HGV Road User Levy Bill
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that helpful introduction. It has filled a few holes in my knowledge of the Bill and is a good opportunity to discuss the policy surrounding this.
My first question is: why is this a money Bill? It seems to introduce changes to policy and to methods of collecting charges for road vehicles which probably merit greater scrutiny in your Lordships’ House. Of course, we cannot do that for a money Bill, so perhaps the Minister can explain exactly why it is a money Bill.
In that context, the Minister will know—because I mentioned it in a speech on Monday in Committee on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill—that I think that it would be much better if the Government came up with a consistent policy for tolling, charging, or whatever we like to call it, for vehicles using the Dartford tunnel, the new tunnels, congestion charging in London and other cities, and possibly eventually on the M6 toll road as well, for a start. All of those are effectively distance-based, unlike this one which is basically time-based. I expect that this is meant to avoid any policy intention to widen it to other vehicles; and of course, on that basis, it has to comply with the Eurovignette directive. I believe that the Commission has started to look at a wider charging solution for roads across the EU which is probably designed, as much as anything, to try to reduce the congestion on the most congested parts. However, I would be very pleased to hear the Minister’s explanation for why this is a money Bill.
The Minister explained that this was intended to increase the fairness between UK-registered and continental-registered vehicles, because when continental vehicles come here they do not pay the equivalent of a toll or VED, but when our vehicles go to the continent they have to pay tolls on some roads—most of which I think are distance-based. However, can he explain whether the locally registered trucks in any of the closer member states—on the roads which our own vehicles probably use the most—pay something equivalent to VED which visiting trucks from the UK and elsewhere would not pay? It would be a comfort to know that the balancing on which this Bill is based applies both ways. I am sure that there is an answer to that, but I do not know it.
In the case of non-UK heavy goods vehicles, Clause 4(2) places the liability for paying this levy on the holders of Community licences. I know that “Community licence” is defined in Clause 4(8), but can the Minister explain to the ordinary human being what that means? What is a Community licence? Is it one similar licence which every truck in the entire EU has, or does each member state have a different one? Whoever is going to enforce it will need to be familiar with 26 or so different types of licence if we are not careful. That will be quite difficult. I shall come back to that in a few minutes.
The Minister explained that UK-registered hauliers will be able to obtain their licences under this levy in the usual way, with the VED, on a 12-month or six-month basis. He said that a foreign haulier coming into Dover could buy a licence on the web or on the phone. Presumably there will be a kind of booth at Dover, or something, where you can pay for the licence at the time. If, as I believe, everybody will have to have a sticker with the licence on their windscreen, there is a question about how a haulier going backwards and forwards across Europe will manage to collect his post with the sticker in it. Or will there be a place where he can collect it every time he comes into the UK? Otherwise, it will be a bit of a mess, really.
This morning I got an interesting briefing from the Freight Transport Association, which raised the question of whether these stickers were necessary. That begs the question of how the Government intend for this new levy to be enforced. Window stickers are fine on cars, because traffic wardens go along and look at out-of-date licence stickers, and you then get a nasty message from the DVLA. However, traffic wardens are not going to be much use in enforcing this on trucks, because trucks do not usually park in the streets where traffic wardens operate, thank goodness.
Anyway, in Clause 10 we have a definition of who can stop a vehicle, and that person is called a “stopping officer”. I have never heard of a stopping officer before. Is it a police officer? Who is it? The definition says what his powers are, but how many of these stopping officers will we have in the country? If they are doing it already—which would be something I do not know about—in how many cases a year do they achieve this stopping? I am not convinced that there will be any enforcement at all of this new licence. If it is to be done by number-plate recognition, as the congestion charge is in London, can the Minister explain how that will work with 26 different number plates from 26 different member states plus a few from outside the EU? We get Turkish and other non-EU vehicles here as well. Is a system in place whereby all registered number plates from around Europe and beyond can be registered? And when they are indentified, what will happen to them?
I hope that the Minister can explain how this enforcement system will work. My suspicions are that it will hardly be done at all. UK vehicles will have to do it because they are paying with their VED, but who is going to do it for the foreign ones and where are they going to do it?
Finally, the Minister explained the revenue gain of £18.7 million to £23 million, which is probably worth having. It goes into the bottomless pit of the Treasury, but that is probably all right. Can he tell us the cost of administering this new scheme, both for UK-registered vehicles and foreign ones? In the debate on road-user charging I also said I believed that the cost of administering the road-user charging system in London—which is very good, and at the time it was introduced there was no better technology—is somewhere between 30% and 40% of the revenue gained. However, I think that the cost of some of the new electronic systems on the continent is about 5% of the revenue gained, which of course is much better. Therefore, what will be the cost of administering this scheme? Let us hope that it does not exceed the extra revenue expected.
With those few questions, I look forward to the Minister’s answers and to seeing this legislation implemented.
Lord Snape
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Berkeley on this topic. I well recall nearly 40 years ago when I was first elected to the other place and was told that the most effective political lobby in the United Kingdom was the farmers. I came to realise that in that conclusion they may well have been right. After all, I seem to remember that the farming lobby managed to blame the spread of foot and mouth some time ago basically on Ministers in the Labour Government rather than on their own practices.
Certainly, one lobby that runs the farming lobby very close in its effectiveness is the road haulage lobby. Most of us in your Lordships’ House are old enough to remember the immediate post-war period when heavy goods vehicles—I think this referred to those above seven tonnes, but it was a long time ago so I would not like to put my shirt on it—had to carry a 20 miles an hour plate and were restricted to that maximum speed. Given the number of heavy goods vehicles that appeared on our roads after World War 2—many of the drivers were demobbed from our Armed Forces—that issue was the first campaign that I remember the road hauliers lobby indulging in. It was very successful and it has indulged in many campaigns since, many of which have been successful.
Since the end of World War 2, we have seen heavy lorry weights increase dramatically. I think that the maximum now is 44 tonnes, although the Minister will correct me if I am wrong. It used to be about 12 tonnes, so the industry has done well there. The length of heavy goods vehicles also has increased fairly dramatically over that period. Each and every increase in weight and length has been accompanied by a cry from the road haulage industry that there would be fewer vehicles on the road because they are bigger, longer and heavier, and that once the motorways had been built they would not be much of a nuisance anyway.
This is not strictly speaking a matter for this debate, but I would be interested to know—perhaps the Minister will tell me, or write to me if he does not have the figures now—how many heavy goods vehicles above the 12 tonnes figure mentioned in the Bill are on our roads now compared to, say, a decade or two decades ago. Although it is not a matter for this Bill, it would be interesting to see not only how successful the road haulage lobby has been but how accurate it was in its predictions.
Another of the lobby’s major complaints was about the number of foreign lorries on our roads. Reverting back to my experience in the other place, I chaired for 15 years the West Midlands group of Labour MPs. It was one of my duties—whether it would be considered onerous or not I leave to noble Lords to work out for themselves—to attend meetings of the Sandwell chamber of commerce, which covered my former parliamentary constituency. The chamber of commerce may not have been dominated by the issue, but certainly a strong presence from the road haulage industry raised the same issue more and more often. It questioned the number of foreign heavy goods vehicles on British roads, and how they were filling up on cheap European derv and able to snatch the bread from the mouths of British hauliers by demanding not only the freedom to travel on our roads, which of course they had, but to take loads back to the continent, which rightly should have been the job of British hauliers.
I was a bit cynical and not inclined to believe that entirely, because every time I asked how many of these wicked foreign hauliers were behaving in this manner I did not get an answer. I found it difficult to believe, and I believe that I expressed the rather unpopular view at the chamber of commerce that I could not honestly believe that Mr Norbert Dentressangle, in his brightly covered lorries, was as guilty of undermining the British road haulage industry as the allegation made at the time suggested.
The Minister talks about 1.5 million trips, which I assume refers to round trips. Are we talking about 750,000 heavy goods vehicles that will be covered, at least in theory, by this measure? I should like to know just how many of these wicked foreign hauliers there are. They cannot use the excuse that they are driving around on cheap, continental derv anymore, because I understand it is just as expensive on the continent as it is in the United Kingdom these days.
The Minister went on to say that the maximum price we could charge foreign hauliers on a daily basis was €11. That will make a big dent in the deficit, whether or not the Prime Minister was accurate in his summing up of it. I cannot off the top of my head multiply 750,000 times €11, but while it is not an inconsiderable sum it will not make much of a dent in the road budget, let alone the deficit as a whole. Therefore, is this piece of legislation actually necessary, given the amount of money it is likely to raise?
