities, and the ability to enter into contracts with other providers. We will come later on to issues of co-operation with local authorities, and so forth. A key responsibility will be relations with road users themselves.

This amendment is my shot at this issue. I suspect that there could be a better one—but it is rather odd that a whole new nationalised infrastructure corporation should be established without the primary legislation saying anywhere what its responsibilities are. Therefore, I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I support my noble friend in his Amendment 4, and I shall speak to the other amendments in this group. On Amendment 4, he is absolutely right. The strategic highways company needs to have responsibility for all the things that he has put in the amendment. I remind the Committee that there is very strong evidence that a month or two before the Olympics, when the air pollution on one or two of the trunk roads in London was reaching Chinese levels, the solution by the Mayor was to cover the monitoring points with plastic bags, which of course reduced the level of pollution inside the plastic bags but did not much help anybody else. But this needs to be done by the strategic highways company, and I would suggest that it needs to be supervised by somebody. That may be a role for the Office of Rail Regulation, or whatever it is to be called in future, because these are very important points.

My noble friend is right in his comment about research, but there needs to be some research into non-trunk roads, which are a very large part of the road network. I hope that that can be taken into account as well.

Amendments 6 and 7 relate to the 20 pages of consequential amendments to which my noble friend referred. It relates to something that may have got lost in the search for consequential amendments—the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the question of which body is responsible for collecting litter on different roads. These two amendments are designed to make sure that the strategic highways do not get left out of the wrapping up; otherwise, we will see them covered in litter from head to foot.

I shall not read out all the parts of my amendment, because everybody can read them, and it probably would not make much sense anyway—unless you put a wet towel on your head.

Finally, my noble friend did not mention Amendment 61, which follows on from Amendment 4 and is to do with the transfer of additional functions to the strategic highways company in Clause 13(2). It covers highways and planning, but I agree that it should cover road safety as well, because that is a terribly important part of it. We will talk about safety comparisons later, but it would be good to see road safety in there, or something like it.

[Lord Bradshaw]

The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, with which I agree, mentions “speed control systems”. We are considering the Deregulation Bill on Monday, which makes specific provision for a lot of the enforcement of speed and other offences to be undertaken by people who go round with pads rather than the modern method of using cameras. Will the Minister cover that, or at least take it away and get sorted out the apparent contradictions between those two pieces of legislation?

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Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

13: Before Clause 3, insert the following new Clause—
“Duties of Strategic Highways Company
(1) A strategic highways company has, in relation to areas for which it is appointed, duties to—
(a) plan, monitor and manage highways for which it is the highway authority in order to secure economic, social and environmental gains jointly and severally,(b) secure the fullest possible use of sustainable modes of transport, including by—(i) widening travel choices;(ii) unlocking development in locations that are sustainable or assisting in making them sustainable;(iii) encouraging highway users to make more efficient use of vehicles by increasing average occupancy and loading rates; and(iv) working in partnership with operators of passenger transport and freight services, as well as local authorities and those responsible for major trip generators.”

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, to some extent Amendment 13 follows on from my noble friend Lord Whitty’s Amendment 4 on responsibilities and scope. There is a strong, if not stronger, argument for having in the Bill a clause which sets out the duties of the strategic highways company, because there is already legislation which puts duties on the Secretary of State or the regulator as regards railways. Some noble Lords will recall the Railways Act 2005 and the Railways Act 1993, which was the basis of privatisation. The duties there included promoting,

“improvements in railway service performance … to protect the interests of users of railway services … to promote the use of the railway network in Great Britain for the carriage of passengers and goods”.

I was very pleased to see that goods got in there. The list of duties continues:

“to contribute to the development of an integrated system of transport … contribute to the achievement of sustainable development”.

I could go on reading out Section 4 of that Act. It very much mirrors what has been achieved by successive Governments and rail regulators such as the Office of Rail Regulation in succeeding years through putting those basic principles into effect. This is quite important, and we have the opportunity to put a similar range of duties on the strategic highways company—or companies, however many there are.

Looking at this amendment, it is important that we start to include the cross-modal issues that I and several other noble Lords spoke about at Second Reading. We should look at modes of transport such as highways and railways—probably cycling and walking as well, and maybe other things in the future—on a cross-modal basis, with the duties to secure something like, as I put in the amendment,

“the economic, social and environmental gains jointly and severally”.

I am sure Ministers could come back with a better version, but I hope this is a useful basis for suggesting what the duties of this strategic highways company should be. Unlocking development is important, as is encouraging occupancy and loading rates for passengers and freight and looking at the need to drive, the need to move around and, of course, its sustainability.

We shall be talking about some of these things in later amendments, but it is important for an organisation such as this one to have duties, which should be in the Bill just as they are for the railways. I have tried to mirror what is in the original Railways Act. It has changed over the years and is in a different format now, but the duties are still there, and if we had something like this for the strategic highways company, alongside the responsibilities that my noble friend Lord Whitty talked about, it would make us all feel a lot more comfortable. I beg to move.

[Lord Bradshaw]

I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has said, but will add something. You can argue for or against it, but having chosen to go down the route of rail regulation, there is one thing I really would like to be assured about. We know that the motorist—maybe “road user” is the right term—is to be represented by Passenger Focus. That of course covers the railway, bus and tram industries; it has seen incremental growth, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, had a good deal to do with its genesis. With railways, buses, trams and the other things for which it is responsible, it has a right to get information from the regulated party or from the party for which it is responsible. A train or bus company cannot refuse such a request. I would like to be assured that the strategic highways company, too, will not be able to refuse a request for information from Passenger Focus acting in pursuance of its duties to represent road users. I am quite happy that it should represent them, but I do want it not to be treated any differently from the way it is treated in other industries.

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[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and to the Minister for her response. I get the feeling that we are being directed towards this lovely, short licence document, or the longer one, as being the answer to everything. It is not clear to me—maybe because I do not understand it—when we will see the longer version, which will have as much detail in it as possible before Royal Assent, and whether we will be able to debate it. If we are not, it is pretty important that there is some reference to a strategy, such as a road investment strategy or, if the Minister prefers, a transport investment strategy, because there is none at the moment.

We do rail one way and roads another—we have debated that very often in the House. They have different criteria; they do not seem to talk to each other, and they have different forecasting methodologies. Is there to be some read-across between how the railways are operated and how it is intended that the strategic roads are operated? It may be that things have moved on since the Railways Act 1993, with the Railways Act 2005 and the high-level output specification used to specify what the railways should do, but there needs to be something in the Bill to set the strategy and perhaps the duties. We can debate whether it is to be the Secretary of State or the regulator, but to just dump all this into a licence that we may or may not see will lose us a big opportunity to consider before we get into the detail not just how roads are built and operated but how they fit into the environment, including the issue of emissions, along with local roads and all the other people that my noble friend Lord Whitty mentioned. I shall reflect on that and come back to it on Report. Perhaps we can have a meeting with the Minister before then, but in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 13 withdrawn.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, in discussing the strategies and the length of time, my Amendments 23 and 24 go into more detail but I think they are trying to say the same thing. It is an interesting issue as to whether there should be a five-year period. It is a great deal better than having one year, which is what we used to have, but it may be better still to have a rolling one, if that were possible.

I heard some results from Network Rail this morning. It has a fixed five-year term, as noble Lords will know. I have been given the capital expenditure year by year over the past five-year period. In the first and final years, the expenditure was 50% higher than in the three middle years, which is very difficult to resource up and resource down for the contractors and suppliers dealing with it. I asked the people at Network Rail why, and they said, “Well, the first year we are catching up with what we should have done in the previous control period and did not get round to it, and the last one was because we had a lot more expenditure that we had to finish before the end of the control period”. That is quite normal. That will happen on roads as well as railways; it is much the same. But I know that the feeling at Network Rail is that, if it was possible to have a rolling capital expenditure programme, life would be much easier. I wonder which, if either, would get through the Treasury better and whether it would be possible to have a rolling one rather than a fixed one. That is just an example from Network Rail.

