Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Bradshaw]

34: Clause 5, page 3, line 32, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “Office of Rail Regulation”

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

This brings us to another clause and concerns the payment of fines, to which reference was just made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham.

The clause refers to the “Secretary of State” in successive subsections, and I believe that that might be wrong. One of the advantages of the Office of Rail Regulation is that it is independent from the Government. It is the Office of Rail Regulation that sets fines for Network Rail when it does not comply with the official standards that the regulator has approved. It may be a question of semantics, and it may be relevant to ask whether the ORR should not become the “Office of Transport Regulation” to stop comments such as those we heard this afternoon of something being done to roads by the rail lobby. I totally disagree with what was said, but to stop this bickering between both sides it might be better to make it the office of transport regulation.

There is a process with the railway. As it approaches the control period, which is a five-yearly period, the industry says what it would like. The Government then say how much money is available and the regulator decides how much an efficient undertaker—Network Rail in that case—needs to carry out the job that it has to do.

The Office of Rail Regulation has just issued a fine to Network Rail because Network Rail has failed to live up to the punctuality targets that had been set for it by the regulator. The money from the fine—this is very interesting—is going to be spent on providing wi-fi access for railway commuters; it is not going back into the maw of the Treasury. I believe that this might be behind the wording in Clause 5 saying that the fine will be levied by the regulator. If it is the intention that the fines will go towards the benefit of the user—in this case, the motorist or people running lorries—it needs to be carefully thought through how that will be achieved. I fully applaud the principle, but in order to get satisfactory separation from the Secretary of State it would be much better if the Bill said “the regulator” or “the Office of Rail Regulation”, whichever was the case.

I am not in any way denigrating the work done by the Office of Rail Regulation; in my view it is one of the most effective regulators, although perhaps it does not have to meet a very high standard when you think of Ofgem, Ofwat and Of-everything else—some of them are doing a very poor job. The ORR has driven up standards in the industry quite considerably, and it is a safety regulator as well. If the Minister can give me reasons why the alterations to the wording that I have suggested cannot be agreed, will she give me a view as to whether it would not be better to change the title of the Office of Rail Regulation to something like the office of transport regulation? I beg to move.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has said, but of course the problem with the Bill is that under the Government’s current proposals the Office of Rail Regulation—perhaps with a better name—will be not a regulator but simply a monitor. There is no equivalence between the ORR’s relationship to the railways and what is currently proposed. We will come to one of my amendments later on that would allow some degree of regulation of quality, standards, the performance of the road network and road safety. At the moment, though, that is not what the Government envisage, and I would hope that the Minister would explain why. As the noble Lord has indicated, equivalence in our strategic network would appear to be common sense.

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[Baroness Kramer]

What we are doing now is basically setting up implementation vehicles. That is the purpose of this language. The content of the road investment strategy will undoubtedly lead to performance criteria. It is very hard to set performance standards without that document in front of us, and obviously we hope to see it some time in the autumn. I think that we have to pass the hurdle of having a road investment strategy before we can sensibly ask a Secretary of State to set those standards.

I am being reminded that it is very likely that breaches of the licence conditions would be the kind of standards used by the Secretary of State. It is possible that he might set standards so that there is a penalty, for example, for the failure to control costs or to achieve delivery. Quite a range of performance standards might be selected but I think that we are rather too early in the process, without having the RIS, to put sensible names to them.

[Lord Bradshaw]

I thank the noble Baroness for that reply. I do not see the difference between the SHC and Network Rail in that they both derive their funding principally from the Secretary of State. I know that train companies pay track access charges but so do lorries and motorists—only they are not called track access charges. The Minister makes the point that people do not pay, but in fact, in the same way that season ticket holders pay once a year for their journeys, people pay once a year for their licence and probably once a week for their petrol, so they are paying customers. I do not see the difference there. When you talk about competition between operators on the railways, except in the freight sector there is precious little real competition for people to choose which train company they use on a day-to-day basis.

