Merchant Shipping (Safety Standards for Passenger Ships on Domestic Voyages) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2022
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I will not detain the House for more than a moment. I pick up a thread raised by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about the time that this has taken since the “Marchioness” disaster. The Minister will be aware that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that I chair has been concerned about the backlog of regulations that await promulgation by her department. The then Minister, Robert Courts, came to talk to us and gave a very impressive report on how action would be taken to close this gap, bring forward the regulations and make sure that we are up to date in all respects.
I am not asking my noble friend to give an answer now; that would be unfair. However, it would be helpful if she could go back to her department and let noble Lords who have participated in this debate know what progress has been made in bringing the department up to date. It has been a—if I may use the police phrase—“serial offender” in this regard. I am not asking her to tell us now, because it is not part of the issue tonight, but it would be helpful for us to know what progress is being made.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for drawing our attention and concern to the situation behind these regulations. I thank the Minister for her introduction and for an excellent impact assessment, which I know her department will have been working on for a long time. I also draw attention to the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which expressed our deep concern very effectively and succinctly.
As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made clear, this all relates to—perhaps we should say “was sparked by”—events 33 years ago: the “Marchioness” disaster in 1989. There were 130 people on board, of whom 51 died. It is a source of national disgrace that it has taken this long to get to this point. I lay no blame at the Minister’s door. We are at last getting to the end of this horrendous saga, but the fact that there was no inquiry in 2000, and that it has taken 22 years since then to get to this final stage, should be a source of concern to all of us. This relates to very old ships that predate 26 May 1965—which, if I can be personal for a moment, was my 17th birthday. That gives your Lordships a perspective on how old the ships are that are affected by these regulations.
The interesting thing that is revealed by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report is that there are still large numbers of these ships being used. Some 600 vessels will be required to make changes to their fire protection equipment, 285 will need to comply with life raft requirements, and 86 will need to comply with life jacket requirements. Those numbers are significant. As a nation, we have a fascination for old vessels. I live in south Wales and we are endlessly interested in the paddle steamer trips between south Wales and north Devon. I see the noble Lord, Lord Davies, nodding because he is well aware of that.
We are all familiar with the details of the tragedy of the “Titanic”. I realise that it would not have been affected because it was not in inland waters. However, the point I am making is that what horrifies us about that disaster are the details—and one detail that everyone picks up on is that there were not enough life rafts for the number of people on that ship. If the people who enjoy trips on historic vessels nowadays realised that they do not need to have life jackets for everyone on board, I am sure that they would be horrified, and probably it would reduce the number of customers they have. So I say to the Minister, “Be strong in the face of opposition to this”. To those people who think that they cannot afford to do it, I say, “You can’t afford not to”. They must provide modern and effective means of saving lives.
Of course we all support this, but I will finish very briefly by echoing the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I am worried that even more time will elapse before this has to be introduced. We have had 33 years to think about this. The idea that it will take even longer to be done worries me considerably. I urge the Minister to ensure that there is no question of the Secretary of State’s discretion being brought into play to delay it even further. I cannot envisage why anyone owning a ship such as this and using it should not be prepared to make what seem to be fairly limited adjustments and modifications to bring it up to modern safety standards. So I support this entirely.
Transport: Freight Services
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Sugg
My Lords, we absolutely listen to Transport for the North when making these decisions. That is a vital role which it plays for us. We are carefully considering its proposals. As I said, we are not able to deliver the entire upgrade of the trans-Pennine route within five years. The existing freight lines will continue so there will not be additional trucks on the M62. We listen very carefully to Transport for the North when we make these decisions. We are prioritising passengers with these upgrades, which is the right thing to do after the disruption they have seen over the past year.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, if we are to have a real crack at the northern powerhouse, do we not need to think about electrification from Hull to Liverpool rather than from Leeds to Manchester? Do we not also need to think about the networks within each conurbation? The problem is not just the trans-Pennine bit, but about travelling within Manchester, Leeds, Hull or Liverpool.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that there is a lot of work to be done on the rail systems in the north. Transport for the North is working on its strategic outline business case, which we expect to see shortly, and we look forward to its suggestions.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 100. These amendments are nothing to do with fracking. They take us back to infrastructure of the road and rail sort. This amendment came about because, quite conveniently, the Law Commissions did a study on the legal situation of level crossings. I believe they took about seven years to do that, so they must have done it extremely thoroughly. They produced an excellent report about this time last year which made a number of recommendations and, very helpfully, included a draft Bill to implement them.
