Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister and the whole debate on the Bill, including notably those Members who have had a previous role in London’s transport. There is obviously the Minister but also the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Me?

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[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

Yes, there was the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, my noble friend Lord Moylan and myself, in the role of adviser to the Mayor of London on transport. Although we have spoken much about how London’s model has improved and can be looked at, I have to highlight that I support my noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendments, and particularly Amendment 34 in the name of my noble friend Lord Young with regard to the Secretary of State’s power to award—and potentially their power only to do so.

I recall that in the almost four years that I was the mayoral adviser for London, between 2008 and 2011, there were at least five and a half Secretaries of State for Transport. Sometimes the rotation of Secretaries of State through that important office can be quite hasty. If we are looking to award such authority, power and control to that office, the speed in the potential change of roles can lead to a certain amount of confusion and hesitation, and not even the progress that we would want to see. For that reason, as many others have probably mentioned, I support Amendment 34.

I also support my noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendment 36 on planning. This was a point that I wanted to make. One of the major changes that we made when we came into City Hall in 2008 was to look at developing the London Plan and the Mayor’s transport strategy in conjunction, so that we could understand the potential for investment in transport infrastructure and where we would look for housing and the development that would generate jobs and growth. That is obviously critical to where investment in transport is then made, and there can be an issue if we do not align that strategy with planning; therefore, we have the amendment that my noble friend Lord Lansley mentioned.

There are a number of challenges when we start to centralise thinking about transport planning. It worked better when we worked very closely at a city and regional level, and closely with boroughs as well. Local authorities know very well their requirements and demands. That feeds into the overall stitching together of planning for what transport is required. During my career, I was fortunate to work in organisations such as Transport for London, Network Rail, the Rail Safety and Standards Board and even the Department for Transport. That approach, though it felt fragmented, brought together the complex requirements for transport. Yet whenever the Government—not the previous Government but the one before them—tried to centralise through organisations such as Railtrack, the Strategic Rail Authority and Network Rail, as it seems they will do now with Great British Railways, there seemed to be a disconnect between what was required and what the large, centralised bureaucracy was trying to deliver. On that basis, I also support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan around ensuring that there is enough authority and devolution in the Bill.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I support the intention of the amendments in this group. There is one amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Pidgeon, Amendment 16, which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has signed, as I have signed his Amendment 12. Unlike him, I want to talk about devolution in Wales and Scotland, because that issue is very important. Railways cross borders; that point is addressed by the noble Lord’s amendment. I agree with his idea that there should be proper formal consultation with the devolved Governments—by the way, I can assure him that the new Council of the Nations and Regions should have a crowded agenda, because many devolved issues have been building up over a long period.

Let us look at the case of Wales. If, for example, you travel from Cardiff to Wrexham, you find yourself crossing between Wales and England; your start and end points are in Wales, but the middle of the journey is in England. That complexity needs to be built in. Devolution of rail powers to Scotland is pretty clear, but in Wales it is—I hope—a work in progress. I will explain to noble Lords why I say, “I hope”. The Welsh Government do not have powers over rail infrastructure. The operation of the railway in Wales is the responsibility of the Welsh Government, but infrastructure planning and funding remain with Network Rail. This is a cause of considerable frustration; the Minister answered a question about it earlier today.

This frustration is largely because Wales gets under 2% of total infrastructure spend in the UK, while having 5% of the population and more than 5% of the land mass. Our rail systems in Wales are in such a poor state, so there is a good argument that we should be getting more than 5%. The failure to allow Wales the Barnett consequentials of HS2 just rubs salt into the wound, and it is a lot of salt—£4 billion of it. I urge the Government to rethink the situation and the tendency set out in the Minister’s letter, because surely there is no hard and fast rule on this. Back in 2007, the Labour Government of the UK made noises which suggested they were willing to offer Wales control of infrastructure. Unfortunately, at that point, the Welsh Government were not keen to take it on, but I think they would be very keen now.

I am keen that this Bill does not in any way prevent further devolution. Transport for Wales, which is owned by the Welsh Government, is investing widely. Despite problems in mid-Wales, services are improving, and passenger numbers were up 27% in the last three months alone. That is a sign of progress. Can the Minister explain why the Welsh Government might not be considered capable of doing the rest of the job?

