Wheeled Goods Vehicles

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The standards that we follow on sideguards are international standards imposed under one of the United Nations sub-committees. So a vehicle, wherever it has been constructed, will have to meet those international standards, which cover sideguards. We are now taking extra steps to make sure that, in addition to the vehicles being fitted with sideguards when they are manufactured, the sideguards are maintained—for example, if they become damaged, quite often they are not replaced—and those are the regulations that we are looking at bringing in next year.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister explain to the House how much enforcement of these regulations takes place? I was kindly invited to a demonstration of enforcement down by the Tate Gallery a couple of years ago, where the police and VOSA were combining to enforce the regulations on tachographs and all other rules relating to trucks. They must have spent a lot of money on this around the country but they said that the main achievement was to put a board on the back of scaffold lorries to stop the poles falling off. If that is all they can do, surely we need much more enforcement of these regulations?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

As the noble Lord will know, there are regular spot checks on roads in this country where heavy goods and other vehicles are stopped and checked to make sure that they comply. I will supply the noble Lord with more information on the effectiveness of these spot checks and how often they are carried out.

Church of England: Disestablishment

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the case for the disestablishment of the Church of England.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, none.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that comprehensive reply. Going back a short time in your Lordships’ House to 1953, when the Queen was crowned, some noble Lords may remember that the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned the Queen and she gave a sworn oath to,

“maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, discipline and government”,

et cetera. According to the National Secular Society, even since 2002 the proportion of Britons who identify with the Church of England has halved from 31% to 14% and half of British people have no religion. Is it not time for the new monarch, when he comes, to embrace this secular state and perhaps swear an oath to Parliament, as suggested by the UCL Constitution Unit, that he will in all his,

“words and deeds uphold justice, mercy, fairness, equality, understanding and respect for all”,

his,

“Peoples, from all their different backgrounds”?

Is that not the way we should be heading?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, the noble Lord seeks to amend the Coronation Oath Act 1688. The Act sets out the oath and requires that it is,

“In like manner Adminstred to every King or Queene who shall Succeede”.

While it has been altered to modernise the language and to reflect the territories that have been added and subtracted, the noble Lord’s proposition goes beyond that, raising broader constitutional issues and requiring primary legislation.

Duchy of Cornwall Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 26th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: I live with my wife in the Isles of Scilly; she has lived there for over 40 years. I have been following royal transport costs for many years and make no secret of my opinion that some of the Royal Family’s transport costs have been justified and are seen to be frugal, but some are excessive, including a charter flight to Saudi Arabia for a funeral.

The point of the Duchy of Cornwall is clearly to provide an income for the heir to the throne. We can dispute how much is needed and whether the confused and non-transparent operation of the Duchy is justified to achieve this. As the Duchy has been telling us for many years, it is a private estate and private estates often provide income for their owners in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner. I note that this Bill requires the consent of both the Queen and the Duke of Cornwall. I question why the Duke of Cornwall: is there not a conflict of interest? I do not think we will get that far, but it is an interesting question to debate.

I think this is the fourth time I have put down this or a similar Bill. This is simpler than previous ones and seeks to concentrate on what I think are the most important issues to be addressed. I argue that because the Duchy now firmly says that it is in the private sector, it should be treated as such. I am also very grateful to Dr John Kirkhope, an eminent scholar and notary public who has spent years examining the Duchy issues and helped with the Bill and what I am going to say.

The trouble is, the Duchy sometimes chooses to be treated as a private estate and sometimes as a Crown body, which receives privileges and is largely unaccountable and silent on many issues. It is wrong that the Duchy should be able to choose its own status based on what is apparently the most financially advantageous option. It should be one or the other—and it has chosen the private option. My Bill is designed to put that option into effect, making it a private estate with no special privileges. I emphasise that the Bill is not about the Duke of Cornwall per se, apart from the first clause. I should also tell the House that a year or two ago, when I previously put forward a Bill, I had a meeting with Duchy officials. We went through all the clauses in that Bill, which was very similar to the Bill today, and, at the end, I asked if they agreed with what I had said and they replied “Yes, largely”. Then when I asked if they would say so in public they said, “No”. I wrote to them again before today asking if they would like to discuss this Bill and I did not get a reply. So there we are. We ought to compare what the Duchy of Cornwall does with what the Duchy of Lancaster and the Crown estates do, which are much more transparent and open.

