Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 13 and 14 are in my name. I declare again my interest as an advisor to AtkinsRéalis in the UK and Ireland.

I have a lot of sympathy with my noble friend on the Front Bench and his comments about various aspects of the Bill; in particular, his comments about the European Union. We should not be looking simply to match the European Union going forward. Indeed, I am very much in favour of having high standards which are not tied to the European Union. Where we can do better—and we should do better—without doing damage to the commercial viability of the UK industry, we should seriously consider taking that kind of step.

While mentioning briefly the international side, in the light of the easyJet takeover proposals, I urge the Minister and his colleagues in the department to use the most muscular approach on this. It would not normally be possible for a UK airline to buy a US one. We need to make sure that the rules and ownership are properly and rigorously enforced. It is urgent to do that.

My two amendments are designed simply to try to put some limitation on the powers that would reside with the Civil Aviation Authority as a result of the Bill. I always envisaged changes upon leaving the European Union as likely to lead to a degree of deregulation and a relaxation of restrictions. The Minister knows that I raised a number of concerns with him in Committee about the extent of the powers to enforce—to enter premises and to impose penalties. These two amendments are designed to put some limitations around the freedoms of the regulator to take enforcement action, so that it does so only in what are genuinely serious situations. I know the Minister is not going to accept these amendments, but I would ask him to give some thought to how this is applied in regulations. Of course, we need a regulator to have the ability to take serious action in a serious situation, but what we do not want is to create a situation where we have undue levels of enforcement on small matters in a way that is overly onerous on the commercial independence and freedom of businesses. We want common sense; these two amendments are designed to apply common sense, and I hope the Minister will be able to take that principle forward.

Finally, I will just comment on my noble friend Lord Young’s amendment, which I am sure he will be speaking to in a moment. Given the impact on the airlines of the failures, when they do happen, in the air traffic control system, I think he makes an important point that is worthy of consideration by the Government.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that trailer. The reason behind Amendment 65 in my name is what happened on 28 August 2023, when the air traffic system run by NATS failed. There was an independent review which looked into the debacle, and I want to quote very briefly from the report, which said:

“From CAA estimates, over 700,000 passengers were affected by cancellations and delays ascribed to the incident, including approximately 300,000 impacted by flight cancellations, approximately 95,000 by long delays (over three hours) and at least a further 300,000 by shorter delays”.


The review went on to estimate the costs involved:

“Based on the information provided by the airlines most affected by the incident, the Panel has estimated that the costs to airlines were approximately £65m. In addition, substantial costs were incurred by passengers, airports, tour operators, insurers, and others. The Panel was unable to accurately quantify these costs. It is likely that the total cost was in the region of £75m to £100m”.


Noble Lords may be surprised to learn that the company responsible for those losses—NATS—with a turnover of over £1 billion, with profits of over £200 million in each of the last two years, has immunity from those losses. Those losses instead are borne by the airlines, which are tied into a monopoly provider. To my mind, this is a manifest, wholly indefensible position that flies in the face of natural justice, and that is what my amendment seeks to remedy.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

65: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Compensation reimbursement scheme for airlinesAfter section 9 of the Transport Act 2000 (power to exclude services from effect of section 8) insert—“9A Reimbursement of passenger compensation payments(1) A licence holder must establish and maintain a scheme for the reimbursement of the costs incurred by airlines in paying compensation to passengers in consequence of a qualifying disruption.(2) For the purposes of this section, a “qualifying disruption” means a cancellation caused by the fault or failure of the licence holder.””

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will be brief. I am grateful to all those who supported Amendment 65 several hours ago. I am grateful to the Minister for replying and I recognise that his hands were tied. My noble friend Lord Moylan said that the Minister played his trump card by quoting my noble friend Lord Harper, a former Secretary of State, in his defence. I do not know if you can overtrump three times, but three former Secretaries of State took a different view from my noble friend Lord Harper so I would argue that was indeed overtrumped.

The Minister produced three arguments in defence. First, he said safety was pre-eminent and that was why NATS should not be fined. Safety is pre-eminent. It is pre-eminent for the National Health Service, rail, water and power—all those utilities are subject to penalties if they underperform, so there is no conceivable reason for exempting NATS from the same regime. Secondly, the Minister said that any fines on NATS would result in higher charges for the airlines. I could not have been clearer in my speech that any fines should come out of NATS’ profits and not be added to the base for charging for the airlines. The biggest fine it could have had so far was £63 million and its profits for the last two years were £200 million.

