Transport Levying Bodies (Amendment) Regulations 2018

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comments. The regulations come after a period when there has been, not surprisingly, a lot of local discussion and debate about the formation of the combined authority. Having been through a period of change in local council formation in Wales about 20 years ago, I still bear the scars; it is never an easy or happy situation. As I knew that there had been debate about this matter and some discussion about the plans for transport in the area, I took a look at the mayor’s transport delivery plan. There are local concerns about an overemphasis in that plan on Cambridge city and on roads.

I applaud the ambition of the mayor, because his ideas include a Cambridge underground—the Cambridge autonomous metro with underground electric buses. It is ground breaking stuff and a very good idea in many ways, because Cambridge as an historic city with a dense population has a huge traffic problem to solve. However, undergrounds involve tunnelling, which is very expensive. It is therefore not surprising that the amount of money that would be sucked into the Cambridge area has alarmed people in Peterborough, who believe—I think quite rightly, being familiar with Peterborough—that much needs to be done to improve their bus network, such as the introduction of bus lanes and encouragement of ultra-low emission buses, as well as to improve cycling and walking infrastructure and the uptake of rail. Those are much less expensive options.

Then there is a wider picture, because Peterborough and Cambridge are two cities in the midst of a large rural area. I strongly welcome devolution of powers over railways, but, in that wider area, people are campaigning for the reopening of Wisbech station, which was a casualty of the Beeching era, and of the line from there to March. They are isolated communities that desperately need investment. People are also campaigning for the electrification of the Peterborough to Ely and Cambridge line to encourage freight from the east coast ports to the Midlands on to the rail. Of course, there are always demands for better rural bus services, with people emphasising the importance of sustainability and tackling congestion and air quality problems. I am simply trying to set the issues that have been put forward in this debate in the context of these regulations, and I have some questions for the Minister.

First, taking devolution fully into account, infrastructure development is of course an essential part of co-ordinated transport planning. So how does the Department for Transport monitor the way that levying bodies, not just this one but others as well, spend the money they raise? How does the department ensure that transport plans treat the whole area affected by this fairly? How does it ensure that there is co-operation and co-ordination—this is a key point—from one local authority area to another? Because there are certain aspects of transport provision, such as local buses, which are rightly an issue for that area alone, but when you are looking at railways you are almost always linking from one local authority area to another, and the same with road provision. So you have a transport plan from here to somewhere; you cannot just stop it at the border. I am interested in how the Government can ensure that the levy, which is after all a levy on the people of that area, is spent wisely.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I can set the Minister’s mind at rest that we are not going to have a constitutional crisis: this will be one of the thousands of affirmative instruments that will go through without a Division. Nevertheless, I have some mild misgivings.

The draft regulations give authority to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority to levy the upper-tier authorities, as far as I can see without constraint. They give this authority to set a levy in respect of transport. I did not know until I heard the speech of the noble Baroness that they were considering digging holes underground. My experience of digging holes underground is that they cost about £250 million per kilometre and they have a dreadful habit of not coming out at anything like the figure you thought they should. Therefore, this levy, if there is overambition, could be a very significant drag on the upper-tier authorities.

I cannot see in the legislation how that is limited. I saw some words about having regard for the ability of the upper-tier authority to pay, but that seemed to be all, so my first question is: are the upper-tier authorities consulted on the level of this levy? There is a general principle that there should be no taxation without representation. There should surely be some process with proper checks and balances in it.

In researching this order, I went back to the Explanatory Memorandum to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Order 2017, which says on page 5, at paragraph 7.13:

“To give effect to the contents of the deal to devolve powers to the proposed Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, the Order confers local authority functions for public transport on the proposed CPCA, to be exercised by the Mayor. It also enables the Mayor to produce and publish a Local Transport Plan for the CPCA area”.


My second question, therefore, is: has the mayor produced a local transport plan? Has he costed it? Has he explained the criteria for how the decisions on expenditure are made? Surely this transport plan should create a budget which the upper-tier authorities are able to have sight of and have some say about whether or not they are getting value for money for their levy.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, in moving that the Bill do now pass, I am grateful to all noble Lords who contributed during its passage. Following our debates and the report of the DPRRC, I am pleased that we have been able to introduce government amendments to improve parliamentary scrutiny, consulting and reporting. We will consider further in the other place the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, on trailer safety. The Government agree that trailer safety is an important issue, and as I have set out, my department will produce a report on it. I should like to thank the Bill team, which worked for many months on the detail of this legislation and will continue to do so as it progresses through the other place and regulations are drafted. This Bill will enable the Government to make important and responsible contingency plans for the haulage industry following our exit from the European Union. I beg to move.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I will briefly comment on the Bill. This is the third transport Bill that the Minister and I have worked on together. They have been conducted very efficiently by virtue of the efforts of the Minister and the Bill team. Virtually all issues have been settled by debate and consensus. I also thank my Bill team, which is half of one person, Katherine Johnson, especially for the brilliance of the amendment she crafted, which was supported in this House because of the care of the wording. I am sorry that we have that amendment between us, but I am very pleased with the way things have gone. I wish us both luck with the next transport Bill, which we are about to start.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 17th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I listened carefully to what the noble Lords opposite said and there is very little that I take issue with. They made very good points indeed. But my position is that we are sending Her Majesty’s Government in to negotiate the Brexit deal. The last thing that we want to do is unnecessarily to tie the hands of our negotiators and perhaps find out at the last moment that that hand-tying exercise has compromised our negotiating position. I sympathise with the points that noble Lords made, but I do not have sympathy with the amendments and I hope that my noble friend will advise the House not to accept them.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

The groaning silence means it must be my turn. With the words of the Government Chief Whip ringing in my ears, I will try to be as brief as possible. My noble friend Lord Berkeley covered the issue with faint praise, and I join him in that. The Government are ahead of the game in this area, but it is a game that we do not really want to be in. He was right to emphasise the inspections, checks and so on. I hope that, as with the coat-hanger Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, the point on reciprocity is noted.

The main amendment in the group was addressed by the overall comments of my noble friend Lord Whitty. It is almost impossible to appreciate the sheer volume of the road haulage business. I do not know about other noble Lords, but because of this Bill, I have been forced to learn quite a lot about the industry. I see that the Minister nods her head; so has she, clearly. What I am more familiar with is the queuing effect of delays. It happens in the railway environment where a nicely worked out procedure can be subject to a delay of only a matter of seconds, but if the queue is long enough, chaos will ensue. I am particularly cautious about wonderful computer systems. Most people will sympathise when I say that big computer systems in the public sector are rarely delivered on time and on budget. The truth is that such systems rarely are, and we hear about that in the public sector. They are very difficult to deliver, and in many ways this computer age of ours is still in its infancy in terms of the difficulty of using these machines for large-scale practical applications.

The chaos that could arise from the systems at a port not working properly could lead to what at least we rather soft westerners would think of as “starvation” where having only vegetables in their season might start to become a reality instead of a gimmick in a fancy restaurant. The transport of food stocks which are time critical could become awfully difficult. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will give us extremely strong assurances that the intent of Amendment 1 is in fact the Government’s intent. I hope my noble friend will not press the House to divide on this issue, but to convince him not to do so, she will have to give us strong assurances that it is recognised that the best possible outcome is a system as close as reasonably practicable to what we have. It is almost a schoolboy statement, but I really would like a pledge signed in her blood.

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[Lord Berkeley]

Well, maybe that will change someday.

To speak briefly to Amendment 4, I think the noble Baroness has tried hard to interpret the long debate we had in Committee about the method of allocation and we will have to see how it goes: I think we cannot go much further on it. However, I support my noble friend Lord Whitty’s Amendment 5 on these criteria, which Unite has quite rightly been proposing for the operators. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, mentioned, though, it is going to get even more unfair if foreign lorries coming here do not have to comply with the same criteria. We risk losing more traffic to foreign lorries: it is massively out of balance at the moment and will get worse. I am not sure how we do it, because the Minister said about a previous part of the Bill that we cannot legislate about anything to do with foreign lorries coming here. I hope she will reflect on the need not only to take into account my noble friend’s amendment but how to apply that to lorries that come to this country so that there is a fair balance.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I too welcome the movement that the Minister has shown in the redrafting of Amendment 4. The essence seems to me that there will be a series of criteria to determine who should get permits and that the use, particularly, of random selection will emerge only where the differentiation by the criteria shows candidates to be equal. In other words, the objective will be to have objective criteria that can do the differentiation process, and only when bids of equal merit are placed in front of the selection would we stoop, sadly, to random selection. Let us hope we never get there—let us hope that there are enough permits anyway.

The Minister met many of the aspirations of Amendment 5 and I hope she will repeat them in her summing up. I hope she will give some warmth to repute as a concept for selection. There is the idea of a single criterion—safe, environmentally okay, et cetera—but it is crucial to recognise that it is more complex than that. We need to look at an operator’s track record: do they consistently work to a high standard? Are they consistently a good representative of that industry?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their comments on this group. I absolutely appreciate the intention behind the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and agree that we should expect our hauliers to operate to high standards. While we could include conditions on permits to cover the areas he raised, as my noble friend Lord Attlee points out, the operator licensing regime already requires this of operators and is quite an effective means of achieving this. We do not need to apply conditions to the use of a permit with a view to achieving exactly the same thing. That is not to say that we would not grant permits subject to conditions. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has raised areas that we would absolutely consider within these conditions. The Bill as drafted gives the Secretary of State the discretion to make regulations authorising the grant of a permit subject to conditions, but we do not want the regulations to impose such conditions; that would make the permit regime more complicated for hauliers if those conditions are already covered elsewhere.

I absolutely understand the query about why some parts of the criteria and not others are in the Bill: believe me, it is something I spent much time discussing with the Bill team. Having considered the public law principles relating to the exercise of discretion and the need, for example, to take relevant factors into account and not to take irrelevant factors into account, we have taken the view that it is preferable to include in the Bill the specific references to first come, first served and random selection, to make it absolutely clear that when considering the scope of the enabling power the Secretary of State has the power to include these methods in the regulations.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that we want vehicles coming into the UK to meet the high standards that we expect of our own operators— even more so if we are using that as a criterion to allocate permits. However, Clause 2 enables regulations to be made only about permits issued to our operators, not permits for access to the UK by foreign hauliers, as the noble Lord acknowledged. The international agreements we set up with other countries will usually mean that a permit will be given only to a haulier who has that country’s equivalent of the operator’s licence. In a permit scheme with the EU, should we have one, all hauliers will have the operator’s licence governed by the same EU rules as we have at the moment. The best way to raise international standards is to continue to work with our partners to improve those standards.

