Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, like others on this side, I give a half-hearted welcome to the Bill. The opening by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, put it in the right context. I am surprised that nobody else has mentioned the less than flattering view of Britain’s infrastructure by China’s Prime Minister when he was visiting here and gave us a rather low score. Perhaps, being an outsider, his view was rather more objective than the rose-tinted view from certain Benches here in the House of Lords.

All, I think, agree—road enthusiasts or otherwise—that strategic highways play an enormous role in the economic development of the country. I personally saw the extraordinary development in north Devon once the highway was produced under a previous Tory Government. It was remarkable how that led to economic development. There is no question but that road building is of vital importance. In our crowded island, however, other factors also are extremely important, particularly air pollution. Air pollution, as we now know, is much worse in big cities where a lot of traffic is present. It is particularly bad where motorways intersect. Therefore the planning and design of motorways should be of considerable concern in terms of air pollution.

Most importantly, the UK has benefited from the fact that we do not have massive motorways through the middle of our towns; in particular, not through the middle of London. Some noble Lords will recall going to protest meetings in the 1960s when there was a real possibility that we would have enormous highways right through London; fortunately, we did not. However, there is a threat for this in other big cities. I believe that that is one of the strategic areas.

The other point, made by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, is on the question of carbon emissions, which is important in the case of major motorways and part of our impact on the climate. The other effect of motorways is that they can help or hinder water movement. In Malaysia, the motorway that goes into the centre of Kuala Lumpur is generally a road but can also be an enormous drain when there is enormous rainfall. Similarly, we could have road tunnels and cuttings to use our roadways as part of our water infrastructure.

The other point to emphasise, when you go to Germany, is that you should moderate your speed because of the noise. The Germans do not generally moderate their speed, but they do when suburbs tell them about the noise. We have extremely noisy roads, such as the North Circular Road, and those are aspects.

I want to come back to that in a moment, and the role of the private sector. I am surprised about the confidence in this Bill about the private company solution. Who will own the company? Will it be owned by five different banks all around the world? There was an article in one of the Sunday newspapers recently. Thames Water has been owned by many banks, finally ending up with the Macquarie bank in Australia. English people are being told all sorts of undesirable things on water to maintain the very high profit levels of this multiple bank ownership. How are we going to be sure to avoid this kind of thing?

Well run companies, such as we see in France with their motorways, not only run the motorways well but also give extremely good advice to road users. They tell them not to go too fast because it is dangerous and it is adding to carbon emissions. Here, under our Department for Transport control of the motorways, road users are told to go faster—they say, “In 70 minutes you will reach Bristol going at 70 miles an hour”. That is not the right message. The private sector with proper guidance could help, but the transparency that we need of private sector involvement needs to be a great improvement on what we have seen with the massive water companies.

The other feature of roads and road strategy is the question of whether they will continue to be the same. Are we going to have automatically controlled cars and cars and vehicles that are electrically driven? The big question is whether the investment and financial case being put forward for roads is based on current technology. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s view on that, and on who will be responsible for making the strategic technological decisions.

It is very important that there should be an overall strategic view on highways as regards the transport, economic and environmental aspects. That issue was of course reviewed in the Armitt infrastructure report, which put all those things together—things which we are not seeing at all in the Bill as drafted. In his report, which he produced with a number of important advisers, including my noble friend Lord Adonis, it was suggested that roads need to be considered in a broad context, obtaining maximum value. That requires an integrated approach by government. I have mentioned some features, but other important ones include other aspects of transport, such as rail. Surely, many railway journeys to the south-west tip of Cornwall would be much more comfortable for everybody if the car was put on a train and the train went to Penzance—the sort of thing that used to happen and which still happens in France. Everybody charging down these roads to that tiny peninsula at the end of Britain is a very strange thing to do.

Finally, there is shipping, which is a very important aspect of transportation around the coast of the UK. This was discussed in considerable detail when we had our coastal Bill in 2009-10, and should again be considered in a strategic way.

On other aspects of the Bill, I welcome the speeding up and clarification on land assets and conveyancing. Purchasing and conveyancing in the UK is nothing like as fast as it is in some other countries, and I hope that the efficiencies there will bring benefits. We should take on board the comments made about the possibility of fraud, when you have a highly computerised system. With people not understanding the process, there are dangers.

