Airports: London

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My noble friend knows intimately the history of airport development in the south-east. I am afraid that I can make no further comment until the final report comes from the Davies commission in the summer of 2015, at which point I will be delighted to comment.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, are the Government sustaining pressure on Sir Howard so that an incoming Labour Government will be able to consider the report immediately after the general election? Another easy question for the Minister: how much did the unrealistic and abortive idea of “Boris Island” cost?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, Sir Howard Davies’ report will not be ready until the summer of 2015 and it is beyond my telepathic capabilities to anticipate its contents. I cannot answer for the Labour Party.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be brief because the two speeches from my noble friend Lord Faulkner and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on the noble Baroness’s own Benches have established a strong case. Of course we all appreciate the strenuous efforts that have been made to meet the points made so forcefully in Committee, but it seems clear that the Government’s reservation is ill founded and the Minister ought to give an undertaking to the House that she will make every effort prior to Third Reading to ensure that we finally wrap this matter up.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that his Government failed to change any of these clauses and we are now getting to grips with a long-standing issue.

I first pick up on the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, who described a case that obviously outraged the House. That is exactly a situation that can no longer stand, given the amendments that the Government are bringing forward. An officer would not be in the position in which, in the absence of a warrant card, he would be vulnerable. The amendments that we have brought forward would precisely deal with that issue for an officer in plain clothes using a warrant card who was attempting to prevent an injury. That incident is clearly covered.

I suppose that I have been in the department for only a year, but I am conscious of the constant attempts to raid the BTP for many other services, and the view of a lot of the forces across the country that the BTP ought to be an available resource. We are absolutely clear that changing the language in the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, suggested would make this a far easier task. It is crucial for the future of rail transport that there is a genuinely dedicated force. I point out again that it is paid for by the railway industry, which adds to its concern that its force would be available to operate in any neighbourhood on any issue. I ask it to make a judgment; police forces make judgments the whole time, and the judgment that we are asking the force to make is well within the scope of its competence on the few such occasions that arise, without the general change that has been requested. I think we have gone as far as we can on this and I also ask your Lordships to rethink the position they are taking, because it is genuinely important that we keep the British Transport Police dedicated to the railways in the way that it is at present.

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[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I speak to Amendments 59 and 60, and to indicate to the Minister that we support the clause but that there are a few issues that we wish to take further. We recognise the extent to which the Minister has responded to the contributions that were made in Committee about these issues. The Bill is much better drafted as a result of her amendments—or will have been better drafted after her amendments have been accepted—than it was when we saw it in Committee. We acknowledge the changes in the Government’s position on the meaning of “native” and “non-native”, and we thank the Minister for taking our comments in Committee on board on this important issue.

The current language in the Bill could have significant adverse effects on biodiversity. We recognise the necessity to protect against invasive and non-native species, but it is also important that we see the extent to which biodiversity is protected in a world where there are many restrictions and anxieties about the reduction in biodiversity. I am particularly concerned about the omission of certain species from the Bill and the fact that the Bill, as it stands, takes no account of the protection afforded to native species such as the beaver.

The habitats directive, which is an EU directive adopted in 1992 and is one of the EU’s two directives relating to wildlife and nature conservation, aims to protect some 220 habitats and approximately 1,000 species listed in the directive’s annexes. These are species and habitats considered to be of European interest, following criteria given in the directive. Article 12 of the directive states that all the species listed in its Annexe IV require strict protection in their natural range, and the species listed in this annexe include the European beaver. We are concerned that the Minister appears to give no recognition to this fact. There are growing concerns around the UK and Europe that the habitats directive is being undermined or is not being fully or properly implemented. Therefore, it is important to highlight the legal protection that it provides for particular species.

The amendments that the Government have put down are, of course, welcome, and I appreciate the extent to which the Minister has listened to the work of the Committee. However, they introduce a possibility that native species can be placed on a list of difficult animals and so can receive species control orders. For example, the absence of native species such as the beaver from Part 1A is worrying, as is the inclusion of the wild boar in Part 1B. Wild boar is clearly now being re-established as a significant species in the United Kingdom, and I want to make the case with regard to the beaver. Amendment 85 adds beavers to the list of native animals. We are aware that some consider the beaver to be recently introduced, but archaeologists have discovered remains of beavers that go back over a considerable period of time. It is true that they largely died out 500 years ago, although the most recent known reference is in the late 18th century. Within Great Britain, there are currently several populations of beavers, one in Devon and two separate populations in Scotland. One of those, in Argyll, is an official trial reintroduction, which is due to conclude in 2015. The other two are made up of beavers that have likely escaped from wildlife centres and begun to breed.

In 2011, Scottish Natural Heritage estimated that there were at least 39 groups of beavers in the River Tay area and they are reportedly spreading into other river systems. It is therefore clear that beavers are already living wild in the UK in significant numbers and are well established in this country. To date, there have been 157 beaver reintroductions throughout Europe and there are now free-living populations in around 30 European countries, including our neighbours the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Denmark.

As it currently stands, the Bill would classify beavers are “not ordinarily resident” and would allow them to be controlled by techniques aimed at invasive species. This takes no account of the fact that beavers are a native component of British wildlife, as I have sought to demonstrate, and I hope that the Minister will respond to those points when she comes to sum up.

Finally, on our Amendment 80, we are concerned about,

“the standards of animal welfare required when carrying out species control agreements and orders”.

We recognise that the Minister has moved a great way to accepting that definition and I record our appreciation of that point at this late juncture.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I thank the Government for the large number of amendments and the movement that has been secured by the Minister and civil servants since we met in Grand Committee. We are all in support of the Government’s intention to deal with the problem of non-native invasive species, but we were concerned about some of the possibly unintended but nevertheless serious consequences of some of the wording around non-native. I will not repeat the arguments because the time is late, but I am particularly pleased that the Government have, through these amendments, addressed those particular issues of definition and that the native species that were wrongly classified as non-natives have been moved into a separate section.

However, another area of concern was the potential for this legislation to impact on future reintroductions of formerly native species that could have important benefits for biodiversity targets and people’s experience and appreciation of nature. We are all opposed to unlicensed reintroductions but question marks still remain over the ability of control orders to apply, for example, to formerly extinct animals that naturally recolonise here. I accept that getting definitions to cover all these potentialities is extremely difficult and it may be asking too much for the Bill to cope with that. Therefore, it was extremely reassuring in Committee to hear the Minister say that control orders would be looked at on a case-by-case basis. However, it is equally key that the code of practice is used to set out the intent of the limited use of control orders. I am therefore pleased that the Government have moved to ensure full public consultation on the code of practice. The opportunity to give further reassurances about the use of control orders could be done by more expansively setting out their proposed limited use therein.

I have a question about Amendments 84 and 85, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham. Proposed new Part 1B amends Schedule 9 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act to include animals no longer normally present. The addition by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, of the beaver prompts me to ask the Minister, like him, what criteria the department are using to select just wild boar to be included in the proposed new Part 1B. I invite the Minister to say a few more words in her summing up about the criteria that would be used to assess any other species that might be added. As she said, the beaver might be one of those. It is important that we are clear about the criteria before we move forward.

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[Lord Teverson]

I add my congratulations. I contributed to this debate in Grand Committee. It is good to see that a great deal of listening has taken place and some practical action has occurred. I am impressed that the Minister is also such an expert on areas such as non-native invasive species. The fact that a lot of these issues have been resolved is a good example of how government can work with the House to resolve important issues such as this one. Given globalisation, this area will grow in importance as the years go on. It is important that we get it right now. I congratulate the Minister on what she has managed to achieve.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, the Minister might have expected the odd congratulation from her own supportive Benches, although whether she would get the same commendation after Christmas as we get closer to the general election is a different matter altogether. However, from these Benches I also congratulate the Minister on the extent to which she listened and responded to the points made in Committee. This is one of the few occasions on which I have tabled an amendment and then seen the Government table an amendment which is as close to being identical as one could have. Therefore, talk about taking the wind out of my sails—I was actually breathless and unable to carry on with my comments. I end on that, I hope, helpful point.

[Lord Teverson]

We on these Benches have great admiration for the work that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has done on this part of the Bill. He made excellent speeches in Grand Committee.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, I yield entirely to the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Berkeley, for their huge expertise in this field. I have not attempted to master all the details. However, there was one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, which I am not sure I correctly understood. It was about the licence. My attention was drawn to the Written Statement that was issued by the Government. Indeed, my noble friend on the Front Bench repeated a Statement made by her colleague, the right honourable John Hayes. He was talking about the draft licence, which is a new document that was issued six days ago. I shall come back to that point in a moment. It states that the licence,

“indicates the manner in which the Secretary of State proposes to issue binding statutory directions and guidance to the new company, setting objectives and conditions around how the company must act”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/10/14; col. 18WS.]

I do not think that there is anything obscure about that; it is perfectly clear that the licence is issued by the Secretary of State. In those circumstances, the Secretary of State can clearly be held responsible if it does not work properly. But it may be that I misunderstood the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.

The Statement from which I quoted was issued less than a week ago and announces the publication of several substantial new documents which bear on Part 1 of the Infrastructure Bill. I fear that the Government have got themselves into rather a bad habit of publishing documents very shortly before Parliament has to consider them, leaving those of us who perhaps do not have the resources behind us that some may have to find it very difficult to catch up with it all. The most recent example—I do not hold my noble friend Lady Kramer responsible for this—is something that we will debate on Wednesday: the community electricity scheme. A task force looking at exactly that issue has been sitting for a year, but its report was made available only this morning. When I first came into the House, it was not even available in the Printed Paper Office, so I am afraid that I rang up the department concerned and expressed my displeasure, if I may put it in neutral language.

I have to say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that that is no way to treat Parliament. If the Government get into difficulties on some of these issues, it is because officials have been allowed to drag their feet to the point when things are issued only a matter of days before they have to be debated. I leave my noble friend with that thought.

Finally, I should say how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. I am sure that we have to come to some form of road pricing in future, if we are to make sense of this. There has been a huge increase in road traffic and no sign of it declining. The fact of the matter is that, while people of course pay the petrol duty, the licence and other taxes, that is in no way related to the amount of use that they make of the roads. I am quite sure that we will have to come back to that at some stage, and it may be something that emerges from the revised structure being set up in this Bill. As I said at Second Reading, I totally support it, and think it a very good move, but the revised structure may well bring these questions of how it is to be paid for much more to the fore. Then we may have the sort of reform that my noble friend Lord Bradshaw advocated.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I can keep my own contribution relatively brief because my noble friends Lord Whitty and Lord Berkeley have presented the case with great clarity. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for pointing out that we are dealing today with a position that is only six days old—the latest change from the Government to this crucial part of the proposals in the Bill. That is to say nothing of the fact that the fracking aspect of the Bill came months after we had considered it in Committee, which was then held up until the Government had concluded their consultation in the summer. So this is not a Bill distinguished by forward planning from the Government, or by a clear rationale of what they are about. However, I suppose I should thank them for having another shot at improving the Bill.

We are pleased to see changes reflective of the representations made in Committee from this side of the House, but we are no clearer on why delivering long-term certainty for roads investment requires a top-down reorganisation of the Highways Agency. The Cook report told us that it is stop-start funding problems that are leading to inefficiencies of between 15% and 20%. Is there any real evidence proving that changing the legal structure of the Highways Agency will, in itself, improve efficiency? Perhaps top-down reorganisation is the metier of this Government in challenging areas. The Minister will be aware of the strength of the concern on our side that this looks like the first step to privatisation. We continue to have that anxiety. Why is the section on the company’s licence for commercial activity and charging for services still unfinished?

We are concerned about the cost implications. There is still no clarity on whether the SHC will be able to reclaim VAT in the same way that the Highways Agency does at present. In Committee, the Minister said that the SHC would not be required to pay VAT, which is exactly the case with the Highways Agency now. That soon cleared up the issue. However, it did not clear up the issue at the other end, because the Minister in the Treasury, David Gauke, in answer to a Question from my honourable friend in the other place, Richard Burden MP, said:

“New bodies are not automatically covered by the … provisions. However, the Department for Transport and HM Treasury are considering this issue”.

HMT is quite important, here, with regard to revenue and dispensations to other departments. It does not seem to be as clear on the matter as the Department for Transport is maintaining that it is. If the new strategic highways authority is no longer able to recover VAT in the same way, that could lead to losses of a considerable amount—as much as £400 million annually. That would be £4 billion over 10 years, which would dwarf the figure of efficiency gains of £2.6 billion that it is proposed will come from the legislation. If the VAT issue is not resolved, therefore, the justification for this reorganisation is even less substantiated.

Turning to Amendment 4, which is in my name, the Minister used two arguments in Committee to reject our attempts to clarify whether the Government envision having more than one company. One argument was that this is only standard legal drafting and there should be no cause for concern. The Minister went on to say that it might be necessary if one wanted a more regional structure for the equivalent of the strategic highways company. Can she not confirm that the Highways Agency is already structured regionally? There appears to be confused thinking within the Government about how many companies there will be, which is why many are concerned that the Government are not being entirely open about their plans for the future.

It is clear that our main reservations about the major government proposal in the Bill have not been assuaged. As my noble friends have indicated, there are other questions, too, to which the Minister needs to respond to convince us that this proposal is acceptable.

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

My Lords, this is obviously a very wide and long group of amendments, which cover quite a range of issues. I do not want to put words in noble Lords’ mouths. but I think that we have progressed to the point at which at least we have a common goal in terms of setting up a structure that will ensure certainty of funding for highways in the way that we have managed to enjoy, and benefited from, with the railways.

Clause 1 allows the Secretary of State to appoint a strategic highways company, thereby conferring duties and functions on it to operate as a highway authority. If we were to drop this clause—there is a stand part debate in this group of amendments—it would be a fundamental change to the model and we would lose many of the key benefits of certainty over funding and plans which, as we have heard today, has been widely supported.

Our aim is to create a different model to deliver road infrastructure. Crucial to this is having a legal body separate from government responsible for our strategic road network and delivering a road investment strategy in the most cost-effective way. We consider the most effective model is a company created under the Companies Act 2006. Let me explain the rationale. We have decades of experience of the fact that the current arrangements—I point this out to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, who will remember the history of the department—have not encouraged a long-term approach to planning infrastructure or provided secure funding. Stop-start has indeed been a definition of a large part of their history and has come with high costs in terms of the efficiency and quality of our infrastructure. For long-term funding certainty and planning, it is crucial for the Secretary of State to be able to have a transparent and binding relationship with a separate legal entity. If the delivery body were to remain the Highways Agency and remain within the DfT, inevitably it would be easy to change funding and plans.

Setting up a strategic highways company as a new company operating under company law with a well established governance and financial framework will reinforce the clarity and robustness of the relationship. We have seen from international experience, for example in the Netherlands and Sweden, that where road delivery bodies have been given long-term funding certainty and a more independent relationship setting out requirements, large efficiency savings have been possible. A company would be constrained to one that is limited by shares and wholly owned by the Secretary of State, ensuring that any company is 100% owned by the Government and remains in the public sector. We have not only no intent but no interest in turning this into a privatisation. That is not part of our agenda and does not achieve the goals that we want.

Let me again take this opportunity to explain that we have no plans to appoint more than one company. We have already made clear that the Highways Agency, in its new legal status as a Government-owned company, will be the only company appointed. The use of plural “companies” in legislation was to allow flexibility for further companies in the future, including how companies would work together: and that is what Amendment 11 seeks to remove. Subsequent provisions in the Bill which refer to a company could therefore refer only to the strategic highways company or to each such company.

We are doing this in part because we recognise that future Governments may want flexibility to create more companies: for example, to give more accountability, to allow a company to look after a specific cluster of roads or area of roads or to promote comparisons and efficiency. Those are not our goals, but they might be those of a future Government. Reference to more than one company would prevent future Governments making change as needed. However, it is not something that we are seeking, so if noble Lords feel strongly on this issue and do not want to give that flexibility to future Governments—even though it is standard in virtually every piece of legislation that this House has seen referring to “companies” and “company” because, as I explained, in law the singular is the plural and the plural is the singular—I could offer a compromise that might reassure noble Lords.

I would be very happy to return at Third Reading with an amendment that would require any Government to seek parliamentary approval to establish additional companies beyond the initial one. I wonder whether this would satisfy noble Lords. It would certainly meet our intent. We see no future Government related to us who would wish to run this in a different way, and this would allow Parliament to have the voice that perhaps noble Lords are seeking.

Turning to the requirement for a licensing regime, we have been and are clear that we do not want to privatise the strategic highway network. Therefore, given that licensing regimes in the traditional sense, which is reflected in quite a number of these amendments, apply to commercial operators, we have been trying to avoid precisely that kind of licence. I find it strange that your Lordships are now pressing for amendments that follow that commercial model. Since we do not intend to privatise, the commercial model is not relevant to our proposals for this company.

In sectors such as rail, aviation, energy and water, the licence is a means of access to an economic activity where there are potentially multiple operators in a commercial market that may seek to apply. Our strategic highways company is funded by government, with no option for a separate revenue income. All its powers and duties to operate as a highways authority already exist in legislation and it is by virtue of their appointment that these powers are switched on.

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Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

2A: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Public sector rail operators
Within 6 months of the passing of this Act the Secretary of State shall publish a report on allowing a public sector rail operator to take on lines and challenge the train operators in the public interest.”

[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.

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[Baroness Kramer]

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

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

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

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her considered and lengthy reply. She will have noticed that she was acting alone in the House, as there was not a supporting voice anywhere—expect that my noble friend Lord Snape, with his considerable knowledge of railways, asked a few questions and expressed anxieties about not returning to the days of nationalised railways, when losses were made and low investment was the order of the day. There is nothing in the amendment or in any proposal conceivable to the Opposition which suggests that.

We have had the illustration of two private companies failing on the east coast main line, and one successful directly operated railway under public auspices producing considerable degrees of success which match the achievements of any on other lines. All we seek is for the Government to think about the possibility of that continuing. That is all that the amendment involves: recognition of ready and conspicuous success under the formula and an eagerness to see that it should persist. It is only dogma on the other side that leads them to indicate that there are so many complexities about running a private railway that one could not anticipate the expertise existing anywhere in any state-operated organisation—except, perhaps, in the German, French and Dutch states, which make successful bids and operate.