As my noble friend Lady Pidgeon has said, Transport for Greater Manchester, which I recently met representatives of as well, is enthusiastic about its success and devolution plans. They spoke to me about the Bee Network, which has lower costs than what went before, higher levels of punctuality and higher numbers of passengers. It is a real success story. They have firm plans to devolve eight rail lines within the next four years. I gather that they may be looking at some form of public/private partnership. That is the sort of thing referred to in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, in Monday’s debate.

Can the Minister specifically reassure us that the aims of the declaration of intent that Greater Manchester signed with the previous Government still hold good? Can he specifically reassure us that there is nothing in this Bill that will prevent Greater Manchester’s ambitions being implemented? We on these Benches want to go further. Where Greater Manchester leads, why should not Birmingham, Liverpool or several other places follow? Shutting off the devolution of rail is at odds with the Government’s plans to give local authorities more powers over buses, for instance. It does not sit comfortably together.

I have two pleas for the Government. First, as I said on Monday, I ask them please to leave their options open. Do not close off avenues in the Bill: allow for unexpected events in the future. Secondly, it is illogical to allow open access operators to pick off rail routes, and it is illogical to encourage local authorities to have more control over buses but not to encourage them to fully integrate their local transport services by having control over trains and railways as well.

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[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, and I agree with every word she said. I will be very brief.

The dystopian world that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, outlined is not one that I would have thought would appeal to most people. He mentioned driverless motor cars, but so far San Francisco is the only city, I think, where driverless taxis—confined to a fairly small part of the city—actually work. As we all know, San Francisco is the sort of place that experiments with all sorts of things. Those driverless cars have not really appealed to most other countries, and whether they will do in the future remains to be seen.

The noble Lord says that with driverless cars, the road network will be much less congested. If they are going to be the only way to get around, it is hard to imagine that the road network will be less congested. The roads will be even more crowded than they are at the present.

Returning to the railway network, we have about 12,000 miles of railway, much of which was built by the Victorians. Will we tear up all those tracks to install the necessary equipment to enable trains to be driven without a driver? That is undesirable, as the noble Baroness correctly pointed out. Even trains on a modern stretch of railway line—for example, HS1 has a continental signalling system, which has been introduced on the East Coast Main Line—need a driver, for the very reasons outlined by the noble Baroness.

As for aircraft, I am not sure about the thought of taking off and landing in a pilotless aircraft. If it is ever introduced, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, might find himself sitting in splendid isolation. After all, the crash of two 737 MAX airliners due to computer failure—and one near accident, which was prevented by the pilot in charge—ought to be lessons to us all.

I am afraid of the dystopian world that the noble Lord envisages. A train driver with responsibility for 500 lives behind him—and, in some cases, travelling at over 150 mph, as on HS1—deserves every penny of the £60,000 or thereabouts that the noble Lord and the Daily Mail complain about non-stop.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly offer my support for my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom’s Amendment 14A and echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about what services we are looking to deliver when we talk about driverless vehicles, trains, et cetera.

In referring to my register of interests, I recognise that I have spent my entire career with one foot in technology and the other in transport. The two have overlapped, and we have seen great innovation in technology in transport. This takes me back to what we achieved in London Underground and Transport for London: we looked at how bringing in gate-line technology and new systems such as the Oyster card would enable us to rely less heavily on ticket offices. Eventually we removed a lot of them. That was not just because we wanted to get the people out from behind those ticket office windows; we wanted those people, freed from sitting behind that thick piece of glass, to support passengers on the Underground system by providing assistance, information and other services. This is about innovation evolving the service and removing the need for one sedentary type of activity, enabling something else to happen.

When we think about our trains—again, I note the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on the kind of support that can be required on a train, especially for long-distance journeys—safety and security are primary. It would also be good if we could have more services, if the food and beverage shop stayed open a bit longer because people are there, and even if somebody is there to help you connect to the wifi, which is always eternally promised but sometimes hard to achieve. Having a greater sense of the passenger experience, focusing on developing the passenger experience by freeing people from the role of sitting in the ticket office and allowing them to do other things, will be of great value.

The main point is that we need to leave space for the design of innovation. It is always hard to tell at the early stages what we will be able to do later with that innovation, but as long as we leave space in the Bill to consider it, we can, I hope, achieve our aim of really improving the passenger experience.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am not accustomed to making speeches on technological matters but, on this occasion, I feel I have some modest qualifications for doing so—although I must say in advance that I do so with a degree of trepidation, because nearly everything I know about driverless trains I have been taught by the Minister. I therefore sit in the uncomfortable position of being subject to not only his correction but his immediate correction the moment I sit down and he comes to respond.

