Rail Devolution: London

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As the noble Lord rightly points out, that was a prospectus published by the former Secretary of State for Transport, the right honourable Patrick McLoughlin, and the then mayor. The new Secretary of State subsequently—and rightly, I believe—asked for details of the business case from TfL. That was presented in October. It was analysed by DfT officials—we worked also with other industry experts—and it was felt that it was in the best interest of all passengers, both those on the suburban services as well as those outside, to go forward on the model that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has now put forward.

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, given the appalling effect which the policies of Transport for London have had on road congestion and pollution in the capital, is there not a case for replacing it with a more cost-effective and accountable body rather than extending its remit into other areas where it can do more damage?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend paints a picture of a particular challenge that has arisen around issues of congestion in London. Nevertheless, TfL plays an important role in the management of transport services in London and continues to do so across several modes.

Shipping: Passenger Safety

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, my understanding is that this exemption is for up to five miles and therefore would not apply in most of the circumstances that the noble Lord has just described. It is for small craft of less than 24 metres which have to be travelling in daylight and in summer only. They are required to have sufficient life rafts for all passengers but additional safety can be provided by buoyancy apparatus.

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, are life rafts generally not preferable to life rings, particularly if the water is cold? Is the saving in this negotiation really significant? Presumably all existing vessels already have the current requirement rather than the reduced one.

Airports: London

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

As usual, the noble Baroness makes a very good point. The Airports Commission has been charged with reporting by December this year to rule out certain options.

[Lord Higgins]

Given that the legislation for a hub at Maplin Sands went through with comparatively few problems back in the mid-1970s, is there not a case for looking at that site again?

HGV Road User Levy Bill

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, as I stated in my opening speech, this legislation will help to deliver a fairer deal for UK hauliers and go some way to correcting an inequality which has existed for too long. For this reason, I believe the Bill should be welcomed. Turning to the aims of the Bill, we consider our plan to charge £10 per day, or £1,000 per year, for the largest vehicles, to be fair, proportionate and compliant with the relevant EU legislation. One of the challenges in dealing with this problem is that anything we do must be compliant with EU legislation. We must treat UK and foreign hauliers in the same way.

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, asked about the implementation costs. The total set-up costs are estimated at between £3 million and £6.7 million, which will be spread over the years before the scheme goes live for foreign hauliers. Thereafter, we estimate the annual cost to be £3 million to £4.8 million. These estimates are at a relatively early stage and will be developed further.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked whether there will be a vignette and whether there will be booths at Dover. There will be no vignette sticker, or booths at Dover or at any other port. The levy will be paid for by a website or telephone transaction, which will feed into a database that will be available publicly and to VOSA officials. Enforcement of the levy will be carried out primarily by VOSA officers, on a targeted basis, using the payment database to show which vehicles are in the country and which have—or have not—paid, alongside VOSA’s normal stopping process for enforcement.

Foreign heavy vehicles mainly travel on a strategic road network and therefore ordinary traffic wardens do not have a role in this. If they detect a vehicle without a vignette by chance, they can do something about it but, being realistic, a traffic warden will not be dealing with this problem. Using ANPR technology at both fixed and mobile sites, VOSA will be able to identify and stop vehicles that have not paid and hold them until a penalty deposit of £200 is paid. That is a penalty deposit and not an on-the-spot fine.

[Lord Higgins]

If the website shows that a particular vehicle has not paid the levy, will it be charged before it leaves this country, on the way out?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, if VOSA detects that a vehicle has not paid the levy, I suspect the vehicle will not be going very far—perhaps to the next service station—until it has paid it, which can be done electronically.

Equality Act 2010 (Work on Ships and Hovercraft) Regulations 2011

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, I have a brief question for the Minister. I assume that Northern Ireland is making its own regulations in the context of this order. Can the Minister give us the background as to why this applies only to England, Scotland and Wales, and not Northern Ireland, yet the definition of “United Kingdom waters” is those waters adjacent to Great Britain or, under paragraph 3(c),

“the legal relationship of the seafarer’s employment is located within Great Britain or retains a sufficiently close link with Great Britain”?

What would “a sufficiently close link” mean in this context?