The Minister did not use the phrase “a level playing field”, but he implied that this would balance the differences between British hauliers and their continental counterparts. However, €11 a day does not strike me as a particularly large penalty if one considers that for a heavy goods vehicle to travel 100 miles on a German autobahn, it would pay tolls of between €35 and €46. We throw open the whole road network of the United Kingdom for €11, but if you drive a heavy goods vehicle through Germany it costs €35 to €46.
As I indicated, the Minister said that this mighty measure before your Lordships today would raise the sum of £19 million to £23 million. He might recollect that a few days ago we had a debate about toll roads, and I pointed out that there was a toll road in the West Midlands that was not used much by heavy goods vehicles. I have noticed that Eddie Stobart vehicles do use it, but by and large those are the only heavy lorries that I have ever seen on the toll road. The heavy goods vehicle industry generally uses the M6 motorway, which passes through my former constituency on an elevated section. During my 27 years as the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East, I calculated that the taxpayer had spent something like £800 million repairing just that one section of the M6 because of the damage done to it largely by heavy goods vehicles. On the department’s own figures, the heaviest heavy goods vehicles do as much damage to Britain’s road network as 30,000 private cars. This great sum of £19 million to £23 million, therefore, might repair one archway of the Ray Hall viaduct in the West Midlands, but it will not make much of a dent in the overall road budget.
I therefore have to say to the Minister, as the wartime sign said, “Is your journey really necessary?” as far as this piece of legislation is concerned. We heard from him that continental hauliers can pay on a day-to-day basis—not something that is open to British hauliers, who pay through VED on an annual basis—so why give them this particular benefit, which will be not shared by their British counterparts? I do not know whether, again, this is a matter for Europe, but why not insist that lorries used in the United Kingdom pay on an annual basis? Then they could come and go as they wished. Why allow them to pay on a one-day, two-day or weekly basis: a privilege denied to their British counterparts? Perhaps the Minister could explain.
Of course the penalties for non co-operation, under this legislation, can only be described as pathetic as well. Is a maximum fine of £200 really going to deter a heavy goods vehicle driver with, perhaps, £30,000 worth of valuable cargo? It is surely not serious that we impose a penalty that is so palpably inadequate. The Minister and the Government ought to look again. Even that penalty is based, as I understand it, on a vehicle limit and the number of axles. Who in this country of ours would be able to tell the vehicle limit or count the number of axles?
That leads me to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Berkeley about enforcement. Is the Minister seriously going to tell your Lordships’ House that there will be proper and adequate enforcement of this legislation? If he is, I do not believe him. Let me refer him to one of this morning’s newspapers. I am sure that the Daily Mail is the Minister’s favourite newspaper. From its optimistic front page to its unbiased sketch writing, I always think of it as a newspaper of value and repute. Today there is a story in the Daily Mail which I cut out as, reading it on the train, I thought: “The Minister will be interested in this one”. It is headed: “Toll of illegal foreign cars on UK roads”. I appreciate that it is not about foreign lorries, but I will come to those in a moment. The story says that:
“Only four out of an estimated 15,000 foreign cars driving illegally on British roads were caught last year. And not one of their drivers was prosecuted”,
the Department for Transport said yesterday. Given that record, it does not inspire me with confidence that our jails will be full of non fine-paying continental lorry drivers. What can the Minister tell us about the likelihood of enforcement under this legislation?
About 15 years ago, the then traffic commissioner for the West Midlands, Mr John Mervyn Pugh, invited me to join him on what he described hopefully as a purge of overloaded vehicles on the M6 motorway, particularly foreign ones. My noble friend asked about an enforcement officer. I presume that that enforcement officer must be from the police, because we were accompanied by three or four police cars. Between Birmingham and Stafford, the police directed heavy goods vehicles off the motorway so that they could be checked.
Lord Berkeley
Clause 10 refers not to an enforcement officer but to a “stopping officer”. Perhaps my noble friend would like to comment on that.
Lord Snape
Whether stopping or enforcing, my only response is that I guess he would have to be in police uniform. Perhaps I might take your Lordships back 15 years to the enforcement on the M6. I still have the paperwork, which I kept. Out of 14 vehicles that were stopped, only three of which were foreign, six were overloaded. In two of them, the driver had exceeded the permitted number of hours. A couple were borderline, while one was taken off the road immediately because of its lack of roadworthiness. Only 14 vehicles were stopped because, within about 40 minutes, there were no heavy goods vehicles heading north on the M6. This is before the days of mobile phones; it was presumably in the days of CB radio, or whatever it was called.
The problems in enforcing legislation such as this are enormous. The fact is that we do not enforce the existing heavy goods vehicles regulations at the moment. How can we, when the traffic commissioner’s total staff 15 years ago was four to cover the whole of the West Midlands and Wales? Given the Government’s clampdown on the Civil Service, I do not suppose that there are 44 of them these days. I suspect that if those four positions are still in situ, that is about it. Are these the people who are going to enforce this particular legislation? I honestly very much doubt that.
The Minister says that there will be a reduction in vehicle excise duty for UK-based hauliers. I have to ask why. I have a copy here of the report of the Armitage inquiry, Lorries, People and the Environment, from December 1980. Your Lordships will be relieved to know that I have no intention of reading that fairly bulky document, but as I would summarise it it pointed out that the number of heavy goods vehicles on Britain’s roads in those days was possibly more than the road network could cope with. If we have moved on from 1980 to 2013, I repeat the question: how many heavy goods vehicles are there on our roads these days, compared with then?
I hope the Minister does not think that I have been too rude about this legislation but it is palpably inadequate and will not be enforced. I do not think that unenforceable legislation—given the present lack of enforcement, that is the only way this can be described—is at all sensible. It is not actually necessary because, despite the propaganda from the British road haulage industry, I do not see this as the great problem that it outlines. If it is, let the continentals pay exactly the same price as British hauliers pay to drive across Europe. If a Bill is necessary, I am afraid that this is not it.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, that will be done under the powers that were wisely introduced by the previous Administration, who also set the level. I agree that it is at quite a low level and made that very point from the Opposition Benches—I cannot remember whether it was the Front Benches or the Back Benches—at the time we introduced the necessary powers. The key thing is that we will be able to stop the vehicle. That is extremely inconvenient to the operator, and I will have more to say on that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked me what a stopping officer is. Stopping officers already exist. They are appointed under the powers in the Road Traffic Act 1988, as amended, and are able to stop vehicles in relation to enforcement of vehicle roadworthiness and driver’s hours. Stopping officers are VOSA enforcement officers.
Lord Berkeley
I have a question before the Minister leaves that subject. There is presumably a database with every vehicle’s number plate on it. Are stopping officers lurking in every motorway service station or do they pick these things up from cameras above motorways? How are they going to find these lorries that have not paid even before they direct them into somewhere safe to deal with them? If I was a foreign lorry driver and did not want to pay, I would keep off trunk roads and go on the side roads, like many people do in France if they do not want to pay the motorway tolls.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I plan to address most of the points made by the noble Lord later on. To answer his point about leaving the strategic road network and going on to minor roads: an operator would have difficulties with that because the vehicle would be much less productive, while he would be trying to avoid only a £10 per day charge. I suggest that the extra cost of lowering your average speed by using local roads would simply not be worth it. For cases that go to court, the offence is a level 5, which can incur a fine of up to £5,000.
However, the real deterrent for operators is the inconvenience of being stopped, as well as another inconvenience that I will come to in a moment. VOSA already carries out risk-based stops for a number of different offences, including weight, vehicle defects, and driver hours, among others, and the levy enforcement will simply be added to this regime. I also suggest that when VOSA detects a vehicle that has not paid the levy, that is exactly the same as if the driver had put a big sign on the lorry which says “Stop me, because I’m a problem vehicle”.
I am aware that the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association has identified an area for a small potential cost burden to operators, which has been introduced due to the way that the levy is rebated, when compared to how VED is currently and will continue to be rebated. It may be helpful for me to say a few words on this. Currently when a vehicle is delicensed—typically, when it is sold—the previous owner can claim back the outstanding whole months of VED, with the rebate calculation done in twelfths. From the introduction of the levy in April 2014, UK operators will still be able to reclaim VED on the same basis, but the levy can be reclaimed only in tenths. To comply with EU law, and to maximise revenue from monthly charges, the annual rate is set at 10 times the monthly rate. This means that in effect it is discounted when compared with the costs of 12 monthly levy charges.
