Railways: Electrification

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Indeed, emissions are not just carbon: particulates play a huge role in poor air quality, and the freight-operating companies are taking active steps to reduce the amount of emissions their locomotives produce. For example, among other interventions the industry has begun using stop-start technologies—rather like we have on cars—on locomotives to reduce emissions when idling. We continue to work with the rail freight industry and the Rail Safety and Standards Board to look at what we can do and what research and development needs to be undertaken to reduce all emissions from rail freight.

[Lord Birt (CB) [V]]

My Lords, only around 40% of the UK’s rail network has been electrified so far, and many diesel locomotives are old and highly polluting. When will the Government set out their plans for achieving a net zero railway system?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As I have noted, the Government will publish in spring 2021 the transport decarbonisation plan, which will take a holistic and cross-modal approach to achieving net zero. However, this Government have electrified 700 miles of track in the last few years; we have a very ambitious electrification programme, which goes through the rail network enhancements pipeline to make sure that the right schemes are prioritised and that it secures value for money.

Heathrow Airport Expansion

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble and learned friend is right to say that when making forecasts, one is always reliant on assumptions. There will be assumptions about air quality, noise levels and climate change. But it is also the case that aircraft are now significantly quieter than they used to be, particularly since the retirement of the 747s, and they are likely to be quieter in the future. When we talk about strict criteria on air quality, noise and climate change, these are limits and not targets. We always look to the aviation sector to do better.

[Lord Birt (CB) [V]]

My Lords, international flights are responsible for around 1% of total global carbon emissions, a figure likely to reduce over time with the introduction of aircraft powered by electricity, biofuels or hydrogen. Does the Minister agree therefore that Heathrow is a critical national strategic asset, not least post Brexit, and that it must be allowed to expand its capacity in line with demand?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The Government are considering the court’s judgment carefully, but I remind the noble Lord that Heathrow expansion is a project owned by Heathrow Airport Ltd and it is for the company to decide on its next steps. However, I take the more general point that aviation has a very significant role to play in our future and I welcome the steps that it is taking to reduce its carbon emissions.

Covid-19: Aviation

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

That is a very good question from my noble friend. The UK is an important member of the ICAO and it plays a leading role in the ICAO Council Aviation Recovery Taskforce, or CART. The CART brings together states and the industry to develop guidance. It published its first report earlier this week, on Tuesday 2 June, and it includes strategic priorities for the aviation sector going forward. I mentioned earlier the common health standards that are being developed by the expert group. Those standards will of course also link into the international health standards that are being developed across various countries, to make sure that air passengers have a seamless end-to-end journey.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, yesterday, British Airways offered reassurance to future passengers, citing, first, the effectiveness of its air-filtering system, and, secondly, its intention to clean key surfaces between flights. BA also asked its customers to supply and wear their own face masks and to socially distance when checking in or collecting luggage. However, BA’s guidance was glaringly silent on social distancing during flights. What expert advice have the Government received on social distancing during flights?

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

Is the Minister there? We seem to have a problem with her connection. We are just coming up to the 10-minute time limit, so I am afraid that the Virtual Proceedings will now adjourn until a convenient point after 6.30 pm for the government Statement.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Lord Birt Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be echoing the enthusiasm for this project of the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson.

When I worked at Number 10, I led a year-long project for the then Prime Minister on our national transport infrastructure, working with a team of officials from the Department for Transport and the Cabinet Office. We identified clearly that the UK, a pioneer of transport infrastructure in the 19th and early 20th century, had fallen way behind. In the previous 50 years, we had invested a far lower share of GDP on our infrastructure than other leading countries. Our work demonstrated that, again and again, Governments of both major parties had cut back on planned capital spend whenever a national financial difficulty arose. As a result, the UK had by far the poorest road and rail infrastructure of any developed country. Few of our decision-makers have ever worked in the real economy, I am sorry to say, and they have scant understanding of modern business and of why fit-for-purpose, globally competitive infrastructure is so essential.

