Report stage in the Lords
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Lord BradshawLiberal Democrat- Quote
- moved Amendment No. 1:
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Lord HanningfieldNon-affiliated- Quote
- My Lords, I support the amendment, to which I have attached my name. I shall not repeat what has been said, but it is important to note that the Bill as it stands will increase the regulatory remit of the DfT. However, with the DfT also being the vendor of both the infrastructure and the UK arm of Eurostar, it could result in a number of potentially damaging consequences, including higher access charges, lower levels of utilisation and conflicts of interest, as well as all the other consequences mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. It is essential that we avoid these pitfalls and I hope the Minister will be able to give us some reassurance on this. The ORR should be the economic regulator of the CTRL. Independent regulation is essential for consistent and robust governance and we should promote it in the House. We all echo the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, who advocated that governance should depend upon strong and independent national regulatory authorities. He also said that he was taking a particular interest in this legislation. I repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said: we need more satisfaction on this issue before we complete the process of legislation and I hope the Minister will be able to help us today. I support the amendment.
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Lord BerkeleyLabour- Quote
- My Lords, I, too, support the amendment, which is designed to create the same regulatory framework for the CTRL as happens on the rest of the network. As my noble friend says, if the text is inadequate perhaps he could suggest some improvements, but that is the intention. As both noble Lords who have already spoken have said, the idea is to enable the independent regulator to fulfil duties not just to set the original charges in accordance with the regulations, which is very important, but also to be able to manage—actually, “manage” is probably the wrong word—or to oversee the operation of the infrastructure manager and, if necessary, require it to introduce efficiencies. To return to the setting of charges, there is no doubt at the moment that the lack of charges is putting off other operators from using it. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, mentioned a potential investor. I happen to have met today another equally credible investor who could buy the infrastructure manager. I got exactly the same answer to my question as the noble Lord did. It is not a question of whether the regulator would provide a better deal than the Department for Transport would. For the past 10 to 15 years the regulator’s office has established a precedent, a method of operation and a credibility that make it probably one of the best regulators in this country and certainly the best in Europe—although the latter is maybe not saying a great deal. I shall come on to that. These companies are saying they want certainty. It is the risk of changes of mind by the Department for Transport, or changes of policy, that they cannot price. These investors start off, not with the politics of the House of Lords or the House of Commons, but with a spreadsheet, and they do not like uncertainty. Even though they may be told by the Department for Transport, “We’ll make sure the charges are really high so you’ll get lots of lovely revenue and therefore you can pay us more”, they will not believe it. They will probably realise that, as with the Channel Tunnel, high charges do not necessarily mean extra revenue. Here we have two investors, whom we happen to have met, who are saying that they would much rather have the thing regulated by the Office of Rail Regulation alongside the rest of the railway. Then we would probably pay more than if it were not, which to some extent puts paid to my noble friend’s argument that the Government want to do it this way because they will get more revenue. If he has evidence from other investors—if I and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, have got it wrong—we would like to hear about it. At the moment, that is my view from the point of view of the investors. Then there is the question of those who will run trains on the line. We shall come to this again when we discuss the second amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. One of the operators I have spoken to who wants to do this said, “Since we don’t know what the charges are going to be yet, or the regulatory framework, we are not investing in the equipment that needs installing in the locomotives to enable them to work with the signalling on this line”. They have delayed investment. As I mentioned briefly in Committee, there is still no approved network statement nor any charges, nearly two years after the first bit of the line opened. If this had been regulated by the ORR from the start, the infrastructure manager would, quite rightly, have received a hefty fine. If you do not know how much you are going to pay, you are not really going to bother to decide whether you are going to run trains on the line. You do not know whether you can do it without making a loss. This is another example of the lack of stringent regulation that we find because the ORR is not doing it. I return to the costs. One usually finds a relationship between the costs of maintaining a piece of railway and the charges. The regulator, as we all know, is doing an enormously complicated assessment of how much money Network Rail needs to maintain its network. It is likely to say, “You already reduced your costs by 31 per cent last time and this time we will probably want somewhere between 20 per cent and 30 per cent”. It is easy to say that