Railway Stations: Facilities

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister say what per diem rate these people are to be paid?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Is there no end to these fascinating questions about the independent auditors? I cannot, but I will write.

Transport Infrastructure

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I hope to be able to put the record straight. I do not propose that there will be changes to the management of HS2; rather, changes will be made to its governance. As I explained earlier, the DfT and HMT will be on the board and there will be a new Minister. I will ensure that I mention to the new Minister, whenever she or he takes up their role, that stakeholder engagement and ensuring that environmental stakeholders are included as part of the process is absolutely essential.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a hugely welcome announcement as far as the economy of the West Midlands is concerned. While I understand that the Statement needs to make a lot of references to the northern powerhouse, it makes no reference to the issue of east-west links in the Midlands. The Minister will know that it takes almost as long to go from Leicester to Derby or from Leicester or Derby to Birmingham as it does to go from Manchester to Leeds, so this is a real issue. Can she assure me that in the work that is being taken forward, the links within the Midlands will be given full consideration?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

The noble Lord is right and we intend that the work on the integrated plan for rail should include the Midlands and the north. Of course, the department is engaging with Midlands Connect because of its interest in the Midlands rail hub, which would certainly lead to improvements in east to west connectivity. We are well aware of the issue and we are working on it.

High Speed 2 (Economic Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Goldsmith on a superb maiden speech. We very much look forward to his contributions to the House in the future.

I apologise, as I am suffering from a cold; my noble friend Lord Ridley told us yesterday that Darwinian principles meant that his cold would find another host, and I fear that he has been proved correct in that respect.

Five years ago, the Economic Affairs Committee, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, raised serious questions about the cost of HS2, the methods used to appraise the project and other priorities for rail investment in its 2015 report The Economics of High Speed 2. In January 2019, the committee followed up this inquiry and published a new report in May last year. Sadly, we found that the Government were still no nearer to providing satisfactory answers. We therefore concluded that HS2 required a major rethink. Before I explain our conclusions, I thank the committee staff who produced the report: Sam Newhouse, Ben McNamee and Lucy Molloy.

I begin with the question of how urgently we need HS2 in relation to other rail investment priorities. In 2015, the committee suggested that rail infrastructure in the north of England should be the priority. We asked the Government to consider whether investment in northern rail infrastructure should be prioritised over HS2. Beyond a business case for Northern Powerhouse Rail, no such assessment of the relative merits of doing so was ever carried out. Five years on, commuter services in the north of England remain badly overcrowded, unreliable and reliant on ageing Pacer trains built on the cheap using frames from Leyland National buses.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord—I will not do it again—but I cannot understand why his committee does not seem to have looked at the West Midlands and the issues there.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

If the noble Lord allows me to make my speech, he will perhaps get an answer to that.

The Government’s response to our report stresses that the Northern and TransPennine Express franchises will deliver over 500 brand new vehicles and retire all the existing Pacer trains. Yet, in spite of the Government’s confidence, Pacer trains remain in widespread use today. Allow me to stress that Pacers were initially given a lifespan of 20 years when they were introduced as a stop-gap in the 1980s. Forty years later, many are still with us.

Overcrowding continues to be far more severe on commuter services than long-distance services. We heard evidence that fast long-distance services are among the least crowded trains that serve the cities on the HS2 line. For example, just 4% of passengers stand on the Virgin Trains West Coast to Manchester, whereas there has been a doubling of demand for local services into central Manchester in the last 15 years but only a 50% increase in passenger capacity. HS2 will do very little to help these long-neglected commuters travelling into cities in the north. In fact, the main beneficiaries of overcrowding relief from HS2, when it is finished, will be London commuters who use the west coast main line. Chris Stokes, an independent rail consultant, described HS2 as

“a very expensive way of dealing with the Milton Keynes-Euston commuter peak.”