I merely ask the House to recognise that this is a modest amendment to keep the ball in play for the huge success in recent events on the railway. The Minister has addressed herself to every issue except that success, which we want to confer. Accordingly, I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

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[Baroness Kramer]

At this point, I cannot remember the exact location of each item, but I will go back. However, we now have the monitor there to enforce the RIS or the strategic highways company’s compliance with it, as well as with the contents of the draft licence or statutory guidance.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

I very much support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. The Minister is right; we have not spoken to Amendment 24, so I do not expect her to comment on it in great detail. However, I hope that she will indicate in her response to this group of amendments—it has been helpful thus far—that she will meet our point: that there is such great complexity about this interrelationship that things will not be rushed. It would be sad if, in pushing things hard to get the Bill on to the statute book and to be acted upon, we pre-empted in a rush what ought to be a long-term perspective on the road investment strategy. We expect the SHC very much to be involved in that new role.

[Baroness Kramer]

I now have a reply, thanks to that helpful intervention and the time associated with it. Clause 3(5) places a duty on the strategic highways company and the Secretary of State to comply with the RIS. So we have that covered. Our concern about removing subsection (6) of Clause 3 is that, without it, the Secretary of State could actually pick and choose when to set a strategy. Frankly, we do not want to give that scope to the Secretary of State—and I am sure that your Lordships do not either.

Your Lordships also propose that the first strategy be set in accordance with the process we have set out in Schedule 2. We have been clear that this time around we are following a compressed timetable. Indeed, we all want to have a strategy in place for day 1 of the company’s operations—but a company that does not yet exist cannot participate in the way that Schedule 2 envisages. If we were to wait until the passage of the Act, we would be in the position of forcing the company to operate without a strategy, delaying much-needed investment in the network. I hope your Lordships will not press that amendment. This is just to deal with the fact that we are pushing ahead with the strategy that I expect your Lordships will see very shortly. However, the assent to the Bill and the creation of the company will come afterwards so it would not be possible the first time around to pursue the proposals in that amendment.

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[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.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the Government for having listened carefully to what was said in Committee, where pressure was exerted from this side of the House for greater clarity of the functions of the highway company. We are grateful for the progress that has been made in the indications from the Government that they accept some of these arguments. But Amendment 15, to which the Opposition are also committed, does not offend in any way in the manner that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, indicated. What it says is that the highways company shall be responsible for the road safety performance of the network. We are talking about the strategic network and it is essential that we recognise that we want enhanced performance over road safety, because in recent years there have been anxieties about the decline in safety for our fellow citizens on the roads.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said that the same criteria as for railways were being applied. What is indicated in the amendment is that the Office of Rail Regulation will be concerned with the monitoring role, and that is where the overlap occurs. It is not contended on this side of the House, as he will recognise, that there could be any anticipation that the same degree of security could be achieved on roads as on a carefully regulated railway. We are very proud in this country of the excellent safety figures of the railway network, leaving aside level crossings, which, as we know, are a perennial problem for the railway. Regarding roads, it is clear that we want all the factors—a fact which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, enumerated—and we want enhanced performance in those areas. Clearly the strategic highways company has a very important role to play. That is why we support Amendment 15.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, on the previous grouping, I was pleased to make it clear that the Government have taken on board the thoughts of this House in putting, basically, the duties around road safety, the environment and co-operation in the Bill. While safety is obviously always at the forefront of our minds, it now seems that given the language in the statutory directions and guidance and what will go in the Bill, we have both belt and braces. If we were to follow the amendments recommended by the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Berkeley, we would put on constraints which, frankly, would remove flexibility on how to approach these issues and make the strategic highways company somehow responsible for issues that it could not possibly control. My noble friend, Lord Jenkin, was eloquent in describing that.

One of the principles of the entire roads reform programme is to give the company operational freedom to achieve its objectives. Amendment 15 runs entirely counter to that, and could lock out potential benefits by forcing the company to focus on an important but narrow aspect of road safety; namely, road infrastructure safety ratings. That is a restraint on effective management for the purposes of safety, not a support to it. Both those issues—the constraints that this would impose and the fact that a significant number of these issues are simply not under the control of the SHC—seem to argue for the withdrawal of the amendment and for the use of the belt and braces which we have already agreed will be in place. There is no need to seek a legal requirement to appraise different types of intervention on the basis that some of the amendments propose, because they are already in the Bill. The company will continue to use the department’s transport appraisal guidance, which ensures that interventions are considered on a consistent and proportionate basis.

I come now to the duties of the monitor. In Committee, and just now, your Lordships were persuasive about the need to help improve road safety and the environment. As noble Lords know, we have said that we will move an amendment on that, and your Lordships have been able to see the much stronger and detailed language now in the guidance and direction. Therefore, this amendment should be seen as not only requiring the Secretary of State to have regard to safety and the environment when setting or varying the strategy, but also indirectly generating objectives on those areas that the company would be bound to pursue—thus subject to the independent scrutiny of the watchdog and the monitor.

In Committee, your Lordships made it very clear that consultation over and above the work carried out by the company through the route strategies and the engagement that the Government will carry out as they set or vary the strategy is needed. To provide reassurance that we will engage with the public and shareholders, we are happy to include this requirement in the Bill as well. Government Amendments 28 to 31, if accepted, would add this requirement and some of the necessary consequential changes.

New powers for the monitor contained in other amendments, which we will discuss later—I believe reference was made to Amendment 48 in a later group—would place the ORR in a different role in relation to the new company. In our original drafts of the Bill it was an advisory body; it is now able to act in the manner of an independent regulator. A regulator has formal duties, which it must work within when carrying out its activities. The ORR’s role on the roads demands the same approach. The ORR itself has asked for a set of duties to be included in the Bill, so it has a firm basis from which to act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, Amendment 16 is about the relationship between the new company and the other highways authorities—essentially the local authorities. It is clear that for the effective operation of the new strategic highways company there will need to be close co-operation with those authorities. I should declare an interest, again non-pecuniary, as a vice-president of the LGA, which supports this amendment. Highways authorities feel that they have not been effectively consulted hitherto. Although they do not oppose the Government’s proposal in the Bill, they consider that Ministers should discuss with them how the company will operate as there will need to be co-operation between the strategic highways company and highways authorities on traffic management and new road schemes. The structure of the new organisation needs to be broadly agreed. There also needs to be some representation on the board of the new structure of those authorities that manage and oversee the other roads in England.

The amendment provides for consultation on the structure of the new company and the appointment of a local authority non-executive director on the board. That would be the minimum that we would need to see for a good and effective co-operative arrangement between the new company and the other highways and traffic authorities. I hope that the Government will accept the amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I should like to speak briefly in support of this amendment, to which I have lent my name. The Government list the “major challenges” facing the strategic road network: stop-start funding, underinvestment, inefficiencies and growing pressure from congestion. If these challenges are so severe, why are more than 90% of our people fairly happy with the condition of the strategic road network and only 30% happy with the condition of local roads?

On the evidence that the DfT is citing to justify its obsession with strategic roads, figure 1 in the summary of reform states that spending on major projects fell sharply in the 1990s and has remained low since, while overall traffic has risen. The figure completely ignores the previous Labour Government’s investment in local roads and tackling traffic in our towns and cities. That is where congestion is obviously most frequently experienced. We spent more than £4.5 billion annually on local roads between 2005 and 2010. That was cut by one-third for 2011-12 by the present coalition Administration. If the DfT wants to talk only about strategic roads, we suggest that it compares the spending on strategic roads with the amount of traffic on them.

Ministers continue to stress that their reforms will deliver a world-class roads network, but throughout the extensive documents that they have published there remains scant mention of the major challenges for local roads, which face a pothole epidemic. Any Member of Parliament will tell you that the transport problem in his area is bound to be represented by potholes in roads. The potholes do not just cause damage to vehicles but affect the pace at which they can travel.

The Government claim that they will deliver more reliable journeys, reduced congestion and less delay and disruption. However, they cannot be listening to local government, which is warning that the new two-tier road system threatens to speed up vehicles travelling significant distances but will lead to greater delays on local roads. I have no doubt that the Minister will say that the department has committed unprecedented funding for local road maintenance—£9.8 billion over the next Parliament and £975 million a year to councils. However, both those figures represent a real decline and more than one-third of the money will be topsliced for the Challenge Fund dreamt up by the department, which means that local authorities spend time and, of course, scarce money on bidding rather than actually fixing the roads.

There is no point in building a world-class strategic road network if 98% of local roads that people use every day are clogged with congestion or are falling apart. That is why this amendment seeks to ensure that the Bill gets the strategic and local road networks working better together and makes a real and tangible difference to tackling congestion. That is why we want to see local representation on the strategic highways company board, which will ensure that the company delivers and complies with its obligations. Local authorities must be actively involved in the creation of the strategic road network.

This issue is of the greatest importance. I understand entirely, of course, why the Bill concentrates on the strategic network but it must not ignore the needs of local road networks. They have to be recognised in the Bill as partners in ensuring that journeys are carried out in the most effective way.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I begin by addressing Amendment 49, which relates back to my original amendments on changing the powers to fine. As I said earlier, the ability to provide overarching governance is a necessary part of a regime in which the ORR is undertaking independent enforcement activity. This is especially true on fines. We want fines to be independent and fair, but we also want to make certain that they do not jeopardise the ability of the company to deliver what it has promised under the RIS. In future, it may also be helpful to have a mechanism to clarify the rules around fines. In the Railways Act these are subject to very detailed instructions, and without the subsection that this amendment removes there would be no way to do this if it were judged necessary.

I now turn to the watchdog. I am aware that the House recognises the value of that role. I am keen that we keep sight of what is important about the creation of the watchdog: the establishment of an organisation that will represent the interests of road users, whose voice must be listened to by those in government. That is something that will make the roads operator publicly accountable in a way that it never has been seen before.

I would like to make a distinction between what the new system of road governance achieves overall, and what role the watchdog plays within that system. Overall, we agree wholeheartedly that the impacts on communities around the network, and on those who walk and cycle in the vicinity, are very important. Environmental enhancements and measures to improve conditions for walkers and cyclists will be important parts of the road investment strategy when it comes into force. I will be discussing a number of issues around cycling in a later group, where a number of cycling-related investments are clustered. That may well answer some of the questions that have been raised at this point.

We expect that the policing of this will belong to the monitor and not to the watchdog. The ORR has monitored Network Rail’s environmental improvements for many years and has the necessary expertise to do the job well. By contrast, looking at the watchdog, Passenger Focus is an organisation focused firmly on gathering, understanding and promoting the views of transport users. It is not an expert in examining environmental impacts or issues, and while it is expanding its remit it does not plan to do so at the expense of its widely praised focus on users’ interests. The purpose of this organisation, whether now or in its new guise as Transport Focus, should be to put forward the views of the people who use the network. Anything else would dilute its ability to do the job well.

I should stress that users include both walkers and cyclists, as Amendment 52 ensures that the definition of “users of highways” includes cyclists and pedestrians, although I must make it clear it is not limited to them. Those who might use the network but do not feel able to are already being heard through the work that Passenger Focus is doing to engage with walking and cycling groups and find out what they feel to be the main barriers to using the network. I can assure your Lordships that this will remain an important part of Transport Focus’s remit. The same is true of potential freight users and potential motorists. All users, of every kind, will contribute to the route strategies that determine the priorities for future investment plans.

I am pleased that we are creating an organisation dedicated to listening to road users’ views, but I would be less happy creating an organisation that tells road users what their views should be. Transport Focus must be free to say what users actually think, and not what we might like them to, otherwise it will not have any credibility with the travelling public. That means we must catch the other issues that your Lordships have raised—including modal shift and environmental impact—elsewhere in the governance system. We have already discussed the new environmental duties on the monitor, and I hope our road investment strategy will do even more.

The proposal to widen the scope of voluntary agreements between the watchdog and local highways authorities is an interesting one. In practice, I believe that the existing wording, “protecting and promoting” the interests of users, is already broad enough to cover anything that a local authority might want the watchdog to do, and more clearly matches their remit as specified in subsection (1).

I therefore hope that your Lordships will feel able to support the government amendments and not to press the others.

Railways: East Coast Rail Franchise

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I cannot comment directly on an issue that will obviously be under consideration but I will take back my noble friend’s comments with pleasure.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister may have sought to reassure the House that she had some form of consultation with the trade unions but did she have any consultation with the half a million additional passengers that are being carried on the line under the successful operation of DOR? Surely she will accept that only a Government who are addicted to dogma would dispense with a company—an organisation that has run the line so successfully—and put it out to bidders, of which the successful one may well be the state-owned company of another country’s railway.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, it is certainly true that other countries have chosen to invest and own companies across a wide range of industries. This is a particularly difficult industry in which to do that. Its fixed costs are extremely high. It costs something like £7 million to £10 million to put in a bid, with no assurance of winning. It is certainly a high-risk industry and the margins, as the noble Lord will know, even for an effective and profitable company, are quite fine. It is an entirely valid decision not to enter into actually running companies when there are private options that have delivered very successfully up and down the country.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I will briefly intervene, not because I have the expertise of my noble friend Lord Berkeley; if he believes that he may be pushing at an open door as regards the Minister’s response, that is very good news indeed. My qualification for speaking about level crossings is that I live on the border of Hertfordshire and Essex, in one of the flattest parts of the country, the Lea Valley. The railway line there is plagued by the problem that it has a very large number of level crossings of all kinds, from the latest state-of-the-art crossings in some parts, to those where people open a little gate and run for it, dragging the dog behind—because they usually have a recalcitrant animal as well—and take risks getting across. Incidents on the line are constant.

I know that my dear friends at RoSPA—the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents—indicate that there are only nine deaths per year and that limited numbers of people are injured. We have 6,000 level crossings, and they are not all on the line that I know so well, but as my noble friend Lord Berkeley has emphasised, there is no doubt that because of the improved efficiency of the railway line—which is not just for local stations but is also the Stansted line, and which therefore supplies an important service to Stansted —very fast trains cause greater problems when you have some crossings which to all of us look exceedingly casual.

There was a tragic case only two weeks ago, when one of the most experienced local cyclists—someone who had travelled all over the world on his bike and raised lots of money for charities, who rode his bike all the time and was very advanced in years—decided that he could beat the train. Of course, this happened on one of our crossings, which is a bit posher than some, with an automatic gate that comes down on one side, and an automatic bar that comes down on the other side. However, if you are prepared to take the risk, you can wiggle between the two, and this poor fellow took the risk and got hit by a fast train.

We need to address this issue. We all know that with so many crossings, it is quite unrealistic to expect the problems to be resolved overnight. We are also aware at the present time that the whole responsibility falls on Network Rail. The costs and responsibility for safety all rest on Network Rail, while it is quite clear that other users create so many of the problems. That is why, at the very least, there should be some sharing out of the costs where it can be established that the local authority responsible for the road access may well not have played its part as fully as it ought to have done.

I am therefore looking forward to the largely positive reply from the Minister; it is an absolute delight to anticipate such a response. I emphasise that we were somewhat disappointed that there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech about a Bill, given that there was a small number of Bills—and rather pot pourri Bills as this one is to a certain extent—covering a range of issues. We were concerned that there was nothing about a level crossing, but I am very glad that my noble friend has raised the issue with this amendment, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for raising this issue. I know that he speaks also for the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who has had to leave. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter. It is an area in which the Committee rightly takes a very keen interest.

As we all know, the UK has the best level crossing safety record in Europe. We want to ensure that it is maintained and, of course, to see that it is improved. We are absolutely not complacent about level crossing safety. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, rightly pointed out that, as we run more trains and operate many of our lines at full capacity, the issue becomes more acute. He mentioned that the relevant cost fell on Network Rail. I can understand why people say that other road users should pay for the provision we are discussing. I do not want to fight over who is going to pay. When it comes to taking a decision on a closure, we need to move forward in an accelerated fashion. Therefore, I will accept a little injustice in order to make sure that we are really efficient when we need to be. I do not think that is what is inhibiting the system although I take the point that the noble Lord makes.

This amendment is about the law surrounding level crossings. At present, the legislative framework surrounding the management and operation of level crossings is, frankly, antiquated and complex. I have been passed a note informing me that 10,000 Acts apply to level crossings. I did not even know that we had 10,000 Acts. That is the most extraordinary figure and it says it all. Indeed, that complexity is the reason why we, or, rather, the Government of the day, requested the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission to undertake a review in 2007. The review was initiated in 2008. I take this opportunity to place on record my thanks to the Law Commissions for the tremendous amount of hard work which has gone into developing their report, and recommendations which were published in September 2013. The examination of 10,000 Acts is demanding work.

The Committee will appreciate that this is a highly complex area which touches on a wide range of issues including railways, highways, health and safety, planning, land and criminal law. The Law Commissions’ 86 recommendations represent the culmination of five years of investigation. Following legal and policy analysis, the Department for Transport has published its response. I apologise that noble Lords have not had a little more time to read it. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was always going to be the most dedicated reader and I congratulate him on going through it. The response indicates which of those 86 recommendations we intend to accept, reject or implement in a modified format.

We accept the case for reform which the Law Commissions have presented and have accepted the majority of their recommendations. However, in some key areas—for example, closures and the application of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned—the Department for Transport’s response indicates that we believe we need additional policy and legal consideration. This arises very much as a result of talking to the industry. The Committee will understand that some level crossings are site specific and that that creates additional complexity. However, we believe that we have to pursue these issues because in some cases there may be alternative proposals that work rather better.

On closures, the department needs to be convinced that the process recommended by the Law Commissions would shorten timescales and cut costs, which it is meant to do. We need convincing that that is what it would do. Stakeholders from both road and rail have voiced concerns about the possible implications and have pointed out to us areas where there is lack of clarity. We need to explore those further.

I very much understand that this is a probing amendment but I am told by those who understand procedure that it is a real oddity to put in a piece of legislation a clause which would legally commit a future Government to introduce a complete Bill. Although I know that is not the purpose of the amendment, technically there is an issue there. I should also draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that the Law Commissions’ recommendations contain significant devolution elements which we must and will discuss further and reach agreement on with the Scottish and Welsh Governments before implementation could proceed. As I said, we are also aware of stakeholder concerns about some of the recommendations. They must be addressed because this is highly practical, operational stuff and we have to get it right.

We want to move quickly, but we recognise that there is work to be done, and we are trying not to set ourselves an artificial deadline. However, I am very concerned that this does not get kicked into the long grass—as, I suspect, are all of your Lordships who have spoken.

