Railway Electrification

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My reference earlier to integrating the electrification programme with rolling stock decisions reflects the fact that many trains on the British railway network are now capable of operating in either electric or diesel mode. That is a consequence of rolling stock purchases over the past 10 years. It enables some more choices to be made about the very expensive infrastructure cost of electrification versus electrification where it makes a real difference in both time and volume of rail traffic, and where trains that will run on electricity—when the electricity is there—will also serve parts of the network where it is not.

Some of the decisions which have been taken in rolling stock will last 35 years, like the rolling stock itself. That is true of the Great Western main line electrification, where those trains happily run on the wires as far as Cardiff and then travel by diesel not only to Swansea but further west to Carmarthen and to the south-west as well. A similar situation is true on the Midland main line, where bi-mode trains will be in operation. There is no point in investing in very expensive infrastructure if we can find another way of creating electrification for the vast majority of the network. The study being done by Network Rail, which will be completed and feed in to the department’s overall review of capital projects, will point out where that valuable public money ought to be best spent.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the electrification of the north Wales main line, that the Conservative party committed itself to in its manifesto, was to be funded from the savings made from HS2 and the Minister should not say that it was an unfunded commitment.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

There is a report out today from Rail Partners which says that the costs of rail freight have been rising three times faster than the costs of carrying freight by road. Part of this is due to the rising cost of electricity. Has the Minister discussed with his colleagues in other departments the effect on the economic case for electrification of their pursuing policies that are giving us the highest cost and the most expensive electricity in Europe?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I will continue to claim that the Network North plan was unfunded, because it depended on money that had never been properly allocated in the future to HS2 phase 2. When this Government took office, there was no evidence of any financial plans to deliver virtually any part of that agenda. In respect of the cost of electricity, of course, it is dependent on the relative price of electricity compared with other forms of propulsion for rail, but in terms of electrification of the railway and its use for freight, other considerations are far stronger than the cost of electricity and where it is generated. I shall concentrate in answering this Question on the electrification of the railway, because that is the Question that was asked.

Driving Tests: Secondary Market

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

One consideration in improving the relationship between driving examiners and the DVSA is to have enough of them to conduct tests on a basis where people do not feel excluded or significantly delayed. It is not the only action the Government are taking: my honourable friend the Future of Roads Minister made a Statement in the other place on 18 December with a seven-point plan, all of which is designed both to help people get tests when they need them and to reduce the amount of time it takes between applying for a test and actually taking one.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend who, after a lifetime of bicycling, offers greater advocacy for learner drivers than the Government appear interested in doing—possibly he is looking for a driving test himself at this late stage. During the previous Government, in the last 18 months, the DVSA issued 283 warnings and 746 suspensions, and closed 689 alleged businesses all over this scam. None of this enforcement activity has been mentioned by the Minister. Has it been dropped? Has the DVSA gone slack under a Labour Administration, while they are focusing on consultations and reworkings of processes?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

As a matter of fact, the statistics I can quote back to him are that 344 warnings and 791 suspensions have been issued, and 811 business accounts have been closed since the new Government took office. I think that comprehensively demonstrates that there has been no such slackening off and that the DVSA is on top of this. The real answer, however, is to reduce the amount of time it takes to get the test in the first place so that people do not feel very early in their learning journey that they have to book a test long in advance of it taking place. The Government’s aim is to get that down to seven weeks by recruiting a large quantity of driving examiners, to whom I previously referred.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is difficult—in fact, impossible, really—for me to add meaningfully at this stage to the many personal and emotional tributes that have been paid by noble Lords to the late Baroness Randerson. I knew her since I entered the House, but only rather distantly as a figure who spoke authoritatively and compellingly from the Liberal Democrat Benches on the subject of transport. But over the last few months, as I have taken on this role, I have had the opportunity of getting to know her better. Indeed, if I may say so, I developed over that period a degree of affection for her rather shrewd sense of humour. Others know her a great deal better than I ever achieved, and I regret that I shall not have the opportunity to develop the growing personal regard that I had for her. We shall miss her very much.

I thank the Minister and his officials for the time that they have given to briefing me on this Bill. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate.

