Rail Performance

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises a subject that I feel that I should know more about than I do. I know the general issue, and one of the benefits of a coherent, integrated railway ought to be that Great British Railways should be considering level boarding far more deeply than anybody on the railways has generally done. That criticism can be levelled at most parts of the British railway system, with some notable exceptions.

I will now go and look at the compatibility or incompatibility of the trains and the platforms in north Wales. You have to remember that the platforms were largely built in that case in the 1840s, and not much has happened to them since. However, I recognise that it is a huge problem and I recognise the access issue, which always or nearly always calls for ramps and people to deploy them. It is unsatisfactory. Sadly, the infrastructure lasts for a very long time indeed, and the trains last for a long time, and it is a subject on which Great British Railways will have to do better than the railway has done for the last 50 years.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not a current active user of Euston Station but, in the course of my lifetime, I know well enough what experience you can have at that station, and it has often been quite dismal. However, I am encouraged by the Statement, which refers to “a 100-day plan of rapid improvements”. Can my noble friend the Minister outline a little more what he hopes will be the situation that will make the business of using Euston a more pleasurable experience for passengers?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. I was at Euston a week last Monday, hearing about the details of the plan. The station itself was very modern in 1968; it is no longer very modern. As a previous chair of Network Rail, I can tell your Lordships that if you look closely at the columns in the station, there are bands around the marble because it would fall off without them. The station is no longer in a fit condition. I would like to take some modest credit for having reincluded the concourse at Euston in the overall plan for the redevelopment of Euston and, now that the tunnels for HS2 will go there, I am very hopeful that all parts of the station will be fit for passenger usage in the future.

However, in the meantime, the most important parts of the 100-day plan are the following. The concourse is too small, so the logical thing to do on the concourse is to load the trains earlier, yet the position up until very recently was that neither of the train companies routinely managed to do that. However, they are now changing. So, a significant proportion of Avanti trains will be loaded at least 20 minutes before departure and, for the more local services on the London Northwestern trains, the platforms will be full of passengers even before the train has arrived. That will make a huge difference. There is a bookshop there currently that will not be there shortly, to create some space. I recall that we got criticism for removing Boots, but too many shops and not enough concourse space is the wrong answer. There will also be some further improvements to signage and visibility. When the last signage was done, it was hoped that it was the right job, but I am afraid it turned out not to be.

I hope that that is sufficient granular detail, but, if my noble friend would like to make himself available, either I or somebody else will show him around Euston Station, and I can get them to show him what is going to happen.

Lower Thames Crossing: Development Consent

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, has the Minister been over the Dartford Crossing recently? Does he know how difficult and congested it can be? I agree with the comment that it is very damaging to the economy to have a massive collective traffic jam day after day. If the Government fail to make the statutory decision by the due date that the Minister has given, what will happen? Have the Government taken into account the economic damage done by the existing situation at the Dartford Crossing and the benefits that the new Thames crossing will bring?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I know the crossing well and I am very conscious of the issues around it. It is a large infrastructure project, so we must get it right.

Trains: Wifi Provision for Passengers

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I do not think I can necessarily disagree with the noble Baroness, but that is a very absolutist approach and there is some balance to be had here. She says that the Government are not willing to subsidise the railways; we already do. As I have said, £2.85 billion is going in for the services. As I mentioned earlier this week, £44.1 billion is going into control period 7—the highest ever—and that covers all the renewals, the maintenance and the Network Rail operations. That element of it is very significant. That is nearly £9 billion a year that the Government spend, and in addition a further £2.8 billion is spent on subsidising services.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister says that no final decision has been taken, but is she trying to persuade the House that the Government no longer think, in the 21st century in which we live, that wifi should count as an essential service for those of us who use the railways?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The proof is in the pudding—between 10% and 20% of people on trains use the wifi. Most people nowadays use 4G and 5G networks.

Airports Slot Allocation (Alleviation of Usage Requirements) (No. 3) Regulations 2022

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising the issue of small aircraft. I know he has a great interest in the matter. I will have to write to him about whether it applies to private jets and other small aircraft. The instrument that we debated in Grand Committee very much covered the slots held by the large commercial airlines.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, before the House agrees these regulations, will the Minister tell us whether the Government expect limits to be placed on the number of passengers able to use Heathrow over Christmas?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

We are aware that the current passenger cap at Heathrow of 100,000 passengers will be removed very shortly—indeed, I think it is this weekend. I believe that no decision has been taken on the Christmas period. However, significant numbers of staff have been recruited by Heathrow, so on balance I expect that it will not return, but that would be an operational decision for Heathrow.

Motion agreed.

