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FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICES BILL (PROGRAMME)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Orders [28 June 2001 and 6 November 2003],
- That the following provisions shall apply to the Fire and Rescue Services Bill:
Committal
1. The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.
Proceedings in Standing Committee
2. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 2nd March 2004.
3. The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Consideration and Third Reading
4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
6. Sessional Order B (programming committees) made on 28th June 2001 shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further Message from the Lords) may be programmed.—[Paul Clark.]
Mr. Speaker: To the contrary, no.
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con): No!
Mr. Speaker: Does the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) want Tellers?
Mr. Speaker: There has been some friendly persuasion. I declare the Division to be off.
FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICES BILL [MONEY]
Queen's recommendation having been signified—
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
- That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Fire and Rescue Services Bill it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
(a) any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State in consequence of the Act, and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money provided by Parliament under another enactment.—[Paul Clark.]
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),
Protection of Groundwater against Pollution
- That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 12985/03, Directive on the protection of groundwater against pollution; and supports the Government's aim of negotiating a flexible, risk-based instrument, which takes account of the variability of groundwater and its uses, in accordance with the Government's policy of effective groundwater protection.—[Paul Clark.]
COMMITTEES
CATERING
- Ordered,
That Mr Simon Thomas be discharged from the Catering Committee and Pete Wishart be added.—[Mr. John McWilliam, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]
WELSH AFFAIRS
- Ordered,
That Adam Price be discharged from the Welsh Affairs Committee and Hywel Williams be added.—[Mr. John McWilliam, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]
HOME AFFAIRS
- That Miss Ann Widdecombe be discharged from the Home Affairs Committee and Mr David Cameron be added.—[Mr. John McWilliam, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]
PETITION
Telecommunications Masts
10.19 pm
Mr. Speaker: I call Mr. Jim Dowd.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham, West) (Lab): Thank you, Mr. Speaker—[Interruption.]
Jim Dowd: I have to admit that mentioning my name normally has the effect of making colleagues and comrades leave the Chamber.
I am grateful for the opportunity to present the petition on behalf of my constituents and others. Without going into undue detail, I have raised the subject with Ministers, and had an Adjournment debate about it. It is a matter of grave concern to my constituents but it also has a wider resonance because it relates directly to the way in which mobile telephone systems are installed throughout the United Kingdom.
- To the House of Commons,
The Petition of Mr. Jeremy Newell, other residents of the Tewkesbury Lodge estate in Forest Hill, London SE23 and parents of children attending Horniman primary school in Forest Hill declares
That we oppose the installation of the TETRA transmitter on the existing Horniman radio mast because of the possible risks unique to TETRA. We believe that it is an insensitive, inappropriate siting, being close to a school and in the middle of a residential area.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons will press Her Majesty's Government to recognise that, as it has been installed without any consultation whatsoever with either the school or the local residents, it should be removed.
And your Petitioners remain, etc.
Railway Pedestrian Crossings
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Gillian Merron.]
10.21 pm
Mr. Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con): I am delighted to have secured the opportunity to draw the House's attention to a problem that blights the lives of many people in southern England and to address an important safety issue.
The specific issue that I want to consider is that of footpath level crossings on the railway. It has two distinct aspects: noise nuisance that is caused by the sounding of train horns and safety risk from trains, including electrocution in parts of the country that use a live rail.
Hon. Members who represent seats in southern England will be familiar with the surge of complaints about disturbance from train horns, especially at night, that followed the introduction of the modern, sliding-electric-door trains on Connex, South Central and, in my constituency, South West, where the offending units are the class 458 trains.
The new trains are most welcome in every respect except for their noisy horns. When the new classes of train were introduced, it became apparent that the horn, in the range of 115 to 125 dB, was many times more powerful than that of the old slam-door trains, which was typically in the range of 90 to 95 dB. By way of illustration, 90 dB is the equivalent of a lawnmower and 125 dB is that of a jet plane flying at 150 ft. Although they are required to have a 400 m forward range, reports confirm that the new horns can be heard two miles away in specific conditions.
Railway safety rules operate on a type approval system. The old slam-door trains, which were designed in the 1950s and early 1960s, have been allowed to continue operating although their horn volume is considerably less than that under the current safety standards. The new trains comply with the standards that have been in force, but perhaps not in evidence, for many years.