I have one other question for the Minister arising out of these amendments. I hope that the strategies and all the duties and everything else will include the interests of cyclists and pedestrians. People may say that pedestrians should not be on trunk roads and they should use footpaths if the road is high-speed, but it is terribly important that pedestrians and cyclists feel safe and use the roads, which is part of the environmental objectives that I put in my amendment. It would be good to have some confirmation from the Minister that this is all part of the strategic investment plan.

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[Lord Whitty]

All the amendments in this group are mine. This relates to exactly the sort of thing that my noble friend Lord Davies was just referring to. The Highways Agency consists mainly of engineers—quite rightly, and very good engineers many of them are. In the fringes, there are traffic engineers, as well as highways engineers. When you ask them to build into their projects objectives other than those which relate to providing more, quicker or wider roads, there is a bit of barrier, on occasion. Between them, the amendments are an attempt to ensure that when we take decisions on road improvements or new roads, issues of safety and the environment are built into those decisions on the same basis as any improvement in travel time, the number of miles of road which are tarmacked, or whatever.

The Highways Agency contains within it people who take those things seriously, but the natural tendency, particularly when we put the foot on the accelerator of spending on roads, is to get as many roads built as fast as possible and not worry too much about the complications. One big complication has wider implications for the rest of the project: safety. Earlier, I declared my interest as the new chair of the Road Safety Foundation. Every year it produces a map of European standards and the state of Britain’s roads. I have the map here if anyone wants to look at it. Those are standards which have been worked up by various equivalent bodies across Europe. It is right to say that our motorway system, in particular, is one of the safest in the world and is the safest part of the British— English, in this case—road system. That, of course, is calculated on the basis of vehicle miles and comparing them. It is also true to say that 250 people a year are killed on Highways Agency roads every year, and 2,000-plus are killed or seriously injured on those roads. That is a significant safety issue. Just to put it in perspective, more people are killed on Highways Agency roads, which are only 2% of our network—a third of the casualties because of the density of traffic—than the number of people who are killed at work. There are health and safety issues at work, for which we have a whole organisation, the HSE, to ensure that such accidents do not happen or are minimised.

The Government need to have an answer to the question of who is liable for those accidents. There have been big improvements in road safety in the past 20 years. When I was Road Safety Minister we had a 10-year strategy and, by and large, that reduced deaths and serious injuries by about 30% over that period. That improvement has slowed down a bit since 2010, but we are nevertheless one of the best and safest in Europe and the world. However, there are still a significant number of deaths and injuries.

If you try to establish the causes of those accidents, there is an assumption that it is mainly driver error or driver behaviour—and there is some truth in that. Much of the improvement over the past 20 years has been in improved vehicle safety. The Euro NCAP programme has raised certainly new car safety features from what it regarded as 2-star to roughly 4-star—air bags and other aspects of car design—which has had a major impact.

It is also true to say that at least for most groups there has been some improvement in driver behaviour, but there has not necessarily been the same improvement in safety features in the physical design of roads, nor has the improvement been reflected in the objectives of road-building organisations—principally the Highways Agency, but also the local authorities. The reasons for this are partly because it is thought that if you build a better road, safety automatically improves. It does not necessarily do so, and certainly does not improve proportionately. It is partly because the system for appraising new projects—whether they are intersections, main road widening or whatever—includes safety elements that are but a small proportion of the total cost and benefit. Additional safety factors are therefore discouraged by the way in which the projects are appraised.

This group of amendments, which also relate to environmental issues, attempts to write safety issues into different points in the Bill. I imagine that the Minister will not accept the amendments as they stand but I advise her and her colleagues that road safety is underplayed in the Bill. At various points in the Bill, explicit reference to road safety and reducing accidents needs to be reflected, as well as in the licensing conditions and the standards and objectives that the Secretary of State accepts for the new company.

My worry about the transposition in this context is that if a road design issue causes or contributes to the cause of an accident, who is liable? We do not get many legal cases about the state of the roads, and I do not know why. Thirty years ago we did not get many legal cases about the performance of the National Health Service; now we get lots of them. We get quite a few about tripping over the pavement, which is the equivalent responsibility for the local authority. If you have an independent company, the question of liability to potential litigation needs to be taken into account as one of the risk factors. I am not saying that it is a determinant risk factor, but it is something that the Government will have to have an answer to, and at the moment I do not think they do. One way of ensuring that that happens, in terms of licence conditions and the other oversight that the Secretary of State will have to perform, is to write safety in at several points in the Bill.

With regard to the detail of the individual amendments, Amendment 18 relates to the standards that the Secretary of State can set for the company. One of those standards should be a reduction in the number of accidents and the number of people killed, and that should be,

“a central objective of the Road Investment Strategy”.

Amendment 22 makes the point that I was just referring to, that when you appraise schemes, the appraisal for safety benefits or otherwise needs to be a separate assessment and not be lost in the overall assessment, because the return you can get on safety measures is often much higher than the return you get on time-saving and other economic benefits. Amendment 22 also goes into other issues of reducing traffic and so on, which also have high returns. It is the same in the energy sector: saving energy is actually a far greater return than spending money on new power stations, although you have to do both—as you do here. But if you appraise the environmental element separately, the rate of return is significantly greater. Therefore, that should be done as a matter of course.

Likewise, in relation to the strategy in Clause 2, Amendment 33 says that the objectives should relate not just to road-building but to safety issues, and that in relation to guidance due consideration should be given to road safety and environmental outcomes. I would particularly emphasise the road safety dimension.

These amendments may not be the most appropriate place, but before the Bill leaves this House it would be sensible for the Government and the department to find the appropriate place to put, in lights, “road safety responsibilities of the new company”. If we let it leave this House without that being clear—in several different places, I suggest—there will be a tendency for the company to at least downgrade those and for the accountability of the company to be weaker because they have not been spelt out in the Bill.

These are quite important issues. Sometimes those who are keen on having new roads regard safety issues as a constraint rather than an objective of road design. We need to ensure they are an objective both at the individual project level and in the overall strategy. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. He has raised some very interesting challenges. I do not think that safety gets taken into account nearly enough in the design of roads. In my earlier life, I designed quite a few of them.

It might be interesting to compare how the roads have developed and how the railways have developed. There were some horrendous accidents on the railways in Victorian times, starting off with a Member of Parliament who got crushed by one of the first trains because he was standing too close to it, or something. That led to the introduction of the Railway Inspectorate, whose job it was to ensure that the railways were safe, bringing in things such as brakes, which are quite useful. Things have moved on a bit since then. The Railway Inspectorate was originally staffed by retired Army officers, but more recently it has moved to the Office of Rail Regulation, which is the right place for it. I think that it does a very good job. We will be talking about some of the issues around that when we discuss a later amendment.

It seems to me a good idea to look at whether the ORR in its expanded role could take on some road safety issues. At present, the Highways Agency does that, and, in the absence of any other instructions, the new body will probably hold much the same views as that agency—namely, the desire to increase speeds so that people can get to their destinations faster and to increase capacity by having more roads. The strategy is designed round the concept of “a minute saved”. My noble friend is an expert on this. He may well be right that that body takes safety into account to some extent, but I am not sure that it does. It could certainly do so to a far greater extent.

