Railways: East Coast Main Line

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, this is certainly not a monopoly situation. Quite a number of companies bid on these franchises across the UK. They all start from a level playing field and we consider them completely impartially. With regard to fares, I note that the new franchise operator proposes a 10% reduction of standard anytime fares on longer distances in May 2015.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister who created the East Coast company, I ask the Minister to join me in congratulating Karen Boswell and her fantastic staff at East Coast on providing a first-class public service since National Express left the public without any service on the east coast line five years ago. Can the Minister also confirm that, at 91%, East Coast has a record customer satisfaction rating for that franchise since its creation, and that the East Coast is also the most popular franchise long-distance operator in the country at present? Would she regard it as a failure if the new private operator did not equal or exceed those performance ratings in a year’s time?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I am absolutely delighted to join in the accolades for the staff at the door—they have done an outstanding job and we have always applauded them for it. As they transfer to the new company, I am sure that they will continue to do an outstanding job. They will be offered new training opportunities and new opportunities to develop professionally, which will be extremely exciting. Therefore I am delighted to congratulate them. I am also delighted that the new franchise offers the kind of investment that we want to see, improving service in so many ways, improving the existing rolling stock and bringing on new rolling stock, additional seats and new services—all those kinds of things. We absolutely need improvements in ticketing as well, which is important because of the many people who use the east coast line.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

86A: Before Clause 17, insert the following new Clause—
“National Infrastructure Commission
There shall be an independent National Infrastructure Commission.”

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank Sir John Armitt for his excellent work in leading the independent review for the Labour Party on long-term infrastructure planning. I also thank Robbie Owen of Pinsent Masons for his invaluable work in preparing a draft national infrastructure Bill since the publication of the report. We have been consulting on the draft Bill and have received a positive response from across the infrastructure sectors. The draft Bill runs to 26 pages. Rather than propose all 26 pages as amendments, the House will be grateful that I have purposefully kept this proposed new clause concise and to the point. However, if the Minister tells us that he is prepared to accept the principle of an independent infrastructure commission, we would be delighted to discuss the provisions of the draft Bill with him with a view to subsequent legislation on a cross-party basis.

The case for an independent infrastructure commission is clear. The UK has historically, over many decades, underinvested in key infrastructure, which is why the World Economic Forum ranks the UK 27th for the overall quality of infrastructure in its 2014-15 Global Competitiveness Report. Our long-term infrastructure planning is weak. There is far too much stop-start decision-making and investment, and forging a political consensus in key areas such as airports and energy has proved notoriously difficult. The role of an independent commission would emphatically be not to replace Government, Parliament and the democratic process, but to inform and strengthen them. Under the Armitt plan, an independent national infrastructure commission would carry out an evidence-based assessment of the country’s infrastructure needs over a span of 25 to 30 years, focusing on nationally significant infrastructure —as defined by the Planning Act 2008—and consulting relevant stakeholders. The key economic infrastructure sectors—energy, transport, water, waste and tele- communications—would be considered in parallel, allowing the interdependence between sectors to be thoroughly examined. Projections of economic growth, population and technological change would inform this cross-sector approach. Environmental issues and obligations would be respected and recommendations made by the commission would need to be consistent with achieving the UK’s long-term climate change targets. The result of the commission’s considerations would be a national infrastructure assessment submitted to the Chancellor, who would have a statutory duty to bring it before Parliament within six months, accompanied by any amendments that the Government might propose. We anticipate that the first assessment would be produced within three years of the establishment of the commission.

The national infrastructure assessment would therefore come forward with the Government’s full authority. Ministers would not be bound by the independent commission but changes made by the Government to the commission’s assessment would be clear and transparent and subject to full public and parliamentary debate. The plan would be fully updated every 10 years but it would be open to the Government or a new Government to seek earlier reconsideration, again on an open and transparent basis. The assessment would be debated and voted upon in both Houses. If approved, there would then be a 12-month period in which individual government departments would be required to produce sector infrastructure plans outlining the specific schemes and projects that the Government would promote to meet the needs identified in the assessment. Proposed sources of funding, timeframes for project implementation and preferred delivery vehicles will be required in the plans in order to provide real delivery momentum, credibility and confidence for investors.

Before a vote on each sector plan in Parliament, the commission would provide a statement commenting on the consistency of the Government’s proposals with identified infrastructure needs, highlighting areas where departmental sector plans fell short, which together with the 12-month deadline for producing the plans would act as a significant new discipline for Government to get on with implementation and delivery. Together these sector plans would form a national infrastructure plan for the UK—not a wish list like the current national infrastructure plan, but a statement of priority national projects with key milestones, delivery targets and vehicles and sources of funding set out in each case.

We have shown in recent years that we can deliver on major national infrastructure. The Olympics were delivered on time and on budget and the Crossrail project continues to progress well. Financial institutions are generally keen to invest in British infrastructure so long as risk and return are well balanced, but in key areas decisions have not been timely and investment has been poorly planned, inefficient and inadequate. To take just transport, the history of the railway system and airports in the south-east of England over the past 50 years is a running commentary on the failure of long-term strategic planning. There is a real danger that energy, water and flood prevention infrastructure could soon become so. The problem clearly lies with the quality and timeliness of planning and political decision-making as much as with the delivery. The current Davies commission on airports is a kind of mini-infrastructure commission, set up precisely because of the failure to resolve airport capacity issues in south-east England over the past 15 years under both this and the last Labour Government. We are proposing a similar approach applied more broadly.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord for his amendment, which allows us to outline again the Government’s position on national infrastructure. I must admit that when he started talking about the Armitt review, I was concerned for a moment, as I was settling down, as to whether the word was Armitt or Ahmad. That threw me a bit—but we are clear which report we are talking about here.

We believe that the national infrastructure plan already delivers unparalleled levels of investment. The Government recognise—and the noble Lord acknowledged this—that infrastructure projects have been delivered on time and on budget. He referred to the Olympics. It is noteworthy that the person responsible for delivering the Olympics on time and on budget is the current Minister for Infrastructure in our Government, my noble friend Lord Deighton. I believe that all noble Lords will agree that he has great expertise in this area.

Of course the Government recognise the importance of the long term in looking at infrastructure investment. Investing in infrastructure is a central part of the Government’s long-term economic plan to build a stronger and more competitive economy. For this reason, the Government have introduced the national infrastructure plan, which has brought together our approach to investing in energy, transport, telecoms, water and waste networks into one place. This has brought a step change in delivering UK infrastructure. We are introducing an ambitious new energy strategy to incentivise additional electricity capacity for the UK and support low-carbon electricity generation. In road and rail networks, we are seeing new investment at rates not known for several decades. Our plan provides sound justification for infrastructure projects that have secured buy-in from a broad range of stakeholders.

We have set out long-term capital settlements to align with the national infrastructure plan. These commitments have led to new investment out to 2021, in sectors such as roads and flood defences, and long-term funding plans for projects such as High Speed 2. This has all helped to ensure stability and continuity of infrastructure investment in the decades to come.

I turn to the issue of the independent infrastructure body. The Government disagree with this amendment and have reservations about introducing an independent body without a clear understanding of the impacts of the change. Failure to understand this would create greater uncertainty and risk the successful delivery of UK infrastructure. We believe that resourcing requirements to support a commission have not been fully established or costed. Establishing a new authority for infrastructure would involve significant complexities and would distract from the business of providing the infrastructure that the country needs now and in the future.

It is essential that the Government focus on delivery. The central issue is to ensure that the UK has a robust plan to address the challenges facing our networks in the future. The Government have developed a strategy to meet current and future demand through the renewal of existing infrastructure and to grow a global economy with modern infrastructure networks. In doing this, we have sought to address climate change and energy security. This investment is vital for future economic growth. However, it is not clear how introducing a national infrastructure commission would address these pressing issues.

The Government already have a strong track record in major infrastructure delivery. While a national infrastructure commission is an untested and, as yet, unproven idea, the Government take delivering infrastructure extremely seriously. The latest infrastructure pipeline shows that £383 billion of investment is planned for infrastructure networks over the course of the next Parliament and beyond. The noble Lord mentioned specific transport projects. We have had 45 major road and local transport projects since 2010, and the start of construction on flagship projects, such as Northern Hub and the Mersey Gateway Bridge, as well as substantive progress on Crossrail, provides good examples. In addition, more than £45 million has been invested in electricity generation networks between 2010 and 2013 and contracts have already been signed under the electricity market reform, with a further allocation currently under way. The UK is rated as the most energy-secure country in the EU and is fourth in the world.

I believe that we are in a good place when it comes to infrastructure and investment in infrastructure for the current, medium and long term. With the reassurances I have provided, I hope that the noble Lord is minded to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response. He offers me a tantalising prospect that, if we were to rename the Armitt report the Ahmad report, then he might be prepared to accept the amendment. I offer him that potential deal across the Dispatch Box, though Sir John Armitt might want some hybrid name attached to the report in consequence.

I am disappointed by the response of the noble Lord. In many other areas, such as fiscal and competition policy, we have independent bodies which advise Ministers. Looking at the history of this country over the last two generations, it is clear that we have had serious problems in the planning of our national infrastructure. This is not just in bringing objective evidence to bear on the debate, but in the establishment of cross-party consensus in areas of high priority. We believe that a commission of this kind could significantly contribute to the process.

The area I know well—transport—is a testimony to the problems of failure to address long-term infrastructure planning on an independent and consensual basis. Airports policy has been a yo-yo since the 1960s. There has been stop-start on Maplin, then at Heathrow, and it has taken 15 years to make decisions about increased airport capacity in the south-east of England. Electrification of the railways has been delayed for the best part of a generation because of the lack of any long-term plan. The noble Lord mentioned HS2 and I am glad that a cross-party consensus has been reached on it. However, it was only five years ago—a generation after most of continental Europe and large parts of Asia started to develop high-speed rail networks—that we even started to consider the potential for high-speed rail in this country because there was no medium and long-term planning.

The Minister mentioned roads and the roads programme. As many noble Lords with major road developments in their areas know, this is a classic case of stop-go. Every time there is a downturn, there is a massive slashing of projects, only for them to have to be revived again a few years later at significant additional expense because there is no agreed medium-term plan. In 2010, when the present Government came in, there were huge reductions in the roads programme for strategic roads, which have since had to be partly reinstated. A system of national infrastructure planning of the kind that we propose could only strengthen the bringing to bear of objective evidence, strengthen cross- party consensus and give a louder voice to capital spending and infrastructure projects within the government machine itself.

The noble Lord referred to the resourcing requirements of the commissioners, but they would of course be a fraction of the cost of the projects themselves and there are already significant staff who develop infrastructure in individual departments. This would enable them to be pulled together to operate more effectively with some clear central direction.

It is only a matter of time before a commission of this kind is established. As I said, in so many other areas of critical policy, the bringing to bear of expert advice reporting to Ministers and Parliament to provide a basis on which decisions can be taken has been a course that has been followed. I believe it will be followed in due course in the case of infrastructure. I would therefore like to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

86B: Before Clause 17, insert the following new Clause—
“National infrastructure projects: new towns
(1) The objects of a development corporation established for the purpose of creating a new town shall be to secure the physical laying out of infrastructure and the long-term sustainable development of the new town.
(2) In this section, “sustainable development” means managing the use, development and protection of land and natural resources in a way which enables people and communities to provide for their legitimate social, economic and cultural wellbeing while sustaining the potential of future generations to meet their own needs.
(3) In achieving sustainable development, development corporations should—
(a) positively identify suitable land for development in line with the economic, social and environmental objectives so as to improve the quality of life, wellbeing and health of people and the community;(b) contribute to the sustainable economic development of the town;(c) contribute to the cultural and artistic development of the town;(d) protect and enhance the natural and historic environment;(e) contribute to mitigation and adaptation of climate change consistent with the objectives of the Climate Change Act 2008;(f) promote high quality and inclusive design;(g) ensure that decision-making is open, transparent, participative and accountable; and(h) ensure that assets are managed in the long-term interest of the community.(4) In this section “infrastructure” includes—
(a) water, electricity, gas, telecommunications, sewerage and other services;(b) roads, railways and other transport facilities;(c) retail and other business facilities;(d) health, educational, employment and training facilities;(e) social, religious, recreational and cultural facilities;(f) green infrastructure and ecosystems;(g) cremation and burial facilities; and(h) community facilities not falling within paragraphs (a) to (f); and“land” is defined as including all the matters set out in the definition of “land” in Schedule 1 to the Interpretation Act 1978, and also housing including (where the context permits) any yard, garden, outhouses and appurtenances belonging to, or usually enjoyed with, the building or part of building concerned.”

