Clean Air Zones Central Services (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

At end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations will increase the fee payable in respect of clean air zone payments processed through the central services website from £2 to £4; risk additional costs being passed on to motorists who are already facing high fuel costs; fail to provide sufficient assurance that drivers will be protected from any direct or indirect increase in clean air zone charges; and extend the charging period until 31 March 2031 despite the continuing financial pressure on motorists.”

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I start by saying that if the purpose of the recent changes in procedure for dealing with statutory instrument regret amendments and fatal amendments was to limit the scrutiny applied to government instruments, it has already proved very successful. What we see is that there are three speakers in this debate and they are all from the Front Benches. I suggest that the use of the list system for this purpose is already showing signs of failure. That remark of course is not addressed to the Minister, who is not responsible for the change, but I think it is important that it should be said.

I take as my starting point what the Minister said about the fuel duty. He claimed credit for not increasing the fuel duty in a way that was envisaged by the Treasury, but that occurred only because of a sustained and effective campaign led by the Conservative Party. The Government were embarrassed into falling back on that because of those efforts. It is wrong that they should claim credit for it. Any motorist who thought they might be able to relax in the light of that circumstance obviously has to think again because we now have, in effect, another stealth tax on motorists.

The instrument doubles the fee paid by local authorities to the Secretary of State for each clean air zone payment—namely, every trip that incurs a clean air zone payment charge—that is processed through the central service. That is for all the cities mentioned by the Minister; I believe that London is not part of that system, but all the other cities that he mentioned certainly are. It doubles that from £2 to £4. The Government are trying to get away with that as a cost recovery item, and they say that they do not expect it to be passed on to motorists by local authorities.

But, if you take the case of Birmingham, for example, where the daily charge is £8, this is now fully half of the fee. Of course this is significant, and local authorities will seek to recover it one way or the other. The Minister says that they do not need to do that because local authorities are generating a surplus—it is true that many of them are—and he imagines that local authorities just sit there with the surplus in the bank smiling at it and counting it as it accumulates. But in fact those surpluses are used for desperately needed transport improvements in their cities. So, if they are to be told, “You can’t pass it on and you will have a smaller surplus to spend”, something will have to give—and it will be local transport improvements. In fact, that is very unlikely because those expenditure plans, which are often laid several years in advance, will require funding, and that funding will no longer be available from this source, so it will come out of the motorist’s pocket.

I appreciate that today the Minister copied me into his letter to the chairman of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and he has explained the levels of cost recovery that are now expected as a result of this measure being implemented. But there is no transparency, and nothing has been offered to us to show that the central system is operating efficiently or that it needs fully half the revenue from the fee. It will not be half in every city, admittedly—it is half in Birmingham because the fee is £8, and in Bath it is £9—but it is approximately half. Fully half of the fee, or approximately that, is being snaffled for a processing system when it could be spent—and is being spent—on necessary and important improvements.

The burden of these fees, and the increase that I feel confident in saying will ensue, does not fall evenly. The vehicles that fail to qualify for these clean air zones are typically older vehicles likely to be owned by people on lower incomes, older motorists and so forth. This is not an abstract consideration about clean air; it affects people’s lives.

The clean air zones themselves should wind up in the very near future. They are, after all, a measure that work only if they achieve a certain objective within a certain timeframe. But we now find that the other effect of this instrument is that they are being extended out as far as 2031. The reality is that this is almost certainly redundant already. The vehicles that qualify for these charges are disappearing from the streets; that is happening simply through the passage of time and the fact that older vehicles are taken out of the fleet. I imagine that it could very easily be the case that the same effect could be achieved by 2031 as keeping these charges in place is likely to achieve.

We have all heard cases in the past where the Government have said that there will be a charge that will be levied for a certain period and then it will fall away. When the time comes for it to fall away, it is extended or kept in place, and sometimes it is even made permanent. The Government have more regard for their own finances—that is the simple fact—than they do for the life of the motorist. They should be ashamed of what they are doing. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is not a revenue-raising measure, the Minister says—unless you are the Department for Transport, which will raise the revenue to cover its costs, as that is the prime directive it is following.

It has been a useful debate. There is little to be superadded to it at this stage. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment withdrawn.

