Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alan Brown and Grant Shapps

Thursday 24th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am very concerned to hear about my hon. Friend’s constituent Priscilla and the way that that incident unfolded. Rail safety, in all its forms, is clearly a big concern to Members across the House, and I propose a meeting between my hon. Friend and the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), on this issue.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

More than half of total carbon emissions in the UK come from cars on our roads, yet so far the UK Government have refused to introduce mandatory E10 fuel, which would reduce emissions. Unlike in Scotland, the UK Government remain wedded to cars that use fossil fuels until 2040. Will the Secretary of State heed the assertion by the Committee on Climate Change that action is required if the UK is to meet its targets for 2025 and 2030, let alone have zero emissions by 2050? What corrective measures will he take, and will he tell us about the exiting new measures that he spoke about earlier?

[Grant Shapps]

For the record, let me correct the figures given inadvertently by the hon. Gentleman. About a third of emissions come from transport, and about 90% of those are from vehicles. On the specifics, and E10 in particular, yes, I intend to move on the issue very soon.

[Alan Brown]

Norway has the highest per capita sales of electric vehicles in the world, and an average of 50% of new cars sold there in the first half of this year were electric vehicles. Second and third in the world are Iceland and Sweden. The UK still hovers at an average of about 2%, although the Secretary of State said 2.6% earlier. Is it not the case that Scotland could fulfil its ambitions and commitments like those Scandinavian countries if it was only independent?

[Grant Shapps]

The interesting thing about the countries the hon. Gentleman cites is that largely they do not produce cars. It is very, very easy if you are not a car manufacturer to introduce all sorts of measures that essentially mean that only electric cars will be favoured and sold. In this country, we have a big car manufacturing sector and we export 80% of the cars we produce. I am very anxious to move the sector to a faster timetable, but to protect jobs as well as the environment it is a question of doing that at a programmed pace. We have managed to do that so far.

Thomas Cook

Debate between Alan Brown and Grant Shapps

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

May I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend, who has been working very hard through the last few difficult days with people from Peterborough who have found themselves without work? He has done tremendous work with his community to support all those who have lost their jobs. There are 630 jobcentres running the rapid response service that has been mobilised to pick up this issue for every single former Thomas Cook employee who has lost their job as a result of this appalling news. I should say that the best thing we can do is to make sure that we operate an economy where there is record high employment and record low unemployment, because that will give people the best opportunity to get back into a good job.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of the statement. I pay tribute to the work of the CAA and to the Thomas Cook employees who have gone above and beyond to help stranded holidaymakers. I express my sympathies for all those who have lost their jobs.

Instead of the UK Government using the mantra that this is the biggest peacetime repatriation, they should be apologising for this collapse happening on their watch. The Secretary of State spoke of reforms and new legislation that are required to stop this happening again with another company, but why were lessons not learned from the collapse of Monarch just two years ago? What are the timescales for the new legislation? I point out that, procedurally, a new Session is not required for legislation. The Government could bring it forward if they wanted.

Will the Secretary of State explain the position with Spain and Turkey, and the fact that they were looking at ways to keep Thomas Cook trading, while the UK Government were not willing to? The German Government led the way in keeping Condor going.

The Secretary of State said that £250 million would have been good money after bad, but what discussions did the Government have with Thomas Cook and what financial appraisal did the Government make before saying that they could not fund that money? This is a Government who can find £100 million to advertise that Brexit is good for us. I think they should spend that money on supporting jobs instead.

Will the Secretary of State explain what impact Brexit had on the collapse of Thomas Cook, because it warned about the impact of Brexit? What impact did the collapse of sterling have on the company’s trading position? What assessment have the Government made of the pension liabilities of Thomas Cook? What plans do the Government have to curb outrageous executive pay, given that close to £50 million has been taken out of Thomas Cook in recent years?

I welcome the update on the holidaymakers in Cuba, but are any other holidaymakers effectively being held to ransom or captive? What discussions are the UK Government having with foreign Governments when such ruthless actions are taken?

Thomas Cook vouchers are now worthless. When will the Government finally implement the scheme to protect vouchers and gift cards when companies become insolvent?

What actions are the Government taking to support the 13,000 employees who are still abroad?

Finally, I have constituents who have lost their jobs. Can the Secretary of State look my constituents in the eye and honestly say that there is nothing more the Government could have done to save their jobs?

