Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Snape Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, it is worth reminding the House that we already have public sector operators in this country; we have lines owned by Dutch railways, French railways and German railways. They are not called that in this country—they have different names—but they are owned by those countries. On the continent, some of them operate effective, positive and well liked services; some of them are pretty awful. When you hear that Eurostar, which is still 40% owned by the British Government—although it is for sale—is allowed to bid for the east coast, but a company that is perhaps 100% owned by the British Government would not be allowed, it does seem a bit odd. I am sure that the Minister has an answer to that, but it seems to me that we are selling off our crown jewels in the shape of a piece of Eurostar and allowing the companies that buy them—perhaps from the continent, perhaps from elsewhere—to come back and provide a good service on certain occasions, but to compete a little unfairly against what our own companies might do if they existed.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I have followed this debate over the years with some interest and have a number of questions arising from this amendment that I would like to put to the Minister; perhaps my noble friend on the Opposition Front Bench would also like to consider them. I have no interest to declare in this debate other than the fact that I worked for the railway industry, as did my father. The romantic view, perhaps, of British Rail that some of my colleagues occasionally expressed was one that neither my father nor I shared.

Working for a nationalised railway industry, as I did before being elected to the other place and before being appointed to this House, was a massively depressing experience. Year after year, the amount of finance available to the railway industry was the subject of debate. It was quite often cut back. Short-termism was the only way to describe the finances of BR. Although I am no great supporter of the form of privatisation that the Government have inflicted on us, at least it has provided some degree of long-term continuity so far as railway finances are concerned—a continuity that did not exist when the railways were nationalised. Indeed, some of those in my own party used to mock what they called the concept of Morrisonian nationalisation. They said that it was not nationalisation at all and that the railways were being run by the civil servants. That view was widely shared by many of us who worked in the industry at the time.

I speak to this amendment not from any romantic attachment to a nationalised railway but as a confused supporter of the railway industry who wonders how we got into this particular mess in the first place as far as franchising is concerned. I have said in previous debates that what we have at the present is neither one thing nor the other. It is certainly not franchising. If we look at the new trains that are in the process of being ordered and built, it appears that they were designed by civil servants. The Government or civil servants set the fares as far as companies are concerned. The Japanese build the trains and the rest of us ride around the country in what remains of the whole industry. It is a confused picture, to say the least, but I do not feel that the amendment would help to clarify matters particularly.

I have one or two questions I want to put specifically to the Minister about the current process, before we look at whether or not directly operated railways should be allowed to bid for franchises. How are these decisions actually taken? The whole thing is shrouded in mystery. Various companies, we understand, put forward bids for the franchises, and a process of evaluation takes place behind the scenes. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how this process is conducted and who is involved in it.

If this amendment were to be accepted, would it mean that one desk in the Department for Transport would put together a bid and its merits or otherwise would then be decided by another desk in the Department for Transport? I hope that I am second to none in my admiration of the legal profession, which does not go unrepresented in your Lordships’ House, but if the answer is yes, one can imagine a bonanza for lawyers in the event of an appeal. Indeed, the taxpayer has just paid heavily for the mess that was the west coast main line franchise. Perhaps the Minister could tell us in passing exactly how much that cost.

If the amendment were accepted, how much does she envisage it would cost the taxpayer to fund legal inquiries or complaints if DOR’s bid—an internal departmental bid in some ways—were accepted over and above a private sector bid: or, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley rightly reminded us, a bid from a nationalised railway industry in Germany, France or Holland, to name but three? I hesitate to sound critical, but one can imagine the legal profession rubbing its hands at the prospect of such a financial fracas taking place behind the scenes.

Allowing DOR to bid is not particularly revolutionary. In the debate on privatising the railway industry in 1993, your Lordships’ House accepted an amendment moved by that well known left-winger Lord Peyton of Yeovil to allow the British Railways Board, as it then was, to bid for franchises. That amendment was struck out in the other place and we have the system of privatisation, franchising or whatever you like to call it that we have now. I do not wish to add to the difficulties of the Minister if, as I suspect, she rejects this amendment, but some clarification is long overdue before she does so as to exactly how this process works at present and how it would be affected if the amendment were accepted.

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[Baroness Kramer]

That company, as the noble Lord probably knows, will presumably be TUPE-ed—or not TUPE-ed, because it is a share sale. Essentially, that company will be absorbed into whatever is the new bidder on the east coast. Also, we have people running the company who can run it under its current circumstances. But take a look, if you are putting together a bidding group. The noble Lord will know how expensive it is to put together an effective bid team, particularly with those kinds of salaries. Let us, however, not just look at the salaries for putting together the kind of senior management you would need for an effective bid team, which are probably way beyond anything that we would consider paying. If we did, however, each bid would be a minimum of—what?—£10 million. That is probably about right for each individual bid. Fourteen franchises would be £140 million, without even the assurance of winning a single franchise. I simply point out that there are a lot of complexities in this matter that are not reasonably obvious. We had a system that was broken, we had two bids that did not work and we brought in a company that restored it. We are now going out with an effective franchise and we expect a very good bid. Two of the bidders are essentially British and one is not; we have a wide range.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that it seems that there is still a romance with the old British Rail, without recognising many of its underlying problems and the limited advantages that could be available under another scenario.

There is one other issue that is often raised. It is said that if we ran one company, we would have a comparator against which to look at the others. That takes us back my original point, which is that every franchise is so different that you cannot carry over from one into the other. If you doubt me on that, look at the pattern of bidders: specific companies that feel they can specialise in the needs of particular franchises bid on those. We do not find every bidder coming in on every franchise. They pick and choose the areas where they have particular knowledge and skills that apply to that franchise. Franchises are not generic and should not be viewed that way, so the comparators essentially do not work.

[Lord Snape]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister. Can she name any bidders for any franchises that are not British-owned bus companies or foreign-owned railways?

[Baroness Kramer]

I will just pick up on a point about “foreign-owned”. There is obviously scope for any country to decide that it is going to own an industry. We have certainly done that in the past: we have owned airports, steel companies and railways; you can go on through the list. We made a decision, as a country, that that could be done better by the private sector, but it is still entirely open to any country that it wants to own a series of businesses.

We have made a decision that that is not where we need to put our money. I have plenty of other places where I would much rather put the £140 million that I have just described than on the franchise bids alone, never mind all the overhead costs that would go with them. As I have said, this business, even when it is done well, is also a high-risk, thinly margined business. If one were to decide to go in for buying shares or into commercial ventures with taxpayers’ money, I suggest that one could choose many other businesses with higher returns, or other ways to spend the money. I would put money into services for the public rather than into owning shares in a company that would go out and compete with the private sector. That is the argument that I am making in all this.

We have a successful railway. It is delivering for the British people. We intend to place more and more demands on it. We have private sector companies that can deliver what we need, provided that we negotiate effectively and hard. It seems to me that that is where our energy has to go: delivering for the British people rather than being caught up in an idea of who owns what.

Vehicles: Heavy Goods Vehicles

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

I cannot deny the attractions of Edinburgh, but I suspect the answer is more nefarious.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

Can the Minister tell the House how many people are employed countrywide in the enforcement of these regulations? How many prosecutions have there been under these regulation over the past 12 months? If she does not have that information to hand, I would be happy to read about it in Hansard.

