Channel Tunnel
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Popat
My Lords, I shall address the situation of the passengers on the train and the assistance given to them. All passengers and staff were evacuated from the train to a place of safety in good time, with no injuries or stress. As I said, most passengers were offered tea, coffee, beverages and, in some cases, hotel and train costs. In a situation like this, the first priority is always to ensure that Eurostar is running a safe service. Of course, there are inevitable delays because of the fire damage in the tunnel. It is clear that only one of the tunnels, the southbound tunnel, was affected in this incident.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
My Lords, there have been four fires—actually, I think it is five—affecting lorries being taken through the tunnel on shuttle carriages going from France to England. Those carriages have lattice sides. That means that when they are going forward, any fire or possibility of fire swiftly generates a dangerous fire that causes immense damage and destruction. This would be obviated if the wagons carrying the lorries were enclosed, like those for cars, with built-in fire-extinguishing apparatus. Will he take this to the safety authority responsible for the Channel Tunnel to get something done before we have an even more serious fire and fatalities?
Lord Popat
My Lords, the noble Lord is correct in saying that there have been previous fires. The relevant authorities are constantly reviewing how to limit this risk; in this instance, the situation was helped by the new sprinklers that were installed as a result of the previous situation. This has considerably reduced the amount of time for which the tunnel has been closed. The use of enclosed lorries is an area that has been looked into in the past but, frankly, it would be commercial suicide for the freight companies to have enclosed lorries. The whole purpose of this is to make sure that goods are transported from one end to the other as quickly and economically as possible.
Railways: High Speed 3
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw
Lord Popat
My Lords, that was a long question—in fact, many questions. The Chancellor has set out a vision for how to unlock economic potential in northern cities. Something remarkable has happened to our northern cities in the last 30 years. They have done very well. It is time that we take them to another level. One way to do so is to have the infrastructure investment. We are having HS2, which has been widely discussed in this House. HS3 is a floating idea. We wait for a further report from David Higgins to justify a business case for HS3. But we need to rebalance the economy, we need to support our northern cities and HS3 will probably become a welcome idea.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister will reflect on the fact that whenever HS3 is built it will be a long time, and there is a very urgent need to improve east-west connections right across the country—from Norwich to Liverpool, Lincoln to Birmingham and so on. Is it not much more important to concentrate on getting these schemes working and, at the same time, to make provision for a through facility at Leeds which will link Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull and completely revolutionise the situation?
Lord Popat
My Lords, the Government have invested more than £600 million for the Northern Hub. I agree with the noble Lord that we need to speed up the works that are going on in the Northern Hub to make sure that we have the right connectivity between our major cities and towns. I agree with him that the work is in progress but there is more to be done.
Railways: High Speed 2 Review
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw
Lord Popat
My Lords, I do not have in my brief details of the line north of Manchester. I will be happy to write to the noble Lord.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
Does the Minister agree that a lot of the demands that we have just heard for the publication of out-of-date information are really mischief-making by opponents of HS2, who wish to use the information only to pick further holes in the case? Last weekend, I was handed a leaflet by people who are against HS2 which referred to the “ultra high-speed line”. That is absolute nonsense, because the trains will run at the same speed as they do now on the Great Western and north-eastern lines and have done for 40 years. Does the Minister agree that it is right to leave the matter in the hands of the extremely competent chairman of HS2, who will come forward shortly with his proposals to cheapen and extend the project?
Lord Popat
I agree with the noble Lord that we have in Mr Higgins the best of chairmen for HS2. The Major Projects Authority, which was set up by this Government, monitors all major projects in the UK such as HS2 and gives us an annual report on whether we are on time, within cost and how well the project is doing.
Cyclists: Safety
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Popat
My Lords, the investment in cycling safety in any area depends on the local authority, but we have allocated £278 million of funding and are spending double the amount in this Parliament compared to the last one. Local authorities make their own assessment of dangerous cycling spots in their areas and can apply for cycle safety funds. With regard to cycle lanes, new roads are designed in such a way as to take cyclist safety and cycle lanes into account.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
Will my noble friend give us some indication of how best practice in the world of cycling is actually applied? Do the Government encourage cycling? What do they do, or is it left to local authorities and charities?
