My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to debate the transport needs of remote island communities in England, and it is my first opportunity to debate with the new Minister, whom I of course welcome.
There are not many remote islands in England. I was advised by the clerks that I could not mention the Isles of Scilly by name, but we have a few other islands in England, which the House of Lords Library has
included in its very helpful briefing, including the Isle of Wight, the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, Lundy and the Farne Islands. I hope that I have not forgotten any inhabited islands but we shall see.
I question whether the Isle of Wight really is remote. It has several competing ferry services, so it is nothing like as remote as the Isles of Scilly. However, it has transport problems, which were ably challenged by the previous MP, Andrew Turner, and are now being taken forward by the new MP, Bob Seely. Bob Seely has also taken the initiative of forming an all-party group for islands. I have joined it and am pleased that Derek Thomas, the MP for St Ives—and Scilly—has, too. I hope that many noble Lords, as well as Members of the House of Commons, will join it. Derek continues to work hard to improve the transport services to and from Scilly. I shall concentrate my remarks on Scilly, which I think is pretty unique within England.
First, I declare an interest. My wife is a councillor on the Council of the Isles of Scilly. She is also the co-ordinator of FRIST—Friends of Isles of Scilly Transport. She has lived on the islands for 40 years. FRIST’s campaign slogan is to create,
“reliable, affordable, all year round lifeline transport links with the mainland”.
My links with the Scillies go back to 1707, when an ancestor of mine was with Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell, whose fleet got wrecked off the Isles of Scilly on the Outer Gilstone Rock, with the loss of about 2,000 lives. It was a very big disaster. My director ancestor—a future Earl of Berkeley—was in the ship behind that went on to the same rock but got washed off, otherwise I would not be here today. I am very pleased to be here today.
If you ask any islander what is the biggest challenge they face on Scilly, their answer is transport to and from the mainland. It is vital for the economy and for the islanders’ welfare and social fabric. The cost of living there is much higher. To take one example, building materials cost 40% more on the main island, St Mary’s, and 60% more on the four inhabited “off islands”.
I will briefly explain the present transport services. We have the “Scillonian” ferry service, which is celebrating its 40th birthday this summer. I am not sure that “celebrate” is the right word but we can debate that. It operates six or seven days a week from Penzance to St Mary’s, from March to November, but there are no passenger sea services in winter. There is a freight ship that operates two or three times a week, and a fixed-wing air service from Land’s End, Newquay and, in the summer, Exeter to St Mary’s. All the above are operated by one company, the Isles of Scilly Steamship Group. There was a helicopter service until 2012, when it closed. A new service is planned with a new heliport in Penzance, but the planning permission for that has been challenged by a judicial review by the steamship company. The company denies that it is a monopoly, saying that it is just a sole operator, which is an interesting definition of the words. It says that anyone else can start a service. But woe betide anyone who tries—they will get a judicial review thrown at them, on the most spurious grounds, in my view.
Turning to the costs, the single fare on the “Scillonian” is £55 and by air from Land’s End it is £80. That means that for a family of four—two adults and two children over the age of two—the cost would be well over £500 return, and you would have got only to the mainland, not to the end of Cornwall.
One of the biggest problems is reliability. The “Scillonian” gets cancelled very occasionally—it is very reliable—but flights are frequently cancelled due to the weather. In winter, 49% of the flying hours from Land’s End are disrupted. This a very high figure and there is no ferry on which people can go instead. It can mean that islanders are cut off for several days, usually due to fog or low cloud.
People suffer badly as a result of having only these unreliable flights in winter. People travelling for health appointments on the mainland can get stressed by the uncertainty. We were recently contacted by a woman patient who was unable to fly on that day because of fog who said that this was the eighth appointment that she had had to miss. Another patient attending hospital on the mainland for a scan was informed by the hospital, “If there is one more instance where you do not turn up you will not get a scan”. That is painful and horrible for people. The worry is that these instances are typical rather than exceptional. It is especially serious for people who are on a course of chemotherapy. If you want to go to a meeting you have to leave a day or two early, as do people booked on holidays, to make sure that you get to the mainland, because there is no through ticketing or code sharing.
Conversely, in summer the air service and ships are often full up—at this time I have friends who cannot get across for several days—and so the islands desperately need more capacity in the summer and an affordable and reliable winter service, preferably by ship. The helicopter will help when it starts but it will not be sufficient.
The freight situation is bad—I have a great interest in freight, although there is no rail freight to Scilly—because the steamship company appears to charge according to the whim of the staff or directives from the management. There is no transparency over the charges or even a written price list. It charges extra or delays shipping and customers can have their goods lost or damaged, as anyone who is brave enough to challenge the company frequently finds out. I have many examples of this but, sadly, I do not feel able to name names because there is a real fear among the people and companies involved that they will be added to the black list.