[Baroness Kramer]

I will be delighted to follow up with any gaps. The noble Lord will be aware that an important task force in London, the new Industrial HGV Task Force, which is made up of eight officers from VOSA and eight from the Metropolitan Police, was launched in September 2013. That has been extremely effective in increasing enforcement. The task force is running a whole series of exercises. Between 1 October and 27 June, it stopped 2,798 vehicles: 764 were compliant—about 27%;—1,232 prohibitions were issued; 724 fixed-penalty notices were issued; and 35 vehicles were seized. Somewhere here, if I can find it, I have more general information; I will write to the noble Lord with that.

Railways: High Speed 2

Lord Snape Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, this side.

[Noble Lords]

This side!

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Popat]

Okay, I will accept that.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I am grateful that the normal procedures of the House are being abided by. I strike a discordant note, as a supporter of this project, to say how disappointed I am—as I am sure many people in the Midlands and north will be—at the abandonment of the link between HS1 and HS2. Thirty years ago, during the passage of the Channel Tunnel Act, we were told that there would be through trains from Paris, Brussels and other continental cities to our great cities of the Midlands and the north. This was, at least, a chance for those through trains to run between those cities. How does the Minister suggest that a businessperson coming from the continent to the Midlands or the north gets between Euston and St Pancras? Do they take the Victoria or the Northern line? Or will they pull their luggage along Euston Road? Will the Minister accept from me that there will be a great deal of disquiet in many parts of the country about the abandonment of this link?

[Baroness Kramer]

Many of the cities in the north and the Midlands accept that the link as it was designed did not fit the purpose that they saw for it. It simply was not adequate in the role that it played. We will be looking at many more trains going to many more destinations out of Kings Cross and St Pancras. There has to be a much better way to create a link between HS1 and HS2. That will be a major study. It is a piece of work and it needs to be of the standard that a high-speed intercontinental link deserves.

In the short term, we will need a way to get between Euston and St Pancras. As I say, that will be looked at. The distance, as other people have said, is very limited; I walked between the two in four minutes yesterday. However, it will be important to make sure that that is an efficient and effective link and not a matter of trundling down the street.

High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, whom I have not heard speak on these matters before—although that probably reflects neglect on my part rather than on his. I agreed strongly with much of what he had to say. I am not seeking to make any particular political point here, but he was not quite right when he said that £9 billion was the total cost of the west coast main line upgrade. It is not finished yet; it was stopped at £9 billion in order to stay within that amount. He said that he does not use the west coast main line very much. If he makes the mistake of doing so next year, he will find that the re-signalling of Watford, which was not done in the original upgrade, will cause quite a bit of delay and dislocation to that line.

This debate follows one that we held a matter of only a few weeks ago, so I shall try to avoid repeating anything that I said then. I do, however, think that it is incumbent on those who oppose the scheme to tell us what the alternatives are, which few of them ever do. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, whom I have listened to with appreciation—I hope that he will understand that—for nearly four decades in both Houses, accused me of grinning like the Cheshire Cat during his contribution. It would have been appropriate if I did, because I was born in Stockport, which was in Cheshire before Ted Heath and his colleagues destroyed local government in the 1970s. Why I was smiling, rather than grinning, during the noble Lord’s contribution was because he did not see any contradiction between his impassioned plea for the environment to be defended and his demand for the A1 motorway to be widened so that he could drive from Lincoln to London in a bit more comfort than he does at present. That is a slight contradiction in terms. The noble Lord shakes his head—not like the Cheshire Cat—but the fact is that it is a contradiction.

We heard my noble friend Lord Rooker, whose constituency was adjacent to mine when we were in the other place, mention road building—and motorway building in particular. In his case, the motorway was 60 feet from the bedroom windows of his constituents. If the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, thinks that that is not an environmental disaster, I would be surprised. The fact is that most people who are interested in transport policy in this country acknowledge that the days of motorway building—to a certain extent, widening is permitted—lie in the past. It is much more damaging to the environment to build new roads, which is something that my noble friend Lord Stevenson, too, might reflect on. Today is the second or third time that I have heard him make his impassioned plea on behalf of the citizens of the area in which he lives, which he is perfectly entitled to do—but he should answer the particular question of whether the M40 has destroyed more sites of special scientific interest and done more damage to the environment than the proposed high-speed railway through the Chilterns will do.

We come back to the question: if not HS2, what? The fact is that we do not have enough capacity on the west coast main line. I listened with interest to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Howard. He would be flattered, I am sure, if I said that it was the biggest load of reactionary nonsense that I had heard for years—I am sure that he would take that in the spirit in which it was intended. If he believes that expanding the world of aviation will mop up the extra journeys that are being made on our railway system, that should perhaps be the subject for another debate. Some 128 million people a year now use intercity trains. That that would require a hell of a lot of aeroplanes, I must say.

He said that no businessman would touch the financial case for HS2. As the financial case was devised by the Treasury, indeed no businessman would. If and when the Treasury makes any contribution to these matters, it will be to say that we cannot afford it and that it does not meet the cost-benefit analysis. If it were left to the Treasury, we would not have built the M25, the Jubilee line, the Docklands Light Railway and various other schemes that most people would agree are essential. I will go further: if everything had been left to the Treasury, when I made my way back to Birmingham this week, I would do so on the 10 o’clock stagecoach from Tyburn. There would be no other way of going from London to Birmingham as no schemes, including the London & Birmingham Railway, would ever have passed the preposterous cost-benefit analysis so beloved of Her Majesty’s Treasury.

I propose to the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that he and I should go to Watford one day. If he thinks that the existing railway can cope with the 5.2% increase in passenger carryings that we are seeing on the west coast main line, we should stand together on the fast-line platform in Watford. He will probably not come because I understand that one cannot get a decent lunch in Watford, but if we were to go there and gaze towards London, we would see in the average hour, outside the rush hour, the following trains: three Pendolino trains from Birmingham and three from Manchester, a Super Voyager from North Wales, a London Midland train at 110 miles per hour from Crewe serving the Trent Valley, an hourly Scottish train and various other trains. That is the basic timetable for the up fast line between Watford Junction and London Euston at the present time. Indeed, this up fast line is so busy that Virgin Trains was refused permission to run an extra service to and from Shrewsbury because there was no room for it. An open-access operator wanted to use the west coast main line as far as Stockport—the home of the Cheshire Cat, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, might say—and on into Yorkshire, but was refused permission for the same reason.

I put it to the noble Lord, and the other critics of this scheme: if not HS2, what? The existing railway can barely cope with what it has at the present time. I do not want to bore your Lordships with stories of my time on the railway or the connections that I still make—it is a temptation, but I refuse. However, I can assure your Lordships that the intention is to close the up fast line that is being hammered in the average hour by all the trains that I mentioned, for between five and 10 years, from Saturday night to Monday morning, in order to do long-awaited and essential work. If we are getting into that state with the traffic that we have at the present time, I cannot believe that we could take any additional traffic, given the increase in intercity carryings that I referred to.

The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, who was, as he reminded your Lordships, Secretary of State for Transport during my time in the Whips’ Office—he tried to get me the sack once, but we will not go into that—seems to believe that the increase in passenger numbers that I referred to will perhaps tail off over the years. It is the 50th anniversary of “Doctor Who”; perhaps I should say to my 11 year-old grandson that instead of building HS2, perhaps in 2033 we will all climb into a police box and be transported from A to B. He is only 11, but I do not think that he would believe that. I suspect that, in his heart, the noble Lord knows full well that we must build new rail capacity in this country. If we do not, the country will grind to a halt.

