Cyclists: Road Traffic Laws
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Keen of Elie
At present the Government’s commitment is to the Bikeability programme, which is training young people in the use of cycles and making them aware of the position of motorists as well.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, what is the penalty for a breach of the Highway Code by way of either pavement cycling or a cyclist going through a red light?
Lord Keen of Elie
There are a variety of offences that may arise in respect of cycling, under both the Highways Act 1835—cycling on the footway—and the Road Traffic Act 1988. A number of steps can be taken, beginning with a warning, followed by a fixed penalty notice of £50, followed by prosecution for a summary offence, which itself would impose a maximum fine of £500. However, under the Road Traffic Act, there are also further, more serious offences such as dangerous cycling, which can attract a fine of up to £2,500.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, could the Minister confirm that in one sense cyclists are treated unfairly?
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, but I want to make the point that it is the turn of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. It was actually the turn of the Labour Benches before but I thought it was right that we kept going in order to save time. Let us go to the Labour Benches now, and if we have time we will go to the Cross Benches.
Lord Berkeley
I shall be quick. Could the Minister confirm that PCSOs are able to fine cyclists on the spot for going through stop lines but are unable to fine cars? Is that not unfair on the cyclists?
Lord Keen of Elie
I do not believe it is unfair on cyclists. One has to remember that in the case of the vehicle, registration can be traced. In the case of the cyclists there is no registration, and therefore an on-the-spot fine is more appropriate.
High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, first, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Mair, on a wonderful maiden speech. One thing he may not know is that his appearance has increased the number of civil engineers in this place by 25%. I would argue that it means there are not enough civil engineers here in the first place. He is very eminent—much more eminent than me, anyway, but I cannot speak for my colleagues—and it is wonderful to have him here. Perhaps a few more will come in later years to boost the engineering expertise in your Lordships’ House.
Many speakers have spoken to support the line. I support HS2 and I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. I have been helping to promote an alternative scheme for Euston station, which the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has outlined, and I will speak a little more about that later. Some of your Lordships have questioned what are, for many more people, important details and the attitude of HS2 in responding to them. While I am sure that we should be building a high-speed line, there are high speeds and high speeds. One or two other noble Lords have asked whether we should be designing something for 400 kilometres an hour or 300 kilometres an hour, when the cost of the trains may go up by 50%.
Then there are the higher operation costs. You would probably have to slow down in the long tunnels—we have already debated how long they are. How should we link that with getting in the first instance, to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker but then spending 20 minutes walking from the new station to New Street if you want to go on to Wolverhampton or other stations? We need to look at overall journey times, which many noble Lords have spoken about. At the other end of the spectrum the Euston express scheme, which I shall talk about, would reduce the walking time to the Underground quite significantly. I think there are still debates going on about stations for Sheffield, Derby and Nottingham in phase two. We need to look at all these things to see the most cost-effective solution to getting extra capacity, which I think we are all agreed should happen. So far, I have some serious doubts about the performance of HS2, particularly in respect of its approach to and performance at the House of Commons Select Committee.
Perhaps I may speak briefly about the Euston express scheme. As is normal in France, Germany and Italy, most, if not all, their stations on high-speed lines are not out of town. The high-speed lines do not go into the centre because it is very expensive to demolish inner-city properties. They go on to the classic lines for the last few miles to go into the mainline station, which is often refurbished. This can be seen in France and Germany; I accept that Frankfurt airport is a slight exception but that is the normal trend and it is much less disruptive.
What we can do is put all the trains—HS2 and west coast main line—into the existing bit of the station, by building extra platforms where there are those wide bits and diverting the tunnels on Old Oak Common to pop up near Queen’s Park station, and run down the existing lines. That would involve extending the station southwards towards Euston Road and putting a deck over the whole lot to get an integrated station for all the platforms, which really would enhance the station quite dramatically. More importantly, it would reduce the costs—which I will come back to later—could be done in about half the time and would solve some of the problems that the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, mentioned earlier for the charities. It is part of a petition by Sam Price to the Commons, and I am sure he will be presenting it again in the Lords. Most importantly, discussions with Network Rail, Transport for London and HS2 have demonstrated that there are no show-stoppers, either during the construction or the operation.
