Railways: Dawlish

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Sugg

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right to point to the issues we have had on that track: when there are high waves and sea spray close to the track the Voyager trains cannot run, as they have brake resistors on top. CrossCountry is working to assess whether there might be engineering solutions that would enable the Voyager class to operate through Dawlish in those challenging conditions. We are also looking into providing further additional rolling stock, but the Government and franchise operators are investing heavily in new, improved trains.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the economies of west Devon, Plymouth and Cornwall rely very much on this line. Last autumn a six-foot hole appeared under the track in the Dawlish area, so this is far from solved. Yet, despite Devon and Cornwall—regrettably—being stuffed with Tory MPs there seems to be no real action at all. Can the Minister give us a date when the fundamental structure, whether it is the line that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, refers to or the sea wall, will be completed? When will something be done?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, this train line has been a long-standing problem ever since it was opened in 1846—that year trains failed to run along it. We are working closely on that and although I am not able to give the noble Lord a date, we are making significant progress. Network Rail has submitted a plan that we are looking at carefully and we hope to make an announcement on it very shortly.

Railways: Reliability

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Sugg

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve rail service reliability in 2019.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government will continue the current record level of funding in our railways, with around £48 billion to be spent on the network from now until 2024. This will support more maintenance and a huge uplift in renewals to increase reliability and punctuality for passengers. We are delivering the biggest rail modernisation programme for more than a century. The department, working alongside Network Rail and other industry partners, is committed to investing in the railways so that we can have a modern, reliable and punctual railway system, fit for the future.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

Hmm. I accept absolutely that we have put billions into the rail network and rail services, and yet last year we had the worst service over the year for 13 years and the worst summer for 20 years. Will the Minister answer this very simple question: who is responsible for those improvements and who is in charge?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I certainly agree with the noble Lord that we had a difficult year in rail last year. Things are improving: punctuality has improved since this time last year; cancellations and significant lateness have improved as well. Previous investment focused on capacity improvements, which was much needed, given the doubling of the number of passengers. For the next control period, however, the main purpose of our investment is to improve reliability, and that involves repairing and replacing worn-out parts of the network to increase reliability. The Department for Transport is working very closely with Network Rail and train operating companies to deliver that.

Merchant Shipping (Monitoring, Reporting and Verification of Carbon Dioxide Emissions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Sugg

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sugg]

Yes, absolutely. They are issued by the independent verifiers and then checked by the MCA. On compliance and enforcement, the existing regulations bring in fines if people fail to comply. That also allows for the detention of non-compliant ships that come into UK ports. Inspectors from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency will ensure that ships have the correct documentation and will do the enforcement on UK-flagged ships. Other ships using UK ports will also be liable for inspection as part of the port state control regime. Non-compliant ships can be detained and their owners prosecuted via the courts and fined. The enforcement will stay the same, it will just be done under the UK regulation rather than the EU regulation.

I hope I have answered the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. Rather than it being about greenhouse gas emissions or carbon, it is about the fuel consumption and reducing that over time.

[Lord Teverson]

I am trying to understand whether this is about just carbon dioxide monitoring or greenhouse gas monitoring because if it is just carbon, it is not compatible with UK carbon budgets, which include national shipping. There is a big difference. It seems a fairly straightforward question to me—yes or no? The Minister is welcome to write to say yes or no.

[Baroness Sugg]

I probably will have to write to the noble Lord with details on that. The current monitoring system is about fuel consumption by vessels. When collated, that information will help inform future policy on the reduction of emissions, which will obviously cover greenhouses gases and carbon. I will take up the noble Lord’s offer of writing to him in detail on that.

The noble Lord also asked about the documents of compliance. We want to ensure that the MRV system works as smoothly as possible after we leave the EU so we have taken the decision to recognise all EU MRV certificates issued by other member states as being equivalent to our own. We have the capacity to issue our own but we have already stated that we will recognise those from member states and we hope, of course, that the EU will mutually recognise ours.

We will also ensure that there is no duplication of reporting for ships travelling between the UK and EU states. If a ship notifies us that it has submitted all its verified voyage data to the EU we will not require it to provide us with a duplicate report. We are trying to minimise the burden on businesses as we leave the EU.

[Lord Teverson]

I thank the Minister and I will not intervene again. I welcome the fact that we will recognise EU documentation. That is an excellent decision that will reduce bureaucracy. Do we need to invent a new IT system ourselves and have we managed to do that? I suppose that that is the key point here.

[Baroness Sugg]

No. We already have the ability to issue these certificates so a new system is not needed.

Reference was made by the noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Rosser, to expulsion orders. It is not the Government’s policy to ban or exile ships from a port unless there is an immediate risk to safety, as both noble Lords said. Neither of those conditions would apply to the requirements under this regime. It is a reciprocal requirement that will no longer be relevant when we are not a member state. There will be a practical problem in that when we exit the EU, there is no requirement under the European regulations to notify non-EEA states that a vessel has been banned from an EU port. There is actually no mechanism if we leave without a deal either for us to tell the EU or vice versa. That is why it has not been replicated. However, there is no reason why we cannot share data in the future. As we made clear in the White Paper, it is in our interests and those of the EU that we should continue to co-operate through the EMSA. However, that will be subject to negotiations.

The question of reporting was raised in the other place and I will certainly forward the letter from my honourable friend Nusrat Ghani on this to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and others. On the assessments of the impact of the maritime sector on carbon dioxide, we have not retained the paragraph on that in the draft regulations because that obligation applies specifically to the European Commission rather than to member states or to the UK in particular. It is necessary for the effective functioning of the MRV system, so the Secretary of State has taken over responsibility for what was previously held by the Commission. There will be an obligation on the Secretary of State to publish the results of the CO₂ data which we will receive annually from ships in much the same way as the Commission will be doing with the other 27 member states. We will just be taking on the responsibility to publish the data, which obviously will be made available to all those who are interested in it.

Under our domestic legislation, the Secretary of State would not be required to conduct a similar biennial review of the impact on the global climate. The fact that it is not in retained EU legislation of course does not preclude us from undertaking such a review and we are keen to maintain our position of leading the way in this area. I have already spoken about our leading role in the agreement with the IMO in April.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned the IMO system which will take effect on international voyages from 1 January 2019. The systems are very similar in that they both apply to vessels of 5,000 gross tonnes and over, but there are a few differences. The European regime which we are carrying over applies only to voyages undertaken to carry passengers and cargo for commercial purposes rather than other maritime activities such as dredging. It requires more information such as on the cargo being carried by the vessel and more transparency in terms of disclosing data. It also includes a more robust verification process. Ideally, we want to see the IMO and EU systems become aligned while maintaining the environmental integrity of the overall scheme. That is something that we will continue to work on with our international partners in order to achieve it going forward. However, as I said in my opening remarks, at the moment we are allowing the systems on UK-flagged vessels to collect the data so that they are able to report to both systems easily enough.

I hope that I have covered the points which were raised, but if I have not gone into them all in detail, I will certainly write to noble Lords. I hope that noble Lords will agree that the objective of the regulations, which is to maintain an effective regime to monitor emissions from ships, is the right thing to do.