Seaborne Freight
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Sugg
My Lords, the dredging of Ramsgate, which the noble Lord said is already happening, is separate from this contract. We have a prioritisation process in place to ensure we can facilitate trade in the goods that we need to. That is an ongoing process that will continue up until we reach a deal with the European Union.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, when did any British Government in any field last place a major contract with a company that had no experience whatever of operating? Are the Government confident that the contract given to Seaborne Freight is fully in accordance and fully compliant with our rules on public procurement and the European public procurement directive?
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, we are absolutely confident that it is fully compliant. We duly published the details of the contract. As with many operators in the maritime sector, it is not uncommon for it not to own its own vessels. Many operators charter them through third parties, as Seaborne is doing.
Airports National Policy Statement
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I know that there are some very interesting proposals around Manston Airport. One of the reasons why we chose Heathrow was because of its freight capacity and the expansion will deliver doubling of freight on that. Alongside that, we are already full at Heathrow, and expect to be full at other airports very soon. Alongside the laying of the final NPS, we announced the policy on making best use of existing capacity to ensure that other airports can do that.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, it is extremely good news that this project is finally going to go ahead but I fear that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said—and I think that the Minister has already acknowledged the point—we may run into quite a lot of obstacles and sources of delay. If we do, I hope that the Government will consider proceeding by some accelerated legislative process to carry this through without undue delay. Undue delays in infrastructure projects are surely a great national economic handicap which we have had for some time, but will the Minister agree that this is a particularly egregious case? We have had delays of at least eight years, due to indecision, vacillation and the setting up of quite otiose inquiries, when their results were already known in advance, merely to delay the outbreak of conflict within the Conservative Party and disputes between that party and the House of Commons. That is a very bad example. I think that future generations and the international world as a whole would have noticed that. Does she accept that, had the last Labour Government won the 2010 general election—I declare my interest: I served in that Government, but I had nothing whatever to do with civil aviation or airports—this new runway would have already been built?
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord’s welcoming of the NPS. He is quite right to point out that this has taken some time and has been the subject of many conversations, which is why we were so pleased to be able to lay the final NPS yesterday. We absolutely need to get on with this. As to whether this would have happened should the Labour Government have won in 2010, I am sure a lot of things would be different, but I am not sure whether the runway would now be built.
Rail Timetabling
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend for the disruption to services he has faced on the Northern route. I absolutely reassure him that the Secretary of State and the Rail Minister have more than daily meetings on this. I agree it is important that we communicate to passengers as quickly as possible the new timetable and the incremental upgrades that are coming.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, is not the most extraordinary aspect of this Statement that the priority of the Secretary of State appears to be to argue that everybody else was at fault and that absolutely no responsibility or blame attaches to him? Does the noble Baroness agree that that attitude is not only unedifying but completely non-credible? The Secretary of State was clearly incompetent if he did not know what was going on—he was not asking the right questions. He knew, as the noble Baroness has just said, that the new timetable arrangements were running into considerable delays. As she said, that was a matter of public knowledge. He was equally incompetent if he did know that things were going wrong and did absolutely nothing about it until the car crash.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, as I said, we were aware that there were issues with the infrastructure upgrades and the new timetable but we received reassurance and were not aware that there would be disruption of this level. As I said, on other rail lines the new timetable has been delivered, but GTR and Northern have suffered unacceptable delays and disruption. I repeat that the Secretary of State has apologised, and I do not think it is right to apportion blame today. The priority is to make sure that passengers get a better service as soon as possible. We are also running the inquiry so that we can fully understand exactly what went wrong, learn from those lessons and make sure we do not have the same situation in the future.
Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) (Amendment) Order 2013
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford
I hope that the noble Earl will forgive me if I intervene on a slightly different matter, but a matter directly related to the subject of this order. I believe it to be in the public interest to do so. I shall speak very briefly.
I discovered this morning from my NHS GP—who has a practice in the centre of London, and whose name I cannot put on the record because I do not have his consent to do so—that very frequently he and his practice colleagues come across prima facie evidence of immigration fraud, people being here illegally or indeed people illegally accessing NHS services. Although there is a hotline available to medical practices to report prima facie evidence of benefit fraud, apparently there is no hotline or other mechanism available to GP practices in this country or to medical centres to report prima facie immigration fraud or other immigration irregularities or illegal access to NHS services. I wonder whether the noble Earl will give some consideration to whether it might be a good idea to provide such a mechanism. I believe that the corresponding mechanism that is supposed to alert the authorities to prima facie evidence of benefit fraud works very well.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. I have a couple of questions for clarification on the order. At the top of page 2, Article 4 inserts two new articles, 8 and 8ZA. Article 8 has a new process of an oral grant or refusal of leave, whereby an individual who has been granted leave to remain or refusal to remain can be told that by telephone. I am slightly puzzled about the mechanics of how that would work. I indicated to the noble Earl that I intended to raise this matter.
