Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Berkeley

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support some of the amendments in this group in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and others. I support the views of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who just spoke about the importance of the list of environmental principles contained in Amendment 75.

We are in danger of having a debate over a more detailed list, that some noble Lords have said may be unenforceable, and a higher-level list which, sadly, many people would say was a bit like motherhood and apple pie and probably unenforceable for that reason. I think the list in Amendment 75 is extremely good. But, as other noble Lords have said, environmental interests can conflict with commercial interests, even if they are hidden by something that is called “environment.” A debate can sometimes use pretty abstruse environmental information to put forward an argument that is not necessarily compliant with everything that should be on this list.

I was involved in the Aarhus convention some years ago, and that seems to sum this up. It is a great shame we do not have it and it has to go back in here if this amendment is accepted; it is about public participation and how to extract information from Governments and public bodies wishing to hide it until it is too late to cause any problems. It is very important to put this in more detail in the environmental principles.

I am also concerned about exemptions. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone mentioned the example about trees, which was quite frightening. Some friends from Plymouth who live next to one of the muddy creeks said that the MoD turned up with a jack-up barge a few weeks ago. They asked, “What is this jack-up barge doing? This is mud, which is quite environmentally friendly—there are lots of birds, fish and everything else,”. The MoD said, “We are going to put a large pylon in to help the submarines go into one of the docks in Plymouth.” My friends asked, “Shouldn’t you have told anybody? Shouldn’t you have told the local council? Shouldn’t you have consulted the residents along this little muddy creek?”

They ended up having three public meetings about this, with the top brass of the Navy turning up with an ever-increasing number of stripes on their arms to say how important this particular pylon was. They said in reply, “Anybody who knows anything about pilotage or moving big ships knows that you do not need this anyway, so why are you doing it? You’re supposed to be the experts”. We can go into the navigation issues, but that does not really matter. The point is that this is another example of the MoD trampling over people. If my friends had not phoned up those at the council and asked whether they knew about this—oh no they did not—it would have gone ahead, and they would have had a great big pylon in the middle of a rather nice creek which was quite happy as it was.

Unfortunately, the MoD has a reputation for not always consulting and not always thinking about whether something is really necessary. My view on so much of this is that we say it is necessary for A, B or C—and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said that we have to move forwards, or something like that—but we must occasionally think “Can we do without it?” We do not have to go back to the horse and cart, but life and the environment might be much better if we did do without it.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, pointed out in her earlier speech, she has been listed twice. I will not call her a second time, but will instead call the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.

Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Berkeley

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 29th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing this group of amendments. I have listened carefully to the debate so far; some excellent arguments have been made in favour of going even faster than the Bill does. I support it, but, as I shall try to outline, there is an argument for going faster.

My interest in the Bill is in fire detection and suppression. I worked on the Channel Tunnel, and after the Notre Dame fire we had some interesting debates in your Lordships’ House about how to detect fires in the roofs of old buildings and how to extinguish them. I was disappointed to be told, “Well, we’re putting fire detectors in the roof, but there’s no access to extinguish a fire.” I still worry about that because, as we all know, the biggest risk to old buildings from fire is when the contractors are in.

The Bill is about the domestic environment; I welcome it. My amendment is a probing amendment about including sprinklers and mists in the definition of firefighting equipment. Mists are very effective and useful, and would be a comparatively low-cost installation for anything between the Houses of Parliament and the buildings that the Bill covers.

I am impressed by mists, even compared with sprinklers. I am aware that many experts on old buildings say that they should not have sprinklers in them because they destroy the contents of the building. That is true—but at least they enable the building to survive. Mists do not destroy the contents, but preserve them to a much greater degree. They are good with electrical fires—which is what we are talking about here—and also with fuel and chip pan fires. I am told that one nozzle, with a small pipe, will cover 16 square metres of building.

I look at a building, whether it is a big one or someone’s property, and I think, “If you can put in a water mist system using a small pipe, it is not that different from installing a ring main for electricity.” Perhaps we should look at making water mist installations a requirement in all habitable buildings in the same way as we require electricity to be put in them—most of the time, anyway.

