Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

Lord Harper Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 20th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a non-executive chair of RVL Aviation.

I too congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his excellent maiden speech. Before he started speaking, I wondered whether he was going to set out the Church of England’s policy on sustainable aviation. I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent content of his speech and look forward to his further contributions in the House. The bit I will particularly remember is his injunction to be “kindly present”, which we should all strive to do. If I ever require someone to provide a reference for me, I will think of the noble Lord, Lord Raval, who spent most of his speech, rather than talking about the Bill, saying fantastic things that the right reverend Prelate would have been too humble to have said himself. He painted a rich picture of the right reverend Prelate’s skills, and I look forward to his future contributions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, will not be surprised to learn that I disagreed with almost every word of her speech. On flying, she referred to the ability of people to go on holiday. We had a very interesting test case during the pandemic, when, in effect, we told people—albeit not for this reason—that they could not fly. Listening to constituents then as a Member of Parliament made clear to me the breadth of reasons why people value aviation. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester touched on some of them, including aviation bringing people together and enabling people to see friends and family around the world. It is not just about holidays; it is about bringing people together.

I also do not share the noble Baroness’s distaste for frequent flyers. Most of the people who do frequent flying are those involved in business, in global investment and in growing both the British and the global economy, which is essential to generate the wealth that we will need to green the economy and to make it more sustainable. We will get public acceptance for a lot of this only if we also make people better off, so it is incredibly important that we support flying and enable more people to fly. I want people who currently do not have the opportunity to fly, both in the United Kingdom and globally, to have the chance to do so.

Where I do agree with the noble Baroness is that we absolutely need to do that sustainably. It will be done by the use of technology. Before I move on to the subject of the Bill, it is worth me saying that a range of technologies are available. When I was Secretary of State, I was surprised by the unanimity across the aviation industry—airlines, airports and the aerospace sector involved in developing technology and manufacturing planes—on the importance of sustainability and decarbonisation. We never had any arguments with the industry or had to push it in this direction; it was already there and moving at pace. I found that incredibly encouraging.

Innovative companies based in the United Kingdom, such as ZeroAvia, are working on the technology around hydrogen fuel cells, which will be available in the future. I will discuss SAF in a moment, but there are also companies working on electric planes. There is also the important work that the Government are doing on airspace modernisation, which we kicked off when I was Secretary of State; that will also make a contribution. To get to net-zero aviation, we will also need to use—for the bit you cannot abate with plane technology—carbon capture and storage, and I know that a great deal of work is going on in that space, too.

I was very pleased to see the Government carry on our Jet Zero Council, which they now call the Jet Zero Taskforce—the renaming is a minor detail. That brings together industry, government, academia and, importantly, representatives from the Climate Change Committee, who provide helpful advice. They therefore learn about where the technology has got to, to inform the advice that the Climate Change Committee then provides to the Government. That is very welcome.

On sustainable aviation fuel, my noble friend Lord Grayling referred to the VS100 flight that Virgin Atlantic put on; it was funded by Virgin Atlantic but also supported by a contribution from the taxpayer because of a competition run by my predecessor. That flight took place in November 2023 and captured enormous public interest and attention. It was one of the rare occasions that I was able to do the morning broadcast round standing in front of a plane at Heathrow Airport—a great backdrop. It also had a good response from broadcasters, who found the whole thing very interesting and who did great explainers for the public on some of this technology; they wished us well with the endeavour, which is not something that broadcasters usually did to Ministers doing the morning broadcast round. It captured attention not just in Britain but around the world. When I went, shortly afterwards, to the climate change conference, COP 28, I was able to speak about that flight, which was a very good example of Britain leading the way in this area and demonstrating the value of technology.

We then started developing and consulting on the SAF mandate, which, in effect, provides the demand side of the equation for sustainable aviation fuel. I am very pleased again that, with the present Government, there has been enormous continuity in policy in this area.