The purpose of it all was because, as we will see, some of this legislation goes back to the first railway. Some 150 years or so ago, there were of course no internal combustion engines and if there were level crossings they were probably to take horses and carts across. It is very different now when in some places, as noble Lords will know, the pressure on level crossings for access is pretty extreme whether it is from the railways or the roads, and particularly in urban areas. When the railways want to run more trains, they find that they cannot because people complain too much that the gates are shut too often and vice versa. Obviously, the solution is to build a bridge or tunnel but that does not really go down very well in urban areas either.
This report by the Law Commissions really deserves some detailed consideration. I tabled these amendments in July and the Government had not responded so I was tempted to try to get a response by tabling the Law Commissions’ draft, which was about 50 pages long. The noble Baroness was quite pleased when I withdrew from that. However, it has resulted—we can debate whether it is a result or a coincidence—in the noble Baroness kindly sending to me and colleagues the government response to this report, and putting a copy in the Library. It is an excellent response, so my purpose in moving this amendment now is to see whether we can press the Government a bit more for a timetable and to discuss one or two of the issues on which I think they might not agree with the Law Commissions.
One issue which covers the whole thing is whether level crossings should be subject to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, as most similar activities are. It may come up on Report when we start talking about the strategic road company, which the Minister kindly gave some of us a briefing on yesterday, and the comparison of safety relationships between road and rail. But on level crossings, the Government have moved a good way in accepting many of the recommendations to make the thing simpler. I do not know how many of the Committee have managed to read these 28 pages overnight but perhaps I could mention a couple of issues. If your Lordships have not, it does not really matter.
For me, if the Government went ahead with their recommendations it would be 90% good and I hope that they will. They are quite right to query again how much this should apply to heritage railways, especially when there are volunteers. That needs taking with a bit of a pinch of salt because dealing with a level crossing on a 100 miles per hour railway is not the same as dealing with one on a 25 miles per hour railway, so they have done well to question that. I mentioned the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act; we could go through that again.
It is a good idea to get rid of all this old legislation. I am told that there are 800 Acts applying to level crossings. Network Rail has to deal with all these things and if we started talking about how much all these changes might cost, I get the impression from Network Rail that a lot of money would be saved—especially on lawyers, which is always a good thing. On whether the Office of Rail Regulation should introduce codes of practice, I think that it should but it is not really the end of the world if it does not. But on the regulations, I worry about what happens when it comes to consultation between road users, planners, highways authorities and rail people, and whether the Government have got it quite right as to who has the last word on how discussions will take place as to who gets priority. That needs a lot more consultation but it is still in the report. As I said, the legislation goes back to 1839. I shall not read out all the different bits of legislation because it will take too long but this certainly needs further work.
The closures need to be made simpler. Network Rail has told me that it costs a great deal of money, time and effort to get closures. Some people will debate whether Network Rail should be allowed to make closures, but when you look at the railway safety statistics, level crossing accidents come very high up the list of causes of accidents—leaving suicides aside, which are slightly different. As we try to make our railways more efficient, run faster and more frequently, we need to look at protecting the public by making some of these closures. I hope that the Minister will accept that they can go ahead. I am not going to go through any more, particularly the Scottish ones. We can possibly leave those to the Scottish Parliament if we get some devolution, which is another issue.
In her covering letter, which is very helpful, the Minister said:
“I have … asked officials to develop, as a matter of urgency and no later than the end of 2014, an action plan which will outline where we believe further work is required and how this will be taken forward”.
That is very good and I welcome it, but there are always two sides to these things. Perhaps the Minister can answer either tonight or in a letter how many of these changes actually need legislation—primary legislation, secondary legislation or none at all? The Law Commissions proposed one great big Bill but it does not have to be done that way. I worry after the next election. Which Government would want to bring in a level crossing Bill in their first session? They would not because they would have other priorities.
Therefore a timetable would be good, showing what could and could not be done. We could then start a process of discussion about some of the issues in this government response, which would be very helpful. It really is important. It will save Network Rail a great deal of money and it will help avoid some of the disputes that take place between road and rail users and their operators. Everyone must agree that we should get rid of legislation going back to 1830-something. Now is the time to do it. With that quick introduction, I beg to move.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and in particular his request for the Minister to consider a timetable. I will not pretend that I have the knowledge of the railways that he has, but I have worked with the Law Commission on a number of its proposals and Bills. It is punctilious about avoiding political controversy and exceptionally thorough in its consultation; as the noble Lord pointed out it has been involved in this in the seven years of consultation. It therefore does an exceptionally valuable job in updating, tidying up and spring cleaning our legislation.
There is, however, a danger attached to that, which is that the Law Commission regards legislation proposals that it has brought forward that have not been implemented within a certain period as needing to go back for further consultation because it needs to make sure that the public mood and the facts have not moved on. I support the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in this because I hope my noble friend will realise that if this matter is left on the shelf, the Law Commission will say that it is no longer fit for purpose and will need to start consultation all over again to see what has happened in the intervening period since the last consultation was carried out.