Simply put, the HS2 project is a poor reflection of the UK’s rail investment needs—I hope that addresses the noble Lord’s question.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Do not tempt me.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

There is, fortunately, a programme in place to help these commuters: Northern Powerhouse Rail would create faster and more frequent lines between Liverpool and Manchester, Manchester and Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, and Leeds and Newcastle. It would reduce journey times between northern cities substantially. To give just two examples, the journey time from Liverpool to Manchester would reduce from a maximum of 57 minutes to just 26 minutes; likewise, Newcastle to Leeds would be reduced from 95 to 58 minutes. Such improvements to journey times would increase access to a wider jobs market between northern cities that are currently very poorly connected.

Representatives from northern regions who gave evidence to our inquiry generally agreed that both HS2 and the Northern Powerhouse Rail programme were absolutely crucial to the north. Since the publication of our report, there has been fierce debate—to put it mildly—on whether both programmes are needed. First, the Government, under the previous Prime Minister, stated in their response to our report that HS2 needs to be in place first. In August, the new Government commissioned a review into the viability of HS2, chaired by Doug Oakervee. New details from a leaked version of his report—apparently delivered before Christmas but still unpublished by the Department for Transport—were revealed this week and appeared to indicate only qualified support for the project.

The recently published dissenting report from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, argued that HS2 is the “wrong and expensive solution” and that priority should be afforded to Northern Powerhouse Rail and Midlands Connect instead. Stakeholders from the Midlands and the north of England, however, have made clear in their response, once again, that both programmes are needed. We urge the Government to provide clarity on this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made it clear: if the Government have £150 billion, they can do both; if they have only £50 billion, they need to choose.

In the view of the Economic Affairs Committee, HS2 phase 2b and Northern Powerhouse Rail should be combined into a single programme to allow investment to be prioritised where it is needed most, and funding for the northern powerhouse needs to be ring-fenced and brought forward where possible, otherwise the north of England will continue to be short-changed by the Government’s plans. The Government stated in their response that they would “carefully consider this recommendation”. We hope they do so.

Our report also considered the planned costs of HS2 and examined the method by which the Department for Transport determines whether the project provides value for money. The leaked version of the Oakervee report found that more work is needed to assess the scheme’s impacts on regional growth and that it is “hard” to say what economic benefits will result from building it. Suffice it to say that providing clarity on the costs of HS2 has never been one of the Government’s strengths. The first estimates for the costs of HS2 were published in February 2011 by the department under the then Secretary of State for Transport, Philip Hammond. The estimated cost for the full network was given as £37.5 billion. Then the department, under the following Secretaries of State, Justine Greening and Patrick McLoughlin, put forward two updated economic cases in January 2012 and October 2013. The estimated cost rose first to £40.8 billion and then to £50.1 billion.

Moving forward, the department’s 2015 spending review set the funding envelope for HS2 at £55.7 billion, in 2015 prices. Adjusting for construction price inflation since 2015, this funding envelope increases to £59 billion today. The estimated costs, however, were shown to have increased to £65.2 billion. Yet fear not; in 2017 the department, now under Secretary of State Chris Grayling, published a financial case with all assumed efficiency savings calculated into the model, estimating that the full cost of HS2 would be £52.6 billion. The committee was told that spending to date on the project was £4.3 billion.

Since the publication of our report, there have been even more conflicting estimates of the costing range for the project. In August 2019 HS2 chairman Allan Cook published an official stock-take of the current status of the programme, in which the total funding range for all costs and risk was estimated at between £72.1 billion and £78.4 billion. Yet following this the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, clarified these costs to Parliament in a Written Statement on 3 September 2019:

“Adjusting by construction cost inflation, the range set out in Allan Cook’s report is equivalent to £81 to £88 billion in 2019 prices”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/9/19; col. 7WS.]


Now, according to the leaked Oakervee report, the cost of the project could rise to as much as £106 billion. Adding to the confusion, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, suggests in his dissenting report that the total cost will in fact be £115.8 billion.