The alternative is that we all go by road. Perhaps we could pursue the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on the newly widened A1 to and from Lincoln. However, as everyone knows, widening roads generates more traffic. That is probably why we have stopped doing it in recent years. As fast as we widen roads, we generate even more traffic and the widened roads fill up once more.

There is no alternative to HS2, for the reasons that I have outlined. I have only one great criticism of it, and it is one that has been mentioned before: at the turn of the 20th century, Brunel managed to convert the Great Western Railway, as it then was, from broad-gauge to standard in a long weekend. Will it really take until 2033, when my grandson will be middle-aged? Although noble Lords on both sides look in extremely good health, few of us are likely to be around to travel on the new high-speed rail service, the principle of which I hope we will embrace under the terms of the Bill. We ought to do it—and a damned sight quicker than we are proposing to at the moment.

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[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I found this debate a fascinating one and in many ways a more enjoyable one than the debate that we had only a few short weeks ago on exactly this topic. On that occasion, there was an indication in the press, at least, and in some circles of some uncertainty about my party’s position with regard to HS2. That had been generated because the shadow Chancellor, my very good friend Ed Balls, had indicated that he was very concerned at the rapidly escalating costs that were being reflected in parts of the media. Of course he was anxious about them. It is his job to look at the way in which a future Labour Government intend to spend their money.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord who spent a great deal of his time commenting on the weakness of the business case for HS2. There should be a business case. I very much appreciated the fact that the majority of my noble friends indicated their support for HS2—all of them, I think, with the possible exception of my noble friend Lord Stevenson, who had other fish to fry as far as the line is concerned. They were a little in danger of glorifying past triumphs with regard to the railway and indicating that we could take similar, easy risks today. I hate to say it but in the absence of cost-benefit analysis, a high percentage of Victorian railway lines went bankrupt. Railway mania was one of the shocking problems of the 19th century so although we glory in the architecture that was left us to us, in terms of both our great railway stations and the significant lines that we still use extensively today, particularly the north-south lines, we ought not to deride the fact that we need to be clear about costs.

When the Minister replies to the debate, I want her to address herself to this question of potential costs because we are asking the nation to commit itself to a very substantial investment in future years against the background of a very significant decline in ordinary living standards at present, with no immediate indication that there is early relief in sight. Our people—our fellow citizens—are therefore going to be concerned about costs. That is why it is important that in substantiating the issue with regard to HS2, we have a clear perspective on those costs and how they are to be controlled.

I think we all take considerable pleasure in the fact that David Higgins has become chair of HS2. We know of his achievements. After all, one achievement in the past couple of years which we all recognise and glory in is that the Olympic Games were delivered on time and on budget, without excessive use of the contingency element built into that budget, and they were a huge success for the nation. Everybody derived value from them so we can make these projects work and we should derive satisfaction from recent successes, while keeping a very close and beady eye on costs because they are so significant in terms of the commitment of the nation’s resources against a background where we all know that those resources are fairly limited.

I do not have to make the case on HS2 today, partly because so many voices around the House indicated their support for it, including a former Transport Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, on the government Benches. My Benches were very strong in their arguments. Of course, the case was made as soon as the debate opened. The magnificent opening speech of my noble friend Lord Adonis set the terms of this debate and in a very real sense put to bed any suggestion of any possible backsliding by a future Labour Government on seeing this project through. However, we want to be absolutely certain about the degree of scrutiny over costs and effectiveness.

We are also concerned about the delays built in to the present progress. Already we have seen the timetable slipping, and nothing will prevent it from slipping further in the very near future. Again, I want the noble Baroness to give us some reassurance about the urgency with which the Government are acting. I will make the obvious point. This is a paving Bill and it will get through in the very near future. However, we have not started on the hybrid Bill and the hybrid Bill procedure on Crossrail took several years. I know that my noble friend Lord Snape once served on a hybrid Bill and we lost contact with him for about 18 months when he disappeared into those wonderful committees in which one is sworn to total commitment to the Bill.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for interrupting, but in the interests of accuracy I must point out that I served on three hybrid Bills and disappeared for much longer than that.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

I am sorry if I elided them all into one, but the loss was so great in the other place at that time that it was remarked on in many quarters. We know without any doubt that my noble friend will volunteer for a hybrid Bill should any arise. I am concerned, however, about this issue. As we know, hybrid Bills are ones over which Parliament and the Government have negligible control, yet we are starting on this Bill. It was intended and hoped that we would have all the processes of Parliament covered, all legislative processes in place and all procedures completed by the time of the general election. There is no hope of that now. There is no question of the Government being able to deliver against that timetable. Of course, slippage is costly in terms of the ambitions that we all have for the successful implementation of the project on time, but delay is also costly in financial terms. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Howard, is already calculating just how much the additional length of time will impact on cost.

All the real issues have emerged in this debate. I listened very carefully to another former Secretary of State for Transport, the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, when he indicated that he still preserved a degree of scepticism about the ability of rail to impact on the economic geography of the country. There is evidence from other countries that its impact is indeed beneficial. It is certainly the case that, as so many noble Lords have emphasised in this debate, if we do not do anything, we will actually reach paralysis. Such is the increase in numbers of those seeking to use rail travel that if we do nothing, we will face a seizure.

During the time when there was a slight degree of misunderstanding about my own party’s position, when proper anxieties were expressed about rising costs, it was very noticeable that the northern cities acted. Representations came in with very considerable force from Manchester and Leeds that indicated how much importance they placed on the improvement of services to those cities, which HS2 alone can provide.

Another question hangs in the air and cannot be answered—certainly not from this debate, because no one has attempted to answer it. What is the alternative? We have a situation in which the rise in demand for rail travel shows itself in very marked ways so that we can all foresee that if nothing is done the constant problems which we see in all commuting areas will get worse. I know that when one talks about commuting people’s first thought is that one is talking about the south-east and London. However, the pressure on Birmingham and the West Midlands, on Manchester, Leeds, Yorkshire and Bradford, is just as acute for people there who want to get to work, to the shops and to other facilities in their cities. Of course, what hangs in the air is that if we do not solve this by improving rail travel we will guarantee misery for our fellow citizens, and it will represent a failure to improve society and the economy.

I hope that the noble Baroness will also comment on one other dimension. I refer to the recent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, to which my noble friend Lord Rooker referred. One of the things we all know about significant public investment is that it can lead to very significant private gains. Just look at any situation where a Tube station in the London area has been opened in recent years and what it does to house prices. There is a straight correlation between transport and private gain. Of course we want to see private gain, because we are providing these services for private people—for our fellow citizens. However, we ought also to look at the public good. These resources are invested on behalf of the nation. I hope that the noble Baroness will take away the noble Lord’s thought about the use of urban development corporations to canalise some of the gains from the investment that will derive from the construction of HS2 so that it comes to the public purse as well. That will perhaps help to reassure those like the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that costs can be kept under control.

