Bus Services Bill [HL]
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I support most of the speeches made in support of this amendment. I am not sure that I agree with my noble friend Lord Snape about too many announcements. It is better to have too many than too few. Coincidentally, today I got news from the Oxford Mail that Oxfordshire County Council is stopping all subsidies to buses. It made the decision this afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Low, spoke about the Oxford Bus Company, which is very good, but 117 routes will be cancelled, mainly to small towns and villages. If we think about the effect on people who cannot see or who have reduced mobility, they cannot drive. The article does not say how many people will be affected by it, but it is obviously going to have a serious effect on people’s lives in just one county. Of course, it is blaming government cuts, rightly or wrongly, and we can debate that. But if the council had waited a year or two until some of this legislation had gone through, the Minister might say that it could easily keep those services because they will be so much better and operators will not need a subsidy anymore because there will be so many more people, presumably under the age of 16, paying for their fares. It is a serious warning. Just one county, which is probably not the poorest county in the country, has said, “Damn the buses. We don’t really care. They’re old, infirm, poor and probably don’t vote Tory. We’ll dump them”. It is a very sad coincidence that it has happened today.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Campbell and Lady Brinton. I shall speak also to Amendments 122 and 126 in my name. I am very grateful for the support of noble Lords who have spoken on them.
These amendments build on the requirements in the Equality Act 2010 for businesses to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that people with disabilities can access goods and services. Action on these issues is vital as the Department for Work and Pensions survey shows that 37% of disabled respondents found transport accessibility a significant barrier to work. We clearly have a long way to go to create a service to which all potential users have access.
Amendment 122 is, I hope, straightforward. It builds on the good practice that exists among enlightened bus operators around the country. It requires all bus operators to provide compulsory, approved equality and disability awareness training by 1 April 2019. It makes the important point that disability is not always obvious and can include mental and other hidden disabilities. We believe that all bus drivers need the skills to identify these potential disabilities, understand the legal framework that applies and have the confidence to intervene effectively when problems arise. I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Judd about the need for public awareness training, but it has to be underpinned by clear legislation and training. In my experience, the public are much more aware of and sympathetic to these issues than we give them credit for. Quite often it is members of the public who come to the rescue of people who are trying to get on to transport; they want to help but do not feel they are getting the support they need to intervene.
We contend that it is not good enough to provide this training on a voluntary or ad hoc basis. With all equality training, the experience is that those who acknowledge that they need the training the most do not really need it: it is those who have to be forced to go on the training who need it the most. It has to be a universal and regular provision.
I ask the Minister for clarification on the Brexit implications of the proposals. As I understand it, Britain currently has a five-year exemption from the EU directive requiring bus drivers and terminal staff to undergo disability awareness training. The exemption runs out in 2018, and we would have expected the requirement to have been put in UK law by then. Will the Minister clarify the status of that obligation now? Is the department on course to implement it, or is this something that can now be achieved more quickly, perhaps through the vehicle of the Bill by adopting our amendment or something similar?
Our Amendment 126 addresses the need for all buses to have audio-visual communication systems to advise passengers of the next stop, any delays and any diversions from the published timetable. The amendment has the support of over 30 charities and bus providers. It would make a vital difference to the lives of almost 2 million people with sight loss, as well as many elderly people who rely on public transport for their independence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, currently only 19% of buses are fitted with AV. Those of us who travel regularly by bus in London realise how liberating and reassuring the service can be, and indeed it frees the driver to concentrate on the roads. I say to my noble friend Lord Snape that I travel on London buses a lot and I have never been irritated by the voice of the AV system; I always find it soothing and reassuring.
It is not like that in the rest of the country, though; a recent Guide Dogs report showed that seven in 10 passengers with sight loss have missed a stop because the driver has forgotten to tell them where to get off. Understandably, this is both distressing and potentially dangerous. AV provision already applies to all new trains. It makes sense to replicate that provision for buses so that we can have a properly integrated public transport system with equal rights and facilities across the piece.
As we have heard, some bus operators have argued that the cost could be prohibitive, but we do not accept that. The latest estimates are that it could be installed for around £2,000 per bus. At the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, a recent study in Oxford showed that if the messenger system was also allowed to include adverts, it could pay for itself in two years. When we met the Minister, Andrew Jones, at the start of the process, he seemed sympathetic to the arguments that have been put on this issue. I understand that he has since said he accepts that the costs have come down, and is therefore reflecting on the next steps. I am also grateful to the Minister here for our earlier meeting on the issues that are covered in the amendments, and I know that more discussions are being planned. I hope the Minister will be able to give us some good news today, and will feel able to confirm that he is prepared to support the amendments.
Lord Berkeley
“(7A) An enhanced partnership scheme must state the minimum standards of service to be provided under the scheme. ”
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, in moving Amendment 84A I shall speak also to Amendment 84B, which is also in my name. Amendment 84A is a small amendment, but it is designed to ensure that when two or more enhanced partnerships meet and work together, the minimum standards that we will be discussing elsewhere and have already discussed are provided in both or all the schemes. Amendment 84B provides—on page 38, line 37—that an enhanced partnership scheme “must” specify the,
“requirements about the frequency or timing of particular local services or local services of particular descriptions”.
As a general comment on the further amendments in the group which propose changing the word “may” to “must”, I would be much happier if the word “must” appeared in the text because “may” can also mean “may not”. Is this going to be covered in further documentation and regulations? For something like this it would be much better to have a bit more definition. I am sure that it is the Government’s intention that these enhanced partnerships should specify the frequency and timing of local services as well as the different types of service, and indeed we have talked about these issues during the course of many amendments during the previous two days in Committee. I hope that the Minister will accept that the word “must” would be a beneficial improvement to the Bill. I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I shall address Amendments 85 and 86 tabled in my name. Once again these amendments are an attempt to firm up the Bill by ensuring that enhanced partnerships take into account the list of factors specified on page 39, which at the moment suggests that they “may specify” those factors. The list includes such fundamental things as tickets and entitlement to travel. We believe that enhanced partnerships have to take these into account. We are saying not that problems have to be solved in a particular way but that enhanced partnerships must take account of this. We are not prescribing the solutions.
Amendment 86 specifies that emission levels must be included in the factors that vehicles must meet and that disabled access arrangements must be taken into account. We have raised these issues before. Once again, this is a very basic reference to simple principles that really need to be taken into account in a Bill that will become an Act in 2016 and will probably suit the industry for the next 20 or 30 years, as the previous Act did. If we want to look ahead, we have to look at the society we are serving to ensure that the factors that are so important, such as emission levels, are considered in every circumstance, not just by the best operators and the most thoughtful local authorities.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to the Minister for that short answer, which was useful clarification. I shall study what he said. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, Amendment 93, which is in my name, states:
“Once consulted, the Competition and Markets Authority may not overturn an enhanced partnership plan and scheme”.
We tabled it because we are seriously concerned about the retrospective role of the CMA that we have seen operating in the rail industry, for example. A retrospective power to impose competition, red in tooth and claw, at all costs is at odds with the principles behind the Bill.
We have a deregulated bus market. Through the Bill, the Government are trying to bring in an element of regulation to improve quality and standards. We support that, but the potential role of the CMA could undermine or, at the very least, seriously disrupt the purpose of the Bill. It is important that we get the role of the CMA clear at this stage and that, once consulted, it will not be able to say retrospectively—after an agreement has been made or a partnership or franchise established—that it is not possible, and to disrupt it and prevent it going ahead.
I draw noble Lords’ attention to the statement put out by the CMA on 5 July. Among other things, it states:
“We recognise that the introduction of franchising may be appropriate in specific circumstances. But we continue to believe that on-road competition should only be abandoned in favour of competition for the market where it’s clear that this is the only way to secure better outcomes for the travelling public”.
I emphasise the word “only”. It is impossible to prove that something is the only way. You can prove the reverse, but it is often impossible to prove that something is the only way. That sets an impossible hurdle for local authorities trying to set up either enhanced partnerships or franchising.
The CMA states that local authorities should have to,
“demonstrate that any distortion to competition created by the proposed arrangements”—
this applies to partnerships as well as franchises—
“would be justified by the contribution to achieving other policy aims”.
That is another complex and potentially impossible step. It states that local authorities should,
“ensure that partnership schemes don’t harm competition unless it’s strictly necessary to achieve their objectives. We want that principle to be hardwired into every stage of the process”.
It recommends that,
“LTAs should be obliged to take the following steps”,
and one of them is to,
“demonstrate that any distortion to competition created by the proposed arrangements would be justified by the contribution to achieving other policy aims”.
That is setting an impossible hurdle for local authorities to achieve. It is also in danger of making even partnerships so complex to achieve that local authorities simply do not bother. If that is so, the Bill will fail.
Amendments 108 and 111 both simply specify bus users as among those who must be consulted on enhanced partnerships. This is very much in line with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, just emphasised. It is truly astonishing that the Bill, which purports to have at its heart the desire to increase the number of people using buses, specifies as people to be consulted the operators, the CMA and,
“such other persons as the authority or authorities think fit”.
It is perfectly reasonable to include the operators and the CMA, but I am unsure why it is not acceptable to use the phrase “bus users” or “bus user groups”. The poor old passenger is worthy of a specific mention. I know that the Minister will say, “Of course bus users will be consulted”, but I think that they are worthy of a mention. There is no philosophical or legal objection to mentioning bus users, because the Bill mentions them at one point—but it does not mention them consistently.
I urge the Minister to take our points on board. The bus user point is not new, but the role of the CMA needs to be clarified if it is not to make it very difficult for the Bill to work as intended.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I would like to discuss Amendment 93. The noble Baroness has done the Committee a service by reading out a letter from the CMA. My first reaction was that the amendment was not a good idea, because it put a constraint on what the CMA would normally do. On page 42 of the Bill the CMA is listed as one of the organisations to be consulted, and that seemed all right to me. However, the CMA’s letter causes me some concern. Presumably, the Government consulted the CMA before drafting this text. The idea that, having been consulted once, the CMA would go against the principles of the Bill and come back for a few more bites of the cherry is going to put off a large number of authorities that might want to take forward these changes. That is worrying, because it might put off a lot of local authorities from doing it at all.
Lord Berkeley
“(3A) A traffic commissioner must have regard to relevant information supplied by a local transport authority when exercising functions under this section.”
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, before I move Amendment 111A, I would like to put on record that I do not understand page 59, line 42. I think there might be a spelling mistake. I do not need an answer from the Minister, but it is useful to put it on record.
The amendments in this group concern what happens when a traffic commissioner refuses an application. In both cases, it is quite important that before refusing an application the traffic commissioner needs to have as much information on the local transport authority as possible. The Minister may say that this is not necessary and that it is obvious that he would do this, but it does not always happen that way, so I thought it would be useful to put in the new subsections proposed in Amendments 111A and 111B to say that the traffic commissioner must have regard to relevant information. It might prevent some unnecessary debates and complaints later from organisations whose applications have been refused. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I support my noble friend Lord Berkeley in these two amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s response. It is right that the traffic commissioner should have all the relevant information in front of him. Putting that into the Bill will ensure that when decisions are made they are robust and we do not get situations where there are needless complaints because people have not taken on board what they should have done. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. It takes two to tango, and I suspect that the traffic commissioner will get the information that he needs whether or not the local authority offers it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
My Lords, I have to inform the Committee that if Amendment 112A is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 113 by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I am very grateful for the Minister’s explanation. This is another occasion when I am slightly concerned that the Minister has answered my amendment before I have spoken to it, but that is the way we have it here. In this case I do not complain; I shall read what he said very carefully and I suspect it will be fine. I do not propose to move my amendment.
Lord Snape
Of course there is not a bottomless pit of public money. It is for the Government to decide the priorities for government expenditure, and I urge the noble Baroness who spoke just before me to press the Government to see the realities of life in rural areas before they take the axe to local government funding any further. I am pleased that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, agrees with me, although I am not sure whether that will do anything for either of our careers.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, it is difficult to agree with everyone on this point. In response to my noble friend Lord Snape, nobody is going to run a community bus service if a bus service is already running. Presumably that service would be making a profit under his definition, so in theory there would not be a need for another one.
