High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 2nd sitting : House of Lords & Committee: 2nd sitting
Thursday 12th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 11, I shall refer to the amendment in the name of the Labour Party.

The finances of HS2 do not stack up, unless it is used as a spine from which to hang a network of substantial improvements to existing rail services and a programme of new lines and stations. Amendment 11 in my name is designed to cover this by way of an annual review by the Secretary of State. The frequency is intended to keep the process of future planning under constant review because, for the sake of efficiency and cost effectiveness, it is essential that there is a steady flow of work for the rail manufacturing and construction industry. The Department for Transport needs to move away from the cumbersome feast-and-famine approach to railway building which has so hampered the industry in recent years.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, queried whether the eastern leg of HS2, phase 2b, would be built following the Minister’s confirmation in our previous debate on Monday that Bills for the eastern and the western legs will be separated. I invite the Minister to tell us whether there is any truth in the rumour that the National Infrastructure Commission, which is developing the strategic rail plan, might recommend that HS2 as a new line should be built only from Birmingham to East Midlands Parkway, and that thereafter trains would join the existing main line to Nottingham, Derby and Leeds. Even if that line is improved and electrified, this would mean that there will be no gains in capacity and speed, and it will mean the loss of the economic development potential of HS2 which we have seen so well illustrated already in Birmingham. If there is truth in this rumour, it illustrates the UK’s fatal flaw: our failure to raise our eyes to the horizon, to build for the future, to plan for the future.

The work of Midlands Connect, for example, and its Midlands Engine Rail plans illustrates perfectly the way in which HS2 can and should be used to stimulate major improvements in rail services across the area and, beyond that, further to the north. It has planned three packages of improvements. Package West uses phases 1 and 2a as well as capacity in existing lines which is released by HS2. It would enable 20 more trains per hour into and out of Birmingham Moor Street station, improving links with the south-west, Wales and the east Midlands. There are plans to improve connectivity at Birmingham Airport and for faster trains on existing lines between Birmingham and Manchester. Then there is its Package East: a multimodal strategy to connect towns across the region into the HS2 hub station at Toton. But possibly most significant is its Package Connect. It has plans to enhance the east-west connection between, for example, Crewe and Derby, Nottingham and Lincoln, and so on, significantly improving journey times in an area where the percentage of commuters who travel by rail is woefully low. Why is that? It is largely because the speeds of the trains—the services at the moment—are low, and the services are infrequent. I must also not forget the importance of freight. Putting more goods on to the railways is important, and essential to a green future and to avoiding climate change.

The single unifying factor in all these plans is that they all depend in some way on the impetus that HS2 will provide. A high-speed long-distance railway leads to improved services for commuters, shoppers and leisure travellers as well as additional capacity for freight. Despite the falling numbers of rail passengers, and despite the fact that the pandemic has made us think again, there is every reason to believe that people will return to travel in the future. Indeed, they already have. Already, we are at roughly 100% of pre-pandemic road traffic levels, at a time when only 59% of us are back in work in our offices. If we were all to go back to work as we have done before, that would be an additional 2.7 million cars and other vehicles on the road per day. It is simply not possible and sustainable in terms of congestion, let alone the impact on air quality and emissions. For a green future we have to plan for a modern, fast and efficient railway.

I remind the Minister that in the general election last year the Government received a huge boost from electors in the Midlands and the north, who put their faith in the Government’s levelling-up rhetoric. Now the Government have to deliver on that, and HS2 is a key part of that deal. But as I hope I have illustrated, HS2 must be used as a catalyst for much more—for much greater change—and the north of England and the Midlands will have a pretty dim view of government promises if that does not go ahead as planned. I beg to move.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has made some powerful points. She has also teed me up splendidly because her amendment raises the issue of connectivity. I can see that the Minister is much looking forward to the fact that I am going to speak again about the connectivity of the east Midlands, Yorkshire and the north-east, which is imminently threatened by this review and potential cancellation of HS2 east.

