Railway (Licensing of Railway Undertakings) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Snape

Thursday 21st March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Berkeley said. I feel very passionately on this subject. First, one of the great things we have seen in the past two decades is the expansion of cross-border rail services. It is important for freight, where in the long term we want to try to take as much lorry traffic off the roads as possible, and it is also very important for expanding passenger networks across Europe and providing a real alternative to air travel, which has damaging effects on climate. I understand my noble friend’s concerns about why we are not promoting the maximum exchange of information and co-operation with our European partners in the event of Brexit.

Secondly, I would like assurances about rail services on the island of Ireland. This is very important to good relations between Britain and Ireland. The development of railways on the island of Ireland is a way of encouraging tourism in north and south. I would like to hear from the Minister that nothing is being done that will in any way be a barrier to the development of that co-operation.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, having left the station before the right of way signal, perhaps I can start again and apologise to the House for—mixing my metaphors—jumping the gun. On this occasion, I shall confine my remarks to the train driving regulations and will discuss the other matter later. I presume I will be in order, which will stop my noble friend on the Front Bench again waving at me in a somewhat frantic fashion.

As my noble friend Lord Berkeley says, I do not think we are getting clarification on these matters. I suspect confusion is likely to arise, depending on how these regulations are implemented. Irish railways have been mentioned. Can the Minister say whether the new licences to be issued for Northern Ireland will be specific to that part of the United Kingdom or be valid throughout the United Kingdom and whether they will be recognised on, for example, the Enterprise service between Belfast and Dublin? What discussions have taken place between our Government and the Irish Government about the future of that service?

How long will the new licences last? My noble friend mentioned a two-year interim period, but what happens after that? A lot of discussions need to take place as a result of this wretched decision that the Prime Minister is apparently going to insist upon. Whether she gets it through the other place remains to be seen.

How much discussion has there been about the long-term effect of this change? After all, train drivers are no longer required to retire by law, but they normally stop train driving in their 60s and many of them will have been driving for a considerable period. Will these licences need to be renewed on a regular basis?

Overall, this is another example of the bureaucracy that will be created as a result of this decision. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how many people in her department will have to be employed to issue the licences and check their validity. Perhaps she can also tell us whether the standards that are now commonplace across Europe will continue to be commonplace in the United Kingdom or whether, at the whim of this or some other Secretary of State, the conditions under which the licences are issued will be altered? These are all matters that result directly from the, in my view, disastrous decision that we are about to take.

I will return to the other regulations at a proper time. They will possibly be even more likely to dislocate the railway industry than these regulations. However, there are still some outstanding questions about the licences, and I would be grateful if the Minister could at least take on board our fears and reassure us.

Railways (Interoperability) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Snape

Thursday 21st March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friends Lord Berkeley and Lord Snape in their opposition to this measure and add my regrets that we are not pursuing a fatal Motion on this issue. My interest in this is personal. I am a railway clerk’s son from Carlisle and I have always been passionate about the railways. My first job in national politics was as special adviser to the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, when he was Secretary of State for Transport, so I have a personal connection. Also, I happened to learn quite a lot about the detail of this SI from being a member of your Lordships’ EU Sub-Committee on the Internal Market, chaired so wonderfully by my noble friend Lord Whitty. The Secretary of State appeared as a witness before us on these questions and it was absolutely plain that the reason he wanted to withdraw from the European agency was nothing more than ideology. He could not stand the fact that standards would be set by Europe. That is what we face all the time from Ministers in this Government. There is no pragmatism about Brexit, so why do noble Lords think we are in trouble? It is because of that absolute absence of any pragmatism.

When we had that hour-long disquisition by the Secretary of State, I raised the issue of the manufacturing plants, which, as my noble friend Lord Snape said, are now foreign-owned but based in Britain. My noble friend Lord Adonis is not in his place but I know that a remarkable achievement of his—one of many, by the way—when he was Secretary of State for Transport was to get Hitachi to establish a plant in Durham that would manufacture trains.

[Lord Snape]

I hate to interrupt my noble friend in full flow, but may I point out to him that that plant in Durham is not a manufacturing plant, it is an assembly plant? That is the great weakness of British industry these days. We put together materials and trains that are built elsewhere. That is what we are going to do in Durham.

[Lord Liddle]

I quite accept the point made by my noble friend but it is better than nothing and it provides hundreds of jobs in Durham. While my noble friend says it is just an assembly plant, how could such a plant operate in Britain if we decided to have different technical standards from those on the continent? That would completely destroy the business model on which that inward investment had been made.