Railways (Safety, Access, Management and Interoperability) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provision) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Grand Committee

Finally—the Minister referred to this in her speech—this SI uses the “made affirmative” procedure. The Minister concerned has attested that this procedure is necessary because this is an urgent piece of legislation, but it is no longer urgent. It was urgent when we were leaving on 31 October or possibly leaving without a deal, but it is no longer urgent until we get to the January deadline. Circumstances have changed. I am concerned, and want to put on record, that the Government have not rethought their approach to this SI and have continued to use this procedure even though the circumstances have changed.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for explaining the content and purpose of this draft statutory instrument, which relates to a no-deal scenario. I also thank the Minister and her officials for the meeting yesterday. I do not think that anything I am going to say will come entirely as a surprise to the Minister and I am afraid that I will repeat some of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson.

I have a number of questions about the content of the Explanatory Memorandum, some of which will, no doubt, relate to issues about which I am still not entirely clear. First, how does an EU portable Part A safety certificate currently differ from a Part A safety certificate from the Office of Rail and Road, if at all, and how will they differ in the future? When introducing this SI, the Minister said that the two-year period to which this SI relates,

“provides an appropriate amount of time in which industry can prepare and align themselves with the Great British domestic certification regime”,

before going on to talk about it giving Great Britain “appropriate control”. In the light of that comment about giving time for the industry to prepare and align itself with the British domestic certification regime, what will the industry have to do in the two-year period to achieve that preparation and alignment with the British domestic certification regime? What actions will it have to take, because there has been talk of there being similarity between the two? It would be helpful if that comment could be clarified; it was also made by the Transport Minister in the Commons when the SI was debated there. I am not entirely clear about what the industry will have to do in that two-year period to prepare and to align itself with the domestic certification regime.

Will operators of services travelling from mainland Europe to the UK require both a UK Part A safety certificate and a Part A certificate issued in an EU member state? Clarification on that point would be helpful. Will a mainland Europe operator with a Part A certificate issued in an EU member state have to acquire a UK Part A safety certificate before bidding for a rail franchise, or will it have to acquire such a certificate only if it is successful in its franchise bid?

What is the position for a train operator in Northern Ireland? What Part A certificate will it require? Will it be a UK one or an EU member state one? Paragraph 4.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum, headed “Extent and Territorial Application”, suggests that, in Northern Ireland, an operator will have an EU member state-issued Part A safety certificate because, as I understand it, it is not covered by the part of the SI that relates to the Part A safety certificates. Once again, some clarification of that issue would be extremely helpful.

In addition, if an operator in Northern Ireland has an EU member state-issued Part A safety certificate, who will issue it and who has issued the current Part A safety certificate? Who has issued the current one and who will issue a future one if the train operator in Northern Ireland had an EU member state Part A certificate rather than one issued by the Office of Rail and Road?

I want to make two points on the Explanatory Memorandum, one of which is exactly the one made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about paragraph 2.5. I know that I am repeating what has already been said but, to recap, it states:

“The UK notified the Commission on 29 November 2018 that it intended to transpose the recast Railway Safety Directive by the later permitted transposition deadline of June 2020, though this will depend on the nature of Brexit on 31 October 2019”.


My question is slightly different from that posed by the noble Baroness and is simply to ask what the current position is on transposing the recast directive. Since the memorandum refers to it being dependent on the nature of Brexit, how will the nature of Brexit affect the transposition?

Finally, paragraph 2.11 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that, once the UK has left the EU:

“There will be an opportunity for the UK to shape its own railway to meet the needs of our passengers and freight shippers”.


What will we be able to do in the future to shape our own railway that the Government are in effect saying we cannot do at the moment under the present arrangements? I am not entirely clear on the answer to that question.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for this short debate on the SI before us. A number of issues have been raised and I look forward to trying to answer as many questions as possible. As ever, I will write if I miss out anything.

As I would expect from a leading Liberal Democrat, we heard the usual question: “What happens if we don’t leave the EU?” It is quite right for the noble Baroness to pose that question. That is obviously not government policy, so not a huge amount of work has gone into it—but the noble Baroness will know that, in the event that the UK does not leave the EU, all the work that we in government are doing at the moment on no-deal preparations, including these SIs, could be revoked. The SIs would simply fall away.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about the recast of our safety directive. That point is very important and is in flow at the moment; we will certainly need to consider it at some point next year. The recast Directive (EU) 2016/798 on rail safety repeals and replaces the previous rail safety directive, and forms the basis of the regulations that we currently have in place. The key aims of the new directive are: to streamline the application process for rail vehicle authorisations and safety certificates through a single EU one-stop shop; to achieve consistency of regulatory approach between national safety authorities; to achieve much clearer alignment with the European Union Agency for Railways; and to progressively eliminate technical and operational differences between member states’ railways, including through the gradual elimination of national safety rules.

