Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part one): House of Lords
Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, we debated many of these issues in Committee and earlier. I mentioned in Committee the issue of Cornwall being allowed to do certain things, even though it does not have a mayor. I was rather shocked to hear the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government at a conference in Exeter on Friday, which was about making the south-west flourish and grow. Somebody raised the question of what a mayoralty can do which a local authority cannot. The Secretary of State responded, “If you want any money for the regions, including for transport, you had better get an elected mayor pretty quick”, and said that Somerset, Devon and Cornwall must have an elected mayor if they want any money. We can debate long and hard whether those three counties plus the cities of Plymouth and Torbay would ever agree on an elected mayor; that is a slightly different issue. He went on to say that the agreement that has been reached between Cornwall Council and the Government was of no interest because there was no money involved. They would not get any more money unless they elected a mayor. I imagine that this applies to any other rural part of the country.

Can the Minister say in this connection—because it is all to do with money at the end of the day—whether the Government have changed their policy on regional support for transport? The regions, and certainly Cornwall and the south-west, will lose a lot of money because of the Brexit situation, so if they want any money for extra services such as bus services, whether they are community services or something else, does that mean that they will have to become a mayoralty, and we will have a mayor of the south-west and a mayor of Cornwall? This is quite radical. The Secretary of State was absolutely adamant about this in response to several questions from the audience. Maybe the Minister has not had a chance to hear about this, but it will be interesting to hear whether the Government’s policy has changed.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. On that final point from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I am sure he will not be surprised to hear that I will look into those comments. However, the Government’s position has been made clear during the course of the Bill. Certainly, on the franchising issue and specifically on mayoral authorities, we believe that they are the preferred model because of their governance issues. On the other issues he raised, I have not seen those comments so it would be inappropriate for me to say any more at this juncture. However, I will read his contribution and come back to him.

The amendments before us concern the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. As we all agree, and as I have said repeatedly, we accept the principle that it encourages those who commission public services to talk to their local providers and communities to design better services. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, first raised this issue at Second Reading and it has been a constant theme throughout the passage of the Bill.

As I have said before, and as noble Lords have acknowledged previously, the 2012 Act already applies to certain procurements by local authorities. In addition, based on our discussions both at Second Reading and in Committee—I hope noble Lords have seen the draft guidance that my department issued recently—we have taken on board the comments and contributions made in the debates on the Bill to ensure that that is reflected appropriately in the guidance. As I am sure noble Lords have seen, it sets out that where the provisions of the Act do not apply because the procurement value falls below relevant thresholds, there is still a need for local authorities to apply the core principles of the Act when procuring services. So not only have we listened but we have acted to strengthen the guidance beyond the original provisions of the Act.

As I said in Committee, we do not believe that we need reference in the Bill to an existing piece of legislation that applies in its own right. However, we accept the principle, and that is why we have strengthened it in the guidance that will accompany the Bill. More broadly, I think that noble Lords are keen to ensure that authorities think about the social, economic and environmental benefits and impacts of schemes. I agree entirely but point out that the Bill already requires authorities to think about these benefits through the franchising and enhanced partnership provisions.

As noble Lords will no doubt recall, as part of their assessment of their proposed franchising schemes, authorities will need to consider value for money, which will include detailed analysis of the social, economic and environmental impacts. Likewise, for enhanced partnerships, the Bill specifies that a scheme can be introduced only where it brings benefits to people using buses or where it reduces congestion, noise or air pollution. Therefore, the Government have listened and, as can be seen from the way we have strengthened the guidance accompanying the Bill, as well as the provisions of the Act relating to the procurement of services, we have specifically considered the social, economic and environmental costs of schemes, and that is well embedded in the Bill.

I hope that noble Lords will be assured by the action we have taken to strengthen and enhance the guidance accompanying the Bill. The existing legislation will be brought to the attention of local authorities and will be referenced in that guidance. We feel that using the guidance is the appropriate way to address this important topic. Again, I thank noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, for raising this issue at an early stage in the Bill. I feel that we have made progress and I hope she will feel minded to withdraw the amendment.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, this amendment is about bus safety. I would like to think that it is so sensible that it will be accepted. Statistics released by the Department for Transport show that 5,381 collisions of buses and coaches were recorded last year, of which 64 resulted in fatalities and 638 in serious injuries. This amendment would help to address this worrying safety record by requiring all bus operators to subscribe to CIRAS, the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System, and for bus operators and their contracting local authorities to collect and publish casualty data for public scrutiny every quarter.

CIRAS is standard across the rail industry and began in 1996, when a team from Strathclyde University was asked to introduce a confidential reporting system for UK rail company ScotRail. It allows employees to report any health, safety, security and environmental concerns they might have. All employee information is kept confidential. Introducing CIRAS to the bus network would give employees an extra way of reporting any concerns, complementing the proven methods that are already in place for reporting and investigating incidents. Under huge pressure from one campaigner who was a victim of a bus crash, Tom Kearney, and with a little help from Green Party elected people, Transport for London adopted this policy on 31 July last year and subsequently incorporated it into its bus safety plan, published on 1 February this year. Due to the bus safety reporting practices we won in London, the Department for Transport has confirmed to us that we know the names of the bus operators involved in only 14 of those 64 fatal bus collisions; that is 22%.

According to a report published by CIRAS in July, since going live in January 2016, safety reports from TfL bus employees constituted 25% of all safety reports during the first half of the year. Since TfL bus operators are fewer than 2% of CIRAS members nationwide, that is a key indicator of the desire for bus sector employees to be proactive in reporting their operational safety concerns. It also means that the DfT has no idea which operators were involved in well over 5,000 bus collisions and 50 deaths last year. TfL knows every single one in over 27,000.

Operators in London carry more than half the passenger journeys in England and, including their services outside London, account for more than 80% of the market. Those operators already subscribe to the CIRAS scheme and will not incur any further cost as a result of the amendment. The cost to other operators of subscribing will be negligible: between £300 and £25,000 per annum depending on turnover and representing no more than 0.03% of their turnover. The amendment would also require operators to collect bus casualty data and provide it to the applicable authority. It would require those authorities to publish quarterly casualty data on their websites.

I am sure noble Lords know this already, but a death on the roads comes to nearly £2 million when the entire cost to public services is taken into account. Money could be saved massively, not only for the NHS, but also for councils and others who have to provide social services to bereaved families. Since 2014, Transport for London has provided more transparency for the public on both the extent of the problems and the very varied safety records of different operators. There is also a slightly concerning fact that this amendment could represent the only language in the Bill that addresses the operational safety performance of the bus services covered by this landmark legislation.

As has already been proven in the air, maritime and rail industries, public reporting and scrutiny of operator safety performance and access to confidential and independent incident reporting can do much to catalyse the formation of a self-reinforcing safety culture within companies. I believe that the amendment represents a proportionate measure to improve bus safety, learning from the progress made in the rail industry and in the bus market in London. I hope that the Government will support the amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much support this amendment. My noble friend has set out very clearly why it is necessary. It is useful to reflect on the continuing difference in the way road and rail accidents and injuries are considered. I recall a few years ago when the Government were forming Highways England—I think that is the name of it now—several of us tabling an amendment which stated that the Office of Rail and Road, as it became, should be responsible for road safety. It was soundly rejected by the Government because it would have shown up just how unsafe the roads were, are and probably will be in the future.

I think my noble friend said that were 64 fatal bus collisions; I cannot remember whether it was last year or in a year. That compares with none on the railways, or maybe one in some years. Yet nobody even seems to think the subject worth collecting statistics on. She mentioned £2 million for every fatality, which is a figure that has long been used in the transport industry, be it in rail or road. It usually means that if the cause of the fatality can be identified and avoided from happening again for less than £2 million, you would spend the money on it, and if it was more than that you might not. If the value is the same, one’s only conclusion can be that the Government think that the value of a bus passenger’s life is less than the value of a rail passenger’s life when they die in a bus accident. This is a very dangerous situation to get into. We are not going to have an Office of Rail and Road looking after road safety tonight, but this amendment is a very good start to a debate that will probably go on for many years. I fully support it.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, this is a new issue raised at a late stage in the process, but nevertheless it is extremely important. This is a critical point for confidential reporting. It is no good just very thoroughly investigating serious, fatal accidents but not looking at the near misses, because there are many more data to be extracted from near misses. Today’s near miss is tomorrow’s very serious accident. Sometimes when things go horribly wrong, there are little things leading up to it; it is not just an out-of-the-blue serious incident.

On the previous amendment, the best argument of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was the need for localism. While the Minister should take on the principle and the need for confidential reporting and strongly encourage it, under the principle of localism he would be better to leave local authorities to decide whether they need to put this into their franchise agreement or not.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have to say that I remain unconvinced by the arguments advanced by noble Lords in support of the amendments and, once again, I urge my noble friend the Minister to resist them.

As I said in Committee, combined authorities with elected mayors or any other local authority with an elected mayor are very different beasts from local authorities which have not gone down the route of an elected mayor. These authorities have thrashed out a devolution deal with the Government and are fully accountable to their citizens, so will be granted the powers to introduce local bus franchising. Even the mere suggestion that a local authority is thinking about franchising will cause uncertainty for industry. Of course that uncertainty could go on for years, indefinitely perhaps—a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Snape.

There are few things that serve to stifle innovation and investment more than uncertainty. All the while, bus operators would have no incentive to adapt their services to meet the needs of their passengers. Who would blame them, given that they could be out of business should the local authority actually make a decision and use the powers? Services would inevitably deteriorate and passengers would be the losers.

Local bus franchising, and indeed the whole concept of devolution, are not steps that can be taken lightly. There needs to be due process and proper scrutiny. Those areas with agreed devolution deals have taken that brave political step. It is absolutely right that there be a separate process for areas that have not secured a devolution agreement, and a process that will require the affirmative procedure giving Parliament the final say is, in my view, exactly what we need. I really cannot support these amendments and my noble friend will have my full support in resisting them should they be pressed to a Division.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, listening to my noble friend Lord Snape and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, makes me think that some of the reasons they are putting forward are really to do with the fact that they do not like the idea of franchises at all. I can accept that view. I think that franchises could be a very useful contribution to better bus services in many areas. However, I do not understand why a mayoral authority, but nobody else, is allowed to do this without the permission of the Secretary of State. Maybe the Minister can explain it. I mentioned Cornwall, which is one of the few authorities that, as far as I can gather, will be allowed to do it. If one thinks that all mayoral authorities are the epitome of perfection and all the other schemes in proposed new Sections 123B to 123F in the clause need a great deal of supervision from the Department for Transport, one could look at the “Rotten Boroughs” column in Private Eye every fortnight and count up which ones are mentioned most often for having allegations of sleaze, fiddle or something else. I fully support this amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s answers.

