Cycling: Women

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to encourage more women to cycle.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, with the permission of the House I beg leave to move the Question standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. He has been delayed returning from the Scilly Isles. Some people will do anything to avoid the Brexit debate.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure I speak for all noble Lords in wishing him a speedy return. This Government are committed to increasing participation in cycling and to making it the natural choice for short journeys or as part of a longer trip. We reaffirmed our commitment to cycling and walking by committing in the 2015 spending review over £300 million for cycling over the five years of the spending review period. This investment supports initiatives that will encourage more women to get cycling, such as the provision of new cycle infrastructure and training.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Does he agree that the Government could do a bit more? Given the number of recent deaths of women cyclists in London, there is still fear and concern among women. Does the Minister agree that supporting local groups which encourage women to cycle would be a good start in helping to increase the number of women cyclists? I should have declared an interest as secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group and a regular cyclist. After all, every new cyclist on the road, if they usually drive a diesel car, would be a double bonus.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I of course acknowledge the noble Lord’s enthusiasm for cycling—and, indeed, his professionalism. As I was leaving the House yesterday, I noticed the noble Lord in his fluorescent jacket and attire. He is quite right: there is always more to be done to encourage cycling, and the Government have invested a great deal in encouraging local schemes. The noble Lord will also be aware that we are shortly to publish our new cycling and walking infrastructure investment strategy, which will underline support for local initiatives such as the noble Lord has mentioned.

High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Bill

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that this House will be reluctant to vote on a Bill at this stage, particularly one which has seen detailed scrutiny in both Houses—which, I have to say, was mainly directed at the line of route. However, despite all that, and despite the fact that those who served on those Select Committees devoted a considerable amount of time and that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, has sought to be helpful and open, and indeed has been patience itself at every stage in steering the public Bill through this House, I cannot but support the amendment.

I do not live in fairyland, and I suppose that there is little realistic chance of the amendment being passed if it is pressed to a vote, because the Whips on all sides of the House are apparently intent on nodding the Bill through. However, I would see it as a failure of my position as a Member of this House if I did not speak now and vote if necessary later in opposition to the passage of the Bill.

As I have done before, I declare my interests as president of the Countryside Alliance and someone who knows personally much of the stretch of countryside between London and Birmingham which is about to be devastated, and many members of the rural communities which will be destroyed along that route. However, I am speaking today not to repeat my views on the devastating environmental damage but because there is a question which surely must be answered before the Bill—this folly—goes any further. That is, simply: does HS2 phase 1 now represent value for money? Is this the best way to spend £55.7 billion—the National Audit Office figure—of taxpayers’ money?

The project we were originally sold was to cost £30 billion in 2010—these are the Department for Transport’s own figures. By 2015, the estimate had risen to £57 billion. Independent estimates are now in the order of £80 billion, or £87 billion if it is adjusted for inflation. The estimate for both phases 1 and 2, taking this railway line on beyond Birmingham, is somewhere in the region of between £138 billion and £147 billion.

The original project was sold to us as one which would have direct trains through to Heathrow and also to the Eurostar, both of which have been ditched. The original argument was based on reducing the journey time to Birmingham by, as I recall, about 20 minutes. When, not surprisingly, that found little favour, the argument became about the need for future capacity—that is despite the urgent immediate need for capacity on trans-Pennine routes, with all the people standing like cattle on trains coming into London day after day.

The train, we were told, was going to run into central London. What is not widely understood, however, is that the present plan goes only as far as Old Oak Common station. It is planned to end there for a good seven years after phase 1 is completed—that is, seven years after the projected completion of phase 1 in 2033. The MP for the area, Sir Kier Starmer, believes it will cause “decades of blight”. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has called for the redevelopment to be put on hold unless less disruptive plans can be made.

The cost of making the necessary acquisitions for taking the trains on into Euston with rising London property prices are frankly unquantifiable. The reality is that it is likely to be cheaper to fly than pay the fares which will have to be charged on this line. So where does the demand for this now come from? It comes from politicians who have put reputations on the line —some of them the most articulate of advocates. It comes from people who have already put money into trying to sell this project. And it comes from people who are hoping to make money, either from the construction work or from the developments around the out-of-town stations—that is, the few of them that are on the route.

Yet ex-Treasury Ministers of all colours have said that more, smaller, infrastructure projects are of greater value to the public and to the country as a whole. This project has already gone badly wrong, as a range of those who have examined it have pointed out. The Treasury Select Committee, the Public Accounts Committee and the Economic Affairs Committee of this House—as has already been mentioned—as well as the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which only last year gave it an amber/red warning, have all cautioned that it is not likely to be on time or within budget.

The warnings are all there and senior personnel have gone very recently, including the chief executive. A financial crisis during construction, which will require major curtailing of the present plans, or a bailout, and the likelihood of there being insufficient money for phase 2 from Birmingham Northwood, are increasingly odds-on prospects.

The Prime Minister, on taking office, called in and re-examined the Hinkley Point project. She then let it proceed. This project surely must be called in to answer the question: does it still represent value for money? We keep saying, to critics of this place, that the value of this House is to hold the Government to account. If we let this through without raising our voices, we will have failed in our purpose.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, as someone who spent six months of my life serving on the Select Committee, I feel I have to answer some of the points that the noble Lord made, in particular that the Bill has not been scrutinised. It had two years’ scrutiny in the Commons and a further six months on every aspect imaginable. Whether concerns were about the environment, noise, or construction, every aspect of the route and its impact was carefully examined. There will always be those who argue against infrastructure expenditure, especially on the levels that we are talking about. When it started, Crossrail was by no means universally accepted, yet now it is praised to the skies as a scheme that was necessary and was delivered on budget and on time.

This is the first railway out of London in something like 120 years. Whether or not the proposal started from the point of view of increasing speed, there is a capacity argument and this project will relieve capacity. It was certainly news to me when my noble friend suggested that the trains would stop at Old Oak Common. If they do, that will be a new development. We debated that not long ago and rejected amendments to that effect from the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and I believe that my noble friend Lord Berkeley was associated with that as well. Therefore, we examined the impact of the line very carefully. Can it be accommodated at Euston? Yes, it can. Allowances have been made for the integration of Crossrail 2 and a new classic railway station.

Thousands of jobs are dependent on this scheme. Somehow we seem to have lost the vision that we started off with in terms of what we need in infrastructure capacity. I suppose that that is not surprising when one looks at the length of time that the scheme has been under consideration. I sincerely believe that the House will recognise that this Bill has been scrutinised in great depth and that it would be a decision of great folly to follow the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

Will the noble Earl take the trouble to read the very wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, who spoke a few moments ago about the consequences of accepting these amendments? If one of them were passed, the Bill would have to be re-hybridised. It would have to go back to the hybrid Bill Committee and months and months would be taken up by looking at the Bill again with these provisions in it.

I cannot believe that the House would want to do that, bearing in mind the exceptionally good job that the hybrid committee did. I see a number of its members are in the Chamber at the moment and they deserve the thanks of all of us for looking at this Bill in such detail and displaying such patience in listening to huge numbers of petitions and far too many lawyers who were presenting them on behalf of people with, in some cases, entirely spurious objections. The committee went through that very well and came up with a series of recommendations for change, and the Government, to their great credit, have accepted them all either in spirit or literally. The fact that the committee has done that job and we have a Bill to which we can give Third Reading and get work under way is very important.

Old Oak Common is a wonderful place. It is where my great-grandfather lived in a Great Western Railway house when he was a top link driver on the railway in the early years of the 20th century. But it is not a place where people want to go when they are travelling on high-speed trains from Birmingham or the north of England. Indeed, the practicality of finishing a journey there has been addressed by Transport for London. It answers the point made by my noble friend Lord Berkeley about Crossrail. Yes, Crossrail is going really well and will be a great success. But when HS2 arrives at Old Oak Common, it is estimated that about a third of the passengers will get off, get on to Crossrail and go into the City. However, if they were all required to go on to the City, the difference between these two—HS2 terminating at Euston or at Old Oak Common—would, in the words of Transport for London, be the difference between Crossrail coping and Crossrail falling down. That would be the implication of accepting this amendment.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, it is nice to be thanked for one’s work. I see several Lords from the eclectic group who served on that committee, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, whom I must congratulate on the way he handled both the hearings and the committee.

I have recently been reading a book—I hope this slight digression will be acceptable, as it relates to this amendment—called Mr Barry’s War, by Caroline Shenton, one of the archivists. The bit that I like is when she talks about an attempt by Barry and a group of architects—someone called William “Strata” Smith, a great geologist, was also involved—to find stone to build this place. They travelled all over the UK. They get to Lincoln, with its magnificent gothic minster, the Ancaster stone quarries—said to be Roman—then Grantham, Stamford and nearby Burghley House. Once they get through Kettering and Northampton by coach, they,

“made their way back to London by the novel means of Robert Stephenson’s thrilling new London and Birmingham Railway, which had opened along its whole length just five days previously on 17 September. This was the first London intercity rail line, and Euston station the first mainline terminus in a capital city anywhere in the world. Its magnificent Doric Propylaeum”—

I do not know if I pronounced that correctly—

“or entrance archway, made of millstone grit, stood for 125 years until pulled down by modernist planners in 1962”.

I could not help feeling that that was rather a propitious bit of reading prior to this debate.

We did not debate the overall cost—that was not in the committee’s remit—but we certainly debated some costings by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and his expert witnesses. I regret to say, however, that they did not stack up. Neither did Old Oak Common. I had to smile when someone said, “It’s just an interim stop”. We all know that if it finishes at Old Oak Common it will be a real stretch of the imagination to believe that that will be interim.

The noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, said that the route had not been decided. It has been decided, and we had a debate, I assure noble Lords, on whether it would be more desirable to terminate at Old Oak Common. That was not the view of the committee after listening to a range of expert witnesses and for some of the reasons cited by my noble friend Lord Faulkner.

We can all have a view, if you like, about people’s motives and intentions—I will assume that they are motivated by the best of all reasons—but one thing you cannot assume is that the process would be speedy, for either the first or the sixth amendment. This will be a lengthy process, and, as has been said, we are now seven years—I was going to say “down the track” but that is an unfortunate pun; if only we were. We have some way to go. As someone who, like the noble Lord, served on Crossrail, I remember just as many criticisms of that. Now it is all enthusiasm, but it was not at the time, I assure noble Lords; there were just as many doubters and naysayers.

My view—and you have heard from other colleagues on the committee—is that we gave this a thorough examination, and I am certain that we also debated it in Committee. I cannot remember how many times I have heard this debate. As a former Attorney-General once said, repetition does not necessarily enhance the value of your contribution. I am beginning to feel that way in this case. I hope noble Lords will not support these amendments; I do not believe they add anything to the existing analysis. As I recall, in the recent Grand Committee debate the Minister reported to us that the National Audit Office has run its calculators over this. Every time there has been a challenge on the costings done by HS2—the classic one was on the tunnel costings in Wendover, which we may unfortunately return to again—they were independently checked. The proposed tunnelling at Colne Valley was independently validated and HS2 was found to be correct in those circumstances. I listened carefully to the argument but I incline to the views expressed by so many of my fellow committee members, and by my noble friend Lord Faulkner.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I echo my noble friend Lord Faulkner’s thanks to the Select Committee. There are no greater tasks which Members of your Lordships’ House take on than being members of these hybrid Bill Committees, which are like the Committee of Public Safety. I think they were sitting for four days a week over many months. Those noble Lords made a huge commitment to the work of the committee and at this very late stage—this last stage of the Bill’s passage through the House—we should certainly not seek to substitute our judgment, on the basis of a short debate, for the exhaustive examination which your Lordships’ Select Committee gave to this issue, among many others which are on the Marshalled List for later in our debates.

I hesitate to arbitrate between my noble friends Lord Faulkner and Lord Snape on the beauty of Old Oak Common, which depends very much on whether you have a great admiration for railway architecture of the Victorian age. It will become a thing of great beauty when the High Speed 2 station and all the wider development is completed there, but that will take some time. I do not think anybody could pretend now, when passing through it at not particularly high speeds on trains coming out of Paddington, that it is a great beauty spot—it is next to Wormwood Scrubs. However, a critical issue for us to consider this afternoon is its utility as a transport interchange. That was the issue considered by the Select Committee.

It is important for the House to understand that once HS2 is completed, we would be talking about all the traffic from Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and the East Midlands coming in to one terminus if you allow only for Old Oak Common to be built. That is the equivalent of the entirety of the intercity traffic which currently goes into Euston and a good part of the intercity traffic which goes into King’s Cross. All of that would be going into one terminus station and all served by one line, Crossrail. As my noble friend Lord Faulkner emphasised, the resilience of that arrangement could not remotely be regarded as adequate for all the traffic going from the Midlands and the north into one station.

The estimate has been made that a third of passengers will transfer to Crossrail. I think some will get off at Old Oak Common and transfer on to Heathrow, which will be 10 minutes away in the other direction, but most of them will transfer on to Crossrail going east. That proportion may be higher. It is hard to know what transport patterns will emerge but when that interchange is available, it will be an extremely rapid and efficient connection not just to the City but to the West End as well. The next stops up from Paddington will be Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon and then Bank. It then goes on to Canary Wharf, so it will offer a range of fast and high-quality connections.

However, even if you stretch that third to a half—since no one can be sure what patterns will develop—still a very substantial proportion of the passengers would, on the projections made, wish either to regard Euston as their destination or to interchange there. By having the interchange at Euston we would then serve another large swathe of London directly, including that huge and important centre which Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras will form themselves. Massive development work will be taking place there, which will be attracted there in no small part because of the development of the HS2 station. We also have there the Victoria and Northern lines, and in due course Crossrail 2, which will serve the new Euston terminus as well. When one considers that these termini will have to deal with all the traffic coming not just from Birmingham but from Sheffield, Crewe, Manchester and Leeds, as well as services going further north up to Scotland, it looks as though there will be a requirement for more than one dispersal point.

All these issues were gone into at great length by committees of both Houses. Their conclusion was that the Government’s proposals were correct in requiring an extension from Old Oak Common through to Euston. At this very late stage in the passage of the Bill, to pass an amendment calling for a further review—the only impact of which could be substantial delay and uncertainty—would not be wise.

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[Baroness Pidding (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 3, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. Before speaking, I draw noble Lords’ attention to the declaration of interests that I made in Committee.

I am aware that this issue was raised in Committee, but I fear that we did not get the fulsome response that we hoped for from the Minister. I would hope that all Governments, particularly a Conservative Government, would be interested in value for money. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, we are told what the total cost of the railway is—although it seems to change every time I see a figure, and few believe that it will stop there. But surely this is only half the issue. The environmental impact of this line, particularly over the Chilterns AONB, has not been costed, and the Government have been strangely reluctant to provide figures or the methodology used. Can the Minster let us have this information? At this stage a full explanation is imperative.

If the people of this country are going to get behind this project, surely we ought to be transparent about the figures that have been used to decide that 8.7 kilometres of additional tunnelling, which would preserve the AONB, is “too expensive” because the benefits to the environment are insufficient to outweigh the additional cost of tunnelling. If the figures stack up—I have no idea whether they do—we will at least have been transparent in the process. Surely the public, who will have to pay for this project in so many ways—and of whom relatively few will see any actual benefit—are entitled to a proper cost-benefit analysis before our countryside is destroyed.

If we destroy the AONB—and it will be destroyed—without making a proper cost-benefit analysis of what we are doing, we will not be forgiven. Indeed, not having such a cost-benefit analysis would be regarded as pure vandalism. I urge the Minister and the Government just to do what is requested in this sensible amendment.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I am surprised that yet again we are exploring the wonders of Wendover—which was one of the many exotic foreign trips we went on. It was important that we went out to see these places. I think it was a slight exaggeration when the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, said that the area of outstanding natural beauty would be destroyed. There will be changes, but I do not believe that the area will be destroyed—and neither do members of the committee.

I return to the point made by my noble friend Lord Stevenson, who says, yet again, that we have not fully and transparently explored this issue. In fact we did—and of course it was done not only by us but by the Commons, who after two years of hearing petitions extended the tunnel by a significant amount. The next challenge that was put to us when we examined this in Committee was a challenge to the promoters’ assessment of tunnelling costs: “They would say that, wouldn’t they? They would make them come out cheaper”. The integrity of that costing procedure was disputed. In a way, that was a useful challenge, because we needed to be assured that that costing gave us a fair and accurate cost comparison of whether extending tunnelling even further—whether it was mined or bored—would achieve savings, which my noble friend Lord Berkeley also insisted would be the case.

That was a legitimate question until we got to the point of the proposed Colne Valley viaduct, where petitioners were asking for a fully bored tunnel instead of a viaduct. Those HS2 tunnelling costs were assessed in an independent cost analysis and were validated. So the idea that at this stage we have not had a full debate on this is preposterous, given everything that has happened—and, again, the idea that the public interest has not been protected is fallacious.

It is true to say—perhaps it is the one point on which I agree with my noble friend—that the hybrid Bill process is not ideal. We and the Commons agreed on that. As a committee we put in our view of how this Victorian process, as my noble friend rightly called it, could be improved. But that is one thing; it does not take away the main point of this amendment, which somehow seems to suggest to the House that, first, the public interest has not been fully served, and, secondly, that this has been a flawed process. I and the rest of my committee colleagues do not believe that to be the case. Again, I trust that noble Lords will reject this amendment.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

Maybe my memory is deceiving me, but the mined tunnel was through chalk, was it not? There was a problem about the slurry and it would not have been a practical proposition to go through—rather than a bored tunnel. I would like clarification on that, specifically the mined tunnel. Can the noble Lord, Lord Young, help me?

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

No, I am not going to because I have just remembered that Peers are allowed only one contribution on an amendment.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I am not quite sure whether I can help the noble Baroness. I asked the same question about a mined tunnel in Committee and the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, explained it all to me. The problem is that I have forgotten the explanation. It sounded very plausible at the time. I am sure if the noble Baroness consults her noble friend she will get all the details of what should be done.

I listened to the noble Baroness who spoke earlier from the Conservative Benches. She made a fleeting appearance in Committee and said pretty much the same thing; I hope she will forgive me for saying so. I do not think emotive language about a two-track railway destroying the countryside takes this House or this debate any further forward. What did she say: “Just another 8.7 kilometres of tunnel”? That is in addition to the 47 kilometres of tunnel out of the 210 kilometres of the high-speed railway line. This is expensive lunacy in my view. I make a plea again on behalf of those who travel by train. People do not travel by train to gaze at a tunnel wall. Some of the semi-hysterical comments—I exempt my noble friend Lord Stevenson, he will be relieved to know—about the damage that the railway line will do to the Chilterns are just that, sheer hysteria. They were all made 30 years ago at the time of High Speed 1 across Kent, and none of it proved true then. Indeed, the economy of Kent has benefited enormously from High Speed 1.

