International Road Passenger Transport (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her explanation of the content and purpose of these regulations, which seek to ensure that current access rights for EU bus and coach operators, into and within Northern Ireland, remain in place after our withdrawal from the EU. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recommended an upgrade of these regulations to the affirmative procedure.

This SI applies to the access rights of bus and coach operators, which is a transferred matter for Northern Ireland. The EU regulations currently provide reciprocal liberalised market access for regular and occasional coach services between the UK and the European Union. Apparently, reciprocal rights for UK operators in the EU market cannot be guaranteed after a withdrawal from the EU so, as the Minister has said, we will join the Interbus agreement as a contracting party in our own right if we leave the EU without an agreement.

The Interbus agreement is a multilateral agreement between the EU and seven other contracting parties in eastern Europe, which currently allows occasional international coach travel for tours and trips between those parties. As the Minister has said, since the Interbus agreement does not cover scheduled coach services, including those that take passengers to school or work, the European Union has agreed temporary contingency measures to enable operators licensed by the UK to carry passengers between the UK and an EU member state, if the withdrawal agreement is not adopted before we leave the EU. These temporary measures would enable scheduled services delivered by UK operators in the EU to continue until the end of this year. The Interbus agreement does not cover cabotage services, but the temporary agreement with the EU will allow UK operators some cabotage operations in the border regions of Ireland until 30 September of this year, as the Minister has said.

In its report, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said that the scope of Interbus is being extended to cover scheduled services, which the Minister confirmed. However, if this extension is not agreed, the Northern Ireland Administration will look to negotiate an extension with the EU or seek to put in place bilateral arrangements with specific countries to secure the access needed to keep UK passenger transport operators moving. That is potentially a little vague about what might happen in the future. The report says that, in respect of cabotage, the Northern Ireland Administration,

“will continue to work … with the European Commission and the Republic of Ireland to ensure that any future UK-EU transport arrangements take into account the unique transport demands on the island of Ireland”.

That could, once again, be regarded as a statement of hope or as something that will definitely be delivered, so I have one or two questions.

What exactly are the extent and scope of the limited cabotage arrangements that will continue until the end of September in the border regions of Ireland? What will the practical impact and consequences be if those arrangements cease to have effect from the end of September? What are the prospects of the Interbus agreement being extended to cover scheduled services before the end of this year? Again, what will the practical impact and consequences be if the agreement is not so extended by the end of this year? Presumably the date of 31 December 2019 does not have the same urgency for the other signatories as it could have for us.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords I have one question for the Minister, following on from my noble friend’s more detailed questions about what will happen after 31 December 2019. It is all set out in paragraph 7.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum. Apart from asking what happens after 31 December, as my noble friend did, I note that:

“The EU have agreed a legislative measure that will allow UK operators currently running regular and special regular services to the EU to continue doing so until 31 December 2019”.


My question concerns the word “currently”. If an operator wishes to start a new service this year, they will presumably not be allowed to, because they are not doing so currently. If this legislation continues with the same wording, they will not be able to do so in future. That looks to me to be starting to create a kind of monopoly of existing operators, because new ones will not be able to do it unless they are operating currently. I hope that the Minister can put my mind at rest and say that this does not actually mean that no new ones could start and that it is just a quick and easy way of expressing what might happen—but it is a worry, because at the moment any operator should be able to operate across the frontier, and let us hope that that can continue in the future.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw the Minister’s attention to the report published this very day by the Select Committee sub-committee that I chair on road, rail and maritime transport post Brexit. I will of course allow the noble Baroness a day or two before we get the official government response, but it has a chapter on the Irish dimension, covering not only bus and coach travel but also road haulage and rail.

I will focus on these regulations. Since the Good Friday agreement, and in some cases before the Good Friday agreement, bus operators have operated across the border and have improved the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic in a positive way, with people moving for work and for other reasons. The fact that that whole arrangement is now subject to some doubt is a serious problem, which goes well beyond the details of any transport regulations, frankly.

While our report focuses primarily on the possibility of moving to an agreement with the EU, it nevertheless has regard to the possibility of no deal. With no deal, as my noble friend has just underlined, as of Halloween we will be faced with a situation where the present propositions from the European Union will last only between then and New Year’s Eve. That is not a satisfactory position for any mode of transport. In particular, it is not a satisfactory understanding for a mode of transport by which individuals move to their work or families and which they have relied on for a decade or two to operate in a regular way.

I appreciate that my report—our committee’s report; I must not be so egotistical as two members of the committee are sitting here today—raises a number of issues related to Ireland. I hope that the Department for Transport in London is apprised of the situation in Northern Ireland, because there are some serious difficulties there. My noble friend raised the question of the decision to extend the Interbus arrangements to cover scheduled transport. That is unlikely to take place before the end of October—or, indeed, between the end of October and the end of the year. That will place a number of those routes in Ireland in doubt. I hope that the Minister and her department—in conjunction with the appropriate officials in Northern Ireland, since at the moment it does not have a devolved Assembly—will be able to resolve this issue in a way which, at least temporarily and in default of any longer-term agreement, will ensure that such services continue to operate. In the meantime, I commend the totality of my report to the Minister—no doubt her officials are studying it already.