Industrial Action on the Railways

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I completely agree with the right reverend Prelate and noble Lords will have the opportunity to quiz the Government on the longer-term plan as we bring the legislation forward to put it into place. The right reverend Prelate may have seen the Williams-Shapps plan for rail: it sets out exactly what we want to do with the railways. We are hugely ambitious for our railways; we are investing in our railways; we are reopening abandoned routes all over the country; we are electrifying lines all over the country; we are opening high-tech networks such as the Elizabeth line; we have HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail; and we are creating thousands of jobs, particularly, for example, in train manufacturing. But, as I said, you have to build a modern railway on firm foundations, and we have to get to the stage where there are firm foundations on which to build that modern railway.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, which I have to admit she did with relish, but when I listen to the tone and content, I find it hard to escape the conclusion that the Government are content, if not enthusiastic, for this industrial action to go ahead because they think it will bring them political advantage. I have only a few moments to ask a question, so I ask the Minister to explain to the House: what is the role of an engaged, ambitious Secretary of State in a dispute such as this? What more, in her view, could the Government do to bring about the solution to this dispute that we all hope to see?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The role of the Secretary of State is, of course, to support the sector in reaching an agreement.

Travel Disruption at UK Airports and Ferry Ports

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount. I support my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton and congratulate him on securing today’s debate and the expert way in which he introduced it and laid out the context for what I hope will be its main purpose: finding out the Government’s view of what is going on and what, if anything, they are trying to do about it. It is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. I have learned a bit about chaplaincy services and, as someone who goes on some on the trains to which he has just referred, I know exactly what he means about the mix of commuter traffic and people who are visiting this country, sometimes for the first time.

Today’s debate is very timely. It is not very popular with the Government Benches so far as I can see, but I understand that it is still very timely because we all know that it has been triggered by what we saw happening over Easter and over the recent Whitsun half-term; and, in the summer that lies ahead, these problems are likely to cause even more chaos. I do not know if the Minister happened to see the news last night; I should think that from time to time she does. At the moment, there is no end of scenes of luggage and queues, and more news about flights being cancelled. In fact, it is not difficult to film huge queues at airports these days, and we have also seen photos of air crews helping to get luggage off planes because there were not enough baggage handlers.

My own experience, for what it is worth, has not been as bad as that. However, on a recent flight back to the UK, the plane landed on time but there was then an inordinate delay while finding enough ground crew staff to find it a berth and take the luggage off. Maybe that has happened to other noble Lords. As for the queues that can arise at passport control, as happened at Heathrow on 24 May, I have known the sheer frustration at seeing large numbers of automatic entry gates seemingly shut because of a lack of staff. I thought that the whole point of these e-gates was to make returning to the UK streamlined and quick for British citizens. No wonder we are told that some airlines are now taking action to cancel even more flights because they know that in the current circumstances there simply are not enough staff to cope with the work.

There is no doubt about the significant disruption. I will cite a couple of examples which the House may well know about. First, on 28 May, easyJet announced that it would cancel more than 200 flights. The airline said that about 24 flights from Gatwick would be cancelled each day between 28 May and last Monday. Secondly, British Airways cancelled 120 short-haul flights to and from Heathrow Airport on 3 June, although it did say that the cancellations were pre-planned and that passengers had been given advance notice. Thirdly, TUI announced that nearly 400 flights would be cancelled from 31 May until the end of June.

Then there is the issue of delays. For people at Manchester Airport on 29 May, it was not good enough for the airport to apologise for the delays at check-in and baggage reclaim and say only that the reason was that there were issues facing several airlines. Of course, very few of the thousands of people who have been adversely affected in recent weeks—and who will be in the months to come—will be watching today’s debate. However, if any of them are, I hope that they will see that Parliament is an important forum for their complaints to be heard and answered.

Mind you, am I the only person to look at what is happening—to see the airport queues and the cancelled flights and the delays that people face at airports and to learn that it is taking far longer than it should for people to have their passport applications processed, and to be told that the Government cannot process in good time the numbers of security applications now being made for airline and airport staff—and then discover that the Government have now announced that they want to reduce the size of the Civil Service?

It feels as though these are the ingredients of what we might otherwise call a failing state. People are entitled to ask who is to blame for all this. Like my noble friend, I am not here to indulge in a blame game because I hope there will be a educative purpose to this debate—to identify who might be to blame for what—in the hope that we can put things right. I often feel that in a debate such as this the Minister’s speech should come first, to enable us to contribute our views in the light of the Government’s arguments. However, it is up to my noble friend Lord Davies to do that in his winding-up remarks.

What has been going wrong? Is it that too many people want to travel? As my noble friend said, after the Covid restrictions of the past two years, it is hardly helpful to blame people for wanting to travel again. Is it because the airlines have acted recklessly? I hope the Minister will tell the House whether she agrees with the Secretary of State, who has apparently said that airlines and operators had

“seriously oversold flights and holidays”.