Clause 1 is on the succession to the title “Duke of Cornwall”. We have debated this in the past and I could go on about it for a long time. The key thing is that it should be open to women as well as men; I am not quite sure whether they would be called the Duchess of Cornwall, but it does not matter that much. The point is that they should have the same privileges and rights as the Duke of Cornwall. After all, the Duke of Lancaster is always the sovereign, regardless of gender, so why should that not apply to the Duke of Cornwall? We can debate that, and I am sure that when the Minister replies he will go back to the royal charter of 1842, although it probably goes back to long before that. But I will not get into that now, because there are many important things that I need to put to the House.

Probably the most important issue is Crown immunity, which is addressed in Clause 2. To illustrate the lack of transparency, a friend of mine who has been trying to buy his house in the Isles of Scilly under the right to buy, and other colleagues, put in 64 freedom of information requests about the Duchy and the Crown immunity issue. I will give only one example. In August 2011, they asked the Ministry of Justice:

“Please provide any papers which explain the basis on which the Duchy of Cornwall enjoys Crown Immunity”.


At least the ministry answered it, but its answer was: “We do not hold any material which you request”. So how can they do it?

There are other examples in various Acts of Parliament which need to be considered. One is the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. It states that the provisions of the relevant part of the Act “bind the Crown”, which includes the Duchy of Cornwall, and that:

“No contravention by the Crown of any provision of this Part is to make the Crown criminally liable”.


The Data Protection Act gives the same information, and Section 14 of the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspections) Act 1998, the Transport Act 2000, the Licensing Act 2003, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004—I have nearly finished—and the Planning Act 2008 all contain the same exemptions.

Most people would find it odd that if the Duchy of Cornwall caused a nuclear explosion—which is highly unlikely—it would not be subject to criminal sanctions. Surely, it is a pretty remarkable state of affairs that an estate that asserts it is private is given exemptions from criminal sanctions under numerous Acts of Parliament, should it act in breach. I can go on about Crown immunity but I will not, because I would like to move on to tax.

We have debated in your Lordships’ House many times the issue of tax and the Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy pays tax on a voluntary basis, but no other estate that I know of in this country does so. I do not know how many other noble Lords pay tax voluntarily—we would probably all like to—but the fact remains that the Duchy should be assessed and treated in the same way as any other estate or private individual.

Clause 4 addresses exemptions under the Leasehold Reform Act. As noble Lords will know, there is a consultation out on this at the moment. I have a friend who has been trying for many years to buy a property in St Mary’s on the Isles of Scilly, and he has completely failed. He has responded to the consultation and I hope he will be successful. This goes back to the issue that the Duchy of Cornwall is not bound by the Leasehold Reform Act because it has an exemption. You can understand the need for an exemption for London’s Royal Parks and other national parks and buildings, but some not very special houses on the Isles of Scilly—I am sure my friend would agree with that assessment—have this exemption and my friend is not allowed to buy his house. Whatever we think of the Leasehold Reform Act, the fact remains that everybody should be treated the same, but in this case they are not.

I think the Duchy will like Clause 5, as it would enable it to purchase land in the UK outside England. Why is there a restriction? I am told that it is a hangover from Victorian times, because of very different land and inheritance laws in Scotland at the time. Apparently, Balmoral was purchased in the name of Prince Albert because, despite the fact that Victoria was Queen, as a female she could not own land in Scotland. I am sure that many noble Lords will know more about this than I do, but that is what I am told. After the death of Prince Albert, the Crown Private Estates Act 1873 was passed to rectify the situation.

Clause 6, on the Stannaries Act, is a bit of a Cornish situation; not many people know about Cornwall’s stannaries. It is time to remove this Act because under it, the Duchy can appoint anyone to be a Duchy solicitor or barrister; they do not have to be legally qualified. That seems unnecessary. The Law Commission recommended that this provision be repealed, and I am told that the Crown lawyers, Farrer & Co, objected. They would, wouldn’t they? They would probably lose revenue if the cases ever came forward. That is another classic conflict of interest, but it is time to move that one on. The same applies to the Solicitors Act 1974.

