Westminster Hall
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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High Speed 2
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, which I think is the first to be held under the new arrangement whereby this debate in Westminster Hall is allocated by that Committee rather than through the mysterious balloting that normally takes place. I am grateful to the Committee for listening to and granting my request.
I also thank the large number of people who have raised this issue with me since the debate was announced. All did so in polite and civilised terms, even if they disagreed with the perspective they thought I was going to take. I would not like to suggest that I have read every one of the more than 400 e-mails that I have received on this subject down to the very last detail, but I have reflected on the key points that people raised and hope that they will appreciate that I have attempted to do so. It is important to look at this subject as calmly and respectfully as we can, because these sorts of plans and projects always arouse strong emotions. Those who are in favour of the development need to be as robust in our defence of it as those who oppose it are in their arguments.
When phase 1 is complete the journey time from Scotland to London could be cut by half an hour—that might not sound a lot, but it is an important reduction—because trains will be travelling at a higher speed for the first part of the journey before connecting on to conventional lines. When phase 2 is complete, journey time could be reduced to around three and a half hours, which would be a significant gain. However, my support for HS2 is not simply about cutting journey times from Scotland. I think that the project is in the national interest. The fundamental underpinning of that view is the need to grow our economy throughout the United Kingdom, and improved connectivity is a crucial part of achieving that. It is particularly important for the midlands, the north and Scotland: we need to distribute our centres of manufacturing and service industries throughout the country, and improved connectivity is the key to doing that.
Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making a powerful case. Does she accept that, however important the increased improvement in journey times is, the most crucial justification for high-speed rail in this country is capacity?
Sheila Gilmore
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and will be coming on to that issue. The underlying purpose, I would argue, is to be able to distribute our investment in our economy more generally, and connectivity is important to that. We have seen, for example, what has happened in Salford with the development of Media City and the BBC’s sometimes apparently painful move up there, which some people obviously felt meant going to the end of the world. That development led not merely to one large company moving part of its operations out of the south-east, but to supporting media industries locating in Salford deliberately because of the bigger pool there.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I apologise, Sir Edward, that I will have to leave before the debate ends, but I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important subject to the House for debate this morning. Although the debate is predominantly about the economic benefits of HS2, does she accept that there are also environmental benefits? If as a result it means that, for further-flung destinations in Scotland and the north of England people are less likely to use air travel, and for areas nearer to London people are less likely to use the roads, there will be green benefits for our economy too.
Sheila Gilmore
I accept my hon. Friend’s point about green benefits in the long term, certainly in terms of air travel, although that will not necessarily be the case in the short term, as people will constantly argue.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
I am not going to attack the hon. Lady aggressively on this matter, but she is making the point that she wants to see economic benefits spread throughout the country, so does she not agree that it would have been more sensible to look at connectivity between northern cities and with Scotland well in advance of running yet another line between Birmingham and London, especially as we do not even know yet whether that line will connect well or properly with HS1, or with Heathrow, Gatwick or wherever it is decided that our future airport capacity will be in the south-east? Does she agree that the project would have been better started in the north?
Sheila Gilmore
The right hon. Lady will not be surprised that I do not entirely agree with her view. We have to remember, for example, that the lines between cities across the north are already being electrified, quite separately from HS2.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Sheila Gilmore
I will shortly, but I want to complete my argument about why, if we want to grow regional economies, we need to improve connectivity and why that is not possible within the existing rail network. There has been a huge growth in rail over the past 20 years, and there is limited spare capacity. Investment in existing lines has been increased and, we acknowledge, that investment is continuing under this Government, but—this is perhaps the point that the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) wished to make—the ability to make further improvements is decreasing because of the limits on capacity. If we decide that we are going to build new lines in various places, we may as well think about the high-speed line now.
Mr MacNeil
Did I understand the hon. Lady’s response to the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) correctly as implying that, as a Scottish Member, she would prefer to have high-speed rail starting in London rather than in Scotland?
Sheila Gilmore
Personally, I would like to see it starting at both ends. I would be interested to learn the proposals of the Scottish Government to assist in achieving that within the powers that they have.
A number of objections are made to the arguments about capacity. Some people argue that the high rate of growth in long-distance travel—it has been about 4.8% a year—will not continue, but that is unlikely, given the patterns we have seen. The factors that are pushing people away from their cars and on to trains—high petrol prices and congested roads—are unlikely to change any time soon. Any type of sustained economic growth, which we all say we want, is likely to push demand for long-distance travel up further, not reduce it. On top of that, there are the predictions for growth in our population, which are now well established.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Since the hon. Lady agrees that High Speed 2 is about capacity not speed, what assessment has she made of the difference in cost between going at high speed across floodplains, with tunnelling and the like through and across environmentally sensitive areas, versus the cost of going at a slightly lower speed around the problematic natural areas within England and Scotland that the HS2 link will have to go through?
Sheila Gilmore
I understand the hon. Lady’s concerns, but if we are to make a serious step change in our rail investment, this scheme is the appropriate route to take.
The other point that some people have raised about capacity is that some inter-city trains operating at peak times—those operating in and out of Euston, for example—are not actually full and we should use that capacity before building a new line. However, on present patterns, it is likely that that capacity will be used up by the time the new line is built. London Midland trains, for example, which serve many commuter towns on the west coast main line, are already full to bursting and room must be created for trains to serve those destinations. Upgrading the west coast main line would be difficult and disruptive and would not provide the other benefits.
Some people have argued that HS2 would not release useful capacity around Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Existing services will still be needed in some places, but those trains will be able to stop at intermediate stations. The lines will remain and the trains will be able to stop at more intermediate stations without holding up longer-distance travellers, giving a substantial boost to regional connectivity. For example, stations between Coventry and Birmingham New Street would stand to gain more services.
We could tackle commuter demand at the southern end of the west coast main line by building more cross-rails. One is being built at the moment and another is planned. I am not saying that those schemes are not helpful, but if such an approach continues it will exacerbate many of the problems created by London’s dominance and would not help economic growth in other parts of the country. People often suggest that other schemes could achieve that, but no one has come up with firm proposals in which we can have confidence. The main transport corridor between Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool—the trans-Pennine route—is already being electrified and will provide that greater connectivity, which is good. This is not a matter of either/or.
The other argument that is often raised is that the business case is not sufficiently strong. Perhaps one of the biggest arguments is about the use of time and the value that is placed on that. People say that in the modern age people can work on trains so there is not the same value to be gained from speeding up journey times, but that does not make up for the fact that it is even more valuable if staff can arrive at their destination and return in a shorter time. Although the cost-benefit ratio is low compared with smaller projects—some people have suggested that road bypasses have a much higher cost-benefit ratio—we cannot build a whole network with small projects. As large projects go, HS2 is relatively good value for money.
There are wider economic benefits that are not always captured in the business case. One argument that I have already addressed but want to talk about a bit more is that HS2 will be a disbenefit to the midlands, the north and other parts of the UK. Examples sometimes cited from Europe are that high-speed rail there has not benefited the places to which it goes. What matters is whether the project connects significant population centres.
Mr Simon Burns
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s generosity in giving way. I suggest that she does not need to go overseas to Europe to see the benefits of high-speed rail. All she needs to do is to look at the benefits that HS1 has brought to Kent and London.
Sheila Gilmore
The right hon. Gentleman’s experience and knowledge is valuable to this debate. Not all examples are of linking large conurbations with others. In some, the benefits may be spread around the country.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend’s speech is extremely welcome. I have never accepted the argument that building HS2 will somehow be a disadvantage to the north or the midlands. By that logic, if we tore up our motorways and existing rail lines, we would be more prosperous. The central point that I am interested in is the economic benefits of HS2—this responds to the point that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) made and that the Scottish National party tries to make—and the need for HS2 to go to London because of decentralisation. This country is the most centralised in the western world and decentralisation will come from London. That is why the route must be built as suggested. London’s property prices show that the country cannot sustain that level of centralisation. That is the crucial benefit of HS2.
Sheila Gilmore
There is no doubt about current centralisation and the pull factors. Some opponents of HS2 say that it would increase centralisation in London, but I argue the opposite. The pull factors towards the south-east exist despite the disadvantages of London—high property prices, lack of land for development, long travel times to work from not far away, and so on. I am seriously worried that we are seeing more of that than we have for some time. As the population is pulled in that direction, it increases even more as people who move to work in the financial services sector and other sectors require other public and private services to support them, so London’s population becomes more and more dense. If we genuinely want to decentralise our economy, we must think about that seriously.
Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Scotland have competitive advantages over London in terms of population, availability of land to develop, relatively cheap housing and a lower cost of living. The service sectors that are already in many of those places and are powerful there would benefit from better access and could grow and develop to the advantage of all of us in the UK.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the Labour leaders of our great northern cities cannot all be wrong in that regard?
Sheila Gilmore
I certainly agree that their views should be listened to and that they have their cities’ best interests at heart. They want them to develop and widen. Of course there will be an environmental impact and I understand people’s concern about that. It is never easy to develop such projects. It would be foolish to say that there will be no disruption or environmental damage, but on balance the country must weigh up the benefits. We must accept, as we have done and will continue to do, that enabling the country to develop as we want and in a much more balanced way means that we must take that on board, while always trying to mitigate the environmental problems.
Mrs Gillan
Is the hon. Lady telling the Chamber that sacrificing homes, businesses, ancient woodland and the area of outstanding natural beauty in my constituency is a price worth paying for HS2?
Sheila Gilmore
I certainly hope that there will be as much mitigation as possible. Any other option, and even expanding some existing rail lines, would also cause damage and loss of housing, because when lines were built there was development around them, so it is difficult to expand them.
If we are serious about expanding our economy, we must find a way to improve capacity because I firmly believe that it will increase. We have to move forward with the project as quickly as possible. There would be regret if in future we looked back and asked, “Why did we not do it 10 or 20 years ago?” This is our opportunity to grow and distribute our economy throughout the UK.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
I have the right to impose a time limit, but I think we should be all right for the time being, if Members are aware of the clock. I shall start by calling Cheryl Gillan, who, I am sure, will be considerate to other people.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
I will try to be considerate, Sir Edward, but as you know, this project has a very deleterious effect on my constituency. I am grateful to be called by you, first of all, and to have the opportunity to put some points from the position of Chesham and Amersham.
I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on obtaining the debate. She has shown interest in this railway for some time, although I have to say that I am not sure it is a priority for her constituents, as 92% of all Scottish rail journeys begin and end in Scotland. As I understand it, some flagship improvements to the Edinburgh-Glasgow route have already been cut by £350 million. I have to say that if she is interested in the issue, she has failed to acknowledge that her constituents and anybody else travelling from Scotland will have years of disruption at Euston station. If she looks carefully at the plans for Euston station and where the long-distance trains from Scotland arrive, she will see that there will be fewer platforms and reduced services for many years, so her constituents and many people in Scotland will face a lot of disruption at the end of their journey if the project goes ahead.
Sheila Gilmore
Perhaps I should just point out that most of my constituents—although not necessarily all the people from Scotland—will be travelling to Kings Cross.
Mrs Gillan
I am sure that most of the hon. Lady’s constituents will be travelling to Kings Cross, but plenty of people from Scotland travel to Euston. As she does not appear to want the route built to Scotland immediately, nor to want the northern routes to be constructed first, she can rest assured that there will be a lot of disruption right across the network as the project develops. I was surprised that she did not ask for the line to be built from Scotland to England, because there is to be a referendum in Scotland and, as I have always said, if we want Scotland to remain as part of the United Kingdom, connectivity to the rest of the United Kingdom is really important. Despite any differing views about HS2, I think that most people in the Chamber would agree that we want Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom.
Mr MacNeil
Does it not show London’s priorities that, rather than building high-speed lines to the north, it built high-speed lines to the south and towards the continent—indeed, to countries that were not in political union with London?
Mrs Gillan
No, I do not at all agree with the hon. Gentleman on that, and he knows it. If that is a mischievous way of pushing the SNP’s message, I have to say that I believe that we are better off together and that the people and economy of Scotland will be a lot better off if it remains firmly as part of the United Kingdom.
Today we have a fightback from HS2, because Sir David Higgins takes up his appointment; we have already had the PR charm offensive from HS2 this morning, conducted from Old Oak Common. We heard that we will have a new further education college to train the 2,000 engineers that we do not currently have to complete the build over the next 20 years of HS2. The Government are constantly trying to talk up the project. We have had more fightbacks and comebacks on HS2 than we can possibly imagine. More alarmingly, we heard this morning that over the next six weeks, Sir David will prove that he can produce HS2 cheaper and quicker. That is what he has been charged to do. That will be interesting; it means that the past four years and the work by the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd is obviously not good enough, and that a great rescuer can come in and show us, over the next six weeks, how we can do it quicker and cheaper. I wish him the best of luck, but it makes me wonder what we have paid nearly £1 billion for in terms of the work that has been carried out so far.
Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)
Is it not always a good idea constantly to make savings and improve delivery? Is that not what every businessman would do every day of his life? To say that that is not a good idea is very strange.
Mrs Gillan
I am not saying that it is not a good idea; I am asking what the hundreds of people who have been working on the project have been doing over the past four years. Surely—
Mrs Gillan
The former Minister here is responsible. When we have a project for which the Secretary of State has had to come to the House and announce that the figures are wrong and that the cost has gone up by £10 billion, surely it is amazing that we now have a new chairman coming in who is already charged with trying to reduce that cost. What is going on with the costings for the project? Neither the Department nor HS2 Ltd have got a grip. I give way to the former Minister.
Mr Burns
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I can certainly say that people have been working, over the past four years, on fine-tuning and improving the line of route and the delivery of it, and on mitigation, which, for example, directly benefits my right hon. Friend. She knows as well as I do that 19 km of HS2 go through her constituency; 14.5 km are in a tunnel and the other 4 km are in a cutting.
Mrs Gillan
I am so glad that my right hon. Friend can remember his brief from when he was a Minister. I am grateful for the tunnel, as are my constituents and the environment, but the fact remains that the area of outstanding natural beauty will be drastically affected by the project. If the issue is about connectivity and capacity, there is no reason why alternative routes cannot be found. The reason why it goes straight through my constituency is speed. There are alternative strategies—I am sure that he remembers the 51m alternative strategy that was produced. There are ways of achieving the connectivity and economic renewal of the country other than HS2.
The business case, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh East mentioned, is dreadful. At the end of October, the Government released yet another version of it, which confirmed the shrinking benefit. The benefit-cost ratio for phase 1 is now estimated to be 1.4, excluding the wider economic benefits. However, experts working on the figures—particularly those in HS2 Action Alliance, which includes some great experts on transport and economics—have estimated that the real figure could be under 0.5. That is less than 50p back for every £1 spent. Even the official figures now beg the question whether the project is value for money.
In order to deal with the bad publicity that HS2 was getting about the benefit-cost ratio and the project’s value for money, which is a shrinking benefit, a report from KPMG was commissioned. That was supposed to build a positive view of the railway, as we all now know. It claimed that the economy would be boosted by £15 billion a year. Within days of that report being published, that claim was challenged from many angles. In September, Robert Peston, the BBC’s business editor, drove a coach and horses through the report. He rightly pointed out that many of the gains that KPMG had calculated were based on a reasonable notion that companies would be established in places where there were better transport links, but the report took no account of whether those regions contain available land to site new or bigger companies, or actually have the people with the relevant skills to employ. As those two features are the fundamental causes of poor growth in many parts of the UK, it is amazing to me that the report even stated:
“The methodology employed makes the implicit assumption that transport connectivity is the only supply-side constraint to business location.”
That was a coach and horses through the report.
Kate Green
I recognise how strongly the right hon. Lady feels about the matter and on behalf of her constituents. She referred to the KPMG report and the criticisms that were levelled at it. I also point out—and invite her comments on this—that aspects of economic gain were not referred to in the report. For example, it did not take account of the added economic benefits to us in Greater Manchester of investment in a station and of bringing the line through Manchester airport.
Mrs Gillan
The hon. Lady could be right. An awful lot was missed out of the report. It was in September that Robert Peston came up with the criticism. In October, a freedom of information request from “Newsnight” revealed the bad economic news that was missed out in detail from the report. The potential losses to some of our regional economies from this rail link will cause real problems. The negative impact on the north-east of Scotland, for example, was described as “significant to say the least” by the Aberdeen chamber of commerce. Areas from Cardiff to Kettering have been identified as ones that will lose millions of pounds from their annual GDP. I agree—that was missed out of the report. There was a nice little map that was supposed to disguise the figures behind, but a freedom of information request from “Newsnight” flushed out that important detail.
By November, the Select Committees were getting their teeth into the HS2 project, and so they should, although one cannot help feeling that the Select Committee on Transport is really an extension of the Department for Transport, given its latest thin and rather inadequate report.
Mr Simon Burns
Can my right hon. Friend answer a very simple question? Why is it that anyone who expresses any criticism of HS2 is 100% accurate, but anyone who sees any benefits in HS2 is either an appendage of the Department for Transport or just downright wrong?
Mrs Gillan
We could turn that question around to the former Minister, because he seems to think that everyone connected with HS2 is absolutely right, that this is the project that will solve all our economic problems and woes and that anyone who opposes it is not worth listening to. He is on dangerous ground with me, because he knows that I have been—
Mrs Gillan
There is an answer to the question. We could easily be wrong on some points, but that is not to say that HS2 is not totally wrong. Besides, they have been set off in a certain—
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. We are in danger of going round in circles now, so perhaps the right hon. Lady could get on with her speech. Perhaps if she gives way to the Minister, we can get on and hear from other people.
Mr Goodwill
I understand that my right hon. Friend is entitled to her own opinions, but I do not accept that she is entitled to her own facts.
Mrs Gillan
Perhaps the Minister will intervene and give me the facts that I should have. Would the Minister like me to give way? How are my facts wrong?
Mr Goodwill
There will be plenty of facts when I make my concluding remarks.
Mrs Gillan
I will be grateful for a reply from the Minister then, of course. He knows that what I am doing is talking common sense and repeating what has happened, as opposed to making anything up. If this project is so good, perhaps the Minister will also, when he replies, let us know why the Government have still not published the Major Projects Authority reports, which highlight the risk. I believe that they have been classified as amber and red. If the Government are so convinced that this is such a wonderful project, it is important that those reports are made public. After all, we came into government saying that we would be the most transparent Government ever.
The hybrid Bill, which has been deposited, has also proved to be contentious. I think that tomorrow the Standing Orders Committee will meet for the first time since 2008 to examine the 14 Standing Orders that it may have transgressed. Alongside the hybrid Bill was deposited an environmental statement of nearly 50,000 pages, from which, as the Minister told me in answer to a question, some 877 pages were omitted. That and the fact that 56 days is the shortest period that has been given for any consultation on HS2 matters reflect the fact that the Government are not wanting to listen in detail to people who are raising valid and very worrying concerns about where we are going with this project.
It is widely known that Buckinghamshire gets all the pain and none of the gain. I am not sure whether the new college that is being promoted by my colleagues in government will be dangled in front of Buckinghamshire —whether it could come to Buckinghamshire. If that were considered, at least it would be something more than we are getting at the moment, because if people start to look in detail at what is proposed and the impact on Buckinghamshire, they will see that it is very worrying.
I talked to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington) before this debate. We were talking about the effects on the local economy and particularly on tourism in Wendover and beyond, and also in Great Missenden in my constituency. But also, more worryingly—my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford, who is also a former Health Minister, will know about this—concern has been expressed, because of what is proposed in changing the transport architecture locally, that even blue-light services could be affected during the construction phase of the project.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way; she has been very generous. She is painting a truly frightening picture of high-speed rail. I just wonder where high-speed rail has been constructed whether she would advocate digging it up and taking it away, because it does seem to be a very frightening project indeed.
Mrs Gillan
I think that I understood what the hon. Gentleman just said to me. We all know that we need to have a balanced economy and that we need to get growth across the country, but there are alternative ways of doing that. It always seems to me that HS2 was a project dreamt up by politicians—by Andrew Adonis in opposition—and adopted by the coalition when it came in and that no one really and truthfully sat down and said, “How do we get an integrated transport system? How do we join up our roads, railways and airports?” We do not appear to have done what I consider to be the overarching work to deliver an integrated transport system. [Interruption.] It is not yet going ahead. As we know, the hybrid Bill must pass through this House and the other House, so it has not got the final stamp of approval.