Some people who apply will, of course, not have English as their first language and may have difficulty in understanding. What process is undertaken to ensure that the person receiving the notice to leave the country or to remain fully understands what they are being told, so that there is no misunderstanding? If someone receives something in writing saying that they do not have leave to remain in the country, they can take it to a solicitor and get advice, but if they receive that information over the telephone they will have to digest it at a later date. I am slightly concerned that someone may get information but not fully understand the nature of that information and not be able to act on it because they are puzzled or do not have any proof of that information. How is it possible to be assured of the identity of someone being notified that they may be granted leave to remain or refused leave to remain in the country if you only talk to them on the telephone? I have questions about how that will work. I am not clear about the security issues involved.
Article 8ZA paragraph (4) says:
“Where attempts to give notice”—
for a grant, refusal or variation of leave in writing—
“are not possible or have failed”.
That is the point that the noble Earl was making. That could be put on file and deemed to have been served. In paragraph (4) it refers to “attempts” in the plural, so obviously two attempts have to be made, but is there any guidance on how those attempts should be made? When it talks about attempts to give notice not being possible, why would it not be possible to make an attempt to contact someone? I am slightly puzzled by the wording.
Paragraph (6) says:
“A notice given under this article may, in the case of a person who is under 18 years of age and does not have a representative, be given to the parent, guardian or another adult who for the time being takes responsibility for the child”.
Does that mean a legal responsibility, or could it be a casual and informal responsibility? I recently raised a case with the Home Office where an individual was seeking to have a passport returned on behalf of another person and I was told that it could not act or intercede with that person because there was no legal authority to do so. I am slightly puzzled how the situation of someone who, for the time being, takes responsibility for a child being able to receive information regarding the granting, refusal or variation of a right to remain in the country would work in practice.
My final point is on the presumption of receipt of notice. The article refers to the notice being sent by the postal service and on the second day after it is sent,
“it shall be deemed to have been given to the person”.
What happens in the event of a mail or postal strike, as we have seen in some parts of the country? I would be grateful if the noble Earl could clarify those points and give me some answers.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am grateful for the supportive and thoughtful contributions made by both noble Lords.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, on reporting suspected immigration irregularities, there is a generic hotline for members of the public and stakeholders to report suspected immigration offenders. Information is available on the Home Office website, and I can write to the noble Lord with further information. However, it is a good point that we should understand about the abuse of our NHS facilities.
Lord Davies of Stamford
The problem may be that because of medical confidentiality there is some hesitation to use a regular hotline. There needs to be a mechanism available specifically to and within the medical profession. That may be necessary if the Government really want the full co-operation of the medical profession in this matter.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I will write in detail to the noble Lord on the issue of confidentiality and on whether anything else needs to be done. Everyone is aware of the abuse of our NHS treatment, to which a lot of immigrants are not entitled.
The Government have made this order to protect our ability to control immigration and ensure that migrants are treated fairly. This Government are committed to ensuring that the UK attracts the brightest and best migrants but is closed to those who seek to abuse the system. We must be clear to the public, our corporate partners and those who wish to come here that we will take action against migrants who fail to pursue the purpose of their leave. In the most non-compliant cases we will require the individual to leave the UK immediately or be subject to enforced removal.
Where the cessation of sponsorship is a result of the sponsor losing their licence or migrant non-compliance is not clear, we must operate a system that is fair and enables bona fide migrants who want to study to switch to another sponsor—and the system does that. However, our ability to take appropriate action must not be hampered by gaps in legislation or result in delays and the need for time-consuming and bureaucratic processes. We do not want to create a duty on sponsors to have to report every change in their migrants’ address, phone number or e-mail address. That would be far too onerous a task. However, it is reasonable to ask the sponsor to provide the latest contact details with their notifications. That will give us the best opportunity of communicating the decision to the individual concerned in the first instance. If we cannot serve the notice on the individual, whether by post or some other means, we will seek to serve the notice on the migrant’s representative. Only where that is not possible, or the service fails, will we serve the decision on file.
The order amends Article 8 of the 2000 order. These changes are technical and retain the current position in Article 8, which provides that a notice giving or refusing leave to enter may be given by fax, e-mail or, in the case of a visitor, orally, including by means of a telecommunication system. The amending order retains the provision in Article 8 regarding oral notice to visitors but transfers the provisions regarding fax and e-mail to the new Article 8ZA, where other means of giving the notice are dealt with—post, courier and so on—and I will write to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to confirm the procedure for giving oral notice.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, also asked what the purpose was of such a broad definition of adults who are responsible for children. Perhaps it would be helpful if I read out the answer.
