Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, we start on quite a fundamental point, on which even the Minister on occasions has not been too secure in the position that she has adopted. When I was asked last night to prepare a short summation of this part of the Bill for wider circulation, I wanted to get things as accurate as I conceivably could, but I found myself wrestling with whether I was referring to one company or companies. Every time that I used the word “companies”, it looked singularly ill placed with the surrounding arguments as far as the Bill is concerned. Therefore, Amendment 1 asks the Minister to clarify what is, after all, a pretty fundamental point, and we would not want to continue our deliberations without having cleared it up.
At Second Reading, the Minister certainly said:
“Yes, it is the Government’s intention to set up just one company. It is standard template language in legislation, I understand, to create the option of further entities. It has no sinister meaning at all behind it. The intention is for a single company, but of course the lawyers always think about what-ifs in the most extraordinary way”—
she did not sound too convinced by the argument herself. However, she went on:
“I guess we did not really kick back against that but, yes, it is one company”.—[Official Report, 18/6/14; col. 896.]
I congratulate her on putting up a pretty stout defence of her position, but even in that stout defence there is a certain ambivalence, as there is in the Bill. That is why Amendment 5 in my name would remove a provision from Schedule 1 that makes rules for when two different strategic highways companies interact, which certainly suggests that the Government are planning for more than one strategic highways company.
It looks a fairly limited argument to say, “The lawyers guard against every development and therefore we may need more than one”. The debate about the Bill will be coloured very significantly indeed if we must take on board the fact that there may be two strategic highways companies. To make the most obvious point, we will want to know how they will interact, and we have amendments down that relate to that. If the Minister is able to clarify the issue and state that, as it is the Government’s intention to establish just one company, she will look at the Bill again to ensure that it is framed in that way, I am quite sure that that would set a lot of minds at rest and make for a much more straightforward discussion.
I assure the Minister that whether there is one or more than one strategic highways company has quite a conditional effect upon the legislation. Our concern is not just about one passing fancy of the lawyers but about something that may be of real substance. Some of my more prophetic colleagues say, “Why don’t you come to terms with the fact that this is all about setting up the strategic highways authority for privatisation? Of course, you will want more than one, and this will neatly fit in with privatisation plans in the not-so-distant future”. Well, I am not a cynical person and I accept what the Government put in the Bill at face value.
It is on that basis that I move this amendment, which would delete “one or more companies” and insert “a company”. In addition, as I said, Amendment 5 would delete sub-paragraph (3) in Schedule 1, which suggests that the existence of more than one potential strategic highways company is not a legal oddity caused by standard drafting—lawyers always make life so much more interesting for us all when they turn to drafting—but a scenario actively envisaged by the drafters of the Bill. It clearly makes provision for what should happen in the event that one strategic highways company should wish to build a bridge connecting to another. One and one still make two and therefore this problem could arise only if there is more than one strategic highways company.
There is understandable concern that the Government are considering a model where the SHC might be franchised out in some not-too-distant future. If that is the intention, it reinforces our many concerns about this measure, but I venture to suggest that this concern is as great as any. Therefore, I ask for reassurance from the Minister that, when I next write about the Bill and try to communicate intelligently with a wider audience, I am able to refer to one company in the singular the whole time and make some coherent sense out of this measure. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment because there are already precedents for having a multiple infrastructure. One is the M6 toll road. I believe that the company running it was given a 90-year lease to maintain and operate it and charge whatever it liked as tolls for the next 90 years, or whatever it was. If, in the future, there is a plan for road tolling, as appears more likely with this Bill—I certainly welcome that and will be talking about it in later amendments—whatever tolling the Government of the day propose, the M6 toll road will not be part of it. Whether that will increase or decrease its traffic, I do not have a clue; it depends on what the charges are. It is a particularly bad example because most of the freight goes on the existing road and damages it quite dramatically—the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has an amendment down on road damage—but this is just one example of what can happen if there is no co-ordination over the whole country.
A second example is that, just after the last election, there were various plans and threats from the then Secretary of State that Network Rail would be broken up into other regions or zones because it was not performing properly. The idea presumably was that there would be competition between those zones for quality, capacity and charging, and for anything else that you come across. Luckily, that did not go ahead. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. The idea of having a different charge for whichever way you go between A and B would be just ridiculous; the business would not work.
The problem here is that, as the Bill stands, you could have more than one infrastructure company. Wales might well choose to be different. I do not think Scotland is part of this legislation, so the charges will be different there. Then there will be all the arguments about doing one thing one way and then leaving the rest of it and coming along and doing something else that is slightly different. There would also be the interfaces and the knock-on and consequential effects, which might be quite serious. I think that my noble friend is quite right in tabling this amendment and speaking so eloquently in favour of it. I do not know why we need more than one infrastructure company to run the trunk roads—there are not that many of them, actually—and why we cannot leave it as a singular company.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, said, I have emphasised before that we have no current plans for multiple strategic highways companies. This is not a sinister issue. We recognise that at some point there may be further companies, but the purpose of that might be, to give a good example, if one wanted a more regional structure for the equivalent of the strategic highways company. As noble Lords know, this Government are committed to devolution, so that is not something beyond the bounds of the imagination, but it is not anything currently contemplated. Our focus at the moment is a single highways company; there is nothing more sinister.
I also point out that one reason why I referred to the lawyers is that in this Bill we have sought clarity. The noble Lord will know from the number of Bills with which he has been associated over the years that it is quite common that a single phrase covers the plural. In fact, from the lawyers, I have this:
“Words in the singular include the plural, and words in the plural include the singular”.
It has been common practice in many Bills to allow for the fact that there may be more than one; it has simply been less explicit than we have been in this document. We thought that for the purposes of plain English this approach would be wise. There is no sinister context to any of this. We simply want to ensure sufficient flexibility for a future Government, so that if they decided that more than one company would be beneficial they would not have to go back and start legislation from scratch. In saying that, I am effectively responding to Amendments 1, 2 and 8, as well as Amendment 5, which as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, said, is consequential to the other amendments.
I want to pick up on some of the issues mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Berkeley—that this is somehow some sinister mechanism for achieving privatisation. Nothing could be further from the reality of this Bill. The SHA is owned solely by the Secretary of State; if he were to cease to own it, it would lose all of its powers. There can be no way in which this company can be privatised. If the Secretary of State were to cease to be its owner, effectively it would cease to have any functions, powers or anything else. It would take a separate Act of Parliament to create a privatised entity. Everyone should be clear on that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the possibility that this could be some mechanism that in some way affected tolling, or future tolling. I point out to him that specifically under this legislation, where we have existing toll trunk roads, such as at Dartford, the Severn crossing and the M6 toll, these concessions remain in the same relationship to the Secretary of State as they currently have. They do not develop a new relationship under the auspices of the strategic highways company. We expect the concessionaires will continue to exercise their existing rights and discharge their current obligations. Tolls and congestion charges would therefore be set by a combination of public authorities such as the UK Government, devolved Administrations and local authorities, as is the case today under existing contractual mechanisms. I hope that with those assurances the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise to the Minister and the Committee that I was not here for the previous bit; I am afraid that I am boxing and coxing with the Chamber at the moment, and have probably already offended the rules of the House by nipping out during the Minister’s reply to move this amendment. Some of this amendment is relevant to what noble Lords have just been discussing on the previous amendment. Indeed, the first part of my amendment is a consequence of trying to clarify that we are talking about only one company and not several. That confuses people, particularly in local Government, who anticipate a degree of regional structures down the line. I know that the Minister will have cleared up some of that.
My second point relates to the issue of privatisation, of which the Minister was speaking when I came into the Room. Clause 1(3) of the Bill as it stands is branded as the way in which privatisation is prevented by the Bill; namely, that the designation would terminate if the company were sold or otherwise disposed of. To me, that seems a funny way of doing it. You will have a company which employs all the people who are at the moment employed by the Highways Agency. If it were somehow to be bought, all its duties would be removed. Surely it is far easier to give some parliamentary control over this process. If we are moving to a hived-off company, structured under the Companies Act but owned wholly by the state, and if it is the intention of the Government to keep it that way, why do we not state baldly in the Bill that it cannot be privatised except by primary legislation? That is what is proposed in the second part of my amendment. It may not be ideal, but it is a good deal better and clearer than what is in the Bill.
There are clearly worries. The first thought of most people when they heard that the Government were going down the road of hiving off the Highways Agency was, “This is the first step to privatisation”. There was alarm at that. There might have been in some quarters—but not ones that I have come across—some joy at the prospect, particularly were it to be related to road pricing, which in principle I do not oppose but is politically rather difficult for any of us to support, particularly a few months off an election. It is easier to assert the will of Parliament and say, “This is not privatisation. If there is any prospect of that changing, you will need a new Act of Parliament”. That is what my amendment proposes. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley
I support my noble friend’s amendment. I am glad that he is here, because I am not sure that any other of us could have moved it. He did it very well. I want to compare this situation with what is happening to Network Rail, of which I declare an interest as being a member.
I have just come from a meeting with Network Rail where we have been told what is going to happen by 1 September, when it comes under government ownership. That sounds as if it is going to be quite easy, apart from changing all the memoranda and articles and allowing the Secretary of State or the accounting officer in a department to make certain appointments and control things. However, that is being done without much, if any, parliamentary scrutiny, because I do not think that anybody is particularly worried about it. Network Rail has been in the private sector up to now, but it has had £4 billion or so a year from public funds. It has managed to work and not cause trouble; otherwise, this would probably have happened sooner. However, there still have to be changes. I worry about it going in the other direction. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, the consequences need some public debate, because there might be many more people who are worried about it, not least the people who work for the new company while it is government owned. It is reasonable to have some parliamentary scrutiny of a change. Therefore, I support the amendment in his name.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I imagine that the Minister will have little difficulty in responding to this amendment. She is obviously going to continue to deny that privatisation is anywhere on the horizon as far as the Government are concerned—so that is one defence. Secondly, I hope that she recognises that there would need to be significant parliamentary action if privatisation of a significant company such as this were carried out. I am therefore anticipating the Minister quite enjoying responding to this amendment, which I am glad my noble friend has aired.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I support the proposal that Clause 1 should not stand part of the Bill, as it queries whether the clause—which is the whole proposition here—is sufficiently coherent and clear as to what it intends to do. As a Roads Minister, I was responsible for at least one of the proposals for the A303 and remember that we talked to everybody in the community, including several different sets of druids, and told them that the Stonehenge tunnel would be built. However, as I said at Second Reading, no sod has yet been turned and all they have done is close one road.
I understand the Government’s intention to create a steadier position through having a slightly more arm’s-length relationship, but this is half-baked. It is neither fish nor fowl. This will be a company that is wholly owned by the Government and which—to address the point that has just been made—cannot raise its own money. The Minister has made that clear to me, both in writing and in person. I thought the main advantage of having the hive-off would be that the body could raise its own funds, even if subject to broader controls from the Treasury, but the Minister makes it clear in her letter that its situation will be no different to the current one of the Highways Agency. That seems to undermine the main advantage of establishing an arm’s-length body. The Government’s proposal incurs all the costs, all the confusion and all this great legislation in the Bill and all the schedules attached to it, but it does not, of itself, provide the funding, the strategic intent or the independence from Government and, crucially, from the Treasury. It will not avoid what has been a stop-go process for the past 30 years.