Railways: Passenger Demand

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My noble friend Lord Bradshaw is right that the economic case is looked at within fairly tightly defined contours. There are many additional benefits. My noble friend Lord Deighton is working on making sure that the growth potential of HS2 is absolutely maximised. My noble friend made the point that there is an uplift in value. My goodness, we have seen that around places like King’s Cross/St Pancras, at the stations on the Jubilee line and in the benefits to Canary Wharf. That economic uplift has not traditionally been captured to help fund infrastructure. We will look closely at ways to do that in future.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the problems on the east coast main line are due to the shoddy way in which electrification took place in the 1980s, a fact that Ministers at the time boasted about? Electrification masts were more widely spaced, and the catenary of lightweight construction means that it blows down in anything above a summer breeze. These matters have nothing to do with the train-operating companies. The Minister’s welcome response about the future of HS2 today ought to be answered by those in my own party, some of whom appear to be more interested in playing politics than worrying about the future of our railway industry.

[Baroness Kramer]

Again, I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Snape, wanders away from the subject of today, but it is crucial to understand that when HS2 goes forward, it does not mean we are stopping other transport investment on crucial lines. As he will know, in the next Parliament £73 billion has been committed to transport improvements and only £17 billion of that goes on HS2. Definite improvements are scheduled for the east coast. Since that is away from the topic, I will not pursue those today—and I cannot find them under my tab. I will write to the noble Lord in detail.

High Speed 2

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for allowing us the opportunity for this debate, and I congratulate him on what he said in opening the debate. It is the first time in the decade or so that I have been here—I do not know whether he will be pleased about this or not—that I have agreed with every word that he said. Perhaps he will not be, but it happens to be true.

There was one thing he did not say that he might have done. He talked about the west coast main line being full, as have other noble Lords on both sides. We ought to recognise that the west coast main line, particularly the southern section, is not just full, it is in a pretty poor condition too, despite all the money that has been spent on it. The recent £9 billion overhaul has held off some of the decay on that route, but the last stretch in particular, from Watford to Euston is in a pretty poor state, as was revealed earlier this year. A report was published in the railway industry’s in-house magazine, Rail News, about an inquiry led by Virgin Trains’ chief operating officer, Chris Gibb, who had been seconded to Network Rail, about the state of the track, particularly that stretch from Watford to London. Chris Gibb reported to a joint board chaired by Sir David Higgins, then chairman of Network Rail, about whom many complimentary comments have been made during the course of the debate. Mr Gibb’s report says that,

“trying to gain access to maintain and repair a railway built 175 years ago, largely through open countryside then but which now passes through many developed and densely-populated areas”,

is extremely difficult. Yet opponents of HS2 appear to believe that by declassifying a couple of coaches on Pendolino trains and adding a few more trains, a junction here and a flyover there, we can somehow cope with the projected increase in traffic which will take place on the west coast main line if HS2 is not built.

I fear that life is not like that. Chris Gibb’s final recommendation is that the line from Bushey, just south of Watford, into Euston should be closed every Saturday and Sunday night for between five and 10 years in order that all the infrastructure can be renewed. That is a pretty unlikely prospect, but I have to say to those who oppose the building of HS2 that we cannot go on, in David Higgins’s words, pounding the west coast main line. He said that by the time the first stage of HS2 is due to open in 2026 the route will be—his exact word—“trashed”.

We cannot go on pretending that we can increase the number of trains out of London to some of our major cities on the existing infrastructure network. I listened carefully to what my noble friend Lord Stevenson had to say. I must say that I was not too impressed by some of the people whom he prayed in aid in support of his opposition. I do not regard the Institute of Economic Affairs as a particularly credible organisation, nor, although I will be careful out of deference to some of my near neighbours, could I bring myself to be too complimentary about the Countryside Alliance. Both my noble friends might like to read a document produced by Centro, the passenger transport authority in the West Midlands, explaining why the West Midlands needs HS2. I will leave it on the board for both of them if they like; whether they find that any more credible than the two organisations they cited remains to be seen. The fact remains that Centro believes that 50,000 more jobs could be created in our part of the world and a £4 billion economic boost would be given to the West Midlands if the project goes ahead.

If HS2 does not go ahead, what happens to the growth in traffic forecast by all sectors to occur on our railway system? Presumably, it will go by road. My noble friend spoke emotively about the Chilterns. We are not talking about the four horsemen of the apocalypse going through the Chilterns, we are talking about a two-track railway. What happens to the M40 motorway? Do we extend and widen that to cater for the extra traffic which we all know will come? If the traffic does not travel by train, it travels by road.

Earlier in my undistinguished career, I served on no less than three committees on the Channel Tunnel: the first abortive Select Committee in the 1970s, the Select Committee that gave the go-ahead in the 1980s and the Standing Committee that prepared the legislation. All the arguments that we are hearing today about HS2 were used then about HS1. The garden of England was going to be destroyed. The phrase “cutting a swathe” was one I heard from many a high-paid lawyer as I sat on the committee when they were talking about what was likely to happen in Kent. As the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said, Kent has not been destroyed. Indeed, many of the previously peripheral towns in Kent have been enormously boosted economically by HS1, and there is no reason to suppose that the same effect would not happen when HS2 is completed.

Fifty years ago, I was a signalman on the west coast main line, so I have some experience of what happened when trying to run trains when the line is being modernised. At least we had many alternatives in the 1960s. For example, Manchester trains ran from St Pancras to Manchester Central. The line from Matlock to Manchester Central was closed in their wisdom—by, I suspect, a Labour Government, I must say—in the 1960s. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, talked about trains to Liverpool. They went up the great western line from Paddington to Birkenhead. That is not available to us any more. As my noble friend Lord Grocott said, there was always the great central line, which ran to Leicester, Nottingham and on to Manchester, which could also be used as a diversion. None of those lines are available to us today. There are neither locomotives nor rolling stock. It must come as a surprise to my noble friend Lord Mandelson to find that loco hauled trains are very rare in most parts of the country and guards vans do not exist at all. He must have missed that during his sojourn in Brussels, but the railway has changed somewhat. Pendolino trains will not run anywhere else. If there is no 25 kilovolt overhead wire, they will not get out of the depot, so they are no alternative. It is not often that I pray in aid the late Baroness Thatcher, but there really is no alternative.

HGV Road User Levy Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Berkeley on this topic. I well recall nearly 40 years ago when I was first elected to the other place and was told that the most effective political lobby in the United Kingdom was the farmers. I came to realise that in that conclusion they may well have been right. After all, I seem to remember that the farming lobby managed to blame the spread of foot and mouth some time ago basically on Ministers in the Labour Government rather than on their own practices.

Certainly, one lobby that runs the farming lobby very close in its effectiveness is the road haulage lobby. Most of us in your Lordships’ House are old enough to remember the immediate post-war period when heavy goods vehicles—I think this referred to those above seven tonnes, but it was a long time ago so I would not like to put my shirt on it—had to carry a 20 miles an hour plate and were restricted to that maximum speed. Given the number of heavy goods vehicles that appeared on our roads after World War 2—many of the drivers were demobbed from our Armed Forces—that issue was the first campaign that I remember the road hauliers lobby indulging in. It was very successful and it has indulged in many campaigns since, many of which have been successful.

Since the end of World War 2, we have seen heavy lorry weights increase dramatically. I think that the maximum now is 44 tonnes, although the Minister will correct me if I am wrong. It used to be about 12 tonnes, so the industry has done well there. The length of heavy goods vehicles also has increased fairly dramatically over that period. Each and every increase in weight and length has been accompanied by a cry from the road haulage industry that there would be fewer vehicles on the road because they are bigger, longer and heavier, and that once the motorways had been built they would not be much of a nuisance anyway.

