Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I must first apologise to the Committee: I was not here for the Second Reading, because transport has never been my top priority in terms of matters that come before your Lordships’ House. Technology has been much more important to me, and it struck me that technology, which is advancing at an incredible pace—its capacity is doubling every two years—affects transport systems almost more than anywhere else.

We think here of the driverless cars that are being trialled at the moment, mainly in the United States, with a certain amount of success. The amount of money that the big tech companies in the United States can put into this means that we are going to get driverless cars within the foreseeable future, and that is going to completely revolutionise the whole business of how our cities operate. The price of taking taxis from A to B is going to come right down, which will affect car ownership. It will mean that people give up owning cars, which are getting more and more expensive, and will rent them for long journeys. At the same time our streets will be much emptier and it may well be, with the introduction of electric cars at the same time, that we reduce the pollution in our cities as well. This is coming whether we like it or not, and we must accept that technology is moving very fast and is going to have an enormous effect.

Driverless cars are tomorrow’s technology. Driverless trains are yesterday’s technology; we already have driverless trains. The Docklands Light Railway, which operates over 24 miles in the East End of London, was introduced in 1987. That is the sort of technology that our new train operators should be thinking of when they start running trains and taking up new contracts. If they do this, it will mean that we can start lowering the costs of operating trains.

I have to say that the history of this is not very encouraging because trains were introduced on new lines on the London Underground, and such was the trade unions’ opposition that those proposals were dropped and they are still driven by operators. This is not encouraging, but we have to look at the whole situation. There will be a lot of opposition to introducing new technology, and the result will of course be that passengers pay much more for travelling by public transport systems operated by people who need not be there.

We have to think now about where technology is taking us in the future. How are the Government going to resolve the conflict with the trade unions, with which to date they have decided on enormous pay increases for driving operators, when in the near future we are possibly not going to need those people at all? Do the Government stand up for the passengers and lower fares, or will they stand up for the wages of train operators who are not actually needed because technology has taken over their jobs?

The same also applies to passenger aircraft—in most airports around the world, ground control can now take off and land virtually any large passenger aircraft. Of course, people feel much more reassured by having a pilot in the seat. On the other hand, I can see the low-cost airlines coming along quite soon and saying, “Well, if you travel in a pilotless aircraft, we will actually lower your fare”. People will then have to decide whether they are prepared to trust the technology.

The basic story still applies: the amount spent on research and development by the big-tech companies is so great that it makes anything that the Government can spend look like chicken feed. At the end of the day, they will iron out the technological problems, and the safety issues will be resolved. At that stage, we will want to see the dividend that comes with that: the cost of travel coming down. The Government will have to decide whether they back the trade unions or whether they want to see cheaper travel for customers.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I will briefly respond to the proposals from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and ask both him and the Minister some questions. I will not say that the recent BBC drama “Nightsleeper” should give us cause for alarm—the issues are very different—but the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, possibly the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, and I were heavily involved in the then Automated Vehicles Bill during its passage through your Lordships’ House earlier this year. Some of the questions I will ask now I asked in the debates on that Bill, too.

First, this is not just a question of having no driver, because there has been a push to remove from trains staff other than the driver, whether it is an old-fashioned-style conductor or a train manager. I wonder how on earth the emergencies that cannot be predicted, either by software or by people driving the train remotely, can be resolved. Should those emergencies on the line happen at very short notice and the train has to stop, how are people to get off? This is the point at which I start to talk about those who need assistance. If you do not have any staff on the train, how do you get people off who cannot clamber down and follow the side of the track? The reassurance of having staff on the train in that situation makes me feel confident that, if there were an emergency, I would be able to get off.

The other key role of staff on a train, whether a driver or train manager, is to help when things go wrong. That could include trying to handle people who are behaving very badly, sometimes breaking the law, by alerting British Transport Police. It might include times when assistance goes wrong, such as trains not stopping at volunteer stops. We still have those; there are some between Salisbury and Bristol, where you have to give advance notification if you want to stop at a particular station. As someone in a wheelchair, I would be in real trouble if the train did not stop—and there would be nobody I could notify. Also, if you arrive at a station where there is a planned stop and you were expecting to get assistance, but nobody is there, other passengers would not know how to get the ramp out of the train, and they would not have the keys to do it. I am very concerned about those circumstances. If there are thoughts about having automated trains, the practical side of how passengers interact, particularly vulnerable passengers, concerns me.

Secondly, the Docklands Light Railway is an interesting example, and we see similar driverless trains in many airports around the world. That is fine, but I have some concerns about the concept at this stage. If our railways—the actual rails and their surrounds—are built before the plans for automation, there will be consequences for driverless trains when trees fall down at the last moment and children run across the line. You cannot manage those circumstances without a driver who can pick up an alert, respond, tell passengers to brace themselves and let them know where they need to go for support. For me, this is not about unions; it is about passenger safety. My particular interest is making sure that those passengers—not just disabled passengers but many elderly passengers; look at the demographics—get support from a member of staff on the train.