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the building of new towns and major urban extensions is a critical national issue in the face of Britain’s acute housing shortage. The designation of Ebbsfleet as a new town and the recent Wolfson Prize competition for a new town scheme demonstrates the enthusiasm and capacity that there is for developing the concept in modern conditions. All three of the major parties in the House are committed to new town or garden city developments, and I take these to mean the same thing, given the importance of green and sustainable development as part of any new town or urban extension.

This amendment intends to capture the spirit of the post-war rebuilding of the country that was spurred on by the original New Towns Act 1946, creating places that today are part of the fabric of our country, such as Milton Keynes, Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City. However, although previous new town legislation provided powers to deliver new towns, the towns that were built did not always conform to the highest design and quality standards. The objectives set out in this amendment update the existing legislation in the New Towns Act 1981—which has barely been used—to ensure protection for the natural and historic environments, to require high-quality and inclusive design and to contribute towards a low-carbon future. The aim is that no part of a new town will be eligible for the Carbuncle Cup, an annual award from Building Design magazine for the ugliest building in the United Kingdom completed in the last 12 months.

Developing places in which people love to live is a topic gathering increasing attention as we look to substantial new settlements. The winner of this year’s Wolfson Prize, David Rudlin, proposes a six-point “social contract” for the development of garden cities. The participative decision-making proposed in this amendment is reflected in Mr Rudlin’s winning entry, which proposes that existing towns and cities should be able to bid for new garden city status to build substantial high-quality and sustainable urban extensions. This includes not only high quality standards, but the requirements that new garden cities include major institutions of learning; that they be well connected by public transport and cycleways; and that for every acre of land developed, another will be given back to the city as accessible public space, including forests, lakes and country parks.

When my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton raised in Committee this issue of promoting sustainable and liveable communities in new towns, the government response was odd. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said it was “absolutely essential” that good-quality design and the other key elements of the amendment—open decision-making, cultural and artistic development, and enhancement of the natural and historic environment—be built into new town development, but the Government were worried that to say so explicitly in statute would be “unhelpful”. But how can it be unhelpful to specify things that are so essential but are not in fact contained in the New Towns Act 1981? If they are not specified, that could lead to what David Rudlin calls “mere dormitory suburbs”.

When the Government say it is unhelpful to specify essential features of new towns, I believe they are confusing being concise with being brief. Being concise shows an excellent grasp of the issue, while being brief can demonstrate a lack of understanding of an issue. This amendment clearly and concisely prescribes the factors that development corporations should consider to achieve sustainable development, from environmental considerations to economic ones. The amendment is therefore helpful, not unhelpful. If the Government are to object on the grounds of brevity, I ask them: which factors set out in the amendment do they think should not always be considered when building sustainable new communities? I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, I will be brief. The two amendments—the one we have just voted on and the one just moved by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—are starred amendments. It is treating this House with contempt to raise two serious issues at the very last moment for consideration in today’s business. I am not in the least surprised that in the previous debate only the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Ahmad spoke. No one had a chance to consider what it was about and take advice. Now we have another one.

This is an important issue. As a former Environment Secretary, I dealt with planning matters, and have lived near some of the post-war new towns. I will not weary the House by repeating what I said in Committee about the appalling mistakes made, for instance in Harlow, which turned out to be a byword for the misery of large numbers of citizens who moved from the city centres out to a town that was full of lakes, parks and everything but failed to have any sense of community at all—certainly for decades. I do not in any way underestimate the need for substantial improvements in the system, and I like to think that in recent developments there have been considerable improvements; we have not had a repetition of those experiences.

However, these are important matters and one has to ask oneself: why did the noble Lord leave it until only yesterday to table this amendment and asking my noble friend to give a considered view of the matters that he raises in it? I say again: it is treating this House with contempt.

[Lord Adonis]

I should point out to the noble Lord that this amendment was tabled and debated in Committee.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Why leave it until the last moment on Report? Why did he not put it down it a week or 10 days ago, when most of the other amendments were tabled, so that people would have a chance to look at it and consult? That is my complaint. I have great respect for the noble Lord’s ability, but sometimes he gives the impression that he walks on water.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his intervention and the noble Lord for his amendment. I feel somewhat spiritually awakened by my noble friend’s final comment about walking on water. I hope I can provide clarity on why the Government are not in a position to accept the amendment at this time.

I shall start with our common ground. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that creating well designed, sustainable communities should be at the heart of any new development. In Amendment 86B, tabled by the noble Lord, two main objectives are proposed for a development corporation to be established for the purpose of creating a new town and for the physical laying-out of infrastructure and long-term sustainable development of the new town.

However, I do not think that prescribing the objects of a new town development corporation in detail would help to achieve that objective in a way that allowed for sufficient flexibility locally. There is much to be said for the simplicity of the current objective of new town development corporations, as indeed set out in statute: to secure the laying out and development of the new town.

The amendment proposes that sustainable development should be included in the objects of new town development corporations. Let me emphasise that the Government strongly support the principle of sustainable development. Indeed, that principle is central to the document National Planning Policy Framework, which provides a clear view of what sustainable development means in practice. We believe that creating an additional statutory definition of sustainable development could serve to reduce that very clarity.

I note that no new town development corporations have been created since 1970. However, I am clear that any future new town development corporations, as well as urban development corporations, such as the one the Government are proposing to establish at Ebbsfleet, should have a strong focus on securing sustainable development in a way that reflects local circumstances and needs. I look forward to Her Majesty’s Opposition supporting the creation of the new town at Ebbsfleet, as we seek to establish it in another Bill.

I hope that the clarity I have provided, with brevity, gives the noble Lord sufficient comfort to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for putting on record the Government’s commitment to sustainable development and high-quality design, which is of key importance.

If I may, I shall respond further to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. The amendments were tabled on Monday, which was the day before yesterday, so there was certainly time for noble Lords to engage fully with the issues—and, indeed, for the noble Lord to have read the Armitt report, which was published some months ago. It is not a recent document, by any means.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I am sorry—

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

They say, “Once a Whip, always a Whip”. We are on Report, and no other interventions would be appropriate.

[Lord Adonis]

I was very willing to give way to the noble Lord, because I did mention him. I think that I had a right of reply to his points, given that he said there had been almost no notice of these amendments.

Amendment 86B was tabled by my noble friend Lord McKenzie in Committee—it is exactly the same amendment. The reason we regard it as so important that the law takes account of the issues specified in the amendment, that sustainable development should,

“contribute to the cultural and artistic development of the town … protect and enhance the natural and historic environment … promote high quality and inclusive design … ensure that decision-making is open, transparent, participative and accountable … and ensure that assets are managed in the long-term interest of the community”,

and so on, is precisely because of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, raised: our last experience of developing new towns in this country was not wholly happy. There have been many very positive elements to the new towns and most of them now function extremely well. However, in some cases the quality of the initial design was not high enough. The Minister said that no new town development corporations have been set up since 1970, but we are just about to begin the process of developing new towns and major urban extensions again. The Government have named Ebbsfleet as the first. It is very likely that others will follow, given the need at least to double the rate of national housebuilding. Therefore, it seems to us, and probably to most people in the House, that having a proper set of criteria for the development of new towns is timely. If it cannot be done in this Bill—and we do not intend to press this amendment today—it should be done before we embark on the next new era of garden city development. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 86B withdrawn.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, I ask the Minister to consider what will happen if the bids received under the franchise competition actually give less money—or are worth less to the taxpayer—than the present east coast trains. If the bids are lower than that being achieved by the present operator, that really does sound like the economics of the madhouse. Those who are bidding have the sword of Damocles hanging over them, because open access operators are allowed access to the track at a much lower price than the franchised operator. It appears that the open access operators are massing for an attack on the east coast line.

Lastly, I recommend to the Minister an article in Passenger Transport, a rather specialist magazine. There is a good two-page article about customer service and its effect on staff morale and how the present franchising system does not allow operators to go strong on customer service. If they do so, they risk losing the next bid because customer service, among other things, cannot be put into a financial evaluation.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord agree that it is the height of nonsense to allow the state operators of France, the Netherlands and Germany to bid for franchises in this country, but not the existing public operator of the east coast line?

[Lord Bradshaw]

It amazes me that we as a country permit so many foreigners to run our water industry, our gas industry and our electricity industry. They are vital basic services and I think it is rather foolish to leave them in the hands of foreign operators. We have seen what has happened with prices for water, for example, which have gone through the roof. I am sure that in the public sector, such increases would not have been allowed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Baroness has to address the fundamental issue: why will she not allow a public operator even to bid against the private sector?

[Baroness Kramer]

I will address that point. However, I want to set the context for the discussion because sometimes there is a great deal of confusion around it.

[Baroness Kramer]

I am sorry but, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, will know, these things will be built into the charges. Of course, the addition of new equipment completely changes the profile as it has to be paid for and that money comes from only two places—the fare box or the taxpayer. As I say, that completely changes the profile and I think that many noble Lords will be aware of that reality.

As regards franchising, I agree that the demands we are placing on franchisees to upgrade equipment are far more significant than has been the case in the past. I think the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said that customer service was not rolled into the franchise. I can tell him that it is now and that a significant number of issues concern customer service. We are building on that because the customer absolutely has to be at the centre of the railway industry. It is true that this has not been done historically and that franchises have been engineering-driven, but that is changing dramatically. The noble Lord will start to see the impact of that coming through with the new franchises.

We are also undertaking a complete technical upgrade as we move from an early 20th century railway to a fully 21st century railway. A digital electronic railway will make huge demands on franchise providers in all kinds of ways. This is a very exciting time. There was a question about British companies’ engagement in the railway. We have some of the most innovative companies now—I speak regularly to the supply chains—who are engaged in this cutting-edge research and cutting-edge supply, which will completely change the nature of the trains running on the track. We are coming much closer to engaging with aerospace technology and other areas. Do not think of the railways as an old, staid industry any more. It is a driving, cutting-edge industry, and that change has to come through for us to meet passengers’ demands. I could go on a great deal longer, but I will come back, because you can tell I am an enthusiast about getting these changes driven all the way through.

One of the questions is, “Why don’t we set up a company and let it bid against the others?”. Let us think about that process. If we are to have any other bidders, they have to know that there is a level playing field and that absolutely no advantage is given to the public bidder. This point was, I think, raised earlier. You may be able to set up enough Chinese walls for us to say that we believe this is being done with integrity, but we would have to convince every other bidder. Think about how the railways are financed. That makes it extremely difficult. Would we be providing government-sourced money to our own public company? Obviously, the private companies go out into the capital markets. Or would it be going out into the capital markets and therefore, in a sense, be as far distant from us as virtually any company that we already describe as being a franchisee?

We would have to be absolutely certain that our assumptions on profit, tax, cost and capital in no way advantaged the public body, or we would lose every other bidder on every bid. If we go back and think carefully about what we would have to set up, we would have to set up the company in order to do this. The salaries alone would, I think, be eye-watering.

[Lord Adonis]

I hate to point this out to the noble Baroness, but the company already exists. It is called East Coast.

