Queen’s Speech

My Lords, today’s debate covers the important fields of transport, climate change, energy, communities, the environment, housing and local government. I am delighted to be sharing the ministerial stage with my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who will be winding up, and we much look forward to the maiden speeches of the right revered Prelates the Bishop of Blackburn and the Bishop of Lichfield. None of my informants can find a recent precedent for two Bishops making maiden speeches in the same debate, so we are blessed indeed. The gracious Speech promises legislation, ""to protect communities from flooding"." Since it was delivered, Cumbria has experienced one of the most serious floods in British history, so I know that the House would wish me to begin with an update on the situation. A month’s worth of rain had already fallen across the region in the first half of November. Then, in just three days between Tuesday and Friday of last week, places such as Keswick and St Bees Head experienced a further month’s rainfall. On Thursday, 314 millimetres of rain fell in Seathwaite and Borrowdale. It is thought to be the wettest 24-hour period ever recorded in the UK. Further heavy rain is forecast this week. Already, at least 1,300 properties have been flooded, several bridges have collapsed and the road network has been badly affected. We are doing everything that we can to help Cumbria County Council and local communities to deal with the severe flooding. A particular issue is the loss of road bridges in Workington, which presently has only a functioning rail bridge. The county council is considering the construction of a temporary road bridge, and relevant government agencies, including the MoD, are offering support. Network Rail also starts work tonight to build a temporary railway station in Workington on the north side of the River Derwent—in addition to the station on the south side—to ease the access problems that the town is experiencing. My department is also providing emergency funding to cover the cost of repair and maintenance work to roads and bridges, just as we did two years ago when the last floods struck. I will return to the issue of floods later in my speech. In respect of the other subjects of today’s debate, the gracious Speech commits the Government to "strengthening the national infrastructure"; to, ""respond to proposals for high-speed rail services between London and Scotland";" to, ""combat climate change, including at the Copenhagen summit";" to, ""support carbon capture and storage and to help more of the most vulnerable households with their energy bills";" and to improve the management of water supplies. I begin with transport. It is the lifeblood of the UK economy, moving people, goods and services, helping to generate growth and enabling trade and industry to flourish domestically and internationally. However, transport also accounts for around 21 per cent of the UK’s total domestic greenhouse gas emissions. It is therefore central to our efforts to tackle climate change. Achieving the twin objectives of transport that supports the economy and reducing carbon emissions is a significant challenge. To meet it, my department has a three-pronged approach: first, a sustainable infrastructure strategy, to provide additional capacity in the most efficient way; secondly, a green industrial strategy, to make the UK a global centre for low-carbon transport industries; and, thirdly, a transport reform strategy, to encourage public transport and healthier, as well as greener, choices such as cycling. Expanding motorway and trunk road capacity sustainably is a key element in our infrastructure strategy. The £6 billion strategic roads programme for the next five years was announced in January and is now being implemented. A significant innovation in this programme is investment in making possible hard-shoulder running on motorways, following the successful pilot on the M42 near Birmingham. That demonstrated that the hard shoulder can be turned into a running lane at a fraction of the cost of conventional motorway widening—but with equivalent benefits—and that, with the installation of regular lay-bys and appropriate traffic officer supervision, there is no compromise on safety. The £6 billion programme extends this successful model to congested parts of the M1, M6, M4 and M5. On high-speed rail, until recently Governments saw rail in the United Kingdom as in a state of inevitable and irreversible decline and they failed to invest in new infrastructure. As a result, today we are behind most other developed countries in building a high-speed rail network. Yet over the past decade rail has experienced a tremendous renaissance in Britain. High-speed rail has the potential to meet future inter-conurbation capacity requirements and to transform, sustainably, the transport connections between our major conurbations, with substantial economic, social and environmental benefits. International experience bears this out. Before high-speed rail, just 24 per cent of journeys between Paris and Brussels were by train. Since the introduction of a high-speed line between these cities, the proportion of train journeys has more than doubled, to 50 per cent, with a huge increase in capacity. In Germany, high-speed rail is so popular that Lufthansa has scrapped flights between Cologne and Frankfurt—little wonder, now that the new high-speed line has slashed the 110-mile journey time by train from 2 hours 15 minutes to just under one hour. Before high-speed rail in Spain, two-thirds of journeys between Madrid and Seville were by plane; just a third were by train. With the advent of a high-speed line, the railway now takes 84 per cent of the market. A similar dramatic change is taking place on the Madrid to Barcelona route, with the opening of the high-speed line between the two cities earlier this year. The question now is where we go in Britain. In January, the Government set up the High Speed Two company to advise on high-speed rail services from London to Scotland. By the end of the year, High Speed Two will have advised me on a detailed route plan for the first stage of a north-south high-speed line, from London to the West Midlands. I have also asked it to advise me on options for extending high-speed services to conurbations further north and to Scotland. The Government will respond to the HS2 report with a statement of policy next spring. I wish to forge as broad a consensus as possible. I welcome the fact that Theresa Villiers and Norman Baker, as spokespeople for their parties, have been engaging constructively with High Speed Two. I will endeavour in the new year to agree a strategic approach