Transport Act 2000 (Air Traffic Services) (Prescribed Terms) Regulations 2025

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 3 June be approved.

Relevant document: 28th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 14 July.

Motion agreed.

Train Operators’ Revenue Protection Practices Review

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the independent review of train operators’ revenue protection practices published by the Office of Rail and Road on 4 June, whether they intend to modify systems of issuing rail tickets to improve their interavailability.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, deliberate fare-dodging has no place on our railways and is being tackled, but it is vital that passengers are treated fairly and consistently. We are urgently considering the helpful and comprehensive Office of Rail and Road report, with its sensible recommendations, and will respond to it as soon as possible. In the meantime, we continue to make it easier for passengers to buy the right fare, to make tickets on an increasingly unified publicly owned railway more inter-available, and to develop plans for Great British Railways to sell tickets online.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister knows that, under the new east coast main line timetable, many more passengers will rely on connecting services run by different train operators, but when they board the train, as happens when they board a train now, they are quite likely to hear an announcement saying that other operators’ tickets are not valid on this service and that they may face a penalty fare of £100. Indeed, the report to which my Question refers reveals many instances of passengers who inadvertently had the wrong ticket and were penalised. Does he recognise that this is a mess? Has he got people at work in his department trying to sort it out?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord knows as much about the December east coast main line timetable as I do now. I compliment him because he asked the flexible public sector operators to add a stop at Berwick to the weekday 1900 train to Edinburgh from King’s Cross, and they have agreed. I think that is a great thing. On a more general point, the announcements are confusing because the ticketing system is confusing. In the particular circumstances of the east coast, where LNER has made arrangements for tickets to be inter-available so that passengers at stations such as Berwick can enjoy a similar level of train service, with a change, as they do now, we will make sure that the announcements are clear enough that people are not put off making the best journey.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that the first iteration of the timetable for the LNER services in question was withdrawn. As a result, as the noble Lord, Lord Beith, has identified, there are fewer direct services serving stations such as Darlington, Northallerton and others, meaning that more changes are to be made. Is there a role for his department to ensure, particularly given the special anniversary of the Darlington to Stockton line, that this could be revisited so that the original direct services are reinstated?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The new east coast main line timetable includes several big improvements, such as knocking over a quarter of an hour off the direct journey to Edinburgh and a service to Newcastle of three trains an hour, which is considerably in excess of the service on the Metropolitan line to Amersham. That is the objective of a railway timetable which is to serve the biggest flows with the best train service. In respect of Darlington and Northallerton, the noble Baroness knows that, in fact, Darlington will have more through-trains to London in December than it does now, as will Northallerton. Some of the other journeys will need a change, and the timetable is arranged to make the best of all those journeys while producing the benefits that I described.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, passengers are fed up with the complexity of rail fares and of the terms and conditions of tickets. When will passengers see a simpler, transparent new range of tickets ahead of Great British Railways coming into operation?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right to describe it as a mess. We are not waiting for Great British Railways. LNER’s changes to long-distance fares, which have been introduced progressively, have resulted in considerably greater passenger satisfaction with the way in which the fares are arranged now compared with before. I am expecting to see similar arrangements on the west coast main line and on Great Western in due course. I think the noble Baroness knows that we are rolling out pay-as-you-go in urban areas, as well as in London and the south-east. It is a long and complex job, and it is not helped by the fact that, fundamentally, the fares system has not changed since the railways were privatised. We are on it, and we are working hard at it.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

On the west coast main line and on other routes, when Great British Railways actually happens, will it have control over the fares issued by open-access operators, or will they still be able to charge what they like for their own services?

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend probably knows the answer, but I am happy to give it anyway. Open-access operators can charge what they like, and no doubt will continue to do so.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure this House would be reassured if the Minister himself was involved in these new practices. Can he give us an assurance that he is heavily involved and that all these new practices will mean less ticketless travel?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The long-term answer is that the railway deserves to be run by competent, professional people. The involvement of Ministers in decisions about timetables and fares is extremely unusual in world railways outside North Korea. I am doing what I am doing now because I think that changes need to be made, and we need to make them faster than we can bring in the legislation on Great British Railways. In the long term, the railways should be run by competent people to an overall government policy. That is the Government’s aim, and mine too.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, concerning those changes, the report referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Beith, from the ORR, a highly respected regulator, is a valuable piece of work on behalf of passengers. Does the Minister accept that, under the new arrangements for the railway, consulted on by the Government earlier this year, the ORR would lose those functions, vindicating the rights of passengers to a toothless passenger watchdog, and be stripped of its independent decision-making powers as to who has access to the track and what charges they pay? These decisions will be made by Great British Railways, an interested party. Is this not regulatory vandalism on the railways?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord has a point of view, but I do not agree with it. Currently, the ORR is independent. In the future, the Government’s proposals will leave it independent. It will have a slightly different role in respect of access; it will be an appeal body. Fundamentally, somebody has to be in charge of the railway and somebody has to be in charge of the timetable. He will know, because we have discussed it here before, that it is mad that a Government Minister in the end has to decide to implement a railway timetable because nobody in the railway itself has the authority to do so. He is also wrong about describing the new arrangements for passengers. In due course he will see that the passenger standards authority will have real teeth and will represent passengers’ interests.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, many stations do not seem to have properly functioning electronic gates, particularly at weekends, and people just walk through. I wonder whether it is possible to do an audit of that. While the Minister is improving the lot of travellers, could he do away with “See It. Say It. Sorted”?

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Ticketless travel is a real problem. Operators have to be on their toes, because leaving gates open at times when people travel means that they will just walk through them. It is not necessarily the case that those passengers do not have tickets, but it is certainly no deterrent to people who do not have tickets. “See It. Say It. Sorted”—oh dear, I have said that now—is actually a good deterrent. We have to be mindful of the safety of people, including women and girls, on the railway. We are going to refresh it, but I am sorry to tell the noble Baroness that we are going to carry on with it, because it is the right thing to do to make everybody travelling by train feel safe.

[Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)]

My Lords, Trainline tells me that, if I get the 15.16 pm train home to Cardiff from London Paddington this afternoon, I could save 5p by splitting my ticket. Will my noble friend the Minister’s reforms get rid of this sort of nonsense? Can he sort that?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It needs to be sorted and it will have to be sorted, over time. I refer to my experience at Transport for London, where we radically changed the fare system and introduced pay-as-you-go and Oyster, which took several years of incremental change. Fundamentally, the noble Lord is right: if you have enough time and effort, finding a cheaper way to travel through buying multiple tickets is not the way to market an effective railway or public transport service. We need to get to a stage when that nonsense is no longer prevalent.

Rail Freight

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting rail freight growth, recognising its significant economic and environmental potential and its critical role in the UK’s resilience. In the last year, rail freight volumes have increased by 5%. We will support further growth through a statutory duty on Great British Railways to promote the use of rail freight, and the Secretary of State will set a rail freight growth target. My officials are working through the details of the design of that target.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that response, but, while welcoming the 5% increase in rail freight over the past year, we are still a long way from the 70% which was promised in the Labour Party’s last election manifesto and which is still, as far as I am aware, party policy. Does he think the move towards that happy situation will be enhanced by the current financial regime, which means that rail freight pays every year in access charges a basic rate plus RPI, while the road haulage industry has benefited enormously from the near 14-year freeze on the fuel tax regulator? If we are subsidising any mode of transport, have we not got it the wrong way round?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Taxation, as my noble friend well knows, is a matter for His Majesty’s Treasury, so I will not comment further on that. Access charges paid by freight for utilising the network do not currently cover the full fixed cost of operations, maintenance and renewal required. The capping arrangements which will be in place until March 2029 will save freight operators an estimated £33 million over this five-year control period. There are already schemes to discount access charges for new traffic, such as the mode shift revenue support scheme and Network Rail’s access charge discount policy. In the future, GBR will have greater flexibility to offer discounted charges.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, as part of the Government’s work, will they assess the role that lorry trailers on rail between key points in the UK and Europe could play in increasing rail freight and reducing the wear and tear on our major highways from heavy axle weights?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness may know that, actually, that is not a new scheme. In respect of rail freight to Europe, the Government clearly have an interest in promoting it. The Channel Tunnel has plenty of spare capacity, as does HS1. In respect of carrying lorries by rail in the UK, that has been tried before. I think it is up to the private sector freight market to develop its own flows, but the Government are there to help with access and access charges in order to get that traffic on the railway.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register as an adviser to Hutchison Ports. I looked carefully through last week’s announcement. I could not see anything in the Government’s plans that would deal with the bottlenecks in the system that prevent rail freight growth. Can the Minister enlighten us as to when those might be addressed?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord has, of course, some background in this subject, but the Government in his time were unable to invest significantly in increased access for freight, and the fiscal position has not allowed as much investment in that area as the Government would clearly like in unconstrained circumstances. Nevertheless, there are investments to be made now in the network which have been announced, such as the investments in the TransPennine upgrade and in East West Rail, which will facilitate more rail freight.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, could we not repurpose other railways to carry more freight, because getting freight off the roads is absolutely urgent, especially in view of the climate crisis? What about repurposing HS2, when it is finished, for only freight?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I think the first thing we need to do with HS2 is to finish it so it is a railway. This Government are working very hard to do that, as was set out in the recent announcement. When HS2 is finished, it will release capacity on the west coast main line, at least south of Birmingham, and that capacity can be used for two purposes. One is for additional passenger trains, which will enable significant growth in services, and therefore more housing development, in places such as Milton Keynes and Bletchley, and the other is to use it for more freight traffic. That is what will happen when HS2 opens.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister says that there is going to be a new use and access statement from Great British Railways, when it is established, in relation to freight, getting access to the tracks and how much people will have to pay to use them, but when is that going to be? The whole of Great British Railways is still a long way off. The Bill is nowhere. The whole process seems to be stalled. In the meantime, how can he expect the freight industry to invest and plan when it has no idea what access it is going to have to the tracks in this new regime or what it is going to have to pay for them?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I have met the freight operators, both individually and collectively—indeed, I have met most of their shareholders—in the last six months. My current belief is that they have a very clear understanding of how the access and use policy will develop from the present policy. In the meantime, as I mentioned, the Government have at least two schemes to promote freight now. It is quite clear that, if we set an increased rail freight target, freight will be an integral part of the railway. The freight community has nothing to worry about in terms of developing its market, although it is quite difficult to fit those trains on to a constrained network, which is why we need an access and use policy to be developed from the present one in order to allow it.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, could the Minister tell us about the Government’s plans for decarbonising the rail freight sector, in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The rail freight sector is, of course, a commercial sector, with commercial organisations providing power to freight trains. This Thursday, I am going to launch one of several new tri-mode freight locomotives from one of the operators, and a number of aspects of the Government’s investment plans for road and rail will allow decarbonisation of freight trains more easily than at the moment. I will be very happy to write to the noble Lord with some detail about that, so that he can understand what we are going to do.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

Is my noble friend satisfied that there are enough incentives to encourage industry to install or improve access for freight?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There are clearly incentives, which I have described, and, in fact, access for freight is continuing. Recently, a new rail link was built into Horton Quarry, which is in Yorkshire off the Settle and Carlisle line, and a new freight terminal at Thorney Mill, which is near West Drayton. So it is clear that developments can be made in that direction, and the discounts that I have described and the encouragement for new freight ought to be testimony to the fact that the Government are keen on that happening.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful that the Minister confirmed the 75% increase in rail freight—the target that I set in December 2023. I listened carefully to his Answer, in which he talked about the Secretary of State setting a target for GBR. Can I confirm that he is intending that Great British Railways will have that 75% rail freight increase—or more—target and will not set a lower one?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to hear from one of the many former Secretaries of State for Transport on the other side of the House. I confirm that the 75% will remain. There is no intention of setting a lower target. Of course, it has to be achieved over time, which he will know all about since he had a hand in the previous target.