In Part 4 there is the discussion of indigenous oil and gas, as the Minister rightly emphasised. Will this be a possible source of energy for the UK via fracking? It is important to consider all the environmental costs. It is unknown by many in Britain, as we have been told here by visiting American politicians, that in the energy Bill proposed by President Bush he explicitly said that the costs of water and water clean-up would not be ascribed to the energy. It is therefore really important that all the environmental costs should be ascribed to the energy benefits or costs of fracking. It would be useful to have that point clearly made. The assumption in all the discussions is that you put a pipe down in the ground and oil or gas will come up out of the pipe. But the point about the experience of America is that, once you start really forcing the structure of the ground well below, you can get a release of gas coming up through other cracks, and some of these—as you can see when you look at the photographs from North Dakota—are very serious indeed. You can see flames popping up in between the nodding donkey gas extractors. There are still significant features of the chemistry of shale that need to be understood, when the shale is there in the presence of water. I visited a chemistry lab at the University of Leicester where they are studying this, and they pointed out that there were still important research questions to be assessed.

Another feature of Part 4 is the encouragement to build more energy-saving houses, as the Minister explained, with technology solutions that should of course include not only new sorts of emission but also ventilation and insulation, which are serious problems. Noble Lords might be interested to know that there is a nice book in the Library, which I edited, called London’s Environment, published in 2005, in which we described in great detail the excitement of the House of Lords committees at that time about what was happening in some of the new housing developments, in BedZED and Woking, some of which were looked at by many other countries. The Minister was right to imply that much of this technology is known, but the question is now to push this out and to ensure that it is available to social houses. I am afraid to say that some social housing is particularly bad with regard to insulation and ventilation, and this causes ill health, so housing for the whole community must be at an appropriate level.

Clause 26 in Part 4 has this very important development, which has been quite widespread in other European countries, in involving community investment in renewable energy. In Denmark, it had a great impact on involving people in their local wind farm installations. As the Bill describes it at the moment, it is a question of the community investing in the generation; there is no discussion that I have seen about generating local electrical networks. Woking was a borough run with no overall control, and some people say that that is why the Woking experiment or development worked so well—but that is a political point. It was at any rate extremely innovative, and Mayor Livingstone said that he wanted to make London look like Woking. That did not quite happen, but it was an ambition. One important point that was made was that the people in Woking could use a local electrical network and then the price of electricity that they paid for was much reduced. I suspect that the scheme being envisaged here is that community people might benefit to some extent from the income to the generators, but will they get cheap electricity out of their electrical plug to their kettle? I am not so sure about that. It is very important to have this done in an integrated way.

Finally, it is very important that if communities are to be involved in fracking, as has been suggested—I think that the Minister suggested that—they must also contribute to the costs. As others have emphasised, these costs include roadways and destruction of the local bio-environment, as well as the costs of the water supply and clean-up and recycling. So it is not just a free lunch. There will be quite considerable investment in all of that—but I believe that if the community is involved the right answer might be obtained.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, the briefing notes accompanying the Bill say that its purpose is to:

“Bolster investment in infrastructure by allowing stable long-term funding, deliver better value for money and relieve unnecessary administrative pressures. The Bill would increase transparency of information provision and improve planning processes, allowing us to get Britain building for our future and compete in the global race”.

I do not think that any noble Lords who have taken part in this debate could disagree with those motives. Indeed, we have had an interesting debate on whether or not the Bill will deliver what this country desperately needs—a modern, efficient infrastructure to allow the economy to continue to grow.

When I served in the Scottish Parliament, my constituency had the unenviable record of being the largest area in Europe not served by a railway line. That is being corrected as the Borders Railway is finally being restored following its closure in 1969. I was intimately involved in that process during my time in the Scottish Parliament. I had the unenviable record of serving on the Scottish parliamentary committee that approved the Edinburgh tram scheme, which I confess I did not readily admit to Edinburgh taxi drivers when I was a passenger in their cabs. Therefore, I am fully aware of the complexity involved in bringing to fruition the infrastructure that we need.

The Borders Railway was a difficult project which the Scottish Government had wanted to fund—I think erroneously—through what they claimed was an innovative funding route, but which I was concerned was an untested and unsure funding route. However, the Government ultimately changed their position on that and are now using the regulated asset base for United Kingdom funding. I am pleased to note that the Scottish National Party is using United Kingdom infrastructure funding support to deliver a Scottish infrastructure project. The tram scheme, which the Scottish Parliament approved but was not subsequently built in full, is costing £125 million a mile. Some people refer to gold-plated infrastructure projects, but, as regards that scheme, the track itself could be said to be gold-plated. Our national objective is to ensure that the private and public sectors have the necessary professional capacity in this regard as well as proper planning and legislative frameworks. One thing that has not emerged in the debate so far is the factor which can make an infrastructure project—whether it involves transport, housing or energy—successful or a source of difficulty, as with the trams, and that is the professional capacity of the teams that put these projects together. If this Bill is to be successful, the projects which it seeks to deliver in a more efficient way will be delivered only if there is that professional capacity.