[Earl Attlee]

In response to the question posed by the noble Lord to me and the noble Lord, Lord Snape, I say that we oppose extending the right to franchising without the authority of the Secretary of State to provide certainty for the operators unless the local authority can get permission from the Secretary of State.

Southern Rail

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

On the noble Baroness’s second point, I know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is looking at the whole issue of compensation, including making it available for delays of 15 minutes; noble Lords will know that it is currently available for delays of 30 minutes. On the specific app, GTR has specific processes for delay and compensation, and an online form is available. One thing it does not entertain is third-party applications. If there are specific examples of compensation applications being directly made via the online application that have then not been paid out, I would be happy if she wrote to me with the detail so that I can take it up directly.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Government confirm that the train operators concerned in this present dispute have safety cases to allow one-person operation of the trains? I recall that it happens in many parts of the country and clearly, they must have got it, but this problem has been going on for much too long. Will the Government put as much pressure as they can on Chris Gibb and his team to get everybody around a table to sort it out once and for all?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I am sure that many of those who know the rail industry also know that Chris Gibb himself also brings around 30 years’ experience. His appointment will expedite the resolution of what has been, as the noble Lord rightly points out, a long-standing dispute; obviously, the people who are suffering are the customers.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support most of the speeches made in support of this amendment. I am not sure that I agree with my noble friend Lord Snape about too many announcements. It is better to have too many than too few. Coincidentally, today I got news from the Oxford Mail that Oxfordshire County Council is stopping all subsidies to buses. It made the decision this afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Low, spoke about the Oxford Bus Company, which is very good, but 117 routes will be cancelled, mainly to small towns and villages. If we think about the effect on people who cannot see or who have reduced mobility, they cannot drive. The article does not say how many people will be affected by it, but it is obviously going to have a serious effect on people’s lives in just one county. Of course, it is blaming government cuts, rightly or wrongly, and we can debate that. But if the council had waited a year or two until some of this legislation had gone through, the Minister might say that it could easily keep those services because they will be so much better and operators will not need a subsidy anymore because there will be so many more people, presumably under the age of 16, paying for their fares. It is a serious warning. Just one county, which is probably not the poorest county in the country, has said, “Damn the buses. We don’t really care. They’re old, infirm, poor and probably don’t vote Tory. We’ll dump them”. It is a very sad coincidence that it has happened today.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Campbell and Lady Brinton. I shall speak also to Amendments 122 and 126 in my name. I am very grateful for the support of noble Lords who have spoken on them.

These amendments build on the requirements in the Equality Act 2010 for businesses to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that people with disabilities can access goods and services. Action on these issues is vital as the Department for Work and Pensions survey shows that 37% of disabled respondents found transport accessibility a significant barrier to work. We clearly have a long way to go to create a service to which all potential users have access.

Amendment 122 is, I hope, straightforward. It builds on the good practice that exists among enlightened bus operators around the country. It requires all bus operators to provide compulsory, approved equality and disability awareness training by 1 April 2019. It makes the important point that disability is not always obvious and can include mental and other hidden disabilities. We believe that all bus drivers need the skills to identify these potential disabilities, understand the legal framework that applies and have the confidence to intervene effectively when problems arise. I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Judd about the need for public awareness training, but it has to be underpinned by clear legislation and training. In my experience, the public are much more aware of and sympathetic to these issues than we give them credit for. Quite often it is members of the public who come to the rescue of people who are trying to get on to transport; they want to help but do not feel they are getting the support they need to intervene.

We contend that it is not good enough to provide this training on a voluntary or ad hoc basis. With all equality training, the experience is that those who acknowledge that they need the training the most do not really need it: it is those who have to be forced to go on the training who need it the most. It has to be a universal and regular provision.

I ask the Minister for clarification on the Brexit implications of the proposals. As I understand it, Britain currently has a five-year exemption from the EU directive requiring bus drivers and terminal staff to undergo disability awareness training. The exemption runs out in 2018, and we would have expected the requirement to have been put in UK law by then. Will the Minister clarify the status of that obligation now? Is the department on course to implement it, or is this something that can now be achieved more quickly, perhaps through the vehicle of the Bill by adopting our amendment or something similar?

Our Amendment 126 addresses the need for all buses to have audio-visual communication systems to advise passengers of the next stop, any delays and any diversions from the published timetable. The amendment has the support of over 30 charities and bus providers. It would make a vital difference to the lives of almost 2 million people with sight loss, as well as many elderly people who rely on public transport for their independence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, currently only 19% of buses are fitted with AV. Those of us who travel regularly by bus in London realise how liberating and reassuring the service can be, and indeed it frees the driver to concentrate on the roads. I say to my noble friend Lord Snape that I travel on London buses a lot and I have never been irritated by the voice of the AV system; I always find it soothing and reassuring.

It is not like that in the rest of the country, though; a recent Guide Dogs report showed that seven in 10 passengers with sight loss have missed a stop because the driver has forgotten to tell them where to get off. Understandably, this is both distressing and potentially dangerous. AV provision already applies to all new trains. It makes sense to replicate that provision for buses so that we can have a properly integrated public transport system with equal rights and facilities across the piece.

As we have heard, some bus operators have argued that the cost could be prohibitive, but we do not accept that. The latest estimates are that it could be installed for around £2,000 per bus. At the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, a recent study in Oxford showed that if the messenger system was also allowed to include adverts, it could pay for itself in two years. When we met the Minister, Andrew Jones, at the start of the process, he seemed sympathetic to the arguments that have been put on this issue. I understand that he has since said he accepts that the costs have come down, and is therefore reflecting on the next steps. I am also grateful to the Minister here for our earlier meeting on the issues that are covered in the amendments, and I know that more discussions are being planned. I hope the Minister will be able to give us some good news today, and will feel able to confirm that he is prepared to support the amendments.

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Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

84A: Clause 9, page 37, line 23, at end insert—
“(7A) An enhanced partnership scheme must state the minimum standards of service to be provided under the scheme. ”

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 84A I shall speak also to Amendment 84B, which is also in my name. Amendment 84A is a small amendment, but it is designed to ensure that when two or more enhanced partnerships meet and work together, the minimum standards that we will be discussing elsewhere and have already discussed are provided in both or all the schemes. Amendment 84B provides—on page 38, line 37—that an enhanced partnership scheme “must” specify the,

“requirements about the frequency or timing of particular local services or local services of particular descriptions”.

As a general comment on the further amendments in the group which propose changing the word “may” to “must”, I would be much happier if the word “must” appeared in the text because “may” can also mean “may not”. Is this going to be covered in further documentation and regulations? For something like this it would be much better to have a bit more definition. I am sure that it is the Government’s intention that these enhanced partnerships should specify the frequency and timing of local services as well as the different types of service, and indeed we have talked about these issues during the course of many amendments during the previous two days in Committee. I hope that the Minister will accept that the word “must” would be a beneficial improvement to the Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I shall address Amendments 85 and 86 tabled in my name. Once again these amendments are an attempt to firm up the Bill by ensuring that enhanced partnerships take into account the list of factors specified on page 39, which at the moment suggests that they “may specify” those factors. The list includes such fundamental things as tickets and entitlement to travel. We believe that enhanced partnerships have to take these into account. We are saying not that problems have to be solved in a particular way but that enhanced partnerships must take account of this. We are not prescribing the solutions.

Amendment 86 specifies that emission levels must be included in the factors that vehicles must meet and that disabled access arrangements must be taken into account. We have raised these issues before. Once again, this is a very basic reference to simple principles that really need to be taken into account in a Bill that will become an Act in 2016 and will probably suit the industry for the next 20 or 30 years, as the previous Act did. If we want to look ahead, we have to look at the society we are serving to ensure that the factors that are so important, such as emission levels, are considered in every circumstance, not just by the best operators and the most thoughtful local authorities.

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Amendment 90AA would allow the LTA, as one of the measures that it may take under new Section 138D, to carry out performance monitoring of a scheme. I agree with the intention and that such monitoring may be a useful addition to a scheme. However, it should be for the LTA itself to determine whether to undertake such monitoring and, if so, what specific elements it covers. This may vary from scheme to scheme. For example, in some schemes, there may be no issues with driver behaviour but the cleanliness of the buses may be an issue. In others, it may be the other way around, or other issues may require monitoring. But I totally understand and appreciate the helpful point made by this amendment, and therefore I agree to consider this amendment as well. With the explanation that I have provided and the reassurance I have given on two of the amendments, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the Minister for that short answer, which was useful clarification. I shall study what he said. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 84A withdrawn.

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[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, Amendment 93, which is in my name, states:

“Once consulted, the Competition and Markets Authority may not overturn an enhanced partnership plan and scheme”.

We tabled it because we are seriously concerned about the retrospective role of the CMA that we have seen operating in the rail industry, for example. A retrospective power to impose competition, red in tooth and claw, at all costs is at odds with the principles behind the Bill.

We have a deregulated bus market. Through the Bill, the Government are trying to bring in an element of regulation to improve quality and standards. We support that, but the potential role of the CMA could undermine or, at the very least, seriously disrupt the purpose of the Bill. It is important that we get the role of the CMA clear at this stage and that, once consulted, it will not be able to say retrospectively—after an agreement has been made or a partnership or franchise established—that it is not possible, and to disrupt it and prevent it going ahead.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the statement put out by the CMA on 5 July. Among other things, it states:

“We recognise that the introduction of franchising may be appropriate in specific circumstances. But we continue to believe that on-road competition should only be abandoned in favour of competition for the market where it’s clear that this is the only way to secure better outcomes for the travelling public”.

I emphasise the word “only”. It is impossible to prove that something is the only way. You can prove the reverse, but it is often impossible to prove that something is the only way. That sets an impossible hurdle for local authorities trying to set up either enhanced partnerships or franchising.

The CMA states that local authorities should have to,

“demonstrate that any distortion to competition created by the proposed arrangements”—

this applies to partnerships as well as franchises—

“would be justified by the contribution to achieving other policy aims”.

That is another complex and potentially impossible step. It states that local authorities should,

“ensure that partnership schemes don’t harm competition unless it’s strictly necessary to achieve their objectives. We want that principle to be hardwired into every stage of the process”.

