Pedal Cycles

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to follow three committed cyclists. I do not bike now but I once did, so I well understand the passion with which cyclists embrace it, and the independence, the flexibility and the sense of well-being that it brings. But as cycling as an activity grows, and as our roads become ever more congested with vehicles of every size and type, it is time to step back and to consider how biking can be made safer for pedestrians and for bikers themselves.

The biggest problem arises in the centre of our cities, where large numbers of cyclists and pedestrians increasingly come together in crowded spaces and where substantial numbers of bikers routinely ignore both the law and the Highway Code. It is commonplace—we all know this to be true—on any urban arterial road, major junction or pedestrianised precinct to see bikers in their legions cycle in the wrong direction up one-way streets; bike on busy pavements; ride through red lights; and zoom across pedestrian green-light crossways and zebra crossings while pedestrians are still using them.

I have myriad examples, but just in the last few days I saw a bike rider weaving around pedestrians on a walkway, neither hand on his handlebars, sitting bolt upright, holding up and studying his mobile phone. Last week, anticipating this debate, I stood by a main arterial route around dusk and observed the enormous numbers of bikers in transit, all travelling at speed, some at a very high speed, almost all in dark clothes, almost none wearing fluorescent jackets, only a very few wearing helmets and a significant minority with no lights, front or rear. Thus they were a hazard to themselves as well as to wary pedestrians, for whom walking on city streets or crossing the road is becoming an increasingly unrelaxing and nerve-wracking experience.

E-bikes are an even greater hazard, many souped up and evidently—ask any London taxi driver about this—substantially exceeding their 15.5 miles per hour limit, and undoubtedly unregistered, untaxed and uninsured.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Birt (CB)]

I am sorry, but it is a time-limited debate.

The City of London police take cycling breaches seriously, but MoJ data for the country more widely demonstrates that enforcement actions are vanishingly low—just three prosecutions for the whole of last year for ignoring traffic directions, for instance. Bikers themselves pay a very high price for using the road. It is very difficult to get figures; I have asked the Library for figures, and I think we will hear figures in this debate that are inconsistent. I do not know what the true figures are but, in the figures I have seen, each week two die and around 80 are seriously injured. I had a colleague seriously handicapped for life when a lorry knocked her off her bike at a roundabout and rode over her legs with his rear wheels.

Pedestrians suffer too in collisions with bikers. Fatalities are rare, though one is too many, but around 500 pedestrian injuries, some serious, are recorded each year—again, I do not know whether that is the right figure—as a result of pedestrian/biker collisions.

What should be done? First, the Highway Code, which I read recently for the first time in many years, is a confusing blend of advice and legal requirements, and it plainly needs revision. We should consider, for instance, legally requiring cyclists to wear helmets and high-vis jackets. Wearing a helmet, it is estimated, reduces the risk of head or brain injury in an accident by 60%. Secondly, we need better education for novice bikers, and more intense public information campaigns for all bikers. Thirdly, the Home Office needs to press the police to take proportionate action to encourage a culture of compliance, especially in city centres.

Biking is a wonderful activity, but let us make it safer for bikers and for the rest of us.

Pedal Cyclists: Insurance

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

As I alluded to earlier, this Government have done more than any other to promote walking and cycling. Over £3 billion is projected to be invested in active travel up to 2025, including around £1 billion in dedicated capital and revenue investment by the department and Active Travel England in the four years up to 2023-24.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, this is a serious issue of growing salience. Cyclists of every kind now make the pedestrian experience in busy urban areas nerve-wracking and hazardous. As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said, they bike the wrong way up one-way streets and they take shortcuts across crowded pavements. This week, a Deliveroo rider ploughed through a dense knot of pedestrians, of which I was one crossing on a pedestrian green light. Most worrying of all, some souped-up electric bikes power along city roads at speeds approaching 40 miles per hour. All this has to stop. Does the Minister agree that bikers, like other road users, should be required to display identifiers and be held responsible for their unlawful and unsocial actions?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right, but I will not expand on what I have said in terms of the registration of cycles and licensing of riders. However, I agree that we need to look at how these things are enforced. It is a matter for the Home Office and for policing. Perhaps his efforts should be directed there.

Transport System: Failings

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I too commend the noble Lord, Lord Snape, for initiating this timely debate, from which I suspect a fair amount of consensus will emerge, at least about what is wrong.

In the noughties, I worked as Tony Blair’s strategy adviser, and among my tasks was to lead a study by officials of the UK’s transport system—road and rail. It was a sorry, chastening experience. We identified that the UK had, by a country mile, the least developed road and rail network of any major country. The core reason for this was that, for the previous 50 years or more, the UK had invested—under both main parties—a lower share of GDP than other major countries. At the first sign of economic reverse—it happened time and again—capital spend was cut in favour of current spend. Frankly, the Treasury appeared not at all to value the payback that comes over time from investing in more efficient transportation. Germany’s GDP per hour worked is 23% greater than the UK’s; France’s is 17% greater. Of course, their superior performance is not all down to their superior infrastructure, but it surely helps.

