National Networks: National Policy Statement

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Kramer]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the National Policy Statement for National Networks.

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

My Lords, I welcome this second debate on the Government’s National Policy Statement for National Networks. I will use the abbreviation NPS, if I may, in the course of this debate. This House previously debated the draft NPS on 8 May 2014 and made a valuable contribution to shaping that final document. I can confirm that the final NPS has been voted on and approved in the other place—the procedure that allows for the document to be formally designated. That said, I welcome the opportunity to update this Committee on the positive changes that have been made in response to comments received through both the parliamentary scrutiny process and the public consultation. For far too long we have suffered stop-start in infrastructure investment, which is in no one’s interest. Investment, such as we are seeing in road and rail, not only improves the transport system but creates jobs. This NPS represents long-term planning that looks to the future.

It might be helpful if I begin by clarifying the role and purpose of the NPS. The NPS has a specific purpose: it will provide planning guidance for promoters of nationally significant infrastructure projects on our road and rail networks and for strategic rail freight interchanges. It sets out at a strategic level the need for development of our national networks and establishes clear, high-level policies by which any nationally significant infrastructure project on these networks will need to be decided.

Our national networks are already under considerable pressure, which is expected to increase further. Long-term drivers of demand to travel—GDP and, particularly, population—are forecast to increase substantially over the coming years and continue to influence the path of travel demand, even taking into account other important drivers such as changes to demographics. The development of our national networks and the improved connectivity it provides can also unlock regional economic growth and regeneration, particularly in the most disadvantaged areas. Broader environmental, air-quality, safety and accessibility goals will also generate requirements for development to address safety issues, improve the environment and enhance accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists. The final NPS has benefited from earlier discussions with noble Lords in these areas; I will highlight some of those in more detail later in my speech.

Of course, the NPS needs to be seen in the context of other, wider transport strategy documents, such as the rail investment strategy and the recently published road investment strategy. These documents show that the Government take the need to invest in transport infrastructure seriously. The first ever road investment strategy outlines how £15.2 billion will be invested in our strategic roads between 2015 and 2021 and is part of a radical transformation of how we run our major roads. Between 2014 and 2019, Network Rail will be delivering a £38 billion programme to help transform the busiest parts of Britain’s rail network, helping to deliver more and better journeys. The Government’s rail investment strategy, also known as the HLOS, will support more than £11 billion of infrastructure enhancement in that period to run and improve the rail network, supporting economic growth and jobs and delivering a greener, more cost-efficient railway that is better for freight and better for passengers. All that is in addition to the investment committed for HS2.

The national policy statement supports a significant and balanced package of improvements across the road and rail networks, including improvements in safety, resilience, maintenance, environmental performance and access for cyclists and pedestrians. Indeed, the development of the strategic road network is primarily about upgrading the existing network rather than building new roads. Almost 40% of the investment in this and the next Parliament is for maintenance, and more than 80% of the schemes in the current programme are smart motorways.

Following the previous debate on the draft NPS held on 8 May last year, I have kept noble Lords who expressed concern updated on progress. The final NPS has taken those concerns into consideration and addressed them as far as possible. Those concerns included road traffic forecasts and appraisal, as well as impacts on local roads and transport policies. Some of those issues were too complex and technical to address in a debate and so I wrote individually to those noble Lords.

Turning to the final NPS, I would like to set out how a number of issues which have been raised by noble Lords have been dealt with in the final document.

I begin with forecasts. Road traffic forecasts and their prominence in the draft NPS were challenged in the consultation and parliamentary scrutiny process. The updated forecasts in the NPS have made use of new scenarios that take into account changes in travel behaviour that have been observed over recent years. These indicate that even with conservative scenarios of overall traffic growth, we still expect significant growth on the strategic road network. We also expect greater divergence between traffic in different locations. We have highlighted in the final NPS that the Government’s aim is to tackle congestion rather than meet the level of growth forecast. This is why I can say confidently that we are not reverting back to a policy of “predict and provide”.

It is important to understand that the NPS does not mean that the national traffic forecasts will be used as the means to justify individual developments. Individual schemes will need to use local models to justify development and to understand local impacts. They will be subject to a full transport business case.

For rail, passenger demand is predicted to continue to grow significantly. Total average growth in passenger kilometres from 2011 to 2033 is predicted to rise by just over 50%, including phase 1 of HS2.

I turn to the environment. Following the consultation and earlier debates, we have further strengthened environmental protections. For example, we now have a presumption against road widening or new roads in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. We have also made a number of other changes, including strengthening the text on biodiversity, landscape, land use and noise.

The NPS recognises that integration between modes is important, and the route strategies that feed into the rail and road investment strategies provide ample opportunity to integrate development where that is sensible. There is now an explicit expectation in the NPS that assessment of alternative transport solutions and modes takes place at the investment appraisal stage—that is, prior to the NPS—and evidence that that has taken place should be available.

The road investment strategy shows us that with improvements in design, the progressive decarbonisation of the vehicle fleet, and higher environmental and safety standards, there is no longer a forced trade-off between a well functioning road and rail network and a well protected environment. Some funds in the road investment strategy have been ring-fenced to ensure that interventions are sustainable and beneficial to society as a whole. They include a £250 million cycling, safety and integration fund to deliver, among other things, improved cycling facilities on 200 sections of the network, and a £150 million innovation fund to exploit novel and innovative technologies and techniques in road construction and management.