Lest noble Lords think that I am unnecessarily alarmist on this, I am doing my public duty to see that this catastrophic and historic error is not made. Every time I raise this issue and engage with stakeholders, my concerns become greater. Since I made my remarks on Monday I have had a number of private representations, which it would not be proper for me to reveal because I gave non-disclosure agreements in response to those, but I have also had a very significant public representation —which I have forwarded to the Minister to give her an opportunity to respond in her reply—from Professor David Rae, who is a professor of enterprise at De Montfort University in Leicester, an area which would gain enormously from the benefits of HS2 east. Perhaps I may read the key part of his letter to the Grand Committee, because it specifically responds to the points I raised in our previous sitting on Monday. He writes:

“Consistent with your Twitter messages”—


I tweet summaries of my speeches because they are far too long to inflict on the public at their full extent—

“regarding the threatened axing of the HS2 Eastern link, a well-informed source tells me that the National Infrastructure Commission, which is preparing the Rail Plan”—

the one that the noble Baroness keeps referring to, and which she rightly says I do not like because it is the disguise for delaying or cancelling it—

“which will recommend the future investment, is more likely to propose that HS2 East is only built from Birmingham to East Midlands Parkway (EMP) and there to join the existing Midland Mainline and follow existing … lines to Nottingham, Derby and North to Leeds. Even if this is approved, there are multiple negative effects. In terms of rail, there will be few gains in either rail capacity or speed, and none north of EMP. In effect the Leeds and Northern HS2 link would be via HS2 to Manchester and thence via Transpennine Rail”.

I should say in parenthesis that that means that the east Midlands would gain very little out of HS2 and the journey times to Leeds and the north-east would be significantly delayed because all of their HS2 journeys would need to go via Manchester. That presupposes that a tunnel is built under the Pennines at high speed to take the line from Manchester to Leeds, which itself, as I know from having looked at the costings, is a hugely expensive and very problematic project.

Professor David Rae continues:

“There is also a large economic development loss to the region. As you will know, the development of the Toton ‘Garden of Innovation’ new community and innovation district around the HS2 station—


the junction station between Derby and Nottingham that is proposed as part of HS2 east—

“is of strategic importance to the region and is one to which the Councils in Derby, Nottingham and respective Counties as well as the Local Enterprise Partnership … are committed. This is crucial to grow the high-value and high-skill capacity of the region, predicated on HS2, and if lost will set back the region’s economic development by 5 years. We simply cannot afford this loss, set against the effects of COVID-19 job losses and anticipated Brexit impacts.”

Motor Vehicles (Compulsory Insurance) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Randerson

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is making a very powerful point in respect of compensation for accidents, but there is also a massive bureaucratic issue in respect of insurance here. It is understated in the Explanatory Memorandum. Paragraph 3.7 says:

“If there is no deal with the EU, UK motorists will also be required to carry a ‘Green Card’ which guarantees third-party insurance provision when driving in the EU. This may result in increased bureaucracy and costs for those drivers”.


That must be the understatement of the year: how can that not result in a massive increase in bureaucracy and inconvenience to drivers? Should the Government not be telling all the motorists proposing to leave the country in five weeks’ time that they are going to be required to have this green-card, third-party insurance provision which they do not have at the moment, and how they can secure it? I am a former Secretary of State for Transport, but I myself do not know what it is, so the population of Northern Ireland which, as the noble Baroness says, will be decamping over the next 12 months to the European Union, is going to have to be well informed about the green-card insurance system, about which it knows absolutely nothing at the moment.

[Baroness Randerson]

The noble Lord makes a powerful point and I will come on to the green card later. It did strike me, as I read the Explanatory Memorandum, that it was a masterpiece of understatement. It said some fairly amazing things without the slightest hint of a raised eyebrow.

The point I am making is that the Government’s proposal is totally inappropriate to modern life. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments points out that paragraph 3.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the method of claiming will vary from country to country and that victims might have to pursue an uninsured person directly.