At the same time as the introduction of the new train types, the publicity surrounding the high profile rail accidents in the past few years and the consequent new focus on railway safety have clearly heightened driver awareness of and compliance with the rules on requirements to sound the horn. I am sure that greater awareness is partly the result of improved safety training by train operating companies, but it may also have something to do with the fact that modern trains have data loggers on board. In the event of an incident, they can confirm definitively whether the driver complied with the requisite safety requirements.
The Rail Safety and Standards Board, which co-ordinates safety matters in the industry, has acted with commendable speed to try to tackle the problem.
With effect from December last year, train drivers are no longer required to sound their horn when leaving a station over a level crossing. Nor are they now required to sound it when passing through a station where another train is stationary at the platform. Those two changes will reduce by a significant proportion the
nuisance that has been experienced, focusing the use of the horn back on to incidents in which drivers identify a particular danger.The Rail Safety and Standards Board expects, by June this year, to be able to scrap the rule that requires the horn to be sounded as a train enters a tunnel, and also when it leaves a tunnel during the night, although it will still be necessary to do so, for technical reasons, when leaving a tunnel during the day. That deals with two of the four main categories of situation in which horns are mandatorily sounded. The other two involve footpath level crossings and user-worked crossings—that is, private rights of way across the railway, with or without vehicles—and I make no apology for focusing on the former tonight, as that is the category that is causing the problems in my constituency and in the majority of others in which a problem persists.
Of the 8,000 or so level crossings in the United Kingdom, 2,546 are footpath crossings. Perhaps rather alarmingly, while Network Rail and its predecessors have succeeded in closing a total of nearly 1,000 level crossings since 1991–92, during the same period the number of footpath crossings has risen by 240. Depressingly for me and my constituents, the regular bulletins from the Rail Safety and Standards Board—which wax lyrical on the progress being made in relation to trains moving away from stations and entering and leaving tunnels—have repeatedly had to report that little progress has been made on the issue of footpath crossings.
The Health and Safety Executive sets the requirements for the placement of so-called whistle boards, which instruct a driver to sound the horn. The siting of these boards is based on the line speed and the forward visibility from a footpath crossing towards the direction of the train. Where a whistle board is deemed necessary according to those criteria, all trains are required to sound the horn on approach from either direction, day or night. It is a fact that, in urban areas, footpath crossings are often used late at night, sometimes by people who are not in a heightened state of alertness. In those circumstances, relaxation of the HSE standards does not seem to be a safe option.
Having had my attention firmly focused on the issue of footpath crossings from the point of view of the noise disturbance being experienced in large parts of my constituency, I confess that I had come to think of the problem simply in those terms. I had begun to ignore the no less important issue of safety. That issue was brought firmly back on to my agenda in the most brutal way possible on 17 September last year, when Sophie Storey, aged 10, died 30 m up the line from a footpath crossing at Moore lane in Staines, after falling on the live rail.
There are, therefore, two issues to be addressed: the elimination of the noise nuisance that blights the lives of tens of thousands of people across southern England, which is a relatively new phenomenon; and the reduction of the risk to pedestrians—a long-standing problem, particularly among children—who are using, or misusing, railway footpath level crossings. The obvious and simplistic answer would be simply to close the crossings. Network Rail and its predecessor organisations have long had a policy of trying to eliminate footpath level crossings wherever possible, both to improve safety and to reduce the significant burden of maintaining the crossings in a safe condition.
Unfortunately, from Network Rail's point of view, railway footpath crossings enjoy the same rights as the rest of the footpath network and can be closed only after what is often a lengthy public inquiry process. The closure orders involved almost invariably attract opposition from users and, in particular, from the Ramblers Association. As a regular footpath walker myself, I fully understand the association's instinct to resist their closure. I wonder, however, whether a more discerning approach could be developed.Railway footpath crossings appear to fall into three categories: those in rural areas—probably the majority—where noise nuisance is probably minimal and the status quo is probably acceptable; those in urban or suburban areas which are little used, where, I would suggest, closure should be explored as the preferred option; and those in urban and suburban areas where the level of usage clearly indicates that they are an important local facility that cannot be closed.
My principal purpose tonight is to raise this issue and bring it to the attention of the House and the Government. However, I also want to ask the Minister a couple of specific questions. First, will his Department support an urgent review of all railway footpath level crossings where whistle boards are currently established, starting in the areas where the new trains have been introduced, to establish the numbers falling into each of those categories and, thus, the extent of the problem? Unfortunately, the Network Rail database does not identify the demographic context of individual crossings at present.