Turning to the amendment, the community bus route is based on the community interest company model, which I imagine was introduced by the Labour Government 10 or 15 years ago, although I cannot remember exactly when. I found one CIC on the internet called the Dales and Bowland Community Interest Company, which runs bus services in the Dales. The point is that it is not designed to make a profit—in fact, it is not allowed to make a profit unless it reinvests it. Unless something like that operated, it is pretty clear that there would be no bus service, so I suspect that, for areas which do not have bus services at the moment or which are thought to be unsuitable for such services, this kind of model makes a really good contribution.
One benefit of the CIC model is that it is very easy to set up—I am involved in one at the moment, although not in connection with buses—and it is easier to get funding for a CIC than it sometimes is for a commercial operation. Officials in the Department for Transport have basically said, “In some circumstances we would be pleased to consider a contribution from the department or from local authorities”. It might be easier to give it to a CIC which demonstrated that there was a need and that it was prepared to work towards participating in providing a service than it would be to give it to a local authority.
I have slight concerns about the text of the amendment. My noble friend Lord Snape talked about the six-month moratorium, but I think that the principle is very sound. I believe that community buses were one of the main reasons that CICs were set up in the first place. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will look on the principle with favour and, if the text is not quite right, I hope that that can be discussed before the next stage. Integrating all the other bus services that we are talking about in the Bill with ones that would not operate without some community involvement—not to make a profit but just to provide a service for the people who need it—is a very important element.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I know that, as has been said, local bus services are very important to our local communities. As noble Lords have said, they act as a lifeline for many, getting people to and from work. Whether the services are required for education, health or leisure facilities, I say at the outset that I sympathise with the aims of the amendment and agree that bus routes can have a real community worth. I am also aware of the issues that many people are experiencing at the moment with bus services being reduced or cut. There is no doubt that many local authorities are facing funding issues and have difficult decisions to make about the services that they may be able to subsidise.
It may be helpful if I say a little about the community transport sector and the total transport initiative, which I think will be of interest to noble Lords and which can help achieve the outcomes that I think are intended by the amendment.
The community transport sector can offer services that address local needs and increase patronage, particularly where commercial bus services are not viable. The sector is well placed to serve more isolated communities and can provide crucial services linking individuals and communities to existing transport networks, work, education, shops and so on.
The department is extremely supportive of the sector, with our recent £25 million community minibus fund helping more than 300 local groups across England. The total transport initiative also offers a significant opportunity to make the funding available to authorities and public bodies for the provision of transport go further. This involves integrating the services that are currently commissioned by different central and local government agencies, allowing resources to be used more efficiently and resulting in services to passengers that are more effective at meeting their needs.
Although I sympathise with the aims of the amendment, I do not think that it will resolve any issues relating to the continued provision of services on routes that are deemed to be of community value. I agree that where services are to be cut or reduced significantly in frequency, commercial operators, or local authorities in the case of subsidised services, should do all they can to consult and inform local communities. However, I do not think it is reasonable to force operators to continue to operate a service, potentially to their financial detriment, for a period of six months. Operators of registered bus services are, in any event, obliged to give a traffic commissioner at least 56 days’ notice of their intention to stop running a service.
That said, I agree that there is more we can do to champion the community transport sector, seeking to use public funding for transport in the most efficient ways. I will also think further on the point raised by noble Lords regarding training and advice for local community groups to help them understand the options that are open to them. I would encourage local authorities, communities and operators to work together to address issues relating to the continuity of services to passengers.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, raised the specific issue of funding for bus services to enable people to access education. I note the important points that she made and agree totally that young people need access to transport to get to a school or further education college, as well as for employment purposes. However, I believe that this is a policy matter in which my colleagues in the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government also have an interest. I will therefore speak to colleagues in both those departments and write to the noble Baroness in respect of the points that she has raised, copying other noble Lords into that correspondence.
I hope that the explanation that I have given has in part persuaded noble Lords that the Government understand the community worth of local bus services and are keen to find ways to ensure that local communities can work together with a view to addressing issues and increasing the understanding of passenger concerns. I hope that I have gone some way to assuring the noble Baroness to the extent that she feels able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
“Passenger representationPassenger representation
(1) A local transport authority, in developing any scheme under this Act, shall be required to set out mechanisms whereby the users of services specified or affected by the scheme shall be involved in monitoring and evaluating the scheme.(2) A local transport authority in developing any scheme under this Act shall be required to specify a body to review complaints from bus users using services specified or affected by the scheme.”
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, Amendment 123A would insert a new clause, “Passenger representation”, which tries to give bus passengers the same information—and credibility of information—that rail passengers get through Transport Focus, whose responsibility has recently been widened to include information about roads. This goes a bit wider than that, however, because local transport authorities need to set up mechanisms whereby passengers who are affected or who might use services can have credible information about proposed or actual services, as they have for rail services, and about reliability, quality and what happens when something goes wrong—as we discussed on today’s first Question.
It does not really matter who provides the services, whether it is a franchise, partnership or something else, but it is important. This could be done nationally, through Transport Focus or Bus Users UK, or locally, with co-ordination by a national body. Either way, there is a need for something like this and to have a requirement for it in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to support the principle of the amendment that my noble friend Lord Berkeley has just moved. We have had debates about inserting references to passenger representation at various points in the consultations on the Bill. My noble friend’s amendment seeks to state this as a general principle so that, in effect, there would be in every area some form of passenger representation to cover the involvement of passengers in the development and continued operation of the franchise, partnership or contract. Further, passenger representation should be part of the general decision-making process as we go forward, not simply in the original consultation.
In addition, my noble friend’s amendment refers to a complaints system. It is vital that there should be within this industry a system for complaints to be rapidly dealt with by the operator and, if necessary, the transport authority. To do that, there needs to be an effective passenger body. It could be a national body or a combination of a local body and Transport Focus nationally. On earlier parts of the Bill, the Minister very gratifyingly showed some encouragement to those of us who were arguing for engagement of passenger representation. I hope that in his reply the Minister can tell us, or at least give a general indication—tonight if possible but certainly before we get to Report—how the Government will bring forward amendments on Report to reflect that commitment to passenger representation and the ability of such organisations to deal with complaints with bus operators. It would be very useful if we all received a letter before Report setting out all the points at which this would be reflected in the Bill.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, as has been said by those noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate, this is something that we have talked about in terms of the principle. The amendment would ensure that local transport authorities set out mechanisms through which passengers are involved in the monitoring and evaluation of any scheme that is implemented as a result of the Bill.
Turning first to the aspect of the amendment that relates to passenger representation, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, proposed a similar amendment which was discussed on the second day in Committee. As I said then, hearing from passengers helps authorities and operators to understand the needs of their local communities and to design schemes that can bring real benefits. I am also keen to ensure that any authority implementing either a franchising or partnership scheme thinks carefully about the outcomes it is looking to achieve, and how it will evaluate and monitor the performance of the scheme. I further agree that passengers should be involved in that process, as they will be the ones with the day-to-day experience of using the services.
I am therefore happy to consider how best to accommodate this. I will consider what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said about how the Government plan to outline this and whether we look to further guidance where we can better set out our wider expectations relating to how passengers should be involved throughout the process, both while schemes are being developed and once they have been implemented. I will provide, as the noble Lord requested, further clarification in advance of Report.
Turning to the second half of the amendment, which relates to complaints procedures, I agree that it is important that passengers’ voices are heard and that their complaints are dealt with effectively.
It is always good to be in advance of the Box note. I have just received one that says, “I would be pleased to write to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in that respect”. It shows that Ministers can think for themselves. That may be a startling revelation to the Box, but I am sure my officials are well versed in how I work.
There is a well-established procedure for handling complaints about bus services, whereby complaints are first made to the operator. If the passenger remains dissatisfied, they can be taken up by Bus Users UK and finally by the Bus Appeals Body. This procedure has been endorsed by Transport Focus, the statutory champion for bus passengers. I am keen to ensure that passengers who use services specified under a scheme of the kind set out in the Bill have access to a complaints procedure at least as good as the one currently in place.
I recognise that the authority may have a role to play in dealing with complaints, particularly where it has introduced franchising. I therefore agree entirely that complaints procedures should be clear to all passengers, and that any authority introducing a franchising scheme in particular should clarify its role in the process, working with Bus Users UK and others. I suggest that we have further discussions on these matters and hope that, with the reassurances I have given and the commitment to write to noble Lords in advance of Report, there is sufficient reassurance of the seriousness with which I intend to consider this proposal, and the noble Lord will be minded to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and the Minister for his reply. I think he has also responded to my Amendments 124A and 124B, but if he has not he can do so. It would be good to have a letter from him covering all these things because they are all interrelated. I am pleased that he has seized on the need to get the right information and then make sure that it is independent and circulated so that people know about it. That is the best way of incentivising operators to do better if they are failing. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, an important element of the Bill is the availability of journey planning and information about bus services. This clause will facilitate the provision of information about timetables, fares, routes, tickets and live information about bus arrival times and enable it to be accessed openly, which should lead to better journey planning information for passengers. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that of course I recall his kind invitation and my acceptance of it. However, when I returned to the department it was my understanding that my honourable friend Andrew Jones would take up his offer. There is no reason why both of us cannot take up his offer and I shall certainly look into exactly where we are in that respect. The focus is on the provision of information that will be helpful to passengers in making informed decisions about whether to make their journey by bus or another transport mode.
I shall turn first to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, whereby the information that may be prescribed would include information about the environmental impact of bus operations and vehicles, including information on the emissions of the vehicles in use. I am sympathetic to the desire of noble Lords to ensure that operators and local authorities are aware of the impact of local bus services on the environment. However, I do not believe that this information is crucial for journey planning purposes. Local authorities would already be aware of the environmental impact of buses on the local area. Other parts of the Bill will give local authorities greater powers to influence the types of vehicles used by operators when providing services.
The noble Baroness and the noble Lord have also proposed further amendments whereby the information that may be prescribed would include information about complaints made about bus services, including their number and nature, as well as performance statistics on matters such as punctuality and reliability. Again, I am sympathetic to the desire to ensure that passengers have access to complaint and performance statistics, but I am sure that noble Lords will agree that raw complaints data should be read with a degree of caution as by themselves they do not necessarily give a full picture of the performance of a service. That said, I would not seek to play down the importance of complaints. There can be instances where well-organised campaigns on a specific issue can give the impression that a service is rather worse than it actually is and could deter passengers from using the bus as a consequence. I recognise that punctuality and reliability are important factors for passengers using bus services. I therefore reassure both noble Lords that this clause has been drafted in such a way that the release of punctuality data could be included in regulations made by the Secretary of State if it was considered appropriate after consultation with stakeholders.
The amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, would extend to matters such as the,
“helpfulness of the bus driver and comfort”,
of the vehicle. Matters such as these are subjective and are best covered by evidence-based customer satisfaction research of the kind conducted by Transport Focus which puts them into their correct context, in particular through the Bus Passenger Survey.
Lord Berkeley
When the noble Lord responded to my amendment about punctuality and so on, he said that those matters could be set out in regulations following consultation with stakeholders. To me, stakeholders are mainly the bus operators and they really will not want their punctuality to be monitored. I hope that the stakeholders will include passenger representatives and others who might have a different view.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Certainly the discussions that we have had to date reflect exactly what the noble Lord has articulated. Having a single stakeholder in a service which has a much wider emphasis is of concern. I note that the noble Lord rightfully wants to put representative groups for bus users at the centre of what we are seeking to do here. I understand the issue that the noble Lord has raised.
I turn next to the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, whereby the Secretary of State would have to ensure that any regulations under these provisions always make provision for the information to be freely available and for registration information to be provided to a traffic commissioner. I sympathise with the noble Baroness in wanting to ensure that the information is freely available. We want to encourage the development and use of apps and journey planners, a point we debated at Second Reading. However, there may be circumstances where it becomes necessary to limit access, and the obvious question is where that might be. There may be cases where the design of an app is such that it imposes a strain on the technical infrastructure which supports the release of the information or a poorly designed app that makes excessive demands for frequent information updates. Those are just a couple of the examples that come to mind.