Thirdly, the Minister said that my amendment was not appropriate. The Liberal Democrats indicated that they were going to listen to the Minister before deciding what to do. I hope they share my disappointment at the Minister’s reply and that such Lib Dems who may be still in the House will support my amendment. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

Railways Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has just told a very moving story, and I think everyone who listened to that will agree that that state of affairs is simply not acceptable.

I join others in paying tribute to the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson. He was an excellent Permanent Secretary at the Department of the Environment in the 1990s, when I was Minister of Housing and Planning. He was a source of wise advice, and he kept me out of serious trouble for three or four years.

Speaking in this debate is a bit like attending one’s own funeral, because the Bill basically undoes the reforms I oversaw as Secretary of State between 1995 and 1997. It is worth reminding the House what those reforms achieved. As my noble friend Lord Lansley said, passenger numbers doubled; services improved by one-third; an operating deficit under British Rail was turned into an operating surplus; investment in rolling stock, electrification, signalling, and station modernisation improved, as the dead hand of the Treasury was removed from the capital programme; passenger safety improved; industrial relations improved; branch lines were reopened; and passenger fares were capped at RPI minus 1%, a reformed abandoned by the then incoming Labour Government, who kept everything else the same for about four years. It is worth making the point that many of those improvements and reforms, post privatisation, were driven by former employees of British Rail, who welcomed the challenges and freedoms that came with the policy.

However, we are where we are. The Government have a mandate for what is in the Bill, which is basically to bring the system under one ownership. On that, I was struck by what the Minister said in response to a recent Oral Question:

“Virtually the whole of the world, in countries that run railways, is incredulous that this country managed to separate the infrastructure from the operations for more than 30 years”.—[Official Report, 20/4/26; col. 503.]


That simply is not the case. Most European Union members have legally separated their rail infrastructure management from their train operations, as mandated by a European Union directive. In fact, we can do what is in the Bill only because of Brexit—something I am not sure the Minister mentioned. The countries that have done what he finds incredible include Sweden, which did it before we did, as well as France—where SNCF has two separate subsidiaries to promote competition—Spain, Italy, Denmark and Finland.

That brings me to the related argument that underpins the Government’s policy. According to the White Paper, A Railway Fit for Britain’s Future:

“This is a necessary first step towards ending fragmentation … That is why we will establish Great British Railways … a single ‘directing mind’”.


However, that is not the model used by successful companies throughout the world. What the Minister calls “fragmentation”, they call specialisation: the ability to secure the component goods and services needed from a variety of sources, ensuring innovation, competition and resilience. BAE Systems and AstraZeneca in this country—and Apple abroad—do not do everything themselves; they outsource, commission and buy in the marketplace. They have been successful because of what the Minister calls “fragmentation”.

The Minister may say that this does not apply to transport because it is different—but it is not. The safest and cheapest form of transport in this country is by air, but you could not find an industry that is more fragmented. The airlines do not own the aircraft; they do not own the terminals; they do not run the national air traffic system; and they do not do the security or the baggage handling. Some airlines do not even employ pilots; they hire qualified self-employed pilots. I challenge the assertion that an industry that is fragmented or specialised is less efficient than an integrated one. Nor incidentally does aviation have a single “directing mind”, which has Orwellian overtones.

My concern is that the three main benefits that came with privatisation will be lost under these reforms. Investment in rail was taken almost entirely off the public sector balance sheet in 1995; it created a market of train operators to replace a public monopoly, and the business model forced the industry to look outwards towards its customers not inwards to the sponsoring department.

On the first, I had the pleasure of negotiating the transport budget with the Treasury both before the railways were privatised and after. Before privatisation, I would go to Star Chamber and they would say, “George, we’re really pleased to see you. We’ve just had the Health Secretary, who wants more doctors and nurses; we’ve had the Education Secretary, who wants more teachers; and we’ve had the Secretary of State for Defence, who wants more soldiers. Priority is the language of politics, and politics is the language of priorities. We’re very sorry, George, you can’t have your new train set for Christmas”. After privatisation, that dialogue simply did not take place; the market responded to the business case that was made.

There is also a risk that the Office for National Statistics will put the rolling stock companies on to the Government’s balance sheet—as it did with housing associations—because of the degree of control over the investment that the Government propose. That would play havoc with their borrowing requirement.

The second advantage was to bring in other successful transport operators: people who ran buses, airlines, shipping or train services overseas. Their skills were applied to running the railway here and to breaking the British Rail monopoly. The Government are not even adopting the concessions—the management contracts with the private sector—that were so successful with the bus companies in London and Manchester, as my noble friend Lord Lansley said.