E-scooters and E-bikes

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right, and in pursuit of his desires, the Metropolitan Police recently seized 52 illegal e-bikes and mopeds. A total of 2,741 were seized across 2025-26. West Midlands Police seized more than 50, and Greater Manchester Police seized six and removed 55 locally. Merseyside Police seized over 500, Nottinghamshire Police around 100 and South Yorkshire Police over 150. So, we are starting to see proper enforcement across Britain, and the more publicity all that gets, the better.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I want to throw my tuppence into this. Building on the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, what strikes me is just how shoddy and tawdry our great city streets are looking. They have been turned into great parking lots of bikes for the benefit of private companies. Is the Minister not moved to do more than simply recite a series of legal requirements imposed on bicyclists that nobody ever complies with?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Gosh. The answer to that is the ability, through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act, to allow local leaders to license shared cycle schemes. This is precisely the measure that will enable local authorities to clean up streets, at least in respect of bikes. As we go forward with proposals for e-scooters, I have no doubt that the same powers will feature. The noble Lord does have a good point, especially in relation to people with partial or no sight, or other disabilities. Littering the pavements and streets with these things is hugely undesirable for ordinary people trying to walk about and make use of their towns and cities.

Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it has been an excellent debate. Most of my points have been made; in the course of the afternoon, I have been tearing up and disposing of parts of the speech that was prepared for me, so I hope noble Lords will forgive me if what is left is a little disjointed.

I thank the officials who provided me with a briefing and the Minister for arranging that, and I thank noble Lords for their speeches. I learned a great deal, particularly about the experience of those with disabilities. From my own background, I have had to engage with those having experiences with disabilities on trains and on the railways in particular; to hear the stories today about those who have had problems in the air, and the sorts of problems they have had and the responses they have encountered, has been a very important experience for me. I can certainly say that we will consider sympathetically amendments brought forward to try to offer some sort of redress. I hope that some of those amendments could be brought forward by the Government, because I know that the Minister himself is not unsympathetic to that case. I would have thought that it would be helpful all round if the Government could take a lead. If they do not, I am sure that others in your Lordships’ House will do so.

Like other noble Lords, I want what this Bill does. For example, I want the “powers gap”, as it is known, to be filled. The retained EU law Act expires on 23 June and there is a whole range of areas for which we can no longer make regulations without primary legislation. This Bill addresses that in respect of civil aviation. In fact, I have been berating the Minister in various fora over the last couple of months, saying, “What are you doing about this powers gap arising on 23 June?” I will also take time out now to berate him about it because, while this is being dealt with in relation to aviation, his department still has no answer on the regulation of the marine sector, for example, and in other areas where we will be left completely bereft as a result of a perfectly foreseeable development—namely, the expiration on a known date, which happens to be this month, of an Act passed several years ago.

To go beyond that, not just the Department for Transport but other departments will be affected by the powers gap—but the Government have done nothing except in regard to aviation. We want to see that done: we want to see airspace modernised. My way of putting it is that we want to give a legal basis for passenger protection rights to substitute for their basis in EU law, which will no longer exist. That is what the Bill does: it creates a legal basis for those passenger rights. We want to see that done, but I do not think we really want to see it done this way. We do not want to see it done by the creation of a huge, baggy, all-powerful new regulatory body. We have had 25 years of creating regulators as the answer to everything, and it does not work. We have had 25 years of taking powers away from Ministers and Parliament and giving them to wholly unaccountable regulators, and here we are doing it again. The Civil Aviation Authority is, in essence, a safety regulator, an economic regulator and a regulator of airspace. It is a very focused body and it is very good, but we are now giving it a far broader range of powers.

I am going to read the bits that matter from the memorandum on the European Convention on Human Rights. We find that Clause 1 engages Articles 6 and 8, and Article 1 of the first protocol. Clauses 2 and 3 engage Articles 6 and 10. Clauses 4 to 6 engage Article 6 and Article 1 of the first protocol. Clause 7 engages Article 1 of the first protocol. Clause 8 engages Articles 6 and 7. Clause 9 engages Article 6.