Civil Aviation Bill
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford
My Lords, I thoroughly agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. When I was Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and therefore about twice a month a regular customer of Belfast City Airport, I realised how enormously important for the economic self-confidence of the Province is that link to Heathrow and, through it, to international networks. I also very much agree with my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis, who spoke of course, on the basis of very considerable personal experience in having held two immensely important positions in civil aviation. I will follow very much the logic of what he said.
Of course, as always, I listened with great attention to the Minister. He started off by saying something that we would all agree with, which is that aviation is “vital to our economy”—I think I noted down his remarks correctly. To my amazement, he did not say anything at all about the fact that the aviation industry is in fact facing a major competitive threat at the present time and is extremely worried about the future. You might hope that a Government of the day would take that on board and do something about it. Far from it, unfortunately. That is a very troubling situation.
Most of us were brought up thinking complacently—perhaps we always were very complacent about this—that Heathrow was the biggest airport in Europe and so we were quite safe as we had the centre of at least the European aviation industry right here in our country. That is no longer true and is becoming less true all the time. Already two of Heathrow’s rivals, Roissy Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt, have more aircraft movements than Heathrow. By the end of this decade, which is only eight years away, they will almost certainly have more passengers, as will Schiphol, so Heathrow will be number four and going down.
Heathrow is enormously important and I make no apology for focusing on it. I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, was completely wrong to say that it is all right because although there is not enough capacity at Heathrow there is enough capacity at Birmingham, Luton or somewhere else. People who want to come to London want to get there as quickly as possible. That is particularly important in the business world. Frankly, the noble Lord did not focus at all on the enormously important economics of the hub and spoke system—what an economist would call the networking effects, which are so important in the aviation industry. If Heathrow is not allowed to become a hub, somewhere else will and it will not be Luton or Birmingham. It will be Schiphol, Paris or Frankfurt. I illustrate that by means of a brief personal anecdote.
In February I was lucky enough to be part of a parliamentary delegation to Mexico. The IPU was rightly concerned to save taxpayer funds and got the best deal that it could, which involved us flying via Schiphol. We went to Schiphol and changed, which meant that we flew 300 kilometres in the wrong direction and 300 kilometres back over the United Kingdom again. That is 600 kilometres more than we needed to fly. We took off twice rather than once. As we all know, most carbon emissions occur on take-off and early altitude gains. I should think that we emitted twice the carbon that we would have done had we been able to fly directly from Heathrow to Mexico City. I witnessed some colleagues taking advantage of Schiphol Airport’s fine duty-free shopping facilities. That, again, is very good news for the economy of Schiphol and of the Netherlands but very bad news for this country. I say to the Government and to the Liberal Party—they should be aware of that and focus on it but they simply are not doing so.
The Bill sets out the obligations of the Secretary of State. I am, of course, totally in favour of the Bill, which was conceived by the previous Labour Government, as has already been pointed out. Clause 2 is headed: “Secretary of State’s general duty”. Clause 2(1) states:
“The Secretary of State must carry out the functions listed in subsection (3) in a manner which the Secretary of State considers will further the interests of users of air transport services regarding the range, availability, continuity, cost and quality of airport operation services”.
The Secretary of State is doing nothing of the kind at present, nor did her predecessor. That is precisely why we have the current problem and why it is cheaper to fly to Mexico City via Schiphol than it is to take off directly from Heathrow—that is, taking off from Heathrow to Schiphol, and then flying from Schiphol to Mexico. Why is that the case? It is because there are not enough slots at Heathrow. Therefore, airlines that want to put on more flights cannot run them from Heathrow. They have to reserve the slots at Heathrow for the high-margin flights going to destinations such as New York, Chicago and Washington DC, where there are lots of first class and club class passengers. The other aircraft with a greater proportion of discounted passengers have to go elsewhere, and so they go to Schiphol, Roissy or Frankfurt. That is the simple logic and the Government must face up to that fact.