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, it is a very long time indeed since I qualified as a member of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers. Since then, I have taken a strong interest in the industry, both as a Minister and Opposition spokesman on trade, in Select Committees and so on. This is an extremely important order. The Minister has set out clearly why it is before us: as a result of European legislation. However, I have always considered it important that the number of ships on the British register should be as large as possible. It has considerable advantages to the UK, not least because, generally speaking, if ships are registered here, the headquarters, operating offices and so on tend also to be in the UK; the Treasury, in particular, benefits as far as taxation and other things are concerned. In addition, it encourages other, related, industries such as insurance, which have traditionally been located in London.

That is very important, but there are other aspects such as the training of officers, which again builds up the link with the UK. We remain a major maritime nation. None the less, the size of the register has, for reasons such as taxation, varied over the years. However, we have always played an important role in the IMO and so on.

This proposal, the extremely helpful Explanatory Memorandum and the impact assessment really examine two possibilities. They rightly reject the idea that we could do nothing, because, as the Minister has pointed out, we are under considerable duress from the European Union to deal with the matter. So the alternatives are either to change the position on differential pay for employees from the European Union, the EEA and the designated states—the designated states are of course really quite expensive in this context—or simply to say that you cannot differentiate at all, regardless of where the employees come from. The Government have opted for the first of these options and, I believe, rightly so. I have received some assessments from the Chamber of Shipping, and the impact assessment also deals with these matters as far as both options are concerned. They say that if one were to do it for seafarers from the EEA and designated states, the average percentage increase in wage costs, which range between 6 per cent and 32 per cent, would impact on a ship’s overall running costs by up to 7.2 per cent. On the other hand, if one were to take the widespread option, the range would be an increase of 10 per cent to 130 per cent; it would depend, of course, on the type of ship and so on. The increase in the overall cost could be as high as 56 per cent.

The industry is highly competitive. If we are compelled to pay higher rates, as would be the case in the international market generally, that would obviously have a serious effect on our position and be likely to result in a considerable reduction in overseas earnings. While it appears that there is no choice but to go for the European option rather than the global one, that would seem to be the right solution. I hope that the Minister will give us an assurance that he is certainly not proposing to consider any further a wider option, which would have a very serious economic effect at a time when the British economy is obviously under considerable strain.

There is a provision in the order for a review after five years. I hope that the Minister will say that if it turns out to be the case that the percentage increase in wage costs that I have indicated under the provisions of the order is having a more serious effect than the one that we anticipate at the moment—which is already serious—a review might be carried out earlier to see whether, in the light of experience, some change ought to be made in the order. However, overall, this is probably the best compromise that can be effected. None the less, it will have an adverse effect on the British economy.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, 50 years ago in Worthing I had the privilege of arguing with the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, when I stood against him for the Labour Party and he won resoundingly. I disagreed with him then and, 50 years later, I disagree with what he has just said. I hope that in the long run the outcome might be different from what he hopes. The regulations are welcome—

[Lord Higgins]

The noble Lord should not worry unduly: my majority was only 32,000.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

Yes, it was so great that the votes could have been weighed rather than counted. However, I got the highest vote Labour ever got in Worthing—which was still quite low.

The regulations are welcome in so far as they apply the provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to employment on ships and hovercraft so as to forbid discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other unlawful conduct in relation to the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sex and sexual orientation. They are welcome also because they bring the law into line with our EU obligations so as to avoid liability in the pending Commission infringement proceedings. Because of the technical nature of some of the issues and their public importance, I gave the Minister notice of what I will say so that he might be well advised in his response. I hope that what I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, was passed on to my noble friend who is handling the matter.

It is most regrettable that these regulations are designed to permit some forms of racial discrimination by the British shipping industry to be outside the protection of the Equality Act, where the discriminatory treatment involves paying seafarers less because of their nationality in a way that may amount to direct or indirect race discrimination on grounds of ethnicity or national origin. I pause to mention that the designated states do not include those of Commonwealth Asia: namely, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

It is worth recalling the history. Under the Merchant Shipping Act 1894,

“the master or owner of any ship, or his agent, may enter into an agreement with a lascar, or any native of India, binding him to proceed either as a seaman or as a passenger … to any port in the United Kingdom, and there to enter into a further agreement to serve as a seaman in any ship which may happen to be there, and to be bound to any port in British India”.