The secondary point—the great unmentionable in this debate on the demand for tunnels—is of course that some people making these points about additional tunnelling do so on the grounds that there is no benefit from high-speed rail passing through the Chilterns to those who live there because there are not any stations. Well, there may be at some time in the future, as we have heard. Again, I exempt my noble friend from that; he is my Whip and I had better tread carefully. Once you get out of London, the M40 passes through the Chilterns without a mile of tunnel. Has that motorway destroyed that part of the world? I do not think it has. My noble friend nods his head but I do not think most people agree. Mind you, of course many of them use the M40 and that they are not going to be able to use the train is behind a great deal of the opposition, in my view. I hope that the Minister resists temptation. Whether it is cheaper to build a mined tunnel or go ahead with the existing proposals, as the Select Committee recommended, I know not. Nobody could have worked harder than the committee to look at those objections. I think there is quite sufficient tunnelling already so far as this high-speed railway is concerned, much of it expensive and unnecessary.

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[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, to concur with what the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, said, we did discuss this at great length in the committee. A target of 28% target has been set; it is certainly not a maximum, as I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, knows. Most of the points that she made are valid, except for the comparison. We are not comparing like with like. In Crossrail, for example, although a significant amount of spoil was shifted using the river, it had to get to the river first. That was part of the problem. This is an unrealistic target, which does not mean to say that we should not be ensuring that the contractors make every effort to take the maximum amount by rail. They have an incentive to do so but there are limitations—for instance, as to how much you can take out of Euston by rail and the times at which it can be done. All that was discussed.

Although it appears reasonable to set this kind of target, I concur with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, that it is not the right way to go about it. There should be—the Secretary of State will ensure that there will be—very significant pressure on the contractors to take the maximum amount off the road, for all the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said. I look forward to hearing what further assurances the Minister can give.

Camden may not have got everything, but it received 100 assurances, which were legal requirements, given by the promotor during the course of its own negotiations, and further additions that we made as the result of our hearings.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. I think I have some good news. I pay tribute the Select Committee’s work on this. I know that it tried very hard and quizzed lots of people as to how it could be done. As is so often the case, when it gets to the stage of involving contractors, sometimes contractors have good ideas. I was talking to some of them and their specialists last week. One of the key ideas is if you bore tunnels from Old Oak Common to Euston and you complete at least one at any early stage, you can take the spoil out through the tunnel. This is a very good idea because you can then deal with it at Old Oak Common. I am told it is possible; they are trying to work it into the programme. If it is possible, the figure for getting spoil and demolition out would probably go up to above 50%—I was told 70% or 80%—which is really good news. In other words, they have come up with some creative ideas. Maybe we were wrong to criticise HS2 in the past for not coming up with such ideas. It has given us a lot of debating time and the committee several days of discussion, but at least people have come up with a good idea. I think four contractors are tendering and I do not know whether they will all adopt this, but it demonstrates that it is possible. I hope Ministers will do all they can to encourage the contractors to be similarly creative.

There is another issue. In Committee we discussed concreting materials and other materials. The present amendment covers just concreting materials. The creative people are now saying, quite rightly, that they cannot bring cement in by train because it takes too long to unload, but that they can bring in most of the concreting aggregate by train and they can put a batching plant for mixing it somewhere on site. I am sure the committee looked at different locations for that; I have, and it is possible. As the noble Baroness said in her opening remarks, there is not a capacity problem for these trains going into Euston at night. It could easily be done.

I hope the Minister will accept these amendments as pointing the way forward to encouraging HS2 to continue to be creative like this. We do not want 1,500 trucks a day in Camden because the construction will last for 19 years—not that all those trucks will be there for 19 years, but they will still there be there for a considerable period. The basic movement out of spoil and demolition material by rail and bringing in concreting aggregate by rail would make a lot of people happy. I am convinced that the project can be done on that basis without any adverse effect on its programme or cost. If it is set up to do that, the contractors will do it well and it will work well.

High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Bill

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 12th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had extensive discussions on HGV routes and the role of the highways authorities. HS2 cannot override them, as I am sure my noble friend Lord Berkeley knows. There was a throw-away remark that the organisation he proposes would be modest. I must admit that, when I look at the coverage and the number of people involved, it does not look very modest to me in terms of the number of people that could attend. We know where the problems are going to be: HS2 has already had extensive discussions with Camden and other highways authorities on HGV routes and so on. We know that there is a construction complaint commissioner so that, if there are any problems, there is a 24-hour helpline. We have been through this over and over again. With due respect to my noble friend, if you were going to suggest a structure to deal with this, I could not think of anything more bureaucratic and, I suspect, expensive, when you look at the range of people who could potentially attend. I agree that there is going to be a significant responsibility on HS2 and its contractors to ensure that they minimise disruption, be it to motorways or local highways, which is why they have to get agreement from the local and county authorities, but in my view this is not the way forward.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. I recognise and endorse the underlying objective behind this particular amendment: to minimise, as we all desire, the impact of construction traffic through appropriate co-ordination with bodies. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has suggested the creation of a command centre. In that respect, I disagree with him.

I wish to go into a few of the specific points that have been raised. First, on the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to which we have already heard a response, I concur with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green. The Bill includes specific powers for the control of construction traffic by qualifying planning authorities. This means that the routes to be used by heavy goods vehicles must be approved by the qualifying planning authority where the volume of large goods vehicles—specifically, those over 7.5 tonnes—exceeds 24 one-way trips per day. The consent of the relevant highway authority is also required for the provision of any new or altered work site access to and from a highway.

My noble friend Lady O’Cathain raised the important issue that, as we move forward on these projects, we must learn from experience of what has happened before. The Crossrail project was cited. In that regard, we have already developed a code of construction practice, which requires the appointed nominated undertaker to prepare a route-wide traffic management plan in liaison with highway and traffic authorities, not forgetting the emergency services as well. This is an approach that was followed during the construction of Crossrail and worked well. We believe it will also work well in this respect.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, also raised the issue of Crossrail traffic management. Although he is absolutely correct that TfL managed the strategic roads, there was still the need to manage traffic flows on the local roads, and those were very much managed by the local boroughs and the construction of Crossrail had a direct impact on them. We are proposing to use the same tried-and-tested method which, as I said, worked well for that project in this respect as well.

The route-wide traffic management plans will include, for example, managing and monitoring lorry flows, requirements for preparing workforce travel plans and the strategy for design and consultation regarding traffic management. In addition to this route-wide plan, the code of construction practice, which I have referred to, also requires the appointed nominated undertaker to prepare local traffic management plans in liaison, as I said, with the relevant highway and traffic authorities and the emergency services.

Once appointed, contractors will also be required to hold regular local traffic liaison meetings with highway authorities, public transport operators and, of course, the police. These will provide an opportunity for contractors to present proposals for future works affecting the highway, including methods of construction and the proposed programme. I hope that this demonstrates that the Government are very much committed to the sentiments behind the noble Lord’s amendment. However, we have learned, and continue to learn, from experience. The Crossrail project has been a positive one and the learning from it will certainly be applied to this project. I hope that that demonstrates to the noble Lord that his amendment is unnecessary.

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[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley are well taken, particularly in respect of facilities for the disabled, flexible space for carrying light freight and proper facilities for families and those looking after young children. There has been a tendency on the part of the railways to move in the Japanese direction of regarding freight and luggage as a bad thing and making it almost impossible for passengers to carry such items in comfort. I do not think that that is a direction in which we want to go.

However, the area where I am more doubtful is about facilities on high-speed trains or the next generation of trains in general for the carrying of bicycles. It is not that there should not perhaps be some facility at the margin for doing so—though I am not sure, even with the great wisdom and expertise of your Lordships’ House, that trying to design a train by committee is a good idea, so the figure of 10% that my noble friend Lord Berkeley has specified might be a bit too precise. If there is spare luggage space on a train that is suitable for carrying bikes, then that is fine. But the real issue in terms of encouraging much more bicycle use in relation to trains—which is out of all proportion more important than the capacity to carry bikes on trains themselves, which will only ever be marginal, particularly with very busy trains loading and unloading hundreds of people at a time—is decent cycle storage and rental facilities at stations, so that passengers do not need to convey bikes on the train in the first place. With the best will in the world, you are only ever going to be able to carry a handful of bikes on trains, but you can have thousands of bicycles, either privately owned or for rental, provided for at stations. By and large, our mainline stations, which were not designed for bicycles or indeed anything else modern, including in most cases decent retail facilities, have lamentable facilities for storing bikes. It is a telling indication of the big problems that we have in managing bicycles, even with all the improvements in London, that the cycle rental scheme does not embrace most London termini, because how to deal with the big issues of location and of shipping bikes backwards and forwards has not yet been worked out.

The contrast with best European practice in this area could not be more stark. I shall never forget visiting Amsterdam station and other major stations in Holland. Where you come out of the station, you have huge areas reserved for bikes, including rental schemes, along with bike workshops, so that you can get repairs done, and proper supervised bike facilities. It is a completely different situation from the one we have here. We are not yet at the stage of detailed station design plans for HS2 but I hope that, when it comes to the design of these hugely forward-looking stations that we want to see at Euston, Old Oak Common, Birmingham Curzon Street and other locations going north, there will be exemplary facilities for cyclists with significant space made available for cycle storage, repairs and rental schemes. In terms of a path-breaking approach to integrating cycling with railway use, seeing that there are state-of-the-art and capacious cycle facilities at stations is far more important than any provision that it might be possible to make in respect of the trains.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, as somebody who puts his Brompton bike on a train every day when I come here, I partly disagree with my noble friend, not on the substance of the point that he makes—that we cannot accommodate hundreds of bicycles on the train; there is a balance to be struck—but in that there are a significant number of people like myself who ride to the station and put their folding bike on the train and then get off at the other end and cycle a bit further. The other usage that I have is on my annual cycle tour, when I do want to take a bike on a long-distance journey on a train. At the moment, the facilities are very limited; you have to reserve in advance, which is probably what will obtain. While I agree with my noble friend that trying to design a train by committee is not a wise thing to do, it is wise to have this debate and raise these issues, which are important.

