Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak first to Amendment 6, which seeks clarification following the debate on changing an “auditor” to an “approved person” in assessing bus franchise schemes. It would ensure that within three months of the Bill becoming an Act, the Government will publish the qualifications required for an approved person under the Act and would also lay a regulation with that information in it prior to the commencement of the clause. This is because Clause 9 amends Section 123D of the Transport Act 2000 to remove “auditor”, a term synonymous with an appropriate level of qualification, registration and probity, with the more generic term “approved person”. An auditor, by contrast, must be a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy.

The Minister said in response to my noble friend Lady Brinton’s question at Second Reading:

“The intention is not to deregulate approved persons but to widen the range of them. I completely agree with her that they should have some qualifications. An unqualified person should not be able to make a judgment about whether a franchising scheme is right”.—[Official Report, 8/1/25; col. 790.]


The powers and responsibilities of the approved person are significant. Clause 9(2)(1) states:

“A franchising authority, or two or more franchising authorities acting jointly, may not proceed with a proposed franchising scheme unless they have obtained a report from an independent approved person on the assessment of the proposed scheme (see section 123B)”.


I understand why the Government would like to broaden the scope of those able to provide assurance that an approved person will have, at the very least, a CIPFA qualification or its equivalent. However, one of the problems of loosening very specific language in previous legislation is that without sight of exactly what the new qualifications are some organisations will take advantage of the new scheme. From these Benches, we would want any new franchise proposal to have been assessed and reported on by a qualified person because this is about significant public money and assurance. On that point, I hope that the Minister can clarify today what qualifications the Government would expect for such a person in order to reassure these Benches.

My noble friend Lord Goddard clearly set out Amendments 2 and 12, which aim to ensure that we learn from the Manchester franchising experience and that best practice is shared more widely, making franchising more dynamic and responsive. Clarity is absolutely needed on whether there is a minimum period from which services or changes to services proposed by a franchising authority may be enacted. I hope the Minister can answer this point and provide much-needed clarity today.

Amendment 61 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, regarding the qualifications needed for officials working in franchising authorities who will be responsible for designing, negotiating and enforcing any franchising schemes, is welcome, given that it is important that staff have a clear understanding of health and safety issues. The noble Lord, Lord Woodley, raised a number of points linked to employment rights, and I look forward to hearing a response to his specific concerns.

The amendments in this group from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, are a mixed bag, with many seeming, quite frankly, to be trying to put more obstacles in the way of any local transport authority that wishes to introduce franchising. They feel like an ideological response rather than genuine concern about bus service provision across the country. The noble Lord suddenly does not seem to believe in localism. I am not sure that he would have had the same opinion in his previous life as a local councillor and a deputy mayor of London.

If all local transport authorities want to move towards franchising, so be it. This is about devolution and local authorities deciding what suits their local communities. It is highly unlikely that everywhere will move towards franchising, but they should have that option. To want potential intervention from the Secretary of State feels an unnecessary and bureaucratic top-down approach, whereas this is supposed to be a bottom-up approach to bus services. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the points raised.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make a couple of brief points. I apologise to the Committee that I am Boxing and Coxing with another meeting this afternoon and that I did not table my amendment for today’s Committee. Formally, I support Amendment 17 tabled by my noble friend Lord Woodley, but I will put it in a broader context.

The amendment deals with the relationship between franchising companies and franchising authorities and the trade unions, which is vital, but, as I said at Second Reading, we need a provision for planning the workforce of bus services across Britain in the same way that we do in other industries. I say to the Minister and his colleagues that the Government are attempting major reorganisations of several industries—energy, railways, buses—yet in the proposed legislation, there is no clear commitment to forward workforce planning. I would have tabled an amendment to that effect, and I hope that the Government will come forward with that in any of the Bills that I refer to, but particularly this one.

The workforce in buses has declined by 25% over recent years. With all due respect, it is a very skilled but elderly workforce. Not many new people are coming into it. We need a new forward system as part of this Bill and the processes it starts to ensure that there is an adequate workforce-planning dimension. Part of that involves the arrangements with the trade unions, which my noble friend Lord Woodley points out in Amendment 17, but it is broader than that and has to be national as well as local. I hope that before the Bill reaches its final stages it will have a clear strategic commitment to workforce planning for bus services.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I reiterate the regret, expressed by the Front-Bench speakers from all parties, that Lady Randerson is not with us. We shall all miss her. Another person I shall miss is my noble friend Lord Prescott, whose funeral comes in a few weeks’ time. I served as a Transport Minister with him, and he would have some firm views on this Bill, I am sure.

