Drones

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

I thank my noble friend for highlighting that excellent report. We have taken forward a number of measures and continue to do so. We are working closely with the European Aviation Safety Agency, and have been for some time, on a comprehensive set of regulations for unmanned aircraft. That will put in place a new framework for regulations and mandate the product standards for drones, such as geo-fencing and electronic conspicuity.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister believe that the measures debated in the recent consultation are sufficient to address incidents such as the one that occurred at Gatwick this winter? Specifically, does she intend to include measures in the draft Bill to clarify who should have the authority to disrupt or destroy a drone?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as I said, the challenge is complex and we need to bring many different things into force. We have already brought in measures to make illegal the flying of drones such as we saw at Gatwick. New police powers on that will be included in the draft Bill. As I said, the Home Office continues to test and evaluate the use of counter-drone technology. That has safety implications, of course, so we need to be sure that we get it right.

Seaborne Freight

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating that incredible Answer to the Question in another place. The Transport Secretary has awarded a £14 million contract to a company with no money, no ships, no track record, no employees, no ports, one telephone line and no working website. The Minister calls this a sensible contingency plan; I call it a crisis. In a crisis, you turn not to the lowest bidder but to the contractors that can ensure safety and reliability. I have two specific questions. First, what risk assessment has been carried out in awarding the contract to Seaborne Freight and were issues such as shipping experience, maritime safety and financial robustness taken into account? Secondly, what guarantees can the department provide on the uninterrupted delivery of critical goods such as food and medicine?

[Baroness Sugg]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. As I said, 90% of the contracts were awarded to established operators. With Seaborne, the proposal was subject to technical, financial and commercial assurance as part of a standard due diligence procedure consistent with that undertaken on all government contracts. Our contractual arrangements with Seaborne clearly reflect its status as a new ferry operator, and it is obliged to meet a number of stringent time stage requirements to demonstrate that it can provide an effective service, with break clauses in the Department for Transport’s favour if it fails to meet them. I reiterate the point that no taxpayers’ money will change hands unless these services are provided.

Drones: Consultation Response

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her repetition of the Statement. I see it promises further action but unfortunately when I look at the detail I see no clear action specified, except the five-kilometre rule. It seems to me it merely says that there will be more meetings and discussions; there is no specific action in the Statement.

Does the Minister accept that the Secretary of State has a personal responsibility for the safety of operations, particularly at Gatwick, Heathrow and the other major airports? The whole concept of a good safety environment is where one individual can be held personally responsible. In the case of aviation, we have several safety systems but, at the end of the day, somebody has to be responsible. Is it her view that the Secretary of State has this personal responsibility? Does he also have a personal responsibility to the many passengers disrupted because of this incident? I believe that in excess of 100,000 passengers had their travel disrupted by this event.

The present regulations in relation to 400 feet and one kilometre are pathetic. When I was both a private and a professional pilot, if I got within one, five, 10, perhaps even 15 kilometres of Heathrow or Gatwick without direct permission to do so, I would have been prosecuted, paid a hefty fine and had my licence removed. The idea that a kilometre is of any value is absurd, and there has to be a serious question mark over five kilometres.

I note that the Statement acknowledges the wider challenge with prisons and infrastructure, and I am pleased that account will be taken of that—but we have known about this risk for many years. I believe there was an incident at Gatwick as far ago as July 2017 and BALPA, the pilots’ union, has been pointing out the potential hazards of drones for a number of years. Why was there not a plan? Why was there not legislation? The noble Baroness and I spent many happy hours together at the beginning of 2018. We did space; we did ATOL; we did vehicle technology; we did lasers. There was every opportunity to squirrel some legislation on drones into those Bills, and indeed I made an informal offer to her predecessor that we would co-operate if the Government had something to bring forward. Some basic legislation could have been introduced.

Is it the DfT’s view that Gatwick Airport Ltd met its responsibilities? Does it not have a general responsibility for the safety of its passengers? Does it not have a general responsibility to plan in some depth for when things go wrong?