I know that there is a downside and that it will not happen through this Bill or indeed for many years, but the costs are low and the damage caused is much less than that caused by a fire or by sprinklers. In his response, I would like the Minister at least to say that he will look at this, particularly for domestic rented, leased and privately owned properties, as well as considering the options for new build along with existing ones. I think that we should start the process now because, as we heard at the beginning of this debate, some 14,000 electrical fires are started every year. Many of them could have been and could be avoided if a water mist system were installed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. He is not responding, so we will come back to him. I call the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Berkeley

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

This has been a remarkable debate, and I am sure that British Transport Police officers will be delighted by the degree of support expressed for them in all parts of the Committee, starting with the splendid speech from the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who was followed by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth.

I shall correct one thing the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. He said he thought the force had been around since the 1850s. That is not right. The force was started in 1825, in the earliest days of the railways. It predates a great many of our normal civil forces. The reason the railway police were formed in the first place was because criminals discovered that by getting on the new-fangled trains they were able to get away from the scene of the crime much quicker than they could by any other means. It was therefore necessary to have a force that was able to operate across county boundaries and country borders.

I find it extraordinary that this proposal to lose that ability should come forward now. I should remind your Lordships that breaking up the British Transport Police has been tried once before. It was done around the year 2000 by somebody called Ken Livingstone, who was Mayor of London. He was anxious to hand the duties of the British Transport Police over to the Metropolitan police force because he felt he had some control over it. The Government of the day, after some deliberation, decided that that was not a sensible thing to do and it was much more sensible to build on the skill and expertise of the British Transport Police; extend its jurisdiction, to which my noble friend Lord Berkeley referred, where necessary; give it, after some reluctance, the opportunity to arm a limited number of its officers, which it had asked for; and, above all, encourage it on what it did really well, such as combating scrap metal theft. The BTP led the government task force on that subject and made a huge contribution to reducing the incidence of metal theft after Parliament passed two important pieces of legislation which regulated that business.

[Lord Berkeley]

My noble friend is too modest to say that he led that legislation through Parliament.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

That is very kind of my noble friend, but I do not think it matters who claims credit for what. What matters is that the outcome of those deliberations was an improvement in the situation in which the British Transport Police played a crucial role. I find it utterly inexplicable that these two clauses are in the Bill. I am sure that in due course they will give the Scottish Parliament with a nationalist majority the opportunity, effectively, to nationalise the BTP in Scotland. It would be a terrible mistake, and I hope the Minister will agree to come back on Report and have these clauses removed from the Bill.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Berkeley

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, before the Division, we were debating Amendment 26BA.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I had just about finished, but want to conclude by saying that I hope that the Minister and our other colleagues will look at the proposed new clause very carefully before Report, because there are some serious things wrong with it. I commend the amendments of my noble friend Lord Whitty for consideration.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Berkeley

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, this is something a little different. The purpose of Amendment 39 is to remove the Inland Waterways Advisory Council from Schedule 1. This is not the most controversial proposal in the Bill, but I believe that the 14 members of the IWAC, all of whom are volunteers and unpaid, its part-time chair, John Edmonds, and the two support staff deserve at the very least an expression of public thanks and recognition for what they have achieved since April 2007, when the council was set up as a consequence of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006. The same goes for the predecessor body, the Inland Waterways Amenity Advisory Council, which was formed in 1968.

The IWAC does exactly what its title suggests. It gives independent advice to the UK Government, the Scottish Government, navigation authorities and other interested parties on matters appropriate to our inland waterways. If no one wants to listen to that advice, of course that is up to them, but before IWAC disappears it is worth making the point that the next two or three years are going to be absolutely critical for the inland waterways as the British Waterways Board turns itself into a charitable trust. That will represent a huge change in culture as well as in status for the BWB, and I would have thought that it would benefit enormously from being able to call on the Inland Waterways Advisory Council for advice, particularly bearing in mind that there is not a lot of experience in Defra in this area.

My question to the Minister, who on this occasion I think is going to be the noble Lord, Lord Henley, is: how long do the Government expect the IWAC to stay around for? Would he not agree that it makes no sense to get rid of it before the British Waterways Board has completed the process of converting itself into a charity? One only needs to look at the CVs of the IWAC board members to realise how much talent is assembled at its meetings. It has economists, accountants, environmentalists, campaigners, academics and heritage experts—they are all there.