[Baroness Kramer]

That company, as the noble Lord probably knows, will presumably be TUPE-ed—or not TUPE-ed, because it is a share sale. Essentially, that company will be absorbed into whatever is the new bidder on the east coast. Also, we have people running the company who can run it under its current circumstances. But take a look, if you are putting together a bidding group. The noble Lord will know how expensive it is to put together an effective bid team, particularly with those kinds of salaries. Let us, however, not just look at the salaries for putting together the kind of senior management you would need for an effective bid team, which are probably way beyond anything that we would consider paying. If we did, however, each bid would be a minimum of—what?—£10 million. That is probably about right for each individual bid. Fourteen franchises would be £140 million, without even the assurance of winning a single franchise. I simply point out that there are a lot of complexities in this matter that are not reasonably obvious. We had a system that was broken, we had two bids that did not work and we brought in a company that restored it. We are now going out with an effective franchise and we expect a very good bid. Two of the bidders are essentially British and one is not; we have a wide range.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that it seems that there is still a romance with the old British Rail, without recognising many of its underlying problems and the limited advantages that could be available under another scenario.

There is one other issue that is often raised. It is said that if we ran one company, we would have a comparator against which to look at the others. That takes us back my original point, which is that every franchise is so different that you cannot carry over from one into the other. If you doubt me on that, look at the pattern of bidders: specific companies that feel they can specialise in the needs of particular franchises bid on those. We do not find every bidder coming in on every franchise. They pick and choose the areas where they have particular knowledge and skills that apply to that franchise. Franchises are not generic and should not be viewed that way, so the comparators essentially do not work.

Railways: High Speed 3

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

I fully understand the interest of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, in connectivity. We consider it to be vital. All the options for the route for phase 2 of HS2 are now being studied, including exactly how stations will work. Connectivity has been built into that discussion with intensive engagement with local authorities and various other stakeholders in the area.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the train currently called the TransPennine Express is one of the worst offenders against the Trade Descriptions Act in modern Britain? Can she tell us why the Government still do not have a firm plan to get HS2 to the north, let alone HS3? The current HS2 hybrid Bill stops at Birmingham and the Government still have not even confirmed the route for HS2 north of Birmingham to Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, let alone the legislation. When do the Government expect to introduce legislation to take HS2 north of Birmingham? Will this be before or after work starts on HS3?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I am sorry to hear the cynicism from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, because he has heard the commitment from this side of the House many times. We are moving ahead at a pace with determining the route for HS2. However, we are doing it with very intense engagement with local communities, including connectivity, because it is vital. If the noble Lord goes and talks with the many mayors of the great cities of the north, he will discover the intensity of that discussion and engagement. He will also understand that they recognise that we should have the route narrowed down, I hope, by the end of this year and will be moving forward with legislation. There is no question about the timetable. If anything, Sir David Higgins is looking to get into the north earlier.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for explaining the Bill so clearly and lucidly. On this side of the House, I am delighted to be supported on the Front Bench by my noble friend Lord Davies, who will lead in Committee, and by my noble friends Lady Worthington and Lord McKenzie of Luton.

As the Minister recognised in her opening remarks, we face big infrastructure challenges on transport, on energy and on housing in particular. Although the Bill contains some useful provisions, the position, I suggest to the House, is that we have the big infrastructure needs of the country on the one hand, and this Bill on the other. They are like ships passing in the night, except that the Bill is perhaps more like a dinghy than a ship: it is no match for the high seas and, indeed, parts of it do not even exist. We still do not have the clauses related to fracking, and consultations on that issue and important issues relating to the Land Registry and community electricity are still incomplete—some have not even commenced.

The noble Baroness said, if I noted it down correctly, that this legislation is “still being developed”. If I may say so, that is one of the most remarkable statements I have heard from a Minister while introducing a Bill, which the House would expect to be fully developed at the point of introduction. Instead, we have a major heading, “Fracking”, and a long spiel from the noble Baroness about how this will be vital for the future energy needs of the country, but the following pages are blank. With respect, that is no way to treat Parliament or your Lordships. In the vernacular, the Government are legislating on the hoof—or perhaps I should say on the future hoof, as we do not even know what hoof they are going to be legislating on hereafter.

Still on the big picture, the World Economic Forum recognises infrastructure as one of the 12 pillars of global competitiveness. However, continued weak infrastructure investment has seen Britain’s global rank significantly slip. We are now ranked 28th for the overall quality of infrastructure, compared to 19th in 2006-07, and we are significantly behind our European neighbours, including France, Germany and Spain, with the US far ahead.

That is not to say that there have not been improvements: there have, particularly in rail infrastructure, but there have not been enough. The essential challenge is not to make largely tinkering changes to the law but for the Government to take some big decisions—which the current law does nothing to prevent—on building the new power stations, runways, bridges, roads and, above all, houses that are needed so urgently by the country.

However, we have to scrutinise the Bill before us, so I turn to its main provisions. Part 1 and Schedules 1 to 3 make provision for the appointment of strategic highways companies to manage strategic roads in England, in place of the Highways Agency. The strategic road network represents only 2% of the English road network, yet it carries more than a third of car and van traffic and more than 65% of heavy vehicle traffic so obviously it needs to be well managed. We support giving greater operational freedom to front-line managers but the question is: will the management be better under the proposed company or companies than under the existing Highways Agency? I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could give us some indication of how the very large figure that she mentioned in her speech— £2.6 billion of savings—is actually going to be made up.

The Highways Agency already operates at arm’s length from Ministers. It currently lets its maintenance and construction contracts to the private sector so it is unclear what efficiency gains are being projected in that respect. Its sources of finance depend almost entirely on the state because we have few tolls and fees and no road pricing, and this will continue to be the case under these companies as privatisation has been ruled out—unless of course the noble Baroness wishes to say that there may be future plans for tolls or road pricing. I take it that there are not. In that case, the sources of finance will remain as they are now, which raises the issue of how greater income generation or efficiency will be secured. There are no obvious improvements in the way in which the national and local road networks interact, which is an issue of genuine concern. The key issue is greater certainty over medium-term and long-term funding but there is no need to create a new company to give greater certainty over future funding. The Government could simply announce a detailed five-year settlement for strategic roads in any event.

The noble Baroness’s mention of stop/start was almost as remarkable a statement as, “This legislation is still being developed”. The reason there has been stop/start over the past four years is that the Government stopped and then they started again. They did not have to do that. They could have announced and stuck to a longer-term funding plan, and it is entirely within their prerogative to do so. However, if the simple act of setting up this company constrains the ability of Governments to stop and start in respect of roads investment, it will none the less be worth while. But until we see the detailed five-year settlement for 2015-20 we are not in a position to judge.

On the proposed company, I have four points to make. First, the unhappy experience with the Ministry of Defence government company in the Defence Reform Bill suggests that the success of this model depends on the clarity of the process for selecting the company, the quality of information provided to the company, the scope of services the company is being asked to provide, and how its performance will be measured. Simply setting up a company is no panacea.

Secondly, on the roads investment strategy, the proposal for ring-fencing funding for investment in the roads and a requirement to respond to a high-level output specification in the same way as Network Rail is, as I have said, a good idea in principle, but the legal architecture around it is vague. Where Network Rail is concerned, there is a well trodden process of settlement with the Office of Rail Regulation under the Railways Act regime. There is nothing that comes close to this in respect of roads. It seems to be the Government simply announcing a five-year road settlement. Will the Minister say more about how the settlement will be set in relation to the high-level output specification? Will there be some independent judgment as to whether the resources are sufficient to deliver the high-level output specification? Can she say when we will see the high-level output specification?

Thirdly, on the provisions regarding the Office of Rail Regulation, the proposal is that the ORR’s remit can be stretched to scrutinise the efficiency of the highways companies as well. But the ORR is obviously not sufficiently equipped or experienced to do this at the moment and we need to know how it is rapidly going to become so.

Fourthly, on accountability, Graham Dalton, the chief executive of the Highways Agency, says that these reforms will enable the Highways Agency to “set its own destiny”. That sounds very liberating but what if that destiny, decision by decision, arouses controversy and opposition, as in many cases it will, in respect of road schemes? At the moment, as I know from, to coin a phrase, the scars on my back—the noble Baroness probably has some as well—it is Ministers who mediate when there are controversial issues relating to road schemes, often at quite a detailed level. Stone curlews and their relocation to make it possible to dual the A11 to Norwich is etched on my mind as taking many hours of discussions in my office, and no doubt the noble Baroness can give equivalent examples. At the moment it is Ministers who mediate, and many MPs and Members of your Lordships’ House will, when it comes to controversial issues relating to road schemes and upgrades, want that to continue to be the case.

Under the Bill, there is to be a Passengers’ Council, which is a reform of the existing quango Passenger Focus, but it is hard to see how it will have the credibility and clout that Ministers currently exercise. Furthermore, as I understand it, the Passengers’ Council will be mandated only to promote and protect the interests of users of highways for which the highways company or companies are responsible. The Passengers’ Council will not represent the interests of communities along the road or the natural environment. That is a very important point. Who will represent their interests and take account of them? I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could clarify those issues. There is a lot for us to debate further about the new structure of the Highways Agency.

Moving to other issues, on invasive non-native species, there will be a lot for us to scrutinise in species control orders, the protection of animal welfare and the proposed powers of entry. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has a great deal to say about all that, but obviously we support a proper control regime to effect eradication or control of invasive non-native species where they pose threats to biodiversity, the water environment, economic prosperity or health and welfare.

Turning to planning and land, on major infrastructure projects and the Planning Act, Clause 18 provides that examinations of projects may be conducted by panels of two inspectors. The noble Baroness said that there are large potential savings from that, but as it is to be the lead examiner who decides in cases of disagreement, does that not make the second examiner distinctly second-class? Is that not precisely why it is odd numbers of inspectors—one, three or five—who are appointed at present?

On land, the Bill proposes that the Secretary of State can transfer public land directly to the Homes and Communities Agency and the agency can then dispose of it to developers. We see benefits in having a less bureaucratic, expedited regime for land transfer, but accountability and reasonableness will be important. It is not clear how they are to be provided under the new regime. In particular, is it correct that there will be no need in any circumstances to go through local planning application processes before land is transferred in that way? Is it also the case that the proposed change may allow public rights of way to be extinguished? As the Minister said, concerns have been raised in respect of protected environments and public amenities; for example, the status of forests and land for recreational use. That is a vital issue. I noted what the noble Baroness said about that in her speech. I hope that her assurances are watertight. Otherwise we may need to propose exemptions at a later stage to safeguard vital public interests.

Clauses 23 and 24 on the Land Registry, transferring local land charges from local authorities to the Chief Land Registrar and extending the powers of the Chief Land Registrar raise a whole host of issues, particularly if the Land Registry is to be privatised, as leaked documents suggest. My noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton will have a lot more to say about that in his speech. Perhaps the noble Baroness can enlighten us as to why a company that returns £100 million a year to the Treasury and is thought to be doing a good job needs to be sold off.

Clauses 19 and 20 propose to simplify the process of making changes to development consent orders and the discharge of conditions attached to planning applications. The Government say that that is due to concerns about delays with planning authorities discharging planning conditions, but obviously there will be concern that that will simply allow developers to ignore planning requirements. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could tell us what evidence there is to support the notion that it is local planning authorities which are delaying the discharge of conditions at the moment. In her reply or in writing, perhaps she might tell us how many decisions regarding the discharge of planning conditions have been delayed and therefore merit this legislation. Is there any evidence to suggest that it is other statutory consultees who are holding up the process and, as this is all related to housebuilding, can she say what impact this will actually have on the level of housebuilding?

On fracking, we do not have the provisions at the moment, as I said, but the Government have put it up in lights. If the intention is to put shale gas production in line with the coal industry, water and sewerage, all of which have access to underground land, then we welcome this in principle. I endorse the potential gains that the noble Baroness mentioned as being well worth securing if it is possible to develop shale gas in this way. But communities need to be reassured about impacts on the environment, including methane levels, contamination of the water table and seismic shifts.