For part of my career, I was responsible for the passengers on the London Underground. We would respond to any risk by making plans immediately to see how we could mitigate those risks and then we would develop those plans. The mitigation, where practical, would be introduced straightaway. Indeed, in the early 1990s we developed plans to evacuate the Underground very quickly. When in 1992 we found incendiaries on trains, we were able to get the people out within something like 10 minutes. I have to admit that we did not have a plan to then restart the Underground, and it was not a good day for our passengers—but at least they were alive and well. Does the Secretary of State accept that he should have had in place, or caused to be in place, a plan? Does he accept that, if a plan does not exist, it should now?

I assume that the new powers will increase police activity and responsibility. Will there be sufficient police resources to make this practical?

The issue of drones has been with us for years, and in my view it has been handled chaotically. This is symptomatic of the whole of HMG at the moment. When will this Government get a grip?

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, at last we have some sort of response from the Government on the issue of drones, which, as the noble Lord emphasised, we have discussed repeatedly and urged the Government to take action on. The only positive thing that can be said about the Gatwick incident is that it involved massive economic and personal disruption but not death or injury, which it could have.

There are now millions rather than thousands of drones in the UK. The Gatwick incident ruined travel plans for 140,000 people. In 2017, there were 93 near misses between drones and planes, and 3,500 incidents involving drones were reported to the police, concerning people’s safety and their privacy. These are large figures: this is not a marginal activity. It paints a picture of a big problem, but the Government have been horribly complacent and have dithered and delayed. The consultation that the Minister referred to finished in September, but we have the response only now and—if I dare suggest it—had we not had the Gatwick incident, I do not think it would have come out now.

I understand that action was deferred because of the pressures of Brexit, but the Government have allowed themselves to be distracted from a very important issue. The new regulations that were introduced last year proved in the Gatwick incident to be inadequate, ineffective and unenforceable. The police clearly did not have the right equipment, and I suggest that the dramatic tension of the Gatwick incident turned to farce when the police suggested they were not even sure that there had been a drone, or that it could have been their drone that people were seeing.

The Government’s proposals today are welcome, but they are far too vague. We need action beyond legislation because, as the noble Baroness said, the legislation—whatever it was—was ignored. I would like to press the Minister on the timescale for these proposals. When does she think new legislation will get through this House, given the very crowded schedule?

The Gatwick incident indicated that both the police and the Army did not have the right equipment to hand to deal with drones. That is despite the fact that some of the equipment we are talking about was invented and manufactured in Britain. Will the Minister assure us that this equipment is now being rapidly rolled out to both the police and the Army? I read that it is being purchased by airports but it is important that the police and the Army carry out the appropriate exercises so that they know how to respond—they clearly did not know how to respond prior to Christmas. Obviously, that will require additional resources. I would like some reassurance from the Minister that the Government will provide those.

For satirists, the Department for Transport is the gift that keeps on giving. Over the Christmas break alone, we had the ferry company with no ferries, the drone incident with possibly no drones and today we had the traffic jam with not enough lorries. The Secretary of State said on television with unconscious irony before Christmas that the drone incident was the first time this had happened in the world and the first time there had been disruption for days at an airport. That is because the action was not taken, because the equipment was not there and the police and the Army were not prepared. It is not the first time that a drone has disrupted an airport across the world. Unfortunately, this was our world first and it is not one that we want to see repeated.

Operation of Air Services (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the whole House should be grateful to my noble friend for having alerted us again to this crucial issue. There has been a lot of talk about holidays, but we must remember that a lot of families cross boundaries with sick or increasingly frail relatives; certainty about travel is actually crucial to their way of life. I cannot help feeling a little cynical; I believe many members of the public who have been blindly supporting the idea that “we must get out” will have a rude awakening when they are hit by the realities of what will happen on the travel front.

This is not just about air traffic, which we are talking about today. What disruption will happen to other means of communication, such as Eurostar or the ports? No definite information is available. Over and over again, those of us who are active in the community hear, for example, from business people, “Please just get some certainty into the situation; it is impossible to operate in the current atmosphere of uncertainty”. That also applies to universities and higher education.