I am glad to hear the Minister say that the title might change. I also hasten to say that the Office of Rail Regulation does a very good job in holding Network Rail to account. I am rather sad to hear that we are going to see how the monitor role works and how the strategic highways agency works—that sounds to me like a bit of a kick into the long grass, rather than a radical experiment.

Lastly, the Minister has also passed to me today—thank you—a letter about the experience in other countries. I have read it. What comes out of it is the fact that people who use longer funding periods of up to 15 years achieve savings of 15% or more. I think that that only underlines the need for long-term thinking in getting away from this very short-term funding, which in both cases far outweighs the life of any Government or series of Governments.

I will beg leave to withdraw the amendment but, in this case, I intend to raise the issue again on Report.

Amendment 34 withdrawn.

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[Lord Whitty]

No, my Lords, I am saying that the policy has to be decided by the Secretary of State. I would query if the Secretary of State always has to be involved in deciding whether or not we are going to put another two miles on a particular road junction because that could probably be devolved further down the line, but leaving that aside, the Secretary of State sets the policy and the Treasury gives him the taxpayers’ contribution to that policy. However, an expanded ORR would see that it was carried out on both the rail side and on the road side, in corridors in both modes, and with interconnections between them at various key points on the strategic network. One of the things that is sadly lacking in our transport system is intermodal transfer. I would actually include access to ports and airports within that too, if we were doing a comprehensive job.

I thought that the whole point of hiving off the Highways Agency and giving responsibility for its regulation to the ORR was a move in that direction, but the Minister seems to be unravelling all that and saying, “We don’t need any of that. That is far too many steps too far. Railways are completely different from roads. We have to consider them in two different frameworks”. I would have thought that in terms of efficiency of return on taxpayers’ contributions, you would have to look at them together. There are different levels of policymaking and delivery, but this is actually an opportunity for increasing the degree of integration and of comprehensiveness, and therefore for increasing the return to the taxpayer and the transport user of expenditure on this area.

[Lord Bradshaw]

In the letter that the Minister sent me about practice in Europe, she makes reference to Sweden. Rather underlining the points that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has just made, reference is made in the letter to a thing called Trafikverket. The Swedish Government set the long-term aims and provide the funding, and Trafikverket is expected to deliver them. The point is that Trafikverket is located in Borlänge in the north of Sweden in the same offices as Banverket, which looks after and regulates the railways in Sweden. They work together to the same criteria.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, perhaps our Swedish colleagues can show us the way, and I bow to the knowledge of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, about the Swedish position. I have read the letter from the noble Baroness about the overseas experience, none of which seems to be entirely congruent with what is being proposed here, but nevertheless it is instructive in this particular instance.

My relatively humble amendment proposes that the two should be considered together, but clearly the Government’s thinking has not yet developed that far and is not reflected to that extent in this Bill. I can only hope that an alternative Government might take it a bit further, if that is the legacy we are bequeathed. For the moment, however, with some regret I will have to accept that the Minister is not going to be persuaded to go down that road, or indeed that railway, tonight.

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[Lord Bradshaw]

My Lords, I support all that the noble Lord opposite has said. I have been here for only 15 years, but I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, will vouch for the fact that I have raised this matter, as has the noble Lord opposite, on countless occasions. I have lost count of the excuses, all of which include the words “next year”. The latest one was the promise around three or four years ago of a quinquennial review. Although it is due, nothing has happened. This is a clear example of confusion and antipathy between two government departments: the Department for Transport, which owns, as it were, the British Transport Police, and the Home Office, which owns the rest of the police force, except in London.

The fact is that this absurd barrier between the areas where the police can and cannot go is not understood and leads to confusion. Almost every night at Reading station I see the constables of the BT police standing by the windows, and on a number of occasions I have seen fights and things happening in their view but they are not able to intervene. To the public, that is absolute nonsense.