Whole swathes of the Bill are open to challenge. Of course, civil servants believe that they can rebut those challenges in court, but it is no wonder that my noble friend Lord Redwood talked about the possibility of delay because, in effect, large parts of the Bill will be determined not in this Parliament but in a foreign court, as we discover whether these clauses will stand should they be challenged. As an illustration of how wide the powers that are being transferred are, I almost feel that parts of the Bill were written by the Civil Aviation Authority. I will come to some of them, but there is also the question of delegated powers.

Tomorrow or soon after tomorrow, thanks to the information offered by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, we will get the report of the Delegated Powers Committee. Huge swathes of power are being delegated to the Civil Aviation Authority and there are extensive Henry VIII clauses in the Bill. All this needs to be explored and the role of Parliament in it needs to be properly understood. At the moment, we are being emasculated in this. With the great swathes of powers being granted to the CAA, I see no provision in the Bill for parliamentary accountability or, indeed, for any accountability of the CAA to anybody, including to the Minister. How can that be an acceptable way of making law and regulation for the future?

I am going to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, but, before I do, I want to say that his speech was one of the most interesting in the debate, because he brought alive for me, in a remarkable way, the experience of being a pilot—even if not a captain—and the things that can happen. I know that other noble Lords with that experience spoke, and I greatly enjoyed his speech and learned from it, but I am going to disappoint him. Of course, I agree with him that, in drafting and preparing regulations, you should consult people who know about things. You should consult pilots, airlines and so forth, and bring them together, but that can be done alongside proper parliamentary scrutiny. While the statutory instrument is an unsatisfactory method for doing so, it is the only one we have. To give up on it completely would be an abandonment of our duty.

I will run through some of the clauses. As I say, many of my points have been made, so I will try not to repeat them, but some things need to be raised. Clause 1(3) gives the Secretary of State the power to confer enforcement powers on the CAA, so why do we need Clause 2? Clause 2 is one of the bits that I think was written by the CAA. It puts into the Bill all the powers that the Secretary of State already has the power to confer, and these powers are extensive. What is going on there?

Then subsection (3)(e) of the new section inserted by paragraph 6 of Schedule 1 creates provisions for the Secretary of State to manage what is going on if two bodies are doing the same enforcement. I do not know which two bodies are meant; I suspect they are the Civil Aviation Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority, but they might be others. One of the principles of enforcement, which those of us with local government experience come across all the time, is that, for one crime, there should be one enforcement agency and one prosecutor. Only in that way do you get clarity and avoid somebody being punished twice for the same thing. We are actually building dual enforcement into the Bill and then giving the Secretary of State some power to manage it from the centre. The Bill should not be doing that; it should be clarifying whether the enforcement is by one or the other—not by both and certainly not by more than two.

Clause 4 is on airspace modernisation. Subsection (2) amends Section 2 of the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Act 2021 to extend the existing ministerial direction powers, so that the Secretary of State can compel implementation of approved airport changes. This is what we are calling the level of last resort. As a last resort, the Minister can step in and force things to happen. But there is nothing here—I echo the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and my noble friend Lady Bray—about the consultation of the communities that will be affected by airspace modernisation. There will inevitably be winners and losers from that, but where are the communities in this? There is no answer to that, but the Secretary of State can exercise that lever without any regard to community consideration. Is that not too large a power for the Secretary of State to have?

Clause 8 on CAA rule-making is another example of a part of the Bill that I think must have been written by the Civil Aviation Authority. It is astonishingly extensive. First, I want to know what a “rule” is. We have rules in football. There is the offside rule. I know what a “law” is, but I do not know what a “rule” is. What is the force of a rule? Does it have the force of law? The CAA is going to make rules. It has no accountability in how it is going to make rules. There is no requirement in the Bill, particularly about consultation.

Then we have—this must be one of the most bizarre things that anyone has ever written into a Bill, which is one of the reasons I think the CAA wrote it—more in Clause 8 relating to CAA rules. In new Section 61F, we have the power for the Secretary of State to issue a document—note the careful avoidance of the word “guidance”—that

“sets out the Secretary of State’s priorities and objectives for the exercise of the CAA’s rule-making functions”.

I have no problem with that. That makes a great deal of sense. We then then go down to new subsection (6), which says:

“The Secretary of State … must consult the CAA in preparing or revising the document and”—


just listen to this—

“may not issue the document without the agreement of the CAA to the contents of the document”.