I wish to devote the rest of my remarks to an issue that was referred to in the gracious Speech and in the Minister’s introduction to this debate—offshore oil and gas. However, that issue is not included in the Bill. I will not draw the conclusion drawn by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—namely, that we will have to legislate for that aspect on the hoof. The Wood review reported to my right honourable friend Edward Davey on 24 February this year. That review is a substantive piece of work with significant consequences for the whole of the United Kingdom oil and gas sector. Given the timeframe within which the Wood review reported to the Government, it is understandable that amendments to the Bill on that issue will have to be tabled during its passage through Parliament. Agreement will have to be reached with the industry to ensure that the legislation is as robust as possible. The clear commitment that was given by the Government in accepting Sir Ian Wood’s conclusions and recommendations in full has been welcomed by the industry. Similarly, the statement in the gracious Speech that this year’s legislative programme will contain measures to allow for “maximising North Sea resources” is also welcome.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

The noble Lord seems to be proposing a new constitutional principle, whereby the Government say that they have an idea but they are not sure what it is, so they say, “Here is a Bill. When we have done some more thinking on it, we will introduce it”. This could be applied across the board. That is not how Parliament works. Is this a new procedure being advocated by the noble Lord’s Benches, in which case could he give us his own little background constitutional paper as to how Parliament should work on this basis?

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

The noble Lord obviously has more experience in this House than I have. I am a mere new Member. However, as a mere new Member, I have been an observer of parliamentary procedure for long enough to realise that it is perfectly common for a Government to table amendments, which on occasion have been substantive. Indeed, over many years the party opposite has tabled amendments on substantive points. My point, which the noble Lord unfortunately did not take on board but which I hope others will and will be more charitable in understanding it, is that when legislation is being brought forward which will make a significant contribution to the success of the British economy, it is best done after proper and due participation and consultation with the sector which it will legislate. That is why the Government have indicated that they will bring forward measures before Committee, as the Minister said in her opening speech, to which the noble Lord no doubt listened.

In the debate on the gracious Speech in another place, the Prime Minister gave a strong indication to my honourable friend Sir Robert Smith, the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, in relation to the oil and gas industry:

“My hon. Friend speaks very powerfully for his constituency and for that absolutely vital industry which, as he says, is vital not just for Scotland, but for the whole of the United Kingdom. We are going to make sure that the recommendations of the Wood review are included in our infrastructure Bill, which is a key Bill at the heart of this Queen’s Speech”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/6/14; col. 27.]

The Prime Minister was right: this is a vital sector. Therefore, I hope that during the passage of this Bill we will give due consideration to the impact which that sector makes to the whole United Kingdom economy. It is 50 years since the first licences were issued. Some 42 billion barrels of oil have already been produced and up to 20 billion more could still be produced. The United Kingdom continental shelf production meets 60% of UK oil demand and 50% of UK gas demand and directly and indirectly supports 450,000 jobs across the UK. It paid 9% of all UK corporate taxes in the last financial year, which is 2% of all United Kingdom tax receipts. Decommissioning relief introduced by this Government represents around 1% of our GDP.

The Government intend to include measures in the Bill to take forward the recommendations of the Wood review. The Bill provides us with an excellent opportunity to ensure that the UK continental shelf is able to face the very complex and difficult challenges which lie ahead. Although more than £14 billion was invested in the continental shelf in 2013—a record amount—production has fallen by 37% between 2010 and 2013, and production efficiency has fallen from 80% in 2004 to 60% in 2012. Rising exploration costs and falling success rates have led to fewer wells being drilled. This was the background to Sir Ian Wood being asked by my right honourable friend Edward Davey to carry out a review into how the UK continental shelf can maximise economic recovery for the whole of the United Kingdom.

Sir Ian Wood’s four recommendations are significant. Two of them in particular require legislative change in this Parliament; and both will, I hope, be the source of proper scrutiny when the Bill passes through Parliament. One is to create a new arm’s-length regulatory body to ensure that there is collaboration in exploration, development and production across the industry. Although it will be arm’s-length from the Government, they will be a partner. My right honourable friend Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary, only last week indicated at the Oil and Gas UK conference that the Government accept this recommendation in full. He also announced that the authority should be called the “Oil and Gas Authority” and be based in Aberdeen. As regards the other recommendation of Sir Ian Wood, my honourable friend said that it will ensure that protocols and processes will be in place for dispute resolution and for ensuring that there is better co-ordination and collaboration among the industry, and that the licensing regime will be rationalised. All these measures will require proper and full scrutiny by Parliament. That is why the signal in the Queen’s Speech and the Minister’s announcement are significant.