If the Government were proposing a new corporation that was properly set up and run and which, although still owned by the Government, had its own structural basis and accountability, as well as the ability to finance its activities in various different ways, I could see that there would be a significant advantage. With this halfway house, which is not even a halfway house, I see very few advantages. Therefore, I think that the Government would be more sensible to leave the Highways Agency where it is, give the agency more money and give that over a longer period of time—if that is the Government’s priority—and, if necessary, think up a fuller, clearer, more comprehensive proposition for what kind of highways organisation we need in this land. The answer to that might well be in the territory that my noble friend Lord Davies referred to, because what we perhaps actually need is a transport infrastructure company rather than one that deals with simply 2% of our roads.
If we were to do that, we could start to deliver the investment required for a genuinely integrated transport policy, whereas the Bill, as I am afraid I have said before, seems to be about changing the names on the doors without changing much else.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I would just like to ask the Minister where this figure of a £2.6 billion saving comes from. The two organisations Network Rail and the new strategic highways company will be quite similar, but one difference between them, which we will come on to in later amendments, relates to the role of the Office of Rail Regulation. Over the past 10 years, the Office of Rail Regulation has required Network Rail to make savings of about 60% of its turnover. That is quite a big saving, which has been achieved, while keeping the service going and the quality improving, because the regulator has very strong powers. If the savings are not made, or if the resulting performance of the network is bad, the regulator can fine Network Rail, as I believe it is planning to do next week.
The problem here is that the rail regulator will not have such powers over the highways authority but will simply monitor. You can sit monitoring things all your life, but you cannot incentivise or require an organisation to make the changes that it should. I am sure that there are changes to be made. I am sure that significant percentage savings could be made over quite short periods. On whether those would be the same as in the case of Network Rail, they probably could be, because Network Rail started off as a nationalised industry, which was probably pretty inefficient to some people. Although the Highways Agency has improved over the years, there is probably a long way further to go. However, unless we can get the ORR to have the same powers not just to monitor but to control and enforce cost reductions, I am not quite sure where we are with this.
Listening to other noble Lords, I am beginning to think that the only benefit from this that I have heard is the idea—which the Minister has, of course, denied—that the Bill is about getting the Highways Agency ready for privatisation.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, perhaps I should declare an interest in that I, too, am a regular user of the A303. When driving down there, one of the greatest moments for me is being able to see Stonehenge, but I know that the fact that I can do so is not necessarily good for the millions of people who go to visit it. More seriously, perhaps I could also declare my interests for the rest of the Committee stage of this Bill. I am a director of Wessex Investors, which would have an interest in the outcome of some of the planning implications of the Bill, although I do not intend to speak on those particularly. Wessex Investors could also potentially have an interest in some of the energy provisions, as it is starting to negotiate with an organisation on an energy project in the south-west. However, I do not think that any of those affect what I am going to talk about.
I, too, shall be interested in hearing answers to the questions on this asked by the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Davies, but I want to make the point that it is important politically that the Government are saying in the Bill that we have had enough of the stop-start, ad hoc investment plans for roads, and we need to move on to a much more mature and grown-up way of looking at infrastructure in the highways sector. Whether that is absolutely dependent on changing the name and function or legal entity of the Highways Agency, I am not absolutely sure, but I know that the Minister will come back on that when she answers the debate.
However, the good thing is that there is a real intention to start to mirror the situation that applies to rail. My understanding of this is imperfect and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will know far more about it than me, but, as I see it, we have a good example from Network Rail, for which we now have a £38 billion programme over the next five years providing the investment needed to keep this country moving and to move things forward and modernise that network. That seems to be incredibly successful as regards usage and how that has worked over the past decade and into the future. If we can start to replicate that in the way we treat roads in this country, that would be positive.
I am not a great person for advocating huge investment in the strategic road network—apart from for the A303—but that clearly needs to be done in some areas, and on a programmed and predictable basis so that the Government, users and contractors know that it will be rolled out and actually happen rather than be subject to the next budget cut. I therefore welcome that, and hope that the Minister will be able to reply in such a way as to show that this change of the legal status of the Highways Agency will enable that to happen. Clearly, we need to do that.
Lord Berkeley
If I may just respond to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, let me say that I, too, congratulate the Minister on what has been announced today about the things happening in Cornwall. To go back to the noble Lord’s comment about the long-term finance, I certainly agree with him that if this change enables the longer-term finance that Network Rail has at the moment, it will be a major step forward. I worry that I do not see that in the Bill—maybe I cannot find it, and perhaps the Minister will be able to put me right. However, I worry further, that although Network Rail has it for the next five years, where is the commitment beyond that for the railways? If that does not happen for the railways, it probably will not happen for the roads. I was going to raise this later, but since the noble Lord raised it, let me ask: is there the opportunity to have a discussion before Report committing the financing of this new agency—the Highways Agency and maybe Network Rail—to a five-year programme? If that does not happen, it would need primary legislation to change it. That is probably a bit of a tall order, but it would be interesting to explore.
Baroness Maddock (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register, although I do not think that any of them have any particular relevance to what we are talking about today.
Following my noble friend Lord Teverson, of course we all have our favourite roads. Many people will be familiar with the A1 north of Newcastle and the issue of dualling it. Therefore, as I have lived with that, having now been married to the MP there for 13 years, I would be grateful to know how the Bill might help or hinder what has been a rather sorry tale of getting quite advanced on the dualling of that road, and then it all going backwards. It is now going forwards again, but I would be grateful for any information my noble friend can give me on that.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, Schedule 1 is 26 pages long. It is devoted almost entirely to inserting in the Highways Act the name of the company rather than the Secretary of State, or vice versa, and a lot of other administrative matters relating to assets, contracts and so forth. What it does not do—and I think it should—is to describe the responsibilities of the company and the scope of its activities, to which my next amendment relates.
This amendment is a shot at describing what I think will be the responsibilities of the company. This is Committee stage and, therefore, I hope that the department might accept the principle and draft a better description. However, essentially, somewhere in the Bill—I would prefer it to be in the body of the Bill rather than in a schedule, but the schedule is where the detail on the new company is spelt out at the moment—it should state what the functions and responsibilities of the company are.
The amendment refers to the obvious things: the construction, the maintenance and the improvement of the road system; traffic management for that system; and safety for that network. When I mention safety, on which I have amendments later on, I should inform the Committee that, since Second Reading, I have acquired an interest in this area in that I am now the chair, taking over from my noble friend Lord Dubs, of the Road Safety Foundation. Some noble Lords may recall that safety was a significant element when I was Roads Minister. Certainly, it is underplayed in this Bill and should be an important part of it, as are traffic management, speed controls, and so forth.
There is also the environmental dimension. There are problems about the construction and operation of roads. Somewhere in this Bill we need to say more clearly that the company, and not the Secretary of State any more, is now responsible for the environmental impact of the roads which are run by the Highways Agency. That includes the level of emissions which traffic management creates and whether that is going down and making a contribution to our carbon saving. It includes also the level of air pollution, which is largely proportionate to congestion and which, again, the Highways Agency network should be making a contribution to, as well as other things which are not perhaps so obvious, such as the run-off of water from highways, which has a significant effect on water systems—we have just passed a Water Act in which the quality of water is an important issue, including that of groundwater. Although most new schemes provide some better storage and diversion of water, from a lot of the old roads it still goes back into the ground or into the water system.
The amendment also refers to another responsibility, which is for research and development. I think that I am right in saying that the Highways Agency has its own R&D budget, but the Department for Transport also has a roads research budget. Is the whole of R&D on roads now to be the responsibility of this new company, which would probably be quite sensible? The Bill needs to be clear that the R&D on roads, traffic and the impact of roads is one of its responsibilities. A final dimension of the responsibilities that I am suggesting is the necessity to engage with road users and local communities, and the ability to enter into contracts with other providers. We will come later on to issues of co-operation with local authorities, and so forth. A key responsibility will be relations with road users themselves.
This amendment is my shot at this issue. I suspect that there could be a better one—but it is rather odd that a whole new nationalised infrastructure corporation should be established without the primary legislation saying anywhere what its responsibilities are. Therefore, I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I support my noble friend in his Amendment 4, and I shall speak to the other amendments in this group. On Amendment 4, he is absolutely right. The strategic highways company needs to have responsibility for all the things that he has put in the amendment. I remind the Committee that there is very strong evidence that a month or two before the Olympics, when the air pollution on one or two of the trunk roads in London was reaching Chinese levels, the solution by the Mayor was to cover the monitoring points with plastic bags, which of course reduced the level of pollution inside the plastic bags but did not much help anybody else. But this needs to be done by the strategic highways company, and I would suggest that it needs to be supervised by somebody. That may be a role for the Office of Rail Regulation, or whatever it is to be called in future, because these are very important points.
My noble friend is right in his comment about research, but there needs to be some research into non-trunk roads, which are a very large part of the road network. I hope that that can be taken into account as well.
Amendments 6 and 7 relate to the 20 pages of consequential amendments to which my noble friend referred. It relates to something that may have got lost in the search for consequential amendments—the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the question of which body is responsible for collecting litter on different roads. These two amendments are designed to make sure that the strategic highways do not get left out of the wrapping up; otherwise, we will see them covered in litter from head to foot.
I shall not read out all the parts of my amendment, because everybody can read them, and it probably would not make much sense anyway—unless you put a wet towel on your head.
Finally, my noble friend did not mention Amendment 61, which follows on from Amendment 4 and is to do with the transfer of additional functions to the strategic highways company in Clause 13(2). It covers highways and planning, but I agree that it should cover road safety as well, because that is a terribly important part of it. We will talk about safety comparisons later, but it would be good to see road safety in there, or something like it.
Lord Bradshaw
The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, with which I agree, mentions “speed control systems”. We are considering the Deregulation Bill on Monday, which makes specific provision for a lot of the enforcement of speed and other offences to be undertaken by people who go round with pads rather than the modern method of using cameras. Will the Minister cover that, or at least take it away and get sorted out the apparent contradictions between those two pieces of legislation?
Lord Berkeley
“Duties of Strategic Highways Company
(1) A strategic highways company has, in relation to areas for which it is appointed, duties to—
(a) plan, monitor and manage highways for which it is the highway authority in order to secure economic, social and environmental gains jointly and severally,(b) secure the fullest possible use of sustainable modes of transport, including by—(i) widening travel choices;(ii) unlocking development in locations that are sustainable or assisting in making them sustainable;(iii) encouraging highway users to make more efficient use of vehicles by increasing average occupancy and loading rates; and(iv) working in partnership with operators of passenger transport and freight services, as well as local authorities and those responsible for major trip generators.”
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, to some extent Amendment 13 follows on from my noble friend Lord Whitty’s Amendment 4 on responsibilities and scope. There is a strong, if not stronger, argument for having in the Bill a clause which sets out the duties of the strategic highways company, because there is already legislation which puts duties on the Secretary of State or the regulator as regards railways. Some noble Lords will recall the Railways Act 2005 and the Railways Act 1993, which was the basis of privatisation. The duties there included promoting,
“improvements in railway service performance … to protect the interests of users of railway services … to promote the use of the railway network in Great Britain for the carriage of passengers and goods”.
I was very pleased to see that goods got in there. The list of duties continues:
“to contribute to the development of an integrated system of transport … contribute to the achievement of sustainable development”.
I could go on reading out Section 4 of that Act. It very much mirrors what has been achieved by successive Governments and rail regulators such as the Office of Rail Regulation in succeeding years through putting those basic principles into effect. This is quite important, and we have the opportunity to put a similar range of duties on the strategic highways company—or companies, however many there are.