I certainly concur with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on disability. It is not just about the number of wheelchairs—it is about ensuring that you have level surfaces so that you can go from platform to train in an easy and effective manner, rather than what you see at the moment. I think that we briefly raised that in one of the Select Committee sittings, but I am not absolutely sure about that. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I do not know where to start on the amendment after that omnibus. However, first, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, I do not think that having another independent adjudicator as well as the complaints commissioner is a good idea. It will confuse the situation. I agree with her on the substance of the point: a complaints commissioner should be appointed, as one will be, and that individual should have teeth. However, we really need to correct the notion that there is a “get out of jail free” card simply because we occasionally see a reference to doing everything practically possible in relation to the environment and that there are no requirements on HS2’s contractors to take care of the environment. Hundreds and hundreds of assurances have been given and they really have to be adhered to. I have said that many times to petitioners. We had petitioners from Camden who said, “Oh, there are a few assurances”. There were 100 assurances given to Camden Council and I pleaded with them to look at what is already available. We went over the environmental concerns meticulously. There is not an animal or insect that we have not considered, from hedgehogs to crested newts and barn owls or whatever, and rightly so. We paid them a lot of attention.

It is unfortunate that my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara was not here on Tuesday because we had the same allegation from the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, that we did not debate this. We did: it did not matter whether they were additional provisions, we debated them at length many times. As for the costing, we did not take the word of the contractors or the promoters. We looked carefully, by an independent assessment, to see whether that could justify their view of extending the tunnel. Do not forget that this tunnel has been significantly extended, as a result of the debate in the Commons, and at significant expense. My noble friend shakes his head; I do not know why. It is not enough because we know what the objective is. He wants to tunnel right the way through it but did not achieve that objective. As for the idea that my noble friend somehow could not make his case, I find that hard to understand. He had plenty of opportunity.

On the idea that we in the Select Committee would somehow pay more attention to the barristers, believe me: we were bored out of our skulls by barristers on many occasions and often paid more attention to people who represented their case effectively, whether they were from the parish council or just individuals. The main thing they had to do was to focus on what they wanted the Select Committee to do, and when they did we supported them. In many cases, that was on compensation as well. It really is wrong to tell this Committee that somehow we did not have an opportunity to look at these issues. We did, again and again. In fact, it is probably lucky that I was not chairing it because I would have been more ruthless. We allowed lots and lots of people to present their case, including in locus standi hearings. We made sure that whether it was on environment or noise, or whatever it was, we gave people the opportunity to make their case—not just once but on many occasions.

It should not be suggested to this Committee that individual petitioners somehow had not had an opportunity to present their case or were browbeaten by the barristers. Of course it was a robust environment; I do not deny that but we took account of it and listened carefully. My noble friend shrugs his shoulders; I do not know whether that means that he disputes the integrity of the committee or our attempts to give a fair hearing to petitioners. I do not know why he does that.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

I made it perfectly clear that I was in no sense criticising the committee. Obviously, I have let the noble Lord speak, but I was trying to say that there was a gap in the ability of those who wished to make points broader than their private interests, the cause of which obviously did not lie with the committee. I am not blaming the committee, which did exceptional work, and was fantastic. I felt—the noble Lord, Lord Young, can read the transcript; he was there—that I could not say the things I wanted to say. Indeed, the chairman stopped me and said, kindly, that he was taking account of my experience and presence in the House, and would listen to me, but that he wanted me to stop. I cut out two pages of what I was going to say. I am not saying that it was good or bad—it just happened. I am trying to get behind that to say that the committee’s process did not engage sufficiently with the issues that could have been considered. I am trying to play back to the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, as I think that that will continue, and in the future an independent adjudicator would be a good thing.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I am afraid that we will have to agree to disagree, because they did have the opportunity to make wider points on many issues. On the fact that my noble friend was stopped from speaking, I cannot remember precisely why, but it may well be that we had heard those points on many occasions and reiteration did not necessarily produce a better impact for the committee. However, again, I refute the idea that my noble friend is promoting: that this was an unfair environment in which petitioners were not able to address the wider case. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker, was meticulous in allowing people to develop the whole case even though we had heard the same issue on many occasions, whether it was the requirement for extra tunnelling or a whole range of issues. Inevitably, if you look at the geography of the petitioners, we heard the same case again and again.

I am not saying that the Select Committee procedure was perfect but I refute that petitioners did not have the opportunity to make their case and address the wider issues. They did. We heard them and wherever we could, if anything, we leaned towards the petitioners. We knew that if people had taken the time and trouble to come to Westminster to make their case, they were entitled to a fair hearing. In fact, the pressure was more on the promoters to prove that the petitioners were wrong than the other way round.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, I must correct two points that my noble friend made. The first was that the HS2 people did not communicate with the residents of various places. They held meetings and sent leaflets and the response was totally pathetic, particularly in the Camden area. It is not unreasonable to think that the response would be pathetic, because we were talking about something that would not go through their patch for seven years, so people thought, “I can’t really be bothered”. That was the information we got from HS2, and the petitioners did not correct us on it.

Secondly, on a point I made on Tuesday, in numerical terms we had over 100 meetings and produced a 60,000-word report, and the verbatim of all those meetings is available. It would be jolly nice if noble Lords tried to look at the various areas about which petitioners now say, “Well, of course they didn’t listen” or “They didn’t do this”. We bent over backwards, to the extent that sometimes I felt that HS2 would get fed up with the committee members trying to understand the various differences between the petitioners. There was just one QC who flung the file at Mr Mould, the HS2 barrister, because he simply could not understand his way of thinking, and that was wrong.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, has explained it completely. I feel utterly traduced, having spent all that time on it. We worked from May through to December, relentlessly, four days a week. We did our best. The noble Lord and I were both worn out. I think I remember him saying, “If I die, Wendover will be written on my heart.” On another occasion, he said, “If I ever hear of Wendover again, I will go mad.” We spent hours on Wendover, and on the Chilterns—and then the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, said that there should not be a tunnel anyway because the people who travel on the train want to see the scenery. To hear this kind of thing after all the work we have done frankly made me want to give up. I lost the will to live at one stage. It had an effect on us. We were getting colds. We were tired. Our weekends were spent in a daze wondering how to recover. I am not trying to plead a special case, but to hear this sort of stuff coming out is not at all rewarding to people who went there, unpaid, and gave up a huge amount of their private life for it.

--- Later in debate ---

The approach I have just outlined is one that has worked well during the construction of HS1 and Crossrail, and I believe that it will work well for this project too. We understand that in issues and enormous projects like this, there will always be a question of trust. This is very important and the Government take it on board, as has been referenced by several noble Lords. But we should be legislating only where it is considered absolutely necessary. In finishing, I note the deep concerns raised by several noble Lords.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

The Minister has comprehensively covered most of the territory, but I want to address the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, and my noble friend Lord Rosser raised. There is a code of practice, and they have had the communication—hopefully, because they were not always as good as they should be on that, which is why we made that comment—but there is also the 24-hour helpline. This is the first recourse that people have. If something is going wrong—for instance, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, if a resident wishes to complain that they were told there would be only 500 lorries but 1,000 have already passed through—there is an immediate requirement for the contractor to respond and to take remedial action. If it fails to do so, then the matter can be taken to the construction commissioner. What people are concerned about, and what we have heard about time and time again and rightly so, is whether what is on paper will happen in practice, and the noble Baroness gave some examples. We must ensure that HS2 abides by the terms and meets the commitments, part of which is that immediate response.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green. He is absolutely right that there will be a 24-hour helpline and dedicated community liaison officers there to assist and respond to people’s concerns. I hope that, following this debate and the helpful interventions, noble Lords will accept that we believe that we should avoid creating unnecessarily what would amount to a quango. I hope, therefore, that these amendments will be withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, it is important that I get this right. This amendment seeks to restrict the ability of a local planning authority to consider the handling of topsoil or other reusable spoil when being asked to approve construction arrangements. Matters over which local authorities—who have requested to be nominated as qualifying authorities—have a right of approval or have enforcement over have been the subject of a tried and tested practice that has worked well on both the Crossrail and the Channel Tunnel rail link projects.

I say to noble Lords, and in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that my impression was that the amendment is linked to Amendment 17, which dealt with restrictions on lorries and road use for the removal of soil and topsoil. We discussed those similar issues when dealing with that amendment earlier this afternoon. The issue relates to storage; for example, of spoil, which is then reusable, as well as topsoil. For example, we spoke on Tuesday about the whole issue of woodland. It is important, where possible, that HS2 has an ability to allow those who will plant the trees to use reusable topsoil—some of which is precious, not least for the regeneration of wildlife and so on—around ancient woodland and new woodland, where it can be transferred. Therefore, on the meaning of “reusable spoil and topsoil” there is nothing one should worry too much about.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I think I can be of some help, because we had significant discussions on this issue. Some of the spoil is indeed reusable—for building embankments, for example. Other types, such as slurry, are not particularly reusable. We had a lot of debates on this because some petitioners were convinced that the promoter had got it wrong and that they did not have to transport some of this spoil over a distance. However, they did; they needed to get it to a site because it had the right components to enable it to be used for building embankments. This is a complex issue. Certainly, however, contractors do not have the right to dump loads of spoil wherever they like—that will be highly controlled and regulated. I hope that has been of some help.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report stage: House of Lords
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Snape]

I am rather sorry I got involved in this whole thing now. I make one plea on behalf of the train passengers, who will pay a substantial amount and a bit more besides as a premium. Part of the pleasure of taking a train journey is looking out of the windows. This obsession with tunnelling everywhere through the Chilterns means we will perhaps be denied the sight of my noble friend galloping across the rolling hills of the Chilterns in pursuit of the uneatable. Surely these are sights that people enjoy when travelling by train. Rather than confine train passengers in tunnels for miles on end, would not the noble Viscount be satisfied with some sort of noise barrier, rather than insisting that train passengers on this proposed high-speed line spend their lives in semi-darkness to avoid my noble friend and her colleagues?