It also points out that no deal will lead to the issuing of green cards again. I am sure that noble Lords will remember green cards—but not with affection. The DfT has acknowledged that this will also apply to travel between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Although it says that the SI has nothing to do with green cards, perhaps the Minister can update us on the situation with green cards, because the British Insurance Brokers’ Association is alerting us now to the urgency for a decision, because physical green cards will have to be produced in their millions in the next few weeks.

I sometimes think that Brexit is a giant conspiracy against the great British tradition of a holiday in the sun.

[Lord Adonis]

I did not pick up on this in my reading of the statutory instrument. Did I hear the noble Baroness correctly: that you will require a green card to cross the Irish border? Is that the point she was making? Is that not a breach of the Good Friday agreement?

[Baroness Randerson]

I am quoting the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. The noble Lord makes an interesting point. It quite possibly would be but I am not sufficiently expert on the Good Friday agreement to be definitive on that.

There is a conspiracy against our summer holidays. We will now be going off with an international driving permit, sometimes two, and a green card to wait in the queue at the Channel Tunnel or the port—unless we choose to go by air, with all the doubts about whether or not the plane will fly. It will cost more because of the changes in the exchange rate in the past two and a half years; the ATOL system will not have the guarantees that it once had; and now we hear that if you have an accident you will be left to fight for compensation on your own. What will we get in return? A shiny blue passport. The problem is that this takes us back to a cumbersome, bureaucratic system that goes back decades and does not fit the modern way of travel.

On the consultation outcome, paragraph 10.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“Given the EU Exit negotiation sensitivity of changes to the Motor Vehicles (Compulsory Insurance) (Information Centre and Compensation Body) Regulations 2003, formal public consultation was not considered appropriate”.


I have read that several times. Are the Government really saying that because this will upset motorists they are not going to tell them about it or consult them? That is how I read that sentence. If that is not accurate, will the Minister explain exactly what the Government were trying to say?

The paragraph goes on, almost incredibly, to say that the Motor Insurers’ Bureau, the insurance trade associations and the motoring trade associations have been consulted and are satisfied. Are they seriously satisfied with this? They cannot possibly be satisfied and I would like to know what they really think. They might take the opportunity after they have read Hansard to tell us. It cannot be possible in an industry as diverse as this that all those organisations are happy with these seriously problematic regulations.

Paragraph 12 refers to the impact. Astonishingly, it deals with the impact on the courts of an expected spike in the number of cases being pursued prior to Brexit to take advantage of the current system. It totally ignores the impact on private individuals who are victims and find that they have to go to another country to pursue their case. Justice is a right, not a privilege, and these regulations cut at the basis of that right. UK citizens injured abroad may effectively lose the right to compensation as a result of this. Indeed, it is likely that compensation will be available only to privileged, wealthy people who can afford expensive legal representation.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, it is important that the House does not lose its capacity to be shocked by the scale of the dislocation that may be imposed by the Government on the country in one month’s time if no deal Brexit proceeds.

In a succession of speeches, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has laid out the impact of no deal on motor industry regulation and she did a good job of weaving together the changes in relation to insurance, accidents and international driving licences. The extraordinary thing about it is that, because we are going back to pre-1973 law, not only are many bureaucratic requirements being imposed but they are being imposed in a way that is entirely pre-digital.

Noble Lords will recall the green card but I am still of an age where I do not recall it—I do not think the Minister recalls the green card—which is a telling remark. You have to be—how can I put this delicately?—of a certain age to remember the green card. I certainly do not remember the international driving licence. However, as we go into this Alice in Wonderland world of disaster that the Government propose to inflict on the country, we now know that not only will you require an international driving licence and a green card but you will have to have them as physical constructs because the regulations under which they are imposed go back to the pre-digital era. You will have to get a physical international driver’s licence or licences—the Minister can intervene on me at any stage if she wishes—and a physical green card. Is that correct?

Road Vehicles and Non-Road Mobile Machinery (Type-Approval) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Randerson

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. She cited the fact that there would be no formal consultation on this SI, as indeed on any other SI that has come before the House. Did she note that paragraph 10.1 also said that,

“the intention is to ensure that, as far as possible, the status quo is maintained”?