The decision to offer rebates on the basis of tenths is to prevent foreign hauliers paying for a year, using the vehicle for a month or less on the UK’s roads, and then reclaiming 11 months. The value of the loss incurred by the operator is entirely dependent on when the rebate is claimed.
The legislation before the House is not designed as a precursor to increased charges on businesses or on road users in general. This charge has a very clear, focused objective, and its introduction is entirely separate from the reviews on future road policy which the Department for Transport is currently undertaking.
I will now deal with a few other points. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked why it is a money Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, very kindly helped me. The Bill only concerns money, and is certified as such by the Speaker of the House of Commons; it is not a matter for the Government.
On the wider points made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on the methods of tolling, following our debate during the passage of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill I offered a meeting at ministerial level with the noble Lord; I hope that that meeting, which is in hand, will be with me. I have mentioned detection. I was asked about VED in other countries. All EU countries have VED for HGVs, or a local equivalent circulation tax. VED or equivalent is required in the Eurovignette directive, and minimum rates are set. Our new VED rates comply with the minimum rate.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised a very important point about whether we should implement a levy on a distance or a time basis. I will say a few words about this important point. The HGV levy is a time-based charge which is both simple and inexpensive to operate. It allows more than nine out of 10 UK operators to be fully compensated through VED reductions. A distance-based scheme has been considered and has some benefits, in that hauliers who use the road network the most would pay the most. That seems, at face value, to be inherently fair. However, in reality it would cost hauliers more and it would not be possible to introduce offsetting measures for UK hauliers, which would mean that they would pay more than they do now. In many cases foreign hauliers would pay less than they would under a time-based scheme.
The introduction of a distance-based scheme has also been discounted as it would be very complex and costly to operate, and would potentially involve the use of a mechanism such as a fuel duty rebate, which is illegal under European law. This has already been tested in Germany. We also believe that the revenues gained from foreign hauliers would not cover the costs of operating this scheme. The Department for Transport looked at options for distance-based charging in 2010 and concluded that in order to fund it the scheme would have to be structured to be revenue-raising, and would therefore have a negative impact on UK hauliers, who would pay most of the charges.
Another difficulty is how to capture the distance-based data. That could be done with a tachograph, but the problem is that the tachograph and the records would have to be inspected by enforcement officers. In addition, the tachograph is in essence a safety device to ensure that drivers do not drive for too long. If we insert an economic effect into it, we would increase the chances that the drivers or the operator would interfere with the operation of the tachograph.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to the noble Lord. I will not go back over tolling, as we will have a meeting on that, and I am grateful to him. This is a tit-for-tat issue. He very kindly said that other member states also have a VED for domestic-registered trucks; for example, in France. Is there not a risk that those member states might play tit-for-tat and say, “Well, British hauliers going into France will be able to use the roads, with or without the tollings, but they won’t have paid the VED in France, so they’re getting an advantage”? Are we not in danger of getting a tit-for-tat situation across member states?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the situation is, as I said in my opening remarks, that our operators often have to pay motorway tolls that no one pays in the UK, and because of the Eurovignette directive, whatever a foreign country did in terms of a vignette they would be limited to the prevailing limits of what you can charge. It could not, therefore, cost our operators more than €11 a day. At the moment our operators pay tolls to use the European road infrastructure.
The chosen time-based scheme, coupled with reductions to VED, is a simple, effective and targeted way of ensuring that UK hauliers pay no more than they do now. VED cuts are a time-based method of offsetting the charge, which means that they fit well with a time-based system. In addition, we need to remember that, in terms of administration, this scheme will have a negligible burden on UK operators.
I always enjoy listening to the noble Lord, Lord Snape. He asked many questions, and I will answer as many as I can. I have probably answered quite a few already, and of course, I will write to him on some of them. He asked me what type of penalties there will be. As I believe I have said, drivers will be charged £200 at the roadside. Fines can be enforced electronically, and they can be invited to pay by credit or debit cards. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, made the point that with modern systems of doing business it is easy to collect the charges.
The noble Lord, Lord Snape, also asked if, under the directive we have to offer periods that are appropriate for the trip being made. If we offer only six-month or annual levies to foreign drivers we will contravene the European directive. He asked about the number of foreign vehicles and I can tell him that 3.6% of miles driven by HGVs in the UK are by foreign vehicles. For HGVs of 12 tonnes and over, the percentage is higher. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, asked about revenue in VED. All levies or fines go into the Consolidated Fund, as we discussed. There are no plans for hypothecation, as the noble Lord suggests, but we will ensure that VOSA, as the primary enforcement agency, will have sufficient resources to enforce the scheme.
I am grateful for the helpful interventions from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and for his support for the Bill. He asked me about cabotage. The Bill does not change the rules on cabotage but it does do a little to level the economic playing field. It is a difficult problem to deal with. I am delighted that the Bill has been so positively received. It has been long called for by industry and others from across the political spectrum, and I am delighted to be taking it through the House.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
“Planning Act 2008: further reform of highways
For section 144(3) of the Planning Act 2008 (provisions of development consent orders for highway projects) substitute—“(3) Subsection (2) does not apply to an order granting development consent which imposes charges in respect of the keeping or use of motor vehicles on roads by the application of Schedule 23 to the Greater London Authority Act 1999 or Part III of the Transport Act 2000, in full or in part and with or without modifications.””
Lord Berkeley
Amendment 75ZAB stands in my name and in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine. This amendment comes out of a fairly recent discovery about some new roads that have received permissions under development consent orders. If the developer wishes to put a charge or toll on them then, for some reason, it has to be a fixed-toll plaza, with lots of toll booths and the old fashioned things that one sees on motorways in France, on the M6 toll, and the Dartford crossing. It seems rather odd that a developer who seeks planning permission to build a toll road needs to be told as part of getting consent that if he is going to put a toll or a charge on it then it has to be a fixed-toll point. It seems to me that that has very little to do with planning—except for the planning permission of the site—and that the method of tolling should come out of a policy from the Department for Transport. I have had a useful meeting with officials on it.
It makes me recall the debate that we have in your Lordships’ House every now and then when the American embassy refuses to pay the congestion charge because it says it is a tax. One or two other embassies do the same thing. We all get a bit upset about that and the Foreign Office tries to make the embassies pay. It is an argument, but what is a toll, what is a charge and what is a tax? It is basically something you pay for going into a tunnel or across a bridge or up a road.
I have put down the amendment because I strongly believe that the Department for Transport should now have a policy on tolling. I do not mean which roads should be tolled and which ones should not be because that is a separate issue. We have the London congestion charge, we have tolls for the Dartford tunnel and for the Birmingham northern relief road, and we have lorry road-user charging coming in. The lorry road-user charging is going to be time-based rather than distance-based, which is odd. Nobody else in Europe is going time-based but that is probably why we are. Worse still, if these all move forward, you are going to have to have separate equipment in your car or lorry for each area, road, tunnel or bridge that you wish to use because I suspect that more and more of the crossings that now have toll booths will wish to convert to taking money while you are on the move because it is so much easier and cheaper and, of course, it is quicker for the person paying.
Cheapness comes into it. Noble Lords will correct me if I am wrong but the cost of collection of the congestion charge in London is something like 30% of the amount you pay. With some of the modern electronic systems used in other cities and some motorways on the continent, you are getting down to about 5%, which means that the developer keeps more of his money. One hopes that one day the Department for Transport, maybe in its new roads policy which we were told about earlier in the Committee stage, will come up with a policy on tolling. That should include one system for the whole country—one technical system—that you can have in your car. That means a common technology and it would be much better if it was common throughout Europe. Then it would be up to the developers, the Government or whoever to decide what rate should be charged for using whatever facility you need. We want to get away from the idea that if you are getting consent for a particular crossing or something with a development consent order, it has to specify the type of toll booth, which seems to be a rather retrograde step. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Baroness Valentine
My Lords, Amendment 75ZAB stands in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I declare that I am chief executive of London First, a business membership organisation.
The demands on our roads are growing. In major urban centres such as London, there are severe physical limits to building more capacity, and congestion is a serious problem. I believe that road charging will be an important part of that solution as we seek to manage our resources more efficiently. A more sophisticated charging scheme will need to deliver reduced and more certain journey times. As the noble Lord mentioned, London is ahead of the pack: it already has a congestion charging zone, which is now widely accepted, including by all political parties.
This amendment would enable Transport for London to develop intelligent, barrier-free charging systems for new or existing roads or river crossings in response to the growing demand for road space. This is more than an academic point. Transport for London is currently consulting on a new tolled river crossing at Silvertown in east London. There is a real dearth of river crossings on the east side of London, in contrast to the west, and a new crossing here would help relieve the Blackwall tunnel and would support new jobs and growth in east London.