I want to concentrate on the process of using the Select Committee to give permissions. I was involved in the committees for the Channel Tunnel, HS1 and Crossrail, and I briefly chaired a Private Bill Committee on a Norfolk Broads Bill. One thing I learned is that committees must act in a judicial capacity when hearing petitions and listening to promoters’ responses. They must listen, and they do, certainly in your Lordships’ House. Having heard the petitions, the committee then forms a view on the issues. It may request further studies from the promoter and publishes reports.
I know that is what our House of Lords committee will do, but sadly my experience hearing the petitions and discussions from many residents’ groups in the Camden area to the Commons committee was that it fell far short of the independence and fairness which I believe is so important for a promoter to get agreement to enhance the credibility of a scheme and its own work. I am not being critical of the decisions that the committee took, but I am critical of the way it appeared —at least when it neared the end of its work and was considering petitions towards the London end—to have more or less given up, lost interest and taken everything that the promoters said or asserted without question. Maybe it is under pressure from Ministers—I do not know—but it should have resisted. My noble friends Lord Stevenson and Lady Young hinted at similar things.
I will give the House one or two examples. Two days before my friend, the petitioner for Euston Express, appeared, HS2 wrote him a letter saying the scheme would not work:
“The EE proposal does not envisage providing the European GC gauge which is a legal requirement”.
Two days later, under cross-examination, HS2 admitted that that was not the case. You cannot change the law in two days. I knew it was not a legal requirement, so why did HS2 write a letter saying it was? It is absolutely fundamental to any scheme that you get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Then HS2 said that the Euston Express scheme was more expensive than its scheme. It could not provide any evidence and was challenged in cross-examination. Even after several meetings, it still cannot substantiate the cost of its AP3 scheme at Euston. I do not believe it knows what the costs are, and I suspect that Ministers in the future will be approached by HS2, which will say, “We have a bit of a problem, Minister. Can we have another £10 million or so?” “I don’t know, I’m working on it”. It is not good.
It is not just me and my petitioner friend complaining. Many residents have said to me that the construction will be massively disruptive to their properties and lives in Camden over 20 years. Eventually, HS2 gave them a chart of monthly noise forecasts—which, incidentally, last for 20 years—which arrived the day after the Camden cutting group had appeared in front of the committee. That is not the right way of doing it. They also said that the Euston Express scheme would require a high level of night-time noise due to the need to rebuild some of the tracks. The committee included that in its report without it ever appearing to have been debated.
Finally, those who live in the grade 1 listed buildings beside the track in Camden were told on several occasions by HS2 that they could get double glazing to keep the noise out. I think most of us know that if you have a grade 1 listed building, you cannot put in double glazing that easily—certainly not the plastic type that will probably be wanted.
The recurring theme from HS2 is to give as little information as possible, delay as much as possible and then later on say, “We have not got enough time to do anything, so you have just got to accept our scheme”. The plan that seems to be going through is full of assertions. That is why I have put down these Motions, which I will come to. I hope that Ministers in the mean time will review the whole policy of how HS2 behaves and relates to petitioners, because it is in Ministers’ interests to get it right. As my noble friend Lord Rooker said, he may argue that we need only one Select Committee hearing between the two Houses, but it has to be the right one. I am confident that our one will be, but I am not very happy about the way that the Commons one was done.
I turn now to my two Motions on the Order Paper. The first one suggests that the committee hears evidence from London at an early stage. There are two reasons for this. First, sadly, it is a a well-known fact that committees get bored eventually and Ministers put pressure on them to hurry up. Secondly, there is also uncertainty about the plans for Euston, and early consideration of petitions would enable the committee, if it so wished, to instruct HS2 to do further work.