Lord Popat
My Lords, we need to see more cycling and safer cycling. Hence, we have allocated funds for local authorities to make it as safe as possible. We encourage cycling and want to see more cyclists on our roads. It is the best and cheapest means of transport.
Road Safety (Financial Penalty Deposit) (Appropriate Amount) (Amendment) Order 2014
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, the order will allow, along with other secondary legislation, effective enforcement against foreign vehicles that have not paid the new HGV road user levy as required by the HGV Road User Levy Act 2013. The levy is due to start from 1 April this year and is intended to ensure a fairer arrangement for UK hauliers. At the moment, when UK HGV drivers travel to the continent, they face road charges or tolls in most European countries. However, when foreign-registered HGVs come to the UK, they pay nothing to use UK roads. The levy will correct this imbalance and ensure that all HGVs weighing 12 tonnes or more using UK roads make a contribution to the upkeep of those roads. At the same time, the Treasury is reducing vehicle excise duty so that more than nine out of 10 UK vehicles will pay no more when the levy is introduced than they do now. The levy must be paid before using a UK road. Foreign vehicles may pay daily, weekly, monthly or annually. The daily levy ranges from £1.70 to £10 depending on the nature of the vehicle; most foreign vehicles in the UK are sufficiently large to pay £10 a day.
First, I will summarise how the enforcement process will work. It is an offence to use or keep an HGV on a public road in the UK without paying the appropriate levy. Enforcement will be carried out by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency—the new name for the combined Vehicle and Operator Standards Agency and Driving Standards Agency—and the police. We will have information on foreign vehicles in the country sourced from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Since we also know which vehicles have paid the levy, we can combine these two information sources to target those vehicles in the country that have not paid. DVSA can use this information to help determine which vehicles to stop. Non-compliant foreign vehicles that cannot provide a satisfactory UK address may be required to pay a fixed penalty deposit of £300 before they are allowed to continue on their journey. Failure to do so will lead to impounding of the vehicle and fines of up to £5,000.
The advantage of fixed penalty notices over taking forward a prosecution is that they avoid adding to the burden on the courts. Furthermore, a significant benefit from the levy is that the ability to require financial penalty deposits at the roadside enables enforcement against persons using vehicles registered outside the UK, who are difficult to pursue effectively once they have returned to their country of origin.
The order builds on existing legislation. The Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 enables the use of fixed penalty notices by police officers and DVSA officers where a person given a fixed penalty notice is unable to provide a satisfactory address. The monetary amount of such deposits is set out in the Road Safety (Financial Penalty Deposit) (Appropriate Amount) Order 2009. The order before the House today adds a new financial deposit amount to the 2009 order of £300 for the offence in Section 11(1) of the HGV Road User Levy Act 2013.
During the passage of the 2013 Act, my noble friend Lord Attlee informed the House that the amount of the financial penalty deposits would be £200. However, since then, the Department for Transport has conducted a general review of the levels of fixed penalty notices and financial penalty deposits, which resulted in a general increase. As a result of these increases, we have decided on an amount for a fixed penalty notice and its associated financial penalty deposit of £300 for the offence in Section 11(1) of the 2013 Act to ensure that the penalty is broadly consistent with penalty levels for similar offences. I commend the order to the Committee.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
I thank the noble Lord for introducing this short debate on the road safety financial deposit order. One of the things that concerns many people about road transport is not the fact that they pay a levy, but rather that there are people who do not pay. They have all sorts of means of avoiding doing so. It is no good just fining them £300 every time they do it; there should be a means of reckoning up if a haulier or a company does the same thing time and again. I would like to know if there is any method that would prevent them coming back here to offend again. People do not like paying charges and will do everything they can to avoid it.
Otherwise, I welcome this charge as perhaps the first step towards having a rational system of road pricing in this country. The calculation has taken into account such things as vehicle weight and other factors. However, it might be the beginning of a way of taking more money from those who use the road, and rather less from those who do not use it very much.
Lord Popat
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken for their support. There have been many questions, and I will try to answer as many as I can.
