Airports (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Friday 16th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, I had not planned to speak in this debate but I gave notice that I intended to speak in the gap and want to ask the Minister one short question. My credentials for doing so are that I was the Minister who took through Parliament the 1996 Act that this Private Member’s Bill attempts to amend. The context to my question is what this debate has been all about: the absolute shortage of capacity at Heathrow Airport. We have run out of space—we are full up at Heathrow. My question to the Minister is: what will the Government’s response be to the 70 businessmen who wrote in the Sunday Telegraph two weeks ago that they wanted a third runway at Heathrow Airport? The other part of the article said that No. 10 was beginning to change its mind about this matter—or the paper thought that it was, although we should not believe everything that we read in the papers. I should be very grateful for an answer to that question.

Roads: Traffic Lights

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Spicer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to allowing traffic to turn left at a red traffic light in the way that certain authorities in the United States permit vehicles to turn right.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we believe it is unnecessary since, unlike in the United States, most UK traffic lights use traffic-responsive systems to reduce delays and improve traffic flow. In addition, the majority of UK signal junctions are provided with pedestrian facilities, which give a green signal only when conflicting traffic is stopped. Any proposal to allow traffic to turn through pedestrian signals would need to resolve the potential for pedestrian safety to be compromised.

[Lord Spicer]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer but the position in the United States needs to be made clear. According to the American embassy, ever since 7 December 1975 every state has permitted right turning on red traffic lights with no consequent detrimental effect on safety, and with a positive effect on the flow of traffic and, therefore, on energy conservation. Why can we not try something similar with left-turning traffic lights here?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the short answer to the noble Lord’s last point—why can we not try something similar here—is that we believe that it would increase the accident rate. It is very important to understand that the road layout in the United States, particularly in urban areas, is very different from that in the United Kingdom. There is far more space, the junctions are much larger and the cities tend to be laid out on the grid system.

Aviation: UK Civil Aviation

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, I had not intended to join in this debate, but I would like to make one point. As has been said already, Heathrow has, for the past 40 years—certainly since I was Minister for aviation—been the number one international interchange airport in the world. Gatwick, as it happens, has been number three for some time. Heathrow is now full up. There is no doubt about it. It is full. The only question before us is what we do about it.

Various ideas have been put forward. One is to run trains to Birmingham. That will take a bit of time, if it comes about, and is not going to do an awful lot for international travel. Heathrow is an international hub interchange airport. The idea that the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, called “Boris’s island” is a wonderful one, but has been around for the past 40 or 50 years. Maplin was the first attempt at it. Even if it is a good idea, it is going to mean a decision about shutting down Heathrow—the noble Lord was absolutely right about that—and it is not going to happen for the time being. It is not going to happen for another 30 or 40 years.

The solution to Heathrow, which is an immediate problem, has to be found pretty well immediately. The only solution available—and I have put this to Ministers in Questions several times in the past year or so—is that of a third runway. There is no alternative. I was the Minister who laid the first sod at Stansted. We attached to Stansted a 20 million air traffic movement condition, so Stansted is not available. Anyway, airlines do not want to fly to Stansted. They want to fly to Heathrow and change there.

The issue is, do we have an asset which is going to grow with the market, or do we allow ourselves to have the competition from Schiphol and all the other places that people have talked about? This is an immediate decision. It needs to be taken straight away and there really is no way round it, other than making a decision about the third runway.

Airports: Heathrow

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Spicer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assumption they make about capacity levels at peak times at Heathrow Airport when forming their transport plans.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, Heathrow Airport’s annual capacity is capped at 480,000 air transport movements, and the Department for Transport’s latest aviation forecasts assume there will be no increase in runway capacity to 2050. The Government do not make detailed assumptions about the airport’s capacity levels at peak times. This is a matter for the airport operator.