I am happy to confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that we will indeed consult carefully with industry on the criteria used. She made a very interesting suggestion on good repute and that is certainly something we will consider warmly. Sadly, I have not seen the briefing from Unite. Perhaps the noble Lord will be kind enough to forward it to me so that we can consider its suggestions, but I confirm that we will include trade unions in our consultation. We meet Unite regularly but we will ensure that we meet it when we discuss the criteria. If we are in the unfortunate situation of having to have a criterion, we should certainly use it to do what we can to improve the haulage industry.

I hope noble Lords will support the government amendment with the intention of trying to make the clause clearer.

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[Earl Attlee]

I entirely accept the point. The amendment is carefully drafted but it would still have the undesirable effect.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, we generally support the sentiment of both these amendments and hope that the Minister will be able to give assurances in both areas.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as I said in Committee—I am keen to reiterate it now—our aim is to set fees on a cost-recovery basis and keep them as low as possible. We will look to minimise the costs to hauliers in using any permit scheme, should we need one. We are well aware of the tight margins that many hauliers operate within and will do all we can to reduce the cost of any permit scheme.

The Bill allows us to charge fees for permits and we propose to charge those fees, if needed, for the recovery of only the costs of providing these permits. The Treasury‘s guidelines, Managing Public Money, set out how such fees should be set and what elements can and cannot be included in that calculation. The Government believe that those using this service should meet the costs of it, rather than the costs being passed on to taxpayers more generally or going on the operator’s licence.

We will follow these guidelines in setting our fees, which means hauliers will not pay any more than they need to to meet the costs of the service. The best way to minimise permit costs for hauliers is to ensure that our systems are as efficient and effective as possible. I acknowledge the points made earlier by noble Lords about IT systems. For these permits, we are exploring how we can use our existing systems with a view to users having a single system for all our permit schemes. We hope that will simplify the process, and there is significant investment.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, this is another interesting amendment. I have a query for the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, about drafting. The amendment refers to “UK registered hauliers”. What does that mean? Does it mean that the company is registered in the UK or that the operator’s licence is held here? You could have a company which is registered on the continent, or in Ireland, whose operator’s licence is actually held in the UK. There is some lack of clarity there. I do not know whether the noble Lord has thought of it.

My worry about the amendment is: if the operator is not going to pay, who is? The noble Lord also made a very important point about competition in the road haulage industry being acute. He is absolutely right: it has been so for a long time. The reason for that is that the cost of operation in road haulage is well understood. Modern vehicles are extremely efficient; you can get maintenance contracts which take out all the risks. You know the costs of the fuel—it is very high, because it is heavily taxed—the costs of the driver, and the cost of other taxes and any necessary permits. If there is a cost to the permits, the market will take account of that. Although the noble Lord is right that it is a horribly competitive market, the prices will actually just rise very slightly to take account of the cost of permits. I do not think that the noble Lord’s concerns about absorbing the costs hold good.

I hope that the Minister will provide reassurance on Amendments 10 and 11. It seems that, in road haulage legislation, the driver is responsible for everything but has little actual power to do anything about it. I hope my noble friend can give some reassurance on that.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I support the amendments and will build on the points made. Amendment 11 is particularly important. The generality of placing responsibility on the driver is becoming increasingly out of date with the complexities of the real, modern world. In other transport environments, it is recognised that the wider responsibility lies with the operator, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give assurances on that.

Amendment 10 is also sensible and goes in the right general direction. We are moving into a wholly digital age—even I have an iPhone.

Amendment 9 deals with a very serious issue. The industry will feel aggrieved if there are additional charges. It would argue, accurately, that it is an enormously efficient industry, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, pointed out, and we respect that. The industry works to very small margins and it is therefore inevitable that these charges will be passed on to customers. I hope that there will be full consultation before any charges are considered and that everything is done to make them as low as possible. I think the Minister has already said this, but it cannot be repeated often enough. In the previous group there was some talk about considerations of other factors such as what other people were charging, and so on. I hope that those will not be the considerations; the simple consideration should be that the Government pay all the capital and the set-up costs, and everything else is driven down to a low level.

I hope that the intention of this amendment, to outline and emphasise just how important this is to the industry, is accepted by the Government and that the Minister will be able to repeat herself by saying reassuring words.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I will first address enforcement and Amendments 10 and 11. The sections on enforcement use the model of enforcement powers that are already in place in the context of operator licensing, Community licences and permits. Under current arrangements, the Community licence is the paper document that hauliers are required to carry in the vehicle and show to inspectors on request, so a switch to paper copy permits, should they be needed, will not fundamentally change this process.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is right to highlight the benefits of digital documents. We want to see the haulage sector moving in this direction and are working towards that, but unfortunately we are not there yet. The Bill already provides the flexibility to move to that digital system in the future. Clause 1 provides that the permit,

“may be in any form the Secretary of State considers appropriate”.

That would enable the Secretary of State to specify the form of permits as digital once we have all the processes in place for that and once the industry is ready for it. Some of our existing permit agreements with other countries require a paper permit to be carried, and indeed all our existing permit schemes are currently paper-based, so it would be slightly counterproductive to insist on a digital permit at this stage. However, I can reassure the noble Lord that we are working towards that and that the current drafting allows us to move to that as and when we are ready to do so.

On the noble Lord’s amendment to Clause 8, the offence in Clause 8(2) relates to the conduct of a driver when a requirement is made of him or her by an examiner. Clause 6(2)(a) requires a driver to produce any permit carried on the vehicle to an examiner, and failing to do so without reasonable excuse would be an offence under Clause 8(2). That offence is relevant where a driver is frustrating enforcement activity, and mirrors similar offences for failing to produce documents carried on the vehicle, such as drivers’ hours records under Section 99 of the Transport Act 1968.

I absolutely understand the noble Lord’s point that if a driver has been sent on a journey by an operator without the necessary permit, the driver should not be punished for that. I agree, and to avoid this we included the wording,

“that is carried on the vehicle”,

in Clause 6(2)(a). Therefore, the driver will be prosecuted for failing to show a permit only if there is one on the vehicle which has been provided by the operator. If that is the case, that would be an offence under Clause 8(1), and that offence applies to the operator, so the driver would not be prosecuted for failing to produce a permit if they had never had such a permit in the first place. I hope this clarifies the scope of these offences to the extent that the noble Lord feels able not to press those amendments.

On the cost element of this group, the amendment proposes that fees should not be charged for five years. I have already outlined, and am happy to do so again, that our aim is to set fees, should they be needed, on a cost recovery basis and to minimise those costs to hauliers using any permit scheme. If we were to exempt hauliers from any permit fees for five years, these costs would have to be borne by another party. That would either be the taxpayer or it would need to be done via the cost of the operator licence, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, pointed out, which would mean that all freight operators would pay for it. The latter would be more in accord with the principles in Managing Public Money which we are trying to stick to.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is right to predict that I will use the argument that the costs of issuing Community licences are covered by operator licensing fees, which also operate on cost recovery. The issuing of Community licences is a small part of the costs of the operator licensing regime, and these fees are kept under review. If we no longer have to issue the Community licences and this reduces the cost to be covered by the fees, of course we will consider that when the fees are reviewed.

However, overall we think it is fairer that those who benefit from a service cover its running costs, rather than have all hauliers or all taxpayers paying for a benefit that only a small number get. Earlier, I confirmed that the fees will cover only the day-to-day running costs, with the Government covering the set-up costs of the scheme, which is being funded as part of our grant from the Treasury. Again, I am happy to confirm that we will do all we can to keep those fees low.

I hope that this discussion and the fact that the fees, should they be needed, will cover only the running costs will reassure the noble Lord that the fees charged to hauliers will be proportionate and stop an additional burden being imposed on the taxpayer. I can also reassure noble Lords that, should the government amendments be accepted, these fees, should they ever be needed, will be subject to three further measures: a statutory consultation with the industry; an affirmative procedure to allow proper parliamentary scrutiny of the regulations; and a report following their introduction to examine the impact on the haulage industry.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has again suggested that we might benefit from further discussion on this. However, as with Amendment 1, I feel that I have been clear about the Government’s position on the Bill and the Government have nowhere further to go. Therefore, if the noble Lord wants to push the matter further, he will have to test the opinion of the House today. However, I hope that with these reassurances and the government amendments that we will come to later, he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I welcome this amendment, as far as it goes. Again, we debated this in Committee. The noble Baroness has tabled the amendment after Clause 8 and explained very clearly its purpose. However, when I read it, I said to myself, “What are ‘relevant restrictions’?” It is not included in the definitions and, although she has explained it, in the cool light of day when the Bill becomes an Act, I would read it and say, “Whatever is that?” Could she look again at that and either clarify it or come back with a definition at some stage?

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 12, I will speak also to Amendments 13 and 14 in my name. In the real world, you have to realise when you are not going to get any further. The noble Baroness has, in effect, accepted the thrust of our concern that there should be proper reporting. I think our amendments are much better but I know that she will not agree with me, and so I will settle for what I have got.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I am grateful for noble Lords’ contributions to this group and pleased that they welcome the broad aim of the amendment. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I hope that I have spelled out clearly exactly what the restrictions will be—and we will continue to do so. Again, that is something that we will consult the industry on and details can be included in regulations.

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Moved by

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

16: Clause 12, page 8, line 36, at end insert—
“(2A) The Secretary of State must collate comprehensive data on the number and nature of trailer-related road accidents in the United Kingdom, and the Secretary of State must include the findings in a report.(2B) Such a report must include a recommendation regarding the necessity or not for the compulsory registration of trailers weighing more than 750kg kept or used on roads, regardless of whether the trailer is being used internationally or only in the United Kingdom, in a register to be kept by the Secretary of State.(2C) The report must be laid before each House of Parliament within the period of one year beginning with the day on which this section comes into force.”

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 17 in my name.

The National Trailer and Towing Association has long campaigned for the periodic inspection and testing of light trailers. One of the main barriers to that is the lack of a trailer registration scheme that covers category O1 and O2 trailers. Noble Lords are aware of the tragic case of Donna and Scott Hussey’s very young son, Freddie, who was killed in 2014 when he was hit by a two-tonne trailer that had come loose from a Land Rover. The family and their MP, Karin Smyth, have been campaigning ever since for better trailer safety to try to prevent further serious injury and deaths. What is needed—and what Amendments 16 and 17 provide for—is the creation of clear evidence based around weights and categories of trailers in relation to their safety and the number and nature of trailer-related road accidents in the UK.