At a meeting with the Minister last week—he has been very generous with his time—he said that the franchise or concession model was not adopted for GBR because the train operators were not interested in the deal. That is strange, because those train operators are the very same companies that run the bus operators that have successfully run exactly those contract arrangements in Manchester and London. Perhaps they overplayed their hand. We are now back to a monopoly, with the risk of a national strike by train drivers, which was avoided by franchising or concessions.

The third innovation was the incentive to grow the market, to look outwards towards the customer. Under privatisation, once a company had won the franchise, the only way that it could increase turnover and profit was by winning more customers. However, when I was Transport Secretary before privatisation, it made little difference to British Rail whether it had more or fewer customers; it just meant that it got more or less subsidy from the Secretary of State. I was its real customer and not the passenger.

For me, the jury is out as to whether what is proposed will give the industry the secure, efficient and customer-focused future that it really needs.

Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as I was chair of the Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group, which published a report last year. I thank the officials at the Department for Transport for their support. The vast majority of the recommendations from that report are now amendments to the Bill. As of today, I have been appointed a board member of Active Travel England, and I also chair the Accessible Transport Policy Commission. We had a useful meeting this morning which looked in a UK context at disabled people’s experience of travelling. I understand that aviation is more complicated than that. The sheer difficulty that disabled people have in using any form of transport came out clearly in the meeting. I make reference to the Transport Select Committee’s report, Access Denied: Rights Versus Reality.

We have probably a once-in-a-generation chance to make a difference to how disabled people are able to access this industry. Since Second Reading, I have had a much-increased number of emails from disabled people who have had truly dreadful experiences of flying, and some of those will be picked up in the next group.

I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 2 and 16, which are in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. They simply ask that we change “may make provision” to “must make provision”. “May” is too vague in this context, so we have a chance to make a change. The Minister will know from other debates that we have had around disability access, such as the debates around taxis, that it is hard enough when we are trying to enact accessibility legislation that was passed 30 years ago, let alone what we are trying to do now. There have been a lot of promises about what disabled people might have the opportunity to rely on. Unless we have a much bigger commitment to “must make provision”, it feels like we will be kicking the can down the road, as we have done with the rail industry and all the derogations around it.

I am more than happy to discuss a tighter range of regulations that the Secretary of State may make or to work across your Lordships’ Chamber. I am simply looking for assurance that there will be a genuine shift in how disabled people will experience air travel. Both this group and the next have a number of important amendments that both seek to strengthen the Bill and to provide more clarity for disabled people. For them, currently and so far, the experience is far too ad hoc. I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 109 in my name aims to remedy a manifest injustice whereby the airlines have to pay for customer compensation when the fault lies not with them but with NATS. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, who trailed this amendment in his Second Reading speech, but, in the time available, the Minister was not able to address it.

The problem manifested itself on 28 August 2023, when the air traffic system, managed by NATS, failed. An independent review was set up and its report gives the scale of the debacle:

“From CAA estimates, over 700,000 passengers were affected by cancellations and delays ascribed to the incident, including approximately 300,000 impacted by flight cancellations, approximately 95,000 by long delays (over three hours) and at least a further 300,000 by shorter delays”.


It went on to say that

“the incident on 28 August had substantial negative impacts on a large number of passengers, not only on the day of the outage but for several days afterwards, as it took until the following weekend for all the re-routed journeys to be completed”.

The review estimated the costs involved:

“Based on the information provided by the airlines most affected by the incident, the Panel has estimated that the costs to airlines were approximately £65m. In addition, substantial costs were incurred by passengers, airports, tour operators, insurers, and others. The Panel was unable to accurately quantify these costs. It is likely that the total cost was in the region of £75m to £100m”.


Finally, it said about passengers:

“Many passengers incurred costs which they could not recover, for example, the loss of pre-paid holidays, lost income from work to which passengers were not able to return, and other consequential losses. The total costs of this large group would be very difficult to calculate but is likely to have been many millions of pounds”.


However, when one reads the NATS annual report for that year, it puts a slightly different spin on the incident:

“A technical flight handling system issue in August necessitated a considerable reduction in flight capacity for a short period in order to ensure the skies remained safe”.


Noble Lords would expect that the guilty party, NATS, rather than the innocent parties, principally the airlines, would have to bear the costs—not a bit of it. The only cost to NATS was £1.8 million. In the words of the review, that was a

“relatively modest penalty associated with not meeting some of its performance … targets”.