On the supply side, the Minister referred to the excellent work being done by the Aerospace Technology Institute, which I also support. As has been mentioned, including by my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower, the capital cost of the domestic production of sustainable aviation fuel has been supported from the advanced fuels fund. I think the third round of that took place recently; the first round happened when we were in government. I would be interested if, in his winding-up speech, the Minister could provide us with an update on where the development of those plants has got to and when we might see more. My noble friend Lord Grayling suggested one timeframe for that, as did my noble friend Lord Davies. If the Minister gives us an update on progress in this area, it would be helpful if he also sets out something that my noble friend Lord Grayling also touched on, which is the value that the Government place on domestic production of sustainable aviation fuel.

There is a national resilience case for that, because again we saw during the pandemic that countries, regardless of the contractual obligations that businesses had, very much protected their domestic supply of this sort of fuel. We can quickly find that our reliance on getting this from overseas rapidly dries up. Having some domestic resilience is very important, and I would be grateful if the Minister could set out the Government’s view.

The specific purpose of the Bill is the revenue certainty mechanism. My noble friend Lord Grayling touched on this, and I clearly remember what I might term his rebel amendment to force the pace. It was good that he provoked that debate. I must confess that, when I was Secretary of State, I took quite a bit of persuading about the need for the revenue certainty mechanism. I will say a few words about that, because it will be helpful in posing some questions to the Minister, both here and when we are in Committee.

When the industry and my noble friend were lobbying for this, I was clear that I wanted to understand what the market failure was that we were trying to fix with the revenue support mechanism. We have ended up with a clear enunciation of it in the Explanatory Notes for the Bill. In his opening remarks, the Minister touched on this and talked about how the need to develop first-of-a-kind technology, which is not currently in existence, requires a significant amount of capital and is very high risk.

The caveat is that, when I had some round-table discussions with some of the investors, both here and in the United States, they understandably quite liked the idea of some guaranteed demand through a mandate. They also quite liked the idea of guaranteed pricing through a revenue certainty mechanism. I gently pointed out to them that they have to take some risk in this process in order to justify the return. The trick here is not to remove all risk, but to get the risk to the level of comparable investment projects, so that we make sure that we get appropriate levels of investment. But we must guard against what has happened in some of the rest of the energy sector, with very long-run contracts guaranteeing returns to investors that are higher than are strictly necessary, with the costs being paid by the consumer.

It is important that, when the detailed work is done, we get the balance right between securing the investment in domestic SAF production, minimising the cost to the consumer and getting the length of the contractual terms right. I do not pretend that that is easy, but it will be important to do it. In Committee, I think we will be discussing how to design the levy obligations on the fuel suppliers. My noble friend Lord Grayling touched on some of the detailed questions, such as how the levy interacts with the UK’s emissions trading scheme, the CORSIA scheme that has been set up internationally and the EU scheme, particularly as the free allocations for aviation under the emissions trading scheme expire.

Some argue that payments under the emissions trading scheme should be used to fund sustainable aviation fuel plants, rather than creating yet another obligation. I would be interested if the Minister set out how he and the Government see those schemes interacting with each other to ensure that consumers do not pay more than once.

My final point, which was also touched on by my noble friend Lord Grayling, is about the composition of sustainable aviation fuel and the international dimension to this. It is quite right—I agree in principle with what my noble friend Lord Grayling said—that we should not be using land that could be used for food crops to produce SAF. But there is one thing that we need to be realistic about, which maybe we should not have to but we do.

There is a big lobby in the US, which my noble friend touched on, that wants to use corn ethanol for SAF. Normally, I would be very much against that. The only argument in favour of it is whether it may be necessary to engage the United States Administration, who are not enormously well disposed towards sustainability and net zero, about what international agreements we may need to have with them, because it is really important in this area to keep the United States Administration broadly aligned. Given that aviation is by definition an international industry, it will be quite difficult to decarbonise the industry if the United States is heading in a different direction. Therefore, I would be interested to know what discussions the British Government are having with the United States Government about trying to keep them in this space and what sorts of discussions are going on with fuel providers. The only argument for using food crops for this would be that if by doing so we could keep the United States in this space.