We have said that we will come forward with an action plan. We will produce it by the end of 2014. It will be an outline of where we think further work is required and how it can be taken forward as a priority. I point out that that action plan will address some of the specific issues raised. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked whether most of this requires legislation. Unfortunately, it does, but we will look for those areas where we do not need legislation, because that will give us a little flexibility. There are also additional complications that flow from our need to get the Law Commission to consider whether it can simplify some of its recommendations. The action plan will cover that issue as well.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley can agree that this is the best way forward; I hope that he will feel comfortable to withdraw his amendment, because it seems to me that we are all pretty much on the same page on this important issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, as a former consumer champion, I am fully in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is trying to do here and, in particular, I see the sense in putting it in the hands of the Treasury. The Treasury is the only government department, with the occasional exception of No. 10, which can ensure that individual departments do not go off at a tangent. The problem is not only the multiplicity of regulators but that each of them rests within a culture of a different department. The consumer function, insofar as it is reflected in Whitehall, is a very minor function of the business department’s responsibilities. It is only the Treasury that can insist that regulators and departments really look after the interests of consumers.

Whether the Government follow through the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, or the NAO’s report, this is something that needs doing, and therefore I hope that we get a positive response.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on putting forward a very useful amendment. However, as he indicated, in terms of the level of expertise available among staff currently devoted to aspects of this kind of work in the Treasury and the fact that we would also need some legislation, the whole proposal will produce enormously beneficial results but not next year, nor probably after that. It would take some time before we had the full range of expertise indicated in the noble Lord’s amendment.

He is absolutely right on one thing: of course the country is not prepared to take time over these issues because the consumer is all too well aware that they are bearing the costs of a great deal of interest by the companies. What the companies reflect is what they classically reflect in the private sector—the massive increases in pay for their directors and chief executives since they became independent operators, a significant increase in profit and a whopping price rise for the consumer, who has very little capacity to avoid such price rises.

We know that consumers are meant to move around among the energy companies—we know how easy that is with regard to water, for example, and other areas where the natural monopolies obtain. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has identified what we on this side of the House have emphasised for several years: that the operation of a great deal of these services to the public through such private companies, some of which are natural monopolies, has produced a most distressing situation for people who we all know are seeing nothing in the way of increase in their own resources, with low wage levels, and are meeting ever increasing costs. I therefore strongly support the amendment and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on making this great effort to produce an outline of what is necessary. However, we will expect the next Government to move more directly even than this proposal.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I am afraid that I wear a number of hats with this Bill. While much of the advice has come from the Treasury, I also speak at other times for Defra. I therefore speak as a government Minister across the breadth of a number of issues. I can assure the noble Lord that my noble friend Lord Deighton will be happy to meet him. I hope that he will take advantage of that opportunity, because it is important to share the thoughts that he has expressed eloquently today.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that departments pay little attention to the consumer and that it is a small part of what they do. That may have been true of the departments that he was part of in his time in government, but if he came today to the Department for Transport, he would hear almost nothing but the words “passenger”, “traveller” and “consumer”. They are key in the way that we have been shaping policy, and I think that one can see it in the response of a lot of the transport industry, which is now beginning to put passengers at the heart of what it does. Historically, that might well have been absent and one might have accused much of the industry of being engineering-biased, but I assure the noble Lord that it is certainly not the case in today’s world.

The Government fully recognise the importance of ensuring that infrastructure investment is delivered in a way which protects consumer interests and is affordable to current and future customers. I think that we can say that a lot of the pressures today are caused by the fact that investment in infrastructure essentially disappeared off the radar screen for virtually a generation. We want to be sure that we do not do that to future generations. It is central to government policy and to the work of economic regulators, such as Ofwat and Ofgem, operating in each sector.

However, the Government disagree with this amendment and have some serious reservations about trying to aggregate across sectors for infrastructure costs. Bang our heads as we might, we cannot think of a way in which one could do this that could be robust or meaningful.

Let me try to be practical about this. Different consumers in different parts of the country consume different amounts of travel by rail or air—I am now talking about transport, because it is my area—and different amounts of water and energy, all differently priced. Consumers also use very different amounts of these services depending on their needs and preferences, which makes any attempt to aggregate across sectors, to depict a typical household or clusters or types of household, pretty much impossible. Once one starts trying even to estimate an average, it becomes meaningless.

It is the sector-by-sector assessment of their customer base which regulators do in detail that we think is the effective way to assess consumer impacts and affordability. I am thinking of new transport infrastructure, which would obviously be included in this package. It might give the Committee some understanding of how it is near enough impossible to do this in an aggregate way. Transport investment affects personal affordability in many ways and affects different social groups in different ways. For example, if we bring in a smart motorway scheme, it leads to reduced congestion and you could argue that it leads to reduced fuel bills. On the other hand, because there is reduced congestion, more people may well use the road, so because they are travelling their fuel bills go up. However, it may be that they are making that journey because they now have access to a job or to additional business. You surely ought to net out that benefit in order to come to a conclusion on the additional cost caused by that additional piece of motorway. Getting this sorted out is virtually impossible.

HS2 is probably the biggest piece of infrastructure seen across Europe. We have said that there will not be premium fares, so what number do you put in for the burden on the consumer? Is it the standard fare? You were not including it when that standard fare was being used on the existing line. Is it the additional revenue? Then again you are netting out benefits. To try to unravel this into something that would let you have a formula that would make any real sense is near impossible. It is not really a sensible way in which to try to look at this. When we think about capturing cumulative effects in a way that has some meaning, it seems impossible to work your way through the human behaviours and their responses to infrastructure to get you to something that you want.

Back in the department, when we are trying to decide whether to fund a scheme, we try to look at this complex picture. How does the scheme impact on the individual, the environment, the economy or personal health? What happens, in terms of safety, to accident levels and to various other societal benefits? It is based on in-depth, long-standing scientific evidence about how people and businesses value different things. It is just a much more complex picture when we try to put this together into a scheme business case.

The fact that I am saying that cross-sector aggregate measures look at something too complex to come up with a meaningful answer does not mean that the Government fail to take affordability extremely seriously. The Government are taking targeted action on some of the costs that have been discussed today. We have introduced a range of measures to help hard-working families with the cost of living, which is surely what we are all trying to get at. For example, increasing the tax-free personal allowance has a big impact on the cost of living for individuals. Freezing fuel duty has a big impact on the cost of living, as does helping local authorities to freeze council taxes. Those are mechanisms for trying to deal with this set of issues and link in no way to the kind of cumulative cost assessment that is being discussed in this amendment.

Targeted action on bills includes action at the last Autumn Statement, in which the Government announced a series of steps saving the average household around £50 on its energy bills. We recently announced an extension of the freeze on rail fares. Last year, that saved season ticket holders around £70 over 2014 and 2015. It is completely separate from trying to calculate the specifics of a specific infrastructure investment. It has been possible because the Government have a long-term, credible economic plan.

For example, Ofgem undertakes detailed and regular assessment of energy market customers, the affordability of bills and consumers’ ability to pay. Ofgem has published a strategy on consumer vulnerability which set out to understand and identify the causes of vulnerable situations in the energy market and to reduce the likelihood and impact of such situations. It regularly monitors and publishes data on energy disconnections for debt and other issues related to supplier dealings with domestic customers. Suppliers are required by their licences to avoid disconnecting consumers who are of pensionable age, disabled or chronically sick in the winter months—the “winter moratorium”. Ofgem also requires the big six energy companies not to disconnect vulnerable consumers at any time of year, and to reconnect a customer as a matter of priority and usually within 24 hours, if they are later found to be vulnerable. Regulators take these assessments and monitoring of consumers very seriously indeed and see it as an absolutely core part of their role.

--- Later in debate ---

We have a lot to learn. If we go down this road, we need to look very carefully at how they did it in Norway, what is applicable to us and what we can learn from that. It was incredibly impressive, particularly —I am repeating myself—the fact that during the recession their fund hardly dropped at all. They managed to keep it up.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I will be very brief. First, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on his excellent exposition of a very important concept. We see much merit in it. The one thing that we cannot replicate as far as the Norwegians are concerned is that they launched their fund at a time of great and increasing prosperity. Any Government in power at present or for the foreseeable future in the United Kingdom are not faced with that same position.

Secondly, there is a community dimension to the issue of shale gas. We are all too well aware of the price that local communities might pay in terms of disruption while the shale gas is mined. Thirdly, I emphasise that while we may underestimate how much is there, of course we may overestimate it too. It is much easier to identify how much is there than to actually extract it. Therefore, we must be able to follow the greater balance of optimism that exists in some places. None the less, the Committee ought to be enormously grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for raising this issue. I hope that the Minister will give him a positive response.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend Lord Hodgson for his amendment and for the most eloquent way in which he explained the merits for the Norwegian people of having a sovereign fund. Of course, shale represents a huge economic opportunity for the UK. It could potentially create thousands of jobs, generate significant business investment and provide substantial revenue for the Exchequer in future.

However, unlike the offshore industry in Norway, the shale industry in the UK is still very much in its early stages. The Norwegian Government’s petroleum fund was established in 1990, as my noble friend said, but that was nearly 20 years after oil first started being produced and when the levels of revenue were well known. In the UK, shale gas is still in the exploration phase. My noble friend said that it was a potential but as yet an unknown. The Government will not be able to forecast the scale or timing of shale revenues until more work is done to determine the extent of gas that can be technically and commercially recovered. It would therefore be inappropriate to indicate now how potential future revenue would be used. As a result, the Government have no current plans to assess the possibility of creating a sovereign wealth fund from this revenue.

I recognise the arguments behind this amendment. Diverting future revenues from government finances to a specific shale fund, or one created by revenue from other natural resources, would come at a cost. Shale revenues may also be needed to make up for shortfalls elsewhere. The UK continental shelf is a mature basin and oil and gas revenues from the North Sea are declining; the Government would likely need to either raise additional tax revenue elsewhere or cut spending to maintain the fiscal balance. The Government consider that, in general, hypothecation, or earmarking revenues for a particular spending purpose, is not always an efficient way in which to manage the public finances. Like all government receipts, revenues are remitted to the consolidated fund to support general expenditure. My noble friend Lord Teverson recognised that fact. Once it goes to the Treasury, it becomes slightly difficult to extract it—but that is because of the methods that we have used, whichever Government have been in power. It allows the Government to allocate resources most efficiently across the economy.

I thank all noble Lords for contributing. It has been a very informative debate, which has raised some very important points. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, said in his concluding sentence that I should be sympathetic to this proposal. Is it something that the Labour Party will put in its manifesto for the next general election? It would be interesting to know how that debate would follow.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

Could I ask the Minister whether she thinks she will put it in her manifesto?

[Baroness Verma]

I have laid out very clearly our position in government. Generally, hypothecation of revenue is not something that we support.

I conclude by recognising that the noble Lord has made some incredibly important points, but I feel that I cannot accept his amendment and hope that he withdraws it.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

72: Clause 16, page 16, leave out lines 5 and 6

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 73, with which Amendment 72 is grouped.

As I thought to construct a speech on this issue, I found myself in the most extraordinary philosophical and political position. All my political life, I have seen the lines of conflict over issues drawn in the following way. Going back to Finance Bills in the 1970s, for instance, I recall that the Labour Government were always accused of drawing up excessive invasive powers—in particular for tax authorities to appropriate property—and the Conservative side was always expressing the rights of the landowner and the liberal proposition that the state should be kept at bay. In fact, on one famous occasion, I remember a Conservative member of the committee telling me, “If this amendment to the Finance Bill is carried, there will be the knock on the citizen’s door and it will be the knock of the French revolutionary of 1789 saying, ‘Ouvrez, au nom de la République!’”, such were the terrors that were being visited upon the British in 1976. I had the temerity—I was a PPS at the time—to suggest that the historical analogy did not quite hold up, not least because the French Republic was not declared until 1793, and therefore he was four years premature in suggesting that the revolutionary was asking for entry in the name of “la République”—after all, Louis XVI did not meet his death until 1793.

However, with this issue here, the position is exactly reversed. The current Government are producing a power of entry that we regard as being quite exceptionable and needing some mighty justification. I do not know whether this proposal in the Bill has emerged from a Conservative Party that has gone soft on supporting landholding interests or from the malign influence of those in the Liberal wing of the coalition, who have decided that they should have regard to the landed interest. However, we are agin this proposal, and I shall go on to explain, as clearly as I can, why. It seems quite unnecessary to give an authorised person,

“to determine whether to offer to enter into a species agreement with a person”,

this excessive right to demand entry. Surely powers of entry must be handled delicately. As a liberal-minded socialist, I would say that powers of entry should always be handled delicately, because the citizen in a democratic state has rights. There needs to be a balance between the interests or rights of the property owner and the rights of environmental authorities wanting to eradicate invasive non-native species.

Of course, we are all with the Bill in its attempt to tackle what we all recognise is a very severe problem, but the authorised person would be seeking to obtain an agreement. It does not seem right, therefore, to allow a power of entry at an early stage in the process before the property owner might even be aware of the need to enter into a species agreement. The persons concerned have not got anywhere near the negotiation stage; as far as one can see, they have not even necessarily identified that there is a problem at all, but there could be this knock on the door from the authority.

In England and Wales, the entry on to private property by any person is a trespass, unless consent is given or the entry is otherwise authorised by statute or by common law. It is also the case, of course, that this concept is enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides a right to respect for private home and family life. In this respect, Article 8 can only be interfered with if it is prescribed by law as a legitimate aim and is necessary in a democratic society. It is particularly difficult to describe species control agreements as a pressing social need for action. After all, if the concept anticipates an agreement as the achievement of the policy, what is the pressing need for forthright rights of entry? Moreover, the Home Office’s powers of entry gateway, which regulates powers of entry, sets out tests which must be satisfied, including “Necessity”, “Proportionality” and “Safeguards”. Such powers should be used only when necessary and not routinely, but these powers in the Bill are routine—they come in at first base, as it were, and condition the nature of action.

Will the Minister justify how allowing a power of entry on to someone’s land merely to decide whether to enter into an agreement fulfils the requirements set out in the European Convention on Human Rights? The property holder is going to be asked to enter into an agreement. Of course I recognise the problem that may arise if agreements cannot be achieved and if the threat to the wider society is significant—none of us is going to underestimate the damage which some invasive species can do. We all know that it would be absolutely pointless if one householder dealt with Japanese knotweed alone. The capacity of one householder to deal with Japanese knotweed alone beggars the mind, but if he did succeed in dealing with Japanese knotweed alone it seems absurd to suggest that agreement would not be necessary. Next door would have to be involved; otherwise, one would not have a solution and one would be more likely to have a situation in which the problem was extended.

It may be thought that I am being excessive in challenging the Government on these issues and recalling other occasions when these issues have been raised, when the boot has been on the other foot and I watched Labour Ministers wrestle with arguments from landowners and Conservatives. The crucial issue is that the Law Commission review addressed this issue and highlighted the fact that concerns were raised regarding potential overuse of powers of entry. It concluded that there should be a formal safeguard against potential overuse of powers of entry. Of course, we subscribe to the objectives of the Bill with regard to tackling the problems caused by invasive species, but we believe that we are entirely justified in probing the limits of the power of entry as regards when and how it will be used. I beg to move.

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

My Lords, I resist Amendment 72, as circumstances may arise in which Natural England has reason to believe that a non-native invasive species is present on someone’s land but the owner denies access to verify this. However, without that verification, one cannot proceed to issue a control order. If there is no voluntary agreement, the landowner can avoid the imposition of a control order. Typically, Natural England will approach the landowner and give him at least 48 hours to respond. The reason for having this tight benchmark is that sometimes one can determine whether a non-native invasive species is present even when one is off-site. However, that cannot always be done, as sometimes the species is tiny and is therefore difficult to pick up in, for example, an aerial photograph.

The expectation is that arrangements will be voluntary and collaborative with rare exceptions—for example, in emergencies. The Committee will know about Asian hornets. We have almost the equivalent of an alert system around the country, watching out for the arrival of Asian hornets. I am advised that, if they are found, eradication needs to take place very rapidly, possibly within 48 to 72 hours, or they will pose a threat to native bees, with all the consequences that flow from that. Therefore, on occasion, it is absolutely necessary to move fast. It would be problematic to provide a landowner with a mechanism to resist even entering discussions about a voluntary agreement and therefore to avoid triggering the process that would eventually lead to a control order. I fully recognise the issues that have been raised. However, given the purpose of this legislation and the implications of allowing a rapidly increasing invasive species to get out of control, I ask the Committee to recognise that this power is necessary and I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 73, which is also in this group, is slightly different. It would require an environmental authority to ensure that, whenever it exercised a power of entry, it must leave the premises as effectively secured as they were on entry rather than, as stated in the Bill, to do so when the premises are unoccupied or the owner is temporarily absent. We want very much to ensure that unoccupied premises or premises where the owner is absent are left effectively secured. As regards Amendment 73, we take the point that there might be grounds for a more general application of the provision. One of the things we are concerned about is the need to think through the language that is used, as we do not want to encourage people to “booby-trap” premises, as it were, with expensive systems that would then have to be replaced. Therefore, I am sympathetic to the intent of Amendment 73 but, given the importance of being able to control invasive species, we need to retain the powers in the Bill, which would be negated by Amendment 72.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her sensitive approach to Amendment 73. We will look again at the wording of that amendment to see whether we can persuade her to change her mind on that matter. It seems a pretty obvious thing to require that, if an authority moves in for the very good reasons that it would have in those circumstances, it should leave the place in the same order that it found it. Otherwise, it seems that we are giving extraordinary powers to those who carry out this action.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

74: Clause 16, page 18, line 17, at end insert—
“( ) the standards of animal welfare required when carrying out species control agreements and orders.”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I move on to slightly gentler territory this time but of great import nevertheless. We all recognise that, in seeking to do the right thing by wider society, we have real problems about how the actions are to be carried out by the authority. That is why Amendment 74 seeks to insert the words:

“the standards of animal welfare required when carrying out species control agreements and orders”.

I am sure the whole Committee will endorse the view that we must ensure that we abide by the highest level of protection for animal welfare. Concerns have been raised by a number of bodies, including the National Farmers’ Union, Animal Aid and the National Anti Snaring Campaign, which have all cited the threat to animal welfare. We must be alert also to the fact that these control orders might prevent farmers and growers being able to react to market opportunities by growing new varieties of crops. That is why those concerned with the countryside argue for an appropriate system of checks and balances to protect their interests. I am not sure that the Bill meets that test at present. The Government have failed to include anything in this schedule to protect animal rights, despite the fact that we know that representations have been made by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Woodland Trust and the Law Commission that the legislation should indeed provide for the inclusion of animal welfare provisions. I fail to see why these representations, made while the Bill was being drawn up, have not registered effectively with Ministers.