Is it, as the airlines claim, because it is taking too much time to get security clearances for the staff they now need? Here it seems that the Government have a case to answer. The director-general of IATA recently said that security clearances which used to take three or four weeks are now taking as long as three months. Can the Minister tell the House whether this is true and, if it is, what the Government are doing to fix it? Has it in some way all been affected by the war in Ukraine because Civil Service resources have understandably been diverted from regular Home Office tasks to deal with the urgent need to process visa and asylum applications? Or is it for some other range of reasons? Some people have suggested IT glitches, supply chain issues and even runway maintenance problems.

Whatever the explanation, it all amounts to something of a perfect storm with fuel and energy prices and the cost of living rising, which we are about to address in the next debate, and rail strikes looming, and those planned might not be the only ones. Air travel problems are an ongoing problem and the Government at least owe the country an explanation for what is happening and what they think is going wrong. I hope the Minister can tell us what it is, together with any government plan to remedy the situation because action is needed. I much look forward to her reply.

Touring Hauliers: Arts Organisations

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

It is a very complex picture. As I mentioned earlier, one in five has already set up with an EU base and a further 6% plan to do so. However, as I also mentioned, it is the case that many tours can already go ahead depending on how many different stops that particular event will have within the EU. If I can find any further details from the industry, I will certainly write to the noble Lord.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the Minister’s answer to the noble Lord, can she give any encouragement or hope to youth orchestras? It is not just professional orchestras that are finding it difficult to tour. Youth orchestras are vital for the experience gained by the young people—I admit that both my children spent years touring and playing all over Europe and had enormous experience with the Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra—but I fear that these in particular are falling completely by the wayside. Can the Minister offer any hope or encouragement for them?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am not aware that there is a particular issue here for youth orchestras. Like any orchestra, if a youth orchestra does not have its own vehicles, it can of course contract with an appropriate haulier which is able to operate within the regime that is set up in the UK and in the EU. It will depend on the sort of tour that youth orchestras want to do and how many countries they will be visiting as to the rules and regulations and which licences will need to be held by the haulier with which they choose to contract.

Train Driving Licences and Certificates (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Yes, first class, too. It gave me a great taste for it, when we arrived at Basel and saw the great age of international rail transport, which was then gradually coming to an end as flying was growing. But it is coming back. Last year—or two years ago, before all the wretched Covid—we went on the wonderful Austrian sleepers to bring us back to Britain, except they could not bring us back to Britain, of course; they could bring us only to Cologne and then we had to get a train from there. But why should that not be part of the vision? Do the Government have this European vision? That is what we need and it is where the future lies if we are serious about a modal switch in medium-distance travel.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the comments made by my noble friend Lord Liddle, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Berkeley for having moved his regret amendment.

When I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, it brought to my mind that vision of the former Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher meeting President Mitterrand when they had the two Eurostars coming nose to nose. I believe that they had to alter the software of the trains to enable that to happen. It was an era of great promise for future travel in Europe and, although I fully understand that the regulations that the Minister has ably moved tonight are necessary and welcome, it is rather depressing to think that we are being restricted.

Drivers’ Hours and Tachographs (Temporary Exceptions) (No. 4) Regulations 2021

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

These regulations, made at the end of October, further extend the relaxation limits to HGV drivers’ hours until 10 January next year, at which point this temporary exemption will have been in place continuously for six months, since 12 July this year. The instrument extends the normal daily limit of nine hours’ driving a day to 10 hours, up to four times a week, with an overarching limit of 56 hours’ driving in a week and 90 hours in a fortnight—or, as an alternative, introduces an amended weekly rest pattern that allows an additional day of driving in a fortnight, provided that an equivalent period of rest is taken before the end of the third week. This exception increases the maximum permitted driving time in a fortnight to 99 hours from the standard 90 hours.

In its 18th report of the current Session, published on 11 November, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, repeated its concerns

“that cumulative tiredness in HGV drivers may constitute a road safety hazard”.

It said:

“The responses to the consultation exercise quoted in the Explanatory Memorandum ... also take that view and add that these Regulations make HGV drivers’ working conditions worse, which is having a negative effect on recruitment”.


Continuing, the committee said—again I repeat something that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said:

“Our concern is bolstered by figures … that indicate that a significant proportion (27%) of the drivers stopped in roadside checks are breaching the Drivers’ Hours legislation. We have repeatedly asked the Department for Transport to provide evidence that would allay our concerns, but the responses have indicated that the Department does not have information either way”.


The department has said that it has

“not been made aware of any increase in accidents involving HGVs since the temporary exceptions to the drivers’ hours rules were first introduced in July 2021”.

That, not surprisingly, says the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, is “not sufficient to allay” its concerns.