It is possible to get oneself into a tizz about these things called driverless trains when what one is in fact discussing is signalling. When I first got involved in railways, I thought that signalling was a system where arms went up and down and red and green lights flashed, but that is all in the past. Modern signalling is, in effect, a huge computer brain that fundamentally drives the trains. It tells the trains when to go, when to stop and how fast to go in between. Its purpose is to maintain a safe distance between trains as they travel, taking account of the speed and the track’s condition and nature. It is specific to the track.

Although the noble Lord, Lord Snape, will find counterexamples—I am sure that he is right to do so—broadly speaking, it is safer to have the train driven by this great controlling brain than it is to have it driven by a human being. A large number of historical train accidents have been caused by driver inattentiveness. Indeed, in Committee on Monday, it was the noble Lord, Lord Snape, I think—it may have been another noble Lord—who drew attention to one cause of such accidents, driver tiredness, whereas the machine does not get tired. It knows what it is doing. It knows where every train is going and where it is in relation to every other.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, spoke of the person who remotely drives the train. There is not a person remotely driving the train; it is the great computer brain.

Road Investment Strategy

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There are no plans for road pricing. Indeed, to clarify what I thought I said on Monday to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, there are no plans for the withdrawal, reduced eligibility or means testing of the English national concessionary fares scheme, commonly known as the freedom pass.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord to his role. I worked with him at City Hall all those years ago, and we worked on smoothing traffic flow in London to improve journey time reliability and help motorists, especially as we knew that autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles and mass-person mobility would be a key part of the public mix in future. Will he look at that as he looks to the future of the road network?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord recalls the project to smooth traffic. A key element of that is the use of modern technology in managing traffic signals. The Government are enthusiastic for the use of modern technology. For too long, not enough modern technology has been used in the control of traffic signals, and we will endeavour to use the latest technology to improve the flow of traffic for all road users.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I echo the thanks to my noble friend the Minister and his team for all the work they have done on the Bill. I also echo the thoughts that this is just one Bill. We are on a journey with this technology and these vehicles, and where it will be going.

I would like to address some of the comments that have been made from all sides of the House, because I hear the fear, worry and concern, as technology takes a giant leap forward. We worry about the implications for the world as we see it now. However, the world changes and adjusts. I understand the questions the noble Baroness had about data, its ownership, its power and the responsibility. When we launched the Oyster card in London in 2003, the first time data would be captured en masse—tracking peoples’ individual movements—I remember similar challenges being made as to what we would do with it.

We have come a long way in 20-plus years. We understand a lot more about the power of data and how it can be used for the benefit of people, as much as the challenge there is to keep it safe. I hope that will be echoed in the usage of data with these vehicles.

Additionally, I hear the voice of my noble friend Lord Moylan. We worked together many a year ago at TfL, bringing in implementations. Back then, there was a significant challenge to another change we were implementing. We were told pedestrians would be vulnerable; we were told accessibility would be reduced; we were told safety would be jeopardised. What was the change we were bringing in? It was bicycles: the cycle hire scheme for London. There are always challenges to bringing in new schemes. They are always seen as having many problems on safety and security, and vulnerabilities. As I say, this is in the context of the world as we see it, not maybe as we can amend it and make it better.

This is the journey. There will be more Bills, and we will scrutinise further the use-cases and the opportunities that this technology will bring, for the benefit of designing the future with safety in mind, I hope.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and his team for their co-operation on the Bill. I thank my co-spokesman, my noble friend Lord Liddle, and Grace Wright, our researcher.

When I wrote these few lines down, I was full of unbridled optimism for the Bill—but I had better come back a bit. I am sorry that the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, have not been satisfied; they were good and proper concerns, but I am sure that they will be properly considered.

Proceedings on the Bill have been very much the House of Lords at its best, and that was very much facilitated by the Minister. Like the Lib Dems, we had several meetings with him, and issues were generally treated on their merits. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is not more reassured by the changes we made to the safety standard. I believe that the safety standard that is now in the Bill is a good one that regulators will be able to work with and that is robust enough to stand up to enterprises with a great deal of money. I, for one at least, say that we have a better Bill of which this House can be proud.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a few brief points on what we have discussed today and what I have read in the Bill previously. It is seen as a very legally descriptive Bill. Some of the challenges and questions that we are raising in our conversations are around use cases, applications and geography, including how this will shape the future in terms of not just mobility but society. These are quite large concepts for us.