There is one thing we must be very careful about: if one set out to design a nation that was utterly dependent on international relations in all aspects of its economic, private and social life, it would be difficult to come up with a better example than the United Kingdom. Central to a Government’s approach to what is happening should be how we get this right and preserve what we have. We must be careful not to join, inadvertently, a sort of emergency operation that asks, “What are we going to do about the catastrophe about to overtake us?” The real challenge is to say, “We must not let this catastrophe overtake us”. It is immensely urgent that we ensure an opportunity is given to all sane people in Britain, and in Parliament, to say, “No, we cannot go on with this nonsense; we really have to think again about leaving the European Union”.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring my interest. I am in receipt of what is, for me, a substantial British Airways pension and, if this disruption were such as to cause British Airways to go broke, I would not get all of it. I have consulted the Registrar of Members’ Interests and am assured that the interest is sufficiently tenuous to allow me to speak. I have a rather more acute interest in the fact that my wife has planned a holiday in the Canaries on 18 April.

I will speak from a presumption of no deal. There is an acceptance that the execution of the intent of this SI will depend on agreements. As I have to take part on probably 70-plus SIs between now and the end of March, I usually avoid general debates on Brexit, but when agreeing these SIs, it is necessary to look at two issues. First, are they technically valid? I have looked through them and there has been a good debate on them in Grand Committee, and I think that they are technically valid. Secondly, what is their chance of being successfully executed? I will speak to only the second question.

The whole of this SI depends on there being agreements to carry on flying. Indeed, in Grand Committee the Minister said that the Government would be seeking multilateral agreements with the EU in order to allow aviation to continue. However, she said that, failing that, we would have to fall back on bilateral agreements. There will be a requirement for 27 bilateral deals with the EU and, if I have read the briefings properly, 17 bilateral deals with non-EU countries presently enabled by EU agreements, including the US—a US under a President who strongly believes in America first. This would mean that if a multilateral agreement were not concluded, 44 sets of negotiations would have to be completed by 30 March next year.

The logic of why that will work is set out in a number of places, including at one point in the Explanatory Memorandum before it was revised, but I thank the Government for publishing a document called Flights to and from the UK if there’s no Brexit deal, which was published on 24 September 2018. It explains the logic of why we will succeed in achieving, first, traffic rights and, secondly, appropriate safety recognition. The paragraph on traffic rights states:

“If there is ‘no deal’ with the EU, airlines wishing to operate flights between the UK and the EU would have to seek individual permissions to operate from the respective states (be that the UK or an EU country). In this scenario the UK would envisage granting permission to EU airlines to continue to operate. We would expect EU countries to reciprocate in turn. It would not be in the interest of any EU country or the UK to restrict the choice of destinations that could be served, though, if such permissions are not granted, there could be disruption to some flights”.


So, if there is not a multilateral deal, the whole concept falls back on an expectation that the EU will reciprocate. A similar section on the same page relating to safety says:

“The UK would expect this recognition of equivalent safety standards to be reciprocated by the EU in its ‘Part-TCO’ authorisations”.

Rail Franchise Agreements

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, Northern is working hard to reduce the number of cancellations experienced on the line which the noble Lord mentions; they are currently running at about 4%, which is obviously not good enough. If the last train of the day is cancelled, Northern operates a last train of the day policy, which should ensure that passengers who are travelling to Brierfield, Nelson and Colne are not left stranded. If for any reason that service does not arrive, there is a 24-hour helpline, and service will then be provided. I have been assured that onward transport has been provided in all circumstances, but from what the noble Lord has said, that is not the case and, as I said, that is not good enough. I will be happy to arrange a meeting with the noble Lord and the Northern franchise where we can discuss further how better to make improvements.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the problems outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, are symptomatic of the structure of the railway. It is the structure that is wrong, and it is the structure that caused the May timetable chaos. Fortunately for us, the Transport Select Committee in the other place reported on that today. At paragraph 63 it concludes:

“The Secretary of State for transport is responsible for the structure of the system that controls and runs our railways. He is at the apex of this system … It is therefore not reasonable for the Secretary of State to absolve himself of all responsibility”.