Looking at this amendment, it is important that we start to include the cross-modal issues that I and several other noble Lords spoke about at Second Reading. We should look at modes of transport such as highways and railways—probably cycling and walking as well, and maybe other things in the future—on a cross-modal basis, with the duties to secure something like, as I put in the amendment,
“the economic, social and environmental gains jointly and severally”.
I am sure Ministers could come back with a better version, but I hope this is a useful basis for suggesting what the duties of this strategic highways company should be. Unlocking development is important, as is encouraging occupancy and loading rates for passengers and freight and looking at the need to drive, the need to move around and, of course, its sustainability.
We shall be talking about some of these things in later amendments, but it is important for an organisation such as this one to have duties, which should be in the Bill just as they are for the railways. I have tried to mirror what is in the original Railways Act. It has changed over the years and is in a different format now, but the duties are still there, and if we had something like this for the strategic highways company, alongside the responsibilities that my noble friend Lord Whitty talked about, it would make us all feel a lot more comfortable. I beg to move.
Lord Bradshaw
I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has said, but will add something. You can argue for or against it, but having chosen to go down the route of rail regulation, there is one thing I really would like to be assured about. We know that the motorist—maybe “road user” is the right term—is to be represented by Passenger Focus. That of course covers the railway, bus and tram industries; it has seen incremental growth, and I think the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, had a good deal to do with its genesis. With railways, buses, trams and the other things for which it is responsible, it has a right to get information from the regulated party or from the party for which it is responsible. A train or bus company cannot refuse such a request. I would like to be assured that the strategic highways company, too, will not be able to refuse a request for information from Passenger Focus acting in pursuance of its duties to represent road users. I am quite happy that it should represent them, but I do want it not to be treated any differently from the way it is treated in other industries.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and to the Minister for her response. I get the feeling that we are being directed towards this lovely, short licence document, or the longer one, as being the answer to everything. It is not clear to me—maybe because I do not understand it—when we will see the longer version, which will have as much detail in it as possible before Royal Assent, and whether we will be able to debate it. If we are not, it is pretty important that there is some reference to a strategy, such as a road investment strategy or, if the Minister prefers, a transport investment strategy, because there is none at the moment.
We do rail one way and roads another—we have debated that very often in the House. They have different criteria; they do not seem to talk to each other, and they have different forecasting methodologies. Is there to be some read-across between how the railways are operated and how it is intended that the strategic roads are operated? It may be that things have moved on since the Railways Act 1993, with the Railways Act 2005 and the high-level output specification used to specify what the railways should do, but there needs to be something in the Bill to set the strategy and perhaps the duties. We can debate whether it is to be the Secretary of State or the regulator, but to just dump all this into a licence that we may or may not see will lose us a big opportunity to consider before we get into the detail not just how roads are built and operated but how they fit into the environment, including the issue of emissions, along with local roads and all the other people that my noble friend Lord Whitty mentioned. I shall reflect on that and come back to it on Report. Perhaps we can have a meeting with the Minister before then, but in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, in discussing the strategies and the length of time, my Amendments 23 and 24 go into more detail but I think they are trying to say the same thing. It is an interesting issue as to whether there should be a five-year period. It is a great deal better than having one year, which is what we used to have, but it may be better still to have a rolling one, if that were possible.
I heard some results from Network Rail this morning. It has a fixed five-year term, as noble Lords will know. I have been given the capital expenditure year by year over the past five-year period. In the first and final years, the expenditure was 50% higher than in the three middle years, which is very difficult to resource up and resource down for the contractors and suppliers dealing with it. I asked the people at Network Rail why, and they said, “Well, the first year we are catching up with what we should have done in the previous control period and did not get round to it, and the last one was because we had a lot more expenditure that we had to finish before the end of the control period”. That is quite normal. That will happen on roads as well as railways; it is much the same. But I know that the feeling at Network Rail is that, if it was possible to have a rolling capital expenditure programme, life would be much easier. I wonder which, if either, would get through the Treasury better and whether it would be possible to have a rolling one rather than a fixed one. That is just an example from Network Rail.
I have one other question for the Minister arising out of these amendments. I hope that the strategies and all the duties and everything else will include the interests of cyclists and pedestrians. People may say that pedestrians should not be on trunk roads and they should use footpaths if the road is high-speed, but it is terribly important that pedestrians and cyclists feel safe and use the roads, which is part of the environmental objectives that I put in my amendment. It would be good to have some confirmation from the Minister that this is all part of the strategic investment plan.
Lord Whitty
All the amendments in this group are mine. This relates to exactly the sort of thing that my noble friend Lord Davies was just referring to. The Highways Agency consists mainly of engineers—quite rightly, and very good engineers many of them are. In the fringes, there are traffic engineers, as well as highways engineers. When you ask them to build into their projects objectives other than those which relate to providing more, quicker or wider roads, there is a bit of barrier, on occasion. Between them, the amendments are an attempt to ensure that when we take decisions on road improvements or new roads, issues of safety and the environment are built into those decisions on the same basis as any improvement in travel time, the number of miles of road which are tarmacked, or whatever.
The Highways Agency contains within it people who take those things seriously, but the natural tendency, particularly when we put the foot on the accelerator of spending on roads, is to get as many roads built as fast as possible and not worry too much about the complications. One big complication has wider implications for the rest of the project: safety. Earlier, I declared my interest as the new chair of the Road Safety Foundation. Every year it produces a map of European standards and the state of Britain’s roads. I have the map here if anyone wants to look at it. Those are standards which have been worked up by various equivalent bodies across Europe. It is right to say that our motorway system, in particular, is one of the safest in the world and is the safest part of the British— English, in this case—road system. That, of course, is calculated on the basis of vehicle miles and comparing them. It is also true to say that 250 people a year are killed on Highways Agency roads every year, and 2,000-plus are killed or seriously injured on those roads. That is a significant safety issue. Just to put it in perspective, more people are killed on Highways Agency roads, which are only 2% of our network—a third of the casualties because of the density of traffic—than the number of people who are killed at work. There are health and safety issues at work, for which we have a whole organisation, the HSE, to ensure that such accidents do not happen or are minimised.
The Government need to have an answer to the question of who is liable for those accidents. There have been big improvements in road safety in the past 20 years. When I was Road Safety Minister we had a 10-year strategy and, by and large, that reduced deaths and serious injuries by about 30% over that period. That improvement has slowed down a bit since 2010, but we are nevertheless one of the best and safest in Europe and the world. However, there are still a significant number of deaths and injuries.
If you try to establish the causes of those accidents, there is an assumption that it is mainly driver error or driver behaviour—and there is some truth in that. Much of the improvement over the past 20 years has been in improved vehicle safety. The Euro NCAP programme has raised certainly new car safety features from what it regarded as 2-star to roughly 4-star—air bags and other aspects of car design—which has had a major impact.
It is also true to say that at least for most groups there has been some improvement in driver behaviour, but there has not necessarily been the same improvement in safety features in the physical design of roads, nor has the improvement been reflected in the objectives of road-building organisations—principally the Highways Agency, but also the local authorities. The reasons for this are partly because it is thought that if you build a better road, safety automatically improves. It does not necessarily do so, and certainly does not improve proportionately. It is partly because the system for appraising new projects—whether they are intersections, main road widening or whatever—includes safety elements that are but a small proportion of the total cost and benefit. Additional safety factors are therefore discouraged by the way in which the projects are appraised.
This group of amendments, which also relate to environmental issues, attempts to write safety issues into different points in the Bill. I imagine that the Minister will not accept the amendments as they stand but I advise her and her colleagues that road safety is underplayed in the Bill. At various points in the Bill, explicit reference to road safety and reducing accidents needs to be reflected, as well as in the licensing conditions and the standards and objectives that the Secretary of State accepts for the new company.
My worry about the transposition in this context is that if a road design issue causes or contributes to the cause of an accident, who is liable? We do not get many legal cases about the state of the roads, and I do not know why. Thirty years ago we did not get many legal cases about the performance of the National Health Service; now we get lots of them. We get quite a few about tripping over the pavement, which is the equivalent responsibility for the local authority. If you have an independent company, the question of liability to potential litigation needs to be taken into account as one of the risk factors. I am not saying that it is a determinant risk factor, but it is something that the Government will have to have an answer to, and at the moment I do not think they do. One way of ensuring that that happens, in terms of licence conditions and the other oversight that the Secretary of State will have to perform, is to write safety in at several points in the Bill.
With regard to the detail of the individual amendments, Amendment 18 relates to the standards that the Secretary of State can set for the company. One of those standards should be a reduction in the number of accidents and the number of people killed, and that should be,
“a central objective of the Road Investment Strategy”.
Amendment 22 makes the point that I was just referring to, that when you appraise schemes, the appraisal for safety benefits or otherwise needs to be a separate assessment and not be lost in the overall assessment, because the return you can get on safety measures is often much higher than the return you get on time-saving and other economic benefits. Amendment 22 also goes into other issues of reducing traffic and so on, which also have high returns. It is the same in the energy sector: saving energy is actually a far greater return than spending money on new power stations, although you have to do both—as you do here. But if you appraise the environmental element separately, the rate of return is significantly greater. Therefore, that should be done as a matter of course.
Likewise, in relation to the strategy in Clause 2, Amendment 33 says that the objectives should relate not just to road-building but to safety issues, and that in relation to guidance due consideration should be given to road safety and environmental outcomes. I would particularly emphasise the road safety dimension.
These amendments may not be the most appropriate place, but before the Bill leaves this House it would be sensible for the Government and the department to find the appropriate place to put, in lights, “road safety responsibilities of the new company”. If we let it leave this House without that being clear—in several different places, I suggest—there will be a tendency for the company to at least downgrade those and for the accountability of the company to be weaker because they have not been spelt out in the Bill.
These are quite important issues. Sometimes those who are keen on having new roads regard safety issues as a constraint rather than an objective of road design. We need to ensure they are an objective both at the individual project level and in the overall strategy. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I support my noble friend. He has raised some very interesting challenges. I do not think that safety gets taken into account nearly enough in the design of roads. In my earlier life, I designed quite a few of them.
It might be interesting to compare how the roads have developed and how the railways have developed. There were some horrendous accidents on the railways in Victorian times, starting off with a Member of Parliament who got crushed by one of the first trains because he was standing too close to it, or something. That led to the introduction of the Railway Inspectorate, whose job it was to ensure that the railways were safe, bringing in things such as brakes, which are quite useful. Things have moved on a bit since then. The Railway Inspectorate was originally staffed by retired Army officers, but more recently it has moved to the Office of Rail Regulation, which is the right place for it. I think that it does a very good job. We will be talking about some of the issues around that when we discuss a later amendment.
It seems to me a good idea to look at whether the ORR in its expanded role could take on some road safety issues. At present, the Highways Agency does that, and, in the absence of any other instructions, the new body will probably hold much the same views as that agency—namely, the desire to increase speeds so that people can get to their destinations faster and to increase capacity by having more roads. The strategy is designed round the concept of “a minute saved”. My noble friend is an expert on this. He may well be right that that body takes safety into account to some extent, but I am not sure that it does. It could certainly do so to a far greater extent.