Lord Berkeley
Can the noble Baroness confirm that this should apply—and the amendment does apply—well outside London? There is a plan for a new road or motorway linking Felixstowe to Birmingham—of course, I would rather it was a railway, but that is irrelevant—and there is talk of it being tolled. There are lots of other plans for tolled motorways in the offing, so am I right in thinking it would be a national system?
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.
Lord Berkeley
I am very grateful to the Minister for what I felt was a positive response. I did not really need much on the poor old Foreign Office’s attempt to get the Americans to pay for parking their cars here, but, on the subject of the amendment, it was good to hear that he understands the problem. I look forward to sitting down with him between now and Report and possibly encouraging the Government to come back with their own amendment, which I am sure will be much better than the one that we have drafted. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, invited me to speak to my amendment, which was very kind of him. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, gave a very good description of it, which I do not need to repeat, but there are a couple of issues on which we ought to reflect. First, the special parliamentary procedure, which my noble friend Lord Faulkner described at Second Reading and again today, is to my mind a second attempt to oppose planning permission if you fail on the first occasion. Is that worth having and, if so, what exceptions or types of development should be included? There is also the question of the scope of the SPP. I believe that it can be very wide: for example, looking at a complete planning application again; or it could be narrowed to apply to just the particular issue that is under consideration.
I found a very interesting example of this recently on Humberside where the established port operator there, Associated British Ports, got into a bit of debate with a new company, which I think was trying to develop a port complex next door for offshore windmills or something or other. A railway line runs through the middle of the proposed development which the developer was trying to purchase so that he could install level crossings rather than having the cost of a bridge. The detail does not really matter but the issue comes back to the fact that if you are opposed to a proposed development, the SPP gives you a second round of attack, if you like, in putting your case. If you want it to go forward as quickly as possible, you will argue that the consent order process is perfectly valid and, if you do not like the outcome, I suppose that you can go for judicial review.
I also worry when my noble friend Lord Faulkner says that there have been only two or three of these cases in the past goodness knows how long, because once people discover that there is this rather arcane procedure, a lot of people might try to use it. That is not a reason for not having it but it is a reason for considering whether one needs it, the scope it should have and how long it should last. I have tabled my amendment in conjunction with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, to test the waters and probe. We have had a good debate and it will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say in response.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for the amendments they have tabled, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Greenway, Lord Jenkin and Lord Berkeley, for setting out their proposed amendments to Clause 22. Questions have been raised about the Government’s position in putting forward Clause 22. It may be helpful if I first set out the issues that the Government are trying to address through this clause.
Clause 22 amends the provisions in the Planning Act 2008 which set out when special parliamentary procedure will apply to a development consent order which authorises the acquisition of specially protected land. It also repeals the separate certification process required in certain cases. The Planning Act 2008 brought together a range of different consent regimes for nationally significant infrastructure into a single development consent order. The overall aim of this regime is to provide a more efficient and quicker consenting regime for very large infrastructure projects. Development consent orders can include authorisation for the compulsory acquisition of land, but when certain categories of specially protected land are acquired, special parliamentary procedure can be triggered. The decision by the Secretary of State that such land is to be compulsorily acquired is then transferred to a Joint Committee of Parliament for confirmation. While the special parliamentary procedure is undertaken, the development consent cannot come into effect and work on the infrastructure project cannot start.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, talked about the reasoning behind such measures. Delays to infrastructure projects can have a significant knock-on impact in delaying benefits to the local and, indeed, national economy. In the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, referred—the Rookery South project in which he was involved—the special parliamentary procedure was triggered for an infrastructure project under the Planning Act. The special parliamentary procedure added more than a year to the consent process. I understand that during this period no work was possible on the project, delaying the creation of up to 300 construction jobs and 80 permanent jobs that would have resulted when the project was up and running.
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.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, this group of amendments seeks to set out in the Bill the types of development and development sites which can and cannot be considered nationally significant under Clause 24. A number of specific amendments have been moved, and I will attempt to address the issues in each.
As noble Lords are aware, the purpose of Clause 24 is to extend the existing powers within the Planning Act to direct sub-threshold forms of energy, waste, transport, water and waste-water schemes into the Planning Act regime, to new forms of business and commercial development. Our intention is not to bring new development into the regime automatically but to provide an alternative planning route where proposed development is of national significance. We have recently consulted on the types of business and commercial developments, and we are now in the process of considering the responses to that consultation.
Amendments 77ZJ and 77AB would rule out proposed schemes using the regime if they were on sites of special environmental or historic importance or if they involved minerals extraction, or quarrying. These amendments would apply equally to the existing types of infrastructure, such as energy, transport and water, as well as to new forms of business and commercial schemes.
An example of the effect of Amendment 77ZJ is that a sub-threshold energy scheme of national significance that might otherwise be considered via the Planning Act route could not be the subject of a direction if part of the site had an environmental designation. We do not consider this to be a sensible approach. If a scheme is of national significance and is directed into the regime, the Secretary of State will have to consider all the issues that are important and relevant, including any impacts on the historic or natural environment, before reaching his decision. To exclude large tracts of land without consideration of the planning merits or otherwise of the proposed development could discourage developers bringing forward much needed infrastructure or economic developments.
I will explain our thinking on minerals a little bit more. As we recognised in the National Planning Policy Framework, minerals are essential to support sustainable economic growth and quality of life. Without minerals, our building industry would grind to a halt. It is essential that there is a sufficient supply of material to provide the infrastructure, buildings, energy and goods that the country needs. We therefore consider that some minerals schemes could be capable of being of national significance, but again we wish to consider the consultation responses before we reach final conclusions about the forms of development.
Amendments 78ZA, 77AA, 77AC and 77BA seek to place the types of commercial and business development in the Bill. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, broadly agrees with the types of development on which the Government consulted recently in connection with the proposals to extend the infrastructure planning regime to business and commercial projects. Nevertheless, we consider that this amendment is premature. We believe that a broad range of types of development of national significance could benefit from using the infrastructure planning regime and that further public and parliamentary scrutiny on how this new power should be used is appropriate. That is why we are now considering the responses to this consultation and why the accompanying regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Amendment 78, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and my noble friend Lord Jenkin, also seeks to remove the exclusion in the Bill on dwellings from being prescribed in regulations. I listened carefully to the remarks made on this point by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. The Government have a clear position that planning for housing should remain a core responsibility of local councils. As the Government set out in the National Planning Policy Framework, local councils should be planning to deliver a wide choice of high-quality homes and wider opportunities for home ownership and creating sustainable, inclusive and mixed communities.
Many of the responses to the consultation exercise that we carried out recently supported the exclusion of housing from the infrastructure planning regime. Again, we are considering these responses, but we believe that housing should be and remain a core responsibility of local authorities.
Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
Leave out from “House” to end and insert “declines to consider the bill in committee until Her Majesty's Government have laid before both Houses of Parliament a report on the compatibility of the provisions of the bill (and in particular the provisions of Clause 2 and proposals to allow junior ratings to hold pilotage exemption certificates) with the International Maritime Organization’s International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers.”
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, in moving this amendment to the Motion, I would like to refer the House to its wording at the bottom of grouping sheet, which has somehow been printed at the bottom of all the amendments to the Bill. This is what I am speaking to now. It is unusual to put down an amendment to a Motion such as this, but we are in slightly unusual times—as we come up to the end of the Session—because we had two days’ notice of the Committee stage today. I had a useful meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and her officials on Monday, where I said it was particularly important that we should see a reply to the letter which we had all been sent from Brian Simpson MEP, chairman of the Transport Committee in the European Parliament, to the Secretary of State for Transport. I said that I needed to see that reply before we discussed it in Committee. Once I knew what the date was, I put the amendment down on Wednesday night and, miraculously, the letter appeared on Thursday morning. That was good news, but it gave us just 24 hours to consider it. As it did not answer the main question that Mr Simpson had asked, I felt it was reasonable to ask for a week’s delay to the Committee, which is what my amendment is about.
As I said, the letter did not answer the concerns that Mr Simpson raised concerning the qualification of the pilots, an issue I have discussed before. I declare an interest as chairman of the UK Maritime Pilots Association, as well as being a harbour commissioner in the port of Fowey in Cornwall. It appears from Mr Simpson’s letter to the Secretary of State, from which I will read a short bit, that it causes him and his committee in the European Parliament some concern, since,
“this clause would appear to be in contravention of the STCW regulations of the IMO which have now been enacted into EU law”.
