Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Liddle

Report stage
Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a group that somebody has decided to call “operations”, which is fine. I have two short amendments in this group. Amendment 5 relates to the consultation requirements. Your Lordships regularly debate the question of who should be consulted and on what basis. My worry here is that the Government are suggesting that the right definition of who should be consulted are those whom the Secretary of State thinks fit. It would be more appropriate to have wording, as I suggest in the amendment, to make sure that it includes not only road users but other groups whose safety

“may be affected by the application of the principles.”

There is a worry here, which also comes out in my Amendment 34 in this group, about the weighting of persuasion and the weighting of firepower, or whatever one likes to call it, between the average uninsured road user—who might be a pedestrian or a cyclist, or perhaps eventually a scooter rider—and the companies that have invested a large amount of money in setting up the systems that the vehicles are using. Whether the pedestrians or cyclists should or should not be insured is another matter for debate, but the fact remains that most of them are not insured at the moment. If something goes wrong, there will be a tendency for Ministers to say, “Well, we need to hear the opinion of the company”, and somehow that will be given more weight than the opinion of those who might be affected. I hope I am wrong there, but it happens in other walks of life that occasionally your Lordships debate. For me, it is right, through Amendment 5, to look at the groups whose safety or other interests might be affected by this.

I turn to Amendment 34, which is much the same. If there is an accident or incident—whatever we want to call it—between a pedestrian and an insured AV, who decides who is at fault, if there is any fault? The vehicle will have insurance and the insurance company will work hard to make sure that its client is given the right advice and that it supports them where necessary. The amendment suggests that, if there was nobody in the vehicle,

“it will be assumed for the purpose of this section that the authorised automated vehicle caused the accident unless proved otherwise”.

That is very radical, but we do not have a better solution. If we do not have something that recognises the lack of balance between a pedestrian or an uninsured cyclist and an AV being driven legally with the right insurance behind it, we will have trouble in the future. I am not sure that this is the solution—I look forward to noble Lords’ comments on it—but something must redress the balance between what we might call the little person on the street and the big companies investing a lot of money in this. They will want to make sure that they look after their clients, if we can call them that. I beg to move.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, we have a great deal of sympathy with the points that my noble friend Lord Berkeley made, particularly on his Amendment 34 dealing with insurance. That is a very complicated question; people have written to me about it, and I have difficulty understanding it, to be quite honest. The Government should give further thought to the question that Amendment 34 asks, for when the Bill goes to the Commons. We do not intend to press this in any way now, but it matters and deserves further consideration by Ministers.

Having said that, I turn to the amendments in my name. We will not press Amendment 9 to a vote, but it concerns another issue about which we hope the Government will have a good think before the Bill is presented to the Commons. We have been approached by people in the business of delivery robots that use pavements, and there is legal confusion. Because a pavement is legally defined as part of the road, this question is within the scope of the Bill; yet, clearly, the regulation of vehicles that primarily use the pavement must be different from those that use the roads. We think of the obvious case of mobility scooters, which are mainly intended to be used on pavements.

Amendment 9 does not direct anything. It gives the Government the power to make regulations about delivery robots which are designed to use pavements. This is not a trivial issue. There is a lot of potential in the delivery robot principle. It deals with the final mile from where the lorry drops off its load to how the parcel gets to the individual dwelling. Doing this with electric robots has the potential to make a big contribution to our net-zero commitments, rather than it being done by diesel vans as happens at the moment. This is an important question which we would like the Government to think about.

Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Liddle

Monday 11th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, a great diversity of points has been raised on this group of amendments, most of which strike us as sensible. It is therefore up to the Government to see whether they could strengthen the references in the Bill to the issues on which TfL should consider regulating. The consensus that there should be a specific reference to noise is very strong, as this is a major cause of nuisance.

I fully support the reference to the need for pedicab ranks and stands, but it goes back to Amendment 14 in my name, from the previous group, which talks of charging for the costs of putting these things in place. They will require some changes in infrastructure that will cost money, which the local authority and TfL will be reluctant to spend.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

Before my noble friend leaves that point, can I ask him whether he would like to see the same rule applied to taxis? Should the taxi community have to pay for its ranks?

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

In principle, I personally do not see why not.

Train Driving Licences and Certificates (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Liddle

Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to say how much I support what my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said. They have raised lots of detailed issues, which I hope we will get a clear answer to at the end of the debate. I just want to add one thing. What is the Government’s vision for international rail travel of which Britain is a part? Is that the way that they are thinking about it, or are they thinking, “Oh well, we can’t do anything because it involves ECJ jurisdiction”, or something like that? Where is the vision? There is a real opportunity here: if we are serious about reducing air travel and all the damage it does to the climate, we have to be in favour of more people going on holiday or on business on the continent by rail. The opportunity is growing. I was lucky enough to be brought up as a railway clerk’s son and, every year, we would use our free passes to go from Carlisle to the continent.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I have often wondered about that. First class too?