The noble Baroness has done a very good job in the last 10 minutes of explaining why the status quo is not being maintained in key respects. There is a contradiction in paragraph 10.1 regarding the justification the Government have given for not consulting. According to that justification, they should have made no changes at all but continued with the existing type-approval regime. Given that the Government have made those changes, and given the statement that they themselves made in paragraph 10.1, there should surely have been consultation.

[Baroness Randerson]

I agree with the noble Lord that there should be consultation, because the Government themselves have admitted that there are aspects that could be misleading. That is what they say in the EM.

It is my understanding that gaining EU type approval is pretty expensive. It would be useful to know at least approximately how much it costs, so we can get some view of what the Government will have to undertake in future.

I turn now to the SI on emissions. These EU regulations establish mandatory fleet average CO₂ emissions targets for all cars and vans in the EU, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. They establish targets by which manufacturers must abide, based on a formula, and levy fines for non-compliance. EU states record and report new EU vehicle registrations to the EEA, which leads to the publication of emissions performance for individual manufacturers. Are we going to carry on with this system on a UK basis? Powers are being moved to the Secretary of State, but will the system of publication of performance continue? It is really important for public confidence. Small manufacturers can apply for derogations. In the SI, small manufacturers are defined as producing 300,000 cars and 22,000 vans. Are the Government going to divide that by 28 or something, to redefine a small manufacturer, or will the definition of a small manufacturer across the whole of the EU apply within the UK, in which context it will hardly be small?

Air Passenger Rights and Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Randerson

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

As the noble Lord is aware, because we debated it at some length in Grand Committee, in one SI the consultees were “selected” and “trusted”, but that has not appeared in others. It is not clear in this case who did the selection and whether they were trusted—perhaps the Minister can tell us.

I want to pose to the Minister the obvious questions. Who has been consulted on these regulations? What were the “long-established stakeholder forums” which were consulted? What issues relating to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU were raised by the consultees? What was the Government’s response to each of those concerns?

I do not serve on the statutory instrument committees but, when I meet noble Lords leaving those meetings with a haggard expression, they tell me there are hundreds more SIs to come and that apparently they are getting longer—some of them are hundreds of pages. I hope that, in these committees, noble Lords are asking questions of the Government as to what these processes are. It would be very helpful to us if these statutory instruments came to the House with a description of which “trusted” and “selected” groups were privy to the Government’s consultations.

[Baroness Randerson]

Is the noble Lord aware that, in some of the forums that the Department for Transport brought together to discuss EU and Brexit issues, those who took part were required to sign non-disclosure agreements?

[Lord Adonis]

So it is not just Seaborne Freight that had to sign a non-disclosure agreement; it turns out that people who turned up to meetings in the department also had to. Perhaps the Minister would like to clarify whether non-disclosure agreements were involved. Indeed, I am told there was an attempt to try to get your Lordships to sign non-disclosure agreements on the ground that, if we debate these issues openly and start expressing our concerns, people might become alarmed—as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, there are some members of the public who observe our proceedings.

This is worse than deeply unsatisfactory and is no way to make legislation. It is totally unacceptable and should not be happening. There is nothing the noble Baroness can say that will meet the substantial points, but perhaps she can at least give us some basic information on how consultation has been conducted and what the results were.

High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Randerson

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 12th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I recall the old luggage vans, although the Minister is far too young to remember things like that. I was travelling on a train in Australia a couple of years ago which still had a luggage van, and it was used for two things. First, it was used for people to put long-distance small packages on. They were not travelling on the train themselves; they were simply sending their package. That might be a company or a private individual. It was also used in the same way as we check our luggage on to an aeroplane—you checked your luggage on to the train. It transformed the experience of sitting on a crammed carriage with people jockeying for position with their luggage. I fully accept that that model is probably not acceptable or appropriate in the UK, but we need to move on from our fatal tendency to cram as many seats into the space as possible while ignoring the requirements for luggage space. I am sure that your Lordships will all have sat on a so-called express train to an airport—by definition in a scenario where you are likely to have quite a lot of luggage—and seen people sitting with large suitcases on their laps because there is absolutely no space left in the tiny amount of room allocated for luggage on those trains.