Another area that has been touched on is taxation and revenue. The Government have stated that the new oil and gas authority will carry out a wholesale review of the ring-fenced tax regime for the oil and gas industry. This has the potential to be a hugely significant piece of work, which will have repercussions not only for the Scottish economy, where the oil and gas sector represents nearly one-third of the entire GDP, but for the United Kingdom as a whole.

Finally, I seek further clarification from the Minister. It was welcome that she indicated that it is the Government’s intention to bring forward amendments before Committee, but is it the Government’s intention that those amendments will cover all the recommendations of the Wood review on the relationship with industry, how clear they will be on the funding of the authority, and how that authority will take forward its work on the fiscal review? Sir Ian Wood gave a clear steer that he wanted the new authority and regulator, and his recommendations, to be taken on board so that the industry can look forward with confidence to a strong and clear regulatory regime and licensing for the future of the sector. It is the Government’s intention; I hope that it is Parliament’s will and that no further constitutional theory needs to be put forward to ensure that the future of the oil and gas sector is as strong as it can be, so that we can rely on it well into the future.

Britain’s Industrial Base

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and thank my noble friend Lord Adonis for introducing it. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Marland, to his new role. He made a tremendous commitment to nuclear energy and I hope he has passed on the message to his successor at DECC. You cannot have all sweet—a little sour is necessary—so I have to remind him of when he got rather agitated at an all-party meeting on energy-intensive industry and suddenly loosed off. He said, “The UK should become the corner shop of the world”. We wondered about that as it was an unusual ambition, and one hopes he meant the laboratory and workshop of the world. That is what I want to refer to.

Following the focus of the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, on national laboratories and technological centres, all countries of the world have hitherto regarded them as an essential part of a technological economy, but not the UK. I worked in an industrial lab in the 1960s. At that time, we had fantastic, world-leading laboratories in electricity, gas, water resources, railways and hydraulics. They are all gone. Since the 1990s, we have lost the Royal Radar Establishment, the Royal Aircraft Establishment and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. They all played an essential role in providing advice and development, in testing new technology and in stimulating thousands of small companies. A few national centres have survived, such as the National Physical Laboratory, the Laboratory of the Government Chemist, Cefas, the Building Research establishment, the Culham laboratories and, I am glad to say, the Met Office. You can read about why the Met Office survived and about its history in the House of Lords Library.

However, a similar story also took place in the major industrial laboratories, which were world leading. We had two major oil company laboratories, one in Cheshire and one in Surrey. I am glad to hear that BP has now reversed its policy and is expanding its strength. We had amazing electrical engineering laboratories in Leicester, Stafford and Essex. I remember an advertisement in the 1960s for English Electric laboratories. It said, “Come and solve the Navier-Stokes equation and the problems of fluid mechanics”. That does not happen now. As other noble Lords have emphasised—but not very many—we still have the world-class Rolls Royce centre and its remarkable network of university laboratories. Its approach was very different from elsewhere, and other countries have copied it. It is true that university research has expanded greatly in the UK, as in other countries, and we have new high-tech companies—in which I declare an interest as chairman of a small high-tech company—but these institutions are not the same as the technological base. The exception, perhaps, is Warwick’s engineering centre, which has the roles of national technology base and university.

What is the future of our technological industrial base? There is no plan or even principle that one can discern, and one asks whether the UK will become a major technological economy again. The evidence is that the greatest success comes through international collaboration. We are, in fact, part of Europe and some of our major laboratories are now collaborations. One way of looking to the future is by looking at the market opportunities, such as aviation, in which we have Rolls Royce and Airbus. One of the interesting points about the 1960s—and I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—is that there is a general statement that there were great mistakes about electronics and aviation. The French say that building Concorde was the essential breakthrough to persuade the Americans that Europe could produce an aeroplane that flew regularly and safely to America, and that without Concorde we would never have had Airbus. In Britain, Concorde is often regarded as an industrial mistake, but in France it was regarded as the way to enter the market. High technology enables you to enter markets.

The other point of the House of Lords Committee concerned why we have a very good software industry. The answer is Harold Wilson because he said that we not only had the white heat of technology but that we wanted to have transputers. Nobody had ever heard of them in the 1960s, but that was the basis of our extraordinary software industry. That is the reason why governmental and department initiatives are important, as well as research centres.