The Office of Rail Regulation could be given responsibility for many of the safety issues that my noble friend raised, which cover a multitude of sins, and could be given a duty to look at the potential for modal shift. We talk about road to rail very frequently, but there is the issue of road to bicycle. As we have seen in London, road to bicycle is concerned largely with safety issues. A terrible number of cyclists have been killed in London in the past year or two. TfL talks about redesigning roundabouts but one of the key issues, which must be obvious to most people, is that if you give cyclists space, they are less likely to get run over. If the road traffic speed is set at 20 miles an hour, it is a great deal safer than 30 miles an hour, and you will get more people cycling and fewer people trying to drive. It would also reduce emissions and do all the other good things that we have been talking about. This is to do with modal shift. The journey time issue is equally important, whether you travel by bike, train, car or bus. Therefore, my noble friend’s amendments deserve careful consideration. I will discuss with him in more detail whether the Office of Rail Regulation should be involved in some of these issues. I think that body is capable of it as it has very capable people. Unlike the Highways Agency, it can stand back and take a different view and, if it does not like what is going on, it should be able to enforce and encourage change. These are important amendments and I look forward to further discussion on them.
Baroness Kramer
This set of amendments seeks to make the road investment strategy cover several specific areas, including carbon reduction, traffic volumes and environmental performance, and to place safety at its heart—the area where we have had most discussion, which has been fascinating. I reassure the Committee that the Government take all these issues very seriously. It seems to me that where we may differ is on whether or not these important values are enhanced in implementation by including them in the Bill rather than in the road investment strategy and in the licence. I am inclined to believe that the RIS and the licence are the most powerful documents to drive forward the behaviours that we are looking for, so I shall explain the role that those documents play.
We are concerned about ending up with a long list sitting in legislation and describing what the road investment strategy should look at, because, as everyone in this Room knows, there is always the problem of what happens with the item left off the list when that is significant. One can try to say that those that are not named are of equal significance and are equally elevated, and that one is not primary over the other, but that is not always an easy argument to make. I am concerned, particularly since we want this to be a long-lasting document, that there will be issues which we consider to be of equal importance to safety and the environment and that we would be in a difficult situation if we insisted on those additional significant priorities. I am therefore hesitant to go to the face of the Bill. It is helpful to have the information that we have on both the RIS and the licence, and the other documents.
Let me focus on safety, because it is a very important issue to the Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, our roads are pretty much the safest in the world, but we can never be complacent. The strategic highways company will have a responsibility for the safety of the road network, but, as I pointed out previously, there are key safety responsibilities—including driver licensing, training and education, the regulation of driving such as drink-driving and drug-driving policies, enforcement, dangerous and careless driving and, as the noble Lord underscored, the important issue of vehicle standards—that must stay with the Secretary of State and not transfer to the new company. That is to put the broad construct, which would not work effectively if those responsibilities were not kept with the Secretary of State.
As we go through these complex documents, it is worth noting that safety is already embedded in the strategic roads “system”. For example, the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges sets minimum standards for road safety, and safety is covered within the appraisal. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked whether the appraisal formulas were exactly as they should be. That is surely not something that we are going to address in primary legislation; it is a working issue that needs to be addressed at a much more practical level. In wide areas of appraisal—I have looked more at financial and cost-benefit appraisal issues—we are constantly trying to update the way in which we look at those issues. I cannot see that it can be driven through primary legislation; it is part of being responsible. The importance of safety is already included in the draft licence and will be a key consideration in the road investment strategy. For example, the RIS will require performance specifications that embed safety issues.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to legal liabilities. I think that it is clear that the SHC is responsible for the road but not the driver, but I do not think it would be right for me to try to speculate on legal liability.
Embedded in the amendments are important issues of environmental protection such as climate change and biodiversity. Again, they are well covered within the licence by broader existing legislation. Again, if we are looking at who is responsible for what, a lot of those issues refer to the vehicle fleet, and that must be with government rather than with the new company.
Therefore the view we take is that the issues that are raised are very important, but that they are carefully covered and encompassed by the language we have in both the primary legislation and supporting documents. Therefore once again, amendment is not necessary to achieve the goals which those sponsoring these amendments have in mind.
Lord Berkeley
The noble Baroness mentioned the performance specification. Giving something like the Highways Agency a performance specification means, “Make your road traffic go as fast as possible, make sure that the bikes are miles away, and put up lots of crash barriers so that if people do go off the road, they won’t kill anyone else”. I hope we have moved on—or will move on—from that.
Baroness Kramer
All I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this, is that we have certainly moved on from that, have we not? That is one of the problems that happens when you try to put too much into primary legislation—we become more demanding as the years go by, not less demanding. It is important that we reflect that more demanding approach in the way we manage our network.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I have an amendment in this group. I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Davies on how we get to the investment strategy. My amendment is at the end of this group, and it is about Parliament’s oversight of the process. We always ought to consider how Parliament both approves and monitors bodies and documents which are referred to in legislation.
I am proposing that, before the first strategy is implemented, it should be subject to a report of a Joint Committee of both Houses. I suspect that our colleagues in the House of Commons will say that it should be a DfT Select Committee. Nevertheless, some form of parliamentary accountability is necessary. It is nowhere in the Bill, and it should be. It should be a regular process; I am saying every five years because that is the period to which the money and strategy initially relate. Certainly, a regular review of the roads investment strategy ought to be built in at parliamentary level. That will complement the consultations that are required at the beginning of the process in my noble friend Lord Davies’s amendments.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 26 is more about who should be consulted. I expect the Minister will say that she does not like lists and therefore we should not have them, but as my two noble friends have said, it is very important that the Secretary of State should consult organisations that are affected, including,
“Network Rail … local transport authorities … combined authorities … statutory environmental bodies”,
and anyone else that the Secretary of State thinks is important. It is very important that this should happen. If it is going to happen, that is fine, but it is very important that it does.
With regard to Amendment 31, on Part 2 of Schedule 2—“Varying a road investment strategy”—it seems more appropriate to make use of the Planning Act 2008 provisions and apply them to the road investment strategy as if it was a national policy statement. My amendment would bring it all together in a national policy statement structure rather than the one in the Bill. I do not think I need to explain it any further. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, as we explained in the RIS explanatory document, Setting the Road Investment Strategy—another one of this cluster of documents that I hope people have found but if they have not, the Library has them—a key mechanism for public and stakeholder engagement in the development of future versions of the road investment strategy will be the route strategies. That is the point at which local authorities and all kinds of interested parties can look at the specifics and contribute greatly to the process. The outputs of the route strategies will be used to develop a strategic route network initial report, which will inform the Government’s proposals. One of those complex documents—I think that it is the one that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, was holding—provides a graphic pattern for how those pieces can work.
Of course, the Government will engage with key stakeholders when developing our proposals, but that is different from requiring a formal consultation. Obviously, it is the goal of the Government to ensure that we come forward with a very well informed document, and that engagement is inherently part of that process. Where we have looked at providing for consultation in this document is in relation to varying the RIS. The point that we have made is that where a strategy is being varied, because it has the downside of potentially weakening the value of the strategy as a long-term funding settlement, that is the part of the process where we want to bring in consultation in a more formal sense.
We would have no certainty that those variations would have had the stakeholder engagement that is required for building the route strategies in the first place, which, as I say, are the first step in the flow-through of information that informs and helps to structure the RIS itself. That is why we have a distinction from allowing the normal pattern of extensive stakeholder engagement when forming the RIS because it will have had that input through consultation on the route strategies. So we have the route strategies leading to the RIS. If the RIS is varied, that process will not have taken place so it is for variance of the RIS itself that we require consultation.
Lord Berkeley
The first strategy is put before Parliament but presumably the Secretary of State consults all the relevant people before he does that, or is he just going to put it before Parliament without consultation? That is the impression I am getting from the Minister.
Baroness Kramer
The Secretary of State and others are very heavily engaged with stakeholders. That is the way in which they expect to develop the RIS. The first one is always a bit odd because if you look at the rules, they require a to and fro between the Secretary of State and the strategic highways company, and of course the strategic highways company does not exist yet so there is a fairly unique arrangement for the first RIS, which we expect to be published—I cannot give dates—in the future.
Lord Berkeley
I will press the Minister once more. I see nothing in part 1 of Schedule 2 that says that the Secretary of State should consult anyone else apart from the strategic highways company. Maybe I have got it wrong but that does seem a bit odd.
Baroness Kramer
The point that underpins all this is that Ministers, rather than Parliament, have traditionally made decisions on infrastructure funding, and we are not seeking to overturn that. It would be rather unprecedented for the Government to put forward a funding and investment plan for debate. If that were to become the underlying principle, it would have a sweeping impact on many different aspects of government, so we are not proposing that. We also, frankly, recognise that it would slow down what is already not a brief process. We want to get to the point of getting infrastructure out into the ground.
For example, the rail investment strategy can be issued by the Government without being laid before the House and debated. That does not prevent Parliament from holding the Government and the rail sector to account, and that is the model that we are following here. We are behaving consistently with how these issues are already handled in government—we are not overturning that, other than to the extent of putting in a requirement for consultation should there be a variance in the RIS. As I said, that is because it has that sort of exception, or potential downside, of undermining the framework of long-term funding certainty that we are trying to create. I assure noble Lords that there will be extensive stakeholder engagement around the RIS. Indeed, the RIS will typically be built from the route strategies up, and there is extensive consultation at the route-strategy level. There is a place for consultation in all this, and the arrangements as a whole are very satisfactory for that purpose.
One of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, lists a number of stakeholders that would have to be consulted during the preparation of the RIS. He is right about lists tending to be a problem for me. The practical reality is that the stakeholders know who they are and the Government know who the stakeholders are. There is constant engagement, and it is a fairly fluid group, so there would be no great advantage to including a list of them.
I want to make sure that I cover the full range of issues. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, suggested that Parliament should report on this. He said that he was not sure his amendment achieved what he intended, but we read it as requiring that Parliament approve each proposal in Part 1 of the Bill before it could come into force, and that Part 1 must be reviewed every five years. We are debating the Bill now, and I am sure his specific intent was not to require it to be reviewed as soon as it was enacted. We may just have some confusion around that issue. Perhaps he was trying to suggest that the RIS should be reviewed by Parliament—that is my understanding from the comments that he made.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome many parts of the Bill, although it does rather seem as if it is sweeping up loose ends before the election. I thought that the Minister did pretty well in her introduction to cover things such as the changes to the Highways Agency; low-carbon homes; shale gas—oil is now low-carbon as well, apparently; planning; non-native species; and the Land Registry. But it is a bit of a curate’s egg. I shall concentrate mainly on Part 1. My noble friend Lord Whitty, from his great experience as a Minister, has outlined some things that I might also have views on, as did the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh.
Starting with the Highways Agency, I think that there is benefit in moving towards the kind of structure that Network Rail will have after it comes under government ownership on 1 September. Again, it looks rather like putting two things side by side with no read-across between the different types of transport and the need to encourage some modes of transport at the expense of others. As the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, said, there is perhaps a silo mentality.
With regard to the new highways companies, as my noble friend Lord Whitty said, how many companies are we going to have? I suspect that this is the start of seeing whether they could actually be privatised—but not in Wales, which seems to be exempt. It will not happen in this legislation but it might happen in the future. The problem, as other noble Lords have said, is where the revenue is going to come from.
My next question concerns the application of the Freedom of Information Act. It seems to me that the company or companies should be subject to FoI, which the Bill requires Passenger Focus to be subject to. It is a bit odd to have Passenger Focus subject to FoI if the companies themselves are not. I have been saying over many years that Network Rail should be subject to FoI as well. We need a bit of consistency here.