The Office of Rail Regulation could be given responsibility for many of the safety issues that my noble friend raised, which cover a multitude of sins, and could be given a duty to look at the potential for modal shift. We talk about road to rail very frequently, but there is the issue of road to bicycle. As we have seen in London, road to bicycle is concerned largely with safety issues. A terrible number of cyclists have been killed in London in the past year or two. TfL talks about redesigning roundabouts but one of the key issues, which must be obvious to most people, is that if you give cyclists space, they are less likely to get run over. If the road traffic speed is set at 20 miles an hour, it is a great deal safer than 30 miles an hour, and you will get more people cycling and fewer people trying to drive. It would also reduce emissions and do all the other good things that we have been talking about. This is to do with modal shift. The journey time issue is equally important, whether you travel by bike, train, car or bus. Therefore, my noble friend’s amendments deserve careful consideration. I will discuss with him in more detail whether the Office of Rail Regulation should be involved in some of these issues. I think that body is capable of it as it has very capable people. Unlike the Highways Agency, it can stand back and take a different view and, if it does not like what is going on, it should be able to enforce and encourage change. These are important amendments and I look forward to further discussion on them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

This set of amendments seeks to make the road investment strategy cover several specific areas, including carbon reduction, traffic volumes and environmental performance, and to place safety at its heart—the area where we have had most discussion, which has been fascinating. I reassure the Committee that the Government take all these issues very seriously. It seems to me that where we may differ is on whether or not these important values are enhanced in implementation by including them in the Bill rather than in the road investment strategy and in the licence. I am inclined to believe that the RIS and the licence are the most powerful documents to drive forward the behaviours that we are looking for, so I shall explain the role that those documents play.

We are concerned about ending up with a long list sitting in legislation and describing what the road investment strategy should look at, because, as everyone in this Room knows, there is always the problem of what happens with the item left off the list when that is significant. One can try to say that those that are not named are of equal significance and are equally elevated, and that one is not primary over the other, but that is not always an easy argument to make. I am concerned, particularly since we want this to be a long-lasting document, that there will be issues which we consider to be of equal importance to safety and the environment and that we would be in a difficult situation if we insisted on those additional significant priorities. I am therefore hesitant to go to the face of the Bill. It is helpful to have the information that we have on both the RIS and the licence, and the other documents.

Let me focus on safety, because it is a very important issue to the Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, our roads are pretty much the safest in the world, but we can never be complacent. The strategic highways company will have a responsibility for the safety of the road network, but, as I pointed out previously, there are key safety responsibilities—including driver licensing, training and education, the regulation of driving such as drink-driving and drug-driving policies, enforcement, dangerous and careless driving and, as the noble Lord underscored, the important issue of vehicle standards—that must stay with the Secretary of State and not transfer to the new company. That is to put the broad construct, which would not work effectively if those responsibilities were not kept with the Secretary of State.

As we go through these complex documents, it is worth noting that safety is already embedded in the strategic roads “system”. For example, the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges sets minimum standards for road safety, and safety is covered within the appraisal. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked whether the appraisal formulas were exactly as they should be. That is surely not something that we are going to address in primary legislation; it is a working issue that needs to be addressed at a much more practical level. In wide areas of appraisal—I have looked more at financial and cost-benefit appraisal issues—we are constantly trying to update the way in which we look at those issues. I cannot see that it can be driven through primary legislation; it is part of being responsible. The importance of safety is already included in the draft licence and will be a key consideration in the road investment strategy. For example, the RIS will require performance specifications that embed safety issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to legal liabilities. I think that it is clear that the SHC is responsible for the road but not the driver, but I do not think it would be right for me to try to speculate on legal liability.

Embedded in the amendments are important issues of environmental protection such as climate change and biodiversity. Again, they are well covered within the licence by broader existing legislation. Again, if we are looking at who is responsible for what, a lot of those issues refer to the vehicle fleet, and that must be with government rather than with the new company.

Therefore the view we take is that the issues that are raised are very important, but that they are carefully covered and encompassed by the language we have in both the primary legislation and supporting documents. Therefore once again, amendment is not necessary to achieve the goals which those sponsoring these amendments have in mind.

[Lord Berkeley]

The noble Baroness mentioned the performance specification. Giving something like the Highways Agency a performance specification means, “Make your road traffic go as fast as possible, make sure that the bikes are miles away, and put up lots of crash barriers so that if people do go off the road, they won’t kill anyone else”. I hope we have moved on—or will move on—from that.

[Baroness Kramer]

All I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this, is that we have certainly moved on from that, have we not? That is one of the problems that happens when you try to put too much into primary legislation—we become more demanding as the years go by, not less demanding. It is important that we reflect that more demanding approach in the way we manage our network.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have an amendment in this group. I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Davies on how we get to the investment strategy. My amendment is at the end of this group, and it is about Parliament’s oversight of the process. We always ought to consider how Parliament both approves and monitors bodies and documents which are referred to in legislation.

I am proposing that, before the first strategy is implemented, it should be subject to a report of a Joint Committee of both Houses. I suspect that our colleagues in the House of Commons will say that it should be a DfT Select Committee. Nevertheless, some form of parliamentary accountability is necessary. It is nowhere in the Bill, and it should be. It should be a regular process; I am saying every five years because that is the period to which the money and strategy initially relate. Certainly, a regular review of the roads investment strategy ought to be built in at parliamentary level. That will complement the consultations that are required at the beginning of the process in my noble friend Lord Davies’s amendments.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 26 is more about who should be consulted. I expect the Minister will say that she does not like lists and therefore we should not have them, but as my two noble friends have said, it is very important that the Secretary of State should consult organisations that are affected, including,

“Network Rail … local transport authorities … combined authorities … statutory environmental bodies”,

and anyone else that the Secretary of State thinks is important. It is very important that this should happen. If it is going to happen, that is fine, but it is very important that it does.

With regard to Amendment 31, on Part 2 of Schedule 2—“Varying a road investment strategy”—it seems more appropriate to make use of the Planning Act 2008 provisions and apply them to the road investment strategy as if it was a national policy statement. My amendment would bring it all together in a national policy statement structure rather than the one in the Bill. I do not think I need to explain it any further. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, as we explained in the RIS explanatory document, Setting the Road Investment Strategy—another one of this cluster of documents that I hope people have found but if they have not, the Library has them—a key mechanism for public and stakeholder engagement in the development of future versions of the road investment strategy will be the route strategies. That is the point at which local authorities and all kinds of interested parties can look at the specifics and contribute greatly to the process. The outputs of the route strategies will be used to develop a strategic route network initial report, which will inform the Government’s proposals. One of those complex documents—I think that it is the one that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, was holding—provides a graphic pattern for how those pieces can work.

Of course, the Government will engage with key stakeholders when developing our proposals, but that is different from requiring a formal consultation. Obviously, it is the goal of the Government to ensure that we come forward with a very well informed document, and that engagement is inherently part of that process. Where we have looked at providing for consultation in this document is in relation to varying the RIS. The point that we have made is that where a strategy is being varied, because it has the downside of potentially weakening the value of the strategy as a long-term funding settlement, that is the part of the process where we want to bring in consultation in a more formal sense.

We would have no certainty that those variations would have had the stakeholder engagement that is required for building the route strategies in the first place, which, as I say, are the first step in the flow-through of information that informs and helps to structure the RIS itself. That is why we have a distinction from allowing the normal pattern of extensive stakeholder engagement when forming the RIS because it will have had that input through consultation on the route strategies. So we have the route strategies leading to the RIS. If the RIS is varied, that process will not have taken place so it is for variance of the RIS itself that we require consultation.

[Lord Berkeley]

The first strategy is put before Parliament but presumably the Secretary of State consults all the relevant people before he does that, or is he just going to put it before Parliament without consultation? That is the impression I am getting from the Minister.