There are a couple of examples of the problem, which Camden is very concerned about—I had an email from it this morning. I have not had anything to do with the rail freight side of this in this petition, but HS2 is saying that it cannot do spoil by rail and is still working on it. At the moment, it is 2,000 trucks a day out of Camden, every day for three years. Can your Lordships imagine that? This was petitioned against two years ago, but they only started talking six months ago and then said it would take nine months or something to produce a report. That is nice, because by the time it has produced a report and it has gone to the committee, and there has been a decision, it will be too late to order rail wagons or get the rail companies involved. They will say it is too late and it has to go by road.
Camden is in the same position over its plans for Euston, which involve having a level deck above and shortening the time. HS2 has promised Camden a report, but it has not come. So it is a question of when the best time is for Camden to petition. It will be speaking to the committee, but there is a whole policy of delay, delay and delay until it is too late. I will not of course press this Motion to a vote, but it is important that your Lordships’ committee understands the problem.
I will just quote one comment from the chair of the Commons Select Committee last year, on 7 July 2015, about Camden and what is happening. The chair said:
“Literally on a number of occasions, we’ve kept saying, ‘When are we going to hear what’s going to happen at Euston?’ Because I would quite like to have dealt with the plans for Euston early in the process, in case they need to be changed, with additional provisions, and if they’re right at the end, then if they’re not right, then it will delay the whole Bill”.
Your Lordships know that we cannot have additional provisions here, so because HS2 has delayed this and been criticised by the committee, it has still not come up with a report. I hope that the committee will look at these very carefully, decide on the best way to do it and then go for it. I do not know whether it is to have two bites of the cherry, but I know that many of the local individual petitioners would like to come on early for those reasons and that it is something to talk about.
Finally—and I apologise for detaining the House for so long—I address what I believe is the need for the committee to have a special adviser on technical and railway matters. I thought that it would be useful to have one, given the comments about no specialists in your Lordships’ House on these issues being allowed on the committee—although I am sure that it will be a very objective and professional committee. In the Commons, it got to the stage when the promoter, HS2, was advising the committee on the merits or otherwise, technically, of promoters’ views. The chair, Robert Syms MP, winding up, said that thanks were extended to HS2 for its helpful advice on the technical interpretation of petitioners’ evidence. He might have added that the committee accepted without challenge much of this advice. That is not how the Select Committee should work, in my view—but that is a matter for the House of Commons. I know that the committee here will not do that, but it might just want to have a special adviser. I am advised by the clerks that if it wants a special adviser there has to be a Motion from this House allowing it to have one.
I shall leave it there. I shall support my noble friend’s petition in the House of Lords. To conclude, I wish the committee well, and am very confident that it will uphold the high reputation that this House has for dealing with things properly, fairly and thoroughly.
Lord Berkeley
That it be an instruction to the Select Committee to which the Bill is committed that it consider petitions from the London area at an early stage.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, before I decide whether to move this Motion, first I should say that I am very happy with the Minister’s answer to the first Motion. I think that it is perfectly reasonable that the Select Committee should be able to decide itself the order in which it considers evidence. However, could he clarify in respect of the second Motion, if the committee subsequently wanted to have a special adviser, whether it would need an instruction from the House or whether it could do it on its own initiative?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will agree with me, as I am mindful of the previous questions about the role of the Select Committee, that if I can cover that matter I shall include it in my response in writing. I trust that that will satisfy him for the time being.
Lord Berkeley
On the basis that I can always put this same Motion down another time, I shall not move it now.
Lord Berkeley
That is be an instruction to the Select Committee to which the Bill is committed that it appoint a special adviser to provide independent advice on railway and engineering issues.
Railways: New Lines
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage new or reopened rail lines to be cost-effective.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport and Home Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are taking many steps to ensure that all rail enhancement projects, including those working towards opening or reopening rail lines, follow government appraisal guidelines and create business cases which test options ensuring best value for the taxpayer. Local authorities and private sector beneficiaries are encouraged to contribute to the overall costs of the preparation and delivery of such projects to decrease the burden on the public purse.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer but does he agree that part of the problem is the very high costs that come out of some of these calculations which indicate that there is not really good value for money? Does he not agree that the answer is actually to have a set of standards appropriate to branch lines or lower-speed and cheaper track, and to cheaper trains—possibly not even signalling, more like a bus—which would be very good for local services but of course totally inappropriate for a main line? Will he encourage the development of some standards that might reduce such costs?