It is difficult to talk about governance because we do not know much about it. I believe that the Minister promised us a document before Second Reading but I do not think it has come. It may be that we will get answers to many of the questions that I and other noble Lords will be asking, but we need it as soon as possible and I hope that she can tell us when we can expect it.
I would like the Minister to comment on whether, in the preparation of the road investment strategy, the Government will take account of the Climate Change Act, the national parks Act and various other Acts, such as right-of-way and environmental legislation. If they do, there needs to be some read-across to Network Rail’s process. Will they undertake the same type of consultation on routes as that which underpins the rail investment strategy? It should underpin the road one because one should look at routes in a multidisciplinary way, with road and rail being compared on particular routes. Will that happen?
Other noble Lords have talked about the funding for the new companies. Will it be similar to the HLOS under which Network Rail operates? I wonder how the Minister has come up with a saving of £2.6 billion in 10 years. How will that be checked and monitored? We have the monitor, which I shall come on to later, monitoring various aspects of the companies’ work.
In the case of Network Rail, the Office of Rail Regulation required it to make savings of about 40% of its turnover over a 10-year period, which is a massive saving, and I think it has done very well to achieve it. Will the monitor therefore be required to do the same for the Highways Agency? It would seem reasonable if it did, but that assumes that there will be a five-year funding programme rather than the annual one which my noble friend Lord Whitty suggested will probably happen. I believe that that has happened to the Environment Agency. Most of my party think that the Environment Agency’s revenue has been drastically cut, and I agree. The Government say that it has been increased, but the problem is that it has been changed—I think, for the worse—so we will need some comfort on that as well.
Going on to cross-modal issues and the duties of the strategic highways authority, will a duty be put on it to work with Network Rail and other relevant bodies? We must not forget local and regional transport bodies, as other noble Lords have said. The amount of traffic on the main Highways Agency roads is actually not a high proportion of the total.
Then there is the question of forecasting, which we have raised many times; the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has also raised it. Will we get some consistency of forecasting of traffic between road and rail? Will we have one forecast or a range? Will the regulator, or whatever it is to be called, be expected to assess the modes together along corridors? How will the highways side of it take into account the needs of buses, cycling and walking? The Minister may say, “You don’t walk along trunk roads”. If you do, you need a footpath or a cycle way. Trunk roads are, after all, a means of travelling between different areas, and there is absolutely no reason why there should not be cycle tracks and footpaths along them. There probably should be some beside HS2, if it gets built. Those other modes of transport need to be included in any policy work that the authority and the department undertake. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that.
Turning to the Passengers’ Council, I find it extraordinary to have a Passengers’ Council looking after roads and their customers. The AA and the RAC do not do a bad job of looking after the customers of roads driving cars or motor bikes, and the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association do a pretty good job of looking after the interests of their members. They are not funded by the Government. When it comes to railways, the Rail Passengers’ Council is funded by the Government, but who looks after the interests of rail freight? The answer is the Rail Freight Group, in which I declare an interest as chairman, and the Freight Transport Association. I cannot believe that the Government intend to offer us £10 million of subsidy to make us equal to the roads. It seems extraordinary that they think that the passengers who drive up and down the roads need a subsidised organisation to look after their interests, but perhaps I am missing something there. I look forward to what the Minister has to say about that.
My noble friend Lord Whitty rightly mentioned the Office of Rail Regulation looking after roads. First, it needs a new name. Secondly, who will fund it? For the railways, it is funded 50% by Network Rail and 50% by the customers, the passenger and freight operators. Presumably, the companies running the strategic road network will fund half of it for roads and the road users will be asked to fund the rest. Is that a rogue user charge, or how will they do it? Or is it yet another subsidy for the roads? I do not know. For railways, the Railways Acts put specific duties on the ORR to guide its works. Would it not be useful if there were specific duties on the monitor, or whatever we want to call it, so as to have its duties specified in this legislation?
The next matter is something that I feel quite strongly about. It is not here in the Bill, but it should be. It is to do with level-crossing legislation. Your Lordships may be thinking, “Why is he talking about that now? It is a minor detail”. However, there are 7,000 level crossings in this country, each with its own legislation. As noble Lords will know, Network Rail has recently been quite severely criticised by the Commons Transport Committee and the Lord Chief Justice over various things that have gone wrong. The legislation is incredibly complex and difficult. I am told that you cannot even change a light bulb in a level-crossing light without putting in a special application to the Office of Rail Regulation for each level crossing, because if you do not, Network Rail might be liable. I am also told that there are 8,000 pieces of legislation, so it could be said that this is a really big red tape challenge for the Government.
The Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission have spent five years considering this and have proposed a Bill to replace all this past legislation with a simple framework within the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which would apply to all stakeholders equally. The Law Commission published a draft Bill which is about 50 pages long, and it is a very good Bill. I gave the Minister notice that I was thinking of putting down the whole of that Bill as an amendment, but then I thought better of it. I am sure that she is grateful to me. However, it is something that we ought to talk about. I am very grateful to her for arranging a meeting so that we can all go through it. I think that that will happen next week. It is a wonderful opportunity to simplify things, save an awful lot of money and time and get the responsibility for the different parts of level crossings where it belongs.
I have one final example on this. Network Rail is responsible for everything, which is right up to a point. However, if a local authority and a bus company decide to put a bus stop 20 yards beyond a level crossing, and if the buses all stop there and traffic backs up on the crossing causing an accident, there is absolutely nothing that Network Rail can do about it except to stop the trains. Something needs to be done, and I am looking forward to further discussion about it.
Finally, I have two quick comments. First, on the non-native species in Part 2, can the Minister confirm, to an ignoramus like me, what a species is? Does it include things that fly or those that go on the land? Does it include things that swim or are in the water? She will probably understand why I am asking those questions. It is very important that the legislation cover all those things, so I hope that she can confirm that it will. Secondly, Part 4 is better late than never. I remember that, more than 10 years ago, when I was on the European Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, we visited Denmark to see wind farms on land which had been developed with the support of local communities, which then got cheaper electricity. In our report we asked why that did not happen here. Okay, it has taken 10 or 15 years, but I am very pleased to see that it is happening. I welcome much of the Bill and am looking forward to some good discussions in Committee.
Baroness Kramer
The noble Lord is talking to someone who does not understand quite how the government books work, but I do not recognise government borrowing being segregated into line items. However, I will follow up on that and write to the noble Lord before I tangle us in something that I have not explored in such detail. If the noble Lord is looking for imputed returns, we can discuss all that later.
The noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Judd, raised the issue of Passenger Focus as a consumer watchdog. It strikes me as a superb representative of the road user. One of your Lordships suggested that the AA or other existing bodies act as a voice for the road user, but they tend to act as a voice for a limited number of views, typically those of car drivers. There are many other road users, and it is important that a much broader sweep, including cyclists, get represented. Using Passenger Focus, with its consumer skills, strikes me as a very important mechanism.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and others also asked whether the Office of Rail Regulation was an appropriate body. It will act as a monitor, not as a regulator; that is an important distinction. The logic follows these lines. The SHC does not require an economic regulator in the way that Network Rail does. It is not dealing with track access charges and the users of the system are not paying in the way that passengers do, so there is really no role for an economic regulator here. There is not a number of TOCs all in competition with each other and with a complex relationship with Network Rail. It will advise the Secretary of State, who will then be able to enforce. It will monitor the operations of the new company.
Lord Berkeley
The noble Baroness is absolutely right in what she says. On the other hand, one of the roles of the rail regulator is to regulate the efficiency and costs of Network Rail. Would it not be a good idea to have some independent monitoring of this new company’s costs in the same way?
Baroness Kramer
The monitoring will indeed be there. That is crucial because of the way in which the SHC is being constructed.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, asked: where on earth do you get those savings from? It is covered in detail in the impact assessment and business case published by DfT on 6 June. It is important to understand that certainty of funding, which will come out of the road investment strategy, combined with the arm’s-length relationship, gives us a structure which is similar enough to the structure which has worked effectively in the rail industry. For example, the Government have committed £24 billion to road investment until 2021. Far more detail on all of this will come out of the road investment strategy.
The road investment strategy is set up in such a way that once established, if a future Secretary of State wants to change it, he or she obviously could—we cannot bind a future Parliament—but it would have to be done transparently, publicly and with consultation. Such pressures are an inhibitor which provides enough satisfaction to the industry to understand that it can look with reasonable certainty over the long term for the funding to be available. That leads to efficiency. We expect the SHC to approach asset management in a different way because it has such clear strategy and certainty of funding. It will also be set up as a company, with the roles that companies have, with its directors and chief executive. The sole shareholder will be the Secretary of State. I think that it will achieve its purpose. One could go over the top and try to reinforce that, but the question is: is that sufficient for the purpose to be achieved? If it is, that is the point at which we should stop.
Yes, the SHC will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so there should be no concern on the issue. I have addressed the issue of multiple companies. My noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer mentioned—I am told that I have only two minutes left. Is that seriously true? If I have only two minutes left, I shall do one thing which is terribly important. I switch completely to address the issue that has been floating through the media and mentioned today: concern that land transfers could affect the Forestry Commission and the national parks. I addressed that issue briefly at the very beginning of my speech. I am looking hard to find the comments; if anyone can hand them to me I will love them for ever.
Draft National Policy Statement for National Networks
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To resolve that this House considers that the Proposed National Policy Statement for National Networks is not fit for purpose because it makes use of the Department for Transport’s forecasts for road traffic growth to establish the need for nationally significant road projects, whereas those forecasts are likely to prove unreliable as travel behaviour changes over the next twenty years in the light of environmental and technological advancements; and because it fails to recognise the need for an integrated approach to planning national and local transport networks, and in particular the role that new railway developments can play in supporting economic growth.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, this is a slightly odd way of starting a debate, when the national policy statement is after all a government document and when the Minister has not had a chance to explain to the House what it is about—after which I could have said what I like and do not like about it. However, I have had many discussions with the clerks on this issue and am told that is this is a slightly new procedure coming out of the Planning Act 2008 and the Localism Act 2011, which requires both Houses to consider the national policy statement, so there we are.
I shall not go into great detail on what it contains as I am sure that the Minister will do that, to the extent that she wants to and thinks that the House needs her to. I am also not going to divide the House, which apparently I could, as I do not see any point. My understanding is that the Secretary of State has to lay the NPSs to both departments and they get debated in both Houses. The Secretary of State then considers representations. As noble Lords probably know, the House of Commons Transport Committee reported yesterday on this, so presumably it will be debating it some time in the future. Then the Secretary of State will look at all the comments and lay a revised version before both Houses, although I think only the House of Commons is required to approve it. If the Minister thinks I have that wrong, I hope that she will correct me.
I am very pleased to be able to discuss this NPS today. I generally support and very much welcome it, as it has been a long time coming. I do not want to delay it but I have a few concerns. My first is to do with rail freight, so I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. The NPS is particularly important when one is seeking planning consent for rail developments—these rail freight interchanges. Interchanges for freight are rather like stations for passengers; if there are no stations, you will not get any passengers on the trains, so you need these interchanges. Some of them are big and are used, effectively, by all the big retailers. They cost a lot of money and getting planning permission to go ahead is sometimes contentious. However, they are essential to growth. If one looks at the Network Rail freight market study there has been growth of 75% in this traffic between 2004 and 2011, and there is a further likelihood of doubling the traffic in 20 years, so these things are needed.