It may also be appropriate to time-limit the disclosure of certain information—for instance, about fares—which is being shared in good faith but is often commercially confidential until the day of the fare change, a point made by my noble friend Lord Attlee in the debate at Second Reading. The disclosure of commercially confidential information was also raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I will consider again how best to address the committee’s concerns with the aim of bringing forward amendments on Report. Again, if I can provide further clarification in advance, I will certainly seek to update noble Lords.
I hope that with the explanation I have given, the noble Lord will feel minded to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I could not agree less with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on this matter. The grounds that he has produced seem to relate to a potential conflict of interest where the local authority is a franchising authority. Clearly, there could be—but, of course, not all contracting will relate to franchises. A whole set of partnership arrangements will be possible. The noble Earl is asking the wrong question, if I may say so.
I remind the Committee of my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. Clause 21 is a very bad clause and I hope that the Minister understands that it will become a major issue on Report if the matter is not resolved. The clause is headed, “Bus companies: limitation of powers of authorities in England”. Of course, it does not apply in Wales, where local authorities would have the right to continue to create companies if they wished to. But that right to form a company exists now and it seems to have worked. So it is not clear why the Government have decided to include this clause in the Bill, which is otherwise, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, pointed out, by and large very good in many respects. Many of the amendments we have been discussing are matters of detail that would enhance what is already a good Bill.
I remind the Minister that five years ago this House passed the Localism Act 2011, which granted an extension of powers to local authorities with an associated general power of competence. That is not to say that local authorities then take on that power and start creating lots of companies, but it means that they have the power to do so should there be an occasion when it seems necessary and in the public interest so to do. It is therefore wrong in principle to remove the right of local councils to do that.
So I hope the Minister will understand the strength of feeling about this issue, and I hope that he will be able to explain to the House why the Government think it is necessary to strike out a power that local government currently has, which has served local government well and would potentially improve public transport networks rather than make them worse.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, my reading of this clause is that even those authorities that are running bus services now will not be able to do so in future. That is very serious. To respond to the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, if a local authority wishes to run a bus service, it does not need a franchise itself: it can just run the service. Ditto, it does not have to have an enhanced partnership with itself: it can just run the service. So it seems to me that if the local authority wanted to run the service it could just do it if this clause was not there. It does not need to have a conflict of interest.
I support all noble Lords on this side of the House who have spoken. This is a really bad clause. It has many similarities with the railway industry, which we can go into. I very much hope that we will see the end of it quite soon.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, it was all going so well. I am of course deeply hurt that the noble Baroness suggested that this was nasty and vindictive. I am sure the noble Baroness was referring to the—
Lord Whitty
My Lords, Amendment 128 calls for a strategy for the bus sector to be part of the Bill. It is fairly short and to the point. My noble friend Lord Berkeley has tabled a couple of rather more comprehensive amendments which express the same objective.
When I first thought of this amendment, I thought of tabling it before Clause 1. I may have to reflect on that after this short debate. The Bill is quite technical and procedural, changing contractual arrangements and introducing new technology such as ticketing systems and so forth. What it fails to do is give a clear indication of the strategy for the bus sector in terms of raising usage, extending buses in much-neglected rural areas, the nature and quality of buses, and their environmental impact. We need a strategy. We need the Government to come forward with a bus strategy that makes sense of the Bill in a broader dimension.
We can come back to this on Report. Obviously, we are nearing the end of today’s proceedings so I will not speak at length but it seems a missed opportunity not to require the Secretary of State to come up with an overarching strategy that would convince people that we are really serious about modernising, extending and making more environmentally attractive our bus services throughout England. I beg to move Amendment 128 here, at the obscure back end of the Bill, but the Minister may encourage me to put it right at the front of the Bill because that is really where it should go.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 128 and will speak very briefly to my two amendments. Several of us spoke about this at Second Reading. I agree with my noble friend that the bus sector needs a strategy. After all, rail passengers have a strategy. Rail freight is having one soon, I am told. There is a roads strategy. There are strategies to do with most things in transport, except buses. I really think it is time for it and I will certainly support my noble friend if he puts a nice amendment down as Clause 0.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I am not sure you can have a Clause 0, can you? I bow to the wide expertise around the Committee. You can certainly get “zero” fizzy drinks or whatever but let us not open up that debate. I am grateful for the courteous manner in which the amendments were introduced. This group relates to proposals to introduce requirements to produce new national strategies for bus services, and looks to place requirements on local authorities to increase the number of passengers using bus services.
I have said before—indeed, it is a sentiment shared across the Committee—that we want to see more people using buses. Perhaps the recent influx into the Chamber is reflective of that sentiment among noble Lords. Of course, I agree with the intention behind Amendment 129 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Buses help people get around and should be an integral part of any public transport system. Public transport works best where it is considered holistically, with bus services integrated with cycling infrastructure, trains and trams, or in the form of park and ride facilities. I agree that authorities considering any of the new tools in the Bill should be looking to improve their local bus services and to encourage more people to use public transport.
However, I am concerned that this amendment may bring unintended consequences; for example, a local authority may introduce a new tram system and may look to increase the overall number of journeys made using public transport but the proportion of journeys made by bus may decrease. It may be more sensible, therefore, to encourage authorities to address the issue of increasing the number of public transport journeys rather than just journeys made using bus services. I trust that this gives the noble Lord sufficient reassurance of the seriousness with which I intend to consider the aims of Amendment 129, and hope he will agree not to move it.
Amendments 128 and 130 would require the Secretary of State to develop and issue a national bus strategy and a bus services investment strategy for England. As I have said in previous Committee debates, devolution is an important theme, which has informed the development of the Bill. The Bill is all about providing authorities with new tools to enable them to improve their local services in the way that best suits their area. It is not about imposing particular models.
Central government has a valuable role to play in setting the wider agenda through policy initiatives such as the low-emission bus scheme and our total transport pilots, which I mentioned in the previous group of amendments, but I do not think that centrally determined strategies for local bus services would help authorities address particular issues relevant to them and their area. As such, it does not seem sensible for central government to set national strategies when it is local authorities and bus operators working together that will be designing services and setting standards locally.
Additionally, I have previously explained that my department helps support local bus services outside London by paying some £250 million per year of the BSOG. As I said in the previous group of amendments, we are already reviewing the BSOG system, with the aim of ensuring that funding is targeted where it is most needed. It is through that work that we should establish and set out central government’s priorities and objectives for the funding provided. I trust this gives the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Berkeley, sufficient reassurance to withdraw and not move their amendments.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome many of these amendments. There is a sense of déjà vu about today because we spent many hours debating this. I recall amendments put down by several of my noble friends and noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches proposing many of the changes now coming back from the Government. It is great that they have taken so much of our advice. I welcome it. Let us hope that this is a precedent for many future changes.
I am pleased that Amendment 1 starts to provide a link between Parliament, Government and the SHCs because that is very important. We talked about that. It may not be what we wanted but it is a start to getting there. I am also pleased that we have an amendment that says that the ORR can give advice to the Secretary of State on the effect of its guidance. That is good. I hope that the ORR will feel able to give advice on many more things than that. I am also pleased that the Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament on this—it is all obvious but it needs to be said—and it is important that this happens and happens regularly.
Would it not have been much easier to have changed the name of the ORR during the passage of the Bill rather than with all these amendments? However, I do not really mind and it does not really matter. That is fine. It is a shame that we have not been able to persuade the Government that the ORR, in addition to its work monitoring the SHC, should have powers to take action and require efficiencies as it is able to do for Network Rail. I hope that that will come one day as the ORR will have the capability to do that and it is a logical thing to do. It would be much better for an independent regulator to do it than to try to have the Secretary of State do it. We saw some problems with that with regard to the railways last summer. I also hope that in future we may be able to persuade whoever wins and becomes the Government after May that it will be useful to have the ORR responsible for road safety on the highways network as well. We did not quite get that far, but we are getting there.
Finally, I did not understand what the noble Baroness said about Amendment 45. It rather seems that if the staff of the Highways Agency do not feel that they will be properly reimbursed in whatever changes come they will be told, “That’s tough. You’re not going to get any compensation”.
However, this is a good step forward. We enjoyed the debates in Committee, on Report and at Third Reading and it was obviously a good use of parliamentary time. It is very nice to think that the Government have accepted many of the principles of what we proposed.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I echo quite a lot of what my noble friend said. We have moved in the direction of a report to Parliament and the role of the Secretary of State vis-à-vis the strategic highways company. I accept, I think, although like my noble friend I find the wording a bit peculiar, that that reinforces the application of the equivalent TUPE in relation to the staff of the Highways Agency.
The one point I am disappointed by, which my noble friend also mentioned, was that neither the Commons nor the Government have seen fit to strengthen the reference to road safety in the terms of the duties of the new company. It is a very weak form of obligation. It is slightly stronger than it was originally. The road investment strategy says that the Secretary of State must “have regard in particular” to the effect of the strategy on the safety of users. Later on it says that the company should “have regard”—no longer “in particular” —to the effect of the exercise of those functions on the safety of users. The phrase “have regard to” is the weakest form of legislative obligation. I had hoped that during the passage of the Bill we would strengthen that wording so that it would be an objective of the company and of the investment strategy to improve the performance on road safety. We have not got that and we are now at quite a late stage during the passage of the Bill but I hope that the Government will keep that under review as we go forward and the company is created. I do need to point out that I am a chair of the Road Safety Foundation. The anxiety that safety should be part of the DNA of the new body is broader than just among those who have any vested interests and certainly I would have thought that the Government could have moved further. However, on the rest of it, I thank the Minister for having moved a bit in our direction.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, my comments on these three amendments reflect my comments on the first group. I welcome them. Again, we spent a lot of time debating them, and it is really good that the Commons listened to the very strong pressure from the various cycling organisations and persuaded the Government that the new clause under Amendment 6 should go in. It covers everything that one could have asked for. It follows on, as the Minister said, from the delivery plan. A duty to deliver a strategy was needed, and what is in these amendments is very good. Subsection (9) even says what happens if the Secretary of State does not produce a strategy, which is very welcome. It would be nice if the Minister could give an indication as to when the first one might appear. Is it this year, next year or sometime never? I know it is always difficult for Ministers to commit themselves.
One thing occurred to me on reading this amendment. I read it as applying to all roads, not just trunk roads, but maybe the Minister will confirm that. I know that there are not many cyclists on trunk roads, as most find it much too dangerous, but trunk roads are useful highways, connecting towns, villages and cities that are a little further apart with a bit more capacity and higher speed. In the Netherlands, they are making high-speed cycle lanes where people are expected to go a bit faster.
However, it is a really good start. I congratulate the Government on listening to all the pressure that has come from the cycling organisations. I look forward to participating and taking this forward.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, from these Benches, I, too, very much welcome these amendments. As we discussed in Committee and on Report, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, we felt that this was an important bit that was missing from transport strategy. The Infrastructure Bill is an excellent opportunity to put that right. The early clauses sounded very woolly to me, but as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, pointed out, new subsection (9) makes it rather clear that this is expected to happen rather than being something that is optional. That is a major step forward. I assume and hope that this will go forward and that we will approve it as soon as possible.
The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that these amendments do not do very much for the Bill. All these points were going to be covered anyway. I do not think that the process over the past two weeks has done politicians any good at all. It was a hurried amendment in the Commons and the Government, under Liberal pressure, gave way. We now have a cobbled together lot of amendments which did not give the other case a decent chance for discussion. If anybody reads last Monday’s Commons Hansard, it is not an impressive debate. We have not had a sensible opportunity here, although the whole framework of what we are discussing has been discussed ad nauseam in this House.
I would like to ask my noble friend, particularly about item 6 in column 1 regarding what will take place in other protected areas, how many miles of coal-mine tunnel are under protected areas in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty? Of course, we must remember that these would not have been allowed under this amendment: the fracking pipeline is only about 6 to 9 inches, whereas a coal-mine tunnel is considerably more.