This confusion absolutely tallies with what the committee heard from Sir Terry Morgan, the former chairman of HS2 Ltd, who told us that “nobody knows yet” what the actual cost of HS2 will be. Most pointedly, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, concluded that

“Parliament has been seriously misled”


about the costs of HS2. The committee also had serious reservations about the cost-benefit analysis used in determining whether HS2 provides value for money. The results of the latest cost-benefit analysis for HS2, published in July 2017, show net benefits of £92.2 billion and net costs to the Government of £39.8 billion. Following the familiar theme of confusion that has arisen throughout the project so far, the leaked Oakervee review suggests that the cost-benefit ratio has fallen from £2.30 to £1.50 for every pound spent. The committee did not find the methodology used credible for either the project’s costs or its benefits. The model does not account for the transformative effects on employment and population that new infra- structure can provide, because it assumes that land use in the surrounding area is fixed. The Government’s response to our critique was disappointing. They accepted the limitations relating to the treatment of land-use changes but offered no indication that they would carry out new analysis.

Our second reservation concerns the methodology and evidence used to calculate the value of travel time. These measurements have improved since their first iteration—when they forgot that people can, and quite regularly do, work on trains—but they are still questionable. They used surveys asking business rail travellers hypothetical questions about how much they would be willing to pay for quicker journeys. The committee did not believe that a few hundred interviews carried out on station platforms were a robust evidence base on which to base a calculation of the benefits that a potentially £80 billion new railway will bring.

Finally, our report shows that the estimated benefits of HS2 are highly dependent on forecast numbers of business travellers using long-distance rail. Our central concern on this point is that the evidence used to forecast the number of business travellers using HS2 is based on data that is 15 to 20 years old. Not only do the numbers not correspond to the most recent data from the national travel survey and the national passenger survey, but relying on out-of-date data is neither a robust nor rigorous basis for evidence-based policy-making. We therefore recommended that new analysis of the project is needed. This must take into account the transformative effects of new infrastructure on the benefits of the project. It should revise the assumptions behind the values of travel time, and the demand forecasts should be revised ahead of this new analysis. We recommended that this analysis be published in full alongside the business case by the end of last year. The Government have accepted that the data is out of date and stated that updating it is part of the department’s latest research priorities. We strongly urge its publication as soon as possible.

In 2015 we recommended that the Government should review the cost saving from lowering the maximum speed of the railway and terminating the line at Old Oak Common rather than Euston. Yet again, the Government failed to consider our very reasonable recommendations. Our follow-up examined the two ideas again in detail. HS2 is being built to accommodate trains that run at a maximum of 400 kilometres per hour, with trains initially expected to run at a maximum of 360 kilometres per hour. Trains that can travel at that speed do not exist. When we asked why the railway was being designed to that specification we were told it was in order to make it future-proof. We heard evidence that strongly questioned the design speed, including one piece of evidence that described the maximum speed as “an engineer’s pipe dream” and “close to ludicrous”.

Allow me to stress, on this point, that in phase 1 trains can operate at 360 kilometres per hour on a mere 68-mile stretch between Amersham and Birmingham. Reducing the maximum operating speed to 300 kilometres per hour would add an extra 10 minutes to a journey between London and Manchester, but the cost savings for the whole project could represent up to £1.25 billion once longer-term operational and energy costs are accounted for. Based on this evidence, we see no reason for HS2 to be built to operate at 400 kilometres per hour.

Once again, we are disappointed that the Government have ignored our recommendation to assess the cost saving that could be made by terminating the HS2 line at Old Oak Common rather than Euston. The Government and HS2 Ltd cite a 2011 report from Atkins as the evidence base for rejecting our proposal. Notwithstanding the fact that it was written at the start of the last decade, that report assessed only the reduction in benefits and made no estimate of the possible cost saving. The Government must consider both. We argue that what matters for the termination point is not the single point in central London, but the connections that enable passengers to quickly arrive at their destination. The evidence we saw shows that onward journey times to final destinations using the Elizabeth line from Old Oak Common appear to be comparable to, or better than, continuing from Old Oak Common on HS2 to Euston. Euston is not “central London”.