So we have an arrangement where the Secretary of State is allowed in effect to give guidance—of course, if you use the word “guidance” that has a legal meaning, but it is effectively guidance, I hope—to the CAA that the CAA can veto. Does anyone read these things before they print them? How can that possibly be justified?

Then we come to Clause 9 on offences. This is no criticism of noble Lords, but nobody in the course of this debate has mentioned the fact that the CAA is being given the power to create criminal offences—something that Parliament normally reserves to itself. The CAA can create criminal offences and you can get a fine. You can be taken to the magistrates’ court and you can get a fine. Again, what is the parliamentary scrutiny for that? What is the justification for leaving that in just that fashion?

We then have the Henry VIII powers. These are completely unnecessary, because the Government’s delegated powers memorandum, which they have written for the benefit of the Delegated Powers Committee, identifies every Act that this Bill interacts with and states that those amendments are already made in the Bill—so why should they need Henry VIII powers to amend further legislation? What is the further legislation, if they have already identified all the legislation with which the Bill interacts? Unnecessary Henry VIII powers have been loaded in that are simply not needed.

We support aviation. I agree with everything that has been said about its economic importance and its contribution to growth. I cannot none the less allow the Government to sit there and say that that is solely their objective when they themselves have done so much damage to aviation in the country. The SAF mandate, for example, is adding significantly to the costs of fuel, and that is feeding through to what passengers are having to pay. Then we have the astonishing, bone-crunching increases in business rates being imposed on airports. This Bill could be a chance for the Government to do something for the benefit of aviation and make good on their commitment to use aviation as a means for growth. It could be that, but it needs drastic change if is to do so credibly.

King’s Speech

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it has been a truly interesting and wide-ranging debate. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I confine my remarks to the transport aspects of the debate. There were a number of interesting speeches in respect of transport. I do not propose to respond to them all, but I would like to single out the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who I think deserves a rather doleful prize. For over 15 years now, he has been the Cassandra figure wandering across the stage from left to right periodically, telling everyone that HS2 was going to cost £100 billion. There is a great deal of blame to go around in respect of HS2, but none of it falls at the door of the noble Lord. Cassandra eventually has to be shown to be right; we know now that he has been right all along.

I want to start by referring to the circumstances, rather than the content, of the gracious Speech. I think it is fair to say that it was, frankly, painful to see His Majesty peering over the top of his Speech at a Prime Minister standing below Bar, of whom nobody knew whether he would still be in office 24 hours later. How has it come to this after less than two years? When Disraeli referred to Gladstone’s Front Bench as being like

“a range of exhausted volcanoes”,

he was at least acknowledging that they were volcanoes. We have been inflicted with something more like a row of molehills, from which the moles have departed. The rapidly leaving ranks of Ministers who are flooding out are now saying quite openly that the Labour Party was wholly unprepared for Government. How have we got to this stage?

However, we have a ready-wrapped solution at hand: Mr Burnham, and what is known as “Manchesterism”. I have looked into Manchesterism. It is very relevant to this debate, because it boils down to a transport policy. Manchesterism is, in essence, the fact that Mr Burnham has taken control of the buses and put a £2 fare cap in. It is worth saying that the £2 cap was, of course, a Conservative policy; that it was the Conservative policy to continue it, and that it was the Labour Party that put it up to £3 in every other part of the country.

When we think about the mechanism by which Mr Burnham has taken control of the buses in Manchester, let us remember that it was a Conservative Government that gave him the powers to do so. The mechanism he has used to take control of the buses is, of course, a franchising system in which the buses are still owned and operated by private companies, but he sets the fares, the routes and the timetables. In other words, it is a system wholly copied from what has been operating in London since roughly the 1980s. One could almost call it “Londonism”. Who was it who, in the 1985 Act, created that system in London? It was, of course, Mrs Thatcher. We might even say that it comes down to being called “Thatcherism”.