Tony Blair gave an in-principle go-ahead to a high-speed rail network linking Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds to London. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, picked up the baton. It is nationally shaming that, 20 years later, no part of that vision is operating, and that, ridiculously, after multiple revisions, only the Birmingham to London section of HSR is now under construction.

At the time of Tony Blair’s go-ahead, China had no high-speed rail network at all. Now, incredibly—it is very hard to believe this figure—China has more than 40,000 kilometres of HSR in operation. As we meet today, the UK has 113 kilometres of high-speed rail. A World Bank study identifies how China has achieved this remarkable transformation: a well-analysed long-term plan, standardised design and construction, and a competitive supply network, and all at two-thirds per kilometre of any other country. Since 1990, China, with a GDP per capita of around $12,000, has also built 130,000 kilometres of motorway.

The UK’s transport system is not remotely fit for purpose, as we have heard over and again in this debate. I visit the north regularly. Many industrial areas in and around the Pennines are criss-crossed by small, narrow roads—the legacy of earlier eras. These now carry commuter traffic, and at peak travel times are severely overloaded. Recently, I was trapped on the M62, not by an accident but by a gridlocked major junction. As a result, it took me just under three hours to travel the 16 miles from Leeds station to my hotel destination. Best practice would be to design motorways to carry long-distance traffic and for secondary road networks, as in other countries, speedily to convey regional and local traffic.

The train from Liverpool to Norwich, passing through and stopping at some of our great cities—Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham and Peterborough—takes five and a half hours. If, rather than take the train from Liverpool to Norwich, you decided instead to fly from Liverpool to Sharm el-Sheikh, you would reach Sharm el-Sheikh more quickly than you would Norwich.

As in so many areas of our national life, we are now operating in slow motion as a country. We need to get a grip; we need massively to raise our game. In transport, we need to learn from the rest of the world and identify what kind of infrastructure is needed in a crowded country heading towards and beyond a population of 70 million. We need to accept that it will take 25 to 50 years to create, but we need to start now.

Train Operating Company Contracts

Lord Birt Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I have to declare that I am a regular traveller on Great Western Railway services and appreciate much of what the noble Baroness says. Cancellations, especially those made close to the time of travel, can be very inconvenient, preventing passengers travelling with confidence. When trains are regularly cancelled, this can disrupt people’s lives. That is why the department holds operators to account for cancellations. The scrutiny and penalties depend on the reasons for these cancellations, as well as on how close they are to the planned time of travel and therefore how much they inconvenience passengers. However, I am not aware of any arrangement that the department has with GWR in relation to cancellations.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, last year, my wife and I spent a delightful three weeks in Japan visiting the ancient cities and gardens, travelling extensively by bullet, regional and local trains. We laughed increasingly loudly as every train, without exception, arrived on time, exactly to the minute. By contrast, almost every wait at a UK train station—including my journey here today—is punctuated by computer-generated announcements of delay and cancellation. In the last 12 months, 33% of UK trains have failed to arrive on time. One in 30 trains has been cancelled. Why can we not run a railway as well as the Japanese?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I take the noble Lord’s point. The Secretary of State visited Japan recently and looked closely at its operating systems. Let us hope that we see an improvement to the extent that we can operate our service equally well.

Railways: Trans-Pennine Express

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am not aware of the reasons for those cancellations, but I remind all noble Lords that sometimes cancellations have to happen that are not the fault of the train operating companies. We have worked very closely with Avanti, and we know that the proportion of Avanti-caused cancellations fell from an average of 13.2% in early January to just 1.4% at the end of March. Occasionally, it is not Avanti’s fault, and it is right that it does not take the blame in those circumstances.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, disruption on our national rail system is now commonplace. Only yesterday, I took a train to reach Parliament that was exactly 60 minutes late. Recently, my wife and I spent a delightful three weeks holidaying in Japan. We criss-crossed every part of Japan on the Shinkansen, the regional network and the local network, and on every single occasion bar none the train arrived precisely, to the minute, as advertised, and deposited us at our destination exactly to the minute. When will we be able to achieve Japanese levels of reliability on our national rail network?

[A noble Lord]

Never!

Electric Vehicle Charge Points

Lord Birt Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Oh, my Lords. I am well aware that several noble Lords have repeatedly requested EV charging facilities at your Lordships’ House. The Government clearly cannot direct the powers that be in your Lordships’ House to install a charging point, but this member of the Government is disappointed by the lack of leadership.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, public charge points often do not work. There is a multiplicity of apps and payment methods; tariffs can be opaque. Does the Minister accept that EV charging needs to be as seamless as buying petrol? Will she accept that the Government must urgently bring much-needed order to our chaotic public charging system?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I do not quite accept that the system is chaotic. It is definitely growing and it is incredibly innovative, but that is why the Government consulted on things such as opening up public charge point data; improving the reliability about which the noble Lord speaks; streamlining payment methods, which is incredibly important; and increasing price transparency, so that people know how much they are going to be charged. We will publish the response to this consultation very soon, and we will lay legislation this year.

