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Mr. Chope: It is not very often that we have the chance to discuss railway byelaws in the round in a Committee, but this is a good opportunity to do so. Can the Minister tell me whether the powers contained in the clause are ones that he would expect to be used more forcefully in respect of people who cause disruption to railway journeys by trespassing on the line and, to be blunt, committing suicide—choosing to use the railway's assets as the location in which to commit suicide? That is highly damaging to the drivers of trains. When I served on the Health and Safety Commission, one of the biggest railway safety problems that we had to deal with was the impact on a driver of seeing somebody committing suicide in front of a train.
Mr. Howarth: The hon. Gentleman is attempting to make a serious point, but what byelaw could punish somebody who had committed suicide?
Mr. Chope: That is a matter worth exploring. The person who committed suicide could not be penalised, but if people with assets—we are not talking about people who do not have any assets—are the cause of an enormous amount of consequential loss, what power is there under the byelaws for the network operator to sue the estate of a person who has deliberately put the health and safety of a train driver in jeopardy and inconvenienced an enormous number of travelling passengers? My concern is not so much about the other travelling passengers as about the fact that, by choosing to commit suicide on the railways, people cause an enormous amount of physical and mental damage to train drivers.
Mr. Harris: Given the rather insensitive and brutal tone of the hon. Gentleman's comments, does he not agree that it is just as well that the clause gives train companies the power to make byelaws rather than members of the Committee?
Mr. Chope: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman described my remarks as brutal. If he was the relative of or had himself been a train driver who had been confronted with the consequences of somebody throwing themselves on to the line in front of a train, he would not make light of this serious issue, which is of immense consequence. Most people hear about such suicides only by reading a short article in the local paper or, if they happen to be a travelling passenger, noticing that services have been severely disrupted.
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However, the consequences for train drivers of somebody throwing themselves in front of a train when it has no ability to stop without running that person over are serious.
In the context of the Bill providing a chance to legislate about the issue, I am asking the Minister whether he is satisfied that the existing byelaws are sufficient to enable the train operating companies or the network operator to sue the estate of people who cause the damage to which I refer. Something like that needs to be done as a deterrent because people's whose minds are seriously disturbed, such that they are minded to commit suicide—
The Chairman: Order. I think that the Minister has understood the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. Will he therefore kindly draw his remarks to a conclusion?
Mr. Chope: I am grateful to you, Mr. Amess. I share your optimism that the Minister has understood my point.
I conclude by asking the Minister to address the issue of deterrence. If there were severe penalties for committing suicide on a railway line that would bear financially on their estate, they might be deterred from doing it.
5 pm
Mr. Knight: I am not going to follow the point made by my hon. Friend. It seems to me that, in those circumstances, there may be remedies available other than railway byelaws.
I ask the Minster whether the examples given in subsection (2) are limited by the scope of subsection (1), or does he view subsection (2) as freestanding and in no way limited by subsection (1)? To give him an example of what I am thinking, could subsection (2)(e), which refers to
''bye-laws for the prevention of nuisance'',
include a nuisance which is outwith the assets of the railway company? If a particular station was plagued by noise nuisance from a nearby property, does the Minister envisage that the byelaws could cover the eventuality that someone who was not on railway property was nevertheless causing a nuisance to those who were on railway property? Or does he feel that the scope of these byelaws will apply only in the case of subsection (1), paragraphs (a) to (d)?
Mr. McNulty: To be entirely fair, the byelaws, by definition, must apply to the utilisation of those relevant assets, and people's behaviour on those assets. There are other recourses to law from any source of nuisance that is outside those assets. But because subsection (2) says ''may include'', of course, paragraphs (a) to (g) are not meant to be exhaustive in any regard. They are simply indicative.
The hon. Member for Christchurch makes some very serious points about suicide, not least the impact on drivers. If one has been up in the cab of an express train, as I have, one can imagine the horror, and it is
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all the greater on a commuter train, especially when, as they frequently do, these things happen at busy stations.
I shall not apologise for the hilarity on my own side; all that the hon. Gentleman said has absolutely nothing to do with the mechanisms for making byelaws or the substance of the byelaws, as in this clause. He is either being obtuse or, given that it is late in the day, completely stupid, by raising such very serious points, not least the ones about drivers, in the context of mechanisms to make byelaws—completely stupid in the sense that, if he is offering a suggestion as to what rail byelaw might prevent some poor unfortunate from committing suicide, he is bonkers. If he is suggesting that rail byelaws should somehow outweigh probate, tort and other forms of legislation in the wider English legislative context, he is even more bonkers than I thought. So I do not apologise for the hilarity on the Government Benches; there was sotto voce hilarity on the Opposition Benches. Those are very serious points, but to conflate them with the mechanisms for making, and the substance of, byelaws is deliberately and utterly obtuse.
Mr. Chope: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. McNulty: Under the circumstances, I think not.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 45 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne) (Con): On a point of order, Mr. Amess. I did not stop the flow of the debate because I was fascinated by it. I assume that you took the view that ''bonkers'' is a parliamentary term, but I should like to know whether that really is the case.
