Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Bradshaw

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend and will briefly speak to some of the amendments in this group, namely Amendments 2, 2B, 5, 6, 6A, 7 and 7A. I will not repeat all that my noble friend has said, because the various amendments that we have tabled between us provide the basis for the proper link between primary legislation and the licence, which, as my noble friend said, is so lacking in the Bill.

I started off by looking at the relevant clauses of the Railways Act 1993 and the Railways Act 2005, which we discussed in Committee and in some helpful meetings with the Minister and officials, for which I am grateful. It was remarkably easy, at this comparatively high level, to cross out “rail” and put in “road”; they are very similar. If, as my noble friend said, we are to have a company that looks after the strategic roads in a way that is similar to what Network Rail became in September by becoming fully government-owned, it would seem logical that the legislation under which this happens would be similar.

I will not go through all the amendments in detail; my noble friend has done that very well. However, I have two questions for the Minister when she comes to reply. First, under the Bill, will it still be possible for Members of Parliament and of this House to table Written Questions and ask questions of Ministers, as we currently can with the Highways Agency? Noble Lords will know that we cannot do that for Network Rail, because if you table a question about it the answer comes back, “Write to the chief executive”. I am sure one gets good answers from the chief executive, but one does not see the answers that other noble Lords get to the questions that they ask the chief executive. I hope that the same thing will not happen with the strategic highways company and that we will still be able to table questions about its operations and the company generally, and to get a proper Written Answer or be able to have an Oral Question or debate on it as the circumstances demand.

I also hope that when Network Rail becomes subject to the Freedom of Information Act on 1 April next year, that situation will apply to it. Clearly, we would not want to ask whether a motorway sign or signal had been moved; that would be a ridiculous waste of ministerial time. On the other hand, there are many things that it would be useful to ask such questions about for the purposes of parliamentary scrutiny.

My second question for the Minister concerns my Amendment 7A which relates to Section 48 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. This exempts Crown-owned companies, or officers or companies of the Crown, from being taken to court by the Health and Safety Executive if it believes that they have contravened the Act. I know that the Highways Agency itself is exempt, being a Crown agency. It would be nice to know whether any change was planned in this relationship, and therefore the exemption, when the strategic highways company comes into existence. I believe that Network Rail does not have an exemption, because the Health and Safety Executive, through the Office of Rail Regulation, has taken action against it on several occasions. There should be a balance between the two and as much transparency as possible. I am very much looking forward to what the Minister has to say in response and fully support the amendments of my noble friend.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

I shall say just three things. The Government are mistaken. The Office of Rail Regulation should, under that title, oversee roads as well. In spite of all the arguments, if it were signalled, it could change its name at some future date. It could be planned for and there would not be a lot of expense. It would be much more understandable to motorists and everybody else who the regulator was, whether it was a railway regulator or a transport regulator.

I also endorse the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about safety. One thing that the Office of Rail Regulation has done is to drive up safety standards on the railways. Although the Government keep saying the safety standards on the roads are the best in Europe, these are really quite deplorable, as we see with the continued deaths of cyclists in London, for example.

Lastly—I know I am reaching for the moon here—would it not be better to be honest and say that we have to adopt road pricing some time and, to make it acceptable, to say that the money raised from it would be used for roads and motoring purposes? If you explain what the money is for, people are much more likely to embrace the idea. A recent opinion poll in one of the national papers showed that people were against raising taxes, but if they were specifically asked whether they would pay more tax to improve the health service, they said yes. The same applies to road pricing.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Bradshaw

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradshaw]

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

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

This body should consider four things, including,

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Berkeley]

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

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

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

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Bradshaw

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Grand Committee

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations (Amendment) Order 2013

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Bradshaw

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, this is a very interesting order and quite complicated for some people to understand. I have a few questions for the Minister.