With regard to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, the HGV Road User Levy Act 2013 establishes the levy. There is secondary legislation to allow levies to be administered effectively. This includes SIs to enable enforcement. Enforcement will be applied severely where the levy has not been paid, and may include the impounding of the vehicle.
Is there a way to retrench the offences? The maximum levy fee is £1,000, or £10 per day. Hopefully, the £300 fine each time a driver is caught will prove a sufficient deterrent to not paying the necessary levy. We give the choice of paying on a daily, weekly or annual basis. The annual fee will be £1,000. What if the deposit is not paid? As I mentioned earlier, if the driver is not able to pay the £300 levy or if he has not had permission to drive in the UK, the vehicle will be impounded until the levy is paid. Either the driver pays or his company does. There are several ways of paying, including credit cards and cash, preferably in pounds rather than euros.
Another question was about why the fine is not related to the length of time that a vehicle has been non-compliant. There are technical and legal reasons for this, however we will know a vehicle’s history with respect to whether it has paid, and so can target enforcement on that basis.
Who decides what enforcement approach to use? The DVSA will decide this—it has a lot of experience of enforcing other offences. For example, it is no different from paying £8 to drive in the city of London through the congestion charge, whereby technology picks up a car that has not paid the charge and a fine is immediately issued.
With regard to hauliers who are repeat offenders, the DVSA’s targeted enforcement system will show the heavy goods vehicles that have previously not paid, and it can therefore target enforcement on those vehicles.
Lord Bradshaw
The experience, for example in north Wales, is that hauliers from the Republic of Ireland regularly flout the driver’s hours regulations, the maintenance regulations of the vehicle and the overweight regulations. The same hauliers come back again and again. Apparently, under present regulations, the job of enforcing these falls to the country of origin, so we are not able to enforce anything unless we actually catch the person doing it. I am anxious for this to be watertight. Impounding the vehicle is by far the most stringent penalty you can impose, particularly—and I know a lot about this—where the police officer has said to the driver who will not pay or say where he is from, “Leave the vehicle and turn off the refrigeration unit”. That usually leads to the money being forthcoming. Therefore, while there is some intelligent policing, I want to know whether we can enforce the thing properly.
Lord Popat
My Lords, under this legislation it is an offence to keep a heavy goods vehicle on the road without having paid. Impounding is one way of enforcing this. The chances are that a very small number of vehicles will be impounded because most drivers carry credit cards, or quite often they will ring the owners of the haulage vehicle to see if they can make a payment over the telephone. Over time, we will know if there are any shortcomings in the system and we will do something to improve it. The noble Lord is quite right that impounding vehicles for a long time is not practical, especially when the police have to look after the vehicles. I can assure the noble Lord that I will certainly write to him on this subject.
Railways: Rolling Stock
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Bradshaw (LD)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Greaves, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s investment in railway electrification in the north gives the opportunity to improve rolling stock. First TransPennine Express’s 10 new electric trains for the Manchester-Scotland route will come into service from this month. The department asked Northern Rail to develop proposals to introduce electric trains in the north-west from December 2014. Current investment in rolling stock will increase the number of vehicles available to the new north of England franchises due to start in 2016.
Lord Bradshaw
My noble friend may have seen the letter written at the end of November by his right honourable friend the Secretary of State, which refers to Rail North—that includes the Northern Rail and First TransPennine Express TOCs—having devolved responsibility for the procurement of rolling stock. This has been announced with great guns in the north, where it is desperately needed. However, the letter also refers to the DfT,
“taking a significant role within an initial partnership structure”.
That statement is further qualified towards the end of the letter with the words:
“DfT will run those franchise competitions to a common timetable, working closely with Rail North”.
Are we to understand that this is devolving responsibility to the regions, or is it yet another way in which the department is actually accreting more responsibility to itself?
Lord Popat
The noble Lord asks an important and interesting question. The Government remain supportive of the principle of devolution in the north of England. We have agreed with Rail North leaders an initial partnership structure to take forward devolved decision-making across the north of England to help manage the risk associated with a project of this scale. Rail North and the department’s officials are developing further details of the partnership for presentation to the Secretary of State and the Rail North local authorities early in the new year. Proposals to decentralise transport powers will assist in building a rebalanced economy away from reliance on the City of London.