I support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, because I think that we need to be more far-sighted on this. His suggestion on flip-down seats is extremely interesting and a useful compromise, because it provides seats where they are needed, when flexible space is not needed, allowing for change in future. Buggies are not going to go away. People are going to go on having children and using buggies and needing to put them on trains.

I want to use this opportunity to explore the issue of wheelchair space. By legislation, there will be such a space, but the Minister will remember that we had the discussion on the Bus Services Bill about what happens when two people in wheelchairs wish to travel together. Wheelchair spaces are very often a solitary allowance, so flexible space would allow additional space for wheelchair users. HS2 will be an absolute boon for wheelchair users; the current railway system is often difficult for people in wheelchairs to navigate, if not impossible. Air travel is very difficult for them. Many people in wheelchairs simply cannot drive a car. So this will be a huge opportunity for wheelchair users to undertake long-distance travel in comfort, and we need to ensure that the trains are designed in such a way that they are flexible enough to accommodate more than one wheelchair user at a time in a carriage.

Given that there has been so much publicity lately about the availability of toilet facilities for people with disabilities—noble Lords will recall the very distressing story of one of our Paralympic athletes who was put in a very undignified position by the fact that the sole disabled toilet on the train was not functioning—can the Minister clarify that these trains will have a modern and respectable level of toilet facilities for disabled people? I would like to feel that all the toilets were accessible for disabled people. By the time it is built, it will be the middle of the 21st century, and we really cannot have only a single available toilet on a train.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley are well taken, particularly in respect of facilities for the disabled, flexible space for carrying light freight and proper facilities for families and those looking after young children. There has been a tendency on the part of the railways to move in the Japanese direction of regarding freight and luggage as a bad thing and making it almost impossible for passengers to carry such items in comfort. I do not think that that is a direction in which we want to go.

However, the area where I am more doubtful is about facilities on high-speed trains or the next generation of trains in general for the carrying of bicycles. It is not that there should not perhaps be some facility at the margin for doing so—though I am not sure, even with the great wisdom and expertise of your Lordships’ House, that trying to design a train by committee is a good idea, so the figure of 10% that my noble friend Lord Berkeley has specified might be a bit too precise. If there is spare luggage space on a train that is suitable for carrying bikes, then that is fine. But the real issue in terms of encouraging much more bicycle use in relation to trains—which is out of all proportion more important than the capacity to carry bikes on trains themselves, which will only ever be marginal, particularly with very busy trains loading and unloading hundreds of people at a time—is decent cycle storage and rental facilities at stations, so that passengers do not need to convey bikes on the train in the first place. With the best will in the world, you are only ever going to be able to carry a handful of bikes on trains, but you can have thousands of bicycles, either privately owned or for rental, provided for at stations. By and large, our mainline stations, which were not designed for bicycles or indeed anything else modern, including in most cases decent retail facilities, have lamentable facilities for storing bikes. It is a telling indication of the big problems that we have in managing bicycles, even with all the improvements in London, that the cycle rental scheme does not embrace most London termini, because how to deal with the big issues of location and of shipping bikes backwards and forwards has not yet been worked out.

The contrast with best European practice in this area could not be more stark. I shall never forget visiting Amsterdam station and other major stations in Holland. Where you come out of the station, you have huge areas reserved for bikes, including rental schemes, along with bike workshops, so that you can get repairs done, and proper supervised bike facilities. It is a completely different situation from the one we have here. We are not yet at the stage of detailed station design plans for HS2 but I hope that, when it comes to the design of these hugely forward-looking stations that we want to see at Euston, Old Oak Common, Birmingham Curzon Street and other locations going north, there will be exemplary facilities for cyclists with significant space made available for cycle storage, repairs and rental schemes. In terms of a path-breaking approach to integrating cycling with railway use, seeing that there are state-of-the-art and capacious cycle facilities at stations is far more important than any provision that it might be possible to make in respect of the trains.