[Baroness Kramer]

The Secretary of State and others are very heavily engaged with stakeholders. That is the way in which they expect to develop the RIS. The first one is always a bit odd because if you look at the rules, they require a to and fro between the Secretary of State and the strategic highways company, and of course the strategic highways company does not exist yet so there is a fairly unique arrangement for the first RIS, which we expect to be published—I cannot give dates—in the future.

[Lord Berkeley]

I will press the Minister once more. I see nothing in part 1 of Schedule 2 that says that the Secretary of State should consult anyone else apart from the strategic highways company. Maybe I have got it wrong but that does seem a bit odd.

[Baroness Kramer]

The point that underpins all this is that Ministers, rather than Parliament, have traditionally made decisions on infrastructure funding, and we are not seeking to overturn that. It would be rather unprecedented for the Government to put forward a funding and investment plan for debate. If that were to become the underlying principle, it would have a sweeping impact on many different aspects of government, so we are not proposing that. We also, frankly, recognise that it would slow down what is already not a brief process. We want to get to the point of getting infrastructure out into the ground.

For example, the rail investment strategy can be issued by the Government without being laid before the House and debated. That does not prevent Parliament from holding the Government and the rail sector to account, and that is the model that we are following here. We are behaving consistently with how these issues are already handled in government—we are not overturning that, other than to the extent of putting in a requirement for consultation should there be a variance in the RIS. As I said, that is because it has that sort of exception, or potential downside, of undermining the framework of long-term funding certainty that we are trying to create. I assure noble Lords that there will be extensive stakeholder engagement around the RIS. Indeed, the RIS will typically be built from the route strategies up, and there is extensive consultation at the route-strategy level. There is a place for consultation in all this, and the arrangements as a whole are very satisfactory for that purpose.

One of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, lists a number of stakeholders that would have to be consulted during the preparation of the RIS. He is right about lists tending to be a problem for me. The practical reality is that the stakeholders know who they are and the Government know who the stakeholders are. There is constant engagement, and it is a fairly fluid group, so there would be no great advantage to including a list of them.

I want to make sure that I cover the full range of issues. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, suggested that Parliament should report on this. He said that he was not sure his amendment achieved what he intended, but we read it as requiring that Parliament approve each proposal in Part 1 of the Bill before it could come into force, and that Part 1 must be reviewed every five years. We are debating the Bill now, and I am sure his specific intent was not to require it to be reviewed as soon as it was enacted. We may just have some confusion around that issue. Perhaps he was trying to suggest that the RIS should be reviewed by Parliament—that is my understanding from the comments that he made.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome many parts of the Bill, although it does rather seem as if it is sweeping up loose ends before the election. I thought that the Minister did pretty well in her introduction to cover things such as the changes to the Highways Agency; low-carbon homes; shale gas—oil is now low-carbon as well, apparently; planning; non-native species; and the Land Registry. But it is a bit of a curate’s egg. I shall concentrate mainly on Part 1. My noble friend Lord Whitty, from his great experience as a Minister, has outlined some things that I might also have views on, as did the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh.

Starting with the Highways Agency, I think that there is benefit in moving towards the kind of structure that Network Rail will have after it comes under government ownership on 1 September. Again, it looks rather like putting two things side by side with no read-across between the different types of transport and the need to encourage some modes of transport at the expense of others. As the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, said, there is perhaps a silo mentality.

With regard to the new highways companies, as my noble friend Lord Whitty said, how many companies are we going to have? I suspect that this is the start of seeing whether they could actually be privatised—but not in Wales, which seems to be exempt. It will not happen in this legislation but it might happen in the future. The problem, as other noble Lords have said, is where the revenue is going to come from.

My next question concerns the application of the Freedom of Information Act. It seems to me that the company or companies should be subject to FoI, which the Bill requires Passenger Focus to be subject to. It is a bit odd to have Passenger Focus subject to FoI if the companies themselves are not. I have been saying over many years that Network Rail should be subject to FoI as well. We need a bit of consistency here.

It is difficult to talk about governance because we do not know much about it. I believe that the Minister promised us a document before Second Reading but I do not think it has come. It may be that we will get answers to many of the questions that I and other noble Lords will be asking, but we need it as soon as possible and I hope that she can tell us when we can expect it.

I would like the Minister to comment on whether, in the preparation of the road investment strategy, the Government will take account of the Climate Change Act, the national parks Act and various other Acts, such as right-of-way and environmental legislation. If they do, there needs to be some read-across to Network Rail’s process. Will they undertake the same type of consultation on routes as that which underpins the rail investment strategy? It should underpin the road one because one should look at routes in a multidisciplinary way, with road and rail being compared on particular routes. Will that happen?

Other noble Lords have talked about the funding for the new companies. Will it be similar to the HLOS under which Network Rail operates? I wonder how the Minister has come up with a saving of £2.6 billion in 10 years. How will that be checked and monitored? We have the monitor, which I shall come on to later, monitoring various aspects of the companies’ work.

In the case of Network Rail, the Office of Rail Regulation required it to make savings of about 40% of its turnover over a 10-year period, which is a massive saving, and I think it has done very well to achieve it. Will the monitor therefore be required to do the same for the Highways Agency? It would seem reasonable if it did, but that assumes that there will be a five-year funding programme rather than the annual one which my noble friend Lord Whitty suggested will probably happen. I believe that that has happened to the Environment Agency. Most of my party think that the Environment Agency’s revenue has been drastically cut, and I agree. The Government say that it has been increased, but the problem is that it has been changed—I think, for the worse—so we will need some comfort on that as well.

Going on to cross-modal issues and the duties of the strategic highways authority, will a duty be put on it to work with Network Rail and other relevant bodies? We must not forget local and regional transport bodies, as other noble Lords have said. The amount of traffic on the main Highways Agency roads is actually not a high proportion of the total.

Then there is the question of forecasting, which we have raised many times; the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has also raised it. Will we get some consistency of forecasting of traffic between road and rail? Will we have one forecast or a range? Will the regulator, or whatever it is to be called, be expected to assess the modes together along corridors? How will the highways side of it take into account the needs of buses, cycling and walking? The Minister may say, “You don’t walk along trunk roads”. If you do, you need a footpath or a cycle way. Trunk roads are, after all, a means of travelling between different areas, and there is absolutely no reason why there should not be cycle tracks and footpaths along them. There probably should be some beside HS2, if it gets built. Those other modes of transport need to be included in any policy work that the authority and the department undertake. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that.

Turning to the Passengers’ Council, I find it extraordinary to have a Passengers’ Council looking after roads and their customers. The AA and the RAC do not do a bad job of looking after the customers of roads driving cars or motor bikes, and the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association do a pretty good job of looking after the interests of their members. They are not funded by the Government. When it comes to railways, the Rail Passengers’ Council is funded by the Government, but who looks after the interests of rail freight? The answer is the Rail Freight Group, in which I declare an interest as chairman, and the Freight Transport Association. I cannot believe that the Government intend to offer us £10 million of subsidy to make us equal to the roads. It seems extraordinary that they think that the passengers who drive up and down the roads need a subsidised organisation to look after their interests, but perhaps I am missing something there. I look forward to what the Minister has to say about that.

My noble friend Lord Whitty rightly mentioned the Office of Rail Regulation looking after roads. First, it needs a new name. Secondly, who will fund it? For the railways, it is funded 50% by Network Rail and 50% by the customers, the passenger and freight operators. Presumably, the companies running the strategic road network will fund half of it for roads and the road users will be asked to fund the rest. Is that a rogue user charge, or how will they do it? Or is it yet another subsidy for the roads? I do not know. For railways, the Railways Acts put specific duties on the ORR to guide its works. Would it not be useful if there were specific duties on the monitor, or whatever we want to call it, so as to have its duties specified in this legislation?