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[Lord Grayling (Con)]

Will my noble friend allow me to help him a little? He may have heard of a company called Network Rail, which, if my memory serves me correctly, must pay compensation to train operators if it goes through the kinds of failing that he has identified. Were he to know anybody who used to chair Network Rail, he might have an interesting point to make.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My noble friend is a mind-reader; I was going to refer to Network Rail in about 40 seconds. As I said, as far as NERL’s ownership is concerned, it is different, but that should not preclude it having to pay up for claims.

The review then produced another pretext, which, again, does not stand up to scrutiny. This is what it said:

“Such a liability would probably lead to a substantial increase in the annual costs of the ATC”—


air traffic control—

“service, which could in turn lead to increased costs to airlines and passengers”.

What happens at the moment? The compensation liability rests with the airlines and, as such, it has already caused increased costs to passengers. If the airlines did not have the liability their costs would go down, but if NATS then passed back all the increased costs we would be back where we started. Crucially, that assumes that the regulator, the CAA, would allow the costs to be passed on by NATS to customers, instead of taking it out of profits. If, as happens with the water companies, costs were not passed on to consumers but funded out of profits then costs to the airlines and passengers would actually go down, not up—the opposite of what the review suggested.

I come to my noble friend’s intervention. The Minister will understand and, I hope, sympathise with the case I am making because of his previous responsibility for Network Rail. If, as my noble friend said, a passenger is delayed, the train operator pays the compensation. If Network Rail was responsible for the delay, it then reimburses the train operator. That is as it should be, and it is exactly what should happen in air transport. A failure in traffic control is paid for by the traffic controller. My amendment is supported by IATA, which actually wants to go further. It would like the amendment to be extended to airports and other parties that provide air services that can cause disruption yet are not liable for passenger compensation. Airlines currently pay all passenger compensation regardless of who is at fault—for example, the power failure at Heathrow last year.

To sum up and use management jargon, we need shared accountability across the value chain. I hope the Minister can respond positively to the case I have made and put right this manifest injustice.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 9, which seeks to strengthen the consumer protection provisions at the heart of the Bill. This amendment would insert two paragraphs into Clause 1. We believe that both are desirable and necessary if this legislation is to deliver meaningful change for the travelling public. The first would add the requirement for

“standardised, comparable information at the point of sale”.

Anyone who has purchased an airline ticket recently will be familiar with the booking experience. I will not go through all the painful detail but suffice to say that, by the time you come to the payment page, the fee you are charged bears little resemblance to the one that first encouraged you to make the booking.

That is not an accident; it is intentional. It is a business model that has moved, frankly, from the sublime to the ridiculous. For example, at the moment, the CMA is investigating Ryanair’s mandatory charge of £8 each way for the privilege of sitting with your own children. It is a business model that harms consumers, distorts competition and corrodes trust in the aviation sector. Airlines that compete fairly on total price are undercut by those which strip out every possible cost, just to put them back in. We do not tolerate these practices in other markets—imagine for one moment that the same situation was in place when you were doing your online grocery shopping. It means that consumers cannot make rational or informed choices. Again, that is the intention. Families on modest budgets find themselves paying significantly more than they had intended to.

My amendment would address this directly by requiring airlines and all ticket sellers—I emphasise all ticket sellers, whether the airlines themselves, online travel agents or price comparison websites—to display the total price up front, including all fees, taxes and unavoidable charges. We believe this is not a radical proposition. It is not difficult for the airlines, if they are selling direct to consumers, or their agents to comply with. Most consumers reasonably believe that this is the case already, so this amendment aims to make it so.

The second element of the amendment concerns passenger rights. When a flight is delayed or cancelled, or a passenger is denied boarding, they are entitled to certain protections, and rightly so. But the evidence consistently shows that a significant portion of affected passengers do not know what those rights are and that airlines do not always volunteer that information. My amendment would require this information about passenger rights in disruption scenarios to be provided clearly at the point of sale, not buried deep in terms and conditions in the small print, and accessible only to those who know how to look for it.

Thirdly, the information element concerns environmental impact. Consumers are increasingly seeking to make informed choices consistent with their values. Aviation, as we know, is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. While the sector as a whole must decarbonise, individuals, too, wish to understand the environmental impact of their individual journeys. Standardised carbon footprint information at the point of sale would enable informed choices. It would also in time, we hope, drive competition on environmental performance, an outcome that we argue would drive consumer-led carbon-reduction measures.

The second part of the amendment includes mandatory minimum compensation standards and, critically, automated payment mechanisms for flight delays, cancellations and denied boarding. The right to compensation for significant disruption already exists in law. Yet, year after year, consumer bodies and passengers find that it is not happening. They are waiting long times and often having to go to court and take legal action. That is an unacceptable situation.

