Railways Investment: North of England

Debate between Baroness Sugg and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 29th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, we are working closely with Transport for the North to help transform the economy of the north of England through Northern Powerhouse Rail. That will significantly improve the capacity, frequency and journey time. I can reassure the noble Lord that we are fully committed to Northern Powerhouse Rail. We have invested money into Transport for the North, and are looking forward to its business case which will be published at the end of this year, and which will set out details of routes and indeed costs.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have some very good experience of travelling by train in the north. However, does my noble friend agree that the pricing of rail tickets is very confusing—even making it difficult for our excellent parliamentary travel office? There are different levels of service and different interpretations, for example, relating to what represents “off-peak” in different franchise areas. Could new investment, whether in the north or elsewhere, include sorting that out?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that we need to do more to simplify rail fares. I mentioned in the earlier Question the easier fares consultation carried out by the Rail Delivery Group. Train operators are obligated to sell the most appropriate fare available, but there is a wide range of tickets on offer and we have made a commitment to removing that complexity and the perverse pricing we sometimes see from ticketing. We would like to see online retailers give passengers much clearer information at the point of purchase and, as I said, we look forward to the findings of the RDG consultation.

Stonehenge Tunnel

Debate between Baroness Sugg and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, the £2 billion that we are investing in south-west roads will improve issues across the south-west. I am afraid that I do not know about the exact details that the noble Baroness has raised, but I will find out and write to her.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have lived just beyond the stones all my life and am absolutely delighted with the progress that is being made and with the improvements that English Heritage has made to visiting Stonehenge as a site—we should celebrate that. I would like to ask: assuming that work starts in 2021, which I obviously very much hope, when will the road be open?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, assuming that work starts in 2021, which we are very much working towards, it will be complete in 2026.

Rail Update

Debate between Baroness Sugg and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I apologise if I did not keep a straight face throughout the Statement. I was a little distracted by the noise from the Benches on the other side. On bidders for the west coast and east coast, the noble Lord is absolutely right that there was a direct award for the west coast and we are considering the options for the east coast. Those are both short-term plans and in 2020 we will be opening them up to further bids. We look forward to receiving them to deliver what the passengers need.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that there is the past and there is the future, and I know that there has been a lot of agonising in the department on the future of franchising. Will my noble friend summarise the improvements to the franchising process that the Government are planning, including Network Rail’s role, to avoid the kind of problems that have been identified in relation to National Express, Stagecoach and so on? Can we look forward?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I would absolutely love to look forward. As I set out, we are making improvements within the department. There was, obviously, a problem; the franchises failed and we are learning those lessons. We are introducing measures to deter overbidding and looking at our financial modelling and stress testing. We hope that, with this added testing, we will be able to forecast and exclude bids which are likely to default. We are continuously improving our risk-assessment process to reduce the likelihood of overbidding in the future. As I said, we are working with Network Rail to ensure that it devolves its services and performs better in future.

Local Congestion: Investment

Debate between Baroness Sugg and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of investments in local roads on traffic congestion and productivity in local areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, as set out in last year’s Transport Investment Strategy, our investment seeks to reduce congestion, raise productivity and support new housing. We estimate from investment appraisals that local major road schemes approved by the department since 2012 will produce an average of £4.50 return for every £1 invested. The department’s evaluations found that local major schemes have been successful in delivering reductions in congestion, often leading to better access to employment and local businesses.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the Minister. I am glad about the investment in motorways, bypasses and some of the other things to which she refers, but do we deal adequately with local congestion, which is hitting productivity and increasing air pollution and is frustrating for those of us sitting in traffic jams? Is she aware that the challenge fund rules under which smaller councils apply for capital are costly and a bureaucratic deterrent to spending the money that the Government have rightly made available for local roads?