I turn to the Bill itself. Over Christmas, I had a message from a foreign friend asking me what it was like living in a socialist paradise, which led me to reflect a little on the nature of the Government. What strikes me about the Government, and it is present here again, is not really their socialism, though there is a degree of that; it is the fact that they are a Government who are almost solely and utterly focused on the public sector. The public sector is the solution to everything, and of course the policies of the public sector unions are determinative. So it is that we come to what is, in essence, a public sector Bill that is fundamentally driven by a rather narrow ideological approach. It is statist and anti-enterprise. It is also mildly nostalgic and backward-looking—a sort of return to the Attlee Government is essentially what we are being offered today.

Our first objection to the Bill, therefore, is that it is bureaucratic. It is anti-enterprise and, through franchising, it is likely effectively to snuff out a number of private sector businesses, which will be reduced to becoming not entrepreneurial entities at all but merely agencies of the state, operating to a fee and doing what the state instructs them to do in terms of routes, services and charging the fares that the state, through the local transport authorities, has set for them.

The Minister knows, from his time as the owner of a private bus company, the benefits to passenger service of private businesses. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, and my noble friend Lord McLoughlin drew attention to the decline in passenger numbers, and the implication that certain noble Lords appear to draw is that it is a consequence of private provision. The same noble Lords, however, do not give credit to the private sector for the massive increase in usage of railways under privatisation. In that case they are probably right as well, to some degree. The point is that both bus and rail demand are subject to stronger fundamental forces. That is the fundamental problem that the Government have in trying to revive the sort of 1950s vision of bus services that we see in this Bill.

The fact is that in the case of rail, the Government hope to benefit from a secular rise in demand for rail passenger services. In the case of buses, they can hope only to prop up what is in fact a secular fall, a decline, in demand for bus services. A number of noble Lords have pointed out that that is very expensive to do. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, gave some illustrations of how expensive it might be. It is a random example and many examples were developed, but one of the first examples given in the debate was by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, who referred to North Shropshire and the cuts in services there. Does anyone really imagine that those cuts can be reversed and restored without heavy public expenditure?

The Government’s chosen case studies, of which they are so proud, include London and Manchester. Going back to November 2024, shortly before her political demise, the former Secretary of State, Louise Haigh, wrote in the Sunday Mirror about London:

“This represents record capital investment to the majority of places and a once-in-a-generation reform plan that aims to deliver London-style buses to every corner of the country—including those areas that are usually overlooked”.


The noble Lord, Lord Snape, said it would cost £850 million a year to sustain London buses. The figure I have is £738 million a year in 2024 but we are in, as the Americans say, the same ballpark. If I may be so bold as to disagree with such an experienced transport commentator as my noble friend Lord McLoughlin, there has in fact been a reduction in bus mileage in London of approximately 5% under the current mayor. There was a plan to reduce it by 7%. I do not think the full 7% was delivered, but it was certainly of the order of 5%. This is palpable to those of us who live in or close to central London in particular. In the case of Manchester, the Bee Network celebrated its first year of franchised bus services in September 2024. Passenger journeys in Greater Manchester grew by 5% in the first year of franchising.

By contrast, however, in the year ending March 2024—I agree this is not exactly the same period, but it is the best overlap I can get—national bus passenger numbers grew by 7%, and those figures are taken from the Department for Transport’s official statistics. I might say also in the context of secular decline that that also illustrates how little can be learned from simply looking at one year’s figures. The idea that Manchester demonstrates a huge success—outstanding, apart from the rest of the country—because of franchising needs to be substantiated. It is not necessarily very persuasive on the numbers given. As my noble friend Lord Effingham pointed out, the establishment of the Greater Manchester Bee Network required over £1 billion of central government investment. If you are spending the thick end of £1 billion a year sustaining the London bus network, you might regard a one-off payment of £1 billion to Manchester as mere small change, but replicate that around the country and you will eventually be looking at real numbers. The upshot is that any promise by the Government to give London-style bus services to the whole of the country is essentially a chimera. It is a bogus offer that the Government cannot afford to deliver.

Let us turn briefly to passengers, which is my next topic, if we move away from costs. We argued forcefully when we debated the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill that the focus of the Bill, its overriding purpose, should be to improve passenger services. It was, after all, a Bill—now an Act—about passenger services on the railway. However, the Government resisted that and overturned it in the other place. Similarly, this Bill makes no commitment to an improvement in services for bus passengers. It simply hopes that by making structural and procurement changes it will somehow achieve that. It has no overall duty on the Secretary of State to seek to improve passenger services. It says simply that perhaps the Secretary of State should.