Cycling
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, the House is incredibly lucky to have the noble Lord, Lord Young, free to talk about one of his favourite subjects. As he said, he has been banging on about cycling for 40 years. It was more difficult when he held different posts in the other place, but his speech demonstrated what a passionate supporter of cycling he is. He is one of the founders of the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, of which I remain secretary. We heard some very good ideas from him, covering all kinds of needs for cycling. I add one that he missed: I believe that when it rains in Denmark the sequencing of the traffic lights is changed so that cyclists do not get so wet. That is rather a nice idea.
The noble Lord mentioned devolution, which comes up all the time because it is a good idea. It is good that expenditure, design and enthusiasm for cycling is devolved. On the other hand, we have to watch that that is not then an excuse for some local authorities to do nothing. There are still cyclists there. The Government need to make sure that their intentions, whatever they are, get carried out.
Devolution—we could almost call it “ducking responsibility”—has been an issue ever since the noble Lord, Lord Young, first spoke on cycling in 1975. It carried on in 1993 in a debate in this House, when the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, who sadly is not here this evening, made similar statements about the need for local authorities to recognise cyclists’ needs. He hoped that it,
“would lead to more widespread action to improve facilities … which … would encourage more people to cycle”.—[Official Report, 21/4/1993; col. 1677.]
In his response, the then Minister said that most people cycled on local roads—I feel that he was trying to say, “It doesn’t matter very much because that’s for the local authority”—and that expenditure priorities should remain a matter for local decisions. We have heard that before.
As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, things are improving. In 2013, the all-party group published a document called Get Britain Cycling following an inquiry. Probably almost uniquely, when it was debated in the Commons Chamber it received an unopposed vote of support, which I thought indicated that the Members of Parliament thought that this was a good idea that needed supporting. It said that investment in cycling should be £10 per person per year. In response to a question yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said that it is currently around £6. Of course, that is a great increase on what we have seen before, but it does not link in with what the Cyclists’ Touring Club says. Its figure is more like £1.39 per person outside London. We know that London has some wonderful investment going in and that is really good, but when the Minister replies will he give some explanation of what the £6 covers and where it comes from? Many Ministers have given this figure, which is a really good one. It is not £10, but £6 is better than £1, or £2, or £3. Where does it come from, who will spend it, and on what? Is it ring-fenced to local authorities? Could they spend it on roads or footpaths? I conclude by comparing it to a headline today relating to a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs which says that each family in this country is paying £150 per year in taxes for railways. Divide that by the number of children in a family and it is an awful lot more than £6. Maybe at some stage the Minister can tell us what the equivalent figure is for roads. I look forward to his answers.
Railways: South-West Network
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to improve the resilience of the rail network in the south-west.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport and Home Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are fully supportive of the initiatives which the rail industry is taking, led by Network Rail, to improve the resilience of the rail network in the south-west. The initiatives include implementation of the weather resilience and climate change adaptation plan for the western route over the period 2014 to 2019. Measures also include improvements to drainage systems, strengthening vulnerable structures, the greater use of specialist forecasting tools and improving flood resilience at key risk sites.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Those are very fine words, but the House will remember the Dawlish scenario two years ago, when a whole sea wall collapsed and access to much of Devon, Cornwall and Plymouth by rail was effectively cut off for several months. As the Minister said, Network Rail responded well but, as he will know, the problem is that the work is not yet finished. I quote David Cameron on one of his many welcome visits to the south-west. He said that cost would not “put him off” delivering what the region needed. George Osborne was there, too, and he said—and I quote—the Government would commit £7 billion of investment into transport. Can the Minister explain why last week the Government cut all funding to Network Rail, even for carrying out studies on the next stage of resilience? After the election, it is all forgotten.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The picture that the noble Lord paints is not factually correct. As he knows, we are putting £38 billion just into the rail sector—the biggest investment since the Victorian age. The fact that my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have visited the sites, including Dawlish, where we have restored what was damaged with an investment of £40 million, underlines the Government’s commitment. The top people in government are visiting those sites and putting money into ensuring that resilience measures are in place.