The next matter is something that I feel quite strongly about. It is not here in the Bill, but it should be. It is to do with level-crossing legislation. Your Lordships may be thinking, “Why is he talking about that now? It is a minor detail”. However, there are 7,000 level crossings in this country, each with its own legislation. As noble Lords will know, Network Rail has recently been quite severely criticised by the Commons Transport Committee and the Lord Chief Justice over various things that have gone wrong. The legislation is incredibly complex and difficult. I am told that you cannot even change a light bulb in a level-crossing light without putting in a special application to the Office of Rail Regulation for each level crossing, because if you do not, Network Rail might be liable. I am also told that there are 8,000 pieces of legislation, so it could be said that this is a really big red tape challenge for the Government.

The Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission have spent five years considering this and have proposed a Bill to replace all this past legislation with a simple framework within the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which would apply to all stakeholders equally. The Law Commission published a draft Bill which is about 50 pages long, and it is a very good Bill. I gave the Minister notice that I was thinking of putting down the whole of that Bill as an amendment, but then I thought better of it. I am sure that she is grateful to me. However, it is something that we ought to talk about. I am very grateful to her for arranging a meeting so that we can all go through it. I think that that will happen next week. It is a wonderful opportunity to simplify things, save an awful lot of money and time and get the responsibility for the different parts of level crossings where it belongs.

I have one final example on this. Network Rail is responsible for everything, which is right up to a point. However, if a local authority and a bus company decide to put a bus stop 20 yards beyond a level crossing, and if the buses all stop there and traffic backs up on the crossing causing an accident, there is absolutely nothing that Network Rail can do about it except to stop the trains. Something needs to be done, and I am looking forward to further discussion about it.

Finally, I have two quick comments. First, on the non-native species in Part 2, can the Minister confirm, to an ignoramus like me, what a species is? Does it include things that fly or those that go on the land? Does it include things that swim or are in the water? She will probably understand why I am asking those questions. It is very important that the legislation cover all those things, so I hope that she can confirm that it will. Secondly, Part 4 is better late than never. I remember that, more than 10 years ago, when I was on the European Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, we visited Denmark to see wind farms on land which had been developed with the support of local communities, which then got cheaper electricity. In our report we asked why that did not happen here. Okay, it has taken 10 or 15 years, but I am very pleased to see that it is happening. I welcome much of the Bill and am looking forward to some good discussions in Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

The noble Lord is talking to someone who does not understand quite how the government books work, but I do not recognise government borrowing being segregated into line items. However, I will follow up on that and write to the noble Lord before I tangle us in something that I have not explored in such detail. If the noble Lord is looking for imputed returns, we can discuss all that later.

The noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Judd, raised the issue of Passenger Focus as a consumer watchdog. It strikes me as a superb representative of the road user. One of your Lordships suggested that the AA or other existing bodies act as a voice for the road user, but they tend to act as a voice for a limited number of views, typically those of car drivers. There are many other road users, and it is important that a much broader sweep, including cyclists, get represented. Using Passenger Focus, with its consumer skills, strikes me as a very important mechanism.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and others also asked whether the Office of Rail Regulation was an appropriate body. It will act as a monitor, not as a regulator; that is an important distinction. The logic follows these lines. The SHC does not require an economic regulator in the way that Network Rail does. It is not dealing with track access charges and the users of the system are not paying in the way that passengers do, so there is really no role for an economic regulator here. There is not a number of TOCs all in competition with each other and with a complex relationship with Network Rail. It will advise the Secretary of State, who will then be able to enforce. It will monitor the operations of the new company.

[Lord Berkeley]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right in what she says. On the other hand, one of the roles of the rail regulator is to regulate the efficiency and costs of Network Rail. Would it not be a good idea to have some independent monitoring of this new company’s costs in the same way?

[Baroness Kramer]

The monitoring will indeed be there. That is crucial because of the way in which the SHC is being constructed.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, asked: where on earth do you get those savings from? It is covered in detail in the impact assessment and business case published by DfT on 6 June. It is important to understand that certainty of funding, which will come out of the road investment strategy, combined with the arm’s-length relationship, gives us a structure which is similar enough to the structure which has worked effectively in the rail industry. For example, the Government have committed £24 billion to road investment until 2021. Far more detail on all of this will come out of the road investment strategy.

The road investment strategy is set up in such a way that once established, if a future Secretary of State wants to change it, he or she obviously could—we cannot bind a future Parliament—but it would have to be done transparently, publicly and with consultation. Such pressures are an inhibitor which provides enough satisfaction to the industry to understand that it can look with reasonable certainty over the long term for the funding to be available. That leads to efficiency. We expect the SHC to approach asset management in a different way because it has such clear strategy and certainty of funding. It will also be set up as a company, with the roles that companies have, with its directors and chief executive. The sole shareholder will be the Secretary of State. I think that it will achieve its purpose. One could go over the top and try to reinforce that, but the question is: is that sufficient for the purpose to be achieved? If it is, that is the point at which we should stop.

Yes, the SHC will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so there should be no concern on the issue. I have addressed the issue of multiple companies. My noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer mentioned—I am told that I have only two minutes left. Is that seriously true? If I have only two minutes left, I shall do one thing which is terribly important. I switch completely to address the issue that has been floating through the media and mentioned today: concern that land transfers could affect the Forestry Commission and the national parks. I addressed that issue briefly at the very beginning of my speech. I am looking hard to find the comments; if anyone can hand them to me I will love them for ever.

Draft National Policy Statement for National Networks

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

To resolve that this House considers that the Proposed National Policy Statement for National Networks is not fit for purpose because it makes use of the Department for Transport’s forecasts for road traffic growth to establish the need for nationally significant road projects, whereas those forecasts are likely to prove unreliable as travel behaviour changes over the next twenty years in the light of environmental and technological advancements; and because it fails to recognise the need for an integrated approach to planning national and local transport networks, and in particular the role that new railway developments can play in supporting economic growth.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a slightly odd way of starting a debate, when the national policy statement is after all a government document and when the Minister has not had a chance to explain to the House what it is about—after which I could have said what I like and do not like about it. However, I have had many discussions with the clerks on this issue and am told that is this is a slightly new procedure coming out of the Planning Act 2008 and the Localism Act 2011, which requires both Houses to consider the national policy statement, so there we are.

I shall not go into great detail on what it contains as I am sure that the Minister will do that, to the extent that she wants to and thinks that the House needs her to. I am also not going to divide the House, which apparently I could, as I do not see any point. My understanding is that the Secretary of State has to lay the NPSs to both departments and they get debated in both Houses. The Secretary of State then considers representations. As noble Lords probably know, the House of Commons Transport Committee reported yesterday on this, so presumably it will be debating it some time in the future. Then the Secretary of State will look at all the comments and lay a revised version before both Houses, although I think only the House of Commons is required to approve it. If the Minister thinks I have that wrong, I hope that she will correct me.

I am very pleased to be able to discuss this NPS today. I generally support and very much welcome it, as it has been a long time coming. I do not want to delay it but I have a few concerns. My first is to do with rail freight, so I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. The NPS is particularly important when one is seeking planning consent for rail developments—these rail freight interchanges. Interchanges for freight are rather like stations for passengers; if there are no stations, you will not get any passengers on the trains, so you need these interchanges. Some of them are big and are used, effectively, by all the big retailers. They cost a lot of money and getting planning permission to go ahead is sometimes contentious. However, they are essential to growth. If one looks at the Network Rail freight market study there has been growth of 75% in this traffic between 2004 and 2011, and there is a further likelihood of doubling the traffic in 20 years, so these things are needed.

The key, of course, is that this draft NPS should set out a clear case on a national basis. It would be helpful if there could be a bit more granularity in it, so that the inspectors can satisfy themselves of the need for a particular case. I should like to see a few comparatively small changes in the final draft. They include: reinstating part of the text from section 4.2 of the current interchange policy guidance, which provides greater qualitative descriptions of the different levels of needs across the regions; clarifying that there needs to be a network of such facilities across the UK and an expectation of having more than one in one location; and linking the NPS more closely to Network Rail’s freight market study and any successor document.