The Government need to take action on this, rather than making vague promises to consider this in the future. There is a strong argument for looking specifically at the safety of trailers in the O2 category, weighing between 750 kilograms and 3.5 tonnes. With a genuine data collection exercise and assessment of evidence, the Government would be in a position to make an informed and responsible decision, befitting Her Majesty’s Government, on whether trailers in that category should be registered and subject to stringent safety testing. The data presented in the Minister’s letter mostly conflates that of trailers below 3.5 tonnes and large—category O3 or O4—trailers above that weight. This is misleading because the data referring to these large trailers is irrelevant to the central issue. We are not questioning the safety of large trailers of this nature because, as has been highlighted, they are already subject to robust safety procedures and checks and subsequently have high pass rates. Those figures, and comparisons with non-GB countries, relate only to large tested vehicles over 3.5 tonnes, not the lower categories of trailer with which we are at present most concerned.

Crucially, any analysis of the Department for Transport data on the safety of trailers below 3.5 tonnes shows some major gaps in reported data. This makes it impossible to describe the best attempt of Ministers to argue on the Government’s behalf that we have a representative assessment of how safe or unsafe domestic users of trailers are on our roads.

The statistics presented in the letter on incidents involving light trailers do not represent all such incidents, but only those reported and recorded by police. Road traffic incidents reported to the police include only those involving a personal injury and that occur on public roads. The DfT therefore clearly states in its annual report on road casualties:

“These figures … do not represent the full range of all accidents or casualties”,


in Great Britain, and goes on to include details of other sources of statistics with vastly higher recorded accidents and road traffic injuries.

We would also like to draw a distinction between the current method of capturing data on trailer safety after an injury has occurred in an incident, and the DfT’s failure to lead any kind of initiative to collect data on the roadworthiness of smaller trailers using stop-and-search-type testing to prevent such accidents occurring in the first place. This has been highlighted by Avon and Somerset Police as an urgent priority. It argues that its own evidence of checks shows the unsafe condition of the majority of domestic trailers, which, despite being overwhelming, is still ignored.

The evidence presented by the National Trailer and Towing Association and others shows the shocking safety standards of many untested trailers under 3.5 tonnes. According to it, a large proportion of such trailers would fail any roadworthiness test. When the Secretary of State undertakes a data-collection exercise and collates comprehensive data on the number and nature of trailer-related road accidents in the United Kingdom, it is vital that this includes data gathered specifically on the safety of trailers in the O2 category.

The logic of the concept that trailers should be registered and tested seems at first sight overwhelming: 750 kilograms of trailer traveling at 70 mph out of control can do as much damage as a small car travelling at 70 mph. Clearly, the solution is that they should be registered and inspected. The Minister will tell us that this is unnecessarily bureaucratic, too complex and disproportionate. Indeed, that was exactly the position that I took in 1960, when I was told that I had to have an MOT test for my car, which, being seven years older than me, seemed to have shown through time that it would manage. We are a long way on from then, and we now accept the MOT test as part of our lives. In fact, MOT testing is one area where our requirements are significantly ahead of the EU’s. We are going to tighten the MOT test at, I think, the end of this month, which will have a significant impact on many car owners. We are willing to be quite brave in imposing this testing regime on vehicles, particularly private motor vehicles, and to some extent we have been rewarded in recent years through a reduction in the number of tragedies.

This is about people dying, and it is about Freddie. But, as I said, the Minister will argue that it is disproportionate. That is why our two amendments are so stunningly reasonable. I will go through them briefly. Amendment 16 would require the Secretary of State to do three things: to collate data, to then take a view of registration and say when they should be presented in a report. The key words are in proposed new subsection (2B): “or not”. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to collate data and make a decision based on them whether to register trailers. Amendment 17 is similar. It would require the report to decide whether it is necessary “or not”—this is at the discretion of the Secretary of State—to introduce a mandatory safety standards testing scheme. The last part of the amendment would enable and empower the Secretary of State to make regulations to introduce such a scheme.

While we believe that registration and examination will be a key improvement in safety and would have saved this little boy’s life and those of other people who die in events relating to trailers, we accept the charge of proportionality. Somebody must take an analytical approach to it and make a judgment on whether this would be grossly disproportionate to the benefits gained. That is why both amendments would allow the Secretary of State to make decisions based on evidence. We are insisting not on registration or a testing scheme in the amendments, but that the Secretary of State goes through an orderly, analytical process and comes to a decision. I beg to move.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I spoke at length in Committee on this matter. I do not intend to do so today. This is a very good compromise arrangement. The Government would ultimately take the decision. We would simply establish a framework on which basis a Government can take the decision. I hope the Government will accept the amendment.

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[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, safety is of course very important and warrants due care and consideration whenever we are legislating. Under the proposals in the Bill, around 80,000 commercial trailers, and a negligible number of non-commercial trailers, would fall within the mandatory scope of the scheme. It would not affect the 1.7 million trailer users who solely use their trailer domestically. We believe that this approach balances the need to offer clarity to UK operators and enable them to continue to operate internationally, without placing undue costs and administrative requirements on businesses and non-commercial users.

It may be helpful to explain the existing regimes in place to ensure high standards of safety and roadworthiness of trailers. This includes an annual testing regime for larger trailers and an approvals regime for new trailers. The current annual testing regime applies to almost all trailers weighing over 3.5 tonnes, with very limited exceptions. Certain other categories are also included, such as those weighing over 1,020 kilograms with powered braking systems. This regime covered the testing of almost a quarter of a million trailers in 2016-17. The pass rate at first test last year was 88%. The separate approvals regime is very similar to that which is in place for motor vehicles and covers new trailers ahead of their entry into service. This means that almost all new trailers are approved either by model or on an individual basis ahead of taking to the roads.

The amendment seeks the collating of a report on the number and nature of accidents involving trailers. I confirm to noble Lords that this data is already recorded in the annual Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain report published by the department every September, which I am happy to share with noble Lords; there is also a copy in the Library. It contains extensive details of all vehicles and persons involved in accidents reported to the police that occurred on a public highway, involving at least one motor vehicle and where at least one person was injured. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, pointed out the limitation that those are the only figures included. The report recorded statistics for more than 136,000 accidents resulting in injuries and has informed the department’s ongoing work on road safety, for which my honourable friend Jesse Norman is the Minister responsible. The number of recorded accidents involving a trailer in 2016 was 4,352, which accounted for 3.2% of the total number of accidents in 2016. The total number of accidents involving trailers has decreased by 21% in the last 10 years—a significant improvement.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, spoke of the tragic death of Freddie Hussey. I pay tribute to the campaign of his family and his local MP. Following this incident, the department and its agencies have undertaken significant work as part of our continuing commitment to improve towing safety standards. Highways England has launched the national towing working group, which brings together a range of stakeholders. The DVSA published further guidance regarding safe towing practices.

Noble Lords will appreciate that towing, by the fact of involving two vehicles, is more complex than driving a motor vehicle alone. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, highlighted some of the issues that can be faced. It requires not only the safety of the vehicles involved but knowledge of and education on driving and towing safely. Alongside effective enforcement of existing provisions, the department believes that education is integral to continuing to reduce the number of accidents related to towing.

My honourable friend the Roads Minister has been particularly engaged on the issue of trailer safety and has met Karin Smyth, the local MP for the Hussey family. He will be attending the trailer safety summit later this month alongside a range of industry stakeholders to take stock of the progress that has been made and decide what more can be done. I absolutely echo the sentiment of noble Lords that each death that occurs on the roads is a tragedy and we must do all we can do avoid them, but I hope noble Lords will agree that these figures and the work I have spoken of underline the fact that the trailers on our roads exhibit good standards of safety and our current approach is seeing steady improvements.

We remain of the view that it is not appropriate to include these amendments in the Bill, but the debate they have raised has been valuable. We will continue to review safety regimes on an ongoing basis, but I appreciate the wish of noble Lords for the department to look further at this issue of trailer safety, and I have discussed this in detail with my honourable friend the Roads Minister. We have asked officials to review what further steps could be taken on trailer safety and the reporting measures that are in place.

Although we remain of the view that trailer registration and indeed a trailer safety check are not integral to improving these standards, it is of course appropriate that we continually look for opportunities to consider data collection, review our conclusions on registration and testing, and raise standards of safety on the roads. As such, I am pleased to be able to commit the department to producing a dedicated report on trailer safety. This report will ensure that our existing reporting on trailers accurately covers the complexity involved in accidents involving towing where issues may arise from a vehicle, trailer or indeed the capability of the driver of the towing vehicle. After looking at the reported road casualties document, I agree that we could and should look at the way that we report trailer safety. It can definitely be improved. The report will also consider the role that registration and testing may play in continuing to improve trailer safety standards. We will certainly discuss this with the Caravan Council and other industry representatives.

As my noble friend Lord Attlee said, following our previous session I have arranged for him to meet the Roads Minister to further discuss trailer safety. On behalf of my honourable friend the Minister, I would like to extend this invitation to all noble Lords with an interest in the subject. The contents of this report I have committed to can be discussed there in more detail. I hope noble Lords are reassured by the statistics I have outlined and by the approach that the department is taking more generally. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for suggesting a report in his amendment and I am pleased to be able to agree to such a report.

As I have throughout debate on the Bill, I have attempted to take on board the views of all noble Lords. I fully agree that the department should consider this issue further but, with my commitment to such a report, I do not think it is necessary to seek to include the amendment in the Bill by dividing the House. With the agreement to a report and the offer of a meeting with my honourable friend the Roads Minister to discuss the contents of such a report, I hope that the noble Lord feels able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response and her department for the steps already made, but she used the argument which is always used in these circumstances: “Not in this Bill”. The problem is that the Bill is here and this is an opportunity. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, pointed out, this is a hole in our legislation, and it is a hole that we believe should be filled.

It is a matter of life or death. I have been involved in the life-or-death industry for many years. In that, you have to worry about not simply the safety; you have to be reasonable and proportionate. That is why these two amendments are framed in this way. They would require the collection of data; the Minister has said that that is going ahead anyway. They would then require the Secretary of State to analyse that data and to make some decisions. Finally, they would enable the Secretary of State to introduce appropriate schemes. It seems that, from what has been said, most of what is in these amendments is acceptable to the Government anyway. The key additional part is the requirement for decision-making and the enabling of that decision-making to result in an appropriate scheme, if that is what the analysis reveals. Accordingly, I am not willing to withdraw this amendment and I beg to test the opinion of the House.

