Contribution
The answer to the noble Lord is to have a strategy rather than not to have one. GBR’s business plan will have to set out how it seeks to achieve that, and in order to do so it will have to interact with the freight sector—not only freight operators but freight customers—to work out what needs to be done in order to increase the amount of freight. That has been done in the past, but not as seriously as it should have been. For example, I was at London Gateway last Thursday, on a brand-new bi-mode freight locomotive, and talked in some detail about how the railway network can accommodate further growth of what I think the noble Lord Lansley—or we—called high-value traffic in order to get more rail freight into and out of the port. It is that sort of five-year plan, with details about the investments that need to be made and a discussion with those parties who are in a position to make them, including government, that will deliver the increases that we are talking about.
I should also reassure the Committee that the Secretary of State cannot ignore this target. Public law principles already require the Secretary of State to have regard to it, due to the legitimate expectation the publication of the target creates, and it would clearly be unreasonable for the Secretary of State to set a target and then, without good reason, disregard it. That is why it is very uncommon in legislation for any public bodies to be required to have regard to their own targets or strategies, because that consideration is implicit in the issuing of the target.
Another example for the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, is that there will have to be further plans for the west coast main line. Parts of it are physically constrained by the lack of not only railway infrastructure but power, and in future those plans will have to look also at freight growth. There have been a number of plans in the recent past which have not looked at freight growth, and now they will have to.
On Amendment 113, to ensure that the freight target is delivered, as I said, we expect GBR to set out a credible pathway for meeting the growth target in its business plan. The Secretary of State will sign off this plan only once she has received expert advice from the ORR and is satisfied that the plan effectively sets out how GBR will meet the Government’s expectations and priorities for the railways, including on rail freight. The business plan will be published and updated annually. GBR will then be responsible for delivering the business plan and will be held to account by the Secretary of State when doing so. The ORR will also monitor GBR’s delivery outcomes and provide expert advice on GBR’s delivery to the Secretary of State. That means that there is no need for the annual report required by Amendment 113. There will be transparent recording of GBR’s delivery against the freight target, which is built into the Bill, and a mechanism for holding it to account against that too.
On Amendment 91, I can confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that the long-term rail strategy will absolutely include freight, as growing freight is one of the Government’s main priorities for rail reform. Representatives from the freight industry have been engaged during the development work of the strategy and will continue, without which the necessary actions will not be able to be achieved. In fact, the discussion document published last month highlights the protection and development of rail freight as a key prioritisation test that GBR will need to pass to meet the rail freight target. “Freight” appears no fewer than 36 times in that document and I can assure noble Lords that it will be similarly prevalent in the final long-term strategy.
I take great note of what the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said about the lessons from the past, and I will be very happy to debate that with her further. Of course, in the last 25 years, there has been massive change in the freight industry from the movement of coal and iron: some of the early targets of 25 years ago are simply not relevant. Indeed, one of the reasons for having a good look at the best use of the railway infrastructure is that some of the reserves of freight paths on the rail today have not been used for many years, because coal and iron are no longer moved around the country. Conversely, some are well used, and the reason why some of them are protected is that freight operators need that protection in order to satisfy their customers about the consistency of delivery.