The key, of course, is that this draft NPS should set out a clear case on a national basis. It would be helpful if there could be a bit more granularity in it, so that the inspectors can satisfy themselves of the need for a particular case. I should like to see a few comparatively small changes in the final draft. They include: reinstating part of the text from section 4.2 of the current interchange policy guidance, which provides greater qualitative descriptions of the different levels of needs across the regions; clarifying that there needs to be a network of such facilities across the UK and an expectation of having more than one in one location; and linking the NPS more closely to Network Rail’s freight market study and any successor document.
That leads me on to the biggest issue, which is to do with forecasting. I shall come to the linking of forecasting between road and rail traffic. However, the department’s road forecasts have been much criticised over the years as a basis for predicting and providing. They are seen as inaccurate, often through overestimating road traffic growth over the past 20 years. I think that the national road traffic forecasts from 1989 for last year showed that there would be a 37% growth in traffic, when actually it has been 13%. There are many other things that I find wrong with this part of the document. It is a question of what the key drivers of potential traffic growth are. It has been said that population growth has not been uniformly distributed in recent years and that this has contributed to the observed drop in traffic versus forecasts, because apparently more growth occurs in urban areas with lower levels of car use. However, this has been going on for 20 years.
Is economic growth assumed to be closely linked to traffic? I do not believe it is. There is a clear decoupling in a lot of evidence, even from before the recession. Then there is the fall in the cost of driving, which is used as an argument for the growth in traffic. However, there are some highly uncertain assumptions to do with low-emission vehicles and the price of oil. These are very vulnerable to change and have contributed to the great difference in growth that I have just cited.
The other issue is the need to consider other modes compared with road—rail, cycling and walking—and to get some relationship between these and the policies of this Government or the next, such as encouraging cycling. Do the forecasts take into account health issues such as air pollution? I think that the European Commission has again started infraction proceedings against the British Government in respect of the air pollution in London and, as we all know, there is a big issue about the need to reduce emissions, particularly from diesel motors. There is the issue of the modal shift of passenger and freight from road to rail or cycling.
Are the values of time correct? I have been looking at the pedestrian crossing issue. When pedestrians press the button to get a green light to cross the road, there is usually a 10-second or 20-second delay. Why should they have to wait when the cars do not? That is a small detail but it all adds up to a disproportionate priority given to cars. There is a similar issue regarding cycling.
Noble Lords may know that a company called DHL, one of the biggest logistics companies here and worldwide, is now looking urgently at the issue of city-centre deliveries. It reckons that its white vans will not be able to cope with everyone ordering things on the internet and having them delivered to their offices because they go home so late, or whatever. DHL has come up with many solutions, including a bicycle that has a motorised trailer; the trailer pushes the bike along and stops it when it wants to put the brake on. These are creative ideas and I am not sure that they are all taken into account.
Have the corridors been looked at? We have the classic case of the west coast main line corridor with the M1, the M6 and HS2, but were the railway and road forecasts considered as one? I do not think they were.
I also hope that the other policy consideration concerns short journeys. Do we really need to drive children half a mile to school, or go shopping over the same distance, if we can walk or even cycle? It has to be safe and convenient, but we are miles behind many other European cities in this area. Again, I am not sure that that is taken into account in the forecasts.
The Transport Committee supported much of what I have said in its report yesterday. I shall not repeat it all now but it is worth reading because the committee took a lot of evidence from, I think, about 400 people. Both the committee and the CPRE felt very strongly about the need to consider the impact of low carbon, which I just mentioned, on the demand for growth in road traffic, rather than building ourselves out of a recession. It states:
“The Government is seeking to accommodate increasing demand for roads by building more infrastructure rather than seeking to manage demand”.
It is interesting how many people are now talking about the need to manage demand. Whether that is taken into account in the forecast, I do not have a clue, but it should be because if we do not do so then we will be in big trouble. The committee also repeats its recommendations in the Better Roads report, which also came out yesterday, that the department should seek to integrate planning for passenger and freight transport by route or region, rather than doing each one individually.
Finally, the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport’s interesting new document, Vision 2035, also refers to the need for demand management. It states:
“The logistics and transport sectors should take the lead in promoting a reduction in both freight and passenger traffic by supporting alternatives to travel, reduced commuting distances and shorter, more localised supply chains”.
That goes a long way beyond the forecasting, but it is part of the forecast and it should be reflected in the NPSs.
I very much welcome this NPS. It has been a long time coming, as I have said, but it will be very helpful. There are many challenges and concerns, which I hope the Government will address. We talked about forecasting, modelling, cross-modal issues and a degree of localism linking national policies and local policies. There needs to be more consideration of climate change, but I hope the Government will eventually get away from “predict and provide” in the forecasts.
Ministers may say that the forecasts are only advisory. That is true, but some Ministers—I do not include the present Minister or any of her colleagues in this criticism—often use them to support ministerial wishes and to object to other proposals. They are used as a useful basis for advising Ministers, and I hope that they can be improved to achieve that in a more equitable way. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. There was a remarkable unanimity among most of us, including the Minister, on many issues, which is good. Just for the record, I should say that I support demand management. I understand where the Minister is coming from and that is fine.
Perhaps I may respond briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, on the Sizewell issue. It is nice to know that Sizewell C will not be built in the middle of the sea. About a year ago, I met the rail freight industry people, EDF and Suffolk Council and said that if the railway was dualled beyond Woodbridge and the link extended into Sizewell, they could run a passenger service for workers to commute from other parts of Suffolk and Essex, as well as take in a lot of freight by rail. I am disappointed that this is not going anywhere, but it is a microcosm of what we have been talking about today: the cross-modal appraisals may not be working out properly. I am happy to talk to the noble Lord later if he would like to.
I definitely support the NPS and hope that the Minister, as she said, will take into account what has been said today. For very good reasons, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Eurotunnel: Structure and Charges
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they plan to take to conclude the European Commission’s infraction proceedings in respect of Eurotunnel’s structure and charges.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to mark the recent 20th anniversary of services through the Channel Tunnel. The British and French Governments will move economic regulation of the tunnel from the Channel Tunnel Intergovernmental Commission to the Office of Rail Regulation and its French equivalent, and put in place a charging framework by March 2015. We are working with the French Government and anticipate that those commitments will be resolved by March next year.
Lord Berkeley
I thank the Minister for that Answer. First, I thank so many noble Lords who have campaigned for many years to get the charges for the Channel Tunnel down. It looks as though the figure for freight will come down by between 25% and 40% which is a great achievement. I congratulate the Commission, the two Governments and, of course, Eurotunnel for reaching this agreement. Will the Minister now turn her attention to France, where there is a big problem? We can get through the Channel Tunnel more quickly and cheaply, but reliability and the general obstruction from the French railways are putting a serious stop on further traffic. Will the Minister encourage the Commission to go for the liberalisation package that is currently before Parliament and the Council to try to ensure that France is not the blockage to more traffic that Eurotunnel used to be?
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, the Government are very committed to the single market. We have been strong supporters of the freight corridor strategies that will now extend from the Channel Tunnel through to London, as well as extending the reach across the continent. I take very much to heart the words expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and I will follow up on his proposal.
Railways: High Speed 2
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate Sir David Higgins and the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, on their two reports. I am very pleased that the Government have accepted them. They are a breath of fresh air. I look forward to continuing to work on the project.
I am particularly pleased that the HS1 link has been removed as it was not fit for purpose, but can the Minister encourage her ministerial colleagues not to be too negative about that? She may know that there is already a link with HS1—it was built with HS1—on to the North London Line and the west coast main line which could be used to run Eurostars north of London. It needs signalling—they have forgotten to do that—but that is a minor detail. The trains are operating in France but they could operate in Birmingham and Manchester very quickly and provide that link if there was a demand. I hope that she will take that back to stop any negativity coming from the northern part of the route and the claims that cancelling the HS1 link is a disaster. It is not.
Baroness Kramer
I fully agree with the noble Lord’s comments about the HS1/HS2 link, and those were indeed the comments of Sir David Higgins. It is something that could technically have been done but, given the impact that it would have had not just on the community but on passengers and freight traffic, trains would have travelled at 20 miles per hour on that particular link and no more of them than three an hour, at that, so it was not fit for purpose.
However, I give assurances, as the Secretary of State has said, that there will be an important study to look at how to connect the north through to the continent as HS2 progresses. We recognise the importance of that; it is a significant and serious piece of work. Sir David Higgins has recently welcomed proposals from others who understand transport and community issues, and the department had done so previously. We will continue to appreciate the input that comes in, and that expertise.
Railways: Line Resilience
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in commissioning a study into alternative inland resilient rail routes to avoid the coastal route between Exeter and Newton Abbot.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, the Government have commissioned Network Rail to undertake a study to identify options for providing a resilient rail route west of Exeter and rail access to the coastal communities in the Torbay area. We have also asked Network Rail to implement schemes already identified to resolve weather-related problems in the Thames valley and west of England. However, the immediate priority is to restore rail services on this route as soon as possible.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer but, as we have had a lovely weekend and spring is clearly in the air, it is very easy for Ministers to forget about the disasters of the winter and to hope that they go away and that they will not have to spend the money. Will the Minister agree to come back to the House in a year’s time, just before the election, and say, “We have implemented all these long-term resilience measures that I mentioned, and a few more, and they are either finished or well on their way, and funded”?
Baroness Kramer
I always hesitate to say anything other than yes to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. As he will be well aware, we have a timetable for the long-term resilience project. We have completed the projects that were timetabled for 2013-14, such as the Whiteball tunnel, and others are timetabled for future years. However, the essence of what the noble Lord is talking about in terms of having a programme to make sure that we achieve resilience will be done over the next few months. The study that Network Rail is doing will lead to an interim report being published in July, which will result in a very important discussion in this House.
Aviation: Regulatory Burden
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords for allowing me to speak briefly in the gap. I am not a pilot, but I was interested to hear three pilots speaking about their experiences. I remember when the noble Viscount was a Minister for air and shipping. He reported to the House one day that he had flown over a tanker that had hit a rock in Milford Haven and had saved the day by finding a Chinese takeaway cook who could translate between English, which everyone was using, and Chinese for the tug outside. I did not know that he was flying his own plane. That is terribly impressive.
My interest in this is that I go to the Isles of Scilly quite often. In the winter, the only transport is a small plane that usually goes from St Mary’s to a grass runway at Land’s End, except when it is waterlogged, which it has been for the past month. Costs are high—£70 to £80 for a single fare—so it difficult for people who live on the islands, and I am grateful to the Minister for agreeing to have a meeting later this week with some representatives where I hope we can discuss this. I have tabled a few Questions on this. I was very pleased to hear that Bristows will do the medevac service—evacuation to the mainland of people who need urgent medical treatment—after the RAF hands over emergency rescue. That is really good news, and I am grateful for that.
Less good is the problem of taking blood samples to the mainland. I asked a Question more than a year ago about whether the Government would facilitate granting a licence for Skybus to carry these samples to the mainland for testing. The answer came back that they would when an application was received, which was fair. A year later, it has still not happened, so I tabled a Question asking whether an application had been received and, if so, what was the answer. I am not looking for an answer from the Minister today. My question is more fundamental: why do you need a licence at all to carry blood samples between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland, or anywhere else, for testing in a hospital? Why does doing so need a licence? They are not going to blow up or anything. You can put them in a sealed bag and they would be quite happy, but there we are.