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, as a mere previous Minister of State for Transport, might I put it to the Minister that 75% extremely challenging, given the very compact nature of England and the relatively short journeys that are entailed compared with many of our competitors?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I agree that 75% is quite challenging for the island of Great Britain. The economics of rail freight work much better over thousands of miles than over hundreds of miles. However, rail freight growing by 5% last year is evidence that it can be done. The market is segmented into a number of areas such as containers, aggregates and so forth, where progress can be made. This Government are determined to allow that to happen.

Road and Rail Projects

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, I will focus on the Statement and the rail and road projects contained within it and, perhaps, those not within it. Across the country, communities have been let down by a transport system that is creaking, crying out for investment and improvement, and was neglected by the last Conservative Government. Constant announcements and reannouncements of transport projects were made, with what appeared to be fictional budgets that never materialised, while our roads and railways deteriorated. The public have been let down.

A safe and reliable transport system is vital for economic growth, and therefore this capital investment is welcome news for the communities that will benefit. In particular, I welcome the Midlands rail hub, the east coast main line being upgraded with digital signalling, new stations at Wellington in Somerset and at Cullompton in Devon, the east-west railway line to Cambridge, and over £2 billion for Transport for London to continue with the purchase of new Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Docklands Light Railway trains. We await the detail of Northern Powerhouse Rail—the Statement says “soon”, whatever that might mean.

It would be helpful, given the hopes raised in the past, for the Government to provide details of the timescale and how the money will be spent to deliver the projects outlined in the Statement. The Statement also confirms that many other schemes will now need to be reviewed. These are projects that are paused or effectively scrapped. I am particularly concerned about the pause to the electrification of the Midland main line from London to Sheffield. Given the removal of the High Speed 2 leg to Sheffield, it feels as if Labour is letting down Sheffield and South Yorkshire by once again cutting major investment in its railway, leaving Sheffield as the largest city in Britain without an electrified railway. When can we see this important project back on track?

I am also deeply concerned that stage 5 of the resilience programme in Dawlish has not been funded. It would take only one large storm to close the railway to the south-west once again. Monitoring is not enough, and I hope the Minister, as the former chair of Network Rail, will assure the House about the future of this project. Then there is the busiest interchange station in the entire country, without step-free access to platforms or accessible facilities for passengers. Its platforms and corridors are far too narrow for a station with around 6 million entries and exits a year. Planning permission has been granted and it is ready to start construction next year, but the project has been put on hold. What am I talking about? Peckham Rye in south-east London. This is such a busy and important interchange. When can we expect funding for this vital project?

Finally, away from the specific projects that I have outlined, can the Minister give a firm assurance that the Government have learned from the overruns of High Speed 2 and Crossrail, and that all these projects will be delivered on time, on budget and using technology such as digital twins, where appropriate, to ensure value for money for the taxpayer?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said so much about other things. He did not have much to say about the list of funded schemes, so I am concluding that, by and large, he is happy with what he has read in the Secretary of State’s Statement in the other place. He makes a lot of noise about the fact that they would have been in some spending review had his Government been re-elected. They were not. Before that, however, they had published documents with endless numbers of schemes that were, frankly, never likely to be funded. There were promises everywhere but funding nowhere. The best example of that is the notorious Network North document. Incidentally, it included Tavistock and a number of other places not in the north of England at all, but the characteristic of all the entries in that document was that none of them was ever funded.

He does not have to listen to me about this, although it is a pleasure to speak to the House now. My predecessor, Huw Merriman, was in front of the Transport Select Committee a few days ago and said:

“A lot of promises were made to MPs and others as to the ambition, but it did not match the amount that was actually being set down. By the time I came into post I ended up with a list that was much longer than could be funded”.


That is true: around the country, all sorts of communities were promised transport schemes by the previous Government that were never likely to be funded and were not funded. Somebody has to sort that out and announce a programme that will bring long-term economic prosperity around Britain, get schemes built and stop a lot of money being spent on endless scheme development without the schemes being delivered. This is such a list, and this list will be delivered. The funding is in place through the spending review to do it, even though there is less than we would like because of the lamentable state of the economy at the time this Government took over.

The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has a lot to say pejoratively about the Government’s rail reform and he continues to ask where the Bill is, but he knows perfectly well that progress can be made without the Bill. Indeed, the purpose of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 was to start the process of bringing passenger operations back into public ownership. The consequence is that we already have two parts of the railway controlled by one person, both the infrastructure and operations. That will allow better reliability, increased revenue and reduced costs. Things are happening today that were not going to happen under the previous regime, and which will produce a better railway. That is important.

The noble Lord says that civil servants are running train services. Actually, I note that Steve White at Southeastern Railway and Lawrence Bowman at South Western Railway are good railway people. They are not civil servants; they are public servants, and they intend to run those businesses for the benefit of the travelling public and the British economy.

The noble Lord talked a bit about open access. What he failed to say about the applications that the Office of Rail and Road recently rejected is that it did not reject them on any competitive grounds; it simply rejected them, most recently, because of a lack of capacity in the railway system. Those train services could not run, and if they had then they would have disturbed further—or, rather, reduced—the reliability of the system.

One point about the list of schemes—lamentably, he did not go into it in detail, but I could—is that many of those schemes will help the railway to run by improving its capacity, such as the digital signalling on the southern end of the east coast main line, which the noble Baroness referred to. The list is starting to look at improving railway capacity and reliability, which was not a feature of many of the Network North schemes—even though they were not funded—but is a feature of these schemes. This is part of the Government’s intention for a long-term investment strategy, and the schemes announced by the Secretary of State last week are an important part of that. I absolutely contend that the Government are on track to deliver what the economy needs in terms of local transport, particularly in the Midlands and the north; to deliver on road schemes without having a horrifically long list of schemes that were encouraged but never likely to be funded; and to start to do things on the railway that will make a real difference.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, was much more focused on the announcement itself, for which I am sure both I and the House are grateful. She enumerated a number of the schemes in the announcement; I am pleased that she welcomes those, as the rest of us will. There will be an announcement on Northern Powerhouse Rail shortly. I will not define “shortly” today; it needs to be worked out with the combined authority mayors in the north of England, which is the reason for some delay. On the road schemes, details of the timescales will emerge as road investment scheme 3 is put together and announced in the early part of next year. On the railway, we will now move forward with the schemes that have been announced.

The noble Baroness is of course right that there are well-known projects and schemes that have not made this list, particularly railway schemes, principally because the other thing that the Government did, as the Chancellor announced as part of the spending review, was to fund HS2 to continue to be delivered alongside the wholesale revision of its governance and management, which will make spending that money more successful.

That does not mean that everything that one would have wanted to have been done is capable of being done for the moment. In particular, the noble Baroness referred to the electrification of the Midland main line, which has got to Syston, near Leicester, but will not go forward, at least in this spending review programme. What will go forward, however, are the bi-mode trains that take advantage of the wires, where they are up, as well as the improvement of the power supply and resilience of the existing wiring south of Bedford, which is quite old. Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and other major places on the Midland main line will see a betterment of service due to the introduction of the new trains in the autumn. I think we all want to regard future electrification as a deferral rather than an abandonment.

The noble Baroness referred to phase 5 of the scheme at Dawlish in Devon on the resilience of the Great Western main line. Phases 1 to 4 were principally about repairing the sea wall and the damage created 10 years ago by an exceptional storm, whereas phase 5 is looking at the stability of the cliffs behind the railway, which indeed should be the subject of future work. The remediation, and indeed the speed of movement, of those cliffs is worth monitoring now, whereas the work that has been done up to now has been on the basic resilience of the sea wall in order to keep the railway running.

The noble Baroness is right about Peckham Rye; it is the largest interchange station, but the scheme is, at least at present, unaffordable. Although, again, I would expect that to form part of a longer-term enhancement pipeline. It is regrettable that there are things across the railway that everybody would have wanted to see, but there is simply not enough money for them.

The noble Baroness is right about the lessons from recent projects. We have talked in this Chamber about HS2 and the need for new management, governance and a focus on understanding what is being delivered at the time the money is spent. The Government, frankly, should be commended for their commitment to continue HS2, which will produce large-scale economic benefit in the Midlands while that process takes place. Not everything is bad in the railway project firmament. Indeed, the trans-Pennine upgrade and east-west rail are so far on time and on budget. Learning from those is as important as learning from HS2, which, sadly, is neither.

Finally, the noble Baroness referred to digital twins. My noble friend Lord Vallance has a lot to say about digital twins for the whole of the Oxford to Cambridge arc, of which east-west rail will form part. Its use in project management is only in the foothills but it needs to be increased. I agree with her on that, too.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my question is about the accuracy of the Statement. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me that it is accurate. I refer to the third page, under the headline “Major road network”, and the Government explaining

“why we extended the temporary cut in fuel duty at the last Budget”.

That temporary cut has been going on since 2011, since when the fuel duty level has been frozen at or below 2010 rates. This has cost the public purse £130 billion thus far and, if it is not temporary and is to continue until 2030, will cost £200 billion. Of the beneficiaries of that, the top quintile by income gets 24% of the benefit—that is all those Chelsea tractors—while the poorest quintile gets only 10% of the benefit. Some of this money might, for example, be spent on at least keeping the £3 bus fare or going back to £2 bus fares. Can the Minister assure me that this is only, in the Government’s mind, a temporary cut in fuel duty?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Baroness will know the answer to that. As I said at Questions, taxation is a matter for His Majesty’s Treasury. The Chancellor will determine taxation policy from time to time.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Secretary of State and my noble friend on producing a comprehensive list of railway and road schemes they intend to go ahead with. This is the first time that we have seen such a list for years. In her introduction, the Secretary of State says that she is green-lighting over 50 rail and road projects. I am not sure whether green-lighting is all right, because occasionally greens go to orange and red, but I hope that is wrong. Within the text, there is quite a lot of uncertainty about which schemes are going ahead and which are what Ministers call “paused”. Pausing could happen for just a week or for a year. It would be useful, the next time Ministers do this, to spell out what pausing means.