That leads me on to the biggest issue, which is to do with forecasting. I shall come to the linking of forecasting between road and rail traffic. However, the department’s road forecasts have been much criticised over the years as a basis for predicting and providing. They are seen as inaccurate, often through overestimating road traffic growth over the past 20 years. I think that the national road traffic forecasts from 1989 for last year showed that there would be a 37% growth in traffic, when actually it has been 13%. There are many other things that I find wrong with this part of the document. It is a question of what the key drivers of potential traffic growth are. It has been said that population growth has not been uniformly distributed in recent years and that this has contributed to the observed drop in traffic versus forecasts, because apparently more growth occurs in urban areas with lower levels of car use. However, this has been going on for 20 years.

Is economic growth assumed to be closely linked to traffic? I do not believe it is. There is a clear decoupling in a lot of evidence, even from before the recession. Then there is the fall in the cost of driving, which is used as an argument for the growth in traffic. However, there are some highly uncertain assumptions to do with low-emission vehicles and the price of oil. These are very vulnerable to change and have contributed to the great difference in growth that I have just cited.

The other issue is the need to consider other modes compared with road—rail, cycling and walking—and to get some relationship between these and the policies of this Government or the next, such as encouraging cycling. Do the forecasts take into account health issues such as air pollution? I think that the European Commission has again started infraction proceedings against the British Government in respect of the air pollution in London and, as we all know, there is a big issue about the need to reduce emissions, particularly from diesel motors. There is the issue of the modal shift of passenger and freight from road to rail or cycling.

Are the values of time correct? I have been looking at the pedestrian crossing issue. When pedestrians press the button to get a green light to cross the road, there is usually a 10-second or 20-second delay. Why should they have to wait when the cars do not? That is a small detail but it all adds up to a disproportionate priority given to cars. There is a similar issue regarding cycling.

Noble Lords may know that a company called DHL, one of the biggest logistics companies here and worldwide, is now looking urgently at the issue of city-centre deliveries. It reckons that its white vans will not be able to cope with everyone ordering things on the internet and having them delivered to their offices because they go home so late, or whatever. DHL has come up with many solutions, including a bicycle that has a motorised trailer; the trailer pushes the bike along and stops it when it wants to put the brake on. These are creative ideas and I am not sure that they are all taken into account.

Have the corridors been looked at? We have the classic case of the west coast main line corridor with the M1, the M6 and HS2, but were the railway and road forecasts considered as one? I do not think they were.

I also hope that the other policy consideration concerns short journeys. Do we really need to drive children half a mile to school, or go shopping over the same distance, if we can walk or even cycle? It has to be safe and convenient, but we are miles behind many other European cities in this area. Again, I am not sure that that is taken into account in the forecasts.

The Transport Committee supported much of what I have said in its report yesterday. I shall not repeat it all now but it is worth reading because the committee took a lot of evidence from, I think, about 400 people. Both the committee and the CPRE felt very strongly about the need to consider the impact of low carbon, which I just mentioned, on the demand for growth in road traffic, rather than building ourselves out of a recession. It states:

“The Government is seeking to accommodate increasing demand for roads by building more infrastructure rather than seeking to manage demand”.

It is interesting how many people are now talking about the need to manage demand. Whether that is taken into account in the forecast, I do not have a clue, but it should be because if we do not do so then we will be in big trouble. The committee also repeats its recommendations in the Better Roads report, which also came out yesterday, that the department should seek to integrate planning for passenger and freight transport by route or region, rather than doing each one individually.

Finally, the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport’s interesting new document, Vision 2035, also refers to the need for demand management. It states:

“The logistics and transport sectors should take the lead in promoting a reduction in both freight and passenger traffic by supporting alternatives to travel, reduced commuting distances and shorter, more localised supply chains”.

That goes a long way beyond the forecasting, but it is part of the forecast and it should be reflected in the NPSs.

I very much welcome this NPS. It has been a long time coming, as I have said, but it will be very helpful. There are many challenges and concerns, which I hope the Government will address. We talked about forecasting, modelling, cross-modal issues and a degree of localism linking national policies and local policies. There needs to be more consideration of climate change, but I hope the Government will eventually get away from “predict and provide” in the forecasts.

Ministers may say that the forecasts are only advisory. That is true, but some Ministers—I do not include the present Minister or any of her colleagues in this criticism—often use them to support ministerial wishes and to object to other proposals. They are used as a useful basis for advising Ministers, and I hope that they can be improved to achieve that in a more equitable way. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. There was a remarkable unanimity among most of us, including the Minister, on many issues, which is good. Just for the record, I should say that I support demand management. I understand where the Minister is coming from and that is fine.

Perhaps I may respond briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, on the Sizewell issue. It is nice to know that Sizewell C will not be built in the middle of the sea. About a year ago, I met the rail freight industry people, EDF and Suffolk Council and said that if the railway was dualled beyond Woodbridge and the link extended into Sizewell, they could run a passenger service for workers to commute from other parts of Suffolk and Essex, as well as take in a lot of freight by rail. I am disappointed that this is not going anywhere, but it is a microcosm of what we have been talking about today: the cross-modal appraisals may not be working out properly. I am happy to talk to the noble Lord later if he would like to.

I definitely support the NPS and hope that the Minister, as she said, will take into account what has been said today. For very good reasons, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.

Eurotunnel: Structure and Charges

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they plan to take to conclude the European Commission’s infraction proceedings in respect of Eurotunnel’s structure and charges.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to mark the recent 20th anniversary of services through the Channel Tunnel. The British and French Governments will move economic regulation of the tunnel from the Channel Tunnel Intergovernmental Commission to the Office of Rail Regulation and its French equivalent, and put in place a charging framework by March 2015. We are working with the French Government and anticipate that those commitments will be resolved by March next year.

[Lord Berkeley]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. First, I thank so many noble Lords who have campaigned for many years to get the charges for the Channel Tunnel down. It looks as though the figure for freight will come down by between 25% and 40% which is a great achievement. I congratulate the Commission, the two Governments and, of course, Eurotunnel for reaching this agreement. Will the Minister now turn her attention to France, where there is a big problem? We can get through the Channel Tunnel more quickly and cheaply, but reliability and the general obstruction from the French railways are putting a serious stop on further traffic. Will the Minister encourage the Commission to go for the liberalisation package that is currently before Parliament and the Council to try to ensure that France is not the blockage to more traffic that Eurotunnel used to be?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, the Government are very committed to the single market. We have been strong supporters of the freight corridor strategies that will now extend from the Channel Tunnel through to London, as well as extending the reach across the continent. I take very much to heart the words expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and I will follow up on his proposal.

Railways: High Speed 2

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate Sir David Higgins and the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, on their two reports. I am very pleased that the Government have accepted them. They are a breath of fresh air. I look forward to continuing to work on the project.

I am particularly pleased that the HS1 link has been removed as it was not fit for purpose, but can the Minister encourage her ministerial colleagues not to be too negative about that? She may know that there is already a link with HS1—it was built with HS1—on to the North London Line and the west coast main line which could be used to run Eurostars north of London. It needs signalling—they have forgotten to do that—but that is a minor detail. The trains are operating in France but they could operate in Birmingham and Manchester very quickly and provide that link if there was a demand. I hope that she will take that back to stop any negativity coming from the northern part of the route and the claims that cancelling the HS1 link is a disaster. It is not.

