Brexit: Transport

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, I will add some burdens to the Minister in his reply by mentioning other factors that must be taken into account. I will talk about the British bus building industry. It is one of our great successes, with Wrights of Ballymena, Alexander Dennis in Scotland and Optare in Leeds. They are world leaders in the manufacture of buses. When we talk about buses, we always talk about all the components that go into building buses. I want to know that these people will be able to trade with countries in Europe on the same basis as they do now. If they are not, it will immediately deal a blow to employment prospects here. There are plenty of other people waiting to fill the gaps that we create for bus purchases.

Secondly, I am concerned about road safety. Figures published in the last couple of days show that serious road casualties of children are going up again, quite steeply. In statistics published by the Department for Transport, little coloured markers show each road user—pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and cars. But lorries are missing. The need to keep the strictest control on lorries is vital if road safety is to be enhanced. Most serious casualties involve one or more heavy goods vehicles. Any race to the bottom that may be envisaged to allow the road haulage market to be liberalised must be balanced very carefully with the damaging effects of that on road safety and on the environment.

The existing railway franchise competitions, which when the railways were privatised were envisaged as something quite separate from the state, are now populated heavily by not only European Governments but foreign Governments. To that extent, I suppose they are nationalised. However, if they withdrew from competitions, which is a possibility, there would be very little competition left in the British market. Very often, they are one of two bidders, or two out of three, for franchises. They mostly run the trains very well and bring a lot of experience, but if we cut ourselves off, that element of competition will not be available to us.

Lastly, I turn to the position of Airbus. It is a joint venture between France, Germany, Britain and, I think, Italy. A huge number of skilled workers in Cheshire depend on Airbus for their living. If the Airbus consortium were broken up in any way, Cheshire could lose out very heavily because there are manufacturers on the continent of Europe that will willingly step into the void left by our withdrawal, and there will be tremendous casualties. That applies in a lot of other areas besides transport. A lot of employment depends on our remaining in the European Union. The examples that I have cited involve transport—I have tried to stick to this particular debate—but I am sure there are many others in many other areas.