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Moved by

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

17: Clause 13, page 9, line 14, at end insert—
“(2A) The report referred to in section 12(2A) must include a recommendation regarding the necessity or not for a periodic mandatory safety standards testing scheme for all trailers weighing more than 750kg.(2B) Subject to subsection (2A), regulations may make provision for a periodic mandatory safety standards testing scheme which must apply to all trailers weighing more than 750kg kept or used on roads, whether the trailer is being used internationally or only in the United Kingdom, with inspections of such trailers to be undertaken on an annual basis.”

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, in Committee, I argued that we are too keen on debating affirmative orders; I am not convinced it is necessary. With the negative procedure, if we have adverse briefing from industry and lobby groups, we can flag a negative order up for debate and debate it just as thoroughly as an affirmative order. I welcome the government amendment to provide for the affirmative procedure for the first such order as a sensible compromise. There is a danger with going for the affirmative procedure for subsequent orders. Suppose a small problem with secondary legislation is detected but you need an affirmative order to correct it. Officials’ advice will be that it is not worth going for an affirmative order just to correct this small problem, whereas if we were using the negative procedure, it could be corrected and there would be no controversy with outside bodies. I suggest, therefore, that we are cautious about the use of affirmative orders.

As for the noble Baroness’s sunset clause, noble Lords will recall that I have been very active on Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, where we have a sunset problem because the Government chose not to commence a piece of legislation, so I have sympathy for sunset clauses. I think there is a slight defect in the noble Baroness’s amendment and in Committee I suggested considering my alternative amendment. The defect is that the Secretary of State can go for an affirmative order to extend the period but that just extends it once for 15 years, whereas my amendment would have given only a small extension each time. I will share my amendment with the noble Baroness.

I am also in discussion with the Cabinet Office and had a meeting with Cabinet Office officials, attended by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, to explore this very issue, because I am at one with the noble Baroness that we should not have legislation hanging around that has not been commenced. Perhaps the noble Baroness will agree with the Minister on the amendment.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for moving from what was an entirely untenable position in the original Bill. I wish she had moved further—I find many of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, sensible—but I cannot at this stage see a position that moves further but not all the way, for want of a better way of putting it. Therefore, I reluctantly accept the Government’s compromise.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to the debate and, as it is the last group today, I am grateful for contributions throughout the passage of the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has moved an amendment to provide a sunset clause for some aspects of permanent schemes introduced under the legislation, and the DPRRC report also recommended the insertion of sunset provisions. I agree that the Bill should not provide powers that may never be used, but use of the regulation-making powers set out in the Bill does not depend on the outcome of our negotiations with the EU, as we have discussed. The powers will be used in any event for applications outside the EU context—for applications pursuant to our bilateral agreements with non-EU countries, for example—so a sunset provision would constrain our ability to manage permit applications for those bilateral agreements.

I agree with the noble Baroness’s intention to ensure that unnecessary and unused legislation does not languish on the statute book but, as I said, that would not be the case. The effect of the amendment, even with the Secretary of State’s ability to extend it, would be to commit both government and Parliament to an unnecessary procedure. We would always need to extend the clause, as we would be using the regulations. For that reason, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

I tabled the government amendment to apply the affirmative procedure to the first regulations made and those first regulations only. I have taken account of the views of the DPRRC and the Constitution Committee—I am grateful for their work in scrutinising the Bill—and the concerns raised in Committee and agree that there should be further scrutiny of regulations in this case as they are likely to have an impact on the haulage sector. We believe that it is appropriate for the first regulations only; the same scrutiny is not required for subsequent regulations. The noble Baroness mentioned offences in particular. Again, we are following precedent by moving offences to affirmative first. In recent regulations, such as those under the Childcare Act, those offences are only affirmative first, and that is what we followed.

We want to ensure that scrutiny of the regulations in this area is proportionate, and we spent some time in Grand Committee debating the merits of the affirmative and negative procedures. We are using powers that will replicate many aspects of existing schemes such as those under the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act, and those regulations are subject to the negative procedure but, given that these regulations will introduce an entirely new scheme, it is absolutely appropriate that they are affirmative in the first instance.

I hope noble Lords will agree that the government amendments allow proper and proportionate scrutiny, and I commend them.

Welsh Ministers (Transfer of Functions) (Railways) Order 2018

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for introducing this order. We on these Benches welcome the order, but we welcome it noting that it is fundamentally somewhat second best in the eyes of the Welsh Government in the sense that they would have liked a settlement much closer to the Scotland model than this order provides. I cannot remember which noble Lord mentioned it, but there is an implication that there is a journey and a terminus on devolution. I think that over the next few years, as this order and its effects play out, we may see renewed pressure that railways in Wales should be managed on the Scotland model.

The order is précised in paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum. It is:

“to devolve executive franchising functions to the Welsh Ministers so that the Welsh Government could lead the procurement of the next Wales and Borders franchise, due to commence operations on 14 October 2018. This formed part of a wider agreement that included revised arrangements to enable the progression of two proposed rail electrification schemes in South Wales”.

This is no ordinary franchise. My judgment of its importance is very much built around the admirable objectives set out in the South Wales Metro proposals. They are somewhat flatteringly modelled on the London experience and envisage a totally integrated railway system around Cardiff and Newport using the Valley Lines. Therefore, the aspiration of the franchise is much wider than any previous one. The franchisee is to be called,

“an Operator and Development Partner”,

and will undertake,

“The operation of the Wales and Borders rail franchise … The design and the management of the development and implementation of capital works to deliver a Metro style service on the Core Valleys Lines … and subsequent infrastructure management of the Core Valleys Lines … The operation of rail and related aspects of the South Wales Metro service”,

and,

“The design and development of further schemes to improve rail travel in Wales”.

My understanding is that that will mean that the ownership of the infrastructure, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, will transfer from Network Rail to either the Welsh Government or their agency, Transport for Wales. Essentially, there will be a change of ownership and responsibility. Could the Minister explain where the powers to make this transfer lie? In which particular Act are they, and who is exercising what powers under it? I remind the House that Network Rail was probably the most undramatic nationalisation in history, brought about by the Office for National Statistics, which said, “It’s yours, Government, and you’d better run it”. Perhaps the Minister would like to reflect on the joys of running a railway.

Has the transfer has taken place and, if it has, what are the details? A number of noble Lords have asked detailed questions about it, but the key issue in the transfer is what the associated financial arrangements are. I think the Minister referred to them in her speech, but I would be grateful if she could spell them out at a bit more length. Do the UK Government have any ongoing responsibility for revenue support, particularly to the railways in the South Wales Metro and the Wales and borders franchise in general? Do they have any responsibility for supporting the capital programme in any way?

The aspect that frightens one when one looks at the aspirations of the South Wales Metro is that it involves some electrification. I have personal experience of exceeding my budget: if I remember correctly, I spent about £1.4 billion more than I was supposed to, but that was only 70% over budget. Network Rail, in its electrification of the Great Western main line, managed to drive the budget up from £2.6 billion to £5.7 billion, which is pretty heroic—about 120% again. Surely one of the problems of taking ownership of these lines, which by implication are not in great shape now, is that the Welsh Government will be exposed to possible significant increases in the project.

In a sense, my final question is: who will be responsible for these overruns? These sums of money are not insignificant for the UK Government but could be crippling for the Welsh Government.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their comments. I recognise the significant experience of the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw, Lord Wigley and Lord Anderson, and many others in this area over many years. I will aim to address the questions that have been raised, but if I fail to do so I will follow up in writing.

The noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Wigley, raised the issue of the wider devolution of infrastructure funding. The Government believe it is not desirable to reopen general discussion on Silk recommendations around which there is no consensus, so we do not intend to revisit the question of devolving Network Rail funding. As part of Network Rail’s devolution arrangements, the Welsh Government will be represented on the Wales route supervisory board, and the board will work in partnership to drive improvements for customers in the Wales and borders area and hold the industry to account.

The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, raised the issue of the delay in this order. I acknowledge that delay but reassure him that the delay in transferring the rail powers to Welsh Ministers has not adversely affected the procurement process for the next franchise. The formal transfer of powers has required the resolution of a number of detailed policy and practical considerations around cross-border services, which has taken longer than anticipated. However, we have been working closely with the Welsh Government to ensure that they can proceed in a timely manner with the franchise procurement. The ongoing procurement of the next franchise is being facilitated through agency agreements, enabling Welsh Ministers to exercise the Secretary of State’s relevant functions in advance of the order being made.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, asked about wider government spending in Wales. The department will continue to liaise closely with the Welsh Government on the specification funding of Network Rail’s operations in England and Wales for each of the five-year railway control periods to ensure that the requirements for Wales for increased capacity on the network are reflected. We are investing a record amount in Wales infrastructure and our spending goes where it is most needed, where it delivers the greatest value for money and we make decisions for both England and Wales based on a rigorous and fair appraisal process that ensures that.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and others mentioned the Cardiff Valley Lines, and I will go into some detail on that. As part of the procurement, the Government are leading on the development of proposals for the creation of the South Wales Metro and, alongside refranchising Wales and borders services, the Welsh Government seek to take ownership of the core Valley Lines infrastructure from Network Rail. They then intend to vertically integrate the core Valley Lines by contracting a supplier to run trains and manage the infrastructure.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 22nd March 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Could I ask some questions? First, have we an estimate of the number of trailers that fall under the various categories nationally that we might be able to talk about during the course of the Committee? Secondly, do we have any information on the number of accidents that have taken place? If so, do we know what proportion of those accidents have entailed the trailer being overloaded in default of other law?

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

Is the Minister going to grasp the general subject of trailer safety under this group or the next?

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

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for their amendments on the requirements regulation for the trailer registration system. Our intention is to set out in the regulations the full scope of the registration scheme. Mandatory registration will apply solely to certain categories of trailers travelling internationally to or through 1968 Convention territories. This includes all current EU member states with the exception of Ireland, Spain, Malta and Cyprus. The distinction over limiting the application of the scheme to trailers travelling in 1968 Convention territories is important as it ensures that trailers used for any UK to Republic of Ireland journeys will not be subject to mandatory registration. The Government have been clear that we are committed to ensuring that no hard border is created on the island of Ireland, and the Bill will not create any additional requirements for trailers used solely for journeys between the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

The intended scope for the mandatory scheme, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and set out in the policy scoping document, is for commercial trailers over 750 kilograms and all trailers over 3.5 tonnes undertaking such journeys. The convention is not concerned with the registration status of trailers weighing below 750 kilogrammes, which is why we have used that bracket. I will explain our thinking on trailers weighing over 3.5 tonnes shortly.

