Channel Tunnel

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Popat]

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct in saying that there have been previous fires. The relevant authorities are constantly reviewing how to limit this risk; in this instance, the situation was helped by the new sprinklers that were installed as a result of the previous situation. This has considerably reduced the amount of time for which the tunnel has been closed. The use of enclosed lorries is an area that has been looked into in the past but, frankly, it would be commercial suicide for the freight companies to have enclosed lorries. The whole purpose of this is to make sure that goods are transported from one end to the other as quickly and economically as possible.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, surely we should be measuring the temperature as these trucks go into the tunnel. One should easily be able to do that because of the open structure. It is likely that the temperature was rising in this case, but that information was not available on a screen to the people operating the tunnel. That would be quite economical and should certainly be instituted.

[Lord Popat]

I take the noble Lord’s point but there is an ongoing investigation into this incident and I am sure that we will learn our lessons about what actually went wrong. It should be borne in mind that this incident happened on the French side of the tunnel, not ours.