The issue of the Treasury Solicitor is a serious one. The Duchy is a private estate. Which other private estate gets free legal advice of unlimited quantity—and, presumably, quite good quality—from the Government’s lawyers? I know several people who have had disputes with the Duchy. There was a case concerning the Helford river, which I think we have discussed before. A friend of mine won his case against the Duchy, probably because the Duchy’s representative said, “We believe we are above the law”, or something like that; but of course, when the Treasury Solicitor got involved he lost on appeal, which is no great surprise.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My noble friend referred earlier to the tax position of the Duchy of Cornwall and the fact that it pays tax on a voluntary basis. My understanding is that the revenue surplus of the Duchy of Cornwall has increased by 50% in the last seven years and that its property asset base has increased from £630 million in 2011 to £940 million in 2018, which is a huge increase. Does my noble friend have the figures for what the increase in the voluntary tax paid by the Duchy of Cornwall has been in that seven years? I cannot find them. Has there been a 50% increase in the tax paid by the Duchy of Cornwall to the Treasury over that period? If my noble friend does not have the figures, it may be that the Minister, who is in full command of all the figures to do with the Duchy of Cornwall, could tell us.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am most grateful to my noble friend for that question. He will not be surprised that I do not have the answer to it. Of course, we are not talking only about income tax—it is about capital gains tax and everything else as well. We can do an FoI on it, but I suspect that it will take a long time, and that is part of the lack of transparency. I very much doubt that similar estates are subject to the same exemptions, so it is a very good question.

I think it is time that the apparent right to Crown immunity for this private estate, with the privileges that it seems to enjoy without any clear basis, came to an end, and my noble friend’s question is very germane to that. The Duchy asserts, as it is entitled to do, that it is a private estate, yet to avoid a suite of laws and because it would not be seemly for the Duchy to be seen in court, it has been granted taxation privileges and property rights and—a procedure that continues today, I think to the detriment of other taxpayers and also to some of the residents—has no parliamentary approval or judicial oversight. It is also free from criminal sanctions should it break the law—something that I think is just crazy.

Let us be quite clear: this is not the Duke but the Duchy of Cornwall. The Duke of Cornwall is completely different. Various Acts of Parliament relating to tax and many other matters in relation to this private estate have been “suspended”, as it has been called. I recall that the last time I managed to question the Chief Whip, he kindly said—I think it was before the Third Reading of a Bill—that the Queen and the Duke of Cornwall had kindly put their interests at the disposal of Parliament. When I asked why, it took about six weeks to get an answer. That was not the Chief Whip’s fault; the answer probably came from the palace, but it was completely meaningless. Therefore, we really need to bring all this into the 20th century and put the situation on to a clear and transparent footing.

Noble Lords ask me: what next? That is a fair question because I am sure that this Bill will not find its way on to the statute book in this Parliament. However, the Duke of Cornwall could decide to do much of what it seeks to do on a voluntary basis. I hope that he will read today’s debate and perhaps consider what he and his successors can do in the short term to put this matter on to a more transparent footing. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke. We have had a fascinating debate. I am not surprised by the comments from the Minister—or the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, for that matter—which I would have expected.

However, this demonstrates the confusion over what is part of government and the monarchy and what is part of private ownership and businesses. The Duchy frequently says that it is in the private sector. In his response, the Minister said that if there is not a Duke of Cornwall, the Duchy reverts to the Crown, with which I agree; it therefore presumably becomes public. How can you have a body or estate that changes between public and private depending on whether there is a male Duke of Cornwall? That seems to need looking at in a bit more detail.

The same principle applies to the property of Buckingham Palace and the discussion started by my noble friend Lord Adonis about its cost. Which bits of Buckingham Palace are Crown property because it is part of our constitution and which bits of it, including all the pictures and the ornaments, belong to the Queen personally? If she were not Queen, would she still have them? I do not know, but it seems that this obfuscation could go on for another 20 years if we are not careful.

The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, asked why the Bill is a Private Member’s Bill. My noble friend Lady Hayter responded to that, but I would say that it is because it has been a good forum for debate. If we are going to talk about the monarchy as a whole, we could include Prayers; the Minister mentioned that we pray for Prince Charles. We could have a discussion about whether we should get rid of the link between the Church and the state, but the Minister started that one and I will leave it there.

I am also grateful to noble Lords for commenting on the Leasehold Reform Act. I do not accept what the Minister said, because it is nothing to do with a private estate, but we will follow up on that in other areas. I share other noble Lords’ views that we may not get this on to the statute book in this Parliament, but the debate has been very good anyway and I thank everyone for it.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Infrastructure and Projects Authority

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action ministers are expected to take when they receive adverse reports on costs or progress from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority provides confidential and independent reviews of major projects being delivered by government departments. While primarily aimed at project leaders, Ministers monitor delivery confidence in projects and intervene where necessary.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Is he aware that the two departments with the biggest spend on the Infrastructure and Projects Authority list are the MoD and Department for Transport, with about £130 billion each? HS2 is by far the biggest project on the Department for Transport’s list. In my book, it is coming up to between £50 billion and £100 billion. The IPA’s red/amber/green traffic light analysis on HS2 says that for six years it has been amber/red, which means:

“Successful delivery of the project is in doubt, with major risks or issues apparent … Urgent action is needed to address these problems and/or assess whether resolution is feasible”.