I support what the noble Lord is suggesting and I hope that my noble friend will be able to act as Dyno-Rod for departmental inertia to make sure that it is brought forward quickly to avoid having to go round the whole course again.
“Revenue from shale gas: sovereign wealth fund
(1) The Secretary of State may, by regulation, establish a sovereign wealth fund to receive and deploy revenue from the extraction and sale of shale gas.
(2) The regulations shall provide—
(a) that the fund shall receive no less than 50% of any revenue received by the United Kingdom Government from any activity connected with the extraction and sale of shale gas;(b) that the assets of the fund shall be deployed to serve long term public objectives other than those connected with monetary and exchange rate policy;(c) that the assets of the fund may be deployed in the United Kingdom or overseas;(d) that no more than 4% of the assets of the fund may be paid out in any one year; and(e) for the governance, independent oversight and transparent reporting of the activities of the fund.”
For those unfamiliar with the term “sovereign wealth fund”, it means a fund created by a state to receive all or part of the revenue or profit from a particular source or activity. It operates under the auspices and laws of its host state. Its assets remain in that state’s ownership and those who manage the fund are answerable for their performance. To be absolutely clear from the start, the amendment does not propose the creation of an uncontrolled or uncontrollable body that can charge about like a rogue elephant.
Baroness Verma
I have laid out very clearly our position in government. Generally, hypothecation of revenue is not something that we support.
I conclude by recognising that the noble Lord has made some incredibly important points, but I feel that I cannot accept his amendment and hope that he withdraws it.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
I thank my noble friend. I feared that “inappropriate” and “hypothecation” would be words used in the arguments produced. I am grateful to noble Lords who have taken part in support of the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, put his finger on the matter. If we do not set it up when we start, it will never get set up; it either happens now or it will never happen. Once the money starts to flow, no Government will ever take their hands off it, and the Treasury certainly will not. So we either set the framework up now or this will go the same way as North Sea oil.
The argument that my noble friend has not answered at all—it is unanswerable—is about the inter-generational fairness. Why should we spend it all on ourselves? No matter what the situation may be, if we have got ourselves in a hole we should clamber out of it and not try to rob future generations of what they should share with us. I shall not go on any further, but I am disappointed with what my noble friend has said, although I am not surprised. I shall discuss the matter with people who are more sympathetic with what I am trying to achieve and see whether they want to come back to this at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred to the extremely good work of the Law Commission. It sounds to me as though there is a very valuable piece of legislation that we could pick up to clear away some of the wreckage of prior years.
For my part, I find myself in sympathy with the strategic objectives behind this legislation although, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding rightly reminded us, much of the detail has yet to be revealed and it will be important that the regulations are published in time for us to have a proper discussion about the detail of the operations of the proposals before us today. My noble friend on the Front Bench gave a persuasive defence of the idea of a strategic authority for our road and motorway network.
Like my noble friend Lord Teverson, I too have struggled with Japanese knotweed, so I understand the importance of dealing with non-native invasive species. Indeed only last week, standing by a trout stream in Wiltshire that I enjoy patronising at this time of year, I was disturbed to find some mink and to see that the water contained an increasing number of very large Canadian crayfish, which are driving out our native-born crayfish and destroying them, so this seems to be an important and useful part of the Bill. And who can argue with the need to house our population decently?
With that background, I shall raise three points with the Government today. The first concerns not how much housing we are going to build or where we are going to build it; rather, the question is what we are going to build. We in this country have an extraordinarily rich and diverse heritage of local architecture, from the dark stone of Yorkshire and the honey-coloured stone of the Cotswolds and Oxford, to the whitewashed cottages of the Celtic fringe and the half-timbered black and white houses of my home county of Shropshire and of Herefordshire. Noble Lords will have their own particular examples of this. I fear that these regional variations are now being swept away in favour of huge estates constructed entirely from six or seven off-plan models of individual houses. If I were to blindfold individual Members of your Lordships’ House, load them into a helicopter, land them in a housing estate and then remove their blindfolds, they would not be able to tell whether they were in Norwich, Redditch, Plymouth or Stockton-on-Tees. I argue that housing constructed in sympathy with the locality, composed of the local style and using local materials increases people’s pride in their community and a sense of belonging and so improves social cohesion.