The setting of all the details of scope in regulations is done in order to offer clarity to trailer users and allow the regulations to clearly cover all matters relating to registration. However, I sympathise with the noble Baroness’s point about having some certainty on that; that is why we have included them in the policy scoping documents and are consulting with the industry. The fact that they are not in the Bill will also allow us to consult further before setting the exact details. While we are clear that mandatory registration should apply to commercial trailers over 750 kilograms, further consideration is needed on whether larger, non-commercial leisure trailers should be covered by the regulations made under the Bill.

I am not sure how heavy my noble friend’s trailer is, but from our engagement with industry, we are confident that trailers over 3.5 tonnes are very limited in number—I fear that we have been unable to come up with exact numbers. However, in light of this, we are considering whether the registration scope should be mandatory for these trailers and we want to consult on this further with the sector before making a final decision. For that reason, and because we believe all of the details should be in one place in the regulations, we do not want to set these categories out in the Bill at this stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I apologise for starting to get worried that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was not going to move his Amendment 18 so I have spoken substantially. However, this gives me the opportunity to raise another argument in support of the general thrust of the noble Lord’s amendment, while being quite sure that we should not put it into the Bill.

Not only is it a question of the tragic accidents and injuries that the noble Lord referred to, but quite often you see these relatively small trailers causing an accident and disruption on the strategic road network. That can be really expensive to the economy. I hope that my noble friend can write to us before the next stage to tell us how many incidents Highways England has recorded of small trailers causing an incident. Often, because they are badly maintained, because their wheel bearings are shot and because the person using the trailer does not realise that the wheel bearings are shot, you see these trailers littered on the strategic road network—the motorways—with a wheel fallen off or bearings collapsed. That causes an awful lot of inconvenience to other road users, so there may be an economic case, forgetting the tragic cost of the accidents.

One point on maintenance is that there is a safety check as well as an MoT. You could require the trailer to have an MoT or you could require it to have a safety check by going to a garage to give it the once-over, which might achieve an awful lot of what we want without all the bureaucracy that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, worries about. The judgment is, of course, a matter for the department.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, when I was 17, I owned a motor car which was six years older than I was. It was in the days when a good tyre was one where you could not see the canvas. I was happy with my motor car. Suddenly the dreadful news of the MoT fell on the world. My motor car, which cost £7 and 10 shillings—about 200 quid, I suppose, in today’s money—had to have an MoT. In the early days of the MOT, you still did not need tread to get through, you just needed not to have canvas. We were terrified: this was going to be the end of the world for the motoring community. In the real world, it has not turned out like that at all. The MoT has progressed and become more refined. As we were discussing on another Bill in a similar area, 90%-plus of road accidents are now down to the driver. Vehicles are now extraordinarily safe because of this progressive legislation.

We talk about a small trailer, but even the smallest trailer weighs about half the weight of the vehicle pulling it. It will have kinetic energy similar to the car. We have a system to manage the kinetic energy of the car called the MoT, drink-driving rules, and so on, and we have created safety in the car. Here we have on the back an almost unregulated vehicle with its own kinetic energy. The case for managing that at first sight looks overwhelming.

Conversely, we need to understand the incidence. This goes to the centre of modern lawmaking, because if it is sensible, it is about proportionality. We do not have the data in front of us, and therefore we will not formally support the amendment at this stage. The arguments made by my noble friend about the nanny state effect and the community feeling that it is unreasonable are real.

I hope that the amendment will secure the Minister’s attention on how to reach proportionality. If there are few accidents and very few fatalities, then arguably the proportionality argument says, “Don’t interfere any more”. If that is not true, however, then the Government of the day have to look at it very carefully, explain to us what the research is, convince us that it is top of the agenda in terms of progressing regulations and come to a situation where society accepts that if there is to be regulation it is worth while.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Golding]

My Lords, I, too, would hate to be left out of this debate. I have been driving for 65 years and I have never seen an accident caused by a trailer. I have never seen one tipped over at the side of the road. However, having said that, times have changed. These trailers are much more powerful than they used to be, so we ought to look at the legislation and decide what needs to be done.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

On a note of personal explanation, I am seized of the risk of trailers: there is clearly a strong case for regulation and testing. Nevertheless, there are at least 1.5 million vehicles that would have to be tested and therefore the issue of proportionality should be properly considered. To get to the bottom of this, we need good data. As a minimum, I expect from the Minister a commitment to gather data so that this can be carried forward.

[Earl Attlee]

I was the Opposition Front Bench spokesman for transport in your Lordships’ House; if I was in the noble Lord’s position again, I would make exactly the same speech.

--- Later in debate ---

Although I understand the sentiment of the noble Lord’s amendment, I hope he agrees with our view that it is not necessary. The department and its agencies recognise the importance of trailer safety, and indeed towing safety more generally, but we believe that the current regimes are already functioning well to this end. We continue to review these regimes and our approach to enforcement on an ongoing basis. I hope that the discussion of the existing and ongoing measures offers the reassurance necessary for the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment, which is beyond the intentions of this legislation. I reiterate that the Bill makes no changes to the testing regime.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

The Minister gave us a figure for the number of accidents. I wonder whether she could look at the number of fatalities and write to us with that information.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Absolutely, I have that information here. Trailer and caravan-related collisions accounted for 2% of the 1,787 total number of those killed or seriously injured in collisions in 2015.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

19: Clause 14, page 9, line 24, leave out “may require or authorise” and insert “must require”

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 19, I shall speak also to Amendment 20. These two amendments say in effect that if a trailer is registered, it must have a registration mark and that registration mark must be fixed to it. The Minister will probably call my attention to the Interpretation Act or something. Really, it is just a probing amendment to receive an assurance from the Minister that these “mays” will in practice be interpreted as “musts”. I beg to move.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If it is about fixing the certificate to the trailer there will be a danger that that can be easily removed, particularly on small trailers. On timber trailers there will be a particular problem, so if the Government were to go down the route of smaller trailers, which obviously I hope they do not, they may have to find some way of burnishing it into the wood or people will simply steal certificates and put them on their own trailers. If it is an aluminium trailer, again, it could be unscrewed unless it was riveted on in some way. All I am arguing is that if we go down this route, let us have a system that works and does not allow people simply to—if I may use the term—nick a certificate from one trailer and put it on to their own trailer for a few days while they are using it and then return it to the original trailer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I think that that was a satisfactory answer and I will read it with care. I hope it boiled down to the fact that the overwhelming volume of the trailers that are registered will have a mark and it will be fixed to them. The second-order advantages, particularly in terms of theft, will come in only if the general approach is overwhelmingly positive. I note that the Minister is nodding, which I hope will go in the record. With that nod, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 19 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

21: Clause 21, page 13, line 4, at end insert—
“(2A) A statutory instrument containing regulations under section 17 (offences) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 21, I will speak also to Amendments 24, 25 and 27. This group and the next group of amendments are vehicles to effect the recommendations of the Select Committee on the Constitution and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I hope the Minister will agree with everything I have to say because traditionally the Government respect those committees for the very careful work they do. It is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, here. I am sure he will speak to these amendments. The work of these committees is essential to keep our law sensible, balanced and correctly scrutinised.

The 11th report of the Select Committee on the Constitution, published on 8 March, says at paragraph 7:

“If there are exceptional circumstances which require the creation of criminal offences by regulations, they should normally be subject to the affirmative procedure”.


It then goes on to talk about sifting. Clause 17(7) of the Bill says:

“Regulations under this section may not provide for an offence to be punishable with imprisonment or with a fine exceeding level 3 on the standard scale”.


But clearly there is a criminal offence and as a general rule we do not believe that any criminal offence should be introduced with a negative instrument. I hope the Minister will agree.

Turning to the subject of Amendment 27, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee says:

“Although the Government do not currently know what regulations under clause 2 will contain or how significant they will be, the Government propose that the negative procedure will always apply to such regulations. For the reasons given at paragraph 9 above, we recommend that there should be a sifting procedure”—


I will come on to that—

“allowing a scrutiny committee to recommend an uprating of the negative procedure to the affirmative procedure”.

Paragraph 9 says:

“We also recommend that there should be a sifting procedure for regulations under clause 1—akin to the one we recommended for the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill—allowing a scrutiny committee to recommend an uprating of the negative procedure to the affirmative procedure”.


The Select Committee on the Constitution also made some references to Clauses 8 and 17. Therefore, for simplicity’s sake, we recommend that all the regulations under Clauses 1, 2, 8 and 17 should be subject to a sifting procedure which can decide whether any should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, as the chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I am delighted to say a few words on Amendment 27. No doubt my noble friend the Minister swotted up on all the briefs and the grand issues relating to Brexit and European trailers; little did she know that she would have to hear confessions from Members on all sides of the Committee about their experiences driving good trailers, big trailers and dodgy little trailers—and wheels falling off.

I am not sure whether I can trump the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, but as a boy up on the farm in the Highlands I was able to drive a tractor by the age of 10 and drive it on the highway by the age of 12. When I was allowed legally to drive a car on the highway, my first car was a three-gear Ford Prefect which, on a long downhill slope, I once got up to 62 miles an hour—I could drive the tractors a bit faster.

The Delegated Powers Committee has recommended the sifting committee procedure for Clauses 1 and 2. We recommend it for Clause 1 because, as we say in our report,

“the content of any regulations made under clause 1 will depend on future international agreements … there is no current indication as to what regulations under clause 1 might say or how important they might be, if they are needed at all … it cannot be known in advance that the negative procedure will always be suitable for regulations made under clause 1 … it might transpire that some regulations made under clause 1 might require the affirmative procedure”.

On Clause 2, to shorten our report to the basics, we cite the Explanatory Memorandum which states that,

“it is not yet clear what sort of a regime or regimes will need to be introduced and, in the interest of ensuring that the provisions cater for agreed scenarios and are not too wide, it is necessary to legislate by way of secondary legislation once negotiations have been concluded and the nature of any permit scheme that needs to be introduced is clear”.

We say:

“Although the Government do not currently know what regulations under clause 2 will contain or how significant they will be, the Government propose that the negative procedure will always apply”.


For that reason, we think that there should be a sifting mechanism where colleagues in the House can decide which ones are tiddly statutory instruments and the negative procedure is okay and which ones require the affirmative procedure.

