Avanti Trains

Lord Woodley Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The noble Baroness asks several questions there, and I would answer by saying that the targets are proportionate to the level of investment agreed with the business plan for any given year.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

On service levels, do the Government share the concerns of the RMT union about Avanti’s proposals to withdraw cash payments from its catering services? This move shows scant regard for those older and poorer passengers who use only cash. Does the Minister agree with me that it would be far better for customers to have the option of cash and card for catering services?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

That really is a matter for the operator; it is not for government to decide that particular issue.

Rail Ticket Offices

Lord Woodley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for her exposition of the greatness of the staff. We absolutely value the staff, which is why we want to get them out there to enable them to help more people. Ticket vending machines are being continually upgraded and there are all sorts of ways we can upgrade them: for example, we are adding video calling to enable people to ask the absolute experts if they wish to take a particularly complicated route. If AI is appropriate, I am sure that the train operating companies are looking at it.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak from personal experience, having travelled up and down from Liverpool twice this week alone. Only this morning, I was listening to the staff there who were worried sick about their jobs, but more importantly, I watched a partially sighted customer trying to get help and support which would not have been available had there been no assistant to help them. This is not about people; it is about profits and wiping people’s jobs out. I urge others to make sure, as I have already done today, that in respect of the consultation paper they vote no to this outrageous proposal.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, those staff will still be there to help the passenger, whether they be partially sighted or for whatever reason they need help. The noble Lord says that this is about profits but it is not at all, because the costs of running the railways fall to the taxpayer. We need to have a modern seven-day railway and that is what this Government are going to deliver.

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

Lord Woodley Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

There was a fair amount in that statement. The noble Baroness mentioned Oxford, and it is important to understand that all the issues she mentioned should be taken up with the local authority. The Government have never been in control of local roads and are not now. These issues are devolved to the local authority, and I encourage her to raise those issues with her local council.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

Speaking of convenience and safe movement of traffic, can the Minister say what is happening with autonomous vehicles, be they cars, lorries or buses, particularly with the trials going on in this country and stretching right across Europe?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The Government believe that there is a huge future for autonomous vehicles, and we will bring forward legislation when parliamentary time allows.

Rail Services

Lord Woodley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I think that the reason for the delay in the legislation has been well set out both by the Secretary of State and the Rail Minister in front of the Transport Select Committee. There is a significant pressure on parliamentary time at the current time, owing to various challenges that were not anticipated. It is also the case that we have received thousands of contributions to the consultation around Great British Railways. We are working at speed on all the things that do not need legislation, and we will bring forward legislation in due course.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, there are things that we do not do if we want to improve the railways. First, we do not close ticket offices to the detriment of customers, and we do not sack guards on trains. The single best way to improve the whole network has already been proved on the east coast main line, which is to take the railways back into public ownership—starting with the absolutely disgraceful Avanti franchise, which I have been the victim of personally for the last four out of five weeks. That would improve efficiencies at the end of it, increase revenues and get better value for taxpayers’ money. Does the Minister finally agree?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am very concerned that the noble Lord states that guards are being sacked. If he could let me know who is doing that, I would be very happy to take that forward.

Rail Strikes: Impact Assessment

Lord Woodley Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

There are varying levels of union membership in the regional control centres responsible for looking at what happens on our smart motorways and setting signs appropriately. The Government have mitigations in place. If necessary, it may be appropriate to put a speed limit on the motorways. We are looking at this in detail, and will do as and when we know more about what level of workforce will be in place.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, while nobody wants disruption over Christmas—or at any other time, for that matter—it is an open secret that the Government are obstructing a settlement with the RMT. Everybody knows that. Likewise, the Minister knows that there is not a cat in hell’s chance of the rail unions accepting a below-inflation pay deal, with thousands of job cuts and particularly with driver-only operations and closing ticket offices, none of which benefits the travelling public—in fact, quite the opposite. Does the Minister agree that the Government should stop interfering in these negotiations and stop politicising this industrial dispute, and instead allow the train companies to settle?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Well read, my Lord. I do not accept what the noble Lord just said. Indeed, I slightly object to him telling me what I know when it is followed by words that are not true. There is a good offer on the table from the Government, which is fair to workers and to taxpayers, and includes important workforce reforms. Without these things, we will not get the services we need and the fares we want. He says it will cause thousands of people to lose their jobs; there are guarantees of a job for anyone who wants one. The one thing that would take this forward would be for the RMT executive to ask its members whether they would like to accept the offer from the Rail Delivery Group and its members. It is refusing to do so. That would provide the clarity and transparency for everybody to understand what the membership of the RMT actually wants.

Seafarers’ Wages Bill [HL]

Lord Woodley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment because the concerns that we have raised in this House have been quite wide ranging, from the principles of the Bill and its compliance with international law to details of its implementation. We are all agreed that we need to do something about the pitifully low wages being paid to seafarers. I think we were all probably quite shocked to hear from the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Berkeley, just how low they are. But wages are by no means the only problem; rosters and pensions and so on are equally problematic. So we commend the Government for giving this some thought, particularly in the nine-point plan; the difficulty is that if the Bill does not work as intended, nobody is a winner.

