Private Crossings (Signs and Barriers) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Snape and Lord Hayward

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest which is not in the register of interests, in that I am a patron of Avon Valley Railway, and the questions being debated this afternoon may well apply in the case of Avon Valley. I want to refer to the points the noble Lord has made and their potential implications elsewhere.

Noble Lords will have seen that I have an Oral Question tabled for 8 February on traffic marshals and the backwards and forwards crossings on this estate. One of my many Written Questions has been about trying to establish what alternatives are available, other than these costly traffic marshals, to mitigate the risk of pedestrians crossing where cars are moving at less than 5 mph. I noted the speeds that the noble Lord referred to and that we are talking here about a much lesser speed. When I queried the cost of the traffic marshals—remember, this is going to run for several years—I was told that the annual cost of a traffic marshal was £65,600 a year. A four-year programme means that we are talking not far short of a quarter of a million pounds. I then asked about the cost of the traffic marshal supervisor and was told that it was £91,700 a year. I have not yet asked what the cost will be of the manager of the traffic marshal supervisor and the like.

I will be very interested to see the costs in relation to these signs. I have been told that there are no alternatives to these traffic marshals, yet, as the noble Lord says, there are 35 pages of guidance. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the options identified in those 35 pages may well be available to use on this estate, and might cost substantially less than the figures I have been given for what we are spending.

I do not necessarily want my noble friend the Minister to answer my observations today, but I am just recording that I have an interest in the costs, which have implications for matters I will be pursuing on another occasion.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Berkeley in his objective. It seems to me, as I suspect it does to other noble Lords taking part in this debate, that this is a typical example, if I may say so, of departmental overkill. For some reason, the regulations, which cover the national railways separately, are to be paid out of Network Rail’s budget. That will be taken care of, presumably, in the grants made to that organisation. But despite representations being made by the heritage railways sector, the regulations are now to apply to every farm track, crossing and so on across the country, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hayward.

These are not matters of minor expense so far as the heritage railway business is concerned. Perhaps I should rephrase that: most of these railways are not businesses, because they are run largely by volunteers. The Department for Transport consulted the HRA and was warned about the total cost of these regulations, but it went ahead anyway. The department’s own estimate of the cost is £1.5 million to £3 million. That is a substantial amount for such organisations, which, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley said, are hardly profitable under the present circumstances. Indeed, the future of some of them is under direct threat.

As my noble friend indicated, crossings, whether on the mainline railway or the heritage railway, are there to protect not the railway traveller but the motorist from the consequences of their own folly—and sometimes not particularly successfully so. It appears that a minority of motorists is prepared to ignore railway crossing signs. In those circumstances, the road network surely ought to make a proper contribution, rather than it being left to the railway industry the whole time, particularly given that, as I and my noble friend have indicated, the lower speeds of heritage railways, which are restricted to 25 mph, make the likely dangers considerably less than on the mainline railway.

I do not expect a direct reply from the Minister today, but I ask him either to write to me or to set out in the Official Report the duties of the ORR as far as the road network is concerned. It appears to be only too ready to intervene on railway safety; indeed, the last time I met the ORR, it proposed an increase in railway freight rates in a particular area of this country because, it said, the railway industry was charging less than it should. As far as I am aware, it does not intervene in—how does one diplomatically put it?—the rough and tumble of the lower end of the road haulage industry. Why, therefore, should it take such a deep interest in railway matters, which, in many cases, I do not consider it capable of doing? Will the Minister set out the ORR’s duties so far as the road network is concerned, allowing those of us who take an interest in these matters to compare the two and, in the interests of fairness, make future representations about the ORR’s involvement in the railway industry?

As the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, indicated, the extra signs that will be demanded under the regulations will apply to the smallest railway crossings. Again, this is really taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I would like to hear from the Minister how many accidents and fatalities he thinks this provision will impact, including the number of casualties that take place because of road users on little-used roads crossing heritage railway lines. Are we prepared to stand by as 1,500 people per year are killed on our roads? Without taking any great action, thousands more will be seriously injured, yet here we are inflicting these regulations on the heritage railway industry.

While £3 million might not be a lot for the Department for Transport, it could tip many of the smaller heritage railways over into bankruptcy. I hope that it is not too late for the Minister to think again. I plead with him and his department to look again at the activities of the ORR. It appears to be more concerned with intervening in matters in the railway industry, whether heritage or mainline, than with what happens to the road network—indeed, it does not show any concern for that at all.