What I feel is so sad about the Government’s approach towards the quangos is that it seems to be based on knowing the price of everything but the value of very little. Most countries would give a great deal to be able to draw on a group of volunteers who are experts, who cost the state virtually nothing and who come together out of a sense of public duty and service. It may not be apparent for some time just how much is being lost as a consequence of this Bill, but we should be in no doubt that we shall as a nation be the poorer because of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lord Faulkner in this amendment. He has outlined the role of and described the people involved in the Inland Waterways Advisory Council extremely well and he will be aware from the briefing that we have all had from Ministers that two secretarial staff are involved in the council. To abolish something because two people are employed there seems quite extraordinary.

The role of the IWAC seems to fit very well with the Government’s plans for localism because canals are a wonderful local amenity. However, there are challenges in maintaining them. We have all read of how volunteer labour is used so often because canals are expensive to maintain and do not produce a lot of revenue. Their transport was rather taken over by the railways about 150 years ago, but they remain a wonderful amenity for leisure purposes and for what they provide to communities. We shall debate this issue again when we talk about the future of the British Waterways Board, but there will be some tension when the BWB becomes a charity. We have not been and we probably will not be told where it will get its funding from and it struggles hard to find funding at the moment. Indeed, there are occasions when I see it turning itself into a property company to the detriment of people trying to use the canals.

I heard about an example of this a couple of years ago in Brentford on the Thames. Some of the BWB people had done a deal with a property company to build some very nice waterside houses at Brentford. To make them even more attractive to the buyers and to make more money, some pontoons were put into the canal so that lots of canal boats could be moored there. The problem was that the pontoons and the boats together were so wide that it was almost impossible to get a canal boat into the canal, which is after all the point of the lock connecting to the River Thames. There are quite strong tides there. Anyone who has driven a canal boat will know they are not like motor cars. They respond to the wind and the tide and they do not steer very well, so you need a bit of space not to hit things. But these people were quite happy to put these pontoons in the river at the entrance to the canal and to allow things to moor, because that would make more money. There were allegations, which I do not want to pursue, that people were making personal gains but, regardless of who got the revenue, it affected navigation.

Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 (Directions to OFCOM) Order 2010

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Berkeley

Thursday 16th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I rise to identify a few problems that are occurring in the relationship between this order, which provides for a clearly welcome increase in spectrum availability, and the railways. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group, but the issue covers the whole railway—passenger, freight and Network Rail itself—and could result in some serious problems in the safety and the operations of the railways.

I welcome the Minister’s comments about the need to rebalance the economy and the provision of superfast broadband being an important part of that. However, it is not much use having superfast broadband if it prevents the running of superfast trains—or even ordinary trains—which are another of the Government’s priorities. Perhaps I can explain the problem in a little more detail.

The problem for the railways is that the 900 megahertz spectrum for mobiles sits quite close to that of the GSM-R railway radio system, which is the modern digital replacement for the very much life-expired analogue system. In terms of safety and operations, GSM-R has very great importance. Its rollout on the railway network is largely complete, and about 6,000 driving cabs are being modified to install the new cab mobiles. All this work is being funded by the Department for Transport. As I understand it, the worst-case scenario is that, in order to contain and eliminate interference between GSM-R—both track-side and in-train systems—and the 900 megahertz mobile systems, there would need to be significant modification, which would cost about £100 million. Network Rail would of course seek funding from the Department for Transport, or maybe from BIS depending on how it all worked.

I think that it is extraordinary that things have got this far. As the Minister said, there has been widespread consultation and I am aware that Network Rail responded pretty heavily, as no doubt did other departments, including the Department for Transport.

We seem to be getting into a situation in which the railways and the broadband systems are both seeking to comply with EU-wide rulings that appear to conflict. Network Rail, which identified this issue quite some time ago, aims to move forward from GSM-R to the new signalling system ERTMS, which is being rolled out. ERTMS already operates in many other member states, including Germany and Finland. Network Rail was involved in commissioning a report—report O-8700—that clearly demonstrates the absolute need to co-ordinate the use of technologies such as UMTS 900 where those are used within four kilometres of any railway infrastructure. In this country, four kilometres either side of a railway does not leave much space. From the little that I know about the issue, I am sure that that would not work for the mobile technology.