One of the schemes paused is the Dawlish scheme mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. I have an interest as I live down the other end. I am not suggesting the work should start now but, as my noble friend said, monitoring should continue because, if the cliff does come down—it could happen quite quickly if it does—it will put the south-west in a very difficult position.

Could my noble friend, over the next week or two, publish a short paper giving the criteria used for going ahead with or pausing different schemes? It can apply to roads as well as to rail. We have had so much stop-start over the last few years, for reasons we need not go into. It would be nice to know what the reasons are. What are the criteria? Is it that there is a good business case, is it because the local MP knows the Minister very well, or is there some other good reason? I am sure there are good reasons for the decisions, but it would be helpful if Ministers could come up with that in the next few weeks. Otherwise, I congratulate the Minister on a good, comprehensive document.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his compliments. Of course, the real significance of this list is that it is a funded list, rather than one that is not funded—a list of aspiration and hope. I am not too sure about the phrase “green-lighting”; I am not too that it is in the dictionary and, if it is, it is a shame. What it means is that these are funded schemes to go ahead. One or two still need development consent orders, which is a process that has to be taken to a conclusion. Therefore, the start dates will be different across the huge list, but many are ready and have been waiting for funding for quite a long time.

On the pausing at Dawlish that I referred to in the discussion with the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, monitoring will take place. It is not that it “should” take place. The monitoring of those cliffs needs to continue. My understanding of the situation, which I have to say is from the last job I did rather than this one, is that monitoring those cliffs is essential. The work needed to remedy all this is, at least partially, about what we see in the monitoring process, so it is sensible to look now and do something when agreed.

Will we publish a paper on the criteria that have been used? There are two things here. One is that the Government have decided to do these schemes and have taken a view, from the wreckage they inherited, to prioritise things that need to be done that will contribute to a better local economy. We will get on with doing that first. In the longer term, there is an intention to have both a 10-year infrastructure strategy and a long-term railway plan. In conjunction with the revision of the Green Book that the Chancellor talked about in the spending review—to look at aspects that allow projects in parts of the country with lower rates of economic activity to benefit—I think there will be a case to publish a long-term railway plan and talk about the criteria used. For now, we will get on with what has been announced.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, the Minister is familiar with the intricacies of the Barnett formula. I know that because he has quoted it to me in the past. Will he therefore confirm that the Barnett formula, as far as rail is concerned, will indeed generate money for Wales from those projects that are England-only, such as the Oxford to Cambridge line? Will he also confirm what the First Minister of Wales has called for—for Wales to get the Barnett consequential of that expenditure?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right: this subject has come up before. There is a real difference in the current circumstances. Rail projects are all classified as England and Wales in the way that this is done. The real difference in this list is that, for the first time, there is a significant commitment to funding rail enhancements in Wales: £300 million or so in the spending review period, and a total of over £450 million in 10 years.

The current Welsh Government, particularly Ken Skates—whom I happened to meet this morning on the subject—and the Secretary of State for Wales, agree that the schemes that have been announced for development and implementation are the right ones. There are schemes for the south Wales main line arising from the Burns report, and there are schemes for the north Wales main line to improve train frequency and connectivity. There is a scheme for Wrexham to Bidston—curiously, in these documents it is referred to as Padeswood sidings, about the most obscure title that you could imagine—which is designed to make some freight improvements to double the frequency from Wrexham to Bidston. There are also a number of other things. The significance of this announcement is that it commits money to Welsh railway schemes— schemes that the Welsh Government agree need to be taken forward as the most urgent—and I hope that the noble Lord welcomes that.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, like my noble friend, I was rather surprised by the tone of the Official Opposition, given the billions of pounds wasted on HS2 just to provide a shuttle—a high-speed shuttle, admittedly—between a north London suburb and Birmingham. What a waste of time and national resource that was.

I very much welcome a number of initiatives in the Statement. Like the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I travel up from Cornwall normally, and I welcome the stations at Wellington and Cullompton, and the opening of the line to Portishead, for which we have waited for some time. The Minister mentioned the Tavistock line, and I rather regret that it looks like that will not happen in my lifetime, but we will see.

As someone who is not a rail expert, I will ask the Minister two things. I do not understand why we do not have a regular electrification programme in this country for the whole of the rest of our network, because of both running cost—the cost of rails and the weight of the machines—and our carbon footprint. Why do we not just have the skills and ability to roll out electrification each year in a standard way that makes that work at minimum cost?

On signalling, I notice that there is one signalling exercise—on Newcastle metro—but a number of schemes are needed for signalling. I do not understand why, in these days of advanced technical expertise, AI and the rest, we do not just have in-cab signalling, rather than having to continually replace—very expensively—the physical signalling resources across our network.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am pleased that the noble Lord welcomes Wellington, Cullompton and Portishead. The answer with Tavistock is that there were so many schemes in what the previous Government promoted as Restoring Your Railway, which on the face of it looked to be an invitation to any community in the country to wish back the railway that was taken away 50, 60 or 70 years ago because, frankly, it did not have many people or goods using it. The answer to the noble Lord is for Tavistock and Plymouth to put forward a sound business case for that investment that would reflect the actual costs of building that railway. I have some experience of that scheme at a much earlier stage, when somebody rather optimistically claimed that it would cost £30 million to extend from Bere Alston to Tavistock. The reality is that it would be not reopening a railway but building a new one, and to do that you need very substantial economic activity there.

The regular electrification programme would of course reduce costs, but we have significant electrification going on in this country. The trans-Pennine upgrade is a very significant electrification project from York to Manchester, and that is in the course of delivery at the moment. When Mark Wild has sorted out HS2 in management and governance terms, as he will, it will be a very significant piece of electrification to be carried out by those people.

In the medium term, one of the answers is for us to have a strategy that embraces both rolling stock and electrification, because it is clear that modern technology allows battery trains and that battery trains could replace diesel trains on quite a lot of the network; they would not need total electrification, but they would need some wires. The noble Lord may have seen that the proposals for East West Rail do precisely that—there will be wires up where it is cheap and convenient to put them up to charge the train in order to charge the batteries for when it would need to go through other places.

The noble Lord raises an interesting point about signalling, but I think the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, had it right about the European train control system on the south end of the east coast main line. We need to move away from like-for-like replacement of existing signalling. Still more difficult, the cost of those schemes means that, almost inevitably, while the aspiration to replace 1950s and 1960s signalling always starts with more flexibility and more capacity, that flexibility and capacity have always been deleted out of those schemes because they cost too much, and what you actually get is a like-for-like replacement at really quite significant cost.

The opportunity with the ETCS on the south end of the east coast main line is to embed a system that has in-cab signalling and does not require fixed assets on the railway but can run more trains on the same railway, because the trains are intelligent and know where each other are. The advantage of doing it on the south end of the east coast main line is that many classes of locomotive and multiple unit will be fitted with equipment, which will mean extending it. Therefore, using it to replace conventional resignalling will be far more possible in future than it is now. It is a thoroughly good thing, and the noble Lord is right that that is the way forward.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement. Reference has been made to applications by open access operators. Will my noble friend the Minister take this opportunity to update the House on the Government’s current view of capacity and capacity constraints on the east coast and west coast main lines?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. The truth is that we knew at the time of the cancellation of HS2 phase 2a that the original purpose of a new railway, originally all the way to Manchester, was to enhance capacity. We knew at the time that phase 2a was cancelled that there were no alternatives and, therefore, that the railway would be constrained north of Birmingham, as it currently is. The Government are thinking about what might be done about that, but until HS2 is built to Birmingham, the Office of Rail and Road has told applicants for open access on the west coast main line that there is simply no space left—and there is no space left. The ORR has had to consider its duty to promote reliability on the railway and encourage Network Rail to improve reliability, and it would be pretty hard to do so if at the same time it approved applications that did not have appropriately guarded train paths to achieve it.

We will see what happens on the east coast main line, where several applications are currently being considered by the ORR as an independent adjudicator. The truth is that one reason for ETCS on the south end of the east coast main line is that the east coast main line is largely full too. I draw the House’s attention to earlier discussions that we have had about the new east coast main line timetable, which has been long in coming and in the end had to be decided by me as the Rail Minister because it was so difficult to get agreement between the parties that had train paths and rights to train paths in order to produce a satisfactory timetable. The truth is that my noble friend is right: on both main lines there is a shortage of capacity, the solution to which can be achieved only through further investment.

[Lord Cryer (Lab)]

My Lords, it is widely recognised that rail privatisation has been a spectacular disaster, which is possibly why around 80% of British people, according to most polls, support rail renationalisation—including millions of Conservative voters, who the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, clearly thinks are closet Marxists planning the state takeover of everything. I have my doubts.

My noble friend has touched repeatedly on the fundamental problem with the rail network—a lack of capacity, in which we have not seen any real expansion for decades. At the same time, road congestion is costing billions to the economy, not just in passengers but more in freight. If there was some movement from road to rail for freight, it would have an enormous economic impact. An average freight train can take around 70 to 80 HGV journeys away from the road network, easing that congestion. This document is a step in the right direction but, in the longer term, a major expansion of the rail network will serve the country well into the distant future.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for those observations. He is right that the Government would encourage more freight on railways—there was a Question on that very subject at Oral Questions this afternoon—which is why they are committed to a long-term rail freight increase target. He will be pleased to know that rail freight grew by 5% last year. It is important when determining timetables for the railways to leave capacity in the right places and at the right times for freight traffic to increase while not constraining the desire to operate a better passenger service. That is one of the reasons why Great British Railways, when it is established, will have control of the timetable to make those best possible judgments, which are not currently made for the railway as a whole despite the fact that it is so obviously a whole network. That is why the public support the Government’s position on managing the railway as a whole network.

Transport Act 2000 (Air Traffic Services) (Prescribed Terms) Regulations 2025

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Transport Act 2000 (Air Traffic Services) (Prescribed Terms) Regulations 2025.

Relevant document: 28th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the UK’s airspace is a vital piece of our national infrastructure that is essential to economic growth, connectivity and national resilience. Last year, there were more than 2.4 million flights using UK airspace, but despite a significant rise in air traffic demand, the structure of our airspace has remained largely unchanged since the 1950s, when there were around 200,000 flights a year. This means that today’s flight paths remain largely based on a system that relies on a network of outdated ground-based navigation beacons. As a result, aircraft today fly less efficient routes and are unable to take advantage of modern aircraft technology and performance. This leads to increased fuel consumption, a greater risk of delays and, as a result, higher carbon emissions. The National Air Traffic Service—NATS—has estimated that, without modernisation, by 2040 one in five flights could face delays of more than 45 minutes.