It recommends that,

“LTAs should be obliged to take the following steps”,

and one of them is to,

“demonstrate that any distortion to competition created by the proposed arrangements would be justified by the contribution to achieving other policy aims”.

That is setting an impossible hurdle for local authorities to achieve. It is also in danger of making even partnerships so complex to achieve that local authorities simply do not bother. If that is so, the Bill will fail.

Amendments 108 and 111 both simply specify bus users as among those who must be consulted on enhanced partnerships. This is very much in line with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, just emphasised. It is truly astonishing that the Bill, which purports to have at its heart the desire to increase the number of people using buses, specifies as people to be consulted the operators, the CMA and,

“such other persons as the authority or authorities think fit”.

It is perfectly reasonable to include the operators and the CMA, but I am unsure why it is not acceptable to use the phrase “bus users” or “bus user groups”. The poor old passenger is worthy of a specific mention. I know that the Minister will say, “Of course bus users will be consulted”, but I think that they are worthy of a mention. There is no philosophical or legal objection to mentioning bus users, because the Bill mentions them at one point—but it does not mention them consistently.

I urge the Minister to take our points on board. The bus user point is not new, but the role of the CMA needs to be clarified if it is not to make it very difficult for the Bill to work as intended.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I would like to discuss Amendment 93. The noble Baroness has done the Committee a service by reading out a letter from the CMA. My first reaction was that the amendment was not a good idea, because it put a constraint on what the CMA would normally do. On page 42 of the Bill the CMA is listed as one of the organisations to be consulted, and that seemed all right to me. However, the CMA’s letter causes me some concern. Presumably, the Government consulted the CMA before drafting this text. The idea that, having been consulted once, the CMA would go against the principles of the Bill and come back for a few more bites of the cherry is going to put off a large number of authorities that might want to take forward these changes. That is worrying, because it might put off a lot of local authorities from doing it at all.

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Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

111A: Clause 11, page 60, line 10, at end insert—
“(3A) A traffic commissioner must have regard to relevant information supplied by a local transport authority when exercising functions under this section.”

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, before I move Amendment 111A, I would like to put on record that I do not understand page 59, line 42. I think there might be a spelling mistake. I do not need an answer from the Minister, but it is useful to put it on record.

The amendments in this group concern what happens when a traffic commissioner refuses an application. In both cases, it is quite important that before refusing an application the traffic commissioner needs to have as much information on the local transport authority as possible. The Minister may say that this is not necessary and that it is obvious that he would do this, but it does not always happen that way, so I thought it would be useful to put in the new subsections proposed in Amendments 111A and 111B to say that the traffic commissioner must have regard to relevant information. It might prevent some unnecessary debates and complaints later from organisations whose applications have been refused. I beg to move.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I support my noble friend Lord Berkeley in these two amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s response. It is right that the traffic commissioner should have all the relevant information in front of him. Putting that into the Bill will ensure that when decisions are made they are robust and we do not get situations where there are needless complaints because people have not taken on board what they should have done. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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I realise that the requirements of EU law will now be considered in the light of the referendum result, but in the meantime we continue to abide by it. However, I agree with the intention behind the noble Lord’s amendments. Where a traffic commissioner must decide whether to accept or reject an individual application to register a local service under this new section, it is important that the traffic commissioner takes into account all relevant evidence, including anything provided by the local transport authority. I assure the noble Lord that nothing in this section of the Bill prevents them doing so. In view of the explanation that I have given, I hope the noble Lord is minded to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. It takes two to tango, and I suspect that the traffic commissioner will get the information that he needs whether or not the local authority offers it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 111A withdrawn.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, I have to inform the Committee that if Amendment 112A is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 113 by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the Minister’s explanation. This is another occasion when I am slightly concerned that the Minister has answered my amendment before I have spoken to it, but that is the way we have it here. In this case I do not complain; I shall read what he said very carefully and I suspect it will be fine. I do not propose to move my amendment.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I am happy that the noble Lord is happy.

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[Lord Snape]

Of course there is not a bottomless pit of public money. It is for the Government to decide the priorities for government expenditure, and I urge the noble Baroness who spoke just before me to press the Government to see the realities of life in rural areas before they take the axe to local government funding any further. I am pleased that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, agrees with me, although I am not sure whether that will do anything for either of our careers.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, it is difficult to agree with everyone on this point. In response to my noble friend Lord Snape, nobody is going to run a community bus service if a bus service is already running. Presumably that service would be making a profit under his definition, so in theory there would not be a need for another one.

Turning to the amendment, the community bus route is based on the community interest company model, which I imagine was introduced by the Labour Government 10 or 15 years ago, although I cannot remember exactly when. I found one CIC on the internet called the Dales and Bowland Community Interest Company, which runs bus services in the Dales. The point is that it is not designed to make a profit—in fact, it is not allowed to make a profit unless it reinvests it. Unless something like that operated, it is pretty clear that there would be no bus service, so I suspect that, for areas which do not have bus services at the moment or which are thought to be unsuitable for such services, this kind of model makes a really good contribution.

One benefit of the CIC model is that it is very easy to set up—I am involved in one at the moment, although not in connection with buses—and it is easier to get funding for a CIC than it sometimes is for a commercial operation. Officials in the Department for Transport have basically said, “In some circumstances we would be pleased to consider a contribution from the department or from local authorities”. It might be easier to give it to a CIC which demonstrated that there was a need and that it was prepared to work towards participating in providing a service than it would be to give it to a local authority.

I have slight concerns about the text of the amendment. My noble friend Lord Snape talked about the six-month moratorium, but I think that the principle is very sound. I believe that community buses were one of the main reasons that CICs were set up in the first place. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will look on the principle with favour and, if the text is not quite right, I hope that that can be discussed before the next stage. Integrating all the other bus services that we are talking about in the Bill with ones that would not operate without some community involvement—not to make a profit but just to provide a service for the people who need it—is a very important element.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I know that, as has been said, local bus services are very important to our local communities. As noble Lords have said, they act as a lifeline for many, getting people to and from work. Whether the services are required for education, health or leisure facilities, I say at the outset that I sympathise with the aims of the amendment and agree that bus routes can have a real community worth. I am also aware of the issues that many people are experiencing at the moment with bus services being reduced or cut. There is no doubt that many local authorities are facing funding issues and have difficult decisions to make about the services that they may be able to subsidise.

It may be helpful if I say a little about the community transport sector and the total transport initiative, which I think will be of interest to noble Lords and which can help achieve the outcomes that I think are intended by the amendment.

The community transport sector can offer services that address local needs and increase patronage, particularly where commercial bus services are not viable. The sector is well placed to serve more isolated communities and can provide crucial services linking individuals and communities to existing transport networks, work, education, shops and so on.

The department is extremely supportive of the sector, with our recent £25 million community minibus fund helping more than 300 local groups across England. The total transport initiative also offers a significant opportunity to make the funding available to authorities and public bodies for the provision of transport go further. This involves integrating the services that are currently commissioned by different central and local government agencies, allowing resources to be used more efficiently and resulting in services to passengers that are more effective at meeting their needs.

Although I sympathise with the aims of the amendment, I do not think that it will resolve any issues relating to the continued provision of services on routes that are deemed to be of community value. I agree that where services are to be cut or reduced significantly in frequency, commercial operators, or local authorities in the case of subsidised services, should do all they can to consult and inform local communities. However, I do not think it is reasonable to force operators to continue to operate a service, potentially to their financial detriment, for a period of six months. Operators of registered bus services are, in any event, obliged to give a traffic commissioner at least 56 days’ notice of their intention to stop running a service.

That said, I agree that there is more we can do to champion the community transport sector, seeking to use public funding for transport in the most efficient ways. I will also think further on the point raised by noble Lords regarding training and advice for local community groups to help them understand the options that are open to them. I would encourage local authorities, communities and operators to work together to address issues relating to the continuity of services to passengers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, raised the specific issue of funding for bus services to enable people to access education. I note the important points that she made and agree totally that young people need access to transport to get to a school or further education college, as well as for employment purposes. However, I believe that this is a policy matter in which my colleagues in the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government also have an interest. I will therefore speak to colleagues in both those departments and write to the noble Baroness in respect of the points that she has raised, copying other noble Lords into that correspondence.

I hope that the explanation that I have given has in part persuaded noble Lords that the Government understand the community worth of local bus services and are keen to find ways to ensure that local communities can work together with a view to addressing issues and increasing the understanding of passenger concerns. I hope that I have gone some way to assuring the noble Baroness to the extent that she feels able to withdraw the amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

123A: After Clause 16, insert the following new Clause—
“Passenger representationPassenger representation
(1) A local transport authority, in developing any scheme under this Act, shall be required to set out mechanisms whereby the users of services specified or affected by the scheme shall be involved in monitoring and evaluating the scheme.(2) A local transport authority in developing any scheme under this Act shall be required to specify a body to review complaints from bus users using services specified or affected by the scheme.”

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, Amendment 123A would insert a new clause, “Passenger representation”, which tries to give bus passengers the same information—and credibility of information—that rail passengers get through Transport Focus, whose responsibility has recently been widened to include information about roads. This goes a bit wider than that, however, because local transport authorities need to set up mechanisms whereby passengers who are affected or who might use services can have credible information about proposed or actual services, as they have for rail services, and about reliability, quality and what happens when something goes wrong—as we discussed on today’s first Question.

It does not really matter who provides the services, whether it is a franchise, partnership or something else, but it is important. This could be done nationally, through Transport Focus or Bus Users UK, or locally, with co-ordination by a national body. Either way, there is a need for something like this and to have a requirement for it in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support the principle of the amendment that my noble friend Lord Berkeley has just moved. We have had debates about inserting references to passenger representation at various points in the consultations on the Bill. My noble friend’s amendment seeks to state this as a general principle so that, in effect, there would be in every area some form of passenger representation to cover the involvement of passengers in the development and continued operation of the franchise, partnership or contract. Further, passenger representation should be part of the general decision-making process as we go forward, not simply in the original consultation.

In addition, my noble friend’s amendment refers to a complaints system. It is vital that there should be within this industry a system for complaints to be rapidly dealt with by the operator and, if necessary, the transport authority. To do that, there needs to be an effective passenger body. It could be a national body or a combination of a local body and Transport Focus nationally. On earlier parts of the Bill, the Minister very gratifyingly showed some encouragement to those of us who were arguing for engagement of passenger representation. I hope that in his reply the Minister can tell us, or at least give a general indication—tonight if possible but certainly before we get to Report—how the Government will bring forward amendments on Report to reflect that commitment to passenger representation and the ability of such organisations to deal with complaints with bus operators. It would be very useful if we all received a letter before Report setting out all the points at which this would be reflected in the Bill.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, as has been said by those noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate, this is something that we have talked about in terms of the principle. The amendment would ensure that local transport authorities set out mechanisms through which passengers are involved in the monitoring and evaluation of any scheme that is implemented as a result of the Bill.