However, in summary, I strongly support aviation and strongly support making it more sustainable. That will be done not by stopping people flying but by using technology—all the technology. Sustainable aviation fuel is the technology solution that is going to be available first—it is available now. The Virgin flight that I referred to demonstrated that you can have a 100% sustainable aviation fuel flight that works. It is a drop-in fuel with existing technology, and the revenue certainty mechanism that is enabled by the Bill, if the design of it is correct—we will test some of that in Committee—will help get that domestic production up and running. With those caveats, I support the Bill and look forward to further debate in Committee with the Minister and, I suspect, a number of the noble Lords who are here today.

Heathrow Airport: Third Runway

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend raises a point that has been raised here before. The Government have put themselves out, as they should, to support the reopening of Doncaster Airport, and of course we will support the Mayor of Doncaster in the aspiration to have better connectivity for that part of Yorkshire.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, the debate over Heathrow expansion, which I strongly support—and I draw attention to my entry in the register about working in the aviation industry, albeit not at Heathrow—is often couched in terms of passenger flights. In terms of the Government’s decision-making, what consideration are they giving to the fact that more than £200 billion-worth of trade goes through Heathrow, including a majority of trade in some very important sectors, such as our world-leading pharmaceutical industry?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

A number of noble Lords are re-running the debate we had on Monday evening. The noble Lord is right that 72% of UK air freight by value goes through Heathrow because it is the only hub airport in Britain, and that is why the Government are so keen to expand it. The noble Lord is right that the value of air freight to international trade to and from Britain is an important issue in considering the expansion of the airport.

Heathrow: National Airports Review

Lord Harper Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I have no doubt that the noble Baroness has the right figures in front of her, but her conclusion is not necessarily correct. The purpose of this is economic growth. Supporting growth in the economy is the number one objective of this Government. In terms of who flies, her statistics suggest to me that there is real business traffic at an international hub airport and that constraining that will be a constraint on the economy of Britain, which is a wholly bad thing. Whether everybody else wants to fly for recreation and leisure purposes is very important, but even more important is that the economy is stimulated by those who need to travel, and that we have a hub airport big enough and flexible enough to cope with their demands.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a non-executive chair of an aviation company, albeit one that does not operate from Heathrow. I have a couple of points to make. I strongly support what the Government are trying to do in expanding Heathrow. I was very surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, who speaks for the Liberal Democrats, did not mention any of the technology improvements, including to aircraft, sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen fuel cells and all the technology that will enable us to fly in a way compatible with our climate obligations. She did not mention any of those things, nor did she mention the Elizabeth line, a fantastic, environmentally friendly solution to get enormous numbers of people to Heathrow. Lots of that progress is going in the right direction.

As we have heard, there are lots of people who absolutely do not want this to succeed and will use every tool so that it does not. My concern, notwithstanding what I have said about the compatibility of expanding Heathrow with our climate change obligations, is that I am convinced that when—as I hope—the Government make the right decision to expand Heathrow, there will be a judicial challenge on climate grounds. I want to know what the Government are doing, first to speed up the process of that challenge, but also to make sure that, ultimately, that challenge will fail and we can make sure that this very important hub airport—not just important for passengers but also incredibly important for the amount of freight that it moves in and out of the United Kingdom—is able to expand and benefit the people of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There have been occasions on which I did not necessarily agree with the noble Lord in all his sentiments, but this time I do. He is right to raise things such as the development of aircraft technology, particularly sustainable aviation fuel, on which I hope he will support us when that Bill is considered in this House. He is right also to raise the Elizabeth line, because it makes a huge difference to connectivity to the airport, and he is right to refer to air freight. Heathrow is a principal hub for air freight, which is part of the economic benefit of having a hub airport.