As the Minister has indicated, buses remain, despite everything, the public transport form used most in this country, but the difference between the bus service in London, where I spend half the week, and the rest of the country, including the rural area in which I live, is stark. We need to extend some of the aspects of Transport for London, which the Minister is familiar with. I had occasional complaints about London’s transport during his time there, but in general it is much better than the situation in the rural areas of the south-west and many other areas of England and Wales.

That is wrong and this Bill begins to change it. The fact is that successive regimes have not taken the opportunity to improve the situation significantly. I acknowledge that the 2017 Act, to which reference has been made, made some improvements in franchising; on the other hand, it effectively closed down the scope for direct ownership of municipal bus companies, which this Bill, thankfully, revises.

I emphasise my support for the Bill and my respect for the Ministers—the previous Secretary of State and the current one—who have got the Bill into the legislative programme at a very early stage. That means we can work it through, address the secondary legislation that will be required and get a good bus service operating in most areas of the country within the lifetime of this Parliament.

I agree with the framework, although it will need some tinkering with, the relationship between franchising and local authority ownership, and the role of the Department for Transport. The framework is right—though like the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and others, I would have preferred to see more substantial support, and definitely multi-annual long-term funding and some rationalisation of the form in which funds come from both local and national government—and, in general, the Bill is moving in the right direction. However, I wish to raise three issues which are not significant in the Bill, and might well require yet another Bill—the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, has already used my joke in that respect—but which need to be part of the reformation of the bus system in the country outside London. Broadly, they involve the passenger relationship, in particular the ticketing system, the workforce and environmental provisions. I will take those quickly, one by one.

Concerning the passenger system, the majority of passengers outside London—certainly in rural areas and in many of our smaller cities—travel for free because they are old-age pensioners or students. People are not attracted to getting on the bus, so they use their cars in areas which would, objectively, be much better served by them taking the bus to the shops or to work. Among the reasons for this are the unreliability and frequency of the bus, and the interchangeability of the bus on routes that they have to take.

I referred to my time as a Transport Minister. I had one achievement that I have been very proud of: I was the very first person to use an Oyster card. I think it was in 1999, at St James’s Park station. We introduced that and extended it from the Tube to the buses and suburban trains. We need a similar system in other parts of the country, so that you would buy one ticket that you can use for a month or a year, and buy it at whatever regularity you feel fits your purposes, and then move from one bus to another without any difficulty. The cost is relatively small. Many of us will have realised that, once we have an Oyster card, we use it and use the car less, and probably walk less as well. We need something similar for areas outside London, particularly outside our cities.

A couple of years later, I introduced another system: the over-65 pass—or the old gits’ pass, as I used to call it, though I do not use that phrase so frequently these days. We introduced in a transport Bill in 1999 that these passes would be valid throughout the country. Although I occasionally face consternation from bus drivers when showing them my Dorset pass, it allows me to travel anywhere in the country for free. We need the same for those who do not qualify as students or old-age pensioners. They would have to pay for it, but the convenience that results would be a big attraction. We could regain the millions of bus passengers who have been lost over the last 40 years since deregulation and the growth in the use of cars.

We also have to ensure that we have an adequate workforce. The workforce has declined by 25%, in line with the usage of buses. The key factor here is that most of the drivers are relatively old and will retire relatively soon, while new drivers coming into the trade are relatively few. We need a system that attracts younger and newer drivers, as well as getting other drivers back into the bus trade. That is essential if we are to expand the whole range of services, which I hope the Bill will lead to. As far as this Bill is concerned, the only reference to training relates, rightly, to the safeguarding and protection of passengers. That is important, and I am glad to see it in the Bill, but we need a provision to ensure that there is adequate training across the country for drivers, mechanics and other staff, so that we have an adequate workforce for this service.

The third area, the environment, is mentioned in the Bill but not sufficiently. It is interpreted explicitly and specifically in relation to having zero-emission buses. That is an important aspect of the environment—it is right that it should be in the Bill and I agree with the timescale—but it is only one aspect. It will be important to see on our streets, as we are beginning to see in London, zero or near-zero-emissions buses, but that is only part of it.