This is not strictly speaking a matter for this debate, but I would be interested to know—perhaps the Minister will tell me, or write to me if he does not have the figures now—how many heavy goods vehicles above the 12 tonnes figure mentioned in the Bill are on our roads now compared to, say, a decade or two decades ago. Although it is not a matter for this Bill, it would be interesting to see not only how successful the road haulage lobby has been but how accurate it was in its predictions.

Another of the lobby’s major complaints was about the number of foreign lorries on our roads. Reverting back to my experience in the other place, I chaired for 15 years the West Midlands group of Labour MPs. It was one of my duties—whether it would be considered onerous or not I leave to noble Lords to work out for themselves—to attend meetings of the Sandwell chamber of commerce, which covered my former parliamentary constituency. The chamber of commerce may not have been dominated by the issue, but certainly a strong presence from the road haulage industry raised the same issue more and more often. It questioned the number of foreign heavy goods vehicles on British roads, and how they were filling up on cheap European derv and able to snatch the bread from the mouths of British hauliers by demanding not only the freedom to travel on our roads, which of course they had, but to take loads back to the continent, which rightly should have been the job of British hauliers.

I was a bit cynical and not inclined to believe that entirely, because every time I asked how many of these wicked foreign hauliers were behaving in this manner I did not get an answer. I found it difficult to believe, and I believe that I expressed the rather unpopular view at the chamber of commerce that I could not honestly believe that Mr Norbert Dentressangle, in his brightly covered lorries, was as guilty of undermining the British road haulage industry as the allegation made at the time suggested.

The Minister talks about 1.5 million trips, which I assume refers to round trips. Are we talking about 750,000 heavy goods vehicles that will be covered, at least in theory, by this measure? I should like to know just how many of these wicked foreign hauliers there are. They cannot use the excuse that they are driving around on cheap, continental derv anymore, because I understand it is just as expensive on the continent as it is in the United Kingdom these days.

The Minister went on to say that the maximum price we could charge foreign hauliers on a daily basis was €11. That will make a big dent in the deficit, whether or not the Prime Minister was accurate in his summing up of it. I cannot off the top of my head multiply 750,000 times €11, but while it is not an inconsiderable sum it will not make much of a dent in the road budget, let alone the deficit as a whole. Therefore, is this piece of legislation actually necessary, given the amount of money it is likely to raise?

The Minister did not use the phrase “a level playing field”, but he implied that this would balance the differences between British hauliers and their continental counterparts. However, €11 a day does not strike me as a particularly large penalty if one considers that for a heavy goods vehicle to travel 100 miles on a German autobahn, it would pay tolls of between €35 and €46. We throw open the whole road network of the United Kingdom for €11, but if you drive a heavy goods vehicle through Germany it costs €35 to €46.

As I indicated, the Minister said that this mighty measure before your Lordships today would raise the sum of £19 million to £23 million. He might recollect that a few days ago we had a debate about toll roads, and I pointed out that there was a toll road in the West Midlands that was not used much by heavy goods vehicles. I have noticed that Eddie Stobart vehicles do use it, but by and large those are the only heavy lorries that I have ever seen on the toll road. The heavy goods vehicle industry generally uses the M6 motorway, which passes through my former constituency on an elevated section. During my 27 years as the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East, I calculated that the taxpayer had spent something like £800 million repairing just that one section of the M6 because of the damage done to it largely by heavy goods vehicles. On the department’s own figures, the heaviest heavy goods vehicles do as much damage to Britain’s road network as 30,000 private cars. This great sum of £19 million to £23 million, therefore, might repair one archway of the Ray Hall viaduct in the West Midlands, but it will not make much of a dent in the overall road budget.

I therefore have to say to the Minister, as the wartime sign said, “Is your journey really necessary?” as far as this piece of legislation is concerned. We heard from him that continental hauliers can pay on a day-to-day basis—not something that is open to British hauliers, who pay through VED on an annual basis—so why give them this particular benefit, which will be not shared by their British counterparts? I do not know whether, again, this is a matter for Europe, but why not insist that lorries used in the United Kingdom pay on an annual basis? Then they could come and go as they wished. Why allow them to pay on a one-day, two-day or weekly basis: a privilege denied to their British counterparts? Perhaps the Minister could explain.

Of course the penalties for non co-operation, under this legislation, can only be described as pathetic as well. Is a maximum fine of £200 really going to deter a heavy goods vehicle driver with, perhaps, £30,000 worth of valuable cargo? It is surely not serious that we impose a penalty that is so palpably inadequate. The Minister and the Government ought to look again. Even that penalty is based, as I understand it, on a vehicle limit and the number of axles. Who in this country of ours would be able to tell the vehicle limit or count the number of axles?

That leads me to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Berkeley about enforcement. Is the Minister seriously going to tell your Lordships’ House that there will be proper and adequate enforcement of this legislation? If he is, I do not believe him. Let me refer him to one of this morning’s newspapers. I am sure that the Daily Mail is the Minister’s favourite newspaper. From its optimistic front page to its unbiased sketch writing, I always think of it as a newspaper of value and repute. Today there is a story in the Daily Mail which I cut out as, reading it on the train, I thought: “The Minister will be interested in this one”. It is headed: “Toll of illegal foreign cars on UK roads”. I appreciate that it is not about foreign lorries, but I will come to those in a moment. The story says that:

“Only four out of an estimated 15,000 foreign cars driving illegally on British roads were caught last year. And not one of their drivers was prosecuted”,

the Department for Transport said yesterday. Given that record, it does not inspire me with confidence that our jails will be full of non fine-paying continental lorry drivers. What can the Minister tell us about the likelihood of enforcement under this legislation?

About 15 years ago, the then traffic commissioner for the West Midlands, Mr John Mervyn Pugh, invited me to join him on what he described hopefully as a purge of overloaded vehicles on the M6 motorway, particularly foreign ones. My noble friend asked about an enforcement officer. I presume that that enforcement officer must be from the police, because we were accompanied by three or four police cars. Between Birmingham and Stafford, the police directed heavy goods vehicles off the motorway so that they could be checked.

[Lord Berkeley]

Clause 10 refers not to an enforcement officer but to a “stopping officer”. Perhaps my noble friend would like to comment on that.

[Lord Snape]

Whether stopping or enforcing, my only response is that I guess he would have to be in police uniform. Perhaps I might take your Lordships back 15 years to the enforcement on the M6. I still have the paperwork, which I kept. Out of 14 vehicles that were stopped, only three of which were foreign, six were overloaded. In two of them, the driver had exceeded the permitted number of hours. A couple were borderline, while one was taken off the road immediately because of its lack of roadworthiness. Only 14 vehicles were stopped because, within about 40 minutes, there were no heavy goods vehicles heading north on the M6. This is before the days of mobile phones; it was presumably in the days of CB radio, or whatever it was called.

The problems in enforcing legislation such as this are enormous. The fact is that we do not enforce the existing heavy goods vehicles regulations at the moment. How can we, when the traffic commissioner’s total staff 15 years ago was four to cover the whole of the West Midlands and Wales? Given the Government’s clampdown on the Civil Service, I do not suppose that there are 44 of them these days. I suspect that if those four positions are still in situ, that is about it. Are these the people who are going to enforce this particular legislation? I honestly very much doubt that.