My noble friend Lord Framlingham has just mentioned ancient woodland. Will marine nature reserves will be classified as protected areas? How many more restrictions will there be on the industry? My noble friend the Minister was absolutely right when she said that health and safety risks can be managed with best practices. We need to show those best practices for the rest of Europe to follow.
Returning to point 6, is this a precedent for future development? If you are not allowed to drill a 6 to 9-inch pipeline a thousand feet down, presumably the Government will not build HS2 which will go smack through the middle of the Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty. There will be 11 kilometres of tunnels there. It will do considerably more damage than any whipstocking under an AONB from a small well. Presumably we will not have any more development. The Liberal party has closed the door on development in national parks and closed the door on the opportunity of growth. I think that a lot of people will use item 6 as a precedent in order to stop any future development at all.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I follow the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about geothermal plants. People may have read an article in the Times last week on 2 February about the Eden project, which is trying to develop the geothermal plant mentioned by the noble Lord, drilling several miles underground. It says in the article—it is quite surprising to me—that the water that will come out will eventually be 180 degrees centigrade, which is well above boiling point. That is wonderful. It would heat 4,000 homes and all the biomes of the Eden project. I hope that this geothermal drilling—which is purely water based, I think; there are no chemicals or anything else—will not be caught by these various amendments. To quote Michael Feliks, chairman of the Renewable Energy Association’s geothermal group:
“It would be a shame if geothermal energy ended up as collateral damage in a debate about shale gas fracking.”
It is a completely different thing. It is drilling, and it should be allowed under the normal planning procedures rather than coming into this Bill at all.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions, but particularly to noble Lords who have supported the government amendments in lieu of the amendments that were made in another place.
A number of questions were raised. I want to make sure that I respond to all of them, but there will be one or two questions that I cannot commit to answering now and on which I will have to write to noble Lords, such as the question posed by my noble friend Lord Caithness about the number of miles of tunnels going underground. I do not think that information is at hand, unless of course the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has the answer.
I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that our regulatory regime is robust. It will ensure that no hydraulic fracturing will be permitted where groundwater and drinking water supplies can be affected. We had a protracted debate not that long ago in which we made it very clear that this Government take very seriously that operations will take place only if all of the environmental impact assessments are met. I had hoped that I had laid out today very clearly in my detailed speaking notes our response to what the other House came up with on Report. We have bettered the amendments that the other place made, so that they will be able to stand up to legal challenge and to ensure that the safeguards that she and other noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, have asked for can actually be delivered.
It would be wrong to return to the detail of a debate that has been well practised in this Chamber. The industry is already voluntarily doing a lot of what was asked in the amendments put by the Opposition. I am pleased with the response from my noble friends about what we have taken on board. It is never about a U-turn for a Government, it is about listening carefully and then making sure legislation works. If the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, wants to make a political point out of it, that is entirely up to the noble Lord. I would say, however, that it is really important that responsible and sensible Governments look very closely at legislation and then respond. I think that the general consensus in the House has been that we have listened, responded and returned with a much better set of amendments, which answer exactly what noble Lords opposite and their colleagues down the corridor have asked for.
National Networks: National Policy Statement
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the Committee for allowing me to speak for a short time. I apologise for turning up late but my programme said that we were going to start at 3.45 pm. I apologise to the Minister in particular for missing the first part of her speech. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group.
Generally, I welcome this national policy statement. It has been some time coming but in the main it is good, and it will do an awful lot to make strategic development easier and possibly quicker—we will have to see how that works—and should certainly help integration, although the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has put some questions down that I look forward to hearing the answers to.
I came across an example a week or two ago when I was privileged to go to the Port of Felixstowe and meet the biggest container ship in the world, which came in there. The Chinese ambassador was there along with other important people. The noble Lord, Lord Deighton, was there, making a very important speech about how good the UK was for business, and how with these big containers you need proper road and rail links inland to ensure that the containers can get away and arrive. I did not say anything in the speeches but I went up to him soon afterwards and said, “The solution is in your hands. Why don’t you speak to the Secretary of State for Transport and a few other colleagues and get the Felixstowe branch doubled and improve the links across the country, which are really bogged down?”. He said, “Well, I’m talking to Hutchison Ports”. I said, “That’s wonderful, but they’re not the people who will actually be doing it”. Maybe the Minister could take that on board and see where it has got to, because it is a major hang-up in getting these extra numbers of containers on to the network to where they want to get to or come from.
My concern echoes the criticism of the Commons Transport Committee about the projections for road and rail that the NPS does not explicitly address the criticisms that many people have made. In a Question in your Lordships’ House a few months ago, we debated the fact that the predictions always show an increase in road traffic, when in fact if the predictions 20 years ago had been true, which said that we would more or less double the amount of traffic, we would probably have more than three times the amount of traffic now than we actually do.
There are many other problems that point to a failure of being able to consider alternative modes. If someone is proposing to build a motorway, or to widen a motorway, to increase the capacity, will anybody look at the alternative for taking it by rail? I think it probably stems from the way in which the projections are done. If you build a bypass or something and you get many millions of cars saving half a minute on their journey, and if you aggregate that up, it will give you a wonderful cost-benefit, in the positive sense, to build the road, without looking to see whether those people could have gone by rail or have cycled or walked. There has been massive criticism of this from groups such as the Campaign for Better Transport and the CPRE, which the Minister will have seen. I wonder whether the time has now come—now that this NPS will, we hope, be confirmed and published and we can all work to it—to reflect on whether there could not be more detailed discussion and investigation into the traffic forecast modelling that the department used, to consult all the experts and to see whether we can get something that is a little more acceptable to many of the users and developers.
Lord Berkeley
But surely resilience, either on rail or road, includes having alternative modes when something goes wrong. Is that not part of planning?
Baroness Kramer
First, that is reasonably well covered but in terms of determining how you cope with resilience, the resilience study for the south-west—a study which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will be very aware of—was also interesting because all modes were looked at in its production. However, it seems to me that it has to be apropos the event location that one is coping with, so we would need resilience on individual modes as well as for broader access. The NPS has that within its language. Part of the way in which the department and the Government are now working is also demonstrated by something like that resilience study, which addressed that wide range of issues. It is picked up again in the RIS where, for example, something such as the A303 is absolutely critical to resilience in access down into the south-west, even though the crisis was on a rail line at Dawlish. To tell the honest truth, I think we have that one sorted.
There are issues of integration and considering an overarching transport plan, which my noble friend Lord Shipley addressed and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, to some extent echoed. First, if one were to look at page 102 of the planning document—the very last page—it is quite instructive because it shows, as it were, the food chain. To me, the work on looking at alternative modes and setting out a broader transport plan happens much earlier up the food chain than in this planning document. It is too late by the time that progress has got as far as the NPS. There is a section called “strategy and policy”, which is a crucial area to bring in this thought around various modes and a much broader perspective on transport. Critically, and as I think I said in my speech, when it progresses to the investment planning and decision-making phase that would be where the RIS, the route utilisation strategies and the work required in the various control periods for Network Rail would appear. It is at those stages that those issues need to be addressed.
Once it gets to planning, it is not that one ignores integration and alternative modes but we would be just past that point when this document begins to apply. I think that is healthier. I say that for this reason: I look at what seems to have been real progression in this area over the last few years. If I had looked at transport planning even four or five years ago, I am not sure that when we looked at HS2 we would have been so incredibly focused as we are now on building that east-west connectivity across the Midlands and the north. It has become an implicit part of looking at HS2 to talk about not just HS3 but much more complex work. A significant part of the responsibility for that has now been devolved to Transport for the North—that is, having remembered its acronym, TfN—which will be producing its initial report in March. That devolved engagement is crucial to that step. That comes well before we would ever get to an NPS; it is a much earlier piece of thinking. Also, when we look on a project-by-project basis, Sir David Higgins of HS2—my noble friend Lord Shipley specifically raised HS2 and connectivity—has said that that is a key theme. He works closely with Network Rail around those issues, because as he builds rail infrastructure, building in the rail interconnection or ensuring that it is optimised will be key. Indeed, one reason that we have not finalised the route for phase 2 is that it is so important to bring connectivity into that picture. Much of that is relatively recent thinking, but it comes at a much earlier stage than the NPS. Very important issues have been highlighted, but I am not sure that they are something for this document. In fact, it would almost be a failure if we were suddenly to start considering that at the NPS stage. It has to have been dealt with much earlier in the process.
I completely agree with the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Berkeley, that rail freight interchanges are crucial. I think that there is now general satisfaction with the provision for that as described in the NPS document. It takes what the industry and much—although not all—of the environmental community thinks is an appropriate approach. We are investing heavily in access to the ports. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will know of the upgrade from Felixstowe to Northampton. Across the various controlled periods, we are looking at the necessary improvements for port capacity. An area that will need a lot of focus in future years is that HS2 releases west coast main line, east coast main line and Midland main line in ways that create capacity for freight that we have not been able to explore historically. Although freight always has to be near the centre of our thinking, there will be a great deal of change as we explore how we can maximise the benefits of that freed up capacity. That will be important.
On modal shift, we have our revenue fund—about £80 million—to try to encourage a modal shift from road to rail. I am now falling back entirely on memory, but I think that the road investment strategy highlighted some parts of that strategy as ensuring relevant port connectivity. If that is not right, I will write back to your Lordships, but I certainly remember that being a great subject of conversation and I am pretty sure that it ended up in the road investment strategy.
My noble friend Lord Shipley talked about continental gauge. My husband, who is now long dead, was one of the supporters of Central Railway, which proposed a dedicated freight line. I think that a Member of Parliament in the other place, Kelvin Hopkins, is a supporter of Eurorail. A number of such projects are coming forward; none is proposed at the moment. It will be complex to consider them until we have a sense of what HS2 releases.
Lord Berkeley
Just for the record, Kelvin Hopkins MP has a scheme which he has been promoting for several years. It is still on his table; whether it is on anyone else’s table, I cannot say.
Baroness Kramer
I do not think that it has come forward to Parliament. I am giving a personal view, but I believe that a major project on that scale is outside the NPS, just as HS2 is, and that the hybrid Bill process would be used because it affects so many communities and so many localised planning issues that require people to have a voice. I cannot believe that it would be appropriate to handle it in any way other than through the hybrid Bill process, but I could certainly be proved wrong in future. My sense is that it belongs there rather than within the NPS framework.
I think that I have covered most of the issues that were raised. As I have said, they are all crucial to transport thinking, so I appreciate the fact that they have been raised in the context of this opportunity to discuss transport. However, we have also to recognise that the NPS is a very specific document meeting a very specific purpose and it is with that in mind that I am narrowing down my comments. The NPS does not introduce new policy; it states current policy. It is a planning document and it is central to our long-term economic plan. We have responded seriously to discussion and debate in this House and the other place as well as in public consultation because we have wanted to get it right. I hope that, on that basis, your Lordships will feel able to support the document today.
Railways: Pacer Trains
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Kramer
I have to say to my noble friend that that last accusation is a new one to me. Clearly, the Chancellor gave a commitment to replace these trains. We also know that this is a line that is due for electrification. However, I am afraid I cannot share the details with the House until we get to the invitation to tender, because they are still being worked out. It will not be very long to wait; it will be in early 2015.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, while all this is going on, the Government are doing the opposite and giving even more trains to the south. Indeed, today the Minister for Transport, Claire Perry, announced that there would be 10 new four-car trains to take people between Milton Keynes and London. Last week, I believe, new diesel trains were ordered and committed to go to Uckfield and between Ashford and Hastings. Is it not time that this trend was reversed and that the new diesels went to the Northern area? Perhaps the people of Sussex and Kent could try out some Pacers for a few years and see how they get on.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, we are obviously anxious to phase out these Pacers rather than find them new homes. The noble Lord will be aware that we have orders from up and down the country for new rolling stock at significant levels; that includes the north—for example, on the east coast main line. An invitation to tender is coming very shortly in the new year. I cannot speak ahead of it, but I am reasonably confident that my noble friend will be happy.