I plead with the Minister this time to take the matter away and come back with a satisfactory solution. This is the result of jealousy over jurisdiction in the police service; I cannot think why. I remember going out with a Thames Valley police patrol one day—I was on the police authority for 13 years. We went out of the Thames Valley into Warwickshire, and they told me that they could not actually make an arrest until we had turned round and come back again. This situation is stupid, it is Victorian and it is not in keeping with modern society.

The reason why I believe this matter belongs in the Infrastructure Bill is that, when the public use railway premises, they expect the police to look after the bus stops, the car parks and the cycle racks. Some of those facilities are in private ownership and some in public ownership, but the journey that the person makes is door-to-door. At present it is being expostulated by the Department for Transport that it is doing a great deal for those journeys, but many people who use public transport but feel unsafe when doing so would be much reassured if they knew that the bus stops around railway stations and other facilities were patrolled by officers who were competent to deal with whatever happened to arise. I strongly support the amendment.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have to say that this is the first time that I have heard the argument advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and my noble friend Lord Bradshaw. My noble friend Lord Bradshaw told us that he has done this many times before; I have obviously been doing other things at those times. I have listened to both noble Lords with care, and I have to say to the Minister that I think they have made an incontrovertible case. I will listen with very great interest when she replies, but she will require some extremely powerful, cogent and convincing arguments if she does not respond in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has suggested and take this away, perhaps coming back on Report with an amendment that meets what seem to me to be totally absurd anomalies.

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Moved by

[Lord Bradshaw]

64: After Clause 15, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of the road network
(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must commission a body to review the funding and condition of the road network (“the review body”).
(2) The Secretary of State must instruct the review body to consider the following four matters—
(a) whether the heaviest users of the road network, in terms of wear and tear on the roads, congestion and pollution, should contribute a higher proportion than at present of the funding of the road network; and, if so, how;(b) whether the methodology for calculating the axle weights of vehicles, as used in calculating rates of vehicle taxation, should be changed;(c) whether organisations which undertake street works, including statutory undertakers, make an appropriate financial contribution to the remaking of the road surface on completion of the street works, and any necessary remedial work if that remaking is sub-standard; and if not, how the organisations could make an appropriate financial contribution; and(d) whether the part of the road network not under the control of the Highways Agency is in a satisfactory condition; and, if it is not, how it should be brought up to a satisfactory condition.(3) The review body shall report to the Secretary of State and to Parliament within 18 months of the passing of this Act.”

[Lord Bradshaw]

This is the last of the road amendments but it is not the least. There are great problems with our roads and the way that they are run. The amendment simply asks the Government to agree that within six months of the Bill being enacted, the Secretary of State commissions,

“a body to review the funding and condition of the road network”.

This body should consider four things, including,

“whether the heaviest users of the road network, in terms of wear and tear on the roads, congestion and pollution, should contribute a higher proportion than at present of the funding of the road network”.

We keep talking about the railway because that is in our minds at the moment, but people who travel at peak times have to pay higher fares than those who travel at off-peak times. The train operators who use congested parts of the network pay more, and it is time that a more rational way of paying for the road network was developed.

I am also asking that the methodology for calculating the axle weights of vehicles, used in calculating the rates of vehicle taxation should be changed, or re-examined, which might be better. The present methodology is based on experiments that took place in 1958 in America by the American state highways authorities. These experiments consisted of running a properly laden lorry, with a distributed load at 35 mph over perfectly level surfaces, and measuring the deterioration of those surfaces. The authorities came to the conclusion that it was reasonable to use the fourth-power function and the standard axle as a means of calculating load damage. Lorries do not go at 35 mph, they do not have perfectly distributed loads and the road network is not in perfect condition, as it was in 1958 when the Americans conducted the experiments. I suggest that it is perhaps time that we revisited this whole area and looked at the real position, not the theoretical position in the laboratory conditions in which experiments were conducted in America.