I will show in a minute that I think those regulations are already in EU law. It seems very odd that in this Bill we have a definition of the management, qualifications and experience required for a PEC holder when there is already one in EU law, which I believe has already been transposed into UK law. I am not very sure, because I have not had time to check it, but since it started about 10 years ago I think it has.
There is also a new directive coming out. Very quickly, this refers to the standards of training, certification and watchkeeping for seafarers from 1978, which were amended on 3 August 2010 by the IMO. They cover the management and operational levels and define those two levels, while giving:
“Mandatory minimum requirements for certification of officers in charge of a navigational watch on ships of 500 gross tonnage or more”,
and the minimum knowledge. I could read the whole thing out but I am sure that noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I will not. The important thing is that this defines, under Section A-II/2, the qualifications, competence and experience that masters and first mates have to have; those have to be applied to PEC holders.
It is pretty extraordinary that we were not told about this at a previous stage of this Bill because it directly relates to the debate that we had at Second Reading, and which they had at many stages in the House of Commons, about the qualifications for pilotage. For the record, the latest reference for this is in European directive 2012/35, which was completed on 21 November last year and will be presumably be brought in by regulation within two years. However, it is already there from the last version; this was the Manila version.
It is rather sad that the Minister, Stephen Hammond, did not in his reply mention that or answer any of the questions. He ended up by saying on page two of his letter that it is for,
“the Master or First Mate”,
to decide whether a PEC holder is qualified. That seems a quite extraordinary misinterpretation of the rules. It is not up to the master to change the requirements for training or seniority of a person to allow him to become a PEC holder, because the convention we are talking about lists three specific cases in which penalties are to be applied. If the master is found to have allowed unduly qualified persons not holding the right certification, et cetera, to perform a function, he is liable to be fined, as is the company. Of course, the person concerned may also get fined.
I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s response as there seems to be a serious conflict on the management, levels and skills required for a PEC holder between the legislation that came from the IMO, through Europe, to here and what is in the Bill. Can the Minister say whether this conflict was known about? I presume that it was and I am sorry that noble Lords were not told about it earlier. I suggest that the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, bring forward a suitable amendment on Report, if it can be done, to link the existing regulations in the directive with the relevant parts of Clause 2 because there will otherwise be court actions coming out of people’s ears. When people find out that they have two regulations, and that one works for them and the other does not, they will all be going to court—and the ports, the pilots and everyone else will be the losers. It is very important that this matter is resolved and I beg to move.
Lord Eames
My Lords, in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I declare an interest as a member of the Royal Yachting Association. I cannot imagine a greater recipe for the lawyers of our knowledge than the conflict that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has exposed before us today. The question of qualifications, training and their wedding with experience is a very sensitive area in the maritime world. We are not dealing simply with a technical matter. We are dealing with one of the most sensitive issues, which concerns people who are transported, people within the marine industry and people with an interest in our ports. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has put his finger on one of the most sensitive issues—this is not a technical attempt to restrain the legislation or prove difficult about it—which has to be given the closest possible attention because there is a conflict in places between these two edicts. The conflict, in my experience, will lead to an open charter for many months and years to come unless we are satisfied as a House that every possible examination has taken place of the difficulties between these two approaches.
I am also convinced that where there is any question of conflict, not only does it raise issues of a purely legal nature, but it puts into contempt the sort of respect that people ought to have of the whole industry. For that reason, I too will be very interested in what the Minister says about what examination has been made of this conflict. Has it been given the attention that it deserves?
I also regret the way in which the legislation has been produced today, on a Friday, with so little notice to many of us who come a great distance to attend the House. At this early stage, I ask that very serious consideration be given to the Bill by the Minister, for whom I have the highest regard and who has always been most helpful when I have raised issues with him. However, in this instance I believe that the full import of what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, says has yet to be realised by the Government.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, invites the Government to take a particular action before the House goes into Committee. It may be unusual, but it is order. I must confess that I am surprised by the move by the noble Lord to delay debating the Bill today. It was, after all, his express wish at Second Reading, only a fortnight ago, that the Bill reach the statute book. He said:
“I wish the Bill well. I hope that we can get it to Royal Assent without too many delays”.—[Official Report, 18/1/2013; col. 911.]
I have no problem with the noble Lord wanting to debate the Bill properly, but he knows that any amendment is fatal to nearly all Private Members’ Bills. He must be aware that if the Bill is to achieve Royal Assent as he desires, it is necessary for this House to debate it today. A week’s delay is not available. I, too, hope that the Bill will achieve Royal Assent—it contains measures that our valuable maritime industry has been seeking for many years—but if it does not, I would rather that it fell as a result of the clear will of this House rather than of a move to delay discussion.
The noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, asked me about legal advice. I assure the House that my department has plenty of lawyers who delight in constraining me in what I can say to your Lordships. Noble Lords will know that it is a long-standing convention that Ministers do not release legal advice. Furthermore, the noble Lord has indicated his concerns about the legality and desirability of Clause 2. I understand that he is very content with the other clauses. That being the case, it might have been more appropriate to table an amendment to provide that Clause 2 can be commenced only after the report that he desires has been published. I have certainly tabled many such amendments in my time.
Having said that, I understand the noble Lord’s desire to ensure that the Bill does not conflict with international agreements that this country has entered into freely. I am happy to give the assurance today that nothing in the Bill conflicts with the Standards for Training, Certification and Watchkeeping, the STCW. I am not convinced that a report stating the same would have any more effect than me, as a Minister of the Crown, doing so at the Dispatch Box.
A ship must comply with the applicable requirements of the code; there is no doubt about that. On some ships, the crew structure will permit another deck officer to act as pilot, using their pilotage exemption certificate, while remaining fully compliant with the code. The noble Lord refers to junior ratings being allowed to hold pilotage exemption certificates if this Bill passes. I do not think it right that I should pre-empt discussion on Clause 2, which I hope that we can have today, but I will say now that this clause does not propose such a thing. I may be able to satisfy the noble and reverend Lord, Lord Eames, at this point. A junior rating is not a deck officer, though a rating might,
“also help deck officers with navigational and watch duties, and anchor the ship when coming into port”,
to quote the National Careers Service.
What we envisage, and what I believe that the industry understands by the term “deck officer” is much more substantial. A deck officer capable of satisfying the pilotage exemption certificate requirements will have had several years of experience at sea and have responsibility for navigation of the ship, which is somewhat more advanced than a junior rating.
I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment and enable us to move on and use the time that we have for important Committee debates which we need to have before the House can be sure that the legislation is sound.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I tabled the amendment on Wednesday evening because I still had not received a copy of the letter from Stephen Hammond MP, which I felt that we needed. The letter arrived 12 hours later, perhaps because I tabled the amendment—I do not know. I could have said that we should delay discussion from Clause 2, but I took advice from the Clerks and this is the amendment that I tabled.
Some noble Lords have probably strayed into discussions on the clause stand part debate. The issue over which I raised this was that of the two potentially different definitions of who can have a PEC. The Minister did not answer, so I suppose that we can all expect lots of court appearances, as the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, suggested. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I do not intend to repeat what I said at Second Reading, or what I said on my earlier amendment, as we have had a good debate on the issue in Clause 2. My concern remains only with the inclusion in the clause of the phrase “deck officer” without a definition of the qualifications and experience of a deck officer and a recognition of the importance of being high up in the management tree of the ship.
My noble friend mentioned junior ratings. With his knowledge and experience, I am sure that he has a good point but I feel that nowadays, and in line with the EU regulations that we talked about earlier, it is important to have a definition of who can and cannot be given a PEC as a deck officer. It is very easy to say that a competent harbour authority will not give someone a PEC unless he is qualified, but it is like so many of these things—on a good day, when everything is going well, it will work out all right, but, sadly, we have all had experience of when things do not go quite right and sometimes a harbour authority is less competent than it might be. Where two ports are sited reasonably close together and are competing for trade, there must be a temptation for one of them to offer a PEC to somebody on a particular shipping line if that will attract the ship into that port and bring in probably much needed revenue. I would like to try to persuade the Minister to be as generous as he can in giving a tighter definition to the meaning of “deck officer” as applied in this Bill. If it can be related to the IMO deck officer that we discussed earlier, that would tie everything together and would probably also reduce the number of future court cases, which we all wish to avoid.