Transport: Women’s Safety
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are currently taking to improve women’s safety on transport.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, we work on a number of fronts to improve safety and security for all passengers and staff. In particular, the Government are supporting a British Transport Police-led academic literature and tactical review on reducing sexual offending and improving perceptions of safety on transport. This research will be delivered for February 2015 and will support an international expert session to debate the findings.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Is she aware of a study recently done in the UK and Canada that found that,
“women passengers generally prefer staffing to technological solutions and are very skeptical of the tendency of”—
transport operators—
“to replace staff from trains or buses with automated machines”.
Will she encourage operators to have more staff and fewer machines and CCTV and to recruit more women to the front line, which women also prefer in many instances?
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I completely agree with recruiting women to the front line. It is also important to have a staff presence where that is feasible. I am very encouraged, for example, by Transport for London’s commitment to take staff out of the ticket offices and put them out on the platforms and places where the passengers are. However, if we were to man every station at all hours at all times, we would unfortunately have to close stations because of the inherent cost.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend and will briefly speak to some of the amendments in this group, namely Amendments 2, 2B, 5, 6, 6A, 7 and 7A. I will not repeat all that my noble friend has said, because the various amendments that we have tabled between us provide the basis for the proper link between primary legislation and the licence, which, as my noble friend said, is so lacking in the Bill.
I started off by looking at the relevant clauses of the Railways Act 1993 and the Railways Act 2005, which we discussed in Committee and in some helpful meetings with the Minister and officials, for which I am grateful. It was remarkably easy, at this comparatively high level, to cross out “rail” and put in “road”; they are very similar. If, as my noble friend said, we are to have a company that looks after the strategic roads in a way that is similar to what Network Rail became in September by becoming fully government-owned, it would seem logical that the legislation under which this happens would be similar.
I will not go through all the amendments in detail; my noble friend has done that very well. However, I have two questions for the Minister when she comes to reply. First, under the Bill, will it still be possible for Members of Parliament and of this House to table Written Questions and ask questions of Ministers, as we currently can with the Highways Agency? Noble Lords will know that we cannot do that for Network Rail, because if you table a question about it the answer comes back, “Write to the chief executive”. I am sure one gets good answers from the chief executive, but one does not see the answers that other noble Lords get to the questions that they ask the chief executive. I hope that the same thing will not happen with the strategic highways company and that we will still be able to table questions about its operations and the company generally, and to get a proper Written Answer or be able to have an Oral Question or debate on it as the circumstances demand.
I also hope that when Network Rail becomes subject to the Freedom of Information Act on 1 April next year, that situation will apply to it. Clearly, we would not want to ask whether a motorway sign or signal had been moved; that would be a ridiculous waste of ministerial time. On the other hand, there are many things that it would be useful to ask such questions about for the purposes of parliamentary scrutiny.
My second question for the Minister concerns my Amendment 7A which relates to Section 48 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. This exempts Crown-owned companies, or officers or companies of the Crown, from being taken to court by the Health and Safety Executive if it believes that they have contravened the Act. I know that the Highways Agency itself is exempt, being a Crown agency. It would be nice to know whether any change was planned in this relationship, and therefore the exemption, when the strategic highways company comes into existence. I believe that Network Rail does not have an exemption, because the Health and Safety Executive, through the Office of Rail Regulation, has taken action against it on several occasions. There should be a balance between the two and as much transparency as possible. I am very much looking forward to what the Minister has to say in response and fully support the amendments of my noble friend.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
I shall say just three things. The Government are mistaken. The Office of Rail Regulation should, under that title, oversee roads as well. In spite of all the arguments, if it were signalled, it could change its name at some future date. It could be planned for and there would not be a lot of expense. It would be much more understandable to motorists and everybody else who the regulator was, whether it was a railway regulator or a transport regulator.
I also endorse the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about safety. One thing that the Office of Rail Regulation has done is to drive up safety standards on the railways. Although the Government keep saying the safety standards on the roads are the best in Europe, these are really quite deplorable, as we see with the continued deaths of cyclists in London, for example.
Lastly—I know I am reaching for the moon here—would it not be better to be honest and say that we have to adopt road pricing some time and, to make it acceptable, to say that the money raised from it would be used for roads and motoring purposes? If you explain what the money is for, people are much more likely to embrace the idea. A recent opinion poll in one of the national papers showed that people were against raising taxes, but if they were specifically asked whether they would pay more tax to improve the health service, they said yes. The same applies to road pricing.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, this amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish a report on allowing a public sector rail operator to take on lines and challenge the train operators on a genuinely level playing field in the public interest, securing value for money for passengers and taxpayers.
Many noble Lords will no doubt recall the exchanges that we had at Question Time last week on the future of east coast rail. I congratulate the Minister on her performance then in defending the Government’s position, which I regarded then, and still do regard, as indefensible, but I hope that today her response will be somewhat different. We should learn the lessons of east coast rail, where we have seen the benefits of a not-for-dividend operator running a rail line.
East coast rail was brought back into public ownership in 2009 after the private operator reneged on its commitments. It is efficient, it has returned more than £600 million to the taxpayer and it invests every penny of that profit back into the company. It provides a quality service, achieving record levels of passenger satisfaction and punctuality. The new timetable that it introduced in 2011 allows it to operate 7,000 more trains each year, and it now has 500,000 more passengers. It has also delivered for passengers. This year’s fare rise was in fact a real-terms cut—something that no private franchise was able to do. In fact, elsewhere, season tickets have risen in price by 30% since 2010—a stark contrast.
Despite that, the Government appear intent on pressing ahead with the privatisation of intercity east coast services. Will the Minister confirm that the cost to the taxpayer of reprivatising the east coast could run to £6 million? It is important that the Minister responds to this question and says what steps the Government are otherwise taking to improve the functioning of the railways. It is unacceptable that our rail lines are, according to the 2011 McNulty review, up to 40% less efficient than the best-performing European networks.
We know that the Conservative Party is unwilling to take a pragmatic approach on this issue. Its Railways Act 1993 effectively prohibits a public sector operator, except in the most restrictive circumstances. But the public do not feel this way. Only 28% of those polled support the sell-off of east coast. Can the Minister say on which side of this divide her own party finds itself? Many will recall her party’s support for a public sector operator while it was in opposition. It is time to put an end to this rigid ideological approach, which also sees the Government trying to rush through a sell-off of the 40% public stake in Eurostar before we have even seen the conclusion of my noble friend Lord Myners’s inquiry into the Royal Mail privatisation.
This amendment would give the Government the opportunity to reflect and to alter their stance. It is time to learn the lessons of east coast and legislate to allow a public sector operator to take on lines. It should be able to challenge the train operators in the public interest on a level playing field. That is the way to secure the best deal for passengers and for taxpayers. I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment so that we can move in that direction. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, it is worth reminding the House that we already have public sector operators in this country; we have lines owned by Dutch railways, French railways and German railways. They are not called that in this country—they have different names—but they are owned by those countries. On the continent, some of them operate effective, positive and well liked services; some of them are pretty awful. When you hear that Eurostar, which is still 40% owned by the British Government—although it is for sale—is allowed to bid for the east coast, but a company that is perhaps 100% owned by the British Government would not be allowed, it does seem a bit odd. I am sure that the Minister has an answer to that, but it seems to me that we are selling off our crown jewels in the shape of a piece of Eurostar and allowing the companies that buy them—perhaps from the continent, perhaps from elsewhere—to come back and provide a good service on certain occasions, but to compete a little unfairly against what our own companies might do if they existed.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I have followed this debate over the years with some interest and have a number of questions arising from this amendment that I would like to put to the Minister; perhaps my noble friend on the Opposition Front Bench would also like to consider them. I have no interest to declare in this debate other than the fact that I worked for the railway industry, as did my father. The romantic view, perhaps, of British Rail that some of my colleagues occasionally expressed was one that neither my father nor I shared.
Working for a nationalised railway industry, as I did before being elected to the other place and before being appointed to this House, was a massively depressing experience. Year after year, the amount of finance available to the railway industry was the subject of debate. It was quite often cut back. Short-termism was the only way to describe the finances of BR. Although I am no great supporter of the form of privatisation that the Government have inflicted on us, at least it has provided some degree of long-term continuity so far as railway finances are concerned—a continuity that did not exist when the railways were nationalised. Indeed, some of those in my own party used to mock what they called the concept of Morrisonian nationalisation. They said that it was not nationalisation at all and that the railways were being run by the civil servants. That view was widely shared by many of us who worked in the industry at the time.
I speak to this amendment not from any romantic attachment to a nationalised railway but as a confused supporter of the railway industry who wonders how we got into this particular mess in the first place as far as franchising is concerned. I have said in previous debates that what we have at the present is neither one thing nor the other. It is certainly not franchising. If we look at the new trains that are in the process of being ordered and built, it appears that they were designed by civil servants. The Government or civil servants set the fares as far as companies are concerned. The Japanese build the trains and the rest of us ride around the country in what remains of the whole industry. It is a confused picture, to say the least, but I do not feel that the amendment would help to clarify matters particularly.
I have one or two questions I want to put specifically to the Minister about the current process, before we look at whether or not directly operated railways should be allowed to bid for franchises. How are these decisions actually taken? The whole thing is shrouded in mystery. Various companies, we understand, put forward bids for the franchises, and a process of evaluation takes place behind the scenes. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how this process is conducted and who is involved in it.
If this amendment were to be accepted, would it mean that one desk in the Department for Transport would put together a bid and its merits or otherwise would then be decided by another desk in the Department for Transport? I hope that I am second to none in my admiration of the legal profession, which does not go unrepresented in your Lordships’ House, but if the answer is yes, one can imagine a bonanza for lawyers in the event of an appeal. Indeed, the taxpayer has just paid heavily for the mess that was the west coast main line franchise. Perhaps the Minister could tell us in passing exactly how much that cost.
If the amendment were accepted, how much does she envisage it would cost the taxpayer to fund legal inquiries or complaints if DOR’s bid—an internal departmental bid in some ways—were accepted over and above a private sector bid: or, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley rightly reminded us, a bid from a nationalised railway industry in Germany, France or Holland, to name but three? I hesitate to sound critical, but one can imagine the legal profession rubbing its hands at the prospect of such a financial fracas taking place behind the scenes.
Allowing DOR to bid is not particularly revolutionary. In the debate on privatising the railway industry in 1993, your Lordships’ House accepted an amendment moved by that well known left-winger Lord Peyton of Yeovil to allow the British Railways Board, as it then was, to bid for franchises. That amendment was struck out in the other place and we have the system of privatisation, franchising or whatever you like to call it that we have now. I do not wish to add to the difficulties of the Minister if, as I suspect, she rejects this amendment, but some clarification is long overdue before she does so as to exactly how this process works at present and how it would be affected if the amendment were accepted.
Lord Berkeley
“Strategic highways company licences
(1) A licence under section 1 may include—
(a) such conditions (whether or not relating to the licence holder’s being responsible for assets under the authorisation of the licence) as appear to the grantor to be requisite or expedient having regard to the duties imposed by section 4; and(b) conditions requiring the rendering to—of a payment on the grant of the licence, or payments during the currency of the licence, or both, of such amounts or amounts as may be determined by or under the licence.(i) the Secretary of State,(ii) the Office of Rail Regulation, or(iii) any other person, or any other person of a class or description, specified in the licence, except a Minister of the Crown or Government department,of a payment on the grant of the licence, or payments during the currency of the licence, or both, of such amounts or amounts as may be determined by or under the licence.(2) Conditions included in a licence under subsection (1)(a)—
(a) may require the licence holder to enter into any agreement with any person for such purposes as may be specified in the conditions; and(b) may include provision for determining the terms on which such agreements are to be entered into. (3) Conditions included in a licence under subsection (1)(a) may require the licence holder—
(a) to comply with any requirements from time to time imposed by a qualified person with respect to such matters as are specified in the licence or are of a description so specified;(b) except in so far as a qualified person consents to his doing or not doing them, not to do or to do such things as are specified in the licence or are of a description so specified;(c) to refer for determination by a qualified person such questions arising under the licence as are specified in the licence or are of a description so specified;(d) to refer for approval by a qualified person such things falling to be done under the licence as are specified in the licence or are of a description so specified;(e) to furnish to a qualified person such documents or other information as he may require for the purpose of exercising any functions conferred or imposed on him under or by virtue of the licence;(f) to furnish to the Secretary of State or the Office of Rail Regulation such documents or other information as he may require for the purpose of exercising the functions assigned or transferred to him or it under or by virtue of this Act.(4) Conditions included in a licence may contain provision for the conditions to cease to have effect or be modified at such times, in such manner and in such circumstances as may be specified in or determined by or under the conditions; and any provision included by virtue of this subsection in a licence shall have effect in addition to the provision made by this Part with respect to the modification of the conditions of a licence.