Unfortunately, the timing of the order is not terribly good, given that Network Rail has employed consultants ATDI to validate previous work and to produce a set of conclusions to inform a meeting of stakeholders that will take place next month. Therefore, the timing is not very helpful. Everyone wants to work together—as indeed they should—to make sure that everyone fully understands the issues involved. However, the problem is that two independent European studies already show that the deployment of UMTS 900, operating at 900 megahertz, affects the performance of GSM-R and causes interference in radio signals between the trains and the signallers.

These technologies are very different from pulling levers—which you still see in one or two parts of the country—that then make the signal go up or down. As we all know, telephone systems, signalling systems and mobile systems sometimes do funny things. As a safety-related matter, the issue is extremely important. It is important that the GSM-R used on the railways is instantaneously available across the whole network to maintain the protection measures. Some measures must be put in between the railway system and the UMTS900. Otherwise, there may be detrimental effects.

Apart from the cost, which is estimated to be about £100 million to change the railway system, I understand that filters would need to be added to the set in each train. There are also timing implications. As with the mobile phone network, there are concerns about the mandatory withdrawal of existing radio systems and the European requirements to have all these things in place by a certain date, which has already slipped. Given the seriousness of the problem and that £100 million plus a lot of delays is at stake, I would be very grateful if the Minister could comment on what could be done to mitigate the effects. Implementing the order without anything else could raise serious issues for the railways. Going through a signal at red—to use older terminology—could cause accidents.

BIS says that it is required to provide UMTS for mobile in order to comply with EU regulations; railway operators say that they are required to do something similar under other EU regulations. I suggest that the aim is for interoperability, which I am sure we would all welcome, whether for mobile phones or the railways. The existing systems are perhaps well past their sell-by date and something should have been done years ago. If we have really have a situation in which the European Union, for better or for worse, has issued two such regulations—or directives or whatever—that need to be complied with across the EU, it is extraordinary that they should come into conflict with each other. Otherwise, someone has got it wrong. I hope that the Minister can tell us a bit more about that.

As for what the Minister might consider by way of giving assurances to the House, I suggest that he could perhaps withdraw the order completely for further consideration. I suspect that a small change to the order would make life a lot easier for everyone and might save us from some of the problems. I believe that it would be possible for Ministers to require Ofcom to ensure that, within the spectrums, the relevant wavelengths—or frequencies or whatever—that cause the biggest problem for the railways are not sold or issued until it has been fully agreed that the railway operators’ system can be maintained in a safe condition. Perhaps the Minister will comment on whether that would be possible for him to give an instruction to Ofcom to do that.

Finally, given that the railways were there first—the issue has been going on for a number of years now—and the telecom spectrum came later, perhaps the Minister will confirm that, if there is any additional cost of modification for the railway system, his department, rather than the Department for Transport, will provide any extra funding necessary.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that I wrote to him about this matter earlier today. I apologise for the late notice I gave him, but I did not receive notification about this problem until seven o’clock last night when a member of the railway industry wrote to me to draw my attention to exactly the points just alluded to by my noble friend Lord Berkeley.

This is clearly a significant issue for the railway. It is not a situation where we can take a chance and see what happens. If it is the case that the new broadband width is going to interfere with signalling, obviously the railway will become unsafe. The solution would seem to be the fitting of filters not just to the train sets, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley says, but I understand to trackside equipment as well. The estimate of costs he gave is a figure that I am familiar with as well.

We are all anxious to see the extension of digital Britain. I played a small and modest part in the legislation passed in the previous Parliament, as the Minister knows, and I am keen to see the benefits of broadband extended as widely as possible. This is a potentially unfortunate unintended consequence, but the operation of the railway, if not endangered, will certainly be embarrassed as a result of the introduction of these broadband widths without some mitigating measures. My noble friend Lord Berkeley referred to the possibility of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills paying the costs, but perhaps it would prefer that the purchasers of the new broadband width should have them built into their contracts. However, it is clearly unacceptable to expect the railway to pay for it, and indeed if the railway were to do so, it would then be for the Department for Transport because it is responsible for the cost of the new signalling system which is being introduced progressively over the next six years.

Again, I apologise for bringing this up so late. It is not a matter that has been considered either in the other place or in your Lordships’ Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, but it needs to be taken into consideration. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some assurance.