Mrs Gillan
I am not digging up anything. The project has not got the final stamp of approval. There is still the option of pursuing other ways in which we could improve our economy.
Let me get back to my local picture, because I think that it is only fair to my constituents that some of their grievances are aired. The agricultural holdings in Chesham and Amersham will be severely impacted. Several farms will be badly affected by the construction, to such an extent that they will probably be put out of business. People cannot run an equestrian business next to a major construction site; nor can they use ground that has been submerged in 50 feet of soil. Will the Minister, although he is rightly going to defend his position, as he must, let me know what detailed work he had done on the losses that will be sustained by the businesses and particularly the farming and agricultural holdings in my neck of the woods? HS2 Ltd estimates that, across the whole route between Birmingham and London, about 300 existing businesses will be required to relocate to new premises, but people cannot relocate a farm and people cannot relocate a family business, when its land has been divided into two or part of its land has been appropriated.
I referred briefly to roads that will have to be closed, realigned or diverted during the construction phase. The impact on communities and local facilities will alter people’s travelling patterns and shopping habits, perhaps even for life. That is a great threat to the local economy. If people start to read through the detail of the environmental assessment, they can see some of the estimates of traffic congestion at the junctions of School lane and the A413, the Amersham bypass and the A404, and Chesham road and Bottrells lane—I could go on, but people will have got the idea. But I want to know what estimates the Department has made of the losses to our local economy from the delays, traffic congestion and disruption that years of construction will bring to Chesham and Amersham.
I believe that some of the claims made by consultants are not correct. There will be a lot of substitution in the economy. Yes, businesses will be attracted to the high-speed rail line and may move, as they did when the BBC, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh East referred to, went to Salford. That move has attracted many production companies and media companies to that area. However, that is substitution, because the businesses have been drawn from other parts; hence one of the very important things that was highlighted in the KPMG report was the disinvestment and the permanent loss to GDP of other regions as businesses are attracted falsely to the line.
This will be a distorting project. Many MPs around the country do not realise that there will be an effect on their constituency, which will suffer disinvestment as businesses move closer to new conurbations, for example into buildings created with Chinese investment, as we have heard, for the Manchester airport area and in other centres where they intend to build buildings that will accommodate businesses or shops.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. The right hon. Lady has been speaking for 20 minutes, so I think she might bring her remarks to a close now.
Mrs Gillan
That is exactly what I intend to do, Sir Edward, and I am grateful for your latitude. I think everybody understands how badly Chesham and Amersham will be affected and how strongly people feel about the matter.
I do not believe that HS2 will deliver all the benefits that have been laid out, but I can see at first hand the terrible effect that it will have on my locality and the businesses there. Many commentators, including the Institute of Directors, the New Economics Foundation and the Institute of Economic Affairs, have said that the project is not the answer to economic growth. I urge the Minister to be sympathetic to my constituents and what they are going through, and to question hard whether the project is the right one. It is still not too late to look at the alternatives.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. The wind-ups will start at 20 minutes to 11.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), on securing the debate, because it is important that we continue to advance the economic case for High Speed 2 as part of the wider case. I assure the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) that I am not speaking as part of any lobby, and I have not been asked by anybody else to come here. I have simply come to express what I think is important for my constituents, for my city and for Scotland and Great Britain as a whole.
From a Scottish perspective, support for high-speed rail continues to be almost universal. One or two people oppose it, but the vast majority of interest groups across different sectors support it. The Scottish Government are united with the other political parties in Scotland in supporting HS2. The Scottish partnership group for high-speed rail has a wide range of supporters, including the major local authorities in Edinburgh and Glasgow, CBI Scotland, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish TUC, Transform Scotland—an environmentally focused transport organisation—and the local transport networks. There is wide public support as well.
Those organisations clearly set out the case for high-speed rail in the UK and the benefits that it will provide to Scotland. To me, those seem self-evident, although others do not agree. There are numerous arguments, and it is not right to single out one issue as the priority, whether it be speed, capacity or modal shift, because they are all important. HS2 will provide faster journey times, increase capacity and promote modal shift from air and road to rail, and it will support and benefit businesses not only in Scotland but in the rest of the UK. All those factors together make a powerful case for HS2.
We have heard the argument that instead of spreading economic benefits throughout the country, HS2 will suck economic activity into London. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) has pointed out, if we took that argument to its logical extreme, we would have to tear up all the existing roads and railways. Presumably, if we were to return to the days of toll roads with a turnpike every few miles and highwaymen along the road to stop us getting anywhere, it would lead to wonderful economic benefits for the rest of the country. I take that argument to its extreme to highlight the folly of the suggestion that HS2 will suck economic activity into London. Supporters of HS2 cannot simply assert that, however; we must give examples of the economic benefits that will result from the project, and recognise that some cities and some parts of the country might lose out from HS2 if it were not done in the right way. The answer is not to say “No HS2”, but to address the problems of areas that might suffer genuine negative economic consequences if high-speed rail is not introduced in the right way.
Let me outline the powerful case for HS2 from a Scottish perspective. Scotland has an important tourist industry, and many tourists come to Scotland not only by rail connections, but by road and air. Anyone who travels regularly on the routes from Scotland to the south will know that the passenger trains are already pretty busy, so tourism might be further enhanced by better, faster trains with improved capacity. Again, it is a question of people’s choices. London is and always will be a major tourist hub, and visitors to London increasingly go on to visit other places. They have to decide whether to go on, for example, to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester or somewhere on the continent of Europe. If the choice is between travelling to other destinations in the UK on relatively slow routes, and travelling in Europe using better rail routes or improved air connections, visitors may well choose not to travel within the UK but to go elsewhere. The tourist industry, therefore, strongly supports HS2.
HS2 also has business consequences. It is not simply a question of speed, because modern technology allows people to work together without necessarily all being in the same place at the same time. Nevertheless, we still need to produce things that must be transported, and we still need to have business meetings, so people make choices based on the accessibility of locations to head offices and other sites of economic activity. A business that is well connected to a major economic hub—in reality, that will often be London—has a much better chance of being successful than one that is not easily accessible.
In addition to improving connections to London, it is important to improve connectivity between other cities and regions in the UK. We have heard about the benefits of faster links between cities such as Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham, and I have another example of how regional economies might benefit from high-speed rail. In Edinburgh and the south-east and east of Scotland, the strong renewables sector is an important and growing part of the economy. There is also a strong renewables cluster around the north-east of England, but although there are some connections between the two, I get the impression that they do not work together as much as they could to achieve maximum benefit. Who knows where high-speed rail might go in the future? Increased connectivity between the east of Scotland and the north-east of England would benefit that potential regional economy.
Edinburgh, in particular, has an international, outward-based economy, which depends on good air links as well as rail links. HS2 would allow travellers the option of using airports further south by providing direct links to Scotland.
Sheila Gilmore
Does my hon. Friend agree that even after the recession, the financial services sector remains an important part of Edinburgh’s economy, accounting for 11% of employment in the city? Does he agree that good connectivity is essential to sustain that industry and ensure that headquarters and major offices are retained in Edinburgh, rather than being drawn to other places?
Mark Lazarowicz
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was about to come to that important point, so I will not repeat what she has said. As I suggested, high-speed rail stations can be important hubs and promoters of economic activity, and it will be up to local governments, communities and businesses to make the most of the opportunities that those connections offer. They will have to choose whether to view high-speed rail as a benefit, or as something that will suck prosperity away from their economy.
At the start of the railway age, towns reacted in all sorts of ways to new railway lines. Some towns chose deliberately to keep the railways away and avoid building stations, but they soon started to campaign for branch lines to reach their communities. I believe that some communities close to the route of HS1 regret choosing not to have a station and reap the benefits that we now see. That emphasises the fact that communities across the country must take the opportunities that arise from HS2, because if they do not, they will not get the benefits.
There is a question about whether HS2 could damage the economic position of certain parts of the country. If HS2 does not go from London to the midlands, the north and Scotland, those parts of the country are in great danger of becoming worse off as a result of economic developments elsewhere. If there are improved transport links from London to elsewhere in Europe and the world, but no such links going further north, those of us from communities further north will be relatively worse off. In addition to the high-speed services from London to Brussels and Paris, operators are planning direct high-speed services all the way from London to Cologne and Frankfurt, for example. If people and businesses in London have access to that high-speed link, but we are relatively worse off further north, our economic position is likely to be damaged. That is why I strongly support the argument for high-speed routes reaching Scotland as early as possible.
It would be damaging if we had the development of high speed to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and York, but did not take further the benefits of those connections and faster services. That is why I welcomed the announcement from the UK and Scottish Governments a few months ago of a study to look at ways to ensure that high-speed rail reaches further north to Glasgow and the rest of Scotland. I understand that the parameters for the study laid out by the Department for Transport state that all options should be considered. That could include new lines, upgrading existing lines or a combination of both. I am interested in hearing from the Minister an update on that study of the lines and connections from the end of HS2, as currently planned, on to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Mr MacNeil
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that it is important to take a wider perspective on how to ensure that HS1 and HS2 interact with each other seamlessly, so that we can travel from Scotland into the wider European market without hitting the buffers in London and having to change trains there.
Mark Lazarowicz
That is part of the argument, and that leads me on to the issue of where work on HS2 should start. Should it be from the north or the south, or somewhere in between? I am sure that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham would like it to start as far north from her as possible and never actually make it to her constituency. That might be a bit unfair, but some people do seem to have put forward the argument for starting as far north as possible so that work does not start in the south.
To me, those options do not seem to be in opposition. Work obviously cannot start everywhere at the same time, but the idea that the line must start from the south and meander until it eventually reaches the north is the wrong approach. There are no economic or technical reasons why starts on the line could not be made at more than one location. I understand that part of the difficulty has more to do with politics. I understand the wish of the Government not to have to deal with the difficulties of the HS2 route from London to Birmingham alongside the difficulties of planning the route from Birmingham to Manchester, or from Manchester to further north. It would be great if Members on both Front Benches made it clear that time would be made available to allow planning for HS2 to go further north from Birmingham, and perhaps for work to be started in Scotland and the north at the same time as in the south. That option should be back on the political agenda, and I urge the Government to consider it.
Mr MacNeil
It is a political reality that we probably instinctively feel to be true that if the work started in the north, it would be more likely that a bridge between the two high-speed lines would be completed than that High Speed 2 would be extended further north via High Speed 3. The pressing political and physical reality would make it more likely that a gap would be filled than an extension completed.
Mark Lazarowicz
I recognise that there is a strong case for work to start as soon as possible on the London to Birmingham section. There are particular capacity issues there, so I do not think that that should be left until the end. At the same time, I feel that we should be discussing trying to do more work much earlier on in the process to benefit parts of the country that are further north as well.
I have taken longer than I intended, Sir Edward, so I will try to make my last few comments as brief as possible.
Mrs Gillan
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the only thing really stopping HS2 from being started in the north, and therefore from achieving the connectivity between the northern cities that they so dearly require, is the legislative timetable? It would simply be a case of stopping what we are doing on the hybrid Bill on the line between Birmingham and London, and progressing quickly with the northern connectivity. We could, for example, bring in a Bill at the back end of the year for the northern stages, which could go through Parliament first. It is a shame that we are not doing it the right way round, for the sake of a few months. We could meanwhile discover, for example, what we are going to do about airport capacity in the south.
Mark Lazarowicz
I do not know whether the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), who is commenting quietly at the right hon. Lady’s side, wants to intervene, but it is not my position that we should stop what we are doing with HS2; we should be developing and bringing forward plans for the next stages of the line.
Mr Simon Burns
I will be brief. The fact is that one cannot do that and gain time, because there are so many set procedures to follow before we could produce a hybrid Bill. For example, all the environmental impact assessments must be carried out, as well as consultations, and time must be taken over coming to conclusions. It is pie in the sky to think that we could wave a wand and reverse the process without losing about four years.
Mark Lazarowicz
I am not suggesting that the process should be reversed. Others are obviously much more expert on the issue, but my point is that I do not see why we have to wait until 2033 for the lines to reach Manchester and York, and then perhaps 10 or 15 years beyond that for them to reach Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Government and Ministers should address that point, as should politicians from all parties who support HS2; we should try to make things happen as soon as possible.
Mr MacNeil
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Given the time scale he mentioned—up to 2033—and the wait, does he agree that Barnett consequentials are also important to the debate?
Mark Lazarowicz
I will have to leave that point.
I will make some final points as briefly as possible. First, one strong argument for committing to high-speed routes as well as high-speed trains going to Scotland is that the economic case for the entire line is improved if Scotland is linked into the process at an early stage. That point has been made by other people, and I strongly endorse it.
My second point is about the economic benefits of the line, not just in the long term, but in the construction phase, as a direct consequence of engineering and construction. The Government must assure people like me that they are making every effort to ensure that the benefits are spread as far as possible throughout the country. A document on HS2 was recently produced, I think by the Department for Transport, that emphasised how Crossrail had brought a wide range of job benefits to large parts of the country. If one looks at the chart in that document, the vast majority of the benefits, perhaps unsurprisingly, were focused around the Crossrail route and south-east England. Hardly any benefits from construction, engineering and knock-on consequences reached further north. The Government must ensure that a major effort is made to make sure that the indirect benefits from the construction phase—jobs and employment—reach the entire country.
Finally, I have a question for the Minister about the further education college that has been proposed to provide trained workers for the high-speed line. I recognise that the college must be based somewhere, but all its activities need not be based around one location; nor must they take place at just one physical college. That initiative should be aimed at ensuring that the job benefits from the construction phase of HS2 are spread as far as possible throughout the country. I suggest to the Minister that it would be worth while to enter into discussions with the Scottish Government at an early stage, so that there could perhaps be a linked initiative in Scotland to provide similar benefits to the section of the HS2 line that I hope will be promoted by both the UK and Scottish Governments at a relatively early stage. In that way, we too can see the jobs benefits, as well as the longer-term economic benefits, of HS2, for which I think the case is very strong.
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
The three speeches so far have lasted 20 minutes, 20 minutes and 17 minutes. I am afraid that Members’ speeches are going to have to be a bit more high-speed.
Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
I certainly will be more high-speed, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing this important debate. It is refreshing to have the opportunity to discuss the positive impacts of High Speed 2 and the benefits that it will bring to many areas of the country. I have considerable sympathy for my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), because I appreciate that there is tremendous pressure against the scheme in Buckinghamshire. However, benefits will also come to her constituency, although not in the same way as to Manchester, Birmingham or other areas along the line of route.
The most important thing about High Speed 2 is that high-speed rail is the future. We already have an example of high-speed rail in this country in High Speed 1, which runs through Kent and London. The benefits that it has brought to the economy of Kent in particular have been immeasurable, so it is not that we are talking about this while looking at a completely blank canvas; we know the potential benefits and impact of a high-speed rail system in this country.
There is an air of déjà vu about the criticism of High Speed 2. Like you, Sir Edward, I was in the House in 1987, 1988 and 1989, when legislation for High Speed 1 was going through Parliament. I vividly remember colleagues with constituencies in Kent talking about how it would be the end of the world and would destroy Kent and its economy while bringing it no benefits. Of course, since then, High Speed 1 has been built and is up and running. It has brought considerable benefits to Kent, particularly around Ashford and Ebbsfleet, where the stations are, to the point that Kent county council, which, along with Kent’s MPs, was opposed root and branch to High Speed 1, is offering to talk to county councils along the line of route of High Speed 2 to explain to them why it was wrong in its opposition, and what benefits high-speed rail brings.
Unfortunately, the county of Buckinghamshire does not wish to participate in any discussions with Kent. I am sure that if my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham tried to persuade Kent county council, it would benefit by having some of its fears allayed.
Mrs Gillan
I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend confirmed who made that offer to whom and when, and what meeting was turned down. I happen to know that the chairman of Buckinghamshire county council, Councillor Martin Tett, has put tremendous effort into considering HS2 and all the alternatives. Indeed, “Better than HS2” is a strategy produced by 51m, which is headed by Buckinghamshire county council. I cannot believe that he would refuse to talk to anybody.
Mr Burns
I suggest that my right hon. Friend has a word with Councillor Tett; as he is a constituent of hers, it should not be difficult for her to contact him. Certainly, when I talked to officials at Kent county council as a Minister, they made it quite clear that they were more than happy to talk to county councils, and officials there told me that Buckinghamshire was reluctant to engage in any meetings with them on the subject.
On the economic benefits, the most important thing is capacity. Faster speeds for the rail network are important, but so is capacity. The west coast main line will reach its full capacity by 2024-25. Given that it is the spine of the country up to Scotland, and that we need those communications for passengers and freight, it is crucial that we relieve that capacity. People in Buckinghamshire and parts of London will say, “It brings no benefit to us.” Of course it will bring benefit to them as well. Although High Speed 2 will not stop in Buckinghamshire, the released capacity on the conventional west coast line that goes through Buckinghamshire and other related conventional lines will ensure that passengers using those lines to commute to London will have more capacity and a better journey experience, because others who might otherwise have been on those conventional trains travelling to London will be using the high-speed line.
High Speed 2 will also give eight of the 10 largest cities in England far greater connectivity, as was said by the hon. Members for Edinburgh East, and for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). That is crucial. As the experience of Kent has shown, it will also create jobs through the actual building of the railways and through increased business activity, particularly around stations, whether at Birmingham, outside Sheffield, at Manchester, or elsewhere where there might be stations. The figures that I have seen, which some people would say are on the conservative side, suggest that 100,000 extra jobs will be created, although a conglomeration of local authorities has come up with the bolder suggestion of 400,000 jobs. Equally importantly, 70% of the economic benefits of the project are expected to be seen outside London, although obviously parts of London will benefit from the project.
I would like to mention the KPMG report. I know that people who do not support High Speed 2 rubbish it, but people like me who do support the project have a more open and reasonable approach to it. According to the report, when High Speed 2 is up and running to Leeds and Manchester, the annual benefit to the economy is anticipated to be in the region of £15 billion a year. Of course, as was said, some businesses and jobs may well be pulled away from other areas. That is part of economic life, but it does not mean that we should not allow a project that will bring a potential £15 billion a year in improvement to the economy once it is up and running. People must be careful about rubbishing a report that shows the potential for job creation, increased and enhanced economic development and growth, and an improvement in the growth abilities of our economy as a whole.
I believe also that we must embrace high-speed rail beyond Leeds and Manchester. That is why I am so pleased that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, along with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), set up a project in October 2012 to examine the benefits of extending a phase 3 into Scotland, to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Personally, freed from ministerial responsibility, I believe that that is an important next stage for High Speed 2. I also see HS2 as a spine. In time, when there is a business case and financial resources available, it should have spurs to other parts of the country that could benefit economically. The areas that come to mind as potential candidates for a continuation of High Speed 2 are Liverpool, south Wales and the south-west of England.
Mr MacNeil
May I add to that a plea for Inverness and Aberdeen, and for the integration of Scotland into the high-speed European network as well?
Mr Burns
No, because I really must allow the shadow Minister and the Minister to begin their winding-up speeches.
There are people who oppose the project root and branch because it will be built in or near their communities; I have considerable sympathy for them, because the building phases are difficult and can be upsetting in cases where people’s property is affected. I hope that once the Government conclude their consultations and consideration, the compensation scheme will be fair and generous. With any project on this scale, there will be difficulties, and some properties and some areas will be adversely affected. One has to balance those problems with the national interest, and to my mind, the benefit to the nation—the economic benefits that will be brought to the nation, and to people, business and commerce in this country—is so overwhelming that we cannot afford not to move forward on this project.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Edward.
I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing this important debate. A constant champion of the railways in this Parliament, her speech this morning exemplified both the passion and the attention to detail that she brings to discussions of rail issues.