Perhaps that is to do with the fact that Ministers are fresh from the horrors of the badger cull and the problems they had over that issue; there are also the problems we have all had over dangerous dogs legislation in recent years. However, the Government were quick to denounce the presence of beavers from sightings in Devon and to suggest their ability to carry a disease when, from what I can see, the Government have produced no proof or scientific evidence to back up these contentions. What assessments do the Government make when deciding whether an animal is considered dangerous or harmful? Is the fact that it is just strange and new sufficient for forthright action to eliminate it?

Reports show us that there is a case that animals such as beavers might have an effect that is as positive as it is negative. I know that we all have to come to terms with the development of new species when they arrive. I am told that beavers would cause a great deal of trouble wherever floods were likely to occur, but I had thought that beavers were rather good at building dams and that most of the demands being made from the Somerset Levels and elsewhere during the past year were to say, “We want more defences”. Why can we not get the helpful beaver to chip in with his little bit? At the least, I am not quite sure why he is condemned outright before he has had the chance. It seems that the Government are obsessed with controlling anything that they think to be a threat, without properly assessing whether it is a threat or not—and certainly without even beginning to think that there might be benefits.

The Government do not have the best track record in following the advice of scientists, especially when it comes to the natural environment. Their failure over the badger culls, where they have been heavily criticised across a whole spectrum of informed opinion, is a clear example. We must make sure that species control operations are conducted and introduced on the back of a clause that enshrines the need to look at the preservation of animal welfare. I am hopeful that the Minister, while she might think it rare, will see this as a constructive amendment from the Official Opposition and look kindly upon it. I beg to move.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. There was a good example in Australia, which I could perhaps relay to the Committee. My brother, who lives in housing association accommodation, was invaded by a possum. It was in his roof for about three years before he was able to persuade the housing association to do something about it. Of course, the possum is a protected species but eventually along came Paul, the “Possum Whisperer”, whose job it was to persuade the possum to leave the premises without endangering the species. He did that without any harm to the premises or to the possum, but the end of the story was that the possum re-emerged slightly later, next door but one. The neighbour knocked on my brother’s door and said, “Hey, I’ve got this possum—any advice about how to get rid of it?”. My brother said, “Well, Paul the Possum Whisperer is the person that you need to go to”. So there was a job creator as well as a very skilled person, who could act in a humane way to protect the animal. It may be that the Government could indulge in some job creation activity here by creating skills such as sheep whisperers and beaver whisperers to get these animals off the premises without any harm. This is a very good amendment, which we should support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for those concluding remarks. Of course, we accept the outcome of her investigation of the situation. I think that that is a safer path, for her, than quoting the European Union control orders, which might be a little inflammatory in some parts of the House, though not on my side. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 74 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

75: Clause 16, page 18, line 21, at end insert “and the Environmental Audit Committee of the House of Commons”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, this amendment and the others grouped with it seek to add to the list of those who have a crucial part to play. None of us has anything but great respect for the work of the Environmental Audit Committee in the other place, which has done a tremendous job in reviewing invasive non-native species and highlighting what needs to be done and how we can improve the situation. It would surely be hugely beneficial to have it involved in the process of issuing, revising or replacing the codes of practice for invasive non-native species. That committee is on record as being very supportive of the implementation of the Law Commission’s proposals and some time ago highlighted the need for this to be a priority for the Government. We think that there is a clear role for that committee, particularly against the background of there being more limited resources to hand for the Government in carrying out this crucial evaluative work.

Our remaining amendments involve the local authorities and local nature partnerships. The simple fact of the matter is that most local authorities do not have the capacity or the ability to assess biosecurity risks and to take a proactive or intelligence-led approach to reducing them. Two-thirds of our local authorities no longer employ any ecologists, according to the Association of Local Government Ecologists. The evidence suggests that ecological capacity within local government is stretched very thin indeed, but it has a very wide policy agenda. We are here debating this Bill because that agenda is extending, and we are trying to respond to those difficulties. There is clearly an ecological skills gap within the planning system and a clearer understanding of the specialist ecological competence is required, especially in understanding exactly what the discharge of statutory obligations involves. Having that clearer understanding would enable local government to allocate better its resources against the risks associated with the fact that it no longer has the level of technical expertise that it once had. When dealing with biosecurity issues such as diseases, pathogens and invasive non-native species, 75% of local government ecologists indicate that only “basic” or “capable” levels of competence are required at that stage. There is a worry about the ability of local authorities to play their part effectively, and that is why we would like a reference to local authorities in the Bill in addition to the crucial role of the Environmental Audit Committee.

It may be thought that I am putting enormous stress on a committee of the other place, but so much competence for dealing with these areas has been swept away that inevitably we have recourse to those obvious locales where expertise exists and can be called upon. The Environmental Audit Committee report has been of the greatest significance in the development of policy. I am seeking to strengthen the role of those who have some capacity to assist the Government, with their limited resources, in carrying out the necessary functions under the Bill. I beg to move.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, the comments that I wish to make may have some relevance to the codes of practice that will accompany the Bill. Amendment 71, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, which has already been debated, could have been a cue in its own right for a wide-ranging and interesting debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, proposed the definition of a species. A species is commonly defined as the largest extent of a group of organisms that is capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. That is similar to the definition that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was advocating, which also mentioned the exchange of genes. However, his definition did not include the fertility of the offspring as one of its conditions. Moreover, we know that bacteria of widely differing species can exchange genes via plasmids, which are small DNA molecules that can be separated physically from the chromosomal DNA. One might wish to exclude bacteria from the definition.

These are abstruse matters and I do not wish to pursue them further. Instead, I propose that in place of “invasive non-native species”, the legislation should be talking simply of “pests”. I assert that it is inappropriate to talk only of non-native species. The objection might be raised that the word “pest” is too vague to serve the purposes of this legislation. What is a pest in one context might be a harmless organism in another context. However, this is one of the realities that ought to be taken into account. I will mention the well known example of the English rabbit. When transferred to Australia, it became a major pest that threatened the viability of Australian agriculture. Rabbits destroyed the grazing land and by eating native plants and grasses exposed the top-soil and left it vulnerable to erosion. One way of overcoming an infestation is to alter the ecology by introducing a predator of the pest, or by some other means. In Australia in the 1950s, the ecology of the rabbits was altered radically by the introduction of a malign myxoma virus, which causes myxomatosis in rabbits.

The point I wish to make is that we need to consider pests within their ecological contexts, and ecology can be severely disturbed by inadvertent human interventions. Often the effect of a human intervention is to diminish the diversity of the ecology by eliminating some of its organisms, which may allow others to propagate without restraint. Thus an organism that has hitherto been regarded as harmless may become a pest as a consequence of such disruption. This is an ever present hazard in intensive modern agriculture. The matter of whether an organism is native or non-native is beside the point.

An ancient example will serve as an illustration. It is provided by a variety of grasshopper that was originally confined to the Middle East, which has latterly invaded the entire African continent. This is the locust, of which the pestilential effects emerged when the advent of agriculture upset an ecological balance. The Book of Joel in the Old Testament provides a graphic description of a locust plague in the Middle East.

The point that I wish to make is that we should approach the problem of ecological imbalance not by programmes of localised pest control but in a holistic manner that takes a far wider ambit. Instead of relying on local pest control officers to deal with outbreaks of invasive species, we should be relying on our public sector research establishments to monitor our natural—and our unnatural—environments so as to guard against pestilential outbreaks and to suggest the necessary countermeasures. This reinforces a point that has already been made by my noble friend Lord Davies, and I hope that his comments might be taken into account at a later stage when we come to review the Government’s deliberations.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, those of us who were privileged to participate in the Defra visit the other day—an opportunity that many of your Lordships took up—will have been very impressed to see the care and control and the deliberate and constant testing and assessment that Defra uses before enabling any biological controls to be used for some of these invasive species. Obviously, that is one direction that is under examination for Japanese knotweed, that much-hated plant, but it sits outside the scope of this legislation, which focuses very much on new invasive species that are not ordinarily resident and where there is a potential for eradication to succeed. The Bill has a narrower target, but other pieces of legislation sit alongside it that tackle, for example, invasive non-native species that are a threat to plant and animal health. So the Bill sits within a much broader context.

The amendments focus on the need for wider consultation on the code of practice. It has always been the Government’s intent to engage a great deal with expertise, with stakeholders and with others on the code of practice, which will be a substantial and complex document that will certainly need a great deal of thought and care. We continue to think about how we should carry out that engagement, and we would like to take a little more time to consider those issues, including the option of undertaking a full public consultation on the code. I can commit that I will have a response on the issue before Report, but I assure your Lordships that it is our intent to have that kind of intensive engagement, including with a number of parties that have been named today. We would like to take this away and think a little more on it, as the code of practice will be complex. However, it is indeed the Government’s wish to be able to tap into that expertise and thinking in order to make the code as effective as possible.

On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her thoughtful and constructive response, and I certainly beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 75 withdrawn.

Vehicles: Heavy Goods Vehicles

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness’s answers were rather too long for the House. However, they were not too long for me, because I agreed with them.

[Baroness Kramer]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, for his support.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

32: Clause 4, page 3, line 20, at end insert “including on matters of remuneration, management, financial arrangements and staffing”

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 32 is designed to probe two issues: the motivation behind the move to a strategic highways company and the extent to which the Minister will be able to affect its day-to-day operations. We are concerned about the cost implications of putting the Highways Agency at arm’s length because doing so could result in significantly increased managerial pay. In fact, there have been comments by informed individuals to suggest that that is certainly one of the attractions of the proposal. It will free the company from the constraints of Civil Service pay. We are also concerned about the issue of additional VAT payments. At present, considerable sums are returned on the basis of the role played by the Highways Agency, but as a company, of course, it will not receive such concessions and will have to meet its VAT obligations in full. We are concerned about fines because we are not at all sure about how any fines would be levied, and on whom. We are concerned about poor value cyclical investments, and we are concerned about the reduced flexibility of the Government in the area of spending in the future.

We recognise that the point of this attempt at improving the infrastructure basis of the Department for Transport as far as roads are concerned is about guaranteeing that certain sums will be spent in the future so that infrastructure projects which clearly need a long time-line of assured expense will have that guarantee. However, we also need some assurance from the Minister that the absolutely critical issue of ensuring that the necessary flexibility, either when situations change or the perspective of Ministers alters, is available. According to the transparency page on the Highways Agency website, at present the top five jobholders all make significantly more than £100,000 a year. One would have thought that in the context of pay in the public service and the other advantages of being in the public sector—the oft-quoted security of pensions, although that is becoming less advantageous as time goes by; job security, although by heavens one cannot talk to many civil servants and get the impression that they feel they enjoy job security—people on salaries of over £100,000 could be expected to discharge a significant area of responsibility. Let us consider whether the pay at the top of the strategic highways company will be boosted by any additional income streams. The Government have quite clearly indicated that these proposals have nothing to do with a long-term perspective on road pricing; we had that discussion at the end of our sitting last week. However, if there are no additional income streams, the taxpayer will be paying those potentially increased wages of the staff.

The impact assessment lists pay and remuneration under the heading “Institutional constraints under central controls”. I want to know what central controls those are, or yet again is a model being followed that we know all too well, in fair weather and in foul, of creating a non-governmental body and seeing its salaries inflate so that they match the private sector, which can always be relied upon to have a significant differential between the top few and the very many who do a great deal of the work and are responsible to them? Is that what we are going to see again prior to privatisation? I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friends on this amendment. It may well be that in her reply the Minister will refer to more than one of the five documents that she referred to in last week’s Committee sitting and kindly e-mailed to us the next day. I have now read them but they do not tell me a lot about the questions that we were asking. I hope that before we get to Report we will have the detail—I think that the Minister suggested that more would be forthcoming—of the relationship between a strategy, if there is to be one, a licence for this company, directions and guidance, articles, duties, governance and things such as that. However, in the case of this amendment, who is going to decide how much the staff of the new company are paid unless it is the Secretary of State?

As my noble friend said, it is beginning to look as though the only reason for making this change is so that the staff can be paid more than they are at the moment. It may be that the people who proposed this looked longingly at the remuneration and bonuses received by the senior staff at Network Rail in recent years without seeing that that is changing quite dramatically to a lower figure. Of course, once Network Rail is fully owned by the state, it may change even further. It would be interesting to hear how we are going to know who is in charge of remuneration, management, financial arrangements and staffing if it is not the Secretary of State. Therefore, I think that this is a very good amendment and I fully support it.

--- Later in debate ---

It is therefore clear that the Government will, in a sense, be on the hook for decisions on remuneration that will cause a variance against the Prime Minister’s salary. I think that we would agree that that means that the democratic process is at work, including in terms of accountability. In the Government’s view this amendment is not needed, and I ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing it.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, the Minister has produced the best reply possible while giving little hard information which the Committee really needs. She made one point that I am pleased to see on the record, as long as she stays consistent with it—that there is no change to the VAT arrangements for the new company. We on this side of the Committee are still struggling to see where the significant gains from the new company are coming from. We are meant to top up towards £2.6 billion in due course from these arrangements. I and several of my noble friends have difficulty in reaching such figures, but I guess that the Minister is seeking to counteract what has been expressed as a general hope and intent outside the House with what can be said in Committee and inside the House, on which the Government can be questioned much more closely. I have listened very carefully to the Minister’s comments. Of course I shall withdraw the amendment, because it was meant only to probe. It did not probe very far, so we may feel that we have to table an amendment at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 32 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

I happen to have had a call from the chairman of the ORR this morning about something else and we got on to the Bill. I asked what the ORR thought about the Bill, and he replied that it would do whatever Parliament decided—not what government decided, but what Parliament decided. That is the right approach, but I do not think that the ORR would resist taking on some rather stronger powers on highways. We will probably come on to that in a later amendment.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I have sufficient sympathy with these amendments that I hope we will be able to attract the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, to our later amendments, which are concerned with regulating the industry, as opposed to being just a monitor. I noticed that he left out Ofsted in his list of Ofgem and the other “Ofs”. I guess he did not want to plunge the Committee into a debate about the efficiency of a regulator that changes its mind about the categorisation of certain schools in Birmingham in the space of a month or so. We are not going to deviate from transport and particularly roads at this stage. However, I hope he will recognise that our sympathy with his amendments will become much more apparent when we discuss the real issue of regulation.

[Baroness Kramer]

I thank your Lordships. I want to make clear that the Office of Rail Regulation in its role as a highways monitor would advise the Secretary of State on these issues. Perhaps it would be helpful if I took your Lordships through the thought process that took us to the current arrangement of enforcement, because we recognise that there are different ways to approach enforcement.

In looking at the system of fines we followed quite a usual practice, which is to keep the setting of performance standards and objectives together with the enforcement of that performance regime. That tends to be the line most experts in this field would recommend, because it means the enforcer, having been involved in setting those standards, has confidence that the regime as a whole is fair and that enforcement is justified. It is quite difficult for a body that is not setting those standards to then enforce them. Given that the company’s funding will come from the Secretary of State, it seemed to us right that he should be the one to set the performance expectations for the company and consequently to enforce them, following the general principle that I just described. That is the role that we have set in place here.

There have been other views. For example, I note that the report of the Transport Select Committee in the other place recommended giving greater powers to the monitor, closer to the functions discharged by a regulator. It is quite clear, as we have discussed before, that the role that the ORR would play with regard to the SHC is, by definition, different from its role in rail. For example, it is clear that there are no passengers who are paying fares, as there are with rail; there is no equivalency with the roads that would be under the responsibility of the SHC. There is no competitive arrangement between the various operators. For example, there is not the relationship that exists between Network Rail and the operators, which obviously has its tensions. We looked at it as rather a different role, and that is why we came up with the structure that we have here.

I agree with the comments that have been made on fines. Any fines that are paid by the SHC—I hope that it would not get to the point of paying fines, but it happens—will come out of the money that the company can spend on improving the road network. We have always assumed that the fines would be much more reputational in nature, rather than a heavy punishment. They are much more aimed at signalling poor performance, rather than transferring large sums of money out of the company. Obviously we want constant improvements in the road network.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, asked again about changing the title to be used from the Office of Rail Regulation to the office of transport regulation. I think that we have said that one of the interesting things about the role that the ORR will have—a role in relationship to rail and a role in relationship to road—is that it may, over time, lead to more thought about how the various modes interrelate. However, at this point we do not think that we are at that stage. It will be interesting to see how this monitoring role evolves. We will need to see how the SHC carries out its work and how that process evolves, so there may be a point in the future when that name change is appropriate.

I also point out that there is nothing to prevent a name change. It is not provided for in the Bill because the body has an advisory role with regard to roads, but it is open to the ORR to use a different trading name if it so chooses. Therefore, if it wanted to call itself a transport regulator, it could choose that as a trading name.

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[Lord Judd]

Perhaps the Minister could clarify one point. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, gave a marvellous example of imaginative thinking by people who were given a task and who realised that fulfilment of that task was related to the public perception of what the organisation was about, and so the title should have conveyed the spirit of what it was about. However, I am not quite clear whether the Minister said that it would depend on secondary legislation or whether the power already exists. That point should be clarified. If it does depend on secondary legislation, it would be a pity not to have a wider concept at this stage. I should like to think that everyone working on the Bill is saying, “Here’s a great opportunity to open up the imagination about the responsibility of all concerned”.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I assumed that the Minister was indicating that of course there would need to be legislative change if the title of the Passengers’ Council were changed. I am reluctant to get too much involved in proposals at this stage because we have a fair legislative trail ahead of us. We have this stage of the Bill as well as two later stages to consider the matter. The Bill will then go to the Commons, which I think will be pretty articulate about the unsatisfactory nature of the present name and will propose changes. As I understand it, the Minister was saying that it is quite possible that the council will recognise the necessity for change, particularly if it is endorsed in the Commons, and that there would still need to be legislative change, but that it would be secondary legislation when we could all pile in again. I do not think that we need worry too much about the degree of definitiveness that we need to arrive at at this point, although there have been some very useful suggestions from those who have spoken to the amendments.