I could go on for a lot longer. I do not want to delay things too much and I still want to see this Bill pass. However, it would be very helpful if the Minister could give an assurance on that issue and then we can move on. My other concerns about the Bill are very small compared with that one.
Lord Rosser
I repeat what we said at Second Reading. We support the Bill and want it to succeed, not least because many of its provisions were contained in a draft Bill that we produced when we were in government. However, I am not sure that the Government are being as helpful as they might be as regards some of the detail. Clearly, the most contentious issue is that of the exemption certificate. My noble friend Lord Berkeley referred to the definition of “deck officer”.
I am grateful to the Minister for sending me a reply to a number of questions that I asked at Second Reading. I was given the letter—dated yesterday—only this morning. I have had a look at it although, obviously, not as long a look as I might have wished. However, I am genuinely grateful to the Minister for the reply and for responding to the points that I made in our previous debate. The Minister has given a definition of “deck officer” in that letter and said that it enjoys the dictionary definition of,
“an officer in charge of the above-deck workings and manoeuvres at sea of a ship or boat”.
However, I do not think that that definition covers the issue of the minimum level of experience for,
“an officer in charge of the above-deck workings and manoeuvres at sea of a ship or boat”,
particularly as regards the pilotage operation. This comes back to the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Berkeley on the standard of experience that is to be required. It would be extremely helpful if the Minister, when he responds, could give an assurance on that point.
I also asked about the role of the competent harbour authorities. The Minister said in his reply:
“It is a matter for Competent Harbour Authorities to decide who has the skill, experience and local knowledge sufficient to be capable of piloting the ship, and for shipping operators to develop and implement a Safety Management System to provide clarity on the roles and responsibilities of the bridge team when a Pilotage Exemption Certificate holder is acting as a pilot”.
Saying that it is a matter for the competent harbour authorities to decide who has the skill, experience and local knowledge does not address in particularly clear terms how much training it would take to obtain a pilotage exemption certificate in a place such as Liverpool.
Lord Berkeley
I hear what the noble Lord says and generally support it, but I have not quoted many letters from pilots, although we have heard a lot of them today. One touched on this subject. A number of British shipping companies, including some ferry companies, are taking on and training young people. However, once the trainees have got to a certain stage and the government grant that goes with them is finished, they find that they cannot get a job because on the whole the shipping lines try to recruit young, cheaper officers from abroad. Does the noble Lord have a solution to that?
Lord Greenway
My answer to that would be that young, well trained British officers are highly thought of elsewhere in the world, so jobs are available for them.
PEC examinations can be seen by both individuals and their employing companies as an important rung in the advancement of their professional careers. They involve commitment and academic effort. Those sitting the exams need both professional experience and proven competence in ship-handling. They must also be highly motivated. Therefore, I think that a lot of these concerns have been overstated. To me, there is no doubt that the extension of PEC eligibility will be of benefit to UK seafarers.
Finally, I will say that if the Bill passes, a lot of these concerns can be dealt with by the steering group of the Port Marine Safety Code. That would involve the UK Chamber of Shipping, the various ports groups and the pilots’ association. They can sit down and work out the details of how this change is to be implemented.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I concur with the excellent points made by my noble friend. The clause will not reduce the standards required by the competent harbour authorities of applicants for a pilotage exemption certificate. It simply states that deck officers and members of the crew with navigation responsibilities can hold a certificate if—and only if—they meet those standards.
I met the chairman of the Maritime Pilots’ Association, in the company of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and he assured me that he would work with the Port Marine Safety Code steering group to provide the best advice for competent harbour authorities on the qualifications that they should expect. I welcome that, as I hope that the House will, coming from such an authoritative group with such a fine history. I welcome that support from the UK Maritime Pilots’ Association and I support this clause standing part of the Bill.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for the very full answers that he gave. Many of them were very helpful, but one thing that was conspicuously missing was that although there was a lot of talk about training, there was not so much about management responsibility. The key to a successful outcome is to ensure that PEC holders have experience of being in a senior management position on a ship.
As an example, many times in the course of this debate and others we have talked about a famous dredging company in the Thames Estuary. I will quote briefly from a letter that I, and perhaps others, have received from a pilot about this. He says that he knows the company and its working pattern well. He writes:
“The Master likes to do dredging at sea and the Chief Officer normally does discharge of aggregate”
—on the quay. He continues:
“They want the Junior Officer to pilot and navigate in between. I asked one of the Captains of this company why the Junior Officer couldn’t do the discharge or the dredging at sea. Both operations he would be qualified for. The answer was because he/she is not trusted in those roles”.
This is from the captain of one of the ships. If he is not trusted to do the discharge at a quay, or to dredge in the sea, it is a bit odd to think that he ought to be capable of having a pilotage exemption certificate to be able to pilot the ship up and around the Thames. We all remember what happened when the “Bowbelle” and the “Marchioness” had a collision.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, if the officer was not trustworthy, the competent harbour authority would not grant him a PEC.
Lord Berkeley
Let us hope so. If it was the Port of London Authority, I am sure that that would be the case. I have more doubts about other authorities. There is also the question of ensuring that we do not confuse junior officers with junior ratings, as there were one or two comments about that.
However, we have had a good debate. I would have liked the Minister to have given a definition on the record that the deck officer should be a person who is,
“engaged on board at Management level holding an STCW A-11/2 Certificate of Competency”,
or other appropriate qualification, which would have covered the inland waterways issue. But he will not give that, and at this time of day it is not really appropriate to seek the opinion of the House, because we would never get home tonight. So I leave it at that.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord on moving the amendment. It is a very useful probe; I shall probably have some more probes later. I have a copy of the code of conduct, which, as he said, was agreed yesterday lunchtime. That probably shows, but at least I understand that it has been agreed. It is unclear to me who makes the order designating a harbour authority as having the powers for general direction. Is it the Department for Transport? From reading the code of conduct, it seems to me as if the harbour authority makes its own designation, which I am sure is not right. It does not sound right anyway. I believe that the designation is under Section 40 of the Harbours Act, but what criteria will the Department for Transport, which I presume it will be, look at when deciding whether an applicant is a fit and proper organisation for having harbour direction powers?
The purpose of the code of conduct and probably of Clause 5 is to enable harbours to be able to make directions without having to wait sometimes several years for the Department for Transport to approve them. I hope that the department, if it is to be the approving body under the new arrangements, will be a lot quicker than that. How long will it be and, as the noble and right reverend Lord asked, what enforcement will there be if things go wrong? I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Airports: Heathrow
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is not a question of de-icing or clearing the runways? British Airways comes on the television screens explaining proudly its problem that, “We run at 99% capacity. The slightest difference in allowing time between flights means that we have to cancel”. It turned out in this case that one in 10 incoming flights was cancelled on one day, and that on another it was one in five. Is it not time that an airport that is trying to pretend that it is an international hub stops running at a rate of capacity that is clearly outwith its capabilities to sustain?
Lord Elton
My Lords, I think I can keep going. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, my noble friend said that Charles de Gaulle has four runways, but the comparison she was making was in capacity. We would like to know what percentage of capacity Charles de Gaulle is running at compared with Heathrow.
Helicopter Flights: Central London
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
My Lords, I agree with everything that my noble friend has said. In addition, I point out that the Civil Aviation Authority considered the operation of helicopters over London in 2005, and we are currently operating under the regime it recommended.
Lord Berkeley
Are not these helicopters known to everyone as being incredibly noisy? Surely, apart from the police and health helicopters, there is no argument for having a commercial heliport in central London. There is a perfectly good public transport service within London. Cannot these very important people use airports instead?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we are not aware of any horrendous problem with helicopter noise, although I have answered an Oral Question in your Lordships’ House about it. The number of helicopter flights over London has almost halved over the past few years, and the level of noise disturbance has reduced accordingly—although, of course, the economic situation may be impacting on that. It is also clear that helicopters benefit the city both by supporting the economy and by providing essential support to the emergency services.
Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to participate in this debate. I first declare my interest as president of the United Kingdom Maritime Pilots’ Association; I am also a harbour commissioner in the port of Fowey in Cornwall. This seems to be something of a Cornish Bill because the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, comes from Cornwall—as does Sheryll Murray MP, who introduced this Bill into the Commons. It is rather nice to think that this Bill, which I am sure will pass, will be a Cornish-originated Bill. Perhaps the rest of the country has something to learn from this; anyway it is good.
