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Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill

My Lords, my name appears on the two amendments tabled today. I, too, have had meetings with the Minister for Railways, Tom Harris, and officials. In the past 24 hours, we have made a great deal of progress. The first concern that prompted this amendment was that the Channel Tunnel rail link would be different from the rest of the network and that access to it for passengers and freight—I declare an interest as chairman of Rail Freight Group, although I do not think that freight is of particular interest here—could have been skewed in favour of one particular operator. The second concern was about the level of charges and who would set them. There is the charge applicable for maintaining the track, and then there is the cap, which is the extra charge that can be put on to help defray the capital cost, which the Government have guaranteed. I hope that my noble friend will be able to give me assurances on both these issues. The first one is the cost of maintenance. Allowing the new infrastructure manager to maintain the track, without any form of regulation, is a dangerous path to go down. Railtrack was regulated and it failed. The Office of Rail Regulation has had to put strong pressure on Network Rail to cut its costs by 31 per cent in the past five years, and the regulator will probably have to do much the same in the next five years. To say that these companies would reduce their costs just because of market pressure, without any regulation, is a dangerous road to go down. I hope that my noble friend can give me some comfort on that. The second issue is the cap that is allowed to help defray the capital cost. Those who invest in the rolling stock and, maybe, the terminals to operate on this line will need some comfort that the cap will not be changed every year. The Government may wish to retain control of setting this cap effectively, but, for example, there may be a change of Government in two years’ time—which is highly unlikely, but one has to look at options. The incoming Government might think that the Channel Tunnel rail link was a waste of time and they might have severe financial crises on their hands, such that they would have to increase the charges. That would not be very good for the companies which invested in new rolling stock to run on this line on the basis of the comfort that they had from the initial charge level. The level of charges as regards both issues should be set by the Office of Rail Regulation. However, if the Government insist upon keeping control of the cap element, I hope that my noble friend can give me some comfort that the cap cannot be changed suddenly by another Government or a change of policy of a particular Government, on a whim, which would destroy investor confidence. Finally, there is the question of access. We all hope that the line will be extremely successful in encouraging many more passengers to use not only Eurostar, but, I hope, new services that will come here. Whether those are run by French railways, SNCF, by Deutche Bahn, the German railways, or by a UK company which buys new trains to run on the line, it is important that there is sufficient capacity and that it is reserved not only for Eurostar because it was there first. The open access regime should be managed independently, I hope by the Office of Rail Regulation, to give everyone a fair chance to run trains in competition—which is I am sure what the Government want. I thank officials and Ministers for all the time that they have spent discussing this. I very much hope that my noble friend will be able to give me some comfort and that, finally, we can reach an acceptable compromise.