The Minister says that there will be a reduction in vehicle excise duty for UK-based hauliers. I have to ask why. I have a copy here of the report of the Armitage inquiry, Lorries, People and the Environment, from December 1980. Your Lordships will be relieved to know that I have no intention of reading that fairly bulky document, but as I would summarise it it pointed out that the number of heavy goods vehicles on Britain’s roads in those days was possibly more than the road network could cope with. If we have moved on from 1980 to 2013, I repeat the question: how many heavy goods vehicles are there on our roads these days, compared with then?

I hope the Minister does not think that I have been too rude about this legislation but it is palpably inadequate and will not be enforced. I do not think that unenforceable legislation—given the present lack of enforcement, that is the only way this can be described—is at all sensible. It is not actually necessary because, despite the propaganda from the British road haulage industry, I do not see this as the great problem that it outlines. If it is, let the continentals pay exactly the same price as British hauliers pay to drive across Europe. If a Bill is necessary, I am afraid that this is not it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, Her Majesty’s Opposition welcome the Bill, and regard a great deal of it as eminently workable. It will improve the situation and remedy a grievance that we have recognised for many years, as far as our road haulage industry is concerned. That does not mean that we do not have some criticisms of the Bill. I had a few carefully listed, but half of them have been made by my noble friend Lord Berkeley in his excellent speech, and the other half by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, in his similarly excellent contribution.

There was just one point that the noble Lords did not talk about, which was to do with a strategy for roads that might involve road charging. There is a provision in the Bill which clearly anticipates that the devolved Administrations must have some opportunity if they wish to do this, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, of course has presented the Minister with that question.

My speech is therefore greatly reduced, because on the whole I am very much in favour of the Bill and somewhat less pessimistic than my noble friend Lord Snape about the issue of enforcement. I am sure that the Minister is going to establish that technology has moved on with concepts like automatic number plate recognition, which allows vehicles to be identified with great readiness and pulled over and stopped effectively by VOSA, which of course is responsible for implementing this part of the administration.

[Lord Snape]

I apologise for interrupting my noble friend. There is a question that I should have put to the Minister, but perhaps he could do so equally well. Supposing a lorry driver is stopped for not having a proper piece of paper saying that he has paid £200. What happens then? Is he to be detained at the port of exit? Are we going to reinvoke the European arrest warrant if he heads home? Perhaps my noble friend could question the Minister about that.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, the driver is responsible for the vehicle and its legitimacy, so he will be stopped all right, and the vehicle will not be released until the necessary charge has been paid. I doubt if the driver will have £5,000—which is the maximum fine—in his back pocket, so the charge will go to his office in the country from which he has come, and that office will have to pay. I agree entirely that it is hard luck on the driver, if that is the sentiment my noble friend is putting forward—but the people who own the lorry have to comply with the law, and I understand that it will be enforced. We would all expect it to be enforced and modern technology will ensure that it is.

I have had sympathy with the road haulage industry and with British motorists for a very long period—from the first time I went to France and found that French autoroutes could charge heavily while we provided free roads for any French motorists who deigned to come to Britain. That always seemed a little unfair. The situation for road haulage is much more serious. After all, the industry shifts 68% of our goods and employs 220,000 workers. Many of them are skilled, because driving in modern conditions on all roads, both European and British, requires skill and concentration. We should recognise the importance of the industry. The issue became more acute when, as the House will recall, additional fuel tanks were placed on heavy vehicles so that not only did they not pay for the roads but they did not buy any fuel in Britain, because continental fuel was cheaper. The sense of obvious unfairness—the feeling that something needs to be done—has been with us for some time.

We will take advantage of the Eurovignette to make progress on this. When some critics of the European Community say that nothing good comes out of Europe, I commend the concept of the vignette—what a wonderful, attractive word to describe a piece of necessary legislation, particularly as it is derived from its original meaning of a small illustration with no defined borders. That looks entirely appropriate for the European directive on which this legislation is based. It will bring considerable benefits, but I expect the Minister to respond to the points made by my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I am certain that he will make every effort to emphasise the necessary compliance procedures for these requirements, because the idea that people would flout these charges and get away with it after we have put the legislation in place would appal us all.

One issue that the Road Haulage Association always complains about, which did not come up, is cabotage—the deployment of these lorries to be used for transfers of goods within the country, at the comparative advantage indicated by lower fuel costs. This Bill does nothing significant about that. Perhaps the Minister will comment on it.

I am also most interested in the revenues that will be derived from the successful implementation of this measure. Both my noble friends emphasised the fact that these lorries cost a great deal in terms of the maintenance of our roads. I am sure that all noble Lords have travelled on our motorways and have noticed that on many roads the middle and outside lanes have reasonably good surfaces while there are almost two trenches on the inside lane where the heavy goods vehicles progress. Of course, the majority of those are British trucks, but it shows the cost to the roads system that heavy goods vehicles incur—in particular because Europe has been very much to the fore in increasing the size and weight of lorries over the years. My noble friend Lord Snape indicated that the 44-tonner was, after all, brought in on the basis of European initiatives.

What is going to happen to this revenue? The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, had his worries about where it was going and asked why this was a money Bill. It is a money Bill because the enforcement of the charges is a form of taxation. This money is not hypothecated to anything to do with road usage or necessity, but goes happily into the Consolidated Fund. We all know what the Consolidated Fund means in terms of priorities. What it certainly means is that we can guarantee that none of this revenue relates to road expenditure. My noble friends emphasised the costs to the road system.

There is another dimension that I want to bring up: road safety. The Road Safety Foundation has made it quite emphatically clear that the actual design of roads, which costs money to do well, is an important contribution to road safety. One particular group of road users who have been vulnerable to lorries in recent years are cyclists. The difference between the road structure in Amsterdam and the road structure in London is so evidently a crucial reason why Amsterdam cyclists feel safe and London cyclists often ride in terror—with just cause. We have had a number of serious accidents and fatalities where cyclists have been hit by lorry drivers who had no idea the cyclist was present.

Safety issues can be improved now because there is the possibility of fitting out lorries with sensors and mirrors that eliminate blind spots, but they cost money. We would need some enforcement. At present, the price of doing nothing is a risk to cyclists in all our cities and the price is becoming greater each year.

I cannot hope to direct the proceeds of this Bill towards safety because, as I say, there is no chance of hypothecation. However, I hope that the Minister will recognise that that which assists the development of road haulage and, in one respect, brings some sense of fairness between the British road haulage system and continental trucks coming into Britain should also be attended by some concern about road safety.

The Minister has quite a lot on his plate to answer, in the challenges that have been presented in the speeches from the Back Benches. I merely endorse the questions that have been asked, because they are exceedingly pertinent. I hope that the Minister’s answer is sufficiently strong for the Opposition to remain confident that this measure is an advantageous one for the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, if VOSA detects that a vehicle has not paid the levy, I suspect the vehicle will not be going very far—perhaps to the next service station—until it has paid it, which can be done electronically.