What have the Government been doing over the last six years with HS2 being at amber/red? Did they talk to the Department for Transport and what was its answer?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for trailing his supplementary question in the House magazine. To put this into context, the IPA was formed in 2015 to help the Government to deliver critical national infrastructure projects. It does this by commissioning independent reviews, which the noble Lord referred to. It then gives a rating to the relevant projects. Those ratings are taken very seriously, as I said in my initial reply, by the project leaders in the departments and by Ministers, who take action when necessary. After the rating has been allocated to a particular project, the IPA and the relevant department have an ongoing dialogue to ensure that milestones are met and that projects meet their commitments. The noble Lord mentioned £50 billion. That is not a figure that the department recognises. The estimate is roughly half that.

Railways: Transport for the North

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Having sat through previous exchanges, I am well aware of the anger in the north at the disruption to services following the introduction of the new timetable. The top priority has to be the stabilisation and restoration of the services to which people are entitled. On the noble Lord’s question about the franchise, the Government have instituted a review that will be completed by the end of the month to see to what extent GTR and Northern were in breach of their contracts. A range of sanctions are available if that turns out to be the case. My initial view is that much of the problems in the north was due to Network Rail being late with infrastructure and late in delivering the timetable. We must await the outcome. So far as splitting the franchise is concerned, the franchise is due to run for some time. There is a real risk of further disruption if the franchise were to be taken back on board now and then split. The top priority is to get stability, and then to make further progress with the substantial investment that is now planned by the Government.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that although Network Rail was late with its electrification of one route, many other faults have contributed to the present problem? Some very good people in Network Rail are trying to do some enhancements on the east-west route, which should be applauded. My worry, which I put to the noble Lord, is that Transport for the North needs to decide what it wants, and its members need to decide what services they want. I have had many discussions with them and, as chairman of the Rail Freight Group, I am very concerned that they are trying to cut out rail freight going across the Pennines in order to get one or two more passenger trains. They should look at the whole thing in the round and then talk to Network Rail about what is possible and come up with a coherent plan—which they do not have at the moment.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. We have a national network and it is crucial that we preserve its coherence and integrity. That is one reason why one cannot devolve entirely responsibility for infrastructure to Transport for the North—the very reason given by the noble Lord. On what TfN wants to do, it has been there for only three and a half months. Looking at its business plan, it is now in the process of starting work this financial year on the business case for further devolution. As I said in my initial reply, if it wants more powers, the Government are very happy to look at that, but having given it responsibility under the statutory instrument, it is now up to TfN to come up with a statutory plan, advise the Secretary of State and, if it wants to, bid for more powers.

Terrorism: Public Alert Technology

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Baroness is quite right that this would need the co-operation of the communication providers and, indeed, Ofcom. My understanding is that after initial discussions they are willing to take part in such a service: that is not one of the obstacles we envisage in our way.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has not answered my noble friend’s first question: why has it taken five years to get not very far and when is it going to be complete?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite right that some work was done a few years ago—I think in 2014—but at that stage it was decided not to make progress. Progress was reignited by the report done by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, and the correspondence with the Mayor’s Office and the Cabinet Office. As a result of that, progress is now being made. I accept what the noble Lord has said about a possible delay. We think the scheme has potential and we are working it up.

Revised Draft Airports National Policy Statement

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the House for allowing me to make a short contribution in the gap. I could express a lot of views on airports but today I shall concentrate on the NPS and airport costs. I support everything that my noble friend Lady Jones has said. I too believe that the NPS is out of date because it comes with baggage which dates from when just one company owned all the major airports around London. We still have this anomaly whereby one company seeks to control and regulate Heathrow’s development but none of the others. All five of these airports are now in separate ownership. One could question why they need this type of regulation at all in terms of the detail that the NPS goes into. My understanding has always been that the Government’s policy is that the five airports should compete with one another. Perhaps the Minister will comment on whether there should be a bigger review of the NPS soon to ensure that it sticks to airport policy and does not get into the minutiae of what happens at Heathrow.

