"My Lords, have not a lot of the problems with the conditions of the rolling stock arisen from the ludicrous decision to put out the work to the leasing companies, for which it was a massive licence to print money? Certainly, neither passengers nor the Treasury benefited from that...." Lord Spellar - View Speech
"Prior to introducing that Bill, will the Minister assure the House that the Department has examined the change in working patterns with more people working from home, the impact that that has had and is likely to have on demand for inter-city travel, whether that has impacted the core case …..." Lord Spellar - View Speech
"I thank the Minister for giving away again. Can I bring him back to the point about whether there has been a long-term sectoral shift in demand for peak hour inter-city travel as a result of working from home and Zoom conferences. Has the Department analysed whether and why it …..." Lord Spellar - View Speech
"T7. The Secretary of State talked about electric buses earlier, but there is also the option of hydrogen. We have a groundbreaking hydrogen industry, while the Chinese have a real grip on electric bus technology. The West Midlands wants to buy hydrogen buses, and Northern Ireland wants to build them. …..." Lord Spellar - View Speech
"Is there not also a problem that when younger drivers have qualified, the insurance premiums when they start work, before they have two or three years’ experience, are huge? Should there not, therefore, be a Government scheme to encourage people in to spread that load and encourage more young people …..." Lord Spellar - View Speech
"Surely, to put it in context, it is best to start with why one would want to do this scheme in the first place. It is about traffic management and, in particular, reducing congestion in very crowded parts of our motorway network, especially at peak hours when people are going …..." Lord Spellar - View Speech
"Maybe a future programme for the hon. Gentleman’s Committee is why such bad advice is being given to Ministers inside the Department. Given that the M42 already had a system that worked and delivered much more predictable journey times, reduced fuel use, reduced pollution and, incidentally, reduced accident rates—that is …..." Lord Spellar - View Speech
"There is a slight danger of conflating smart motorways and all lane running motorways. There are smart motorways that work, as with the M42, which is a key part of the motorway box around Birmingham and vital to the economy of this country. We therefore need to differentiate, and to …..." Lord Spellar - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman’s last statement will be very much welcomed by workers in the gas and oil industry, but was it not also remiss of the Government a few years ago not to continue with the gas storage facility in the North sea, which would have provided us with some …..." Lord Spellar - View Speech