The other important point, which other noble Lords have mentioned, is that we must look forward to the long-term needs which will have strong technology input. My noble friend Lord Adonis referred to infrastructure for dykes, roads and buildings. The extraordinary thing about the Netherlands is that they put them together and put windmills on their dykes, which saves 40% of the cost of the windmills. We need energy, whether wind or nuclear. This Government have been very strong in advocating space. We now essentially have a government lab—it is a European government lab in Harwell—for making use of space. Looking forward, are we simply to rely upon industry and universities to provide the technological base, or should we reconsider establishing a new technological base, making use of them but, in addition, making use of government resources?

Finally, I emphasise the importance of good graduate engineers, which other noble Lords have mentioned. I was talking to colleagues this morning. The difficulty in the UK is that we have some universities with an extremely demanding curriculum producing extremely good engineers, but too many schools and universities do not have such a demanding level and German companies say that they do not correspond to the standards in Germany. In Germany, engineers are paid almost as much as lawyers. In Britain, engineers are paid half the salary of lawyers. Lawyers work extremely hard at university because of the high pay at the end of it. How are we going to solve that? I do not know. I leave that to the Minister.

Civil Aviation Bill

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I do not know what the scope of general and business aviation covers but what about the increasing number of hot air balloons that go around the country? Some are quite high; some are propelled, some are not; some make noise—I do not think it is as serious a problem as surface noise, to which the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, referred earlier—but they should not go anywhere near airports. What regulation is there for them if they get near airports and in the air generally? It is probably a problem for air traffic control.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I support the amendment as part of my philosophy of more than 20 years of noting that public servants in Britain who work in agencies—I used to run the Met Office in civil aviation—do not have as part of their job description a requirement to help British commerce and industry. The leader of the Conservatives today said that growth in this country will only come about from businessmen and entrepreneurs. He is wrong. It will also come about from civil servants working with industry to create environments in which these things happen.

It is quite extraordinary that in no case is the job description of any civil servant such that he is judged at the end of the year on how he has done in his service and also promoted industry. This is a good example. The role of the CAA is enormously important for industry. Surely part of the role of the Secretary of State will be to define the terms of reference of the director of the CAA in that direction. The amendment takes us in that direction.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 3 and 9, and perhaps Amendment 11 as well. Like my noble friend Lord Rotherwick, I have a connection with what used to be called the Popular Flying Association, of which I was once the president. Indeed, in that capacity, on one famous occasion, I was lucky enough to fly the then Aviation Minister to open the PFA annual rally. Who was the Aviation Minister? He was none other than my noble friend Lord Goschen, and I am glad to say that we were met with tumultuous applause. As I recall, the only problem was some very nasty weather, about which I had to go to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, at the Met Office because we felt that we had not really had proper warning. Happily, all the matters were properly resolved eventually.

General aviation is a very important part of the aviation industry and of aviation activity as a whole. It is quite properly regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority, including the hot air balloons to which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred. Indeed, a few months ago, I had the privilege of flying in one. I must warn your Lordships that it is very exciting and great fun, except the landing. You usually end up in a heap on the grass, but that is for another time. However, general aviation is crucial. Amendments 3 and 9, which were tabled by my noble friend Lord Rotherwick, are important and relevant, and I hope the Minister will be sympathetic, at least, to the aspirations of those amendments, or perhaps will even agree to them.

Civil Aviation Bill

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, this Bill provides a modernising regulatory framework for civil aviation in the UK. However, because of the UK’s international leadership, this impacts across the world. A modern framework is necessary for a world-class aviation industry, including aviation services, and for taking a leading role in ensuring global safety and minimising any adverse environmental impact. I declare an interest as a former chief executive of the Met Office, which still receives funds from the Civil Aviation Authority, and I am grateful to the Met Office for providing me with some up-to-date information. I am also a director of an environmental consulting company that works for aviation in other places. I also provided evidence on behalf of BALPA in the 1970s, so I have worked on both sides of the fence.

This Bill is based on the strategic review of the CAA by Sir Joseph Pilling in 2008 for the previous Government and, as the Minister explained, on other recent studies. Aviation is a great technical achievement of engineering and meteorology, and increasingly environmental science. As a boy in 1953, I flew in a Comet 1 a week before the first one crashed. This is something I learnt about when I was a student at Cambridge, where I looked at extraordinary movies of the Comet 1 fuselage being pummelled by forces until it cracked. As a result, I have a sober view of these matters. Since then, aircraft have become safer and less dangerous than any form of surface transport. At the same time, aircraft have become more technologically advanced, with less fuel per passenger mile, and with better air traffic control. The new planes for the next generation—which were discussed earlier—are now being considered by Airbus. As far as I can see, they will look something like the wing fuselage designs familiar to noble Lords who used to read the Eagle in the 1950s, and familiar to Dan Dare. They should also be quieter.