Identity Documentation
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I want to focus on some of the issues that I have been investigating in my work to try to encourage more rail freight, passenger services and other traffic across the channel, the pretty disastrous camps that have been created in Calais and the pressure that is on many people who want to come to this country.
Before I do that, I would like to reflect on something. We have been talking about the different identification required for different events, including people going into buildings and so on. More and more, organisations require that but, on the other side, nobody is required to carry any ID at all. A couple of years ago, I was invited to go and visit Prince Charles in Clarence House to advise him on rail freight. I turned up on my bike and the security guard said, “Where’s your driving licence?”. I told him that I did not need a driving licence because I was on a bike—I did not have one anyway. “Where’s your passport?”, he said. I am afraid that I then said, “Are you a foreign country?”. I offered my House of Lords pass, but that was rejected out of hand. There needs to be some consistency. It is lovely being amateur like this but, given today’s problems, it is pretty ineffective.
I have talked to a lot of people about the problem in Calais. It is dramatically affecting cross-channel traffic, including businesses, passenger services, freight services, lorries, cars, trains and so on. It affects not only France but Germany, Italy and other countries.
As to what documentation people need to show the authorities, I agree with my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours that the Germans have got it right, for many reasons. They still have a terrible fear of what the Stasi did to them over 25 years ago and are keen to have data that do not leak everywhere. We should try to get all the different immigration and other services together and come up with a common approach which would allow you to go on a train from, say, Germany to London without getting off at Lille and wasting two hours while you have to go through security again. The fact that they cannot reach agreement means you have to go through this 19th century procedure.
One of the issues that arises in many discussions is: why do people want to come to this country? Clearly the Government do not want too many people here, unless they are going to be useful and work and so on, and so they are stuck in Calais. We have had many debates as to the reasons. Clearly one is that we speak English and, like most of the rest of the world, the country they come from probably speaks English as a second language. If they have family and friends here, one can understand why they want to come here.
The evidence I have gathered from talking to a lot of people is that one of the great attractions in getting here is that you can survive without any ID. You can work cashless. Whether that is in the restaurant or café trade, agriculture or anything else, there are a lot of places where you can get by without having to pay tax or declaring anything. You do not need any social security identification but you can probably still be treated in hospital if anything goes wrong. If you visit a hospital in France as an emergency, you will be treated. Otherwise you will have to show an ID, a passport, an insurance card(?) or something.
Having an identification requirement in this country—I am not expert but other noble Lords have provided good information about it—would reduce the pressure on us. We should not think that this problem will go away because, if the Calais situation is tightened up, which the Government are quite good at doing, all that will happen is that people will go round the coast, to the west and to the north, and choose other ways of getting in. As we saw in the press, one of the Paris bombers apparently came into this country and out again without being detected. So detection must be properly carried out.
We need some form of identification in this country together with enforcement. I notice that there is a clause in the Immigration Bill that allows the Government to take away driving licences from people they do not like, but what else can they take away? It would be better if the system were co-ordinated because eventually the message would get back to people who are trying to come here that we are no better or more attractive than any other part of Europe. We hope that you will think carefully before trying to come to this country because you think you can work here on the cheap, without paying tax and without having any ID.
Lord Bates
We do not know the specific type of passports they were travelling with in that instance. But additional elements have been introduced to improve our security, and I may just go through a few of them. Certainly, the passenger name records directive was agreed at the Justice and Home Affairs Council following the Paris attacks last year. We have the biometric residence permit, the application registration card, and the Prüm requirements for the exchange of databases. We are part of the Schengen information-sharing system with our European colleagues, and we are going to be part of the second-generation Schengen system. We are part of the European criminal records information system for sharing data across borders. Of course, I appreciate that people will feel that additional information is required, which is one reason why we are introducing the Investigatory Powers Bill. We are also investing heavily in our border security: £380 million of investment is going into the borders and immigration citizenship system, and the digital services for the border security programme, to which we have committed. We have committed an additional £64.5 million to the Channel ports to improve security there, and we have announced a further £1.9 billion to be spent on intelligence and security matters.