Integrated Rail Plan: Northern Powerhouse Area

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I am a proud Liverpudlian and chair of a business headquartered in Yorkshire. Well into the last century, most people, like my grandfather, walked to work. No longer. Modern business requires a multiplicity of skills, from technologists to service engineers to data scientists to financial analysts and myriad more. Most people travel significant distances to work and while they undertake their work, mostly not on trains but in cars, vans and HGVs.

Economically, it is best to think of the heartland of the north, from Liverpool through Manchester to Leeds, as a single metropolitan area with a huge population. The north has long had a wholly inadequate road and rail system to connect its major centres. The M62 is seriously jammed for many hours of the day. By way of example, Halifax and Huddersfield are only eight miles apart, but the direct route between these two famous towns is through hilly country on narrow, bending and heavily trafficked roads, and at rush hour the eight-mile journey can take a whopping 45 minutes. By train, it takes an incredible one hour and 46 minutes to travel the 74 miles from Liverpool to Leeds at a sluggish 42 miles per hour.

To unleash its potential, the north needs not just a rail plan but an integrated rail and road plan. That plan would create a strategic road network and, inter alia, relieve the pressure on the M62 and enable rail to do what rail does best: moving people into, out of and between major metropolitan areas. Leeds and Liverpool need to be connected to London by high-speed rail. London is an unrivalled global centre of financial and professional skill and, to prosper, the north needs effective connectivity with it. Remarkably, under the Government’s proposals in future it will be quicker to reach London from Manchester than to reach Leeds from Liverpool. That is truly shocking. The north will not thrive until the Government focus equally on all three of its major metropolitan areas.

For the past 70 years—not 25, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said—we have had the worst record of any major country in the world in investing in our national transport infrastructure. The Treasury bears prime responsibility for that. High-speed rail is the most vivid example. The International Union of Railways records that China has 38,000 kilometres of high-speed rail, Spain has 3,500, France has 2,700 and the UK—any guesses?—has 113 kilometres. That is 24 times less than France.

That is truly shameful, and it illuminates a horrible truth about our politics: all the pressures on our highly disputatious political system press on the short and not on the long term. This is less than half a plan and I do not expect to see that change.

Lorry Drivers

Lord Birt Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord will know that I am a great fan of rail freight and where it is appropriate to shift freight to rail we certainly should do so. However, one thing that we should be setting up with the industry is a clear and transparent charter that sets out good practice, decent minimum standards for our professional drivers and a commitment to initial and ongoing training. It is time to put the “professional” back into professional drivers and I would be happy to support the industry in working towards such a charter for hauliers and their customers.

[Lord Birt (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is not just lorry drivers. I detect skill shortages in every part of my day-to-day personal and business life—shortages of roofers, data scientists, maintenance engineers, digital marketeers, gardeners, and many more. Do the Government have an analytical grip on the functioning of the UK’s labour market? Do we have appropriate educational skills and immigration policies to enable our economy to reap its full potential?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Any government Minister could probably spend about an hour talking about all our responses to the pandemic, the changes to our labour market and what will be needed in different parts of the sector. One of the big things that the Government are focused on is apprenticeships. In the haulage sector in particular, we did exactly as it asked. We increased the C+E apprenticeship from £6,000 to £7,000 a year. We now need the industry to step up and take that £7,000; there is a £3,000 incentive if that is done before 30 September. Let us get more people into jobs.

North of England: Rapid Mass Transport System

Lord Birt Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I can reassure my noble friend that we are of course looking at connectivity across the regions. A number of urban centres need to be connected, and it is really important that we make sure that towns and villages are connected via local transport to those point-to-point systems.

[Lord Birt (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I have long been a supporter of improving our strategic rail network, but I now wonder whether we face a mid to long-term future in which electric vehicles incorporating artificial intelligence within intelligent connected road networks will become the de facto mode of speedy, seamless door-to-door travel. Is the Department for Transport contemplating and investigating this possibility?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I suspect that it will not be an either/or situation in the future, as indeed it is not now. We are actively considering opportunities for automation and AI. We want to see the safe development and deployment of self-driving vehicles. The Government have the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, which is looking at developing regulations, investing in innovation and skills and engaging with the public, because it is important that we take them with us.

HS2: Phase 2B

Lord Birt Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend might have seen a letter published today by Connecting Britain, which is made up of 120 leaders from the places that he mentions and beyond. It says:

“The Integrated Rail Plan is your chance to move on from Covid to what the future of the UK should look like. Levelling up parts of the country that have seen traditional and considerable underinvestment, and that would benefit from a plan for growth.”


That is exactly what we intend to do.

[Lord Birt (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the UK has underinvested in rail and road infrastructure under all Governments for over 50 years. As a consequence, we have the worst transport infrastructure of any major country. Does the Minister agree that the payback to the economy of major infrastructure investment—think of the M1, for instance—comes not only over decades but, more likely, over the best part of a century?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, this Government completely agree with the noble Lord, and that is why transport infrastructure and building back better is our priority for Britain over the coming years.