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EU: Single Market (EUC Report)

My Lords, I speak as a new member of the committee who was not present when any of the evidence was taken. When I arrived, the final draft of the report was more or less complete, and I have read it only since then. As I understand it, a free market depends on all the participants sticking by the rules, whatever they are. State aid has been strictly controlled and is normally disallowed, but just as important is the question of compliance and enforcement. I see that one of the committee’s conclusions at paragraphs 154 and 155 is that enforcement is fundamental to the activities of the Commission, and that applies over a very wide range of activities—from fishing nets to the safety of electrical appliances. Because it is where my area of expertise lies, I want to refer to transport and the standards of compliance that are observed there. In the railway and airline industries, those standards are strictly maintained on grounds of safety and many other related reasons. However, I am concerned about two issues of compliance, and I gave the Minister prior notice of the fact that I would raise them. First, I want to talk about the devastating effect on the local bus industry of the agreement entered into on regulations concerning drivers’ hours. I suggest to the Minister that this was forced on us not by the European Union but, to some extent, by the incompetence of the people whom we sent to negotiate on our behalf and who did not understand the implications for the local bus industry. These things are difficult to negotiate but it is possible to take advice from those who are intimately involved. I suggest to the Minister that, whenever we make regulations which affect small sections of industry, advice should be taken by government negotiators to ensure that our real interests are maintained. I simply draw to his attention that the Finnish Government—a very small participant—were able to secure a derogation from these regulations but we were unable to do so, although we are affected to a far greater extent. The second issue that I want to raise concerns the standards observed in the road haulage industry. A number of questions have been asked by my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno about the appalling situation in north Wales, where hundreds of lorries are taken off the road because their drivers grossly exceed their hours—I am talking not about a few minutes but about several hours. The lorries are in a poor mechanical condition and, as a consequence, they are killing people. They are also overloaded. The police stop those drivers in very large numbers but they have no power to do anything unless someone gets killed or something of that sort. However, the lorries just go on their way. Of course, a report is made to the home country but that is not very effective if there is no enforcement there. This applies in places as diverse as the Republic of Ireland, Greece, Bulgaria and all sorts of other countries. I know that the Government are talking about introducing some sort of on-the-spot fines but we have yet to see them. My other point is that these lorries have free access to our roads. Again, the Government have not moved to bring in a system of lorry taxation that would at least make owners of vehicles which are registered other than in the UK pay a fair price to use our roads. That is distorting competition. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will confirm that aluminium ingots from Anglesey to Austria, which have been transported by rail for a long period, have now been transferred to road using an eastern European haulier. I am not saying that that haulier does not observe the rules but in general they are not observed. In consequence, we have more road congestion, probably more accidents and gross overloading, and nothing is done about it. I say to the Minister that he has responsibilities to ensure that our side of the bargain is enforced. The other area that I want to talk about is the independence of economic regulators. This is also touched on in the report at paragraph 157 in particular and also in paragraph 159. We have been in discussion on the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill and have learnt that concessions are being made to secure that economic regulators—I am talking about them and not bodies such as the Environment Agency—are free from interference by national Governments. I want to bring to the Minister’s attention that, in my view, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill—I am sorry about the long title—invades the independence of the regulator and, to that extent, is objectionable. It is even objectionable to the extent that when I talked this week to a concern which is considering bidding to buy these assets that are being sold by the Government—that is, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and Eurostar—and asked them bluntly, ““Would you rather that the Government had a hand in regulation or that the regulation was made independently of government by the Office of Rail Regulation?””, they said that the latter would strongly influence their decision and the price that they would pay. That is because government are transient and capricious and the regulator is rather the reverse. Therefore, I ask the Government to pay attention to both the detail and the effect that their decisions have on people’s ability to function properly in the open market, which we all want to see.