A plan to fix this has been set out by the Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority—the CAA—in the form of the airspace modernisation strategy. The regulations being considered today are one part of enabling that plan to happen. Modernised airspace will enable greater capacity in the air, improve resilience to disruption and help UK aviation to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The draft regulations will be made under powers conferred by the Transport Act 2000. Under that Act, the Secretary of State may modify prescribed terms in an air traffic services licence. This instrument designates as prescribed any term specifying air traffic services authorised under a licence and any term specifying the area in which those services may be provided. In practice, this will allow the Secretary of State to modify the terms in the air traffic services licence granted to NATS (En Route) plc, known as NERL, in order to create and fund a new UK airspace design service, or UKADS for short.

The airspace modernisation strategy is a long-term plan designed to ensure UK airspace remains safe, efficient and capable of meeting future demands. It includes changes to flight paths to enable better use of the UK’s airspace.

The approach adopted in the UK until now has seen individual sponsors—usually airports—design and progress their own proposals for airspace change through the CAA’s CAP1616 airspace change process. This approach recognises the crucial role that airports play in airspace design, but also creates fragmentation and delay, particularly when multiple airports have overlapping airspace designs and competing priorities. This is especially an issue around London, which currently has 11 airports in the programme and some of the most complex airspace in the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, in general we welcome this statutory instrument. We welcome the prospect of a more rational organisation of airspace—who could do otherwise? However, there are considerable problems and the Minister needs probing on some of them. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Foster of Oxton, who is not in her place because she is detained on a train that has been diverted and which has delayed her. She would have been here; as noble Lords will know, during her many years in the European Parliament, she worked on all the Single European Sky legislation. She has supplied me with some questions, and some of my speech has been helped by her: I want to acknowledge that, because that has been very useful.

The first question has to go to cost. How much extra will the airlines have to pay, over and above their current payments for air traffic control services? They are going to be recharged for this. Is it going to be a smooth sum, or will it be lumpy and go up and down as costs are incurred? The Minister says it will be small and that, indeed, they may save money in the long term, once it is all done. However, there are so many things that the Government say are going to be small and will save you money in the long term, but they never do. So can he be more precise than simply saying “small” and give us a better clue of how much it will be, perhaps as a percentage of what they currently pay?

Another question has to do with the timescale for achieving this; here, I refer to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. It looks as though it will take years, not simply because of complexity—we grant that the work will be complex—but also, if one looks at page 5 of the Explanatory Notes that accompany the statutory instrument and the number of stages that have to be gone through to achieve a CAA decision on airspace change, it could take many years to do the work. Can the noble Lord give an estimate of how long it might be before, even for the London area, we see these changes brought into effect?

Returning to the charges for a moment, will foreign carriers that enter UK airspace be asked to pay towards this? If so, how will they be charged? Then there is the big question of how these changes are going to be integrated with neighbouring airspace and air traffic control arrangements, particularly the Single European Sky arrangements. Do they need to be, perhaps because they are en route? It might be that they are wholly within domestic airspace and that integration is therefore not needed, but some words from the Minister on that when he comes to reply would be helpful.

There is another question, about skills. I do not doubt for a moment that many of the people involved in airspace planning in the UK are very skilful, but UK Research and Innovation’s Future Flight Challenge said:

“The skills and knowledge needed for the airspace designers for any ACPs associated with enabling new airspace users will likely be different to the airport based changes”


to which we are accustomed. Where are the skills going to come from? Can we be guaranteed that we will have the right skills and the right people in place to do this work in a timely fashion?

Next, I want to build on some remarks made by my noble friend Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate, who referred to general aviation and smaller airports—he did not refer to smaller airports explicitly, but I shall. With this new all-singing, all-dancing, powerful body that will set these new rules for flights, it will be very easy to ignore the particular needs of smaller airports. I note that, in the consultation so far, there have been some very worried remarks from airports such as Biggin Hill and Farnborough about how their interests are going to be looked after as this work proceeds. Again, some consolation from the Minister would be very helpful.

Finally, I come to the public. Any change in flight paths can have a devastating effect on communities that live under those flight paths, particularly if they are close to an airport. The question of public engagement by NERL as it proceeds with this work is going to be crucial to its successful implementation. I would like to hear the noble Lord say that that there will be a plan from the outset for transparent public engagement on the proposed changes, and the possible changes, so that communities, local authorities and their representatives can be fully engaged. He may say that this could make it difficult to get the work done, but my view is that we have a choice: either we tackle this problem early on and hope to deal with it as we proceed, or we proceed in relative silence, with a lack of transparency, and run into a massive problem at the end, a problem that might, in various locations, be so powerful that it results in making the changes politically unimplementable. I would like to hear about the public engagement strategy, because of the powerful effect that these changes might have on local communities; otherwise, if the Government can pull this off, it will take many years and it will improve things, but there is a great danger, in my view, of it all going horribly wrong somewhere along the line.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their consideration of these draft regulations. I will now attempt to respond to the specific points raised.

I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate, welcome these proposals. He referred to general aviation, as did the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. We recognise the key role of general aviation and the value that it brings, both economically and as a pipeline for people to learn to fly. The UKADS will take account of the needs and views of general aviation as it develops its designs. Of course, London has some of the most complex airspace in the world, and the UKADS will provide the guiding mind to help deliver modernisation in this very complex area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

The question about timescale was not about when the work would begin; rather, it was, I think, about when it was likely to result in some fruit.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I will write further on what we can say about the projected timescales of conclusion. It is enough to note for now that this work is extraordinarily complex, particularly since we are seeking to address the airspace around London, which is one of the world’s most congested spaces. I will write to all noble Lords on what we currently envisage the timescales of this to be, so far as we can estimate them.

I was delighted to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, also welcomes this statutory instrument. In respect of local communities, which are clearly very important, aircraft noise is a considerable issue in some communities. I should declare my interest in that I live in Richmond, so I am familiar with the circumstances of this—although I have got used to it, as I did when I lived in Hayes and Ealing when I was growing up.

The first thing to say is that modernisation is expected to benefit those who use and are affected by UK airspace, including residents living near airports. The UK ADS will progress airspace change proposals through the CAA’s CAP1616 airspace change process, as current sponsors do now. This includes requirements to engage with local communities and to factor in environmental considerations. Airports will continue to play an important role in strengthening community relationships by working in partnership with the UK ADS to deliver consultations and to ensure that local voices are meaningfully represented. The CAA and the department expect, by the September of this year, to consult on a package of changes that will make the process for airspace design decisions more proportionate. People affected by airspace change will continue to have a say and any changes will retain the important principles of a transparent, evidence-based process.

Airspace modernisation is expected to result in a further reduction in the average noise levels per flight, as aircraft climbs and descents could become quicker and quieter with route changes that better utilise the capabilities of modern aircraft. Modern technology and navigation systems also make it possible to set much more accurate flight paths, which navigate more accurately around population centres. However, noise impacts will also depend on other factors, such as planning decisions, traffic growth or airline route choices. Airports will still be expected to develop and implement robust noise action plans, which will be subject to oversight and review by my department and the Civil Aviation Authority.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, asked whether the new body could be subject to freedom of information requirements. It will be a body in private hands, but the Civil Aviation Authority and the Department for Transport will be subject to FoI requests. She, too, asked about the timescale. I have already said that I will write to noble Lords to make an initial foray into that area.

On the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and the nature of the charges, in November 2024, the Civil Aviation Authority set out illustrative costs of approximately £20 million per annum. This is broadly equivalent to approximately 2% of the 2024 UK en-route charges paid by airlines—for illustrative purposes, this is approximately £7 per flight or 5p per passenger. The CAA has taken into account feedback received and is currently consulting on detailed proposals for the new charge, with final charges depending on the chosen regulatory model and actual service costs.

The noble Lord asked whether charges will be paid by foreign airlines: they will. They will pay through the existing industry mechanisms, the same as the en-route rate paid for services today. He asked about skills. This is a challenge around the world. UKADS and NERL have skills and facilities in house. We will maintain what we have, and by creating a new guiding mind, we will enable better use of the skills and experience we already have in house. I will write to the noble Lord further about integration with the European system.

I believe I have answered all the points that have been raised, but if there are any further points, I shall be happy to write to noble Lords.

Without these regulations we will not be able to establish the UK Airspace Design Service and deliver the benefits that airspace modernisation can bring. Those measures will help us deliver fewer delays for passengers and quicker, quieter and cleaner flights over the UK. This will lead straight into the Government’s commitment to innovation, sustainability and economic growth. I hope noble Lords will join me in supporting these measures.

Motion agreed.