Finally, I went to the Scillies just before the new year; I had a bit of a difficult journey, so I did a blog on it which produced quite a few responses, including one from the chairman of the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company that runs the service inviting me to meet him, which I did. We did not necessarily agree on customer service, but what he told me about costs was very interesting. He said that a third of the cost of the short, very frequent service, which does not make a big profit, went towards regulation, a third fuel and a third airport charges. That probably justifies the charges, but do they have to be so high? A third of the cost being regulatory seems an awful lot. As for airport charges, Newquay is renowned for having high charges because it likes to call itself an international airport, so it has to cope with the odd international flight with enormous numbers of staff, I believe, for security.
I hope that the Government and the CAA can look at the total charges because if that is correct—and I have no reason to suppose that it is not—an £80 single fare to get home to the Scillies if you live there or to go to the hospital or visit friends seems a bit high, and that is the only way you can get there in winter. If the regulatory cost could come down a little, it would be a great help.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to address this Question for Short Debate which my noble friend Lord Rotherwick has introduced on reducing the regulatory burdens on general aviation. I am grateful to the noble Lord for securing the opportunity for this debate to take place. I am aware of his interest and great expertise which far exceeds mine, so I am delighted that he and other noble Lords with experience have spoken in this debate. This is a useful opportunity to update noble Lords on the work which is currently taking place and to address some of the key issues that have been raised today.
Noble Lords may be surprised by the number of activities covered by the general aviation industry, including maintenance and pilot training, gliding and ballooning, as well as the operation of small aircraft for leisure or business purposes. The sector covers a wide spectrum of aircraft types and activities, ranging from paragliders and microlights to business jets. There are around 20,000 civilian aircraft registered in the UK, of which 95% are engaged in what can be described as general aviation activities.
The value of the GA sector and its contribution to the UK economy should not be underestimated. The 2006 strategic review of general aviation, carried out by the CAA, estimated the UK’s GA industry to be worth approximately £1.4 billion in 2005. This highlights the important economic contribution which is made by the GA sector. The sector currently supports around 50,000 jobs in the UK and has a strong track record of providing high value-added employment opportunities across a range of areas and supply chains.
I am sure that noble Lords are aware of the Government’s deregulatory red tape challenge because it has been so well addressed in this debate. In 2012, all existing aviation regulations were scrutinised, but at the start of 2013, the Minister without Portfolio, Grant Shapps, proposed that a further red tape challenge should be undertaken, specific to GA issues. I am sure that Grant Shapps and Andrew Haines will appreciate the warm comments by the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, on what they have achieved, which were echoed by the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw.
In this context, I assure the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, and the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, who raised the issue, that the red tape challenge is being handled in a most judicious way. The concern that they raised about medicals is an area that will certainly be reviewed by the GA panel to see whether there are more proportionate ways of delivering the process of providing and maintaining licences. However, it will be done only with an understanding of the importance of the robustness and safety required. When the panel reports, Ministers will consider very carefully any recommendations in this area and will discuss them in great detail with the CAA.
The GA red tape challenge received nearly 500 responses —three times as many as any other theme to date. The responses identified many areas where improvements are needed and highlighted the need for a change in the approach to regulating GA. In response to this, a substantial programme of reform has recently been launched with the aim of helping to support a vibrant UK GA sector.
The Civil Aviation Authority, the independent regulator, has recognised the need to create a culture change in its regulation of the GA sector. It has incorporated the findings of the GA red tape challenge into its own internal review to produce a comprehensive GA reform programme. This will support a programme of deregulation and self-regulation for the GA sector, remove complexity, look to deregulate and delegate where possible and, where not, consider how to allow the GA sector to take on more responsibility and accountability for its own safety where possible and appropriate.
As part of that programme, the CAA announced the setting up of the specialist unit—which, again, has been widely praised in this debate—dedicated to GA issues. I can confirm that it will indeed be operational from April this year. This recognises that the GA requires different, less onerous regulation compared with that for commercial air transport and it demonstrates the CAA’s commitment to addressing GA issues. It will provide effective and proportionate regulation which supports and encourages the growth of the GA sector. As others have mentioned, Andrew Haines, the chief executive of the CAA, and his team are very committed to making the unit a success.
I assure noble Lords that the CAA will work closely with the GA community as regulations are developed, providing opportunities for the sector to challenge those regulations when it believes that they are unduly burdensome. For example—to take up a point that has been raised—there will be far greater scrutiny of the CAA’s fees and charges in order to provide greater transparency. On the issue of onerous fees, the CAA is committed to reducing the charges that it places on the industry, and it has agreed to work to reduce fees and charges by 3% in real terms by 2015-16. It must also report on issues such as efficiency.
The noble Lord raised a number of specific issues, most of which have already been explored by the CAA. They include informed consent, which would allow members of the public to pay for flights which are not designed to meet the same requirements and standards as a commercial carrier. However, it must be stressed that the CAA will consider this alongside other initiatives intended to bring proportionate oversight to address the safety risks associated with aviation activities.
The noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, is right: the CAA is looking at options for delegating certain functions to industry associations, and he named a number of them. They are well placed to deliver regulatory oversight in a manner proportionate to the needs of the sector. However—and he may be slightly disappointed when I say this—the CAA will seek to introduce market access opportunities for suitable qualified entities because it believes that in some areas where there are no existing arrangements, this will help to provide those new and required opportunities.
The CAA welcomes the GA sector’s involvement in agreeing its charging schemes, as I mentioned earlier, and it recognises some of the concerns expressed about the fees and charges. As a result, it is proposing to establish a GA sub-group of its Finance Advisory Committee specifically to take on the issue of fees to ensure that they are proportionate as well as transparent.
Another specific area of concern is the availability of airspace for GA operators. The community often takes the view that this has been reduced as controlled airspace has grown to favour commercial aircraft. Actually, the opposite may often be the reality. For example, between 2010 and March 2012 the total volume of controlled airspace within the UK was reduced by 214 cubic nautical miles. The CAA is aware of these concerns and ensures that its airspace change process is public and that all decisions made are fully explained. A principal benefit envisaged within the future airspace strategy is the potential to capitalise on the improved performance characteristics of modern commercial aircraft, which will allow other airspace users, including GA, to benefit from the airspace volumes released beneath them.
The GA challenge panel is an important element. It is independent and includes representatives from the GA industry. The panel is providing a “critical friend” function to the CAA and will work with the regulator to challenge its GA reform programme, challenging the CAA to be consistent, transparent and innovative in its approach to GA regulation and supporting the CAA as it strives to deliver genuine change in its approach to GA regulation.
The panel is considering projects which have the potential to promote growth within GA and opportunities for further reducing the regulatory burdens on the sector. It is also considering options for simplifying existing European safety requirements, an issue discussed in the debate, and assessing the progress being made to bring about a culture change within the CAA. The challenge panel will report directly to Ministers Grant Shapps, Robert Goodwill and Mark Harper in the Home Office in April, with an interim report due before then in late January. The panel’s existence will be short term, but the role it is performing and the report it will produce will provide a platform for improving the regulation of the GA sector.
An increasing number of the regulations which impact on GA ultimately derive from the European Aviation Safety Agency. The Government and the CAA have been proactive in lobbying for reform and fully support the EASA road map for general aviation, which came about as a result of the GA sector sharing its concerns about the proportionality of its rules. The EASA has recognised that much of its regulation has been overly burdensome and the road map proposes a series of reforms and changes in approach.
We welcome the fact that the European Commission has accepted the UK's recommendation that an evaluation of the application of commercial aviation safety requirements to general aviation should be included in the rolling regulatory fitness and performance programme. We will continue to work with the European Commission to ensure that this evaluation is both rigorous and evidence-based. Recent announcements such as securing the EU’s agreement to allow the UK to continue issuing the instrument meteorological conditions rating for pilots until April 2019 are encouraging and demonstrate EASA’s willingness to reconsider its regulatory policy in relation to GA. The Government also welcome the CAA’s commitment to eliminating gold-plating of EU regulations and Ministers are due to meet with the EASA next week.
On the serious issues concerning the border agency, I say to the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Oldham and Lord Bradshaw, that the GA challenge panel is meeting with the border agency, hopefully next week. I understand that the issues have been raised and that consideration will be given to whether they are onerous or appropriate. There is a mechanism for taking the issues forward.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, raised the question of airfield planning. Planning issues are always contentious but, luckily, they tend to be local issues.
I shall be meeting the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, on the Isles of Scilly and I thank him for giving me a heads up on many of the issues he will wish to address in that meeting. However, there is not time for me to deal with them now.
The noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, asked about innovation. There is innovation grant funding for GA and the DfT is currently working with the GA challenge panel to identify suitable projects.
There is movement on all fronts. I thank all noble Lords who are present. My time is up. I am not sure that I will be able to take the noble Lord’s question.
Lord Berkeley
Could I remind the Minister that I am Lord Berkeley, not Lord Bradshaw? I think she got us muddled up.
Baroness Kramer
I consider it an insult to neither noble Lord that I might have confused them for a brief moment. I certainly know who they are, and both are remarkable in the area of transport.
Shipping: Passenger Safety
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on passenger safety of their application to the Committee on Safe Seas and the Prevention of Pollution from Ships for exemption for certain ships and areas of operation from European safety requirements in order to substitute life rings for life rafts.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government require all vessels to carry enough life rafts to meet the risk to those on board in an emergency. The proposal submitted to the Committee on Safe Seas and the Prevention of Pollution from Ships is based on UK regulations for domestic passenger ships and is supported by the department’s formal safety assessment of domestic passenger ships carried out between 2002 and 2004 in response to Lord Justice Clarke’s formal inquiry into the “Marchioness”/“Bowbelle” collision.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that response. My understanding is that this exemption application applies to passenger ships with up to 130 people on them, which, under directive 2009/45, article 4, allows them to go 15 miles from the place of refuge or five miles from the coast in the summer. The idea is to reduce the number of life rafts to the maximum number of passengers—not allowing, of course, for the fact that you cannot always launch life rafts if a ship is heeling—and to replace the rafts removed with life rings. Does the Minister really think that it is a good idea for people who might be wrecked in an accident in the North Sea or off the Hebrides to have to get into a life ring rather than a life raft?
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, my understanding is that this exemption is for up to five miles and therefore would not apply in most of the circumstances that the noble Lord has just described. It is for small craft of less than 24 metres which have to be travelling in daylight and in summer only. They are required to have sufficient life rafts for all passengers but additional safety can be provided by buoyancy apparatus.
Railways: High Speed 2
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Kramer
I thank my noble friend. He is exactly right that the demand for skills would be significant, not only with HS2 but with all the other infrastructure projects that are being launched thanks to the actions of this Government. My noble friend will take some comfort from the fact that the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering, which was established in 2010 with wide railway industry support, is helping to tackle the current and future skills needs within the industry. It is working closely with HS2 to identify skills gaps and promote railway engineering skills. We obviously have the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy, which has played an important role in the Crossrail project; one would assume that it would do so with the super-sewer for London and then HS2. The skills academy is one of the participants, along with BIS and the DfT, with some support also provided by Siemens, in looking at training entry-level employees as well as skilling up others to respond to new technology developments in the industry with initiatives such as the Siemens Rolling Stock Academy.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, when the Prime Minister recently visited China, he announced that the Chinese would help us build HS2. Can we expect several thousand Chinese people to flood into this country, and will they be welcomed in the same way that Romanians and Bulgarians apparently will be?