My recommendation to the Minister and the Government is that different phases and parts of the Bill addressing specific use cases and their applications may evolve as we go forward, be they about where automated vehicles may be used in railways, rural life, emergencies or the as yet innovative opportunity for such vehicles in commercial applications. In a previous debate on the Bill, I spoke about how we should potentially view automated vehicles as the equivalent of a smartphone, as compared with the mobile phones that we had originally. A smartphone is no longer just a phone; it enables us to do so many other things. These vehicles have the opportunity to become so many other things that we probably cannot define them to the nth degree yet; it is therefore difficult for the Bill to work against that. However, if we can start to scope out additional use cases and see how they would affect the legislation, that may be the way to go.

Let me make a point or two about the points that have been made, for example about the challenges around road signage and automated vehicles. We are already stepping towards an environment where sensors and smart vehicles acknowledge the changes that happen on the road and the speeds on the road around us. This will be another phase of that evolution. Funding for that is a good question; we should discuss in more detail where we will look at providers, digital technology suppliers and the other opportunities that they will provide from that kind of implementation of technology.

We should look at making sure that charging points are integral and standard for usage with automated vehicles as well. I helped the then Mayor of London set up the London electric vehicle partnership in 2008, when we first looked at electric vehicles. We knew that there would be a challenge around standards and charging but we did not allow those challenges to hold us back. We need to think about agile development, failing fast, and enabling trialling and testing to continue so that we do not slow things down as we look for overall international agreement on some of these things. It is a challenge to make sure that we get momentum, which I think we are all looking for.

Perhaps we can identify the use cases that we are highlighting more specifically, then look at how the Bill can address them in its future versions.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. It has been an interesting debate on this group of amendments because we have started talking about infrastructure separately from what goes on it. That is an important issue to look at because, whether in terms of the comments that I remember the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, making at Second Reading about the benefits of living in the countryside or the comments of other noble Lords who have mentioned the need for proper infrastructure, the key to this—it was in the press at the weekend, I think—is that the infrastructure mapping must be accurate. Who is going to do it?

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggesting putting it on an old railway line. The old railway line is on the maps already, but can you drive down it safely? Is it a guided bus rail, which is another form of getting around? Not only do all these things need to be kept up to date but somebody needs to be responsible for ensuring that they are up to date and for what happens if they are not. I am sure that this is all on Minister’s mind for when he responds, but there is further work to be done here.

Refurbishing Trains: Contracts

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

If I am correct, I believe it was somewhere in the region of £30 billion to £34 billion.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, having had a small passion around railways and networks—in fact, the last time we ordered some new rolling stock for London, I was with the then mayor as we brought the S stock trains into London—I have looked at the timelines and supply chains, especially with manufacturers in and across the UK. Does the Department for Transport have a view on what rolling stock may be part of the ordering book when we look at network north plans, and also for plans for the London Underground, which seem to be going a bit slower than they should be?

Battery and Hydrogen-powered Aircraft

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

First, the use of battery electric has been proven in small, manned aircraft. However, the weight, plus lack of power density of batteries currently on the market, limits the range and payload of electric aircraft. To support adoption of new aircraft such as hydrogen and battery-powered, the Government have supported research into airport preparedness for handling aircraft through £4.2 million of funding for the zero-emission flight infrastructure project. The findings will be published in March.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, the House might be getting used to my personal interest in electric mobility, and I want to build on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, about landing pads. I am aware of two major international organisations that are progressing and quite advanced in their development of electric aeroplanes to be used for personal mobility—as in air taxis—to help people travel easily and in a sustainable way. It is not airports they are looking for, it is landing pads, which will be less invasive in our environment. Is that something we are looking into? I know that across Europe, sites are being searched for landing areas to be trialled in the testing of these planes.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very interesting point. I do not have the information in front of me, but I will certainly look at that and write to him.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in my first Second Reading debate, and to follow my noble friend Lord Lucas. I was not going to mention it, but he raised the issue of standards, which is critical, although we should never let a standard stand in the way of innovation. I take that lesson from my time in industry. A long time ago, when we were working on the platform to deliver the Oyster card, a European standard was going to come through on how contactless technology could work. There was a debate about whether we should wait for that standard. Most people were saying that we should, as it would allow interoperability across Europe. I had other thoughts: that it could take a significant amount of time and delay the programme. We pushed through and used our standard. At the end of the day, if we had waited, we could have been waiting the best part of a decade for that standard to be ratified—something to consider as we look at standards and the speed of innovation.

