Britain’s Railways

Lord Snape Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab) [V]]

Does the Minister accept that we have spent many years listening to Conservative Ministers extolling the virtues of franchising, yet the White Paper acknowledges, in effect, that the franchising system has been an expensive failure, the abolition of which is long overdue? On rail freight, what actions will Ministers take to ensure the future success of the rail freight industry if we are to achieve a meaningful transfer of freight from road to rail and reduce the number of heavy goods vehicles on our roads? Will Ministers reject the RHA’s incessant demands for bigger and heavier lorries on our overburdened road network? Does the Minister agree that, properly encouraged, rail freight could make a significantly greater contribution towards the Government’s carbon reduction targets?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I cannot agree with the noble Lord that franchising has been an expensive failure. We have seen an enormous growth in passenger numbers as a result of the involvement of the private sector, and I think that has given us a really firm foundation from which to go better. However, rail freight is a topic that we can probably agree a little more on. I believe that it will benefit from this national co-ordination, as I said earlier, and we will consult closely with the freight industry to find out what challenges it has and how we can help it by making changes. We will introduce a new rules-based track access regime, which will have a statutory underpinning. That will be relevant for both freight and open access operators. We believe that that will yield more goods going by rail freight, and we will engage with the industry to make sure that this is the case.

Railway Industry Association Report

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The Government’s plans for decarbonising all forms of transport will be set out in the transport decarbonisation plan, which will be published shortly, but the noble Lord is quite right that the best way to make the most effective use of the supply chain is to have a rolling programme. That is why electrification projects are included in the rail network enhancements pipeline, which was last published in October 2019 and will be updated in the near future. I take his point about the Treasury, but it is also the case that we must be prudent and stay within the funding envelope that we have available.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

The Minister will be familiar with the east-west railway line connecting our two main varsity towns. She will also be familiar with the fact that the design was for a fully electrified line, since when the Government have changed that to a non-electrified line, with electrical specification left for the future and the line being built by a private sector company. Are we really going to decarbonise our transport system by adopting this temporary and, in the view of many of us, expensive alternative, rather than going ahead with building the line as it was originally designed?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that it is our aim to deliver a net-zero carbon railway. East West Rail is a very important part of the development of the Ox-Cam Arc, which will support housing and jobs. Any decision to grant development consent for the project will need to demonstrate that it would not have a material impact on the ability of the Government to meet their carbon reduction targets. However, EWR Co, the company responsible for it, continues to examine decarbonisation options, including full electrification along the whole route, as well as various options for partial electrification using battery or electric hybrid rolling stock and other sustainable rolling stock options.

E-Scooters

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend is right that it can be a frightening prospect, particularly for vulnerable people using the road or pavement, to be terrorised by e-scooter users. But that does not mean that we should not proceed with trials that will establish exactly what the risks are and build an evidence base, as to how they might be successfully used. I take note of his comments and will make sure that colleagues in the Home Office are aware of the concerns about enforcement against the use of e-scooters on pavements.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that Birmingham is one of the cities selected for the e-scooters trial, and that representatives of the blind and partially sighted community have expressed widespread concern about the number of these wretched things that have been abandoned in the city centre as a result of this trial? Does the Minister anticipate ditching her ministerial car to use one and can she see the Peers’ car park being packed with e-scooters at some time in the future? Finally, can she reflect on replacing the private car with these sorts of machines? We have heard it all before, so will e-scooters go the same way as the Sinclair C5 or Segway?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, the Government believe that e-scooters, if used in the right way, have great potential and could encourage modal shift away from the car. That is why we are doing these trials. I am delighted that Birmingham has decided to be forward-thinking, as I would expect of it, and to take up the opportunity for a trial. A lot goes into place when a trial is established; there is careful liaison with the local police and the operator. A key concern is to make sure that the scooters are put back where they belong, and we are very focused on that with each of the operators.

Domestic Air Travel

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord is quite right; I have looked at this and there are probably three routes to which this would apply—for Manchester, Leeds Bradford and Exeter. Our expectation is that many passengers travelling on those domestic routes would be making an international connection, so even in France their flights would not be banned. This Government do not propose to ban domestic flights; we propose investing in high-speed rail and ensuring that our aviation sector as a whole contributes to decarbonisation.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister acknowledge that the speed of the French TGV had an enormous impact on the internal aviation market in that country and that timings under HS2 such as two hours and 17 minutes to Newcastle and 67 minutes to Manchester, as well as the hope for three hours to Glasgow and Edinburgh, will have a similar impact on Britain’s internal aviation? I know that she is not a member of the Green Party, but perhaps she could help me out and explain on its behalf why it is in favour of slower trains on Victorian infrastructure yet against modern high-speed trains on new infrastructure.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I would love to help the noble Lord. I fear that I am unable to explain it, and the irony in this Question is very clear to me; investment in High Speed 2 is clearly good for the environment and should be continued. As he identified, the journey time savings can be significant as well as capacity.

