My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to move Amendment 8. I will also speak to Amendment 19 to save the Committee time. This is a small issue compared with many of the ones the Committee will discuss today and in future days, but it is important for the rail sector and the financial sector that is linked to it. The amendment, which is a small addition to Clause 2(2), would enable the Luxembourg Rail Protocol to the Cape Town convention to be ratified.
I will try to explain what this is as quickly as I can. The Cape Town convention is a global treaty which, with the Luxembourg Rail Protocol, will make it easier and cheaper for the private sector to finance all types of railway rolling stock—locomotives, passenger and freight wagons, metro trains and trams, et cetera.
It creates a new global system for protecting and prioritising creditor rights in relation to secured financing or leasing of all types of rolling stock. It includes a facility to register security interests in an international registry. It is the first common worldwide system for uniquely identifying rail equipment.
This is nothing particularly new because it has been around in the air sector for many years and there is already a protocol in the Cape Town convention to benefit aircraft. The rail sector protocol has been signed but not yet ratified. I will give the Committee some examples. Aeroplanes obviously move around the globe. Occasionally, they get stolen or people take them to places where creditors cannot get at them. Members may wonder what this has got to do with the railways. When I was first chairman of the Rail Freight Group, about 20 years ago, and getting interested in international rail freight across to the continent through the Channel Tunnel, we came across a number of examples where rail freight wagons went to Italy and but did not come back. Nobody could seem to find them. Italy was different in those days. I do not think it is the case today at all. It was a worry because the people who had financed those wagons lost their assets. I am sure this can happen today in other parts of the world, but I am not going to start giving examples. This protocol is designed to prevent that happening without creditors knowing what has gone on.
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The good thing is that if the Government are able to ratify this, there will be no cost to government, and the people involved in developing this convention have said it is estimated that the savings to the UK domestic rail industry will amount to over £5 billion in 30 years, just in direct microeconomic benefits. The protocol will of course also underwrite new business and jobs from the incremental export opportunities for UK rolling stock manufacturers, as well as for financial services. That is particularly important due to the change in trade from Brexit, with exporters looking for new markets.
I hope that that summarises the purpose of this amendment and that the Government will accept the principle of these amendments. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, for the discussions we have had by email, and I now look to discuss how this could be taken forward. I am always conscious that when one puts down an amendment, Ministers will often say that they have a better one and that they will come back at the next stage with something better. Of course, that is fine. I hope that I do not have to press my amendment at this stage, which would be unusual. However, I hope that the Minister can give me an assurance that an alternative, which he suggested, would be acceptable: the possibility of introducing an amendment to the private international law Bill in Committee in the other place, which I believe is due next week on 6 October, to facilitate either the ratification of the Luxembourg rail protocol to the Cape Town convention directly in that Bill, which obviously would stop it being used more generally, or by way of adding a regulation later to that Bill. Obviously, I would find that acceptable if it worked. An alternative would be for the Government to introduce their own amendment to the Trade Bill on Report.
Given the timescales involved, I request that the Minister facilitate an urgent meeting with his Ministry of Justice colleagues and the Department for Transport, which also has an interest in this, and myself, so that we can agree a way forward. I could then support, and, I hope, facilitate, a government amendment tabled to the private international law Bill in Committee in another place next week, or agree an amendment to this Bill which the Government might bring forward on Report. I beg to move.