with them, so that the development of high-speed rail in Britain becomes a national and not a party cause. I also look forward to discussions with colleagues in this House on high-speed rail. It is my firm belief that a project of this magnitude, with such long-term investment and planning timelines, will succeed only if we all work together, across the parties, on a shared national strategy. That will be my principle of action in the months ahead. Turning to our wider transport strategy, perhaps I might highlight electrification in respect of rail, cars, vans and buses. On rail, we are investing £1.1 billion to electrify the Great Western main line from London to south Wales and the line from Manchester to Liverpool via Chat Moss. The benefits of rail electrification are huge. An electric train typically emits up to a third less carbon per passenger mile than does a diesel train; electric trains are also far more reliable and far cheaper to buy and maintain than diesel trains. On road transport, significant further improvements in fuel efficiency will come from the internal combustion engine, but manufacturers are developing mass market electric and hybrid cars; government policy is to encourage their uptake and to make the UK a leading global centre for designing and building them. The Government have committed more than £300 million to subsidise the purchase price of ultra-low-carbon vehicles, which are more expensive than conventional cars because of their batteries. Last week I took a significant further step by launching the £30 million Plugged In Places scheme, which will set up charging points for electric vehicles in a number of towns and cities nationwide. I have also established a £30 million Green Bus Fund, for which bus companies and local authorities in England can compete to help them to buy new low-carbon buses from next year, and a £20 million scheme for public sector fleets to trial up to 180 low-emission and all-electric vans supplied by four British companies—Ashwoods, Allied Vehicles, Smith Electric Vehicles and Modec. This pilot scheme will be tested in six local authority groups and by six large public fleets. The Government will continue to work in the EU to develop regulations for further reducing CO2 from new vans. Most journeys in this country are local—40 per cent are less than two miles and 68 per cent are less than five miles—so local authorities, too, have a key role to play in decarbonising transport. Bus patronage is now at its highest level for two decades and through the Local Transport Act we have made it easier for bus operators and local authorities to work together to deliver better services for passengers. I also want buses to be easier for people to use. As we have seen in London with the success of the Oyster card, which from 2 January is to be extended to overground train services as well as Underground and buses, smart ticketing makes public transport far more attractive to passengers and is helping to make a reality of what for my predecessors seemed like an unachievable holy grail—a genuinely integrated transport policy. We recently consulted on a smart and integrated ticketing strategy. Following a very positive response, I intend to publish final plans shortly with further significant incentives to spread the smart ticketing approach to other cities. In policy terms, I have also placed particular emphasis on cycling, not as an occasional travel option but as a mainstream form of transport that is viable, healthy and sustainable. Cycling England has a three-year budget of £140 million and is doing much excellent work, including the designation of cycling demonstration towns. Across the six towns, cycling levels have increased on average by 27 per cent over three years. But we need to do far more. Nearly half of adults own a bike and 60 per cent live just 15 minutes from a railway station, but only 2 per cent of train passengers travel to the station by bike, so I am boosting cycling facilities at stations with a £14 million package of investment. I am also encouraging employers to provide staff with much improved cycling facilities through a new Cycle to Work guarantee, which is being supported by leading public and private sector employers. This commits employers to provide their staff with safe bike storage, changing facilities, a bike repair service, training and access to the Government’s generous tax break scheme, Cycle to Work, for new bikes and cycling equipment. In all these areas, our strategy is to improve transport while also cutting carbon emissions. Of course, climate change is also a global challenge, requiring global solutions. This, again, is partly a transport issue. Aviation and shipping are fast-growing sources of emissions and they are, by their very nature, global sectors which are regulated at international as well as national level. That is why, in addition to setting targets to reduce emissions from UK aviation to below 2005 levels by 2050, we successfully negotiated the inclusion of aviation in the European Emissions Trading Scheme, which will begin from 2012. We are leading moves to achieve international agreement to reduce carbon emissions from both aviation and shipping at the Copenhagen summit and after. Sectors beside transport are equally important in tackling climate change. One of the major challenges in the transition to a low-carbon economy is ensuring secure and sustainable energy supplies. Britain is now a leader in the development of offshore wind power and we are putting in place a new framework for delivering the significantly greater clean energy generating capacity required for the future. We recently published draft national policy statements on energy infrastructure to guide the decision-making of the new Infrastructure Planning Commission. In July, we published the low carbon transition plan. The Energy Bill promised in the gracious Speech is a key part of this. Clean coal has an essential role to play in our energy future. However, we need to fund the projects that will demonstrate the carbon capture and storage technology required to reduce the emissions from coal-fired power stations. We recently published our response to the consultation on a framework for clean coal. This includes a commitment to financial support for up to four carbon capture and storage demonstration projects and the retrofitting of additional carbon capture and storage capacity to those projects, should it be needed. The Energy Bill will provide the necessary financial support mechanism. As energy costs rise, it becomes more important that we help the most vulnerable consumers with their energy bills. The Energy Bill will therefore introduce a framework for