Railway and Other Guided Transport Systems (Safety) Regulations 2006 

I declare an interest as chairman of a rail freight group, although I have not come to talk about rail freight this evening. I spent yesterday at the British Embassy in Berlin, hosting an event organised to demonstrate the success of the British railways structure. The chairman of Network Rail and the chairman of the Office of Rail Regulation were there and there was a large audience from politics and industry. A point made by various speakers was that not only is the accident rate on the railways down, but the rate of accident reduction has increased. The accident rate has gone down faster since privatisation. That is one of the things that people sometimes forget. Everybody thinks that because of privatisation and split responsibility accident rates have gone up. That is not what has happened: they have gone down. We had a good story, but this is an element of it that I do not feel proud of. It is now six weeks since responsibility for railway safety was transferred from the Health and Safety Executive to the Office of Rail Regulation. It seems to me that handing over responsibility to the Office of Rail Regulation was a poisoned chalice of a going-away present. The number of staff that the ORR has exemplifies that. It has 130 staff working on economic regulation and more than 200 working on safety. The only comfort is that I am told that there are not enough seats for 200 people, so it may be that the chairman and his staff are thinking of reducing the number because it is out of balance. I know that we have to comply with the safety standards that have come out of the European Commission. It is right that we should, but it has to be proportionate. When I read the draft regulations and the Explanatory Memorandum that goes with them, I sense jobsworth. To give the Committee one or two examples, paragraph 7.21 of the Explanatory Memorandum relates to what my noble friend Lord Faulkner and the noble Earl said about heritage railways:"““Verification services””—" a new idea that is required—"““would be charged at commercial rates, and this was known . . . when the Safety Regulations were developed””." The fact that that was known does not mean that that was right."““The cost will need to be worked into future plans for expansion of heritage networks, as is the norm for most business””." The memorandum does not state that there is a need for them, just that they must be done. I agree with my noble friend that a lot of people will stop doing things on heritage railways. Then we get on to paragraph 7.26:"““The regulation of railways is always a major issue of interest to the public””." In the context of the viewpoint of the Health and Safety Executive, it is a major interest because it wants it to be. It gives it more credibility and more things to do and justifies more staff and more money to spend. The safety rate has come down. The train protection and warning system has had a major effect. The reference ,"““a major issue of interest to the public””" is about jobsworths. Moving on to the section on purpose and intended effects, public inquiry recommendations are one of the reasons for including the existing framework driven by European requirements. I hope that public inquiries as they happened before are a thing of the past because we now have the Rail Accident Investigation Branch. It seems to be a kind of virility symbol that each inquiry has to produce more recommendations however sensible or stupid they are. Then there is a check on how many have been implemented and for what. My last example relates to risks. Paragraph 2 of the regulatory impact assessment states that:"““Major incidents are rare, but where they occur they have a large impact on individuals, society and the national economy arising directly from the deaths and injuries sustained as well as from physical disruption of the railway and indirectly by undermining public confidence in the operation of a key part of the national infrastructure””." I have heard many people talk about this, but there is no evidence to support that statement. Hatfield was a terrible accident, but it did not stop people using the railways: they went straight back on to them. This is again part of the safety mafia who hype things up for the sake of their own jobs. In the end, we have to accept these regulations now because it is too late and we need to comply with the European regulations. However, what I hope my noble friend will take away from this and one or two other debates is that, having got these regulations, let us try to cut them down and simplify them. We do not have any such regulations for roads and we certainly do not have them for the maritime industry. There is no evidence that they are required any longer if something much simpler could be produced. The noble Earl talked about interoperability and how far it should extend. For passenger lines it clearly does not need to go to the Kyle of Lochalsh—I do not imagine that he is suggesting that there should be a through train from Paris to the Kyle of Lochalsh every other day. However, it is important for freight because freight needs interoperable wagons and lines. The more different standards there are throughout Europe the worse things become. Yes, we are having these regulations and yes, we need them, but I trust, hope and pray that we are not superimposing them on top of existing UK regulations so that we will have two types of regulations to comply with. I look forward to my noble friend’s comments.