This Government take air quality seriously, and the NPS recognises the impact that new road and rail infrastructure can have on it. Over £2 billion has been invested in measures to increase the uptake of ultra-low-emission vehicles, sustainable travel and green transport initiatives. The Government have also committed £100 million to improve air quality on the strategic road network as part of the road investment strategy. This is on top of a commitment to have environmental measures built into all new road schemes as standard.

The policy in the NPS states that promoters of nationally significant infrastructure projects should identify air quality impacts and put suitable mitigation measures in place. These measures may affect the project design, layout and construction and may comprise measures to improve air quality in pollution hotspots outside the immediate locality of the scheme. The measures could include changes to the route of a new scheme, barriers to trap or disperse emissions or speed control. Where a scheme results in a zone that is currently compliant with the air quality directive becoming non-compliant, or if the proposed timescale in which a zone is expected to achieve compliance is affected, the NPS is clear that the scheme should not go ahead.

We have listened to concerns raised on the importance of reducing carbon. The Government have already set stretching legally binding carbon budgets, which the NPS supports, but a planning inquiry on an individual road development is not the place to have a debate on our national carbon reduction strategy. Carbon impacts will still continue to form a key part of the transport appraisal and decision-making process for road schemes. We make it clear that applicants for any new schemes should provide evidence of the carbon impact of the project and an assessment against the Government’s carbon budgets.

The final NPS is clear that applicants should include design as an integral consideration from the outset and that independent, professional advice on design is taken. Visual appearance should be a key factor in considering the design of new infrastructure, as well as functionality, fitness for purpose, sustainability and cost. Good design goes towards ensuring that a development is sustainable, as aesthetically sensitive as possible, durable, adaptable and resilient. It contributes to safety and accessibility so that all users, including disabled people, have their needs met. The new company, Highways England, if established under the Infrastructure Bill, which is progressing through the Commons at the moment, will be required to establish a design panel to provide advice on design issues, which will be invaluable in ensuring that development takes account of geographical, environmental and socioeconomic considerations. This is further evidence that we have listened and responded on the matter of design.

New developments provide an opportunity to make significant safety improvements; indeed, some developments may have safety as a key objective. Our roads and railways are among the safest in the world but there is always room for improvement. The rail industry is required by law to consider the impact on safety of any proposed changes. The frequency of train accidents with passenger or workforce fatalities is now at the lowest level ever, despite more passengers and miles travelled.

The Government’s vision, in which Britain remains a world leader in road safety, is set out in the national Strategic Framework for Road Safety. The NPS sets out clear guidelines on this. A scheme will not be granted development consent unless all reasonable steps have been taken and will be taken to minimise the risk of road casualties arising from the scheme, and the scheme contributes to an overall improvement in the safety of the strategic road network. The road investment strategy includes a key performance indicator of reducing fatalities and serious injuries by 40% by 2020. I take this opportunity to remind the Committee that the NPS is a high-level long-term planning document that does not name specific schemes, as that would not be appropriate in such a document.

I ask that noble Lords recognise that this final NPS is much improved, following their valuable contributions and public consultation. The NPS has been produced following the requirements of the Planning Act 2008. As I mentioned, it is a high-level planning document. Consideration of issues such as the mode and integration are dealt with much earlier in the phase than this planning stage—essentially, at the investment appraisal stage.

What we have is a document which provides greater certainty for those developing much-needed transport infrastructure, along with robust environmental and safety protections and design requirements, which should help speed up the process for nationally significant infrastructure projects.

I hope that the Committee will welcome this much improved document, and I beg to move that the Committee has considered this NPS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, as usual, this has been an excellent debate, with a significant number of issues raised. I very much appreciate the informed way in which this House approaches what to me are some of the most fascinating issues that a Government could look at, because transport is essential for both quality of life and the economy of the country.

I shall try to address some of those issues. First, this is a planning document and it may well be that some of the issues raised fall very far outside the scope of a planning document, so if I mention those only in passing or omit them, please forgive me. Your Lordships know that I am always happy to discuss those broader issues.

Let me first pick up the issue of forecasting. I am rather pleased with what I think has been a real consideration of methodologies for forecasting now reflected in this final NPS. It is probably true to say, if we look at some of the historical numbers that we have had, that the methodology that has typically been quite reliable for the road network outside the major cities, especially outside London, did not seem to reflect changing patterns within London. Your Lordships will find in the document that more factors have now been brought in. That has been thought through in a broader way to derive the current set of forecasts. Also, the forecasting part of this document looks across a range of scenarios. The reality is that even when you look across a range of scenarios and take a pretty conservative position, there is still a powerful drive in the direction of growing demand.

However, as I said in my opening speech, recognising all that, the Government’s programme has still focused very much on existing roads, hotspots and congestion, rather than a new roads strategy, so we are certainly not in “predict and provide” mode, but we must be conscious as we move through all this work that we are paying attention to growing demand. Frankly, if that was not part of the understanding process, we would find ourselves in real difficulty. A look at the description and discussion of forecasting in the document itself might be of real interest to those with concerns around these issues. A great deal of attention has been paid to this area and, in my eyes, the forecasting is certainly much more sophisticated and appropriate than some which we might have seen in the past. I am not saying that it was bad but that there are more complexities now, which are being introduced into that process.

I want to pick up quickly on the issue of resilience. Chapter 2 of the NPS does that rather well, frankly, so I stress it because resilience is crucial. However, if we are talking about the performance of Network Rail, that is really outside the scope of the planning document. There are lots of issues to discuss there which are not really part of the NPS, but keeping resilience within the frame for an NPS is important and does matter.

[Lord Berkeley]

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

[Baroness Kramer]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Berkeley]

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

[Baroness Kramer]

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

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

Motion agreed.