We stress in paragraph 10:

“We are not seeking to make a sifting mechanism a general feature of our legislative landscape”—


we are not seeking to attach it to every Brexit Bill.

“However, the circumstances of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union have given rise to unique legislative challenges”.


We know that next year we may have 800 to 1,000 statutory instruments to get through, perhaps in a short period of time. In those circumstances we have recommended the sifting procedure to the House. I know that the Leader of the House, the Lord Privy Seal, has rejected that already, but we recommend it for the Bill because the first five clauses begin with the words, “Regulations may”. That is almost unique. Because there will be so many regulations and some will be routine, trivial and therefore not crucial, some will be mega important and may require the affirmative procedure, we commend the sifting mechanism—exactly the same procedure as we identified in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, using the same secondary legislation scrutiny procedure, not creating any new all-singing all-dancing committee—to the Committee, and I commend it to my noble friend.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, my noble friend is very helpful. I cannot conceive how any regulation under this Bill would need the affirmative procedure, but we will see what the Minister says.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, we proposed this amendment to stimulate this sort of debate. We felt that the recommendation from the committee was particularly sensible because it was proportionate. In fact, it will probably allow the committee to make sure that very few orders have to go through the affirmative procedure, and that is why we hope the Government will accept the amendment. It is a practical way of dividing orders, given the fact that, at this time, we do not know what sort of orders will come in front of us.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I recognise and fully welcome the point that appropriate scrutiny should be given when considering regulations. As discussed, there are a number of ways that this could be achieved. Noble Lords have proposed a number of amendments that would apply the affirmative or sifting procedure. Some of these build on the recommendations made by the DPRRC and the Constitution Committee. I thank the committees for their work; I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, that their work is absolutely essential to making our lawmaking better. I fully understand the support of noble Lords for these recommendations but I am afraid I would like to set out our thinking on the different clauses at some length.

Clause 21 stipulates that regulations should be subject to the negative procedure. In this, the Government are following the precedent of the haulage operator legislation already in force across the UK. As such, we believe the powers we have drafted are suitably limited and proportionate for the delivery of a permit scheme, and for the delivery and enforcement of the trailer registration regime. We also believe that the negative procedure provides for an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny.

I turn to Clause 17 on offences. As my noble friend Lord Attlee highlighted, there are safeguards in Clause 17 limiting the Secretary of State to creating summary-only offences. Again, that is consistent with other offences created within the Bill. The second safeguard is that for some of the offences created in regulations the Bill requires that an appropriate defence must also be included in regulations, although I do understand the noble Lord’s concern around how offences are usually treated. One other argument for doing this in the way we have proposed is that everything would be set out in regulations in one place. But, as I said, I take the noble Lord’s point and will consider that further.

The amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, would extend the affirmative procedure not only to Clause 17 but additionally to Clauses 1, 2 and 12. I want to spend a bit of time on the provisions in Clauses 1 and 2 as they affect non-EU related issues. The clauses were designed to put into effect agreements with the EU and other countries on international haulage. What will need to go into the regulations will not only reflect what has been negotiated with the EU but also, as we discussed last week, what has already been agreed with third countries. As well as providing flexibility while the outcome of the negotiations is unknown, the negative procedure for these regulations also acknowledges that future amendments to permit schemes would not be restricted by requirements to return to primary legislation on each and every occasion, which if they were affirmative we would have to.

In Part 2 of the Bill, the provision of Clause 12 allows for the creation of the registration scheme that will enable users of UK traders to satisfy fully the conditions in the 1968 Vienna Convention. The detail of that scheme, as with existing vehicle registration powers, may need to adapt to meet future requirements. We will be consulting on the detail of the trader registration scheme with industry, and again we will be replicating many aspects of the existing vehicle registration scheme that is created under the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994, such as setting out the process for issuing registration documents and specifications for registration plates. Regulations for vehicle registration made under that Act are made under the negative procedure. Once that scheme is in place, we may need to amend or update the regulations over time—for example, as the DVLA processes change. To give an example, the equivalent regulations for motor vehicle registration have been amended 12 times in the last 10 years. Those are our arguments for not having the affirmative procedure throughout. As I say, I understand noble Lords’ concerns about the first time that these regulations come in.

The sifting committee procedure proposed is similar to that set out in Schedule 7 to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill that is currently before the House. As my noble friend Lord Blencathra said, the process of leaving the European Union has certainly thrown up some unique legislative challenges, not least for our noble friend Lord Trefgarne and the sifting committee. The requirement was included in the withdrawal Bill, given the issues and significant powers that, of necessity, are provided by that Bill. We think the proposed powers that we are considering here are far more limited and primarily technical in nature, as my noble friend Lord Attlee said. This amendment as it stands would also require Parliament to go through the same procedure for regulations made in respect of our arrangements with non-EU countries, which provide a sufficient number of permits for the levels of trade. I do not believe the agreements need such scrutiny.

I point out to the Committee that Clause 8, which is referred to in the amendment, would set out in the Bill the offences and penalties for failing to carry a haulage permit and failing to comply with an inspection. There is no power to make regulations under Clause 8 itself; it simply relates to regulations made under other clauses, so in this case there would be no regulations for the sifting committee to consider.

On the question of timing, I think we all welcome the news from Monday that the UK and EU negotiating teams reached another important milestone in the Brexit process by agreeing the terms of a time-limited implementation period, but of course as a responsible Government we want to continue to plan for all scenarios. We need to take responsible and, importantly, timely steps to ensure that the haulage industry can prepare. As we have said before, we are hoping to get the scheme in place by the end of the year, and obviously we would need to get everything through before then. I admit that the timetable is challenging.

We are working closely with the DVSA and the DVLA to align the systems, but stakeholders have already raised with us the pressure that they will be under involving the registration of vehicles. The run-up to Christmas is the busiest time of year for hauliers, and of course they are asking for as much time as possible. I am keen for us to give them sufficient time to put in applications, and I am sure noble Lords will also support that aim.

I recognise that the aim of the amendments is to ensure that Parliament can take appropriate scrutiny, and I want to consider that carefully. I am conscious that Parliament needs sufficient time to properly scrutinise legislation but, as I said, I am sure that noble Lords will also be alive to the interests of UK hauliers when making judgments on handling. As we have discussed, there are various options available to ensure that the regulations are subject to appropriate scrutiny. I have listened to the arguments made today and I will consider them carefully ahead of Report. At this point, I hope the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, in the light of the Minister’s response, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

22: Clause 21, page 13, line 4, at end insert—
“( ) No regulations may be made under sections 1 to 5 or 12 to 18 of this Act unless a draft of an instrument containing those regulations has been laid before both Houses of Parliament within three months of the passing of this Act.”

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I refer once again to the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, particularly to paragraphs 2, 3 and 4. Someone devised these wonderful words in paragraph 2:

“The Bill is wholly skeletal, more of a mission statement than legislation … Clauses 1 to 5 all begin: ‘Regulations may …’ … 16 of the 24 clauses contain delegated powers, all of them subject only to the negative procedure”.


Paragraph 3 states:

“It would have helped us had the Department for Transport, in addition to providing a delegated powers memorandum, produced some illustrative regulations alongside the Bill. As it is, we are in the dark because the devil will be in the regulatory detail.


We appreciate that the position remains unclear for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, the Minister may wish to assist the House in its consideration of the Bill at Committee Stage by providing illustrative examples (however tentative and qualified) of at least some of the regulations to be made under the main delegated powers in the Bill”.


That has not proved possible, so we have tabled the amendments to give effect to the desire expressed in that paragraph. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Sugg]

I fully understand that and will send the noble Lord more details on it. To go back to the fee, as I said, it is very difficult to determine the exact cost but I understand that it is an important consideration. We are confident that the fee will be significantly less than the current vehicle registration fee, for example, which is £55, but we are not able to provide any more detail on that at this time. That also goes towards trying to ensure that we get the right balance when deciding which trailers need to be registered and which do not, why we have not included 750 kilogram trailers and why we do not think this should be mandatory for domestic use—it is a not insignificant cost for a family going on a camping holiday once a year.

I hope I have explained why, in this case, the legislation will not go unused, despite whatever agreement we reach with the European Union, in the case of either the permit scheme, which will be used for existing and future schemes with other countries, or the trailer registration scheme, which will come into effect anyway because of the earlier convention. In the light of that, I hope that this discussion has reassured the noble Lord to the extent that he feels able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I will study the Minister’s response with care and decide whether to bring forward anything on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 22 withdrawn.

Rural Bus Services

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as I said, we fully support the concessionary fare programme and we want to continue the £1 billion a year we spend through local authorities to guarantee that service. It certainly supports bus services and that is something we want to carry on with.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare a former interest as the former chairman of London Buses. I agree with the noble Baroness that buses are a vital part of our community. They carry the poor, the old, the young and the sick. Labour would introduce regulations to designate and protect routes of critical community value, including those that serve local schools, hospitals and isolated settlements in rural areas. Why do the Government not copy those policies now?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, decisions on providing bus services are devolved to local authorities and, as I have said, we think that is right. We support local authorities with the bus service operators grant, and will absolutely continue to do so. As well as the devolution of the £40 million, we are reviewing the rest of that money to see whether we can spend it better and allow local authorities to use it better. However, local authorities are best placed to understand what their communities need and deliver their services. They are also democratically accountable to the people they serve.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 13th March 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I want to correct the record on something. I said that we ran on quota permits but we ran on non-quota permits. I just checked my notes.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not read Hansard for last night’s debate; I was there. There is no doubt about the extent of the concern expressed by Committee Members last night about permits and trade and the impact on society. I therefore support Amendment 1. Having been a negotiator, I was alerted to the concern of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, so I looked at what it said—that:

“It is an objective of the Government, in negotiating a withdrawal agreement from the EU, to seek continued UK participation in the EU’s Community Licence arrangements”.


I have to say, as negotiating briefs go, I have rarely seen one less prescriptive. It simply expresses a direction of travel and, broadly speaking, I support it. Similarly, I support Amendment 7, which once again gives more guidance than anything seriously prescriptive from a negotiator’s point of view.

I am grateful to read the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I think we have an amendment for every recommendation but I will check that before the next sitting. It would be easier if we had correspondence and the Government gave in in advance. We have here what one might call a contingency Bill—that is, a Bill to create an Act of Parliament against a contingency. All the committee is saying is that it is wrong to leave powers lying about. That relates specifically to Clauses 1 and 3. On Clause 1, the report states:

“Given that regulations under clause 1 might prove to be unnecessary, we recommend that the Bill should contain a sunset provision, extendable if necessary, to remove the regulation-making power in clause 1 if it does in fact prove to be unnecessary”.