However, the big and immediate issue on energy, whatever the potential long-term gains from fracking, is the need for new power stations. According to a recent survey by the CBI and KPMG, two-thirds of British companies fear that UK infrastructure will deteriorate over the next five years and their most critical concern is about energy. Britain’s supply of electricity is dangerously close to demand. The safety margin of capacity has been shrinking and now stands well below the 20% necessary to ensure against shocks. Thanks to its antiquity and the demands of environmental legislation, roughly one-fifth of existing generating capacity will drop out of the system over the next decade.

As I said in the debate on the Address a fortnight ago, plans for delivering new gas and nuclear power stations are well behind the curve. Ministers talk about a dozen new nuclear power plants but only two are yet proceeding. As for gas, because of a lack of clarity and confidence in the Government’s capacity mechanism for encouraging new supply, we are facing a situation where existing gas stations may be mothballed with little appetite for new plants. On renewables, to repeat what is becoming a truism, there are two Governments at the moment: DECC, under Ed Davey, is in favour while DCLG, under Eric Pickles, repeatedly turns down applications for extra wind capacity. On all this, the Bill is irrelevant. There is already an Energy Act and what we need now are concrete proposals and consents and viable funding arrangements.

It is the same issue regarding a large part of the transport infrastructure that is required. Where are the plans? It is great that Crossrail 2 and HS2 are proceeding but where are the plans for new airport capacity in the south-east of England? All we have is a commission, which is not due to report for at least another year, because for the entirety of this Parliament the Government have not been able even to form a view, let alone take a decision. I am told that later this year, for the first time in 350 years, Britain will no longer have the world’s largest port or airport. That accolade will pass, symbolically, to Dubai.

It is the same situation year after year with there being no plan in respect of the new lower Thames crossing—vital infrastructure to relieve the Dartford crossing, the most congested short stretch on the entire Highways Agency network. I published three options for the new lower Thames crossing five years ago. Since then, three options have been reduced to two but there still has not been a government decision in respect of those two. It does not need a Highways Agency company to build the new lower Thames crossing; it just needs a Government and a Minister who can take a decision and see it through. The new crossing would be entirely paid for by tolls, so there is no public expenditure implication at all.

Above all, the Bill barely scratches the surface of the UK’s chronic shortage of housing. The rate of housebuilding is lower than at any time since the 1920s. Less than half the 250,000 new homes a year required are being built nationally and less than a third of the 60,000 required in London. There are estimated to be 150,000 unemployed construction workers, costing the economy up to £2.1 billion a year in unemployment benefits and lost tax revenue. Yet this situation has been getting worse, with 40,000 jobs lost in the construction industry last year. On current projections based on the low rates of housebuilding, employment in construction will still be 11% below its 2008 peak in 2018.

This is an infrastructure problem with huge social consequences. Rapid house price inflation, driven by shortage of supply, is pricing many out of home ownership, with average house prices nationally close to seven times the average income. With home ownership becoming increasingly elusive, many are turning to the private rented sector where the housing stock is often of poor quality and unable to keep up with demand. Almost one in seven people in the UK now rent, including 1.3 million families with children. One-third of these properties fail to meet the decent home standards, and the number of homeless households has risen to more than 50,000 a year. On almost all of this the Bill is silent, yet this is the biggest infrastructure issue that we face as a country.

As for the Government’s national infrastructure plan, I simply note that at the most recent count 355 projects and programmes—that is, 55% of the total of 646 that are in the pipeline—were not under construction or even part of an active programme of investment. So we face big infrastructure challenges. According to the Civil Engineering Contractors Association, a lack of investment in infrastructure is costing the UK around £78 billion a year in lost output. Our total infrastructure stock as a proportion of GDP is less than India, the US, China, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa and Poland. In March 2012 the Prime Minister said:

“I want to set out a vision for this country’s infrastructure in the 21st century; what we need, how we can pay for it and some specific steps that we are going to take”.

We still need that vision today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

I hope that my noble friend will encourage him to read my comments.

Moving on to more substantive issues, we had actually very little discussion of shale gas. My noble friend Lord Teverson spoke about geothermal extraction. I think that is rather positive. There is clearly an appetite in this House to ensure that this is a successful project. I know that many people are waiting for the detail, and that is exactly right. I would encourage anyone with an interest in this area to look at the consultation that is under way until 15 August because they may wish to participate in it as well as use it to inform themselves of what may happen, since the Government will not be making their final decisions until that consultation is complete and its implications are understood. We do not want to prejudge.

My noble friend Lord Teverson asked for more information on geothermal. I suspect that he knows this area far better than I do, but I remind him that geothermal power projects are eligible for support through the renewables obligation, and that under the contracts for difference the department has set a final strike price for geothermal power of £145 per megawatt hour until 2016-17 and £140 per megawatt hour thereafter. Indeed, there are a lot of measures to exploit geothermal, of which I think everyone recognises the potential.

In the same vein, my noble friend Lord Purvis mentioned the Wood review. We recognise that the oil and gas industry in the UK is of national importance and will be a vital part of the energy mix. While investment levels in the UK continental shelf are rising and near-term prospects are strong, there are new challenges for exploration and production. The environment is, frankly, very different from the circumstances when production peaked approximately 15 years ago. We will be responding very shortly to the Wood review. Details of how this will be carried forward will be available in Committee—I think my noble friend might have thought it would be later but it will be in Committee.

On zero-carbon homes, my noble friend Lord Teverson constantly reminds us that as well as talking about the supply side for energy we must focus on the demand side. This part of the Bill is absolutely critical in this area, and we will see those clauses before the Summer Recess. We recognise, as I suspect all noble Lords did in their speeches, that making all homes zero-carbon “on site” is sometimes not physically feasible or cost-effective for housebuilders. There are technical limits. Of course, we will be exploring the whole issue of allowable solutions. My noble friend Lord Teverson said he was concerned that we were focusing on potential exemptions for small sites, but we must recognise that small housebuilders face a very different economic framework from that faced by the big housebuilders, lacking economies of scale. But it is an important industry throughout the UK and we rely on it heavily for housebuilding in this country, and we must always keep in mind that the industry needs to be successful.

On roads reform, there was a very wide range of questions. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lord Bradshaw—and there may have been others—talked about the importance of ensuring that reforms to the Highways Agency were seen within the context of spending on local authority roads, particularly the maintenance of those roads. It is obviously a very important point. Your Lordships will know that the Government are investing more than £6 billion in this Parliament—£12 billion in the next—on highways maintenance for strategic and local roads, enough to resurface 80% of the national road network and fill 19 million potholes a year on local roads. I also want to make it clear that there are benefits from that integration between the strategic highways network and local roads that come from our proposals for changes to the Highways Agency. The licence agreement for the reformed Highways Agency will include a duty to co-operate that will foster and improve partnership working with local authorities.

The new company will be a traffic authority and have the same legal responsibilities to ensure that traffic runs smoothly on its own network and the local network. These changes will strengthen the interplay between local authorities and the Highways Agency.

[Lord Adonis]

The Minister just referred to the “new company”. Many noble Lords in the debate asked whether we are talking about a company or companies because the Bill says “companies”. Do I take it from what the Minister just said that it is the Government’s intention to set up just one highways company?

[Baroness Kramer]

Yes, it is the Government’s intention to set up just one company. It is standard template language in legislation, I understand, to create the option of further entities. It has no sinister meaning at all behind it. The intention is for a single company, but of course the lawyers always think about what-ifs in the most extraordinary way. I guess we did not really kick back against that but, yes, it is one company.

A number of your Lordships seemed to think that we might be looking at privatisation. Indeed, I was not sure whether or not the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was proposing that, but we are certainly not proposing it on this side. This will be a company with a single shareholder, the Secretary of State. Any change to that would require primary legislation, so there is no backdoor mechanism.

[Lord Adonis]

For the record, my Lords, I was not.

[Baroness Kramer]

A number of other noble Lords asked whether the body would go out and seek private finance. It could do so only with the authority and approval of the Secretary of State, so it is no different from the current situation of the Highways Agency. The Government do not anticipate that that is what it will do. Quite frankly, borrowing through government costs significantly less, and this is an on-books entity. That is not something that this is meant to facilitate, if that is helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

The monitoring will indeed be there. That is crucial because of the way in which the SHC is being constructed.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, asked: where on earth do you get those savings from? It is covered in detail in the impact assessment and business case published by DfT on 6 June. It is important to understand that certainty of funding, which will come out of the road investment strategy, combined with the arm’s-length relationship, gives us a structure which is similar enough to the structure which has worked effectively in the rail industry. For example, the Government have committed £24 billion to road investment until 2021. Far more detail on all of this will come out of the road investment strategy.

The road investment strategy is set up in such a way that once established, if a future Secretary of State wants to change it, he or she obviously could—we cannot bind a future Parliament—but it would have to be done transparently, publicly and with consultation. Such pressures are an inhibitor which provides enough satisfaction to the industry to understand that it can look with reasonable certainty over the long term for the funding to be available. That leads to efficiency. We expect the SHC to approach asset management in a different way because it has such clear strategy and certainty of funding. It will also be set up as a company, with the roles that companies have, with its directors and chief executive. The sole shareholder will be the Secretary of State. I think that it will achieve its purpose. One could go over the top and try to reinforce that, but the question is: is that sufficient for the purpose to be achieved? If it is, that is the point at which we should stop.

Yes, the SHC will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so there should be no concern on the issue. I have addressed the issue of multiple companies. My noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer mentioned—I am told that I have only two minutes left. Is that seriously true? If I have only two minutes left, I shall do one thing which is terribly important. I switch completely to address the issue that has been floating through the media and mentioned today: concern that land transfers could affect the Forestry Commission and the national parks. I addressed that issue briefly at the very beginning of my speech. I am looking hard to find the comments; if anyone can hand them to me I will love them for ever.

[Lord Adonis]

While the noble Baroness wrestles with her papers, I invite her to respond to another big concern raised in the debate, which is that there were discussions in government about privatising the Land Registry. Are there are indeed such discussions?

[Baroness Kramer]

I can tell the noble Lord only that there will be no such clauses in this Bill. I can provide that absolute clarity.

[Lord Adonis]

Are there any discussions about privatisation of the Land Registry at a later date?

[Baroness Kramer]

There will be a response to the consultation, but it is not the intention of the Government to provide for that in the Bill or, as far as I know, in any future legislation.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, and to pay tribute to him for his sterling work over the past year in promoting HS2. Six weeks ago, the House of Commons carried the Second Reading of the HS2 Bill by the colossal margin of 452 votes to 41. HS2 is vital to transforming transport capacity and connectivity between London and the major cities of the Midlands and the north. The Bill will proceed in this Session with our support.

However, if HS2 is the “Flying Scotsman” of the new Session, the rest of the Queen’s Speech barely merits “Thomas the Tank Engine”. Starting with the economy, the gracious Speech tells us:

“An updated Charter for Budget Responsibility will … ensure that … governments spend taxpayers’ money responsibly”.

I assume that this means that the Chancellor will be updating his fiscal rules of 2010 and proclaiming them as a charter. However, since the Chancellor is not on target to meet either of his 2010 rules by 2015 as intended, because of the weakness of the economy for most of the four years since he became Chancellor, it is hard to see why the public should have more confidence in any new set of rules just because they are dressed up as a charter.

As for the proposed legislation to cut bureaucracy and promote access to finance for small businesses, we welcome any measures to deal with late payments in particular—although the public sector is itself often the culprit. However, the Government have spent the past four years announcing one initiative after another on access to finance, mostly to little effect: remember Project Merlin? The House will not be holding its breath. The plain fact is that, as the Bank of England’s latest Trends in Lending report said in April, lending to all businesses is still falling, with small and medium-sized enterprises hit worst.