However, there is another paradox here. That very system of franchising, where contracts are let on a concession basis to private companies to provide the bus services, is exactly the system that the noble Lord the Minister has vehemently rejected in relation to the operation of the trains. In his paradise, the trains have to be owned and run by Great British Railways, and there is to be no room at all for any sort of competition, except where it exists already. Since we know where we are coming from, that makes me wonder whether the noble Lord the Minister has yet made the pilgrimage to Wigan to knock on a few doors and make inquiries of Mr Burnham as to whether he still backs the Great British Railways Bill with this mechanism, which is not part of the Manchesterist approach at all.

There is more to say about this Great British Railways Bill. Another thing that is going on is that, overnight, the Labour Party has become a party that wants to rejoin the European Union. Mr Streeting—I am putting Mr Starmer aside as being what might be described as a short-dated stock—wants to join the European Union, and he says so. Mr Burnham also wants to join the European Union, but he would prefer not to say so. Yet the one thing that is absolutely not compatible with being a member of the European Union is a Great British Railways structure in which there is no competition allowed—except, I grant you, temporarily for existing open-access operators. To exclude competition is completely incompatible with the EU’s railways directive.

Indeed, if we did rejoin the European Union, and Deutsche Bahn, or SNCF, or one of the private Italian railway companies turned up and said that they would like to run a service on Great British Railways’ tracks, and we were to refuse them on the basis of this Bill, we would find that the whole principle of the Bill would collapse immediately and we would lose the case under European Union law.

So there we are: we have the Bills, but we do not really know anything about the direction of travel and what is going to happen under an imminent new Prime Minister. We have a civil aviation Bill that replaces the EU regulation of airlines and airports, including consumer protection. We welcome that, but the way in which regulations are to be made is going to be an entirely private matter for the Civil Aviation Authority. I do not think the Government have got the message. We voted Brexit to get rid of unelected bureaucrats making laws for us—but at least we had parliamentary scrutiny. We had an array of European Union committees here in your Lordships’ House that would look at those laws before they were implemented. We are to have none of that: there will be no parliamentary scrutiny of the new regulations made by the Civil Aviation Authority and to some extent by the Secretary of State. That cannot be an acceptable Bill, and it is one that we are unhappy with as a matter of principle: we can support the substance, but the mechanisms are not appropriate.

My noble friend Lord McLoughlin spoke warmly about the highways finance Bill. We support the idea of finding new mechanisms for financing the building of roads, but I am really puzzled, and I want the noble Lord to address—if not today then later, when we get to the Bill—why the regulated asset base model is an appropriate way of attracting private finance, given that we know from experience elsewhere that it tends to encourage overspecification and gold-plating, and anyway is designed for infrastructure where assets are incrementally added, such as they might be at Heathrow, rather than for building a road or a bridge, which presumably once built is built and one does not periodically add to it over time. That is something else that we are going to want to look at.

Finally, I come to the Northern Powerhouse Rail Bill. Both the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, spoke in favour of this. In fact, they spoke as if the Bill were likely to make Northern Powerhouse Rail happen: as if it were pushing it forward. I do not want to raise the anxiety level of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, but as is explained in the document produced by the Government, the Northern Powerhouse Rail Bill is actually only a renamed High Speed Rail (Crewe-Manchester) Bill. That was a Bill introduced by the Conservative Government. It was carried over into the last parliamentary Session, nothing was done with it, and it is being carried over into the current parliamentary Session. It does not build Northern Powerhouse Rail; it simply creates certain powers to take land for the purpose of building the parts around Crewe and Manchester that are necessary for Northern Powerhouse Rail. There is no objection to this Bill from our side—as I say, it was our Bill originally—but, if anyone thinks that the Government are building Northern Powerhouse Rail, I point out that there is not a penny available to build Northern Powerhouse Rail, unless the Minister is going to tell us that that is what is coming up.

I have to congratulate the Government on acceding to the Conservative Party campaign not to increase fuel duty. That is a small win and something we can call a win-win for both of us, I think.

I will conclude by referring to something for which no legislation is provided. It is not in the gracious Speech, but it is an important matter: the electric vehicles mandate. The electric vehicles mandate is already destroying our automotive industry and is going to ruin the country in many ways, destroying many jobs in relation to cars. But that is not enough for the Government, who now want to extend it to HGVs. I simply say to the Government that they really must think very carefully about this. Indeed, there is simply not enough electricity in the system to power electric HGVs. The Government must move very cautiously on the electrification of HGVs. I hope that, if not today then soon, there will be an announcement from the Government that they are going to reflect on whether this is something they really want to push forward.