the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is a new line and it will be very efficient, but it is actually being operated by Network Rail at the moment under a kind of subcontract from the present owners. I suspect that if the Office of Rail Regulation got its teeth into this, it would find ways of saving money even now and might well say to the operators, “You can save 20 per cent in the next five years”. Again, the lower the costs, the lower the charges and the more traffic that will use the line. It is really quite simple. I look upon the noble Lord, Lord Jones, as a kind of ambassador for many good things that we do in this country. He made a speech during a debate on 14 March, when we were focusing on energy and transport issues. While he is going around the world, he clearly believes that the kind of private sector arrangements we have here for the network industries and the regulation that goes alongside them are something that we are proud of. Personally, I am proud of what is happening on the railways now; it is rather good. The noble Lord said in the rest of the paragraph, which the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, did not quote, that: “A flexible … framework will require greater regulatory co-ordination and consistency, coupled with a robust process for reaching agreement on cross-border issues”,—[Official Report, 14/3/08; col. 1705.] and all that. He is really saying that we want to sell this to the rest of Europe. We cannot do that unless our own house is in order. I have been talking to people in the Commission about this today. They said, “Well, Tony, it’s all very fine you saying what a great regulatory framework you’ve got, but if your Department for Transport decides it wants to regulate something because it’s easier and it thinks it’ll make a bit more money, how are you going to sell this to the rest of Europe?” That is what our railway business wants from this country—many companies are starting to operate on the Continent—but we have to have a sound home base. For me, this is quite simple. I hope my noble friend can answer this question: what is making the Government continue down this path when two major investors and one major operator say that they would pay more money if the Government went down the road of making this railway regulated in the same way as the rest of the network? I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
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The Earl of Mar and KellieLiberal Democrat- Quote
- My Lords, I support the amendment. It is important that the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, or High Speed 1, should be incorporated wholly into the public railway network in a uniform fashion because I hope that one day we will have a high-speed network, and I do not want the precedent to occur whereby the high-speed lines are for some reason governed differently.
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Lord Bassam of BrightonLabour- Quote
- My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have made a contribution to this debate, which I fully acknowledge is an important one. It has been the main thrust of concern and discussion on the Bill as it has gone through its various stages, so it was no great surprise to me when the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Berkeley, later joined by the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, put this amendment down for further discussion today. They have been commendably clear in terms of what they are after, and I congratulate them on that. It is very welcome that we can clear the air on this. I hope that noble Lords will bear with me; I have a lengthy series of points to make, but I ask them to follow through the argument. I shall also try to answer some of the points that have arisen during the course of their contributions.
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- Lord BerkeleyLabour
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- My Lords, I did not have lunch, tea or any other meal with him.
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- Lord Bassam of BrightonLabour
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- My Lords, I apologise; that is what I thought I heard. The noble Lords have regaled us with their reflections on conversations that they have had, perhaps at lunch, perhaps on other occasions. When they got stuck into the hors d’oeuvre, and before the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, got round to sipping his nicely chilled Chablis, there was clearly a meaningful conversation to be had with a potential purchaser of High Speed 1, who indicated that it would be happier with regulation by the Office of Rail Regulation rather than with regulation by the Secretary of State. I hope that fair consideration was given to the issue in those congenial discussions, because it is clear that it requires some thinking through. The noble Lord asked me to explain why the Government want to retain a regulatory role that has worked well. The answer is that we believe that keeping the current structure will secure a higher sale price by enhancing the commercial stability of High Speed 1. We did not come to this decision lightly, and we will consider which parts of the Secretary of State’s current and future duties can be undertaken by the Office of Rail Regulation as soon as the sale of High Speed 1 is under way next year. Coming to a definitive view on what those duties might be, and finalising the detail of the contract between the Secretary of State and the owner of High Speed 1, will be an important element of our thinking. I share the view of both noble Lords, who have made big contributions to this debate, that once the detail of that contract is agreed, and where functions of a regulatory nature continue to exist, the Office of Rail Regulation would be the obvious and competent candidate to undertake them. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the operation of the CTRL. There is a contract between LCR and Network Rail for the operation of High Speed 1 which lasts until 2086. The Department for Transport is in discussions with Network Rail. We will try to find a way to amend the current relationship so as to introduce more effective incentives to reduce costs. However, there is no possibility of it being transferred to the Office of Rail Regulation; it seems to us that the current arrangement works sensibly. I return specifically to access charges. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, mentioned them as did the noble Lords, Lords Berkeley and Bradshaw. The enterprise value of High Speed 1 is determined largely by the amount of income that the company will receive in future. The income stream is generated by the access charges paid by train operators. It makes commercial sense to assume that the more secure the income stream, the less risk that bidders and their lenders will associate with HS1’s business. For that reason, investors will see attraction in having a firm contract with the Secretary of State which defines precisely the parameters for them to set access charges in the long term. The Secretary of State will set the charging framework within that contract, because the level and structure of charges will directly affect the value that taxpayers receive in a sale. Our only concern is to protect value by providing potential bidders with certainty. Bidders will know that the maximum price that they will be permitted to charge train operators will not be reset at regular intervals, neither by the Secretary of State nor by the Office of Rail Regulation. The rest of the rail network is subject to economic regulation by the Office of Rail Regulation, which allows it to review prices charged at regular intervals and to increase or reduce them if appropriate. That is necessary for Network Rail’s network given the historical uncertainty about the company’s cost base. In the case of Network Rail, it will provide comfort to investors in the same way as in the water industry, for example, where privately owned utilities also have complex, historical asset bases. However, we do not see High Speed 1 in the same light. Furthermore, developments in EC legislation since the Railways Act 1993 and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Act 1996 mean that charges for HS1 are subject to independent regulatory control by the ORR through the appeal mechanism in the Railways Infrastructure (Access and Management) Regulations 2005. Given these factors, subjecting HS1 to additional regulatory scrutiny through periodic reviews of access charges would introduce an unnecessary burden as well as unnecessary uncertainty for the business. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, spoke about the necessity for certainty—I completely agree with him. Additional scrutiny would damage value, rather than enhance it. LCR, the present owner of the business, shares this view, and we are confident that investors will be comfortable with it, too. The relationship of HS1’s future owner with the Secretary of State will be similar to that between the Secretary of State and many other owners of public infrastructure, most obviously those operating under long-term concessions or PFI or PPP contracts. That is a well understood relationship, and investors’ cost of capital for those projects has decreased significantly as the market has matured. In the context of the future restructuring of LCR, the Government have considered carefully whether there are good reasons to augment the EC model of regulation for HS1. The department took professional advice on the options available and discussed the plans with the Office of Rail Regulation. It concluded that there was no overriding reason to do so. The department has not received feedback from any of the parties to which it has spoken that would suggest concern in the industry about the regulatory arrangements for HS1. The Government have no desire to undertake the functions of an independent regulator in relation to HS1. In the context of the restructuring, we will consider which powers can be transferred to the Office of Rail Regulation, given its expertise and available resources. For example, the duty to ensure that the charges set by HS1 comply with the 2005 regulations could usefully be managed by the ORR in the future, once a long-term charging regime has been put in place. Until the sale process begins, the Government—as well as potential purchasers—can only speculate on whether the market as a whole will see more value in either a railway subject to periodic charging reviews by the ORR or one for which there is a charging framework established in a long-term contract with the Government. The key choice is the type of regulation, not a choice between having the Secretary of State or the ORR acting as the regulator. The case is not clear cut, and the course that we have chosen to follow is the one that we think will deliver the greatest possible return. In our opinion, any arguments against it are not sufficiently compelling to merit changing the existing regulatory arrangements.
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- Lord BerkeleyLabour
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- My Lords, my noble friend said that the key to all this will be the long-term charging regime once it is in place. Is he aware that that is exactly what happened with the Channel Tunnel? A 50-year long charging regime was put in place when it was set up and financed 20 years ago. Because of changes to things outside, liberalisation and so forth, that more than anything else is now responsible for there being so little passenger and freight traffic through the tunnel. I suggest that that is not a good precedent.