[Baroness Kramer]

So many of your Lordships have been really helpful on this point. I clearly have not been very clear. Passengers’ Council is the legal name. If the legal name were to be changed, that would require a change in secondary legislation under the Transport Act 2008, so that is entirely possible. However, the Passengers’ Council already uses a trading name that is different from its legal name; it uses the name Passenger Focus, just as English Heritage has a different legal name—I fear that I do not know what it is—but clearly its trading name is English Heritage. A body such as the Passengers’ Council can adopt one or more trading names. I suggest that we leave it to the Passengers’ Council to decide whether it uses “Road User Focus” or another name as its trading name for this role. If your Lordships have suggestions for a change to the legal name or for a particular trading name, I will gladly pass them over and make sure that they get to the right ears at the Passengers’ Council. I am sorry if I am confusing matters.

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[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I warmly support what my noble friend has said. I should say at the outset of our deliberations that I am sorry that I was not able to be here for the first meeting. I should also underline that I am a strong supporter of the CPRE and that I am involved in the capacity of honorary officer in a number of environmental agencies, not least those dealing with our national parks. All of that is relevant.

We should go back to the mainstream of the argument that we had on the previous amendment. The roads should serve the community. We are a closely knit island with a lot of complex interests to reconcile. Direct impacts and consequences can arise from a new piece of legislation which may quickly become unintended consequences. It is therefore terribly important to get right, at the beginning of a Bill, the approach and ground rules for any strategy that is to be established. An example is the realm of public health. We keep saying that we want more people to take up cycling and walking. It is perfectly clear to me that the role of any regulation in this sphere should be to ensure that not only are those objectives reconcilable with other policies in the public realm, but that they can be furthered.

But then there are all the people who do not use the roads because they are intimidated by and frightened of them. Their interests also need to be looked at very carefully. There are communities which have to contend with increased noise on roads arising from more feed-ins and feed-outs from strategic routes. We need to have some imagination and clarity of thinking right at this early stage about the wider social purposes which the regulator should be looking at in the fulfilment of the Government’s policy. At the moment, looking at the responsibilities of Government and quite apart from their aspirations as expressed for, as I have just said, public health, there is a conflict. We keep narrowing the scope down to, in effect, passengers and drivers, when the much wider community is involved. It is therefore sensible to make this clear at the outset in the tasks set out for regulation.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, we have major doubts about whether the Passengers’ Council will provide an adequate forum for the public response, so we want to take the opportunity in this new legislation of not just renaming the body, but of widening its perspective. I have tabled two amendments which seek to ensure that the interests of cyclists and pedestrians would form part of the perspective of the strategic highways company, and that the needs of local communities are taken fully on board. Major road schemes clearly have an impact on all communities. However, both of my amendments can more than safely be withdrawn because they are overwhelmed by the more extensive and detailed series of amendments which have been put down by my noble friend Lord Berkeley, and typically my noble friend Lord Judd has backed the winning side. I will certainly not move my amendments when we come to them, and I have a great deal of sympathy with what my noble friend Lord Berkeley has said.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, with great interest, and I have been pondering for a few minutes whether in fact he is right. My mind goes back, if I am allowed to reminisce, to when the then Government were planning the motorway network. At one stage this involved taking the M11 motorway from London up towards Cambridge and then to join the A14, and it went slap bang through the middle of my constituency, Wanstead and Woodford. Initially my constituents were pretty horrified by this, as indeed was I. This urban area was proposed to have, in effect, a four-lane dual carriageway going from Hackney Wick towards Epping Forest.

The Minister of Transport at the time was my noble friend—as he now is—Lord Fowler, and his junior Minister was my right honourable friend Kenneth Clarke. I persuaded the Minister that they should come and spend a morning with me in Wanstead, which was the part of my constituency that would be most dramatically affected. They came to the perfectly wise conclusion that that part of the road should go underground. It would involve a cut-and-cover operation, which eventually happened.

Once that announcement had been made, though, overwhelmingly my constituents said, “Well then, get on with it”. They did not want constant delay. However, and this is the point that I want to make to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, it was held up for nearly eight years by a series of demonstrations supported by precisely the environmental bodies that he mentioned, and others. Some of them were quite clearly anarchists. They rechristened the area of Wanstead Green “Wanstonia” and declared independence, and all that sort of nonsense. The courts became bogged down with a series of cases to try to get them out, which held up the process for years to the increasing fury of my constituents, virtually none of whom took part in those demonstrations. The demonstrators were all from outside and were the kind of people who live for demonstrating. That is what makes them tick; it is their new religion. I can tell the Committee that that caused enormous irritation in the area. Now, of course, if anyone drives up to Cambridge by that route they go through the cut-and-cover and it is entirely sensible, and people say, “But why couldn’t it be done before?”.

I question whether it is possible that the monitor should regard, as it were, the CPRE and bodies like that as within its remit. It is monitoring the transport system. It is for the planning system to determine whether or not the environmental consequences are acceptable. I do not believe that the monitor should have anything to do with it. There are already enough obstacles. We are debating in another Bill the question of judicial review, because that can also be a great obstacle to getting a transport system properly up and running because of local nimbys and so on. When one is dealing with road and rail—look at what is already happening with HS2—there are enough obstacles in the way already. What we should be arguing about here, in an infrastructure Bill, is ensuring that what we want to produce actually happens without undue delay.

I hope that we shall never see anything again remotely like what happened in my constituency and indeed in other areas around the country, as plenty of former Members of Parliament will be able to testify. That has been one of the biggest obstacles to getting a modern road and rail network, and it does not seem to me that the monitor can have anything to do with that at all.

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[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I do not want to prolong this, but is that not the function of the planning system rather than of a body that is monitoring the strategic highways company and the railways? There is a separate planning system, which is going through Parliament at the moment with regards to HS2 and which has nothing whatever to do with the Office of Rail Regulation. It is a planning system and I think that these two things should be kept entirely separate.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I, too, have memories of motorways. The M25 went around the north of the constituency that I represented, in Enfield. The only tunnel constructed on the M25 was there, in order to protect the interests of my constituents. Subsequently there was an additional tunnel in order to protect a great deal of Epping Forest, which I also greatly supported. However, our negotiations and discussions were nothing to do with planning authorities; we had to deal with the Department of Transport and the excessive, terrifying costs of what is involved in tunnelling. That is why the M25 is a circular route 125 miles long but has only one tunnel, which is constructed as far as the immediate neighbourhood’s interests are concerned. It was nothing to do with planning; the Department of Transport had to answer.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I do not want to prolong this discussion for much longer, but some of us, in setting out a role for the Passengers’ Council, are trying to ensure that it produces the right data and looks at alternative options before the company goes ahead and develops new roads. With regard to the planning system, I do not believe that the Passengers’ Council should have a role at all, but I believe that it has a role in producing the data to justify—or not—what gets done and to look at alternatives.

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[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 58 in this group.

The first amendment is to make clear that the ORR, or whatever we end up calling it, will be a regulator as well as simply a monitor. I said earlier that we needed something equivalent to the ORR, which monitors the rail network, to be applied to the road system. There are areas of a strategic road system that need to be regulated. They include safety records—I declare my interest as chair of the Road Safety Foundation. They also include environmental performance in relation to all sorts of things such as carbon emissions, air pollution, water runoff and so on. Someone needs to be regulating specifically the strategic network, which is seen increasingly as a system. It has hitherto been subject to either general regulation or specific regulation by the Department for Transport.

It is important that the new body, as it extends its role into roads, is seen to have as powerful a leverage in that area as the ORR does in rail, to achieve the excellent levels of safety that we have achieved in the railway system in recent years and to ensure that the strategic network continues to make substantial improvements in the safety record on the highways network. If the Government maintain their line that the monitor is not a regulator, then it is not just a question of symmetry between the different modes but a question of the effectiveness of the Government’s role in relation to the strategic transportation system within England. The ORR-plus needs to be given that clear role.

As to my second amendment, I suspect that I shall get from the Minister the same answer that I received in relation to the Passengers’ Council’s funding. It is important, though, to recognise that this situation is unusual. In energy, water and telecoms the money comes from the regulated industry. In her response on the issue of funding for the Passengers’ Council-plus, the Minister said that it would come from the Government. I assume that I am going to get the same answer in relation to the regulator/monitor.

It is important for the Government to recognise that this is unusual, and someone sitting in the Treasury probably realises that. On reflection, I still think that this should probably be a matter for the user organisation, the watchdog, if such a provision were to be written into the legislation. Some future Chancellor, of whatever party, may ask: “Why are we, the taxpayer, paying for this in relation to transport, when in all the other regulated sectors it is the industry that pays for it?”. In the great scheme of things, the Treasury, wearing another hat, regards all this as taxation because it is a mandated levy on the industry, but in terms of the impact on the general expenditure of the Government it is in a different category. It would therefore be useful not only to have on the record the Minister saying that that is how this body will be funded but, for added certainty, to put something like that in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I have amendments grouped with those of my noble friend Lord Whitty, and I agree with a great deal of what he has just said.

Amendment 54 is my chief amendment and is designed to ensure that the monitor focuses not simply on the financial cost of the strategic highways company’s activities—that is, the bill to the taxpayer for the SHC—but on its wider non-monetisation impacts such as landscape, biodiversity and social distribution. We need breadth to the monitor’s analysis of the performance of the company. The text is based on guidance in the Treasury Green Book on appraisal, so I am merely suggesting that where the Treasury thinks that the proper appraisal of an activity should include these features, I want them to be included when considering the SHC.

The other amendment in the group is a minor one about removing all exemptions in documents. We do not see why these powers should be restricted in the documents that are made available, but that is a relatively minor aspect. Amendment 54, however, is of considerable import.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I have tabled two amendments in this group, but I shall speak to the whole group because all the amendments consider the role of the monitor—the Office of Rail Regulation or whatever it may be. I get the feeling that Ministers are rejecting any comment that might enable the SHC, or the government policy that surrounds it, to climb out of its roads silo. There is probably a rail silo because that is the way the railways work. There is also clearly a road silo, so what these and several previous amendments are trying to achieve is the ability to look at cross-modal choice and to consider the issue of sustainability, which seems to be forgotten about for much of the time. The ORR would have the opportunity and the capability to look at the alternatives and it would be able to consider the costs, which of course it is meant to be monitoring.

Monitoring something is not quite the same as pushing for greater efficiencies, a point I made when speaking to a series of amendments that we considered last Thursday. What the ORR has achieved with Network Rail is a reduction in its costs by 60%. If the new construction and maintenance costs of the highways were to be reduced by 60% in a period of 10 years, either we would have quite a few more roads that were in better condition or the Treasury would be very happy—or both. It is an opportunity that will be missed unless the regulator is given more powers. That is the point of Amendment 57. The compromise would be that the ORR would report to the Secretary of State within three years with ideas on how it might do its job properly.

There are several other issues. My noble friend Lord Whitty mentioned safety. During a Question for Oral Answer earlier today a noble Lord talked about road safety and the issue of HGVs. Safety on the roads may have got better, but it is still disastrous compared with safety rates on the railways. It is not just about people being run over; it covers a multitude of different issues for which I believe the ORR could come up with some new ideas. I have separated out two amendments related to level crossings so that they will be considered later, though I am not sure when. However, level crossings are a major safety issue for the railways. There is really no reason that I can see for not putting all these together under one safety rule—based, in my book, on the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. I know that that was being debated in the Deregulation Bill yesterday and some rather distressing issues were brought to the fore.

Safety is one thing but pollution is another. Recently we were told that the pollution measurements in Oxford Street are three times the EU limits. There would not be any harm if the ORR were able to look at that as well.

Finally, on funding, the Office of Rail Regulation is funded by the industry: 50% by Network Rail and 50% by the train operators. I cannot see why the ORR’s monitoring of road activities should not be funded partly by the company running the infrastructure and partly by the users. That would be a good balance. There is absolutely no reason why that should not happen except, I suppose, that Ministers would be frightened of the road lobby. However, there would be a consistency between road and rail, and there is an opportunity here for at least getting the funding for the ORR on a consistent basis between the two.

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Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

61A: Clause 13, page 9, line 25, leave out from “repeal” to end of line 26 and insert “or revoke any enactment”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, we come to a very serious part of the Bill. I doubt whether there is any Minister who does not quail at the thought that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee might offer a smidgen of criticism of a Bill that the Minister is setting out to defend. I see a no more trenchant onslaught of the Bill than the second report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I suppose that as soon as we all saw the report, we ought to have anticipated that there would be government amendments compliant with the requirements of the main recommendations in the report, but we were not certain. That is why we have tabled Amendments 61A and 61B, which are committee recommendations.

The committee expressed itself in very forthright terms indeed. It was quite explicit about the Henry VIII powers in the Bill, and its certain condemnation that that attempt should be successful. There is no need for me to read out the full report. Its indictment is clear enough. It says in its crucial paragraph 4:

“We draw these powers, and the deficiencies in the explanations for them, to the attention of the House. We recommend that, unless the reason for their inclusion and their intended purpose can be fully explained to the satisfaction of the House, the words ‘otherwise modify’ and ‘(whenever passed or made)’ should be omitted from clauses 13(5), 14(2) and 28(2); and that, if the words ‘otherwise modify’ are retained in clause 14 or 28, the same words should be inserted in clause 29(2)(c) so that regulations made under that clause in reliance on them will require the affirmative procedure”.

The committee seeks excision of certain parts of these clauses. In other respects, it is determined that it should be affirmative procedure. That is what my amendment seeks to achieve. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, most of these amendments concern the comments made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its report on the Bill. I do not think there is any disagreement on the points that have been raised. The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Davies and Lord McKenzie, address comments made by the committee by providing that the references to modifying legislation should be removed, leaving the powers in Clauses 13, 14 and 28 as powers to amend, repeal and revoke legislation.

The Government prefer to take a slightly different tack, retaining the power to modify, but adjusting Clause 29 so as to ensure any modification of the application of an act is subject to the same affirmative resolution procedure as applies to the amendment of an Act. As the Select Committee report noted:

“Non-textual modifications of primary legislation are capable of making changes which are no less significant than textual amendments”.

We prefer our approach, simply because it can be preferable, in some circumstances, to modify the application of an Act so as to cover additional circumstances, rather than by making textual amendments. As the power will be subject to the affirmative procedure, Parliament will have the opportunity to scrutinise any use made of the power, which will include consideration of whether a non-textual amendment approach would be inappropriate in the particular circumstances.

The government amendments also address the point raised by the committee regarding future legislation. It provides that repeals, amendments and modifications of primary legislation under these powers can be made only in respect of Acts passed before the end of a Session. I am sure that is much the same as the intention behind the amendment laid by the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord McKenzie, which remove the words “whenever passed or made” from the relevant clauses.

Amendment 97, the final amendment in the group, addresses a different point. It adjusts the extent of a provision so as to ensure that not only do Clauses 13 and 14 extend to the whole of the UK, but Clause 15, which defines some of the terms used in Clauses 13 and 14, also does so. It was always our intention that the definitions in Clause 15 should apply to Clauses 13 and 14 in all jurisdictions. This technical amendment makes that slight correction.

I hope noble Lords agree that the government amendments are an appropriate response and will agree to withdraw their similar amendments accordingly.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, the Government have made a shot at giving a response, but I do not need to point out to the Committee the difference between compliance with what the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee suggested and a dependence on affirmative procedure in crucial parts of the legislation. We all know the limitations on affirmative procedure. Of course it is an important dimension that gives a chance for effective reassessment, but it is not the same as getting the statute right. I am not going to press the amendment in Committee, but I am by no means sure that my colleagues in the other place will feel so inhibited. The Government will therefore have to work quite hard to establish the fact that they are not taking advantage of the situation in a way that is to the detriment of parliamentary scrutiny of the legislation we are considering. For the moment, and with some reluctance, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 61A withdrawn.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I also support my noble friend’s amendment. The situation is a classic case of restrictive practices or protectionism—whatever we would like to call it. I thought that this Government were against restrictive practices and protectionism—after all, they have several deregulation Bills—but, as ever, it seems that the Home Office is exempt.

During my Question on HGVs today, the Minister mentioned in reply the work being done in London between VOSA and the police to stop lorries that might be thought to be contravening some regulation or other. In fact, I was invited to witness one of these events a few weeks ago. They do it every day in different parts of London, and it works well; the number of vehicles that are stopped and the number of charges that the Minister told the House about are very impressive. However, there is one thing that has not happened. I said to the Metropolitan Police people and VOSA, “You’re doing all these things, but do you have one common database so that you can work out how to catch these people and do something with them?”. Very politely, the answer was, “Well, no we don’t, because the Met doesn’t allow it”.

The issue of whether the Met is above the law is a debate that we can have on a different day, but it is the same issue as the restrictive practice of saying, “Don’t set foot on my patch, otherwise—although I will not shoot you—I shall make sure that there is trouble”. Surely we should all be working on the same databases and sharing things. VOSA has made major progress here and it is about time that the Met caught up. If an amendment comes back on Report, either from the Minister or from my noble friend, it would be nice to think that a Home Office Minister could be here to answer on this issue and make a proposal.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, I have heard my noble friend Lord Faulkner wax lyrical persuasively on this issue, and I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw talk about it on many occasions. It is clear that the case stands—and stands mightily proud. We have had this argument long enough for a Government to see sense on this. All that I can say to the Minister at this moment of decision is that I shall be showing the utmost loyalty and commitment to my noble friend. The Minister has a noble friend on her side arguing the same case. I advise her to follow my example.

[Baroness Kramer]

I point out to noble Lords and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, that this issue appears to have been on the table for some 15 years. How interesting it is that the Government for most of those 15 years did absolutely nothing to resolve the issue. The noble Lord may wish to hesitate slightly in being critical.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

I was not being critical at all. I was being anticipatorily hopeful.

[Baroness Kramer]

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, that we have a great deal of sympathy with the issues that he has brought forward. The question is whether, from an entirely practical perspective, we are able to resolve all the various policy implications and clearances in time for inclusion in the Bill—not least by working out whether we need legislative consent from the Scottish Government; obviously, there is that additional layer of complication over the BTP and devolution issues. That would all need to be resolved.

Given that situation, we have particular concern that the BTP has all the necessary powers needed to take enforcement activity at level crossings. I can say that we will give this issue careful consideration and will review the current arrangement to consider how best to address this anomaly, including whether amendments are required to the various Acts and sections that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, described. As I say, at this point, it is not clear that we can resolve all this in time for inclusion in the Bill, which is my primary concern. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, but we will consider it and see what is possible within the timeframe that we have to work with.