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, my Question came with the bias of a former Aviation Minister. Given that Heathrow Airport is now effectively full at peak times, what is to be done about that while we wait 20 years for a new airport to be built in the Thames?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the short answer is that the South East Airports Taskforce, chaired by my right honourable friend Theresa Villiers, determined that there should be operational freedoms for Heathrow Airport to enable the airport to recover quickly from disruptions to operations.

Localism Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, this amendment follows on nicely from the previous amendment. It also illustrates the general confusion over the structure of transport in the London area. The purpose of the amendment is to remove from the Department for Transport the responsibility for rail franchising within the inner suburban area of London and transfer it to Transport for London. It is wholly within the spirit of the Bill to take from the centre and give to a regional or more local body powers that it can exercise more effectively and more efficiently for the benefit, in this case, of passengers.

Noble Lords will know that at present Transport for London effectively either manages or in some way regulates the Tube, the Docklands Light Railway, bus services, river transport services and taxi services, but when it comes to rail, it has only a very limited purview. It directly manages London Overground, which is one very minor line, and it will have oversight of Crossrail once it is completed. However, when it comes to the inner suburban rail services that criss-cross much of the London area, Transport for London’s role is extremely limited. The Department for Transport lets and manages the franchises and Transport for London can simply specify and pay for either an increment to that service or—terrible bureaucratic word—a decrement to that service. Essentially, the consequence of that has not been very beneficial to passengers.

I would argue that London is different from much of the rest of the country when it comes to rail. Fourteen per cent of Londoners use the National Rail network to commute daily to work. Indeed, outside of London proper, in the south-east and east of London there are many more who use that rail network to commute to work within the London area. That makes it distinctly different from any other part of the country. There are 10 train operating companies, so it is a highly fragmented service. Demand in the area is so inelastic that the kind of competitive pressures that have effect in the rest of the country are virtually irrelevant when it comes to London, where demand is so high, capacity is constantly at breaking point and there is always a need for additional capacity. So the competitive issue that exists elsewhere is not relevant within London itself.

I said that there were 10 different train operating companies. That means 10 different brandings, 10 different fare structures, 10 different forms of marketing, 10 different commercial strategies and 10 different operating time horizons. As noble Lords will know, the McNulty review recommends that more power should go to the train operating companies and franchises should be longer. So trying to create an integrated London Transport service within this environment, where rail is so fragmented and Transport for London has so little direct power, is very significantly undermined. If your Lordships would like an example of what this does to, as it were, disadvantage passengers, I draw your attention to the Oyster card. I should declare that I am a former member of the board of Transport for London and was very involved with the rail side. Rows went on year after year to try to get any form of Oyster card available on National Rail. Then we got “pay as you go”, which most people have now enjoyed only for the past couple of years. Technically it could have been done very easily, but the issue was never high on the priority list for the Department for Transport, which had to be involved because of the franchising structure. The TOCs saw it as a way to leverage money out of London Transport. The whole process was very much to the disadvantage of passengers. If your Lordships want another quick example, just go down to Waterloo. The next time you are stuck on a train that is slow because there is no space to get into Waterloo station, you will see that there is an empty platform. When Eurostar moved to St Pancras, one of the international platforms was, at great expense to the Government, converted to domestic use. The department has never managed to get its act together to put that into play for passengers. That is another huge, wasted asset. Frankly, this is repeated all over London.

Sometimes I seethe with envy when I talk to transport friends in Berlin as they are able to work with the bus and taxi services so that late-night trains are met by a co-ordinated timetable of buses and taxis, ensuring that train passengers have a seamless journey. The battle in London has been to look at travel as a single journey, whether you use one mode or multiple modes to get to your destination, and to create that kind of integration. It has been phenomenally successful, but leaving out rail makes no sense.

Sometimes people say that people from outside London use the services so they must not be too London biased. We can give them a voice by putting some directors from outside London onto the relevant board within Transport for London. It is also true that the department will continue to have a voice, but the balance needs to be shifted towards an entity which has a genuine interest, in a detailed way, in the quality of service, as Transport for London does.