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I hesitate to come into this debate, but I confirmed with my colleagues that I was not suffering from post-traumatic High Speed 2 Select Committee delusion. We spent an inordinate amount of time, quite rightly, looking at possible alternatives and at costings. We did not just take the promoter’s word for it. Whenever it put up its experts we looked at whether we could ascertain whether there was an independent corroboration of the costings. Indeed, the Minister confirmed that this was the case earlier when he talked about the possible tunnelling in the Colne Valley area. That was independently assessed. It was proved that the promoter’s costings were right. There were not any savings to be made, although there were lots of assertions that there were savings to be made.

I appreciate the thanks we have had for the amount of time we spent. There were times when I remembered the old Army adage, “Never volunteer”, but, despite that, for the most part we enjoyed it because it was expertly chaired. We ought to pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, who carried out the task, in our collective view, skilfully and carefully.

On the final point in Amendment 7, there are no heavy goods vehicles going through Wendover. It was asserted on many occasions that there are alternative routes. Like my noble friend Lord Adonis, I am not trying to pretend that this project will not cause problems in its impact during the construction phase, but we at least ought to be accurate if we are putting down an amendment. I hope that that has helped noble Lords.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. After the interventions by the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Young, I feel that there is little left for me to say except to clarify that they are both correct. It is important to underline that point for the record.

I will start with the amendment in the name of my noble friend. As he recognised, the issue would lead to a rehybridisation of the Bill. He talked of his own experience and I fully accept that it is procedurally possible for this to happen, but we need to think long and hard about whether such amendments should be made. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, that, as we heard from a member of the Select Committee, this was given a fair and detailed hearing by that committee, as well as in the other place. Despite not being able to consider changes that would require an additional provision without a direction from the House, your Lordships’ Select Committee nevertheless heard further arguments on the case for a mined tunnel at Wendover, on the supposition that an order under the Transport and Works Act 1992 could be used to enable further powers to be secured if needed. After that extensive and exhaustive review, neither Select Committee felt the need to recommend that additional work be undertaken to investigate the merits of or provision for a mined tunnel—we all know what that is now—at Wendover.

I reiterate that we have provided a range of additional assurances for the residents of Wendover, which, as well as the ones that I have spoken about, include noise barriers on the Small Dean embankment, an assurance relating to noise mitigation measures at Wendover Campus School and funding for a bespoke package of noise insulation at St Mary’s Church, Wendover, to allow it to continue to function as a concert venue. I have already talked about the 100-metre Wendover tunnel extension and the noise barriers that were secured in the other place. I have also alluded to the independent review of costs—the noble Lord, Lord Young, also mentioned it—conducted by the non-executive director, Ed Smith. I reiterate the hope that the noble Baroness will reflect not just on what I have said today but on the appropriate sections of the Select Committee report, which also considered this matter.

While I continue to recognise the valid concerns that my noble friend raised about remaining impacts on Wendover, the area has been given many commitments to manage the impacts of the new railway. I believe that this House should respect the decisions of the Select Committees in the House of Commons and in your Lordships’ House.

[Baroness Mallalieu]

I apologise for interrupting, but I just want to be clear about this. I am looking at the relevant section of the report—120—and it appears that the committee looked at a bored tunnel but not at a mined tunnel. If I am wrong about that, I would be grateful if I could be corrected. Notwithstanding the fact that the committee was in some doubt about whether it should look at it, it looked at a bored tunnel, whereas the proposal that is now being made by the noble Viscount is a somewhat different project.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I can assure your Lordships that we looked at all the alternatives at great length on many occasions. Although I did not always enjoy the repetition, it was important that we heard the arguments. We heard from experts on both sides, so if there is one thing this Committee need not worry about, it is whether these alternatives were given a lengthy and fair hearing.

[Viscount Astor]

My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who has spoken. I particularly enjoyed the idea from the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that a four-kilometre mined tunnel would put HS2 passengers in darkness. If I have got right the speed that the train is going to go, in a four-kilometre tunnel, you only have to blink three times and you have missed it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I did not want to intervene again, but I feel I must correct the impression that the noble Viscount is creating that we did not consider these issues. All the issues raised by the amendments were considered in depth. We were not restricted. We heard numerous petitions on the possible alternatives. In his opening contribution, the noble Viscount suggested that we somehow did not listen to parish councils. I assure him that we listened to them on many occasions. Inevitably, some were better than others. After some of the legal representation that we heard, I would have much preferred to hear from the parish councils again. The idea that because they did not have high-powered legal representation they were unable to make their case is not true. I just wanted to correct the impression that the Committee should look at this again because it was not given a proper searching examination by the Select Committee; it was.

[Viscount Astor]

All I can say to the noble Lord is that some of those involved in parish councils felt unable to present in the way that they should have; I quite respect what he said.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2015 Lords Chamber

These are sensible amendments.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the government amendments, because in effect they are in keeping with the spirit of the Commons amendments and ensure a practical application so that shale gas exploration will go ahead.

I will address as briefly as I can some of the assertions —and they were assertions—made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. She was invited to give the source of what she alleged and was unable to do so. That is really unfortunate.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I am perfectly able to do so, but sadly not at this precise moment. I am more than happy to do so in the future.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

With due respect, I do not think that is good enough. If we are going to enter into a debate in your Lordships’ House in which assertions are made that in essence the exploration of shale gas and fracking is unsafe, it ought to be backed up now with the evidence. The noble Baroness has had the opportunity to do so.

I try to enter this debate sharing the same concerns as the noble Baroness—concern for the environment and for the benefit to the public as a whole—and I do not take any assertions from the companies that might be involved in it: I go to sources such as Durham University, which is conducting an independent assessment, I look at the House of Lords report. We keep hearing assertions about earth tremors and earthquakes, but I thought we had nailed that in the last debate. There will be continuous seismic monitoring. Operations will stop if there is a tremor of 0.5, and at 0.5, believe me, the earth would not move for anybody in this Chamber, whatever they were doing, so to allege that the Government and this House are somehow colluding with an unsafe practice is totally irresponsible.

Let us remind ourselves that we are still going to be dependent on gas. By 2025, something like 70% of it is likely to be imported. Let us remind ourselves what happens with imported gas. First, it could be fracked elsewhere, where the conditions are not likely to be quite as well protected and monitored as ours are. Then it has to be liquefied, transported and then de-liquified to be put back into its gaseous state. Are we saying that is preferable to using our own resources? I do not understand that analysis and I do not think it is borne out.

[Lord Truscott]

Of course, not all imported gas has to come as LNG. Some can come directly through the interconnectors with the continent or through pipelines from Norway, for example.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I thank my noble friend, but a significant amount will still be LNG and I do not think that undermines my point. I know that my noble friend Lord Truscott has lots of experience, but I must admit that I was surprised by his analysis. Even if we are sceptical, it was a British geological survey, after all, which identified 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. If we take only 10% of that as capable of being extracted, which is a reasonably modest assessment, that is something like 40 years’ supply of the gas that we use—and we are being invited to say that we should not even consider using it.

My noble friend suggested that it was all about the current price of oil and gas. Of course we should take that into account, but as he was invited to say, is he seriously thinking that companies will invest in shale exploration without any prospect of return? I talked to companies recently about this and said, “Aren’t you deterred by the current price?”. They said no, because they do not invest at today’s prices. They are talking about a plan that is likely to take five years. I do hope that the House will support the government amendment.

On protecting groundwater, of course we should be doing that. Again, I have looked at this carefully. Apart from the fact that there has been very little evidence of methane contamination from fracking, we are talking about a six-inch pipe being drilled down. When it goes through the aquifer, which is at approximately 300 to 400 feet, multiple layers of steel and concrete contain the gas on its way to the surface and prevent it escaping into surrounding rock and groundwater.

What about the myth about the chemicals? We should remind ourselves that 99.95% is just sand and water and that the 0.05% consists only of approved non-hazardous chemicals, one of which is polyacrylamide, which is used for contact lens solution. We would be unlikely to use that chemical for a solution like that if we thought that it was seriously hazardous.

I am just as concerned about the environment and the water supply as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, but I am also concerned about those who, frankly in my opinion, misapply science and deliberately distort data rather than convey to the public the facts and the independent assessment, which is what this House should be doing. On those grounds, I hope that this House will overwhelmingly support the government amendments.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I set out the Labour Party’s position on this group of amendments, because what I hear is a gathering debate on the merits of fracking and I have no intention whatever of referring to that.

The essence of our position is to explore the difference between Amendment 21 and the other amendments in the group and to try to persuade the Government that their amendment may require fine tuning. However, we will not seek to divide the House on our amendment and we will not support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

On Monday 26 January, the Government accepted a Labour amendment to the Infrastructure Bill to overhaul the regulations for shale gas. This was a huge U-turn by the Government and a big victory for the protection of Britain’s environment. Labour has always said that shale gas extraction cannot go ahead unless there is a system of robust regulation and comprehensive inspection, but David Cameron has repeatedly ignored people’s genuine and legitimate environmental concerns over shale gas. Now, thanks to Labour’s amendment, the Government have been forced to accept that tough protections and proper safeguards must be in place before fracking can go ahead. I must make it clear that we are very pleased about the Government’s U-turn and think that it is in the best interests of the nation and the environment.