European Union Entry/Exit System

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pidgeon]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to prevent the introduction of the European Union’s Entry/Exit System causing transport congestion and disruption to freight.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the European Union’s Entry/Exit System, EES, is now expected to be introduced in October 2025, with checks taking place on UK soil at the juxtaposed controls at the Port of Dover, Eurotunnel and Eurostar. The Government continue to work closely with the authorities at those three places and the French authorities to ensure that EES is implemented successfully. In respect of freight, over 80% of HGV journeys from Britain to the EU are undertaken by foreign-registered vehicles. EU hauliers will not be required to complete EES checks.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer, but, given the significant risk to UK exports, particularly “just in time” produce, what work are the Government doing with the French authorities and the European Commission to ensure that pre-registration systems are in place ahead of implementation to alleviate congestion and support smoother freight flows?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Of course, the primary aim of government has to be to ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place at juxtaposed portals ahead of the implementation of the system. The EES is an EU-wide system. Although the EU has expressed a desire to explore pre-registration and we continue to work with European colleagues to encourage the development and adoption of an app, it is still in the early stages and will not be available at the start of implementation. However, even if there were an app, passengers would still need to attend a kiosk, booth or tablet to enrol biometrics, but of course the app would reduce the time taken for individuals to undertake full EES checks at the border, so it would be very desirable. We are urging them as hard as we can.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there is a facility at Stansted Airport that currently takes live racehorses, exporting them to the rest of Europe and further afield? For good reason, that has been requisitioned for other purposes, but there could be a period when those racehorses will not be able to move from East Anglia to the rest of Europe. Will he use his good offices to investigate this to make sure that a comparable facility is available without any delay to expediting flights of live racehorses, which bring much joy as well as being good for the East Anglian economy?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am afraid it is a revelation to me that there is such a facility at Stansted, but, now that I know, I will go away and look at the noble Baroness’s remarks to see what can be done.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, Operation Brock causes absolute havoc around Kent, and the renewed and enhanced passport restrictions will inevitably cause delays. Can the Minister assure us that Operation Brock will not become a regular feature of life in that part of Kent?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Of course, one has to be very sympathetic about the considerable disruption that Brock causes. Since they took office, the Government have been thinking about what else can be done. My department has signed a contract with Lydden Hill racetrack to be a contingency site for the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum to incorporate into its traffic management plans, and we are also in negotiations with another site. But the primary thing that needs to happen is for the Port of Dover to finish its facility at Dover Western Docks. That was facilitated by an early action of this Government, and the work finally started in March 2025. It is in progress to be finished by 1 November, and it is monitored by my department and the Home Office weekly and by Ministers monthly.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Government still require incoming freight vehicles to call at a place called Ashford Sevington to be checked, or will that be removed? At the moment, all incoming vehicles are supposed to be checked at Sevington but, of course, half of them just drive by up the motorway and are never seen again.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. I will have to take some advice on how that works; it is not immediately apparent that it is connected with the EES, but I will go away and answer his question in writing.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, following the concerns expressed about Operation Brock, it is worth recalling that the EU’s phased introduction of EES allows for temporary suspension at specific border points in the event of high traffic. Given that the UK’s traffic monitoring will give us advance notice of building problems at the juxtaposed borders in Dover and Folkestone, what assurance can the Minister give us that the Government have sought to ensure that French border officials will accept and use our traffic information when making a decision to suspend the EES?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is quite correct that there is considerable flexibility, certainly in the early days of the scheme, to suspend it for the benefit of traffic getting through. The juxtaposition of the French and British border controls is very helpful in that respect. With our current, better relationship with the French Government, I know that there is an intention both at the highest level and at a working level to do precisely what the noble Lord says so that the French can apply this flexibility at the right times for the benefit of traffic going through the ports and Eurotunnel.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, on the movement of trucks across EU borders, what developments, if any, have there been on sorting out the urgent question of cabotage for touring musicians, which the Minister’s department should be taking a keen interest in?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am absolutely sure that my department is taking a keen interest in it. Again, this is not immediately connected with the European Entry/Exit System, but I would be very happy to write to the noble Earl and say what progress there has been.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, given that the Channel Tunnel has quite a lot of capacity, what consideration have the Government given to the increased use of the tunnel for rail freight? Will the Government’s strategy for increasing rail freight in this country include a proposal along those lines?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises an excellent point. In fact, the Government and I are very active in encouraging more freight through the tunnel—and, indeed, more railway freight generally. Of course, as the noble Lord will know from our discussions on the then public ownership Bill and subsequently, the Government intend to give Great British Railways a target to increase rail freight, particularly in respect of the use of Eurotunnel. Both Eurotunnel and HS1 have the facility to discount track access charges for new freight. When I meet the freight community, as I do probably more often than the passenger operators —at least as a group—I regularly encourage and unfailingly remind it of this so that we can use the surplus capacity to which the noble Lord refers.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that, while most of this discussion has related to the south of England, the impact of these changes is at least as significant on the other bits of England—not least the north of England, because businesses up there are affected at least equivalently by the changes that may take place?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Indeed—we are very mindful of the fact that, done inelegantly and with the wrong result, this could affect business across the country generally, not merely in the south of England. The three juxtaposed controls are in the south of England, but they affect travellers and freight from all over the country. We are mindful of the effect on the economy as a whole; that is why the Government have worked so hard since they took office to check both that the arrangements in these places are adequate and that there is more capacity, as well as in collaboration with the European Union so that its end of this works as well as ours will.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister consider exploring the viability of processing and charging facilities on the M20 in the Ashford area, away from the coast at Folkestone, Dover and Thanet, to ameliorate the problem with congestion on the coast?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his suggestion. The juxtaposed portals work by having designated areas which are under the control of other sovereign nations. That would always require a lot of attention. The site in the Dover Western Docks was chosen after the Government took action to enable it to happen. We feel confident that it will work and that the authorities at Dover can sort out the difference between EU hauliers, who do not need to go through these checks, and hauliers from Great Britain, who do. It will depend on the dexterity of the Port of Dover, which needs to work hard to maintain its own business. What the noble Lord suggests is clever, but it would take a lot of doing, while the arrangements that we are putting in place must be there by the autumn.

HS2 Reset

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, in the late 2000s there was an absolute cross-party ambition in the UK to build a high-speed railway connecting London and the north of England, and ultimately Scotland, and increasing the capacity of our railway was at the core of that ambition. The Liberal Democrats—and I am speaking on behalf of my Benches today—have always supported this. It is not about a nice-to-have, fast, shiny new railway line which we all love, but helping to alleviate the pressure and capacity restrictions on the existing rail network, and supporting growth.

This Statement, the James Stewart review, which is to be commended, and the associated papers set out a damning story of Conservative mismanagement. What should have been a fantastic example of investment, connecting our great cities of Leeds and Manchester with London while boosting economic growth, has in reality been a Treasury spending spree wasting billions of pounds of public money and causing years of delay, based on a political whim of the day. It is a textbook example of how not to build modern infrastructure, and the Conservative Party should be ashamed of their mismanagement.

The Conservative Government focused on a schedule before sufficient design work had taken place—a recipe for disaster that we have seen play out—and constantly changed the scope and requirements of the project. Reading the Statement about HS2 brought back many memories about what happened with Crossrail. There was no real oversight, and there were confused lines of accountability. Key people were not listening to those who were reporting that the build was not on time, and they chose to water down those warnings up the line. There was constant pressure to change the scope, an obsession with an opening date above all else, and a lack of capacity in the Department for Transport to oversee major infrastructure projects.

This reset for High Speed 2 is therefore absolutely welcome. To date, the project has failed to follow international best practice in building major projects. We on these Benches stress how much we welcome the new leadership of Mark Wild, as chief executive of High Speed 2, and his forensic work in unpicking what happened and getting the programme back on track, to a realistic timescale and budget. He took over Crossrail when it was on its knees and turned it around, motivating the team to deliver the Elizabeth Line, which is such a pleasure to use and is one of the busiest train lines in the country. I know he can do the same with High Speed 2.

The project has again shone a light on poor procurement and poor contract management within the Department for Transport. What actions will the Government take to address insufficient capability within the Department for Transport, particularly in commercial and delivery expertise, and client work on major infrastructure projects on this scale? What will the Government do to build trust with local communities and wider stakeholders in this new HS2 project? What changes will the Government make to the governance structure and financing of High Speed 2 to ensure that costs and schedule estimates are reliable? As always, we want to gain wider learnings from this. As I called for after Crossrail—in fact, I briefed a previous chief executive of High Speed 2 and Ministers about the issues we had found during the Crossrail delays—we want to build more transport infrastructure to help our regional economies grow. To do this, however, we need a structure to deliver it on time and on budget.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by emphasising the benefits of a new railway to the Midlands and the north of England. Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness referred to the capacity of the West Coast Main Line, and it is not in contention that new capacity needs to be built. Connectivity drives growth, jobs and housing, and the skyline of Birmingham is testimony to Birmingham’s expectations of a faster link to London. Indeed, the Government have put significant money into connectivity for the sports quarter, which, clearly, would not be being proposed were it not for HS2 serving Birmingham in the future. The development opportunities at Old Oak Common are already being realised, as will those at Euston. The benefits of greater connectivity are there to see and are really important for our country and its economic future.

We can also do some big projects. The trans-Pennine route upgrade is a £14 billion project to an existing railway and is on time and budget. But it is true, as both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness said, that HS2 has gone badly wrong, and it falls to this Government to sort it out, because we cannot carry on like this. Currently, we can predict neither when it will open nor how much it will cost. That is a pretty terrible position to be in and it has to be said the consequences are as a result of actions taken by previous Governments.

I welcome the fact that both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness welcomed the appointment of Mark Wild as chief executive and Mike Brown as chair of HS2. I have every confidence that both those people will begin to put this right and fundamentally restructure the company and the approach to the project through a very detailed review of where it is now—because, unless you know where it is now, you will not be able to find out where it is going in the future.

It must be the case that the criticisms of the governance model are justified. Indeed, James Stewart’s report sets out a whole a whole raft of recommendations that the Government have fully accepted. My own department clearly shoulders some culpability. The noble Lord asked what has happened in the department and, although I do not think it is not right to delve into senior personnel, he will, of course, note that a new Permanent Secretary is about to be appointed, the previous incumbent having retired.

We need a new model, but one in which the chair and board of HS2 take a far greater responsibility for the things they should be responsible for. The noble Baroness referred to Crossrail, where it was quite clear that the chair and board were not acting in the interests of the company. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that I regard him as the best board member of Crossrail during his time as a non-executive director, because he diligently looked at the progress of the project. Indeed, the then chair of the project complained furiously, to me and others, about the noble Lord’s diligence in inspecting the real state of the project. That was as it should be and it is a shame that HS2’s boards do not seem to have done the same. It is right to have a new chair, and I have no doubt that in due course we will have a new or different board as well.

I will not go through the Stewart report. It contains a raft of recommendations, as I said, all of which the Government have accepted. It is also quite clear that, if you are going to put out big construction contracts, you should have a sponsor capability that is capable of understanding what the contractors are doing as they do it and of measuring how much is done and how much it has cost as it is happening. Mark Wild has found that HS2 itself is fundamentally unable to achieve that in its present state and will therefore change it.

What is in front of us in Mark Wild’s letter to the Secretary of State and the Stewart report is extraordinarily unhappy. Clearly, a number of really bad decisions have been taken. I helped Doug Oakervee with his review in 2020, and his strong recommendation was that the then construction contracts should not have been left in their current form because they had insufficient detail and there was insufficient design and encouragement to the contractors to perform properly and to budget. We can see the result of that here.

I will not go through the Secretary of State’s Statement in detail—because it is already in the public domain—nor the letter or the report. To answer the noble Lord’s question about Euston station, it is clear that Euston station is no longer to be delivered as part of HS2. That cannot be a great surprise because, as the Secretary of State remarked in the other place, faced with a first design that cost a huge amount more than the budget, when HS2 looked at it again, it came back with a design that cost even more—and that is without the air-conditioned platforms that were originally part of the design and were an eye-wateringly unnecessarily feature, since they do not exist even in railways in Saudi Arabia, where you would probably think they might like that sort of thing.

So, it is right for Euston to be dealt with separately. The reason the noble Lord is not aware of a separate company is that the Government have not yet got to that stage. It has taken a long and painful process to get to a stage at which all the parties involved in Euston now agree with the spatial plan, including the developer Lendlease and its new partner, the Crown Estate. The Government are now considering how best to procure that station, which includes an HS2 station and the concourse of the Network Rail station as a combined station, which it always should have been but, certainly when I started chairing the partnership board at Euston, was not. In fact, the original intention was to have two platforms numbered “1” because the HS2 people thought they were building a new railway in a separate station. How stupid was that?