Turning first to the aspect of the amendment that relates to passenger representation, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, proposed a similar amendment which was discussed on the second day in Committee. As I said then, hearing from passengers helps authorities and operators to understand the needs of their local communities and to design schemes that can bring real benefits. I am also keen to ensure that any authority implementing either a franchising or partnership scheme thinks carefully about the outcomes it is looking to achieve, and how it will evaluate and monitor the performance of the scheme. I further agree that passengers should be involved in that process, as they will be the ones with the day-to-day experience of using the services.

I am therefore happy to consider how best to accommodate this. I will consider what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said about how the Government plan to outline this and whether we look to further guidance where we can better set out our wider expectations relating to how passengers should be involved throughout the process, both while schemes are being developed and once they have been implemented. I will provide, as the noble Lord requested, further clarification in advance of Report.

Turning to the second half of the amendment, which relates to complaints procedures, I agree that it is important that passengers’ voices are heard and that their complaints are dealt with effectively.

It is always good to be in advance of the Box note. I have just received one that says, “I would be pleased to write to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in that respect”. It shows that Ministers can think for themselves. That may be a startling revelation to the Box, but I am sure my officials are well versed in how I work.

There is a well-established procedure for handling complaints about bus services, whereby complaints are first made to the operator. If the passenger remains dissatisfied, they can be taken up by Bus Users UK and finally by the Bus Appeals Body. This procedure has been endorsed by Transport Focus, the statutory champion for bus passengers. I am keen to ensure that passengers who use services specified under a scheme of the kind set out in the Bill have access to a complaints procedure at least as good as the one currently in place.

I recognise that the authority may have a role to play in dealing with complaints, particularly where it has introduced franchising. I therefore agree entirely that complaints procedures should be clear to all passengers, and that any authority introducing a franchising scheme in particular should clarify its role in the process, working with Bus Users UK and others. I suggest that we have further discussions on these matters and hope that, with the reassurances I have given and the commitment to write to noble Lords in advance of Report, there is sufficient reassurance of the seriousness with which I intend to consider this proposal, and the noble Lord will be minded to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and the Minister for his reply. I think he has also responded to my Amendments 124A and 124B, but if he has not he can do so. It would be good to have a letter from him covering all these things because they are all interrelated. I am pleased that he has seized on the need to get the right information and then make sure that it is independent and circulated so that people know about it. That is the best way of incentivising operators to do better if they are failing. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 123A withdrawn.

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[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, an important element of the Bill is the availability of journey planning and information about bus services. This clause will facilitate the provision of information about timetables, fares, routes, tickets and live information about bus arrival times and enable it to be accessed openly, which should lead to better journey planning information for passengers. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that of course I recall his kind invitation and my acceptance of it. However, when I returned to the department it was my understanding that my honourable friend Andrew Jones would take up his offer. There is no reason why both of us cannot take up his offer and I shall certainly look into exactly where we are in that respect. The focus is on the provision of information that will be helpful to passengers in making informed decisions about whether to make their journey by bus or another transport mode.

I shall turn first to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, whereby the information that may be prescribed would include information about the environmental impact of bus operations and vehicles, including information on the emissions of the vehicles in use. I am sympathetic to the desire of noble Lords to ensure that operators and local authorities are aware of the impact of local bus services on the environment. However, I do not believe that this information is crucial for journey planning purposes. Local authorities would already be aware of the environmental impact of buses on the local area. Other parts of the Bill will give local authorities greater powers to influence the types of vehicles used by operators when providing services.

The noble Baroness and the noble Lord have also proposed further amendments whereby the information that may be prescribed would include information about complaints made about bus services, including their number and nature, as well as performance statistics on matters such as punctuality and reliability. Again, I am sympathetic to the desire to ensure that passengers have access to complaint and performance statistics, but I am sure that noble Lords will agree that raw complaints data should be read with a degree of caution as by themselves they do not necessarily give a full picture of the performance of a service. That said, I would not seek to play down the importance of complaints. There can be instances where well-organised campaigns on a specific issue can give the impression that a service is rather worse than it actually is and could deter passengers from using the bus as a consequence. I recognise that punctuality and reliability are important factors for passengers using bus services. I therefore reassure both noble Lords that this clause has been drafted in such a way that the release of punctuality data could be included in regulations made by the Secretary of State if it was considered appropriate after consultation with stakeholders.

The amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, would extend to matters such as the,

“helpfulness of the bus driver and comfort”,

of the vehicle. Matters such as these are subjective and are best covered by evidence-based customer satisfaction research of the kind conducted by Transport Focus which puts them into their correct context, in particular through the Bus Passenger Survey.

[Lord Berkeley]

When the noble Lord responded to my amendment about punctuality and so on, he said that those matters could be set out in regulations following consultation with stakeholders. To me, stakeholders are mainly the bus operators and they really will not want their punctuality to be monitored. I hope that the stakeholders will include passenger representatives and others who might have a different view.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

Certainly the discussions that we have had to date reflect exactly what the noble Lord has articulated. Having a single stakeholder in a service which has a much wider emphasis is of concern. I note that the noble Lord rightfully wants to put representative groups for bus users at the centre of what we are seeking to do here. I understand the issue that the noble Lord has raised.

I turn next to the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, whereby the Secretary of State would have to ensure that any regulations under these provisions always make provision for the information to be freely available and for registration information to be provided to a traffic commissioner. I sympathise with the noble Baroness in wanting to ensure that the information is freely available. We want to encourage the development and use of apps and journey planners, a point we debated at Second Reading. However, there may be circumstances where it becomes necessary to limit access, and the obvious question is where that might be. There may be cases where the design of an app is such that it imposes a strain on the technical infrastructure which supports the release of the information or a poorly designed app that makes excessive demands for frequent information updates. Those are just a couple of the examples that come to mind.

It may also be appropriate to time-limit the disclosure of certain information—for instance, about fares—which is being shared in good faith but is often commercially confidential until the day of the fare change, a point made by my noble friend Lord Attlee in the debate at Second Reading. The disclosure of commercially confidential information was also raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I will consider again how best to address the committee’s concerns with the aim of bringing forward amendments on Report. Again, if I can provide further clarification in advance, I will certainly seek to update noble Lords.

I hope that with the explanation I have given, the noble Lord will feel minded to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I could not agree less with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on this matter. The grounds that he has produced seem to relate to a potential conflict of interest where the local authority is a franchising authority. Clearly, there could be—but, of course, not all contracting will relate to franchises. A whole set of partnership arrangements will be possible. The noble Earl is asking the wrong question, if I may say so.

I remind the Committee of my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. Clause 21 is a very bad clause and I hope that the Minister understands that it will become a major issue on Report if the matter is not resolved. The clause is headed, “Bus companies: limitation of powers of authorities in England”. Of course, it does not apply in Wales, where local authorities would have the right to continue to create companies if they wished to. But that right to form a company exists now and it seems to have worked. So it is not clear why the Government have decided to include this clause in the Bill, which is otherwise, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, pointed out, by and large very good in many respects. Many of the amendments we have been discussing are matters of detail that would enhance what is already a good Bill.

I remind the Minister that five years ago this House passed the Localism Act 2011, which granted an extension of powers to local authorities with an associated general power of competence. That is not to say that local authorities then take on that power and start creating lots of companies, but it means that they have the power to do so should there be an occasion when it seems necessary and in the public interest so to do. It is therefore wrong in principle to remove the right of local councils to do that.

So I hope the Minister will understand the strength of feeling about this issue, and I hope that he will be able to explain to the House why the Government think it is necessary to strike out a power that local government currently has, which has served local government well and would potentially improve public transport networks rather than make them worse.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, my reading of this clause is that even those authorities that are running bus services now will not be able to do so in future. That is very serious. To respond to the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, if a local authority wishes to run a bus service, it does not need a franchise itself: it can just run the service. Ditto, it does not have to have an enhanced partnership with itself: it can just run the service. So it seems to me that if the local authority wanted to run the service it could just do it if this clause was not there. It does not need to have a conflict of interest.

I support all noble Lords on this side of the House who have spoken. This is a really bad clause. It has many similarities with the railway industry, which we can go into. I very much hope that we will see the end of it quite soon.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, it was all going so well. I am of course deeply hurt that the noble Baroness suggested that this was nasty and vindictive. I am sure the noble Baroness was referring to the—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, Amendment 128 calls for a strategy for the bus sector to be part of the Bill. It is fairly short and to the point. My noble friend Lord Berkeley has tabled a couple of rather more comprehensive amendments which express the same objective.

When I first thought of this amendment, I thought of tabling it before Clause 1. I may have to reflect on that after this short debate. The Bill is quite technical and procedural, changing contractual arrangements and introducing new technology such as ticketing systems and so forth. What it fails to do is give a clear indication of the strategy for the bus sector in terms of raising usage, extending buses in much-neglected rural areas, the nature and quality of buses, and their environmental impact. We need a strategy. We need the Government to come forward with a bus strategy that makes sense of the Bill in a broader dimension.

We can come back to this on Report. Obviously, we are nearing the end of today’s proceedings so I will not speak at length but it seems a missed opportunity not to require the Secretary of State to come up with an overarching strategy that would convince people that we are really serious about modernising, extending and making more environmentally attractive our bus services throughout England. I beg to move Amendment 128 here, at the obscure back end of the Bill, but the Minister may encourage me to put it right at the front of the Bill because that is really where it should go.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 128 and will speak very briefly to my two amendments. Several of us spoke about this at Second Reading. I agree with my noble friend that the bus sector needs a strategy. After all, rail passengers have a strategy. Rail freight is having one soon, I am told. There is a roads strategy. There are strategies to do with most things in transport, except buses. I really think it is time for it and I will certainly support my noble friend if he puts a nice amendment down as Clause 0.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I am not sure you can have a Clause 0, can you? I bow to the wide expertise around the Committee. You can certainly get “zero” fizzy drinks or whatever but let us not open up that debate. I am grateful for the courteous manner in which the amendments were introduced. This group relates to proposals to introduce requirements to produce new national strategies for bus services, and looks to place requirements on local authorities to increase the number of passengers using bus services.