I think that all right hon. and hon. Members would agree that the exponential growth in passenger demand now poses a serious challenge for our railways. We have debated the causes of that growth at length before and I do not propose to revisit those arguments today, but it is a fact that passenger demand has doubled in the last 20 years and we are now accommodating the same number of passengers as there were in the 1920s on a network less than half the size it was then. That growth has continued through periods of infrastructure disruption and even through recession. Technology is making it easier for people to travel and young people are now the group who are most predisposed to travel by rail.
Passenger numbers grew by 7.3% at the start of last year compared with the first quarter of 2012, and across the network conflicts between inter-city, commuter and freight trains are common as competing grades of traffic jostle for scarce paths. As my hon. Friend spelled out, some sections are already approaching the limits of their capacity, especially on the west coast main line, where the number of trains being run has doubled during the past 15 years, leading Network Rail to warn that the line will effectively be full by 2024. All this has happened despite the west coast route modernisation project, which cost £9 billion and caused enormous disruption over a period of 12 years without delivering the long-term capacity benefits that we as a country need.
I have full sympathy with right hon. and hon. Members and local authorities who represent communities served by the west coast main line, and they have made it clear that they have no wish to relive the experience. Unfortunately, the heavy demands on the line mean that expensive periods of disruption continue. In 2014, there are three planned closures of the line in the Watford area alone, which means that the southern end of the line will be closed for most of August as track and signalling is replaced. Such closures require sizeable compensation payments to train operators—Network Rail puts the cost for such works on the west coast main line at 18% of its overall budget—and cause delays and inconvenience to businesses and individual passengers, the costs of which are much more difficult to quantify.
Consequently, before I talk about the economic case for HS2, we should consider the economic impacts of inaction. Commuter trains could be cut as train paths are reassigned to more profitable long-distance trains—a process familiar to transport planners and passengers in the west midlands. In the most extreme cases, some smaller stations in Staffordshire were closed while the west coast main line was being modernised, and they have not reopened. Thousands of passengers are already being left standing on their morning commute, not only on routes into London but on the approaches to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. In addition, growing congestion on the lines hits resilience and reliability, undermining rail’s traditional advantage over other modes of travel. A consequence of the growing number of services provided is that journey times have not improved on most of the main lines, and in many cases have got worse in the past 20 years. Even after the intercity express programme trains are introduced on the east coast main line, a number of important long-distance journeys will still take the same time as they did in 1991.
There is a clear need for capacity improvements, and as the British Chambers of Commerce has said:
“Future business success depends on infrastructure networks that meet demand. Rail is no exception. The UK rail network must have the capacity to meet rocketing business demand - for long-distance services, for commuter rail services, and for the transport of freight.”
That was why Lord Adonis, when he was Transport Secretary in the last Labour Government, developed proposals for a new north-south line.
Lilian Greenwood
No. I will not take an intervention at the moment.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said on Third Reading of the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill:
“High Speed 2 is a project that is in the national interest.”—[Official Report, 31 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 1179.]
That is why Labour supports HS2 to meet our north-south capacity requirements and provide the connections between the core cities that our regional economies need to thrive.
In that respect, I am happy to declare an interest as an east midlands MP. There are relatively good links from Nottingham to London, which are due to be strengthened by electrification of the midland main line, but our inadequate rail connections to Birmingham and Leeds hold back growth. As the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) said, increasing capacity is vital, but so are connectivity and journey time improvements. It can take two hours to travel from Nottingham to Leeds by rail, but with HS2 that journey time would be cut by two thirds. Although it is important that we continue to invest in our existing network—the budgets published up to 2020-21 show that investment is not being diverted from conventional lines—high-speed rail will bring real improvements for journeys between cities outside London.
It is important to stress that communities away from the high-speed rail stations also stand to benefit, as more local services can be run on the conventional network. The right hon. Gentleman drew attention to people’s experience of HS1 in Kent. Similarly, compatible trains will run off the new high-speed rail line, enabling faster journey times and direct connections to the new network. I draw hon. Members’ attention to Network Rail’s “Better Connections” report, which examined how additional services can be provided. We need to see more of this sort of work from both Network Rail and local bodies, who should be emboldened as they plan how to maximise the benefits of HS2 as part of the transport devolution agenda.
When the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill was in Committee, we took evidence from two academics who both agreed that regional benefits would depend on the quality of the local plans that were put in place, so my first question to the Minister is: what steps is he taking to encourage transport authorities that are not on the immediate high-speed rail route to plan for HS2? We have already seen how high-speed rail can be a catalyst for regeneration in west London. Plans have been outlined by Queens Park Rangers football club to relocate to Old Oak Common in order to create a new 40,000-seat stadium, a project that the developers say will support 24,000 new houses. In Birmingham, the city council has said that the arrival of HS2
“presents a huge opportunity to breathe new life”
into the Eastside area. The new station is planned to be at Curzon Street, which was the original terminus of the first London to Birmingham railway and which last saw long-distance services in the 1850s. If the planners get the design and the connections right, the reborn Curzon Street station promises to be the jewel in the crown of Birmingham Eastside’s rejuvenation. Centro, the west midlands transport authority, has developed a wide-ranging plan for integrating high-speed rail with its Metro system, commuter rail lines and bus services.
My hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) have touched on the importance of the HS2 line for Edinburgh and Manchester, and as an east midlands MP I can point to other examples of how HS2 can act as a spur to investment. A recent report by consultants Volterra found that development in the immediate vicinity of the planned station at Toton could build 650 to 875 houses and support up to 1,500 administrative jobs. However, more can be done to promote jobs and skills. Can the Minister update us on how many apprenticeships have now been created by HS2, both directly and indirectly? Also, will he commit to the target of creating an apprenticeship for every £1 million spent on the project, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has called for?
Lilian Greenwood
I will not give way as I have very limited time to speak.
We heard this morning that the Business Secretary has announced plans for a new further education college to educate the work force we need to build HS2. That is welcome news, but we want a proper jobs and skills strategy. Last year, during the evidence sessions for the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill, we were told that that document was being prepared. Can the Minister tell us when it will be published? As he knows, the current Crossrail project has begun to train a new generation of highly skilled workers, and a plan must be in place for the HS2 project too.
Labour successfully amended the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill to make the Government account for the number of vocational qualifications gained each year. Another Labour amendment that was accepted will compel the Government to account for any underspending or overspending in the project’s annual budget. I note that the Minister’s colleague in the Lords, Baroness Kramer, described the process that we put in place as
“a very vigorous reporting process under which the Government must report back annually and record any deviation from budget, and the consequences of that…which has put in place a very intense scrutiny process around the budget.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19 November 2013; Vol. 749, c. 949.]
I am glad that Labour successfully wrote a “vigorous reporting process” into the primary legislation, but the truth is that the Government should have got a grip on escalating costs since the election.
The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) rightly raised concerns on behalf of her constituents about the uncertainty about compensation after the Government’s initial consultation was deemed to be unfair—
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. Will the hon. Lady bring her speech to a conclusion?
Lilian Greenwood
Certainly, Sir Edward. It is in the interests of the wider rail network, regional economies and the nation as a whole for the project to succeed. That is why I am proud to support it and why Labour wants to see HS2 delivered on time and within budget.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
As ever, it is a joy to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) for securing this morning’s debate and everyone else for their most useful contributions. I will try to address some of the large number of questions asked.
To respond to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), we are well aware that there are real concerns about not only the environment, but people’s property and businesses, in the areas through which the line will be driven. We have done as much as is reasonably possible to avoid or reduce environmental impacts. We will, for example, provide more than 150 miles of tunnels and cuttings, make extensive use of sound barriers and plant a total of 4 million trees along the line of route. In my right hon. Friend’s constituency, 77% of the line will be tunnelled and the rest will be in a cutting, which is a great achievement that she has managed to secure for her constituents, who will understand how she campaigned to secure it.
Mrs Gillan
I am grateful for the Minister’s kind acknowledgement of the work that I and others have put in. Will he assure me that he will not rule out at this stage looking at mole tunnelling further to protect the area of outstanding natural beauty, which environmental organisations in my constituency have forcefully proposed?
Mr Goodwill
The hybrid Bill process, which we hope to commence this year, will provide an opportunity for those who want to make representations. As I say, however, 77% of the line in my right hon. Friend’s constituency will already be in a tunnel.
My right hon. Friend also referred to the KPMG report. HS2 will of course not serve all areas of the UK, which is reflected in the figures, and the benefits will naturally be greater in the places directly served by the line. Of course, the analysis does not include the benefits of other investments to boost the transport system. Indeed, the Government will invest £73 billion in the next Parliament, of which only £17 billion will be spent on HS2 and which will help the places not being served by HS2, particularly those in the north of England.
Lilian Greenwood
Does the Minister accept the Select Committee on Transport’s recommendation that the Department, HS2 Ltd and Network Rail work together on identifying potential high-speed Britain projects that might be included in the next control period for transport spending?
Mr Goodwill
It is vital that other investment happens in both rail and road infrastructure and that account is taken of how that will dovetail with High Speed 2. HS2 will also free up capacity on the existing classic network to allow services to places such as Blackpool or Shrewsbury and, most importantly, for more freight, which many people have missed. Moving freight off the roads and on to rail will free up capacity on our roads.
The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned apprenticeships. It is envisaged that HS2 will create up to 2,000 apprenticeships during its construction. I was pleased to be with Sir David Higgins and other Ministers at Old Oak Common this morning, when the further education college that will focus on the skills necessary for HS2 was announced. Several locations have been proposed, and I will take on board the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz).
I believe passionately in a successful Britain and in a country that can compete and thrive in the global economy. To achieve that, we need infrastructure that is fit for the 21st century and beyond. Nowhere is that truer than in the context of transport, which is a key enabler of economic growth. Good transport equals good economic conditions. An important way to support British business, to power up the recovery and to put people back in work is to invest in and modernise our transport networks. Growth and prosperity are created by businesses and people having ideas, taking risks, innovating, working hard and creating jobs. A balanced and successful economy requires modern and efficient infrastructure. The Government’s role is to help create the conditions for success by fostering the security, skills and infrastructure that support our economy. By delivering additional capacity and enhanced connectivity, transport infrastructure allows businesses to grow and work together and to access a wide range of customers, suppliers and skilled labour. Business investment is encouraged by the quality of transport links, influencing the decisions of international companies on where to locate and, in turn, increasing investment in the UK.
Transport infrastructure has particular economic significance for UK cities. In 2009, London and the core cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield, together with their wider urban areas, contributed almost 50% of UK GDP. The core cities deliver 27% of the UK’s GDP and need to be better connected to thrive and achieve higher levels of growth if they are to close the performance gap between the south-east and the rest of the country—the so-called north-south divide.
Major infrastructure investments like HS2 stand apart from many other decisions made by the public and private sector. They affect the lives of generations of citizens and last centuries, not decades, which makes it important that we make the right decision. In proposing HS2, the Government are firmly convinced that we are investing in a solution that is right for the future economic development of the country, and I am pleased that we have such widespread cross-party support.
HS2 is a transformational project that will enhance rail capacity, connectivity and reliability, helping to underpin economic growth. It will provide the spine for a truly national network, connecting seamlessly to the existing rail network, serving destinations not directly on the high-speed line, releasing capacity on the existing main north-south lines to enable additional commuter, regional or freight services to use the line and freeing up more space on existing trains. It will provide a step change in the capacity of the rail network to accommodate the growing demand for long-distance travel. Our transport system is already under strain, as we have heard today, and will only get worse as demand continues to grow. Alongside the £73 billion that the Government will invest in all forms of transport by 2021, HS2 will help us get ahead of current demand on our core transport network.
HS2 will slash journey times for passengers between our key cities and regions: London to Birmingham will take just 49 minutes, London to Manchester just 1 hour 8 minutes, and London to Leeds just 1 hour 23 minutes. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East knows the current journey times between Edinburgh and London all too well. Scotland will benefit from high-speed services from the moment that HS2 opens. The Y network allows for the seamless transition of trains on to the east and west coast main lines and is expected to slash the journey times between Edinburgh and Glasgow to London by up to an hour, which will benefit the Scottish economy by some £3 billion.
Scotland is an important part of the United Kingdom, and we must not be swayed by those who propose dangerous alternatives. In November last year, the Secretary of State for Transport announced further work into rail capacity and connectivity in Scotland and between Scotland and England. The study’s objective is to identify the broad options available and to provide the evidence base for any future decisions. Work is ongoing and a draft report will be ready in time for the summer recess.
We have taken steps to ensure that the economic opportunities presented by a scheme as transformational as HS2 are fully exploited. The HS2 growth taskforce, ably led by Lord Deighton, has a relentless focus on maximising the economic growth potential of HS2. Lord Deighton was also at Old Oak Common today to see the potential in that part of London. HS2 will be the biggest infrastructure project in Europe and will have a significant direct impact on local jobs, particularly in engineering and construction. Independent research predicts that HS2 is capable of directly generating up to 22,000 jobs in the next five years, rising to a maximum of 50,000 jobs by the late 2020s. In addition, HS2 will support over 100,000 jobs. Phase 1 will create 40,000 jobs in the midlands and London and phase 2 will create at least 60,000 jobs in the midlands and the north. We recognise that the benefits will not just fall into our lap, and the role of the growth taskforce is to identify the work that must be done in advance to ensure that we capture the full potential of this investment for the UK.
In conclusion, HS2, coupled with the record investments we are making in existing transport, is the right solution to the transport challenges that we face. It is about a step change in capacity and connectivity for passengers. It is about unlocking the potential of our major cities and regions, supporting jobs and driving growth. It is about building a dynamic society, a thriving economy and a successful Britain. HS2 is not just a viable proposition for a new railway; it is so much more than a piece of transport infrastructure.
South Sudan
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir Edward, and to have secured this important debate on the humanitarian tragedy that is continuing to unfold in the world’s newest state, South Sudan. I am grateful to members of the associate all-party group for the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan, which I chair, who have supported this debate and are present.
In less than two years of statehood, South Sudan has experienced an unprecedented shock to its national income; its gross domestic product fell by nearly 250% in 2012, at the height of the dispute between South Sudan and Sudan over oil charges and compensation. There has been some progress since then on what have been generally dismal indicators on health, maternal mortality rates, mortality during childbirth and education. In that respect, the past four weeks have been a tragic and massive step backwards.
When members of the associate all-party group, including me, visited Juba and Lakes state in April 2012, we saw at first hand the challenges and the great opportunities before the new state of South Sudan. We heard of the problems in bringing together a cross-tribal, cross-community Government able to function efficiently in order to alleviate hunger and educate the country’s children. We heard of the need to adopt a genuinely pluralist constitution that provides for the accountability of the state to its citizens and of the Government to Parliament. We listened to the complex issues regarding the future of Abyei state and the need to resolve the continuing border problems with Khartoum.
We witnessed the positive effects that investment by the Department for International Development and its partners in the United States and France, through the UN, is having on the economic empowerment of women and the attempts to rebalance the economy in favour of agricultural production, which the rich foliage, particularly in the southern parts of the country, strongly promotes. We experienced for ourselves the problems of a country that has only 60 km of paved roads and, in many respects, a very weak—in many states, non-existent—infrastructure. We saw the intense difficulty that that causes to farmers in getting their goods to market and in distributing seeds and other agricultural products from the capital out to the other states. We also met farmers who had fled to Uganda during the earlier civil war and were making painstaking efforts to rebuild their businesses and their lives on land that had been returned to them after that civil war ended.
I will not forget the huge numbers of female fruit and vegetable growers north of Rumbek, in Lakes state, who greeted us when we visited their UN World Food Programme-supported plantation. They were all wearing T-shirts proclaiming: “Marriage can wait, women’s right to education first.” I asked one of them how many children she had, and she told me 12. She was determined to make a success of the agricultural co-operative, so that her children would have something that she had been denied: the right to an education. It is tragic that the avoidable humanitarian situation is putting at risk all that essential work in one of the poorest countries on earth. The avoidable political instability, the internal displacement and the tribal conflict that is being stoked up for political ends, or to settle old scores, mean that the extraordinary work of many such women, who are empowered in South Sudan’s economy for the first time, and of the UN and the United Kingdom in carefully supporting such programmes, runs the risk of being lost.
The conflict could not have come at a worse time. The planting of crops is due to take place next month. The rainy season in South Sudan is due to begin in April and May. In that period, 60% of the country will be inaccessible by road, and many parts will be accessible only by air. The country struggled to cope with spiralling food security problems in 2011 and 2012—nearly 4 million people were threatened by hunger in that period—and the risk is that the situation will get worse in the spring if agreement cannot be reached between the Government and their Opposition.
Nearly two years ago, the biggest humanitarian challenge in South Sudan was the returning refugees who had spent many years in Sudan and were returning to their former homeland in the south without jobs to go to or the means of ensuring a livelihood in the future. Additionally, the current conflict means that there are up to 400,000 displaced South Sudanese nationals, with some 50,000 having fled into neighbouring states. The UN estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 people a day are fleeing South Sudan into neighbouring Uganda. The violence is having a tragic and serious impact on the region.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware of this morning’s news reports that more than 200 people appear to have perished in a ferry accident while fleeing the fighting? Does that not show the absolute desperation of the terrible situation that the South Sudanese face?
Mr Bain
My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to the growing disaster. The UN’s best estimate is that 10,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict in the past month alone. As we know, the impact of conflict is always felt most profoundly by the most vulnerable. Women and children in South Sudan are bearing a particularly harsh burden in a conflict that is not of their making. The UN has also said that health facilities in many states of South Sudan are already beginning to creak at the margins. There are shortages of blood and transfusion supplies. There is one hospital at which 192 patients are awaiting surgery pending blood becoming available. That is the scale of the crisis that the violence is beginning to produce among the weakest in South Sudanese society.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
Is not a serious development the fact that refugees are now moving to surrounding countries, such as Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and, of course, Sudan? That is putting further pressure on those countries, and further exacerbating the difficulty of getting humanitarian support to people who are now dispersed over a wide area.
Mr Bain
My hon. Friend is entirely correct that that is making the job of the UN Mission in South Sudan even harder. An added burden is also being placed on the mission, as a number of refugees are fleeing into neighbouring states.
The conflict has exacted a deadly toll. The International Crisis Group estimates that some 10,000 people have already perished in the conflict. Mass graves are being discovered, and humanitarian access is limited in conflict areas, with battle having spread to seven of South Sudan’s 10 states. The very real prospect is that the final number of deceased may be even higher.
The source of the renewed political instability in South Sudan is the aftermath of President Kiir’s Cabinet reshuffle last July, when Vice-President Machar was removed from his posts—along with the secretary-general of the governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Pagan Amum, and others—after Riek Machar issued a public challenge to President Kiir and indicated his desire for a leadership contest. The President then announced the dissolution of all internal Sudan People’s Liberation Movement party structures in November. That step was described by his internal critics as unconstitutional. There was a walk-out by the Opposition at the national liberation council on 15 December, and fighting began later that day between factions of the presidential guard in Juba, spreading to other parts of the armed forces in the following days. That violence has now become ethnic in nature, and has led to as many as 60,000 people seeking refuge in the South Sudanese compounds of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, particularly those in the capital, Juba.
The conflict has spread to the other states in South Sudan, with former Vice-President Machar declaring it an armed rebellion. There is now evidence that the armed forces are splitting along ethnic and tribal lines. There has been prolonged fighting over the city of Bor, with control switching between the forces loyal to the President and those loyal to Machar. There have been harrowing accounts of ethnic killings in Jonglei, along with the deaths of two UN peacekeepers. The obvious consequences of that are that non-governmental organisations’ staff and others have had to be evacuated from the country, making an already difficult humanitarian situation even worse and reducing access.
Some of the international responses have been welcome. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development has dispatched a delegation of Foreign Ministers to Juba. The African Union is now engaged, and talks are continuing in Addis Ababa to try to find a resolution. While that happens, people continue to die and women and children are facing a terrible humanitarian position. Can the Minister update the House on how many areas of South Sudan are open to humanitarian access? We need to ensure that the South Sudan crisis response plan is fulfilled, and that the shortfall of $106 million to meet the immediate needs in the crisis is contributed to by supportive Governments. I welcome the fact that DFID has allocated a further £12.5 million to help deal with the crisis, but can she say what representations have been made to other Governments to help to meet our collective responsibilities as an international community to the many hundreds of thousands of people at risk?