Today, business relies on people with advanced professional, specialist and technical skills: financial, strategic, digital, logistical, data science skills and many, many more. They often work for just a few months, on a project basis. Such skills are barely ever available locally in sufficient number. So many people at every level in modern business travel long distances to work, some daily and some weekly, up and out early on Monday, back late Thursday, home-working Friday. At the same time, goods, products and parts of every possible description are distributed urgently at every hour of the day, to every corner of the land. Strategic roads, lamentable though they are in the UK, are by far the most important part of our transport infrastructure. However, rail matters too, and our rail network has long been a disgrace.

We simply must create a long-term, 20 to 30-year plan, not only for effectively linking the huge metropolitan areas of the north to one another but also for linking them and the great Scottish cities to London. Beyond that, we must address lateral travel right across the UK. Manchester and Leeds are 40 miles apart, but it takes over an hour by rail to travel between them. Norwich is 206 miles from Liverpool; the train journey takes five and a half hours, travelling at a snail-rail pace of just 37 miles per hour. Someone leaving London on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner to New York at the same time that Norwich fans left for their opening match of the season against Liverpool just a few weeks ago would have arrived 17 minutes before them.

As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, France opened its first HSR link from Paris to Lyon almost 40 years ago. Japan, Spain and France all have advanced HSR networks now around 1,800 miles in length. China has built an incredible 11,000 miles of high-speed rail in the last six years alone. This, my Lords, is our global competition. Currently, the UK’s only high-speed rail link, from Folkestone to St Pancras, is a measly 67 miles long. How embarrassing for our nation is that?

If HS2 survives its current scrutiny, we will still lag far behind other countries, albeit with a less shaming 400-mile HSR network all of our own. Whatever the project, it must of course be run efficiently, at least possible cost and with real environmental sensitivity. We would all agree on that, but only those who have never themselves managed a large, complex project can barefacedly protest when unexpected difficulties arise or when honest attempts to identify the full cost of a project prove flawed. Beyond that, those selfsame critics often show no appreciation at all of the difference between revenue and capital spend—the latter an investment to have an impact over many decades, perhaps centuries. The Minister reminded us that the west coast line was started 200 years ago. What a return on investment that has proved; it has paid for itself over and over again.

HS2 is a vital foundation of our future rail infrastructure and should be supported wholeheartedly. We should run the project as efficiently and as cost-effectively as we can. But we should also hold our nerve and, Brexit or not, in respect of our national infrastructure we simply must regain Britain’s one-time boldness and ambition from centuries past.

Seaborne Freight

Lord Birt Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as I said, the DfT is not party to the dredging work. I am not able to comment on the value of contracts held by entities other than my department. Dredging of the port is the responsibility of the relevant port authority and continues to form part of the ongoing discussions. As I said, the DfT will continue conversations with a number of stakeholders, including Thanet Council, over plans to re-establish the ferry service.

On the money paid around the Seaborne contract, the contract awarded to Seaborne was part of a broader procurement exercise to secure additional freight capacity after Brexit, and as part of that the three contracts were awarded. Extensive third-party due diligence was carried out on these so a cost would have been attached to the process even if we had never entered into an agreement with Seaborne.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister has told us that substantial commercial due diligence was done on this deal, yet the Secretary of State’s Statement says clearly says that Seaborne,

“was backed by Arklow shipping”.

It goes on to say that Arklow offered support for the proposition, and finally that Arklow,

“provided confidence in the viability of this deal”.

Will the Minister explain more clearly than she has so far what the backing was, what the support was and what the assurances were?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to remind the House that no taxpayer money has been transferred to the company and the Government stand by their robust due diligence carried out on Seaborne Freight. Perhaps it would be helpful if I read out some specific reassurances that Arklow provided to us. It said:

“Arklow Shipping has been working with Seaborne for twelve months in connection with Seaborne’s proposals to develop new freight services between the UK and continental Europe. Arklow Shipping is therefore familiar with Seaborne’s agreement with Her Majesty’s Government to provide additional freight capacity … In support of the current proposals to develop the shipping route … Arklow Shipping intends to provide equity finance for the purchase of both vessels and an equity stake within Seaborne which will be the operating entity of this project … Seaborne is a firm that brings together experienced and capable shipping professionals … I consider that Seaborne’s plans to deliver a new service to facilitate trade following from the UK’s departure from the EU are both viable and deliverable”.


