Rail Vehicle Accessibility (Gatwick Express Class 458 Vehicles) Exemption Order 2006

My Lords, I am quite horrified at the size of the documentation and the amount of effort that has clearly gone into the process of approving the use of two other trains to replace those which are being taken out of service. The Government frequently say that they want to reduce bureaucracy but this example is absolutely scandalous. Someone has spent a lot of time working on this. The sets of trains which have been put onto the Gatwick Express are, as far as I understand it, the best available. While matters such as windows not being in order and whether doors open properly are relatively small, one should be able to deal with them immediately without requiring the publication of large documents. In all honesty, that sort of fault can happen on the best stock—but it should be dealt with. We should not really be holding up a train operating company from introducing better rolling stock while such documents are produced. I am concerned that we may have many of these documents, at great expense, unless we find a fairly simple and standard way of moving trains round from one part of the country to another. This situation will increasingly happen as a lot of rolling stock comes off its lease and is available for transfer.