There is a wider question about the UNMISS mandate. After the UN Security Council passed a resolution in late December, extra troops were promised to provide a peacekeeping function in South Sudan. Will the Minister state what the latest intelligence is on when those troops will be deployed, in which states and with what remit? Will it be to support food supply lines? Will it be to support hospitals and schools? What will be the function of those additional troops?
A wider question has to be asked on the future of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. Questions have been asked about its capacity to provide security in that country. When we visited in 2012, there was already tension between dealing with the day-to-day alleviation of hunger and deprivation, and longer-term development objectives. Is it the view of the Minister and the Government that those two functions are still compatible, or does the crisis mean that a review of UNMISS’s mandate in South Sudan should be considered? There are also issues with the perceptions that some in South Sudan have of UNMISS. How can the international community act to overcome that, and to ensure cross-community, cross-tribal confidence in what UNMISS is doing?
My sense is of a state that has had an enormously difficult start in its birth and early years. My sense in visiting the country was of a state that has enormous capacity to supply economic benefits and be the bread basket of central Africa, but it badly needs support from the rest of the world to establish an effective system of governance that gives proper democratic rights under a permanent constitution, that observes the normal relationship between the armed forces and the people, that allows democracy to come to the fore, and that has a mechanism to resolve the territorial disputes between South Sudan and Sudan.
My other strong sense is that a process of reconciliation has to happen. It was necessary before the conflict, and it will be even more necessary now. I wonder what our country, with its hugely important diplomatic heritage in Sudan, South Sudan and the entire region, can do together with other countries, such as the United States, China and our other partners, to ensure that a proper process of reconciliation can take place once this conflict has been resolved.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
In exactly that regard, and in the current terrible context, does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that as humanitarian aid is directed into South Sudan, Governments and foreign donors make a point of trying to ensure continuing engagement and support for national civil society organisations and faith networks, so that they can maintain their fabric and ethics and underpin that course for reconciliation?
Mr Bain
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, because the sense of anyone visiting Juba and the outlying states in South Sudan is that civic society—non-governmental organisations—largely constitutes the means of delivering health, education and other services to the people in those areas. Those groups are critical in rebuilding the country, particularly after this hugely devastating conflict, and in securing the international community’s development goals for the area.
It is clear that we have to document the human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law committed in the past few weeks. Those responsible for any violations have to be held to account. What is the Government’s view on dealing with that situation when the conflict comes to an end? Will the Government be prepared to call for the reinvigoration of the national peace and reconciliation committee to bring people together? That committee should reflect the diversity of South Sudan society and encourage further nation-building initiatives.
In conclusion, South Sudan has had a tragic first two years of its life. We have a strong history in the area: this country has contributed enormously to the improvement of the diplomatic situation in Sudan and what is now South Sudan over the past few decades. We and the rest of the international community cannot walk away from this issue; people look to us for leadership. I hope that in replying to the debate, the Minister will show that the United Kingdom is prepared to offer that leadership on a devastating and tragic situation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)
It is a pleasure, Sir Edward, to serve under your chairmanship. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) for securing this extremely important debate. As chair of the associate all-party group for the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan, his experience and knowledge is huge. His was a powerful exposition of the situation in South Sudan, and I thank him for that.
The UK is deeply concerned—I am deeply concerned—by the terrible violence in South Sudan that began on 15 December 2013. We have been at the forefront of humanitarian and political efforts. Conflict is continuing in parts of the country and there are large numbers of reported deaths. The ethnic dimension, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, of some attacks is deeply worrying. We have been calling on all sides to ensure protection of civilians and respect for human rights. We are urging the leaders on both sides to remain engaged in the talks led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and to agree on the immediate cessation of hostilities while pursuing a sustainable political solution to the crisis, rather than continuing to seek resolution through military means.
South Sudan is close to my heart. It was the first country that I visited when I took up my post. I saw an 18 month-old country full of optimism, hope, possibility and potential. It was undeveloped and there were huge needs and challenges—but it was all there. It is heartbreaking to think how much of a setback the current situation will be and to wonder how any good things can continue. Even before the crisis, as the hon. Gentleman said, South Sudan had one of the largest humanitarian emergencies in the world, with a complex mix of needs, including refugees—more than 225,000 are Sudanese. I went to the camps on the border of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, and refugees were pouring across the border. As the hon. Gentleman said, there are no roads, and we had to go by helicopter. It is a logistical nightmare, particularly in the rainy season, when everything becomes inaccessible.
South Sudan, a poor, young and vulnerable country, already faced immense challenges, and now it has deep difficulties, including internal displacement of people, populations affected by floods, returnees from Sudan and a large population affected by chronic, severe food insecurity. Those pre-existing issues have not gone away, but the response is being disrupted directly in areas affected by the current crisis, and indirectly elsewhere, as a result of disruption of supply routes and markets, and the evacuation of humanitarian agency staff. In addition, the humanitarian situation that has developed as a direct result of the conflict is extremely urgent. We estimate that there are more than 350,000 displaced people within South Sudan, with large numbers in UN bases, and an additional 50,000 people have been displaced to bordering countries—the majority to Uganda. Many are in acute need of food, health care, shelter, clean water, sanitation and protection, and we are concerned about reports of the conditions in which some displaced people are living, including in UN camps. Thousands of people are yet to receive any humanitarian assistance, and remain fearful for their safety and that of their families.
The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) spoke about the people who were on a boat on the Nile and, sadly, drowned. People are swimming across the Nile trying to escape their dreadful situation, because it is better than staying. Aid agencies are doing a tremendous job in reaching those in need, where security allows. The ability to provide assistance remains severely constrained because of the fragile security situation and subsequent lack of humanitarian actors on the ground. Without progress on the security front, aid efforts will remain inadequate, especially in the areas worst affected by conflict, such as the town of Bor in Jonglei state.
The humanitarian crisis remains our priority and the focus of our efforts. Our existing significant humanitarian programme—more than £60 million in 2013—has put us on the front foot in responding to the crisis with the redeployment of funds to ensure a rapid response. DFID is supporting the efforts of aid agencies through direct funding and by supporting logistics. On 30 December the Secretary of State announced a further £12.5 million commitment to provide immediate supplies and support to key organisations operating in South Sudan, including the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN agencies. That package of support will provide emergency medical treatment for thousands of people, clean water to 5,000 people and tents for 7,500 people who have fled their homes, including family-sized tents which provide women, girls and young children with some privacy and a safe space. That issue was raised, rightly, and it is a priority for DFID. The support package will also support the logistics of the humanitarian effort, through support to the UN’s humanitarian air service, which airlifts aid workers and humanitarian supplies to those in need across the country. On 5 January a UK-funded emergency relief flight carrying life-saving water and sanitation equipment landed in South Sudan to avert a potential health crisis that was emerging from the conflict. Via trusted partners, we are closely monitoring the situation on the ground and we stand ready to provide further assistance as required.
The facilitation and provision of humanitarian assistance, on the basis of need alone, must be allowed. We have called on all parties to ensure safe, secure access for humanitarian agencies and respect their neutrality, and to meet their own obligations to avoid civilian casualties and direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
As I have said, before the current crisis, South Sudan was already one of the poorest countries in the world and more than half of its population were below the poverty line. Alongside our emergency humanitarian funding, the Department for International Development has a long-term development programme. However, that has been completely disrupted—I cannot put it any other way—because so many of our staff have had to leave, as have our implementing partners. Our priority at this point is to assess and respond to the immediate humanitarian situation. In the UN Security Council the UK was quick to agree to an emergency troop uplift of 5,500 to the UN mission in South Sudan, almost doubling existing numbers. We are now considering how to give more support to UNMISS through airlifts and by helping to fill gaps.
As to the specifics on what representations have been made, we are co-ordinating closely with other donor agencies and development actors and we know that further pledges are coming down the line, and are likely to be confirmed in the coming days, to contribute to the immediate funding shortfall that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East raised. As I have said, we have already contributed an extra £12.5 million. On the matter of UNMISS, I heard criticisms of the UN operation when I was in the country, and particularly in Jonglei. The need for regular review of all peacekeeping missions is built into the system, and clearly the latest events will have to be taken into full consideration at the next review.
The UN has been gathering disturbing reports of human rights abuses, and we are deeply concerned, as everyone must be. We welcome efforts by the UN Mission in South Sudan to investigate reports of abuses and ensure that civilians are protected. The UN Security Council agreed on 24 December to strengthen the UNMISS human rights component. We of course welcome the Sudan People’s Liberation Army’s announcement that it will investigate the involvement of organised forces in the killings in Juba. The UK is currently in discussion with international partners on how best an independent review can be taken forward. We welcome the UN Secretary-General’s announcement on Friday that he would send the assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Simonovic, to South Sudan.
On 10 January the UN Security Council statement gave a clear welcome to the African Union Peace and Security Council’s decision to establish a commission of investigation to ensure accountability, reconciliation and healing among all South Sudanese communities. The hon. Gentleman raised those issues and they are at the core of the matter. The situation may have started with political machinations, but the people were living side by side perfectly peacefully and they have now been drawn completely unnecessarily into ethnic divisions. The immediate focus is obviously on the cessation of hostilities, but I agree about the way forward in the longer term.
Humanitarian access is severely constrained. UN agencies and NGOs are on the ground and providing support where they can. I do not have the full breakdown of the uses to which new UNMISS troops will be put. DFID is still in the process of assessing needs, and therefore the deployment will presumably follow the needs that are expressed.
I will touch on the political side, and the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Foreign Secretary has been in touch with both Kiir and Machar and is trying to bring all sides together. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development is the mechanism for taking those matters forward, but we are urging President Kiir to ensure that the issue of detainees will not prevent constructive discussions from progressing. We are working closely with our Troika partners, the US and Norway, and the EU and regional players, to support the political process.
I thank all hon. Members who have attended the debate for their interest in and concern about a matter that is close to my heart. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East gave an excellent exposition of the situation. My Department, working hand in hand with the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, will continue to focus our efforts on ensuring that we are responding to the humanitarian situation and continuing efforts to support the political process.
Strengthening Couple Relationships
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
I am most encouraged to see so many of my hon. Friends joining me for this debate this afternoon. It is also good to see some of our friends from Northern Ireland here, too. It is a pity that there is only one Labour Member present, but there we go; I shall not be saying something positive about the Labour party. As you can probably gather from my voice, Mr Streeter, I am suffering from the lurgy that afflicts most of us at this time of year. I was not going to come in, but I was told that the debate would not happen unless I was here and as so many of my hon. Friends want to take part, I was not going to deny them this opportunity.
I also offer a warm welcome to the Minister. He may or may not be aware that, when we announced this debate, we received a call from his Department to ask who should be responsible for replying. I know that the Minister is robust, and I hope that the slight uncertainty between his Department and the Cabinet Office does not reveal some lack of co-ordination in Government on this hugely important issue. Research has consistently shown that stable families are the foundation for a strong society. In 2008, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that
“there’s nothing more important to families than the strength of their relationships”,
yet the United Kingdom has one of the highest rates of family breakdown in the western world, with less than 70% of children living with both their parents. It is for that reason that I am leading this debate on strengthening couple relationships today.
In 2000, I helped to produce the Family Matters Institute report on the cost of family breakdown, which we then identified was costing this country £30 billion a year. According to the Marriage Foundation, last year that figure had risen to no less than £46 billion, which is more than the entire defence and overseas aid budgets combined and some £1,500 for every single taxpayer. It is a substantial burden. Just yesterday, the Daily Mail carried a two-page spread about a man who has apparently fathered 15 children by six different women, with seven more children by unnamed women, and who is said to have cost the taxpayer in excess of £1 million. One son is a convicted murderer and three others have served jail sentences, all of which cost the taxpayer a further £150,000 a year.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and to his courage in leading it despite his ill health. The doubling of family breakdown over the past 30 years is plainly a huge issue, but there are heroes. I pay tribute to Harry Benson of the Marriage Foundation, who will no doubt be referred to later, for helping to deliver practical support on the ground to help keep couples together. He says:
“We value commitment and faithfulness ever more. But we have lost confidence in marriage. The tide will turn when we realise once more that marriage is the best way to achieve both.”
Does my hon. Friend have any practical proposals to make to the Minister on how to achieve that?
Sir Gerald Howarth
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to set the scene first, because the problem is of such magnitude that it is important to put the facts on the record. I will admit to him that I am light in the department of what the solutions are, but he will not be surprised to hear that I have some advice for the bishops. I know, however, that my hon. Friends are doing good work in this field.
I was drawing attention to an article in yesterday’s Daily Mail. Some people will say that it refers to an extreme example, which it may be, but it reflects on a smaller scale what is going on right across the nation. I regularly deal with broken family cases at my surgeries. One constituent recently told me that the father of her child walked out the day she went into labour and has not been seen since, although he boasts on Facebook that he has paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash for a London flat. Another told me that the father, who smokes a lot of weed, has not seen the children for two years; he has a child by another woman and is now with a third woman. A third constituent told me that she is expecting a child by a man who is not interested and has no job; he himself was placed in care as a child. This is going on all over the country. I am not talking about a deprived inner-city area. This is Aldershot, Hampshire. If it is happening there, imagine what else is happening in some of our inner cities.
The men who father these children seem to have absolutely no interest in bringing them up, let alone paying for them. It is important that we recognise that we cannot afford to continue to subsidise people who live such dysfunctional lifestyles. We do not have the money. It is immoral, it is wrong and it has to stop. Am I being judgmental in an age when such an approach is deemed inappropriate? Of course I am being judgmental. For the sake of our country, we need to be judgmental. Besides, plenty of people never cease to be judgmental about Members of Parliament.
Let me move from the particular to the general. Let us consider the data. According to the Centre for Social Justice—an excellent organisation—more than 3 million children are growing up in a lone parent household, 92% headed by the mother. Does that matter? I submit that it does matter because the evidence shows that
“marriage provides the most reliable framework for raising children.”
Those are not my words, but those of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Home Secretary, in his 1998 consultation document entitled “Supporting Families”. That view was essentially reiterated by this Government when, in their social justice strategy paper published in March 2012, they said that
“this Government believes marriage often provides an excellent environment in which to bring up children. So the Government is clear that marriage should be supported and encouraged.”
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. His point about dadlessness is important. The lifelong impact on dadless children’s educational achievement and job prospects, among other things, is immense, but does he accept that children sometimes grow up in dadless households because dads who want to be there have been excluded? The purpose of the presumption of shared parenting in the Children and Families Bill, which is going through Parliament now, is to ensure that, wherever possible, those dads who are unable to live with their children because of an acrimonious split continue to have whatever meaningful and valuable contact they have with their children because of the huge value that it brings to the experience of the children.
Sir Gerald Howarth
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. It is not one that I intended to cover in my speech, but I am glad that he has put that on the record, because it is clear that there are fathers who do want access to their children and who do want to play an important role in bringing up their children, but they are denied. I hope that the Children and Families Bill will be a move in the right direction to rectify that wrong.
Let me be clear that the problem is not just about the financial cost, massive though that is. As all right hon. and hon. Members are only too aware from their surgeries, there is a massive social cost in human misery, which has an undeniably detrimental effect on children, as my hon. Friend has just illustrated. Statistics show that children of separated parents are more likely to have physical and mental health problems in childhood and to fall into crime or substance abuse in later life. The Centre for Social Justice observes that lone parents are two and a half times more likely to be in poverty than couple families, and children from broken homes are statistically less likely to be able to establish stable relationships themselves, thereby continuing the cycle.
Research by the Office for National Statistics on “The mental health of children and adolescents in Great Britain”, published in 2000, found twice the incidence of disorders in boys aged 11 to 15 in lone-parent households as in married households. Even more interesting, the incidence in cohabiting households was similar not to that in married households, but rather to that in lone-parent households. I shall have more to say on cohabitation in a moment, but clearly one has to recognise that although not all children brought up in such conditions will necessarily struggle in those ways, we cannot ignore the facts if we are to tackle the issue. According to Relate, another excellent organisation, the number of families with dependent children increased by 5% between 1996 and 2012. The number of married-couple families with dependent children fell by 12%, however, and the number of lone-parent families rose by 22% and the number of cohabiting couples doubled. One million fathers do not live with their children.
Marriage, which for the majority of Conservative Members of Parliament can be only between a man and a woman, remains the core of a stable family. Only in this environment do children have both male and female role models for guidance and support. However, the number of marriages has fallen from about 415,000 in 1970 to about 240,000 in 2010, a near 100-year low. The number of single-parent households has risen from 8% of the total in 1970 to 22% in 2010. Since the late 1970s, there has been a steady increase in the rise of cohabitation, with nearly half of all children today born outside marriage, but cohabitation is a relatively unstable substitute for marriage. Figures from the Centre for Social Justice show that fewer than one in 10 married couples separate by their child’s fifth birthday, compared with one in three cohabiting couples.
Many of us welcomed the Government’s acknowledgement of the contribution that marriage makes to a strong society when the Chancellor included a tax break for married couples in his autumn statement. At this point, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who led the campaign on that front, but it can only be the start. I agree wholeheartedly with the Christian Institute that
“most marriages last for life… Children need a father and a mother to nurture them... Children need parents who love them and love each other just as much. That love must be a permanent and not a temporary commitment… The best environment for raising children is marriage because the spouses have committed themselves to each other, and thus their children, for life. No other kind of relationship provides this environment of stability and permanence for children. Social science confirms that lifelong and loving marriage is the ideal context in which to raise children.”
Some say that in a free society, people should be entitled to live any lifestyle that they want and to an extent that is unquestionably true. I am conscious that I am trespassing on delicate territory, as we are all touched in one way or another by such trends, even at the highest levels in our land, but overwhelmingly it is the taxpayer who is picking up the tab for the current state of affairs, so the state cannot be an idle bystander.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. His comments thus far have rightly centred on the importance for children of having a stable family background, but does he also agree that marriage is important for looking after more elderly family members as well, and increasingly so? My own family has had experience of this. People need a solid family life to look after elderly parents or grandparents who might need care, even if not at a level that requires them to go into a home.
Sir Gerald Howarth
I could not agree more. My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point—one that is not often made but needs to be, particularly as our elderly population continues to grow. The importance of families sustaining that elderly generation will increase. My own children never cease to remind me that I need to be kind and generous to them, because they will be choosing my old folks’ home. I do not know quite what they mean, but there we go.
The statistics I have quoted provide sound reasons why the state should encourage marriage. International studies have found that couple counselling has been effective in improving the quality of relationships. Relationship guidance and support from organisations such as Relate should be at couples’ disposal. I am pleased that the Government have pledged £30 million to support these initiatives, although I understand that only 2% of those eligible are able to access the facilities, because of a lack of resources. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has been doing hugely important work in the field of providing counselling to those whose relationships are in difficulty.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that those who wish to stay at home, whether the father or the mother, should be encouraged to do so, if that is what they wish? Government policy should not push them out.
Sir Gerald Howarth
Again, I agree with my hon. Friend. Our friends always say how nice our children are, and perhaps it is all down to me, but actually it is not; it is down to my wife, because she gave up her job and spent the early years of our children’s lives looking after them. At dinner parties, people would say to my wife, “What do you do?” and she would say that she looked after the children, to which they would reply, “Oh, so you don’t do anything else.” Well, seeing all of my hon. Friends here who are male—[Interruption.] They are not all male, but many are, although sitting in front of me is my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), the mother of three children. Those men who have been asked to look after our children in the way that mothers do find it extremely demanding. The idea of the full-time mother staying at home has been belittled for far too long and the role should be properly recognised.
Many others beyond Relate seek to provide support to those whose relationships are challenged, and I salute all of them. The churches individually do a tremendous job in seeking to heal the wounds, but I wish that the bishops would be more vocal in their condemnation of dysfunctional lifestyles. Like the Bishop of Manchester, they seem to have no shortage of views on the iniquity of the Chancellor’s proposals on welfare, despite the overwhelming public support for them, but they seem reluctant to pronounce on the value and the virtue of fidelity.
