Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bradshaw and Baroness Randerson

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 21st January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw (LD) [V]]

I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Randall, has raised this matter, because it is of considerable concern to many people—those who enjoy areas of outstanding natural beauty and, for example, those who run the National Trust. I, too, would like to know what sanctions are available to people who own such areas of land if it becomes apparent that aircraft are not keeping to the guidance provided by the various air traffic orders.

Therefore, I intervene simply to second what the noble Lord, Lord Randall, has said. I believe that the mechanisms are there, but what I really want to know is what happens if the rules are not obeyed and what can be done about it.

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the raising of this fresh issue. I have had representations from residents in Shropshire about a sudden unexplained increase in aircraft noise in their area. In this case the noise was undoubtedly caused by civilian flights. People who suddenly find themselves underneath flights by the Air Force and the military often understand the need for those, but they may be more concerned about civilian commercial flights.

Even the local councillors could not find the cause. They could not discover where the flights were coming from, or why there had been a sudden increase. Was a new airline operating from a nearby airport? Were the schedules, or the destinations, different? They could not find the answer, and then along came the pandemic, and there was no longer a problem. However, that does not mean that the problem has disappeared for ever, or that it will not be back in the reasonably near future.

Even if that problem does not return in Shropshire, that would not undermine the important principle behind the amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Randall, for tabling it. Areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks are subject to numerous protections in terms of planning, the natural environment, and the agriculture that can take place within them, but, as I understand it, there is no protection from aircraft noise.

The Bill threatens to make the present vulnerability of such places worse, because airports will now be required to surrender their spare airspace. There might be an airport very close to an AONB but not operating over it simply because there is no commercial incentive to use that route. But now airports are to be asked to give up their spare airspace for use by general aviation, which means that our skies will be even more crowded.

This is an interesting development, at a time when the Government are keen to burnish their environmental credentials. I recommend that they look into this and see whether they can use their new powers to deal with the problem of noise. I urge the Minister to take seriously the suggestion in the amendment that flights below 7,000 feet should be controlled, and allowed only in certain situations.

Railways: Fares

Debate between Lord Bradshaw and Baroness Randerson

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to review the mechanism used to determine annual increases in train fares.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House and on behalf of my noble friend Lady Randerson, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bradshaw and Baroness Randerson

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment is designed to ensure that when a franchise or an enhanced quality partnership is in place, it will not be undermined by an operator—probably operating across the borders of the franchise but maybe even within it—using vehicles that do not comply with the franchising agreement. Most of us know areas of the country where some of the buses that are in competition with the main operator fall well below the standards—the vehicles are noisy, dirty and probably do not conform to up-to-date emissions regulations. I am moving this amendment to ensure that a traffic commissioner’s powers will enable him to enforce the standards laid down by either the statutory partnership or the enhanced quality partnership. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment reflects the importance that we on these Benches believe lies in the role of traffic commissioners and the enforcement that they have the power to undertake. If you look at their annual report, you will see that the traffic commissioners themselves complain of being overstretched. It is important, therefore, that we give them an express requirement to enforce regulations at a time when we are likely to see bus companies with a lower quality of service possibly impinging on the better bus companies that provide the very best service. I simply wanted to briefly underline the importance that we see in this simple amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bradshaw]

I return to the subject which we have spoken about throughout the Bill: how deep rural bus services might be saved from the way they are being reduced in present circumstances—and, with the various threats to local government funding, are likely to be further reduced in future. I do not intend to press my amendment to a Division, but I would like to have the Minister’s views on it.

The concessionary fare money that the Government dispense, which is a large sum of money—we are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds—is divided up among transport authorities in such a way that it generally comes down to a sum of money spent on concessionary fares in each area. This means that many busy rural routes, profitable routes, attract concessionary fare revenue; whereas deep rural routes, which are mostly used by concessionary fare holders, pass holders, receive the same sum as the authority gives to its urban routes. Of course, a lot more people use urban routes, and I suggest a small top-slicing of the concessionary fare revenue granted to urban routes, so that a little bit is instead devoted to the rural routes. Because far more people travel on urban than rural buses, a small top-slicing of the money for urban buses would amount to a huge increase in concessionary fare revenue earned by operators of rural services.