So, we are progressing with Euston as a separate project to be delivered by a separate organisation. There will be more to say in short order, both here and in the other place, but the noble Lord has not missed anything. The state in which even that part of the project was left, after the peremptory cancellation of phase 2a and the statement by the previous Prime Minister that Euston should be built with no public funding, was one where it needed serious work to come to a conclusion. But I do not agree with the noble Lord that we should somehow further alter the design of Euston. We should get on with a plan that works in order to open this railway at the earliest possible time that Mark Wild can predict, at a cost he can predict, and with a delivery plan that will work.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s Statement on HS2 yesterday. It has good detail and a lot of the plans that the Government intend to do. I was also pleased that the latest cost estimate of about £100 billion to get it to Birmingham, is much closer to the one that Michael Byng and I have been peddling for some years. I also welcome the new chief executive and chair of HS2 and, of course, the Ministers, who are both relatively new.

The worry I put to my noble friend is that the four new people at the top, excellent though they will be, have an incredibly difficult job ahead of them. One of the biggest problems is to unpick or change the mouthwatering contracts that most of the contractors have been given by the previous Administration, which means it will be very difficult to know what the future output costs will be and how they will be monitored. So, can one or two people—very good people, with two Ministers in charge—plan this without a much greater root-and-branch change in the Department of Transport and HS2? I hope I am wrong, but I think there is a lot of work to be done there as well.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that. There is no latest cost estimate. One of the things we are absolutely resolved to do is not to have such a cost estimate until Mark Wild and the people he is bringing in have been through this project in such detail that an estimate can be reliable. It is not at all satisfactory to have contractors working on such huge contracts without a full understanding by a decent sponsor of what they have delivered as they deliver it, how much it has cost, and what the remaining work is. That is also a feature, because the contracts were let too early and the design was not certain, so all that work needs to be done.

My noble friend is right that four new people by themselves cannot do all this—not by a long chalk. But noble Lords will, I hope, have read Mark Wild’s letter in detail, in which he sets out that, fundamentally, HS2 is unfit for purpose and he will have to restructure that company, alongside getting proper estimates of cost and timescale. He will need some help doing it and much of my and the Secretary of State’s discussion with him in the last weeks and months has been about how many people he needs to do that, who they are, whether we can trust them and how quickly we can get them in. Those elements are all important.

One of the really important things in this is that, I think for the first time for a long time, we will have a chair and a chief executive of HS2 who are communicative, collaborative, straight and honest, and we can have a discussion with them about where this is going and what it is doing. One of the characteristics of this company so far and of the Crossrail company for most of its life is that they were both arrogant enough to believe that they knew what they were doing without any supervision and without telling anybody what was really going on. In both cases, it went badly wrong. Mark knows that he has to change the culture of the company. There clearly are some good people there, but they need to be led and directed properly.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a former Secretary of State for Transport, I think one of rather many in this House, and as an adviser for many years to the Central Japan Railway Company, which is now busy building the fastest railway in the world, the Yamanashi Maglev. It may be of some comfort to all sides of the House that it is running considerably over budget and two or three years late, emphasising the point that these gigantic projects again and again, almost for the last century, have been becoming wildly over budget and raising all sorts of issues, such as social and environmental consequences, that were not seen to start with and were not brought into the consultation. That remains the situation.

I welcome the moves the Government are making to pull it together with the new appointments, which I am sure are of the highest quality. I think we should all try to live with the remarks of the Minister and others that it is all the previous Government’s fault. They always say that. We should swallow our pride and recognise that if we have joint support, all round, of the least partisan and most constructive kind, we will get this project through. My Japanese friends said from the start that building should have begun from the north and come downwards rather than starting from London. There might have been rather different politics if it had.

Is the Minister aware that there will be more overruns? There will be more costs that no one had foreseen. Their efforts should be welcomed, as I said, but they must also be prepared for being quite frank in coming before this House, and obviously the other place, with the details of where the overruns are and how they fit in. There is a much bigger lesson, as my noble friend rightly said in his excellent opening remarks, that in these giant projects, we have not quite got right the co-operation between the Government, the state and the private sector. I see another huge whitish elephant coming up at Sizewell C, not because there should not be nuclear power there—I am all for that—but because it is the wrong design. It is vast. It is going to take years, and it is going to cost nearly the same sort of money in the end as we are spending on this railway. Figures of £30 billion to £40 billion are freely mentioned. There needs to be a vastly greater concentration on combining finance by the state that does not end in borrowing and taxation that we cannot afford with the private sector, where there is lots of money ready to go into well-formed and properly investable projects.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

I remind the House that this is an opportunity for Back-Benchers to ask questions. We have several who want to intervene, and we will run out of time if we are not careful.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord and former Secretary of State, of which there seem to be very many on the Opposition Benches, for his remarks and observations.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will agree that the point of railways is moving people and freight around the country and that the railway system is not a kind of glorified train set for the great men of our age to play with. I have travelled up and down the west coast main line for more than 50 years, and during that period we have all experienced a great deal of trouble and difficulty. Can the Minister confirm that, as well as the other factors that are being taken into account in consideration of this woeful debacle, the interests of the travelling public and their convenience will be at the forefront of the consideration of what happens next?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I can indeed absolutely assure the noble Lord of that. One of the difficulties I found in coming into this position is that clearly the previous management of HS2 thought it was a construction project—I think there are some lessons from Crossrail here too. There was a view that somehow it was a big construction project and at the end you incidentally got a railway. That cannot be right. The original justification for this was the capacity constraint on the west coast main line, which is still there, and the projected inability to do anything serious about its capacity without years of disruption. What has resulted is a project that has created years of disruption, but somewhere else other than on the railway. I have it in mind constantly that this project will produce a new railway for the United Kingdom that will be regarded as part of the railway network by its customers. I refer to the ludicrous proposition that Euston should have had two platform 1s. Nobody cares anything about that. What they want is a train to Birmingham or a train to Manchester, and they want it to run reliably. We have that very much in mind. Indeed, Mark Wild, as the chief executive, knows perfectly well that he needs to turn this present construction activity into a railway, which is what he did with the Elizabeth line, and I have every confidence that he will do it again.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a necessary but pretty depressing Statement announcing, as it effectively is, that when it comes to major infrastructure projects, whether they are railways or power stations or airports, this country does them very badly indeed. I hope we learn some lessons from that. I ask my noble friend to reflect that, on timescale, the Victorians managed in a period of 30 years, from 1830 to 1860, to build the whole rail network, and we cannot deal with one line in less time than that. I remind him as well that in the international context, pretty well every other country in the world—Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and others—has been building, is building or has planned major high-speed rail systems. Will my noble friend give us answers to these questions? Why do these projects take so long when we know from our history that it is possible to do them much more speedily? What can we learn from all these other countries that do not seem to have any of the headaches, disasters, mismanagement and overspend that we have in building a very necessary railway because the old Victorian one, wonderful though it was, is crumbling?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend is not quite right. We do not always do these things badly. Indeed, I deliberately referred to the trans-Pennine upgrade in my previous remarks because it is a very large project. It is very complex because it is being carried out on an operating railway. Its current value is £14 billion. It has been through innumerable scope changes, sadly, but it is now being delivered on time and badly.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am sorry. That is a slip of the tongue caused by looking at my notes. I should have said on time and on budget. We do not always do them badly.

If noble Lords look at the history of HS2 they will see not limited scope changes but enormous scope changes with miles of the railway being put into tunnels and some technical specifications that, now they are being contemplated, do not look half as clever as they did when somebody suggested the highest-speed high-speed railway in the world, which therefore has to go in very straight lines and might disturb bats and need a bat tunnel when a more modest railway would have gone around that issue rather than straight through it.

I have to say to my noble friend that it is not always true that the Victorians got it right, and I am sure that this must have happened to previous Transport Ministers too. When I got to Network Rail, I remarked that Brunel’s Great Western Railway cost three times what he suggested it would, and about a week later I got a letter in green ink several pages long from a retired engineer, who said that I was entirely wrong and had no idea what I was talking about: it was actually four times more expensive.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

When I was appointed to lead the Department for Transport, HS2 was already not in great shape, as is well known. I immediately implemented some changes to get a grip of the project by focusing the company on cost control, starting work to renegotiate those big civil contracts that the Minister referred to and cancelling the second phase—which, although controversial at the time, I notice the present Government have not changed—which freed up money to spend on projects across the country. The final thing was to appoint Mark Wild as the new chief executive. I am confident that, with his record in delivering the Elizabeth line, he will achieve great things.

I will ask the Minister two questions. First, I listened carefully to what he said about Euston. Of course, I worked closely with him in his previous incarnation as the chairman of the Euston partnership. Refocusing that as a development-led project with more housing, more business space, and more contribution from private sector investment and less from the taxpayer is the right thing. I am pleased with the progress that has been made. He said he would come back to your Lordships’ House “in short order”; can he give us a bit more detail about what that means? Is that before the Summer Recess or after? I would like to hear more detail.

Secondly, the Minister also referred to the main works civil contracts. We started the work on renegotiating them. Can he say a little more about the progress that has been made? I recognise there is some commercial confidentiality involved there. It was referred to in James Stewart’s report, and it is important to get value for the taxpayer.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for the decision to appoint Mark Wild, which was obviously a good thing. The noble Lord is absolutely right that he did take some action. In the light of what has been discovered since, we could question how much action should have been taken, because this Government have clearly now taken some really strong action. In particular, we have had a serious look at governance. As a consequence, there is a new chair and there will no doubt be a new board in due course. That is one of the issues that has needed attention for some time.

I would be less complimentary about the cancellation of phase 2, which was pre-emptory. As for freeing up money, there was no money associated with phase 2. It is true that it would have cost money had it been delivered, but it was a delusion for many parts of the country. The Network North document promised everything to everybody without evidently having money in the short and medium term to deliver it. But everybody has had a part in this, and the truth is that this Government are committing themselves to this fundamental reset. Through that, we will get phase 1 to Birmingham and Old Oak Common and Euston done.

The Government are moving fast on Euston. I doubt we will be able to put anything in front of the House before the Summer Recess, but as soon as we are able to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I will come back about it. The noble Lord is certainly right about the main works civil contracts, but in order to have a reset of those you actually need to know where the project is. If you do not know where the project is and nobody can accurately say how much has been delivered then trying to negotiate your way out of those circumstances is really quite hopeless. Mark Wild is undertaking a granular review of how much has been constructed and how much value has been created through its construction. The noble Lord is right that we have to engage in discussion with the main works civil contractors and their consortia. We will do that in due course, but we first have to know where the project is in order to baseline those discussions.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain exactly what the purpose of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority is? It was created in 2016 and has presided over a number of these types of projects which have not worked out. At the moment, the police are looking to purchase a new radio system, which has gone from £2 billion to £12.5 billion. In all the political knockabout—and I understand why there is political accountability in this—it seems to have been a silent body but, as far as I can see, it was set up to avoid this type of event.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Government are creating a new body out of the IPA and the NIC. We expect it to assist those projects to help them do these jobs better. There are a number of projects through government that have not gone well either—the project that the noble Lord refers to is one of them. It is really important for a body such as that to embrace the learnings, both from the James Stewart review and from the actual experience of these big projects, and help government not commit the same mistakes again.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the problems encountered by all major projects such as HS2 is the difficulty of getting the public generally on side. I declare an interest here as a former owner of a property that was on the route of the original plans for HS2. I am sure the House will understand the issues that arise when you wake up one morning and discover that your house might have a tunnel underneath it, or worse, and the reaction you have to that.