(5) Subsections (2) and (4) are without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1)(a).
(6) Any reference in subsection (3) to a “qualified person” is a reference to—
(a) a person specified in the licence in question for the purpose in question, or(b) a person of a description so specified,and includes a reference to a person nominated for that purpose by such a person pursuant to the licence.(7) Any sums received by the Secretary of State or the Office of Rail Regulation in consequence of the provisions of any condition of a licence shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund.
Lord Berkeley
I shall be brief in speaking to this group of amendments because we have discussed at some length the licence for the strategic highways company. My Amendment 9 is a provision similar to what Network Rail now has. I was interested in the Minister’s comment that it is a licence for a commercial model and that the strategic highways company is not going to be commercial. I do not know whether Network Rail was ever commercial in her definition of the word, but it certainly is not now and I notice that the Government have not tried to change the licence to reflect any alteration. Perhaps she has a quick view on that. The draft licence that we received on 3 November was certainly an improvement on the previous version, for which I am very grateful.
The only other thing I wish to comment on in this group is my Amendment 17, which is to do with the duties of the strategic highways company. Whether they should go in a licence or in some other document, I do not know, but the draft licence from the Department for Transport is a licence to build roads, to take into account environmental concerns and to do it reasonably efficiently. Given experience of legislation over the years, there is a need to have in the Bill, for preference, or in a licence, if it must be that way, a wider role and wider responsibilities for this company to go cross-modal. That includes looking at road and rail—I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group—passenger as well as freight, efficiencies, travel choices, developments in sustainable locations, as sustainability is very important in all this, and different modes to secure the economic, social and environmental gains jointly and severally. I do not think that these are in the draft licence at the moment. If the Minister would look at this again and see whether some—preferably all—these issues could go into a licence, I would be much happier that the strategic highways company was going to be part of a wider transport and environmental structure, taking into account the needs of customers, the environmental needs, roads, railways and developments in local transport. With that short introduction, I beg to move.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I have Amendment 10 in this group. Again, as in the previous debate, my noble friend Lord Berkeley has put his finger on another lacuna in the Bill. Nowhere does the Bill spell out the functions and duties of the proposed strategic highways company. There is a whole schedule, 26 pages long, which largely consists of adding,
“or a strategic highways company”,
but does not actually say what that company should do. I find this extraordinary and not consistent with earlier circumstances in which we have set up public bodies or corporations to do a particular job, some of which are still doing it, where there was clarity in the legislation as to those functions. Those functions have to be economic, social and environmental these days. The Government should at least consider making sure, at later stages, that the Bill spells out the central duties of the companies. I hope that the Minister will take that away.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response. We must recognise that she has moved a long way on these discussions in the last month or so and I very much welcome her commitment to come back at Third Reading with some of these issues—particularly those in my Amendment 17—in the Bill. As she says, some of the things are in the draft licence but, as many noble Lords have said, we would like to see it strengthened a little more. I hope that we will be pleased with the result at Third Reading in a week or two. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I support my noble friend on this group of amendments. I will briefly develop his theme by looking at the amendments in the group that relate to the monitor. I have proposed that the name of the Office of Rail Regulation should be changed, but that does not matter very much.
In Clause 9, the Government have introduced Amendments 41 and 43, both of which are welcome. They are a step forward from our discussions and I am certainly pleased to see them there. I have one or two amendments to those two amendments on the Marshalled List, which are complicated to go through and I am not going to attempt to go into any great detail now. Their purpose is twofold. One relates to safety and the other efficiency.
On the railways, one of the two tasks of the Office of Rail Regulation is to ensure that the network is operated as safely as possible under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, which is slightly modified for railways. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, the approach of the amendments is to do the same for the roads. Let us not forget that, as my noble friend said, just under 2,000 people were killed on the roads in the past year compared with none on the railways—no passengers, very few rail workers and I am not sure about the road workers. Sadly, suicides are a separate issue. The difference between 2,000 on the roads and none on the railways indicates that the structure of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act is working very well on the railways. In these amendments, I propose that a similar thing should be done on the roads, supervised by the Office of Rail Regulation.
The other relevant matter in this group is that, as we discussed briefly in Committee, the monitor should not only have the ability to check on the efficiency of the strategic highways company, but have powers of enforcement if it felt that the efficiency was not as it should be. Again, that is contained in the amendments. One thing worries me about the Government’s amendments. There is a constraint on the independence of the monitor, which is serious. The rail regulator is totally independent. He cannot be sacked except under extreme circumstances that we do not need to go into. But in Amendment 43 on general duties that the monitor should act under, the Government say that the principles are that:
“(b) regulatory activities should be targeted only at cases in which action is needed”.
Who decides when that takes place? Who decides which actions are needed? Surely it must be the regulator who decides. If that is the case, then proposed new subparagraph (b) in Amendment 43 is superfluous. If it is the Government, I suggest that they would be interfering in the independence of the regulator.
In Amendment 48, the guidance that the monitor would receive in proposed new subsection (2) includes:
“The Secretary of State and the Treasury, acting jointly, must give the Office”,
of Rail Regulation,
“guidance as to the circumstances in which the payment of a fine under [this] section … should be required”.
Whereas the ORR can fine Network Rail whenever it likes if it has due cause, when it comes to the strategic highways authority it has to ask the Treasury’s permission first. That sends completely the wrong message. It would be good if the Minister could agree to look at those two things and the general safety outline as to how it will be implemented under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act as part of the discussions between now and Third Reading.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I have listened to the argument with interest and some incredulity. Seeking to compare the number of deaths on the railways with the number of deaths on the roads ignores major differences between the two forms of transport. The roads are essentially a matter for individual drivers and many accidents and deaths are caused by serious driver error. It can be because the vehicles have not been properly inspected. Older vehicles always have to have annual road testing. Of course, there are many other causes, such as the terrible bonfire that swept smoke right across the motorway and caused serious accidents. But none of those can conceivably be laid at the door of the highways authority.
The design of the roads, signposting, warning signs and a whole range of things are the responsibility of the highways authority and would be the responsibility of the strategic road company, but a great many of the issues for which the strategic highways authority would be made directly responsible—the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, talked about legal liability—cannot conceivably be laid at the door of that authority. The language that he has used in his various amendments simply does not draw the distinction between issues that are clearly the responsibility of other authorities, notably the whole question of licensing, inspection and testing of vehicles and the question of skills of drivers and so forth. I do not see how the highways authority could be made responsible for all that.
I studied the noble Lord’s amendment and listened to his eloquent speech in which he made it clear that he has a very real interest, although non-pecuniary, in road safety, but it is overstepping the mark to try to lay the liability for that sort of thing at the doors of the strategic highways authority. I will listen to what my noble friend says having studied her amendments on this issue with interest. For the moment, I am not persuaded on this occasion by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.
Lord Berkeley
“Formation of route strategies: consultation and co-operation1AA (1) The strategic highways company shall produce route strategies for all highways under its control (“specified highways”) and shall ensure such strategies remain up to date.
(2) In deciding how to divide up specified highways into route strategies, the strategic highways company shall have due regard to local government boundaries and travel to work areas.
(3) Route strategies shall consider—
(a) other transport modes, including railways and port facilities, that are served by specified highways or run parallel to them;(b) the interaction between specified highways and other highways;(c) opportunities to secure the expeditious movement of people and freight;(d) opportunities to reduce environmental impacts.(4) The strategic highways company must—
(a) carry out such consultation, and arrange for such publicity, as the strategic highways company thinks appropriate in relation to a route strategy;(b) consult such persons, and such descriptions of persons, as may be prescribed;(c) have regard to the responses to the consultation and publicity in deciding whether to proceed with a route strategy.(5) In setting or varying a roads investment strategy, the Secretary of State shall have due regard to route strategies.
(6) The Secretary of State may make regulations about route strategies.”
Lord Berkeley
I speak briefly on this amendment. We are in Schedule 2, Part 1 now. It suggests that there need to be route strategies before the Secretary of State can really put forward investment strategies. We have discussed this before—in route strategies it seeks to ensure full consultation. The Minister has been very forthright in her commitment to consultation, which of course I welcome very much. It is, however, another way of saying how important it is, when one is considering route strategies, to look at all different modes, including not only the local government travel to work areas, how to move people around and ensure consultation.
The proposal is a very useful precursor to an investment strategy, and I hope it will give the impression outside, as it is designed to, that transport, surface transport, road, rail and other means of transport are being looked at in the round rather than just having an investment strategy in which we are investing in roads willy-nilly. I beg to move.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I will speak briefly to the amendment. We recognise that what the noble Lord is seeking to do is to remove some ambiguity, but we are not comfortable with his amendment because we think it would prevent the company from adapting the route strategy process to meet changing needs and circumstances. That would make it somewhat undesirable. We recognise what is driving this. It seems that it is being driven by a desire for greater clarity, so I am happy to commit to him to include a requirement in the final version of the statutory directions and guidance along the lines that the company will agree the process with the Secretary of State and publish it. That should provide the combination we are seeking, both of clarity and of flexibility. I hope that on that basis the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to the Minister for that short reply. I shall read it with interest, but it sounds good. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I will speak to one or two of the other amendments in the group, and hope that the Minister will be able to respond under the slightly odd arrangement we have.
In Clause 8, on my Amendment 33A, the Government have moved a long way in changing the name and activities of the Rail Passengers Council. The point of the amendment is to emphasise the need for them to consider not just the users of the network, but also those who do not currently use it or who cross over the network. In other words, they must look at the people who are not using it, at the potential for modal shift and at reducing the need for travel. They must look at the thing in the round before they come up with their excellent data, which I am sure they will do on the roads as they currently do for railways and, of course, buses.
Moving quickly, I raised a question about Amendment 48 in a previous grouping—I got it wrong—and the Secretary of State giving the Office of the Rail Regulator guidance as to the circumstances in which payments were defined. I hear what the Minister said. My question is whether that is the same guidance and instruction that the ORR currently has with the railways. If not, why not?
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 33, which asks the watchdog to look after the interests of cyclists and pedestrians. As we know, and as the department has recognised, a strategic road network can often be a barrier for pedestrians and cyclists. That means that there are many potential users of the network who may wish to use it to cycle to work but currently cannot.
The legislation would not allow Passenger Focus to consider their views. The chief executive, Anthony Smith, has been quoted as making clear his view that, given the legislation, Passenger Focus could focus only on actual users of the strategic network along with, perhaps, a second tier of fleet managers marshalling its use. While he quite understood the concerns around the remit, any change must be a matter for government and the legislative process. This is therefore our chance to effect that change, against a background in which the Government continue to respond to the increasing pressure for the use of cycles by saying that they are very much in favour of such growth.
Of course, the greatest deterrent to cycle use in our towns and cities and on connecting roads of any significance is danger. Because we do not set out to protect cyclists adequately, our present figures are dreadful in comparison to many other European countries. In the UK, 2% of journeys are made by bike, compared with 10% in Austria, 19% in Denmark and 27% in the Netherlands. Some 22% of all journeys in the UK are of less than a mile, but a fifth of these are in a car. Some people are, of course, obliged to use a car for a journey of less than a mile. However, the great deterrent to using the far more efficient and effective cycle is that people consider cycling to be dangerous.