I have been much encouraged by reading about Sir Paul Coleridge, a High Court judge who seems to have been eased out of his place for having trenchant and principled views on the importance of traditional marriage. He recently warned of the “yawning public ignorance” about the mental effects on children of conflict between parents, even from birth. He believes that the Government have spent too much time pushing through the same-sex marriage legislation rather than tackling a crisis of family breakdown.
The cost to the taxpayer, the cost in human misery and the damage to children serve to prove why it is time that Parliament took the issue more seriously. I hope that the Government will push it much higher up the agenda than they have been able to do up until now.
Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. Colleagues, about five people have caught my eye and we have about 50 minutes remaining. If we self-regulate at about nine minutes each, we should all get there, but I will let you know how we get on.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) on securing this important debate.
I speak from the perspective that supporting stronger relationships is a public health issue. The importance of relationships in preventing disease and in prolonging life, health and well-being is becoming increasingly recognised, not only for partners in a relationship, but for their children, their wider family and the community at large.
The scale of the problem of relationship breakdown is such that we cannot put it into the “too difficult” category. Government have to act and treat it as a public health issue. The public health outcomes framework should make explicit mention of family and relationship factors. In particular, we need to be concerned about the impact of family breakdown on those in more deprived households. Relationship breakdown affects them more than others, and the outcome for the children can be disproportionately serious.
According to a recent YouGov survey for the Prince’s Trust of 2,161 young people aged 16 to 25, 21% of the children in poor homes said that no one had ever told them, “I love you.” Those results show that young people from deprived homes where there are not necessarily functioning and strong relationship standards are significantly more likely to face symptoms of mental illness, including suicidal thoughts, feelings of self-loathing and panic attacks. Young people who grow up in poverty are also twice as likely to believe that no one cares about them—22% expressed such a view compared with a figure of 10% for the wider youth population. The tragedy is that many young people are growing up today in households where they have no role models for strong relationships.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
My constituency of Belfast North, which is one of the most deprived in the United Kingdom, bears testimony to what the hon. Lady is saying. Great work is being done by local groups on relationship support, but does she agree that part of this issue is the need to take away the stigma attached to going for help about relationships? There needs to be more education to ensure that people feel comfortable about coming forward.
Fiona Bruce
I agree entirely and hope to come on to that issue.
Professor Scott Stanley has talked about the perfect storm that is brewing with
“an ever greater amount of family instability”
and has said that for young people the problems are going to be pronounced. He says:
“Attachment is an unalterable, important human need and reality, and how attachment systems form in individuals really matters”
for their future health and well-being. He also argues that:
“The cultural systems and structures that always have helped couples clarify, form, and maintain strong commitments have been steadily eroding”—
most notably, the sense that marriage and childbearing inherently belong together, which makes ongoing stability more likely than not.
The nature and extent of the problem we are up against have all the hallmarks of a public health emergency. The Office for National Statistics recently found that people’s personal relationships, mental health and overall sense of well-being are all intimately bound up with each other. But the stakes are even higher than that: in many cases it is about life and death. A huge review of 148 studies, with almost one third of a million participants, that looked at how social relationships influence the risk of mortality showed that people with stronger social relationships have an incredible 50% increased likelihood of survival when compared with those with poor or insufficient social relationships.
I want to give credit to Dr Samantha Callan of the Centre for Social Justice for drawing many of these issues to my attention. She argues that the influence of social relationships on risk of mortality is comparable with risk factors such as smoking, and exceeds many well-known risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity.
Other potential public health issues are isolation and loneliness. The absence of loving relationships of any sort is bad for health and is linked with increased risk of cardio-vascular disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity and death. One of my constituents has written to me to say that it is absolutely critical that the new health and wellbeing boards take into account the issue of loneliness and focus on how they can improve relationship support, bearing in mind the impact that loneliness is having on our older generation.
Studies on the impact of relationship difficulties suggest that improving couple relationships has the potential to reduce alcohol misuse. Recent studies focusing on metabolic syndrome suggest that obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and poor blood sugar metabolism, all of which increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke, are other mechanisms by which poor marital adjustment increases poor health outcomes for women.
There is also the issue of obesity among children. Children who are raised by parents who have what is called an authoritative—not an authoritarian—parenting style apparently eat more healthily, are more physically active and have a lower body mass index than children raised under other parenting styles, such as authoritarian, permissive, indulgent, uninvolved or neglectful. Reports say that marital dissatisfaction results in more authoritarian and less authoritative parenting. In other words, there is a vicious cycle. The quality of the parental relationship has a significant bearing on children’s health. The sad fact is that disadvantaged children suffer the most.
If a focus on relationships has the potential to deliver significant public health gains, how do we realise those gains? Certainly, building stronger relationships requires encouraging couples to build on good habits and to reduce bad ones. We should encourage and support proposals within plans such as the “Let’s Stick Together” programme developed by Care for the Family, which talks about avoiding negative habits. Often the issue is skills, which can be developed. Such skills include being responsive or even enthusiastic about what a partner is saying, expressing feelings of warmth and affection, managing conflict, communicating well and preserving a friendship, as well as learning how to perceive and demonstrate commitment and deal constructively with misunderstandings. All those skills can be learned, and learning them is critical when people have had no role models.
We also need preventive relationship education, web-based support and specialist counselling and therapeutic services—prevention rather than cure. Could we not move some of the millions of pounds that Relate receives to work at the outset of relationships instead of using the money to deal with the fallout and damage at the end?
The CEO of the Fatherhood Institute, Adrienne Burgess, has said:
“Encouraging parents to both take a lot of responsibility for looking after the child…and earning is a great way to help couples become real team parents. When they do this child rearing brings them together and means they are less likely to split up.”
On maternity services, Adrienne Burgess has argued:
“Increasing the potential for both of them to be involved is a really simple way to help strengthen couple relationships.”
To return to my point about the elderly, loneliness has significant links to a range of chronic conditions, including high blood pressure and depression, and increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by over 60%. On average, 10% of the population aged over 65 is chronically lonely, which means that they feel lonely all or most of the time. It is vital that the health implications of this issue are recognised by those making decisions about local health priorities. The proportion of elderly people in our population is increasing. Many of them live alone due to relationship breakdown. Helping them to sustain partner relationships, with the mutual support that such relationships can provide in later life, could carry major personal and public health benefits.
The Relationships Foundation has described strong relationships as a national asset that we should preserve and strengthen. The social capital of families and communities is a sustainable bedrock not only of our national wealth but of our well-being. Stronger relationships between couples mean that those couples can then provide strength and support up and down generations, across families and out into communities. That is a national resource that we must nurture and cultivate, and that we ignore at our peril.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) on bringing this matter to the House for support and consideration. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). Perhaps I am a bit biased, but I believe that she always puts forward a good case on these issues. We are both concerned about them and are here to show our support. The Chamber is full of Members who, we were saying before the debate started, are the likely suspects. They are the ones who support what we are about in this debate on strengthening families.
I want to make a few comments in support of marriage in its totality. I do not want to be judgmental in the information that I relay. I am blessed in that I come from a strong family, and my parents are still a tower of strength in my life—my mother is 82 and my dad is 84—but I know that not everybody has the stable background that I had. I also know that there are single-parent families who simply could not do a better job raising their family than the one they are doing. I understand that and want to put that on the record right away. I believe that we have a role in this place in strengthening families and relationships, which is why I congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot on bringing this matter forward.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that if we polled young people about their aspirations, it is unlikely that they would aspire to be a single parent? The reality is that we have to get in early and make sure that we give our young people the infrastructure in their lives so that they are able to make wise decisions and are not at risk of their relationships breaking down.
Jim Shannon
Those are wise words from the hon. Gentleman and I agree with him wholeheartedly. It is important that, through this debate, we try to explain why we feel that marriage is important and why it should be an aspiration of all young people. I believe that it is, by the way, but things happen and relationships fall down. That is a fact of life.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
The Library’s debate pack states:
“On current trends, 48% of children born last year”—
2013—
“are likely to see the breakdown of their parents’ relationship.”
That is why some sort of early intervention is needed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) said that the stigma must be removed. It must be removed because 48% is unacceptable.
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. His wise words and heart contribute to this debate.
I have been an advocate of marriage between a man and a woman as the most stable way to raise a child, and I am on the record as saying that during a Bill Committee debate last year. I advocate that not because my parents remain a strong partnership after 60 years of being together, but because it is a fact that those who are married have a more stable relationship than those who cohabit. I base that on information and statistics that have been made available to me, and any social worker or person in that area of expertise will agree. I stress again that some families outside that mode do a great job, and I do not suggest that marriage is the only right way; however, it has proved to be the most stable way.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
My hon. Friend will not be surprised that I draw to his attention to the fact that God says, in his precious word, that he put us together in families. Although many people have sought to undermine marriage, does my hon. Friend not agree that the scriptural bond of marriage is still the foundation stone of a strong society, and will be in years to come?
Jim Shannon
I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend’s wise words. Marriage is the bedrock of society. I have been married for 26 years and I have a very understanding wife. I do not say this with pride, but I was not always present while my children were being reared. My wife was a housewife and looked after them. Being a housewife is sometimes a harder job than working in a shop or elsewhere. The way my three boys have come on is a credit to my wife and the guidance she gave them, and I make no bones about that.
A consistent feature of cohabitation has been its relative instability compared with marriage. Some UK and European studies draw attention to the fact that, regardless of socio-economic status and education, cohabiting couples are between two and two and a half times more likely to break up than equivalent married couples. That is a fact; it is not made up. Even the poorest 20% of married couples are more stable than all but the richest 20% of cohabiting couples. The statistics are clear. Three quarters of family breakdown involving children under five arise from the separation of non-married parents. Only 9% of married parents split before their child’s fifth birthday compared with 35% of unmarried parents.
I was just talking to my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds), and we want to put on the record the good work that Relate does. I sometimes refer people to Relate and although its advice may not always have worked as I might have wished, it was always expert and important. I have also referred constituents to friends in their church. No one can speak better about churches’ good work than my hon. Friend the Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea), but I want to put on the record my thanks to them for giving guidance, support, help and advice when it is needed.
CARE has supplied me with information combining new data on family breakdown from Understanding Society with household data from the Office for National Statistics. Research from the Marriage Foundation shows that cohabiting parents now account for 19% of couples with dependent children, but 50% of family breakdowns. We all know that marriages may break down irrevocably. I am no man’s judge and never will be, but every effort should be made to prevent breakdown.
Statistics also show that when a separated couple was married, the children are 60% more likely to have contact with their father than if the parents were unmarried, and that separated fathers are more likely to contribute to their child’s maintenance if the parents were married. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has just left the Chamber, referred to the father’s role and said that even in a broken-down relationship it is important that a father remains in contact with the children as they are growing up.
The prevalence of mental health issues among children of cohabiting parents is more than 75% higher than among those of married parents. Children from broken homes are nine times more likely to become young offenders. I give these statistics with no joy, but they account for 70% of all young offenders. I could continue to give statistics, such as the rise in the cost of family failure, which the hon. Member for Aldershot said was £44 billion. That is a massive amount of money. Failed relationships now cost every UK taxpayer £1,475 a year.
The Centre for Social Justice and the Marriage Foundation make it clear that the Government should strengthen stability and reduce family breakdown by encouraging and promoting marriage. The Democratic Unionist party, of which I am privileged to be a member, supported the married couple’s tax allowance. With my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), I have pressed the Chancellor to implement that allowance. I believe that every hon. Member in the Chamber probably supports that.
Mr Andrew Turner
Will the hon. Gentleman help me and say whether there is a relationship between membership of the IRA and the extremist Protestant organisations, and the breakdown of families?
Jim Shannon
I cannot give the statistics, but I am sure that there has been some impact.
The public policy benefits of marriage are extensive and should be recognised in the UK tax system, as is the case in most OECD countries. Although marriage was recognised in the UK income tax system for many years and continues to be recognised in most OECD countries, that recognition was removed in the UK in 1999. Today, the UK is the only large, developed economy not to recognise marriage in its income tax system. Only 20% of people in OECD countries live in jurisdictions that do not recognise marriage and most of them live in the UK or Mexico. A fully transferable allowance would reduce discrimination against one-earner couples, increase the threshold for low and middle-income families, and reduce the imbalance between one-earner and two-earner families.
In 2010, the Conservatives proposed a transferable allowance of £750 for married couples and civil partners under which a spouse or partner who could not use their personal allowance could pass it to his or her partner if they were a basic rate payer. The Chancellor gave a commitment on that in the House and we have pressed him to ensure that it is introduced before the next election. I understand that he has given a commitment to do so. What discussions has the Minister had on the date of implementation of that allowance? It is time to introduce this encouragement for families. If nothing else is heard in this debate, I hope that that will be heard and that the Government will encourage families and marriage and do what they promised.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure, Mr Streeter, to serve under your chairmanship. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) for securing this important debate, and I look forward to the Minister’s response; I am sure he will bring common sense and sensitivity to it.
It goes without saying that the family is the backbone of our society. As I am sure many hon. Members have experienced, when couple relationships are turbulent, it shows in other aspects of the couple’s lives. Several studies show that those who are married or in stable relationships live longer lives and require medical assistance from the state less frequently. Couple, family and social relationships may act as a shock absorber in supporting people through life changes, such as becoming a parent, retirement or family bereavement, but for many the relationship itself may need support during, after and even before such events. That is why it is vital that when things go wrong in relationships, there are organisations to turn to that offer affordable support and guidance.
One such organisation operating in my constituency is Relate, which offers counselling services to couples, or those in complex relationships, which are now more common, as relationships and family structures are evolving all the time. Without Relate, many in relationships would not be able to afford the appropriate counselling; Relate has been able to subsidise its support, making it accessible to everyone, not just the well-off. Last year, it gave bursaries to more than 1,400 people.
I was alarmed last year when the director of Relate Derby and Southern Derbyshire contacted me to say that Derby city council had told it that it would reduce funding further. It looks as though Derbyshire county council will follow suit. In fact, it is expected that in time there will be no funding whatever from the two councils. The squeeze on funding has resulted in a 30% reduction in Relate staff numbers in the area. That means that the charity is finding it difficult to cope with the increasing demand for all its services.
Local changes to funding structures mean that many central initiatives could be undermined. Relate Derby and Southern Derbyshire is on the precipice of substantial cuts in funding that will mean a reduction in the provision of services, which will be felt by hundreds of vulnerable clients. Without regular grants from Derby city council and Derbyshire county council, funding for Relate services in the area increasingly comes from spot purchasing, which means that the charity experiences peaks in demand without the core funding to ensure that staffing levels are sufficient to meet that demand. The other issue with spot funding is that it generates an increase in administration costs for Relate. That has already had a knock-on effect on its provision of additional services. It is considering no longer accepting further requests. Children and young people in other groups will be all the poorer if they are unable to access the excellent services of our local Relate.
Relate Derby and Southern Derbyshire is well known for its work with people with Asperger’s syndrome and their families. Relate offers live chat, e-mail and webcam counselling, which can be more suitable for different client groups, such as those with Asperger’s. That counselling might well disappear if no money can be found, even though the demand is even greater this year. Last year, Relate helped more than 250 families in the area in which there were people with Asperger’s. It is clear that the withdrawal of funding by Derby city council and the county council, and the change to funding structures for services, will have a profound and negative effect on the number of referrals that Relate can deal with and the ongoing support it can offer to stakeholders.
Jeopardising the provision of subsidised counselling has an impact not only on the relationships of the couples and families who need it, but on the police force, the health service, social services, the school system, the courts and the economy as a whole. As has been said, a report by the Relationships Foundation estimated that the total cost to the economy of relationship breakdown was some £46 billion. That is perhaps not surprising when one considers that those who have experienced the breakdown of a relationship often have poorer employment outcomes and poorer physical and mental health.
The consequences of conflict in the home are even more keenly felt by children; those who experience such situations typically have poorer outcomes in the classroom. Domestic violence is a substantial issue for a number of Relate’s clients. In fact, 23% of all those referred by the two councils are victims of domestic violence, but only 4% of those had reported the abuse and violence to any other agency. Relate is doing an incredibly valuable service that other agencies seem unable to do. It goes without saying that it is in the Government’s interest to ensure that affordable counselling is accessible.
While I am extremely pleased by the Government’s commitment to keeping families together—demonstrated by their £30 million investment in relationship support bodies over the life of this Parliament—there is still more to be done to support organisations such as Relate Derby and Southern Derbyshire, which provides incredible value for money and great expertise for local families. The Government should further promote the importance of relationships by requiring local authorities to recognise family relationships as a core responsibility, and ensure that they do not continue to be overlooked in favour of other priorities in local government funding decisions.
Fiona Bruce
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does she agree that local authorities should be required to measure levels of family breakdown in their locality? Family breakdown is a recognised index of social deprivation and a key driver of social disadvantage.
Pauline Latham
My hon. Friend makes a substantial point. If local authorities did that, they would have more information to go on, instead of just cutting funding without thinking about the consequences. The health and wellbeing boards could help fund some of the work done by organisations such as Relate; that would help. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) has done the House a great service in ensuring that we have this debate. It is such an important debate that it is a matter of regret that we are having it in Back-Bench time in Westminster Hall.
The effects of marital breakdown on society are enormous. It is a modern plague and it is causing not just expense but misery. We have to speak up about it all the time, because there is almost a conspiracy of silence about such issues. Over the past 50 years, a view has grown in our permissive society that people are happiest if they are completely liberated and can do what they want and say, “It is about me.” The Churches, successive Governments, schools, the BBC, national newspapers and we as Members of Parliament are all complicit in that permissive view of society, which has left a trail of despair in its wake.
Sir Paul Coleridge, the family division judge, has been mentioned. He is one of the very few people who have had the courage to speak about this matter. He deals with these issues every day of his working life. He warns of the “yawning public ignorance” of the mental effects on children of conflict between parents, even from birth. He is either retired or about to retire, and The Daily Telegraph said that he
“decided to step down because of opposition from within the judiciary to his support for traditional marriage. He has been placed under investigation and could be officially censured over comments last year criticising the Government for pushing through same-sex marriage legislation rather than tackling a ‘crisis of family breakdown’.”
He is a man who knows what is going on and he should be listened to.
I am grateful to the Library for its work on the briefing papers, but I do not want to quote a load of statistics, because we all know the truth. It is absolutely clear what is going on and there is no argument about it. The decline of traditional marriage has been an unalloyed disaster. People in government, in schools and in Churches are frightened of speaking out about this issue. They think that if they say they support traditional marriage, they are somehow criticising people who are not married or who, for all sorts of reasons that are not their fault, are no longer married, but that is not the case. Surely we can value everyone in society and how they live, while speaking out for what is right in society, which is marriage and people setting out to stay married if they want to bring up children.
Again, we are indebted to the Library for telling us what is going on. These are all statistics and facts. They are not made up by people who come here with a particular point of view. A story in The Daily Telegraph on a National Centre for Social Research study said:
“One in eight divorced or separated fathers has lost all contact with their children”.
Is that not dreadful? Is that not sad?
Sir Edward Leigh
Indeed. One in eight divorced or separated fathers do not see their children at all. The Daily Telegraph story continues:
“Almost a million men in the UK are estimated to have dependent children with whom they do not live. Almost 130,000 of them have no contact at all with their children.”
A story in The Daily Telegraph on the British social attitudes survey said:
“The belief that couples should ideally get married before starting a family has effectively collapsed within a generation, the British Social Attitudes survey, the longest running and most authoritative barometer of public opinion in the UK, shows.
Only a minority of people now view marriage as the starting point for bringing up children, with support for that view almost halving in less than 25 years.”
Do we not have a responsibility for the change in social attitudes? We are told, “Britain has changed. You have to accept it,” but do we not have a right to speak up for what is right?
Dr McCrea
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that behind the statistics in the briefing papers are many human tragedies and stories? We are talking about people and lives. Does he also agree that the traditional family unit has been constantly under attack in our society? It is about time that the Government did more to encourage and strengthen the marriage bond, rather than airbrushing marriage from family policy documents.