In respect of the noble Lord’s question about a possible challenge, the Secretary of State in the other place said that we have announced that we are working with the judiciary to cut the amount of time it takes for a review to move through the court system, including for national policy statements and nationally significant infrastructure projects. Indeed, it is the Government’s intention to consider very carefully whether this should be designated a nationally significant infrastructure project, alongside others. We are considering that; the Secretary of State is seeking the views of the Climate Change Committee and we intend to do all that expeditiously, to proceed with this.

Great British Railways: Rolling Stock

Lord Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend is accurate: 90 trains were procured; some of them were delivered five years ago. At the time that the South Western Railway operation reverted to public ownership, six out of the 90 were in service; as of today, 23 are now in service. The new management is doing what the old one did not, which is to put the new trains in service and have the old ones taken out of service and scrapped. The rest of them will be introduced as fast as the drivers can be trained, which will take a little time because that had not been done either.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, before the election last year, we published a rolling stock pipeline so that the industry was aware of not just the trains that the Department for Transport wished to procure but the fact that it had Treasury funding, which I hope has been a useful foundation for the work that the Minister is doing on the rolling stock strategy. Given that foundation that was put in place, is he able to add to the Answer he gave the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and indicate to the House a timeframe of when he wishes to publish that rolling stock strategy for the competitive rolling stock industry that we established over the last decade or so?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord’s recollection of what happened in his term of office might be quite good, but the fact is that the industry does not have much regard for what was published at the end of the term of the previous Government and is actively and interestedly waiting for something which relates to a real future, which is related to the age of the rolling stock and future usage. Currently, there are already three live procurements in the market for rolling stock, which will be referred to in the publication of the rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, which I expect to take place next summer.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Lord Harper Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his work on this Bill and for meeting me to discuss any concerns that may remain. We on these Benches are pleased to hear from the Government a commitment to a comprehensive review that will cover many of the issues that we discussed at earlier stages of this Bill and were the subject of many amendments to the Bill earlier in the year. These, we hope, will include the impact on SEN bus services, the £3 bus fare cap and the impact on villages and rural areas. The Government have already mentioned their published review of the £2 bus fare cap.

Within this group, for our Benches, the one key area remains the affordability of bus fares. We think the overall package of legislation in this Bill will help to transform bus services across the country and equip local transport authorities with a wide range of powers to deliver the right services to their local communities in the right way, but this needs to go hand in hand with affordable bus fares. The increase in the bus fare cap from £2 to £3 has created real barriers for passengers, particularly those on low incomes who rely on buses to go about their everyday lives. Budgets are tight for many families, forcing difficult choices between transport and other essentials. Bus fares outside cities such as London are very expensive. Without addressing fares, we think the Bill risks deepening existing inequalities and leaving many people isolated. This legislation is about improving bus services and enabling local authorities to have a choice about how local services are provided, but unless there are affordable bus fares, we think there is a hole in the plan.

The amendment that passed in this House on Report was about a review. It was not about providing a £2 bus fare scheme to support bus routes, particularly socially necessary routes, which are a lifeline for many villages and rural areas. The Motion in my name that we will get to would insert Amendment 8C into the Bill and ensure that the legislation contains a statutory commitment to the £2 bus fare scheme for socially necessary routes. It would require the Secretary of State to take all necessary steps to ensure that the £2 bus fare cap is maintained for passengers using socially necessary local services. We believe this is a far clearer amendment to the legislation, putting into action what we are committed to and ensuring a focus on the £2 bus fare cap by the Secretary of State. I hope Members on all sides of the House will see the merit in this provision to enhance further this bus legislation. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and look forward to testing the opinion of the House on this later.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words on this issue as the introducer of the £2 bus fare cap and the person who wrote the relevant sections of our manifesto, which committed to keep it for the duration of the Parliament and fund it, importantly, from savings that we were going to make in rail services. We do not spend enough time in this country talking about buses. Two and a half times more journeys are made by bus than by the national rail network. You would not know that from the national press, which is very London-centric on this subject, but in most parts of the country buses are critical, so I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate.

