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Viscount Tenby: I, too, support this group of amendments and again express my apologies for not having done so during the Committee stage when I was unavoidably detained from attending. I can assure the Minister that my not being able to be there in no way is a diminution of my enthusiasm for not only the amendments but for what is behind them. That is the important thing. I also declare again an interest as a magistrate.
Far more authoritative voices than mine have already said everything there is to be said about this issue and there is no point in repeating the arguments at the Report stage. However, as regards level crossings, I was one of the noble Lords who looked at the video provided by Network Rail and I saw evidence of the staggering recklessness displayed by a lunatic fringe of drivers, any of whom could have
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caused unimaginable and catastrophic casualties at the scene of such an incident. I hope that when push comes to shove on these amendments, noble Lords will give them a really good shove.
I also warmly support the amendments relating to bridge strikes. No one has much referred to them but there have been more than 2,000 in the past year. It is probably true that many noble Lords have their favourite sites for observing this strange ritual of the British transport system, where the drivers of large lorries and buses follow a route in hope rather than expectation. For example, not a million miles from where I live there is a railway bridge, in the aptly-named village of Wrecclesham, which has been struck on a number of occasions in recent years by a variety of vehicles despite the height being clearly displayed. Mercifully, so far as I am aware, there have been no serious injuries. But if we continue to let drivers and, ultimately, transport managers get away with dangerous disregard for road conditions, once again the consequences will be very grave indeed. I commend all these amendments to the House.
Lord Tyler: My Lords, in a previous disposition in the other place, I had to witness the results of several very serious level crossing incidents in my then constituency in Cornwall on the branch line between Parr and Newquay.
I wish to refer swiftly to the issue of costs. I hope the Minister will take account of the fact that every incident is very costly, not only in livesas it has been on occasion in Cornwallbut costly in accidents which then cause major injury, in disruption to the rail service, which can last for several days, even for weeks and months, and in disruption on the roads. I hope that in his reply the Minister will not look simply at the costs of prevention and the costs implied by the amendment, but will also be looking at the costs of not passing the amendment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, I, too, apologise for not being able to be in attendance at the Committee stage. I add my support to the spirit behind the amendments. I remind the House that we are not only talking about lives lost in terms of deaths and lives lost in terms of major injury, but also about lives damaged by minor injury. Such an injuryfor example, facial scarringmay appear minor but the person has to live with it forever. This also has a cost, both for our health services and within society. All of these factors need to be counted in.
Lord Snape: My Lords, I do not think I have an interest to declare in this matter but I shall declare one anyway as an employee of the National Express Group. Like previous speakers I do not wish to repeat anything I said at an earlier stage of the Bill, but I do wish to register, first, my support for the amendments and, secondly, my disappointment at the apparent reluctance of the Government to see the sensible reasons for these amendments.
The history of the railways over the past 150 or 160 years shows that we have succeeded in reducing the
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risks of accidents enormously. The potential for errors for signalmen has been drastically reduced in recent years, for example. Although it is still possible for drivers to misread signals and cause accidents, modernisation, electrification and the provision of modern signalling has, if not eradicated, enormously reduced accidents caused by drivers' errors. But there is one area in which we have not succeeded in reducing the number of accidents. Indeed, in recent years, the number of accidents at level crossings has actually increased. That is partly as a result of the vast increase in road traffic and partly of the more cavalier attitude of many of our driving fraternity.
If we are to tackle the problem of level crossing accidents, two things ought to be done. First, in accordance with Amendment No. 50, highway authorities ought to accept far more responsibility for the protection of level crossings than they do at present. I do not underestimate the power of the driving lobby in this country. Some daily newspapers appear to be obsessed by an organisation called the Association of British Drivers. I have never heard of these people as individuals, but collectively they appear to have enormous influence on transport policy in the United Kingdom. The Daily Mail finds it impossible to talk about any aspect of our transport policy without quoting some representative of, as I refer to them, the petrol-head fraternity.
The fact is that for many years, motorists have been getting away with the sort of behaviour at level crossings that causes accidents. There was one particular accident recently which it would be improper of me to go into detail about, but from what I have read and from what I have heard from my contacts in the railway industry, it would appear that the driver of the road vehicle involved in that accident, who was tragically killed as a result, had zigzagged round a half-barrier level crossing. That sort of behaviour is by no means unusualit happens, I would have thought, fairly regularly in various parts of the country. It is long past the time that highway authorities accepted far greater responsibility for level crossing safety and protection.
Secondly, I spoke at an earlier stage of the Bill about bridge bashing. Trains these days, particularly the ones that I and some of my noble friends use most often on the West Coast Main Line, are faster and lighter than the trains that previously ran. They are multiple unit trains, to all intents and purposes, although I dare say the purists would not like them to be so called. If we have a serious bridge bashing incident on the West Coast Main Line, the potential for disaster, because of these faster and lighter trains is, in my view and that of people far more expert than I, greatly increased. The department ought to look far more seriously at the penalties for the sort of conduct that we see all too often.
Bridge bashing in a particular area has been referred to; in an earlier stage of the Bill's proceedings, I referred to a bridge at Brandon, just south of Coventry, where the line speed restriction is 100 miles per hour. The bridge is regularly struck and trains are
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regularly stopped for hours at a time while a thorough inspection is carried out. Sooner or later, some bridge, if not that one, will be so badly struck as to displace the railway line, leading to a tragedy.
Ministers will say, and newspapers will demand, that the maximum amount of money be spent on ensuring that this sort of thing does not happen again. We could do something to prevent it if the punishments were more adequate than they are and if local authorities, as well as individual drivers, accepted far more responsibility for their actions.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I rise to support these amendments, apart from Amendment No. 52 which I have a little bit of anxiety about. It is only a matter of time before there is a serious accident because of a bridge strike or a level crossing infringement, as so aptly described by the noble Lord, Lord Snape. After that accident there will of course be a public inquiry and there will be only one conclusionthat we should have done something about it and we failed. It appears that the Minister does not want to take any action. He does not want to go for sacrificial structures and he does not want to go for an increase in penalties. My greatest fear is that we will live to regret not taking the opportunity to do something about it now.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I also rise to support these amendments, which have a remarkable degree of support in every single part of the House. I do not think that there has been a word spoken from any of the Benches with which I disagree. One must take very seriously the warning from the Health and Safety Executive, which says that level crossings,
It is where the worst accident is likely to happen, and it will happen because we are not properly controlling the use of road vehicles across level crossings.
We have far too many level crossings that are unmanned and unpatrolled and producing the risk that gives rise to the sort of terrible accident such as took place last year at Ufton Nervet. This was the accident in which a motorist, apparently determined to commit suicide, drove his car onto the crossing, waited there for several minutes and, despite the efforts of an off-duty British Transport policeman to persuade him to move, remained in place and got hit by a high-speed train that derailed, killing the driver and five passengers. That particular crossing is very lightly used, and is one which would undoubtedly be closed by Network Rail if this set of amendments were to be passed. There are many others that come into the same category.
I hope very much that my noble friend will respond to the mood of this debate and give us some reason to believe that the Government will act on the issue of railway level crossings at a later stage of the Bill, and that it will not be necessary for the House to divide on
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it. But I think that he realises that if the House does divide, the Government will not be able to win a vote on it.
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