Railways (Interoperability) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

As always, my noble friend Lord Berkeley makes an excellent point. I think that the Government have to come up with a better explanation for why we should be leaving these arrangements than the simple, “Why should we bother to be part of some European agency when we have left the European Union?”

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak with some trepidation. I am not as expert in these matters as the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley, Lord Snape and Lord Liddle. However, I share their concerns about what the Government are doing by extricating us from years of integration in Europe in important areas of our national life. This is a perfect example of the dangers of the obsessive ideology which seems to believe that we must leave the European agencies which we helped to establish. Leaving them will impose much greater costs on our country, much more regulation rather than less, and indeed doing so will probably take us back around 10 years in the progress we have made across Europe in these vital areas of our national life.

I support fully the call by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for us to remain at least an associate member of the European rail agency as well as the signalling agency. The transfer of responsibility from these agencies, which have enormous expertise and experience, to the Secretary of State fills one with some trepidation, to put it mildly. It may be that my noble friend the Minister, who I am sure shares some of my concerns even though she is in a difficult position, can provide some assurances that the Government will consider alternative plans that allow us to remain part of these agencies whether or not we leave the EU with a deal. Obviously, I hope that we have no chance of leaving with no deal, but so far the Government have refused to consider the idea of revocation if that is the only way to avoid it.

We need to continue the important activities of compliance and information sharing that are a part of these agencies. Just because there is some link to the ECJ, for example, is not a good enough reason to leave agencies that are so important to many areas of our national way of life, prosperity, security and safety. I urge my noble friend to respond positively with some of the assurances that the noble Lord is seeking.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for bringing forward this Motion, and state that had he had chosen to table a fatal Motion, I would have supported him all the way. It is a supreme irony that Britain, the country that brought the railways to the world, is now insulating itself from world progress on the technology.

As we work through these SIs, they produce a range of solutions to the problems that the transport sector faces. Some of the solutions are relatively neat, while others are pretty clumsy. Then there is this one, which is simply downright stupid. That stupidity has been recognised by all the key railway industry organisations, which are seriously worried about the future. I also draw attention to the fact that the SLSC sub-committee which looked at this SI has expressed its view that an important policy issue is being raised here.

Interoperability means the application of EU-wide technical and operational standards. That applies to the rail infrastructure, the vehicles and the component parts. It is based on technical specifications, known as TSIs, devised by the European rail agency. It is important to note that the UK is very well represented at that agency by its technical experts. We have been a leading member and we have a vote, which of course we are going to give up. TSIs automatically apply to the UK, so we have not had to create our own regulations, but that does not stop us creating our own additional standards. These are proposed by the Rail Industry Safety and Standards Board.

There are a number of key issues about this SI. It is made under powers in the Transport Act 2000, and so would normally be done by the negative procedure. As all of this is very controversial, as I shall set out later, I am concerned that future SIs on this subject should be passed by the affirmative procedure. Can the Minister give us that reassurance today?

This SI cuts us off from the European rail agency, as the noble Lord has explained, and transfers powers to the Secretary of State. I am with the noble Baroness in saying that this does not fill me with confidence, because the European rail agency was set up to harmonise standards to enable the rail industry to better compete with other forms of transport. It effectively shadowed the systems in place for aviation and the maritime industry, and the Government have decided to remain members of those international organisations.

At the heart of the European rail agency is the sharing of data. As I have said many times, data is the key to safety. By leaving the agency we are cutting ourselves off from that data. As I have pointed out, even if you continue to share the data on a good will basis, you tend to get out of step, because standardised methods of collection of that data are a key aspect in it being robust. Once you are on the outside of the system, you can no longer rely on that data. It does not have to be like this. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, pointed out, the Swiss are an associate member. Although they do not have a vote, they participate fully in other ways.

The replacement of the agency as the setter of standards by the Secretary of State is extremely worrying. There is a specific intention in this SI, unlike in others, to diverge over time from EU standards. In other circumstances, in other SIs, the Government have explained that they want to carry on shadowing what exists, but not so for railways. This is a clear politicisation of the railways issue, simply because the current Secretary of State has a bee in his bonnet and wants to diverge whenever possible from EU standards and organisations. We have a very important rail manufacturing industry, supplying a buoyant export market to the EU. It is certainly not in its interest to have to manufacture to two different sets of standards, which would obviously cost more.

The SI talks about consultation with the industry. In my view, that is an empty offer and completely meaningless; the industry has already been consulted and has made it clear that it does not want the divergence. The DfT is already under attack for failing to co-ordinate and lead the rail industry effectively, and here we are heaping more and more powers on the Secretary of State in a series of SIs. That will not improve matters. There is no transparency here, in contrast to the EU processes for the railway industry—there is not even a role for a statutory adviser. We have an inept Government, whose response to the chaos they face is simply to take more and more powers for themselves.

The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, referred to the visit by the Secretary of State to EU Sub-Committee B. We asked him about his wish to diverge from EU standards, because we had already heard evidence from the rail industry organisations that they did not want that. The only benefit he could come up with was that we could build our platforms to a different height, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has explained. There are two problems with this: first, we already have a derogation on this; and, secondly, it seems we already build platforms to a number of different heights. For example, as the noble Lord said, for Crossrail there will be step-free access in the tunnels from the platform to the train, but not on the existing Network Rail platforms. Someone has come up with the idea of actually building trains with lower floors, so you do not need to worry about the platform heights; I give the example of Merseyrail. Where there is divergence in standards, any new product will be assessed against the UK standard by a UK-approved body. As the secondary legislation sub-committee pointed out:

“As a result, there may be situations where new products already holding conformity assessment documents issued against”,


EU,

“TSIs will need to be reassessed”,

for the UK market. That is stupid. That bureaucracy will cost a lot of money for those purchasing in Britain.