[Baroness Kramer]

I fully agree with the noble Lord’s comments about the HS1/HS2 link, and those were indeed the comments of Sir David Higgins. It is something that could technically have been done but, given the impact that it would have had not just on the community but on passengers and freight traffic, trains would have travelled at 20 miles per hour on that particular link and no more of them than three an hour, at that, so it was not fit for purpose.

However, I give assurances, as the Secretary of State has said, that there will be an important study to look at how to connect the north through to the continent as HS2 progresses. We recognise the importance of that; it is a significant and serious piece of work. Sir David Higgins has recently welcomed proposals from others who understand transport and community issues, and the department had done so previously. We will continue to appreciate the input that comes in, and that expertise.

Railways: Line Resilience

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in commissioning a study into alternative inland resilient rail routes to avoid the coastal route between Exeter and Newton Abbot.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have commissioned Network Rail to undertake a study to identify options for providing a resilient rail route west of Exeter and rail access to the coastal communities in the Torbay area. We have also asked Network Rail to implement schemes already identified to resolve weather-related problems in the Thames valley and west of England. However, the immediate priority is to restore rail services on this route as soon as possible.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer but, as we have had a lovely weekend and spring is clearly in the air, it is very easy for Ministers to forget about the disasters of the winter and to hope that they go away and that they will not have to spend the money. Will the Minister agree to come back to the House in a year’s time, just before the election, and say, “We have implemented all these long-term resilience measures that I mentioned, and a few more, and they are either finished or well on their way, and funded”?

[Baroness Kramer]

I always hesitate to say anything other than yes to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. As he will be well aware, we have a timetable for the long-term resilience project. We have completed the projects that were timetabled for 2013-14, such as the Whiteball tunnel, and others are timetabled for future years. However, the essence of what the noble Lord is talking about in terms of having a programme to make sure that we achieve resilience will be done over the next few months. The study that Network Rail is doing will lead to an interim report being published in July, which will result in a very important discussion in this House.

Aviation: Regulatory Burden

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords for allowing me to speak briefly in the gap. I am not a pilot, but I was interested to hear three pilots speaking about their experiences. I remember when the noble Viscount was a Minister for air and shipping. He reported to the House one day that he had flown over a tanker that had hit a rock in Milford Haven and had saved the day by finding a Chinese takeaway cook who could translate between English, which everyone was using, and Chinese for the tug outside. I did not know that he was flying his own plane. That is terribly impressive.

My interest in this is that I go to the Isles of Scilly quite often. In the winter, the only transport is a small plane that usually goes from St Mary’s to a grass runway at Land’s End, except when it is waterlogged, which it has been for the past month. Costs are high—£70 to £80 for a single fare—so it difficult for people who live on the islands, and I am grateful to the Minister for agreeing to have a meeting later this week with some representatives where I hope we can discuss this. I have tabled a few Questions on this. I was very pleased to hear that Bristows will do the medevac service—evacuation to the mainland of people who need urgent medical treatment—after the RAF hands over emergency rescue. That is really good news, and I am grateful for that.

Less good is the problem of taking blood samples to the mainland. I asked a Question more than a year ago about whether the Government would facilitate granting a licence for Skybus to carry these samples to the mainland for testing. The answer came back that they would when an application was received, which was fair. A year later, it has still not happened, so I tabled a Question asking whether an application had been received and, if so, what was the answer. I am not looking for an answer from the Minister today. My question is more fundamental: why do you need a licence at all to carry blood samples between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland, or anywhere else, for testing in a hospital? Why does doing so need a licence? They are not going to blow up or anything. You can put them in a sealed bag and they would be quite happy, but there we are.

Finally, I went to the Scillies just before the new year; I had a bit of a difficult journey, so I did a blog on it which produced quite a few responses, including one from the chairman of the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company that runs the service inviting me to meet him, which I did. We did not necessarily agree on customer service, but what he told me about costs was very interesting. He said that a third of the cost of the short, very frequent service, which does not make a big profit, went towards regulation, a third fuel and a third airport charges. That probably justifies the charges, but do they have to be so high? A third of the cost being regulatory seems an awful lot. As for airport charges, Newquay is renowned for having high charges because it likes to call itself an international airport, so it has to cope with the odd international flight with enormous numbers of staff, I believe, for security.

I hope that the Government and the CAA can look at the total charges because if that is correct—and I have no reason to suppose that it is not—an £80 single fare to get home to the Scillies if you live there or to go to the hospital or visit friends seems a bit high, and that is the only way you can get there in winter. If the regulatory cost could come down a little, it would be a great help.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to address this Question for Short Debate which my noble friend Lord Rotherwick has introduced on reducing the regulatory burdens on general aviation. I am grateful to the noble Lord for securing the opportunity for this debate to take place. I am aware of his interest and great expertise which far exceeds mine, so I am delighted that he and other noble Lords with experience have spoken in this debate. This is a useful opportunity to update noble Lords on the work which is currently taking place and to address some of the key issues that have been raised today.

Noble Lords may be surprised by the number of activities covered by the general aviation industry, including maintenance and pilot training, gliding and ballooning, as well as the operation of small aircraft for leisure or business purposes. The sector covers a wide spectrum of aircraft types and activities, ranging from paragliders and microlights to business jets. There are around 20,000 civilian aircraft registered in the UK, of which 95% are engaged in what can be described as general aviation activities.

The value of the GA sector and its contribution to the UK economy should not be underestimated. The 2006 strategic review of general aviation, carried out by the CAA, estimated the UK’s GA industry to be worth approximately £1.4 billion in 2005. This highlights the important economic contribution which is made by the GA sector. The sector currently supports around 50,000 jobs in the UK and has a strong track record of providing high value-added employment opportunities across a range of areas and supply chains.

I am sure that noble Lords are aware of the Government’s deregulatory red tape challenge because it has been so well addressed in this debate. In 2012, all existing aviation regulations were scrutinised, but at the start of 2013, the Minister without Portfolio, Grant Shapps, proposed that a further red tape challenge should be undertaken, specific to GA issues. I am sure that Grant Shapps and Andrew Haines will appreciate the warm comments by the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, on what they have achieved, which were echoed by the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw.

In this context, I assure the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, and the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, who raised the issue, that the red tape challenge is being handled in a most judicious way. The concern that they raised about medicals is an area that will certainly be reviewed by the GA panel to see whether there are more proportionate ways of delivering the process of providing and maintaining licences. However, it will be done only with an understanding of the importance of the robustness and safety required. When the panel reports, Ministers will consider very carefully any recommendations in this area and will discuss them in great detail with the CAA.

The GA red tape challenge received nearly 500 responses —three times as many as any other theme to date. The responses identified many areas where improvements are needed and highlighted the need for a change in the approach to regulating GA. In response to this, a substantial programme of reform has recently been launched with the aim of helping to support a vibrant UK GA sector.

The Civil Aviation Authority, the independent regulator, has recognised the need to create a culture change in its regulation of the GA sector. It has incorporated the findings of the GA red tape challenge into its own internal review to produce a comprehensive GA reform programme. This will support a programme of deregulation and self-regulation for the GA sector, remove complexity, look to deregulate and delegate where possible and, where not, consider how to allow the GA sector to take on more responsibility and accountability for its own safety where possible and appropriate.

As part of that programme, the CAA announced the setting up of the specialist unit—which, again, has been widely praised in this debate—dedicated to GA issues. I can confirm that it will indeed be operational from April this year. This recognises that the GA requires different, less onerous regulation compared with that for commercial air transport and it demonstrates the CAA’s commitment to addressing GA issues. It will provide effective and proportionate regulation which supports and encourages the growth of the GA sector. As others have mentioned, Andrew Haines, the chief executive of the CAA, and his team are very committed to making the unit a success.