As I say, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I acknowledge my interests, particularly as a board member of techUK and a senior executive at Atos. My noble friend Lord Moylan and I share many transport-related interests from our time at City Hall and working with TfL, and I will echo a number of the comments that he made. The immense amount of work that I acknowledge the Law Commission has put in over the last four years is demonstrated by the quality of the Bill, but it does focus on legislation and is quite narrow on some things. That is why we meander across to other areas such as usage, and maybe even more so the commercialisation of the technology.

To balance things out, I did take note of other reports, such as the excellent report by the APPG for Self-Driving Vehicles, The economic, environmental, and safety benefits of self-driving vehicles, techUK’s consultation with industry and what it sees as opportunities, and Innovate UK’s report on connected and automated mobility. All of these look at innovation and opportunity in particular, alongside the need for safety.

I will take noble Lords back a little bit to an early point in my career in 2008, when I first drove an electric vehicle in San Francisco, in California, which has been mentioned a few times in this debate. I was there and driving it because it was new technology, because of the obvious issue of sustainability, and because it was exciting. We saw then the potential of this technology. It was undefined—I think they were still using laptop batteries stuck together in the boots of these cars, the early Tesla Roadsters—but there was such potential.

That was the point when we realised at City Hall in London that we would establish the London Electric Vehicle Partnership to look at the potential of this new technology—not just through the prism of legislation, but we would identify challenges in collaboration with industry, policymakers and manufacturers, so that we could understand the challenges, the operational designs that would be required, the infrastructure requirements and the potential commercial models that would be appropriate. It would still take time for this to come to the fore, but some of what we see in the adoption of electric vehicles in the UK was based way back then in our collaborative approach with industry and how we developed policy. In the deliberations on the Bill we should work extensively with industry around its developments and thoughts, as well as internationally on how use cases have been developed for automated vehicles.

I would like to highlight various comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about some of the challenges that may occur. This is not an either/or solution as technology moves forward and we move towards a digital society. I can be a slight use case here. I have one car now whereas, with two children and a wife, we may have had two cars in years gone by. I can honestly say that my second car is an Uber because I have moved to that flexible mode of technology and it provides an element in the multimodal mix that I use. Travelling to various parts, I will potentially walk to a metro station, then take an Uber at the other end and take a bus when possible. We are looking at the maturity of the mix and where these automated vehicles could play in the mix and, I hope, not add to the vehicle fleet but become part of it and reduce the need for people to own their own vehicles.

I feel great confidence in the technology. The reason I say that, to be fair, is that the technology is already here. It is being used and tested. We quite rightly have a focus on the safety element and how we will ensure that we can convince the public that this is safe to use. That is the priority because safety leads to confidence, confidence leads to adoption, and that will be the success. That will lead to other areas of innovation because the tip of the iceberg is what this technology will do to the transport mix and to general industries across the board.

My noble friend Lord Moylan mentioned pods. What will they become? Here I would like to make an analogy with the smartphone. We can think of these automated vehicles as the equivalent of where the smartphone has now taken what used to be a phone. There will be apps and different commercial ways of using them. All kinds of services will be developed that we possibly cannot even imagine right now, but they will benefit personal mobility as well as public mobility; safety, inclusivity and sustainability will be increased. They are all within our grasp through the development of this technology. Let us not forget that if we look at mobile phone technology, we saw acceleration in the ability to ensure connectivity and avoid bugs in the system, but when we look at that technology, on which life almost depends, we do not find those difficulties as much as we thought.

I am hugely supportive of the Bill, if noble Lords could not tell already. I look forward to taking part in Committee. There are many lessons for us to learn. I ask the Minister that we look at how EV operating models have developed because—my noble friend Lord Lucas highlighted this—there will be much synergy between electric vehicles, the usage of electric vehicle technology and automated vehicles. It remains unsaid whether they will be together as a technology. They may still be separated, but the win for us will be when the technologies merge and therefore their operating models will have some alignment.