On Thursday 5 February, the Government tabled their own redrafted version of the amendment that is before the House today. Our position remains as it has been for three years: namely, that regulatory gaps need to be filled to ensure the right conditions are in place before any drilling to explore or extract unconventional gas is permitted. The Government’s amendment accepts a number of the regulatory safeguards that we proposed, which we welcome. However, it also excludes protections that were agreed to in the other place, most notably on the monitoring of fugitive emissions, notification of residents affected by fracking, and safeguards for protected areas and groundwater source areas. I must make it clear to the House that if the Government’s amendment is passed today, it will be challenged, if necessary, in the other place. Therefore, we will listen to the Minister’s response with great care, and it will be considered with great care by colleagues in the other place.

While the Government have said that their version of the Labour amendment redrafts, but does not substantially alter, its terms, I have a number of concerns. The original Labour amendment referred to fugitive emissions. The government version limits this to fugitive methane emissions. Does the Minister recognise that there will be other emissions arising from shale extraction, including CO₂? Why have they not included this in the scope of their amendment?

The original Labour amendment referred to mandatory environmental impact assessments. The government version refers only to the environmental impact, stopping short of a full EIA. Will the Government explain their rationale for this? What, in the eyes of the Minister, is the practical difference between a full EIA and the requirements of this proposed new clause?

The original Labour amendment referred to no fracking within or under protected areas. The government version refers to that only within protected areas. Does the Minister accept that this could still lead to hydraulic fracturing underneath national parks and other areas?

The original Labour amendment referred to a prohibition on developments inside groundwater protection zones. A definition of groundwater protection zones is already given by the Environment Agency, yet the government version refers to protected groundwater areas and suggests that these should be defined in a future statutory instrument. Why are the Government not using the existing definition?

The original Labour amendment required that residents should be notified individually. This is not required in the government amendment. The Minister has already set out some of the reasons for not accepting this requirement. It seems to me that she should go further in explaining why this requirement cannot be met. I believe that the requirement for individual notification exists in other legislation and that the practicality of the absolute concept which she used in her argument is overcome in other legislation. We certainly want to make sure that residents are fully informed and that there is a high probability of all individuals affected being informed.

I repeat that we will not divide the House on our amendment or support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I wanted to address this series of amendments not because I am opposed to any of them but to make a plea for looking at the genuinely objective evidence that is available. Durham University is conducting a lot of independent, objective analysis of fracking incidents and the potential threats. I agree with my noble friend Lady Worthington that there is a need to build public trust, but sometimes it is hard to do that when certain organisations are totally hostile to fracking applying in any circumstances whatever. They make allegations that are, quite frankly, unsubstantiated. That is my concern. When we look at evidence, we need to look at evidence that is substantiated.

Another website that is worth looking at is that of the US Environmental Protection Agency. It frequently asks questions such as: why does there need to be a two-year analysis of what is going on, and why can we not say now that fracking is terrible, ruins the environment and so forth? The response is that that is not the case. There have been some quite dreadful things. To my eternal shame, a BBC programme endeavoured to show that fracking was the cause of methane contamination, which meant that you could light the gas as it came out of the tap. My plea is that of course we should have proper safeguards and we need to build public trust, but we also need to ensure that we are not repeating unsubstantiated allegations and that we look at objective evidence. Of course fracking will not be the total solution but there is no doubt that, certainly in America, it has substantially cut emissions and it could have a role to play here, although the environment is somewhat different.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I do not think that any of us is in any doubt about the importance of baseline monitoring for the purposes of environmental control. I totally agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, said about the misrepresentation that is going around on the whole question of fracking. This must be scientifically based. To my mind, that is where both the Government and the industry have so far failed to convince the public of the case for fracking. As the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, said in her opening speech, my noble friend Lady Verma made the case for the need for shale gas on environmental grounds. That is the case we need to go on pressing.

With regard to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, an enormous amount of work is being done by the British Geological Survey on the baseline monitoring of contaminants of various kinds, and on the protection of water. This has been sparked by examples in America, where there never has been any proper baseline monitoring. That is an example of the imperfections of their system of regulation, of which our people have taken full account. They recognise that if we are to control contaminants—it is very important that that should be done—we need to know where we are starting from. That is the heart of the noble Baroness’s amendment.

I am told that the British Geological Survey is about to publish a further study. It originally put in the 12-month period on the grounds that there might be seasonal variations. Its latest work on the contamination of drinking water has shown that there are no seasonal variations: there is no evidence of that at all. I would not be in the least surprised if, in its further report—this is the advice I have had—it finds the 12-month period to be unreasonable and that the best method of assessing baseline monitoring for methane should be scientifically based. The work that is done by the BGS in this country is, for the most part, to the highest standard. The Government are entirely justified in putting their faith in it.

I do not know what the Minister will say in response to the amendment, but I would guess that everything the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, is asking for is, in one way or another, already being achieved or will be achieved by the Government’s existing policy. I am interested to hear my noble friend’s reply. I share the view of the Committee that baseline monitoring is absolutely crucial if we are to have effective regulation.

Apprenticeships

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. However, we cannot help feeling that this is another lost opportunity on the Government’s part. On one level, we do not challenge their commitment to apprenticeships as they have certainly tried to drive up the number. However, there is a danger in going for volume without ensuring that the quality is sustained, as was mentioned in the Richard report. One of the things the Government are doing, which we welcome, is making sure that apprenticeships are real jobs lasting for a minimum of one year. That has not been happening over the past few years and some young people have been exploited and have not gained a proper qualification, so that step is a welcome improvement. However, is it enough in the current situation of very high youth unemployment, which must concern us?

I welcome another matter that the Government have addressed: namely, that the retraining of older employees will not be badged as apprenticeships but will be proper retraining, as it should have been. However, we are concerned that fewer than 10% of employers in this country employ apprentices. That is not an easy problem to solve but it requires determined, imaginative action from the Government, which we do not believe they have shown in their response to the Richard review. Yet again, they have ducked the Select Committee’s recommendation that every government procurement contract should contain a commitment to apprenticeships.

This week is National Apprenticeship Week, which we initiated when in government. It is a worthwhile event which celebrates the importance of apprenticeships. When I attended the Crossrail apprenticeship awards ceremony, I could not help reflecting that its 400 apprenticeships came about because the previous Labour Government had insisted that they had to be an inherent part of its contract. That applied not only to Crossrail but to the Olympics, where we managed to establish 300 apprenticeships. I have yet to receive a satisfactory response from the coalition Government on why they will not make apprenticeships a requirement of public procurement contracts. If they want to send a signal about their commitment to employers, surely they should insist that apprenticeships are part of any public contract.

There are also lost opportunities in relation to the Richard report. He wants his recommendations to be taken as a whole rather than as a “pick and mix”, which the Government have tended to do. I know that they say they will come back to it, but the real concern is that time is marching on and the need is there now. For instance, on supporting small businesses, we know what some of the successful measures are in terms of SMEs. We know that getting them together to be part of group training associations or hubs that encourage small businesses to take on apprentices works. Why have we still not got apprenticeship schemes in every school, college and university? If you want to signal that apprentices are a necessary part of their environments and that there are real opportunities, getting those organisations to take on apprentices would be a first-rate example.

I hope that in her response the Minister will tell us exactly how the Government will increase the pathetically small number of employers who take on apprentices. The record of FTSE 100 companies is not much better—only about one-third of them do so. This remains a lost opportunity and the Government are not making real and determined efforts to ensure that an apprenticeship will be available for all those young people who want one.

We know that demand enormously outstrips the supply. I have previously cited the example of BT; for 300 apprentice places—although the figure may have increased—there were some 25,000 applications. It is harder to get a BT apprenticeship than it is to get into Oxford or Cambridge. We remain in that situation because, first, we are not providing an example through government procurement contracts and, secondly, we do not have a determined drive to ensure that more companies take on apprentices.

Some local authorities are doing well, but why are not all local authorities having apprenticeship drives? Why do not all local employment partnerships ensure that apprenticeships have to be an inherent part of their programmes? The noble Baroness can cite a large figure of 500,000 apprenticeships—I have said that there are problems about their quality—but that is not enough if one looks at the participation rate of companies. I still go around talking to employers who seem to have little or no idea that they could, to their benefit, take on apprentices. The Government need to do a lot more and ensure that every school has links to the business community. They need to ensure that apprentices go back into schools and colleges to give out the message on how good apprenticeships are.

At a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Apprenticeships Group, attended by about 30 young apprentices, I asked them, “How many of you were advised by your teachers in your school to take up an apprenticeship?”. About two hands went up; the vast majority of young people are still being propelled towards the academic path. There is nothing wrong with that, except that it is not suitable for them all. The guidance that is given in schools and colleges is still nowhere near good enough. If you want to improve that situation, you have to make sure that there are links to the business community. It would not harm primary as well as secondary schools to do that. When young people see apprentices coming back to the school, saying what a great experience an apprenticeship is and how it has changed their lives—how they can earn while they learn—it is one of the most powerful messages that they can get from people who were part of their peer group.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I have a whole range of questions that I should like to put to her on the Richard review. Will she confirm whether the Secretary of State for Education will provide funding to deliver improved awareness in schools of apprenticeship opportunities, as recommended by the Richard review? What measures does Secretary of State for Education intend to take to ensure that apprenticeships are properly promoted in schools? What measures does the Minister intend to take to support smaller businesses to engage with the apprenticeship system?

We should not have to wait yet another six months or so. There are easy options, some of which I have described, that the Government could be taking now. Concepts such as group training associations are nothing new—in fact, the National Apprenticeship Service should be driving them—but more determination on the part of the Government is needed. They should give out a very positive signal that if you want a government contract, you have to commit yourself to taking on a number of apprentices. If the HS2 goes ahead—I hope that it does—one would need only one apprentice for every £1 million of investment to generate some 33,000 apprenticeships. That is a sobering thought, but it will not happen unless it is made an absolute requirement. There could be so much benefit. If one considers what Crossrail did, how it engaged with its contractors and SMEs and got them to take on apprenticeships, one can see the benefit of that approach.