The Queen’s Speech also promises yet another Bill to reform the planning regime and to promote infrastructure, even as the ink is barely dry on the previous Growth and Infrastructure Act—intended, yes, to reform the planning regime and to promote infrastructure. “Déjà vu all over again”, as someone once said.

The House will therefore want to focus not so much on the measures in the Queen’s Speech as on the economic fundamentals. Thankfully, the economy is at last reviving. We all welcome the recent improvements in employment and output, and the fact that inflationary pressure remains low. However, before we hear too much about an economic plan that is working, the best gloss that can be put on Britain’s relative economic performance is that, at last, we are in catch-up mode. Unlike the US, Germany, France, Canada and Japan, the UK’s GDP is still below its 2008 peak—out of the G7, only Italy has a worse record. As the Office for National Statistics says in its latest analysis,

“UK real GDP fell by 7.2% … and the subsequent economic recovery has been one of the slowest in the G7 … and in UK economic history”.

Nor has economic growth been accompanied by any pick-up in productivity, the key determinant of long-term prosperity. Productivity growth in the UK since 2007 has been lower than in all other member countries of the G7, including Italy. This underlying productivity weakness partly explains why average real incomes have been languishing for so long and why wage growth has been so weak.

Exports remain especially weak. The current account deficit stands at 5.5% of GDP, the highest level since records began in 1955. Over the past two years, the UK’s exports have been flat, and the Government are not remotely on track to meet their target of doubling exports to £1 trillion by 2020.

As for employment—made much of by the noble Lord—the top-line employment figures tell only part of the story. For instance, 1.4 million people are working part-time because they are unable to find full-time employment. As the Bank of England notes, this very high number of people reporting that they would like to work longer hours points to considerable underemployment. The rise in claimed self-employment, which accounts for more than half the increase in total employment reported since last summer, also suggests that millions simply cannot find permanent jobs and are looking for other ways to make ends meet.

Youth unemployment remains especially high. At 19%, the UK’s youth unemployment rate is higher than that of Italy, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany. We are failing the next generation —a lost generation of young people with poor skills and no work, and little hope for the future.

The truth is that Britain is growing but the foundations are weak, the young are especially disadvantaged and a good deal of today’s growth is being driven by consumer debt and a surge in house prices. This partly also explains why growth is so regionally imbalanced, concentrated on London and the south, while the Midlands and the north do less well. Tellingly, 21 of the 25 worst performing retail centres in the country are in the north, the Midlands and Wales, while 22 of the 25 best performing are south of the Watford Gap.

Household consumption and private housing investment, fuelled by the housing price surge in London and the south-east, represented fully 60% of GDP growth last year, while net trade and business investment, essential for driving innovation and high-value jobs, remain worryingly low. A critical issue is the failure to build new homes on anything like the scale that the country needs. The rate of housebuilding is lower than at any time since the 1920s. Barely half of the 200,000 new homes a year that are required are being built nationally, and less than a third of the 60,000 a year needed in London.

Where are the policies to deal with these fundamental weaknesses, to improve youth skills, to transform vocational education, to accelerate investment and to dramatically improve the rate of housebuilding? To tackle youth unemployment, we need more apprenticeships and more work opportunities for young people, yet the number of apprenticeships for under-19s is still below its 2010 level—a figure disguised by the Government lumping all apprenticeship numbers into one total, when most of the growth under this headline number is for those already in employment in their mid or late 20s. Even in the public sector, apprenticeship numbers are pitiful and too little is changing too slowly. The Civil Service used to have no Whitehall-wide apprenticeship scheme whatever. Now it has just started but for a mere 100 apprentices when there should be thousands.

The Government’s Youth Contract, billed by the Deputy Prime Minister as the big answer to youth unemployment when it was launched two and a half years ago, has massively underachieved. The policy was for 160,000 wage incentives for employers taking on long-term unemployed young people. There were also to be 250,000 unpaid work experience places. Two and a half years later, a mere 4,000 young people have been placed with an employer for six months with full government support; that is just 2.5% of the way to 160,000. Furthermore, a recent employers’ survey revealed that 81% of the jobs advertised under the Youth Contract would have been offered anyway. As for the 250,000 work experience placements, fewer than half have in fact been created.

It is a similarly worrying story on housebuilding. Why is the rate of housebuilding so low? It is because of a serious construction skills shortage, private sector land-banking and the unwillingness or sheer inability of the public sector in its various guises, from local government to the MoD and the NHS, to get building on its own land. There have also been some nimby councils but others want to do more but do not have the powers. The Government have done far too little to tackle these problems. For example, three years ago the Prime Minister told us that he wanted to see new garden cities. So far only one has been announced, in Ebbsfleet, which already had planning permission for 10,000 homes.

To drive improvements in skills, housing and infrastructure, the Government should be following the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and empowering England’s cities and localities by radically devolving budgets and powers to local authorities and to local enterprise partnerships, overcoming what Vince Cable called the Maoist abolition of the regional development agencies in 2010. Instead, only a fraction of the Heseltine devolution has taken place, mostly dependent on complex and protracted individual city deal negotiations, which is far from the rocket boost required.

It is a similar story of half measures or no measures in respect of energy and infrastructure. The average dual gas and electricity bill is now at a record £1,353, up from £819 in 2009. Over the four years to October 2013, gas prices increased by 21% and electricity prices by 25%. The Office for National Statistics estimates that the share of household income going on essentials has risen by 10% since 2003, which is a huge burden on family budgets. The lack of an effective energy market is part of the explanation. That is not just our contention: since Ed Miliband put this issue up in lights, it has become the Government’s and the regulator’s contention too.

In February, Ed Davey asked the big six energy companies to review their pricing. He also asked Ofgem to think radically and even consider breaking up the big six if they had been overcharging. In March, Ofgem reported back that it found evidence of both collusion and overcharging, evidence of “possible tacit coordination” between energy companies that includes a,

“strong alignment of pricing announcements, in both timing and extent”,

and evidence that the big six have seen increasing profits that do not appear to reflect increasing efficiency, a possible sign of lack of competition. A Competition and Markets Authority investigation is now under way, but nothing is being done in this Queen’s Speech to freeze or reduce energy prices while that happens and we will not get any action on competition until after the election. As for energy infrastructure and new supply, according to a recent survey by the CBI and KPMG, two-thirds of British companies fear that UK infrastructure will deteriorate over the next five years, and their concerns are most critical on energy.

Legislation on fracking is proposed in the Queen’s Speech which, the Government say, would put shale gas production in line with the coal industry, water and sewerage, all of which have access to underground land. We welcome that in principle, provided that communities are reassured about impacts on the environment, including contamination of the water table, but the critical issue is that a fifth of the UK’s power-generating capacity will close over the next decade, but plans for delivering new gas and nuclear power stations are well behind the curve. Ministers talk about a dozen new nuclear power plants, but only two are as yet proceeding. As for gas, because of a lack of clarity and confidence in the Government’s capacity mechanism for encouraging new supply, we face a situation where existing gas stations may be mothballed but there is little appetite for new plants. On renewables, there appear to be two separate Governments: Ed Davey’s DECC is in favour while Eric Pickles’s DCLG repeatedly turns down applications for extra capacity.

The story on housing and energy applies to transport, too. Although a few welcome projects, such as Crossrail, Thameslink and HS2, are proceeding—mostly, I should note, inherited from the previous Government—there are too many plans without delivery, the biggest plan of all being the constantly relaunched national infrastructure plan, which is a catalogue of everything on the infrastructure drawing board, only a fraction of which is actually being taken forward

In one vital area of economic importance, extra airport capacity in the south-east of England, there is not even a plan, just a commission, which is not due to report for another year, because for the entirety of this Parliament, the Government have not even been able to form a view, let alone to take a decision. It is the same with the new lower Thames crossing—vital infrastructure to relieve the M25 Dartford crossing, the most congested short stretch of road on the entire trunk network. The previous Government published three options for the new crossing five years ago. Since then, the coalition Government have merely reduced the three options to two so there still is no plan, let alone a decision. Yet a new crossing would be entirely paid for by the private sector through tolls.

The Government’s non-delivery is summed up by the extraordinary saga of the A14. The upgrade of the A14—a vital growth corridor from the east coast ports to the Midlands—was shovel-ready in 2010. One of the first acts of the coalition Government was to cancel it, along with a string of other major transport schemes. Two years later, in 2012, Ministers tried to resuscitate the A14 as a toll road with magic money. That scheme collapsed and last year, finally, the Government said that the A14 would go ahead on its original plan. So a vital major trunk scheme, which might have been finished by now, is not even remotely close to starting. A very large number of the schemes that the Minister mentioned in his remarks from the road plan of last year are simply the resuscitation of schemes that were cancelled in 2010.

As a country, we face huge challenges. At last there is growth but far more needs to be done to tackle youth unemployment and underemployment, and to construct the homes, infrastructure and energy and transport systems that Britain needs to thrive. Where the legislation in the Queen’s Speech addresses these problems, we will give it our support but the imperative is for a bold and ambitious Government—and for that, the general election cannot come soon enough.

High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, this is my first opportunity in the House to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, on her appointment as Transport Minister. I do so very warmly.

The previous Government started work on what became HS2 five years ago. In March 2010 we published the Command Paper that set out the case for HS2, together with the detailed route plan from London to Birmingham and the outline plan to extend the line from Birmingham to Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds, linking to the existing main lines to Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh. HS2 transforms connections between London and the major cities of the Midlands and the north in the spirit of the great Victorian pioneers who built the main lines from the 1830s—starting with Robert Stephenson’s London & Birmingham Railway—upon which we still depend today.

It was always clear to me that without cross-party agreement and a fixity of national purpose to rise above short-term party politics, HS2 would never happen. HS2 through to Manchester and Leeds is a 20-year project. The golden rule of high-speed rail is that while everyone wants the stations, no one wants the line. From the outset of planning HS2, I therefore consulted with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and the Cabinet agreed to publish the Command Paper in 2010 only on the basis of their support. I am glad to say that the coalition Government have maintained this cross-party approach and very largely stuck to the 2010 plan for HS2. We may disagree on other areas of transport policy—for example, I am proud that East Coast is doing such a good job for the public as a state company and believe that it ought to be allowed to continue as such—but on HS2 I acknowledge the constructive role played by the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and other Ministers in keeping this a national project, not a party project. This approach is fully reciprocated by my right honourable friend the Leader of the Opposition.

I also applaud the decision to appoint Sir David Higgins as chair of HS2. The biggest infrastructure project in Europe needs the best infrastructure manager available. Sir David Higgins, fresh from delivering the 2012 Olympics on time and on budget, is the very best. As with all major infrastructure projects, HS2 has experienced some teething problems. Sir David must get a firm grip on management and costs at HS2, including the recent increase in the total projected cost from £32 billion to £42 billion—an increase largely due to a sudden, and in my view hard to justify, decision by the Treasury to impose an extra £6 billion of contingency reserve on the project, taking the contingency reserve alone to £14 billion. HS2 cannot be “at any price” and this represents a 50% contingency on the costed design of £28 billion. We look to Sir David to review these costs and to stress-test the figures with some urgency. I was glad to hear what the noble Baroness said about that. I know that Sir David will also take to heart the good advice on project costs and management from the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, in his excellent lecture on HS2 to the Royal Town Planning Institute last week.

I will say a few things about the history of HS2. There have been claims that the 2010 Command Paper was not a thorough analysis, that I and others were kidnapped by rail fanatics who bamboozled us into mortgaging the Exchequer simply to cut half an hour off the journey time from London to Birmingham, and that the whole project has had to be relaunched on the basis of capacity rather than speed. None of this is correct. Capacity is and always has been the central argument for HS2. The 2010 Command Paper could not have been clearer. It set out the previous Government’s intention to proceed with HS2 in these words:

“The Government’s assessment is that over the next 20 to 30 years the UK will require a step-change in transport capacity between its largest and most productive conurbations, both facilitating and responding to long-term economic growth … alongside such additional capacity”—

I stress those words—

“there are real benefits for the economy and for passengers from improving journey times and hence the connectivity of the UK”.