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[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

I support the Minister looking closely at the amendment from my noble friend Lord Bradshaw for two reasons: first, because of the point he made that we need roads of good quality, whether you are the user of a car, a cyclist or some other person travelling on the road. We are facing far less revenue coming in to the Treasury to pay for them and need to find other sources of funding. That seems to be a reasonable proposal.

Secondly, I follow on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about cyclists. I speak as someone whose husband suffered a serious cycling accident two years ago—the police do not know whether it was because he went into a pothole or was hit by a car and then hit a pothole, but potholes were clearly involved in that accident, and he still has no recollection of what happened. There is an increasing number of good reasons to encourage children on to bicycles. I speak as someone who cycles my youngest to school when I can. It is madness for us to want children to be encouraged to go out to cycle for the health benefits that that gives them if, by the time they are adults and cycling to work, the roads are in such poor condition that it is not safe for them to go on them.

We need safe and well funded roads, which means that the Government are going to have to be creative in how we find that money. I think that the amendment offers an opportunity for further discussion and debate.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Bradshaw is nothing if not creative in his response to transport problems. I guess that this is a creation a little too far for the Minister, but we shall see from her response. I understand my noble friend’s arguments and agree with some of them very strongly. We do not have a real measurement of the impact on our roads of heavy vehicles. The most amazing thing that any road user has to come to terms with is looking at the carriageways which heavy trucks have been traversing and then at the other two which are used by cars. You are looking at what is virtually trench warfare. The impressions in the surface reflect the enormous impact of goods vehicles, so whether they pay enough is a challenging financial issue. I am sure that the Minister will be able to explain just how great that challenge is.

On the question of potholes, I do not deny that there are potholes on all our roads. They are a serious issue on our main trunk road networks because vehicles can become involved in desperately bad accidents either through hitting them or by seeking to evade them at the last moment. However, I venture to suggest that most of the problems of potholes are not on the strategic road network; they are on the local road network. That is where we have such a massive problem, which is partly a product of our perhaps not employing the best possible techniques when building them and partly because we have had some very severe weather in recent winters. We all know the havoc that that has wrought on our roads. However, that does not alter the facts. I know that the Government talk of extra sums being made available, but they look pretty thin on the ground for local authorities when it comes to the challenges they face.

I have considerable sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, not least because he sees yet another opportunity to articulate clearly an important dimension of our transport anxieties. I am just grateful that it is the Minister who has the task of allaying them.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I bow to the expertise of previous speakers because I am no great expert in species. The previous three speeches have demonstrated that it will be quite a challenge to decide what is in and what is out. The issue seems to be very subjective and no one is fighting tonight, but I expect that the experts will fight in the future.

I have two examples—and I do not know whether they are in or out; perhaps the noble Baroness can help me. I have a quote from the Western Morning News last week, under the headline:

“UK ladybirds are being eaten by their invading cannibal cousins”.

Ladybirds are now cannibals that are eating either the five-spot or two-spot ones—I could go on—and invade at the speed of 200 kilometres a year. Even though they came in 20 years ago, I do not know whether they have reached Cornwall yet. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, will know. Are they included? Have they been here before? Where would it be?

My other example is from three or four years ago when a friend of mine discovered that the Duchy of Cornwall was introducing Japanese oysters into the Helford River in Cornwall—we seem to have been in Cornwall a lot, but I cannot help that—without doing an environmental study or getting permission. Oysters were put in the cages, which all looked very nice, and some people liked them and some did not. However, after a year they all died, which may have served right those who introduced them, but it killed every other oyster in the river—the native oysters. I do not know whether those Japanese oysters would come within the context of this part of the Bill. Those that came from Japan certainly killed all the local ones, and it was of some comfort when my friend took the duchy to court. Its defence was that it believed that, for all practical purposes, it was above the law. I do not know whether that was why the court found against the duchy because the matter is still sub judice. That is an example of someone bringing in a species and perhaps not following it through to see if it was the right one to bring in.

That is why I tabled my Amendment 71. When I was researching it, I thought, “What is a species?”. I looked it up on some web dictionaries, and the best definition seems to be the wording that I have put in the amendment. Does it cover things in the air, be they birds, insects or whatever? Does it cover animals, birds or whatever that walk on the ground? Does it cover things in the water? That is a pretty important place from which we should start. It would be very good if someone could give a definitive answer so that we knew what the context was and where we might go from here.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the main outline of the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. I was a little less keen on the pasty that was identified as being available in Cornwall. I recall my brother-in-law, who is an expert on birds, arriving in Cornwall in the early 1990s and seeing a chough, which I did not see. He was certainly well versed in the significance of choughs to the Cornish position.

The purpose of the amendment that I have tabled is to get some sharpness of definition in the crucial area that we are concerned with. We all know that the issue of invasive species is of great significance. It is one of the causes of the loss of biodiversity and much of the world, and we have seen indications in this country of the extent to which that occurs. The annual cost of invasive non-native species to the economy is put at £1.3 billion, so we are not talking peanuts here.

I shall mention my own experience of this. I heard someone—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—suggest that we could not mention Japanese knotweed. I am going to mention Japanese knotweed quite often. My acquaintance with the problem of Japanese knotweed was to see a person lose the value of their house, in an ordinary suburban area with absolutely no suggestion of any threat at all except of Japanese knotweed. The plant effectively reduced the price of their house from £350,000 to £50,000 in value. They simply had to get out of that house as they did not think that they could afford the costs of controlling the knotweed.

That was my introduction to local difficulties, but when I was in the department I became acutely aware, and I am sure that the Minister is well versed in this, that whenever a group of people come together to discuss Japanese knotweed, the railway industry is going to be there in force, as indeed it was on every occasion when we discussed it, simply because of the sheer cost to the railway system in this country of keeping the wretched plant at bay.

We are not talking about trivial issues as far as the nation is concerned when it comes to certain aspects of non-native species in this country. For agriculture alone, the cost in England and Wales seems to be getting on for £1 billion. That is an awful lot of money being spent in seeking to control a plant. In the European Union, the annual cost of non-native species is €12 billion. We were gratified to hear at the Defra briefing this morning of the extent to which there was international movement and action on this, and that the European community was playing its full role in this. There were one or two interesting exceptions that we heard about, which raised an eyebrow or two; many of us thought that the Danish scarcely merited the kind of exemptions that we in this country could hardly get for particular products and local parts of the economy; nevertheless, the Danes had obviously put up a good case.

However, I want to emphasise that we have to get this right. I know when I say those words that it is not possible to get it right, because it is a continual battle against change, some of it produced by climate change, which accelerates the difficulties.

We support the clause. The reason we want to probe the Minister is obvious enough; the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, did the task for me. Red kites were reintroduced at Woburn, not far from where I live. The first arrival of a red kite on a tree, resting and then taking off in all its glory is something that I treasure. Of course I applaud the reintroduction of certain species, but I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said about his anxiety about beavers. That shows the differences there can be between different parts of the community. People I have been talking to thought that beavers might help to restrict floods because they build dams to do so, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, thought that beaver dams might accelerate the problems. There you are, you pays your money and you takes your choice on that.

Before the Olympic Games, an absolute fortune was spent on clearing the site of my dear friend knotweed. The site had to be cleared of a lot of other very noxious things indeed. One of the great expenses of the Olympic Games was getting the site clear, but Japanese knotweed featured in that and cost £70 million to remove.

We must not underestimate the challenges which such species present. My amendment is tabled in order to get, and I am certain that the Minister will oblige the Committee by giving, a clearer definition of what the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, asked for in the first place.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, is absolutely right: £1.8 billion is the estimate of the cost, a lot of it falling on agriculture but a significant amount on transport, of invasive non-native species.

It is important to understand that this measure is one part of a much broader range of measures. It is particularly focused on tackling prevention, and then early detection and rapid response, so that we do not always find ourselves, as we have with the grey squirrel, for example, in a position where an invasive species has so taken hold that we are now able to consider only control. I think that every one of your Lordships would regard that as an important strategy.

The questions raised by the amendments centre on definitions. On the sensible advice of the Law Commission, the definition of non-native used in this part of the Bill is consistent with that already used in Section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Part of that is a list, and part of it is a broader definition. It is drafted to regulate the release of formerly native species. It is clearly not a list that matches what we are intending to do with control orders, because control orders give us the ability to go in to make sure that a species may be eradicated—that eradication is possible. There are also other lists, as noble Lords who came to this morning’s meeting will know, because the European Union will be creating a core list some time in 2015 and regional lists will follow. So we have a whole range of lists. The important element in all of this for the purpose of the control orders will be a code of practice that will overlay the lists. That should be available in draft form to your Lordships by Report.

The list in Schedule 9 referred to by my noble friends Lady Parminter and Lord Teverson contains species that we would not attempt to eradicate, with rhododendron ponticum being a good example. There are species on the list that we would attempt to eradicate, such as the monk parakeet, but a lot of the work under control orders would focus on species which have not yet arrived here and therefore are not on any list at all. The code of practice will provide the relevant mechanism for working out a complex situation where a number of lists are developed for a whole range of purposes.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

66: Clause 16, page 11, line 25, at end insert—
“( ) The Secretary of State must publish an annual assessment of species control operations.”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I have quite a lot to say about this next amendment so I shall speed up as I respect the fact that time is moving on. The clause centres round the sustainability of new species control agreements and orders. The Government’s capacity to take an intelligence-led approach to prevent non-native species becoming established in the UK has been significantly reduced. We valued the presentation at Defra this morning and the work that the department has done, but the cuts that have been sustained in some of the scientific establishments concern us, particularly the ecological science services at Kew. One should not underestimate the difficulties that flow from the reduction of that activity.

The Government have failed to implement the ballast water convention in spite of evidence that non-native invasive species transported in ballast water tanks pose a significant biosecurity risk. There is enough evidence for us to take these issues very seriously, and I hope that the Minister will indicate that there is a possible change in the Government’s perspective on their actions. The Woodland Trust has also raised concerns regarding the ability of environmental authorities financially to support species control agreements and orders. Many of the environmental budgets are already stretched but eradication control of invasive species is vital and needs to be adequately prioritised and supported. That is the burden of the opening statement made by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter.

The Government need to face up to the fact that the cost to agriculture and fishing is growing. Climate change is probably a key reason why the number of invasive non-native species arriving in the UK is increasing. The Government must reassess the work of the GB Non-native Species Secretariat in the light of this evidence. After all, the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee report made it clear that for an eradication campaign to be successful and cost effective it needs to be timely and informed by good evidence and sufficient funds to sustain it until complete eradication is achieved. None of us underestimates the challenge represented by that comment by the Environmental Audit Committee. The Government need to engage with the EU’s work in revising the plant and animal health regulatory frameworks to ensure that the result is a unified approach to biosecurity threats between these regulatory frameworks and the invasive species framework. Some of us were reassured this morning about the degree of co-operation within the European Union. It is obviously a germane time for us to take the fullest possible advantage of good will among the nations of Europe.

Prevention is definitely cheaper than eradication, and it is in the best interest of the environmental authorities to have annual assessments to put in place goals and objectives that would, in turn, allow them to plan their capacity to carry out species control operations. It is also extremely important that we continue to monitor the development of these species control orders and to analyse effectively their ability to hit their targets.

The Bill does not allude to the monitoring of this new scheme and how we can track its progress and achievements. We need that. Not all of us—certainly not many of our colleagues—will have the same kind of opportunities vouchsafed to those of us who went to Defra this morning. We need to ensure the wider public is well informed about progress. An annual assessment would look at which species have been identified, which would be subject to species control orders, how many have been carried out, the success of the scheme, and an evaluation of the scientific evidence surrounding invasive species, animal welfare and so on.

There is clearly a great deal to be done. The amendment seeks to identify the fact that the Government are not doing enough at the present time. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I need to be rapid in my response, so let me simply say we think an annual assessment of species control orders is too frequent, as we estimate there is only one control order a year. However, we agree that an assessment of how these provisions are working is required. The code of practice will make clear that this assessment should form part of the five-yearly review of the GB invasive non-native species strategy.

We do not accept Amendment 67, which states that there should be a requirement on the Secretary of State to ensure that the environmental authorities,

“have the necessary capacity to carry out species control operations”,

because, at the rate of one order a year, it is entirely feasible for this to be met from existing resources. The environmental authorities are already resourced with this kind of activity in mind.

We do not support Amendment 68, which would remove the requirement for agreements made in relation to a dwelling to be made only by the Secretary of State or Welsh Ministers. We believe that this is an appropriate additional safeguard for the more intrusive use of powers under this regime.

I hope that that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and that he will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, that reassurance is noted. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 66 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, Amendment 69 clarifies that there is no requirement on an owner, or provision for an environmental authority, to carry out any operations contained in a species control order until the 28-day period for making an appeal has expired. It also clarifies that, where an appeal has been made within the 28-day period, the owner need not carry out the species control operations and the environmental authority will not do so until the appeal has been determined.

The amendment merely clarifies our original intention in the Bill. Without it, the order could potentially require an owner or allow an environmental authority to carry out the operations contained in a species control order before the period for making an appeal has expired, or before the appeal is determined by the First-tier Tribunal. However, the amendment does not apply to emergency species control orders made under paragraph 9(2)(c) of this Schedule. Where a species control order is made because it is urgently necessary, the environmental authority may carry out the operations immediately. However, the First-tier Tribunal has the power to suspend the order should an appeal be made by any owner.

Amendment 70 ensures that the environmental authority must notify all owners of the premises that it is aware of, and not just the owner specified in the order, that a species control order has been made. It is necessary because any owner of the premises has a right of appeal against a species control order within 28 days of notice being given that the order has been made. However, as currently drafted, there is no requirement on an environmental authority to notify all owners That could potentially lead to another owner of the premises being unaware that a species control order had been made and thus being unable to exercise their right of appeal. This amendment merely clarifies our original intent.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, it is fairly rare for the Government to produce amendments unless they have been prompted to do so by a critical opposition. On this occasion, we were not the critical opposition. I am happy to accept the amendment.

Amendment 69 agreed.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out “one or more companies” and insert “a company”

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, we start on quite a fundamental point, on which even the Minister on occasions has not been too secure in the position that she has adopted. When I was asked last night to prepare a short summation of this part of the Bill for wider circulation, I wanted to get things as accurate as I conceivably could, but I found myself wrestling with whether I was referring to one company or companies. Every time that I used the word “companies”, it looked singularly ill placed with the surrounding arguments as far as the Bill is concerned. Therefore, Amendment 1 asks the Minister to clarify what is, after all, a pretty fundamental point, and we would not want to continue our deliberations without having cleared it up.

At Second Reading, the Minister certainly said:

“Yes, it is the Government’s intention to set up just one company. It is standard template language in legislation, I understand, to create the option of further entities. It has no sinister meaning at all behind it. The intention is for a single company, but of course the lawyers always think about what-ifs in the most extraordinary way”—

she did not sound too convinced by the argument herself. However, she went on:

“I guess we did not really kick back against that but, yes, it is one company”.—[Official Report, 18/6/14; col. 896.]

I congratulate her on putting up a pretty stout defence of her position, but even in that stout defence there is a certain ambivalence, as there is in the Bill. That is why Amendment 5 in my name would remove a provision from Schedule 1 that makes rules for when two different strategic highways companies interact, which certainly suggests that the Government are planning for more than one strategic highways company.

It looks a fairly limited argument to say, “The lawyers guard against every development and therefore we may need more than one”. The debate about the Bill will be coloured very significantly indeed if we must take on board the fact that there may be two strategic highways companies. To make the most obvious point, we will want to know how they will interact, and we have amendments down that relate to that. If the Minister is able to clarify the issue and state that, as it is the Government’s intention to establish just one company, she will look at the Bill again to ensure that it is framed in that way, I am quite sure that that would set a lot of minds at rest and make for a much more straightforward discussion.

I assure the Minister that whether there is one or more than one strategic highways company has quite a conditional effect upon the legislation. Our concern is not just about one passing fancy of the lawyers but about something that may be of real substance. Some of my more prophetic colleagues say, “Why don’t you come to terms with the fact that this is all about setting up the strategic highways authority for privatisation? Of course, you will want more than one, and this will neatly fit in with privatisation plans in the not-so-distant future”. Well, I am not a cynical person and I accept what the Government put in the Bill at face value.

It is on that basis that I move this amendment, which would delete “one or more companies” and insert “a company”. In addition, as I said, Amendment 5 would delete sub-paragraph (3) in Schedule 1, which suggests that the existence of more than one potential strategic highways company is not a legal oddity caused by standard drafting—lawyers always make life so much more interesting for us all when they turn to drafting—but a scenario actively envisaged by the drafters of the Bill. It clearly makes provision for what should happen in the event that one strategic highways company should wish to build a bridge connecting to another. One and one still make two and therefore this problem could arise only if there is more than one strategic highways company.

There is understandable concern that the Government are considering a model where the SHC might be franchised out in some not-too-distant future. If that is the intention, it reinforces our many concerns about this measure, but I venture to suggest that this concern is as great as any. Therefore, I ask for reassurance from the Minister that, when I next write about the Bill and try to communicate intelligently with a wider audience, I am able to refer to one company in the singular the whole time and make some coherent sense out of this measure. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment because there are already precedents for having a multiple infrastructure. One is the M6 toll road. I believe that the company running it was given a 90-year lease to maintain and operate it and charge whatever it liked as tolls for the next 90 years, or whatever it was. If, in the future, there is a plan for road tolling, as appears more likely with this Bill—I certainly welcome that and will be talking about it in later amendments—whatever tolling the Government of the day propose, the M6 toll road will not be part of it. Whether that will increase or decrease its traffic, I do not have a clue; it depends on what the charges are. It is a particularly bad example because most of the freight goes on the existing road and damages it quite dramatically—the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has an amendment down on road damage—but this is just one example of what can happen if there is no co-ordination over the whole country.

A second example is that, just after the last election, there were various plans and threats from the then Secretary of State that Network Rail would be broken up into other regions or zones because it was not performing properly. The idea presumably was that there would be competition between those zones for quality, capacity and charging, and for anything else that you come across. Luckily, that did not go ahead. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. The idea of having a different charge for whichever way you go between A and B would be just ridiculous; the business would not work.

