My Lords, I will briefly intervene, not because I have the expertise of my noble friend Lord Berkeley; if he believes that he may be pushing at an open door as regards the Minister’s response, that is very good news indeed. My qualification for speaking about level crossings is that I live on the border of Hertfordshire and Essex, in one of the flattest parts of the country, the Lea Valley. The railway line there is plagued by the problem that it has a very large number of level crossings of all kinds, from the latest state-of-the-art crossings in some parts, to those where people open a little gate and run for it, dragging the dog behind—because they usually have a recalcitrant animal as well—and take risks getting across. Incidents on the line are constant.
I know that my dear friends at RoSPA—the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents—indicate that there are only nine deaths per year and that limited numbers of people are injured. We have 6,000 level crossings, and they are not all on the line that I know so well, but as my noble friend Lord Berkeley has emphasised, there is no doubt that because of the improved efficiency of the railway line—which is not just for local stations but is also the Stansted line, and which therefore supplies an important service to Stansted —very fast trains cause greater problems when you have some crossings which to all of us look exceedingly casual.
There was a tragic case only two weeks ago, when one of the most experienced local cyclists—someone who had travelled all over the world on his bike and raised lots of money for charities, who rode his bike all the time and was very advanced in years—decided that he could beat the train. Of course, this happened on one of our crossings, which is a bit posher than some, with an automatic gate that comes down on one side, and an automatic bar that comes down on the other side. However, if you are prepared to take the risk, you can wiggle between the two, and this poor fellow took the risk and got hit by a fast train.
We need to address this issue. We all know that with so many crossings, it is quite unrealistic to expect the problems to be resolved overnight. We are also aware at the present time that the whole responsibility falls on Network Rail. The costs and responsibility for safety all rest on Network Rail, while it is quite clear that other users create so many of the problems. That is why, at the very least, there should be some sharing out of the costs where it can be established that the local authority responsible for the road access may well not have played its part as fully as it ought to have done.
I am therefore looking forward to the largely positive reply from the Minister; it is an absolute delight to anticipate such a response. I emphasise that we were somewhat disappointed that there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech about a Bill, given that there was a small number of Bills—and rather pot pourri Bills as this one is to a certain extent—covering a range of issues. We were concerned that there was nothing about a level crossing, but I am very glad that my noble friend has raised the issue with this amendment, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.