I have said before—indeed, it is a sentiment shared across the Committee—that we want to see more people using buses. Perhaps the recent influx into the Chamber is reflective of that sentiment among noble Lords. Of course, I agree with the intention behind Amendment 129 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Buses help people get around and should be an integral part of any public transport system. Public transport works best where it is considered holistically, with bus services integrated with cycling infrastructure, trains and trams, or in the form of park and ride facilities. I agree that authorities considering any of the new tools in the Bill should be looking to improve their local bus services and to encourage more people to use public transport.

However, I am concerned that this amendment may bring unintended consequences; for example, a local authority may introduce a new tram system and may look to increase the overall number of journeys made using public transport but the proportion of journeys made by bus may decrease. It may be more sensible, therefore, to encourage authorities to address the issue of increasing the number of public transport journeys rather than just journeys made using bus services. I trust that this gives the noble Lord sufficient reassurance of the seriousness with which I intend to consider the aims of Amendment 129, and hope he will agree not to move it.

Amendments 128 and 130 would require the Secretary of State to develop and issue a national bus strategy and a bus services investment strategy for England. As I have said in previous Committee debates, devolution is an important theme, which has informed the development of the Bill. The Bill is all about providing authorities with new tools to enable them to improve their local services in the way that best suits their area. It is not about imposing particular models.

Central government has a valuable role to play in setting the wider agenda through policy initiatives such as the low-emission bus scheme and our total transport pilots, which I mentioned in the previous group of amendments, but I do not think that centrally determined strategies for local bus services would help authorities address particular issues relevant to them and their area. As such, it does not seem sensible for central government to set national strategies when it is local authorities and bus operators working together that will be designing services and setting standards locally.

Additionally, I have previously explained that my department helps support local bus services outside London by paying some £250 million per year of the BSOG. As I said in the previous group of amendments, we are already reviewing the BSOG system, with the aim of ensuring that funding is targeted where it is most needed. It is through that work that we should establish and set out central government’s priorities and objectives for the funding provided. I trust this gives the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Berkeley, sufficient reassurance to withdraw and not move their amendments.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Amendment 42 deals with the Bill as a whole and is the standard-form provision added on Third Reading in this House to avoid issues of privilege. Privilege issues would otherwise arise because the Bill authorises expenditure and the charges, which are set out in the Ways and Means resolution. In accordance with standard procedure, the privilege amendment was removed at Commons Committee stage. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome many of these amendments. There is a sense of déjà vu about today because we spent many hours debating this. I recall amendments put down by several of my noble friends and noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches proposing many of the changes now coming back from the Government. It is great that they have taken so much of our advice. I welcome it. Let us hope that this is a precedent for many future changes.

I am pleased that Amendment 1 starts to provide a link between Parliament, Government and the SHCs because that is very important. We talked about that. It may not be what we wanted but it is a start to getting there. I am also pleased that we have an amendment that says that the ORR can give advice to the Secretary of State on the effect of its guidance. That is good. I hope that the ORR will feel able to give advice on many more things than that. I am also pleased that the Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament on this—it is all obvious but it needs to be said—and it is important that this happens and happens regularly.

Would it not have been much easier to have changed the name of the ORR during the passage of the Bill rather than with all these amendments? However, I do not really mind and it does not really matter. That is fine. It is a shame that we have not been able to persuade the Government that the ORR, in addition to its work monitoring the SHC, should have powers to take action and require efficiencies as it is able to do for Network Rail. I hope that that will come one day as the ORR will have the capability to do that and it is a logical thing to do. It would be much better for an independent regulator to do it than to try to have the Secretary of State do it. We saw some problems with that with regard to the railways last summer. I also hope that in future we may be able to persuade whoever wins and becomes the Government after May that it will be useful to have the ORR responsible for road safety on the highways network as well. We did not quite get that far, but we are getting there.

Finally, I did not understand what the noble Baroness said about Amendment 45. It rather seems that if the staff of the Highways Agency do not feel that they will be properly reimbursed in whatever changes come they will be told, “That’s tough. You’re not going to get any compensation”.

However, this is a good step forward. We enjoyed the debates in Committee, on Report and at Third Reading and it was obviously a good use of parliamentary time. It is very nice to think that the Government have accepted many of the principles of what we proposed.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo quite a lot of what my noble friend said. We have moved in the direction of a report to Parliament and the role of the Secretary of State vis-à-vis the strategic highways company. I accept, I think, although like my noble friend I find the wording a bit peculiar, that that reinforces the application of the equivalent TUPE in relation to the staff of the Highways Agency.

The one point I am disappointed by, which my noble friend also mentioned, was that neither the Commons nor the Government have seen fit to strengthen the reference to road safety in the terms of the duties of the new company. It is a very weak form of obligation. It is slightly stronger than it was originally. The road investment strategy says that the Secretary of State must “have regard in particular” to the effect of the strategy on the safety of users. Later on it says that the company should “have regard”—no longer “in particular” —to the effect of the exercise of those functions on the safety of users. The phrase “have regard to” is the weakest form of legislative obligation. I had hoped that during the passage of the Bill we would strengthen that wording so that it would be an objective of the company and of the investment strategy to improve the performance on road safety. We have not got that and we are now at quite a late stage during the passage of the Bill but I hope that the Government will keep that under review as we go forward and the company is created. I do need to point out that I am a chair of the Road Safety Foundation. The anxiety that safety should be part of the DNA of the new body is broader than just among those who have any vested interests and certainly I would have thought that the Government could have moved further. However, on the rest of it, I thank the Minister for having moved a bit in our direction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, my comments on these three amendments reflect my comments on the first group. I welcome them. Again, we spent a lot of time debating them, and it is really good that the Commons listened to the very strong pressure from the various cycling organisations and persuaded the Government that the new clause under Amendment 6 should go in. It covers everything that one could have asked for. It follows on, as the Minister said, from the delivery plan. A duty to deliver a strategy was needed, and what is in these amendments is very good. Subsection (9) even says what happens if the Secretary of State does not produce a strategy, which is very welcome. It would be nice if the Minister could give an indication as to when the first one might appear. Is it this year, next year or sometime never? I know it is always difficult for Ministers to commit themselves.

One thing occurred to me on reading this amendment. I read it as applying to all roads, not just trunk roads, but maybe the Minister will confirm that. I know that there are not many cyclists on trunk roads, as most find it much too dangerous, but trunk roads are useful highways, connecting towns, villages and cities that are a little further apart with a bit more capacity and higher speed. In the Netherlands, they are making high-speed cycle lanes where people are expected to go a bit faster.

However, it is a really good start. I congratulate the Government on listening to all the pressure that has come from the cycling organisations. I look forward to participating and taking this forward.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches, I, too, very much welcome these amendments. As we discussed in Committee and on Report, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, we felt that this was an important bit that was missing from transport strategy. The Infrastructure Bill is an excellent opportunity to put that right. The early clauses sounded very woolly to me, but as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, pointed out, new subsection (9) makes it rather clear that this is expected to happen rather than being something that is optional. That is a major step forward. I assume and hope that this will go forward and that we will approve it as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that these amendments do not do very much for the Bill. All these points were going to be covered anyway. I do not think that the process over the past two weeks has done politicians any good at all. It was a hurried amendment in the Commons and the Government, under Liberal pressure, gave way. We now have a cobbled together lot of amendments which did not give the other case a decent chance for discussion. If anybody reads last Monday’s Commons Hansard, it is not an impressive debate. We have not had a sensible opportunity here, although the whole framework of what we are discussing has been discussed ad nauseam in this House.

I would like to ask my noble friend, particularly about item 6 in column 1 regarding what will take place in other protected areas, how many miles of coal-mine tunnel are under protected areas in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty? Of course, we must remember that these would not have been allowed under this amendment: the fracking pipeline is only about 6 to 9 inches, whereas a coal-mine tunnel is considerably more.

My noble friend Lord Framlingham has just mentioned ancient woodland. Will marine nature reserves will be classified as protected areas? How many more restrictions will there be on the industry? My noble friend the Minister was absolutely right when she said that health and safety risks can be managed with best practices. We need to show those best practices for the rest of Europe to follow.

Returning to point 6, is this a precedent for future development? If you are not allowed to drill a 6 to 9-inch pipeline a thousand feet down, presumably the Government will not build HS2 which will go smack through the middle of the Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty. There will be 11 kilometres of tunnels there. It will do considerably more damage than any whipstocking under an AONB from a small well. Presumably we will not have any more development. The Liberal party has closed the door on development in national parks and closed the door on the opportunity of growth. I think that a lot of people will use item 6 as a precedent in order to stop any future development at all.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I follow the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about geothermal plants. People may have read an article in the Times last week on 2 February about the Eden project, which is trying to develop the geothermal plant mentioned by the noble Lord, drilling several miles underground. It says in the article—it is quite surprising to me—that the water that will come out will eventually be 180 degrees centigrade, which is well above boiling point. That is wonderful. It would heat 4,000 homes and all the biomes of the Eden project. I hope that this geothermal drilling—which is purely water based, I think; there are no chemicals or anything else—will not be caught by these various amendments. To quote Michael Feliks, chairman of the Renewable Energy Association’s geothermal group:

“It would be a shame if geothermal energy ended up as collateral damage in a debate about shale gas fracking.”

It is a completely different thing. It is drilling, and it should be allowed under the normal planning procedures rather than coming into this Bill at all.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions, but particularly to noble Lords who have supported the government amendments in lieu of the amendments that were made in another place.

A number of questions were raised. I want to make sure that I respond to all of them, but there will be one or two questions that I cannot commit to answering now and on which I will have to write to noble Lords, such as the question posed by my noble friend Lord Caithness about the number of miles of tunnels going underground. I do not think that information is at hand, unless of course the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has the answer.

I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that our regulatory regime is robust. It will ensure that no hydraulic fracturing will be permitted where groundwater and drinking water supplies can be affected. We had a protracted debate not that long ago in which we made it very clear that this Government take very seriously that operations will take place only if all of the environmental impact assessments are met. I had hoped that I had laid out today very clearly in my detailed speaking notes our response to what the other House came up with on Report. We have bettered the amendments that the other place made, so that they will be able to stand up to legal challenge and to ensure that the safeguards that she and other noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, have asked for can actually be delivered.