As has been said, the draft Bill was published by the previous Government and I made one or two attempts to take it forward in various marine navigation Bills, so of course I generally welcome this Bill. However, when I did my Bill I was required to seek the consent of the Prince of Wales, so I consulted the clerks here as to whether that was needed for this Bill and if not, why not. Helpfully, the counsel to the Cabinet Office has published two versions of a 50-page manual on when, how and whether you need the consent of the Queen or the Prince of Wales to any Bill.
I think some of it is redacted but the key thing is that this Bill does not apparently need the consent of the Prince of Wales—even though he is the harbourmaster of St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly—because, as the clerk said,
“there is no requirement in the Bill that any harbour authority exercises”,
the duties put on it in this Bill. The clerk then said that,
“the text at line 34 on page 3”,
of this document,
“says a ‘harbour authority may give directions’”.
If the harbour authority was required to give directions, the Prince would have to give his consent but as the word is only “may”, he does not. That is all right then; we can carry on with the Bill. I hope that I have all the quotes right, as it is quite a complicated document.
Looking at the principle of this Bill and of other government legislation in the maritime sector, it has generally been based over the years on light regulation and on the assumption that all parties behave in a sensible and professional manner. The noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, emphasised how important it was to carry on with this so as to encourage as many people to use the water as possible, without getting in the way of others. The problem here is that the pressures on ship owners and crews to save money are nowadays immense: hence tiredness, cutting corners and, often, language problems. Most of the time, it is all right and nothing happens. There are sometimes small incidents and occasionally, sadly, some things one might term disasters, be they oil spills, cruise liners hitting rocks or whatever. We can all say that it will never happen again but, sadly, it occasionally does. In considering this Bill, we should make it proof against one or more parties acting stupidly, dangerously or whatever because the consequences could be catastrophic. I hope that they do not happen very often.
I take as support in this a quote from the Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty insurance company. Earlier this month, in releasing its annual report on ship losses, it said,
“it reveals the main reason for incidents seem to be human error”.
It emphasises that,
“self regulation initiatives and technological improvements such as the introduction of … ECDIS in July”,
all help,
“to reduce accidents, but only if coupled with effective training and management oversight”.
That is an important issue, which I want to speak about when it comes to the pilotage exemption certificates in Clause 2.
There has been much previous debate about Clause 2 over the years in the Commons: about whether it should be there at all and, if so, whether the amendments in this Bill, which add “deck officer” to,
“the master or first mate”,
should be there. The Government say that this is a deregulation benefit but it is really not very clear to whom the benefit applies and by how much. When the noble Baroness winds up, perhaps she can help to quantify this because from the mass of evidence that I have received—the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, referred to having received a lot of this too—I know that the current PEC requirements under the 1987 Act have been developed and are of long standing over centuries.
I was very interested to hear of the pilotage arrangements for Watchet because I was there a couple of years ago and, with that rise and fall, it is some harbour. There is an old pilot boat in the museum there, which I think has been recreated. It shows how dangerous it was and what the importance of local knowledge was there.
I am not sure where the pressure for this change is coming from. The Chamber of Shipping seems to have confirmed my view that it is coming from a very small sector of the shipping industry; basically, a dredging company in the Thames. There, you have three people on the dredger: the master, the first mate and a third person, who is perhaps the deck officer. Because of the working time directive requirements, the master likes to dump the aggregate on the quay while the first mate likes to do the dredging, so somebody has to drive the ship in between and it obviously has to be the deck officer. We can debate whether such a person has the right training or experience. We will need to debate further whether it is appropriate for such a definition to be applied to bigger shipping. I have seen no substantive argument from the Chamber of Shipping or others to support the claims that this change needs to take place.
There are two key issues here. One is that if the phrase “deck officer” is to be applied properly, it has to have a proper definition of how they are trained and what qualifications they have. I suggest there is also an issue as to what managerial responsibility they have in relation to the master. It is fine to say that he might be the navigation officer. However, if he is also employed and the boss, two levels up, is the master it might be a brave person who overruled that master. While it is not overruling, because the master is in charge, it is a different relationship from just providing the navigation information. There is a lot more work to be done on this, and I hope that we can discuss this more with the noble Baroness between now and Committee.
I shall quote one or two comments about this. The first is from David Phillips, chief harbourmaster of the PLA, who says that,
“pilotage is possibly the most important risk control measure that ports have … It is important to understand that the act of pilotage is a command function. To exercise command at sea requires a measure of experience that will come from sea experience”.
The UK Harbour Masters’ Association wrote to Sheryll Murray on 26 November, saying,
“It is essential that the role of pilot is, in the interests of marine safety, restricted to only the most experienced navigation officers signed on the vessel’s articles or other official document of engagement”.
I met my noble friend Lord West outside. He apologised that he could not be in this debate but allowed me to quote him as saying that he thought that this change in the definition of who could have a PEC was actually dangerous.
The noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, quoted from the House of Commons evidence. Its Transport Select Committee report of 2008 into the Draft Marine Navigation Bill said:
“We are extremely concerned at the proposal in Clause 4 to amend the provision for pilotage to extend the scope of who can hold a PEC. The proposed change would impose additional burdens on competent harbour authorities and make it harder to ensure that only appropriately qualified staff carried out pilotage. This could create unnecessary dangers”.
The only safe way is to remove Clause 2, but I look forward to discussing this with the noble Baroness between now and Committee. I hope that we can reach agreement before then without causing too much delay to the Bill, because I want it to go through.
I turn to Clause 5 and the power of general direction. It is an important part of a CHA’s role, and the current process is very long-winded. This is an important clause, giving harbours the powers to do this more quickly. I have been involved in debates with the ports and the shipping and leisure industries. Most of the time they have to work together, but I suggest that the Bill has to make provision for when they do not. We have all had examples of where this has gone wrong; noble Lords will have seen an interesting video clip 18 months ago of a racing yacht in the Solent going across the bows of a tanker, with the spinnaker getting caught in the racing yacht’s anchor. The mast came down but luckily no one was hurt. What surprised me was that the entire crew were serving naval officers. If the Navy can get it wrong, one or two other people can probably get it wrong as well.
I am not having a bash at the Navy, because there are equal stories on the other side. I heard yesterday from the Royal Yachting Association that, after the ports had said, “We’ll work together. It’ll all be all right. We’ll be very friendly. We’ll consult. The leisure industry needn’t worry. It’ll be all right on the night”, the port of Dundee, which already has the powers, is requiring users of recreational craft, presumably including dinghies, to submit passage plans to the Forth and Tay Navigation Service in advance of putting their boats in the water or going to sea. That goes beyond what is necessary, desirable or even appropriate. If that kind of thing can happen without consultation and listening to those whom they have consulted, it confirms that there is a need for something better than what is currently in the Bill.
I generally support Clause 9, regarding the general lighthouse authorities. It is good for the GLAs to be able to invest and go into commercial business, but I hope that it will bring benefits to the shipping lines and those who pay the light dues. Hopefully, it will improve the efficiency of the whole thing.
With those few words, I wish the Bill well. I hope that we can get it to Royal Assent without too many delays.
Scrap Metal Dealers Bill
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, before my noble friend Lady Browning, whose Bill this is in this place, rises to speak, may I ask the Minister how the Government intend to use the next five years, assuming that this amendment is passed? Are there any plans in view for the Government to include in a government Bill the very necessary contents of this Bill?
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I support the comments of my noble friend Lord Faulkner. I find it quite extraordinary, with all the work that has gone on to get this Bill through, and all the damage, cost and disruption to railways, sculptures, communications and churches that we have seen, that here we have the coalition supporting an amendment that will dump the same problem on the next Government in five years’ time. I hope they will reflect on this, because whoever is in government then—and I am sure it will not be the present coalition—will be blamed. It is really totally unnecessary to have this sunset clause. I hope that the Minister, on reflection, will withdraw this amendment so that the legislation can go through as quickly as possible and we can get some protection from these thieves through a system that will record transactions and enable the police to charge people, thereby reducing the thefts and all the damage they are causing.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I declare an interest, as my wife’s family has suffered from metal thieves taking memorial plaques from the side of a church in Dewsbury. I feel strongly about this: I do not think there are many people in this House who feel as strongly as I do about deregulation, but it seems quite extraordinary that we have Bills coming before this House—mainly originating from European directives—where there is no possibility of having a sunset clause and where the Government are unable to proceed. This looks like a bit of window dressing. We should listen very carefully to the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, about the risk and the delay which will arise.
