Railways (Interoperability) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-03-21
Topic: Transportation
Anthony Gueterbock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the previous two SIs that we debated caused a lot of interest—I am grateful to so many noble Lords for their contributions—but they are to some extent the hors d’oeuvre, because this one is the main course. I wanted to table it as a fatal Motion because I feel so strongly about it, but the timing does not really help and I was told it might be several weeks before parliamentary time was found, which would be after the Brexit date that we had—I do not know whether we still do; that is for discussion This is a really serious problem: transferring all responsibility for railway safety and standards from the European railway agency to the Secretary of State in the event of a no-deal Brexit. It is very complex, as noble Lords said earlier, but in this case it is also unnecessary: there is a much simpler solution. My impression is that the reason that so many of these pieces of railway legislation, and those on air travel, are presented as a major change is because somebody in government does not like the word "Europe" in the title. We debated this last week when we were discussing the noise regulations in respect of airports, and I suggested to the Minister that there was a serious conflict of interest here, because if the Secretary of State—I am not being personal: any Secretary of State—is responsible for noise regulation at airports but is also pushing for all he or she is worth the third runway at Heathrow, it is in the Secretary of State’s interest that the noise regulations are as lax as possible. The lack of consultation was discussed then, and I fear the same is happening here There is a solution, which I shall come to. The European railway agency goes back a long time: I have been involved in it for probably more than 10 years. It means that there is one set of standards for the manufacture, export, testing and everything in the railway sector across Europe. There is the common requirement for safety, accident and other data, which the House also discussed this morning. It is extraordinary that the Government are introducing this massive change for what I call dogmatic reasons I give noble Lords an example of what happened about 10 years ago, which was one reason why the ERA was created. A rail freight wagon was developed in this country to take trucks piggybacked on it—mostly cement trucks. It worked very well. It was developed by a company called WH Davis, and it was so successful that it had an export order to operate in France. When it tried to get approval from the French regulatory authority to operate in France, the changes necessary—which were not that big but were significant—would not allow it to operate in this country. So there could not be a wagon that complied with both countries’ standards at the same time. That is a small example of why it was so important to make a European agency responsible for such things, which would also allow manufacturers in one country to apply to the ERA for approval if they thought that approval in one particular member state was being withheld for reasons that might be political There is, I am afraid, another more recent example of the Secretary of State’s involvement, involving station platform heights; I am sure that noble Lords are great experts on that subject. One of the reasons why the Government apparently do not like anything to do with the ERA is that it told them they could not have a certain station platform height for HS2, because it was different from the platform heights on similar high-speed lines on the continent. I am told that that caused a certain amount of anger: how dare Europe interfere? This is interesting, because the station platform height regulation applies to only four stations on HS2. All the other stations that HS2 trains will go into have Network Rail platforms, whose heights are all different anyway If the Government think that they are very good at such things, let us consider Crossrail station platforms. The Crossrail stations in the central section allow level boarding between the platform and the train—but unfortunately that height is different from all the other stations that Crossrail trains will go into at each end of the route, at Reading, Shenfield and wherever else. That means that someone in a wheelchair will need help at every station outside the centre: they will need not only a portable ramp, but a staff member to help them on and off the train. When I asked why we could not have one common station platform height for the centre sections and the outside sections, I was told that the European railway agency thought about the plan and questioned it, but because this is a metro service it does not have the wherewithal to challenge the Government. This is what the Government have achieved, which is unclear and will cost everybody a lot of money for a very long time It may be surprising, but the whole railway industry is I think in favour of the status quo with the European railway agency. Whether it be Network Rail, the Rail Delivery Group, the Railway Industry Association, the Rail Freight Group—I have already declared an interest as a former chairman of that—or the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, they all want the status quo to continue. I have talked to them all, and if they have not gone public on this too much it is because many of them have had to sign ridiculous non-disclosure agreements. Let us hope that that will stop as soon as the Brexit debate finishes There are strong arguments for staying with the European railway agency. My preference would be to suggest an associate membership, such as the Swiss Government have. I have talked to people in Switzerland, both in railways and in government, and they say that it works fine. They are not on the boards, but they still get things done by talking to people. They mentioned the European Court of Justice. The Swiss do not like it, any more than our Government do. But when I asked whether that was a problem, they said, "No, we just carry on talking about it—but it works". So I suggest that the solution is something like associate membership of the European railway agency. We should abandon this ridiculously complicated SI—which may get abandoned anyway if we do not bale out I hope that in her response the Minister can give me two assurances. One is that, assuming that this SI does not come into force, the Government will consider alternatives to the present idea when they look at it again—which they probably will unless we stay in the EU. The second is that they will discuss with the Swiss Government, the European Union and the European railway agency whether there is an arrangement that could enable the continuation of compliance and information sharing. I repeat: that is what the industry wants. It will save money and provide more export opportunities. It seems to me that there is no downside, apart from the fact that the European railway agency has "Europe" in its name. I beg to move.