Finally, on use cases around non-user involvement with the technology, we need to look at separating this more from the user-included technology approach. There will be more use cases around the non-user approach than the user approach. When reading the Bill, I thought that part was something we could look at separating further and digging into more; I look forward to doing that in Committee.

Rail Fares

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower]

I cannot particularly comment on that one issue, but I am sorry to hear of the noble Lord’s experience and it is certainly something I will take back.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, as someone who is infrequent on the rail service, as a Londoner, when I do travel I enjoy the experience. What I have seen over the last few years is increased digitisation and more tickets being purchased online. I think we should welcome that, the ease of fares that are being seen online and the work being done by the train operating companies. Another thing I have noticed is that, as personal experience shows, if there are delays and challenges on the rail network then refunds are being offered quite easily—or advertised, at least, to be offered quite easily. The process itself, though, feels a bit more complex, because I have not yet been able to attain one of those refunds. Will the Government and my noble friend look at how we could automate refunds, to make that better for the user experience?

[Lord Davies of Gower]

My noble friend makes a very good point and, as somebody who has made several applications for refunds online, it is not the simplest of processes. Indeed, for those less acquainted with computers and software, it is even more difficult. I take his point and it is something that, again, I will take back.

Mopeds, Motorcycles and Powered Light Vehicle Industry

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, on bringing this debate forward and I welcome my noble friend Lord Davies and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, to their roles.

It is a privilege to be able to speak, as I was not going to do so. I speak from a personal perspective as much as a professional one. I held the role of the mayor’s transport adviser from 2008 to 2011 in this city. During that time, I had much chance to consider and look at the policies for different modes of transport as they applied in the city. One mode I was not part of then and did not use was motorcycling. I fixed that by learning how to ride a motorbike when I took on the role. I thought that, if we were judging policy on them, it was important to have the experience. I had to learn how to ride and not fall off, but it also taught me heightened awareness of the safety and security of not just me as a rider but all other users of the road network—pedestrians, cyclists, HGVs and everything else. It was a revolutionary experience, because you have a completely different perspective on what is happening and how you feel about your personal safety and usage.

It also took me into a very deep conversation about the benefits and the challenges. The benefits became ever clearer when asking the motorcycling and powered two-wheeler community, as it was then—there were no electric mopeds at that point—about their usage. I must acknowledge the warmth of the community. It is very strong. Anyone who is a biker will know that it is a very good community to be part of. They see journey time reliability, flexibility and safety as vital parts of using this mode of transport. It brings benefits not just to them but to broader society and to the city.

London lags behind similar cities in the world that rely on powered two-wheelers as part of the extensive social mix. Cities in a number of European countries demonstrate that. There is something cultural that we have not quite got right there. I ask the Minister to consider in his deliberations the need to recognise the personal ability to use bikes and the benefits it brings for commuting, logistics and minimal impact on the environment. Enforcement must be considered with greater usage of motorbikes and powered two-wheelers in the logistics industry, but it is a growing industry that will only provide benefit to dense urban areas rather than be a hindrance.

Low-traffic Neighbourhoods

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his welcome. On 30 June, the Prime Minister announced a review of low-traffic neighbourhoods to be carried out by the Department for Transport. The review is intended to focus on the processes for creating low-traffic neighbourhoods, including understanding the consultation and engagement processes that were followed for such schemes and the views of local communities impacted by them. The review will focus on the schemes installed since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and will not look at historical street layouts.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome my noble friend to his new role, one that I covet somewhat, having previously been a transport director for this city at City Hall. On low-traffic neighbourhoods, one of the challenges we faced in this city was managing the balance between safety, economic policy and keeping the city moving when implementing policies, especially on the roads. So, on low-traffic neighbourhoods and 20 mph zones, do the Government approve of a blanket approach to this type of policy, or does it have to be a bit more sophisticated?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. As a resident of Wales, I can speak with some experience on this. The Government are very concerned about excessive vehicle speeds and believe that any form of dangerous or inconsiderate driving behaviour is a serious road safety issue. The power to impose 20 mph speed limits rests totally with local traffic authorities and I emphasise that the Government support 20 mph limits in the right places. We do not, however, support 20 mph limits set indiscriminately on all roads in England, with due regard to the safety case and local support. The Transport Secretary announced The Plan for Drivers in October, which included an assurance that we will update the 20 mph speed limit guidance for England to prevent inappropriate blanket use.