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Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 7: 7: Clause 25, page 17, line 19, at end insert ““or a mainline railway between England and Scotland linking major population centres”” The noble Duke said: My Lords, I will speak also to Amendment No. 29, which is consequential on Amendment No. 7. I thank the Minister for a number of useful explanations, which have been sent to us over the past few days and have helped to clarify the various issues with which we have been concerned. I have tabled the amendments because some areas of national infrastructure are clearly devolved and within the competence of the Scottish Executive, for which the correct convention for any legislative process is that a Sewel motion would be required. However, in addition, I get the sense that the Government are concerned that there might be areas where we stray unwittingly into devolved territory. To my mind, my amendment deals with an important area that is clearly not devolved but has great importance to the future, especially the economic well-being, of the whole country. As noble Lords will be aware, we have touched on the subject at various stages in the passage of the Bill. When the Scotland Act was passed in this House, the provision and regulation of rail services was clearly a reserved matter. Since then, an interesting series of statutory instruments have made many useful amendments to the situation. The first enabled the Scottish Parliament to transfer to certain Scottish public authorities the same rail responsibilities exercised by a passenger transport authority. The second was to give the Scottish Executive power to provide grants to the Strategic Rail Authority for the funding of services for the carriage of passengers by rail, specifically those which, "““start and end in Scotland and are provided under a franchise agreement””." Of course, that has now been modified to allow Scottish Ministers to take over from the Strategic Rail Authority. It is only when we come to the next measure, Statutory Instrument 2002/1629, to which I drew your Lordships’ attention on Report, that the legislation deals with anything to do with the powers for, "““the promotion and construction of railways … in Scotland””," which is of course the area where a national policy statement would have any effect. When we debated that, the Minister made it clear that cross-border railways would continue to be dealt with at Westminster. Two further statutory instruments that I have seen allow the Scottish Parliament itself to exercise the functions previously confined to the passenger transport authority. I recognise that devolution has been an ongoing process, and the Government may wish to make further adjustments. The measures taken so far have made good sense and enabled useful improvements to be made to the running of railways in Scotland. As the Bill stands, the Infrastructure Planning Commission has a role in Scotland, as do national policy statements. My amendments are to ensure that it can consider cross-border railways. The point at which its powers might stray into the territory of the Scottish Executive would be if a policy were proposed that tried to lay down some specific structure or route for a national infrastructure project once it got into Scotland. At that point some kind of devolved consent would certainly be needed, and the commission will need to keep that at the forefront of its mind. Taking things forward from this, I ask the Minister to confirm that only the promotion of railways in Scotland and the funding of passenger services that start and end in Scotland are a directly devolved responsibility. Noble Lords will probably be aware that cross-border passenger trains that run to Edinburgh and Glasgow are the responsibility of the Department for Transport, and certainly will be of concern in considering national policy. Throughout all this legislation, there is no specific mention of the regulation of goods transport by rail, another area where a national policy statement would have an important bearing. Does the same degree of devolution that is stated as applying to passenger rail transport apply to goods? A rather curious adjunct to this occurs in Section 8(2) of the Railways Act 2005 which states: "““The Scottish Ministers shall also have power, whether they do so wholly or primarily for Scottish purposes, to provide … financial assistance to persons otherwise than under franchise agreements””." This suggests that the Government can see a scene where the Scottish Government would take the initiative and pay for construction of a cross-border railway if it was felt to be in Scottish interests and there would be no need for an initiative from Westminster. Is that likely to be part of government policy? As the Minister will also be aware, at an adjournment debate last week in another place some of the problems that arise from our current position were aired. The main one related to the station at Lockerbie, which is run by the Scottish Transport Authority. No trains call at that station other than the cross-border trains. The maintenance of the station, therefore, is of no interest to anyone other than the people running the trains. The same thing happened at Dunbar but I believe that the Scottish Transport Authority now runs a train to Dunbar to help to overcome this problem. The people in Lockerbie were very exercised as there was no co-ordination on the timetables between any train they could catch going north that would link them up with trains that would run to either Glasgow or Edinburgh and get them into their work before nine o’clock. This was discussed at length. It shows that the national infrastructure plan should encompass the whole range of cross-border traffic. I beg to move.