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- Lord Bassam of BrightonLabour
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- My Lords, I made that point earlier—I certainly made it in earlier debates. We continue to want to increase freight through the tunnel, particularly with pathways for freight. We know that we have to work with our partners to achieve that. I do not think that that is necessarily a killer argument. To be clear, HS1 access charges will be regulated. The charging framework is likely to set a maximum cap on the investment recovery element of the HS1 access charges. The prices offered by HS1 must comply with that framework, and with the specific requirements in the 2005 regulations. These are intended to ensure that charges are fair, non-discriminatory and, subject to certain provisos, cost-reflective. Operators who are not happy with the access charges for HS1 or the terms and conditions on which access is offered can appeal directly to the Office of Rail Regulation which will review whether those requirements have been met. If not, it is able to direct the infrastructure operator to remedy the situation. Our current thinking—on which we sought views from industry late last year—is that the maximum access charge for passenger charges will be just over £2,000 per train on top of operating costs. We expect freight charges to be lower than that and understand that HS1 will produce proposed access charges for freight services. Details of the proposals that we put to industry at the end of 2007 are publicly available and I will ensure that copies of them are placed in the Libraries of both Houses. We are considering the responses that we received and expect to consult industry in the next few months on a revised proposal. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, had a particular concern about one of the features of the proposals previously put to the industry—that charges levied on particular operators might be allowed to rise and fall proportionately depending on total usage of the line. A number of the parties who responded to the consultation provided strong arguments against that proposal, with which both we and LCR have some sympathy. Although we are yet to develop all of the detail of the revised proposal, we and LCR both expect to move away from that feature of the previous consultation. Although the work is ongoing, I hope that that will provide noble Lords with suitable comfort that the arguments have at least been listened to. In Committee, I was also asked how the Government would ensure that the HS1 concessionaire would be incentivised to reduce costs without the involvement of the Office of Rail Regulation. We have identified that that element needs further attention as part of the restructuring arrangements. As a result, we are working on a number of proposals to ensure that the new owner of HS1 has the appropriate levers and incentives to reduce costs while operating and maintaining the railway to an acceptable standard. We are discussing that with Network Rail which, as noble Lords will be aware, has a long-term contract to operate and maintain HS1.
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- Lord BradshawLiberal Democrat
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- My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply but I am sorry to say that it does not satisfy me. He more or less put down my noble friend as regards the extension to the high-speed line elsewhere. I do not know whether I misunderstood but I took that to mean that it would be regulated separately from the rest of the network, which was the point he was making. However, it is quite wrong to have two railway lines regulated under different regimes which are interconnected with each other. I do not think that the Minister has really grasped the point that this railway will operate in a competitive environment. In the end, the customer will decide what he will pay. The department can set whatever charges it wishes but if they are too high people will not come and people have got to make an effort to come. It is not as if there are lots of people out there who will swarm to the railway. There are people out there who are very sceptical about railways and need to be persuaded to use the service. Independent regulation will give confidence to investors in the new infrastructure, train operators and, more importantly, train operators’ customers that they are not dealing with the whimsical regulation that the Minister described, which is leading to the almost paralytic control now being exercised over rolling stock, and which has most train operators and rolling stock companies wringing their hands in despair. I am dissatisfied. The Minister needs to discuss the matter with the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Birmingham, because we are getting inconsistent messages.
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- Lord Bassam of BrightonLabour
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- My Lords, I do not think that what my noble friend Lord Jones said is inconsistent at all. He was talking about the system of regulation in general. I explained in detail that this was a separate issue. The noble Lord will need to study what I said very carefully. I have read the relevant paragraph in the speech of my noble friend Lord Jones and nothing in it sets us at odds with him at all. He is absolutely right to make the case for independent regulation. It is a very different relationship.