[Grant Shapps]

I should have picked up the point about Thomas Cook employees abroad in answer to a previous question. We are actually bringing back some of those people, starting with the crews and the operational people. I think I am right in saying that yesterday we had brought back about 150 so far. We are not ignoring them, but we need to bring passengers back first. I have asked the CAA to be as flexible as possible in bringing back Thomas Cook employees, and the hon. Gentleman is right to remind me that I had not mentioned that before.

The hon. Gentleman asked a number of other questions that I have previously answered, and I do not want to go round in circles. The House must know that no Government would want to lose an iconic, 178-year-old famous British name. I hear people ask, “Why don’t you just put the money in?” All those people have to do is open the books to realise that there is a £1.7 billion debt, with £1.5 billion lost in six months alone, and that another profit warning had been issued.

I am afraid that this situation is entirely different from that with Condor, which is a fundamentally profitable airline, and it just would not be responsible to throw good money after bad. We would probably be back here in a very short time to offer a bail-out to get people home, rather than to bail out the company. This company just was not a going concern with which we could do that.

The hon. Gentleman asks sensible questions about whether other holidaymakers are being held to ransom or being held captive elsewhere in the world, and I am not aware of any other location in which that is the case at the moment. However, it is a live and moving situation, and under our direction the CAA has been issuing proactive letters to explain that holidaymakers’ bills will be settled in places where some hotels have not had bills settled for the past three months because of the company’s bankruptcy. I pay tribute to and thank our foreign mission in Cuba for proactively getting in touch with Ministers yesterday to resolve that appalling situation.

I think that covers the majority of the questions that I had not previously answered.

HS2

Debate between Alan Brown and Grant Shapps

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I know that Douglas Oakervee will have been listening to my right hon. Friend’s words with great interest and will no doubt take into account the national rail travel survey information. She will of course meet him as well. I will just reflect on her final point—because of course Douglas Oakervee is looking at all this—about all forms of travel across the country. I entirely agree with her. Having ordered it two years ago, I recently got an electric car. It finally arrived a couple of weeks ago. It is clear that transport is changing in this country and that we have to take a more holistic view of it. Rail is one part, but there is much else to consider.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I, too, welcome the Secretary of State to his new position. He must be so thankful to have inherited another failing Grayling legacy.

We know that the increased costs and delays have been covered up since 2016 and denied at the Dispatch Box, so, while I welcome the review, should there not be an inquiry into this hiding of key information from the House? While I welcome the review, I find it strange that about a third of the document that sets out its terms has been redacted. Can he explain why?

What changes will be made to the cost-benefit criteria, and why? While the Secretary of State said that many of the benefits of the scheme were previously underestimated, I would remind him that the business case rested on the assumption that time business people spent travelling by train should be treated as downtime, meaning that shorter train journeys were treated as increasing productive time, when clearly that is not the case now that we have wi-fi on the go. Will he confirm that that aspect of the business case will not be over-egged?

The current proposals also mean that journeys north of Crewe to Scotland will be slower than the existing Virgin service. Will the review look at that and perhaps a different type of rolling stock? If it does, what will that mean for the existing rolling stock and ongoing procurement? What further reviews and cost-benefit analyses will be done of track design that could mean slower high-speed trains but reduced costs? What is the contractual status of the recent contract awards to First Trenitalia, given that the Government might now be doing a full stock decision? What would that mean for that contract? What is the committed spend, to date, in the Barnett allocations to Scotland, and what will happen going forward? We were promised at the Dispatch Box that on day one of the high-speed trains operating they would go all the way to Scotland, and that is now not the case. Will the Secretary of State answer those questions and, if not, please put his responses in writing?

[Grant Shapps]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I write to him on some of that, rather than detain the House on all of it. He is absolutely right about the Allan Cook report. I should have mentioned that in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan). I am unhappy about having any of that report redacted. I have read the rest of it. It is not hugely exciting. I pushed back on that with the Department, and apparently it is just that the lawyers are saying that it is commercially confidential stuff that I cannot force to be released. I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman that it would be much better if we could read every single page, but that is the law. [Interruption.] I do not disagree—it is just that lawyers will not allow it to happen.

On downtime when travelling, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Lots of people work very productively when travelling. It is my favourite time to work uninterrupted. I can assure him that Doug Oakervee will look at that. Allan Cook referred to some of the build benefits where there could be new industry, homes and so on in an area where a line runs.

The last point I will comment on—I will write to the hon. Gentleman about the rest—is the implications for the west coast partnership. That is very important. Under the contract, I think in 2026—that it would be in line with if HS2 went ahead—the company would become a shadow operator, so it is built into that contract if the thing goes ahead.