That is from Arklow Shipping, which, as I said, is Ireland’s largest shipping provider and one of Europe’s biggest. That letter has now been published on the GOV.UK website.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Lord Birt Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 20th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who exhibited his normal entrepreneurial and visionary flair.

I have no doubt whatever that, one day, all vehicles will be electrically powered and autonomous and that, as a result, travel by road will be safer, faster and carbon-free. However, this Bill is but a modest, incremental step towards that very distant goal.

Electric vehicles are not new. In 1899, a Belgian electric vehicle, “La Jamais Contente”, which looked like a torpedo with a man perched uneasily on the top, was the very first vehicle of any kind, anywhere in the world, to break the 100 kilometres per hour speed barrier. All new cars in the UK will have to be electric by 2040—earlier in some countries. Anyone purchasing a car in or around 2030 will be wary of buying anything other than an EV, because the resale value of a carbon emitter will become so low. So, in a little over 10 years, the rush to buy EVs may well have begun.

Currently there are 37 million vehicles in the UK, of which only 140,000 are plug-in electric—and these EVs have access to only 15,000 charge points at the moment. Think how much energy is required to move nearly 40 million heavy metal objects across long distances—the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, gave us a very vivid illustration of that. Full electric mobility will exactly double our current demand for electricity. Moreover, at the very same time, to meet our carbon targets to which we have all agreed, gas and oil heating will itself be replaced by electric heating and overall demand for electricity will be triple what it is now. EVs will be by far the most power-hungry devices connected to the low-voltage grid, so a massive investment in the local grid will be needed to cope with the huge increase in domestic demand.

My first question is: when will the Government produce a plan for the transformation of the electricity generation and distribution system to accommodate this tripling of demand—a demand that must be served by non-carbon means? Furthermore, the Government’s thinking on a charging infrastructure for tens of millions of EVs appears to be in its infancy, as the Bill demonstrates. My second question is: when will the Government produce a strategy for charging to match the scale of the demand that will surely occur?

I turn to CAVs, connected and autonomous vehicles—a far less mature technology than EVs. The Secretary of State has said that we shall have,

“fully self-driving cars, without a human operator”,

on UK roads by 2021. This Bill provides a framework for authorising such vehicles. I have been heavily involved with organisations at the forefront of digital technology for 25 years, including leading global players. I have the most direct experience of the awesome power of these technologies and of their transformative impact. However, in every single organisation in which I have worked, digital technology has also often gone wrong. This is an embryonic, still nascent technology. For instance, we cannot get wi-fi to work reliably in the Palace of Westminster. On almost all technology platforms, one piece of software exposes bugs in another. Malign elements at home and abroad penetrate deep into our systems. The notion that we can reach level 5 autonomy by 2021—what the Secretary of State described—is a fantasy.

Toyota was the most innovative car maker in the second half of the 20th century. It invented lean manufacturing and produced reliable vehicles, thus ending the era—an unwelcome part of my youth—of push-starting cars in second gear on cold winter mornings. When the careful, measured CEO of Toyota’s research arm recently said that,

“we are not even close”,

to level 5, I found it all too easy to believe him. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, illustrated brilliantly, how can technology reliably master 100% of the extraordinary complexity of the driving experience, in all circumstances, overnight? In a Renault test, the sensors fogged up and the system tanked. I invite noble Lords to look at the BBC website to see the driverless Nissan in east London. It stops impressively at zebra crossings and traffic lights but it is completely thrown by the—admittedly unusual—sight of a broken-down emergency vehicle with fluorescent flashes being ferried on the back of a trailer with a big blue turn-right sign on the rear. It would have flummoxed me and it certainly flummoxed the driverless car.