[Lord Snape]

The minimum penalty is £200. Is the driver supposed to pay that on the spot? If he does not have any British cash or that amount of money, under what powers will the vehicle be detained and where?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, that will be done under the powers that were wisely introduced by the previous Administration, who also set the level. I agree that it is at quite a low level and made that very point from the Opposition Benches—I cannot remember whether it was the Front Benches or the Back Benches—at the time we introduced the necessary powers. The key thing is that we will be able to stop the vehicle. That is extremely inconvenient to the operator, and I will have more to say on that point.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked me what a stopping officer is. Stopping officers already exist. They are appointed under the powers in the Road Traffic Act 1988, as amended, and are able to stop vehicles in relation to enforcement of vehicle roadworthiness and driver’s hours. Stopping officers are VOSA enforcement officers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the situation is, as I said in my opening remarks, that our operators often have to pay motorway tolls that no one pays in the UK, and because of the Eurovignette directive, whatever a foreign country did in terms of a vignette they would be limited to the prevailing limits of what you can charge. It could not, therefore, cost our operators more than €11 a day. At the moment our operators pay tolls to use the European road infrastructure.

The chosen time-based scheme, coupled with reductions to VED, is a simple, effective and targeted way of ensuring that UK hauliers pay no more than they do now. VED cuts are a time-based method of offsetting the charge, which means that they fit well with a time-based system. In addition, we need to remember that, in terms of administration, this scheme will have a negligible burden on UK operators.

I always enjoy listening to the noble Lord, Lord Snape. He asked many questions, and I will answer as many as I can. I have probably answered quite a few already, and of course, I will write to him on some of them. He asked me what type of penalties there will be. As I believe I have said, drivers will be charged £200 at the roadside. Fines can be enforced electronically, and they can be invited to pay by credit or debit cards. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, made the point that with modern systems of doing business it is easy to collect the charges.

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, also asked if, under the directive we have to offer periods that are appropriate for the trip being made. If we offer only six-month or annual levies to foreign drivers we will contravene the European directive. He asked about the number of foreign vehicles and I can tell him that 3.6% of miles driven by HGVs in the UK are by foreign vehicles. For HGVs of 12 tonnes and over, the percentage is higher. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, asked about revenue in VED. All levies or fines go into the Consolidated Fund, as we discussed. There are no plans for hypothecation, as the noble Lord suggests, but we will ensure that VOSA, as the primary enforcement agency, will have sufficient resources to enforce the scheme.

I am grateful for the helpful interventions from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and for his support for the Bill. He asked me about cabotage. The Bill does not change the rules on cabotage but it does do a little to level the economic playing field. It is a difficult problem to deal with. I am delighted that the Bill has been so positively received. It has been long called for by industry and others from across the political spectrum, and I am delighted to be taking it through the House.

[Lord Snape]

Before the Minister delights or otherwise in taking it through the House, can he just answer the specific question that I put to him? How many vehicles are we talking about? I know that there are 1.5 million journeys and 3% or 4%, or whatever, of total vehicle miles, but how many heavy goods vehicles will be covered by this legislation?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I cannot immediately answer that at the Dispatch Box. What really matters is how many vehicles are coming in; how many journeys are made. In my opening remarks, I said that there were 1.5 million journeys.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Valentine]

Yes, indeed, it would be a national system.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I support my noble friend and the noble Baroness in this amendment. It is something that I personally feel strongly about. I live near Birmingham in the West Midlands and I use the tolled section of the motorway quite frequently on my journeys north. It is a very convenient way of missing the congestion that can be found around spaghetti junction and the Ray Hall viaduct, the elevated section of the M6—until one reaches the toll booths, where we have this medieval concept of queuing to pay, the sort of thing one did with a horse and cart centuries ago. Invariably, I find myself behind someone who has got in the wrong lane, or someone who does not have the right money or cannot find their credit card, and a lot of the time saved by using the toll road is lost as one queues to get through this barrier. Surely there has to be a better way.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, said, in this day and age it should surely be possible to have a more modern system of collecting revenue for toll roads. It is 25 years since I first went to Singapore. The authorities there managed to collect congestion charges electronically three decades ago in a way that is apparently beyond us on the Midlands motorway. I ask the Minister to bear that in mind.

Perhaps I may test the patience of the Committee for two or three more minutes while I am on this hobby-horse of the Midlands motorway. At the moment it is comparatively lorry-free because the private owners—I understand that Macquarie, the Australian company, is the main shareholder in the Midlands motorway—deliberately, as a matter of policy, price off heavy goods vehicles. Those heavy goods vehicles then use the existing M6 over the elevated section at the Ray Hall viaduct and past spaghetti junction—a section of the M6 that is regularly and expensively under repair because of those very same heavy goods vehicles which, whatever the very effective road lobby says, do not pay their true track costs and do enormous damage.

Thanks to the generosity of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister in the 1980s, Macquarie was given the concession to run the Midlands motorway in perpetuity, and can charge what it likes. The last thing it wants is a non-stop procession of heavy goods vehicles, because that damages its motorway. It is no accident that the bit of motorway infrastructure regularly under repair anywhere in the country is the left-hand lane, because that is the one used by heavy goods vehicles. It is a nonsensical situation in which the British taxpayer has paid literally hundreds of millions of pounds. I know the Ray Hall viaduct quite well; it was in my former constituency of West Bromwich East. When the former Prime Minister John Major talked about the cones hotline he had the Ray Hall viaduct and the spaghetti junction interchange in mind. Miles of it are regularly coned off because of the damage done by heavy goods vehicles, which use that section of the M6 because they are deliberately priced off the Midlands motorway.

There are two matters here that I hope the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will address. The first is the nonsensical and medieval concept of stopping to pay a toll, having used a road on which I must confess to breaking the speed limit occasionally myself. I have rarely if ever seen a police vehicle on that privately-owned section of motorway, although having said that I have no doubt I can expect to see one in the very near future. The taxpayer had to pay literally hundreds of millions of pounds because of the pricing policy on that section of toll road, which keeps off heavy goods vehicles. Both of those matters are complete nonsense. No one blames the Minister personally, but can he do anything about it?

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I wish my noble friend Lord Snape well in his quest to abolish all medieval practices in this country. I would simply point out that your Lordships may be the first victims of such a policy, so I hope he does not progress too fast.

[Lord Snape]

If my noble friend will allow me to say so, at least some of us in this House have occasionally sought election.

[Lord Adonis]

Of course, in medieval times exit was not a permitted right. The issue here is a very simple and straightforward one, on which I hope the noble Lord can give the Committee comfort. It is as simple as whether it is possible to have a tolling regime without having to have toll booths. The reason the issue has come to the fore is the Silvertown tunnel proposal. TfL, quite rightly, does not want to have toll booths, but the legal position is unclear. TfL tells me the issue is whether the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 or the Greater London Authority Act is the relevant legal basis for tolling. If it is the one, then there is not a need for booths; if it is the other, then there might be. I think we all agree on what the public policy objective is here; we simply need the Government to give us comfort that it can be achieved.

Railways: Fares

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I agree that it must be difficult for ordinary passengers to understand how ticket pricing works. The increase in regulated fares is implemented by train operators as an average across a basket of fares. This flexibility allows some fares to be increased by up to 5%—although only 2% on Southern—more than the average, while other fares must increase by much less or even be held flat to comply with the regulated average.