We have had a gracious Speech written for His Majesty the King by the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer. We do not know, as we debate it, who is going to be the Prime Minister a few weeks from now. We do not know, as a consequence, who the Secretary of State for Transport or for Health, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is going to be a few weeks from now. There is a degree of unreality about this debate. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part and treated it very seriously, and I look forward to hearing the Minister perhaps try to give some gloss to all this that will make sense of it to the rest of us.

Merchant Shipping (Port State Control) Regulations 2026

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and his officials for their helpful briefing last week. As we have heard, this instrument revokes and replaces the Merchant Shipping (Port State Control) Regulations 2011, which implemented the UK’s commitment under the Paris memorandum of understanding and the associated EU directive. As I learned from last week’s briefing, the Paris MoU obligates the UK to operate a regime of port state control for the monitoring, inspection and control of foreign-flagged ships calling at UK ports, to reduce the risks that such ships may pose to health, safety or the environment by ensuring that they meet relevant international standards. We have been part of the Paris MoU and its predecessor since the 1970s.

The MCA has around 100 inspectors and inspects around 1,300 ships a year. This instrument will mean that new maritime conventions are properly referenced and reports will be written in the international context, which will improve shipping safety. However, this SI shows just how much work there still is to amend legislation a decade after Brexit. Does the Minister agree that the time and effort that have to go into technical tweaks and amendments such as this distract from tackling other important issues and take up resource?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am very sorry to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, say that making laws for our own country, through our own processes, is somehow a distraction from what we should be doing, and that it would be better, presumably, if we were to hand this responsibility over to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. I cannot say how much I would want to distance myself from such a position.

Since I have very little to say about the instrument, I shall add a little local colour. I did on one occasion seize an unseaworthy ship. When I was the third secretary in the British embassy in South Africa, I was the duty officer one weekend. In those days without mobile phones, that meant I had to stay home all weekend, very close to the telephone. Nothing ever happened but to my astonishment, I got a telephone call from the harbourmaster at Durban, saying that there was a British-registered vessel—or, rather, I think it was registered in some territory, dominion or whatever in the Caribbean that none the less fell under the Crown—in his port. It was so unseaworthy that he intended to seize and immobilise it but, apparently, he needed the permission of Her Majesty’s consul-general. I knew nothing about consular services, but there we were: I was the representative, for that weekend, of Her Majesty’s consul-general in South Africa. After a moment’s thought, I reached the conclusion that, on the whole, it was probably safer all round for me to say, “Yes, you have my authority to seize this vessel”, than to say no or prevaricate in any way—so that is what I did.

It has not happened since, but I am therefore not wholly unfamiliar with the idea that there is a degree of port inspection going on and that vessels not meeting appropriate standards are appropriately dealt with. This instrument affects no change whatever in current arrangements. It advertises itself as achieving no change in current arrangements, and that is absolutely fine. I have no objection to this instrument.

However, I will raise the same point that I raised when we discussed a statutory instrument—I think on aviation safety—a week or two ago. This instrument is made—the Minister said “in part”—using powers under the retained EU law Act. By common agreement, that Act expires in June. From that date onwards, we have no capacity to amend regulations of this sort, which are crucial in the world of transport. Statutory instruments are the normal means by which these regulations are made in the field of transport, but this spreads across the whole of Whitehall and many other departments as well. I say that we have no power to change them—we have no power to do so other than by primary legislation and Act of Parliament; we cannot use statutory instruments.

This failure of foresight on the part of the Government seems a massive dereliction of duty. Even if the Minister was able to assure us today that there will be legislation in the King’s Speech to correct this oversight—I fully appreciate it is unlikely that he can tell us today what will be in the King’s Speech—it is most unlikely that it will possible to pass it in both Houses and enact it by the end of June, when it will be necessary. As I say, I regard this as a massive dereliction of responsibility on the part of the Government, and I expect there to be serious potential consequences unless something is done.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for their consideration of these draft regulations. I am grateful for the scrutiny and interest that they have shown in ensuring that the UK’s port state control regime remains relevant and compliant.