The solution that I have proposed is an automation system to make sure that, where delays happen, there is an automatic payment so that you do not have to go through a complicated process to do it. The airlines have all this information. They know who is on their planes, they know who is not, they know when they are delayed and they know when compensation needs to be paid. We do not believe that this requirement would be too onerous on the airlines. It would simply make it a more efficient, fair and effective system.

We welcome this Bill. We recognise the consumer protections, but we feel that they need to have real bite. That is what my amendments seek to do. Our worry is that, if we do not put stronger protections in the Bill, we will simply have gestures towards consumer rights without actually putting them in statute. With the inclusion of these amendments, we would take concrete steps to make sure that we are acting in the passengers’ best interests in making these systems fairer and more efficient.

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I wanted to let all the Members who had amendments speak first, notwithstanding the Front Benches. I just wanted to touch on one amendment where I think I can add some level of knowledge. I agree completely with my noble friend Lord Moylan about the way in which my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham set out his case with some charm and tenaciousness. However, I am afraid to say that I do not agree with the ineluctable logic. Let me just share with the Committee why.

I was in post when NATS had its failure and I will always remember getting that phone call telling me that something terrible had happened, with potentially millions of people whose holidays were going to get messed up. You pay a great deal of attention in that situation. I spent quite a lot of my time over that short period engaging with the aviation sector and ensuring that NATS, the airlines, the airports and everybody else worked incredibly closely together at pace to make sure that passengers had the least terrible experience possible in the circumstances.

Once the initial events had taken place and we had got everybody back to where they should have been, we considered—or I considered, as the then Secretary of State—exactly the point that my noble friend set out, about whether we ought to change the legislative regime around compensation. Superficially, there is a case for doing so, but let me deal with the reason why we decided not to.

The first point is that, if you look at the ownership structure of NATS, which I do not think that my noble friend touched on, almost half the business—49%—is owned by the Government or, in other words, the taxpayer. Some 42% is owned by a group of major airlines, 5% is owned by the staff through a trust and 4% by the company that owns Heathrow Airport. The conclusion that I came to was that, if you were to change the position so that NATS was responsible for paying compensation, almost half the bill would land on the taxpayer, just over 40% of it would effectively end up on a different group of airlines—not necessarily all the ones hit by it—and a little bit would effectively land on the staff. The conclusion that I reached was that that did not really get you to a significantly better place than the current position, accepting that the current position is suboptimal.

What made me think was that my noble friend set out the position with Network Rail, which is and has for a long time been completely owned by the taxpayer. There is a question about whether there is a purpose in doing that. The conclusion that we reached, and the present Government’s conclusion, is that we are not sure that the regime whereby Network Rail has to pay money to train operating companies is an effective lever in driving up standards. The conclusion that we reached, which the current Government are following through on and which we will be debating in due course through the Railways Bill, is that the way you get more effective working between the train operating companies and Network Rail is by bringing them together in what will be GBR. I am not sure, therefore, that getting the taxpayer to pay a chunk of money to airlines is the right way in which to deliver what we actually want, which is to stop these sorts of outages and disruptions happening in the first place.

NATS is a regulated business, so it has quite considerable constraints on how it acts, and the Government have a considerable say in how it operates because of that 49% stake and the Government’s role in nominating a number of members of the NATS board. Certainly, when the outage happened, I had a considerable say in putting pressure on the management of the company and appointing the person who conducted the review, effectively ensuring that the company took steps to make sure that that particular circumstance could not happen again.

I understand the case that my noble friend has made. I considered it at the time, but we did not think that moving from the status quo to that position was particularly compelling. I do not think that I have changed my mind on that, but of course I will happily take a question on it.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I thank my noble friend, who may have saved the Minister a bit of trouble. I will make just two points. First, as my noble friend said, the airlines are one of the major shareholders. The airlines support this amendment. I have a letter from IATA and I have seen correspondence from British Airways; they believe that this change should be made. The second point my noble friend made, which I have real difficulty with, is that the taxpayer picks up the tab when an organisation owned by the taxpayer makes a mistake. Look at the National Health Service, for example. What is happening here is that, where the taxpayer is on the hook, the Government have decided to penalise an innocent party, namely the shareholders of the airlines. As a Conservative, I cannot see how my noble friend began to defend that when he was Secretary of State. Had the incident happened 20 years earlier, when I was Secretary of State, I would have come to a different decision.