The problem here is that, as the Bill stands, you could have more than one infrastructure company. Wales might well choose to be different. I do not think Scotland is part of this legislation, so the charges will be different there. Then there will be all the arguments about doing one thing one way and then leaving the rest of it and coming along and doing something else that is slightly different. There would also be the interfaces and the knock-on and consequential effects, which might be quite serious. I think that my noble friend is quite right in tabling this amendment and speaking so eloquently in favour of it. I do not know why we need more than one infrastructure company to run the trunk roads—there are not that many of them, actually—and why we cannot leave it as a singular company.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I cannot pretend that the second version is any better than the first as regards convincing us on this matter. The Minister will know that there is a great deal in the Bill about the relationship between this strategic authority and the national rail network. We will emphasise that later on, because we think that there is great merit in ensuring that plans are put before the travelling public that show some co-ordination of thought between the railway and the major road network. I therefore find it a little difficult to think of the road network being regionalised. We are talking about trunk roads and motorways; at this stage we are not talking about local roads, although we all recognise that they comprise by far the greatest carriers of traffic. We are talking about the strategic network and we will seek to emphasise the virtues, which we hope the Government will see, of close co-ordination between two major bodies of the nation: rail and road.

The noble Baroness dangles before us the prospect of fragmentation of this company, challenging though it is to set up and significant as it is bound to be as regards road development. We are at one with the Government on the necessity of continuity of policy on infrastructure and in the belief that we should therefore create the mechanisms that offer that continuity, so we applaud the part of the Bill that does that. It is not usual for the Opposition to put down congratulatory amendments, but the noble Baroness will be well aware that in Second Reading speeches we all had many positive things to say about the ambition of improving our infrastructure planning. However, the insertion into the Bill of this doubt and this possibility complicates matters significantly. I must say to the noble Baroness that I hear what she says; she has obviously thought about it a great deal and has convinced herself. She has not as yet convinced me, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

I support my noble friend’s amendment. I am glad that he is here, because I am not sure that any other of us could have moved it. He did it very well. I want to compare this situation with what is happening to Network Rail, of which I declare an interest as being a member.

I have just come from a meeting with Network Rail where we have been told what is going to happen by 1 September, when it comes under government ownership. That sounds as if it is going to be quite easy, apart from changing all the memoranda and articles and allowing the Secretary of State or the accounting officer in a department to make certain appointments and control things. However, that is being done without much, if any, parliamentary scrutiny, because I do not think that anybody is particularly worried about it. Network Rail has been in the private sector up to now, but it has had £4 billion or so a year from public funds. It has managed to work and not cause trouble; otherwise, this would probably have happened sooner. However, there still have to be changes. I worry about it going in the other direction. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, the consequences need some public debate, because there might be many more people who are worried about it, not least the people who work for the new company while it is government owned. It is reasonable to have some parliamentary scrutiny of a change. Therefore, I support the amendment in his name.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I imagine that the Minister will have little difficulty in responding to this amendment. She is obviously going to continue to deny that privatisation is anywhere on the horizon as far as the Government are concerned—so that is one defence. Secondly, I hope that she recognises that there would need to be significant parliamentary action if privatisation of a significant company such as this were carried out. I am therefore anticipating the Minister quite enjoying responding to this amendment, which I am glad my noble friend has aired.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I will indeed enjoy responding to this amendment. It would seem from the speeches I have heard that our purposes are the same. The question is: whose language does it better? In this case, I go with the language in the Bill, which is rather more efficient in that it does not require an Act of Parliament to, as it were, “gut” the highways authority should it cease to be owned by the Secretary of State; it just does it. Obviously, if such a thing were to happen, we would put in place a transitional process to bring the staff back over; those kinds of things would only be sensible. The language in the Bill achieves what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, intends but does it rather more effectively than the subsections he has designed. Let us go for quick action and ensure that we have the maximum strength, which we have in the Bill. I therefore ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Debate on whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, at Second Reading the Government failed to provide a convincing case for why the strategic highways company needed to be created to achieve the stated aims. As we indicated to the Minister at Second Reading, there is agreement pretty well across the House on the objective of a more coherent planning structure for the crucial part of the infrastructure represented by trunk roads and motorways. But the Minister indicated that because the Highways Agency would be turned into a government-owned company, it would have,

“the stable, long-term funding needed to plan ahead effectively”,

and that the Government were,

“also introducing in the Bill the framework for a roads investment strategy”,

which, of course, we applaud. The Minister went on to say:

“The strategy will be agreed by the Government and the new company. It will set out the Government’s longer-term strategic vision for the strategic road network, investment plans and performance criteria, along with the necessary funding, just as happens for the railways. The new delivery model will allow the company to better prioritise its spending in terms of both maintenance requirements and capital demands. This is bound to lead to better asset management than we have now”.—[Official Report, 18/6/14; col. 838.]

Where is the beef in that statement? What is it about the new delivery model that is superior to what we could achieve with the Highways Agency? What in the structure of the Highways Agency makes it impossible for it to deliver longer-term planning? It may be that it has not done so because of the vicissitudes of funding, for which the Government must take responsibility, but the Minister surely recognises that nothing gets done without Treasury approval. What the present structure of the Highways Agency seems to need is more operational independence from the Treasury. The Treasury needs to be on board with the necessity for longer-term thinking about roads. But why we need the creation of a government-owned company to plan spending, I do not know. This is spending that is not in yearly cycles. It does not peak towards one part of the year rather than another. It is not clear that the Bill actually delivers what the Secretary of State has claimed to be among the key benefits. I cannot see why, with serious intent and commitment to long-term planning of infrastructure on the Government’s part, the existing structure cannot be made to work towards those objectives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bradshaw]

The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, with which I agree, mentions “speed control systems”. We are considering the Deregulation Bill on Monday, which makes specific provision for a lot of the enforcement of speed and other offences to be undertaken by people who go round with pads rather than the modern method of using cameras. Will the Minister cover that, or at least take it away and get sorted out the apparent contradictions between those two pieces of legislation?

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

Well, my Lords, that is a bumper that whistled past the Minster’s ears. It is an interesting little challenge. I have no views on what the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has said, except that I usually consider what he says to have a modicum of very good sense.

I support my noble friends’ amendments. My noble friend Lord Whitty made a persuasive case for the opening amendment. My own amendment would merely establish a consistent theme for us in this legislation: we want to see the Office of Rail Regulation playing a significant role in the road network. It should publish guidance and have powers to require efficient use of the road network. That is what it does for rail. As the noble Baroness will have noted a few moments ago, I was seeking to extol the virtues of a degree of integration between these two critical features of our transport infrastructure. This is one modest step towards that. The Office of Rail Regulation should promote not just efficient spending but efficient management of the road network. It has earned the approval of many of us through its work on the rail system. There is surely merit in it doing so for the road while furthering the prospects of integration between two main features of our transport infrastructure, which will be an abiding theme of the Opposition’s position on the Bill.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, your Lordships have raised a number of important issues around the powers that are transferred to the new company. The purpose of Schedule 1 is to transfer to a strategic highways company appointed under Clause 1 the statutory duties imposed on, and the powers exercised by, the Secretary of State in his capacity as highway authority. The functions and responsibilities are already expressed in legislation, but they are transferred to the new company on its appointment. These are all the functions that it needs to operate. That may help in understanding why I regard Amendment 4 as an unnecessary addition to the Bill.

Amendment 4 takes us to Clause 13, under which the Secretary of State may transfer additional functions other than an excluded function to a strategic highways company. I think the noble Lord’s purpose was to make road safety functions capable of transfer to the company. We absolutely appreciate the importance of road safety, but we do not require the amendment because, in our view, the only road safety functions which would ever be appropriate to transfer to a strategic highways company would be those which relate to highways. For example, the Secretary of State is responsible for issues which relate to drink driving and the standards that are required of vehicles. In other words, many aspects of road safety are not to do with the highway itself. It would not be appropriate to transfer that range of responsibilities over to the SHC, but only those parts which relate to the highway itself. This is already enabled within the legislation before us.

On a wide range of these issues, I draw your Lordships’ attention to the licence, a draft of which was issued on 23 June and which covers in great detail many of the issues which have been raised here. There is always a question of whether you put things in the Bill or in the licence. We are constantly adding to and refining the kinds of actions and responsibilities that we want an entity like the new SHC to carry out. We would lose a lot of our flexibility were we to put this in the Bill rather than use the licence mechanism. With the combination of the transfer of duties already provided and the licence, a wide range of these powers are already covered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I am sorry, but this is something else that I think should be in the Bill. It does sort of follow from the clear statement by the Government that we will have only one strategic highways company, in which case it should surely be made clear that the scope of its activities covers what are currently Highways Agency roads in England. At the moment, that is not clear—and I think that I am right in saying that it is also not necessarily the case. Tolled roads will remain the responsibility of the Secretary of State, and some of those tolled roads, such as the road that I still call the Birmingham North Relief Road—the tolled M6—come under the general jurisdiction of the Highways Agency, although the company that runs the tolled M6 operates it and, of course, collects the tolls for it. So the exact jurisdiction of the company needs to be made clear. That is not to say that all the roads that are currently under the remit of the Highways Agency should always remain so. One can alter that later.

There may be some local roads that should be transferred into the company and there may be some roads in the margins of the Highways Agency’s slightly odd portfolio that should really be local roads, in the general demarcation between the two. Ministers and the Secretary of State would still have the possibility of changing those roads but it should be clear that this Act is shifting what are currently Highways Agency roads into the new company—full stop. That is what my amendments in this group provide for, with Amendment 9 saying that it is “the whole of England” and Amendment 10 saying that, in the first instance, they will be Highways Agency roads. I beg to move.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments, and shall speak to the two amendments in my name. Amendment 11 is a probing amendment; I want to know where Wales fits in. It is the only reference to Wales that I have seen in the Bill and I would be grateful if the Minister could make it clear where Wales fits into any possible consultation process with regard to the authority.

Amendment 12 is pretty self-explanatory on the necessity of consulting with local highways authorities in the areas that they cover on the structure of the organisation, the appointment of a representative of local highways authorities as a non-executive director of the board, and other matters decided by the Secretary of State. It is clear that for consultation to be remotely effective there has to be some representation of the local highways authorities.

As the Minister is all too well aware—the Committee need not dwell on this point for any length of time—important though the motorways and trunk roads of England are, local authorities still carry most of the traffic and, of course, are responsible for the majority of the roads. It is not conceivable for a scheme for a road of such significance to be developed and work to be done on it without the local highways authorities being involved. We are all well aware that if there is the most minor interruption on some of our motorways and other major roads, cascades of traffic fall upon the local roads. Those local roads bear the brunt not just of the difficulties of that day but of the ongoing costs as a consequence of excessive use of them; they are often not designed for the volume of traffic that is diverted on to them.

I am sure that the Minister will be at pains to emphasise that nothing will be done without consultation with the local highways authorities. My amendments seek to make that explicit in the Bill.

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[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 40 in this group on precisely the subject of the duty to co-operate. This very much builds on the Localism Act, under which local authorities have a duty to co-operate with each other. I understand that part of the department’s argument on this will be that the new company—the present Highways Agency—is already a traffic authority and a highway authority and is therefore covered by the Localism Act’s provisions. I am not sure whether that is entirely clear. If it is, then some of the objections that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, referred to would have to apply to the Localism Act as well. If that is the case, can we somehow cross-refer to it?

The Highways Agency has only 2.4% of the road mileage of the country. All of its roads create traffic for the local network and all of the local network piles out on to the motorway at various points. Sometimes the most congested areas of the motorway are congested largely because it is being used as a local road by people for just two exits. There is an important need for the Highways Agency and the traffic authorities to co-operate and that needs to be reflected in the Bill.

However, in view of the environmental and safety aspects, there is also a need to co-operate with the safety authorities and with the Environment Agency, which is concerned with emissions, air pollution, water run-off and so forth. The HSE’s duties on the roads will relate only to employee drivers, but it does have some, and there must therefore be a cross-over.

We have briefly mentioned the interface with Wales. Obviously, at the far end of the network there is interface with Scotland as well, and there needs to be some co-operation with the devolved Administrations. I also referred to the police and traffic commissioners because, in practice, a lot of the traffic management of the Highways Agency is conducted by the police. Therefore, the police should have at least some mention here, although I am not entirely clear whether the duty to co-operate under the Localism Act actually covers police authorities as well. In one sense, even if it does, we should cross-refer to it.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I want to reinforce the points that have already been made in terms of some definitions of obligations and duties as far as the company is concerned. Amendment 15 would ensure that the road investment strategy outlines its social, economic and environmental objectives. The Government’s draft national policy statement, published recently, sets out the policy against which the Secretary of State will make decisions on applications for development consent for nationally significant infrastructure projects. The application should include guidance on mitigating environmental and social impacts and plans to enhance environmental benefits—objectives to which I am sure we would all subscribe.

However, the Bill references merely the strategic highways company’s “objectives”, without giving the new company a clear direction on how the road investment strategy will aim to ensure that its activities are carried out with the intention to provide benefits to society, the economy and the environment. For example, the strategy should incorporate an estimate of the impact on UK carbon emissions of building more roads infrastructure. It is inconceivable that we would have a perspective on such construction without having some assessment of the issue of emissions. It surrounds all aspects of aviation at present and it cannot be anything but an important issue, as far as the public are concerned, for roads.

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Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

17: Clause 3, page 3, line 2, at end insert—
“( ) the anticipated impact of the Roads Investment Strategy upon the condition, development and funding of the local roads network and local transport provision,
( ) the anticipated impact of the Roads Investment Strategy on links with other nationally and regionally significant infrastructure projects, including ports and airports, and the impact of projected vehicle emissions on local air quality.”

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[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I am in great danger of running into the same brick wall of a government response as my noble friend Lord Whitty. It was an interesting response: “We are creating a new company; we are setting out a new strategy for roads; we have a five-year programme; and we are talking seriously about infrastructure. Please do not come to us with any suggestions of what considerations such infrastructure developments should take into account”.

My noble friend Lord Whitty tried to analyse the road investment strategy and what that might involve in terms of wider consideration. I will deal with the national networks policy statement, with exactly the same objective. I see no point in the Government arguing that they have got improved machinery but reined-in objectives. In circumstances where wider society is clear that what it wants from our infrastructure is greater integration and greater realisation of the relative impact of public expenditure in one area upon another, I do not see how the Minister can maintain that these things are too burdensome. It is not too burdensome to include in the Bill the possibility, some period further on, that there may be more than one company. It is not too burdensome to have a decade-forward look at certain aspects of the legislation.

With these amendments, we suggest the road investment strategy will need to take account of its impact on local road systems and will need to consider the links between other significant parts of the transport infrastructure, such as ports and airports. If we had not had the built-in five-year delay on the decision regarding an additional runway in the south-east, we would currently be discussing infrastructure in relation to aviation as well as roads. The Minister maintains that there cannot be a case for pressing additional obligations on the strategy. I do not accept that. I do not see why we should not ask, as Amendment 29 does, the Secretary of State to provide the strategic highways company with a survey on the condition of the local and strategic road networks. I do not see why we cannot envisage increased co-operation with Network Rail. I know we cannot flick a switch overnight and deal with such complex issues as if they are givens to immediately act on, but unless we have the objectives then the whole concept of the integration and improvement of infrastructure over a period of time disappears.

I listened very carefully to the Minister’s reply to my noble friend Lord Whitty. I understand what she is driving at, in that we cannot take everything on board at the same time. However, we are not suggesting an enormous increased cost as far as the road investment strategy is concerned; we are suggesting that it should have the perspective to understand what integration and development of the infrastructure is all about. That means that the Government should give serious consideration to this group of amendments, as well as to the previous group, introduced by my noble friend Lord Whitty, which seek to guarantee that our improved investment strategy for infrastructure will take in all the factors that wider society regards as being germane to transport improvement. I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I would like to put a question to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, about his amendment. I believe I am right in saying that local authorities already have a very effective system for regularly analysing the state of local roads, the investment that needs to be made to bring them up to standard and what it will cost, called the ALARM system. What is wrong with that? If they have that already, why write something more into the Bill? I merely ask the question. Maybe the noble Lord can answer when he winds up at the end of the debate, and perhaps my noble friend might like to comment on that in the course of her reply.

I understand, of course, that different parts of the road structure will have an impact on each other. I would have thought that would be covered by the duties of consulting that my noble friend referred to in relation to earlier amendments. This will be an integral part of the operation of the strategic highways company. There is already a very good system, as I understand it. One sees headlines in the newspapers every year about the state of local roads and what needs to be spent to bring them up to standard. If there is a headline word that has entered into the public consciousness, it is “potholes”.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, through these amendments, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and others seek to ensure that the impact of the road investment strategy on the various local road networks and other transport infrastructure is considered. This is an important argument, and I need to be clear that, through the licence, we are requiring the strategic highways company to have an asset management strategy. Understanding the condition of its assets is absolutely key to this.

The condition and performance of the local road network are, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, clearly outlined, matters for the local highway authority. Frankly, we would not wish to include in the Bill a requirement to survey the condition of local roads, because its focus is the strategic road network. We are not anxious to usurp authorities’ powers. I share the assessment of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, that the tasks are currently well carried out by local authorities, which, I suspect, would not want to surrender a lot of resources and have the task taken over by a centralised body.

That said, we want this new company to co-operate with its partner road networks. The route strategies, with which I think many of your Lordships will be familiar, are a key source of information in developing the road investment strategy. They provide local authorities and, by extension, local highway authorities with a mechanism to work with the new company and thus ensure that the impact on the local road networks of interventions on the strategic road network is considered. We think that that will be an extremely effective mechanism and it is well provided for in the legislation as it stands.

In addition, as part of the changes elsewhere in the Bill, the company will, as I have said before, become a traffic authority. That is new and means that it will be subject to the network management duty—a legal obligation on all local traffic authorities to ensure, among other things, that traffic flows smoothly from one jurisdiction to another. At present, the Highways Agency is not subject to this requirement, so this will be a new guarantee of co-operation.

I could start to list the kind of support that we are offering for local roads but, setting aside our significant financial contribution, I also want to make it clear that we are supporting efforts by local authorities to share knowledge and best practice under the highways maintenance efficiency programme, as well as encouraging co-operation and common procurement. There is therefore a gathering momentum to achieve much more co-operation and partnership working, which will continue under the new arrangements.

