Lord Moylan (Con)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Pack, but also quite annoying, because he has made about three-quarters of my speech, and with his customary effectiveness and clarity. I too start by emphasising the importance, as it seems to us, of the fact that almost through carelessness, the Department for Transport is going to lose, in a very short space of time, its legal ability to make amendments, not just in this area but, as the Minister herself said, in a wide number of areas of policy. We will be left in a position where it will be possible to make these often technical adjustments only by primary legislation. This date of June 2026 has been in the diary now for something like three years. I seem to remember a case, a long time ago, of George Bernard Shaw writing a letter to the Times, which began “Saturday morning, despite occurring at regular and predictable intervals, always appears to take the staff of Baker Street station by surprise”. We are in a very similar position here. June 2026 has been in the diary for a long time, yet here we are. Just think through the practicalities: everyone assumes, I think rightly, that we are approaching the end of a parliamentary Session and we will then have a Prorogation, a King’s Speech and a State Opening. Before we know where we are, we will be in June and the Government, on behalf of this department, will still have no legislation to table to give themselves the range of powers they normally need. That is not just carelessness, it is a dereliction of duty, and the Official Opposition will be holding the Government fully to account. I can hardly believe that I am saying this, but it is what is actually happening, although the department could have planned for it a long time ago. As for future transport legislation, we know that the Railways Bill will be arriving from the Commons after Prorogation, in the new parliamentary Session. Is that the instrument that the Minister has it in mind to amend in order to give the powers—I see some potential scope issues in that regard—or will a new and separate Bill be brought forward, and on what timescale? We need to know these things and it is ceasing to be a joke. The second aspect relates to the question of Northern Ireland. What we are seeing here, and this applies to the remainder of my remarks, is that the commitment to net zero is now taking over and becoming responsible for all sorts of problems and costs, not merely financial. One of them, because the vans we are discussing are mostly used for commercial purposes, will be a disruption to trade and the provision of services—artisanal services, plumbers, whatever—between one part of the United Kingdom and another because we have chosen to do this. The Minister appeared to say that this is not a problem arising from the Windsor Framework; it is entirely because the power involved rests with the Northern Ireland Assembly. If that is the case, what contact and what effort has the department made to co-ordinate this action and decision with Northern Ireland, so that these unnecessary barriers do not arise? Will the Minister tell us what discussions have therefore taken place? Those are the immediate topics. What is the timetable, what is the practical proposal for resolving the legislative gap, and what contact occurred between the department and the Northern Ireland authorities to try to ensure that these measures went ahead in tandem and that this rupture—this unnecessary rupture, as it now appears—in trade between different parts of the United Kingdom did not take place?