I shall say a word or two about my noble friend Lord Moylan’s purpose clause and his remarks on that. He talked about the Government trying to help their friends in local authorities. What is interesting about this legislation is that, if you look at what has happened to bus services, the real challenge, and one of the problems, is that what happened during the pandemic is that a significant number of people stopped using buses for rather obvious reasons and never returned. That caused a huge financial problem for the bus network and has caused lots of routes that were previously profitable not to be profitable. The thing that is missing in the legislation is that you can offer local authorities the powers to franchise services all you like, but unless the Treasury is going to give local authorities the money to pay for those bus services, all you do is take loss-making services that are being reduced by private sector operators or by local authorities that cannot pay for them, and the local authority ends up having to take them away because it has no ability to pay for them.

When this legislation gets on to the statute book, I will be interested to see whether the Government fund the powers to the level that you would have to in order to deliver an improvement to bus services. I suspect, given the dog’s breakfast the Chancellor is making of the economy and the fact that there is less rather than more money available for public services, that that is not going to happen, but we will see how that develops in the future. I think my noble friend Lord Moylan does not have to worry in one sense, because I do not think this cunning plan that the Government have implemented to help local authorities is going to help them at all.

Specifically on the cap, the Minister talked about the review of the £2 bus fare and said that it was not good value for money. What he missed out was that the Government decided, without having concluded the review of the £2 bus fare cap, to have a £3 bus fare cap, which suggests that they like the principle, but introduced it and picked a number without having done the review on the £2 bus fare cap in the first place. That demonstrates not sensible, evidence-based policy-making but a Treasury-driven “Let’s just reduce the cost of the policy and not look at the impact it was having”.

When I talked to bus companies, I found there were two issues relating to the bus fare cap that were important in driving up bus ridership. One was the obvious one, which is that it reduced the cost. Particularly in rural areas—as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords—where you often have to take a number of parts of a journey with a number of fares, it drove down the cost of those journeys. That is really important for people going to work or accessing education, so that had a big impact.

The other thing was the clarity and the consistency that it provided in communicating the level of bus fare to people, which had, I have to confess, a rather surprising impact. When talking to bus companies, I asked the question, “If we were to take this away, what would you do to your pricing structure?” What was interesting was that they all said having a round-number bus fare had a surprisingly powerful effect on their ability to market services to consumers, rather than people not knowing what a bus fare was going to be and a whole range of complexity. I think it needed a bit more time to bed in, and that is why I support a proper review having been carried out.

To go back to the point I made about funding, what we suggested—to take savings from the reforms that we were going to put in place for rail services and use some of that to fund the bus services—would have rebalanced where people chose to take their journeys. More people depend on bus services for important local journeys. Whether to access education, to access the health service or to access employment, far more people across the whole of the country use bus services to do that than use the rail network.

The Government have done the reverse. The first thing they did was come in and give railway drivers—some of the best-paid public servants—a pay rise and ask for nothing in return; they got no productivity improvements for the rail user. That money could have been spent on improving the quality of bus services across the country. That would have been the right decision, and it is the decision that we were going to make. When we do not see increases to funding for bus services—when we simply give local authorities the powers to franchise but with no money to deliver that—then people on all sides of your Lordships’ House will think that making savings in the rail network and putting the money into buses would have been the right decision. I am sorry the Government chose not to do so.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Harper for reminding us of the importance of funding and the fact that the Bill is almost meaningless unless large amounts of funding are attached to it for local authorities. That is not an original point; it is one that was made forcefully by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, at an earlier stage of debate on the Bill, but we have still heard nothing about the large amounts of funding that the Government are going to have to put into buses in order to make the Bill a reality.

I turn to the Motion by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who happens today to be sitting behind me, and who is apparently my new best friend. I understand—I hope I am not traducing her here—that she is not intending to divide the House on her Motion, but if she did then we would stick loyally with her as we did before. The Conservative Party is and always has been the party of villages, and whoever speaks up for villages in your Lordships’ House will have our support. It is a tragedy that the Government are willing to defer for a whole five years—into a new Parliament, when there is no doubt that they will not be the Government—a commitment to look at the effect of their policies on villages.

