Cyclists: Safety

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Baroness Kramer

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, it is important that everyone does all they can to try to improve cycle safety. In London, many of the recent incredibly sad deaths have been related to collisions with HGVs. Europe has adopted, and we are enforcing, new rules on goods vehicles in consequence of that, and London is taking it further with its Safer Lorry Scheme, which will be more fully implemented in September. There is a whole variety of actions that we can take; London’s superhighways are another example. Much of the money announced today for the eight cycle cities may well go on segregated cycle provision.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, why are the Government so resistant to introducing 20 miles per hour limits for vehicles in cities and towns throughout the country?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, it must be a local decision. There are some areas where decisions should be made not by government at the centre but by local government, which understands the local circumstances. Changes have been made to make it much easier for that to be implemented. Change in the rules on road layouts and changes in signage mean that it is now much easier for a community that wishes to have 20 miles per hour limits to make sure that they are in place.

Railways: East Coast Main Line

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Baroness Kramer

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

The way in which this franchise has been set up is a sale of shares. All staff will remain on their existing contracts. They will continue effectively to be employed by the same employer. Whatever those terms are will continue. It is important to notice the ambitions in this franchise to improve training and opportunities for staff. Virgin has been clear that, with new services, it is going to need to train and hire new drivers and new on-board staff. There are no plans to close ticketing, although much friendlier services will be opened up.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I return to the question from my noble friend Lord Adonis about performance. What will be done to examine the performance of the new franchisee against that of the previous holder over the coming 12 months and the next five years?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, we hold all our companies to a very high standard of performance. They continue to be rigorously observed. Virgin will take on great challenges, bringing on new services and rolling stock. These will offer a great deal to passengers and we will expect a high performance from them. The noble Lord will be aware that, under the new franchising regime, the quality of output is a very important part of deciding where to award the franchise. It is no longer just on the cheapest.

Railways: Line Resilience

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Baroness Kramer

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

I say to my noble friend Lord Dykes that I do not have the data in the foremost part of my mind. As he knows, the matter is very much under discussion and I will get back to him with whatever detail is available.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, among those for whom there is a residual problem are the poor, beleaguered commuters travelling from Hastings to London, who for weeks now have had disruption due to flooding and have been trying to secure refunds from the rail operative. What are the Government doing to bring those rail companies into line, ensure that people are given a full refund for the tremendous inconvenience that they are suffering, which goes on and on, and bring this to an end quickly?

[Baroness Kramer]

This is the Tonbridge to Hastings route, which was closed because of a landslip. My understanding is that the reopening is delayed due to ground movement. We very much hope that the line will open again shortly but if there are issues—and I understand from the noble Lord that there are—will he pass them to my department and we will make sure that that they are passed on to the appropriate institutions for proper answer?

Postal Services Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Baroness Kramer

Wednesday 6th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I hesitate to rise on this occasion because there have been so many detailed, coherent and powerful speeches, but perhaps I may make two brief comments. I would ask the Minister, as he looks at the potential amendments to Clause 28, to recognise that it is an extraordinarily powerful clause. Everyone in this House is concerned that Royal Mail should have an effective future and that we should have a secure universal service provider. Moreover, everyone in this House is aware that Postcomm in its approach to regulation has played a role—it has not been the only factor but it is certainly a critical one—in bringing Royal Mail, frankly, to its financial knees. If I were a potential investor I would ask myself how that regulatory environment was going to change because I certainly would not want to put my head into the same noose that Royal Mail has had to face for the past decade or so. Clause 28 therefore signals a fundamental change in the outlook, priorities and focus for Ofcom, particularly by for once looking for financial sustainability. So I urge the Minister, in looking at a variety of complex and interwoven evidence, to continue to recognise the importance of sustaining a balance between competition and the future of the universal service provider. But let us not lose what this clause has finally brought to the picture.

My final brief comment is that concerns have been expressed around the Committee that one of the responses Ofcom might make to financial pressures in the universal service provider would be to restrict the scope of the universal service. It seems to me that that would be very hard to do, given the language used in this clause and in Clause 30. I know that it was only meant to get the debate going, but I am rather taken with Amendment 24H tabled by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, which would require paying attention to the underlying costings. That would drive in the direction of recognising that price might be the mechanism to use to ensure Royal Mail’s financial future rather than reducing the scope of the USP.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of Amendment 24PB, which has already been spoken to by my noble friend Lady Dean. I await the Minister’s response with interest because that will give an indication of the Government’s view not just on how they will tackle this particular piece of legislation, but their more general view on the problems we face in many other areas of society related to indebtedness. It will also be an indication of whether we are learning the lessons of history. I go back to NATS which, when it was privatised, was very highly geared indeed. My old friend the former Chancellor and then Prime Minister was even prepared to contemplate a gearing of 129 per cent, but in the event it was limited to 110 per cent, which was still an extraordinarily high gearing to bear for the airlines group that bought the major part of the company.