It would be wrong to return to the detail of a debate that has been well practised in this Chamber. The industry is already voluntarily doing a lot of what was asked in the amendments put by the Opposition. I am pleased with the response from my noble friends about what we have taken on board. It is never about a U-turn for a Government, it is about listening carefully and then making sure legislation works. If the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, wants to make a political point out of it, that is entirely up to the noble Lord. I would say, however, that it is really important that responsible and sensible Governments look very closely at legislation and then respond. I think that the general consensus in the House has been that we have listened, responded and returned with a much better set of amendments, which answer exactly what noble Lords opposite and their colleagues down the corridor have asked for.

National Networks: National Policy Statement

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Committee for allowing me to speak for a short time. I apologise for turning up late but my programme said that we were going to start at 3.45 pm. I apologise to the Minister in particular for missing the first part of her speech. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group.

Generally, I welcome this national policy statement. It has been some time coming but in the main it is good, and it will do an awful lot to make strategic development easier and possibly quicker—we will have to see how that works—and should certainly help integration, although the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has put some questions down that I look forward to hearing the answers to.

I came across an example a week or two ago when I was privileged to go to the Port of Felixstowe and meet the biggest container ship in the world, which came in there. The Chinese ambassador was there along with other important people. The noble Lord, Lord Deighton, was there, making a very important speech about how good the UK was for business, and how with these big containers you need proper road and rail links inland to ensure that the containers can get away and arrive. I did not say anything in the speeches but I went up to him soon afterwards and said, “The solution is in your hands. Why don’t you speak to the Secretary of State for Transport and a few other colleagues and get the Felixstowe branch doubled and improve the links across the country, which are really bogged down?”. He said, “Well, I’m talking to Hutchison Ports”. I said, “That’s wonderful, but they’re not the people who will actually be doing it”. Maybe the Minister could take that on board and see where it has got to, because it is a major hang-up in getting these extra numbers of containers on to the network to where they want to get to or come from.

My concern echoes the criticism of the Commons Transport Committee about the projections for road and rail that the NPS does not explicitly address the criticisms that many people have made. In a Question in your Lordships’ House a few months ago, we debated the fact that the predictions always show an increase in road traffic, when in fact if the predictions 20 years ago had been true, which said that we would more or less double the amount of traffic, we would probably have more than three times the amount of traffic now than we actually do.

There are many other problems that point to a failure of being able to consider alternative modes. If someone is proposing to build a motorway, or to widen a motorway, to increase the capacity, will anybody look at the alternative for taking it by rail? I think it probably stems from the way in which the projections are done. If you build a bypass or something and you get many millions of cars saving half a minute on their journey, and if you aggregate that up, it will give you a wonderful cost-benefit, in the positive sense, to build the road, without looking to see whether those people could have gone by rail or have cycled or walked. There has been massive criticism of this from groups such as the Campaign for Better Transport and the CPRE, which the Minister will have seen. I wonder whether the time has now come—now that this NPS will, we hope, be confirmed and published and we can all work to it—to reflect on whether there could not be more detailed discussion and investigation into the traffic forecast modelling that the department used, to consult all the experts and to see whether we can get something that is a little more acceptable to many of the users and developers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

But surely resilience, either on rail or road, includes having alternative modes when something goes wrong. Is that not part of planning?

[Baroness Kramer]

First, that is reasonably well covered but in terms of determining how you cope with resilience, the resilience study for the south-west—a study which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will be very aware of—was also interesting because all modes were looked at in its production. However, it seems to me that it has to be apropos the event location that one is coping with, so we would need resilience on individual modes as well as for broader access. The NPS has that within its language. Part of the way in which the department and the Government are now working is also demonstrated by something like that resilience study, which addressed that wide range of issues. It is picked up again in the RIS where, for example, something such as the A303 is absolutely critical to resilience in access down into the south-west, even though the crisis was on a rail line at Dawlish. To tell the honest truth, I think we have that one sorted.

There are issues of integration and considering an overarching transport plan, which my noble friend Lord Shipley addressed and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, to some extent echoed. First, if one were to look at page 102 of the planning document—the very last page—it is quite instructive because it shows, as it were, the food chain. To me, the work on looking at alternative modes and setting out a broader transport plan happens much earlier up the food chain than in this planning document. It is too late by the time that progress has got as far as the NPS. There is a section called “strategy and policy”, which is a crucial area to bring in this thought around various modes and a much broader perspective on transport. Critically, and as I think I said in my speech, when it progresses to the investment planning and decision-making phase that would be where the RIS, the route utilisation strategies and the work required in the various control periods for Network Rail would appear. It is at those stages that those issues need to be addressed.

Once it gets to planning, it is not that one ignores integration and alternative modes but we would be just past that point when this document begins to apply. I think that is healthier. I say that for this reason: I look at what seems to have been real progression in this area over the last few years. If I had looked at transport planning even four or five years ago, I am not sure that when we looked at HS2 we would have been so incredibly focused as we are now on building that east-west connectivity across the Midlands and the north. It has become an implicit part of looking at HS2 to talk about not just HS3 but much more complex work. A significant part of the responsibility for that has now been devolved to Transport for the North—that is, having remembered its acronym, TfN—which will be producing its initial report in March. That devolved engagement is crucial to that step. That comes well before we would ever get to an NPS; it is a much earlier piece of thinking. Also, when we look on a project-by-project basis, Sir David Higgins of HS2—my noble friend Lord Shipley specifically raised HS2 and connectivity—has said that that is a key theme. He works closely with Network Rail around those issues, because as he builds rail infrastructure, building in the rail interconnection or ensuring that it is optimised will be key. Indeed, one reason that we have not finalised the route for phase 2 is that it is so important to bring connectivity into that picture. Much of that is relatively recent thinking, but it comes at a much earlier stage than the NPS. Very important issues have been highlighted, but I am not sure that they are something for this document. In fact, it would almost be a failure if we were suddenly to start considering that at the NPS stage. It has to have been dealt with much earlier in the process.

I completely agree with the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Berkeley, that rail freight interchanges are crucial. I think that there is now general satisfaction with the provision for that as described in the NPS document. It takes what the industry and much—although not all—of the environmental community thinks is an appropriate approach. We are investing heavily in access to the ports. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will know of the upgrade from Felixstowe to Northampton. Across the various controlled periods, we are looking at the necessary improvements for port capacity. An area that will need a lot of focus in future years is that HS2 releases west coast main line, east coast main line and Midland main line in ways that create capacity for freight that we have not been able to explore historically. Although freight always has to be near the centre of our thinking, there will be a great deal of change as we explore how we can maximise the benefits of that freed up capacity. That will be important.

On modal shift, we have our revenue fund—about £80 million—to try to encourage a modal shift from road to rail. I am now falling back entirely on memory, but I think that the road investment strategy highlighted some parts of that strategy as ensuring relevant port connectivity. If that is not right, I will write back to your Lordships, but I certainly remember that being a great subject of conversation and I am pretty sure that it ended up in the road investment strategy.

My noble friend Lord Shipley talked about continental gauge. My husband, who is now long dead, was one of the supporters of Central Railway, which proposed a dedicated freight line. I think that a Member of Parliament in the other place, Kelvin Hopkins, is a supporter of Eurorail. A number of such projects are coming forward; none is proposed at the moment. It will be complex to consider them until we have a sense of what HS2 releases.

[Lord Berkeley]

Just for the record, Kelvin Hopkins MP has a scheme which he has been promoting for several years. It is still on his table; whether it is on anyone else’s table, I cannot say.

[Baroness Kramer]

I do not think that it has come forward to Parliament. I am giving a personal view, but I believe that a major project on that scale is outside the NPS, just as HS2 is, and that the hybrid Bill process would be used because it affects so many communities and so many localised planning issues that require people to have a voice. I cannot believe that it would be appropriate to handle it in any way other than through the hybrid Bill process, but I could certainly be proved wrong in future. My sense is that it belongs there rather than within the NPS framework.

I think that I have covered most of the issues that were raised. As I have said, they are all crucial to transport thinking, so I appreciate the fact that they have been raised in the context of this opportunity to discuss transport. However, we have also to recognise that the NPS is a very specific document meeting a very specific purpose and it is with that in mind that I am narrowing down my comments. The NPS does not introduce new policy; it states current policy. It is a planning document and it is central to our long-term economic plan. We have responded seriously to discussion and debate in this House and the other place as well as in public consultation because we have wanted to get it right. I hope that, on that basis, your Lordships will feel able to support the document today.

Railways: Pacer Trains

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

I have to say to my noble friend that that last accusation is a new one to me. Clearly, the Chancellor gave a commitment to replace these trains. We also know that this is a line that is due for electrification. However, I am afraid I cannot share the details with the House until we get to the invitation to tender, because they are still being worked out. It will not be very long to wait; it will be in early 2015.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, while all this is going on, the Government are doing the opposite and giving even more trains to the south. Indeed, today the Minister for Transport, Claire Perry, announced that there would be 10 new four-car trains to take people between Milton Keynes and London. Last week, I believe, new diesel trains were ordered and committed to go to Uckfield and between Ashford and Hastings. Is it not time that this trend was reversed and that the new diesels went to the Northern area? Perhaps the people of Sussex and Kent could try out some Pacers for a few years and see how they get on.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, we are obviously anxious to phase out these Pacers rather than find them new homes. The noble Lord will be aware that we have orders from up and down the country for new rolling stock at significant levels; that includes the north—for example, on the east coast main line. An invitation to tender is coming very shortly in the new year. I cannot speak ahead of it, but I am reasonably confident that my noble friend will be happy.

Transport: Women’s Safety

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are currently taking to improve women’s safety on transport.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, we work on a number of fronts to improve safety and security for all passengers and staff. In particular, the Government are supporting a British Transport Police-led academic literature and tactical review on reducing sexual offending and improving perceptions of safety on transport. This research will be delivered for February 2015 and will support an international expert session to debate the findings.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Is she aware of a study recently done in the UK and Canada that found that,

“women passengers generally prefer staffing to technological solutions and are very skeptical of the tendency of”—

transport operators—

“to replace staff from trains or buses with automated machines”.

Will she encourage operators to have more staff and fewer machines and CCTV and to recruit more women to the front line, which women also prefer in many instances?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I completely agree with recruiting women to the front line. It is also important to have a staff presence where that is feasible. I am very encouraged, for example, by Transport for London’s commitment to take staff out of the ticket offices and put them out on the platforms and places where the passengers are. However, if we were to man every station at all hours at all times, we would unfortunately have to close stations because of the inherent cost.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

If we do not provide for that in the Bill, the better course would be to start again. The amendments in the names of my noble friends on the Front Bench would effectively do that by deleting this clause from the Bill. If the Minister wishes to avoid us going down that road at some stage, she needs to come up with a proposition of her own which meets the rather large deficiencies in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend and will briefly speak to some of the amendments in this group, namely Amendments 2, 2B, 5, 6, 6A, 7 and 7A. I will not repeat all that my noble friend has said, because the various amendments that we have tabled between us provide the basis for the proper link between primary legislation and the licence, which, as my noble friend said, is so lacking in the Bill.