We have therefore recommended that the redevelopment of Euston station be removed from the scope of phase 1 of HS2 and that Old Oak Common should operate as the London terminus for phases 1 and 2a. Doing so will allow time to determine whether Old Oak Common could operate as the London terminus for the entire HS2 network, and the potential costs or savings that that would involve relative to a terminus at Euston. Our report is an appeal to the Government to conduct a major rethink of the full HS2 project. A new appraisal of the project is urgently required. The Government must act to ensure that the benefits of HS2 are not geographically uneven and do not entrench the uneven economic divide between north and south that already exists.

I was very struck, in our discussions in the committee, by the words of the former Chancellor and Transport Secretary the noble Lord, Lord Darling. He said, “These projects are all the same: they run over budget and in the end the bit at the end gets cancelled.” The bit at the end is the east-west rail structure which is so desperately needed now in the north of England. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate. I will be looking at this from a West Midlands perspective but I should perhaps declare myself as a friend of Euston station—not, I hasten to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that I think it is architecturally of any merit whatever; it is just that I have a flat very close to it. I confess that I thought that the WC1 postcode signified that I lived in central London, which I think is where Euston station is.

[Lord Berkeley]

Come on.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

It depends where you look at it from.

We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, who has certainly been consistent over the years. He talked about despair, but I want to reflect to him the despair that would be felt in the West Midlands if HS2 were cancelled. It would have an absolutely devastating impact on our economic well-being. We are very vulnerable. With Brexit, the motor car industry is hugely vulnerable. Cancelling HS2 at the same time as there is economic uncertainty would be devastating for a region that, over the last two years, has grown more than any other apart from London.

My noble friend and the noble Lord’s committee have produced some very salient points about the HS2 budget and the appraisal system. There is no getting away from that. The question is: is that enough to cancel HS2 as a whole? To be fair to both noble Lords, that is not what they are saying. They are raising issues that need to be answered, and that is fair.

The noble Lord’s committee also focused on the north. It focused on the railway connections and referred to the 90 minutes that it takes to travel the 75 miles between Liverpool and Leeds. I do not dissent at all from what the committee has said about issues in the north, but I am disappointed that so little attention was given to similar issues in the Midlands. For instance, it takes 57 minutes to travel to Leicester from Birmingham, which are 46 miles apart, while the 51-mile trip to Nottingham takes 76 minutes. There is a large flow of people and work but it could be much, much bigger. There is no question but that road congestion—journeys take ages by road—and the very poor railway connections are impeding the development of a Midlands-type economy.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. How does HS2 improve the railway journey time between Birmingham and Leicester? It does not go anywhere near Leicester.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am not a railway expert but I do know a little about railway maps. The point I was going to make is that this is part of an appalling railway system in the West Midlands—something with which I know my noble friend agrees. We have a local service operator called West Midlands Trains. Its record of 44.8% of services arriving on time between October and November last year is a symptom of our hugely overcrowded and cancelled trains. That is a feature of commuting life in the West Midlands. Part of the reason why we need HS2 is that our line is absolutely chock-a-block. Creating extra capacity is essential. I know that my noble friend does not disagree with that because it is what he said in his minority report.

Let us turn to the comments made by a number of noble Lords, which are, essentially: “If you cancel HS2, don’t worry because the money will be available, we can sort out the capacity issues both in the north and in the Midlands, and all our troubles will go away.” My noble friend’s report is very interesting because he took the trouble to look at what the alternatives might be. For instance, I do not believe that we could deal with the capacity issue in the West Midlands without four-tracking the line from Rugby to Wolverhampton, but that would be hugely disruptive. I do not know how many bridges there are; I suspect my noble friend knows—

[Lord Berkeley]

No.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

But there are quite a lot. There is a lot of housing, the NEC, the airport—a host of difficulties for four-tracking. But if you do not four-track, you will not solve our major congestion problem.