In almost identical terms, Amendment 11 refers to Clause 3. In examining Clause 2, we could not see any reason why the same logic should not apply, so we have also proposed Amendment 10, which refers to Clause 2.

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

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. The proposed amendments would enshrine in the Bill an objective in negotiating the EU withdrawal agreement and, should a certain agreement be reached, Clauses 1 to 3 would cease to have an effect.

I will speak first to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, which seeks continued recognition of Community licences issued by the UK in the negotiations. As I outlined on Second Reading, the Government’s objective is to maintain the existing liberalised access for UK hauliers. Road haulage is at the heart of the £110 billion of trade that takes place between the UK and the EU every year. We are confident of success in the negotiations, as the continued movement of goods is in the interests of both the UK and the EU.

As noble Lords have pointed out, access is currently secured through participation in the Community licence arrangements. Outside the EU, only EEA members are currently party to the Community licence system. Although continued participation in the Community licence arrangements could be one outcome, the best way to secure mutual recognition and continued access for our hauliers will be through negotiations. I am afraid I must disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, in saying that we do not feel it would be right, or beneficial to our negotiations, to place any negotiation objectives in the legislation. As my noble friend Lord Attlee said, that would tie our hands.

The Government will take all reasonable steps to see that there are no restrictions on the movement of goods. This can take many forms, including the Community licence, mutual recognition of the operator licence or a permit-based agreement. Many international agreements that are permit-based do not restrict the numbers of permits exchanged; indeed, some of our existing agreements do not require permits at all, including our agreement with Turkey. As I said, our aim is to continue the liberalised access we enjoy today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Berkeley, I am confused about the continual references to Northern Ireland in the Bill before the Committee. Bearing in mind the years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, is there some specific reason why the Government are—“harping on” would be the wrong phrase to use—continually mentioning Northern Ireland in the Bill?

We need to seek some clarity from the Minister about the permits as well. What information does she envisage appearing on the permit? Will the permit be in the name of the driver, the vehicle or the company? Will it be for a specific journey or a period of time? Again, following my noble friend’s amendment, why are there specific references to Northern Ireland? It is and will remain part of the United Kingdom; I do not envy those in the negotiations that will take place between the Government and the Democratic Unionist Party but, for the moment, we have to say that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. Whatever amendments we pass to the Bill will therefore apply equally in all parts of the United Kingdom. Perhaps the Minister can help us where the permit system is concerned. Will there be a difference in the permits for Northern Ireland, and exactly what information do the Government envisage setting out on those permits before they are issued?

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, in speaking to the amendments in this group, I admit that to a fair degree I am not sure what the Bill says about Northern Ireland. I am not entirely sure what it will say about Northern Ireland, with or without these amendments. One thing I know about Northern Ireland is that before you say anything about it, you have to consult a lot of people to make sure you get it right. Accordingly, all I will say is that our position is to support the Good Friday agreement. We will examine what has been said so far and what the Minister says before determining our position on this group.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

8: Clause 2, page 2, line 43, leave out subsection (2)

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I move Amendment 8 simply because I believe two things. First, we cannot contemplate a situation where there are not enough permits. If we have a permit system, we must negotiate a position where there are sufficient. That is the principal reason for my moving the amendment: to emphasise that point, to allow people to speak to it and for some of the passion of last night to come through on the back of it.

If there is a limit, it is unthinkable that it should be a matter of random allocation or “first come, first served”. How do you build the future of your business, which is to a degree capital intensive, while depending on employing staff to line up at some government office with sleeping bags to sleep overnight to be first in the queue as if it is Wimbledon, or plan your investments on the basis of how their names might come out of some hat? First, we should not contemplate a limit on the number of permits; secondly, I cannot believe that these words were put in a Bill, as it cannot be a serious suggestion to this extraordinarily important industry that it would be required to behave like that to carry on trading. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I support the initial comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. It would be a disaster if we had to regulate the issue of permits in the way provided for, but I hope that the Minister can reassure us that we will take all necessary steps to avoid such a situation. However, I think that it is a sensible provision in a Bill as a backstop, while recognising that it would be terrible in the way if we found ourselves in such a situation as the noble Lord described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sugg]

Currently, the scoping document does not include a provision to auction. That is a new one on me, and I think there will be various views on it. We are of course discussing what criteria should be used and that is subject to consultation, so I shall be happy to feed in my noble friend’s thoughts.

As I said, I understand the issue. I will take it back to see whether there is anything that we can do. With that, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, if the Minister comes back with an agreement where this subsection is needed, she will have failed, and if she fails, the use of these criteria would be unreasonable. The Minister and I have already done spaceports and lasers. She has a commendable record on bringing back compromises; I hope that she does so in this case. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 8 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee]

Of course, the noble Lord is thinking about a complex system. One might need a permit just to run vehicle registration number XYZ in Europe; it might be as simple as that; we simply do not know. The Minister will not give the indication because she is negotiating. It need not be horrendously complicated.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, this is the reports group of amendments; various reports are suggested. We have two amendments in the group, Amendments 13 and 14, but they all centre on the same issue: how is this critical, potentially catastrophic problem being solved and how much is it costing?

It is important to realise that this is not a second-order hard or soft Brexit debate; it has nothing to do with that. Whether it is a hard Brexit or a soft Brexit, if this problem is not solved, we starve. Last night, it was clear just how concerned the House is about the situation. There is an argument that, because it will cause them pain and cause us pain, the world will be rational. The trouble is that the negotiations are being led not by businessmen or exporters but by politicians. I hate to say it: in history, politicians have not always been rational. Our friends in Europe are feeling very bruised about Brexit. They should probably be cheering because they are getting rid of us, but they are not; they are upset. Their club is being challenged by our departure, so there is every possibility that they will not be rational.

The argument that the pain is the same from anything we get wrong, again, is not valid. If you put a border down the North Sea and down the channel so that nothing can cross it, the EU 27 will survive and we will not. This problem has to be solved. All that we are asking for in this group of amendments is to be told how it is happening. Whether we agree the amendment or not, I hope that the Minister will hear what we are saying, arrange one way or another to keep us informed of developments and convince us that the energy and effort that such an important issue requires are going into solving it.

Brexit: Aviation

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. There will always be competing needs for housing and other uses of land, including for the general aviation industry. As my noble friend has rightly pointed out, yesterday the Government launched the new National Planning Policy Framework consultation, and the draft text for this consultation strengthens the language on airfields and aviation networks. It states that all planning policy should,

“recognise the importance of maintaining a national network of general aviation facilities”.

The Government have appointed a new general aviation champion, Byron Davies, who will be looking at this.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, in announcing the appointment of the general aviation champion, Byron Davies, the Minister acknowledged the economic importance of general aviation, particularly smaller airfields, and the need for protection of airspace. Will she make sure that the role of general aviation in creating the next generation of airline pilots is held in the balance because, without general aviation to create that new generation, British aviation in general could be seriously damaged?

[Baroness Sugg]

I agree with the noble Lord on the importance of supporting general aviation. The skill sector within it currently supports more than 38,000 jobs, nearly 10,000 of them directly related to flying and the remainder in manufacturing. It is key that we continue to support this industry and those who are learning their skills in it.

Renewable Transport Fuels and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Regulations 2018

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I ask that the draft Renewable Transport Fuels and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Regulations be considered.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

I believe that the Minister does not want them considered but approved. The Minister’s civil servants are always right for the Moses Room, but we are in the Chamber rather than there.

[Baroness Sugg]

I thank the noble Lord for that correction. I therefore ask that the draft Renewable Transport Fuels and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Regulations be approved. These regulations will amend two pieces of legislation relevant to suppliers of fuels: the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order 2007—the RTFO Order; and the Motor Fuel (Road Vehicle and Mobile Machinery) Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reporting Regulations 2012—the greenhouse gas reporting regulations. In September, the Government set out a 15-year strategy for renewable transport fuels. This is an ambitious strategy to support investment in sustainable advanced fuels of importance to the UK and to help meet our carbon budget commitments. These regulations are the product of that strategy and are key to its implementation.

It may be helpful at this stage for me to provide an overview of the current regulatory framework. Under the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order, suppliers of fossil fuel have an obligation to demonstrate that the equivalent of 4.75% of their fuel supply is from renewable sources. Suppliers of biofuel that meet sustainability criteria are rewarded with renewable transport fuels certificates, which can be traded on the open market. The greenhouse gas reporting regulations operate in parallel with the renewable transport fuel obligations scheme, and require fuel suppliers to report the amount and type of fuel they supply and its greenhouse gas intensity.

Under the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order, the greenhouse gas emissions savings from renewable fuels have improved year on year. Last year, the average greenhouse gas saving of a litre of renewable fuel was 71% compared to petrol and diesel. The draft regulations build on that success. They would amend the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order to increase the targets for renewable fuels to 9.75% of fuel supplied in 2020 and 12.4% by 2032, providing investment certainty; increase incentives for new fuels of strategic future importance to the UK, known as “development fuels”; make certain renewable aviation fuels and make renewable hydrogen eligible for reward; and place a limit on the contribution that biofuels produced from food crops can make to meeting targets.

The draft regulations will amend the greenhouse gas reporting regulation to create a new greenhouse gas credit trading scheme. Key features of this new scheme are an obligation on fuel suppliers to reduce the overall greenhouse gas emissions of the fuels they supply by 6% compared to 2010 levels, and incentives to suppliers through rewarding with greenhouse gas credits for fuels with lower greenhouse gas emissions than petrol and diesel, electricity used in vehicles and reductions in emissions from the extraction of crude oils.

The serious groundwork for these amendments began in 2014 and there has been input from industry and NGO experts throughout. The department has, rightly, taken time to build consensus in a controversial and complex policy area. In 2014, there was no final agreement in the UK or at EU level over how best to address negative indirect land use change impacts associated with some crop biofuels, no broad agreement on how to increase renewable transport fuel targets or on what the long-term strategy should be, and no firm proposals on how to incentivise novel renewable fuels or advanced development fuels of strategic importance to the UK.

These regulations set a 15-year strategy, mitigate indirect land use change risks and promote advanced development fuels, and they are the most ambitious in this area to date. They also strike a balance between maintaining support for an established UK biofuel industry which faces challenging market conditions and setting ambitious, stretching targets to support new development fuels.