I started off by looking at the relevant clauses of the Railways Act 1993 and the Railways Act 2005, which we discussed in Committee and in some helpful meetings with the Minister and officials, for which I am grateful. It was remarkably easy, at this comparatively high level, to cross out “rail” and put in “road”; they are very similar. If, as my noble friend said, we are to have a company that looks after the strategic roads in a way that is similar to what Network Rail became in September by becoming fully government-owned, it would seem logical that the legislation under which this happens would be similar.

I will not go through all the amendments in detail; my noble friend has done that very well. However, I have two questions for the Minister when she comes to reply. First, under the Bill, will it still be possible for Members of Parliament and of this House to table Written Questions and ask questions of Ministers, as we currently can with the Highways Agency? Noble Lords will know that we cannot do that for Network Rail, because if you table a question about it the answer comes back, “Write to the chief executive”. I am sure one gets good answers from the chief executive, but one does not see the answers that other noble Lords get to the questions that they ask the chief executive. I hope that the same thing will not happen with the strategic highways company and that we will still be able to table questions about its operations and the company generally, and to get a proper Written Answer or be able to have an Oral Question or debate on it as the circumstances demand.

I also hope that when Network Rail becomes subject to the Freedom of Information Act on 1 April next year, that situation will apply to it. Clearly, we would not want to ask whether a motorway sign or signal had been moved; that would be a ridiculous waste of ministerial time. On the other hand, there are many things that it would be useful to ask such questions about for the purposes of parliamentary scrutiny.

My second question for the Minister concerns my Amendment 7A which relates to Section 48 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. This exempts Crown-owned companies, or officers or companies of the Crown, from being taken to court by the Health and Safety Executive if it believes that they have contravened the Act. I know that the Highways Agency itself is exempt, being a Crown agency. It would be nice to know whether any change was planned in this relationship, and therefore the exemption, when the strategic highways company comes into existence. I believe that Network Rail does not have an exemption, because the Health and Safety Executive, through the Office of Rail Regulation, has taken action against it on several occasions. There should be a balance between the two and as much transparency as possible. I am very much looking forward to what the Minister has to say in response and fully support the amendments of my noble friend.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

I shall say just three things. The Government are mistaken. The Office of Rail Regulation should, under that title, oversee roads as well. In spite of all the arguments, if it were signalled, it could change its name at some future date. It could be planned for and there would not be a lot of expense. It would be much more understandable to motorists and everybody else who the regulator was, whether it was a railway regulator or a transport regulator.

I also endorse the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about safety. One thing that the Office of Rail Regulation has done is to drive up safety standards on the railways. Although the Government keep saying the safety standards on the roads are the best in Europe, these are really quite deplorable, as we see with the continued deaths of cyclists in London, for example.

Lastly—I know I am reaching for the moon here—would it not be better to be honest and say that we have to adopt road pricing some time and, to make it acceptable, to say that the money raised from it would be used for roads and motoring purposes? If you explain what the money is for, people are much more likely to embrace the idea. A recent opinion poll in one of the national papers showed that people were against raising taxes, but if they were specifically asked whether they would pay more tax to improve the health service, they said yes. The same applies to road pricing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, this amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish a report on allowing a public sector rail operator to take on lines and challenge the train operators on a genuinely level playing field in the public interest, securing value for money for passengers and taxpayers.

Many noble Lords will no doubt recall the exchanges that we had at Question Time last week on the future of east coast rail. I congratulate the Minister on her performance then in defending the Government’s position, which I regarded then, and still do regard, as indefensible, but I hope that today her response will be somewhat different. We should learn the lessons of east coast rail, where we have seen the benefits of a not-for-dividend operator running a rail line.

East coast rail was brought back into public ownership in 2009 after the private operator reneged on its commitments. It is efficient, it has returned more than £600 million to the taxpayer and it invests every penny of that profit back into the company. It provides a quality service, achieving record levels of passenger satisfaction and punctuality. The new timetable that it introduced in 2011 allows it to operate 7,000 more trains each year, and it now has 500,000 more passengers. It has also delivered for passengers. This year’s fare rise was in fact a real-terms cut—something that no private franchise was able to do. In fact, elsewhere, season tickets have risen in price by 30% since 2010—a stark contrast.

Despite that, the Government appear intent on pressing ahead with the privatisation of intercity east coast services. Will the Minister confirm that the cost to the taxpayer of reprivatising the east coast could run to £6 million? It is important that the Minister responds to this question and says what steps the Government are otherwise taking to improve the functioning of the railways. It is unacceptable that our rail lines are, according to the 2011 McNulty review, up to 40% less efficient than the best-performing European networks.

We know that the Conservative Party is unwilling to take a pragmatic approach on this issue. Its Railways Act 1993 effectively prohibits a public sector operator, except in the most restrictive circumstances. But the public do not feel this way. Only 28% of those polled support the sell-off of east coast. Can the Minister say on which side of this divide her own party finds itself? Many will recall her party’s support for a public sector operator while it was in opposition. It is time to put an end to this rigid ideological approach, which also sees the Government trying to rush through a sell-off of the 40% public stake in Eurostar before we have even seen the conclusion of my noble friend Lord Myners’s inquiry into the Royal Mail privatisation.

This amendment would give the Government the opportunity to reflect and to alter their stance. It is time to learn the lessons of east coast and legislate to allow a public sector operator to take on lines. It should be able to challenge the train operators in the public interest on a level playing field. That is the way to secure the best deal for passengers and for taxpayers. I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment so that we can move in that direction. I beg to move.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

9: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Strategic highways company licences
(1) A licence under section 1 may include—
(a) such conditions (whether or not relating to the licence holder’s being responsible for assets under the authorisation of the licence) as appear to the grantor to be requisite or expedient having regard to the duties imposed by section 4; and(b) conditions requiring the rendering to—of a payment on the grant of the licence, or payments during the currency of the licence, or both, of such amounts or amounts as may be determined by or under the licence.(i) the Secretary of State,(ii) the Office of Rail Regulation, or(iii) any other person, or any other person of a class or description, specified in the licence, except a Minister of the Crown or Government department,of a payment on the grant of the licence, or payments during the currency of the licence, or both, of such amounts or amounts as may be determined by or under the licence.(2) Conditions included in a licence under subsection (1)(a)—
(a) may require the licence holder to enter into any agreement with any person for such purposes as may be specified in the conditions; and(b) may include provision for determining the terms on which such agreements are to be entered into. (3) Conditions included in a licence under subsection (1)(a) may require the licence holder—
(a) to comply with any requirements from time to time imposed by a qualified person with respect to such matters as are specified in the licence or are of a description so specified;(b) except in so far as a qualified person consents to his doing or not doing them, not to do or to do such things as are specified in the licence or are of a description so specified;(c) to refer for determination by a qualified person such questions arising under the licence as are specified in the licence or are of a description so specified;(d) to refer for approval by a qualified person such things falling to be done under the licence as are specified in the licence or are of a description so specified;(e) to furnish to a qualified person such documents or other information as he may require for the purpose of exercising any functions conferred or imposed on him under or by virtue of the licence;(f) to furnish to the Secretary of State or the Office of Rail Regulation such documents or other information as he may require for the purpose of exercising the functions assigned or transferred to him or it under or by virtue of this Act.(4) Conditions included in a licence may contain provision for the conditions to cease to have effect or be modified at such times, in such manner and in such circumstances as may be specified in or determined by or under the conditions; and any provision included by virtue of this subsection in a licence shall have effect in addition to the provision made by this Part with respect to the modification of the conditions of a licence.
(5) Subsections (2) and (4) are without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1)(a).
(6) Any reference in subsection (3) to a “qualified person” is a reference to—
(a) a person specified in the licence in question for the purpose in question, or(b) a person of a description so specified,and includes a reference to a person nominated for that purpose by such a person pursuant to the licence.(7) Any sums received by the Secretary of State or the Office of Rail Regulation in consequence of the provisions of any condition of a licence shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund.

[Lord Berkeley]

I shall be brief in speaking to this group of amendments because we have discussed at some length the licence for the strategic highways company. My Amendment 9 is a provision similar to what Network Rail now has. I was interested in the Minister’s comment that it is a licence for a commercial model and that the strategic highways company is not going to be commercial. I do not know whether Network Rail was ever commercial in her definition of the word, but it certainly is not now and I notice that the Government have not tried to change the licence to reflect any alteration. Perhaps she has a quick view on that. The draft licence that we received on 3 November was certainly an improvement on the previous version, for which I am very grateful.

The only other thing I wish to comment on in this group is my Amendment 17, which is to do with the duties of the strategic highways company. Whether they should go in a licence or in some other document, I do not know, but the draft licence from the Department for Transport is a licence to build roads, to take into account environmental concerns and to do it reasonably efficiently. Given experience of legislation over the years, there is a need to have in the Bill, for preference, or in a licence, if it must be that way, a wider role and wider responsibilities for this company to go cross-modal. That includes looking at road and rail—I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group—passenger as well as freight, efficiencies, travel choices, developments in sustainable locations, as sustainability is very important in all this, and different modes to secure the economic, social and environmental gains jointly and severally. I do not think that these are in the draft licence at the moment. If the Minister would look at this again and see whether some—preferably all—these issues could go into a licence, I would be much happier that the strategic highways company was going to be part of a wider transport and environmental structure, taking into account the needs of customers, the environmental needs, roads, railways and developments in local transport. With that short introduction, I beg to move.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have Amendment 10 in this group. Again, as in the previous debate, my noble friend Lord Berkeley has put his finger on another lacuna in the Bill. Nowhere does the Bill spell out the functions and duties of the proposed strategic highways company. There is a whole schedule, 26 pages long, which largely consists of adding,

“or a strategic highways company”,

but does not actually say what that company should do. I find this extraordinary and not consistent with earlier circumstances in which we have set up public bodies or corporations to do a particular job, some of which are still doing it, where there was clarity in the legislation as to those functions. Those functions have to be economic, social and environmental these days. The Government should at least consider making sure, at later stages, that the Bill spells out the central duties of the companies. I hope that the Minister will take that away.