The other option pointed out by my noble friend is the Chiltern line, a good line which many of us use when going to a different part of London. As he says, it would have to be four-tracked in certain places and would need to be electrified. My noble friend is doubtful about my railway geography, but the one thing I do know is that a lot of the Chiltern line goes through Buckinghamshire. Can you imagine what would happen if the Government announced that the alternative to increase capacity is four-tracking and electrifying the Chiltern line? All noble Lords who come from Buckinghamshire would rise in protest. The Chiltern line is saturated—

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge]

I do not come from Buckinghamshire—although very close to it—but I point out that HS2 goes through Buckinghamshire already.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

Before my noble friend resumes, I point out that we are in the midst of electrifying the Midlands route. It is not pleasant but it is not the end of the world. It is happening while trains run.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

It does not go through Buckinghamshire though, does it? The point I am trying to make, to anyone who says that it would be easy to increase capacity in the ways suggested—my noble friend did not say that—is that it would not be easy at all. It would also cost a lot of resource.

Finally, my noble friend estimated, I think, £39 billion for the local rail development in the north and the Midlands. It is a round figure. Does anyone seriously think that the Treasury will agree to spend that money in substitute for HS2? We all know what happens: you cancel a project, you say that you are going to do all sorts of things to substitute for it, but it never comes. We have all too many examples of major projects being cancelled. There is no doubt that there are serious questions, which both noble Lords have raised, but I think it would be a disaster to cancel the project.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I do not entirely agree with her but I thought that she put her points in a very pithy way. Clearly the trade-offs between the benefit of HS2 in environmental terms and some of the environmental defects are those that always have to be weighed. The problem that I have is that sometimes we weigh these balances for so long that in the end we make too little progress.

My frustration, which I share with other noble Lords, is that this country is so bad at major infrastructure projects, yet in HS1 we have an example of a brilliant project that I think was undertaken on time and on budget without one major health and safety victim. It is unbelievable that we are spending so many years building what is still a relatively short piece of track. There have been many reviews of major infrastructure projects in this country—my noble friend has looked into this matter on a number of occasions—but, given our economy and the challenges that we face, we cannot afford to mess around any longer with these critical infrastructure projects.

There are obviously questions to be answered about HS2. We have heard about the cost and delay overruns. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, raised the issue of whether there was overspecification in the original project, which the review will no doubt look into. Like my noble friend Lord Adonis, I think the Minister put the case for HS2 extremely persuasively and, essentially, I want to endorse what she said. I also wanted to touch briefly on the impact on the economy of Birmingham and the West Midlands, about which I am most informed.

Just looking at the capacity crisis on our railways, it is a no-brainer that we have to increase capacity one way or another. Whatever the cost overruns on HS2, the capacity issue simply will not be washed away. If, for instance, the review suggested that HS2 should be cancelled, or in the end the Government decided to do this, they will still be left with this incredible capacity issue. What are the alternatives? One is to four-track the west coast main line between Rugby and Wolverhampton, but the cost and disruption would be enormous. The same would be said if the Chiltern line from London to Birmingham was changed to a four-track line. That is clearly another option, as is turning trains into double-deckers. This is feasible, but bridges would have to be raised and services would be disrupted for a very long time and at huge cost. So what are the alternatives? In the end, the review is bound to conclude that there is no alternative to carrying on with HS2.

My noble friends Lord Adonis and Lord Snape made the point that construction has started. A huge number of jobs have already been created in Birmingham and the West Midlands and the National College for High Speed Rail has been established. A huge amount of investment is taking place in the city of Birmingham on the strength of HS2. The West Midlands economy is fragile. The potential of Brexit and the damage it could do to our motor industry is immeasurable. Cancelling HS2 at the same time as we face these huge uncertainties would have a devastating impact on our economy. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly referred to those who are talking to the Government. Our own Select Committee looked at this and focused on the railway challenges facing the north of England. I sympathise with noble Lords who are concerned about the railway infrastructure in the north of England, but I do not think that stopping the London to Birmingham part of HS2 and starting again in the north is a rational or sensible approach to delivering this railway.