Does the Minister agree with the committee, and does she further agree that things will not get better until the Secretary of State accepts his responsibility or stands aside for a more proactive and responsible candidate?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I should make clear that the Secretary of State and the department have accepted responsibility for the role we played in the implementation of the timetables in May. It is clear from the difficulties with the introduction of the timetable over the summer, from problems experienced with some major investment projects and from the collapse of the Virgin Trains East Coast franchise that we need to see significant change, but that, as the noble Lord said, is in the structure of our railways not in our Secretary of State.

Railways: CrossCountry

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I agree that we need to invest in our public transport to enable people to get to work on time. Between 2015 and 2020 we are investing more than £13 billion to improve connections across the north to get people to work and to visit family and friends. We have also seen recent announcements for the Tyne and Wear Metro in the previous Budget and investments in roads to deliver that commitment.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the Question was almost certainly provoked by the CrossCountry public consultation, to which the Minister alluded. The Question has also provoked me into reading it. Excellent document as it is, I am sure she will agree that it will create many more demands than there will be resources to meet them. It will also create an enormous number of trade-offs. Have the Government developed the appropriate algorithms and criteria to resolve these trade-offs and, if those trade-offs are seen to be not the revenue-maximising solution, will the department accept some revenue sacrifice in the interest of passengers?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord and other noble Lords agree that, when setting these requirements, it is of course important that we speak to passengers to understand what they want from the service. The decisions on services will be informed by the consultation responses. We will assess the ideas against the department’s objectives for the franchise, and will undertake financial and economic assessments to make sure that we deliver the best possible service for passengers and value for money for both passengers and taxpayers. On sacrificing revenue, we do not make the decision solely on the basis of returns. We will always put passengers first but we need to be mindful of value for money for the taxpayer.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 4th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also welcome these amendments. I share the noble Baroness’s concern about the method of allocation of permits, but I think that we have gone as far as we are going to get on that one. I was particularly interested in the Minister’s comments about Amendments 5 and 6, which she said did not apply to Northern Ireland. I thought the whole point of trailer registration, in Part 2 of the Bill, was that it was a necessity to have trailers registered in case there was a need for any trailer to go outside the UK on to the continent, or into the EU, following Brexit, which of course would also apply to the Republic of Ireland. My logical mind therefore thinks that, if a trailer cannot be registered in Northern Ireland, it cannot leave Northern Ireland—or the UK—for the European Union, which means it cannot go across the border to the Republic.

Notwithstanding that, in Amendment 11, if a driver does take a trailer into the Republic that is registered in Northern Ireland—which apparently it cannot be—they can still be fined. This seems slightly illogical because, if I were a trailer owner in Northern Ireland and not able to register it and therefore go into the Republic, that would not seem quite right to me. Can the Minister explain where I have got it wrong or whether there is something more that needs to happen?

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, but also that we have gone as far as we can in those areas. On government Amendments 5, 6, 7 and, I think 8, my research assistant, Catherine Johnson, who drafted the original amendment passed in your Lordships’ House, assured me that the Minister has accepted your Lordships’ amendment but put it in her own words. Accordingly, we support the government amendments and thank the Minister for her efforts.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for participating in this short debate and for their support for the amendments. As ever, the scrutiny and analysis of noble Lords has improved the Bill—in particular, on the important issue of trailer safety. The points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, will be covered by the report, and we will work closely with the devolved Administrations. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, Amendments 5 and 6 relate only to the trailer safety report; the rest of the Bill applies to Northern Ireland.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, the Government have been clear that our priority is to maintain and develop liberalised access for commercial haulage as part of our future relationship with the EU. It is in no one’s interest to put up barriers to trade, and we will seek to agree a reciprocal deal that allows hauliers to continue to travel freely between the UK and Europe. I agree with the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on limited permits. We are confident that we will secure a liberalised approach and avoid the need for any new documents or processes—or, at a minimum, that all hauliers who seek a permit can get one. However, as a responsible Government, we are preparing for all outcomes through the Bill.