We know that the International Chamber of Shipping is very concerned about compliance with international conventions, and we have heard from both the RMT union and the port authorities that they just do not see how the Bill is going to work in practice. We know that the Government do not accept those concerns. That is fine. But it is slightly troubling to me anyway that the key stakeholder groups have not really been listened to.

Rather than re-table amendments on all those issues, I think we have settled on this amendment being the best way forward because it provides an opportunity to review how the Bill is operating in practice and, crucially, how it is fitting with the nine-point plan and with the progress we are making on international wage corridors and so on. We can see how the international shipping community is responding and where the port authorities have found ways of delivering what the Government ask. Crucially, we might be able to work out whether this legislation is resulting in a better deal for seafarers.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, this amendment is needed to put the seafarers’ charter in the Bill. There is no doubt about that. Voluntary agreements do not work with employers such as P&O which have shown complete and utter contempt for the law and have avoided working with trade unions fighting to preserve local jobs that really keep the economy going. As a good example, the agency crew on P&O ferries are denied the basic ILO right to organise.

We have mentioned often in this debate the Dover-Calais route, and that must be an absolute priority for imposing conditions that P&O and Irish Ferries have to abide by, stopping them exploiting foreign seafarers on poverty pay for long and exhausting roster patterns. We need more ratings to be trained, but it is disappointing to see that only 60 new ratings have been trained since 2020. It is scandalous at a time when demand for ratings is increasing. The number of UK ratings employed in the industry has plummeted, with almost all the jobs operating in and out of UK ports now held by foreign workers.

Will the Government act now to protect our depleted and declining maritime workforce or are they prepared to see UK seafarers suffer and struggle for survival at the hands of law-breaking profiteers such as P&O? I urge everybody to support this important amendment.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, which goes some way to implementing one of the Government’s nine points in response to P&O Ferries’ shameful conduct. That point was the creation of minimum wage corridors and

“asking unions and operators to agree a common level of seafarer protection”

on ferry routes.

In the Minister’s recent letter to us of 21 October, she said that the Government were

“committed to a voluntary Seafarers’ Charter because it avoids confusion, complexity and over-regulation of an industry. It is right to keep this as a voluntary agreement initially, while we monitor the impacts of the Charter. However, we are keeping the need for a legislative basis under review.”

It appears, disappointingly, that discussions have stalled; the last version of the charter has not been circulated since early August, and the forum of employers and trade unions overseeing it appears to have been unilaterally scrapped by the department. The crucial area of roster patterns, which had been agreed by unions and operators —two weeks on and two weeks off—has now stalled, because the Government have proposed that further research is needed. That may be delay the publication of the seafarers’ charter. Is the Minister in a position today to give us a timeline for completion of that vital work?

Still, the principle of collective bargaining lies behind point nine, and also underlies the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe. Given the precedent established by P&O Ferries in abrogating without notice collective agreements with unions that had been updated and developed over 100 years, it is essential for the Government to act to restore protection for seafarers by way of upholding collective bargaining, as intimated in the Minister’s letter.

It may be relevant for your Lordships to note that the EU, which of course covers the countries to and from which most of the routes that we are considering go, has adopted a social pillar, which in principle encourages the social partners

“to negotiate and conclude collective agreements”.

Partly in consequence of that, the European Council and Parliament have recently approved a draft directive on minimum wages. Seafarers are excluded on the basis that ship owners and seafarers’ unions will collectively bargain their own procedures to determine minimum wages. The UK should encourage such sectoral collective bargaining. That would be consistent with our obligations under the trade and co-operation agreement.

A return to encouragement of the social partners in the shipping industry to negotiate a comprehensive seafarers’ charter, impact assessed and monitored in accordance with my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe’s amendment, is important. I invite the Government to adopt his amendment.

Airports: Delays

Lord Woodley Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I maintain my position on intervening in the price of flights, but we are absolutely intervening in terms of the standards of care that passengers receive from the aviation sector. Again, as I mentioned, in the letter that we have recently written to the industry, one thing that we made very clear was that passengers must be informed promptly of their consumer rights. Obviously, passengers should take those up with the airline itself and then with the CAA if it is not acceptably resolved with the airline.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, as we know, the recent airport delays are undoubtedly a direct result of opportunistic employers such as BA slashing jobs, pay and conditions during the pandemic. Now, unfortunately, we can all see that the chickens are indeed all coming home to roost, with many airlines too slow to rehire and refusing to restore wages that were stolen from staff under the cover of Covid. However, I am pleased to tell the House that, thanks to my union Unite, members working for CAE cabin crew have now secured an 18% pay rise—yes, 18%—and £1,200 summer bonus. Does the Minister agree that BA should follow suit and reverse its 10% pandemic cut for everyone, not just for management as is currently the case?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As I am sure the noble Lord will not be surprised to learn, the Government will not get involved in the pay and conditions discussions within the aviation sector, as it is a private industry.