The first question refers to this issue of non-road mobile machinery. The Minister will be aware that a lot of work and debate took place on this issue, which has been around for some time. The Commission, after much persuasion, produced a directive which was published in October or November 2011 and allowed non-road mobile machinery to continue not to comply with stage III B or the equivalent for a period of three years. That would allow the railway industry—I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group—to purchase locomotives which did not comply with the new directive. There is a good reason for that: nobody had designed a locomotive that would comply, so it was either no locomotives or ones which did not comply. The industry persuaded the Commission of this and since then, surprisingly maybe, one or two designs have popped up. However, there is still a demand for this. It is now one year and three months since the directive was agreed in Brussels but it has not yet been converted into British law. So, technically, although anybody who buys a locomotive—I think that it also applies to tractors and other things off-road—is compliant with EU legislation, they can be taken to court and fined in this country because the Government have not got round to producing these regulations.

Perhaps the Minister can therefore answer two questions. First, when are we going to see these regulations? I hope the answer will not be “soon”, because in many Governments’ terms “soon” probably means a year’s time, and by that time they will have run out of space.

Secondly, what effect will the new regulation converting the directive into UK law have on this order? It seems to me—I may have got it wrong; I stand to be corrected—that we are implementing what is not a very sensible scheme from the Commission to add biofuel to existing fuel, especially when there is a shortage of crop area and crops around the world, which puts up the cost of fuel. Turning some of those crops into bio seems a bit perverse to me. Certainly the Renewable Energy Association believes that this will be a seriously perverse incentive to investment in renewable fuels and renewable generating capacity. It is talking about the market size being reduced to 30% or 40%, jeopardising investment of £1 billion and putting 3,500 jobs at risk. One can dispute those figures, but what consultation has taken place with the Renewable Energy Association? It is a very respectable organisation.

On Monday I attended a sort of round table with the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, our new Treasury Minister, who was extremely good. It was a Chatham House event so I am not going to say who said what. It was to do with investment and infrastructure, and investment in other things that the Government are so keen on at the moment. We were told, and there was general agreement, that there was not much trouble with finding the funds for investment. The two problems were: first, planning—which is going on in the Chamber at the moment; and secondly, some kind of comfort for the investors that the Government are not going to change their mind and change the ground rules or the buy-in price or whatever during the time when investors are trying to get a return on their capital.

I hope that the Government are going to follow-up this particular regulation with a new debate with the Commission as to what is right and what is wrong for biofuels and whether they should be there at all. Current thinking across many parts of the world has probably overtaken the original idea behind this.

[Lord Bradshaw]

The question that I wish to address to the Minister is slightly different from that of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Making renewable fuels is a very complex and difficult thing, and we know that there is a lot of tension between the use of land for agriculture for producing food, and turning that crop into fuel. The noble Earl will recall that we have had discussions before on the question of recycling used cooking oil. This used to enjoy a margin of 20 pence over the ordinary cost of fossil fuels. The Government, in their wisdom, decided to put an end to this and “generously”—in inverted commas—decided that when this cooking oil is converted into fuel, it should enjoy a premium of two renewable fuel certificates.

I would like to know, since this has been in place, how much we are actually paying in the way of money for transport renewable certificates compared with the 20p which was a very definite sum and caused investors to really work hard at this particular subject. I am of the opinion that two renewable fuel certificates do not equal 20 pence, and I would like to know whether they have ever reached that. The important point is that as well as producing renewable fuels, the producers of renewable energy from cooking oil are doing a very important job in removing it from landfill, or stopping it from being tipped into rivers or drains or whatever they do with it. Unless it is worth while for people to collect and refine it, it will end up not being used and being dumped in some form or another on the landscape.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Bradshaw

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I had just about finished, but want to conclude by saying that I hope that the Minister and our other colleagues will look at the proposed new clause very carefully before Report, because there are some serious things wrong with it. I commend the amendments of my noble friend Lord Whitty for consideration.

[Lord Bradshaw]

I endorse what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. The proposed new clause states:

“The Secretary of State may by order made by statutory instrument amend any enactment so as to remove from a sectoral regulator either or both”.

How long is that going to take? If there is a weakness in the regulation, which is apparent, and even if the Secretary of State can recognise it, how long is the remedial action which is set in the Bill likely to take to bring into force? If a regulator is incompetent, surely there must be other ways of getting him to move over. He has a board of his own which, if he is exaggerated in his actions, can take action to rein him in. However, the whole edifice which is built here is wrong. I know two of the regulators involved and I have known some of the regulators in the past. Generally speaking, they are extremely competent people and probably more competent than the people who would advise the Secretary of State to use these powers. I believe that the powers are heavy-handed and very long-winded into the bargain.