Another serious issue is that buses contribute to congestion and pollution, particularly on our urban streets. That requires a rather better system of traffic management, which preserves and extends bus lanes, rather than what is happening in many of our cities at the moment. That is partly because of the extension of cycle lanes—I see my noble friend Lord Berkeley sitting here—but these should be introduced at the expense of motoring lanes, not bus lanes. The result, in London and elsewhere, is buses being delayed in traffic in what were previously free-flowing bus lanes. We need to make sure that traffic management in the towns and cities in which our buses have been constricted gives priority again to the introduction and sustaining of bus lanes.

Those are some of the things which I hope the Minister will assure me can be introduced within the framework of the Bill by secondary legislation, rather than in an additional Bill. They are essential to attracting people back to using buses, and to ensuring that buses are not idling in their lanes because of traffic jams, polluting the atmosphere, as well as holding up the rest of the traffic. We need to make buses much more attractive in this respect, so that they are quick, reliable, clean and healthy. If we can do that, and get at least a significant proportion of people back into using buses, then this Bill represents a very good start. I congratulate Ministers on it and will support it.

Transport System: Failings

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Snape on this debate and his opening speech, particularly his excoriation of the railway system for the experience of passengers these days under privatisation, which my noble friend Lord Murphy has just underlined. His anecdote about Newport station takes me back even further than 45 years to when I used to visit my Welsh relatives. I quite admired and was rather impressed by Newport station, and even more impressed by the train service at the time. Sadly, that has deteriorated.

I also welcome, like my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Murphy, the announcement by my friend in another place Louise Haigh, whom I hope will soon be Secretary of State for Transport. We need a drastic change in the way we run our system. Since privatisation, the situation has become even more dire for passengers year by year, and we have ended up in effect with the state having responsibility without power and having to meet a significant part of the cost. The system of franchising is broken and successive regulators have failed. We have had the Strategic Rail Authority, the Office of the Rail Regulator and now we have the Office of Rail and Road. It would have been more accurate if they had all been designated with the title of “Offtrack”, because that is what they are. The system has gone downhill ever since privatisation. Whatever the failings beforehand, they have been multiplied since.

This calls for a broader approach to transport policy—although, before I leave rail, I should mention that the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, has drawn to my attention that, since the start of the debate and his own speech, there have been 10 cancellations out of Euston station this very day.

The question is wider than rail policy. Transport policy has many objectives. Some of them are contradictory, and they need a cohesive and clear approach, both within and between sectors. Some of these contradictions and problems are macro, such as the state of the railways and the fiasco of HS2, but some are micro. I shall give a personal example. I live seven miles from a railway station. There is a bus service to it from my town of only one bus per hour, and outside rush hour there is only one train per hour, but the first three buses in the morning are scheduled to arrive three minutes after the trains for London and Exeter have departed. A little bit of integration could help because that causes people to rely entirely on their cars, increasing congestion on our inadequate rural roads and increasing pollution.

We need integration within and between sectors. I support more space for cyclists, but some of the provision for cyclists contradicts road use elsewhere. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, has just reported one effect of shared space at floating bus stops. We must ensure that pedestrians as well as cyclists are protected and that the provision of cycle lanes—which I support—is done in such a way that it does not increase greater congestion and danger to pedestrians.

We need a real integrated plan. Others have referred to the proposals by the Institution of Civil Engineers for the integration of transport infrastructure; obviously it needs to be broader than infrastructure, but infrastructure is where it starts.

We need to ensure some degree of modal shift away from fossil fuel-using cars and pollution-producing transport. Freight trains, for example, contribute about a quarter of the carbon emissions that the equivalent on the roads would produce. We need to ensure that this is provided for in the infrastructure on the roads as well as on rail.

I shall mention three issues that are dear to my heart but which have not been touched on much today. First, the switch to electric vehicles has slowed down. I was a member of your Lordships’ Environment and Climate Change Committee when we produced a report about a year ago on this topic. I would like a clear and positive response about reversing that decline and ensuring in particular that there is a market for small electric vehicles in this country.

My second point is on aviation. I declare my vice-presidency of BALPA. If aviation is to continue to supply domestic and short-haul routes, it has to be more environmentally sustainable. That means more investment in sustainable aviation fuel. It also means concentrating on changing the pattern of flights, scheduling and payload, and the way in which our domestic aviation system works. That has hardly received any attention.