There have been many crashes of autonomous vehicles in California, not least because the way CAVs currently move confuses human drivers and thus triggers human error. We must be extremely cautious about allowing CAVs on to our roads. It will certainly be a very long time indeed before I will be trying out a CAV on a crowded M6 on a stormy winter evening and risking meeting one of the double platoons of heavy goods vehicles described by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. So my third question to the Minister is: how will the licensing system for CAVs work? I simply do not understand it and I suspect other noble Lords do not, either. What criteria will be applied before these vehicles are allowed on our roads?

Finally, bold, unevidenced statements appear to be a growing feature of our modern politics on all sides. In recent times Ministers and officials have loudly proclaimed, “We will keep Britain at the forefront of CAV technology”, or, “We are at the front rank of electric vehicle technology”. There are many more such examples. My fourth question to the Minister is: what evidence is there to support these confident claims? I can find none. If you look at the sector analysis, the global leaders of these technologies are, unsurprisingly: GM; Ford, which acquired Argo AI, a collaboration between former Google and Uber executives; Honda, working with Alphabet’s Waymo; and Renault and its partners, including Microsoft. No British names appear in the global tech analysis.

I will offer some hard numbers. In the past few days I have looked at patent applications for CAV-related technologies to the end of 2016. US companies had 10 times, German five times and Japanese 4 times the number of patents applied for by UK-based companies. What evidence does the Minister have to persuade us that the Government’s rhetoric is justified and that we are leaders and not laggards in this important new technology? We must prepare for electric vehicles and we should be alert to the potential of autonomous vehicles, but we need a far bolder vision and plan for both than we have yet seen from the Government in this Bill.

HS2 Update

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I think we all want to see a 21st-century experience across the whole network. I appreciate the noble Lord’s support for the project. In terms of journey times generally, we should compare the existing current routes. The noble Lord talked about Scotland. Once HS2 is up and running, we will be talking about journey times from London to Glasgow going from four hours and 31 minutes to three hours and 40 minutes, and to Edinburgh from four hours and 22 minutes to three hours and 40 minutes. I appreciate the noble Lord’s point about existing lines, but I assure him that the Secretary of State is determined to ensure that where the route connects with other parts of the existing network, as I have alluded to already, we are looking at making major investments in other parts of the rail network as well.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I wholly welcome this long overdue investment in our national infrastructure, while also wishing that we were able to build our infrastructure as quickly as some other countries have demonstrated they can. Can the Minister explain the rationale for connecting HS2 to Leeds and Manchester but not to the city of my birth, Liverpool?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I suppose that is a question that I as a Liverpool fan should also raise; perhaps my accent does not quite give away the team that I support. The noble Lord talks about the importance of connectivity across regions. The Government are working—I referred earlier to northern powerhouse rail as well—on how to ensure that, with the new body that has been set up, we can look to improve connectivity not just between the cities that I have just mentioned but across various parts of the north-east and the north-west to link up the northern part of the country more effectively. I also assure the noble Lord that, as I mentioned previously, HS2 is being made safe and will accommodate any other changes or accommodations that we will need to make on additional line investment across different parts of the north-east and the north-west.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and his hymn of love to his native city. As a Liverpudlian, I fondly recall visiting Blackpool routinely as a child and less fondly watching Stanley Matthews give us a display of how to play football in the second football match I saw as a child.

In 2008, the UK economy suffered a body blow. At long last, we are beginning to recover, but our bounce back has been slower than other leading economies. Moreover, it will be 2018 before we are again, as a nation, in fiscal balance. Our debt levels are now, and will remain for some time, among the highest in the world. It will be a generation before they return to prior levels, always assuming that we will have responsible Governments in the future willing to work to that goal. All parties standing at the next election will, I hope, set out their plans for returning our national debt to historical and defensible levels.

Our lengthy recession has had manifold adverse consequences, as we are all aware. Many individuals and businesses have moved backwards in their fortunes. Responsible savers are paid minuscule rates of interest, well below the rate of inflation, yet still pay tax on the proceeds—punished twice over for their prudence. Even the best-run economies were affected by the global recession, but the UK’s difficulties were intensified: first, by a large financial sector, parts of which, as we all know, were infected by an ingrained culture of risk-taking and greed, making casino bets with their clients’ money; and, secondly, by a failure of government correctly to forecast tax revenues and tailor the level of public spending accordingly. On the one hand, regulation of the finance sector failed us; and on the other, the institutions of government proved inadequate to the task of managing our public finances. Changing the culture and behaviour of a whole industry is not a trivial task, but let us cross our fingers that the new financial regulation reforms will work.