The Chairman: This has been such a pleasant afternoon up until now. I will reflect on whether the term ''bonkers'' is accepted parliamentary language.
Mr. Wilshire: Further to my point of order, Mr. Amess. I freely send my apologies to the Clerk for landing him in it as well.
Schedule 9
Question proposed, That this schedule be the Ninth schedule to the Bill.
Mr. Knight: For the benefit of my colleagues who are hanging on to the edge of their seats waiting for me to recall the Latin phrase that I mispronounced, I understand it is eiusdem generis. I am grateful for confirmation that that is the case.
There are two amendments to the schedule on the amendment paper in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, but they are starred and have therefore not been selected. I make no criticism of the Chair for that, but I wish to ask the Minister why the schedule is worded as it is and not worded as it would be if those amendments had been agreed to.
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Does the Minister feel that 28 days, under the provisions headed ''Confirmation'', is long enough? It does not seem a terribly long period, bearing in mind that it could take 21 days to get an appointment for legal advice on a point that one may wish to pursue. Does the Minister feel that the 28-day period is reasonable under the circumstances?
Also, should not the scope and content of byelaws be made widely available? We have all seen those notices on A1-size hoardings, not only in railway stations but elsewhere, detailing byelaw after byelaw and printed in such minuscule type they are difficult to read even when one is standing close to them. Should there not be a duty or some encouragement properly to inform fare-paying passengers or those seeing them off on a journey of the restrictions imposed upon them? Should there not be some encouragement, or a even duty on stations, to display the byelaws?
Just as aircraft have in-flight magazines these days, a lot of train operating companies have rail magazines that are available in the carriages of the trains. Should there not be some encouragement or duty either to publish such byelaws in any train magazine available or to affix them to the doors, so that passengers can become fully acquainted with the scope of the restrictions that are properly imposed upon them?
Mr. Chope: This gives me an opportunity to come back to the Minister on the issues that I discussed earlier. The schedule sets out the penalties for breaches of byelaws. In the light of the Minister's acceptance of the gravity of the situations that I described, and in the knowledge that on some occasions people do not succeed in committing suicide but do give a major fright to the driver and disrupt the railway services for many hundreds or thousands of other passengers, does the Minister believe that the penalties in paragraph 2 of the schedule are sufficient to reflect the seriousness of such trespassing?
Mr. McNulty: The thrust and content of the provisions dealing with the 28-day period are the same as in the Transport Act 2000, which we think is about right, given the experience.
I share the concern that, beyond the publicity outlined in the schedule, it should be incumbent on train operating companies and owners of stations to ensure the widest possible dissemination of the relevant information, but I do not think that there should be a requirement in the Bill or elsewhere in statute. The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire knows that the Bill makes provision for anyone who requests a copy of such information to get a free copy, but it is certainly in the interests of the operators for those byelaws to be fully publicised, especially if they are peculiar to a particular station or line.
In practice, such information is designated, but not exactly drawn to people's attention, in major stations, and there has to be a copy in the operator's principal office as well. However, the wider point of getting such details disseminated as much as possible—by exhortation rather than statute—should prevail.
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In lieu of someone going away to do research on parliamentary good behaviour, which covers more than parliamentary language, I will cheerfully withdraw my use of the word ''bonkers'' if it is unparliamentary. The fact that it is unparliamentary does not change the facts. I say again to the hon. Member for Christchurch that, although the matters are serious, I agree that the schedule for payments might not be appropriate were the byelaws seeking to get redress from, to use his terms, a failed suicide for all that has happened to the business day of the rail company concerned. However, they cannot possibly do that, which goes back to the obtuseness of his earlier points. The byelaws are not the place to seek redress from someone who attempts a suicide but fails.
I also take the point about there being significant disruption with a suicide, but I do not understand how a byelaw could capture the liability for disruption to the wider business, not just of the rail operator but of anyone else, that the failed suicide has placed himself under. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, there are other areas of law to seek redress in such circumstances.
To take a more recent case, no byelaw would have prevented an individual from parking their car where they did at the Ufton Nervet rail crossing. With the best will in the world, no byelaw could seek redress from the estate of that individual for liabilities encountered by the rail operating company due to loss of business or anything else. It is not for byelaws to do that. As it happened, the driver was not insured, but the drivers insurance bureau—or whatever the name is of that legal catch-all for drivers' insurance—covered that dimension.
I am not decrying the substance of what the hon. Gentleman said about the import to or impact on businesses or individuals, especially drivers, of suicide, but I can envisage no circumstance in which byelaws of rail operating companies would be the way to seek redress. Suicide and such things are far more important than a nuisance byelaw created for the smooth flow of traffic and utilisation of rail assets on the Great Western or any other line. That is why I was angry and why I called the hon. Gentleman bol—bonkers, for which I apologised. I nearly said what I was really thinking. Schedule 9 as it is, including the levels of fines for the purposes for which the byelaws are intended, is more than appropriate, and I commend it to the Committee.
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