I will give one or two examples without names. One customer said that there is a considerable variation in freight charges, made worse by the lack of transparency. He said that eight boxes weighing 80 kilograms came in at £15.82, whereas another seven boxes from the same consignment, with the same weight of 80 kilograms, came in at £18.35. Surely there must be a price list. A second customer has strong evidence of predatory pricing, which gives an unfair advantage to the local subsidiaries of the steamship company. I suspect the CMA will want to investigate that. It should.
A third resident, a businessperson, surveyed 50 logistics companies which regularly deliver to Penzance for the islands. It is a long story but, frankly, the whole service is a disgrace, a shambles. You do not know when the freight is going to arrive or how much it is going to cost, and sometimes the company turns away deliveries at Penzance for the most spurious reasons, including slight damage to a pallet. That is crazy. He points out that the quay staff are wonderful but that communication with management does not seem to exist. His conclusion is that freight issues are stifling investment in the islands. He says that change must come to this unacceptable situation. I entirely agree.
Visitor numbers are now the mainstay of the island economy because the trade in flowers and so on has reduced over time. There is general agreement that there is plenty of space for more visitors, especially in the shoulder and winter months, but in June the air service was 2,000 passengers down on last year, largely due to fog disruption. That has a serious effect on the operators of holiday accommodation. One person told me that he is losing business because of it. He said, “The current service is not fit for purpose and the islands are losing business as a result”. That is a common complaint.
Let us compare these problems with Scotland, where the Scottish Government and the local councils support island life in a number of ways. Ferries are often operated by charging passengers on a road-equivalent tariff and commercial services often run alongside the subsidised ones. But the key difference is that services are much more frequent and fares are lower than the equivalent service for the Isles of Scilly.
I could go on about this for a long time but we need to talk about solutions. After a number of years of disagreement both within the Isles of Scilly and with the mainland about what could be done, there is now a new council with a new commitment to work together to find solutions, and I certainly welcome that. Some years ago, Ministers said at a meeting with island representatives, “Come back when you can speak with a single voice”, and of course they were quite right. Now everyone is talking with the same voice—the council, the business group known as the Islands’ Partnership, Healthwatch, FRIST, the community interest company and Cornwall Council, as well as Penzance Town Council. The two councils have done really good work on the infrastructure of the quays and airports, but that is not enough because what is needed is service improvement. The quays at St Mary’s are nice but there is no passenger service in the winter. There is a nice hardened runway at Land’s End but the planes cannot fly in the frequent foggy conditions. The current services are hopeless for anyone who wants to travel with any degree of certainty, whether for business, holidays or hospital appointments. The crews and front-line staff do a great job but they are often let down not only by the weather but by the management.
I am afraid that the situation has all the hallmarks of a lazy monopoly provider which, sadly, is putting shareholders’ returns well before the needs of its customers. I think that three changes are required. The first is competition, something we often talk about in your Lordships’ House. I know that a number of people
have asked the CMA to investigate whether there is an abuse of dominant position by the sole operator, and we shall see what it says. However, it would help enormously if the air services and the sea services were run by separate and independent companies. That would bring competition, would, I am sure, improve customer service, and would probably reduce fares. The second change is something known as “aid of a social character” which is allowed under EU competition law. I hope that the Government do not sneak something in to abolish it when we go through Brexit. It would give the islanders a percentage reduction on their fares. The system operates well in Scotland and it is a major benefit to the residents there. The third change is a winter subsidy passenger service contract for a ship service perhaps three times a week to provide a cost-effective service that would be much more reliable and much cheaper than fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
Scilly needs something like this. People think that the islands are very beautiful and prosperous, but that is not the case. On 1 June last year the Daily Telegraph reported:
“Between 2014 and 2020, both Cornwall and West Wales will receive over €1,000 (£800) per person from the EU Structural and Investment Fund - similar to that received by Romania and Bulgaria”.
I know Romania well, but do we really want Cornwall and the Scillies to look like that? The present services are not fit for purpose. The new helicopter service will help, but the route needs further competition to improve reliability, reduce costs and see a step change in the freight sector, which generally thrives on competition. This is what Scotland gives its island communities in order to help them sustain their way of life and their economy. Do the UK Government not care about their own islands? They are far fewer in number but they are equally in need of support.
In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will look favourably on the requests I have made, and those from other noble Lords who are to speak in the debate, and that he will agree to meet me and colleagues from the representative bodies of the islands to take forward the discussions. I hope that he will visit the Isles of Scilly to see them for himself, and I hope also that he will not be held up by the air services. I beg to move.
12.40 pm