I will briefly respond to the proposals from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and ask both him and the Minister some questions. I will not say that the recent BBC drama “Nightsleeper” should give us cause for alarm—the issues are very different—but the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, possibly the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, and I were heavily involved in the then Automated Vehicles Bill during its passage through your Lordships’ House earlier this year. Some of the questions I will ask now I asked in the debates on that Bill, too.
First, this is not just a question of having no driver, because there has been a push to remove from trains staff other than the driver, whether it is an old-fashioned-style conductor or a train manager. I wonder how on earth the emergencies that cannot be predicted, either by software or by people driving the train remotely, can be resolved. Should those emergencies on the line happen at very short notice and the train has to stop, how are people to get off? This is the point at which I start to talk about those who need assistance. If you do not have any staff on the train, how do you get people off who cannot clamber down and follow the side of the track? The reassurance of having staff on the train in that situation makes me feel confident that, if there were an emergency, I would be able to get off.
The other key role of staff on a train, whether a driver or train manager, is to help when things go wrong. That could include trying to handle people who are behaving very badly, sometimes breaking the law, by alerting British Transport Police. It might include times when assistance goes wrong, such as trains not stopping at volunteer stops. We still have those; there are some between Salisbury and Bristol, where you have to give advance notification if you want to stop at a particular station. As someone in a wheelchair, I would be in real trouble if the train did not stop—and there would be nobody I could notify. Also, if you arrive at a station where there is a planned stop and you were expecting to get assistance, but nobody is there, other passengers would not know how to get the ramp out of the train, and they would not have the keys to do it. I am very concerned about those circumstances. If there are thoughts about having automated trains, the practical side of how passengers interact, particularly vulnerable passengers, concerns me.
Secondly, the Docklands Light Railway is an interesting example, and we see similar driverless trains in many airports around the world. That is fine, but I have some concerns about the concept at this stage. If our railways—the actual rails and their surrounds—are built before the plans for automation, there will be consequences for driverless trains when trees fall down at the last moment and children run across the line. You cannot manage those circumstances without a driver who can pick up an alert, respond, tell passengers to brace themselves and let them know where they need to go for support. For me, this is not about unions; it is about passenger safety. My particular interest is making sure that those passengers—not just disabled passengers but many elderly passengers; look at the demographics—get support from a member of staff on the train.
6.15 pm