---

Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill

My Lords, the support that we have provided has been to Eurostar UK Ltd. That is the nature of our support. It is for the French and Belgian parts of the joint venture to provide support to their element of the part of the railway that they run. The amendment would restrict the Government’s ability to provide any support for international services, other than that historically provided to Eurostar. As I have said before, the Government’s intention is substantially to reduce the public support for international services, mainly by putting in place a commercially sustainable, long-term access charging regime. In Committee, noble Lords were concerned that the Government’s position had changed since Second Reading. I assure them that this is not the case; our position on providing funding to Eurostar has remained unaltered since the Bill was introduced in another place. At Second Reading, I said that Clause 1 gives the Secretary of State commercial, "““flexibility to subsidise international operators in the same way as we currently support domestic franchise operators””.—[Official Report, 19/2/08; col. 146.]" My point was that the provision of some continuing support to Eurostar and other international service operators may be desirable, not that Eurostar’s position is or will be akin to that of a domestic franchisee. For clarity, Eurostar does not provide its services under a franchise agreement with the Secretary of State, and there is no intention that it should do so in the future. While it currently has the benefit of reserved capacity on HS1 until 2052 on a take-or-pay basis, it is proposed that this will be renegotiated as part of the restructuring, so that its position as regards access to HS1 will be the same as any other open access operator. The historical funding structures that are in place include the access charge loan, guarantees of Eurostar’s rolling stock lease payments, hedging obligations and its ability to pay HS1 access charges. Removal of this support now would damage Eurostar’s ability to compete as a sustainable, stand-alone entity. To damage that could be commercial suicide. We also wish to retain the power to reorganise or amend these existing support packages to achieve best value for taxpayers through the restructuring. The amendment would prevent us achieving that, which is why it cannot be supported. I add for certainty that the Government do not intend to put Eurostar in such a position that it has an unfair advantage over prospective competitors; in any event, state aid rules prevent them doing so.  Finally, although we have no intention of doing so now, we do not believe that a future Secretary of State should be left without the power to provide any new support for international services in future, should they choose to do so. No decisions have been made on the future of Eurostar, and Clause 1 seeks to provide the Government with as much flexibility as possible in their pursuit of the most economically advantageous return for taxpayers. For those reasons, I urge the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, to withdraw his amendment.