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, the discussion was primarily about finance, rather than the range of engineering skills and jobs on which I have just reported. I can assure the noble Lord that the programme that HS2, along with various engineering companies, is taking out is targeted at schools in Britain rather than those overseas. For example, HS2 sent a contingent of 30 people to the skills show in Birmingham to which youngsters came from all over the country. I am confident that a large number of these skills can be achieved in the UK, creating a base for our youngsters to participate not only in HS2 but in a wide range of engineering projects. However, we will always consider financing from overseas.
Dartford River Crossings
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, on achieving this debate. It is timely. There is a consultation out on the river crossings. He asked the Minister a question about the end of the year, but he did not say which year. I am sure that we will hear that when the Minister responds.
It is quite clear that there is a traffic problem east of London because of the growth. I met an expert in these things recently who said that the centre of gravity of the population of London was now some five miles east of the City. That surprised me slightly, but maybe the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, and his colleagues from Essex will confirm that. I do not know, but industry and business are moving east beyond Canary Wharf, so there is clearly a demand.
My concern, starting with demand and forecasting, is about the way the department does its road forecasts, which I have mentioned before. I put a Question down on it today, not in respect of this debate but generally. The briefing for the debate gives Highways Agency figures for the Essex-Kent traffic from April 2012 to March 2013. It states that,
“the traffic was down one and a half million vehicles”,
from 49 million. That was confirmed by the number of trips and everything.
One has to ask why. Maybe it is to do with the congestion. Why has the traffic gone down? Maybe it is to do with the tolls. I believe that the tolls will be changed quite soon, which is something that we managed to achieve in legislation about a year ago, which is very good. But it is extraordinary that the Highways Agency is still quoted as saying:
“While the amount of traffic using the Dartford Thurrock River Crossing has decreased slightly over the last few years, traffic flows are expected to increase by a fifth over the next 30 years, due to the anticipated development in the Thames Gateway region”.
I could just about believe that if the Department for Transport forecasting team had not been producing forecasts of road traffic growth for the past 20 years which show a spider’s web where the curve goes up and then it levels off. That shows the actual traffic, but the forecast keeps on going up. If the forecast that was done in 1992 or 1993 had been achieved today, we would have 50% more traffic than we actually have.
There is something wrong with the forecasting. I have said that before. Is it because the department likes building roads? This is not an attack on the present Government because the department has been the same for the past 20 years. I hope that some thought has gone into this. We should look at the road and rail element. I believe that this crossing is necessary but it needs a rail element as well. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group, but this is a passenger and freight issue. I would like to cover that in a little more detail.
Page 9 of the consultation document states that,
“the provision of rail freight as part of any new Lower Thames crossing would not address the rail freight capacity issues that are forecast for the area”.
That, I think, is open to challenge. In fact, a very large and welcome development called the Thames Gateway is being built just downstream from where these crossings might be, which is forecast at peak to have something like 40 freight trains a day. The London, Tilbury and Southend line and the route across London can actually carry that amount of traffic, because it is a good line.
It is debatable how much of that traffic would want to go south: it would probably want to go north because it is coming in from the deep sea. However, within that complex, a very large logistics centre is being built—and the first bit is already just opened—which will be doing shorter deliveries and may even want to use traffic from the Channel Tunnel. Noble Lords will know that the volume of Channel Tunnel traffic is pretty low at the moment. However, the industry forecasts suggest that, with the present pretty high charges, in 2043—which is hopefully after these links get built, but perhaps we do not know—there will be something like 50 trains a day through the Channel Tunnel, 25 in each direction, compared with about seven today. If somebody achieves a better diversion from road to rail, it would certainly help reduce the number of trucks on the Dartford crossing. If you stand on a bridge at Ashford and count the number of trucks, you will see that 200 trains a day could be filled. The first reason they are not going by rail is largely price, followed by difficulties in France. In a 20-year timescale, however, we can probably think that that could change.
When I worked for Eurotunnel 25 years ago, we forecast that there would be 40 freight trains a day in each direction when the tunnel opened and probably up to 60 today. The forecasts were miles out for whatever reason, but I am just saying that that is the sort of potential. Therefore, I think there is room for rail freight on this link and luckily there are good existing rail lines on either side which could probably take much of that traffic if it wanted to go either to the big logistic centres—I only mentioned one, but there are several others down there on both sides—or further north. There needs to be a strategic view taken, if you have lots of freight trains in the Channel Tunnel wanting to go up to the Midlands, as to which way they should go around London. Do they go south-about through Redhill, or do they go north-about, possibly by crossing here on the LTS and the Gospel Oak-Barking line, or does somebody want to build a new line from somewhere through Hertfordshire and outer Essex, if I can call it that, with a new crossing which could tie up with one of the mayor’s ideas for airports, or whatever? One could go on having conjectures about this for ever. What I am saying is that, if there were a rail link built in to this crossing, it could connect quite easily with existing routes where there is capacity, and it would help a great deal in getting some of the trucks off the road.
I turn to passengers. The same consultation document says:
“Passenger flow volumes on a cross-river rail route east of London are also likely to be limited”.
The North London line services were limited before Transport for London took them over; they are now incredibly successful. London Overground has grown by leaps and bounds, is very popular and has established many new journeys. Rail transport, as noble Lords will know, has increased pretty dramatically in the south-east, as it has in the rest of the country.
It is hard to conclude that passenger flow volumes are likely to be limited: if there is not a service there at the moment, it is very difficult to judge. How many people driving across the Dartford crossing, paying their toll in their car every day, would use a convenient rail service if there was one? It is a very difficult thing to decide and it would probably take five or 10 years after it opened before it was really possible to know what the right figures were and whether everybody got it right. However, most of these links develop into something highly popular. What this link needs is a good road link and a good rail link, hopefully together, and, in places, capacity for expansion. Whether we should be doing that on HS2 we can debate; it is too late now. Capacity for expansion is important, because we tend not to look at the longer and wider potential for this link—I mentioned the airport, but there may be other things in Kent and in Essex. If the economy of the London area is moving east, who knows what it will be in the future for passengers and freight.
I do not have a view on which of the three options should be used, although I have been told by someone who owns quite a big area of land at Swanscombe, where there is potential for a theme park with several thousand jobs, that it would be a pity if the route went straight through the middle of that land. He has a point, if it is a job creation scheme. On the other hand, one has to look at the options and the costs and everything else.
I hope the Government will look again at the potential for rail—not high-speed rail but local and regional services and freight. It would be remiss not to do it, because it is possible that this link may not get built for 10 years—we look back at opinions expressed five years ago, and in 15 years many things can change—so I look forward to hearing the Minister speak about this and am happy to take it further.
Baroness Kramer
I think a lot of forecasts are as accurate as tosses of the coin. Let us see what we can do about this. Journey time reliability is important, and this is consistently one of the worst performing links in the strategic road network. We think it is going to get better, not worse.
Successive Governments at national and local level have commissioned studies on congestion and possible new river crossings. The most recent report for the department, done in 2009, identified short and medium-term measures to improve traffic flows. It also concluded that a new crossing is needed in the long term and shortlisted potential locations: option A, at the existing Dartford-Thurrock crossing; option B connecting the A2 with the A1089; option C connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 between junctions 29 and 30; and a variant of option C connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 and additionally widening the A229 between the M2 and the M20. From the start, this coalition Government have been determined to act and promises made as early as the first spending review in 2010 are now being realised.
Next year will see the introduction of free-flow charging. That will please the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I know he has been waiting for that. Motorists will no longer stop at each end of the crossing to put money into a slot machine or hand it to an attendant. Believe it or not, getting this technology right has not been quite as easy as it sounds, and nobody wants to install a technology, have it go wrong and create that kind of inconvenience. Although it was hoped to bring it in late this year, it will now be coming in 2014. I believe October is the target date.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to the Minister. I am surprised she said the technology is not working very well because it is working in many other member states. In fact, I met somebody yesterday in Brussels who said that it is not only doing the charging, either fixed-point or road-user charging, but at the same time is checking whether lorries are overloaded, have not paid their licence and other things. The technology is there. It just needs applying to every toll in this country in the same way.
Baroness Kramer
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for that. I was on the board of Transport for London when we brought in the congestion charge and I can tell the Committee about the nightmare of trying to make sure that we had effective number plate recognition systems and everything else attendant on it. I suspect every one of your Lordships would rather we delayed a bit and made sure it worked faultlessly—that is probably tempting fate—rather than introduced it and had it not function properly.
Baroness Kramer
I fully accept that and hope the noble Lord will be pleased when he sees the system in operation.
The coalition Government are also committed to reviewing the options for a new crossing. In the 2012 national infrastructure plan, a new crossing for the lower Thames was identified as one of the coalition Government’s top 40 infrastructure projects, which are prioritised as nationally significant and critical for growth, and that continues into the current infrastructure plan.
Noble Lords will understand that we face a unique and important opportunity in choosing how to add capacity to the road network to best serve our national interests. Should we add capacity at the existing crossing linking the M25 between junctions 1a and 30, or should we add capacity further downstream linking other parts of the network? Whichever we choose will have substantial implications, and it is clearly a matter of public interest.
To better understand the relative merits of each option, the department embarked on a technical exercise to review the options. Once that review was completed in spring 2013, the department made the findings publicly available and consulted on the options from May to July this year. Noble Lords will be interested to hear that in addition to online communications, the Minister and officials met interested parties during the consultation in a series of briefings, meetings and public information events. Numerous members of the public took advantage of the opportunities and at the end the department recorded and analysed more than 5,700 responses to the consultation.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, is right. The consultation has confirmed what many noble Lords may have expected; namely, that opinion is divided. Opinion is divided on both the case for a new crossing and on where to locate a new crossing. Those who responded to the consultation expressed a mixture of support and opposition for each of the options—options A, B, C or C variant. Respondents also made detailed comments highlighting serious issues relating to the economic, environmental and social impacts of each of the options. As I have already emphasised, our decision on where to locate a new crossing is of public interest. I know noble Lords would expect the department to respect due process and give careful consideration to the serious issues raised during the consultation. The Department for Transport intends to make an announcement shortly on next steps and to publish a summary of the consultation response. I have no reason to think that we will not be within our target of doing that by year end.
The question at the heart of today’s debate presumed that the Government would have reached a decision on whether a new crossing should be a bridge or a tunnel. Noble Lords raised issues about levels of tolls, whether tolling is appropriate and forms of financing. While the review which the Department for Transport undertook established the engineering feasibility of bridge and tunnel solutions for each location and considered the means by which it could be funded, it is clear that the detailed work that leads to decisions about technical and financial aspects is much more sensibly progressed when the Government have certainty about their preferred location.
A couple of specific issues were raised, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that I have not covered. He will know that the department takes the view that a rail crossing would not address the rail-freight capacity issues forecast for the area and that demand for cross-river passenger rail services is likely to be relatively low and so it probably would not offer value for money. However, I am happy to take that issue away and look into it much more thoroughly, as well as looking into the rather strange usage patterns forecast. I will follow up on those issues with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.
I think that I addressed most of the direct questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. There is one further issue on traffic forecasting. As he will know, it is based on population and economic growth and motoring costs. Let us follow up on that when we have more time to look at it.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, for securing this debate and the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Davies of Oldham, for their contributions. A new lower Thames crossing represents a unique and challenging opportunity. I have referred to the work undertaken to date to consider the options. I have indicated the high level of public interest in the decision on where to locate a new crossing, and I have advised the Committee that the department intends shortly to publish a summary of the consultation response and announce next steps. I trust that noble Lords will maintain their interest as we progress this important infrastructure priority.