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Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill

moved Amendment No. 6: 6: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause— ““Charging (1) The Railways Infrastructure (Access and Management) Regulations 2005 (S.I. 2005/3049) are amended as follows. (2) In Regulation 12 the following are revoked— (a) paragraphs (3) and (4), and (b) in paragraph (8), the words ““and (4)(c)””.”” The noble Lord said: The amendment refers to the charging regime relating to Regulation 12. I do not want to repeat what I have said before—we will all get tired over this—but it will be interesting to see how the charges come out. We have spoken about the return on the investment. The people running High Speed 1 have been helpful over freight and have offered 20 train paths a night in each direction. There has been some debate about how it should have been built and whether it has been built to the design for 300 kilometres an hour or 120, but I think that has been resolved. The key is to get continental gauge trains into Barking, Dagenham and places like that. That would bring enormous benefit to rail freight, assuming, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said, the Channel Tunnel comes right. According to the European directive, the charges for freight have to be short by a marginal cost, but there is still to be an allowance for mark-up or financing up to the level of how much the market can bear. It is very interesting, because the regulator is doing exactly the same thing in his review of Network Rail’s access charges. I heard one of his senior people this morning explain how the charging worked. There is a limit to it, which is based on the level of charging that any market sector can bear. The regulator defines a market sector as spent nuclear fuel, coal and things like that, so they are quite constrained. I do not know who will make these decisions for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, because it will not be the regulator; it will be the Department for Transport, taking advice, I presume, from people who want to make as much money as possible on the line. We have a long way to go on this. I shall not speak further at this stage, except to say that setting the charges will make or break the link. It is surprising that nobody has picked up on the fact that, nearly a year and a half after the link opened, there is no freight on it, even though it is designed for it. Not even rates have been set. I beg to move.