Road Maintenance

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

I certainly agree with the noble Lord on that. We have introduced the lane rental scheme, which has encouraged utilities to work together at weekends and in the evening to reduce congestion and the inevitable annoyance to motorists. We saw disruption to drivers cut by half in Kent and London, where we ran a pilot, and we are looking to extend that across the country. On licences and permits, we absolutely encourage local authorities to use permit schemes for works on the roads, which will help with planning. They will also ensure that utilities work together. Around 65% of local authorities use permit schemes now, and we encourage others to join.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister tell us whether Her Majesty’s Government believe in value for money? If the answer is yes, will she explain how patch and mend delivers value for money on a whole-life basis? If the answer is no, does she accept that Her Majesty’s Government are storing up a massive bill as roads self-destruct under the present policy?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I can certainly confirm that this Government believe in value for money. We are spending a record £23 billion on the enhancement, renewal and maintenance of our roads up and down the country, and will continue to invest in that to provide better journeys for motorists and to cut congestion. We have seen improvements and that our investment is making a difference. A, B and C roads combined have seen a gradual improvement, with fewer roads being considered for maintenance.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, at the risk of causing a bit of trouble at this stage of the Bill, I cannot see why it matters particularly where the charging points are in a motorway service station. If you are going to park your car and go off to have a drink, you might as well plug it in while having it. If you do not want to do that but have a high-powered, high-speed charger you can probably do that as if you are filling up with petrol. The general principle in the Bill is all right but I suspect that the commercial pressures on the operators will persuade them to put the charging points where they are most convenient.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for bringing forward these amendments, which seem to have produced a consensus on all the issues which were brought up on Report. I must agree with other speakers that the Bill is narrow and, to be fair, it is generally our role to scrutinise Bills. While we have done that, there has to be much wider consideration given by government to this whole area. That consideration has to work with other parts of government and local government, so that we do not trip into the area of sovereignty conflict. Fortunately, that seems to have been effectively solved by the amendments and the consultation. It is an important area to get straight if we are to achieve the spread of charging points that will be necessary, particularly to achieve our air-quality targets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

Before the Minister sits down—because it seems to me that I have to use that ridiculous device—I reciprocate the thanks to the noble Baroness, her co-pilot the noble Lord, Lord Young, and the team. They have set a very high standard of involvement with the Opposition and the political parties and, I believe, with individuals. It is a standard which I hope the Government will copy in all areas. We have made great improvements to the Bill, and I do not think there has been a Division on anything. We are there, and I thank the Minister for that. I also thank my massive team of one-fifth of a person, Molly Critchley, for all her support.

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, before the Minister sits down, we have concentrated very much on charging points, but the Bill was amended on Report to cover hydrogen refuelling points. They may not need exactly the same thing, so I would like an assurance that the way they are treated will take account purely of what they are for rather than making the broad assumption that they are charging points and therefore electric only.

Heathrow Airport

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Answer as a Statement, but it is, in my view, not realistic. Having looked at Tuesday’s Statement, liabilities about cancellation were not covered but there was certainly a commitment to surface access, with extensions to the Piccadilly line, improved connections to Crossrail et cetera. Without these surface transport improvements, the air-quality commitments will be unachievable, and they have to be met. The statement of principles document has allowed Heathrow Airport Ltd to set out what it will not pay for. On surface access, it has essentially said that it will pay for the roads that have to be moved and no more. If HAL is not going to pay, what are Her Majesty’s Government going to do, given the commitments they have made on surface access? In reality, the Government are committing themselves to billions of expenditure. I have extended the odd Tube line, and it is very expensive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, there is a huge amount of pent-up demand at Heathrow and I imagine that those flights will be some of the first coming in when the new runway is built, which Heathrow expects to be in around 2026. I have spent much time in many regional airports and they have all been welcoming of the expansion of Heathrow, particularly on the domestic connectivity point where we expect to see up to 15% of slots reserved for domestic flights.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, if the Minister will forgive me for extending my question, she ran through a number of schemes which she said were committed. Who is committed to paying for these claims and under what sort of process are they committed?

[Baroness Sugg]

The schemes which I mentioned—those that are already in progress on HS2, Crossrail and the Piccadilly extension line—are already committed and agreed on. The other two to which I referred for southern rail and western rail are still in development.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

But who is paying for the committed schemes?

[Baroness Sugg]

Those schemes have already been currently funded, and I will have to write to the noble Lord with exact details.