The key issue is not just the importance of the aviation business as regards employment. As has been said, it generates nearly half a million jobs in this country. However, it is important for two other reasons as well. First, it is not the only factor or the leading factor but is certainly a factor in location of business decisions. If you decide that you want to locate an international headquarters in a particular city, one of the things that you undoubtedly take into account is the air communications. If you put your office in London and you have to go via Birmingham to get there, that is a very major disincentive to coming to London at all. The aviation business is very important as regards business traffic. It is also important as regards tourism. If you ask the Government whether they care about tourism, they will say, “Of course, we care very much about tourism. It is a very important industry”. However, in practice, they are handicapping tourism over and over again. We have the problem that we are not part of the Schengen visa system so people coming to this country as part of a European tour—the bulk of private tourists from outside the EU coming to the EU come on organised tours—often will not take the trouble, time or additional cost involved in purchasing a British visa. That is a big handicap. We now have the longest delays at our border controls of anywhere in Europe as a result of mismanagement by this Government. That is also a handicap. If we now have shortages of airline slots and people are diverted to Birmingham—I again take the example put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw—that will also be a considerable deterrent to tourism. Therefore, it is no use the Government saying that they care about tourism if their policies have the effect of weakening British tourism’s competitiveness worldwide. That is exactly the situation.
Lord Trefgarne
Everything the noble Lord is saying is directed towards more operations, more slots and more flights from Heathrow. What was the policy of the Government, of whom he was a distinguished member, between 1997 and 2010?
Lord Davies of Stamford
Our policy was to expand Heathrow and build a third runway. That was the policy which I supported then, which I support now and which I trust my party will support again at the next election. It is the only policy that seems to make any sense. As regards the third runway that we were planning to build—the BAA third runway—I read an interesting proposal the other day which I recommend to the noble Lord, who knows a lot about this subject. It was produced by the Institute of Directors. Noble Lords may be surprised to hear a member of the Labour Party referring to the Institute of Directors but I thought that it came up with an interesting proposal for a third runway to be built within the existing perimeter of the airport to the south, which would be something like 2,600 metres in length and would greatly improve the situation. The scheme has been well documented and the noble Lord may like to look at it. However it is done it is clear that all the airlines and BAA are of one mind on this—the solution is the one that, had we won the previous election, we would have implemented, I am proud to say.
Of course, the whole of this is against the background of the present Government’s neglect of infrastructure generally. We have had the postponement of the high-speed rail project.
Lord Bradshaw
As regards neglect of the infrastructure, under the Labour Government nine miles of railway were electrified. Under this Government, I think that 833 miles will be electrified. I also draw attention to the fact that a lot of money is being spent on Manchester and Birmingham Airports and a great deal of investment is going into Gatwick.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I commend all that but there is no question that this neglect applies to a number of vital major projects. One of them is the third runway for Heathrow and another is the high-speed rail project, which is unaccountably delayed. Perhaps it has been pushed off sine die; I do not know. I do not think that we shall ever see it again under this Government, although I hope that we do, of course.
Another such issue is nuclear power. I have asked about this in the House. We are 10 years away from the date when all the AGRs have to be decommissioned but the Government have not succeeded in getting one new project launched. It takes a minimum of eight to 10 years to build a new nuclear power station. These are major areas of neglect. I have to say to the party opposite that any Government who govern with two eyes focused simply on the next morning’s headlines or opinion polls and do not think about the long-term interests of the country are betraying the public interest and will be seen in historical retrospect as a historical failure.
I have to say another thing that the Government will not like, which is that a recession is rather a good time to bring forward investment in social overhead capital—in infrastructure—because factor costs are lower during a recession. It is also rather a good idea to create some demand and jobs during a recession because—I know that the Government do not want to hear this—the fact is that austerity alone will not relaunch growth. I would have hoped that all these important infrastructure projects would have been brought forward, which they would have been by an imaginative Government genuinely concerned with the long term.
I hope that my strictures will have some effect. I am sure that the Minister will not say now that he agrees with my criticisms of the Government but I hope that the Government will think very carefully about these matters and come forward with a policy on all of them which is a little bit more worthy of the enormously important role which they have in looking after the interests of the country during their mandate of office.
Lord Soley
Like other speakers, I welcome the general thrust of this Bill. I am sure that we shall make some improvements in Committee. I would like to see it in the context of a proper aviation policy, which I fear we do not have at the moment. I am rather nervous about some of the papers that might come out from the Government, although the Prime Minister today, in answer to Zac Goldsmith, the MP for Richmond Park, declined to give a commitment that, if re-elected, the Government would not build a third runway. This argument is moving and there are growing numbers of people who recognise that the only realistic possibility is the expansion of Heathrow. It is something that I have been saying for many years, but I will not spend a great deal of time on it now because the House and other people have heard my views on many occasions. I simply reiterate that at a time of economic recession, a third runway is estimated to add some £8 billion to the British economy, and all the investment is totally private sector. The idea of not doing it is crazy. If we do not do it soon, we will continue to lose out. A number of Members around this House have made that point.
