Railway and Other Guided Transport Systems (Safety) Regulations 2006 

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I am even grateful to my noble friend Lord Berkeley, although I am going to disagree with some of his comments. I am particularly grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, who stepped in for the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who is irreplaceable in these debates. Nevertheless, the noble Earl directed some sharp questions which I will seek to respond to in a moment. We all miss the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, on such an occasion as this. As the Committee will recognise, the primary purpose of the Railway and Other Guided Transport Systems (Safety) Regulations 2006 is to transpose into British legislation the bulk of the European rail safety directive. I hear what my noble friends and the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, suggested: that things are going somewhat too far. Of course, we in Britain pride ourselves on the safety record of our railways. I pray that in aid against the main contention that my noble friend Lord Berkeley advanced when he asked why, in this age when railway safety is improving and when we have such devices as TPWS, we need to implement in full the European directive. The answers are first that we are obliged to and, secondly, I do not think that we are so perfectly secure about all our railways systems that we do not attach great importance to improvements with regard to safety. This is an opportunity for reinforcing that position. I hear my noble friend Lord Berkeley suggesting that in certain cases that may be inappropriate; he is right. If the rail system is not to be interoperable with Europe, it does not have to comply. Where it might—and the interests that he represents, as he will recognise only too clearly, have got a distinct element of interoperability over a vast range of their activities as far as freight is concerned—we need to take the directive very seriously. I hear what my noble friend Lord Faulkner said about heritage railways, and what he said broadened out into the areas of light rail as well. The noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, also raised the point about their concerns that they should be included in the framework. My noble friend Lord Faulkner was generous enough to recognise that we have exemptions until 2010, following discussions with the department and operators. We intend during the interim period that the Office of Rail Regulation will work with the heritage and light rail sectors, the insurance industry and other interested parties to resolve remaining concerns, which generally revolve around the question of insurance for the operation of the railways. In the event that no sustainable method of applying safety verification can be developed in time, the Office of Rail Regulation will consider revisiting the options on how best to address the issue. I take on board my noble friend’s anxieties and those of the noble Earl, but we need to address the question of insurance. We need to have a solution for light railways and particularly for heritage railways. We have got time to work on this, and we intend to work with the sector to obtain decent and appropriate solutions. The noble Earl referred to community railways, but that sector has not presented to us any concerns about the regulations. We are only too happy to meet that sector and to work with it, because we recognise how important and distinctive the contribution of that sector is. Where it is functionally isolated, there is no difficulty in making the same provisions for community railways as for heritage and light railways, but the noble Earl will recognise that community railways have quite a broad perspective, and they vary quite significantly. He will recognise that one community railway operates solely on the Isle of Wight, and therefore it has an obvious exclusion element to it in terms of the way in which that railway works. We are sensitive to those concerns, and we want to encourage community railways, so we will work with them to ensure that their interests are safeguarded with regard to the regulations. I make no real bones about the significance of the regulations. My noble friend Lord Berkeley said that railway safety is improving all the time, and there is a record to be proud of. But he knows the shock to the nation when things go wrong on the railway. I hear what he says that it sometimes is a very unfair comparison when you see many times more people killed in cars every day than you see killed on the railway in a year, and yet railway accidents create such dramatic response from the nation. That is in the nature of the news, and it is in the nature of the railway. That does not alter the fact that we all recognise that an event such as Hatfield has significant implications for the railway. There is no way in which any responsible government can react to this situation except to seek to guarantee that the railway is as safe as possible. Where weaknesses are identified—particularly those which emerged from the Hatfield crash and the public inquiry chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Cullen, into the Ladbroke Road crash from which we learnt a great deal—it behoves us, of course, to address them at the appropriate opportunity. We are looking to the European rail safety directive to adopt a common Europe-wide approach to rail safety. It gives us the opportunity to emphasise how committed we are to rail safety and to take action accordingly. I accept the reservations. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, would probably have been even more persistent than the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, in itemising why such exceptions should be considered. I give the noble Earl and, through him, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, an assurance that we will operate these regulations in consultation with those parts of the railway system which do not fit readily and straightforwardly with inter-operability with Europe and the requirement of those standards. We look on these regulations as the basis for the significant position on safety that we need. We are obliged to fulfil those requirements. We also have the will to do so because rail safety is a major priority for the Government, particularly because of the points made by my noble friend Lord Berkeley. The country seems to reel from the shock of any significant problem on the railway in a way which it does not do with almost any other transport system, with the possible exception of aviation. By the same token, the aviation industry is prone to say at times that it is governed by safety regulations which guarantee that the myriads of flights which occur—increasing every year—are carried on in perfect safety. But when anything goes wrong, of course, it is the stuff of drama. That is the nature of both air and rail travel. We just have to respond to that. I am grateful for this short debate. We miss the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and his inimitable style. He will not be satisfied with my reply, but had he been here he would have been even less satisfied with it because he would have sought to persist through illustration just why he was concerned about these regulations. However, we think that they are to the advantage of running a rail system safely. A safe rail system is by far the best form of public transport that we can offer the nation, and we should take pride in that.