None the less, I have made it clear that I do not intend to divide the House on Motion 1A, so at this stage I beg leave to withdraw Motion 1A.

Rail Freight

Lord Harper Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There are clearly incentives, which I have described, and, in fact, access for freight is continuing. Recently, a new rail link was built into Horton Quarry, which is in Yorkshire off the Settle and Carlisle line, and a new freight terminal at Thorney Mill, which is near West Drayton. So it is clear that developments can be made in that direction, and the discounts that I have described and the encouragement for new freight ought to be testimony to the fact that the Government are keen on that happening.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Conservative Benches. Can they please make up their minds on who will ask a question?

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I bow to the popular will from my Benches—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

I really think we need to sort this out.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful that the Minister confirmed the 75% increase in rail freight—the target that I set in December 2023. I listened carefully to his Answer, in which he talked about the Secretary of State setting a target for GBR. Can I confirm that he is intending that Great British Railways will have that 75% rail freight increase—or more—target and will not set a lower one?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to hear from one of the many former Secretaries of State for Transport on the other side of the House. I confirm that the 75% will remain. There is no intention of setting a lower target. Of course, it has to be achieved over time, which he will know all about since he had a hand in the previous target.

Self-driving Vehicles: Disabled Passengers

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. The Government are consulting on an integrated transport policy, which will of course include provision for disabled people. In the various modes of transport, there is extensive work going on in all cases to accommodate disabled people as fully as we can in the provision of public services going forward. Some of them are more difficult than others. The railway is 200 years old this year—some of its facilities are equally old—but the Government are striving to achieve what my noble friend looks for.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, it was a great pleasure to get the Automated Vehicles Act on the statute book before the last election. It puts Britain in a globally leading position to get investment and technology and be global leaders in this important technology. I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said: we should be ambitious about making this technology accessible for everyone. Automated vehicles have the potential to improve the life chances and the independence of all those who have a disability that means that they cannot drive themselves. I urge the Minister to be as ambitious as he can and to go as fast as he can to get this technology on to our roads. It is safe, we are leaders in it and it is a real opportunity for Great Britain.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There must have been a shadow of a question in there somewhere, but I agree with the noble Lord that it is an exciting prospect. He is right that the potential here is to increase mobility for the community and for people with disabilities, if we get it right. I have great sympathy with the noble Baroness in striving to make sure that disability is treated in the mainstream, but if we are going to do this quickly, we have to recognise that the early adoption under this Act is likely to be using the same sorts of vehicles as are used now. What we are looking for in the medium-term future is new designs, which should have the facilities such as audio-visual equipment and facilities for people in wheelchairs that she would expect.

HS2 Reset

Lord Harper Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am sorry. That is a slip of the tongue caused by looking at my notes. I should have said on time and on budget. We do not always do them badly.

If noble Lords look at the history of HS2 they will see not limited scope changes but enormous scope changes with miles of the railway being put into tunnels and some technical specifications that, now they are being contemplated, do not look half as clever as they did when somebody suggested the highest-speed high-speed railway in the world, which therefore has to go in very straight lines and might disturb bats and need a bat tunnel when a more modest railway would have gone around that issue rather than straight through it.

I have to say to my noble friend that it is not always true that the Victorians got it right, and I am sure that this must have happened to previous Transport Ministers too. When I got to Network Rail, I remarked that Brunel’s Great Western Railway cost three times what he suggested it would, and about a week later I got a letter in green ink several pages long from a retired engineer, who said that I was entirely wrong and had no idea what I was talking about: it was actually four times more expensive.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

When I was appointed to lead the Department for Transport, HS2 was already not in great shape, as is well known. I immediately implemented some changes to get a grip of the project by focusing the company on cost control, starting work to renegotiate those big civil contracts that the Minister referred to and cancelling the second phase—which, although controversial at the time, I notice the present Government have not changed—which freed up money to spend on projects across the country. The final thing was to appoint Mark Wild as the new chief executive. I am confident that, with his record in delivering the Elizabeth line, he will achieve great things.