Therefore, I invite the Government to say in their response what evidence they have that the relaxation of limits to HGV drivers’ hours provided for in these regulations, which have been in effect for nearly five months, does not increase cumulative tiredness to an extent that constitutes a road safety hazard. On how many occasions has the relaxation in hours provided for in these regulations actually been used, and by how many different firms? Why does the Department for Transport not have figures on the proportion of drivers stopped in roadside checks who breached drivers’ hours legislation in force at the time they were stopped? I would have thought that that was a fairly important piece of information, which one would have thought the Department for Transport would have.

The Department for Transport provided the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee with 28 short, medium and long-term interventions it had put in place to alleviate the existing HGV driver shortage. One can of course take the government line that this shows how active and focused they are in seeking to address the driver shortage—a shortage that they have known about for years but have nevertheless still been caught on the hop by—or one can take the view that the Government do not know what steps will address the driver shortage issue. That would be consistent with their inability to provide the information and meaningful assurances sought by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and would suggest that the 28 interventions simply reflect an approach more akin to thrashing around in all directions hoping that a course of action will finally turn up trumps.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee says in its report on the list of 28 interventions that

“while this list shows the various strands of the Department’s current activity, we still lack a strategic statement of the programme’s objectives, milestones and costs, against which its effectiveness and value for money can be assessed.”

Can the Government now provide that strategic statement, either in their response today or subsequently, and indicate the cost of each of the 28—or perhaps now more—interventions and the specific impact each one is expected to have on the existing HGV driver shortage, bearing in mind that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has argued that these specific regulations on drivers’ hours will not address the underlying causes of the shortage?

On one specific intervention, namely increasing cabotage for foreign hauliers in the UK, which extends through to the end of April next year, can the Government say today how that meets the Prime Minister’s previously stated desire to see significantly higher pay for UK drivers? Allowing foreign transport operators to make unlimited journeys in the UK for two weeks before returning home can only mean UK drivers facing more competition for work, which will depress rather than increase levels of pay, as previously desired by the Prime Minister.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee commented that no formal impact assessment had been prepared and that the Explanatory Memorandum provided no information on how many additional HGV journeys might be added by this instrument or what the take-up by foreign operators might be. Continuing, the committee said:

“We therefore have no means to assess whether the number of operators involved will constitute a threat to the UK workforce, or to measure whether the legislation is likely to be effective.”


Can the Government in their response give some figures to indicate what the impact has been to date of this relaxation in restrictions on cabotage?

It appears that the underlying causes of the driver shortage—and I will not go through all the reasons mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee—relate to pay and conditions, including the provision of decent facilities for drivers away from the cab of their vehicle. The job, and the standing it has at present, does not appear attractive, particularly to younger people. The workforce is overwhelmingly older white males and is certainly not diverse, which means that the actual potential recruitment pool is less than it might be. I understand that pay is now rising, turnover is falling, provisional licences are increasing and further improvements are anticipated in the new year—albeit there is still a shortage which will not be properly addressed until next year.

I am sure the Government will have some hard information to give on the current driver shortage situation today in their response and the extent to which it is the Government’s 28—or is it 32?—measures that have or have not delivered, and the extent to which they agree with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on the underlying causes of the shortage of HGV drivers, which these regulations on relaxation of limits to hours, the noble Earl has powerfully argued, fail to address.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, before the Minister gets up to reply, could she tell the House whether it is the Government’s intention to renew these regulations next year, and, if so, why and on what basis?

Rail Infrastructure: North of England

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend is not quite right to say that the Government are backing away from away from large-scale projects, as the IRP—when he is able to read it—will demonstrate to him. However, my noble friend is right that Network Rail has recently completed a study on the west Anglia main line and we are considering its findings. Network Rail is required to conduct similar studies for all parts of the network, and these provide helpful advice to government on potential investments for the future.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

Has the Minister seen the front-page banner headline in today’s Yorkshire Post? It says: “PM breaks his own rail pledge.” I want to ask a question about Leeds—and I gladly declare to the House what you might call a family connection. To be practical, can the Minister explain what impact today’s plans are going to have on a station such as Leeds where, as I understand it, HS2 would have had the effect of freeing up platforms for much-needed extra capacity? Without HS2, the existing platforms are going to have to cope with all existing and future demands.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, it is very difficult to have a sensible discussion on this topic on the basis of front pages of the media. It is impossible that the noble Viscount has been able have a look at the documents which, as we know are being published, possibly as we speak. However, I can assure him that we are well aware that Leeds is an incredibly important station. It is the fourth busiest in the country outside London. Passenger demand has increased by 30% over the last 10 years and the Government are committing to £100 million to look at the options for how to run HS2 services to Leeds, to build capacity and also to finally develop and deliver a mass transit system for Leeds.