My question is not so much about the detail of the current report, but to ask whether the department is thinking more widely about how it can get people on board prior to and during the process of planning new infrastructure of this type. Is the department aware of a scheme proposed a few years ago by members of the insurance industry to try to create a fund that would be available to remove blight from the political issues that departments face when making proposals? If he has not heard of that or had any discussions with it, would he receive a representation from me on it?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It is right to say that the public need to be onside with these huge projects. Although, clearly, this is a high-speed rail project, I started what I said today with a reminder about the benefits of it because it is too easy just to refer to the project as a project without referring to why it needs to be done. I think there are some lessons in that. The other thing is that massive scope changes, such as the deletion of whole legs of a scheme, lead people to the conclusion that the original proposition was somehow not justified, and that is to be deeply regretted.

In detail, I have had many representations—as, no doubt, my predecessors did—from individual landowners, and it is clear that, in some cases, HS2 has not behaved properly or with due speed in what must be, personally and commercially, worrying and trying circumstances for individual landowners. We have just appointed a new commissioner for construction and residents, and I look to HS2 and to that commissioner to act with alacrity on some of the long-running claims that have clearly blighted individuals’ lives. I would like to hear further from the noble Lord about what he refers to, and I hope he will write to me.

Self-driving Vehicles: Disabled Passengers

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what provision there will be for disabled passengers in the pilots for self-driving vehicles announced on 10 June.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State must, by law, consider whether and to what extent granting a permit for an automated passenger service is likely to help improve understanding of how these services should best be designed for and provided to disabled and older passengers. Accessibility considerations will be set out in non-statutory guidance, and related permit conditions can be enforced through the permitting process. It would be counterproductive to specify detailed requirements in regulation for innovative new services.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, but the key problem with the Government’s announcement is that the consultation is happening at exactly the same time as the specification and the manufacture of the driverless vehicles that are due to be launched early next year. This is literally a once-in-an-era moment: new driverless vehicles hitting our roads. The Government need to ensure that taxis and bus-like taxis will have accessibility designed into them. Otherwise, it will be like everything else for disabled people: reasonable adjustments after the event that are expensive for the manufacturer and never perfect for the user. Can the Minister say whether the contract with Wayve and Oxa will ensure that ramps, audio and visual announcements are designed in right from the start?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness knows that we consider the implications of transport for people with disabilities extraordinarily seriously. Whatever individual providers have said—and some of them have said something following the recent announcement by the Secretary of State—it will still be up to the Secretary of State to grant permission, under the conditions I described. For taxis and private hire vehicles, they will need local authority consent and, of course, that will all be subject to the public sector equality duty.

I think the noble Baroness is assuming that all these services will be provided by newly designed vehicles, when in fact the likelihood is that, in the very short term, they will be the same sort of vehicles used for taxi and PHV services. In the medium term, clearly there will be new designs, and there are already some that are suitable for wheelchairs and people with disabilities. We have to acknowledge that automated vehicles are part of an exciting future, but they have to be implemented safely, and she is right that they have to be implemented to benefit all parts of the community.

[Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, what provision will there be for disabled passengers in all HMG’s transport plans?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. The Government are consulting on an integrated transport policy, which will of course include provision for disabled people. In the various modes of transport, there is extensive work going on in all cases to accommodate disabled people as fully as we can in the provision of public services going forward. Some of them are more difficult than others. The railway is 200 years old this year—some of its facilities are equally old—but the Government are striving to achieve what my noble friend looks for.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, it was a great pleasure to get the Automated Vehicles Act on the statute book before the last election. It puts Britain in a globally leading position to get investment and technology and be global leaders in this important technology. I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said: we should be ambitious about making this technology accessible for everyone. Automated vehicles have the potential to improve the life chances and the independence of all those who have a disability that means that they cannot drive themselves. I urge the Minister to be as ambitious as he can and to go as fast as he can to get this technology on to our roads. It is safe, we are leaders in it and it is a real opportunity for Great Britain.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There must have been a shadow of a question in there somewhere, but I agree with the noble Lord that it is an exciting prospect. He is right that the potential here is to increase mobility for the community and for people with disabilities, if we get it right. I have great sympathy with the noble Baroness in striving to make sure that disability is treated in the mainstream, but if we are going to do this quickly, we have to recognise that the early adoption under this Act is likely to be using the same sorts of vehicles as are used now. What we are looking for in the medium-term future is new designs, which should have the facilities such as audio-visual equipment and facilities for people in wheelchairs that she would expect.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister comment on what licences will be given to rural areas? We are very short of buses, both for people with disability and for the ordinary population. Surely these kinds of vehicles would be ideal in small, remote villages so that people could access essential services.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is entirely right. One of the really good prospects here is the provision of public services to people in rural areas where buses, with the best will in the world and despite the Government’s ground-breaking bus legislation, will not serve every need of the community because of the sparse population. That community is also getting older and many people there cannot drive, so there is a real opportunity here for autonomous vehicles fulfilling the need for public services in a way that conventional buses and taxis really cannot.

I go back to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, which is that we have to design in—as far as we can—facilities for disabled people among this. But we also, as the noble Lord opposite said, have to get going with this, because it is such an exciting future.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, as well as the area of accessibility, what work have the Government carried out to determine liability in collisions involving self-drive vehicles as part of this pilot, given that human error will be removed from the equation?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right: safety has to be the first priority here. There has been a great deal of work worldwide on this. Clearly, the primary consideration for the adoption of autonomous vehicles is safety, so that people are not endangered by new technology but assisted by it. I will write to her about the precise steps that the Government have taken in the UK on this, but it is of course being addressed on a worldwide basis.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, yesterday the Deputy Prime Minister spoke in the other place of the importance of getting disabled people into work. I ask the Minister in what way the retro, ad hoc inclusion of disabled people facilitates the realisation of that worthy goal. Can he also confirm that the Minister for Social Security and Disability in the other place was specifically consulted on the points that he has made?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Government are really committed to including people with disabilities in mainstream life and work, and I think the availability of autonomous vehicles ought, over time, to enable that more fully, as we have described—in rural areas, for example—than happens now. The Government have consulted extensively over where to go and what to do in this respect, and I will make sure that my department has consulted with all other necessary departments on this, but I would believe that to be the case, without doubt.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and other noble Lords have made some very important points, but I draw the Minister’s attention to an account in the Daily Telegraph this week of a report from the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism suggesting the real likelihood that these automated vehicles could be programmed by terrorists so as to launch mass attacks on pedestrians in our streets—so-called slaughterbots. This is a grave matter. Has the Minister read that report, and can he give an assurance that these vehicles will not be allowed on our streets unless that risk has been eliminated?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I have no doubt that the noble Lord spends far longer reading the Daily Telegraph than I have time for. As it happens, I did not read that particular article, but I do know of the subject. Of course, we have to be concerned in all aspects of national security that things controlled by clever computers and technology are not misused by those who are enemies of the state anywhere. It is also a common issue with these vehicles around the world. I am not going to say any more about that now, other than that the Government know perfectly well that this is a possibility. When and as they take action on this, they will make sure that the risk to the public is absolutely minimised.

E-scooters, E-bikes and Pedal Bikes: Legislation

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to introduce legislation to provide for the registration, insurance and other matters relating to privately owned e-scooters, e-bikes and pedal bikes.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to legislate for the registration or insurance of e-bikes or pedal bikes. This would be likely to put many people off cycling, with negative environmental and health benefits. However, it is illegal for private e-scooters to be used on public roads. The Government will consider both registration and insurance for e-scooters in any future legislation. I look forward to further exploring this important subject with the noble Baroness in our forthcoming meeting.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, and I look forward to meeting him tomorrow. Presumably, the Government are seeking a safe space for all road users, including pedestrians, car drivers, e-scooters, e-bikes and bikes. Currently, 1 million e-scooters are being used illegally on public roads without insurance. Damage caused by their accidents is recovered through Motor Insurers’ Bureau claims, 47% of which involve e-scooters, including pedestrians between the ages of seven and 80 being struck by an e-scooter. Although I share the Government’s aim to increase and improve micromobility at every level, will the noble Lord ensure that the Government apply the law as it currently stands and review the possibility of extending to e-scooters, e-bikes and bikes both registration and insurance? It is inappropriate that only car drivers are currently covering the cost of this insurance.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I feel that this is a rerun of the noble Baroness’s previous Question. She is right that the road network, including the pavement, should be safe for all varieties of road users, including all the people she mentions and pedestrians. It clearly is an issue, and I respect her view, and that of other noble Lords, that it is an issue. The previous Government started a rental trial in 2020 and announced primary legislation in May 2022 but failed to deliver it. This Government are giving serious consideration to these issues, including the issue of insurance, and I am sure that this subject will come back—probably weekly—until this legislation.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister consider banning e-bikes and e-scooters on pavements and introduce a special lane on the road for these vehicles to rescue pedestrians from what is currently a major risk?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

We have limited road space in the towns and cities of the United Kingdom. I have wrestled with this issue personally, when I ran Transport for London for nine and a half years. It is extraordinarily difficult. The answer is a set of laws, and people conforming with those laws, that leave pedestrians safe, disabled people safe and road users of all sorts safe. There is an issue about enforcement—the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, raised that issue in this House a few days ago and produced the very competent Sergeant Ford of the City of London Police, who has done a lot on enforcement regarding illegal e-cycles. The answer is proper behaviour, a road network that copes with all its users and proper enforcement.

[Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)]

My Lords, phone thefts using e-bikes and e-scooters, and general antisocial behaviour by those using such vehicles, plagued the residents of Stratford City in my former constituency, spreading fear and intense feelings of unease. What sanctions can be deployed against such bike users, and are there any plans to increase the sanctions?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Government understand that position completely, and there is enforcement. Last year, the City of London Police seized 324 e-cycles for having no insurance, and the Metropolitan Police seized 1,076. Of course the issue, as my noble friend relates, is not merely illegal use of the cycles; it is the disorder and crime that goes with them. My noble friend Lord Hanson of Flint stood at this Dispatch Box a few days ago talking about the additional measures the Government are putting in place to allow easier confiscation of these bikes when they are used in the wrong way. We encourage police forces to follow the lead of the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police in understanding that the use of these things illegally leads to further crime.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the investigative reporting by Jim Waterson at London Centric on Lime bikes, and the huge increase of broken legs and serious injuries at A&Es, known locally as “Lime leg”? What plans do the Government have to ensure that comprehensive insurance is in place for hire bike operators?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises a good point. I and the department have read the investigation by Jim Waterson. It is concerning that these bikes apparently seem to cause so many breaks of the lower limbs, and I will write to her about the actions that can be taken both about insurance, which hire bike schemes should have, and with the company about the design of its bikes and the damage that they seem to cause on a regular basis.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, on at least two occasions recently when I have asked questions about e-bikes and e-scooters and the Labour Government’s policy towards them, the Minister has replied by telling me about the previous Conservative Government’s policy towards them. It is becoming increasingly clear that the reason for that is that this Government really do not know what their policy towards them ought to be. Will the Minister answer the question I asked last time? Are the Government, essentially, happy for the current state of drift and danger to continue on our streets pretty well indefinitely?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Last time the noble Lord said that to me, I repeated the answer I gave him on 1 April, which is that

“I do not … care to be lectured about drift by somebody who represents a party that did an experiment in 2021, published some results in 2022 and then did nothing”.—[Official Report, 1/4/25; col. 117.]


That answer is still the same. The Government, as the noble Lord heard in answer to the Question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, are considering what to do. It is a complex problem. I have explained to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, among others, that we have to make some decisions about what needs to be in legislation. It is not a simple thing to do, and it is a great shame that his Government did not contemplate and do something about it.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, somebody has to speak up on behalf of pedal bikes. I say that as somebody who cycled from London to Vienna and back many years ago, when I was younger, and somebody who was also knocked down by a pedal bike two or three years ago. Is it not the right policy to encourage the widest possible use of pedal bikes? It is healthy and good for the environment.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. I have cycled only as far as Amsterdam on a pedal bike, so I admire him for going to Vienna and back. I am not sure that I could do it now.

The reason why I answered the original question the way that I did is that it is very important not to put people off a mode of transport that is environmentally friendly and safe and, when done in the right way, is a huge benefit to our society. That is why registration and insurance of pedal bikes is such a difficult issue, because it would undoubtedly put people off cycling. But we also have to recognise that there are behaviours about cycling in general, and the use of e-bikes and e-scooters, that are very threatening and damaging to pedestrians and can cause very serious accidents and death. That is why the Government intend to introduce appropriate offences to the Road Traffic Act 1988 about the more serious offences caused by dangerous, careless and inconsiderate cycling.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, many of us have children and grandchildren. To go on from the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, can the Government confirm absolutely that there is no move at all to register bicycles for anybody, but particularly for young people? Otherwise, we will have six and seven year-olds who want to learn to ride a bicycle being registered for some foolish reason, when the only person they are a danger to, sadly, is themselves.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I share the noble Lord’s enthusiasm for teaching kids to cycle, which is why I said to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, that the Government have no plans to legislate for the registration or insurance of e-bikes or pedal bikes.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister keeps telling us that this is complex and difficult, but meanwhile he is not doing anything either. Does he understand not only the dimensions of the harm that is being caused, particularly to pedestrians, of riding on pavements, dumping on pavements and sailing through red lights, as well as the corrosive effect that this normalisation of anti-social and unlawful behaviour is having on public confidence in tackling lawlessness?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The one thing that I did not say was that the Government are doing nothing. The Government are considering very seriously what needs to be done to deal with this issue, and noble Lords will know—because I put it in the Library—that the range of legislation affecting particularly e-bikes and e-scooters across Europe and beyond gives us some difficult and serious choices about how to legislate and in which way. In the meantime, as my noble friend Lord Hanson of Flint said in response to the Question last week from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, the Government are taking serious action on dangerous and inconsiderate cycling as well as about confiscating bikes when they are used for crime. I have sympathy with what the noble Baroness says, and we are doing something about it.

European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate. This has been an important discussion, and I welcome the opportunity to respond. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, I was not aware of EGNOS until recently. I am afraid that I have also concluded that it is imperative to use acronyms in this speech because I cannot spell it out every time over 12 minutes, which is a shame. The topic has been amply explained by noble Lords and I do not need to explain it again. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Berkeley for setting out the history of EGNOS, with which I concur. It understandably attracts interest, particularly from the aviation sector and those with an interest in its future success.

I begin by reaffirming this Government’s unwavering commitment to maintaining a safe, modern and innovative aviation system. I welcome the noble Earl’s endorsement of those principles, too. In answer to the question of why this department is here and why I am speaking, the Government recognise the importance of positioning, navigation and timing technologies for our security and prosperity. That goes much wider than EGNOS and aviation, impacting all parts of our lives. DSIT is leading on this wider work with the Government’s framework for greater PNT resilience, but my department is working across government to understand the requirements for transport.

We recognise the value the sector places on services such as EGNOS in supporting aviation safety and reliability, particularly during difficult weather and at smaller aerodromes. Since the UK’s withdrawal from the programme as a result of leaving the EU, as noble Lords have heard, flights have continued to operate safely with no degradation in our overall safety regime. We are carefully examining all available options for supporting the continued operation of safe and reliable flights, which could well include membership of EGNOS. My noble friend Lord Berkeley is right: we are talking to the European Union and a better relationship will enable us to participate if we choose to. That answers the question of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about whether we could join if we so wished, but it depends on whether we choose to or not. He also made a point about Galileo, which I am not equipped to answer, but I will speak to my noble friend the Technology Minister so that he can have an answer in due course.

It is critical that any solution is based on clear operational needs and a strong value-for-money case for both users and taxpayers. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that, if the previous Government had considered paying for the system, they could have done so during their time in office. This Government are continuing this work and we will continue to work closely with industry experts and stakeholders to find the most effective and sustainable solution. If noble Lords have further evidence to contribute to a value-for-money case, my department will be pleased to hear it. I note the suggestion from the noble Earl that we should ask the aviation industry whether it would be prepared to contribute to the costs of joining.

On safety, we must be clear that we have a highly robust safety regime in place in the UK supported by navigation aids and procedures that remain fully compliant with international safety. The Civil Aviation Authority continues to ensure that all procedures are managed appropriately. We recognise that EGNOS or a similar SBAS could have operational benefits for small, regional and general aviation airports. It would provide greater resilience in poor weather and support access but, as the noble Lord Davies, said, ILS is used at larger airports which are not affected and this would not be useful to them.

The Government appreciate the frustration of those facing delays and disruptions to their flights from poor weather as well as the importance of reliable connections, especially for those living in more remote areas of the United Kingdom. Since I took office, I have heard several times from my noble friend Lord Berkeley about the needs of residents of and visitors to the Isles of Scilly, and I respect his continuing advocacy on their behalf. The Government are already taking important steps to support the connectivity of communities, and we are continuing to look closely at this issue to see what more can be done.

It is also important to be clear that emergency medical and search-and-rescue operations have continued safely and effectively since our withdrawal from EGNOS. These services have access to a range of procedures and capabilities, such as point-in-space approaches, which greatly assist in increasing the utility of air ambulances and helicopters in poor visibility conditions. SBAS services, such as EGNOS, are not currently widely used across Europe to support operational capabilities. We are determined to ensure that the UK’s aviation safety regime remains world-leading, which is why we are continuing to consider the best option for the United Kingdom. This work is continuing, and no decision has been made.

It is clear that noble Lords who have contributed today, and others, deeply care about having an SBAS such as EGNOS, and we fully recognise that it can have benefits. However, it is also important that every penny of taxpayers’ money, particularly in a time of tight finances, is spent responsibly, efficiently and wisely and that any decision made represents value for both users and taxpayers. We are continuing to consider what an effective, impactful and deliverable solution that works for the UK could look like, and no decision has been made.

The Government recognise the importance of positioning, navigation and timing technologies for our security and prosperity. That is why we are implementing the policy framework for greater PNT resilience and developing proposals for a national timing centre and enhanced long-range navigation systems. The work around UK access to a satellite-based augmentation system is an important part of that, which is why we are continuing to consider the best option for the UK’s specific requirements.

I turn to the future of flight because there are constant developments in emerging technologies—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before the Minister moves on to another subject, given the particular circumstances in Scotland, which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred to, and the many islands, if the Scottish Government wished to make a service agreement with the European Union for this purpose, but the United Kingdom Government had chosen not to, do they have any scope to do so?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. Rather than filibustering for a few minutes while I refer to the knowledgeable officials behind me, I think I had better write to him about that. I can see an answer coming: it says, “Not sure. We’d need to check”. That is very wise.

I turn to the constant developments in technologies, particularly in drones and uncrewed aircraft. This is an important, evolving area, and the full range of requirements are still being mapped out. There may well be applications where SBAS and EGNOS could be useful. As the Government have ambitious plans for the UK to be a global leader in creating a future-of-flight ecosystem fit for the future, ensuring that we can fully realise the social and economic benefits of new and emerging aviation technologies, we must continue to think about this work. It could be said that I am saying that we are just not doing anything, but we are doing something. These rapid developments, particularly in drones used beyond the line of sight, may well provide an increasing case for this technology and for EGNOS in future.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend has given us a very interesting progress report on any discussions taking place with the European Union, the CAA and others, but no decisions have been made. Can he give us any estimate about when the next decision might be achieved?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. It is a good question because developments in drones, particularly drones beyond line of sight, uncrewed aircraft and flying taxis have been much in the news recently. There are many applications way beyond traditional air applications. There is activity for drones beyond line of sight not only on the railway but in better policing. Those things would affect a judgment about an investment in this and whether the continuing cost of it is worth investing in. I urge my noble friend not to ask us to be too peremptory in making a once-and-for-all decision when technology is changing as, because of that, the justification for doing this might increase and we might get to the answer that my noble friend wants.

I am grateful to all noble Lords for their thoughtful and constructive contributions, which reflect the strong interest in maintaining the UK’s continued leadership in aviation safety and innovation. We remain committed to ensuring safety and efficiency. We recognise the real value of systems such as EGNOS, but we must also consider the financial implications and seek solutions that offer the best value for money.

On the contributions of noble Lords about the cost of it, or the cost when it was around £35 million—I cannot confirm whether that might be the current cost or not—if the previous Government could not justify it, in these difficult financial circumstances we have a duty to justify public expenditure. However, noble Lords will have heard me say that we are considering it not only for the benefits from EGNOS for the purposes described in the discussion today but because the future of drone and uncrewed aircraft technology is rapidly developing. I hope noble Lords will appreciate that we are strongly considering it. I am grateful for all that they have said.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the Minister’s response, but what representation has the department had from the CAA on this issue?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The department is in constant discussion with the CAA on this issue. I do not have any evidence that the CAA believes that reimplementing EGNOS is a matter of the greatest concern, but as the noble Lord asked the question, I will go away, find out what the current position with the CAA is and write to him about it.