Finally, building on what the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, has said on road safety, I was disheartened a few weeks ago when the Minister replied to an Oral Question that he saw no reason to have a road safety strategy. Previous road safety strategies have worked very successfully and saved many lives. We need to integrate driver behaviour, road and vehicle design, road signage, speed and traffic organisation. That is quite difficult, but it needs to be done. To reduce the continuing high level of accidents and danger to pedestrians and car occupants, we need a proper road safety strategy. I hope the Minister can include that in his reply.

I hope that we can see a more integrated approach. I hope that the incoming Government will provide one. The announcement on railways is a good start, but we need a much broader policy that takes in all modes and types of users.

South West Rail Resilience Programme

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to provide funding to ensure the timely completion of the works to protect the rail line at Dawlish from flooding, including Phase 5 of the South West Rail Resilience programme.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Berkeley, and with his permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, I can confirm that Network Rail has delivered two phases of the south-west resilience programme, providing protection to the railway at Dawlish from coastal flooding. The third and fourth phases addressing cliff protection measures are in delivery, with a combined budget of £85 million. Network Rail is being funding to deliver a detailed proposal for the fifth and final phase, which addresses cliff protection for a mile-long stretch of the railway.

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad to see that Members are so keen to speak. I thank the Minister for her reply, but it does not really answer the Question—or it does so only partly—and it does not reflect the importance of this line to the already existing problems of transport links to west Devon and Cornwall. Can she reassure us that the vital fourth and fifth phases—she mentioned the fourth, but not the fifth—will indeed be fully funded by Network Rail and the department? Can she give us an estimated date of completion to restore full resilience to this vital link to the far south-west?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As I mentioned in my opening Answer, Network Rail is working on the fifth phase of the works in some detail; we need to establish detailed proposals for this mile-long stretch of the railway. Local consultations have happened, and there was some reluctance around some of the proposals put forward. Therefore, Network Rail is looking at the scope and costs of the fifth phase.

HGV Drivers

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, this crisis was eminently predictable in light of the age profile of UK haulage drivers and the prospect of Brexit. Do the Government now recognise that temporary visas and increased testing capacity will not resolve the basic problem? Do Ministers accept that in order to attract and retain the next generation of HGV drivers we need not only to provide more training, increase pay and stop the permanent escalation of hours but to improve working conditions, particularly adequate and hygienic facilities at lorry parks, which are provided by public authorities in much of the continent but not here, so that too many drivers have to sleep in their cabs?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I think that the noble Lord has just pointed out the complex and convoluted nature of the solutions to this problem, which is indeed long-standing. I say again that we are working closely with the industry on this. Of course it is not just the haulage industry that has skin in this game; it is also the people who provide services to the haulage industry. The noble Lord will be pleased to hear that I am working with National Highways to figure out what we can do to improve services at motorway service areas and to see whether we can develop some more.

Lorry Drivers

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

The Minister appears to be blaming the industry and the pandemic but, given that she referred to discussions in 2016 and 2018, do the Government not have some responsibility in this respect? This crisis was eminently predictable, given the age profile of drivers and the likely reaction of east European drivers to Brexit. Do the Government need more powers and responsibilities to establish an emergency programme of training for qualified HGV drivers and to implement it in concert with the industry, unions and FE sector now?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I have said that this is a partnership between the industry and the Government. We will do what we can and we need industry to step up to the plate. I reiterate that the HGV levy has been lifted until mid-2022. That is a huge saving for the sector. It has the money that it could now invest in skills, and I very much encourage it to do so.

E-Scooters

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

When one purchases an e-scooter, the vast majority of retailers say that it is for use on private land only. I will take the noble Baroness’s comments back to the department to see what else we can do.

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, given the dangers to pedestrians, particularly disabled pedestrians, how come there are scooters on the pavement within a few hundred yards of the Palace of Westminster and elsewhere, when it is against the law to be on the pavement anywhere? How come there have been so few prosecutions and that you are still allowed to buy and sell these scooters when, in the trial areas, you must use those provided by designated renters only?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I have probably addressed many of the issues that the noble Lord points out. I will take that point about enforcement and what more we can do back to the Home Office. E-scooters should never be on the pavement, as is the case with bicycles. The OECD’s international transport forum analysed various global studies of e-scooter safety and concluded that they are broadly equivalent to cycles. That may or may not be reassuring to the noble Lord.