Is the Bill going to work? In its manifesto, the Labour Party committed to reform the system for procuring bus services and to give local leaders new powers. The reality of the Bill is that the Government are not really giving local leaders new powers, but simply removing the Department for Transport’s role in confirming the appropriateness of franchising in other areas. It is our view that the Government’s decision to remove the Secretary of State’s discretionary power to grant franchising powers to local authorities risks too much, and we believe that the Secretary of State should have the power to intervene where a local authority’s franchising model is failing, as a safeguard to protect services for local people where local leadership is poor.

It is essential to understand the differences between large concentrations of persons living in an urban area and the structure of a market that exists in rural areas. That was the logic behind the 2017 Act, which gave powers to certain conurbations, in effect, to franchise or take more control of their own buses but to deny them elsewhere. Extending that power throughout the whole country is, I am afraid, to take a chance and offer a bogus prospectus to the public. The vast majority of local transport authorities will not have the skills to plan routes, assess demand, set fares and introduce a ticketing system, No doubt we will be told that the Bus Centre of Excellence will be deployed to help them. Perhaps the Minister could tell us when he responds how many people are employed by the Bus Centre of Excellence. As other noble Lords have said, the consequence is that the Bill has no answer to the needs of rural communities.

We believe that some subsidiary elements of the Bill are welcome—for example, closing the loophole in the safeguarding of children who are being transported to school on independent school bus services—but we have other concerns, which I will briefly run through, because we will have an opportunity to discuss them further in Committee.

The first is the relative silence of the Bill on ticketing, which is remarkable. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who is always ahead of the game, said—to the rather older Members of the House, perhaps—Oyster cards are not where it’s at any more. Contactless payment, at the very least, is what one should be looking at, rather than a bespoke Oyster card-type system. But it is remarkable how little the Bill has to say about that and, as she said, about the ability to deploy that payment method outside a particular local transport area. Where is the Bill taking us on that; what do the Government have in mind?

Data collection is very important, but more important is its dissemination. In London, the data collected by Transport for London is available free to all app developers. Do the Government intend the same with the data collected nationally; or is it, heaven forfend, the secret plan of the Department for Transport to develop its own app to disseminate this on an exclusive basis? I think we would like to know.

The training of bus drivers in relation to disability in particular is very important, but as the Minister knows, because I have expressed this to him privately, I am concerned about the implications of the passage in the Bill on drivers being trained to tackle anti-social behaviour and potentially violent activity. It is my very clear view—and I suspect it is, on reflection, his—that it is not right for the public to expect bus drivers to put themselves at risk in order to confront incidents that the police would tackle by deploying two, three or four uniformed officers. We have to be very realistic about this, and we will want to explore the issue when the Bill is in Committee.

Safety is of course terribly important, as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, made clear. It is worth asking to what extent the franchise model contributes to a sort of aggressive bus management that might lead to buses being driven less safely than might otherwise be the case. I said earlier that the Bill has a sort of nostalgic “back to Attlee” flavour to it. One way of illustrating that is that it completely fails to mention anything to do with demand-led transport. The Bill very much envisages a fixed-route, traditional bus service but in fact, in many rural areas demand-led transport might well be and is already proving to be a much more effective way of providing affordable services to communities. The Bill as it stands contains almost no provision for that and makes no reference to it; it will be interesting to see how that fits with the franchising system.

I will conclude. This is an ideologically driven, backward-looking, bureaucratic and expensive Bill. We, for our part on these Benches, shall do our best to improve it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

It was a long time ago.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It was a long time ago; the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and I completely agree. I wanted only to say that I do not claim particular credit for it; if you lead a team, you should give credit to the team that you lead and not take it all yourself.

The noble Lord’s more important points were about inclusion and accessibility. I absolutely recognise the points he made about the accessibility of the bus service to people with disabilities. I note his contention that Clause 22 does not go far enough, but I promise—and I am sure we will discuss it in Committee—to look at the degree and extent to which this clause can answer his points. He must be able to see that the intention of Clause 22 is to improve bus stopping areas and for the Secretary of State to give some guidance, which ought to be mandatorily taken into regard by local transport and highway authorities.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised points about community control and who is in control. As I said, the point of this is to return control to local transport authorities. He also raised a question, which he largely answered, about what happens if local transport authorities do not do their job. One would hope that the citizens of the local transport authority would vote them out for not doing their job. That is the remedy. I do not think that the Secretary of State coming down on local transport authorities like a ton of bricks is a satisfactory alternative; we want to return control to the people who should rightly have it.

