Self-driving Vehicles: Disabled Passengers

Debate between Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill and Lord Harper

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. The Government are consulting on an integrated transport policy, which will of course include provision for disabled people. In the various modes of transport, there is extensive work going on in all cases to accommodate disabled people as fully as we can in the provision of public services going forward. Some of them are more difficult than others. The railway is 200 years old this year—some of its facilities are equally old—but the Government are striving to achieve what my noble friend looks for.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, it was a great pleasure to get the Automated Vehicles Act on the statute book before the last election. It puts Britain in a globally leading position to get investment and technology and be global leaders in this important technology. I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said: we should be ambitious about making this technology accessible for everyone. Automated vehicles have the potential to improve the life chances and the independence of all those who have a disability that means that they cannot drive themselves. I urge the Minister to be as ambitious as he can and to go as fast as he can to get this technology on to our roads. It is safe, we are leaders in it and it is a real opportunity for Great Britain.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There must have been a shadow of a question in there somewhere, but I agree with the noble Lord that it is an exciting prospect. He is right that the potential here is to increase mobility for the community and for people with disabilities, if we get it right. I have great sympathy with the noble Baroness in striving to make sure that disability is treated in the mainstream, but if we are going to do this quickly, we have to recognise that the early adoption under this Act is likely to be using the same sorts of vehicles as are used now. What we are looking for in the medium-term future is new designs, which should have the facilities such as audio-visual equipment and facilities for people in wheelchairs that she would expect.

HS2 Reset

Debate between Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill and Lord Harper

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am sorry. That is a slip of the tongue caused by looking at my notes. I should have said on time and on budget. We do not always do them badly.

If noble Lords look at the history of HS2 they will see not limited scope changes but enormous scope changes with miles of the railway being put into tunnels and some technical specifications that, now they are being contemplated, do not look half as clever as they did when somebody suggested the highest-speed high-speed railway in the world, which therefore has to go in very straight lines and might disturb bats and need a bat tunnel when a more modest railway would have gone around that issue rather than straight through it.

I have to say to my noble friend that it is not always true that the Victorians got it right, and I am sure that this must have happened to previous Transport Ministers too. When I got to Network Rail, I remarked that Brunel’s Great Western Railway cost three times what he suggested it would, and about a week later I got a letter in green ink several pages long from a retired engineer, who said that I was entirely wrong and had no idea what I was talking about: it was actually four times more expensive.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

When I was appointed to lead the Department for Transport, HS2 was already not in great shape, as is well known. I immediately implemented some changes to get a grip of the project by focusing the company on cost control, starting work to renegotiate those big civil contracts that the Minister referred to and cancelling the second phase—which, although controversial at the time, I notice the present Government have not changed—which freed up money to spend on projects across the country. The final thing was to appoint Mark Wild as the new chief executive. I am confident that, with his record in delivering the Elizabeth line, he will achieve great things.

I will ask the Minister two questions. First, I listened carefully to what he said about Euston. Of course, I worked closely with him in his previous incarnation as the chairman of the Euston partnership. Refocusing that as a development-led project with more housing, more business space, and more contribution from private sector investment and less from the taxpayer is the right thing. I am pleased with the progress that has been made. He said he would come back to your Lordships’ House “in short order”; can he give us a bit more detail about what that means? Is that before the Summer Recess or after? I would like to hear more detail.

Secondly, the Minister also referred to the main works civil contracts. We started the work on renegotiating them. Can he say a little more about the progress that has been made? I recognise there is some commercial confidentiality involved there. It was referred to in James Stewart’s report, and it is important to get value for the taxpayer.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for the decision to appoint Mark Wild, which was obviously a good thing. The noble Lord is absolutely right that he did take some action. In the light of what has been discovered since, we could question how much action should have been taken, because this Government have clearly now taken some really strong action. In particular, we have had a serious look at governance. As a consequence, there is a new chair and there will no doubt be a new board in due course. That is one of the issues that has needed attention for some time.

I would be less complimentary about the cancellation of phase 2, which was pre-emptory. As for freeing up money, there was no money associated with phase 2. It is true that it would have cost money had it been delivered, but it was a delusion for many parts of the country. The Network North document promised everything to everybody without evidently having money in the short and medium term to deliver it. But everybody has had a part in this, and the truth is that this Government are committing themselves to this fundamental reset. Through that, we will get phase 1 to Birmingham and Old Oak Common and Euston done.

The Government are moving fast on Euston. I doubt we will be able to put anything in front of the House before the Summer Recess, but as soon as we are able to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I will come back about it. The noble Lord is certainly right about the main works civil contracts, but in order to have a reset of those you actually need to know where the project is. If you do not know where the project is and nobody can accurately say how much has been delivered then trying to negotiate your way out of those circumstances is really quite hopeless. Mark Wild is undertaking a granular review of how much has been constructed and how much value has been created through its construction. The noble Lord is right that we have to engage in discussion with the main works civil contractors and their consortia. We will do that in due course, but we first have to know where the project is in order to baseline those discussions.

Driving Test Delays

Debate between Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill and Lord Harper

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. The Government are using modern technology to do just that. As a result of some of the actions taken since the Government took office, there has been a further number of warnings, suspensions and closed accounts. That is a consequence of monitoring what is going on. However, it has to be said that the people who use the bots are always one step ahead, so the consultation launched recently is about changing some of the rules to make sure it is not worth using bots. We have to make sure that people who want to book tests themselves, and driving instructors and the businesses they run, both have the opportunity of booking tests so as to get people working and contributing to the economy.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, having listened carefully to what the Minister said in response to my noble friend Lord Young, I will make two points. First, when we left office, we had reduced the backlog from a 20-week delay at its peak to 15 weeks. Since then, it has got worse, not better. Secondly, if the Minister looks more carefully in his folder, he will see that we did have a comprehensive plan, with a number of steps that we took—remarkably similar to the steps that the Government themselves have laid out—and that had some success in bringing down that backlog. The simple question to the Minister is: why has it got worse on his watch?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I welcome another former Secretary of State for Transport to the House, and I look forward to my interactions with him. Looking back at the numbers of tests booked, in fact he is right: there was a modest change from 2023 to 2024. The 2023 figure was 548,000 tests and the 2024 figure was 532,000. This is not an easy issue to solve, and the truth is that behaviours have changed, but what we are concentrating on here is a series of measures, including the latest consultation—which was clearly not planned by the previous Government because it is as a result of the call for evidence from December last year, which had 27,000 responses. This fast-track consultation is about changing the rules to make sure that people who try to profit through bots do not succeed.