As I say this, I can feel the officials in the Box preparing a note to send to my noble friend on the Front Bench saying, “Tell the noble Lord there are plenty of other provisions, including one in the Localism Act, which will give local communities the power to insist on specific standards”. However, I am afraid that this has proved to be on the one hand specious and on the other hand ineffective. Faced with a developer that tells the local authority that it can have a standard-plan house at X thousand pounds but a specified one costs X thousand plus 20%, there can be only one answer. The builders will fight tooth and nail to narrow as much as possible the range of houses that they have to offer; it is, after all, in their commercial interests so to do. The Government need to think carefully whether there is sufficient equality of arms between builders and local communities and, if they accept the builders’ argument, whether bland uniformity is the answer or whether we risk creating run-down, featureless, hollow estates 25 years from now.
My second point is, at this time, a non-point because fracking has not so far appeared in the Bill. However, my noble friend on the Front Bench has trailed it extensively so I take this opportunity to urge the Government, as they consider the whole issue of fracking, to consider at the same time the possibility of establishing a sovereign wealth fund for the UK. Noble Lords will be familiar with the concept of such a fund, whereby a country, instead of spending all the proceeds from the exploitation of a precious and finite resource on immediate consumption, puts some proportion aside to benefit future generations. One could argue that this is akin to an everlasting pension fund for UK plc. The noble Lords, Lord Oxburgh and Lord Cameron of Dillington, were fringing on this when they talked about local participation in individual schemes.
Most noble Lords may think about this in terms of the Gulf states but, closer to home, Norway has an extremely successful sovereign wealth fund. As a result, Norwegian government bonds are some of the most sought after and highly rated in the world. A British sovereign wealth fund might not just help the country in the long term; it might also improve our financial stability in the short run. As a nation, we are jolly good at spending but rather less good at saving. As a nation, we have already blown the proceeds of the majority of the first great gift from nature, North Sea oil. The Government need to reflect carefully on whether we should repeat that experience with a second potentially great gift from nature, our gas reserves.
My third and final point is an entirely strategic one and one in which I argue that the Bill is set at the wrong end of the telescope because it makes no reference to how the population level may develop in this country over the next few years. As always when I raise this subject in your Lordships’ House and elsewhere, I begin that this is not a rerun of the argument about immigration or about the racial make-up of our country. I have absolutely no interest in either of those topics, but I have profound interest and concern about the rapid rise in the absolute level of population in this country and how this will affect every single settled member of our population.
The facts, which I used last week, can be simply put. On average, every day the population of this small island increases by 1,250. We are putting a large village or a small town on to the map of Britain every week and are doing so 52 weeks a year. The cumulative impact on our country will be huge. Take the example of housing, the subject of the Bill we are discussing today. Of course we all agree that our settled population should be properly housed. Common decency demands it. The average occupancy rate is 2.4 people per household, down from about 3.1 people 20 years ago. It is unlikely to increase much. It may even fall as people live longer, more people get divorced and more people choose to live alone. If we stick to the 2.4 figure, noble Lords can do the mathematics as well as I can: 1,250 people a day at 2.4 people per dwelling means 520 dwellings per day. There are 24 hours in the day. That requires 22 dwellings per hour, one every three minutes, night and day. This is before we begin to make an effort to improve our existing housing stock. This is just today’s challenge.
One could reasonably ask where all this might end. The mid projection of the Government Actuary’s Department and the Office for National Statistics is that by 2054, 40 years from now, the population of England will have increased by 13.1 million people. On the housing metric of 2.4 people per dwelling, that will require us to provide 5.4 million houses. Doing that will present and create political challenges of a very high order.
When we debate the housing crisis and how this Bill may help resolve it, it is fair enough, but we need to remind ourselves that we are addressing the outcome, not the underlying cause, of the challenge in the first place. This is not the time or the place to go further into this complex and difficult area of demographic change, except to say that every area of government will be challenged. Today’s headlines about gaps in the funding of the health service are just another feature. So often, the terminology used in the debate serves to confuse rather than to clarify.
I anticipate that before the end of the debate some noble Lord will raise the example of Thomas Malthus, pointing out that his predictions have proved wrong and so, by analogy, will the predictions that I have given the House today. My answer to that would be to say that indeed Malthus made predictions and indeed they were based on a hypothetical set of circumstances. My remarks are not based on a hypothesis. They are based on reality: 1,250 people are arriving in this country or being born in this country every day. That is a fact. Of all the challenges that the Government face, those of demography have the longest lead times. A nudge on the demographic tiller has no impact today. Its impact is felt in 10, 25 or 50 years. This Bill deals with today’s challenges, but I hope that someone, somewhere, is thinking about the longer-term challenges for our infrastructure and not, like Mr Micawber, hoping that something will turn up. These demographic changes now taking place contain serious implications for all parts of our country and society and the social cohesion and welfare of our nation.