I am mindful that there are a number of EU rules about state aid. We have to be careful that we do not leave anybody with a profit as a result, but many of the rural routes are not the sorts of routes from which anybody makes very much money. My object in moving the amendment is to ask the Minister—he and I will meet fairly soon—whether this might not be a way of supporting the rural routes in this country. The Government would not have to find more money; they would simply have to redistribute the money that they are already spending. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, my noble friend has devised a very neat way of assisting bus services in rural areas. The problem that rural bus operators face is the demography of those areas, as they almost always have a very much older profile of bus passenger, which means that those routes rarely carry large numbers of fare-paying passengers. The concessionary recompense given to bus operators is cumbersome and inadequate, and that makes it very difficult for rural operators to make a profit. There is a long record of rural operators going out of business. We are suggesting a weighting towards rural areas that would hardly be felt by operators in urban areas because the actual number of rural passengers is very low as a percentage of the total. For rural operators this scheme could be the difference between survival and going out of business. I urge the Minister to respond positively to the efforts made by my noble friend Lord Bradshaw to suggest a mechanism to support bus services in rural areas.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I thank noble Lords for their brief contributions to this short debate. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has tabled an amendment on rural bus services and concessionary travel. As I have said before during the progress of this Bill, rural bus services play a vital role in helping people to get to work and school and in ensuring that they can access a wide range of services and leisure opportunities. Indeed, this issue has been raised in the House before. I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott—who is not in her place at the moment—raised it on Second Reading.

I think we all accept that the loss of a local bus service, particularly in rural areas, can leave people isolated or dependent on friends and family to help them travel. However, commercial services in rural areas can be the most difficult to provide because of the need to achieve the critical mass of passengers required for a regular service. As I have said before, we are confident that the Bill provides significant opportunities for rural areas, and I again draw the noble Lord’s attention to the specific guidance which the Government have now published in which those opportunities are set out.

I turn specifically to the amendment. It would perhaps be useful to remind noble Lords that reimbursement by local authorities to operators is made on a no-better, no-worse-off basis. That means that operators are already fairly compensated for the cost of providing concessionary travel in both urban and rural areas. I believe that the reimbursement mechanism that is now in place is fit for purpose, as evidenced by the large decrease in reimbursement appeals that we have seen over the last few years since the new reimbursement guidance came into force.

If the noble Lord is seeking greater reimbursement for operators for their rural as opposed to urban services, we would be concerned that the amendment would lead to a distortion in the concessionary travel scheme because it is reimbursed on the principle of “no better, no worse off” to which I alluded a few moments ago. It is for that reason that we cannot support this amendment.

I finish by saying that the Government provide, as I indicated previously, significant funding for local bus services. We have talked before about BSOG and the £300 million to local authorities. The Department for Communities and Local Government intends to increase support for more sparsely populated rural areas by more than quadrupling the rural services delivery grant from £15.5 million to £65 million by 2019-20. That again underlines the importance of rural services—a sentiment which I know we all share. On the basis of my explanation, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bradshaw and Baroness Randerson

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw]

It will not come as a surprise to any of your Lordships to know that the bus industry is in quite deep crisis. The number of passengers is falling, bus speeds are declining, and the quality of service that buses offer is getting worse. Considering that we want more people to use buses, the causes of the congestion afflicting the bus industry need to be addressed.

In a letter to me on 8 August, the Minister said that mayoral combined authorities will have the ability to seek additional functions or equivalent legislative provisions to enforce moving traffic offences if they wish. The enforcement of moving traffic offences is an extremely important power. Provisions were made in the Traffic Management Act 2004 for that power to be granted to local authorities but London and recently Cardiff—which is outside the scope of our discussions this afternoon—are the only two places to adopt this ability to tackle the points of traffic congestion that really hold up buses.

Oddly, the Minister’s letter makes no reference to authorities that seek not franchises but advanced quality partnerships. If the Government are willing to grant those powers to franchising authorities, they should be willing to grant them to authorities that decide instead to go for advanced quality partnerships. My amendment would give effect to this so that, if a local authority wanted, it might apply to the Secretary of State for permission to adopt the provisions in the Traffic Management Act.

This amendment is very important to the bus industry which, as I said, suffers severely from traffic congestion. That, among other things, is leading to services being withdrawn because they cannot be operated profitably. More buses are needed to maintain the service, the buses go slower and carry fewer people, and they become less profitable. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, there is a bit of a conundrum at the heart of the Government’s attitude to this. They offer franchising powers to local authorities and, according to the Minister’s letter to my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, they offer additional powers to ensure that such franchising works well. That is logical but surely the most effective and efficient way forward is to ensure that those local authorities that do not want to go for franchising—it will be difficult and complex anyway—are enabled to make their bus service as efficient as possible to avoid the necessity for franchising. If you take that situation together with the views of the Competition and Markets Authority that franchising should be gone for only in very extreme situations—we will return to that later today—there is a bit of a contradiction. I cannot see why the Government are so unwilling to use statutory powers that already exist to implement the provisions of the 2004 Act.

It is not as if we do not have evidence that those powers work. They work in London and I can give noble Lords an assurance that they are beginning to work well in Cardiff. Those powers were given to Cardiff because it was part of the devolution settlement that Cardiff could ask for them. I was actually the Minister in the Wales Office who took that through this House in order to ensure that Cardiff had those powers. Noble Lords will probably be aware that I live in Cardiff so I have personal experience of the way in which the system is working.