[Lord Snape]

Does the Minister agree that this largely synthetic row about rail fare increases takes place every year around new year, when there is not much bad news elsewhere? The British media love bad news, and it provides them with an annual story. Notwithstanding that, does the Minister agree with the figures that show that fares for travelling by train have increased in real terms by about 20% over the past decade, while the cost of motoring has reduced by 5% over that period? Are there not some inconsistencies here in government policy?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, first, the relative prices of motoring and travelling by rail vary up and down. The comparison does vary. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State asked exactly the same question as the noble Lord about the timing of rail fare increases—and he was not amused.

Public Bodies (Abolition of the Railway Heritage Committee) Order 2013

Lord Snape Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Faulkner. He has worked tirelessly on railway heritage. If it was not for him, we would now be in a complete mess. I was very surprised to hear the Minister say that the Railway Heritage Committee was a good example of voluntary work that has now been moved to the Science Museum. He said that it had had a bit of administrative support from the Science Museum before, or that it now has it. I cannot see what the difference is between them. It is moving the deckchairs for the sake of it. I suspect that it will cost more and do exactly the same thing; where is the benefit? My noble friend Lord Grocott talked about old steam engines. A month ago I went round the National Railway Museum in New Delhi, where most of the engines, as he said, were built in this country—largely in Glasgow—and they were very fine. I hope that this tradition continues. Of course, they now build very good engines of their own in India.

Having listened to the Minister’s explanation, which I believe lasted a good seven minutes, and to the story that my noble friend Lord Faulkner told about the work that he had to do just to move things across to the Science Museum, I am afraid that my only conclusion is: thank God he was there to do it. It will be fine in the future when the next Labour Government make things better, but this is a classic case of dogma ruling brain when it started. As my noble friend Lord Grocott said, I hope that it is not repeated.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I, too, join in the general chorus of discontent about the actions of the Government today. I support my noble friend Lord Faulkner and agree with his very able speech about the need to care for railway artefacts and his description of the work that the Railway Heritage Committee has done over the years. I have no personal interests to declare except that in the 1980s, along with the late Robert Adley, I served on the advisory committee to the Railway Heritage Committee, which was newly formed at that time. The work that it has done over the years is enormously commendable.

Some of the reminiscences—if I may put it like that—of my noble friend Lord Grocott apply to railway installations all over the world. However, there are many such installations still in the United Kingdom, which the Railway Heritage Committee would have been interested in seeing properly preserved. I do not suggest for a moment that transferring these matters to the Science Museum will necessarily adversely affect the future of railway heritage. However, I am conscious, as your Lordships will be conscious, that the Science Museum has lots of other things with which to concern itself. The great thing about the Railway Heritage Committee is precisely that it was concerned about our railway heritage, and worked to preserve that which we still enjoy at present and which future generations should also enjoy. I deplore and regret any diminution of that concern for our railway heritage as a result of this order.

I suspect, as did my noble friend Lord Grocott, that some civil servant somewhere drew up a list of quangos to be abolished and this one found itself on there. Even at this late hour, I urge the Government to think again. As a railwayman myself, and the son of a railwayman, I feel strongly about our railway heritage. I have bored your Lordships previously with stories about my own railway career. I point out that there are still artefacts—they can still be regarded as such—in use on the present-day modern railway which are well worth preserving. I am not sure I would have the ability, or that the Science Museum would have the time or patience, to listen to the case for preserving them. For example, there are signal boxes in the Stockport area, where I spent the early part of my career, which were built by the London and North Western Railway in the 1880s, and which still signal trains today. Do I approach the Science Museum when eventually those signal boxes are abolished, to say that these are part of our railway heritage, and ought to be kept?

I might say in passing that, although those of us who travel regularly on the west coast main line are familiar with the litany of equipment failures—“failure of lineside equipment” seems to be the stock response to any delays—that does not happen in the Stockport area. Thanks to the London and North Western Railway, which installed those signal boxes in 1888, they still do not have any problems, all these years later, in passing Pendolino trains through the town of Stockport. If we are properly to preserve that sort of railway heritage, we might need a wider scope than saying, “We will leave these matters to the Science Museum”.

So I ask, even at this late hour, for the Minister to reflect again. The abolition of quangos is not necessarily a bad thing, but the old proverb about babies and bath water certainly applies in this particular case.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, as president of the All-Party Parliamentary Arts and Heritage Group I would like to add one brief comment. First, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for what he has done. Secondly, it is self-evident that the work of this committee must carry on. It is often better to allow a group of enthusiasts, who are totally dedicated to a specific thing, to carry on rather than have it subsumed within a larger organisation. I have seen this happen with the subsuming of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, on which I sat for almost 25 years, into National Archives. Although I pay tribute to what National Archives seeks to do, the specialist knowledge and specific determination that were embodied in the commission have largely gone.

When there are relatively small and perhaps even obscure groups doing a very good job, it is a pity to sweep them away in the name of quango-clearing. This was not a costly quango: it was a body of dedicated enthusiasts doing a good job.

--- Later in debate ---

Railways clearly engage the interest of the public. There is one major railway TV programme on at the present time, which consists of three episodes about the historic nature of our railways on a major channel. Even Michael Portillo has moved on from politics to show his enthusiasm for bringing Bradshaw’s up-to-date with his “Great British Railway Journeys”. In doing so, he identifies changes over the historical period that have occurred as far as those railway journeys are concerned.

[Lord Snape]

Would my noble friend accept that Michael Portillo, who became Minister of State in the Department of Transport with very much a right-wing image, with a brief at the time to close the Settle and Carlisle line, spent a bit of time with railway men, went to see it for himself, became the more humane character that he is today and saved the Settle and Carlisle line as a result?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, it has been a very interesting debate and I thank every noble Lord who has taken part in it. In all parts of the Chamber, there have been impressive demonstrations of support for the work of the Railway Heritage Committee, for the cause of railway heritage as a whole and, indeed, for the role of our railways in our society. I thank every noble Lord who has participated.

As I shall be playing a part in the work of the Science Museum advisory board, I hope very much that I will be able to satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and my noble friend Lord Snape that in future we will do as good a job as the Railway Heritage Committee has done. I am particularly pleased that there has been such praise for the work of the Railway Heritage Committee, which I have not been a part of for the past three years. I am sure that the members of that committee will be very gratified that there is such support for the work that they have done and that their efforts are being appreciated. I have to tell noble Lords that back in 2010 they did not feel that they were being appreciated and it appeared that the committee was being abolished almost by a stroke of the pen.

My noble friend Lord Snape referred to the sterling work by Mr Michael Portillo in saving the Settle to Carlisle line. If he is interested, and if I might be allowed a small commercial, your Lordships will find in the Library a book, of which I am the co-author, that was published last week called Holding the Line: How Britain’s Railways Were Saved, in which the saving of the Settle to Carlisle line is described in some detail.

[Lord Snape]

Can my noble friend assure me that I get a mention? Otherwise I will not read it.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, has a very good mention in it, which I hope that he will appreciate; not least because he was the source of information that has subsequently appeared in it.

The Minister has asked me not to press my amendment. I am getting pressure from behind me to do that but, in view of the fact that the Government have moved a very considerable distance, and I certainly do not want to fall out with the Minister, who has been extraordinarily helpful, as has his colleague the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, I do not intend to press it this afternoon. I will read very carefully what the Minister has said about the review to be conducted by the DCMS within three years; that is the first time that we have heard that. We will study those words very carefully, and if this can lead to a future new statutory instrument, then that will solve the problem. It is a missed opportunity but it is a great deal better than where we were in 2010. I beg leave to withdraw.