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- Lord BradshawLiberal Democrat
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- My Lords, independent regulation means regulation based on assessment and study of the costs associated with the assets. The Minister referred to the water industry and the water regulator. However, there were horror stories about the amount of capital taken out of the water industry, which was privatised almost debt-free and now has mountains of debt because it was not properly regulated. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, we have here a regulator who can and will set charges. I have no confidence in a charging regime that is cooked up between Network Rail and officials in the department. It has to be tested in the market independently. I will read what the Minister said but I plead with him to discuss this within government because I believe that the whole speech he read out is totally inconsistent with what we have been told elsewhere. I have no doubt that we will return to the matter at Third Reading and we shall require change. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 1 [Powers of Secretary of State]:
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- Lord HanningfieldNon-affiliated
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- moved Amendment No. 2:
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- Lord BerkeleyLabour
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- My Lords, this is a very interesting amendment. I go even further than the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, in suggesting that the whole question of historical support should be resolved at a very early date. My noble friend said in Committee that all passenger operators—rather than freight operators—should be treated equally in terms of access rights and access charges on the CTRL. There is absolutely no reason why the Government should not sell Eurostar UK without any conditions, subsidies or anything else to the highest bidder on the basis of the charges. On the previous amendment, my noble friend said that the charges for passenger trains, and I assume it is all passenger trains, would be £2,000 per train as a contribution to the financing costs of the CTRL, plus the operating costs. Several issues come out of that. First, if the Government start subsidising international services, it is inevitably a can of worms because you do not know what is happening on the other side of the Channel. SNCF or Deutsche Bahn might want to come in as competition, as we have discussed. You do not know what subsidy they are getting for which services, so it is a seriously slippery slope to start to subsidise any international services, including Eurostar. It should not be subsidised in the way that might be inferred from the last two lines of the amendment. I will leave that to the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. However, there is an even bigger problem here, because the charges that appear to have been considered for using the CTRL are based on what they think they can get away with with Eurostar, which includes a £20 charge per passenger for using the Channel Tunnel, regardless of how many people go. I have been talking to some people who have an interest in local authorities in Kent, and they are still very upset that only one or two Eurostar trains a day are stopping at Ashford. We talked about the fact that it is a high-speed line and any train should be able to go on it, so a service such as Manchester-Birmingham-London-Stratford-Ebbsfleet- Ashford-Calais-Lille, for example, could be run by a competing train operator. The answer was, “Who is going to fork out £2,000 a train for going up 60 miles of track?”. That is a very high figure for a service to start. There will be the same problems as there are with the Channel Tunnel. I said on the previous amendment that the charges will be so high that no one will use it. The figure of £2,000 is arbitrary. I do not know whether any discussions have taken place with German or French railways or anyone else. Eurostar has little choice but to accept it, because it is owned by LCR, which is guaranteed by government; so it is hardly a discussion between equals. There is one last problem that I would like to ask my noble friend about. On the rest of the network, train operators pay so much to use a station. If a train stops at a station, they pay so much to Network Rail for the services that may be provided, such as the platform being in good order. The international stations used by Eurostar are quite expensive and they are quite expensive to operate, because you have all the special facilities such as customs and immigration and the segregation that goes with that. Is the idea that there will be a separate charge made to Eurostar and anyone else who wishes to operate international services for calling at stations? At the moment, Eurostar probably either owns or operates the stations, but how will this work with open access? This is all a barrier to other operators coming in and providing competing services. This is the only opportunity that we have to talk about these things before it is all signed and sealed in the contract, and we suddenly find that we end up with another contractual disaster, which we have talked about already with the Channel Tunnel and other things. I would be grateful to my noble friend for some responses. There is merit in such an amendment, and maybe the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, will consider bringing it back on Third Reading.
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- Lord Bassam of BrightonLabour
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- My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, for reminding me about my old school. It was not called Colbayns in those days; it was Clacton Secondary Modern School for Boys, and it became a comprehensive some time shortly after. I visited the school some years ago, and I was most impressed by the headmaster—I think it is Mr Pavitt—who has done a brilliant job of turning the school around. Since my words at the Dispatch Box are recorded, I offer to pay another visit, and perhaps Mr Pavitt will invite me again. I greatly enjoyed it the last time I went. I thank the noble Lord for tabling this amendment and allowing me another opportunity to outline the Government’s position. Under the present legislation, the Secretary of State can support services in the United Kingdom. In the context of international passenger services, that has translated into supporting Eurostar UK Ltd, the part of the Eurostar joint venture that is responsible for paying the UK-side access charges. The Secretary of State has not stood behind the French and Belgian parts of the joint venture in that way; they rely on the French and Belgian state railways for any support they receive.
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- Lord BerkeleyLabour
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- My Lords, when my noble friend says “support” I think that he means the support for paying the fixed charges relating to the Channel Tunnel. Is that correct, or is he talking about the Channel Tunnel Rail Link?