The development of aircraft and engine design has reflected the increase in demand for smaller environmental impact. Noise has certainly reduced, as anybody living in London knows. In the 1990s, however, a major engine manufacturer asked at the Royal Society why engine design should take into account emissions of gaseous pollutants. That was then and here we are now with huge changes in policy and design. The new Rolls-Royce engines are as good as any in the world; it is a world leader. The Bill needs to strengthen and keep pressure on industry, as my noble friend Lord Davies mentioned in his opening remarks.

The operation of aircraft also depends greatly on accurate weather forecasts. Forecasts help with the safety and economic operation of aeroplanes. The Met Office reckons that the level of error in the estimation of a flight from Los Angeles to London is now 62 seconds, if the issues are solely to do with the meteorology. However, the real problems with aeroplanes are to do with airports, and indeed whether the aeroplanes are in the right place at the right time.

UK airlines have an excellent record of safety, greatly helped by these forecasts, both before take-off and during flight. It is an important responsibility of the CAA to fund the services of the Met Office and to ensure that it and other organisations remain at the highest technical level. For example, new methods of detecting lightning are now available for civilian forecasts. These were formerly secret. Indeed, it was lightning in the Atlantic which brought down the Air France Airbus a couple of years ago. These are still very important issues.

Noble Lords might not know that an aircraft flight above 24,000 feet receives data and forecasts from the UK and the US weather services. The World Area Forecast System provides this information for all airlines in all countries. Independent observers note that the UK forecasts are improving faster than any others. Payments to the Met Office of £30 million per year come from Eurocontrol, to which the CAA contributes.

As my noble friend Lord Davies and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, reminded us, local weather is very important, and this is the responsibility of local weather services. One of the most difficult problems remains forecasting and advising aircraft in situations of extreme local weather, where there are special local factors. The Met Office and European weather services provided very valuable information about the effects of the ash from the Icelandic volcano, which required a new level of collaboration between the Government, the aircraft industry and environmental services. Indeed, there was a special meeting of the European Parliament to discuss this. This is an example of where science and engineering can provide services around the world.

My question to the Minister is whether it is a role of the CAA to encourage this important area of UK business. I have made the point over and over again that most chief executives of most technical agencies in the UK have no explicit responsibility to help UK industry. Would you believe it? That is the position. Other countries do not have that restriction, as I know from my experience. It was not on my job list at all. I sometimes used to ask about that. The UK does not use its agencies to help its very considerable possibilities for export, and I hope that might be considered in the Bill. Clause 84 refers to the environment of airports, and as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said, this is associated with aircraft pollution, noise and surface transport which provide most of the pollutant gases near Heathrow. If you look at a map of London pollution there is a great blob at Heathrow associated with surface transportation traffic.

This is of course being studied intensively. The UK has developed methods, which improve on the standard methods of the United States, for studying aircraft pollution at take-off and landing, as was announced by a Minister in 2007. There is much more that could be done. In Japan the airports are using electricity from solar collectors on their large airport roofs. There are no large solar collectors on London airport roofs. There are enormous possibilities here. The electricity from these solar collectors in Japan goes straight to the aircraft, so you do not have aircraft running their engines, producing pollution and so on. This is the kind of development that the CAA could be pushing.

The climate impact of aviation is serious and growing, but it is still less than shipping. The CAA should have a strong role in pushing the industry in the right direction, and discussing taxation regimes to ensure that aircraft operations have reduced emissions. One of these is to go more slowly, and the other is to use more technology, especially technology on the ground. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, noted that the CAA will be taking responsibility for the health of passengers, especially regarding air flow. I wonder whether the CAA will also take responsibility in taking an interest in all passengers on aeroplanes. I am informed that the air flow to first class and business passengers is considerably greater than to those in economy class. Some noble Lords travel in economy class and will therefore be very interested in ensuring that there is an equitable distribution of air flow in aeroplanes. It is palpable that it is not equitable at the moment, and it is well known in the industry. Indeed, I am going to Rio tomorrow economy class because it has less environmental impact. Not everybody goes to Rio in economy class, and I do it out of environmental principle.