mandatory social price support to alleviate fuel poverty. Building on the success of the current voluntary agreement with energy companies, which already helps more than 1 million customer accounts, this mechanism will further enhance support. It will allow the Government to give greater direction on the types of households eligible for support and ensure that more of the available resources are targeted at households most in need. The Energy Bill will also clarify the principal objective of Ofgem to ensure that it reflects the interests of consumers in reducing emissions and ensuring secure energy supplies. It will also make it clear that, while promotion of competition is the foundation of consumer protection over the long term, Ofgem should act proactively to remedy cases of consumer detriment. We will also introduce a licence condition to make it easier for Ofgem to tackle market exploitation where companies take advantage of constrained electricity transmission capacity. I turn now to the provisions of the Flood and Water Management Bill, to which the House paid close attention after it was introduced in draft last year. This Bill answers the urgent need—still more urgent after the events in Cumbria this past weekend—for the legislative changes recommended by Sir Michael Pitt and it takes forward proposals set out in the Government’s water strategy, Future Water. After this past weekend, the House hardly needs reminding of the gravity of the 2007 floods, which claimed 13 lives. By implementing Sir Michael’s recommendations in response to those floods, we hope to reduce the impact of flooding on communities and businesses in future. Legislation is only one part. We are also investing a record £2.15 billion in flood management over the current spending period. But it is necessary, in law, to define clearly the roles and responsibilities of all involved in flood risk management. Under the Bill, the Environment Agency will take a full strategic overview, while local authorities manage the risk to homes and businesses of local causes of floods. The Reservoirs Act will be modernised. Regulation will be based on the risk posed by a reservoir breaching, not just on its size, making communities living close by safer. Homes and workplaces also need greater protection from surface water flooding. For the first time, the Bill gives responsibility for addressing the causes of run-off flooding. To reduce such flooding and to prevent sewers from overloading and rivers from being polluted, the Bill encourages the installation of sustainable drainage systems in new developments. The Bill safeguards consumer interests and ensures continuity of supply. Provisions leading to more efficient delivery of large infrastructure projects will help to protect water customers from escalating costs. The Bill also enables government to give water companies more flexibility and scope to restrict non-essential domestic uses of water during droughts by updating the existing hosepipe ban powers. The Bill allows water and sewerage companies to operate concessionary schemes for surface water drainage charges, so that community groups will no longer face unaffordable rises in their bills. Floods can happen at any time. We must be ready and this Bill is of immediate importance. I turn to local government. Over the past decade, the Government have steadily transferred powers to local government. In the case of the Mayor of London—with whom I am happily joined at the hip in promoting Crossrail—we have created a new and powerful tier of local government for our capital that Members on all sides of the House will regard as a success. One key role of local government is to promote community cohesion, which is particularly important in a recession, with all the tension that it brings. Strong and positive community relationships can be built only where people feel able to speak up about their concerns and feel confident that their voice is being listened to. Our Connecting Communities programme, launched in October, is part of that process. We are investing £50 million between 2008 and 2011 to promote community cohesion, with £34 million going directly to authorities in greatest need. Of course, money is only part of what it takes to promote social cohesion. Strong cross-community civic institutions are the bedrock of a strong society—I know that this will be a major theme of our debate today. Another critical responsibility of local government, working in partnership with the voluntary and private sectors, is the provision of social housing. The Government are taking forward the biggest council house building programme for nearly two decades. Work began on nearly 30,000 homes between April and June this year; 55,000 affordable homes will be built this year and the same number will be built next year. Across the broader field of local government, four significant developments are in train, which, taken together, have the potential to improve the delivery of local services. First, the Total Place approach is mapping all public service spending within each area to evaluate the potential for far greater use of shared services, innovative procurement and joint commissioning by different public bodies in each area. Secondly, local authority scrutiny powers will be extended to all local public service spending. This will enable councils more effectively to campaign, to hold spending bodies to account on behalf of citizens and to challenge public services to improve. Thirdly, there will be new roles for local government, including the ability to generate new income. This is not about new or higher taxes but about exploring the significant commercial opportunities for local government in the transition to a low-carbon economy, for example in generating energy from renewable sources. Fourthly, it is critical that our public services are transparent and open to examination. The work being undertaken by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt on making data more accessible to the public must extend across the whole public sector, including local government and local services. I have set out an extensive programme of reform and improvement flowing from the gracious Speech. It is far more than a list of Bills, policies and proposals. It is a statement about our core values as a Government, about an economy and infrastructure that will promote wealth and prosperity for all, about an environment that is sustained and safeguarded and about a society that values cohesion and the rights and responsibilities that we all owe one to another. This is our mission as a Government. I am confident that it is widely shared across the House, to which I commend the gracious Speech.