Transport: Road Building
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw
Lord Popat
My Lords, since coming into office in 2010 the Government have completed a number of major road schemes and brought forward 26 new major schemes, so we are taking all the action necessary to repair and maintain our existing roads as well as filling in those potholes mentioned earlier by the noble Lord.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
Although the point about potholes is academic, the structure of our highways network is deteriorating very rapidly. Would it not be better to concentrate our money on putting the existing roads in proper order and then dealing with some of the worst pinch points to which the previous speaker referred?
Lord Popat
My Lords, that is exactly what the department is doing. The Government have made £800 million available for local councils to fill potholes and maintain and repair local roads so that we can see the traffic flow and avoid the congestion that we normally see in the mornings.
Grand Committee
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw
Lord Popat
My Lords, the order before us today will allow for greater flexibility in the deployment of traffic commissioners across Great Britain. Traffic commissioners are appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport as independent regulators of the heavy goods and public service vehicle industries in Great Britain. Traffic commissioners’ statutory functions can be found in numerous pieces of primary and secondary legislation but two key Acts set the regulatory framework. The Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981 establishes traffic commissioners, traffic areas and the general regulatory framework around licensing of road passenger transport operators, while the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995 establishes the road haulage operator licensing system.
Most operators of lorries, coaches and buses in Great Britain must hold an operator’s licence to operate legally. Traffic commissioners’ key regulatory functions are to licence the operators of lorries, buses and coaches and to consider and take, as necessary, disciplinary action against operators who have not observed the conditions of their licences. To grant an operator’s licence, a traffic commissioner must be satisfied that the applicant has sufficient funding, is of good repute and has arrangements in place to be able to operate in a suitably professional manner.
Although the majority of traffic commissioners’ work is focused on operator licensing, they also have a number of other key functions. These include registering local bus services and matters relating to the granting of vocational driving licences or taking action against the holders of such licences. The work of traffic commissioners is funded by fees paid by the industries that they regulate.
The Local Transport Act 2008 contained a number of reform measures to the structure of traffic commissioners. One of the key reasons provision was made in that Act for this restructuring was in recognition of traffic commissioners’ strengthened role resulting from that Act—for example, in relation to bus punctuality where the Act allowed traffic commissioners to issue a broader range of penalties to bus operators. Another reason for these measures was to respond to concerns raised by the industry about different standards or processes being applied in different parts of the country.
For these reasons, the traffic commissioner reforms attracted cross-party support during the Bill phase of the Local Transport Act and were designed to strengthen the independence of the regime, with the post of senior traffic commissioner becoming statutory rather than administrative. The first statutory senior traffic commissioner was appointed in March 2009. The legislation before us will provide that officeholder with more flexibility with regard to how resources are allocated by removing, except in Scotland, the statutory link between an individual traffic commissioner and their appointed regional traffic area of responsibility.
Given the degree of devolution of their functions, in Scotland a traffic commissioner will be retained who will be referred to as the Scottish traffic commissioner. However, the Scottish commissioner would be able to act on reserved functions in England and Wales and vice versa to provide further flexibility, and the legislation before us reflects that flexibility.
It is important to note that the legislation before us, and the associated commencement order, will not directly result in any changes to how traffic commissioners are deployed across Great Britain. Any changes to how traffic commissioners are deployed is, under the Local Transport Act, a matter that must be detailed in the senior traffic commissioner’s guidance and directions, on which the senior traffic commissioner must consult as set out in the Local Transport Act. This arrangement ensures that the independence of traffic commissioners in fulfilling their regulatory functions is maintained. However, any redeployment of traffic commissioners will help ensure that the fees paid by the haulage and passenger transport industries for the traffic commissioner system are kept as low as possible, which of course is particularly welcome given the financial pressures many in the industry are experiencing.
The changes before noble Lords are intended to assist the traffic commissioner system by removing current legislative restrictions to allow traffic commissioners to operate as flexibly as possible while retaining their statutory independence. I therefore commend the order to the Committee.