I want to thank the Minister, who has my full support for this Bill. We will attend it with great interest at some point in the future—maybe the distant future. I want to say to the Government that this was a convenient way to get HS2 off the election agenda, but in the end, they will have to make a hard decision. From all the Minister has said, I think she knows already that the only decision that can be made is to continue with HS2. I very much hope that she will do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I would be happy to return to this issue outside the Chamber where perhaps we could have a better and more detailed conversation. I was also going to say that we should meet when the review has been published so that we can talk about the more detailed costs and benefits assessment. That conversation is probably too lengthy to have in the Chamber today.

I turn now to a few of the environmental matters which have been raised, because of course they are very important. I think that it was the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who referred to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, saying that he admired her “hippy way” of bringing things up. I thought, “No, that is not the case at all, because these issues are important”. We had a good conversation when we met, and I hope that both noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Young, along with other noble Lords will accept an invitation to a briefing by the HS2 environment team. Perhaps we can then get to the root of the issues of concern because this is a huge area. I believe that HS2 has a great deal of information on it and I hope that the team will be able to put at least some of the fears of noble Lords at rest, although I am probably resigned to the fact that the noble Baroness will not change her view.

I want to refer to the point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow. He asked whether having a railway line causes an area to become not beautiful any more. Having visited the area that phase 2a of HS2 will go through, I agree with him that it is lovely and a great part of the country which already has the west coast main line and a motorway running through it. However, it is still beautiful. I think that there are many positives. On the habitat side, again we can raise those issues with the environment director and talk about them further.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I just want to clarify that I did not say that the noble Baroness was a hippy; rather, I said that she was pithy. In other words, she put her points of view across very succinctly.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

Goodness, okay. I offer my sincere apologies to the noble Baroness and perhaps Hansard will go back and scrap all of that.

I shall carry on about the environmental statements, which are of course very important. I can assure the noble Baroness that they are of a high quality. However, I shall turn now to ancient woodlands because I sense that this is an issue that we may return to a number of times. I agree that ancient woodlands are very important, but there is some context here. We have some 52,000 ancient woodland sites in the UK, and of those 52,000, some 62 will be affected by HS2. It is the case that we can do things to mitigate the impact on ancient woodland. I was quite surprised to learn that not only do we have a planting regime in place, which we will learn from and improve on—and we can quiz the HS2 environment director on it—but we also propose to move the actual soil to a new place.

HS2

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

As I have already explained, we will respond to all the issues raised in the report in detail before the Summer Recess, and so I am not willing to go further on them right now. However, I will respond to the noble Lord’s question about investment in the north. It is absolutely critical. That is why we are investing £2.9 billion in the upgrade of trans-Pennine rail. The noble Lord also mentioned infrastructure. We intend to replace every single train operating in the north. We agree that the infrastructure needs an upgrade, and therefore we are replacing the trains.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister give me an assessment of the impact on the West Midlands and Birmingham economies—on investment, jobs and the well-being of the region—should HS2 be cancelled?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I completely agree with the noble Lord that there would be a significant impact on the future economic growth of Birmingham if HS2 were to be cancelled—and I certainly do not support the cancellation of HS2. I have lost track of the number of letters that have been published and that we have received from organisations in the east and west Midlands, and from the north, stating that HS2 is hugely beneficial to their economies—there was one in the past 24 hours from representatives of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Durham and more. It is very important for Westminster politicians and think tanks to listen to what those in the north and the Midlands are saying.