We privatised in order to bring in capital, to bring in to a degree the economic disciplines of the private sector, and to bring in private sector management that we hoped would result in better performance. Capital was a vital part of that, so if you end up with a company potentially coming in which has borrowed most of the money to purchase your concern and then finds that it is unable to provide the capital needed to effect changes in the operation of your concern, you are in real difficulties. That was the experience with NATS. It ran into the September 11 debacle fairly quickly and then had to go running back to the Government for a form of bailout. We know perfectly well from our experiences over the past decade that if utilities go to the wall, they have to be bailed out. We know also that in defining utilities, we find that a substantial part of the private sector itself ends up as a form of utility, which is what the banks are. They could not be allowed to go to the wall so they had to be bailed out. Let us hope that the report that is coming out on the banks will teach us some lessons from history that we can use to good effect.

BAA was purchased on the basis of very high gearing indeed, and there is a big question mark over the extent to which the capital that went in has been used to its fullest effect. We know perfectly well that those who suffered from the poor performance of BAA just before Christmas because of a lack of capital investment in equipment will feel that BAA did not deliver as it should have done. Instead, BAA has spent much of its time trying to make profits to repay the capital it borrowed at very high interest rates. When we come to changing the status of Royal Mail, there is no way that we should be looking at a company that is very highly geared.

The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, has made in this amendment a modest attempt—it is not very prescriptive—to put right the wrongs that we have experienced in the past. When we move to talk in a different context about the private sector, perhaps these are the frameworks that we should lay down for changes there, too. The Americans certainly know that, when utilities have been privatised, there should not be gearings of more than 60 per cent. I hope that we can look for similar changes in this legislation.

Postal Services Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Baroness Kramer

Monday 14th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, the statements made by the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, expressed the distress that is widely felt and which we all understand. He got to the crux of the matter when he said that a previous Government had liberalised the market in mail without first putting Royal Mail on a secure basis. I agree totally with that analysis. Just as happened with Deutsche Post in effect, Royal Mail should have had private capital brought in in that period to put it on to a secure and thriving basis before the market was liberated. We can see that.

However, I ask the House to be careful that we do not repeat that mistake. Since Royal Mail is bleeding money daily, there is urgency in dealing with the problems facing it to make sure that it survives and that a universal service provider survives. Sometimes in these conversations we might occasionally overlook the reality that if there is no secure financial future for Royal Mail, which requires not just the current very important modernisation programme but steps beyond that requiring considerable additional outside money to establish it as a pre-eminent and effective organisation, the role of universal service provider is indeed in jeopardy. It is making sure there is a successful financial future for this organisation that makes the universal service provider concept viable. Rather than reading this legislation as some sort of attack or as a lack of faith in the universal service provider, I see it as attempting to put into place the structural underpinnings that make the USP a realistic ongoing proposition, because consumers and those who work in the Post Office wish to see that as part of our future.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I agree with the principal point that my noble friend Lord Clarke of Hampstead made about the universal service. As the House knows, I was one of those who recognised the problem that Royal Mail was facing and who was in favour of substantial capital investment to try to help with modernisation and moving forward, but I was not in favour of 100 per cent privatisation. There is a difference between those who are now expressing concerns in a way that they did not before. The major difference is that we are talking about 100 per cent privatisation as opposed to only a very substantial part of the shares being sold.

My worry is that we could find ourselves in a position where a foreign buyer might already be in the business in a country that no longer has a universal service and that might decide in due course that it will no longer maintain a universal service in this country. That would be very bad indeed for Britain. People are waking up to what is happening in the health service, with the threats and fears that they are starting to see, and I hope that they will start to recognise that while we need change in this area as quickly as we can have it, there have to be fundamental safeguards to meet the wishes of the British people. I hope that they will recognise that there is conceivably a threat at the end of the day to the universal service.

We are governed by European Union legislation in this area to a degree. Originally, the European Union was very much in favour of the retention of the universal service. Bit by bit over the years, the European Union has changed the legislation and has eased its position on it. A number of European countries have now moved from being totally state-owned to 100 per cent privatisation, and in some of them operatives are not required to deliver a universal service. It is quite conceivable that one of those could bid and be successful in purchasing the Royal Mail. I listened to the previous debate and the assurances given by the Minister. She hopes that there will be ways in which we would avoid any such difficulty arising. Ofcom would be involved. Will Ofcom have the right to stop a foreign bidder of the kind that I have just described proceeding with the purchase of 100 per cent, less the employees’ share, of Royal Mail? If so, how would it prevent the universal service disintegrating bit by bit if such a buyer were in possession of the Royal Mail?