I talked earlier about aligning road and rail investment strategies, so I will not repeat that. Instead, I shall use this occasion to underscore how much we recognise that there is significant value in Network Rail and the new strategic highways company working together on the kinds of issues that your Lordships have listed. However, we do not think that you need a legislative mechanism to try to prescribe how those two companies should work together. We would find it extraordinary if they chose not to, and I doubt that the Secretary of State would permit them to ignore each other in that way.

It is entirely appropriate that the road investment strategy and the new company’s response to it will have due regard to the national network’s national policy statement—that is a mouthful. However, it would not be appropriate to create a formal link between what is a planning document and what is, in effect, a funding and investment plan. The two documents align but there is not a hierarchy between them.

On that basis, looking through the details of the amendments, we think that the underlying issues that are of concern to your Lordships are already addressed. Therefore, we feel that the amendments are not needed and we hope very much that the noble Lord will feel comfortable in withdrawing the one he has moved.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I will back off from my amendment in relation to local authorities out of deference to the representation from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, although I should say that I back off for today, because that is not the perspective that we have of certain aspects of the work of local authorities. However, I shall back off if the Minister will take on board the obvious thrust of these amendments: both those in the group we are considering at the moment and those in the previous group, which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, introduced, are concerned with the fact that the strategy has to take into account broader issues than road provision has done in the past and that it will need to have that written down and enforced. It is all very well for the noble Baroness to say, “Yes, as a matter of course those who are planning the roads will take into account these other factors”. No, they will not. In the past, we have seen that such factors have clearly not been taken into account.

Not the least significant of all those factors, especially for many British people, is the question of increased emissions. We have seen precious little activity, as far as roads are concerned, on emissions. An attempt in the previous group of amendments to introduce that into the categorisation of the work which the new system must take into account was rather brushed aside.

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[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I can be very brief. I fully endorse the statements made by my noble friend Lord Whitty. I once had the privilege of being president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. That was a year in which I contributed little but learnt a very great deal indeed. I do not think that the consciousness of the need for safety on our roads has increased as much as we might have expected, given the work that has been done by estimable authorities such as RoSPA. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will take these amendments very seriously.

[Baroness Kramer]

This set of amendments seeks to make the road investment strategy cover several specific areas, including carbon reduction, traffic volumes and environmental performance, and to place safety at its heart—the area where we have had most discussion, which has been fascinating. I reassure the Committee that the Government take all these issues very seriously. It seems to me that where we may differ is on whether or not these important values are enhanced in implementation by including them in the Bill rather than in the road investment strategy and in the licence. I am inclined to believe that the RIS and the licence are the most powerful documents to drive forward the behaviours that we are looking for, so I shall explain the role that those documents play.

We are concerned about ending up with a long list sitting in legislation and describing what the road investment strategy should look at, because, as everyone in this Room knows, there is always the problem of what happens with the item left off the list when that is significant. One can try to say that those that are not named are of equal significance and are equally elevated, and that one is not primary over the other, but that is not always an easy argument to make. I am concerned, particularly since we want this to be a long-lasting document, that there will be issues which we consider to be of equal importance to safety and the environment and that we would be in a difficult situation if we insisted on those additional significant priorities. I am therefore hesitant to go to the face of the Bill. It is helpful to have the information that we have on both the RIS and the licence, and the other documents.

Let me focus on safety, because it is a very important issue to the Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, our roads are pretty much the safest in the world, but we can never be complacent. The strategic highways company will have a responsibility for the safety of the road network, but, as I pointed out previously, there are key safety responsibilities—including driver licensing, training and education, the regulation of driving such as drink-driving and drug-driving policies, enforcement, dangerous and careless driving and, as the noble Lord underscored, the important issue of vehicle standards—that must stay with the Secretary of State and not transfer to the new company. That is to put the broad construct, which would not work effectively if those responsibilities were not kept with the Secretary of State.

As we go through these complex documents, it is worth noting that safety is already embedded in the strategic roads “system”. For example, the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges sets minimum standards for road safety, and safety is covered within the appraisal. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked whether the appraisal formulas were exactly as they should be. That is surely not something that we are going to address in primary legislation; it is a working issue that needs to be addressed at a much more practical level. In wide areas of appraisal—I have looked more at financial and cost-benefit appraisal issues—we are constantly trying to update the way in which we look at those issues. I cannot see that it can be driven through primary legislation; it is part of being responsible. The importance of safety is already included in the draft licence and will be a key consideration in the road investment strategy. For example, the RIS will require performance specifications that embed safety issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to legal liabilities. I think that it is clear that the SHC is responsible for the road but not the driver, but I do not think it would be right for me to try to speculate on legal liability.

Embedded in the amendments are important issues of environmental protection such as climate change and biodiversity. Again, they are well covered within the licence by broader existing legislation. Again, if we are looking at who is responsible for what, a lot of those issues refer to the vehicle fleet, and that must be with government rather than with the new company.

Therefore the view we take is that the issues that are raised are very important, but that they are carefully covered and encompassed by the language we have in both the primary legislation and supporting documents. Therefore once again, amendment is not necessary to achieve the goals which those sponsoring these amendments have in mind.

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Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

20: Clause 3, page 3, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) The Secretary of State must, within one month of publishing a Draft Road Investment Strategy, begin a consultation on its contents.
( ) The Secretary of State must publish a response to the consultation no later than a month after the conclusion of the consultation.”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, Amendments 20 and 21 in my name are designed to encourage proper scrutiny of the road investment strategy that will be set by the Government. The impact assessment makes clear the potential effect of the operation of the new organisation on the public:

“Corporatising the HA will provide it with a greater commercial focus, but there is a risk that it might take decisions that have negative consequences for the public. We would not expect a company at arm’s length to make identical decisions to a minister, who is expected to take into account a wider range of impacts and views and is then held democratically accountable for them”.

Exactly. That is why it is enormously important that this body, which is to be established with increased powers, is made fully accountable.

The road investment strategy is likely to last five years and will involve the spending of a huge amount of public money. As the Minister said at Second Reading, the Government committed more than £24 billion to upgrade Britain’s strategic road network between 2011 and 2021. The strategic road network, as the Committee knows, carries a third of all car and van traffic and 65% of heavy goods traffic. It is therefore vital that business, trade bodies and campaigning organisations can make their views known during the consultation process. It is also vital that the public can make their views known, both directly through the consultation and indirectly through their elected representatives. If it is a vital part of the Government’s plans to secure stability and enable long-term planning, then it is also essential that this process is transparent, open and accountable. Otherwise, it will never gain the public confidence that it needs to operate successfully. I beg to move.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have an amendment in this group. I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Davies on how we get to the investment strategy. My amendment is at the end of this group, and it is about Parliament’s oversight of the process. We always ought to consider how Parliament both approves and monitors bodies and documents which are referred to in legislation.

I am proposing that, before the first strategy is implemented, it should be subject to a report of a Joint Committee of both Houses. I suspect that our colleagues in the House of Commons will say that it should be a DfT Select Committee. Nevertheless, some form of parliamentary accountability is necessary. It is nowhere in the Bill, and it should be. It should be a regular process; I am saying every five years because that is the period to which the money and strategy initially relate. Certainly, a regular review of the roads investment strategy ought to be built in at parliamentary level. That will complement the consultations that are required at the beginning of the process in my noble friend Lord Davies’s amendments.

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[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, it is my duty to withdraw my amendment. However, the Minister seems to suggest that the Government should not consult when they are launching a body which they favour and expect to be successful, but should consult like fury the moment it has gone badly wrong. In my experience, Governments do things the other way around, but perhaps the Minister is setting up a new model on how consultation will be carried out. Nevertheless, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 20 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

25: Schedule 2, page 57, line 26, after “objectives,” insert—
“(ba) the circumstances in which the Road Investment Strategy will allow the strategic highways company to undertake commercial services or charge for services”

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, there currently appears to be a gap in the Government’s draft licence for the strategic highways company. It says:

“Provisions relating to commercial activity and charging for services are still under consideration. We expect that the Licence holder will, where legislation allows, be able to continue to undertake commercial services or charge for services, on a non-discriminatory and cost-recovery basis, where this represents the continuation of current practice by the Secretary of State, in his role as highway authority for the network”.

My amendment is intended to probe this position and to ascertain in what precise circumstances the Government envisage the strategic highways company charging for services. There is some concern in many quarters that the model that is being constructed allows for the strategic highways company or companies to charge for road use. Although the company will have to be wholly owned, Clause 8 includes extensive powers for the strategic highways company to delegate functions, which could mean that many roads are contracted out in the future.

Our history on charging schemes for roads is not a particularly happy one. The toll road on the M6 was supposed to take 75,000 cars a day; in fact, it averages just over 40,000. As the embattled public who travel on it will testify, the equivalent stretch of the old M6 takes up to 180,000 vehicles a day. Therefore, road pricing and toll roads raise very real issues. There are also concerns that if the Government significantly increase the number of roads for which people have to pay, there will be increased congestion on other roads and more accidents as a result. The M6 toll road stands as a bleak beacon of warning. I beg to move.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, in lending my support to my noble friend Lord Davies, I speak to my Amendment 39. It proposes that:

“The power to set a toll or a tariff on a strategic highway may not be delegated to any company or person but must remain the sole prerogative of the Secretary of State”.

We have heard from the Minister that there are no immediate plans for privatising the highways company, which is set to replace the Highways Agency. However, this does not allay our anxieties about the privatisation of our strategic highways network. Nothing that the Government have said will preclude them from asking private contractors to administer parts of the network under concessions. The contractors would derive their income from tolls.

We need only look across the Channel to see an example of a strategic highways network that is largely under the control of private profit-making agencies. The example is provided by France, where 45% of the motorway network is now operated under commercial concessions, including all the main arteries. This circumstance has been the result of a major sale to private investors of the state’s holdings in autoroute companies, which began in 2005, under the Villepin Government, during the presidency of Jacques Chirac. Initially, the tolls on the roads were set by the French Government, but the private companies have been permitted to make year-on-year increases in the tolls. There is now widespread discontent at their exorbitance and at the excessive profits of the companies, which acquired their assets at knock-down prices. Clearly, the French Government ought to have retained the sole prerogative to set the levels of the tolls.

The only example of a tolled motor road in the UK is the M6 toll road of a mere 27 miles in length, which bypasses the Birmingham conurbation. This is controlled by the Australian company Macquarie, which holds the concession until 2054. In contrast to the French toll roads, this under-used road appears to be a commercial failure. In 2012, the operator, Midland Expressway, claimed to have made a loss of £41 million. I have no way of confirming this figure, which seems to have been exaggerated; there would have been a tax advantage in exaggerating the loss. The recourse of the company was to increase the tolls. This may have increased the company’s revenue, but it would certainly have diminished the traffic on the road, thereby reducing its social utility and increasing the costs of congestion and physical depreciation that are borne by the adjacent M6 freeway.

These circumstances should serve to emphasise a fundamental principle. Road charges need to be set by a central authority with an overarching concern to maximise the utility of the roads. High tariffs should be levied to deter vehicles from travelling on congested roads. High tariffs that deter traffic from using empty roads should be lowered or abolished. It might seem to be redundant to declare such principles at a time when there appear to be no immediate plans to impose additional tolls and tariffs on our roads. However, I believe that such charges are certain to be imposed sooner rather than later.

There are two factors here. The first is the likelihood that this Government, or a future Government, will desire to raise revenue to finance additional construction and maintenance. The second is the availability of new and effective technology that will greatly facilitate road-charging. My concern is that, unless the Government think ahead and resolve to take a strategic oversight of the matter, a piecemeal and dysfunctional system of road-charging will arise that will reproduce the problems that can be clearly discerned in other countries that have already applied tolls and tariffs to their roads.

Finally, whenever private enterprise is charged with undertaking motorway projects, it has been expected to raise the finance for those purposes from the open market. That has certainly been the case for the French toll roads, and it has been the case with our only toll road company, which administers the M6 toll. By going in their own right to the market, the companies have been denied the advantage of the superior creditworthiness of the Government. In consequence, they have had to bear much higher interest rate charges. There should surely be a way of conferring the benefits of the Government’s creditworthiness on all borrowings in favour of investment in social infrastructure, whoever undertakes them.

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[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I have to be quite quick to be sure that I finish before rising time, so these will be somewhat abbreviated responses. A strange hare may have been started running by some of the language used here. The commercial activities that the SHC engages with, such as selling salt supplies to the local authorities, is all piddly ante stuff, to be taken care of in the governance documents rather than the RIS, which I think is the relevant place for it.

As for funding road infrastructure, the power to retain decision-making over tolls or tariffs for the Secretary of State, under the amendment to Clause 6, is just not necessary, because all the powers to make decisions over tolls or road usage remain with the Secretary of State, who is not minded to enter into road pricing—although that may distress some noble Lords who have spoken here tonight.

It would be possible for the Secretary of State to permit this body to raise its own financing, but he would have to give that permission. Given the way in which the Government work, there would have to be Treasury support for that. This Government certainly are not minded to do it because, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, borrowings would go into the public sector borrowing requirement. Therefore, to pay higher pricing for financing that could be obtained by the Government themselves borrowing directly is not something that this Government are minded to do for their road infrastructure. This project commits long-term funding, which will come overwhelmingly from the Government. An exception might be possible if there were a discrete road project, which might be PFIed, although nothing in that range is being contemplated at the moment.

Looking at all those issues, while it may disappoint Members that we are not engaging in plans for road pricing or extensive borrowing by the HCA in the public markets, I still ask the noble Lords to withdraw their amendments and understand that this is really a policy issue and that the Government have made appropriate decisions in determining these issues.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, this was a probing amendment and it certainly hit its target. Let us be conscious, certainly on my side of the Committee, that this Bill is known as a Lords starter. We therefore have no guidelines from the democratic House as to whether road pricing would ever appear on the agenda; it certainly does not appear on the agenda of my party. I take at full value the points that the Minister has made today on behalf of the Government and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 25 withdrawn.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a most informative and splendid debate, although perhaps a little too long for such a modest measure. I shall try to keep my remarks to the absolute minimum. My noble friend Lord McKenzie has dealt with Part 3 of the Bill. He will lead for the Opposition in Committee on those issues and he has clearly spelled out the anxieties that we have about aspects of Part 3. I reinforce the obvious point that he mentioned about the loss to local authorities of revenue from the charges that they can make, which go to the Land Registry. As there is a fairly well founded rumour that the Government are bent on eventual privatisation of the Land Registry, the Minister will not be at all surprised that the questioning on those aspects of the Bill will be fairly intense in Committee.

I turn to the last issue in the Bill—fracking—although there is not much to say about it in relation to the Bill, because there is not a great deal there. We appreciate that the consultation that the Government are carrying out on this does not conclude until August and we are quite content to wait to see the government proposals as a consequence of that consultation. However, it indicates what a rag bag of a Bill this is that government proposals about one of its more important features are scarcely before the House today.

I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on community electricity clauses, as I always do on energy matters. I also appreciated the contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and his optimism about what could be done on this, which we share. I understand the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, exactly when he says that nearly everything in any Bill relating to energy seems to be dealt with by regulation. It looks, from the outline of the Bill, that what we will have to probe is the exact nature of the regulations that will give effect to what is intended. We obviously support the broad concept, and our questioning and probing in that area will be constructive.

The question of invasive and non-native species was raised first, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and several other noble Lords expressed their concern. We need legislation in this area. The Government have sought to do what they can in the past on these matters, but we are aware of the great threats that obtain. As a Minister, I was personally concerned with Japanese knotweed five years ago. I was informed by the scientific establishment, not only in the department but in government, that we had cracked it in terms of the science and that all it needed now was careful analysis of the process of implementation and restricted experimentation in a limited area. Here we are, five years on, and neither I nor my noble friend Lord Dubs can get a meeting with a responsible Minister. That may be because the responsible Minister does not have a great deal to say about the progress on Japanese knotweed.

Japanese knotweed is important because it affects land in a very invasive way and harms households. It is a transport issue, too, because it costs Network Rail a considerable sum each year to keep the railway track free of knotweed, which can do such damage. We also know of a number of other threats to our environment, and therefore I of course welcome these provisions in the Bill very warmly indeed. The Minister will no doubt appreciate that she will be questioned about a whole range of plants and species of which she knows precious little at present, I would guess, but about which she will no doubt be primed as we make progress through the Bill.

In so far as the Bill is about infrastructure and transport, it is about roads. Even when it refers to rail, it does so in terms of rail taking some responsibility for the monitoring of roads. However, we have very real doubts about the role of the Passengers’ Council and whether it provides an adequate forum for public response. As the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, indicated, the rail system is very different indeed from the road system, as is the nature of the customers on it.

The House will recognise that there are severe reservations about the Bill. The Bill purports to be about infrastructure, but that idea has been demolished by several contributions, in which the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, played his full part by indicating that the Government are very far from having any sensible infrastructure policy at all. They are of course proud of the fact that they are continuing with HS2. They are also indicating that they may get around, eventually, to dealing with the A14, which drags on along its interminable path amid its failure to get adequate improvement. However, the idea that the Government have an infrastructure policy and that, if they have, this Bill is a central part of it is quite risible. All noble Lords who spoke in the debate expressed criticisms that show the inadequacy of the Bill in these terms.

That is why I hope the Minister will recognise that we will probe very hard on the Highways Agency and the role that it is to adopt. It is true that the chief executive of the Highways Agency is buoyant with optimism about the extent to which he will have extensive powers to pursue his clear objectives. Just where that fits in with the Government’s responsibility to Parliament, I am not quite sure. We regard the proposals in the Bill for the scrutiny of what the Highways Agency is intended to do, if it gets the role outlined in the Bill, and the processes there as wholly inadequate, and we will be pressing the Government very hard indeed on those issues.

The roads system in this country needs considerable attention but, as noble Lords have pointed out, the Bill is concerned with only 2% of roads. My fear is that the Bill will arrive at the other end with Members of Parliament not too far from a general election and facing pressing issues related to the inadequacy of the roads in their constituencies. Trunk and long-distance roads will be of less concern to the other House than what has happened with the failure to maintain and keep up our roads, particularly following the ravages of last winter, and the problems of potholes.

We are destined to participate in some very interesting exchanges in Committee. The Committee will have a great deal to discuss, which will all be done in a constructive spirit, because we realise that the Government intend to address issues that the nation wants addressed. The problem is that this Bill is a wholly inadequate vehicle.