So, capacity first, with speed and connectivity significant additional benefits. That was the argument for HS2 in 2010, it is the argument in 2013 and, if we see this through, it will be the argument on its completion in 2033—and no doubt on HS2’s centenary in 2133—because capacity is the fundamental problem, solved for a generation and more by HS2. It is a problem that, if not solved, will mean that in just 10 years’ time we will have to start closing the north-south intercity railway to new business, which would be a betrayal of the future prosperity of this country, given that HS2 connects the five principal cities and conurbations of the UK.

The facts on capacity are compelling. Long-distance rail demand has doubled in the past 16 years alone; the trend growth rate is 5% a year, consistently ahead of economic growth, as other modes of intercity transport such as motorways and domestic aviation become saturated or simply unavailable, and as railway services steadily improve.

Furthermore, HS2 does not just meet rising demand for intercity travel; by freeing up substantial capacity on the existing lines, it also provides a huge capacity boost for freight trains and for commuter and regional passenger services. Rail freight volumes have increased by more than 50% in the past 20 years and continue to grow fast. Moving freight from road to rail is a national imperative, placing a special pressure on the west coast main line, which gets most of the relief from the additional capacity of HS2 since 43% of all rail freight movements in the country use it to get from the ports to the nation’s major goods distribution centres in the Midlands.

As for commuter rail, demand has also increased sharply over the past 20 years, particularly into the biggest cities served by HS2—London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds—because the big cities are the national dynamos of population and employment growth, and they will continue to be so as the UK’s population increases by a projected 11 million people in the next two decades. Here, again, HS2 is an essential congestion-buster, to the benefit of dozens of towns and cities in and around the major corporations. Coventry, Wakefield, Bradford, Stockport, Leicester, Peterborough, Stevenage, Bedford, St Albans, Cambridge, Milton Keynes—the list of beneficiaries goes on.

The question before Parliament and the country is this: if not HS2, what? Given that we are not going to be building new intercity motorways or encouraging more domestic aviation—nor should we—the only alternative to HS2 for dealing with the capacity crunch is massive further upgrades of the existing Victorian main lines. This would be very expensive and destructive and yield only a fraction of the capacity and other benefits of HS2. You do not need a crystal ball to appreciate this reality. It is only five years since the most recent upgrade of the west coast main line was completed; it cost £9 billion and entailed a decade of constant chronic disruption, at weekends and often on weekdays too, without services or with severe delays and diversions. Upgrading a busy main-line railway is like conducting open-heart surgery on a moving patient—horrendous for all concerned.

The 2010 Command Paper estimated that to achieve two-thirds of the capacity of HS2 by conventional line upgrades, just for London to Birmingham, would cost more in cash terms than HS2. In practice, though, many of those proposed upgrades, like four-tracking the Chiltern line, are simply unattainable. If I was in any doubt about that, I have been seriously disabused by the large number of your Lordships who live in the Chilterns and rightly treasure it, and who have given me freely the benefit of their advice on these matters.

The present Government have since identified a more credible upgrade alternative from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, which is set out in chapter 6 of the strategic case document that was published last month. The key points about the upgrade alternative are these. First, the upgrade is projected to cost £19 billion. That is nearly half the cost of HS2 but the capacity increase would be less than one-quarter—so half the cost for one-quarter of the capacity.

Secondly, that increase in capacity would be insufficient by the late 2020s even to keep pace with the lower of the growth projections for intercity traffic set out in the Government’s strategic assessments. So in all likelihood we would complete the upgrades of the existing lines, spending £19 billion, only to be faced with the prospect of either carrying out yet more expensive upgrades to the existing main lines or, at that stage in the 2020s, of embarking on HS2. That would be an even more expensive repeat of the situation that we now face in taking forward HS2, having already spent £9 billion on the most recent upgrade of the west coast main line when we might have done better to have started HS2 15 years ago.

Thirdly, the £19 billion price tag for the upgrade alternative does not take into account the chronic disruption of the upgrades in question—the open-heart surgery on the moving patient that I just described. Look at the description of these upgrades and you will see that to undertake them would require, as the Minister said, the equivalent of 14 years of continuous line closures every weekend. Furthermore, the list of projects involved in the £19 billion upgrade alternative, with its 14 years of disruption, is colossal, to say the least: a new 30-mile stretch of tunnel and surface line to get the east coast main line out of King’s Cross, avoiding a series of acute existing bottlenecks including the Welwyn viaduct; the rebuilding of most of the major stations on all three of the main lines going north from Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross, including those three termini, to accommodate more platforms and longer trains; and four-tracking a lot of two-track sections of line, including in urban areas. The idea that this would be an easy alternative to HS2, let alone a cheap one, is wishful thinking, to put it mildly.

It is true that putting the £19 billion upgrade option through the Treasury’s benefit/cost ratio methodology produces a somewhat, but not much, higher ratio figure than comes out for HS2, but from my experience of major transport projects I would always be cautious about the value of benefit/cost ratios because they involve so many artificial assumptions. The M25, the Victoria line and the Jubilee line extension all had low benefit/cost ratios and faced a deeply hostile Treasury, but which of those do we now think it would be a good idea to close? All three of them have recently been upgraded to deal with congestion.

Much has been made by the critics of HS2 of the value given in the benefit/cost ratio to the benefit of time saved by business travellers, as if they were not able to work on trains. Equally artificial, though, and far more significant in its impact on the BCR for HS2, is the fact that the benefit/cost methodology caps traffic growth projections in 2036, only three years after the opening of HS2, on the grounds that further growth thereafter is too speculative. Do any of your Lordships seriously think that traffic will stop growing in 2036? Brunel did not build the Great Western Railway on the assumption that there would be no traffic growth after 1870—thank goodness, otherwise the GWR would have been built single-track. He might even have been told by a Treasury economist that upgrading the canals offered better value for money. Nor did we build the M25 thinking that traffic would stop growing in 1995, which would have been an equivalent assumption. What is needed here is a dose of common sense plus a grasp of history, which shows that in Britain, with our historic aversion to major infrastructure investment, we have consistently under- estimated the value of better transport links serving our major population and economic centres.

I have a few other points to make. Faster journey times, although not a principal reason for HS2, are a considerable benefit that cannot but be advantageous to the unity of Britain and the strength of its economy. As HS2 proceeds further north, the time savings become steadily greater: an hour off every journey between London and Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds. Journeys will be further shortened by the proposed interchange between HS2 and the new Crossrail line at Old Oak Common, just west of Paddington. This will give an 11-minute connection direct to Heathrow and fast underground trains direct to the West End, the City and Docklands without going via Euston and its congested Victoria and Northern lines. This could be a rare British example of joining up two major traffic infrastructure projects at the point of conception.

The second point is that the notion peddled even by some reputable commentators that bringing northern and Midland cities closer to London will suck the lifeblood out of them is utterly farcical. If it were true that modern transport connections between great economic centres were a negative factor, we should close existing motorways and intercity rail lines because Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds would be better off without them, prospering in splendid isolation.

The third point is that HS2 not only dramatically improves connections between these cities and London but between the cities themselves, as the noble Baroness said. This is a crucial part of the connectivity improvement brought about by HS2. The Victorian railway companies built mostly separate main lines from provincial cities to London, which is why rail links between most of our provincial cities remain terrible. Birmingham and Manchester are only 67 miles apart, yet the rail journey takes one and a half hours. It is 40 minutes by HS2.

Fourthly, while I do not think that just because most other developed countries do things we should follow suit, I believe that when a technology has proved successful elsewhere we should take note. Almost every developed country with an economic geography similar to ours has over the past generation built high-speed rail to link their major cities. Japan started in 1964 with Tokyo to Osaka, about the distance from London to Glasgow. Since then, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Korea and Taiwan have all followed suit. China is constructing more high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined, and the United States is building its first line from LA to San Francisco—two major cities also about the same distance apart as London and Glasgow.

In conclusion, I am not aware of a single country that has introduced high-speed rail between its major cities and now thinks it was a mistake. They know that high-speed rail is integral to building a modern economy and a modern society. I believe it will be the same here in Britain, so we should get on with HS2.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I support my noble friend and the noble Baroness in this amendment. It is something that I personally feel strongly about. I live near Birmingham in the West Midlands and I use the tolled section of the motorway quite frequently on my journeys north. It is a very convenient way of missing the congestion that can be found around spaghetti junction and the Ray Hall viaduct, the elevated section of the M6—until one reaches the toll booths, where we have this medieval concept of queuing to pay, the sort of thing one did with a horse and cart centuries ago. Invariably, I find myself behind someone who has got in the wrong lane, or someone who does not have the right money or cannot find their credit card, and a lot of the time saved by using the toll road is lost as one queues to get through this barrier. Surely there has to be a better way.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, said, in this day and age it should surely be possible to have a more modern system of collecting revenue for toll roads. It is 25 years since I first went to Singapore. The authorities there managed to collect congestion charges electronically three decades ago in a way that is apparently beyond us on the Midlands motorway. I ask the Minister to bear that in mind.

Perhaps I may test the patience of the Committee for two or three more minutes while I am on this hobby-horse of the Midlands motorway. At the moment it is comparatively lorry-free because the private owners—I understand that Macquarie, the Australian company, is the main shareholder in the Midlands motorway—deliberately, as a matter of policy, price off heavy goods vehicles. Those heavy goods vehicles then use the existing M6 over the elevated section at the Ray Hall viaduct and past spaghetti junction—a section of the M6 that is regularly and expensively under repair because of those very same heavy goods vehicles which, whatever the very effective road lobby says, do not pay their true track costs and do enormous damage.

Thanks to the generosity of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister in the 1980s, Macquarie was given the concession to run the Midlands motorway in perpetuity, and can charge what it likes. The last thing it wants is a non-stop procession of heavy goods vehicles, because that damages its motorway. It is no accident that the bit of motorway infrastructure regularly under repair anywhere in the country is the left-hand lane, because that is the one used by heavy goods vehicles. It is a nonsensical situation in which the British taxpayer has paid literally hundreds of millions of pounds. I know the Ray Hall viaduct quite well; it was in my former constituency of West Bromwich East. When the former Prime Minister John Major talked about the cones hotline he had the Ray Hall viaduct and the spaghetti junction interchange in mind. Miles of it are regularly coned off because of the damage done by heavy goods vehicles, which use that section of the M6 because they are deliberately priced off the Midlands motorway.

There are two matters here that I hope the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will address. The first is the nonsensical and medieval concept of stopping to pay a toll, having used a road on which I must confess to breaking the speed limit occasionally myself. I have rarely if ever seen a police vehicle on that privately-owned section of motorway, although having said that I have no doubt I can expect to see one in the very near future. The taxpayer had to pay literally hundreds of millions of pounds because of the pricing policy on that section of toll road, which keeps off heavy goods vehicles. Both of those matters are complete nonsense. No one blames the Minister personally, but can he do anything about it?

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I wish my noble friend Lord Snape well in his quest to abolish all medieval practices in this country. I would simply point out that your Lordships may be the first victims of such a policy, so I hope he does not progress too fast.

[Lord Snape]

If my noble friend will allow me to say so, at least some of us in this House have occasionally sought election.