Secondly, will the Minister discuss with his colleagues in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister the possibility of the development of an accelerated process for the closure of footpaths that are demonstrated to have low-level usage in urban areas? In some cases, I understand that objections have been lodged and pursued vigorously to closures of footpaths that would involve a diversion of only 100 m or so to allow the railway to be crossed at another point. The risk to life and the constant nuisance and sleep deprivation from train horn noise surely cannot be justified by such a minor inconvenience for such a small number of users. A proper balance must be struck.
Thirdly, on the relatively small number, I hope, of high-usage crossings in urban areas, the traditional response to replacement of footpath level crossings has been grade-separated crossings—bridges or tunnels to you and me, Madam Deputy Speaker. Unfortunately, those are phenomenally expensive and often unsightly. There are one or two practical issues, however, which the Minister might be able to address. At present, if Network Rail proposes to replace a footpath crossing that is accessed by a stile with a bridge, the bridge is required to be fully compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, complete with ramps and all the other facilities to ensure wheelchair and other disabled access. It seems to me slightly absurd that if the track operator wants to replace a dangerous and non-wheelchair-accessible level crossing with a safer bridge, the bridge must be provided with full disabled access. The consequence, of course, is that the bridge, in almost all cases, does not get built. Is there any possibility of creating an exemption to the requirement for full
disabled access where the facility is simply a safer replacement for an existing non-compliant crossing? Can the Minister discuss that with colleagues in other relevant Departments?Even if less elaborate bridge crossings are to be permitted by such an exemption, and even when planning consent for them can be obtained, which is not always easy, there will be significant financial implications. I therefore ask the Minister whether there is a possibility of additional financial support being made available for replacements of footpath level crossings with bridges where train horn noise is a particularly acute nuisance. To save time, however, I will anticipate a negative answer and move on to my next point.
Perhaps the logical next course is to look for more innovative potential solutions. The Rail Safety and Standards Board is about to conduct a test on the south coast using a Japanese device, a broadband frequency horn, which apparently allows the horn to sound at different frequencies in an attempt to narrow the spread of sound. Some research is already under way examining the optimum location of the horn on the train to maximise the forward profile of the noise footprint and minimise the spillage, which causes most of the nuisance to residential properties. I understand that other tests are about to take place using train-activated trackside horns—a horn that is located on the crossing but activated by the approaching train. Clearly, because the horn is on the crossing itself, it does not have to be of the same loud volume as one that is train-mounted. Such a system can be supplemented by sensors on the crossing to detect the presence of pedestrians.
Even those measures, however, will have significant cost implications at a time when the railways are under financial pressure. I understand how difficult that makes any of these suggestions for Network Rail, the train operating companies and the Minister. I urge him, however, to take this problem seriously. The railways are a part of our communities. We all want rail to make a greater contribution to the total transport solution, but the inconvenience being caused to large numbers of my constituents and others across the south of England is creating hostility to the idea of any expansion of services on the rail network.
Additional services produce more horn noise disturbance. Part of the line through Virginia Water and Egham—a particular source of the problem in my constituency—could become part of the route of the proposed Airtrack south-western rail approach to Heathrow. I should very much like that infrastructure development to go ahead, and I expect that the Minister would too; but, if he wants the support of those in the local community, we must ensure that the burden that the railway imposes on them is reduced to an acceptable level.
What is clear is that the railway must act as part of the community. Too often in the past, the railway's attitude has been rather disdainful of the wider community issues. The railway has to modify its procedures to make it an acceptable neighbour. Health and safety at work legislation also imposes a duty of care to the public, and the recent Heathrow night flights ruling has established that human rights legislation can bear on issues that relate to sleep deprivation, and when train horn volumes are equivalent to a low-flying jet plane, there is clearly a
direct read-across. I want the railway and the community that it serves to operate in harmony, but that will require an urgent resolution to the intolerable burden that train horn noise at footpath level crossings currently imposes on my constituents and others.In summary, major steps have already been taken in relation to trains moving away from stations and trains passing through tunnels, but the noise problem generated by footpath level crossings will be more difficult to address. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that the Government are aware of not only the problem and the extreme misery that it causes to tens of thousands of people across southern England, but the animosity that the problem creates towards further expansion in the use of the rail network. It is in all our interest that we find a solution that eliminates the noise nuisance for as many communities as possible, as quickly as possible, and that addresses the very real safety risks by closing those railway footpath crossings that are not sufficiently used to justify the risk and burden that they place on the community.
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