If the lascar refused to enter into the second agreement, under which he was employed on blatantly discriminatory terms, he should,

“be liable to the same consequences, and be dealt with in all respects in the same manner, as if he had voluntarily entered into the same”.

In other words, he could be punished under the criminal provisions of the Act for desertion or indiscipline.

Much of the 1894 act was repealed by the Merchant Shipping Act 1970, which did not re-enact the unsightly lascar clauses. However, under the Race Relations Act 1968, the practice of making racially discriminatory agreements with non-white seamen brought to Britain for this purpose was given fresh statutory blessing. During the passage in 1968 of the Race Relations Bill—I was watching at the time—Ben Whittaker MP attempted in Committee to remove provisions that permitted race discrimination on board merchant ships. He was supported by Eric Heffer MP, who pointed out that if the exemptions were not removed, 35,000 Asian seamen would be outside the Bill's protection. But the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, recalled his personal experience as a Cardiff MP and said that there was a long tradition in the United Kingdom that seamen of mixed races were segregated according to race and that lascars continued to be employed on British ships on terms and conditions of service which were dissimilar to those pertaining to British crews. Mr Callaghan, as he then was, said that he wanted to see this discrimination ended, but he would not make an amendment, which no doubt would have been a great advance in race relations, but would have upset a great many other things.

--- Later in debate ---

As I say, this was after a careful review in her report of all the evidence, which if I may say so has not really been dealt with either in the Explanatory Memorandum or so far in debate.

[Lord Higgins]

I am trying to follow my noble and learned friend, and it may well be that I have misunderstood the situation. Incidentally, he refers to the shipbuilding industry, when it is the ship operating industry. However, as I understand it, although I may be quite wrong, the order is purely concerned with pay differentials; all the legislation with regard to discrimination in other areas and so on is not effective. No doubt the Minister can clarify whether that is the case. In all events, if, as a result of the change on the pay differential, the vessel is flagged out to, say, Liberia, any protection they may have from UK law is lost.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

First, I apologise for saying “shipbuilding industry”, which is of course not what was intended at all; one is concerned with the shipping industry. Secondly, my noble friend is perfectly right that we are concerned with racial discrimination in pay and nothing else, which is preserved by these regulations. It is that and nothing else which Susan Carter of the external panel was considering in her careful review of stakeholder evidence on differential pay in the shipping industry, where she goes through the consequences of outlawing differential pay on five types of ship based on a Chamber of Shipping survey of its members. She looks at 229 ships and estimates what may happen about change of flag and so on. I have been quoting from her report. I submit that, being an external reviewer who has looked at all the evidence, her report should be given careful consideration. I respectfully agree with the report and wish that the Department for Transport would follow the wise and objective advice of the external panel instead of creating considerable legal uncertainty and continuing unfairness which our courts and employment tribunals may have to resolve. That may be to the benefit of my profession, but it is not in the public interest. I wish that the Government had taken the advice of their own external reviewer and I hope that these points can be considered before we come to the debate to approve the regulations.

Transport: Investment

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord is pleased about the A11 Fiveways project as it connects Norwich by dual carriageway. In researching the Statement, I found place names that I had never heard of. It is a little too challenging for me to comment on specific schemes, but parliamentary tools are available to the noble Lord, should he wish to use them.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, what is the definition of a congestion hotspot, as it is difficult to envisage a hotter congestion hotspot than that which exists along the south coast, particularly in the Worthing area? The scheme for a Worthing bypass got past the public inquiry stage something like a decade and a half ago, yet there has still been absolutely no action, particularly by the previous Government. In terms of economic efficiency, for a long while it has been quicker and much easier to drive from the south coast up to the M25, round the M25 and then down the M20 or M3 if one wants to get commercial traffic through the Channel Tunnel or to the Dover ports. Will my noble friend look into this whole issue as, in economic terms, it fully deserves to be included in the programme? No doubt the schemes that have been announced are very welcome, but I should have thought that this scheme ought to be given higher priority than those on the list.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord presents me with a difficult problem in responding to a specific scheme about which I know little. However, I will write to him.