Lord Bradshaw
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the debate. I am well aware of what was intended in the 2008 Act and have no comments to make on it. However, in the past week the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State announced in the Commons that he was proposing a review of the transport commissioners’ duties. Apparently it is a quinquennial arrangement and the duties must be reviewed on that basis. I will draw two or three matters to the Minister’s attention, with a view to him raising with the Department for Transport certain issues that should be included in the review.
The first concerns the management of highways. This Act also elevated the position of local authorities in the management of the highways. The Minister will recall the use of the words,
“broaden a lot of the penalties”.
The traffic commissioners have a duty to bring before a traffic commissioner’s court the bus operators whose vehicles either do not keep time or run erratically. That is perfectly reasonable, but in a number of cases the operators concerned find it almost impossible to run a regular and reliable service because the highway is obstructed. It may be obstructed by roadworks, which are often carried out in a very undisciplined fashion, or by inconsiderate parking. These are matters over which the local authority and not the bus operator has control.
What I am asking in the first place is that, where a bus service is shown to be unreliable, if the traffic commissioner believes that the highway authority is not discharging its duty to provide a highway along which a reasonable bus service may be operated, they should have the ability to summon the director of highways, or whoever in a local authority is responsible, to give an explanation of the way they are contributing to the operation of a decent bus service. This is not meant to be divisive, but we are moving into an era of partnership working between local authorities and bus operators, and it is reasonable that a balance should be made, and that where a local authority is not playing by the rules, it should be answerable to the traffic commissioner.
The second matter that I will raise—again, I would like it to be addressed in the upcoming review—is the question of goods vehicle operating centres. Traffic commissioners have the duty of approving premises where goods vehicle operators are based. That includes the facilities for maintaining and stabling the vehicles, and having access to the highway. However, the traffic commissioner is not allowed to take his consideration any further than the gates of the depot. Sometimes—this is happening more and more as farms become heavy haulage depots—you will find that heavy lorries are making their way on to totally unsuitable roads. I am suggesting that the traffic commissioner’s discretion should extend to the point where the lorry will meet a main road, and that we should not let our lanes be devastated by heavy lorries that not only destroy the road surface and are dangerous but make for unfair competition.
That brings me to my third issue: the question of the competition authorities. As the Minister said in opening, the traffic commissioner licenses new local bus services but has no discretion whatever about what a local bus service should be. For example, if the noble Lord, Lord Davies, runs a bus service that runs on the hour and the half hour, I can come along and register a service at 57 and 27 minutes past the hour so that I run my bus three minutes in front of his and take all his passengers. I am asking that there should be an element of discretion in the traffic commissioner agreeing to a licence. Where the people who are trying to register a new bus service can be shown to be acting in a predatory way, which is not difficult to judge, the traffic commissioner should insist that journeys are spaced out evenly so that the public get a better service and we do not engage in the thoroughly wasteful bus wars that have been going on since 1985 and still flare up in some areas.
I am quite pleased with the order being laid before us because it makes more efficient use of traffic commissioners’ time, and I hope they will be run better. However, some small additions to their duties ought to be considered in the review that is to take place.
Lord Popat
My Lords, both the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Davies, have pointed to a number of issues raised by the order. The order will allow the senior traffic commissioner the flexibility to determine what individual traffic commissioners work on and how their duties are broken down to different regions. The chances are that the traffic commissioners will become more specialised in different regions. For example, one traffic commissioner may specialise in issuing licences for buses; another may specialise in licensing the haulage industry. The order will create the consistency that we require. Currently, there is no consistency between the eight regions. I am sure that the senior traffic commissioner will give the necessary direction to traffic commissioners to create this consistency.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, spoke about competition among local bus services. This will obviously be determined by the transport commissioner for an area to make sure that competition does not make things difficult for people who use bus services and that journeys are well spaced out.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, endorsed the order as being long overdue, which I welcomed. Whether to introduce a quality contract scheme is entirely a local decision and, like any decision, it must be made in the public interest. Central government has no role in such decisions; the Government are focused on improved joint working between local authorities and bus operators. We have seen the benefits of that approach in Nottingham, Sheffield and Liverpool.