The OBR is a welcome new institutional fixture of manifest independence and integrity. Alongside an independent Bank of England—another welcome reform of recent times—the OBR, if it is retained and respected by future Governments, should prevent political hopefulness and opportunism once again tipping over into recklessness. Yet one fatal imbalance in our economy has not been addressed: for 40 or 50 years, like a badly run business, the UK has consumed too much and invested too little.

Public investment in the UK as a share of GDP is consistently below that of other countries. Unsurprisingly, there is a clear correlation between countries with excellent infrastructure and national competitiveness. The UK lags behind the rest of the world, as once we led it, in creating modern infrastructure and—surprise, surprise—our national productivity trails our competitors too. We know that we allowed our Victorian water and sewerage infrastructure to decay, that we were slow off the blocks with broadband, that we have procrastinated over power generation for the past two decades, and that we have by far the most congested roads and underinvested road and rail infrastructure of any major country. The cold statistics speak for themselves, but each of us can make brutal comparisons whenever we travel to competitor countries. It is shameful but characteristic that we did not long ago resolve how to deal with chronic undercapacity at Heathrow, one of the UK’s most prized strategic assets.

Last year’s Treasury document, Investing in Britain’s Future, was a list of directionally sound projects, but it was neither a vision nor a plan for modernising our creaking, crumbling, unfit-for-purpose national infrastructure within the span of a generation. I greatly respect the record of the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, and I do not for a moment doubt his good intentions, so I will look keenly at the plan he outlined earlier to see how far it goes towards meeting those long-term goals. As a nation, we need to resolve to set aside 3.5% of GDP annually for investment, which is the long-term OECD average. We have been so far below 3.5% for so long—we are currently at something like 1% to 2%—that we probably need to spend 4% to 5% of GDP on our infrastructure for at least 20 years simply to catch up with other nations.

We also need some formal mechanism to embed a long-term commitment on investment into our budgeting, and perhaps in her concluding remarks the Minister will tell us what share of GDP the newly announced infrastructure plan implies over the next five to 10 years. For decades, Governments of all kinds have promised investment but have then short-sightedly cut it at the first sign of economic reverse, most recently vouchsafing in late 2008 that capital spend would be protected—I quote the Treasury of the time—“to support the long-term productivity and competitiveness of the UK economy”, only to see the capital budget savaged, cut by almost half, in the period from 2009 to 2011.

We should continue the process of remedying the long-standing weaknesses in the governance of our economy and, alongside the OBR and an independent central bank, create a new institution of some kind that will depoliticise long-term infrastructure investment. Projects, as we know, can take decades to gestate, plan and deliver. We need an organisation that will bring together the main political parties in order to forge and stand behind a consensus about our national infrastructure. HS2 and the skilful cross-party work of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, offer us some hope that this might be achieved. Let us complete an institutional framework that will stabilise our economy, improve our productivity and end the catastrophic dislocations that have plagued us on and off for half a century, and which have substantially reduced our economic performance as a nation and prevented this creative and enterprising country from achieving its full potential.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester and congratulate him on making a maiden speech; to do so on the Queen’s Speech takes exceptional courage. He said that he has hard work ahead of him to achieve the goal of women bishops, and asked if there was enthusiastic support in this House. I assure him that there are many who will provide him with such support; indeed, he may regret asking the question.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, was right to say that the better the debate, the worse the wind-up. I realise that I have an extraordinary challenge in the wind-up today; there were so many speeches today across such a wide range of issues that I realise that in the time available it is going to be absolutely impossible to respond to all the points that have been made. Where there are questions that I have been unable to answer by the end of the debate, and there will be many, we will try to follow them up.