I want to make an additional point—and this is where it would be good if the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, could talk to the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, understands the concept of a hub airport. That is curious because he seems to love trains, and I presume that he understands the concept of what is in effect a hub railway station. People go to the big railway stations in big cities to interchange to get to other places.
Perhaps I may give the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, an obvious example, and I would like him to think it through, because the opponents are getting in the way of the advantages that would accrue to us if we took the necessary decisions. I could give him many examples similar to that of the Japanese businessman who wishes to invest in Europe and has investment meetings here. He wants to fly on to his factory in Liverpool and can do that by going to London, getting a train across to King’s Cross, getting the train to Luton, and then flying to Liverpool. Or he could go to Euston and get the train all the way to Liverpool. Alternatively, he can fly to Amsterdam, have his meeting there, decide his investment policies, and fly straight to Liverpool. That is true of dozens of regional airports around Britain. We are not just doing damage to London; we are doing damage to our regions and it is important to understand that.
I will not proceed further on that, other than to make the more general point that in aviation generally we still have the second largest and second most advanced aerospace industry in the world. Although we will not retain that position much longer, for all the obvious reasons about emerging countries, we can retain the great advantage that we have, particularly in science and technology. We can do that only if we have a good civil aviation policy and a defence policy that goes with it to support the aviation industry. Everyone in the industry understands that, and that is why when I make speeches such as this I get so much support from across the whole industry. That is generally recognised by all, and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to talk this through with people, understand the concept of the hub and why you cannot have more than one hub airport in one major area. You can have several hub airports in a large country, but not otherwise. That is important.
I wanted to mention investment in Heathrow and so on. Although the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, who has had to slip out for a while, has saved me some time, I want to reiterate this issue—which the noble Lord, Lord Patten, also touched on. There is a problem here. My understanding is that it would not require much tweaking of the Bill to give Heathrow the protection that it needs in terms of investment policies in infrastructure. We could look at that in Committee, because it is an important matter which we should flag up.
I want to refer to two other matters mentioned by another speaker. Clearly, we must give the CAA a duty of efficiency, and the National Audit Office is relevant in this context. The idea of the CAA not being answerable to the National Audit Office is, frankly, dumb. I believe that we were thinking of doing that some time ago when we were in government and considered introducing a similar Bill. That was the intention.
I want to say a quick word about the issue of airline holiday sales and the Air Travel Organisers Licensing scheme. My understanding from the CAA is that it believes that airline holiday sales should come under the new ATOL arrangements. It was drawn to my attention that the number of people whose holidays are protected by the ATOL scheme has reduced considerably, and today only around 50% of holidaymakers travel with full financial protection from ATOL. Those figures are from the CAA. We should all recognise and support its proposal.
Security issues, dealt with in Clauses 78 to 82, are very important. This is perhaps not the moment to discuss them in detail, although we may do so in Committee. I am slightly worried about the way that we are tackling this area. It is difficult to get right, although it may be that the Government have received advice from the security industry generally, including the security departments of government. However, we need to get this right. I remember the Minister saying at one time that her plan was to make Heathrow better, not bigger. When you look at the queues at Heathrow you realise that, whatever else she has done, she has not achieved that.
Part of the reason is that we have not tackled effectively the whole issue of immigration, passport clearance and so on. The recent sacking of the head of that department has produced a situation where there is almost a work to rule. I am not justifying that, but if you tell the workforce that they must obey the Immigration Rules to the letter, they will do that—and that is what they are doing. That may be good, bad or indifferent, but you cannot easily blame those staff without recognising that the Government, by saying what they said and doing what they did, have made the problem far worse. We have to rely to a considerable degree on the good sense and, above all, the training of these people. If you tell them that they cannot use that good sense and training and give them a set of rules which you tell them to obey to the letter—and if you tell them that they will lose their jobs if they do not follow the rules to the letter—then they will obviously do just that: follow the rules to the letter. That would account for the terrible queues at Heathrow, which have done immense damage. The airport’s position in the international airline stakes is bad enough.
My noble friend and colleague Lord Davies of Stamford said that Heathrow was now number four in terms of aircraft movements. It has slipped to number eight in terms of the destinations it serves. That is by far the most serious slippage for a major airport. To compound that with a lack of effective ground operations in terms of clearing the queues and so on is therefore a major failure.
Lord Davies of Stamford
Just to set the record straight, what I actually said was that Heathrow is currently third in Europe for aircraft movements—behind Roissy and Frankfurt—but that it will be fourth by 2020, behind Roissy, Frankfurt and Schiphol, both in terms of movements and passenger numbers.