Sir Edward Leigh
Absolutely right; but it is the people at the bottom of the heap who suffer the most. We are not talking about society divorces in the 1950s. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people living, effectively, a tragic life. The Marriage Foundation has interesting statistics, including:
“45 per cent of young teenagers (aged 13-15 years old) are not living with both parents…Half of all family breakdown takes place during the first two years”;
but—and this is the important point:
“Amongst parents who remain intact, 93 per cent are married…In sharp contrast, of the 47 per cent of children born to unmarried parents today, the report predicts that just 11 per cent will reach the age of 16 with unmarried parents still together.”
Marriage works. It is best for children. Every statistic proves it. Why are not the Churches, schools and Government crying that out from the roof tops?
Sir Gerald Howarth
My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech. He asks why Churches and schools do not recognise what many people say is the bleeding obvious, which is backed up by all the statistics. It is true that the previous Government had a good document supporting families, and the present Government have one. However, they do not give effect to the means by which we can strengthen marriage and those relationships, and send a clarion call out to people: “This is the way to lead your life—if you want a fulfilled life, you are more likely to have it through this means.”
Sir Edward Leigh
The Government are making one effort. They have said that they will bring in a transferable allowance for married couples. It is a matter of regret and has already been noted that the Labour party spokesman is here alone. Fair enough—he will speak in a moment; but it is a matter of regret that the Labour party has continually laughed at the proposal from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Labour viewpoint is “This is rubbish and will not make any difference.” The fact is that if one member—usually the mother—of a married couple who are doing their best to bring up children decides to stay at home, they are uniquely disadvantaged by the tax and benefits system.
There are six key arguments that drive a coach and horses through the arguments against the transferable allowance. First, the UK is out of line with international convention in not recognising marriage in its tax system. We are virtually alone of all big countries. One-earner married couples—those who would benefit from a transferable allowance—are thereby at a serious disadvantage relative to comparable families. The second is the distributional argument: introducing a transferable allowance for married couples will disproportionately benefit those in the lower half of the income distribution. In that way, it is quite unlike the coalition policy of increasing the personal income tax threshold to £10,000.
The third argument is about the married couples allowance, which was dismissed by some as something of an anomaly, but which played a key role in sustaining one-earner families. The fourth argument is that a transferable allowance would help to make work more rewarding for many of the poorest in society. The fifth is that transferable allowances should be introduced as soon as possible to compensate for the attack on one-earner families resulting from the introduction of a higher-income child benefit charge. The sixth and final argument is the stay-at-home spouse argument; most one-earner families do not have the option of becoming two-earner couple families.
The Government are at least doing one small thing. It will not, on its own, persuade anyone to get married or stay married; but at last we have a statement. That is what we want today from the Minister—and from the Prime Minister and all Ministers. We want them to have the courage to stand up for traditional marriage. That is not just because the current situation is a modern plague that costs us £46 billion a year—it is not just about the cost. The point is the human misery that comes in its wake. That is why the debate is so important.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) warmly on obtaining the debate. I am extremely grateful to the colleagues who have been here throughout this debate on a matter of important public policy. It is an area where we politicians sometimes fear to tread, thinking that it is an aspect of personal life where we should not intrude, and that we should get back to the building of bridges, bypasses, hospitals and schools. I reject that argument entirely. The issue is one of public policy that affects the amount of tax we pay, how children do in school, the criminal justice system and pretty much every area of life.
In support of my view, I quote the Prime Minister. In a great speech to Relate in June 2008 he said that
“there are some who think politics should stay out of issues like relationships…I just think that’s incredibly superficial and short-sighted”.
He continued:
“For too long, politicians here have been afraid of getting into this territory, for fear of looking old-fashioned or preachy.”
Those of us who support the thrust of his arguments are here with the full and explicit support of the Prime Minister, because he gets it. In his speech he said:
“The number one challenge we’ve got in this country today is to strengthen our society. There is no more important way of doing that than strengthening families, and there’s nothing more important to families than the strength of their relationships.”
I am delighted he said that. He continued by commenting that:
“helping people maintain strong relationships is not some fluffy alternative to reducing budget deficits—it is the way to reduce budget deficits, by reducing the demands on the state caused by family breakdown.”
In December 2010, as Prime Minister, he made another speech reiterating the important commitments he had made as Leader of the Opposition.
The parents of half the children born today will split up by the time the child is 15. By the age of 16, one in six children will not see their father at all. Cohabiting parents are sadly three times more likely than married couples to have separated by the time their child is five. A child whose parents split up is twice as likely to live in poverty as one whose parents stayed together, and has a 75% greater likelihood of underachievement at school. The Youth Justice Board says that 70% of children and young people in custody have an absent father. How much more evidence do we need that the issue is important, and a legitimate area of public policy? That is why those of us who care about it are here today. To me, it is a question of giving people the skills and support to make a success of the most important area of their lives; it is about reinforcing good habits and positive social norms.
The crisis is unfolding slowly and imperceptibly, without dramatic moments and media attention, but that is no excuse for not drawing attention to it. That is why the debate is so important, and why we look forward hugely to the Minister’s response. We want to encourage him to continue the good work begun by the Government. His boss, the Secretary of State for Education, who is charged with the matter, takes the issue seriously, too. He made an important speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research in August 2008 and considered the educational underperformance of children growing up in unstable families, citing important work by James Heckman of the university of Chicago.
We have been around the piece and we agree that we need to do something about the problem, so I want to be practical. I have five practical, positive steps that we could take. The first is to do with relationship support. There are some wonderful programmes today, and I want to give credit to them. My complaint is that often they are too small and piecemeal. I yearn to roll them out across the country so that they can be carried out to scale, to tackle the size and challenge of the problem. The first programme I want to mention is called As 2 Become 3, and is provided by Insights for Life, run by Bob and Jess Read as part of an antenatal package. That is important because dad is almost always there with mum as they go to the hospital for their antenatal courses, and the feedback about it has been tremendously good.
Let me quote what some couples said. Ali and Simone said of the course:
“The course also helped us make sure we share this 24/7 job and still find time for each other which is important as this is why the baby is here in the first place.”
Adrian and Britta, another couple, said:
“We discussed which values are most important to us, and how they could be developed and nurtured. Learning about different ways to manage conflict gave us permission to be more open and honest, and we now try to collaborate rather than merely compromising. It has been worth the extra effort as it has brought us closer.”
Many colleagues here have talked about the importance of giving people the skills and support of early intervention. Why is every single antenatal course in the country not signposting that course? Why is it not being made available in every single NHS hospital? If it is having good results and good outcomes, let us do it everywhere, not only in a few selected places.
The next course I would like to mention is Let’s Stick Together, which is run by Care for the Family. The Minister’s Department is giving funding to the Let’s Stick Together programme. Pilots are being run in different areas across the country, and we look forward to the evaluation of those. It is an hour’s course that is typically done for new parents in children’s centres. The feedback is really positive and people often want to go on and do more courses to keep their marriages and relationships strong. I celebrate that work; we should have more of it.
Another course, which is run by Family Action, is called Parents as Partners. It looks at parenting issues and encourages strong parenting, but all the academic evidence is that, as the relationship between mum and dad is strengthened, where the parents are together, the parenting outcomes are even better. I pay tribute to Family Action and the important work that it is doing.
This morning I had a briefing from Safe Families for Children, which is an excellent project to help vulnerable children. It involves early respite care for children whose parents are in deep difficulties, before the situation gets to the fostering stage. It has been run in the Chicago area very successfully, saving a lot of money there, and it has been rolled out in the north-east. I think the Minister has had an invitation from Sir Peter Vardy to go and see it, and I hope that he may be able to take that up at some point. Parents are most likely to split up just after a child has been born, so if parents can be given some space to deal with difficult issues, that can help the couple to stay together.
Last, but by no means least, I pay huge tribute to the work done by Holy Trinity Brompton, by Nicky and Sila Lee, who are the pioneers of the marriage preparation course, the marriage course, and the restored lives course, for people whose relationships have sadly split up—we must not forget such people, because we want to help them to rebuild their lives, so that they can build stronger relationships and marriages if they get the opportunity to marry again. That work is being looked at around the world. In Shanghai, they are very keen on the work of the marriage course. The Chinese Government get it in a big way and are copying in Shanghai what Nicky and Sila Lee are doing. That is the first area that I wanted to cover—practical things being done around the country. However, let us do them to scale and make sure that there is proper signposting in all those areas.
Secondly, I want those courses, and others which have not yet come to my attention but are no doubt happening, to have a kitemark—a Government seal of approval—so that public authorities such as local authorities, hospitals and others can refer people to them with confidence, knowing that proper provision is made and people’s qualifications and other standards will be acceptable. That would be hugely helpful, so that directors of public health, people running family centres, local authorities and so on could signpost such courses with confidence.
The third area I want to address, which has been mentioned by some colleagues, is local authority and local council engagement. I believe that if we value something, we measure it, and we also measure what we value. It is therefore really important that local authorities know what is going on in terms of relationship health in their areas. If local authorities saw the extent of family breakdown in their area, they would be more determined to do something about it. They have the opportunity to do so through their child poverty strategies, which need to address family breakdown. If they saw that an area was worse than another similar area, they would ask why that was and what that other area was doing better. They would perhaps want providers of some of the courses that I mentioned to come in and do something about it.
In my area, I set up the Bedfordshire Family Trust. We run couple strengthening courses. We get people coming to them and know that the courses work and that people appreciate them. That is the sort of thing that local authorities should be able to refer people to in order to save their budgets on housing, care placements and so on, because, as we know, local authorities have to watch the pennies at the moment. That is the third area where I would like to see action.
The fourth issue is public health, and that shows why family is so important. We have a Minister from the Department for Education here and I do not expect him to be an expert on health issues, but he will have heard colleagues mention health earlier. We know that there are significant implications and health costs, and that poor-quality relationships can lead to increases in alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease, and linked problems with childhood obesity and diabetes.
As the chair of the all-party group on strengthening couple relationships, I was hugely surprised by one fact. We issued a report earlier this year called “Relationships: the missing link in public health”. Just listen to the data on coronary artery bypass grafting, which is perhaps not something that people would have thought was directly linked to the quality of relationships. The facts are that:
“The quality of couple relationships also has a remarkable impact on survival rates after bypass surgery, with married people being 2.5 times more likely to be alive 15 years after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) than those who are not married, and those in high-satisfaction marriages being 3.2 times more likely to be alive 15 years after CABG compared with those reporting low marital satisfaction”.
That is a reason to have a strong marriage, if no other.
On that fourth point, the cost to the health service of people with long-term conditions is huge. When couples are together and can support each other in older age, we save a huge amount for the health service. That is another reason why we have to take public health seriously.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) on securing the debate, and I thank all those who contributed. There have been some very interesting points made.
I was particularly keen on some of the practical suggestions made by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who is the chair of the all-party group on strengthening couple relationships, as he said. Looking at the group’s minutes, I was struck by some of the issues identified, especially by Dr Lester Coleman of the OnePlusOne charity. He emphasised that those who are more engaged at work enjoy a better quality of relationship. That may be because they are more personally fulfilled and more secure in their personal identity, and therefore are better able to give and share. That would seem to be an argument for making it easier for those who wish to work to do so, and is perhaps also an argument for supporting child care, which is a very important part of the Labour party’s policy, especially at a time when the cost of child care is rising so dramatically.
Apparently, parents, as opposed to non-parents, also experience better-quality relationships, and although I would be the first to accept that many contented couples do not have children, that finding suggests to me that we may need to do all we can to support those who wish to be parents. That might include measures such as those that the Government have embarked on to improve adoption. It might mean working harder to broaden the range of people who can adopt and foster. In some cases, it might mean making fertility treatment available to more couples on the NHS.
I also understand that Dr Coleman says that where there is greater work-family conflict, that can have quite a negative impact on the quality of relationships. Of course, that brings to mind all the arguments about making work flexible, so that it fits in with families, and the issue of the living wage, which we comment on from time to time. I am not sure that all of that has received enough attention in the debate so far.
It is perhaps also worth noting that in the YouGov survey commissioned by Relate, to which the hon. Member for Aldershot referred, 59% of respondents were concerned about the strain that money worries were placing on their relationship, which of course is one reason why we on this side of the House take so much time to emphasise the problems of the cost of living at the moment.
Steve McCabe
I think that I can speak for my side of the House, Mr Streeter. When it comes to strengthening couple relationships, the hon. Member for Aldershot has been clear. He is talking about heterosexual couples. We learned about his views on this issue during the debate on same-sex marriage. He has repeated them honestly today in this debate and in his ePolitix article, in which he states that marriage
“for the majority of Conservative MPs can only be between a man and a woman”.
I do not think that in this day and age it is possible to make such a narrow distinction, because whatever the views of individuals, the law and society are clear: “couple relationships” can mean married, cohabiting, heterosexual and homosexual relationships, however difficult that is for some people to accept. I acknowledge that many people put great store by traditional marriage, but that does not mean that we can deny the reality of what we see around us.
Sir Gerald Howarth
What the hon. Gentleman has heard throughout this debate, though, is that all the evidence has shown that cohabiting couple households—I am referring to the statistics relating to family disorder, the breakdown of family life and so on—are much more akin to single-parent households than to married couple households. No one is saying that people have to live that lifestyle, but the facts suggest to us that there is one lifestyle in this country that is likely to produce a happier outcome and is better for children, and that is marriage. His right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), a former Secretary of State for the Home Department, said that himself, so why cannot the hon. Gentleman accept it?
Steve McCabe
As a divorcé, I do not feel that my divorce has prevented me from being able to have a further solid relationship; nor has it prevented me from having a strong parental role or from being part of a family.
It is interesting that the Government’s most explicit policy to support marriage, the married couple’s tax allowance—we heard quite a lot about that from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh)—is available only to one third of married couples. The proposals are really designed for the situation in which one partner does not work outside the home or earns very little. It is really a policy for stay-at-home mums, which is perhaps slightly at odds with some of Dr Coleman’s suggestions. Of course, it is available only for married mums, not for widows, cohabiting mums or anyone like that. Perhaps most astonishingly of all, it is available for the love rat who deserts his wife and family and runs off with someone else’s wife. He can remarry and claim the allowance. That strikes me as a slightly perverse way of strengthening couple relationships.
The other thing that is slightly strange about the policy is that it applies to only 4 million of the 12.3 million married couples, and it is not clear what impact it will have on children, given that pensioner families make up more than one third of the beneficiaries. In fact, only 35% of the 30% of families who gain from the policy have children, and only 17% have children under the age of five. It is hardly a well targeted policy if its aim is to support the concerns raised by the hon. Gentleman.
Andrew Selous
I want to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the international facts. If we look across the OECD, we see that the UK is very much an exception in not recognising marriage at all in the tax system. In fact, it is really just us and Mexico alone among all the OECD countries that do not recognise it; 80% of the population of OECD countries live under a system in which marriage is recognised.
Steve McCabe
I was talking about the efficacy of a particular measure. Despite the doom and gloom, if we accept that not all relationships come in the form that the hon. Member for Aldershot would like to see—I accept that that is his view, and I understand that he holds it sincerely—the Relate survey to which I referred has some interesting observations. Let me pay tribute to the comments by the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) about Relate. I agree: I think that it is an excellent organisation that we should protect. The Relate survey paints a slightly rosier picture. It found that 93% of people said that, when times were hard, relationships within their family were important. Although the media sometimes presents our society as one in which family relationships have broken down, Relate could not find evidence that that was the case overall. According to its survey, families—albeit sometimes new families or reconstituted families—remain the backbone of our support systems.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) for raising this deeply important subject, and for stoically being here despite his heavy cold.
Like all those who contributed this afternoon, I believe that strong and stable families are the backbone of a strong and stable society—the key to ensuring that children grow up in a loving environment and develop into healthy and fulfilled adults. That is why the Government have invested significantly in supporting families and couple relationships, as well as the institution of marriage—because we understand the crucial role that the family plays in providing a foundation for a child’s development and success in later life. I saw that for myself in my own personal and professional life before coming to Parliament, so I need no persuading of the merits of a strong, stable and loving family environment in bringing about a better society.
Although the view that I have set out is based partly on what we know intrinsically works, and the values that help to improve and enhance lives, we also know from research that happy relationships lead to better physical and emotional well-being for all involved. The fact is that the quality of the relationship between parents is strongly linked to positive parenting and better outcomes for children. Family stability is key for children. Sustained parental relationships are associated with a range of positive childhood, adolescent and adult outcomes, including in respect of cognitive development, education—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State himself said that in his speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research in 2008—better job prospects and less propensity to commit crime, as well as in relation to health. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) raised important points about how health outcomes could be improved with the right support for relationships, and measures that we know help to achieve that. I will take away her comments about the health outcomes framework and the role of the health and wellbeing board, and I will discuss the matter with Ministers in the Department of Health to ensure that it is properly considered as those aspects of the health system develop further.
On attachment, which is a vital part of understanding whether a relationship is positive or not, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence will for the first time produce guidelines on what constitutes a secure attachment, which will be an extremely useful addition. Conflict between parents is detrimental to children’s outcomes, hence the high priority we are giving to supporting all couple relationships, particularly those of people who are married. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot told us, evidence shows us that the children of married parents do better than those of cohabiting parents, particularly on measures of social and emotional development at the ages of three and five. We need to ensure that all under-fives receive the best possible support, so such evidence is important.
Centre for Social Justice reports, which many hon. Members have brought with them, have starkly illustrated the considerable emotional, social and economic costs associated with the breakdown of families. As my hon. Friends the Members for Aldershot and for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) have reminded us, those costs amount to an astonishing £46 billion a year, which is not far off the total annual budget for educating all our children.
Important life events, including the transition to parenthood, relocation or changes in employment, can contribute to relationship stress. We must do what we can to encourage couples to take up support at an earlier stage—the early prevention that hon. Members have mentioned in this debate—to ensure that they get through difficult events in their lives. My time at the family Bar has shown me the devastating consequences of not doing so, not only for adults but, perhaps even more importantly, for any children involved. To bring that about, and by virtue of the strong prime ministerial steer, the Government have committed £30 million over the spending review period from 2011 to 2015, which puts funding for relationship support on a much more stable long-term footing. That gives us greater encouragement that we can get couples to use relationship support services.
The Department is funding a range of providers to deliver relationship support services, including one that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) highlighted: the Parents as Partners evidence-based intervention programme delivered by Family Action, which works with couples who are particularly likely to face relationship stress or be at risk of relationship breakdown. There is also a series of campaigns and culture change messages aimed at employers, new parents and young people to raise awareness and encourage them to seek help on relationships. There is training for early years workers and managers, to help them to encourage positive relationships between parents, and to engage better with fathers, in particular, on relationships and parenting. The public policy agenda is being developed—a point made by my hon. Friend—through the formation of the Relationships Alliance, which I know he has been instrumental in helping to bring together.
I take on board the point that my hon. Friend made about the need to scale up some of those excellent services, and the Relationships Alliance is well placed to help achieve that. In my ongoing discussions with the alliance—I am meeting representatives next week—I am sure that that will be on the agenda. All those valuable services are provided by expert organisations. Many hon. Members have praised the work done by such organisations, which include Relate, Marriage Care, the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships and OnePlusOne. Those four organisations, which launched the Relationships Alliance in the House of Commons in November, will be key in helping to establish a much more coherent and cohesive message on what is available to those who need support.
Fiona Bruce
I thank the Minister for his constructive personal concern and his comments so far. We have heard today that the issue straddles many different areas: education, local government, the criminal justice system and health and well-being. Would it not be helpful to appoint a dedicated Minister to tackle this issue? Care for the Family has said that it feels as though there is no one in government waking up every morning thinking about this key social policy as a priority. After all that we have heard today, should not there be?