The overall issue for the CAA, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, is not just efficiency, which is important, but also effectiveness and excellence, and in promoting to other countries what we do well. That aspect is missing from the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, implied.

The question, then, is not just about the publication and dissemination of data but about the responsibility for action and forward planning. The CAA has no chief scientist or chief engineer. The Department for Transport has a chief scientist but that person’s impact on this whole issue is not particularly obvious. The result is that the CAA must rely on information from other agencies such as the Met Office, the Department of Health, Defra, universities, NERC and so on. However, the pioneer role of the CAA should be promoted in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Countess will recognise that these are complex matters. I will write to her on all the points she raised.

The noble Lord, Lord Soley, asked if the Bill will cover military airports and whether they could be exempted under Clause 77. In certain circumstances, military airports can be exempted from economic regulation under Chapter 1 and Clause 77.

My noble friend Lord Bradshaw was concerned about the market power test set out in Clause 6. His specific concern was that unless an airport operator has market power, it should not be regulated. I would like to reassure my noble friend that, under the Bill, where an airport does not and is unlikely to acquire substantial market power, it will not be made subject to economic regulation. It is a specific requirement of the market power test in Clause 6.

The noble Lord, Lord Rogan, talked about the aviation needs of Northern Ireland. The Government and the Civil Aviation Authority have no role in the slot allocation process. EC regulations established a mechanism for the allocation of slots at congested airports. This has been transposed into UK law under the Airports Slot Allocation Regulations 2006, which came into effect on 1 January 2007. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Manchester and London City airports are all designated by the Secretary of State for Transport as co-ordinated airports with their slot allocations managed by Airport Coordination Limited, an independent company which has powers under the UK regulations to monitor the conformity of air carriers’ operations with the slots allocated to them, and to take enforcement action against those airlines that do not operate according to the regulations, in particular by introducing sanctions for slot misuse. The ring-fencing of slots at Heathrow to protect regional services, other than where a public service obligation has been implemented, would be incompatible with EU law. The UK has highlighted the issue of regional connectivity with the European Commission in the context of the current reform of the EU slot regulations and is exploring the scope for including measures to help secure the ongoing provision of air services between UK regions and congested London airports. Beginning this summer, Commission working groups will examine the slot proposals, and I commend the work of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who has been extremely active and effective in Brussels.

The noble Lords, Lord Davies of Oldham and Lord Davies of Stamford, commented on the UK Border Force. It is not covered by the Civil Aviation Bill and is accountable to Ministers and Parliament as a Home Office agency. Queues at airports are caused by many factors, including the border force receiving incorrect flight manifests and early or late airplane arrivals, resulting in bunching. The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship is reviewing what additional data may be published by the Home Office and shared with port operators. Meanwhile, the UK Border Force has responded to recent problems with queues in a number of ways. It is tackling short-term peaks with a pool of trained staff, and working with airports and airlines to ensure that they provide more accurate passenger manifests and flight schedules so that the force can flexibly deploy staff at the right times and in the right places. It is creating a new central control room for the UK Border Force at Heathrow that will use mobile teams for rapid deployment, and it will implement new rostering and shift patterns. It is also working with Gatwick and Heathrow airports to improve passenger flows using more specific measures such as e-gates and other biometric checks.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked why there is no obligation on the CAA to require airports to develop passenger welfare plans. The indicative licence prepared by the CAA included, at the request of the Department for Transport, an example condition that would strengthen an airport’s resilience where appropriate. The proposals contained in Condition 7 require the licence holder to operate the airport efficiently and to use its “best endeavours” to minimise any detriment to passengers arising from disruption. It would also require the airport to draw up, consult on and gain the CAA’s approval for an annual resilience plan setting out how it will secure compliance with its obligations under the condition. The licence holder would be obliged to comply with the commitments it has made in its resilience plan.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, mentioned the issue of the difference in the quality of the air between first and economy class. The air is the same throughout an aircraft. First class seats and economy class seats are usually separated by a curtain, which is not an airtight medium.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

I was talking about the volume of air. We know that there is air, but the question is how much of it is circulating. That is a very clear distinction.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, if I have anything further to add, I will write to the noble Lord.