Hauliers

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has spelled out the problems. The reason they have not been as apparent as they might is not just the Covid effect, but as the period of grace means that the regulations have not been fully implemented either across the channel or in Northern Ireland.

My main point is a different one. Once we return to something like pre-existing levels of exports and imports, there will be a serious problem of a lack of skilled HGV drivers. A disproportionate number of HGV drivers from and to the UK, whether employed, subcontracted or owner-drivers, have been EU citizens, mainly from central and eastern Europe. A lot of small EU firms also operate over here. The British-based driving workforce is ageing.

Brexit has meant thousands of haulage drivers who are EU citizens leaving the UK and small EU-owned hauliers are also pulling out. Part of the post-Brexit plan for road haulage has to be an upgraded workforce. We need a systematic training and upskilling system and recruitment of a new generation of drivers. I see no plan for that, either by Government or by the industry. In her reply, can the Minister please enlighten the Committee on what is the strategy for upgrading the UK road haulage workforce?

Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 1) (Amendment) Order 2020

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her words. She made it sound as if these amending orders were a relatively straightforward way of dealing with the post-Brexit situation but, taken together with everything else we know, it conjures up something closer to a hard border in Kent than the free, frictionless trade we were promised after Brexit.

I have four areas to raise with the Minister but, when she winds up, can she first indicate whether any of this is likely to be included in any trade agreements that might be reached within the next few days? Rumour is that there is a specific sub-agreement on road haulage that might make life a bit easier than what she has described when Operation Brock would be needed.

The first point I want to raise is on guidance. Over the weekend, I tried to read the Government’s 24-page guidance for hauliers and commercial drivers. It is not an easy read or particularly user-friendly, but it is better than the 262-page document they issued the previous month. However, it is not comprehensible at a glance. What efforts have the Government made to ensure that information is communicated to haulage offices and to individual drivers, who themselves may be of multiple nationalities, in a form that is easily comprehensible? What is surely needed here at this late stage is a user-friendly handbook, plus perhaps an electronic equivalent. Can the Minister report on discussions with the industry and the trade unions on a short, easy-to-read guide for hauliers and drivers to understand?

Secondly, on the related point of enforcement, failure to produce correct documents will fall on individual drivers who may have their vehicles demobilised or turned back, and who may themselves be fined £300, as the Minister explained. My point is that the penalty should surely fall on the company, which has the legal responsibility for documentation, not on individual drivers. It is surely wrong to penalise the worker or subcontracted driver for the failures of the haulier’s administration. Has any discussion on this arrangement involved the trade unions representing drivers? I understand that the Minister’s colleague, Rachel Maclean, told some of our colleagues that she would meet Unite the Union but that, as of this morning, no such meeting has yet been arranged.

The majority of drivers employed by foreign and British hauliers operating on the cross-channel routes are not British nationals; many are, of course, eastern European. There is a difficulty not only of communication but, potentially, of collecting any fine if it falls on the driver and not the company. There is another problem here as well. There will be a need to differentiate drivers and trucks of different nationalities. I understand that there will be an electronic system, which is not completely working properly. It will be able to do so to a degree, but what then happens? For example, trade between Ireland and the remaining countries in the EU mainly transits via Great Britain, but Irish lorries from an EU member state—Ireland—will presumably have easier access through French and Belgian ports, so should the UK side of this operation not allow them to go through more easily? What arrangements have been made for this Irish trade? Will it be given priority, as would logically be the case? While I am about the Irish trade, what are the equivalent arrangements at Holyhead and Fishguard?

Regarding Operation Brock, traffic management and parking, these regulations imply an enormous operation. They envisage situations where the traffic is either near static or gridlocked. Does responsibility for enforcement and Operation Brock, with traffic management on the M2, M20 and feeder roads, fall on the Kent Police or some new organisation? I understand that document checks will be carried out by DVSA personnel. Is the cost of all this to come out of general taxation or a grant to DVSA, Kent County Council or Kent Police? Does the operation involve customs officers and Border Force staff in checking other aspects of the documentation? What are the additional cost and manpower resources for that operation? It is potentially an enormously substantial traffic management task.