[Baroness Sugg]

My noble friend raises an important point, and I know that she met recently with the Roads Ministers to discuss this. We have been investing heavily in motorways and it is right that we concentrate spending where it is needed most, but we know that other important roads have long gone underfunded. That is why we are consulting on introducing a major road network from 2020. That will provide a share of the national roads fund to invest in bypasses and road widening to help improve congestion. My noble friend also raised the point of the complexity of these processes. There are many different schemes available for additional funding to local authorities—which, of course, is welcome—but they can be complex. In last year’s Transport Investment Strategy, we committed to providing targeted support to local authorities to help develop their bidding and delivery capability in order to ensure that they get the appropriate funding.

Space Industry Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Sugg and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 16th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I was unable to speak at Second Reading on this important Bill, but I have had a helpful exchange with the Minister on the powers in it and his plans for consultation in future.

Following on from the comments made by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, I have a question and a comment. First, he argued for parliamentary procedure in relation to guidance. I would find it helpful to have a little more detail as to what sort of guidance is envisaged, so that we can look critically at whether any parliamentary procedure is appropriate. Secondly, I share his concern at the double barrel—having an affirmative resolution for the first regulation and a negative resolution for subsequent provisions—because it could be open to abuse and give too much power to the Executive on important matters. I would welcome further study of this provision, as has been suggested, before Report.

I am worried about the powers in the round—in this Bill and the Data Protection Bill—and I think that delegated legislative provisions will also become an issue when we come to the plethora of Brexit Bills later in the Session. It would be very useful, in this less contentious Bill, to make sure that we have the right provisions.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for allowing me the opportunity to explain the Government’s approach to statutory guidance under the Bill. I also thank him for his work on this Bill and for his role in the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. As he said, the Government have taken on board many of the recommendations of that committee, following its scrutiny.

The purpose of guidance is to aid policy implementation by supplementing the legal framework. It is not intended to circumvent this legal framework set out in primary or secondary legislation. The main benefit of the guidance is the flexibility to amend quickly and take account of changing events. For example, recently with Monarch Airlines, the CAA had to provide extensive guidance about passenger consumer rights under the ATOL scheme. This included what protections there were for consumers and how they could go about making an ATOL claim. This guidance had to be produced very quickly to support those impacted by the airline’s failure, and it is a clear demonstration of the flexibility of having guidance not made in regulations.

I should add that the approach we are taking under the Bill is consistent with that in aviation. Various standards, technical information and information regarding best practice can change annually. It would be difficult to keep up with changes if the guidance had to be approved by Parliament every year. There are parallels, too, with the approach taken on health and safety and other technical sectors. For example, in the nuclear sector, guidance sets out how people can comply with the requirements imposed by the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.

I assure noble Lords that the Government’s approach to the statutory guidance will be transparent. The initial sets of statutory guidance will be consulted on to allow scrutiny and comments from anyone with an interest. Where the guidance relates to regulations we will consult on it at the same time as consulting on the draft statutory instruments. Perhaps it might be helpful, in response to the questions from my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lady Neville-Rolfe, if I set out what we believe the split to be between the regulations and the guidance under the Bill. There may be matters on which the regulator does not wish to prescribe a particular way of working but wishes to help operators with guidance. For example, in relation to safety assessments, the regulator will be primarily interested in the outcomes rather than prescribing specific processes or methodologies. That is in line with best practice in health and safety where regulations will set out what must be taken into account and the requirements to be met in carrying out a risk assessment. Guidance will recommend a certain approach to carrying out that risk assessment.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, raises the point around the DPRRC recommendation on Clause 9. As I have already mentioned, the purpose of the guidance is to support the implementation. The recommendation in this case focuses on the need for parliamentary scrutiny of guidance given by the Secretary of State to the regulator. We believe that we need the flexibility for guidance to the regulator as well as for guidance to other persons. In aviation, for example, the CAA is required to take account of the guidance on environmental objects when carrying out its air navigation functions.

As my right honourable friend in the other place John Hayes said in his letter in response to the Committee, the initial guidance on this clause will be subject to a full consultation to enable scrutiny and comment from all those with an interest. Obviously this is an area of considerable interest in the Chamber, and we will certainly reflect on all the points made today. Given these assurances, I ask my noble friend to withdraw Amendment 5.