Lord Berkeley
That is a lovely list of what is happening and what he is doing, but did the Minister read the piece in the Guardian on Monday, which I briefly referred to, which said that two of the terrorists came and in out through Dover without being checked? I remember that some time last year before the election, when the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, was a Minister, I complained that lorries and cars were not being checked going into Dover, and her answer was that if we checked everyone we would cause a traffic jam. That is a pretty bad reason.
Lord Bates
In the wake of the terrorist attacks, we have introduced 100% border checks at scheduled arrival ports in the United Kingdom. I cannot see how that assertion would stack up with the evidence.
Channel Tunnel: Migrants
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking with the Government of France to deal with the organised groups assisting migrants seeking to use the Channel Tunnel to enter the United Kingdom.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, we continue to work closely with our French counterparts. The joint declaration signed on 20 August cements a comprehensive programme of work between our two countries.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Is he aware that rail freight services through the tunnel have been virtually decimated—I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group—and that road freight is being equally badly hit because people are still climbing into lorries? There may be a fence round the terminals and there may be a few more guards, but dogs are not allowed to bite—I suppose that that would be against the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act if it applies to Calais. Surely more should be done to direct attention at the gangs that are organising these migrants into armies with chain-saws, blankets, mattresses and bolt-cutters to climb the fence. Could there not be more intelligence? Are the Government going to use some of the 1,900 new spies that the Minister announced in November—although they might need a bit more training—to help them?
Lord Bates
The noble Lord is absolutely right: that is why the Prime Minister announced in July that the Organised Crime Task Force will concentrate specifically on immigration crime. At the Valletta summit in November he announced an expansion of the task force. Through new legislation in the Serious Crime Act, that work has already led to the disruption of 174 organised immigration crime groups. But we are very conscious that more needs to be done and are working very closely on that with our French counterparts.
Drones: Risks to Passenger Aircraft
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I am sure that my noble friend speaks from great experience and my right honourable friend will have taken note of his helpful suggestion.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, is this not a worldwide—or at least a European—problem, because the Americans can pinpoint bombing in Syria by controlling a drone from somewhere in the States? Who are the CAA and the Government talking to outside the UK? Surely it is much more than a UK problem.
Police: Officer Offences
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bates
On that point the noble Lord is absolutely right. The number who have been struck off, which I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, was 444 out of 127,000 serving police officers. It is absolutely right that the vast majority behave to the highest possible standards of integrity.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, is there a national policy not to charge police drivers with killing people on the roads? I believe there has not been a single conviction of a police driver for killing other people—be they pedestrians, cyclists or people in other cars—for the past 10 years or so.
Lord Bates
Whenever there is a fatality where the police come into contact with the public and those tragic circumstances happen, it is a mandatory requirement that that is reported to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and investigated. I am not sure of the actual numbers, but I will be happy to look into the issue and write to the noble Lord.
HS2
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I assure my noble friend that, as I am sure she is aware, HS2 will be getting underway, and we look forward to it beginning in 2017. I give her the added assurance that HS2 will also give the potential to deliver much better train services to large numbers of towns and cities. I am acutely aware of the challenges she has raised about there not being enough capacity for people, but part of what HS2 will do is deliver extra capacity to places such as Coventry, Rugby and Milton Keynes.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I have read AP3—the latest additional provision from HS2, which he mentioned to the noble Baroness—and I can see nothing in it about the effects of construction, particularly the disruption which will be caused, around Euston and many other sites up the line, by construction lorries. I understand that, for three years during construction, there will be about 720 trucks a day leaving the Camden area with spoil. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group, but surely HS2 should look at moving as many materials as possible by rail.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The noble Lord raises a quite valid point. We are looking at the issue of disruption from HS2. Again, there are lessons to be learned from places such as London Bridge, Blackfriars, Reading and Birmingham and they are being applied in the development of Euston to ensure that we mitigate whatever disruption there may be, not just to the rail and Tube networks, but to the surrounding local communities as well.