The noble Baroness invited me to comment on whether this and other changes distracted the Government and officials from more pressing matters. She would not expect me to do other than make an official reply, which is that the development of the new regulations has been a lengthy process, due to the complexity of the existing legislative regime. There have been a number of changes as a consequence of leaving the EU; my understanding is that this is one of the last. It has been left until late because the Paris memorandum of understanding is behind all this. As the noble Baroness said, we were a signatory when that started in the 1970s, and therefore this could be left until quite late.

The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has one on me: he has seized a ship. I was thinking of withdrawing the whole lot and changing the regulations so that, in the future, he had to seize all the ships. He would be very busy doing that, or might at least be very busy attending ships. However, on reflection, it is better if we leave the arrangements just as they are in the way that this statutory instrument is drafted. The noble Lord certainly has some experience there that I have never had, and I doubt that I ever will.

The noble Lord makes a more serious point about the remaining EU legislation. My information on the maritime sector is that this is one of the last things because the Paris MoU is there and we can revert to it. I will not comment on what might be in the King’s Speech; the noble Lord and I, and everybody else, will have to wait for it.

Trains: Punctuality

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Virtually the whole of the world, in countries that run railways, is incredulous that this country managed to separate the infrastructure from the operations for more than 30 years. That is the primary reason why people have spent so much time in the railways discussing not how you fix delays but whose fault it was and who pays the compensation for them. The Japanese railways are renowned for their reliability, but one thing that the Japanese have never done is to contemplate splitting the infrastructure from the operations. That is what Great British Railways will solve.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, we will not get improvements in performance on the railways unless we also get improvements in productivity and efficiency of staff. In January this year, the RMT put out a press release boasting that it had secured a 3.8% pay rise for its Network Rail staff, with no productivity or efficiency conditions attached. Can the noble Lord say whether Ministers will be insisting that future pay settlements will be directly linked to productivity?

Aviation Safety (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, as we have heard, these regulations will allow the Civil Aviation Authority to exempt industry from certain safety requirements to allow for such things as greater research and development, as well as allowing increased air traffic control for one-off major events with increased air traffic. I thank the Minister for arranging a briefing with his officials, who answered my questions and provided clarity on a number of matters. I was really pleased to read the CAA exemption policy, which makes it clear that:

“When considering whether or not to issue an exemption, the CAA’s starting point will be that the requirements exist for good reasons and exemptions should therefore be exceptional. We will only issue an exemption on the basis of this Policy if to do so will maintain a high standard of safety, having regard to the safety of all aircraft, crew, passengers and persons on the ground”.


I was also pleased to hear the Minister’s assurance regarding risk assessments. Those points should assure us all.

We on these Benches support greater research and development in aviation, which these changes will allow. The regulations will allow the CAA to issue more exemptions, although within those safeguards, around trialling new aircraft and testing uncrewed aircraft or new fuel types and technology. In recent years, we have seen rapid developments in aviation technology, particularly in uncrewed aircraft. It is important that the UK is not left behind, but it will be essential that the CAA does not overuse these increased powers. Therefore, my only question for the Minister is: could he clarify what criteria have been drawn up by the department to set clear guardrails for how the CAA can use these powers and then report on their use?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for arranging a short briefing for me yesterday on this measure, which I found very helpful. That was a useful thing to do and I thank him.

The substance of this statutory instrument is not terribly interesting. We could go on about whether the CAA could be trusted to do its job, and exactly how you might define exemptions, but these issues have been raised in the course of debate; there is no point in my belabouring them. Generally speaking, I trust the CAA to do the job that it has done so well for so many years. I do not see any reason to think that it will go wild and start indulging in or approving unsafe practices in the near future.

I think that there are more interesting things about this statutory instrument that relate to its circumstances. The first circumstance that we want to take account of is the EU reset. The third clause of this instrument—the second operative clause in this instrument—is undoubtedly a Brexit benefit. It is a relaxation of regulation that could not be brought about had we remained a member of the European Union. The Minister has said this. I am not making a controversial point. We are doing this in a context where the Government have said, without any mandate, that they want to align our laws with the European Union, making us subject to laws that they make without any consideration of what the benefits might be for us. These advantages that we are getting today by passing this statutory instrument could be yanked away at any moment in the next year or so as the reset starts to bite.