The Government promised to support cycling but, of course, Cycling England, the pressure group for cyclists, was shut down; the body which co-ordinated policy and action on cycling, which had a £60 million annual budget, was shut down; and the Government also abandoned the cycling towns and cities initiative which we, as the previous Administration, had initiated—and it was delivering results. The proportion of people cycling at least once a month in England dropped from 15.3% to 14.7% in the year to October 2013. No one is going to say that that is a dramatic drop, but it is movement in the wrong direction when there are calls on all sides, to which the Government subscribe, for cycling to be encouraged. There was a decline in all regions in the United Kingdom.
I am therefore seeking with this amendment for the Government, who alone can take the legislative initiative on this—that is quite clear—to give a voice to cyclists and pedestrians, and to ensure that we make some progress on the aim of improving the use of cycling, and even walking over short distances. In order to achieve that, certainly with cycling, we must overcome the anxiety of the public that cycling on so many of our roads is just not safe enough.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Berkeley
“( ) The Office of Rail Regulation is renamed as the Office of Rail and Road Regulation.”
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, in this grouping I have five small amendments, Amendments 36 to 40. They really suggest that perhaps the Office of Rail Regulation needs renaming, whether as the Office of Rail and Road Regulation, the Office of Road and Rail Regulation, the Office of Surface Transport or something like that. Given that the Government and Passenger Focus have agreed to change that organisation’s name, I wondered whether the Minister had any proposals to make this change.
Amendment 39 tries to link in with the licence and other things about which we were talking. Probably the most important amendment in this group of five is Amendment 40. Can the Minister explain why Clause 9(5) is there? Basically, the strategic roads authority would not have to provide any documentation to the monitor or office of road regulation if it was confidential. It could not be compelled to produce such information.
I do not believe that that is the case for the Office of Rail Regulation or Network Rail. Network Rail should provide every bit of information that is required. I know from discussions in Germany with the German rail regulator that the German railway, Deutsche Bahn, succeeds in preventing the regulator from investigating some sections too thoroughly because it was not given the information. It is a bad precedent. Would the Minister consider whether this paragraph is necessary or could be changed?
The final two amendments in this grouping are Amendments 41 and 42. Perhaps I should speak to Amendment 42 and the Minister could answer. She should then speak to Amendment 41, which is a very good amendment that I welcome. It concerns compliance and fines, and I am sure that the Minister will talk about fines. Look at new subsection (1)(a) and (1)(b) on a road investment strategy and directions and guidance, proposed in government Amendment 41; it would be rather good to have in addition two paragraphs (c) and (d) that referred to compliance with safety and efficiency requirements. It seems to me that that would tie up the role of the ORR and make sure that it had to investigate all these issues such as safety and efficiencies and, if necessary, levy fines or impose any other penalties that it felt should be imposed. I beg to move.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, I have previously discussed the rationale behind a number of government amendments which will further define the duties of the monitor. Amendment 41, which I have already described but will move shortly, if I understand it correctly, makes it clear that if the company fails to comply with its statutory directions or have regard to guidance, the monitor may issue fines. We have covered Amendment 43, which will give the monitor a duty to drive performance in a number of areas.
Amendments 38 and 39 propose an alternative to the Government’s definition of the monitor’s function. However, as I have mentioned, the Government’s amendments to the Bill already describe what the monitor should have regard to when monitoring the strategic highways company. With those in place, the distinction between “monitoring” and “ensuring” should become academic.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has also proposed that we remove subsection (5), which prevents the ORR requiring the company to provide it with information that it would not be compelled to produce during civil proceedings. Our legislation already grants the Office of Rail Regulation strong legal powers to require the strategic highways company to disclose data. However, I reassure noble Lords that this does not mean that the monitor has carte blanche to access every file held by the company. For example, the company should not be obliged to disclose particularly sensitive documents—for example, legal advice. This is a perfectly reasonable proposition.
In assessing the performance and efficiency of the company, there is little information that the company would not be compelled to disclose during civil proceedings that would help inform the monitor’s analysis. In addition, pitching this at the level of civil proceedings has a precedent. The provisions in subsection (5) mirror those in Section 58 of the Railways Act 1993.
As for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, to the government amendment, I agree that the company must comply with its health and safety obligations and have due regard to maximising efficiency. It is also important that the monitor has the power to sanction the company if its performance and efficiency have been insufficient, as the Government’s amendments have set out. However, as we have already discussed, I do not believe that it follows from this that the monitor needs further powers to issue sanctions for health and safety. The Health and Safety Executive is responsible for policing this area and every company has an obligation to comply with the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, regardless of what our monitor is empowered to do. As there is already an effective and respected body in this area, I feel that it should be left to continue with its good work.
Turning to the second addition, once more I agree that maximising efficiency on the design, construction and operation of the highways is important. When we discussed Amendment 43, we made it clear that the monitor has critical responsibilities in assessing the key themes of performance and efficiency; and it will need to use its powers of sanction accordingly. The Government’s amendments ensure that these issues are given appropriate regard. The monitor will have the power to sanction the company if it is satisfied that the commitments of the road investment strategy, which will include commitments on construction and on efficiency, have been contravened.
This leaves the issue of design, which is currently the remit of existing planning authorities. Planning authorities operate effectively and judiciously all across the country. They currently have the responsibility for approving the design of any highways and are well placed to consider local issues. This system works well, and I believe that matters of design should remain in their capable hands. They need not be duplicated by the monitor.
Finally, I turn to the first amendment in this group. This proposes that the Office of Rail Regulation be renamed the Office of Rail and Road Regulation. As your Lordships may be aware, following discussions in Committee we have announced that we plan to change the legal name of the watchdog from the Passengers’ Council to Transport Focus. I can understand why the noble Lord proposes this change for the monitor. This case, however, is less straightforward.
There is the issue of the proposed name. While it may appear that we are indeed talking about an office dealing with road and rail issues, I urge caution around “regulation”. The monitor will not be a regulator of roads, at least in the market-setting sense in which the ORR currently regulates the railways. It will not control the direct costs on individual motorists for using the network, as it does on the rail side, because for the vast majority of roads such costs do not exist. In fact, the tools available within a hypothetical office of rail and road regulation would be very different, depending on which side of the road or rail fence it was acting.
We have discussed this question with the ORR itself. It is very alert to the new challenges of its role, and to the value of handling road and rail policy in one organisation. It does not, however, think that a name change is appropriate at this time.
Unlike Passenger Focus, the ORR has to manage a relationship with its levy payers in the rail sector and has a formal role in making sure the rail market functions well. Given that this is a substantially different role to roads, it would rather carry out the road work under a strong free-standing brand—the strategic road network monitor—while retaining its current statutory name for its existing work. This will ensure that any confusion is avoided and that, in the eyes of the public, roads monitoring is clearly differentiated from rail regulation. This will make it clear that neither road nor rail users risk having their interests eclipsed by the other.
There is also a practical issue with the noble Lord’s approach to renaming the Office of Rail Regulation. Considering the varied legislation in which the name “the Office of Rail Regulation” appears, the proposed amendment would not be in itself sufficient to make the change. There would also need to be significant tidying up. That is why we are renaming Passenger Focus, through secondary legislation, in which these implications can be worked through. If we were changing the name of the ORR, we would want to follow the same approach.
The amendment that I propose is an important safeguard in ensuring appropriate monitoring of the strategic highways company, and I hope that your Lordships will support it. Conversely, I believe there is a strong argument against each of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and ask that he withdraw this one.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her full answers to those questions. I shall not push the ORR issue again. It is not something that has to be top of the priorities, but I am grateful to her for her explanations, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Kramer
Your Lordships have previously asked if cyclists and walkers are included in the definition of road users of the strategic road network and other highways. The answer remains emphatically yes, and I have moved an amendment to make this absolutely clear for the provisions of the Bill where we use the phrase “users of highways”. I should also point out that this definition—I have double-checked this with the lawyers—absolutely does not exclude any other users who may not be mentioned.
Lord Berkeley
The House should congratulate the Minister on the amendment. We have discussed it so often. We have been told on many previous occasions that Governments do not like lists; you can understand that. I shall not table an amendment saying, “Please add Segways and horses” or anything else. I take what the Minister says: this covers everything.
In that vein of thanks, the two other amendments in this group are to do with cycling and walking strategy. Some noble Lords have already spoken on cycling and walking. It may seem odd that on strategic highway routes there is not much cycling and walking. I suggest that there should be. It is important that, as part of the strategies that the strategic highway company will have to look at, it should have a separate cycling and walking investment strategy.
In this House we have debated cycling on many occasions. The pressure is on from many areas, not just from the cycling and walking organisations but also from those who believe that they are pretty healthy forms of transport, to get the Government to commit to a long-term strategy with some long-term funding. So far, Ministers have not been able to make any commitment to funding, but the recommendations from the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group’s report last year suggested that £10 per head of population per year—which is about half the figure in many continental countries, such as Belgium, Holland and Denmark—could be allocated on a long-term basis to improving cycling facilities, infrastructure and other things,
I know that Ministers have in the past said that this is a local problem and that it should therefore be funded locally. The problem is that local funding does not usually stretch to such things. Many people believe that, combined with a draft strategy, something like what is in Amendment 55 and the proposed new schedule in Amendment 96 should be done for the benefit of health, and for cyclists and walkers, and to reduce road congestion, pollution and the other things that we talked about earlier.
I look forward to the Minister’s response, and take into account that this is only the small tip of an iceberg. As my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham said, most journeys take place on local roads. Still, it is a start, and if it could happen on the trunk road network, I suspect that the other roads would soon follow.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I, too, very much welcome the Minister’s amendment. It offers clarity and shows that the Government are quite clear that cyclists and walkers are important on the highway network. I admit that I could not resist backing the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, because, although I am not an absolutely regular cyclist, I get my bike out quite frequently in Cornwall, which is not the easiest of terrain to cycle.
I was in continental Europe over the weekend, and it was astounding to see how important cycling can be in terms of an alternative transport means and strategy. If it is one that is generally safe, and one that is accepted among families, then it becomes a normal way of getting to school, of getting to work and moving around. Indeed, I remember doing it as a child back in the 1950s and 1960s. I always used to cycle to school, save the bus fare and spend it elsewhere. That was my disposable income for the week.
Given the excellent work that, in particular, my right honourable friend Norman Baker has done in the other place in the past, and the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, this is something that we need to build on. That is why I was very pleased to support this amendment. It would be good to move to a proper formal government strategy in this area. It is also all part of our commitment to reduce carbon emissions in the transport sector, and a very important way of doing that. Having said that, I also understand the argument that—hopefully—as we devolve more fiscal powers to cities and non-metropolitan areas as well, this should be a major part of their focus of work, too.
It would be a sign that the Government is looking at this area and has some strategy that they see as a framework. It would also give a signal that the Government think that this is important, and would get them ahead of the curve on this important change that is gradually happening. It would be so much better for all of us: for emissions, for physical exercise and for congestion. It would have big pluses for all those points of view. That is why I am pleased that the Minister has proposed the amendment that she has, but I hope that the Government can consider this and take it forward in some way or another.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Berkeley
“Part 4ALevel crossingsLevel crossing bill
Within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, Her Majesty’s Government shall introduce into Parliament a bill to give effect to the recommendations of the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission on level crossings (Cm 8711), and which is substantially based on the draft Level Crossings Bill prepared by the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission.”
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 100. These amendments are nothing to do with fracking. They take us back to infrastructure of the road and rail sort. This amendment came about because, quite conveniently, the Law Commissions did a study on the legal situation of level crossings. I believe they took about seven years to do that, so they must have done it extremely thoroughly. They produced an excellent report about this time last year which made a number of recommendations and, very helpfully, included a draft Bill to implement them.
The purpose of it all was because, as we will see, some of this legislation goes back to the first railway. Some 150 years or so ago, there were of course no internal combustion engines and if there were level crossings they were probably to take horses and carts across. It is very different now when in some places, as noble Lords will know, the pressure on level crossings for access is pretty extreme whether it is from the railways or the roads, and particularly in urban areas. When the railways want to run more trains, they find that they cannot because people complain too much that the gates are shut too often and vice versa. Obviously, the solution is to build a bridge or tunnel but that does not really go down very well in urban areas either.