I start by putting today’s discussion in some sort of context. Four years ago we gathered in this Chamber to debate the first Queen’s Speech since the formation of the new Government. It was also the first time that Britain had a full coalition for more than half a century. However, we were also in the middle of the biggest economic crisis for decades. It was crucial that in that first Queen’s Speech we sent out a strong message of intent to reassure the country. Indeed, Her Majesty’s opening words in that Queen’s Speech of May 2010 made absolutely clear our top priorities: to reduce the deficit, restore economic growth and govern with fairness and responsibility. We know that those are the yardsticks against which this coalition Government’s performance will be measured.

I do not intend to reiterate the speech made by my noble friend and colleague Lord Deighton at the beginning of this debate, which listed the successes and achievements on the economic front. They were echoed by my noble friend Lord Flight, who predicted 3% GDP this year—I hope he will give me some good horseracing predictions, because that requires true courage and acuity. My noble friend Lord Razzall talked of the animal spirits that are pushing forward the economy. My noble friends Lord Northbrook and Lady Noakes pointed out how manufacturing is on an upward trend. That was a real challenge for us to achieve, and we are achieving it. My noble friend Lord Wrigglesworth talked about the achievement of reducing the structural deficit and achieving confidence in the markets at the same time as real fairness in the ways in which we have had to make cuts in order to manage the deficit. My noble friend Lord Shipley talked about the robust contribution of small businesses, as did quite a number of other noble Lords. When you listen to that list, you recognise that this is very far from a zombie Government. This Government are alive and kicking. I take the point that zombies are immortal. Now there is a prospect.

In fact, if anyone is looking a little pale on this occasion, it has to be the Opposition and their speeches today. I am just astonished at the level of amnesia. When I listened to the speeches made by the noble Lords, Lord Adonis, Lord Giddens, Lord Lea of Crondall and, to an extent, Lord Davies, they all seemed to have forgotten the state of the economy that they handed to us. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, and this is crucial, that, yes, there was a financial crisis, but the Government had run this economy in such a way with such overspending that there was no resilience to come back from it, and it is because of that that we faced the crisis that we did, which was so much worse than that in other developed countries. It is from that base that we have moved forward.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that many of the issues that he raised and criticised this Government for were actions that his own Government had not taken. Although this is slightly out of the range of the economy, one of the things that shocks me most is that as I go up and down the country and talk to young people who are now just getting into employment, they came through education during the Labour years when they did not get the skills they needed, when there were no apprenticeships, respect for vocational education or opportunity. It is those changes, including 2 million apprenticeships by the end of this Parliament, that are beginning to make a real change and eat into the figure for long-term youth unemployment. I agree that we must focus on that relentlessly, but that is just one of the many issues on which I wanted to challenge.

The noble Lords, Lord Giddens, Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, all raised the issue of inequality. We have been in a period of real austerity. We are beginning to recover. We are now seeing wages begin to recover, which is crucial, but we also made sure that people kept their jobs. To have been through the period of recession that we have been in and to have managed to keep down unemployment, which is now down to 6.8%—which is not where we want it, we want it much lower—has been a very significant achievement. What more could you do to tackle inequality than to start to take people at the bottom of the earnings scale out of income tax? That is something that Labour never conceived of doing. Labour may now be on board—everybody is on board—but my party led on this issue and has been crucial in making those kinds of changes, along with apprenticeships and the kinds of opportunity that are offered.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned women. Since the coalition Government came to power in May 2010, there are 446,000 more women in employment. Between 2011 and 2012 the gender pay gap reduced for all employees. Even if you look only at full-time employees, it also reduced. We are not where we need to be but, my goodness, we are on the path. There are not many who could have said that, certainly not coming through the kind of economic period through which we have been. We must not relent.

I will try quickly to cover some of the key issues. On the issue of women, the tax-free childcare that we are now putting into place, something that has never been done before, as well as the improvements that we are making in the support to parents on universal credit, are great breakthroughs. They will be very important in the lives of people, especially in the lives of many women.