My problem, which I want to share with the House, is that, in terms of costs, Heathrow is being regulated as a monopoly in a very similar way to how Network Rail is regulated. The regulator’s role is to make sure that a company stays within its costs and that these are passed on to customers in an equitable way. That is fine but it does not address whether the costs are necessary to produce the outcome that the promoter, or Network Rail, or Heathrow Airport wants. Mr Walsh obviously has a vested interest in the actions of the CAA. He says that the fault lies with the CAA, which,

“rewards the inefficient use of capital : the more it spends on capital projects, the cost of which can be passed on to airlines, the more it makes for its shareholders”.

My solution is to bring competition to Heathrow. Perhaps the Minister would like to consult the CAA and consider whether the five or six terminals that may be built at Heathrow should not be sold off into separate competing operations, and leave the BAA in charge of infrastructure, which should involve not only the runways, the services and the air traffic control, but the access, which many noble Lords have spoken about. The question then becomes: who pays for the access? Can the Minister say who is going to pay for all these lovely new rail accesses that are planned for Heathrow? It now has the worst proportion of passengers coming by rail of all the airports around London, I think, and it would be wonderful if the new accesses happened. But who is going to pay for them? On the same basis, can we have Heathrow Express removed from that structure so that customers do not have to pay £27 for a single journey, as I think it says in the briefing? I am sure that contributes some way to the number of people driving to Heathrow.

There is a long way to go on this, but I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

I will ask the Richmond Society to forward to the noble Lord the detailed modelling that has been done to show the impact of double noise on a significant section of the population. He may find that rather interesting.

Opposition to Heathrow comes from the overwhelming majority of residents in south-west London living under the flight path, four local councils and MPs of all political colours that represent that area. My party, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens have consistently opposed expansion. When any of us hear of the mitigations, we apply that against our own experience. I lived in the area when Heathrow applied for the fourth terminal and we were assured there would be nothing more. Then came the fifth terminal, and we were assured again that anyone was foolish to suggest there would be a third runway. Then came a third runway and we were told, of course, there would be no sixth terminal. Now we hear of a sixth terminal to go with the third runway. This pattern continues regularly. In the same way, the mitigations—noise is a good example —never live up to their billing. Sitting outside—most people have the right to sit in their garden—is not helped by noise insulation inside a house; that works only provided all the windows and doors are closed, with the consequence that quality of life is severely affected.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. She quite rightly talked about more and more terminals. Does she have a view on the view expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Spicer and Lord Naseby, that we should be talking about probably four runways, if not five, to keep up with Dubai and Amsterdam?

[Baroness Kramer]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, was perhaps more honest than most. A lot of the PR that comes from Heathrow and much of the aviation industry suggests that every new increment will always be the last and it never is, because there is always a rationale and always money to be made from continually trying to expand capacity, particularly when the underlying strategy is to strip flights out of other airports in the UK. That ownership is no longer held in common has added great fire to that underpinning strategy.

I hope that the Government will reconsider again the whole notion of a third runway at Heathrow; there are other and better options. I understand that it is in some ways a sop to business because business tends just to assume that a third runway would be good without looking into the detail. This seemed a way to pacify businesses infuriated by Brexit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham]

It is an Act that his Government generously put on the statute book, but I will of course write to him with details of the section that gives the Secretary of State those powers.

[Lord Berkeley]

Will the Minister very quickly tell us who Caroline Low is? From thousands of responses, why did he choose hers?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Because it summarised in one sentence the case for Heathrow. Caroline Low works for the Department for Transport and is obviously a very able civil servant who can summarise an argument concisely, which is exactly what a Minister looks for.

Subject to any revisions to the Government’s proposals in the light of this process, we plan to bring forward a final airports NPS by the end of June. I hope on the basis of what my noble friend and I have said today, your Lordships will feel able to support the airports National Policy Statement.

Carillion

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

Can the Minister possibly explain something? In the last five years, contracts such as for the railways, HS2 and maybe others have become more and more complex. Therefore, the cost of responding to them can, I am told, be £10 million or £20 million. These companies are not making a lot of money, so if they lose a contract they have lost that £10 million or £20 million. This may happen to rail franchises as well. If this goes on, I worry about who will be next. It is getting more and more complex, the cost is greater and the companies do not really make that much profit to get a reward. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

That goes slightly wider than the Statement. There are a few limited circumstances where the Government have undertaken to reimburse people bidding for a contract for the costs of tendering. As a general principle, the Government do not pay—nor does any customer pay—for people to produce a bid. Obviously, there would be consequences for public expenditure if we went down that road. At the moment, it is not such a deterrent that we are failing to get good competition for contracts. If it appeared to be a serious deterrent, we would look at it again, but at the moment I do not think that that is the case.