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- Lord Bassam of BrightonLabour
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- My Lords, the support that we have provided has been to Eurostar UK Ltd. That is the nature of our support. It is for the French and Belgian parts of the joint venture to provide support to their element of the part of the railway that they run. The amendment would restrict the Government’s ability to provide any support for international services, other than that historically provided to Eurostar. As I have said before, the Government’s intention is substantially to reduce the public support for international services, mainly by putting in place a commercially sustainable, long-term access charging regime. In Committee, noble Lords were concerned that the Government’s position had changed since Second Reading. I assure them that this is not the case; our position on providing funding to Eurostar has remained unaltered since the Bill was introduced in another place. At Second Reading, I said that Clause 1 gives the Secretary of State commercial, “flexibility to subsidise international operators in the same way as we currently support domestic franchise operators”.—[Official Report, 19/2/08; col. 146.] My point was that the provision of some continuing support to Eurostar and other international service operators may be desirable, not that Eurostar’s position is or will be akin to that of a domestic franchisee. For clarity, Eurostar does not provide its services under a franchise agreement with the Secretary of State, and there is no intention that it should do so in the future. While it currently has the benefit of reserved capacity on HS1 until 2052 on a take-or-pay basis, it is proposed that this will be renegotiated as part of the restructuring, so that its position as regards access to HS1 will be the same as any other open access operator. The historical funding structures that are in place include the access charge loan, guarantees of Eurostar’s rolling stock lease payments, hedging obligations and its ability to pay HS1 access charges. Removal of this support now would damage Eurostar’s ability to compete as a sustainable, stand-alone entity. To damage that could be commercial suicide. We also wish to retain the power to reorganise or amend these existing support packages to achieve best value for taxpayers through the restructuring. The amendment would prevent us achieving that, which is why it cannot be supported. I add for certainty that the Government do not intend to put Eurostar in such a position that it has an unfair advantage over prospective competitors; in any event, state aid rules prevent them doing so. Finally, although we have no intention of doing so now, we do not believe that a future Secretary of State should be left without the power to provide any new support for international services in future, should they choose to do so. No decisions have been made on the future of Eurostar, and Clause 1 seeks to provide the Government with as much flexibility as possible in their pursuit of the most economically advantageous return for taxpayers. For those reasons, I urge the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, to withdraw his amendment.
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- Lord BerkeleyLabour
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- My Lords—
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- Lord Bassam of BrightonLabour
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- My Lords, two or three questions were asked, and if the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will let me I will reply to those; I suspect that his interruption might have been on them. He asked about the prices charged for stations. There is to be no charge, to incentivise operators to stop at stations. He suggested that access charges could become unaffordable. The Government intend to cap access charges at a level affordable to new entrants into the market. The analysis behind the level of access charge is based on the principle of affordability. The noble Lord also raised an issue about the Channel Tunnel and charges. We are setting charges now, with the benefit of more understanding of the market for international services than was available 20 years ago when Eurotunnel first raised debt. Eurotunnel now has the benefit of a 50 year-plus contract, giving guaranteed usage levels and charges for freight and passenger services. There is no equivalent long-term contract benefiting High Speed 1. I hope that I have covered his points.
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- Lord BerkeleyLabour
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- My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for clarifying those issues. It might help if he were prepared to write to those who have taken part in the debate, to separate the possible government support that Eurostar gets from using the Channel Tunnel, because of the fixed costs that he mentioned—they are different on the French side—from the costs associated with using the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. I was getting a bit confused, so I am sure that it would be better if he wrote to us.
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- Lord Bassam of BrightonLabour
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- My Lords, the noble Lord is right to say that these things are complex. I will set out them out in correspondence for the benefit of all noble Lords who have taken part in the discussion. I think that I have answered the main point; obviously we wait to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, has to say.
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- Lord HanningfieldNon-affiliated
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- My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer. The exchange between him and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, hit the nail on the head. I have never said that I wanted to stop the historical funding. One recognises that there has to be historical funding during the restructuring, et cetera; I want to be absolutely clear on that. I may have tabled an amendment that would stop it, but that is why I ended my comments by asking the Government to help on the amendment, because I still feel that there is no real clarity about what will happen in future. That is what all this discussion is about. All our discussions slightly go round in circles. It is a bit like the first amendment in a way. We are basically behind the Bill, but the two discussions that we have had today are mainly through lack of clarity and understanding where the Government will go after the historical funding and restructuring. We are giving the Government an opportunity to think and to clarify these things a bit more for us before Third Reading. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, can take up the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and write to us to try to clarify the issues. I repeat that I do not want to stop historical funding; I just want to know where we are going afterwards. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
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