Clearly, these powers are having an impact. You can measure that impact in the number of people who are fined for contravening the local road traffic regulations. It is clear that motorists started off with a brazen disregard for bus lanes, yellow boxes, right turns that they should be not making and so on, but that they learned pretty quickly. We know that because the fines start off very high but fall off pretty quickly. By the way, the council also learned because it started moving the cameras round. When it moves the cameras, the amount taken in fines goes up; then, after a while, people have learned and it goes down again. We want a very low level of fines because we want people to obey the rules. This is having an impact. All we are asking is that the Government use existing legislation to give local authorities the tools to do the job, whether they are going for franchising or any other partnership arrangement.

The evidence right across the country, as my noble friend has said, is of increased traffic congestion slowing down bus travel. The impact on passengers and bus companies is considerable. I draw noble Lords’ attention to a discussion I had with an operator in Bristol which said that it had had to put on well over 30 additional buses to maintain existing timetables because of congestion, and that much of that congestion is avoidable—if people do not park in bus lanes or drive along them, and so on. Of course, the financial impact on bus companies of having to put on additional buses is passed on to the passengers. The combination of higher fares and slower journeys deters people from using the buses. To my mind, it is only sensible to use the powers that exist.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bradshaw and Baroness Randerson

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape]

Before the Minister replies, I hate to prejudge and pre-empt his reply, but I fear that he will say what Ministers in successive Governments have said over the years—that these are purely a matter for the local authority, which is of course free to introduce measures to control the increase in traffic.

Interestingly, as I am sure the noble Lord who moved the amendment will agree, it has just been revealed in published statistics that far from there being a war on motorists—a phrase that the Conservative Party and Ministers in Conservative Governments have used frequently—the cost of motoring in real terms has been getting cheaper over the past 30 years. Is it any surprise that congestion has got worse in those circumstances? I hope the Minister will say that the Government are prepared to take some powers themselves rather than saying, “It’s not a matter for us, it is a matter for elected mayors or anyone else who is a local authority to do something about congestion”.

All of us who take part in these debates know full well that, faced with the problem of sitting in a traffic jam in one’s own car or on a bus, the bus is very much the second choice. Only proper enforced bus priority and a proper congestion charge will make public transport more attractive, and not just in major cities; understandably, some of the Liberal amendments have been about rural transport. Again, if it were possible to travel as quickly and as cheaply—or more cheaply—on public transport than in one’s own car, the bus would become a more attractive proposition in rural as well as urban areas. The fact is that in current circumstances it is not. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some reassurance that in future, in pursuit of the very noble cause of introducing or increasing bus travel, the Government will be prepared to introduce some powers to bring that happy situation about.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, my general point is that reducing congestion is a win-win measure. First, it reduces your journey times, and we need that reduction in journey times because they are lengthening at an alarming rate. I will give noble Lords one or two examples of recent research.

Research by London Travelwatch shows there is an “alarming” decline in average bus speeds, which are down to nine miles per hour. That deters people from getting on buses, even in London, which we hold up as a wonderful example of success. In the rest of the country, the situation is also very severe. Greener Journeys research shows a decline in bus speeds in Manchester. Why? In the west of England, between 2012 and 2015, there was an 18% increase in the number of vehicles registered. You cannot have that level of increase in the number of vehicles on the roads without a serious congestion problem, and I make the obvious point that the west of England is not perhaps an area that we think of as congested.

Not only will you reduce your journey times if you deal with congestion, you will also increase bus reliability. Research by bus user groups shows strongly that bus users rate reliability very highly indeed. In other words, they probably do not mind that much whether a journey takes 25 minutes or half an hour, but they need to rely on it being half an hour and not 40 minutes. We need to encourage new users, and they want reliability. At the same time, reducing congestion obviously reduces air and noise pollution. I say to the Minister that you may not have very high levels of air pollution in the countryside, but it is still air pollution and it adds to global warming; it matters to us all. It is important that we do not dismiss air pollution issues in rural areas either.

It is entirely sensible to specify reduction in congestion as one aim of any scheme. It is important that we bear in mind that these things fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, and the Bill will not be a success unless those pieces fit together.

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, since we are talking about the west of England, I should say that I met the person responsible for providing bus services in the city of Bristol, and a rather ridiculous situation has arisen there. The Bristol omnibus company, whatever it is called now, has introduced lots of new buses. It has been summoned by the traffic commissioner because its services are unreliable. Bristol City Council has agreed to appear on behalf of the bus company against the traffic commissioner, because it has concluded that it is impossible to run a reliable service. It puts that down not only to congestion, but to the near free-for-all which has been allowed by the utilities to dig up the roads for roadworks. This is not because there is a gas leak or a burst water main, but because somebody needs their telephone connected. Perhaps the Minister would address the whole problem.