I still think that the Government’s response to the Richard review is a lost opportunity and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I thank the noble Lord for his reply. I am sorry that in parts of it he was rather more negative than he usually is on this subject. However, I pay tribute to him and to his Government for what they did to revive the apprenticeship scheme in their time, and we are building on that and taking it forward.

Perhaps I may take up some of the noble Lord’s questions. He mentioned the high level of youth unemployment, which is mercifully coming down, although not fast enough. Of course, we have a revitalised apprenticeship programme, which, alongside an employability skills programme, will help young people to take up opportunities. We also have the traineeship programme in place, and that, too, will be of assistance to young people in getting back into employment. National Apprenticeship Week is certainly a great success. It is raising the profile of apprenticeships this week and has gone from strength to strength. It was interesting to see that the apprentice of the year was a young woman engineer at British Aerospace. She is obviously doing an awful lot for gender equality in STEM subjects, as well as personally raising the profile of all the good things that apprenticeships can do.

The noble Lord mentioned, as he has done before, public procurement and having a set number of apprenticeships for every public procurement exercise. Of course, we support the appropriate use of public procurement to promote the take-up of apprenticeships, but under EU law we cannot make contracts conditional on hiring workers or apprentices, so the Government leave—

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

We did not find that to be a problem. That was said to me when I was a Minister, yet we challenged it and were able to bring about those apprenticeships. I am just asking the Minister not to accept that. We have never called for a set number of apprenticeships, although there are various formulae. I find what the Minister says regarding apprenticeships being part of a public procurement contract incredible. I had exactly the same response but we challenged it and were able to bring about apprenticeships with Crossrail and the Olympics. I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to challenge that and to show determination.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I note what the noble Lord says. Obviously we try to encourage firms to take apprentices, but we use that route rather than making contracts conditional on it. However, I know of the success of the Crossrail apprenticeship scheme and how well that worked.

The noble Lord mentioned awareness of apprenticeships, and that links into careers information, advice and guidance, which of course is now statutory in schools. As part of that, they now have to give information about apprenticeships as well as about higher education and other opportunities. We have recently heard the Prime Minister reiterate that it should now be the norm for young people to go into either higher education or an apprenticeship, so we are putting a great focus on that. One of the things that Ofsted will monitor in schools is how well careers information, advice and guidance is delivering that aspect of opportunities for young people. The noble Lord is absolutely right: there is a real issue concerning the number of young people, parents and employers who are aware of the range of opportunities that are available. The more publicity we can get for this programme, the more we will be able to engage all those parties in seeing the benefits of apprenticeships for all.

We know that apprentice alumni go back into schools. Obviously there is not a particularly co-ordinated programme but we are aware that it happens and that it can be extraordinarily effective. Any former pupil going back into a school to talk with enthusiasm about what they are doing is a tremendous motivator for the next generation, and we will certainly do what we can to encourage that.

Of course, apprentices have to be in a job. So far as concerns insisting that schools, colleges and so on take on apprentices, it is important that a job is identified for them beforehand. Again, there is an ongoing programme of raising awareness and of making the opportunities available.

The noble Lord talked about the links between businesses and schools. We know that these are absolutely crucial, and work is ongoing in this respect. We are not waiting six months for any of this to happen; it is all ongoing at present. Discussions take place between employers and education providers—schools, businesses and higher education—to make absolutely sure that employers are aware of the benefits of having apprentices and that young people, and indeed adult returners, are aware of the possibilities of apprenticeships.

Going back to careers information and guidance, Ofsted will have a review in the summer to assess just how well the delivery of apprenticeship careers advice is going. We will keep a monitoring eye on that.

The noble Lord mentioned demand outstripping supply and a number of cases where the extremely efficient apprenticeship schemes are hugely important. He said that time was marching on but we are now taking action. I hope that the Opposition will see that in many ways this is a cross-party initiative. As I said, we are building on the work that his party did in government, and we hope that we will be able to take it forward so that it becomes a very exciting and vibrant programme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I apologise if I gave the impression that the heritage industry was small. I was trying to make the point that many of the component parts of it are very small. The noble Lord is absolutely right that it is a very important part of tradition and, of course, of the tourist industry, to which it makes a great contribution. However, it is much more important than that, too: it includes a very diverse range of skill and work areas and it is vital that we do not lose sight of these.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I will take advantage of the fact that we have not exhausted the time. This is a really key issue. I apologise if I sounded negative. I do not want to be negative but just want to get the Government to recognise the size and scale of the problem. Even though the Minister says that youth unemployment is coming down, as I am sure she knows, in some parts of the country it is not and the levels are very high, so I want to try to inject a sense of urgency into the situation.

The Minister did not really respond to the point that I made about there still being only a very small number of businesses participating in apprenticeships. What positive steps are the Government going to take? For instance, addressing the very worthwhile point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about heritage craft skills, the difficulty with those small businesses—sometimes it is just one person on their own or a small group—is, first, that they face what they see as an administrative burden and, secondly, that they worry about whether they can carry an apprentice and create that job. That is why, again, they need to be encouraged to create their own little hubs and group training associations, where some of that administrative burden can be shared.

I am critical because, as I have said, there is a danger that in the first attempt we are driving up volume rather than quality as well, although that is being addressed, which I welcome. Interestingly, one my noble friend Lord Grocott’s point, I met a young apprentice accountant as part of the Crossrail scheme. When we talk about apprenticeships, we seem to forget that what they involve is much more wide-ranging than manual skills: there are over 200 apprenticeship frameworks. We have gone well beyond what used to be regarded as the traditional route. In relation to the higher level—

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I think the House has been very tolerant. The noble Lord is speaking in Back-Bench time.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I did wait to see whether there were any further Back-Bench speakers and there were not, so I took the opportunity. If there are any, I will give way. However, as there are not, I will just use the opportunity that we have.

On higher-level apprenticeships, again, there is a view that it is an either/or choice: you either take an apprenticeship or you go to university. However, it should not be an either/or choice because, as we know, higher-level apprenticeships can lead to university degrees. I will end on that.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I was in no way complacent about youth unemployment. We all know that it is a disastrous start for many young people if they cannot get into a job and into work when they finish their compulsory education. The noble Lord mentioned getting employers more involved. There is now, for instance, a £1,500 start-up to help SMEs get their first apprenticeship scheme going. We have seen 6,800 starts between February and October 2012, and there are a further 12,100 in the pipeline.

As for small and medium-sized enterprises, an increasing number of employers are coming on board and taking on apprenticeships. As for the larger firms, discussions are ongoing with some of the major firms that take significant numbers of apprentices. The noble Lord mentioned BT. There is also BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce. Some very large firms have extraordinarily well established apprenticeship programmes, and the Government are in constant dialogue with them to try to ensure that best practice can be passed on and that it is made as easy as possible for employers to take on apprenticeships. One of our other challenges is to reduce the bureaucracy so that there are no unnecessary disincentives to employers taking on apprenticeships. Of course, more work needs to be done, and we very much look forward to the results of the consultation and to ensuring that we take that implementation forward in the autumn.

Britain’s Industrial Base

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Adonis on creating the opportunity for this debate. Given the complexity of the subject, it is a short period to try to deal with it. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Marland, on his appointment. I do not envy him trying to sum up this debate given the varying strands and the different advice that he has been given. Given the time available, I am going to focus on only one or two issues.

Skills are a key part of our industrial base and I want to draw attention to the importance of STEM subjects. My noble friend Lord Haskel mentioned the quality of teaching in engineering, maths and physics. My noble friend Lord Adonis was one of the promoters of Teach First. In trying to convince young people that engineering is an area worth entering, we need to focus on the quality of teaching.

There was lots of talk about infrastructure. I want to concentrate on our broadband network, investing in it and making sure that investment delivers and delivers on time, given the importance of broadband investment in R & D and in all our industries. My noble friend Lord Adonis talked about the poor quality of the mobile network. Why is it taking us so long to introduce 4G? By the time we get round to introducing it, 5G, which is on the horizon, will already be with us.

Given my interest in skills and apprenticeship, I want also to focus on apprenticeships. A variety of advice is coming to us on apprenticeships. I am not sure that I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Bhattacharyya on how we should fund them, but their importance should not be underestimated. My noble friend Lord Adonis told us of his experience of companies saying to him, “We were looking for 86 apprentices out of 1,500 and we could not get them”. That comes back to the quality of teaching and ensuring that our best young people understand that it is worth going into engineering. That is fundamentally important. My noble friend Lord Bhattacharyya reminded us that the number of applications for apprenticeships vastly exceeds those available. Demand exceeds supply enormously. My noble friend gave his example and the example that I normally give is British Telecom. It has some 300 apprenticeships and it gets something like 25,000 applications.

The number of companies offering apprenticeships is still pitifully small—only a third of the FTSE 100 companies. Somewhere between 4% and 8% of companies are actually offering apprenticeships. They are a good deal, so how do we encourage the creation of apprenticeships? I hope the noble Lord will address in his reply why the Government are not demonstrating by example and by their own leadership. When they offer government contracts, they should ensure that apprenticeships and training are a key part of those contracts. We did that in the previous Government, and it is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, in his contribution referred to the Olympics—I cannot remember the wonderful quote from Abraham Lincoln. It was not by chance that we got nearly 400 apprentices out of the Olympics; we got them because there was a demand on the companies. Similarly with Crossrail, we ensured that some 400 apprentices would emerge from that. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government do not understand the importance of demonstrating through their own contracts the creation of apprenticeships. It is an area that the Government have to tackle.

There is another way the Government could encourage apprenticeships. If they want more SMEs to participate in apprenticeships, one of the key ways is through more group training associations, the hubs that encourage SMEs to recognise that if some of the administrative and training burden is concentrated centrally, it becomes much more attractive to those companies to participate in apprenticeships.