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, Amendment 14 ensures consistency between the Deregulation Bill and the Infrastructure Bill on permit schemes, allowing the company powers to make permit schemes and derive the benefit of simplified arrangements proposed in the Deregulation Bill for approval of permit schemes. I hope that your Lordships will approve the government amendments and feel comfortable in not pressing the other amendments in this group.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response. We must recognise that she has moved a long way on these discussions in the last month or so and I very much welcome her commitment to come back at Third Reading with some of these issues—particularly those in my Amendment 17—in the Bill. As she says, some of the things are in the draft licence but, as many noble Lords have said, we would like to see it strengthened a little more. I hope that we will be pleased with the result at Third Reading in a week or two. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I support my noble friend on this group of amendments. I will briefly develop his theme by looking at the amendments in the group that relate to the monitor. I have proposed that the name of the Office of Rail Regulation should be changed, but that does not matter very much.

In Clause 9, the Government have introduced Amendments 41 and 43, both of which are welcome. They are a step forward from our discussions and I am certainly pleased to see them there. I have one or two amendments to those two amendments on the Marshalled List, which are complicated to go through and I am not going to attempt to go into any great detail now. Their purpose is twofold. One relates to safety and the other efficiency.

On the railways, one of the two tasks of the Office of Rail Regulation is to ensure that the network is operated as safely as possible under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, which is slightly modified for railways. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, the approach of the amendments is to do the same for the roads. Let us not forget that, as my noble friend said, just under 2,000 people were killed on the roads in the past year compared with none on the railways—no passengers, very few rail workers and I am not sure about the road workers. Sadly, suicides are a separate issue. The difference between 2,000 on the roads and none on the railways indicates that the structure of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act is working very well on the railways. In these amendments, I propose that a similar thing should be done on the roads, supervised by the Office of Rail Regulation.

The other relevant matter in this group is that, as we discussed briefly in Committee, the monitor should not only have the ability to check on the efficiency of the strategic highways company, but have powers of enforcement if it felt that the efficiency was not as it should be. Again, that is contained in the amendments. One thing worries me about the Government’s amendments. There is a constraint on the independence of the monitor, which is serious. The rail regulator is totally independent. He cannot be sacked except under extreme circumstances that we do not need to go into. But in Amendment 43 on general duties that the monitor should act under, the Government say that the principles are that:

“(b) regulatory activities should be targeted only at cases in which action is needed”.

Who decides when that takes place? Who decides which actions are needed? Surely it must be the regulator who decides. If that is the case, then proposed new subparagraph (b) in Amendment 43 is superfluous. If it is the Government, I suggest that they would be interfering in the independence of the regulator.

In Amendment 48, the guidance that the monitor would receive in proposed new subsection (2) includes:

“The Secretary of State and the Treasury, acting jointly, must give the Office”,

of Rail Regulation,

“guidance as to the circumstances in which the payment of a fine under [this] section … should be required”.

Whereas the ORR can fine Network Rail whenever it likes if it has due cause, when it comes to the strategic highways authority it has to ask the Treasury’s permission first. That sends completely the wrong message. It would be good if the Minister could agree to look at those two things and the general safety outline as to how it will be implemented under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act as part of the discussions between now and Third Reading.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have listened to the argument with interest and some incredulity. Seeking to compare the number of deaths on the railways with the number of deaths on the roads ignores major differences between the two forms of transport. The roads are essentially a matter for individual drivers and many accidents and deaths are caused by serious driver error. It can be because the vehicles have not been properly inspected. Older vehicles always have to have annual road testing. Of course, there are many other causes, such as the terrible bonfire that swept smoke right across the motorway and caused serious accidents. But none of those can conceivably be laid at the door of the highways authority.

The design of the roads, signposting, warning signs and a whole range of things are the responsibility of the highways authority and would be the responsibility of the strategic road company, but a great many of the issues for which the strategic highways authority would be made directly responsible—the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, talked about legal liability—cannot conceivably be laid at the door of that authority. The language that he has used in his various amendments simply does not draw the distinction between issues that are clearly the responsibility of other authorities, notably the whole question of licensing, inspection and testing of vehicles and the question of skills of drivers and so forth. I do not see how the highways authority could be made responsible for all that.

I studied the noble Lord’s amendment and listened to his eloquent speech in which he made it clear that he has a very real interest, although non-pecuniary, in road safety, but it is overstepping the mark to try to lay the liability for that sort of thing at the doors of the strategic highways authority. I will listen to what my noble friend says having studied her amendments on this issue with interest. For the moment, I am not persuaded on this occasion by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.

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Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

25: Schedule 2, page 71, line 19, at end insert—
“Formation of route strategies: consultation and co-operation1AA (1) The strategic highways company shall produce route strategies for all highways under its control (“specified highways”) and shall ensure such strategies remain up to date.
(2) In deciding how to divide up specified highways into route strategies, the strategic highways company shall have due regard to local government boundaries and travel to work areas.
(3) Route strategies shall consider—
(a) other transport modes, including railways and port facilities, that are served by specified highways or run parallel to them;(b) the interaction between specified highways and other highways;(c) opportunities to secure the expeditious movement of people and freight;(d) opportunities to reduce environmental impacts.(4) The strategic highways company must—
(a) carry out such consultation, and arrange for such publicity, as the strategic highways company thinks appropriate in relation to a route strategy;(b) consult such persons, and such descriptions of persons, as may be prescribed;(c) have regard to the responses to the consultation and publicity in deciding whether to proceed with a route strategy.(5) In setting or varying a roads investment strategy, the Secretary of State shall have due regard to route strategies.
(6) The Secretary of State may make regulations about route strategies.”

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[Lord Berkeley]

I speak briefly on this amendment. We are in Schedule 2, Part 1 now. It suggests that there need to be route strategies before the Secretary of State can really put forward investment strategies. We have discussed this before—in route strategies it seeks to ensure full consultation. The Minister has been very forthright in her commitment to consultation, which of course I welcome very much. It is, however, another way of saying how important it is, when one is considering route strategies, to look at all different modes, including not only the local government travel to work areas, how to move people around and ensure consultation.

The proposal is a very useful precursor to an investment strategy, and I hope it will give the impression outside, as it is designed to, that transport, surface transport, road, rail and other means of transport are being looked at in the round rather than just having an investment strategy in which we are investing in roads willy-nilly. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to the amendment. We recognise that what the noble Lord is seeking to do is to remove some ambiguity, but we are not comfortable with his amendment because we think it would prevent the company from adapting the route strategy process to meet changing needs and circumstances. That would make it somewhat undesirable. We recognise what is driving this. It seems that it is being driven by a desire for greater clarity, so I am happy to commit to him to include a requirement in the final version of the statutory directions and guidance along the lines that the company will agree the process with the Secretary of State and publish it. That should provide the combination we are seeking, both of clarity and of flexibility. I hope that on that basis the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the Minister for that short reply. I shall read it with interest, but it sounds good. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 25 withdrawn.

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As part of this new arrangement, it is necessary for the Secretary of State to be able to issue wider guidance on how the monitor carries out its responsibilities. The Secretary of State and the Treasury, acting jointly, will also be required to issue guidance to the monitor on the application of powers to fine. In the short term, this will help the new regulator to bed in and adapt to its unique remit. Over time, it will allow the Government to clarify how policy is developing and to ensure that key elements are properly represented. However, I stress that this is not a power for the Secretary of State to overrule the monitor, just as it is not in other sectors, and it cannot be used in such a way. These measures will allow the monitor to act in the manner of an independent regulator, will result in clearer, stronger accountability, and will lead to better outcomes across the network.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I will speak to one or two of the other amendments in the group, and hope that the Minister will be able to respond under the slightly odd arrangement we have.

In Clause 8, on my Amendment 33A, the Government have moved a long way in changing the name and activities of the Rail Passengers Council. The point of the amendment is to emphasise the need for them to consider not just the users of the network, but also those who do not currently use it or who cross over the network. In other words, they must look at the people who are not using it, at the potential for modal shift and at reducing the need for travel. They must look at the thing in the round before they come up with their excellent data, which I am sure they will do on the roads as they currently do for railways and, of course, buses.

Moving quickly, I raised a question about Amendment 48 in a previous grouping—I got it wrong—and the Secretary of State giving the Office of the Rail Regulator guidance as to the circumstances in which payments were defined. I hear what the Minister said. My question is whether that is the same guidance and instruction that the ORR currently has with the railways. If not, why not?

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 33, which asks the watchdog to look after the interests of cyclists and pedestrians. As we know, and as the department has recognised, a strategic road network can often be a barrier for pedestrians and cyclists. That means that there are many potential users of the network who may wish to use it to cycle to work but currently cannot.

The legislation would not allow Passenger Focus to consider their views. The chief executive, Anthony Smith, has been quoted as making clear his view that, given the legislation, Passenger Focus could focus only on actual users of the strategic network along with, perhaps, a second tier of fleet managers marshalling its use. While he quite understood the concerns around the remit, any change must be a matter for government and the legislative process. This is therefore our chance to effect that change, against a background in which the Government continue to respond to the increasing pressure for the use of cycles by saying that they are very much in favour of such growth.

Of course, the greatest deterrent to cycle use in our towns and cities and on connecting roads of any significance is danger. Because we do not set out to protect cyclists adequately, our present figures are dreadful in comparison to many other European countries. In the UK, 2% of journeys are made by bike, compared with 10% in Austria, 19% in Denmark and 27% in the Netherlands. Some 22% of all journeys in the UK are of less than a mile, but a fifth of these are in a car. Some people are, of course, obliged to use a car for a journey of less than a mile. However, the great deterrent to using the far more efficient and effective cycle is that people consider cycling to be dangerous.

The Government promised to support cycling but, of course, Cycling England, the pressure group for cyclists, was shut down; the body which co-ordinated policy and action on cycling, which had a £60 million annual budget, was shut down; and the Government also abandoned the cycling towns and cities initiative which we, as the previous Administration, had initiated—and it was delivering results. The proportion of people cycling at least once a month in England dropped from 15.3% to 14.7% in the year to October 2013. No one is going to say that that is a dramatic drop, but it is movement in the wrong direction when there are calls on all sides, to which the Government subscribe, for cycling to be encouraged. There was a decline in all regions in the United Kingdom.

I am therefore seeking with this amendment for the Government, who alone can take the legislative initiative on this—that is quite clear—to give a voice to cyclists and pedestrians, and to ensure that we make some progress on the aim of improving the use of cycling, and even walking over short distances. In order to achieve that, certainly with cycling, we must overcome the anxiety of the public that cycling on so many of our roads is just not safe enough.