Incidentally, there have been bus routes down the Embankment since the trains went. I used to travel on route 109, but it does not go there any more.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also raised some important points on the Bill. She raised Clause 9 on approved persons, which we will discuss in Committee. The intention is not to deregulate approved persons but to widen the range of them. I completely agree with her that they should have some qualifications. An unqualified person should not be able to make a judgment about whether a franchising scheme is right.

The noble Baroness asked whether Clause 11 complies with the procurement regulations. I am advised that I am able to tell her that it does.

The noble Baroness welcomed Clause 19 and referred to assistance data. I will take that away and see what can be done. Bringing data on bus service usage into the 21st century is quite important and I am sympathetic to the idea that, as long as it is not a burden to bus operators, or indeed local transport authorities, collecting data is the right thing to do, so that we know what is going on.

I note very clearly the noble Baroness’s comments on Clauses 24 and 25, that diversity training is not the same as the rights for disabled people, and on what we did, with her great assistance, in the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill, referring to the Equality Act. I will go away and reflect on that.

Lastly, I come to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, who has some extraordinary views about socialist paradises and returning to the era of the Attlee Government. I find it particularly extraordinary because I know that the noble Lord has such a strong view about the autonomy of local authorities. The Bill intends to return bus services to the autonomy of local authorities and for the Secretary of State not to intervene so much in the provision of services.

I have to tell the noble Lord that there is currently a huge disparity in the provision of bus services across Britain. I was not only responsible for the bus service in London, as he knows, but, for a measurable length of time, I was responsible for the bus services in what was laughingly called south-east England but apparently included Norfolk, Northampton, Leicester and Southampton. Even within one bus group, 20 years ago, there was an extraordinary variation in the provision of services and the extent to which bus operators sought to maximise the network and the return on it, or cut off individual journeys, to the extent to which some towns and cities in Britain find themselves short of or even without bus services after 7 pm and on Sundays.

I think I know roughly how to run a bus network, and one of the things you should do, which is the feature of the best bus services run by the private companies outside London—I can mention some places, but I will not—is to seek to service the network and to take people to school, hospital, work, leisure and home. It is in those places where those services have drifted away that something else needs to be done.

That is also true of rural services. The noble Lord alleged, quite wrongly, that the Bill does not deal with demand-responsive transport. It very much does—that is one of the remedies open to local transport authorities, as it should be. It is not a particularly cheap methodology but it is there to be used and, in fact, there are some startlingly good examples of it. He refers to it as though it is an urban feature but his own Government instituted an experimental regime in Cornwall, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, knows, has produced rather a good bus service in Cornwall by having features of Cornwall Council’s activities that amount to franchising in the same way that the Bill will allow to happen.

I have come to the end of my allotted time. There is a limit to what I can answer here. As I set out earlier, the Bill is primarily about empowering local leaders wherever they are. It is a privilege to bring this forward to your Lordships’ House for Second Reading. I thank all noble Lords who have participated in today’s debate. I welcome the support of those who have spoken in favour of the Bill’s measures and look forward to continuing the debate on the Bill in Grand Committee.

Old Oak Common: Train Disruption

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right to criticise a railway that cannot operate reliably on Sundays and a lot of work is going into making sure that the optional working arrangement for Sundays for drivers and train managers on the Great Western Railway is addressed. But he is conflating two issues. We are mindful of the railway needs of the south-west of England. I think I have met virtually every Member of the other House west of Bristol on the matter of Old Oak Common. Old Oak Common will be an asset to the railway, and the railway to the south-west of England. As always with these things, construction is difficult and takes more time than we would like, but the result will be a better railway network for all parts of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister said that a station at Euston is indispensable for the success and effectiveness of HS2. Indeed, the Government made funds available in the Budget to build the tunnels from Old Oak Common through to Euston. How close are the Government to seeing deliverable engineering proposals for the construction of those platforms at Euston that allow passengers to board, alight and make use of these tunnels? How far away are we from actually having a plan?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am not sure whether the noble Lord knows, but one of the things that I took on in my previous role was chairing the Euston Partnership, which I did for five years. In that time, we saw at least two iterations of a design for the HS2 station. One was eye-wateringly expensive and included air-conditioned platforms, which is not the case even in Saudi Arabia. The alternative looked like an eastern European railway station after the Second World War, with corrugated iron canopies. Neither of those is at all sufficient. I have seen work going on for an integrated station between the Network Rail side and the HS2 side. I am optimistic that it is affordable, and that it can be financed and built. Incidentally, there will be a large amount of office space, creating jobs and housing in that area as well.