My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding raised the issue of consolidation. We should strive to produce legislation that is comprehensible to those who have to operate it and to those who are affected by it, and the consolidation of statute law can make a valuable contribution to this. Consolidation can take different forms. On the one hand, there can be what we call “formal consolidation”, which reproduces a law on a particular topic without any changes. On the other hand, a Bill may reproduce existing law with amendments. In recent years, fewer formal consolidation measures have been prepared than previously. One reason for this has been the change to the way that Parliament amends legislation. Amendments are now routinely made by textual amendment; that is, by inserting, removing or replacing text in the original statute. The need to consolidate simply to take account of textual changes has therefore largely disappeared. The approach taken in the Civil Aviation Bill is sometimes to make brand new provisions, as in Part 1, and sometimes to textually amend existing legislation, as in Part 2. When drafting the Bill, the changes being made did not appear to call for the rewriting of the law relating to civil aviation or aviation security. The specific textual amendments to other Acts made by the Bill show more clearly the changes that are being made than would a provision which replaced the whole of the legislation being amended, with the changes buried somewhere in the middle.

I have endeavoured to respond to many of the valuable points made by noble Lords, but time does not allow me to respond to all the points that have been made, no matter how good they are. I will read Hansard carefully and write to those noble Lords who have asked me questions that I have not been able to answer. I will also be delighted to have meetings with noble Lords outside the Chamber to look at the detail of these matters. This is only the first opportunity to formally discuss the Civil Aviation Bill in your Lordships’ House, and I look forward to debating it with noble Lords in Committee.

Building Regulations (Review) Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Friday 4th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Harrison and wish to pick up on a couple of his points.

Sadly, this yet another story of UK buildings and accommodation that are of a somewhat lower standard than in the best continental countries. In many of those countries not only water sprinklers are used, but fine-spray systems that are set off by smoke. One of the extraordinary things about the 9/11 event was that huge numbers of sprinklers did not operate, because those of a classical nature operate on temperature, not smoke. It is perfectly possible to install a system that starts to spray a low level of water when there is smoke and then a higher level of water when there is a high temperature.

It can be demonstrated in a lab. I was so appalled by the situation that I went to Holland, carried out some experiments and then tried to get companies involved. However, the UK is the old UK and that did not work. The Building Research Establishment does not seem to have produced this kind of adaptive technology. Perhaps if there is now an initial programme in Wales, although we should watch it, we should also, as my noble friend Lord Harrison said, make use of international research and, I hope, develop the capability in this country to install flexible systems.

Huge amounts of water such as those needed for classical sprinklers may well be unnecessary if there are smoke alarms, as now, and water spray systems. It may well be a cheaper and faster method that should certainly be looked at. I endorse the amendment.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I support the amendment and the Bill. I declare my interest in the building of new homes for older people as the chairman of the Hanover Housing Association, which is the country’s largest builder of extra care apartments.

At previous stages of the Bill and in its previous incarnation, I congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on his interest and expertise in this subject and strongly supported the idea of a comprehensive review of this aspect of the building regulations. I know that some of my colleagues in the housing world are concerned at the potential cost of fitting sprinkler systems in residential premises, and a full cost-benefit analysis should reveal whether or not those worries are well placed. Some of those colleagues have had non-financial concerns.

One chief executive of a major provider of new apartments told me that the policy of his organisation was that in the event of a fire alarm being set off, residents should stay put in their flats, each of which is secure against fire, for long enough to await the fire being put out—or, very exceptionally, for them to be rescued. He felt that sprinkler systems in the whole building would lead to residents vacating their flats, perhaps in a panic, and placing themselves at greater risk in the corridors and stairways outside. I am not at all sure that these fears are justified, and if a fire is started within a flat, as it so often is, it can be extinguished only inside that flat, which is where the sprinklers would be so valuable.

A positive reason for the installation of sprinkler systems in older people’s housing, one that appeals to me, is the possibilities that this opens up, apart from the potential for saving lives, of increased flexibility in the design of new buildings—the internal design. In other countries it has been possible to do without a lot of clumsy lobbies and internal walls which are required for fire protection but which can waste space and give a boxed-in feel to the environment. Sprinklers can liberate an open-plan design, sometimes with dividers to separate living, sleeping, cooking and eating areas, without enclosing and confining the whole space of the apartment. I think that sprinklers may have some spin-offs in terms of the design of apartments, some of which are in themselves a saving of the capital cost of those new homes.

Incidentally, I was pleased to note that fires started by cigarettes left burning, perhaps because a smoker falls asleep, are less likely in the future not only because fewer people smoke but because cigarettes will be required to no longer smoulder but to go out if left to their own devices.

All those considerations can be brought together in a review, and it seems entirely sensible for that to proceed now in the hope that it will shed light, and perhaps lead to important changes to the building regulations. On the basis that a review is more likely to be acceptable to government if the timescale is not too constrained, I support the noble Lord’s amendment and hope that the Government will accept that a review should proceed.