Drivers’ Hours and Tachographs (Temporary Exceptions) Regulations 2021

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee had, if not harsh words, some words of doubt about the Government’s proposals. Partly for those reasons, I support some of the sentiments expressed by those who seek to oppose these regulations. Among the concerns that the committee raised was the lack of parliamentary scrutiny before these exceptions came into force—a familiar source of complaint. I do not particularly blame the noble Baroness for this, as it seems all too typical of the present Government that the only chance the House has to debate these regulations is when they have come into force and there is not much we can do about them. There seems to be a continuing pattern here, which Ministers should look at.

The committee went on to ask about the guidance to use the exceptions only “where necessary”—a vague phrase. On its behalf, we seek a definition from the Minister on when a “where necessary” situation will arise. It went on to talk about whether the system would be abused for commercial advantage. Most heavy goods vehicle operators in the United Kingdom are perfectly reputable people, but there is a fringe element within the road haulage industry where pressure on drivers to exceed permitted hours happens from time to time and it is difficult for drivers, particularly for smaller operators, to resist.

My noble friend Lord Berkeley mentioned consultation, particularly with the primary trade union involved in heavy goods vehicle operation in this country, Unite. A piece of Civil Service wording came back about that consultation. I forget the exact words, but it was that the union was not kindly disposed to the proposals on excessive hours. That was one way of putting it. In December, Unite issued a press release about the increase in drivers’ hours, under the heading

“Unite condemns ‘dangerous and useless’ relaxation of HGV driving rules in response to Dover delays”.

That is a bit stronger than we were led to believe from the committee’s wording and a lot stronger than the Government might like. I wonder whether that informal consultation with the trade union was genuine or consisted of a telephone call from the Minister’s department saying, “This is exactly what we are going to do”.

What we are talking about is a solution in search of a problem. It is not a lack of drivers or drivers’ hours causing delay but a lack of customs officers in the Port of Dover in particular. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to the number of empty vehicles coming back from the continent. It is no secret that the Road Haulage Association is annoyed by what it sees as a failure of the Government to recruit the necessary number of customs agents to ensure that these delays do not continue. It is not as though this problem has arisen unexpectedly; it is over four years since the country voted to leave the EU, yet we seem no nearer to recruiting sufficient customs agents to help prevent these delays.

I draw the noble Baroness’s attention to last Sunday’s Observer. Under a heading about how delays at ports would go on for months, Mr Richard Ballantyne, the head of the British Ports Association, said that most ports had seen a recovery in shipments over recent weeks, although the delay to import checks had

“put off a problem rather than resolved it”.

The Road Haulage Association says pretty much the same. The noble Lord, Lord Frost, who has been appointed by the Government to resolve these problems, says that they are temporary and that, since January, things have picked up. I go back to the point mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh: there are still a heck of a lot of heavy lorries passing between this country and the European Union. The trouble is that too many of them are empty, for the reasons that I have just outlined. Increasing drivers’ hours and the consequential impact on road safety are not going to help that. I hope that the Minister can reassure us this afternoon and tell us how many extra customs agents—a question I put to her some weeks ago, but no answer came—have been recruited and whether she is tackling the real problem, rather than the Government sending up a smokescreen, as these proposals appear to be.

National Bus Strategy: England

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his warm words about the bus strategy—it is nice to have some. The noble Lord also makes a very important point: because we are giving more local control and accountability for bus services, the ability of local transport operators to put in place their bus service improvement plans will be critical. The noble Lord spoke of their need to share best practice. That is absolutely in the plan: the bus centre of excellence will combine learning from not only the Department for Transport but bus operators and the leading LTAs—which are already well down this track—and it will encourage everyone and ensure that they can move together at the same speed. We do not want what I call the recalcitrant LTAs: the people who have not loved buses as much as the Government have. My ambition is to make sure that we have no recalcitrant LTAs and that across the country everybody levels up so that we have good bus services everywhere.

The noble Lord mentioned demand-responsive transport. He will have seen the £20 million that we have put into 17 bids across the country. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned them. We published the list of 17 successful places back in early January; all of them have moved into the final stage and secured funding. Demand-responsive transport will be really good for rural areas. The noble Lord wants them to be autonomous, and so do I, but perhaps not just yet.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on the documents. Unlike the spokesperson for the Liberal party, I welcome it. The fact that she has embraced so many policies that the Labour Party has advocated for so many years is entirely to her credit. More power to her elbow, say I. Has the Minister read the Prime Minister’s foreword? I know these things are traditionally written for Prime Ministers, but it is everything we have come to expect from the Prime Minister: a mixture of comedy, hyperbole and demagoguery. Talking about the bus industry it states:

“Outside London, with a few exceptions, that lesson has not been learned.”


He is comparing London to the rest of the country. As a former chairman of a major bus operator, I could have learned some lessons if we had thrown £1 billion in subsidy at buses in Birmingham over the period since deregulation, but we never had the opportunity.