I hope my noble friend will tell us whether, if this amendment were not passed, the Government would continue to support this Bill with enthusiasm. It seems to be an unnecessary risk and an unnecessary delay to send it back to the House of Commons for further consideration. I understand the long-standing difficulties there are with Private Members’ Bills in the other place. My late colleague, Eric Forth, used to cause considerable irritation by what he regarded as a principled stand on this matter. However, this is a Bill which, as several speakers have said, is urgently needed. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Browning for the diligent way in which she has carried us forward. At this very late stage, I am sorry that the Government are proposing to put a spanner in the works, which will delay much needed legislation.
Public Bodies (Abolition of the Railway Heritage Committee) Order 2013
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Grocott
My Lords, I will take the opportunity first and foremost to congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner on his unremitting commitment to this subject, on his many years of service on the committee and on the relentless way in which he has turned the issue around. I am sure that the Government must regret publishing their long list of bodies to be abolished, only to discover a little late in the day that many of them were doing incredibly useful work that was much valued not just by the people directly involved but by the community at large. That is the point I will make about railway heritage. As the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said, the issue is important not just to those of us—of whom I am not ashamed to acknowledge that I am one—who are rail enthusiasts. The income of several generations of my family depended on the rail industry, but the importance of the work of this committee goes much wider.
There can be few countries worldwide where one cannot find examples of British railway engineering. We not only invented the railways but in many countries of the world built them, along with the locomotives that ran on them. I will mention the railways of Paraguay and Zambia because I have seen them. Companies from Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Glasgow and Manchester make the equipment that built their locomotives and that maintains their railways. I do not want to indulge in hyperbole but I imagine that there are few countries in the world where there is no British railway engineering. This is an achievement we should celebrate. It is a national issue, rather than one simply for people interested in railway heritage.
Perhaps I may be forgiven for being slightly parochial in drawing the attention of the House to Coalbrookdale in the Ironbridge Gorge, Telford, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. It was the marriage of Richard Trevithick and the Coalbrookdale Company that produced the steam locomotive that ran on iron rails in the first decade of the 19th century. There is a replica in the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. The tradition that it celebrates is a wonderful example of something that is of tremendous interest—I repeat—to many more people than simply those who are interested in railways. Half a million people visit the Ironbridge Gorge Museum every year.
I conclude by saying that it is not just history that we should celebrate. The rail heritage industry—perhaps it is not so much an industry as a movement—is of real relevance to our economy today. Engineering activities are taking place in a number of centres that are keeping skills going that otherwise would be lost. Locomotives are being built at Boston Lodge in north Wales, and there are engineering apprenticeships at Crewe that even today are keeping going skills that might otherwise be lost. That is of tremendous importance. Finally, the subject is of great importance to the tourism industry. Members of the other place who have a heritage railway in their constituency know that it attracts visitors and brings strength to the economy.
My noble friend has embarked on a noble exercise to ensure that the committee’s functions are maintained. As this is an amicable debate I will not introduce a sour note, but perhaps I may send a gentle and friendly memo to this Government and to what I hope will be the subsequent Labour Government, suggesting that before they abolish something they should check whether it is doing something useful.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Faulkner. He has worked tirelessly on railway heritage. If it was not for him, we would now be in a complete mess. I was very surprised to hear the Minister say that the Railway Heritage Committee was a good example of voluntary work that has now been moved to the Science Museum. He said that it had had a bit of administrative support from the Science Museum before, or that it now has it. I cannot see what the difference is between them. It is moving the deckchairs for the sake of it. I suspect that it will cost more and do exactly the same thing; where is the benefit? My noble friend Lord Grocott talked about old steam engines. A month ago I went round the National Railway Museum in New Delhi, where most of the engines, as he said, were built in this country—largely in Glasgow—and they were very fine. I hope that this tradition continues. Of course, they now build very good engines of their own in India.
Having listened to the Minister’s explanation, which I believe lasted a good seven minutes, and to the story that my noble friend Lord Faulkner told about the work that he had to do just to move things across to the Science Museum, I am afraid that my only conclusion is: thank God he was there to do it. It will be fine in the future when the next Labour Government make things better, but this is a classic case of dogma ruling brain when it started. As my noble friend Lord Grocott said, I hope that it is not repeated.
Lord Snape
My Lords, I, too, join in the general chorus of discontent about the actions of the Government today. I support my noble friend Lord Faulkner and agree with his very able speech about the need to care for railway artefacts and his description of the work that the Railway Heritage Committee has done over the years. I have no personal interests to declare except that in the 1980s, along with the late Robert Adley, I served on the advisory committee to the Railway Heritage Committee, which was newly formed at that time. The work that it has done over the years is enormously commendable.
Some of the reminiscences—if I may put it like that—of my noble friend Lord Grocott apply to railway installations all over the world. However, there are many such installations still in the United Kingdom, which the Railway Heritage Committee would have been interested in seeing properly preserved. I do not suggest for a moment that transferring these matters to the Science Museum will necessarily adversely affect the future of railway heritage. However, I am conscious, as your Lordships will be conscious, that the Science Museum has lots of other things with which to concern itself. The great thing about the Railway Heritage Committee is precisely that it was concerned about our railway heritage, and worked to preserve that which we still enjoy at present and which future generations should also enjoy. I deplore and regret any diminution of that concern for our railway heritage as a result of this order.
I suspect, as did my noble friend Lord Grocott, that some civil servant somewhere drew up a list of quangos to be abolished and this one found itself on there. Even at this late hour, I urge the Government to think again. As a railwayman myself, and the son of a railwayman, I feel strongly about our railway heritage. I have bored your Lordships previously with stories about my own railway career. I point out that there are still artefacts—they can still be regarded as such—in use on the present-day modern railway which are well worth preserving. I am not sure I would have the ability, or that the Science Museum would have the time or patience, to listen to the case for preserving them. For example, there are signal boxes in the Stockport area, where I spent the early part of my career, which were built by the London and North Western Railway in the 1880s, and which still signal trains today. Do I approach the Science Museum when eventually those signal boxes are abolished, to say that these are part of our railway heritage, and ought to be kept?
I might say in passing that, although those of us who travel regularly on the west coast main line are familiar with the litany of equipment failures—“failure of lineside equipment” seems to be the stock response to any delays—that does not happen in the Stockport area. Thanks to the London and North Western Railway, which installed those signal boxes in 1888, they still do not have any problems, all these years later, in passing Pendolino trains through the town of Stockport. If we are properly to preserve that sort of railway heritage, we might need a wider scope than saying, “We will leave these matters to the Science Museum”.
So I ask, even at this late hour, for the Minister to reflect again. The abolition of quangos is not necessarily a bad thing, but the old proverb about babies and bath water certainly applies in this particular case.
Cycling: Infrastructure
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Berkeley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of the Highways Agency’s budget is allocated to infrastructure for cycling.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the Highways Agency works with cycling organisations to provide parallel routes, safe access and crossing points to the strategic route network. These schemes are funded within the agency’s portfolio of small improvement schemes, on which the expenditure is approximately £50 million each year across the portfolio. Provision for cyclists is also a consideration of the agency’s major schemes. The specific investment relating to cyclists is therefore difficult to disaggregate.
Lord Berkeley
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer and I congratulate the Government and TfL on the investment they have recently announced for cycling infrastructure. However, does he agree that possibly there is a need to go further? There is a poll in the Times today, coincidentally, which shows that 25% of the respondents think that segregated cycle lanes would make people cycle more. It also shows that only 2% of journeys in this country are by cycle compared with a figure of about 25% to 35% in Belgium, Holland and Denmark. Does he agree that it is time to look at reallocating space on the roads for cycles and providing much greater investment alongside that?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the views of respondents to any survey are obviously important. We should not disregard them. We should take account of them. Segregation has its benefits because you will be able to reduce the number of accidents far more effectively. However, there is the issue of economic use of the road space and the business case if you want such a scheme. In London, these are matters for Transport for London.
British Transport Police
Lord Berkeley Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right in his analysis of the problem. Unfortunately, we cannot make any suitable amendment to current legislation going through your Lordships’ House. I am advised that other routes, such as a regulatory reform order, are not suitable, so we will have to wait for a suitable slot in the primary legislation. However, the noble Lord’s point about legal uncertainties is extremely important.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, how many BTP officers carry firearms? As my noble friend said, it seems odd that they do not have the same legal position as other police officers around the country who are able to carry firearms. What is the legal position of BTP officers who carry firearms? Are they at risk on a personal level in a way that the other police officers are not?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord’s first question, we are talking about only 53 police officers, so the bureaucracy load is manageable, although extremely inconvenient. The weakness in the legislation on the protection of officers who are involved in an incident, alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, is an extremely important point.