As noble Lords mentioned, the UK has applied for an extension to be in place until 16 June 2020, which has been agreed. Regarding the terms of our departure, if we are in an implementation period at that stage, the recast safety directive will be brought into our legislative framework. I suspect that, if we are still in our positions, we will be back in place to debate it at that time. If there is no deal, the Government of the day can look at the changes that have happened in Europe and decide whether to bring those changes into UK legislation. If the directive is implemented in whole or in part, a consultation with industry will take place, as with any new legislation. Officials have already done much of the work to ensure that the directive could be implemented if it is necessary and desirable.

Moving on to the ORR and its ability to charge a fee, the instrument makes fixes to EU tertiary legislation that allows the ORR to charge a fee. It was clear that the ORR wants to retain that fee-charging ability should it need to in future; essentially, we are retaining the status quo. However, the ORR has advised that it does not currently charge a fee in its role in determining applications for access to the rail network but that it wishes to retain the ability to charge a fee should it need to—which is the status quo. However, if a fee were to be charged in future, it would be subject to consultation with the industry.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, also mentioned the “made affirmative” procedure and asked whether it was still appropriate for this instrument to be brought through your Lordships’ House under that procedure. I suspect that it is. The debate taking place today is happening prior to the date on which a no-deal exit would otherwise have happened. Therefore, the significant difference between the “made affirmative” procedure and the normal affirmative procedure is not substantial in this case. Had we done it the other way, we may well have had the debate on the same day—but it was absolutely clear to us that we needed to make sure, had this debate not been able to be scheduled, for example, that certainty would be available to the industry. That is why we used the “made affirmative” procedure. We could have gone back and withdrawn the SI, then tabled it again under the new procedure—but, in practical terms, I am not sure that it would have made any real difference.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, brought up the subject of safety certificates in future and asked whether there would be divergence. We may want to diverge in future; one of the benefits of Brexit is being able to take control of the sorts of regulatory systems that we might find beneficial. Safety has always been a priority for this Government and for Governments before us, and it may be that, in future, we diverge from the EU in certain areas with regard to the safety framework. We are definitely not going to lower our safety standards, but we might do things differently. But things may change and, in future, EU operators wishing to operate in the UK will have to get a safety certificate from the UK, and that will be under the new regime. Obviously, this would have to go through your Lordships’ House and there are many steps to be taken in that process.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that I have answered all the questions, unless the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is going to challenge me on that one.

[Lord Rosser]

Paragraph 2.11 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that,

“once the UK has left the EU we will have the flexibility to diverge from EU rail law where it is in the UK’s interest to do so, whilst maintaining our excellent safety record. There will be an opportunity for the UK to shape its own railway to meet the needs of our passengers and freight shippers”.

The inference is that we do not have that opportunity under the current arrangements. What are these opportunities to shape our own railway to meet the needs of our passengers and freight shippers that we do not have at the moment because of current arrangements?

Also, on the bit about alignment with the British domestic certification regime, I think that was something the noble Baroness the Minister said in her introduction, but it was certainly something the Minister of State said when this matter was being discussed in the House of Commons. Those were the words he used—so it is hardly the Explanatory Memorandum; it was actually what the Minister said when he referred to,

“an appropriate amount of time for the industry to prepare and align itself”,

with what he described as,

“the Great British domestic certification regime”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/10/19; col. 4.]

I get the impression from the Minister’s answer on behalf of the Government that maybe that was some slightly flowery wording and perhaps he got a bit carried away with himself.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I could not possibly comment on the words of my honourable friend in the other place, and I will go no further on that, but if I can shed any light, I will happily write to the noble Lord.

The words missing from the Explanatory Memorandum are “future needs”. Needs that might come to light will be in freight, for example. In my view, rail freight is an area where we should be looking to expand and improve the volume of goods that travel by rail. Improving gauge clearances or making all the other slight changes that one has to make to a railway to improve the ability of rail freight to, for example, get through tunnels, may have a knock-on impact on the safety certification. I do not know for sure, but these are the sorts of things that we will need to look at if we are to get more freight on to our railways. Therefore, we feel that, in future, divergence is a possibility. It is by no means a certainty. It would not happen without full consultation with the industry, and it would happen only if it is in the interests of the industry.