Roads: Charging

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the principal authority for ensuring compliance with UK regulations is the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency. It may have a role in ensuring compliance with lorry road user charging, and it certainly has a role in ensuring that foreign goods vehicles comply with all our regulations.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

Does the Minister agree that the most advanced and used system in Europe is the German one, which is not based on paper, or even on registration recognition, but on satellites; that that is the way forward; and that that is what the previous Government were exploring and it has been abandoned by the present Government? Will they not go back to look at the longer term and to try to get the best system for our country, not a halfway house measure?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the satellite scheme was abandoned by the previous Government, not by this Government. They abandoned it because they spent £65 million on it and achieved nothing. It is also important to remember that our problems are different from the problems experienced by continental countries, which have a far higher proportion of foreign heavy goods vehicles operating on their territory.

Railways: Heritage Sector

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I, too, express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for providing us with this very useful debate today. I declare an interest as one of the numerous vice-patrons of the Bluebell Railway, which is endeavouring to raise funds in its 50th jubilee year. I believe that I have one or two colleagues in the House who are also vice-patrons.

Like the noble Lord, I think that heritage railways, particularly the Bluebell Railway on which I shall speak, epitomise all that one looks for in the big society as it is currently described. Last year, for example, the Bluebell was granted the prestigious Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. While it has a calibre of full-time employees, its mainstay is volunteers. Nearly 600 of them keep the organisation running and have done so for more than 50 years. Last year, the Bluebell line carried 187,000 passengers, including my noble friend. It is a good employer, a great tourist attraction and a great educator, not just for Sussex, where I reside, but also for the UK; people come from overseas to visit our steam trains. It had a turnover last year of more than £3 million. In addition to that, as others have described, there is a wider benefit to the local communities as people come in to see the railway.

As well as providing full-time employment for staff, it currently offers more than 40 full-time apprenticeships in its carriage, wagon and locomotive works, which are not only maintaining the old skills that are required but, with the use of technology, moving into new areas and developing new engineering skills.

The trust has very ambitious plans for growth. Of particular importance, it is now working on a northern line extension project that will link into East Grinstead and the national rail network. That gives the opportunity to talk about some of the issues which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned.

There is a final obstacle to be overcome: the removal of thousands of tonnes of household waste that were tipped into the Imberhorne cutting on the outskirts of East Grinstead. The work is costing well over £2 million. There is urgency to the task, as our exemption from land tax charges unfortunately expires on 31 March 2012. If the waste is not moved by then, we will face very high costs arising from the landfill tax. After April 2012, the costs will triple, with an extra £64 for each tonne taken out. Indeed, if it is not cleared before 2014, the cost will go up to £80 per tonne, which is an extra cost on top of the expenditure that I have just described. These costs are being driven by government changes to the landfill tax.

The Bluebell Railway is a charity and many of our volunteers are having a problem with the cost of providing fuel for their cars, which affects the numbers who turn up. We are also having problems with the local authorities, which are suffering expenditure cuts, and that is also a concern for us. We are therefore looking for donors.

As the train is ahead of schedule, I shall take an extra minute to make an appeal for donors, in the hope that people will be prepared to put themselves forward. In terms of the big society, we are looking to individuals and groups, but I also make an appeal to bigger organisations. The Bluebell Railway line will end at East Grinstead, adjacent to a big Sainsbury’s store. Sainsbury’s will gain considerable benefit from having this heritage railway running alongside its store. As we have not been able to persuade a large company to make a very helpful donation towards what we are endeavouring to do, perhaps I may appeal to the noble Earl. In spite of all the problems that he has, perhaps he could have a helpful word in the right quarters with some of the bigger organisations around East Grinstead, which so far have not pulled as much weight as we would have wished, and that might help in getting the rest of that household waste out of the cutting. I look forward with great interest to a response on that.

Airports: Heathrow

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My noble friend is, of course, absolutely right.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the last Government also placed 51 per cent of the shares of National Air Traffic Services in the hands of the public through the Government? The Government are contemplating privatising NATS. Would he assure the British public that it will not fall into foreign ownership?

Roads: Charging

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an interesting point. One problem that we experience is foreign vehicles coming in with very large fuel tanks, sometimes containing in excess of 1,000 litres of fuel, which enable them to travel all around the UK and then leave without buying any fuel here. There is also an EU directive on the minimum vehicle excise duty rate.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

What does the Minister think of the German satellite tracking scheme? It is more expensive than some of the alternative systems that are available, but does it not provide an investment that could be built on in future and used to track all traffic?

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord makes an important point. We are looking very closely at what our European partners are doing. It is important to remember that their problems are slightly different from ours. European states have a lot of through traffic. We do not have so much through traffic, but we do have lots of foreign vehicles coming to deliver to the UK.

Transport: Investment

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his contribution. By definition, a trolleybus is electrically driven and therefore has zero emissions at the point of use, which makes it a very attractive project. I look forward to researching this project, just out of interest on my part.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, would the Minister agree that it is difficult to accept that dealing with the deficit is the number one priority when an announcement is made locally that the £50 million made annually by the congestion charge in west London is likely to be abandoned in December, with all the attendant loss for the capital that will go with it? That sits neither very squarely with dealing with the deficit nor indeed with fairness, when one sees the nature of the people who will be the beneficiaries from the abandonment of the west London congestion area.

I should like to ask something more positive. Nowhere in the document is there anything that gives us great hope of seeing a strategic approach to many of the problems that we face. In particular, I pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, about the massive cut coming in the maintenance of roads. Some £200 million is to be taken out every year over the next four years, after a particularly difficult winter. If we have another hard winter, at the rate we are going we will be like a third-rate country. Will the Minister please explain the criterion used to determine how the £200 million should be saved in each of the next four years? Is that to be done by local authorities or has some criterion been set for establishing that?

Secondly, which schemes have been totally abandoned? It is very difficult when reading the documentation to identify whether any have gone. My reading of it is that some have gone all the way. Will he please place a list in the Library?

Thirdly, are the Government giving any thought to alternative means of raising funds to reinvest in the road transport system? For example, a number of parts of the country were exploring the possibility of introducing congestion charging—not solely to raise funds but to reduce congestion—and such schemes would have been helpful in providing funding for reinvestment in other parts of road transport. Has that been totally abandoned by this Government? Does the noble Earl have any views on how they might explore alternative ways in which money may be raised?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the congestion charge is not my responsibility but the responsibility of the Mayor of London.

On the difficulty of local maintenance, I shall write to the noble Lord. On the Highways Agency, it can do a number of things to better manage the strategic road network. It can build on the investment of the previous Government in better systems, to make sure that maintenance takes place at the right point—not too early and not too late.

As for the noble Lord’s question about local authority congestion charging, I should say that we have no intention of introducing a national scheme.

The road schemes to be cancelled because there is no foreseeable future for them are: the A1 Leeming to Barton scheme; the A19 Seaton Burn interchange; the A19 Moor Farm scheme; the A21 Kippings Cross scheme; the A21 Flimwell to Robertsbridge scheme; the A21 Baldslow scheme and the A47 Blofield to North Burlingham scheme.