I will ask the Minister two questions. First, I listened carefully to what he said about Euston. Of course, I worked closely with him in his previous incarnation as the chairman of the Euston partnership. Refocusing that as a development-led project with more housing, more business space, and more contribution from private sector investment and less from the taxpayer is the right thing. I am pleased with the progress that has been made. He said he would come back to your Lordships’ House “in short order”; can he give us a bit more detail about what that means? Is that before the Summer Recess or after? I would like to hear more detail.

Secondly, the Minister also referred to the main works civil contracts. We started the work on renegotiating them. Can he say a little more about the progress that has been made? I recognise there is some commercial confidentiality involved there. It was referred to in James Stewart’s report, and it is important to get value for the taxpayer.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for the decision to appoint Mark Wild, which was obviously a good thing. The noble Lord is absolutely right that he did take some action. In the light of what has been discovered since, we could question how much action should have been taken, because this Government have clearly now taken some really strong action. In particular, we have had a serious look at governance. As a consequence, there is a new chair and there will no doubt be a new board in due course. That is one of the issues that has needed attention for some time.

I would be less complimentary about the cancellation of phase 2, which was pre-emptory. As for freeing up money, there was no money associated with phase 2. It is true that it would have cost money had it been delivered, but it was a delusion for many parts of the country. The Network North document promised everything to everybody without evidently having money in the short and medium term to deliver it. But everybody has had a part in this, and the truth is that this Government are committing themselves to this fundamental reset. Through that, we will get phase 1 to Birmingham and Old Oak Common and Euston done.

The Government are moving fast on Euston. I doubt we will be able to put anything in front of the House before the Summer Recess, but as soon as we are able to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I will come back about it. The noble Lord is certainly right about the main works civil contracts, but in order to have a reset of those you actually need to know where the project is. If you do not know where the project is and nobody can accurately say how much has been delivered then trying to negotiate your way out of those circumstances is really quite hopeless. Mark Wild is undertaking a granular review of how much has been constructed and how much value has been created through its construction. The noble Lord is right that we have to engage in discussion with the main works civil contractors and their consortia. We will do that in due course, but we first have to know where the project is in order to baseline those discussions.

Driving Test Delays

Lord Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. The Government are using modern technology to do just that. As a result of some of the actions taken since the Government took office, there has been a further number of warnings, suspensions and closed accounts. That is a consequence of monitoring what is going on. However, it has to be said that the people who use the bots are always one step ahead, so the consultation launched recently is about changing some of the rules to make sure it is not worth using bots. We have to make sure that people who want to book tests themselves, and driving instructors and the businesses they run, both have the opportunity of booking tests so as to get people working and contributing to the economy.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, having listened carefully to what the Minister said in response to my noble friend Lord Young, I will make two points. First, when we left office, we had reduced the backlog from a 20-week delay at its peak to 15 weeks. Since then, it has got worse, not better. Secondly, if the Minister looks more carefully in his folder, he will see that we did have a comprehensive plan, with a number of steps that we took—remarkably similar to the steps that the Government themselves have laid out—and that had some success in bringing down that backlog. The simple question to the Minister is: why has it got worse on his watch?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I welcome another former Secretary of State for Transport to the House, and I look forward to my interactions with him. Looking back at the numbers of tests booked, in fact he is right: there was a modest change from 2023 to 2024. The 2023 figure was 548,000 tests and the 2024 figure was 532,000. This is not an easy issue to solve, and the truth is that behaviours have changed, but what we are concentrating on here is a series of measures, including the latest consultation—which was clearly not planned by the previous Government because it is as a result of the call for evidence from December last year, which had 27,000 responses. This fast-track consultation is about changing the rules to make sure that people who try to profit through bots do not succeed.