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Yes, first class, too. It gave me a great taste for it, when we arrived at Basel and saw the great age of international rail transport, which was then gradually coming to an end as flying was growing. But it is coming back. Last year—or two years ago, before all the wretched Covid—we went on the wonderful Austrian sleepers to bring us back to Britain, except they could not bring us back to Britain, of course; they could bring us only to Cologne and then we had to get a train from there. But why should that not be part of the vision? Do the Government have this European vision? That is what we need and it is where the future lies if we are serious about a modal switch in medium-distance travel.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Liddle

Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage
Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I add my support for my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment. I remember that when he first brought forward HS2 as Transport Secretary it was as a concept for this new Y-shaped spine, which would dramatically transform connectivity between London, the Midlands and the north. This concept has stood 11 years of the most severe examination. This afternoon, we have an opportunity to tell the Government that they cannot replace a north-south divide in this country with an east-west divide, and that both parts of this scheme should go ahead.

We were in economic difficulty at the point when my noble friend Lord Adonis first proposed HS2. We had just been through the financial crisis and the banking meltdown yet, at a time of great fiscal difficulty, here were a Government putting forward a transformative scheme for the country. One of the great things about it was that my noble friend Lord Adonis was able to secure cross-party backing for the whole concept. That is why it survived throughout the decade of the 2010s, first with the coalition and then with the Conservative Governments.

The need for this giant step forward in connectivity in Britain is even more compelling today than it was in 2009, because, since then, regional inequalities have grown. We have Brexit, which, whatever we think of it, will cause problems for regions in the north and Midlands that are heavily dependent on manufacturing. Now we have the prospect of permanent scarring of our economy as a result of the Covid crisis. One thing on which I think we can all support the present Government is their aspiration for levelling up. If we take that aspiration seriously, what on earth is the case for losing heart on this tremendous concept of transforming connectivity in England?

The economic argument holds true. Across Europe and North America, cities are the most dynamic places of productivity, growth, innovation and opportunity. Bringing cities together through better transport connections will increase and multiply those benefits. I saw some data the other day that suggested how the big cities of Britain were all much less productive than their comparators on the continent. This transformative proposal for connectivity would help reverse that. The imperative to go ahead is as strong as it ever was.

I speak as someone who does not live directly on the line. My dad was a railway clerk in Carlisle. When I was a lad, I think there were four express trains during the day from Carlisle to London. The first one left at 8.30 am and got you into Euston just before 5 pm. It was quite nice, of course, because if you could afford it, you could have both lunch and tea in the restaurant car, but it was an exceptionally long journey in the 1950s. Now, as a result of the west coast main line modernisation, the journey time has been reduced to three hours and 20 minutes. With HS2, it should be reduced further to around two and a half hours. Just to show how these things link together, one of the proposals of the borderlands project, which the Government last week agreed should be accelerated, is to spend the money on making sure that the platforms at Carlisle station are long enough to take HS2.

This scheme can affect most parts of Britain in a positive way. We should not go back on it now.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I join every other noble Lord who has spoken in reminding the House that services between Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds are pretty awful at the moment. They are very slow, they are probably unreliable, and they do not help with the levelling-up agenda, “one nation”—as my noble friend Lord Adonis called it—or anything else. It is easy to reflect now on whether the Government should have gone for phase 2b east before they went for 2a, but it is too late for that, and does it really matter?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have some sympathy for this amendment given my experience as a member of the HS2 committee. The representations that we heard from petitioners were basically very local: they were individual petitions—people who had particular grievances and concerns—and, to the extent that there was any collective representation, at the parish council level. It is a pity that broader questions of whether the county council, highways authority and those responsible for transport locally had looked at how the impact of HS2 could be mitigated, given that we do not want to stop it or change the line of the route, did not come up at our committee. I therefore have some sympathy with Amendment 4.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an interesting amendment. I shall just concentrate a very few remarks on proposed new subsection (2)(c) and (d). The first thing to say is that I do not think that anybody is serious in expecting them to build extra stations on phase 2a. Crewe is a very good junction and it must involve, possibly on other lines, building extra stations if it can be justified.

As part of the Oakervee review, I also, with the team, visited Crewe. I think the Select Committee went there as well. It brings into focus the fact that the Select Committee quite rightly looks at local things and people’s concerns, but who looks at what one might call the regional connectivity? I will give one example. We were sitting in the office in Crewe talking to HS2 and Network Rail representatives and it became quite clear that the design of HS2 to go through Crewe station was effectively preventing even an hourly service from Shrewsbury through Crewe to Manchester because of the point layout. I got the impression that HS2 did not care at all about that. Network Rail said, “You’re stopping us doing even what we can do at the moment with difficulty”. I do not know where that should be discussed, or whether it should be in a report, as the amendment proposes, but there ought to be an opportunity to discuss it. It is not a matter for petitioning, but I will be interested to hear what the Minister will say about it.

Railways (Interoperability) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Liddle

Thursday 21st March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

I quite accept the point made by my noble friend but it is better than nothing and it provides hundreds of jobs in Durham. While my noble friend says it is just an assembly plant, how could such a plant operate in Britain if we decided to have different technical standards from those on the continent? That would completely destroy the business model on which that inward investment had been made.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his words. Is he aware that Hitachi recently bought a firm in Italy that manufactures trains and signalling equipment? Can he imagine what would happen if it had to manufacture in all these places using different standards for the European markets and the UK?

