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28 Jan 2003 : Column 763—continued
Railways and Transport Safety Bill
[Relevant documents: Minutes of Evidence taken before the Transport Committee on 18th December 2002, relating to London Underground PPP: New Developments, and supplementary memoranda from Transport for London and the Department for Transport, HC 200-i (typescript available in the Vote Office).]
Order for Second Reading read.
2.54 pm
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Alistair Darling) : I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill will allow us to take important steps to improve the safety of transport. It will set up a rail accident investigation branch; it will introduce new alcohol offences in relation to marine and aviation activities; and it will create an independent police authority for the British Transport police. The Bill contains other measures, which will help to improve the safety of transport, and it will make minor amendments and additions to the Greater London Authority Act 1999 in relation to the tube. I shall deal with each of those matters in turn to show how the Bill fits in with measures that have already been taken to deliver a safer and more reliable railway.
Part 1 makes provision for a rail accident investigation branch with responsibility to investigate rail accidents, including accidents on the tube. Clause 3 enables Lord Cullen's recommendations to be implemented by establishing such a branch, which will act independently of the industry and its regulators and carry out its investigations openly. It may help if I explain briefly why it is necessary.
Following a railway accident, it is necessary to find out as quickly as possible what caused the accident and to enable remedial action to be taken as soon as possible. That can happen now, but we believe that the present system needs to be improved in line with the recommendations of the Cullen report following the Paddington rail crash. At the moment, after a rail accident the police help the rescue operation and secure the site, and after that their interest in is investigating any criminal acts. The Health and Safety Executive inspectors, Her Majesty's rail inspectorate, also attend the site because of their health and safety interest. They investigate the cause and, if appropriate, they will prosecute any breaches in respect of health and safety.
At the moment, we do not have any one body with sole responsibility for finding out quickly what went wrong and why the accident happened without attempting to attribute blame. That is necessary because, very often, lessons need to be learned quickly. That is what happens now in the case of an air or marine accident, and it works well. Lord Cullen was right to recommend that the Government set up a rail accident investigation branch along the same lines. Following the accident at Ladbroke Grove near Paddington, Lord Cullen recommended that such a branch be established
along similar lines to the aviation and marine accident investigation branches, and that is what we are now doing.
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham): Can the Secretary of State explain why, in the case of motor vehicles, extra speed is dangerous and we ought to have more limits on speed, but in the case of the railways, we ought to urge trains to go faster and faster? Is not it the case that as trains cannot steer out of the way of danger and cannot brake very well, extra speed will cause more accidents?
Mr. Darling: The situation is a little more complicated than that. There are obvious differences between rail travel and road travel. Generally speaking, trains run a lot faster than cars, but provided they have the right safety equipment, such as signalling and braking power—
Mr. Kelvin Hopkins (Luton, North): Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Darling: I should like to finish this point before I give way to my hon. Friend.
Provided that trains have the right signalling, the right braking power and other safety mechanisms, they can run very fast. Indeed, passenger trains in this country have been running at 125 mph for many years now, to a large extent without incident, and trains in other parts of the world, such as the TGV in France, run at even higher speeds. Provided that the right safety precautions are taken, there is no reason why trains should not travel at those speeds.
Cars are rather different, for obvious reasons. They run in a different environment, and all the evidence shows that, depending on the conditions, cars that are going too fast can put drivers and other road users at risk. With respect to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), there is a substantial difference between trains running at speed on the railway and cars running at speed on the roads.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham) rose—
Mr. Darling: I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) first.
Mr. Hopkins: I apologise for interrupting my right hon. Friend earlier. To reinforce his point, the Shinkansen system in Japan has been running at very high speeds for many decades without a single fatality.
Mr. Darling: That is right. Those trains are designed to run at high speeds and they have the necessary braking systems and track signalling.
Mr. Darling: If we are to have a debate about the merits of cars and trains running at high speed, I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson).
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South): I seek my right hon. Friend's guidance about braking power. He is right
to point out that Cullen made two proposals for massive structural change. One relates to the investigation of accidents and the other to the avoidance of accidents. The European model that my right hon. Friend mentioned is premised on the introduction of the European railway traffic management system for braking, or ERTMS. That was also a central point of Cullen's recommendations. The suggestion was that the regulations for the introduction of that system should be in place by 2004, and that all trains capable of travelling at more than 100 mph should be equipped with the new system by 2008. There seems to be an important gap—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. That is far too long an intervention.
Mr. Darling: I shall come on to train protection, and, if my hon. Friend does not mind, I would like to do so at what I consider to be the right point.
Mr. Bercow: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Darling: Well, since the merits of fast cars and fast trains are not included in the Bill, I shall give way just once more, and then I want to make some progress.
Mr. Bercow: I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. The intentions behind the Bill are laudable and we all hope that, in practice, its effects will be beneficial. However, does he not think it noteworthy that a Bill that contains 110 clauses and seven schedules appears to contain no fewer than 73 references to regulation? Could we not have had a better idea of what the content of those regulations might be, and can he at least tell the House now whether they will be subject to the negative procedure of the House, or to its affirmative counterpart?
Mr. Darling: That sounds to me like an extremely good bid to participate in the Committee stage of this Bill, when all these issues can be explored at length over several weeks.
Mr. Darling: Perhaps some of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues would be very pleased to see him consigned to a Committee for several weeks. The making of regulations is not uncommon in this regard, but these issues can be discussed in Committee. The point that I was going to make before the intervention of some 10 minutes ago is that widespread support exists for setting up the rail accident investigation branch—
Mr. Darling: I want to make some progress, but I promise every hon. Gentleman sitting in the House, given that there are not that many of them, that I will give way in due course.
The fact that I think that this is the right thing to do is based on the experience of the air accident investigation branch and the marine accident investigation branch,
both of which have worked very well since they were set up. The former body was set up in 1922 and the latter in 1989, and although they operate in different ways, they have been extremely effective in getting to the bottom of what happens in an accident, without attributing blame. Moreover, they have been able to reach conclusions infinitely more quickly than does the current system in respect of the railways, and on that basis I hope that this proposal will be accepted on both sides of the House.
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere): In framing his proposals, will the Secretary of State bear in mind the experience of bereaved families such as those involved in the Potters Bar railway accident? Almost nine months after that accident, those families are still waiting for an early acceptance of responsibility, and for an authoritative and full explanation of what took place. Does the Secretary of State agree that such explanations assist in the grieving and healing process for such families?
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