Moreover, how will local commercial traffic which operates only within Kent and south-east England—not in international trade at all—be allowed to proceed and not get caught up in the gridlock of international trade? How, for example, will those lorries given key priority because they are carrying live animals or fresh produce be able to work their way through and who is responsible for seeing that they do? Is that the police or the DVSA, and how will they have the authority to get them through?

Are there systems for communicating severe delays back upstream, so that lorry drivers coming through the country either divert or rest well before they reach Kent, so that the situation does not get worse? I understand that hauliers and Unite the Union have also raised the question of facilities at the lorry parks, where drivers may have to stay for hours, if not days, in some cases, if the situation gets really bad. Frankly, a few Portaloos scattered along the M20 is not sufficient.

Finally, can the Minister clarify something on phasing in? In dealing with traffic coming the other way, into the UK, the Government have indicated that they do not initially intend to impose heavy checks at Dover and that the system will be phased in in five stages. Is there a similar understanding with the EU, or with the French and Belgian authorities, so that there will be a phasing-in of their controls the other side of the channel? If that were the case, it would ease the problem on this side to a degree and much in these orders would therefore not often be needed.

Road Vehicles and Non-Road Mobile Machinery (Type-Approval) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation of these regulations and recognise the urgent need to get them through in time for the end of the transition period, so I intervene not to oppose or amend the transposition, but to get a clearer idea of how the Government intend to proceed in this area, once we have a so-called independent system of regulation, and to put these regulations in a wider context.

My first concern relates to the degree to which any future revisions of these regulations can, in reality, be completely unilateral here in the UK. For example, just this week, the Government announced that they intend to phase out all new diesel and petrol cars by 2030. Presumably, in advance, the Government will tighten the regulations in stages to make a smooth transition away from fossil-fuel-based cars and lorries by making the worst carbon emitters, in effect, illegal first and then by making, in stages, all new vehicles, whether manufactured here or imported, illegal from 2030. Can we do that if the EU is not doing so on the same timescale or in the same stages?

The vast majority of cars and commercial vehicles registered in this country are made by EU-based companies, such as Volkswagen, Renault, Volvo and BMW, or by non-EU companies that have Europe-wide subsidiaries, such as Honda, Toyota, Ford and General Motors. Car production systems are, in effect, an integrated European shop floor, in which different components are produced in different countries, with assembly in different places according to the model. They are traded across Europe without regard to their final assembly location.

In the emissions area, EU regulations are, perhaps notoriously, set with the interests of German manufacturers firmly in mind. That is unlikely to change much after Brexit. It is possible, nevertheless, that the EU’s new commitments on climate change will impose tougher regulations on new models. It is possible, but not certain and probably not likely. So how, in this integrated world of cross-border manufacturing and trading of new models, is it possible for UK carbon-emissions limitations to be seriously out of sync with EU-regulated limits? I am talking about the 10-year period from now until 2030. In reality, can the UK move to tighter limits than Europe during that run-in period? If not, the target to phase out all new fossil-fuel-based vehicles by 2030 looks seriously more difficult.

Another query relates to integrating limits on carbon emissions, as the second and third regulations here do, with other vehicular emissions under air quality rules. In a different context, the Government have already announced in the Environment Bill that they will at some point require levels for area-based exposure limits on a number of exceedances of noxious emissions, from NOx and NO₂ to particulates, in a way that would be better than current EU standards and closer to the WHO recommended maximum. At this point, I declare my honorary presidency of the Environmental Protection UK charity.

There are other sources of air pollution but clearly the biggest contributors to excess pollution and most level exceedances are vehicle emissions and the concomitant traffic problems. While the origins of particulates in the combustion system are different from carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, the filtering systems are not very different. The engineering therefore could be combined. The history of successive phases of government attitudes towards diesel shows that, if not managed properly, there can be a conflict between air quality ambitions and carbon reduction ambitions. Would it not be better to seek a unified system of regulation and specification to cover all vehicle emissions? Are the Government considering this either unilaterally or with the EU or, indeed, the Japanese and American regulatory authorities? If not, why not?

Underlying all this, in all vehicular emission regulations are the Government really committed to an enhanced system of real-world testing of the actual level of emissions on the road, rather than relying on the results of laboratory trials? These are conducted largely by the manufacturers and, as we saw in the Volkswagen case, the results can be illegally distorted by them. Unless we guarantee the real-world accuracy of emissions claims, no amount of improvement in the regulations will deliver, in terms of either carbon saving or cleaner, healthier air.