The Government recognise both the environmental and the wider economic benefits of established UK biofuel production. The department has listened to suppliers and is now proposing that the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order obligation level will reach 12.4% in 2032, providing longer-term certainty. Rather than set a 2% crop cap in 2018, that cap should reduce gradually from 4% in 2018 to 2% in 2032.

The department is aware that the UK bioethanol industry and its partners would have preferred a different approach on the crop cap and are seeking support for a rollout of E10 fuel. These regulations will not contract the market for UK bioethanol made from crops and will provide space for a market for E10, should suppliers choose to deploy it. Moving to E10 fuel could make achieving our renewable energy targets easier and provide an economic boost to domestic producers of bioethanol and UK farmers in the supply chain. The department therefore remains committed to working with industry to ensure that any future introduction of E10 is managed carefully and that E5 remains available for vehicles not compatible with E10.

In conclusion, the regulations before your Lordships will accelerate the delivery of sustainable development fuels, enabling the UK to lead in developing and deploying those fuels. They also take into account the wider economic importance of existing UK biofuel production and seek to maintain that market. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I, too, support the instrument—indeed, as has been pointed out, we should be celebrating it, given how long it has taken to achieve.

I have worked hard to understand the instrument and its accompanying memorandum and I would probably have had many questions to ask. However, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report rather effectively had that debate for us in some depth. At the end of the day I agree with its general conclusion, despite the industry intervention, that the balance is about right.

However, the instrument is directive driven and the targets are only made by the dependence on non-crop double incentive—and by the time I had got to a non-crop double incentive I thought perhaps it was time to retire. I say it is directive driven because I would have valued seeing somewhere the department’s long-term vision for biofuel. Most forms of transport have credible non-hydrocarbon solutions, at least in embryonic form, but aviation, with its requirement for very high fuel density, needs to look forward hopefully to biofuel, which can be 100%. So I would be grateful if the Minister could set out the department’s thinking about the long-term use of biofuels, particularly in aviation.

From reading the Explanatory Memorandum and the correspondence with the sub-committee, it seemed to me that one problem was with the potential feedstocks for non-crop biofuels. Asked for examples, we were given cooking oil and tallow—but there are only so many fish and chip shops generating used cooking oil. Is there a viable long-term source of feedstocks for non-crop biofuels that could start to contemplate meeting the volumes of fuel that would be needed if biofuels, particularly non-crop biofuels, became the preponderant fuel for aviation?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions and for their broad welcome and support for these regulations. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned the delay in passing them, and I acknowledge that there has been a slight delay. The regulations have been informed by extensive consultation with industry experts and NGOs and they represent a complex set of changes. We felt that it was right to build consensus wherever we could in this area.

The noble Baroness asked how we can help new suppliers, particularly to aviation, get from the demonstration scale to the commercial one. Under our second competition, up to £22 million of government funding will be matched by private sector investment to construct a first-of-a-kind fuel production facility in the UK which will enable the demonstration of technical and commercial viability, including for aviation fuel. She also asked why we did not propose a target in 2018. Time would have been tight for a 2018 target. During the consultation there was little support for targets before 2020 and we therefore decided not to introduce one for this year.

The noble Baroness raised the point about the crop cap and asked whether the percentage we have set is correct. It is different from that in other member states. We have taken into account the consultation responses to the regulations and we have set the cap at 4% in 2018; it will be reduced gradually from 2021 to 2032. To put the figures into perspective, total UK bioethanol production capacity at the moment is equivalent to a little more than 1% of the transport energy requirement, and the current proportion of crops being used to produce biofuels is equivalent to less than 2% of the UK fuel supply. As I say, I acknowledge that the cap is lower than that set in some member states, but they are already using more crop-derived biofuels. The changes proposed in the regulations continue to support our existing bioethanol industry by encouraging future investment in waste-derived fuels. We think that a higher crop cap in the UK could result in more fuels being supplied that can cause an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

The noble Baroness asked whether we will deploy E10 fuel. I hope that the Government have been clear that deploying E10 fuel is an option for suppliers in meeting their obligations and it may well be the best and most cost-effective option, but at this stage the regulations do not mandate E10 fuel in the sense of requiring that petrol should be blended with 10% bioethanol. The regulations provide the flexibility for fuel suppliers to determine how best to meet their obligations, and we think that flexibility will enable the costs to be kept down and allow suppliers to react to changes that impact on the market.

On exiting the European Union, I can confirm that the Government have no plans to change their policy in this area and the amendments have been designed to achieve our domestic carbon budget commitments and provide UK industry with the long-term investment certainty it needs, but as with any policy, we will keep it under review to ensure cost-effectiveness. On the question raised by the noble Baroness on the generation of electricity for electric vehicles, with her permission I would like to consider further how we can address this in the AEV Bill, and I will write to her on the issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the issue of compatibility of the various different engine types with this new fuel. We recognise that the owners of vehicles, be they regular cars, vintage cars or indeed boats, will ask whether they will be compatible with E10 and indeed E5 fuel. We are committed to working with industry to ensure that any rollout of E10 is carefully managed and that information on compatibility is made available to vehicle owners. We intend to consult very soon on proposals that will require that E5 fuel remains available to motorists, and how best to provide information on it. I am not aware of the detail concerning boat engines, so I will write to the noble Lord.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, talked about the long-term proposal. Obviously, as we transition to ultra-low emission vehicles, we will continue to need low-carbon liquid and gaseous fuels for decades to come, particularly in the aviation sector. In the absence of new measures and given the expected growth in the aviation sector, emissions are likely to increase, so low-carbon fuels such as biofuels are considered the only viable source of energy available to significantly limit aviation emissions by 2050. Electric airplanes are in development, but I think they are some years off. The UK aviation industry has for some time advocated its eligibility for an award under the RTFO because it would help to provide the support needed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, also mentioned, to kick-start the use of aviation biofuels which at present are not produced or supplied in the UK. The regulations before us will enable renewable aviation fuels to receive RTFO incentives for the first time, and we hope very much that that will encourage the industry to grow.

The noble Lord asked about the availability of waste feedstocks and the number of fish and chip shops both in this country and abroad, given that we import some of our feedstocks. We have carried out scenario testing to look at different waste supply potentials. Stakeholders have been helpful in confirming that the volume of waste feedstocks we think we will need to meet the higher targets is likely to be available, and we therefore continue to assume that the waste feedstocks can be supplied. There is some uncertainty over exactly which feedstocks will be supplied—noble Lords have mentioned cooking oil and tallow—but we anticipate that much of the increase will come from the waste already being used to make biodiesel. Furthermore, given the post-consultation changes to the crop cap, which, as I said, will start at a high percentage and gradually reduce towards 2032, we consider that the risk of waste biofuels becoming more expensive than the buyout is reduced. The development fuels sub-target is also designed to increase the diversity of feedstocks used to produce fuels.

I hope I have answered all noble Lords’ questions; if not, I will follow up in writing. I thank noble Lords for their contributions to the debate. The regulations are needed to support investment in sustainable advanced fuels for automotive, aviation, road freight and maritime; to provide certainty to UK producers and the farms that will supply them that existing bioethanol capacity will be fully utilised; and to help us meet our climate change commitments. In meeting our commitments, low-carbon fuels will be needed for decades to come, not least in the sectors that are harder to decarbonise through electrification, such as heavy goods vehicles and aviation. We feel that the targets in these regulations are ambitious and will provide an important contribution to UK carbon budgets. The amendments build on the success of the RTFO to date in delivering significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions. I hope your Lordships will agree that the regulations are the best way to proceed with our renewable transport fuels strategy. I beg to move.

Seafarers (Insolvency, Collective Redundancies and Information and Consultation Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, we should congratulate the Minister on bringing this legislation here. Since she took up her role as Minister, it is clear that she has looked into the dark corners of the Department for Transport’s cupboards, dusted off some badly overdue legislation and brought it into the strong light of day. I regret having to say this, but I have to ask again: why is it so late? I understand that this measure is based on the seafarers directive of 2013. It should have been transposed into UK law by October last year. So we are now six months overdue. I know that the Government are distracted by Brexit, but it is a bad symptom of a situation where a Government are really struggling to cope.

Of course, I support the proposals here; on these Benches, there is strong support for the principle behind the regulations. The big issue is whether they really equalise rights for seafarers, bringing them fully into line with those who work on land. We all realise that it is a much more complex issue, because if you work at sea national boundaries are crossed less obviously and supervision of terms and conditions of employment is probably much more complex. There are also complex employment patterns, as the Minister has pointed out.

One can therefore do nothing other than welcome the increased job security that there will be for seafarers as a result of these regulations—and perhaps dwell for the moment on the fact that it is quite ironic they have been introduced as a result of an EU directive at a time when many fishing and coastal communities are among those in the UK where support for leaving the EU was strongest. I fully support the regulations and thank the Minister for her explanation.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I come to these regulations still intellectually exhausted from biofuels and have set myself the minimum objective of trying to understand them. My few questions for the Minister are therefore just to understand them better.

The regulations and their accompanying Explanatory Memorandum seem, as far as I can see, to talk solely about share fishermen, where employed, and I am not clear whether the regulations affect anybody else. I thought that the easiest way to understand this might be to turn it on its head. The objective, we are told, is to turn the rights of seamen into the same rights that land-based workers have. Paragraph 7.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum identifies five directives, which are set out, covering five areas where in the present situation there is a difference between seamen and land-based workers. I was not clear whether all five were covered by the regulations. In simple terms, asking the obverse question, following the approval of the measure, what differences remain between seamen and land-based workers? If there are any differences, why have they been retained?

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, these regulations are, no doubt, narrowly drawn and seek to improve protection for at least some seafarers using our ports. There are, however, some wider problems. Foreign owners and companies bring fishing vessels to British ports. They are often largely crewed by people from south-east Asia and the Indian subcontinent. When, from time to time, the owners become insolvent or the vessels break down, the crews can be left in very difficult situations. Their wages may be unpaid for long periods. They may or may not receive the redundancy payments that should be due. They may be asked to work on land or may choose to do so, even illegally, because of the threat of destitution. They may have serious difficulties in communicating with their families and their Governments.

I therefore ask the Minister: what representations have HMG received on these issues from voluntary organisations working with fishermen and seafarers? Do the Government now have proposals, other than those included in these limited regulations, for dealing with the very real, human problems—for example, over repatriation of crews? Do foreign Governments help with this, and what provision do our Government make for meeting the costs, particularly of repatriation in cases of bankruptcy when crews are stranded here through no fault of their own? The people who are affected by the problems I have mentioned are, by themselves, almost voiceless. They therefore deserve better protection than they have now.