I am sure that the consistency introduced by these changes will solve the problem of the poor regulation of bus services mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Davies. Local traffic commissioners will be empowered by senior traffic commissioners, who will in turn take guidance and instruction from the Department for Transport.
I cannot say much about the £2 billion subsidy that we provide for buses. That has been going on for a quite a number of years and I have no figures to substantiate how the subsidy is used.
Lord Bradshaw
Before the noble Lord sits down, the £2 billion subsidy to the bus industry is a rather fanciful figure. A lot of it is actually a subsidy to the passengers. For example, old-age pensioners’ bus passes are paid for by the Government so that people may travel free. The bus industry did not wish them on itself. On the industry making extraordinary profits, I commend having a look at the results of FirstGroup, which were published this morning. They are really terrible and it is losing a lot of money. That is as maybe and it is up to FirstGroup, but a lot of this talk about subsidy means subsidy to passengers; it is not to running bus services which, in a commercial market, the companies would not run anyway.
Lord Popat
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, raises an important issue. I am glad the taxpayer is not subsidising the transport operators, whereas the taxpayer is subsidising or making free bus passes available to people aged over 60. So I am glad that the £2 billion is not going to the transport industry directly but is for the benefit of the people who use public transport.
Lord Davies of Oldham
I understand the point. It does not go directly as a subsidy to the buses. However, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, is indicating that it is not an advantage to the industry that there is a guarantee from the public purse that certain people will have their fares paid for by the Government and be able to travel free—a position that we all endorse and are in favour of. If he does not think that that subsidy is an advantage to the industry, I wonder which world he is living in.
Lord Bradshaw
If I may reply to that, the bus companies are not reimbursed for the fare; they are reimbursed for a percentage of the fare, which, on average, is about 40% of what people would pay anyway. So it is not a question of handing over sacks of money to the bus companies. They have to provide more capacity to carry the extra people.
Lord Popat
My Lords, I take the points that both noble Lords have made. One of the questions that was raised in our discussions was why we are doing this now. Others were about some of the announcements made about the changes taking place. The traffic commissioner will be reviewed as part of the triennial review of all non-departmental public bodies. That review will be undertaken this financial year. The nature and scale of the review is yet to be determined and there are no current plans for any further substantial changes. It is for the senior traffic commissioners to take matters forward now.
I hope I have mostly addressed the key issues raised today and that noble Lords will agree that the consequential amendment order will allow the flexibilities in the traffic commissioner system, as envisaged by the Members of the House when approving the Local Transport Act.
Railways: Reopenings
Debate between Lord Popat and Lord Bradshaw
Lord Popat
I thank the noble Lord for his Question and I know he has considerable knowledge of this area. I had the pleasure this weekend of flicking through Holding the Line, his excellent book on Britain’s love of railways, and it touches on the Beeching report. With the benefit of hindsight I do not believe anybody feels that the Beeching report’s legacy is all positive. The noble Lord raises some of the most frequently expressed concerns. Regarding the Lewes to Uckfield line, I know that this is a long-standing campaign supported by many local residents. Network Rail has agreed to carry out a study into the capacity of the nearby Brighton line and the reopening of the Lewes to Uckfield line is one of the options being considered. The department is unaware of any work comparing the benefits of investment in rail schemes and road schemes in this corridor. In instances where proposed schemes go across local boundaries, we will, as always, encourage the authorities to work together.
To sum up the noble Lord’s response to the Beeching report, I had the privilege of looking at the report this weekend. It is fair to say that the author could not foresee how the country would change in the subsequent 50 years. Different times require different responses.
Lord Bradshaw
My Lords, will the Minister take into account the variations in cost between opening a line that has been closed, opening a station that has been closed and putting money into services such as Nottingham to Lincoln, where a small amount of money would greatly enhance the service and utility provided?
Lord Popat
My Lords, it is for the local authorities and PTEs working with the local enterprise partnership to determine whether a new railway line, train service or station is the best way to meet local transport needs and the wider strategic objectives of economic growth, housing growth and carbon reduction. With regard to the cost, if there is a good business case, I am sure the local authority will look into it.