Mr Timpson
As the Minister with responsibility for children and families, I have sympathy with the need to raise the issue across Government and to ensure that all Departments play an active role in establishing what works and delivering it, but as my hon. Friend will acknowledge, I am not in a position to start appointing new Ministers or Departments. Forums are available to bring the topic together across Government; in particular, the social justice committee, which is chaired by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has a strong interest in the subject and is well placed to hold such cross-government discussions.
We are doing a significant amount to support families but we must recognise that, sadly, parents separate. When that happens, it can be a difficult time in which families need support on a range of issues. That is why we are improving the information, advice and support available to separated parents outside the court system to help them focus on their children’s needs and to agree workable arrangements for post-separation parenting. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly said, the Children and Families Bill, which is currently in the other place, includes provision to highlight the importance of a child having a relationship with both parents following family breakdown, provided that to do so is safe and in the child’s best interests. The welfare of the individual child must be the court’s paramount consideration, but, subject to that, the parental involvement clause requires courts to presume that the child’s welfare is furthered by the involvement of each parent who can be safely involved. By making clear the basis on which the court makes those decisions, that provision is intended to encourage parents to reach agreement themselves about their child’s care without recourse to the court.
Sir Gerald Howarth
Before my hon. Friend the Minister sits down, may I thank him for the serious attention that he is paying to the issue? We hope that we can support him in raising it up the Government’s agenda. Before we conclude, may I also thank you, Mr Streeter, for all that you have done in this field?
Mr Timpson
It is remiss of me not to have directed similar praise to you, Mr Streeter, and I concur with the words that have just come in your direction.
The Government have commissioned two key pieces of work that will inform future policy makers and commissioners, because problems often start with poor commissioning decisions. That will help in areas such as Mid Derbyshire that want to move away from short-term, spot-purchasing solutions towards something more sustainable. Those two key pieces of work are an independent evaluation of relationship support interventions and a cross-government review of the family stability indicator of the social justice strategy.
Although significant evidence points to the importance of the quality of adult couple relationships to child outcomes, we know from various reviews of literature that there is limited evidence from within the UK about which relationship support practice has the most positive impact on adult and child outcomes. My Department has consequently commissioned research to test the effectiveness of several relationship support interventions, some of which we have already heard about—“Let’s Stick Together”, which my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton and for South West Bedfordshire have mentioned, as well as marriage preparation and couple counselling—to evaluate whether they are as effective as we would like. That report is due at the end of the month.
Steve McCabe
Does the Minister agree that it would be wrong of us to conclude the debate without acknowledging that figures released today show that the divorce rate in this country is falling, not rising?
Mr Timpson
It would be remiss of anyone not to welcome a fall in the divorce rate, but the fact is that it is still far too high. That is why our emphasis is on working with couples at the earliest opportunity so that they never have to reach that stage in their relationship.
The debate has been informative, passionate and serious. Although the Government have done a lot of work in this area, we recognise that there is still work to do, not only on the ground to improve relationship support, but in the messages that come from Government about how we build strong relationships across society. The past 50 years have seen a seismic shift in the structure and composition of families in this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot rightly acknowledged, we should respect many of the reasons why that has happened, but we cannot accept the erosion of marriage and the many well evidenced benefits that it brings to society. That is why the Government are committed to supporting marriage. The marriage tax break is a step in the right direction that will help to ensure that all the attributes marriage brings with it flourish and do not wither.
Lower Thames Crossing
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, and good to see my hon. Friend the Minister in his place. I have debated these matters a number of times with a number of Ministers over the past three and a half years, but this is the first time that I have had the pleasure to debate with him. I am also grateful for the interest shown by hon. Friends present, which shows the importance of the subject.
The Government are considering where to site a new river crossing in the lower Thames area. As we all know, new Thames crossings do not come along very often. Perhaps, as a result, the debate is all the more challenging when they do, but it is important that we get the location right. That is why we need to have a discussion today.
Some people think that the removal of the toll barriers due to take place next year will alleviate the need for a new crossing, given that it will increase capacity at the existing Dartford crossing. However, I think that they are wrong and that to rely too heavily on that solution is excessively short-termist. We need good infrastructure if we are to make the most of economic growth opportunities. I feel that we have insufficient crossings to the east of Tower bridge. I would like to see two more new crossings in London and a new crossing in the lower Thames area, but much further downstream than is proposed in the options before us.
The Government have consulted on three options. One of those has been ruled out, but we are still looking at two. People are looking for clarity, but perhaps the fact that we still have not reached a decision illustrates how difficult the problem is. I suggest to the Minister that, given the fact that there is no obvious solution to the problem, it is time to look again and perhaps consider other options.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing such an important debate and pay tribute to the work she has put into trying to alleviate the congestion that affects both her constituency and mine. Does she acknowledge the difficulties that would result from putting an extra crossing at so-called option A, next to the existing Dartford crossing? That would not, in fact, create an alternative for motorists. It would give them no choice, so if there was any problem on the M25 at that location, the problems that we see today would only get worse.
Jackie Doyle-Price
My hon. Friend pre-empts much of what I was about to say. I completely agree with him. That is really the mistake in the present options before us—to be honest, they are just lines on a map. They are sticking plaster, informed more by cost than by what is in the best interests of developing a sustainable road infrastructure that will actually meet the needs of our growing economy. We all have great ambitions for the Thames Gateway as a powerhouse of economic regeneration, but they will not be realised unless we have adequate road infrastructure in place. That means developing a new lower Thames crossing much further east so that we open up the whole of south Essex and north Kent to new opportunities.
My hon. Friend the Minister will be aware that the two options still under consideration both go through my constituency, but I must say that my objections are not based on nimbyism. My reasons for opposing them relate entirely to the resilience of the road network, by which I mean both the local and the strategic road network. On the local network, Thurrock is a major logistics hub with substantial port infrastructure, so a functioning road infrastructure is crucial to our continued economic success. I advise the Minister that the problems caused by traffic congestion are without doubt the biggest issue in my postbag. I hear from not just residents, but businesses, and they tell me that it is costing them jobs and business.
I am concerned that although the Highways Agency will advise the Department for Transport about the effect on the national road network, insufficient consideration has hitherto been given to the impact of either option on the local road network. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) agrees with me. The reality is that either option A or C—the two still under consideration—would have a critical impact on Thurrock’s local network.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing such an important debate. She is talking about the resilience of the road network and the economic potential of south Essex. Of the two remaining options on the table, A and C, does my hon. Friend agree that as well as not addressing or helping to deliver the full economic potential of south Essex, option C would also have an incredible environmental effect by dividing an established rural community and wrecking one of the most significant remaining rural parts of south Essex.
Jackie Doyle-Price
My hon. Friend is entirely right to identify that environmental impact of option C, which is perhaps the biggest barrier to that option. In addition, option A would have a significant effect on air quality. Taken together, both of those impacts—we are talking about serious environmental damage—show that we are looking at the wrong options.
I would like to say a little more about option A, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford said, is at the site of the existing Dartford crossing. I understand the Highways Agency’s reasons for recommending option A—I have been down to the control room.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I will resume my critique of option A. As I was saying, it is the Highways Agency’s preferred option, due to the current challenges of managing traffic flow into the tunnels. However, as things stand, Thurrock routinely experiences gridlock whenever there is an incident at the Dartford crossing, and that would only get worse if option A was chosen. To give an example, over the Christmas period, the bridge was closed on three occasions due to high winds. Those in my constituency who live inside the M25, including myself, are totally cut off when such incidents take place. The traffic conditions are utterly miserable. On 23 December, it took me 105 minutes to travel two miles between Lakeside shopping centre and my house. Dartford crossing may be part of our strategic road infrastructure, but when things go wrong, it has a great impact on the local road network in Thurrock. To add insult to injury for the local users who crossed via the tunnels, the tolls continued to be levied during the disruption, after many commitments that at times of serious congestion they would be lifted.
The Minister will also recall the security incident that took place last September, when both the bridge and the tunnels at the Dartford crossing were closed. The disruption that that caused illustrated clearly how dependent the road network is on that one crossing, which makes the argument strongly that any new crossing should be not at that location but at a new one. In my view, the interests of the strategic road network would be best served if we considered creating a new outer ring road to complement the M25. That brings me to what is wrong with option C, which would link up on the north side with the M25 and the A13, which is already severely congested.
Another issue with option A that the Minister should reflect on arises from representations made to me by Vopak, which has a fuel terminal sited just east of the Dartford crossing. Vopak has advises me that if option A were to be built, it might require the closure of Vopak’s West Thurrock terminal. That would have serious implications for the resilience of the fuel supply to London and the south-east. That is the final nail in the coffin of option A—I hope.
I am aware that option C has generated considerable support from the local enterprise partnership, not least because it is also supported by Essex and Kent county councils. To be fair to Kent, it has developed its own vision of how the road network should look on the south side, but, unfortunately, that type of thinking has not really been done on the north side. As I have said, the result is that there would be greater burdens on the M25 and the Al3, so, for me option C is not the answer.
I remind the Minister that at the time of the 2009 study, there were two further options, D and E. I believe those options might lead to the creation of a proper new orbital road, which would add significantly to our road transport infrastructure, but it appears that they have been ruled out on the basis of cost. Dare I say to the Minister that that is a false economy? Sooner or later, we will have to build a new outer ring road, particularly if we are to realise the economic potential of the Thames Gateway. It is also worth bearing in mind the additional connectivity of the eastern region that such a road would create. It would add to the connectivity of Stansted airport, which would help us to deal with our aviation capacity challenges. In particular, option D—a crossing at Canvey—would allow connectivity with the Al30, which is a very under-utilised road.
I am very aware that what I am suggesting would slow down the timetable for the new crossing, but it is really important that we get the right solution to this problem and that we do not just apply a sticking plaster.
Stephen Metcalfe
My hon. Friend is making some powerful points, particularly about option C. To maximise the potential for future growth in south Essex, does she agree that looking again at options D and E would also allow us to make the most of Southend airport, which is now a growing hub and making great strides in providing additional airport capacity? Now, if someone wants to get to Southend, they have to come all the way to the M25 and then go out along the A13. A new outer ring road might start to address that problem.
Jackie Doyle-Price
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that illustrates again the importance of looking at transport issues not just in terms of rail, roads, or airports, but in terms of the whole picture. Let me remind those people just down the river at city hall who talk about a Thames estuary airport that we already have one at Southend. It is very popular with my constituents because going there is almost as nice an experience as going to London City airport—you will know that, Mr Streeter, if you have ever used it. If you are flying short-haul, I recommend that you use Southend. My hon. Friend is entirely right about that.
I am really disappointed about this entire debate. I congratulate Kent county council on the work that it has done. It has taken the 2009 study and used it as a prompt to develop its vision of what it needs for its road network, so it is very disappointing that that type of thinking has not taken place on the north side of the river. Essex county council and Thurrock borough council should hang their heads in shame, because we are now on the back foot as we respond to these proposals. In 2009, the highways engineers of those two authorities should have sat down and come up with a sensible solution. Actually, there is evidence that Southend council is starting to do that—as my hon. Friend pointed out, the council is recognising the opportunities, with its growth strategy based around the airport. Nevertheless, all this shows that communities can be very badly let down by poor leadership of their local authorities. We are now having to respond to decisions that are being made without being at the table, and that is regrettable. However, never say die. Both my hon. Friend and I are loud in being champions for our communities, so we will try to shift the agenda ourselves. Having said that, it is rather difficult, because—as I have said—we are on the back foot.
I make a real pitch to the Minister please to look again at option D, a crossing at Canvey. Look at how that crossing would connect with the A130 and look at the impact that the other options would have on the M25 and A13. I must point out that the A13 is only dual carriageway after Tilbury docks, which again shows the weakness of Essex and Thurrock councils in responding to the road traffic infrastructure challenges facing them, to which they should respond more strongly if we are to maximise our economic competitiveness. I know that what I am suggesting will slow things down, but I implore the Minister to bring to this issue the long-term vision and thinking that the Department for Transport has brought to aviation and particularly to rail, including the development of High Speed 2. I say that because this project is an investment that will bring more bang for the Department’s buck.
In closing, I thank the Minister and the Department for responding positively to the requests that we made locally for investment in junction 30 of the M25, which will go a long way to help tackle the problems affecting the M25. I also thank him for the concessions that he has given the residents of Dartford and Thurrock for use of the Dartford crossing, which are very welcome and have gone down well. The Department has always engaged very openly with representations made to it, and I hope that he will reflect on the representations that have been made to him today in the same spirit.
I will put one last thought into the Minister’s head. The options before us are based on bridges and tunnels, but if we are to take a longer-term view, an interim solution may be needed. I simply point out that the Woolwich ferry carries a million vehicles a year. Perhaps we should look at the potential of ferries to boost crossing capacity on the Thames.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
It is a great joy to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) on securing this debate on the options for the new lower Thames crossing. I acknowledge the attendance of my hon. Friends the Members for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), who I know have a personal interest in the subject.
I have noted the points that have been made during the debate, which echo issues raised during the public consultation we held last year on options for the location of the new crossing. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock responded to that consultation, taking the opportunity to present formally the views and concerns of her constituents. The Secretary of State for Transport made an initial response to the consultation feedback with his announcement to the House on 12 December. He announced our decision to discard one of the options—option B—and to undertake further analysis to understand better the relative merits of the remaining options. I will therefore respond to this debate with reminders of the challenge facing us and the point the Government have reached in deciding where to locate a new lower Thames crossing.
Options D and E involved locations further east than the other options. Quite aside from the costs and the environmental issues associated with them, they were found by the 2009 study to take relatively little traffic—about 5% or less—away from the existing crossing. Of course, we all know that 50 years ago a tunnel was opened between Dartford and Grays. Today the Dartford-Thurrock crossing comprises two tunnels and one bridge, which carry about 140,000 vehicles daily across the Thames and provide a vital link in the M25 orbital route around London. It is worth reminding ourselves that the Dartford-Thurrock crossing, or the A282, is the only river crossing east of London and the only road link between Kent and Essex. It is also in the Thames Gateway, which is the area identified for major redevelopment and growth. Therefore, whether people are making long journeys from the channel to the rest of the UK or travelling across the area east of London, and whether they are travelling for business or leisure purposes, the crossing provides a critical link.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. He is getting to the nub of the issue for myself and my hon. Friends who are here today, namely that the crossing is the only link between Kent and Essex and the only link that connects up our ports. As the only crossing east of London, it is the only show in town when there is disruption, and that is why we need something else to build resilience into the system.
Mr Goodwill
Well, nobody has come to me with the argument that we do not need to do something to alleviate the congestion, and of course the whole point of the Government’s consultation and the work that we are continuing to do is to ensure that we make the right decision based on environmental, traffic, cost and of course air quality grounds. Air quality is a major issue now, as the vehicles we are using on our road networks are failing to deliver the clean exhaust emissions that had been promised in earlier testing. It is disappointing how the vehicles operate in practice compared with the predictions that were made about them. In fact, in terms of journey time reliability, the crossing is consistently one of the worst performing links in the strategic road network, and it is forecast that the problems will get worse in the future.
A succession of Governments, both at national and local level, commissioned studies on congestion and possible new river crossings. A study for the Department for Transport in 2009 identified short and medium-term measures to improve traffic flows. It concluded that a new crossing was needed in the long term, and shortlisted a number of potential locations: option A at the existing Dartford-Thurrock crossing; option B connecting with the A2, which we have since discarded; option C connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 between junctions 29 and 30; and the option C variant that would additionally widen the A229 between the M2 and the M20. The Government have been determined to solve the problem from the outset.
Gareth Johnson
I pay tribute to the work of the Department for Transport. Back in 2010 the previous Prime Minister vowed to sell off the Dartford crossing. There was no plan to address the congestion and pollution in the area or to do anything to help small businesses based in Thurrock and Dartford. There is still much to be done, and the crossing still remains a scar on the face of the local area—it is the nemesis of the Thames Gateway—but the Department should be congratulated on its progress thus far.
Mr Goodwill
The Government are well aware of the brake on economic development in my hon. Friend’s constituency and others in the area caused by the congestion at Dartford.
At the first spending review in 2010, we promised to introduce measures to tackle congestion at the crossing in the short to medium term. Indeed, autumn this year will see the introduction of free-flow charging on the Dartford-Thurrock crossing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock mentioned: motorists will no longer stop on the crossing to put money into a slot machine or to hand it to an attendant. We also committed to reviewing the options for a new crossing. Subsequently, the national infrastructure plan 2011, which identified a lower Thames crossing as one of the Government’s top 40 infrastructure projects, added a commitment to consult on those options. My Department has fulfilled both those commitments, and following the review of the options shortlisted by the 2009 study, the Department consulted the public from May to July 2013.
Knowing that our decision on the new crossing will affect many different interests, we engaged with the public in a variety of ways. In addition to online communications, both the Minister and officials met interested parties in a series of briefings, meetings and public information events. Numerous members of the public took advantage of opportunities to speak with officials to ask questions or raise concerns. In all, the Department recorded and analysed more than 5,700 responses to the consultation. The consultation feedback has confirmed that opinion is divided both on the need for a new crossing and where to locate it, and that there are serious issues at stake in reaching decisions on where to locate a new crossing and whether it should be a bridge or a tunnel.
Stephen Metcalfe
I am grateful to the Minister for giving up his valuable time. Has his Department at any point considered the capacity of the M25 as a whole and whether that will need expansion at some point? We have already moved to four lanes in some areas, but if at some point in the next 50 years we need an outer ring road or outer link road, so that people are not all using the M25, regardless of the crossing, would it not be worth reconsidering options D or E, or a variant thereof, and putting in place the most expensive part of the infrastructure of an outer ring road at this point in the investment cycle, rather than waiting to look at it again at some point in the future?
Mr Goodwill
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Indeed, the Department is currently considering what further improvements may be needed on the M25, A282 and A13 to ensure that, when we address the bottleneck at the crossing, we do not push the congestion north and south to other parts of the M25, which is already a very congested road.
A number of consultation responses requested that we reopen other options previously rejected. Some, like my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock, advocated options further east downstream, while others advocated options further west within London. However, given the Government’s objectives for the crossing, as set out in the consultation, 1 am not convinced there are any reasons that would justify reopening previously rejected options. I am sorry to disappoint her. Further information about the consultation feedback is set out in a consultation response summary published online by my Department alongside the Secretary of State’s announcement last December.
That brings us to the point we have reached in determining where to locate a new lower Thames crossing. As I said at the beginning, we have narrowed down the options and are obtaining further advice on points raised during the consultation in order to weigh up the relative merits of the remaining options. In pursuing further advice, I am listening to concerns expressed by respondents to the consultation. Specifically, I am seeking more information, first, on the scale of further improvements that may be required on the M25, A282 and A13. Secondly, I am seeking further information on potential implications for compliance with national and European air quality targets. Many hon. Members will have seen the coverage of our planned improvements to the A1 in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, where we are having to take measures to reduce the speed of vehicles to reduce the pollution, particularly nitrogen oxides, that puts us in danger of breaching those targets. Thirdly, I am seeking more information on the scale of mitigation that may be needed to avoid impacts on protected habitats.
I make it clear that we have no plans to consult on additional options. The options we are still considering for a new lower Thames crossing are: option A, at the existing Dartford-Thurrock crossing; option C, connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 between junctions 29 and 30; and the option C variant that would additionally widen the A229 between the M2 and the M20.
Jackie Doyle-Price
The Minister has confirmed that he is still considering those options, but will he reassure me that there will be a close examination of the exact routes taken when the crossing hits the north bank? We have serious concerns about the impact on the M25 and the A13. Will there be further consultation with the community on those potential impacts?
Mr Goodwill
We are looking at the M25 as a whole as part of our route-based strategies, and will look at potential future routes for any outer orbital road, but we are not currently looking at that to tackle the urgent problem we have now.
The decision has far-reaching consequences and is not to be rushed. We will, however, make an announcement on our consideration of the options as soon as possible. My Department and the Highways Agency remain committed to accelerating delivery of infrastructure projects such as the lower Thames crossing. The final location decision need not delay the delivery of the crossing, as development of the remaining options continues.