E-scooters and E-bikes

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 gave police stronger powers to seize vehicles being used anti-socially, without first requiring a warning. It also introduced new respect orders enabling police and councils to ban persistent offenders from areas where they cause harm. I am not familiar with whether that legislation applies to Northern Ireland, but I will write to the noble Lord to confirm that.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is time someone spoke up for the cyclist. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Shamash, I like e-bikes. I am one of a number of noble Lords on the other side of middle age who use e-bikes—legal e-bikes—to get around. Our case is undermined by illegal e-bikes being driven dangerously, often by delivery drivers. The City of London Police confiscates and destroys five illegal e-bikes every week. Should not more police forces do that and give wide publicity to that, in order to reduce this abuse?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right, and in pursuit of his desires, the Metropolitan Police recently seized 52 illegal e-bikes and mopeds. A total of 2,741 were seized across 2025-26. West Midlands Police seized more than 50, and Greater Manchester Police seized six and removed 55 locally. Merseyside Police seized over 500, Nottinghamshire Police around 100 and South Yorkshire Police over 150. So, we are starting to see proper enforcement across Britain, and the more publicity all that gets, the better.

King’s Speech

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. On social care, she is absolutely right.

On housing, the Government’s target of 1.5 million homes is not a policy but a dream. By their own calculations, they are already 400,000 adrift. In London we need 88,000 new homes a year. Last year they finished 6,000. While I welcome all the plans to speed up planning, much of which are now in place, that is not the problem. The number of sites with planning permission not yet built on is more than 1.5 million. The problem is not potential supply but demand. Builders will not build if there is not a buyer. If there is no buyer, it is not just the market buyers who are hit but the people wanting social homes. Following what the right reverend Prelate said on affordable homes, half the social homes are built through Section 106. They are built on the back of market homes. If we do not get the market homes, we do not get the social homes. That hits those in real need.

On 17 December 2024 the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, answered questions on a Statement that stated that there were,

“to our shame as a nation, just shy of 160,000 homeless children living right now in temporary accommodation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/12/24; col. 1057.]

A year later it had risen to over 176,000.

We need to kick-start both markets—market homes and social homes—and we urgently need a successor to Help to Buy for first-time buyers. Most renters want to buy. The average rent is higher than the average mortgage payment. But, without wealthy relatives, many renters simply cannot afford the deposit. This is where we need urgent government action in conjunction with the financial institutions and developers to find a successor to Help to Buy. I note in passing that the Government made a profit of £1.3 billion on Help to Buy.

On remediation, I warmly welcome the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Roe, to chair the building safety regulator. I commend him on the progress he has made in reducing the backlog of approvals for new high-rise homes. But there is a real challenge post Grenfell. Almost nine years later, over half a million people are still living in flats with a fire risk. Less than 20% of buildings over 11 metres high with unsafe cladding have been fixed.

The remediation Bill puts a little meat on the bones of the Government’s remediation acceleration plan, but there are still a range of issues on which leaseholders and I have been campaigning: non-cladding defects are not comprehensively funded; non-qualifying leaseholders continue to face ruinous costs; developers in the developer remediation contract are, in far too many cases, doing the bare minimum and marking their own homework; safety risks are being reassessed as tolerable, with buildings left half safe; building insurance premiums remain eye-watering; leaseholders are still having to pay for waking watches; and shared owners still face problems—they cannot sell because their registered social landlord will not buy, so they are having to sublet.

On funding for buildings under 11 metres with the same sort of cladding as Grenfell, we had an announcement in July 2025, but we still have no details. The BSR’s remediation improvement plan is yet to have an effect on high-rise buildings, with the median approval time now at 46 weeks. Leaseholders and residents are pushed from pillar to post, scrambling for simple answers about their homes.

In opposition, Labour understood that accelerating remediation without fixing the structural problems that I have mentioned would not work and recognised that remediation had to be comprehensive and independently overseen, with leaseholders and residents at the centre. Put simply, some leaseholders in some buildings are protected from the costs to fix some safety defects—that is simply not good enough. I look forward to working with this Government, as I did with the last, to do justice to leaseholders, who are in no way to blame for the misfortune that confronts them.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 121A from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading, but a number of amendments have emerged in this Bill that fit my wider interest in accessibility.

I did not want to repeat myself, as some of the issues fall under the previous group of amendments, such as abandoned bikes causing a lot of difficulty for disabled people, which is a significant issue. I asked quite a large number of disabled people about their experiences and only one said that there might be a need for it where they lived, because local businesses rely on pavement parking to carry out their trade. However, there is a far more negative impact than that. A number of disabled people explained that they have to take very long routes around and that there is a lack of dropped kerbs. If you are pushing along the road at my height, behind cars, you cannot actually see what is on the road. Also, in lots of places, broken paving is a nightmare for wheelchair users and a lack of tactile paving makes it extremely difficult for visually impaired people, who might have to use routes that they had not realised they would need to use.