[Lord Liddle]

As always, my noble friend Lord Berkeley makes an excellent point. I think that the Government have to come up with a better explanation for why we should be leaving these arrangements than the simple, “Why should we bother to be part of some European agency when we have left the European Union?”

Sub-national Transport Body (Transport for the North) Regulations 2017

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Liddle

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Cumbria County Council and, more particularly, as a railwayman’s son from Carlisle. I, too, welcome the establishment of Transport for the North. I think it is excellent that we will now have a planning and co-ordinating body that will bring some coherence and, we hope, a transport strategy for the north.

I follow up what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said about resources. In repeating the statement, the noble Baroness referred to a sum of £260 million for which Transport for the North would be responsible. What caught my eye in the recent Budget Statement was paragraph 4.53 on infrastructure delivery, which talks about the Infrastructure and Projects Authority setting out a 10-year projection of public and private investment in infrastructure in Britain of around £600 billion.

The interesting question is how much of this £600 billion will come under the purview of Transport for the North. I very much look forward to the noble Baroness being able to tell me in her reply. Mr Hammond promised some worthwhile things in the Budget. For instance, in the transforming cities fund, there was £243 million for Greater Manchester and £134 million for the Liverpool City Region. There was a £300 million fund for ensuring the links between HS2 and other infrastructure in both the north and the Midlands, but £300 million is not very much. Of course, there is the new rolling stock for the Metro—one of the finest achievements of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, when he was Transport Secretary in the Callaghan Government.

We need more information. My county of Cumbria has vast unmet infrastructure needs. I have a letter here that I could read out about Cumbria’s requirements for road investment. I am conscious of the requirement for rail investment. The west coast main line has been modernised, but the coastal railway, which goes through some of the most beautiful country in England, up to Sellafield and then on to Carlisle, is back in the 19th century in its infrastructure. Yet we are talking about a new nuclear power station being built in west Cumbria and how we try to relieve traffic congestion in the Lake District. These questions need to be addressed, and they will all cost money.

I say just three things on money. First, in my view, London and the south-east should make a bigger contribution. They constitute one of the richest parts of Europe, and I would like the Mayor of London given power to raise more money through property taxation in London for infrastructure investment. Secondly, as long as you stick to the traditional cost-benefit analyses of how transport schemes are assessed, you will always end up with London and south-east projects at the top of the list. That is because there is not a broad enough conception of public value in how transport projects are assessed.

Thirdly, I do not want the Secretary of State for Transport telling us that he has no money in his budget, because that has been exposed as a total fallacy by his decision on the east coast franchise in the last few weeks. He has basically allowed Virgin and Stagecoach to run away with hundreds of millions of pounds that they owed on their franchise payments—possibly as high as £1.5 billion, I am told. He has allowed them to run away with that, because he was not prepared to go along to the House of Commons and admit that their franchise had failed. That is money that could have been spent on transport projects in the north of England; it has not been spent—and what is the explanation?

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that so many local authorities have got together and persuaded the Government to form this new organisation. As the Minister said, in geographical terms it is probably the 10th-largest area of its kind in Europe. It goes from Newcastle down to Lincolnshire, right across to Cheshire and Liverpool and up to Cumbria; it is an enormous area, and it is a real success that they have managed to do this.

The Minister said that it would be useful for the Department for Transport—I hope that I have got this right—to give advice. From Regulation 5, “General Functions”, it seems to me that Transport for the North will be giving advice to the Secretary of State. It says that among its general functions is,

“to prepare a transport strategy”—

yes. Then it refers to providing advice to the Secretary of State about how he should exercise his transport functions. Thirdly, it has the function,

“to co-ordinate the carrying out of transport functions”.

Fourthly, it says that it must tell the Secretary of State if it thinks that TfN can do it better. To me, that is very much the Secretary of State retaining control. Perhaps the Minister could explain where the devolution is in all this. It is nice having lots of advice, and everything, but the devolution does not seem to be there; it is still going to be the Secretary of State who has the control.

Other noble Lords have mentioned money. The £250 million that the Minister mentioned is really pretty derisory, compared with Crossrail 2, which I believe will cost £30 billion and HS2, which I think will cost £100 billion, which, of course, connects to the north. But I suspect that many people in that enormous area, as other noble Lords have said, would like to be better connected within the area rather than getting to London 10 minutes quicker. So there is a real mismatch between what London is getting and what the north needs to get. I hope that the Minister can put me right on both those issues. Is it real devolution? Can Transport for the North really make decisions and have the money to spend it as it wants?

Last week, in a local newspaper in Bolton, Lancashire, a comment was made that the Secretary of State had refused the Mayor of Manchester—and this may also be the case regarding other big stations in the north—control of the station so that they can do it up and make it more attractive, getting more passengers and more retail. Why does London have to control the colour of the paint, or what is done locally in these stations, if the local people want to do it and can make some money? We really have to let go of London having control of everything and let this new organisation have real powers. If it fails, the Government know what to do, but I think that it will be a great success.