My third concern is whether the arrangements for the utilities, which dig up our roads to lay their pipes and cables, include them making an adequate financial contribution to the remaking of the road surface on completion of such street works. Is the remedial work of a suitable standard, and if not, how could those organisations make an appropriate financial contribution? I know that noble Lords will see, as I do, that outside their own homes the entire road is pockmarked by holes which have been dug by the cable companies, water companies, gas companies and so on. Most of the work is not properly finished and often the edges are not adequately sealed, allowing water to get in and break up the road surface, which is the primary cause of potholes. However, it is no good spending money on just filling up those potholes, the problem has to be attacked at its root cause.

My last issue is the question of the other part of the highways network that is not covered by this legislation. It is not in a satisfactory condition. The structural condition of the road is usually pretty terrible, and what is more, it is declining more and more rapidly.

Those are not issues that I expect the present Government to tackle, but they should be working on drawing up the terms of reference of a review that would look into how to address them. I have referred previously to why this is now urgent. The revenue from fuel tax will decline as cars and lorries become more efficient, which means that the Government will face a mountain of expenditure with a declining source of revenue. Moreover, very fuel-efficient cars are not eligible to pay much road tax. I have noticed since I acquired such a car that I am putting around a third of what I had been into the pot for the upkeep of our roads. That is a serious strategic problem and, while I am not expecting any answers, I am expecting some sympathy and a form of commitment that these issues will be taken in hand. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, these are interesting amendments which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has said, cover a wide range of issues. It is definitely time to revisit the issue of damaged roads. Road vehicles are getting heavier and their tyre pressures are higher, but that may be balanced by improved suspension systems, making this a complicated calculation. Of course, higher speed incurs more damage to vehicles of all types. It is reasonable that vehicle excise duty, in the absence of any sort of road user charge, should reflect the different types of damage caused to roads as well as congestion and pollution. We need also to take into account something else which has come to the fore in the past few years. Worsening road surfaces are having a serious effect on cyclists. If the Government want more people to take up cycling, it must be safe for them to do so. A large pothole can cause a cyclist to fall off their bike and hurt themselves, and at night the potholes cannot be seen because they are so deep. It is a serious issue and now would be a very good time to address it.

On proposed new paragraphs (2)(c) and (d) in Amendment 64, we are where we are with the undertakers. I suspect that that is one reason why we do not do more with our roads. Constructing trams in cities is so expensive because the private sector undertakers take anybody to the cleaners if they want to build anything. I do not see an easy solution, except that they need to be kept up to the mark and ensure not only that the quality of the reinstatement is good but that the time it takes is kept short. Some emergency potholes and road works are there for weeks.

On new paragraph (d), damage to the roads in the past couple of winters probably reflects the same cause and effect as damage to the rail network: the weather has been very bad. The motorways mostly stayed open, as did the existing high-speed rail link because they have been designed and built in the past 50 years to cope with the current forecast weather conditions and using more modern drainage systems—slopes on cuttings and so on—which are appropriate. Most of the other roads and the classic railway system has suffered from being built 100 or 150 years ago. It is time to look at all that again, and it would be interesting to see the results. I hope that the Minister will look on the amendment with favour.

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[Lord Bradshaw]

I drafted the amendment rather carefully so that it does not commit this Government to doing anything other than choosing a panel of people to look at some problems. If past experience is anything to go by, by the time the panel is assembled and comes to some reasonable conclusions, we are talking about the legislation of the Government not in 2015 but probably in 2020, because that is the speed at which things are done. I plead with the Minister to look very carefully at what I have said. I am not asking the Government to commit themselves to road pricing or to raising VED; I know that this is probably not the time in the parliamentary season to make such suggestions. However, these four problems are major ones. I did not even get on to the problem of the question of appraisal; as the Minister knows, it is absolutely barmy, but I thought that that was a step too far. In the light of what she has said, I shall withdraw my amendment, but the problems will not withdraw themselves; they will steadily get worse. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 64 withdrawn.