Brexit: No-deal Ferry Contracts

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

There were a couple of points there from the noble Baroness, for which I am grateful. Knowing what I know now from my short time in the department and from my time as a Defra Whip, I believe that, had I been the Secretary of State, I would have made the same decisions. These are very important contracts. The other thing to be aware of is that the contracts had to be as flexible as possible. Many will say, “Oh, they do not seem particularly flexible”, but this is all dependent on the maritime market, which is not the same as other markets. The maritime market operates in periods of weeks and months rather than hours and days. We believe that the legal advice is appropriate. I can confirm that a case is being brought by P&O, but obviously I cannot comment on an ongoing legal case.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, can I ask the noble Baroness two things? First, where did the money come from? Has it come from government contingency funds or out of the direct expenditure plans of her department? Secondly, if this insurance deal is not to be repeated, as seems to be implied, do I take it that the Government have firmly—and will in the future—set themselves against a no-deal Brexit?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I believe that the money will have come from the no-deal Brexit funds made available from the Treasury. If that is not the case, I will of course write to the noble Lord. I did not say that these contracts would not be repeated. The situation is that no deal is still the legal default, so what is going to happen next is pretty much what happened last time—

Airports: Disabled People

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I assure the House that the aviation strategy Green Paper due to be published in the coming weeks will indeed address these issues. The noble Baroness is right that, in a recent CAA survey, one in 10 passengers who requested assistance were fairly or very dissatisfied with the service provided. That is obviously not good enough. The Green Paper will propose a passenger charter, which will clarify what can be expected from airlines, airports and airside services, including on wheelchair damage and waiting times, and will improve the standards of service for passengers with reduced mobility.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, why do the Government not focus on enforcing the regulations that the Minister referred to? Surely that is what they ought to be doing at the moment.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, it is important that we look carefully at the regulations. They include provisions, but, as I mentioned in my original Answer, some of them do not specify exactly what is needed. That is why we are looking to introduce a passenger charter, to more clearly set out what we think the standard should be. Through the strategy, we are also looking at strengthening the CAA’s range of enforcement powers to deal with instances where airlines or airports have not met their legal obligations. At the moment, we are not sure whether those are right, and so we are looking to strengthen those enforcement powers.

Immigration: Tuberculosis Testing

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, eventually for all the 82 high- risk countries, you will not be able to get a visa to the UK unless you are clear of TB. To clarify further my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Morris, arrivals from the other European states are not tested for TB because of course they do not need to be tested. They can come and go as they please.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the growing incidence of TB is actually a feature now in the UK, particularly in cities such as London and Birmingham? What priority are the Government giving within the National Health Service to dealing with a problem that is causing a great deal of concern?

Railways: London Midland Rail Franchise

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they will take regarding the London Midland rail franchise, following recent disruption of its services.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, London Midland has not yet breached its contractual cancellations benchmark, which is calculated as a rolling annual average. However, if the situation continues and cancellations increase, the department has a range of actions available, which will certainly require robust plans to improve performance and, potentially, further punitive measures. My honourable friend the Transport Minister Norman Baker discussed the matter with London Midland’s managing director last week to apprise him of the department’s concerns.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am not sure that that will be much compensation to the thousands of travellers, particularly in the West Midlands, who have suffered from the cancellation of hundreds of trains in the past few weeks. Can I take the noble Earl to the general obligation contained in the franchise agreement, which is that the operator should undertake its job with a,

“degree of skill, diligence, prudence and foresight”?

The problem with the London Midland service is a shortage of drivers. I would have thought that that is ample evidence for an intervention into the franchise agreement. This company is not fit to run the franchise.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I share the noble Lord’s concerns regarding passenger experience. He is right that the problem relates to a shortage of drivers and the ability of London Midland to retain the drivers it has and attract new drivers. It is a competitive market. There is also a considerable lead time for taking on and training new drivers. This is a matter for London Midland. However, there are strong incentives for it to put the situation right.

Aviation Policy

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, my noble friend asks a good question, although it is slightly wide of the Question on the Order Paper. We support the ETS scheme, but my noble friend will understand that there are difficulties with it as well.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

But, my Lords, on the question of an integrated transport policy and given that the Minister mentioned Birmingham Airport, does he not, like me, regret the absence of an HS2 Bill in the Queen’s Speech? Does that indicate that the Government are in fact having second thoughts on that?

[A noble Lord]

I hope so.