I spoke to one scooter user who said that, when they were trying to weave their way around a car, they could not see whether there was a driver in that car; there was, but the driver did not see them, so pulled out and knocked them into the road. This is really difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, raised parents with prams, for whom this can be horrendous. A mum who is a wheelchair user got in touch with me; she cannot use a pram, because she is a wheelchair user, so she trained her child to walk alongside her. I did that with my daughter and it is amazing how, from a young age, they learn what they should or should not do. But this mother found herself having to walk out into the road with a toddler and she felt very disconcerted about it.

Data from Cambridgeshire County Council shows that we spend about £234 million a year fixing pavements damaged by pavement parking. Data from Guide Dogs, admittedly from 2006 to 2010, showed that local authorities spend about £1 billion repairing kerbs and walkways because of pavement parking. This seems not just a ridiculous amount of money but incredibly dangerous.

Disability rights campaigner Judy Heumann suggested that, to be good allies to disabled people, non-disabled people should let the air out the tyres when people have pavement-parked. I do not think that is a very good idea, but this is such a challenge, not least when there is no other route that can be taken: you risk damaging your chair; you might not get through with your guide dog; or you risk damaging somebody’s car or van. A number of disabled people told me that they have experienced quite a lot of verbal abuse and high levels of threat by asking people to move, which is just not acceptable.

In researching this amendment, I watched a public service film from 1982 that says, “Leave the pavement for pedestrians”, but it seems that we have not moved on too much since then. I urge the Minister and his team to look at this issue. It is a real risk for disabled people and we should just be doing much better.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I support entirely what the noble Lords, Lord Bassam and Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, have said.

I am slightly confused by a comparison between what the Department for Transport said in a press release on 8 January and what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has said, which is that powers will be available when legislative time allows. He rightly pointed out that we do not know when that will happen. However, the press release on 8 January said:

“The department will set out guidance to help local authorities use these powers in a proportionate and locally appropriate way later in 2026”.


That implies to me that it can do what is proposed by setting out guidance and that we can be under way by 2026. However, the briefing we have all had from the trust implies that the Government will resist this amendment because they want to narrow the scope and there will be a place for it at a subsequent date. Exactly what is happening this year? If it is not all going to happen this year, what will happen this year? The press release certainly implies something:

“The department will set out guidance to help local authorities use these powers in a proportionate and locally appropriate way later in 2026”.


I am sure the Minister will be able to shed some light on this issue.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

That is really interesting, is it not? I am sure the Minister will tell us exactly what all that means.

I am one of those people who challenge people who park on the pavement. Just recently, I saw a huge van parked all the way across a pavement. I went up to challenge the driver and found that it was an ambulance, so I did back off because I thought somebody needed some help. I totally agree that pavement parking means that the kerbside degenerates; it gets broken, which means yet another hazard for all of us, not just for people who are not particularly mobile, at night and so on.

I hugely admire the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, but he should not be parking on the pavement. I do not care that the road is too small. He should park in a legal place and walk the rest of the way. It would be really good for his heart. The thing about pavement parking is that, if your car is too wide to park on the road, your car is too wide. Get a smaller car—do not take up space that pedestrians need. I see no rationale or excuse for that. It is just plain rude, and I loathe it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

If it is the case that only minor amendments are needed to what is now before us, why can that not happen on Report?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

As I say, I am very happy to meet the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Blunkett to see whether we can move this forward.

Motorway Speed Cameras

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of reported errors of speed cameras on national motorways.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

This Government are working to fix an anomaly dating back at least to 2021 affecting how some speed cameras interact with variable speed signs on some motorways and A roads. A small number of motorists have been impacted, and the police are contacting each of those affected. The public must have confidence in technology on our roads, which is why my department has announced an independent review into how the anomaly occurred, its handling and the changes needed to ensure that this cannot happen again.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. National Highways is clearly doing all it can to remedy the injustice done by the erroneous recording of speeding offences. Is the Minister satisfied that all those involved have now been contacted, with fines repaid and points restored? What about those who had to take time off work to attend speed awareness courses and, more importantly, what about those who lost their licences because of the accumulation of points, and thereafter lost their jobs? What compensation will be offered to them?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

We estimate that approximately 2,650 incorrect activations took place between 2021 and now, and we are checking further back. The number of drivers affected is considerably lower, as not every activation resulted in enforcement. The relevant police forces will contact those affected directly with details on what action is being taken to provide redress. All those notified by the police will receive details on how to contact National Highways if they have evidence of costs associated with this incorrect enforcement—for example, those associated with licence loss.