Quite a number of noble Lords raised the issues of social housing; I am trying to watch the time as best as I can. Social housing was the focus of speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer; it was covered by the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Leicester and of Rochester; and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talked extensively about it, as did the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie of Luton, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, Lord Wrigglesworth and Lord Harrison. They fell into two groups. There was discussion of affordable housing and housebuilding. When we came into government in the financial crisis, obviously the consequence of that financial crisis was that housebuilding had largely collapsed. It is one of the first industries that gives way in that kind of financial crisis. We have been coming back from that, but the impact of the crash was huge. Housebuilding is now at its highest since 2007. Over 445,000 homes have been built since April 2010; 170,000 affordable homes will be built between 2011 and 2015—we have got to 99,000 so far; and £23 billion of public and private finance will help to ensure another 165,000 more affordable homes between 2015 and 2018, which will be the fastest annual rate for 20 years.

We need to keep absolutely focused, which is one of the reasons why the Bills that were announced in the Queen’s Speech were so important. The ability now to transfer unused land held by agencies from those agencies to the HCA to turn into housing projects much more quickly will be one of the many things that will help, along with the changes in planning law which, as many have said, is not a protection in many cases but an obstacle. We need to change that dynamic.

The other issue that was raised was concern about the house price bubble in London. Hopefully, that is now mitigated against as we look at the most recent figures. I want to be absolutely clear that, as some said on the Floor of the House, Help to Buy does not appear to have been a contributor to that: Help to Buy has been helping people outside the London area. Mark Carney’s name has been taken in vain on quite a number of occasions, but what is really important is that the Bank of England is now looking at macroprudential tools rather than interest rates only to try and manage the housing market. It is now becoming tougher, for example, to qualify for a loan in London for high-priced houses. Mechanisms like that can help us deal with those bubbles without the necessary resort, which will have to happen at some point, to interest rates.

Somebody raised the question of foreign buyers. Noble Lords will know that Boris Johnson now has an agreement with builders in London that they will market first in London rather than overseas. There are other measures like that which we can manage to achieve. Others mentioned some of the tax steps that have been taken to try and contain that.

I move on quickly from that issue to the issue of energy, which obviously plays a big part in the Queen’s Speech. Again, I am under tight time pressure, so I will focus fairly heavily on the issues of extraction of oil and gas from shale, and geothermal. I want to provide some reassurances—I am desperately looking to find out exactly what the question was—that the report of the Economic Affairs Committee, discussed by its chair, the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, my noble friend Lord Teverson and the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Jones, and others, will be responded to before the summer recess.

There is a consultation at present on the Government’s proposals for underground access. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that this concerns access below 300 metres. Many of the people who oppose the headline that they see on this measure have no idea that we are talking about levels below 300 metres. It does not apply to surface access. It is very much to the credit of this country that we have a very tough regime of approval for the kind of exploration that would be necessary for shale oil and gas extraction. They are internationally recognised and there is no attempt to break down those protections, which are essential for the confidence of the community. Others have talked about the importance of sharing the benefits with the community, and a number of programmes deal with that. I will gladly write to noble Lords with more detail because I can see that time is racing away from me.

There were a number of questions on devolution and local government from the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Leicester and of St Albans, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, and my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord Shipley. Devolution is absolutely critical and the Government have taken it forward in a way that no one has for a generation. I work with the Local Growth Fund. Local enterprise partnerships are obviously working closely and are deeply engaged with their local authorities and other stakeholders in the community and are coming forward with strategic plans for economic growth in their areas, bringing in new kinds of thinking and breaking down the old silos, which is critical. It means that the Government are handing over the motivation for and the design of those strategic economic plans to local areas, which is a crucial piece of devolution.

I look at simple things in the transport world where we transferred significant parts of the support that we give to buses, including the bus service operators grant, back to local authorities. There is very much a pattern. I recognise that these are hard times, but the good local authorities have looked at the harder financial profiles they face and have managed them very effectively. I take on board the warning of my noble friend Lord Tope; we have had that same concern virtually every year. Really good authorities have found ways to deliver for local people—and, ironically, the approval ratings for local authorities have gone up significantly: they are now at 77%. So there are ways, and we must demand that at a time when every penny is important.

