Lord Lansley (Con)

My Lords, I will speak briefly in this group. There have been many good points made, but I want to focus on Amendment 123 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. The purpose of Amendment 123 is to remove from Clause 18 its final subsection (4), which says, in effect, that, in so far as Great British Railways applies its capacity duty from Clause 63—noble Lords will remember the capacity duty is about GBR protecting itself and its ability to maintain its timetable and its access to infrastructure—it is to control the capacity from anything that might impede it providing its own services. This clause now says that these general duties where GBR is concerned are not to have effect if the Section 63 capacity duty is being applied by Great British Railways. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for drawing the attention of the Committee to this important point. I looked at the capacity duty and asked myself, “Under what circumstances would Great British Railways do something, using the capacity duty, that would be contrary to any of these general duties?” It seemed to me that it would not do it, and could not justify doing so, if it did not promote the interests of the users of railway passenger services, since that it who it is meant to be looking after. It should not be able to do so, so as not to promote high standards of railway service performance—clearly, that could be doing something in the short run but benefiting in the long run. It should not be doing something if it cannot be demonstrated to be best calculated to be in the public interest. It should not be doing it if it cannot justify that it is within the need to make efficient use of public funds. We are therefore left with two general duties which might be prejudiced by the application of the capacity duty by Great British Railways. Those are: to enable persons providing railway services to plan the future of their businesses with a reasonable degree of assurance; and promoting the use of the railway network for the carriage of goods. It seems that we are left with a provision that allows Great British Railways to invoke its capacity duty for its own purposes to the prejudicial interests of freight and, indeed, others such as open-access operators which are providers of railway services. I do not think that we should permit that to happen. When the time comes, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will persist in Amendment 123 and that we support it.