Queen’s Speech

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Birt, who has over many years been working on transport. I welcome his speech tonight. I also welcomed the references to transport in the Queen’s Speech. At the start of the debate, my noble friend Lord Adonis reminded your Lordships of the three sustainable policies in transport which we would do well to remember in the final months leading up to the election, and which, I hope, will remain in place afterwards. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. I was recently invited to participate in an expert group for the European Commission looking at future policy regarding the transport elements of the trans-European network. I propose to speak this evening on high-speed rail and cycling, with a word or two about royal travel and finishing with air pollution, most of which is to do with transport. My noble friend said that the Government would produce a report on high-speed rail in the spring, which is very good. The date has slipped slightly, which is no great surprise; my noble friend has led a high-speed rail study over the past year, which is fantastic compared with the speed of previous government studies, and not just of high-speed rail. I hope that he does not have problems of purdah before the election which would delay this report further, because we all want to see it. I would like to set down a few principles which are important when looking at the high-speed line work that High Speed Two is doing. We all recognise that the main reason for building this line, or lines, is to deal with the big problem of capacity on the railways. That reflects the success that the Government have had over the years in increasing rail passenger traffic by some 50 per cent and rail freight by 60 per cent. It is important to learn the lessons from High Speed One, which is a great success. It is open and very reliable, but we seem to have ended up with two high-speed services on the line which go at different speeds. The domestic services to Dover and Ramsgate go a little slower than the Eurostar services. It does not matter much at the moment but when, as we hope, more trains run on this line, it will have an adverse effect on capacity. The best capacity we get on any line like this is to have all the trains going at the same speed. I hope that that will be taken into account with regard to HS2. Secondly, let us please not have the Government as the independent regulator. It did not work on HS1. It has been changed, but it has caused a lot of difficult and unnecessary debate over the past 18 months. Thirdly, let us have a structure that allows for open access for passenger operators, whoever they may be—some may be franchised, some not. Let us not tie the financing of the construction into revenue from one operator and then get tied up with European open access rules. A way has to be found to separate that out and have open access. I hope that HS2 will be built to accept freight; obviously high-speed freight can use it. Container trains, for example, could at least use it some of the time, probably at night with a reasonable axle load. The most important thing about this line is that it will be able to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I heard a nasty rumour that trains might not be able to run on it at night because the line might go through the Chilterns and the good residents of the villages there would not like trains going past their front windows at night. I hope that sleeper trains will run on this line, and maybe the odd freight. Day passenger trains run in the early morning and late evening, and if people accept that this line will be built—as I hope they will, especially with the new Planning Act—there will be a benefit. Noise barriers will be put up if the houses are too close, and the trains should be able to run 24/7 like they do on the rest of the network, because that is what it is for. After all, motorways are open 24 hours a day—people do not require the traffic to be stopped on the M1 so that they can sleep next door to it. It is exactly the same. It is very important that the high-speed line trains are capable of going beyond wherever the end of the line is—London, Birmingham, Manchester or wherever—on existing lines. If you live in Wolverhampton or Shrewsbury and take the high-speed line as far as Birmingham, do you really want to get out there, cross the platform and walk to another station to get on an ordinary train? My noble friend the Minister who will reply to this debate has great experience of travelling around Birmingham, and I am sure that he will agree. It applies not just to Birmingham but also to many other places, including Holyhead and everywhere else. Let us also make it part of the European high-speed rail network and let us have a proper connection with HS1 in London. We do not know where the station will be, because we have not been told yet. I do not really mind whether the connection is high-speed or even conventional-speed somewhere north of St Pancras, but let us not require all the passengers from Birmingham, Manchester or anywhere else who want to go to Paris to leave the station and walk up the road with their luggage to St Pancras to get on another train. That is not part of the high-speed European rail network and we would insult the rest of Europe, our partners and the people north of London if that happened. With those few remarks, I am greatly looking forward to the report coming out, and I congratulate my noble friend on the way that he has pushed this forward, consulted everybody and got as much all-party support as anyone could hope for. My second point concerns cycling. My noble friend has also done a great job on cycling, of which I am a great supporter. It is good for health and good for carbon reduction. We all know that. Chris Green, who long ago developed Network SouthEast, has just produced a report for my noble friend on station improvements, and it is fantastic. I hope that it is implemented quickly. However, at the moment the target is for an average of 5 per cent of journeys to and from stations to be by cycle. Could we not be a little more ambitious? Five per cent is rather less than happens in the Netherlands, as he and I know. Thirdly, I have a comment or two about the grant in aid for royal travel by air and rail. We do not often talk about this. I am not here to criticise the Royal Family because they do a very good job in representation, visits and meetings. But I question whether some of the travel costs are not a little high at this time of financial restraint, particularly the use of helicopters and charter planes. I refer to the Grant-in-aid for Royal Travel by Air and Rail Annual Report 2008-09. People will say that security is the excuse for not using a car or scheduled train and there is no detail given in this report, but over the year there were 190 uses of helicopters, which cost a total of £680,000 just for the UK. I wonder whether Prince Charles and his family should not try to save a little more taxpayers’ money. They could do a little less and do it in an environmentally friendly way. I have one comment on their visit to South America, which was also pretty excessive, including a trip to the Galapagos. I am sure that it was a good bit of state duty, but it cost £645,000 for a chartered flight. There are certainly scheduled flights to South America. Finally, I have a quick question on air quality in London. My noble friend will know that I have been asking lots of questions about this, because the Government seem to be in breach of regulations on PM10, dangerous airborne particles, in many roads in London and other towns—in London it is particularly bad—under legislation that has been in place since 1990, and some for 10 years. On the Marylebone Road, for example, there were an average of 115 micrograms per cubic metre in 2008 when the limit was 40. That still applies around the Stratford Olympics, which is why I have been campaigning for more of the freight to come in by rail and water. I understand that the Government are likely to be fined by the European Commission if they do not comply with the reduced limits by next year. Being fined by the European Commission is not something that any Government would want, but I should be grateful if my noble friend would give an update on this. What we must do—and it can happen, especially if the mayor co-operates—is to get below that limit before the Olympics. Otherwise it will look like the high-carbon Olympics rather than the best Olympics ever, which I am sure we all want to see. I hope that my noble friend in his response will be able to give us some comfort that the limit will go down and we will have lovely fresh air around Stratford and other places in 2012.