[Lord Berkeley]

What would the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, think if there developed a debate between the Office of Rail Regulation, which is the regulator that we probably both know best, and the Government, and the Government said to the ORR, “You’re not pursuing this competition case in the way that we think you should, and it should go to somebody else who, like the CMA, could do it better.”? Is that not serious interference in the independence of the regulator?

Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (Authority to Carry) Regulations 2012

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Bradshaw

Thursday 12th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that introduction. I have read all the documents about this with considerable interest. Before I comment on the regulations, perhaps I may say that I am also grateful to the Minister for the improvements that appear to have been made to the Eurostar immigration services. I came back yesterday and there seemed to have been some improvements. Much more work has to be done, and I am sure that we will have many more meetings, but it was good.

My concern about this draft regulation is its exact purpose. The second paragraph of the evidence base document which came with the draft regulation states:

“Existing powers are available to direct airlines not to carry a UK national who poses a threat to an aircraft, and to prevent people who pose a terrorist threat”,

within the country. The end of the paragraph says that this provision is to close a gap.

Can the Minister explain whether the real purpose is to prevent people blowing up an aircraft; to prevent them coming here to do nasty things on the ground, so to speak; or whether it is a bit of both? I can totally understand it if the purpose concerns the aircraft—in that respect, it all looks quite reasonable, and I shall come on to some of the detail later. However, if it concerns people coming to the UK generally, presumably it would be possible for them to avoid any problem by travelling across the frontier from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland, or coming in by sea on a ferry, or coming in by train. I think that one of those means is included in these regulations, and I am pleased about that, as it might plug one gap. However, there might be one or two other gaps that should be looked at. Alternatively, we might need to consider whether this is all necessary.

I was interested in the consultation responses. I do not always read consultation responses but there is a long paragraph, in which it says:

“A response was received from a member of the public who was very supportive”.

If only one member of the public was supportive and nobody thought it was a bad idea, does that justify going to all this length? In a telephone conversation, a civil liberties group was also “supportive”. That is good, but to push these as the only two responses to the whole consultation indicates that people either did not understand it, were bored by it or did not think it would do any good anyway. If the Minister has any comments on that, I would be glad to hear them, because one could say that it was a bit of a job creation scheme and not much else.

Paragraph 18 of the Explanatory Memorandum says:

“Carriers will be informed by the Home Office if they do not have authority to carry any of those passengers. Those passengers should not be brought to the UK”.

I think that there is already legislation to enable those who come in to Heathrow or another airport to be turned round and sent away again. If the aim is to avoid terrorists doing bad things in this country as opposed to on an airplane, why do we need this if they can be turned round and sent back anyway without it?

From a practical point of view, if the airlines are happy that they have to send all this information in and the Immigration Service can respond within 15 minutes to a list of several hundred passengers, all I can say is, “Good luck to them”, and I hope that there will be a certain amount of settling-down time before people start sending out lots of fines. Frankly, it looks quite challenging, even if the Home Office’s computers work properly, which I do not think they do all the time.

My final point concerns the evidence base for this. I do not know whether it is a joke or we are supposed to take this seriously, but it talks about “hit” rates and “false positive” assessments, and the “movement search” covering five years of travel using the e-Borders system. It then uses a planning projection that is made by multiplying the result by 300%,

“which allows for a reasonable margin of error and ensures a prudent planning response”.

It goes on to say:

“Where the result is zero, the planning projection is taken to be 3 (as zero cannot be multiplied upwards)”,

which is helpful. I do not know who has produced this but is such a load of rubbish really value for money? “You cannot multiply zero by three”. Perhaps the Minister can suggest to his officials that they think of something better to do because if this is not a job creation scheme, I do not know what is. Apart from that, I will be pleased to hear the Minister’s response to my comments.

[Lord Bradshaw]

I wonder if the Minister can answer a very simple question; if he cannot, perhaps he can write to me. If people arrive here by plane, train or ferry who have not got permission to enter the country, is it possible for the carrier to send them straight back to wherever they came from without them getting any recourse to the immigration procedure?