Will the Minister say what happened to the £5 billion that the Prime Minister announced with suitable flair about a year ago? It has now been reduced to £3 billion. It is welcome nevertheless. How will it be distributed? Will there be proper consultation with local authorities and bus operators? Will the Minister accept my congratulations on the paper as far as it goes? Next time we take a bus trip together, which she has promised, I will see if I can sell her a few more Labour Party policies on the journey.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I think good ideas should not be party political. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, mentioned the £5 billion. If he were to read the—I would say “small print” but it was not small print—document, the £5 billion was for cycling, walking and buses, so there was £3 billion for buses and £2 billion for cycling and walking. However, the noble Lord makes a very serious point. I am delighted that the strategy is out of the door, but I am under no illusion: the hard work is about to start because we have £3 billion and we have to think about exactly how we spend it. At the moment we cannot decide that because we do not know what sort of bus service improvement plans are going to be coming forth from the local transport authorities.

The timeline looks like this: by 30 June, each transport authority will say that it is going to have either an enhanced partnership or franchising and that the bus operators are willing to take part; they will then have to work very hard indeed to prepare a bus service improvement plan by 31 October. On the basis of those bus service improvement plans and the amount of funding that is needed in order to provide the sort of revenue funding and capital funding required for those plans, the funding will be distributed. Of course, it could also be the case that bus lanes could be bolstered through a levelling up fund, so there is a lot of opportunity for local transport authorities at the moment to take buses by the scruff of the neck and bring them into the 21st century and beyond.

Hauliers

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I am less concerned with the supposed delays to heavy goods vehicles crossing the channel and more concerned to see that the Government meet their carbon reduction targets in 2050. Some one-fifth of total carbon emissions in this country come from road vehicles, 21% of which come from heavy goods vehicles. Yet in 2019, the last year for which I have figures, no fewer than 1.6 million lorries were carried through the Channel Tunnel by Getlink, and 2.5 million lorries took the short sea crossing.

I have always been in favour of the Channel Tunnel. Back in the 1980s, I was chairman of the Channel Tunnel All-Party Group. I was at Canterbury when President Mitterrand and Mrs Thatcher signed the treaty of that name. We were told then that the opportunities for long-distance rail freight would be enormous, once the Channel Tunnel was opened. Yet, traffic by rail never exceeded more than 2,000 tonnes, and that number is falling. Given that the channel crossing is overdependent on road haulage, can the Minister tell us whether she is confident of meeting the government targets for carbon emissions?

Rail Freight: Channel Tunnel

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that only around 1 million tonnes of through-freight is taken across the Channel on long-distance freight trains from this country, whereas more than 20 million tonnes is taken on 1.6 million lorries? If you add to it the 2.5 million lorries a year thundering down the M20 to use the sea crossing at Dover, leaving these things to—as she puts it—commercial matters when they are environmentally disastrous is not what those of us who supported the Channel Tunnel from its inception really believed.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord will know that whether a consignment uses conventional rail freight or an HGV will very much depend on the nature of the goods being transported. Conventional rail freight is more often used for more dense goods, such as those from the steel and automotive sectors and other bulk goods. But, as I have already said, there is capacity to increase conventional rail freight through the Channel Tunnel and we look forward to those who wish to do so.

Railways: Electrification

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As I have noted, the Government will publish in spring 2021 the transport decarbonisation plan, which will take a holistic and cross-modal approach to achieving net zero. However, this Government have electrified 700 miles of track in the last few years; we have a very ambitious electrification programme, which goes through the rail network enhancements pipeline to make sure that the right schemes are prioritised and that it secures value for money.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

Will the Minister accept that these things, to use her words, take a long time because successive Governments, including this one, keep putting them off? Would it not make more sense to have a proper rolling programme of electrification that would meet the aspirations of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and help bring about stability in the industry for those responsible for electrification? Finally, would it not also help the Government’s carbon reduction targets?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, these things take a long time not because of delays but because of all the quite correct processes that these schemes need to go through. The noble Lord points out that the Government need a long-term electrification plan. That is exactly what the rail network enhancements pipeline is: it looks at all the potential schemes, prioritises those that produce the best overall benefits and secures value for money for the taxpayer.

National Bus Strategy

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As the noble Baroness will be aware, transport in London is the responsibility of the mayor, so I shall not go into great detail on that. However, she has raised a really important point, which is that road-space reallocation is going to be one of the key features as we try to decarbonise our transport landscape and balance the needs of car users, delivery drivers, bus users and, of course, cyclists.

[Lord Snape (Lab) [V]]

Is the Minister aware that the National Express route 11 in Birmingham is reputed, at 26 miles, to be the longest urban bus route in Europe? In 1979, the journey would timetable at two hours and 10 minutes; by 2020, that had increased, due to congestion, to three hours and four minutes. Would the Minister consider the enjoyment of joining me for a three-hour journey around Birmingham’s ring road on the number 11? Alternatively, can I persuade her to visit the recently opened Regional Transport Coordination Centre to see for herself what we are doing to tackle congestion in the West Midlands?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I may have to decline the trip on the route 11 on this occasion—perhaps maybe next time if the noble Lord asks again. But I would like to see the Regional Transport Coordination Centre in Birmingham, not least because it was actually delivered on the back of £19.5 million-worth of funding from the transforming cities fund. I remind the noble Lord that it was opened by the Transport Secretary on 17 January—so perhaps I can do an anniversary visit at some point next year.