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Railway Safety Levy Regulations 2006

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. I am not sure whether my noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton quite welcomes the order, but I think that noble Lords on both Opposition Front Benches broadly welcome the proposals. I shall deal first with the questions that have been asked. I assure my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester that the turnover described in the regulations relates to the operation of a railway, not to extraneous costs. Income from refreshments sold on a heritage railway would not be part of the turnover; only the actual operation of the railway would be. Nor would the construction of new lines, for example, be brought within this framework. So the concept of turnover relates to the operation of the railway. I was also asked whether people who think they have been badly treated could appeal. It would, of course, be open to any regulated company to seek judicial review of a decision if it considered the Office of Rail Regulation to have acted unreasonably. I should add that the Office of Rail Regulation is subject to scrutiny by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. So any unfair and arbitrary action by the ORR would be aired fairly promptly. The offended party would make sure that it was in the public arena very rapidly and, of course, would be subject to parliamentary interest from that point. But, of course, in such a situation, judicial review is always the last stop. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, also pointed out that there are a number of heritage railways with turnovers above £1 million. These are subject, in the first range, to a levy of only £1,000. I hear what the noble Lord says—that heritage railways are usually sustained through voluntary efforts and costs have to be kept to the lowest level possible—but he will recognise that a levy of £1,000 on a turnover of more than £1 million is a modest amount. The noble Lord asked how long these figures would remain in place and whether they would be inflation-linked, which is also the burden of the remarks of my noble friend Lord Faulkner. This is a matter for the Office of Rail Regulation to consider; the limits are not prescribed in the regulations. We would not expect something which is, by definition, bound to be open to change to be specified in the regulations. The figures can be reviewed by the Office of Rail Regulation each year when it makes its annual determination. It is committed to a full review of the levy regime in the light of experience, and it expects to begin work on this at the end of 2007. Whether the £1 million and £5 million limits need to be varied will form part of that review. I have no doubt that if it proved to be the case that these figures grievously affected the operation of the small number of heritage railways which come within the framework, the Office of Rail Regulation would take that matter on board, and would expect to do so within two or three years of the order becoming part of the statute. I should emphasise to my noble friend Lord Hunt that, like heritage railways and tramways, the Tube is certainly part of this regulation. Inevitably, health and safety regulations on Tube lines have somewhat different expectations, for all the reasons that we can well imagine, and it is because of this that the system has a somewhat different emphasis from the more obvious overground lines. Nevertheless, we have sought to promote regulations that govern the whole sector, as we are obliged to do. I hear what my noble friend says about noise. I think the whole country is aware of the fact that, among all the environmental aspects of health that we have to consider, noise is an increasing factor. That is why it is so prominent in regard to road transport and air transport, which the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, and myself have enjoyed debating over these past few—I was going to say ““interminable months””—lively weeks. Health and safety regulations for rail are different from the ones for air for very obvious reasons. They are entirely different regimes. Is the railway being adversely affected by these regulations? I do not think so. The railway prides itself—rightly—on its extraordinary success in terms of accident rates. Whenever a disaster occurs on the railway, we all know of the shock to the national psyche that occurs. He will recognise that rail remains the safest form of land transport. The reason air can compare with it at all is simply that air transport covers many thousands of miles with its passengers. In many cases, it will be many thousands of miles before any dramatic acts of taking off or landing take place with the aircraft, whereas rail passengers are, by definition, always in contact with the track and there is always potential danger. Rail is not being disadvantaged by this. It is being guaranteed that in moving these powers away from the Health and Safety Executive and directly to the Office of the Rail Regulator, it is having its health and safety regulation—on whose high standards it has always prided itself—directly related to a body dealing uniquely with rail. It can therefore take account of rail’s interests, as my noble friend was enjoining us to do. I re-emphasise, in my final brief remarks, that these regulations have been tabled against a background of widespread consultation and general approval. The heritage industry has indeed presented its case with force, as my noble friend Lord Faulkner knows only too well. Indeed, all aspects of rail have had the chance to comment on these proposals and the regulations command the widespread support of the industry. On Question, Motion agreed to.