Infrastructure forms a significant part of the nature of this Bill and a number of people raised it. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, said we did not have a plan; we certainly have a plan by any definition of a plan that I know in the national infrastructure plan. As the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, is sitting here, I asked him to confirm what I am saying. The plan sets out what the Government want to achieve, the approach in each sector, and the action they will take to ensure delivery, including identifying key priority investments.

That has been crucial, and sometimes the numbers used to describe investment in the UK and to compare it with other countries fail to recognise that essentially road and rail are public investments in this country, but nearly every other kind of investment in infrastructure comes from the private sector. I was recently in the United States, where they are now trying desperately to copy what we are doing because one’s ability to leverage in that kind of private money significantly increases the amount of investment in infrastructure and creates so many possibilities that could never come from just using the public purse. So we need to stop using distorted figures when we look at these numbers.

Noble Lords talked of their concern over the new status of the Highways Agency—the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, mentioned it.

[Lord Birt]

As I think the Minister will see when she reads Hansard, she has misquoted me. Could she answer this question? What percentage of GDP is going to be invested in our infrastructure under the Government’s plans?

[Baroness Kramer]

I will have to come to the noble Lord with that number, because I do not have it to hand. I would be quite interested in seeing it myself, as I have not seen it expressed in that way—but I would be delighted to.

Something that is very important about the Highways Agency, which encapsulates the real change that this Government are bringing to infrastructure, is that it will sit as the delivery implementing agency, in effect, for future roads investment. Sitting outside it is the roads investment strategy, which remains entirely the responsibility of the Secretary of State. I should say that the Highways Agency is also wholly owned by the Government—it is definitely an agency. For the first time, we will have long-term certainty of funding for roads and a programme over a Parliament in the same way that we have had for rail. Many in this House have pointed out that the problem in project after project has been that investment has been subject to a stop-start set of decisions, which have disrupted long-term investment. Now we can begin to have that kind of assurance. Bringing into the Highways Agency people with the skills to deliver that efficiency, just as we are doing in the rail sector, is absolutely crucial. With the scale of investment that we are undertaking, we have to make sure that every penny is well spent. That means that we need that specialised expertise and we will have it going forward—we hope, if this House and the other place agree to the kinds of proposals being put forward in the Queen’s Speech.

I have less than two minutes, so I close by reiterating my thanks to everybody who is here. I recognise that there are very significant areas that I have not covered, but I shall try to do so in writing in response to questions. Finally, it has been an absolute privilege to be in the Department for Transport at this time. I look back at previous Ministers, and many in this House who had to deal with cuts and decline. We are at a time when this Government are taking a completely different approach towards infrastructure. It is part of the growth, because it becomes the framework for important economic growth. We are building Crossrail, we are completing the Northern Hub, and there will be £70 billion of capital investment in transport over the next Parliament. We are trebling the budget for major road schemes. Network Rail will spend £38 billion over the next five years. We have doubled the investment in cycling and we are investing £500 million to position Britain at the forefront of ultra low-carbon motoring. As the demand for travel rises, we are meeting that challenge.

Busy arteries such as the west coast main line will be overwhelmed in the next decade if we do not build new capacity between our cities in the form of new rail, which is why we need the new north-south rail High Speed 2. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that it is of course our intention that eventually there will be an HS1-HS2 link. The scheme in the programme was simply inappropriate and unworkable. It is something we want but we recognise that it will need to be looked at in the future.

However, the most important thing about HS2—this goes back to the discussion on the economy and equality—is that it offers so much opportunity to the Midlands and the north, which they deserve. We must take connectivity along with it. That goes back to the devolution issue. The noble Lord, Lord Deighton, has led that work and worked closely with the communities in the Midlands and the north. They have told us what connectivity is needed to maximise the benefits of HS2. That line offers a future in which once again, as has always been the case traditionally, the Midlands and the north can balance out London and we achieve growth all across our nation so there are no areas to which we have to transfer payment, as it were. Rather, there will be great generation of wealth, income, jobs and new business all across the country.

I thank noble Lords for their contributions and wish there had been time to respond to more of the questions.