This report by the Law Commissions really deserves some detailed consideration. I tabled these amendments in July and the Government had not responded so I was tempted to try to get a response by tabling the Law Commissions’ draft, which was about 50 pages long. The noble Baroness was quite pleased when I withdrew from that. However, it has resulted—we can debate whether it is a result or a coincidence—in the noble Baroness kindly sending to me and colleagues the government response to this report, and putting a copy in the Library. It is an excellent response, so my purpose in moving this amendment now is to see whether we can press the Government a bit more for a timetable and to discuss one or two of the issues on which I think they might not agree with the Law Commissions.
One issue which covers the whole thing is whether level crossings should be subject to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, as most similar activities are. It may come up on Report when we start talking about the strategic road company, which the Minister kindly gave some of us a briefing on yesterday, and the comparison of safety relationships between road and rail. But on level crossings, the Government have moved a good way in accepting many of the recommendations to make the thing simpler. I do not know how many of the Committee have managed to read these 28 pages overnight but perhaps I could mention a couple of issues. If your Lordships have not, it does not really matter.
For me, if the Government went ahead with their recommendations it would be 90% good and I hope that they will. They are quite right to query again how much this should apply to heritage railways, especially when there are volunteers. That needs taking with a bit of a pinch of salt because dealing with a level crossing on a 100 miles per hour railway is not the same as dealing with one on a 25 miles per hour railway, so they have done well to question that. I mentioned the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act; we could go through that again.
It is a good idea to get rid of all this old legislation. I am told that there are 800 Acts applying to level crossings. Network Rail has to deal with all these things and if we started talking about how much all these changes might cost, I get the impression from Network Rail that a lot of money would be saved—especially on lawyers, which is always a good thing. On whether the Office of Rail Regulation should introduce codes of practice, I think that it should but it is not really the end of the world if it does not. But on the regulations, I worry about what happens when it comes to consultation between road users, planners, highways authorities and rail people, and whether the Government have got it quite right as to who has the last word on how discussions will take place as to who gets priority. That needs a lot more consultation but it is still in the report. As I said, the legislation goes back to 1839. I shall not read out all the different bits of legislation because it will take too long but this certainly needs further work.
The closures need to be made simpler. Network Rail has told me that it costs a great deal of money, time and effort to get closures. Some people will debate whether Network Rail should be allowed to make closures, but when you look at the railway safety statistics, level crossing accidents come very high up the list of causes of accidents—leaving suicides aside, which are slightly different. As we try to make our railways more efficient, run faster and more frequently, we need to look at protecting the public by making some of these closures. I hope that the Minister will accept that they can go ahead. I am not going to go through any more, particularly the Scottish ones. We can possibly leave those to the Scottish Parliament if we get some devolution, which is another issue.
In her covering letter, which is very helpful, the Minister said:
“I have … asked officials to develop, as a matter of urgency and no later than the end of 2014, an action plan which will outline where we believe further work is required and how this will be taken forward”.
That is very good and I welcome it, but there are always two sides to these things. Perhaps the Minister can answer either tonight or in a letter how many of these changes actually need legislation—primary legislation, secondary legislation or none at all? The Law Commissions proposed one great big Bill but it does not have to be done that way. I worry after the next election. Which Government would want to bring in a level crossing Bill in their first session? They would not because they would have other priorities.
Therefore a timetable would be good, showing what could and could not be done. We could then start a process of discussion about some of the issues in this government response, which would be very helpful. It really is important. It will save Network Rail a great deal of money and it will help avoid some of the disputes that take place between road and rail users and their operators. Everyone must agree that we should get rid of legislation going back to 1830-something. Now is the time to do it. With that quick introduction, I beg to move.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and in particular his request for the Minister to consider a timetable. I will not pretend that I have the knowledge of the railways that he has, but I have worked with the Law Commission on a number of its proposals and Bills. It is punctilious about avoiding political controversy and exceptionally thorough in its consultation; as the noble Lord pointed out it has been involved in this in the seven years of consultation. It therefore does an exceptionally valuable job in updating, tidying up and spring cleaning our legislation.
There is, however, a danger attached to that, which is that the Law Commission regards legislation proposals that it has brought forward that have not been implemented within a certain period as needing to go back for further consultation because it needs to make sure that the public mood and the facts have not moved on. I support the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in this because I hope my noble friend will realise that if this matter is left on the shelf, the Law Commission will say that it is no longer fit for purpose and will need to start consultation all over again to see what has happened in the intervening period since the last consultation was carried out.
I support what the noble Lord is suggesting and I hope that my noble friend will be able to act as Dyno-Rod for departmental inertia to make sure that it is brought forward quickly to avoid having to go round the whole course again.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for raising this issue. I know that he speaks also for the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who has had to leave. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter. It is an area in which the Committee rightly takes a very keen interest.
As we all know, the UK has the best level crossing safety record in Europe. We want to ensure that it is maintained and, of course, to see that it is improved. We are absolutely not complacent about level crossing safety. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, rightly pointed out that, as we run more trains and operate many of our lines at full capacity, the issue becomes more acute. He mentioned that the relevant cost fell on Network Rail. I can understand why people say that other road users should pay for the provision we are discussing. I do not want to fight over who is going to pay. When it comes to taking a decision on a closure, we need to move forward in an accelerated fashion. Therefore, I will accept a little injustice in order to make sure that we are really efficient when we need to be. I do not think that is what is inhibiting the system although I take the point that the noble Lord makes.
This amendment is about the law surrounding level crossings. At present, the legislative framework surrounding the management and operation of level crossings is, frankly, antiquated and complex. I have been passed a note informing me that 10,000 Acts apply to level crossings. I did not even know that we had 10,000 Acts. That is the most extraordinary figure and it says it all. Indeed, that complexity is the reason why we, or, rather, the Government of the day, requested the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission to undertake a review in 2007. The review was initiated in 2008. I take this opportunity to place on record my thanks to the Law Commissions for the tremendous amount of hard work which has gone into developing their report, and recommendations which were published in September 2013. The examination of 10,000 Acts is demanding work.
The Committee will appreciate that this is a highly complex area which touches on a wide range of issues including railways, highways, health and safety, planning, land and criminal law. The Law Commissions’ 86 recommendations represent the culmination of five years of investigation. Following legal and policy analysis, the Department for Transport has published its response. I apologise that noble Lords have not had a little more time to read it. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was always going to be the most dedicated reader and I congratulate him on going through it. The response indicates which of those 86 recommendations we intend to accept, reject or implement in a modified format.
We accept the case for reform which the Law Commissions have presented and have accepted the majority of their recommendations. However, in some key areas—for example, closures and the application of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned—the Department for Transport’s response indicates that we believe we need additional policy and legal consideration. This arises very much as a result of talking to the industry. The Committee will understand that some level crossings are site specific and that that creates additional complexity. However, we believe that we have to pursue these issues because in some cases there may be alternative proposals that work rather better.
On closures, the department needs to be convinced that the process recommended by the Law Commissions would shorten timescales and cut costs, which it is meant to do. We need convincing that that is what it would do. Stakeholders from both road and rail have voiced concerns about the possible implications and have pointed out to us areas where there is lack of clarity. We need to explore those further.
I very much understand that this is a probing amendment but I am told by those who understand procedure that it is a real oddity to put in a piece of legislation a clause which would legally commit a future Government to introduce a complete Bill. Although I know that is not the purpose of the amendment, technically there is an issue there. I should also draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that the Law Commissions’ recommendations contain significant devolution elements which we must and will discuss further and reach agreement on with the Scottish and Welsh Governments before implementation could proceed. As I said, we are also aware of stakeholder concerns about some of the recommendations. They must be addressed because this is highly practical, operational stuff and we have to get it right.
We want to move quickly, but we recognise that there is work to be done, and we are trying not to set ourselves an artificial deadline. However, I am very concerned that this does not get kicked into the long grass—as, I suspect, are all of your Lordships who have spoken.
We have said that we will come forward with an action plan. We will produce it by the end of 2014. It will be an outline of where we think further work is required and how it can be taken forward as a priority. I point out that that action plan will address some of the specific issues raised. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked whether most of this requires legislation. Unfortunately, it does, but we will look for those areas where we do not need legislation, because that will give us a little flexibility. There are also additional complications that flow from our need to get the Law Commission to consider whether it can simplify some of its recommendations. The action plan will cover that issue as well.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley can agree that this is the best way forward; I hope that he will feel comfortable to withdraw his amendment, because it seems to me that we are all pretty much on the same page on this important issue.
Lord Berkeley
I am very grateful to the Minister for a comprehensive reply. It was a probing amendment, and one would not want the text to commit a future Government. She has outlined many of the challenges. I am sorry that I got the number of Bills wrong by a factor of about 12, which is pretty bad. If we can have a timetable, with all these issues addressed and listed, including issues relating to Scotland, Wales, the EU and whatever, that would be extremely helpful. If the noble Baroness can get the agreement of Network Rail and, we hope, all the train operators and everyone else, that is a major step forward. I again thank the Minister and the Law Commission, because it has got the issue on the agenda. Let us hope that we can see it driven to a conclusion in less than the seven years that it has taken to produce its report. On that note, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I support this amendment. When I read it I thought that it was a breath of fresh air, which, from my small experience of some of these regulatory bodies, is very necessary and probably should have come earlier. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, talked about the importance of competition, which we discussed under the Energy Bill. An awful lot of the regulators, which he rightfully lists, under Section 7, are by definition monopolies, because that is the way they are.
I certainly believe that monopolies are generally inefficient because they are not subject to competition. One role of the regulators should be to make them more efficient and make sure that they reduce their costs as much possible and increase their efficiency. On the rail side, the Office of Rail Regulation has a duty to look at Network Rail’s costs and to make a decision on whether it is efficient. If it is not, the ORR has a duty to reduce its requirement and to reduce its costs while not affecting the efficiency of the operation. As I said in a recent speech in your Lordships’ House, the ORR has already reduced Network Rail’s costs by about 40% in 10 years. It is rightly intent to continue that trend with another 20% or 25%.
That is designed to make sure that the company is efficient and that, therefore, the customers, who largely are the train operators, get the services at the least cost and look after the interests of the customers. The other thing that the regulator has to do is make sure that the company is properly financed so that it can deliver on its objectives.
Vehicles: Heavy Goods Vehicles
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have plans to strengthen the enforcement of drivers’ hours and construction and use regulations with respect to heavy goods vehicles.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, the Government have plans to strengthen enforcement, including: continued targeting; introducing four new purpose-built Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency check sites; using the joint DVSA and police HGV task force in London set up last year; and a fixed-site automatic number-plate recognition camera network. We are consulting about proposals to use financial penalty deposits for historical drivers’ hours offences, developing plans for some specialised vehicles, and working to get more serial offenders to traffic commissioner inquiries more quickly.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that comprehensive Answer. I would like to know when some of these things are going to happen, but they sound really good. My reason for asking was that I recently met an HGV driver who had driven on trade plates from the south of England to Edinburgh, and then back to the south of England and back to Edinburgh, within 24 hours. I hope that these regulations will stop that kind of thing. Will the Minister confirm exactly how it could be stopped in the future?
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, the noble Lord raises an important issue about trade plates. Vehicles which have not yet been put into service are exempt from the EU drivers’ hours rules and so do not need to use a tachometer. However, drivers of these vehicles would need to comply with the GB domestic drivers’ hours rules, which restrict driving to 10 hours a day with a duty limit of 11 hours a day. Obviously, for enforcement, without the tachometer we are very much dependent on intelligence. I have passed the noble Lord’s information back to the various authorities to pursue. Intelligence is an important part of enforcement here. We also rely heavily on whistleblowers. Drivers are encouraged to report any breaches of these rules to the DVSA on its helpline, which is 0300 123 9000. All calls will be treated in confidence and driver anonymity is ensured. I will confirm to the noble Lord the various processes that follow on from the receipt of that information.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Lord Berkeley
“(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.
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.
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.
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.
Lord Berkeley
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.