A new lower Thames crossing represents a unique and challenging opportunity to address serious capacity issues on the strategic road network for the longer term, yet each option raises serious questions to which we are duly giving our full attention. I trust that hon. Friends and hon. Members will maintain their interest in the new lower Thames crossing as the Government progress and refine their proposal, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock and her colleagues will not be backwards in coming forwards to make their views known to me and my departmental colleagues.
Manufacturing in the UK
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I thank the Minister for taking time out of what must be a busy diary to come to this debate. I am delighted to have secured this debate because I believe that manufacturing plays a very important part in the UK economy, and I wish to see manufacturing encouraged and assisted to grow and prosper in every region of the UK.
Today, the manufacturing industry employs some 2.6 million people in the UK, which is just 8% of all jobs in the country. In 2011, manufacturing accounted for 11% of national economic output, some £145 billion. Still, manufacturing comprises only 12% of the UK’s economy, compared with more than 23% in Germany. As we are only too aware, manufacturing in the UK has underperformed compared with the service sector for many years—one reason being that manufacturing output declined particularly sharply during the recession and, after a short period of growth, again fell in March 2013 compared with March 2012. In the past few months, however, some manufacturers have started to grow and to increase their market share once more. Such businesses have embraced invention, innovation, quality and design, which I will discuss further as I make progress.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and I congratulate him on securing this enormously important debate. It is important to celebrate the success of our leading-edge manufacturers, so will he join me in congratulating MINI, which has its plant in my constituency, on its sales going above 300,000 last year, which is up 6% on the year before? That helps to make my hon. Friend’s point that, with the right investment, the right product, the right work force and partnership between trade unions and management, we can do great things.
Mr McKenzie
I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. That example underlines what I am about to discuss, which are quality, design and improving market share. MINI is a true example of that.
The success of such businesses highlights that, without a strong manufacturing base, there can be no rebalancing of the economy, which we are told is a priority for this Government. Great importance should be placed on invention, quality and design in manufacturing. The importance of development to creating a product cannot be under-stressed. Research and development are essential to build businesses and to dominate markets.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I congratulate him on getting this important debate and must declare an interest in the manufacturing sector. Does he agree that this or any future Government need to remove the bureaucracy that affects companies, in particular SMEs, so that they can concentrate on market research and exports?
Mr McKenzie
I share the hon. Gentleman’s comments. SMEs clearly need all the help they can get to close in on markets and to increase their market share.
Mr McKenzie
I will make a little progress and will then give way.
I offer as evidence the innovation of a well-loved son of Greenock in my constituency. I dare say that hon. Members have heard of him. His name is James Watt. While his product has been consigned to history, his name lives on as a unit of power, which is testament to his innovative genius. It was the innovation of the steam engine that saw him and his business partner go on to dominate the market for such machinery for over a decade. As James Watt would have put it, research and development are vital to the pursuit of excellence. In technology-based sectors, research is a primary driver of innovation.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. Successive Governments have supported manufacturing in the west midlands, in particular Coventry, through their support for Jaguar Land Rover. The London Taxi Company was recently saved through useful agreements between the company and Jaguar Land Rover, because the trade unions were prepared to negotiate to save the company. We should welcome that and give credit to successive Governments. My hon. Friend mentioned research and development, and the university of Warwick and Coventry university have done a lot in terms of design and research in manufacturing.
Mr McKenzie
I note and accept my hon. Friend’s points and will develop them later in my speech.
The town of Greenock was not only the manufacturing birthplace of the personal computer back in the early 1980s but the innovation centre for surface-mounted technology and multi-layered processors, which have led to the powerful hand-held IT devices many of us rely on today. Sadly, that manufacturing base has moved to continents that can offer cheaper labour costs to satisfy the need for ever-reducing product prices, with the short-term justification of the need to maintain a healthy profit margin.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is being generous in accepting so many interventions. As he says, innovation is the key to the future of a successful manufacturing industry. Does he agree that by incentivising R and D tax credits we are holding on to British manufacturers that might otherwise have gone overseas?
Mr McKenzie
I will go on to describe that as a positive step forward later in my speech.
The manufacturing base moved and was lost when investment and encouragement in research and development stopped, and that is not the first time we have seen this. Indeed, history could be said to be repeating itself. My constituency suffered greatly when shipbuilding manufacturing went into steep decline.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and apologise for not informing him that I intended to intervene. I congratulate him on securing this important debate. It is vital that we achieve consensus on the role and importance of manufacturing in the UK, and I only wish that more Members from all parties were here to listen to what he has to say.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware of “Making Good”, the report of an inquiry chaired by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and myself that forms part of the work of the all-party group on manufacturing, which is co-chaired by myself and the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman)?
Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. Interventions are supposed to be brief, so please conclude.
Chris White
Thank you, Mr Streeter. The report makes a number of important recommendations, from developing a long-term strategic fiscal framework to forming closer relationships with trade associations. I recommend the report to the hon. Gentleman and to anyone else who is interested in this debate.
Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. This is a half-hour debate. The more interventions that Mr McKenzie allows, the less time there will be for the Minister to make his response. I am sure that he will bear that in mind.
Mr McKenzie
Where once our shipbuilding industry pushed the boundaries of design and introduced propellers, double-skinned hulls, bulbous bows and countless other improvements, we stopped pushing the boundaries and proclaimed as a nation that anyone could build a ship. Instead, we should have been saying that not everyone can build the ships of tomorrow. We stopped asking, “How can we improve this product?” and stopped challenging the accepted conformity to regulation.
In other sectors, the rapid adoption of technologies is essential to innovation, and has transformed existing industries. The success of our economy depends on the extent to which businesses in all industries and sectors invest in adapting technologies and building capacity in order to get ahead. This is particularly true now. Since the industrial revolution, economic downturns have, on the whole, always been followed by surges of innovation. Manufacturing can have a prosperous future, but only if we prioritise research and development.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr McKenzie
I will make some progress and then give way.
Innovation and the speed at which innovative ideas are put into action are the keys to success. However, the costs of cutting-edge research and the latest high-tech processes are greater than ever before and are often too large for one company to bear. No competitive economy should leave universities, research laboratories and the private sector’s innovation arms to their own devices. The UK’s competitors understand that a country’s research and innovation capability is a key part of the national infrastructure, yet the UK spends relatively less on pure research development compared with its peers, and a significant part of that 23% is in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Rehman Chishti
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate him on securing this important debate, about which I know he is passionate. On research, does he agree that we need to get more students and pupils to study engineering, which would lead to an increase in manufacturing and construction? If so, does he welcome the Government’s initiative of creating university technical colleges around the country, one of which will be in Medway, to help to achieve that aim?
Mr McKenzie
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will touch on education later in my speech.
The UK’s innovation performance is generally weak, although I concede that there are some exceptions. However, UK manufacturing companies overall spend less of their turnover on innovation than their European peers, while, oddly, the opposite is true for UK service companies. Other countries, notably the Nordic countries, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel, have significantly increased innovation as measured by US patenting. The UK has grown innovation output slowly and from a relatively low base.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and of course congratulate him on securing this important debate. We both represent Scottish constituencies, and my hon. Friend will be aware that some 70% of Scotland’s exports are to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. As we strive to develop the manufacturing base in Scotland and seek to become more innovative, does he agree that it makes no sense whatever to turn our biggest customer into our biggest competitor, which is what would happen if the Scottish Nationalists got their way?
Mr McKenzie
I will not try the Chair’s patience by travelling down the route of an independence debate, but I and—I hope—Scotland could not agree more with my hon. Friend.
Current levels of UK innovation are insufficient to drive growth and to close the gap with key competitors. UK business enterprise research and development as a proportion of GDP has remained below that of other leading economies such as Japan, the US, Germany and France. Furthermore, there has been a slight downward trend in the intensity of business enterprise research and development in the UK, unlike in most other advanced economies. We need to combine public and private investment better to ensure that we do not fall behind.
Jason Lippitt, managing director of TMAT, which is an acoustic components manufacturer, argues that even with limited resources, smaller businesses must find a way to use research and development if they want to survive.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making a fine speech. Would he compare the experience in his constituency with that in mine? I find that many of my manufacturing employers are worried about, first, access to finance—they are increasingly moving towards crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, which the Government are about to regulate and might destroy —and, secondly, the lack of highly skilled technicians. Yes, graduates are good, but technicians are what most of my employers are desperately looking for.
Mr McKenzie
I will explore later business demand for graduates and highly educated people to bring into the manufacturing process.
Jason Lippitt said:
“Research and development is of paramount importance. We haven’t yet invented the products we will be making in five years. Research and development is the lifeblood of business.”
How true that there are products we have yet to discover. In five years’ time, we could be dominating markets, but only if we prioritise and plan for the future of manufacturing in the UK. If we look at the phones or tablets in front of us now, could we have imagined them five years ago, or even believed how essential to everyday life they would become? Devices that we are doing without now will make us wonder in five years’ time how on earth we managed without them. With them will come new careers that we also could not imagine.
That vision is shared by Andrew Johnson, senior economist at the manufacturers’ group EEF, who said:
“There are countries on other continents that Britain will never be able to match labour costs with, but they will never be the dominant part of the selling equation if we continue to develop innovative new products and develop new technology.”
How true. What is the position of the Minister and of the Government on forming a partnership with manufacturers to invest in research and development to create new products and to win existing markets and create new markets? Government policies can either make or break a nation’s manufacturing sector.
For example, Germany has an interventionist industrial strategy. Public-private collaboration enables innovation and technology advancement and promotes talent development. Global leaders in innovation, such as the US, Japan, Germany and Sweden, have well-connected systems that enable the public and private sectors to work together to maximise the economic benefits of manufacturing and innovation.
What of the UK? The UK system would seem not to be as well connected or orientated to the needs of business compared with that of, say, the US Government, which plays a major role in shaping innovation. The USA has a systematic and comprehensive approach to driving innovation and to supporting small businesses through its small business innovation research programme. The Dutch Government, too, have introduced a new policy to promote innovation in strategically important economic sectors.
In contrast, the lack of any coherent manufacturing and industrial strategy from the Government can only prove to be a disaster for the UK economy, as highlighted by Lord Heseltine’s report, “No stone unturned”, which received a positive response from industry and the manufacturing unions and was welcomed by the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the lack of any real Government economic and industrial growth policy and their failure to take urgent action in developing a manufacturing policy are worrying.
On the whole, manufacturing continues to suffer throughout the UK. We need urgently to see the green shoots of recovery spring to life in all parts of the UK. Research and development tax credits are a move in the right direction, as I said, but what else might the Government do? Education and stimulation of the next generation of manufacturers could be a start, and I recognise the focus placed on that by some education providers throughout the country.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the Scottish Government are hampering manufacturing growth in the UK by cutting severely the budgets of vocational colleges, in particular in the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and mathematics?
Mr McKenzie
I agree fully with my hon. Friend, but I fear that this debate is not the one in which to comment on the failures or otherwise of the Scottish Government to stimulate manufacturing or business.
In the past, universities did basic science, while companies worked separately on applications for commercial use. Today, such boundaries have blurred, and successful research and development often involves co-operation throughout the innovation process. Design and, more importantly, quality in design will also give a manufacturer the edge in competitive markets, as we have heard. We have also witnessed improvement by Jaguar Land Rover in quality and design. That is how important design and recognised quality in design are in improving market share. Furthermore, I dare say that Mr Dyson is not resting on his laurels and will continue to show competitors a clean pair of heels through design improvements.
What of the process of manufacturing itself and the innovation there? I was always told by my previous employer to take inspiration from and look no further for success in process change than the high jumper Dick Fosbury, whose revolutionary approach to high jumping is now the accepted method, or process, by which all athletes approach the bar. Similarly, many of our innovative manufacturing processes, such as constant flow, “just in time” and fully integrated supply chains, are now accepted methods.
That brings me to the importance of manufacturing clusters and supply chains. Clusters such as IT in silicon valley or high-performance cars in southern Germany can be located in a particular region within a larger nation and sometimes even in a single town. Clusters affect competitiveness in three broad ways. They increase the level of productivity at which constituent firms can operate; they increase the capacity for innovation and productivity growth; and they stimulate and enable new business formation that further supports innovation and expands the cluster.
Mr McKenzie
I thank the hon. Lady, but I will push on.
What are the Minister’s plans for and position on mounting a sustained programme of cluster development to create a more conducive environment for productivity, growth and innovation? That would of course bring employment opportunities throughout the United Kingdom. More of our large companies should be encouraged to expand the number of UK-based companies in their supply chains. Also, what is the Minister doing to encourage the establishment of manufacturing supply-chain associations throughout the UK?
Labour is committed to implementing a comprehensive industrial strategy to form the cornerstone of how the UK will build competitive businesses in the long term, and that has been welcomed by the CBI and others. We are an industrial nation, a nation that still has much to offer the world through invention and innovation, and a nation that has a future with manufacturing, but only if we plan for manufacturing in the future.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)
I join in welcoming you to the Chair this evening, Mr Streeter. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) on securing this important debate and on the participation and audience that he has attracted from among both Opposition and Government Members.
A strong manufacturing sector remains crucial to the UK economy, now and in the future. It contributes disproportionately to our overall productivity growth. It drives innovation and business research and development; it accounts for 72% of all our business R and D. Manufacturing accounts for more than half of all our exports, and it provides skilled and well-paid jobs and employment opportunities for people of all educational attainment levels throughout our country, and particularly in the less affluent regions. The recent Foresight report, “The Future of Manufacturing”, pointed out that it is also one of the keys to resilience. It is one of only two sectors able to drive growth right across the economy through cross-sectoral supply chain linkages.
Of course, some manufacturers have not had an easy time during and after the recent financial crisis, but there has been some encouraging news of late. We know from the Office for National Statistics that manufacturing output rose by 0.6% in the three months to November, and industrial production rose by 0.3%. Two weeks ago, an executive survey by the Engineering Employers Federation and Aldermore told us that 2014 looks set to be better for the UK and for manufacturing than each of the past two years. Projected manufacturing expansion of 2.7% will put us top of the European Union growth league. The Deloitte chief financial officer survey, published on 6 January, reported that business optimism was at a three-and-a-half-year high. It is true that macro uncertainty and capital constraints, two of the biggest blocks to business activity, have begun to recede.
Mr McKenzie
We welcome the statistics that the Minister is rehearsing. Will he advise us of the spread of manufacturing across the length and breadth of the UK?
Michael Fallon
I do not have a figure on that immediately to hand, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to write to him to fill in the picture across the regions. We have some statistical knowledge of that through the regional growth fund and our other funding instruments.
We have significant strengths in key manufacturing sectors, including automotive manufacturing, aerospace and pharmaceuticals. We need to make more of those competitive advantages and to sustain them. That is why we have a long-term plan in the shape of our industrial strategy, enabling Government and industry to work together to support the long-term direction that is needed to create more opportunities and jobs and to make this country more competitive. One of the most encouraging things about the industrial strategy has been the consensus that has built up around it, not simply among all parties in this House and in the all-party group on manufacturing, but between the CBI, the TUC, Lord Heseltine and others.
The strategy has five main strands: the sectors themselves, procurement, skills, technologies and access to finance. Through those strands, we are planning 10, 20 or even 30 years ahead. For example, with industry we are jointly funding the Aerospace Technology Institute to enable us to meet the challenges ahead and respond to the demand for up to 27,000 new civil aircraft between now and 2030.
Mr McKenzie
The Minister referred to the all-party group on manufacturing. What are his thoughts on that group’s call for a hotline to Government and a go-to man for manufacturing needs?
Michael Fallon
I was rather hoping that I was the go-to man and the contact figure within Government. Not only have I had the pleasure of addressing the group in this place, but the group has been to see me at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and although titles vary, if there is a Minister for Manufacturing, I suggest that it is probably me. I am certainly happy to add to that a specific hotline, or an official with whom the group can have contact.
I have already mentioned the Aerospace Technology Institute. Through the construction strategy, we are trying to make the UK the global leader in sustainable construction by 2025, in a market that will grow by 70%. As part of the automotive strategy, we are investing around £1 billion over 10 years in a new advanced propulsion centre to develop, commercialise and manufacture advanced propulsion technologies in the UK. That strategy, too, looks 20 or 30 years ahead.
Hon. Members have referred to the renaissance of our motor manufacturing industry. There is the success of Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan, and also of the MINI plant at Cowley, which I have visited.
Mr Sheerman
Very briefly on that point, the big companies such as Rolls-Royce and the companies that the Minister mentioned are wonderful, but does he agree that our real future lies in growing small and medium-sized enterprises into larger companies, as most people who will work in manufacturing will work in SMEs in the future?
Michael Fallon
I certainly accept that, but I do not draw a sharp distinction between large and small. Companies need each other, and if I am given the time, I will come on to talk a little about the supply chains. The hon. Gentleman’s point on employment is well made.
On procurement, we have recently published procurement pipelines worth nearly £80 billion, covering a range of sectors. On skills, we are responding to the engineering skills shortage identified by Members by enhancing young people’s engagement through initiatives such as See Inside Manufacturing and Tomorrow’s Engineers. We are also supporting the technologies of the future through the “eight great technologies” strategy, focusing on advanced materials, big data, satellites, robotics, synthetic biology and so on.
I was asked three very specific questions. The first was on supply chains. They are absolutely essential to creating strong, sustainable and balanced growth, but they have weakened or hollowed out in recent years. Our broad objectives there are, first of all, to work with industry to map current supplier capabilities and quantify the opportunity to source more UK content. In each sector—aerospace, automotive manufacturing, marine industry, nuclear and the like—where that mapping finds gaps in supply chain capabilities, the sector will encourage domestic suppliers to expand to fill them, with the support of the manufacturing advisory service.
We are also working to strengthen existing supply chains by encouraging some of the prime producers to adopt a more collaborative and long-term approach to their suppliers. That is part of the answer to the point raised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). For example, the Rolls-Royce apprentice academy will enable the company to train additional apprentices to work not just for Rolls-Royce, but for other companies in the Rolls-Royce supply chain, as well as other manufacturing firms in the east midlands. We are helping domestic suppliers to build the strength and capabilities that they need to access new opportunities. We underpin that through the advanced manufacturing supply chain initiative, which helps with funding for capital investment for skills and innovation.
Secondly, the hon. Member for Inverclyde quite rightly drew attention to the continuing need for innovation. He was right that it was innovation that drove the first and subsequent industrial revolutions in this country, and when it comes to innovation, the Government have a legitimate and necessary role in ensuring that our future is prosperous. Despite financial pressures, my Department has sought to protect vital investment in future innovation. We have launched seven catapult innovation and technology centres, one of which is focused on high-value manufacturing.
The recent autumn statement pledged a further £600 million of support for the eight great technologies that I referred to, including advanced materials; the Government seek to support investment in innovative materials development and process technologies in manufacturing. For example, this year, the Technology Strategy Board will invest some £7 million in collaborative research and development to help British companies to improve and to enhance manufacturing process through innovation.
Thirdly and finally, the hon. Gentleman mentioned design, but before I come to that, perhaps I should touch on finance, to which several hon. Members referred. Of course it has been difficult for companies large and small in certain sectors, including manufacturing sectors, to access the finance that they need through mainstream lending. Through the business bank and other sources, we are determined to help enhance some of the alternative methods of financing. Again, the hon. Member for Huddersfield made the important point that we do not want to over-regulate the alternative funding streams as they emerge.
On design, which was the hon. Member for Inverclyde’s final point, he is absolutely right to say that it is driving buyers. Last week, it drove buyers to the London boat show to buy high-quality boats and yachts. He referred specifically to the quality of design, and we see time and again that the reason British brands are and will be sought out is the high quality of design.
In conclusion, I think it has been recognised throughout the debate that manufacturing is no longer in decline. I am not over-claiming for its renaissance, but it is no longer in decline. On the contrary, it is recovering hand over foot, and we have seen significant recovery, particularly in sectors such as aerospace, automotives and pharmaceuticals. The Government’s active encouragement is needed on skills, the supply chain and access to finance, and I assure all those who have spoken, including the hon. Member for Inverclyde, that the Government are absolutely committed to ensure that manufacturing continues to recover.
Question put and agreed to.