Rail Freight

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Moylan]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made towards achieving their target to increase rail freight volumes by 75 per cent by 2050.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, this Government have a clear ambition for rail freight growth, with a target of 75% by 2050, and we continue to work collaboratively with freight operators and Network Rail. My department’s modal shift revenue support programme and Network Rail’s access charges discount policy have been hugely successful, awarding £39 million over two years to eight freight operators and supporting 19 new flows. We continue to progress the Railways Bill, which will enable GBR to further support rail freight growth with the first ever statutory target for growth.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is encouraging to hear the Minister repeat the Government’s commitment to that target, which they inherited, of course, from the previous Government and which we support. However, the rail freight industry is, I think, finding it increasingly unconvincing, because the Government have refused, so far at least, to put this target into the Bill which is currently in the other place. They are leaving it, in effect, to the discretion of Great British Railways, which will of course be in competition with the freight operators for the very same paths on the railway. Would the Government not like to strengthen this target by making it part of the statutory obligation imposed upon Great British Railways in the Bill?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Government have been quite clear that setting a statutory target is in the Bill, and we have also been clear that it is 75%. In practice, that protects those freight paths that have been in the timetable for a long time but are not necessarily used other than at short notice. That is the reason for the proposed statutory inclusion in the Bill. For that reason, GBR will not be in competition for those paths. Those paths will have to be reserved in order to allow the target to be effective in the future.

Small Boat Deaths: Cranston Inquiry Report

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I spent most of last weekend reading the report—I do not claim to have read every word—but parts of it are extraordinarily harrowing because they comprise evidence from two survivors. It is clear that, as a consequence, a large number of actions are needed. Fundamentally, there were insufficient resources, and insufficient process was followed in the right way, which contributed to this tragedy.

On the other hand, on the night when this occurred, there was also a large number of rescues, and we should at least be proud that many people contributed to rescuing numbers well into three figures, so not all is wrong. As always, the trick with these things is to be positive about the changes that need to be made and recognise the heroism and bravery of those who go out to sea at night in very difficult conditions, but also to make sure that the backing and numbers are there for them to operate safely and do their jobs properly.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I think we would all agree that the best way to reduce the number of people dying in the English Channel is to reduce the number of unsuitable boats crossing the English Channel. The Government were elected on a pledge to smash the gangs. How is that going, and is the effort going to be helped or hindered by the sudden resignation after only 18 months of the head of UK Border Security Command?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Government are taking strong, decisive action to do something about this issue. In particular, we are removing around 60,000 people who had no right to remain, and the historic deal with the French, which means that those who arrive are now being detained and sent back, is considerable evidence that the Government are not slacking on this matter.

We should pay tribute to Martin Hewitt, who established Border Security Command. In his time as commander, he has helped to deliver landmark legislation and put in place leadership and governance. We will make an announcement on his successor in due course.

Public Transport: Accessibility

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am sorry—I know quite a lot about the railway system, but I do not know the completion date for the station works at Macclesfield. I will find out for the noble Lord and write to him.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I come back to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Borwick. Is the Government’s new position that they would make taxis accessible in the rest of the country outside London, where they are already accessible, but they feel inhibited in doing so because they cannot make private hire vehicles—a completely distinct legal category —accessible at the same time? Is that the Government’s current position? Is that what the Minister said?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I do not think that is what I said, because if I meant to say what the noble Lord said, I would have said it. The point is that the definition of “taxi” is venerable and that taxis, in various forms, have been on our streets for several hundred years. Private vehicle hire, as the noble Lord knows, has been legitimised in London only recently and, in the rest of the country, is quite different from what it was 20 years. We need to make sure that the combined provision of those two types of vehicles, which provide what is nearly but not quite the same level of service, is suitable for the users of those services throughout the various rural and urban areas of England.

The present design of accessible taxi of the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, is a beautiful vehicle that is largely used only in London because it is so expensive. We need to make modifications to all taxi and private hire services, as the legislation is woefully out of date, and find a way to make them suitable for all people, both disabled and non-disabled, who seek to use them as means to get around their towns, cities and countryside.