I assure noble Lords that the CAA will work closely with the GA community as regulations are developed, providing opportunities for the sector to challenge those regulations when it believes that they are unduly burdensome. For example—to take up a point that has been raised—there will be far greater scrutiny of the CAA’s fees and charges in order to provide greater transparency. On the issue of onerous fees, the CAA is committed to reducing the charges that it places on the industry, and it has agreed to work to reduce fees and charges by 3% in real terms by 2015-16. It must also report on issues such as efficiency.

The noble Lord raised a number of specific issues, most of which have already been explored by the CAA. They include informed consent, which would allow members of the public to pay for flights which are not designed to meet the same requirements and standards as a commercial carrier. However, it must be stressed that the CAA will consider this alongside other initiatives intended to bring proportionate oversight to address the safety risks associated with aviation activities.

The noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, is right: the CAA is looking at options for delegating certain functions to industry associations, and he named a number of them. They are well placed to deliver regulatory oversight in a manner proportionate to the needs of the sector. However—and he may be slightly disappointed when I say this—the CAA will seek to introduce market access opportunities for suitable qualified entities because it believes that in some areas where there are no existing arrangements, this will help to provide those new and required opportunities.

The CAA welcomes the GA sector’s involvement in agreeing its charging schemes, as I mentioned earlier, and it recognises some of the concerns expressed about the fees and charges. As a result, it is proposing to establish a GA sub-group of its Finance Advisory Committee specifically to take on the issue of fees to ensure that they are proportionate as well as transparent.

Another specific area of concern is the availability of airspace for GA operators. The community often takes the view that this has been reduced as controlled airspace has grown to favour commercial aircraft. Actually, the opposite may often be the reality. For example, between 2010 and March 2012 the total volume of controlled airspace within the UK was reduced by 214 cubic nautical miles. The CAA is aware of these concerns and ensures that its airspace change process is public and that all decisions made are fully explained. A principal benefit envisaged within the future airspace strategy is the potential to capitalise on the improved performance characteristics of modern commercial aircraft, which will allow other airspace users, including GA, to benefit from the airspace volumes released beneath them.

The GA challenge panel is an important element. It is independent and includes representatives from the GA industry. The panel is providing a “critical friend” function to the CAA and will work with the regulator to challenge its GA reform programme, challenging the CAA to be consistent, transparent and innovative in its approach to GA regulation and supporting the CAA as it strives to deliver genuine change in its approach to GA regulation.

The panel is considering projects which have the potential to promote growth within GA and opportunities for further reducing the regulatory burdens on the sector. It is also considering options for simplifying existing European safety requirements, an issue discussed in the debate, and assessing the progress being made to bring about a culture change within the CAA. The challenge panel will report directly to Ministers Grant Shapps, Robert Goodwill and Mark Harper in the Home Office in April, with an interim report due before then in late January. The panel’s existence will be short term, but the role it is performing and the report it will produce will provide a platform for improving the regulation of the GA sector.

An increasing number of the regulations which impact on GA ultimately derive from the European Aviation Safety Agency. The Government and the CAA have been proactive in lobbying for reform and fully support the EASA road map for general aviation, which came about as a result of the GA sector sharing its concerns about the proportionality of its rules. The EASA has recognised that much of its regulation has been overly burdensome and the road map proposes a series of reforms and changes in approach.

We welcome the fact that the European Commission has accepted the UK's recommendation that an evaluation of the application of commercial aviation safety requirements to general aviation should be included in the rolling regulatory fitness and performance programme. We will continue to work with the European Commission to ensure that this evaluation is both rigorous and evidence-based. Recent announcements such as securing the EU’s agreement to allow the UK to continue issuing the instrument meteorological conditions rating for pilots until April 2019 are encouraging and demonstrate EASA’s willingness to reconsider its regulatory policy in relation to GA. The Government also welcome the CAA’s commitment to eliminating gold-plating of EU regulations and Ministers are due to meet with the EASA next week.

On the serious issues concerning the border agency, I say to the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Oldham and Lord Bradshaw, that the GA challenge panel is meeting with the border agency, hopefully next week. I understand that the issues have been raised and that consideration will be given to whether they are onerous or appropriate. There is a mechanism for taking the issues forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, raised the question of airfield planning. Planning issues are always contentious but, luckily, they tend to be local issues.

I shall be meeting the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, on the Isles of Scilly and I thank him for giving me a heads up on many of the issues he will wish to address in that meeting. However, there is not time for me to deal with them now.

The noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, asked about innovation. There is innovation grant funding for GA and the DfT is currently working with the GA challenge panel to identify suitable projects.

There is movement on all fronts. I thank all noble Lords who are present. My time is up. I am not sure that I will be able to take the noble Lord’s question.

[Lord Berkeley]

Could I remind the Minister that I am Lord Berkeley, not Lord Bradshaw? I think she got us muddled up.

[Baroness Kramer]

I consider it an insult to neither noble Lord that I might have confused them for a brief moment. I certainly know who they are, and both are remarkable in the area of transport.

Shipping: Passenger Safety

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on passenger safety of their application to the Committee on Safe Seas and the Prevention of Pollution from Ships for exemption for certain ships and areas of operation from European safety requirements in order to substitute life rings for life rafts.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government require all vessels to carry enough life rafts to meet the risk to those on board in an emergency. The proposal submitted to the Committee on Safe Seas and the Prevention of Pollution from Ships is based on UK regulations for domestic passenger ships and is supported by the department’s formal safety assessment of domestic passenger ships carried out between 2002 and 2004 in response to Lord Justice Clarke’s formal inquiry into the “Marchioness”/“Bowbelle” collision.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that response. My understanding is that this exemption application applies to passenger ships with up to 130 people on them, which, under directive 2009/45, article 4, allows them to go 15 miles from the place of refuge or five miles from the coast in the summer. The idea is to reduce the number of life rafts to the maximum number of passengers—not allowing, of course, for the fact that you cannot always launch life rafts if a ship is heeling—and to replace the rafts removed with life rings. Does the Minister really think that it is a good idea for people who might be wrecked in an accident in the North Sea or off the Hebrides to have to get into a life ring rather than a life raft?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, my understanding is that this exemption is for up to five miles and therefore would not apply in most of the circumstances that the noble Lord has just described. It is for small craft of less than 24 metres which have to be travelling in daylight and in summer only. They are required to have sufficient life rafts for all passengers but additional safety can be provided by buoyancy apparatus.

Railways: High Speed 2

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

I thank my noble friend. He is exactly right that the demand for skills would be significant, not only with HS2 but with all the other infrastructure projects that are being launched thanks to the actions of this Government. My noble friend will take some comfort from the fact that the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering, which was established in 2010 with wide railway industry support, is helping to tackle the current and future skills needs within the industry. It is working closely with HS2 to identify skills gaps and promote railway engineering skills. We obviously have the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy, which has played an important role in the Crossrail project; one would assume that it would do so with the super-sewer for London and then HS2. The skills academy is one of the participants, along with BIS and the DfT, with some support also provided by Siemens, in looking at training entry-level employees as well as skilling up others to respond to new technology developments in the industry with initiatives such as the Siemens Rolling Stock Academy.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, when the Prime Minister recently visited China, he announced that the Chinese would help us build HS2. Can we expect several thousand Chinese people to flood into this country, and will they be welcomed in the same way that Romanians and Bulgarians apparently will be?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, the discussion was primarily about finance, rather than the range of engineering skills and jobs on which I have just reported. I can assure the noble Lord that the programme that HS2, along with various engineering companies, is taking out is targeted at schools in Britain rather than those overseas. For example, HS2 sent a contingent of 30 people to the skills show in Birmingham to which youngsters came from all over the country. I am confident that a large number of these skills can be achieved in the UK, creating a base for our youngsters to participate not only in HS2 but in a wide range of engineering projects. However, we will always consider financing from overseas.