[Lord Adonis]

Of course, in medieval times exit was not a permitted right. The issue here is a very simple and straightforward one, on which I hope the noble Lord can give the Committee comfort. It is as simple as whether it is possible to have a tolling regime without having to have toll booths. The reason the issue has come to the fore is the Silvertown tunnel proposal. TfL, quite rightly, does not want to have toll booths, but the legal position is unclear. TfL tells me the issue is whether the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 or the Greater London Authority Act is the relevant legal basis for tolling. If it is the one, then there is not a need for booths; if it is the other, then there might be. I think we all agree on what the public policy objective is here; we simply need the Government to give us comfort that it can be achieved.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for tabling this amendment and for raising this issue in the House. Of course, it is always a pleasure to listen to noble Lords when they get on their hobby-horses. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Snape, will be here on Thursday afternoon to discuss the HGV Road User Levy Bill that I will propose to the House.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, makes a persuasive case in favour of amending Section 144(3) of the Planning Act 2008 in order to provide greater flexibility for developers wishing to include road charging provisions within the development consent order and to remove unnecessary additional processes and restrictions from the major infrastructure regime. While I cannot comment on the detail of individual cases, I share his commitment to ensuring the delivery of the crucial infrastructure that this country needs to support vital growth and jobs. I also agree with him that it is important that we take the opportunity to ensure that the provisions of the Planning Act 2008 are fit for purpose and are not inadvertently acting as a barrier to growth. This is therefore an area where I am able to consider further the case for an amendment to Section 144(3) of the Planning Act 2008.

On the noble Lord’s point about charges against diplomatic organisations, he will be aware that this is a long-running issue that we have debated many times. The Government pursue these charges vigorously with the organisations concerned. The noble Lord touched on the charging of road users, and of course on Thursday we will debate the HGV Road User Levy Bill, which partially addresses some of these problems.

I am happy to meet all noble Lords to discuss some of the wider issues relating to charging for roads. However, noble Lords will be well aware of the Government’s policy on wider road-user charging. With those reassurances, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment and perhaps return to it on Report.

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It is a narrow point, but if this clause is to be effective, as I hope my noble friends in government expect it to be, this modest improvement in the situation would help the Government’s intention. I hope that Ministers feel able to agree to that. What Mr Boles said on that occasion absolutely reflects what is right, and this amendment is necessary to give effect to that.

[Lord Adonis]

Noble Lords have different views about the precise scope of the special parliamentary procedure, which we have heard expressed in Committee, but it is important that the scope is consistently applied. It is therefore important that the Minister answers the point made by my noble friend Lord Faulkner. Why does Clause 22(5) preserve the application of the SP procedure to proposed compulsory purchase acquisition of National Trust land, which is held inalienably, but not provide equivalent protection for land held in trust for the nation by the Canal & River Trust? Since the land is held for precisely the same purpose in both cases, why should the same legal procedure not apply to both?

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I support the amendments and the stand part debate proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, and express some concern about the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.

We are talking about open space. The law relating to open space is quite complex and is nothing like as simple as might be suggested. The problem is that a little bit of this particular Bill intervenes on the law on open space in one or two instances, potentially causing considerable confusion, not least about the definition of “open space”. In Clause 22 is set out the proposal that in some circumstances where it is proposed to develop on and remove open space—it does not refer to commons; the position on commons will remain the same—the special parliamentary procedure will not apply. Those circumstances are when,

“it is strongly in the public interest for the development for which the order grants consent to be capable of being begun sooner than is likely to be possible if the order were to be subject (to any extent) to special parliamentary procedure”.

It is an important bit to read out. The crucial words are,

“it is strongly in the public interest”.

That decision will have to be made by the Secretary of State, which is why what the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said about the threat of a relatively large number of delaying judicial reviews is so crucial. What is and is not in the public interest is clearly debatable, and the question of whether the Secretary of State is making a reasonable judgment on what is in the public interest is clearly judicially reviewable. That is the constraint in here which means that it is poor legislation; it is vague and not very clear about what it means. It might mean different things in identical circumstances to different Secretaries of State.

There are other reasons why Clause 22 is undesirable. As the noble Lord said, there have been very few references to or uses of special parliamentary procedure. Once again in this Bill, the Government come forward wanting to do something without providing any clear evidence of why it is necessary. The first thing that the Minister has to try to do is to give us some evidence of why this is necessary in the real world, not of why, in some theoretical future, there might be a problem or two, but evidence that it has been a serious problem in the past. If it has been only in one or two cases, then that does not add up.

The other rather vague and, I believe, judicially reviewable phrase is “long-lived”. These new provisions apply to circumstances in which the removal of the open space is temporary but possibly long-lived. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what “long-lived” means. I suspect that she cannot tell us very precisely because, again, it is a matter of judgment, and it may lead to more delays than even a special parliamentary procedure.

Has the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, spoken to his amendments? He has not. I thought that perhaps I had been asleep and had missed him when the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, jumped in. I will speak to them, with his permission, and then he can tell me why I am wrong.

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Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

77ZJ: Clause 24, page 29, line 32, after “may” insert “, subject to regulations excluding sites of special environmental or historic importance,”

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I will speak to the six amendments in this group standing in my name. The question before us is what projects should be considered nationally significant and therefore subject to the Planning Act 2008, as amended in this Bill, and therefore subject to a national rather than a local planning consent regime. The 2008 Act permits this change to projects of national significance in respect of infrastructure. Clause 24 extends this to business and commercial schemes.

The thrust of my amendments is that Parliament should not give the Secretary of State such wide-ranging powers without defining their extent carefully in the Bill. In the Bill, discretion as to what constitutes national significance is left almost entirely to the Secretary of State. The only substantial limitation is that regulations may not encompass projects that include residential dwellings. My amendments are all probing and I look forward to the Minister’s response to the substantial points underlying each.

Amendment 77ZJ would exclude from the new arrangements sites of special environmental or historic importance. Amendment 77AB would exclude developments that involve surface mineral extraction or quarrying. Such applications arouse especially strong local feeling, and to circumvent local planning entirely for such schemes is bound to give rise to acute concern. Amendments 77AA, 77AC and 77BA would remove the Secretary of State’s discretion to define what is meant by business or commercial and to permit the bypassing of a local authority, because Amendment 77ZA and other amendments in my name specify the definition in the Bill.

Amendment 77ZA seeks to define business and commercial projects of national significance, rather than leaving it entirely to the discretion of the Secretary of State. Under my amendments, these projects could be subject to the national process only if they are in specific areas—largely those set out in annexe A of the Government’s consultation on what should constitute nationally significant infrastructure projects in the business and commercial sphere.

That leads me to the Government’s consultation on those projects. The Government will no doubt respond to my amendment by saying that they have consulted both on categories of development and on thresholds within those categories in terms of the number of square metres that might apply in determining whether a commercial or business development application is of national significance. Last week, the Government published their analysis of the responses. However, they have not yet said how they intend to proceed. A key issue for us in this debate is to know what the Government’s response will be to the consultation that they carried out on types of development and thresholds. I will welcome the Minister’s response to the question of what the Government intend to do in respect of the types of development and thresholds set out in annexe A of the consultation. If the Minister is not able to give me a response now, I would be very grateful if he would write to noble Lords before Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 78 in this group, which is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding. It is yet another attempt to change the definition of what type of project could be included in the extent of the Planning Act. It relates to commercial and business developments that require consent under the national significant infrastructure regime.

The issue that I would like to raise is that of mixed-use schemes that have some housing or retail element. They should be able to take advantage of the regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects. Any retail element is excluded from the proposed list of development types set out in annexe A of the recent CLG consultation on extending the Planning Act regime. I imagine that this could always be reversed if the Government were minded to do so, but the Bill prevents any housing element being included in regulations.

I believe there is a large number of potentially significant business and commercial developments that will have some retail and certainly some housing element in them, even if it is only a caretaker. In theory, if there is just one property in a development, it cannot qualify for going down the nationally significant route. It is important for such developments to be able to include some housing element and to go for the nationally significant approach. An awful lot of time and cost could be saved if this were possible. The original prohibition of housing was well intentioned, and clearly big housing projects are not what the nationally significant definition is for, but it is a problem because if there were just one or two houses in a big development, it would be excluded.

That is what this probing amendment seeks to achieve. I hope that the Minister is willing to look at this again. Perhaps we can discuss whether there is some better wording that could be applied on Report.

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[Baroness Hanham]

I understood that that was what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was getting at. I have committed to giving him the summary of the responses and have been told that the Government’s response will come in due course. That does not sound to me as if it will come before Report, but if it does, I will let noble Lords know that it is coming.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, raises a point of some substance. I have read the summary of responses which the noble Baroness very kindly sent to me a short while ago. It is supremely uninformative. Question 3 asks:

“Do you agree with our assessment of the factors that the Secretary of State would need to take into account when considering whether a project is nationally significant?”.

The summary of responses says:

“A number of respondents thought the assessment factors were broadly right whilst others commented that they were not detailed enough or were not supported at all”.

I could go through them, but it is a profound exercise in waffle and does not really help us very much. To be fair to the Government, in annexe A of their consultation paper, they set out both specific types of development and very specific criteria in terms of the square metreage for the thresholds that would need to be met before these projects are deemed to be of national significance. That is crucial in informing our view as to whether we think this clause should proceed without requiring further limitation, although I think there is quite a strong preference for seeking to put provisions in the Bill. It would be extremely helpful if the noble Baroness were able, before Report, to indicate whether the Government stick by their proposals in annexe A or are minded to amend them in any form. If that does not come before Report, we will of course have no chance to assess the Government’s intended course of action before this Bill becomes law.

[Baroness Hanham]

My instinct would say that if it is there, then the Government are going to introduce it and are probably not going to amend it. If there is any change to that, I will let the noble Lord and the Committee know.

[Lord Adonis]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 77ZJ withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

77ZK: Clause 24, page 29, line 35, at end insert—
“( ) The Secretary of State must publish his reasons for giving a direction under this section.”

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the amendment standing in my name in this group is very simple. It would require the Secretary of State to publish the reason that a planning decision is to be made centrally, including why the application is regarded as nationally significant. This is a simple case of transparency and accountability. If the Secretary of State is to be granted the wide powers contained in this Bill, it is only right that their use should be open to scrutiny case by case. If the local authority is to have its planning role set aside, it seems only fair to tell it why. Just as planning inspectors have to give reasons for their decisions, it seems entirely consistent and transparent that the Secretary of State should have to give reasons for deeming a development proposal to be of national significance. I beg to move.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 77A, 77B and 78A, and to the question of whether Clause 24 should stand part of the Bill, which are down in the Marshalled List in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I am afraid mine will not be quite as swift and simple as the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, because I want to give a pretty full exposition of why Clause 24 should be deleted, or at least amended in a way that would remove the extension of the major infrastructure regime to business and commercial projects.

I am afraid that my subtext will be the same as for previous amendments I have put forward: this is another unnecessary clause in an unnecessary Bill. We still lack evidence of substantial numbers of large-scale projects being delayed under the current system. Using DCLG’s own statistics, local authorities are already determining and approving 87% of relevant, large-scale, major applications that might fall within the categories of Clause 24 within one year, which is the same period as the fast-track timetable that DCLG heralded when the Bill was published. Once again, we urge the Minister to present to the House the evidence for substantial delays or other reasons that would justify Clause 24.

The Minister Nick Boles, when briefing Peers, very kindly indicated that there would be only 10 to 20 applications to the Secretary of State each year under Clause 24. Therefore, one could take the view that it is hardly worth legislating for, especially as this is a centralising proposal that flies in the face of the Government’s commitment to localism. The Secretary of State has call-in powers if necessary. Indeed, if local authorities struggle with some of these larger-scale proposals, the Planning Advisory Service is available to support them. What additional benefits does the Minister believe are provided by the provisions in the clause beyond those already available?

Clause 24 is all the more unsatisfactory because of the point already raised by the noble Lords, Lord Adnois and Lord Greaves, about the consultation on how business and commercial developments will be defined in terms of type and scale. It has only just been completed. I, too, have read the summary of responses and, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, it was not hugely illuminating. Indeed, all the types of development that the consultation proposed would have major local impacts and need to be dealt with by local government. I add my voice to those who already urge the Minister that we see not only the summary of responses, but the Government’s reply and their intentions in terms of the clause, before Report. I ask the Minister to commit to producing the Government response before Report—otherwise we are being asked to buy a pig in a poke.