[Lord Spicer]

Is the empty platform at Waterloo, which the noble Baroness has been describing, the reason why plays are being put on there now?

[Baroness Kramer]

Plays are not taking place on the adapted platform but it would be better to use it for a play than nothing at all. It is absolutely ridiculous.

I have two more points to make. Some people say that there must have been a lot of thought about how the franchises should be divided up and a reason for not giving far more influence over the rail franchising process to Transport for London. The rationale was, “We don’t like Ken Livingstone”. When the GLA Bill went through this House, particularly when TfL was under review, there was an attempt to minimise the London influence. We had the disastrous Tube public/private partnership, which was a key part of the structure and which ensured that Transport for London really could not manage the system as a whole.

There was very little appreciation of the benefits of integration. That is one of the other pieces, if you like, which came out of much of that kind of thinking. We have all moved beyond that and recognise the benefits of integration and the benefits of regional management. I argue that at this time, when the transport infrastructure in this area is desperately overstretched, when we really are in a situation of economic recovery in some areas of London and you practically have to strap people to the roofs of transport carriages, we need to maximise the use of that infrastructure. Therefore, the logic is to change the franchising responsibility, which is what this amendment attempts to do.

Airports: Heathrow

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Spicer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they expect Heathrow airport to lose its status as the world’s busiest international airport; if so, to which airport; and when.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, last month the Department for Transport published its UK aviation forecasts to support the development of a new policy framework for UK aviation, which supports economic growth and addresses aviation’s environmental impacts. It is forecast that Heathrow will have 85 million terminal passengers in 2030 compared with 65.7 million in 2010. The department does not forecast demand for airports outside the UK.

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, when I was Minister for Aviation, Heathrow was the number one international airport in the world and Gatwick was number four, and together they provided the international crossroads and hub for the whole world. Does my noble friend share my concern—based, if for no other reason, on economic growth—that the pre-eminence of Heathrow should now be challenged by the likes of Schiphol and Frankfurt because of the capacity constraints that have been set on it?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I understand the point that the noble Lord makes, but there are also airports in the Far East which will probably overtake Heathrow eventually. We want to see a successful and competitive aviation industry which supports economic growth and addresses aviation’s environmental impact. Aviation should be able to grow, but to do so it must play its part in delivering our environmental goals and protecting the quality of life of local communities.

Airports: London

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Spicer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to provide for sufficient capacity in the London airport system to accommodate the forecast expansion of passenger demand.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the Government are not in the business of predict and provide. We are committed to developing a new policy framework for the whole of UK aviation which supports economic growth and addresses aviation’s environmental impacts. The Department for Transport expects to publish passenger demand forecasts later this year to support the development of the framework.

[Lord Spicer]

If, as anticipated, Heathrow cannot take the strain, which London airport will? Perhaps I should add that I ask that Question as a former Minister for Aviation.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the Government have set up the South East Airports Task Force to look at how we can make airports in the south-east better, but not bigger.

Airports: Heathrow

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Spicer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan for London Heathrow Airport to continue to be the world’s busiest airport in respect of international passenger traffic.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we are committed to producing a new policy framework for UK aviation that supports economic growth and protects Heathrow’s status as a global hub, as well as addressing aviation’s environmental impacts. We intend to issue a scoping document in March 2011 setting out the key strategic questions that we are seeking to answer, followed by publication of a draft policy framework for consultation by March 2012.

[Lord Spicer]

I thank my noble friend for that response, but does he accept that the growth of the British economy will be seriously affected if there is capacity constraint at Heathrow Airport?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we have made it absolutely clear that we do not support the construction of additional runways at Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted. We believe that such runways would cause an unacceptable level of environmental damage, undermining our efforts to combat climate change and significantly damaging the quality of life of local communities. Instead, we have established the South East Airports Taskforce with key players from across the industry to explore the scope for measures to make the most of the existing airport infrastructure and to improve conditions for users of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.