Electric Scooters and Electric Bicycles: Pedestrian Safety

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I certainly recognise the passion with which the noble Baroness speaks. Before Christmas, the Government published the English devolution White Paper, which has in it a provision for local transport authorities to be empowered to regulate on street micromobility—that is, e-bikes and e-cycle schemes—so that local areas can shape these schemes and tackle the scourge of badly parked e-cycles and e-scooters.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, as well as being potentially criminally ridden, these vehicles are also being used in the course of committing crime. In 2023-24, there were 11,000 offences recorded involving the use of e-bikes and e-scooters—a huge growth on previous years, and there is no sign of abatement. Do the Minister and his Government have a plan for curbing this epidemic?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It is easy to recognise the position the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, talked about. Indeed, he talked about it in very similar terms the week before Christmas. It is primarily a matter of enforcement by chief police officers, simply because, as he says, there may or may not be a crime in relation to the use of e-scooters and e-bikes, but crimes are being committed as a consequence of using them. This debate is one of the ways of drawing it to the attention of chief police officers, so that enforcement action is appropriately taken.

Cost of Living: Rail Fares

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her warm tribute to Baroness Randerson.

As I said, the Government are to have a rail sale early this year, in which many millions of tickets will be sold at discounted fares. Noble Lords will know that, following Covid, the demand characteristics of the railway have changed: there is still less commuting, despite changes in working practices, and more leisure travel. That gives real opportunities to produce fresh fare scenarios that will incentivise travel. To pre-empt a question that otherwise will be asked, the railway needs to be adequately able to cope with leisure travel for all seven days of the week in order that people can not only travel cheaply but get a seat when they do.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I echo what the Minister said about the late Baroness Randerson. We will have an opportunity to discuss her sad demise later in the week and return to the subject then.

In the future that the Minister envisages for the reformed railways, will it still be the case that regulated fares are set by the Secretary of State, or does he expect that power to pass to Great British Railways? Will that be in the consultation document that he has promised is going to be issued? When are we going to see that consultation document, given that he told the House he hoped it would be issued before the Christmas Recess, which clearly has not been the case?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments on Baroness Randerson.

On the future of the fares structure of the railway, it is overwhelmingly likely that, whoever the Secretary of State is, they will continue to have a strong interest in the fares structure of the railway. However, the proposition is that Great British Railways will be responsible for both revenue and cost, and therefore will have some freedom to set fares. It is true that I had hoped that the consultation document would be available before Christmas, but clearly that was not the case. The passage of the seasons in political time is variable, but I am going to promise that it will be available in the next few weeks.

E-scooters and E-bikes

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to a trial conducted by the previous Government which has gone on rather a long time—rather too long, in my view. Would it not make sense for the Government to draw that trial now to an early conclusion and see what lessons could be learned from it before proceeding with legislation, so that it could be informed by the results of the trial? Will the Minister be able to give a commitment that that will be done? When he learns the lessons of that trial, and will he take a particular interest in the use of e-scooters in relation to crime which we see on the street, which is a cause of great concern—not least mobile phone theft?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Happy Christmas to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan.

Hammersmith Bridge

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

We know what the range of costs for a future renovation of the bridge should be. They are very significant—at least a quarter of a billion pounds. I cannot currently say how detailed that is, but I know that it is the order of magnitude of what would need to be done to move further than just stabilisation, which will be completed, as I say. It must have been quite a burden to both chair and be in those meetings, and I am interested to hear about that. I hope that my honourable friend the Minister for Local Transport, when he reconvenes the taskforce, quickly brings the meeting to a clear understanding of what the bridge is to be used for in the future, and therefore what needs to be done to it in the long term.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the Greater London Authority Act explicitly transferred the responsibility previously held by the Government Office for London to fund capital transport projects by the boroughs to the Mayor of London. It is undoubtedly the Mayor of London’s responsibility to provide funding for this. Does the Minister not agree that what we are seeing here is a failure by two Labour-run authorities that, at the expense of members of the public, are engaged in a competition to show who can be more anti-motorist?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I will say two things to the noble Lord. First, the bridge has got into its current state over decades, which have seen various changes of control by the owners, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Secondly, he will know better than most that the level of settlement afforded to the Mayor of London for transport purposes by the previous Government was frankly derisory, and therefore the current Mayor of London has not been able to allocate money to all the things he would like to. We need to establish what the use of the bridge will be in future, which is a matter for the two boroughs. In other circumstances the noble Lord would defend fiercely the right of local authorities in London to decide what to do with their local roads. That has to be established. From that, it can be worked out what to do with the bridge, how much it will cost, how long it will take and, incidentally, who should pay for it.