Of particular concern is that the proposals under Clause 24 also include the extractive industries: deep-mined coal, large onshore gas, oil and other mining and quarrying above certain thresholds. They would be brought within the major infrastructure planning system without robust guarantees that the considerable environmental impacts of these developments can be addressed through the planning system. They are usually dealt with through specific local, national park or county-level policies and procedures governing mineral planning issues. It is also unsatisfactory to propose that deep-mined coal be included in the proposed fast-track process because this seems at odds with the presumption against new coal that is included in the National Planning Policy Framework. It does not say much for commitment to addressing climate change if we regard these types of energy generation as sufficiently important to bypass the normal planning system.

One could say that there might be safeguards for decisions made under the national infrastructure procedure. National policy statements are the main basis on which nationally significant infrastructure projects on energy, transport, water or waste are decided. These have major advantages in that they are scrutinised by Parliament before being agreed. However, we do not yet know as a result of the consultation process whether Ministers will change their minds about formulating national policy statements for business or commercial schemes. The consultation was on the basis that there would be no national policy statements for these schemes, but I see from the consultation response summary that there has been some pressure to develop further national policy statements in these areas. Can the Minister give the House some clarification on the Government’s position on national policy statements for business and commercial schemes, and could we have that clarification before Report?

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[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I listened with great care to what my noble friend said on the question of who can make an application to the Secretary of State for an NSIP treatment. I will read very carefully what she said but, having listened, I am still puzzled as to why there is a difference between the existing applications and the new ones for business and commercial. Perhaps I might leave that there. I will read very carefully what she said and decide how we should proceed after that.

[Lord Adonis]

On the question of proposed types of development and thresholds, on which the noble Baroness, Lady Young, pressed the Minister, I took the Minister to have made a significant statement earlier when she said that if there was to be a notable departure from the proposals set out in annexe A of the consultation document she thought it likely the Government would come forward and tell the House that before we passed this legislation into law. I am sure we will study carefully in Hansard tomorrow what the noble Baroness said but that was quite a significant statement. We look forward to the noble Baroness coming forward and telling noble Lords of the Government’s intentions if they intend to depart from the proposed types of developments and thresholds set out in annexe A.

Unless I missed it, I do not think that the noble Baroness replied to my amendment at all, which would require the Secretary of State to publish the reasons why a planning decision is to be decided centrally, including why the application is regarded as nationally significant. I thought that was a very reasonable and extremely constructive amendment and that she might even be able to accept it.

[Lord Greaves]

I would like to ask a question that the Minister might want to write to us about in some detail. She mentioned the figure of 13% of, I assume, major applications or perhaps some other kind of big applications that took more than 52 weeks. It would be a help to know whether they were major applications as defined at the moment. That is typical of the very general statistics that the Government give when we ask for evidence. How many of those applications would have gone to be decided at national level under the new system or how many would have been likely to go to that level? How many of the 87% of presumably major applications that were dealt with within 52 weeks would also have gone to national level? If we are expecting only an additional 20 or 25 in the commercial business categories, does that equate to 13% or what does it equate to? Some more detailed figures and statistics on these matters would be extremely helpful. I would also find it extremely helpful to have a list of just five or six applications dealt with in the past year which in future would come to national level, so that I can get my mind round what sort of developments they are and what sort of outcomes there might be.

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[Baroness Hanham]

If I can get what my noble friend requires, I will make sure he and the Committee get that before Report.

[Lord Adonis]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 77ZK withdrawn.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

59A: Clause 8, page 10, line 31, at end insert—
“(1A) The Secretary of State shall by regulation introduce statutory guidance specifying how statutory undertakers shall consult with local planning authorities.”

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 59B in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Whitaker. We are dealing here with national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. The issue is how to get superfast broadband to them. The key point on which we are all agreed is that this needs to happen superfast. No one disputes this. The DCMS consultation paper, published yesterday, states:

“We want to ensure that planning-related barriers to deployment are minimised at a time when upgraded broadband infrastructure is being rolled out to the rural or remote areas where connectivity is needed the most”.

I think that the whole House will agree with that.

The consultation paper published yesterday makes an excellent case for why we need a rapid rollout of superfast broadband. It points out that in the national parks there are more than 22,000 businesses, of which more than 70% are SMEs. In areas of outstanding natural beauty there are more than 61,000 businesses, of which 74% are SMEs. It also points out that there are more than 153,000 homes in the national parks, and more than 467,000 in areas of outstanding natural beauty. The consultation paper states:

“By providing planning certainty, the aim is to encourage operators to invest in new infrastructure to support greater rural connectivity for householders and SME businesses in protected areas, supported by the fact that whereas 84% of urban premises have superfast broadband, the figure drops to just 19% in rural areas”.

However, having set out those figures on why it is important to get superfast broadband into rural areas, including our national parks, as soon as possible, the paper totally fails to make an argument in respect of the planning system to bring this about.

Like other noble Lords, I have spoken to those in charge of our national parks. They tell me that, far from obstructing superfast broadband, they are desperate for it. They see it as absolutely vital to their communities and to their sustainable futures. They have almost invariably given the consents required for the installation of the necessary cabinets and masts through the existing prior notification procedure.

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[Baroness Hanham]

I cannot answer the noble Lord’s question. He probably does not really expect me to answer it here. The consultation process will begin to throw up some of that information if we do not have it. If we do have the information, I shall see that noble Lords receive it.

The second proposal removes the prior approval requirements for broadband cabinets in protected areas. Of course, the cabinets have to be there, otherwise you cannot have broadband. They have to be at certain spaces and there are all sorts of things about broadband cabinets that require them to be placed in a specific location. We are bringing forward Clause 8 to enable us to make these amendments to the communications code through secondary legislation.

Let me be clear that the removal of prior approval will be temporary, as noble Lords have seen in the consultation which sets out a period of five years. By limiting the window to five years, this will also ensure that the operators have an incentive to get on with the rollout of that business and community need.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Baroness said that the requirement for prior approval will be removed. However, she still has not told the Committee how that will accelerate the deployment of superfast broadband, given that there appear to be virtually no cases where the prior approval process has held up the deployment of superfast broadband in the national parks and in areas of outstanding natural beauty.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I have about another 15 pages in my brief.

Again, referring to the consultation paper, in the national parks, there are more than 22,000 businesses, of which more than 70% are small and medium-sized enterprises, as noble Lords have said. There are more than 153,000 homes and we know that there is a lot of demand for it. The proposed changes are about creating certainty and reducing the time and cost of deployments. Evidence to date from commercial deployment shows that deployment can be held up by planning decisions. In conservation areas where planning permission is currently required for broadband, there is evidence that it has been held up for 27 months by the need for consultation. This has resulted in the new broadband service not being provided in these areas.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Baroness referred to conservation areas but did not cite any evidence in respect of national parks.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I was citing the reason for the process in conservation areas taking up to two- and-a-half years. Under the measures on which we are consulting, local authorities will still be involved.

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us so much detail as to how the reformed regime will work. However, I cannot help but observe that she spoke for 27 minutes but did not give us a single shred of evidence as to why the existing planning regime is halting or delaying the rollout of superfast broadband to the national parks or to areas of outstanding natural beauty. I will ask a direct question: does she have any evidence that she would like to share with the Committee as to how the current planning regime is delaying the rollout of superfast broadband in the national parks or in areas of outstanding natural beauty?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, first, we need some speed to get this done. As the noble Lord will know, so far there has been very little deployment of broadband in areas of natural beauty and it is estimated that 85% of premises will not be reached by the market unless we can speed things up. This is at least a contribution to speeding up the provision of broadband in the rural areas where, at the moment, it is not very significant.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, that does not meet the point at all. The evidence which the national parks have given to noble Lords shows that 97% of several hundred applications—I think 292 have been made under the pre-notification procedure—have been agreed by the national parks authorities. I am sorry to keep putting this to the noble Baroness but it is a fairly fundamental issue. There has been a large number of applications, and we obviously want a great deal more so that we have a great deal more rollout of superfast broadband in the national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. However, almost all those that have been brought forward have been agreed. Does the noble Baroness have any evidence at all that there are cases which the Committee should take into consideration where the planning authorities themselves have been slowing down a rollout of broadband that would otherwise have taken place?

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Before my noble friend responds to that, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has taken account of the paragraph in the impact assessment which says:

“We have received reports where multiple sites have had to be surveyed and prior approval applications submitted, only for agreement still not to be reached, and delays in some cases of up to two years. Examples have been provided by BT based on their experience of rolling out broadband over the last two years with delays ranging from 12-27 months”.

It seems to me that that is really quite a serious bar on broadband in these areas

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am not sure whether the noble Lord was present for my opening speech, but I pointed out that national parks authorities are not aware that any of those cases raised by BT apply to national parks or areas of outstanding natural beauty. The Government say airily that they have received reports but will not actually publish anything. The noble Lord, like me, has been a Secretary of State in the past. It is one thing to declare airily that you have received reports but it is another thing actually to give chapter and verse. No chapter and verse whatever has been given in this debate that there is a real issue that would justify a very major change in the law of the kind that the Government are proposing.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

Is there not a serious point in what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has just read out? The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has quite correctly said that there has now got to be a large expansion of broadband into the rural areas. What the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has cited is the experience so far of trying to introduce broadband more widely. Maybe my noble friend is thinking that it is a precautionary principle—that the Government are giving top priority to the expansion of broadband. I think that the point that I tried to make in my comments, that it is important if we are coming back to this on Report that we have a clearer answer on these points about the risks that may arise.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl. I will make sure that that is considered and give him an answer before next time—as I will with the other matters raised before Report.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, it is always good to try to be constructive. Given the scale of the concern that has been expressed in the Committee and the noble Baroness’s good intentions—as always—to seek to meet legitimate concerns which have been raised, I wonder whether she and the Planning Minister, Nick Boles, would agree to meet the chief executives of the national parks authorities before Report? They could discuss this matter directly and go into the specific issue of how superfast broadband can be rolled out more swiftly and effectively while seeking to preserve the landscape and not subvert the existing planning system.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the noble Lord knows that I am always happy to have meetings that are relevant to the legislation. Let me look into what would be sensible and the best way of setting up such meetings before Report. I give him an undertaking that I will do that.

[Lord Adonis]

I very much welcome that commitment from the noble Baroness. I hope that Mr Boles will also be present at the meeting and that we can make some good progress so that when this matter comes back on Report we do not have to have the same debate yet again.

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, on the basis that the Minister is content to meet the chief executives of the national park authorities before Report—

[Baroness Hanham]

I am content to meet their representatives. If we confine ourselves to chief executives, they may not be able to come in time, but I will certainly meet the organisations.

[Lord Adonis]

On that basis, my Lords, after an hour and 48 minutes, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 59A withdrawn.

Railways: Franchises

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I would not like to deny that what my noble friend has said is true.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, twice this afternoon, the noble Earl has cited Professor David Begg and his view that the franchise system can easily be rectified. Is the noble Earl aware that Professor David Begg is a non-executive director of First Group, the company to which his department awarded the franchise before it had to be cancelled, and that therefore he is not an entirely independent observer of these events? Does the noble Earl understand what the word “independent” means; it means that one should be apart from the matter that one is reviewing.

How can Sam Laidlaw, for whom I have the highest respect—he is an executive of great integrity—possibly be judged to be independent when he is a non-executive director of the department whose actions are the subject of an inquiry in this case, including the actions of senior civil servants and Ministers who are with him on the board? Does the noble Earl not recognise that the findings of such an inquiry will always be tainted until they are properly and independently conducted and that proper independent review cannot take place under a non-executive director of the very department that has conducted probably the single biggest failure in British public policy since the poll tax?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I answered the noble Lord’s second point yesterday. On the first point, Professor Begg chaired the Commission for Integrated Transport, which was set up by the party opposite.