Channel Tunnel Infrastructure: Reliability

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The review that I have talked about already will look at the resilience of the infrastructure and at previous recommendations to make sure that the infrastructure is resilient. Obviously, everything that we are talking about is certainly less than 40 years old, which, by railway standards, is like yesterday. There should be no reason—I cannot think of any good reason—why the infrastructure cannot support the much-increased level of service.

To that end, as the noble Baroness knows, the Government are committed to expanding the use of the tunnel for both passengers and freight trains. She will know that Virgin has been granted access to the depot in London, which it believes is necessary for its competitive activity with Eurostar. She will also know that Trenitalia, which is the Italian state railway, has found a funder to independently start additional competitive services with a depot in France, but not needing one in London. So, I am confident that all the infrastructure she mentions can support those services in the future.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned compensation in his response. The Government want people to travel by train rather than by plane. He will know that the compensation available to the Eurostar passengers mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, is much less than the compensation offered to air passengers, such as those disrupted at Heathrow recently, leaving many of the Eurostar passengers severely out of pocket. Is there not a case for aligning the compensation regimes between the two modes?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord will know that we used to have far more influence over Eurostar and its commercial policies because we were once part-owners of it, but, sadly, a previous Conservative Government sold their 40% share in Eurostar to what has turned out to be the French state railway 10 years ago. So, we have no commercial influence over what Eurostar does.

If there is a case for what the noble Lord suggests, it would certainly require some examination, but I am not sure that we particularly want to interfere in people’s commercial businesses. What I do want to do is make sure that the infrastructure provided by Getlink, HS1 and SNCF on the other side of the tunnel is reliable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, so that the services that currently run and additional future services run reliably.

Walking, Wheeling and Cycling Paths

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Local highway authorities are responsible for public rights of way and are required to keep a rights of way improvement plan. Where opportunities exist to bring historical routes into use for walking, wheeling or cycling, local authorities must decide how to integrate them into their active travel networks. The Government have announced their intention to remove the 2031 cut-off date for recording unregistered historic rights of way so that routes can continue to be identified, protected and enjoyed. I think the noble Baroness will know that, in respect of new railway lines and particularly HS2, there are plans to use the line of route for walking and cycling paths.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, in Holland, 55% of cyclists are women. In this country it is less than half that, at 25%, so what are the Government doing to encourage more women to enjoy the benefits of cycling?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I hesitate to speak in front of such a well-known cyclist as the noble Lord. The answer to that question is to make cycling both more convenient and safer. There are a whole range of measures, including those set out in my two previous responses, to make cycling a more general feature. Of course, safety is a particular issue, which is why investment is needed in making dedicated cycle paths and in cycling on the highways, which are both important. There are a whole range of measures, many of which will no doubt come up in the next eight minutes, about safety, the Highway Code and all those things, in order to get a much better gender balance in cycling, which the noble Lord is absolutely right to raise.

Open Access Rail Services

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord has drunk his own Kool-Aid on this. I made it quite clear that there are benefits to be provided. He also needs to do a bit of careful research, because there are very few commuters on open access services. Commuting is one of the things that has a high fixed cost and generally does not cover the cost of its operations. Open access is successful for people making long-distance journeys irregularly, and some of the operators are very good at it.

The noble Lord also referred to the future railways Bill. We have already made it quite clear that Great British Railways needs to be the body that decides who implements the timetable. Currently, there is not one. It will have to have some rules for access to the railway, which will be developed from the current rules and will be consulted on. If third parties believe that they have been disadvantaged by GBR not following its own rules, or doing something in the wrong way, our proposal will be that they have the ability to appeal to the independent regulator. I think that is perfectly fair, but I also think it is really important that your Lordships’ House recognises that nobody is currently in charge of the national railway timetable except the Secretary of State and me. Outside North Korea, that is really not a good circumstance to have.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Further to the question by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, can the Minister confirm that train operators offer choice for travellers, jobs for those in the railway industry and direct links to London from stations not served by other operators? Will he condemn the words of Mick Whelan, the general secretary of ASLEF, who described open access operators as “parasites”?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I think the railway trade unions are quite capable of speaking for themselves. The noble Lord is right: I did say that open access provides benefits such as improved connectivity and choice for passengers. It does provide jobs, although the House might like to note that Hull Trains has been in dispute with its own drivers since February—a dispute that shows no signs of being resolved and results in a reduced service, for which the operator, which is owned by FirstGroup, has no substitute.