Train Crew Shortages

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. The lengthy disputes were damaging to passengers and to the railway’s revenue and sapped the morale of the staff—and, indeed, of the management. In particular, in relation to Northern, the number of disputes and the length of time for which they have taken place reflect the fact that no serious effort seems to have been made to resolve them in the time that the company was in the ownership of the last Government. The previous Secretary of State, the current Secretary of State and I are absolutely resolute that we have to resolve these issues. They are quite deep-seated, but as we are here today, the management and the trade unions are in discussion about how to do that, and we are strongly supporting them.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I start by commiserating with the Minister on the fact that transport does not appear to be being mentioned in the latest great reset speech today. It must be tough not being a priority. On the running of the railways, the noble Lord knows better than anybody else that, to run a railway, you need management with strong focus and a strong hand. Does he not accept that the morale of management at the train operating companies is absolutely shot to pieces as a result of the recent legislation, while it waits for the Hendy axe to fall, and that, in effect, at least over the next few years, the railways are being run by the unions—much as the Government appear to be being run by the unions?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There is no need to reflect the Government’s policy on railways in any particular speech by any member of the Government. We have a clear direction to go in, and we are going there. On the management of the railways, I have to say, if the noble Lord opposite knew the managers as I did, he would know that many of them were in fact rather pleased that there is now a direction. Their morale, as with my own when chairing Network Rail, was significantly damaged by the promise of reform, which started after the May 2018 timetable debacle and was not fulfilled by the previous Government. This Government are going to do it.

Road Transport (International Passenger Services) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I have a question for the Minister about this generally positive instrument. It is about electronic travel authorisation. If a bus comes from Great Britain to the Republic and into Northern Ireland, electronic travel authorisation will be required, as I read it. Can the Minister confirm this? Many of us see this as a disincentive and an obstacle to tourism. People visiting Ireland from outside the EU and from outside Ireland need, as I read it, electronic travel authorisation to come into Northern Ireland—that is effectively a visa. Can the Minister confirm that? If he does not have the information available, he can write.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for arranging a helpful briefing with his officials this morning. This is, I imagine, one of those very rare occasions where I find myself more in sympathy with the proposal from the Minister than with the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who seemed determined to reopen all sorts of arguments about Brexit and who did what when.

This is, in my view, a sensible and necessary disentangling of our laws from the pernicious effect of EU legislation, so that we stand on our own feet with our own laws, making international agreements—such as the Interbus agreement—and adhering to, and adopting, in this case, its protocol relating to these coach services, which the Minister spelled out in considerable detail, with great clarity for such a complex subject.

The impact assessment for this instrument says that it has no impact and that that is the reason for not having any consultation. I welcome that; we should have more laws that have no impact. Most of the laws that set out to have an impact seem to have only perverse impacts and do not achieve what they are intended to at all. This one is deliberately intended to have no practical impact—with one exception that I will return to—because it seeks to maintain the existing situation but translate it into domestic law. As I say, this is not only desirable but necessary because the provisions of the TCA under which it operates will effectively expire at the end of March next year, as the other foreign parties join the Interbus agreement. So, on the whole, we welcome this instrument and are happy to support it.

On cabotage, it is of course possible—as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said—that there is some diminution of immunity to British travellers as a result of that. The Minister has been asked a question, and I certainly do not know the answer to it, but he may. It is possible that certain services currently operating start in, say, Paris and go to Edinburgh, stopping along the route, collecting passengers and dropping them off. Those services will no longer be able to operate in that fashion—picking passengers up and dropping them off along the route—once these provisions come into effect, which in practice will be on 1 April next year. As I say, that could constitute a diminution in services.

However, it is interesting that the noble Baroness focused on that, because the counterpart to that is that British coach operators will not have those cabotage rights in the European Union. I would have thought and hoped that the Liberal Democrats would be more interested in promoting the interests of British coach operators travelling abroad than protecting the business model of foreign coach operators operating in the UK. However, that appears not to be the case: her focus is on the latter—she did not mention the others at all.