I am conscious of the clock, so I will wind up my speech. I think it was my noble friend Lord Giddens who gave us the global perspective, if you like. I did not know whether to feel cheered or gloomy at the end of it, although he gave us some sage advice about the great challenge of trying to create net jobs. I hope that when the Minister gives his reply, he will focus on how we are going to create more apprenticeships.

Employment Tribunals Act 1996 (Tribunal Composition) Order 2012

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

As an amendment to the above Motion, at the end to insert “but that this House regrets that the order will risk the reduction of justice and fairness at employment tribunals, is opposed by both trades unions and employers’ organisations, and risks increasing costs through a greater number of appeals; believes that having an employer and employee representative on employment tribunals remains the right way to ensure a fair and just decision and process for claimants; and calls on the Government to place a report into the effect of the changes before Parliament 18 months after the approval of the order”.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his contribution, although that does not mean that I agree with it. I also thank him for the speed with which he responded in writing to the questions that had been raised but, again, I do not necessarily thank him for the content. I do not feel that he helped to clarify or justify the Government’s proposals, and that is why we have put down these amendments to the two orders.

The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, said that people felt the introduction of lay members was motivated by further proposals. I do not think that you can really blame people for that, given that the Government have indicated that there are likely to be further movements in employment law. Even if you were not of a suspicious nature, the Beecroft report being delivered to No. 10 might at least have caused your antennae to wave about a bit in anxiety. Therefore, my question to the Minister is: can we expect more in this vein, with the view being taken that if only we lift these restrictions, somehow that will open the floodgates to employment and that the restrictions are the barriers that are really holding back SMEs or even large firms? We believe that that is a false analysis predicated on entirely the wrong views.

On the question of lay members, why do we believe that they ought to be a key part of the process? I do not intend to go through all the reasons as we had a full and frank debate in Grand Committee. When industrial—now employment—tribunals were first formed, the whole idea was that there would be a different approach and a different style. Along with that came lay members. What do they bring? They bring real knowledge and understanding of industrial situations. That is not to say that judges do not, but they do not have the same perspective. Will the proposal alter fundamentally the nature of unfair dismissal claims? We believe that it will. We believe that lay members play a fundamental and important role in the proceedings.

The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, told me that the safeguards are there and are real. I listened carefully and the only safeguard that I could see was that it would be a judicial decision. That does not strike me as a real safeguard. I will not use the word “whim” but it depends on a view that lay members are not necessary in a significant number of cases. It must be significant or we would not be going down that road. If we are talking about preserving the nature of employment tribunals in which the views of people who have real experience in a wide range of industries and occupations, lay members play a vital role in ensuring that those views are taken into account and that the perspective of cases receives the widest possible analysis. Will it cost a bit more? Inevitably, it will, but we believe that it is justified in the circumstances.

On the second Motion, on the question of the length of unfair dismissal, it is true that there has been a history of different periods. We have gone from two years, to one year, to six months. Is the Government’s proposal justified? We do not believe that it is. Although it has fluctuated over a significant period, there is no evidence to show that it has had a direct effect on employment levels. That is why I said at the outset that it is predicated on the wrong analysis. Since the qualifying period was reduced from two years to one in 1999, more than 1.75 million jobs have been created in the UK, so it does not seem to be a barrier or impediment. The Minister quoted the chamber of commerce. Similarly, I could say that, interestingly, the SME Business Barometer survey asked 500 SMEs about the main obstacle to success. Top of the poll as the biggest obstacle was the state of the economy, with obtaining finance next. Just 6 per cent of respondents listed regulation as the main obstacle to growth.

In the correspondence that I received from the Minister, even he struggled to demonstrate that the unfair dismissal claims were the root cause of the problem. First, they cannot be disentangled. We cannot disentangle employment tribunal claims from the multiple claims; the Minister admitted that in the correspondence. We do not believe that the proposals are evidence-based.

I will quote again from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Surely it has some credibility when it states:

“Making it easier to dismiss staff without due cause is far more likely to harm the prospects of UK plc by fostering crude and out-dated attitudes to employment relationships that will put employees off from ‘going the extra mile’. Unproductive and disengaged workers will cost firms far more than the threat of tribunals”.

I believe that the institute is right about that.

If we want to give employers helpful advice, some things that the Minister suggested were right, such as more use of ACAS and mediation. However, the key for employers is how they treat their employees. We never suggested that training would be finished in a year; we are talking about continual learning in today’s workplaces. We are saying that the first year of employment is a long enough period to assess a new employee if the employer is making sure that they are being mentored and are responding to their training programmes. Are we really saying that at the end of that period an employer cannot assess whether an individual is going in the right direction and will make a worthwhile contribution to the organisation? My experience tells me that a year is a significant period of time.

This would signal the wrong route to employers. If we extend the unfair dismissal period, we will be trying to convince ourselves—without any evidence—that this will make employers take on more people. Of course we want employment to increase, but the way to encourage this is to ensure that we create the right economic conditions. I cannot resist saying to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that while the focus is definitely on reducing the deficit—and I welcome the increase in apprenticeships—we still have not seen the growth that was predicted, the forecasts for which have been significantly reduced.

My final reason for moving the Motion was that I read the letter in reply to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, who made the reasonable request that an employee should be entitled to be given a reason for dismissal before they were dismissed. Unless the noble and learned Lord is more easily pleased than I am, he will be disappointed with the final paragraph, in which the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, stated that the Government consider that requiring employers to give a written reason before giving notice would be an additional administrative complexity for them and would increase their costs. Does that send the right signal to employers about how to treat employees? Surely it is totally the wrong advice to give them. If they are handling their employees in a proper, structured way, and if they have the right HR procedures, they should have nothing to fear from an employment tribunal. On these grounds, I beg to move.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Motions. We had a wide-ranging debate on both these orders in Grand Committee. I opposed both, and I still do. Both orders undermine the employment rights that many people have fought for over the years. The first deals with the qualifying period and the right of workers to receive a reason for dismissal. The second provides for the removal of lay members from industrial tribunals that deal with cases of unfair dismissal. As noble Lords indicated in our previous debate, this has been opposed not only by the TUC and the CBI but by the Engineering Employers Federation and Citizens Advice.

Those who supported the Government in our previous debate did so, as I understand it, because they believed that if employers did not have to comply with employment laws, they would be able to employ more people. I doubt that. I oppose the orders for a different reason: I believe that, in a civilised community, the worker has rights which must be observed. An overriding one must be the right to continued employment unless there are very good reasons for this not to be maintained. Is it right that employees should simply be regarded as disposable? The loss of employment is often a disaster; not only for the employee but for his or her family. Many may face a decline in living standards and perhaps years spent on benefits. The trauma is even worse when the decision is felt to be unfair and if there is little alternative work available.

I agree that conciliation or mediation should be tried rather than immediate reference to a tribunal, but this is attempted nowadays and may not always work out. The opportunity to go to a tribunal should exist if such procedures do not provide an acceptable solution. The presence of lay representatives from both sides of industry or commerce, in addition to a judge who presides, produces an informal—and informed —atmosphere, conducive to a fair hearing by litigants. Most organisations familiar with our present arrangements, including many judges themselves, are supportive of the involvement of lay representatives.

The Government want to change the arrangements for hearing unfair dismissals so that the litigant will appear before a judge sitting alone. In other words, there will be a more legal set-up but no access to legal aid, since this is being removed by legislation recently before our House. There is no doubt that the Government believe there have been too many tribunal cases and that there will be fewer under their new proposals—and no doubt fewer successful cases. This is grossly unfair. There is no more important area of life than the work that most people do. Without it, life changes dramatically, not only for the individual concerned, but the family which he or she has to support. The loss, if unfair, should be compensated. The least the Government can do is examine how these changes impact upon people, which is what is proposed by my noble friend’s Motions. I hope the Government will accept them. If they are interested in fairness and justice, they can really do no other.

--- Later in debate ---

The orders have been consulted on publicly, affirmed in another place and debated at some length in your Lordships’ House, both in Grand Committee last week and today. They will have a positive impact on businesses, on the economy and—as the noble Lord, Lord Jones, said so eloquently—on those who would otherwise be out of work. Together with the wider package in which they sit, they will help make a difference by improving the efficiency of the system while maintaining a level of service to the users who rely on it to deliver justice. I commend the orders to the House.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his extensive reply. I will keep my remarks very brief. I see that I am getting support for that intent. It is not because I think that the issues are unimportant, but because my noble friends did ample justice to the reasons for both amendments to the Motions.

I will pick up a couple of points. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, invited us to leave ideology at the door. I like to think that we did in this debate, and that there were sincerely held views on both sides. All of us in the Chamber care passionately about youth unemployment. That is why the previous Government spent so much time rebuilding the apprenticeship programme, which was practically at death’s door.

Because we hold a different view on these issues, that does not mean that we do not care—we do care, passionately. However, the noble Lord is being over-optimistic if he believes that this measure, described by the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, as “modest”—again I must part company with him there—will somehow ensure that we do not have, in his view, any spurious claims. I still firmly believe that if you really want employers to protect themselves, the way is to have proper personnel procedures and not imagine that somehow they can deal with this at the 11th hour.

Because of the time, I am going to telescope my remarks to a large extent. I welcome one point by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. I do not know whether he called it a “review” or a “report” in a two-year period approximately, but I welcome it, even though we are totally opposed to these changes. As for the composition of the tribunals, we believe that this is a profound change in their nature. I am not going to test the opinion of the House on the first amendment to the Motion, not because we see this issue as less important, but mainly in the interest of time; it is for that reason alone. We are still fundamentally concerned about it; we are still not reassured by any means when the noble Lord tells us that there will be more to come. We believe that this will again diminish rights. However, for the reasons I gave, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.