Channel Tunnel Security Regime

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 30th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

I am pleased to speak in support of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I am very concerned about the competitive issues involved in this debate. I am not given to being anti-European or anti-French but it seems that this is one case where the British Government have tried to get some sort of inquiry going—one that I hope, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, will take in industry views—but have been met with, shall we say, a slightly straight bat by the French to the extent that nothing is happening.

The Channel Tunnel is now getting on in years, like me, and it is time that the operating regime, whatever it is, was reviewed. A number of people in the passenger and freight industry want to run trains to Europe. Unfortunately, France has created what one could almost call a cordon sanitaire or moat around their end of the tunnel, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to negotiate for the operation of the necessary through trains. Those of us in the industry who went to St Pancras about two years ago all saw a beautiful new German train that people in the industry wished to introduce into service from Frankfurt, Cologne and Amsterdam, et cetera. There is no doubt that there is a market there, but that market is being considerably obstructed.

Who is making that obstruction? I can say only that it is the Anglo-French bureaucracy. It is not, I believe, about valid security considerations; as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has demonstrated quite cogently, those considerations are considerably overplayed. Eurotunnel, which I think is almost all French-owned now, seems to apply a different set of rules to the shuttle services that it operates, which convey lorries and people in their cars through the tunnel, from what is applied to railway services, which are mostly operated by other people but which the French could operate if they wished. They do not seem to have the commercial imperative to make the railway business in France competitive and are losing market share in many segments.

I am sorry to end on a slightly sour note about Anglo-French relations, but it really is time that someone did something about it. Let me make a suggestion that will be very unpopular. We are about to launch a franchise competition in this country in which Keolis, which is wholly owned by the French state, will bid to run one of our major passenger franchises. I do not see the logic of allowing free competition in that respect—although I actually support it—if there is no reciprocation on the part of Paris. It really is time that we got a move on.