Oral Answers to Questions
David Simmonds Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Mr Harper
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that question. In fact, I met representatives of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations just yesterday to talk through the issue in some detail. We will be able to make some announcements on policy very shortly. Obviously, I will keep the federation informed, as I will Members of the House.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
My constituents very much value access to the travelcard scheme, which in particular enables visitors, friends and family to make the most of a trip to London. They were concerned to hear the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announce his plans to abolish the travelcard. They were equally puzzled to hear that the Mayor has now apparently intervened to save the scheme from his own plans. Can my right hon. Friend help me explain that conundrum to my constituents?
Mr Harper
Like my hon. Friend, I was surprised that, having proposed to cancel the travelcard scheme in the first place, the Mayor of London is now trying to take credit for cancelling his own cancellation. From my point of view, those hon. Members who so stridently raised concerns about the Mayor of London’s latest plans to increase costs for the travelling public and the Department of Transport officials who worked with Transport for London to find an alternative deserve the lion’s share of any credit.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Simmonds Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Mr Holden
I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady. I met recently with the West of England metro Mayor, who has had £21 million in BSIP funding, which we have made more flexible. To date, he has looked at schemes including the birthday month travel scheme. I can see that she might not be as interested in that as some of her hon. Friends, but I would be delighted to meet her to discuss what more flexibility we could introduce to preserve buses in her constituency.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Following his recent meeting with Transport for London about its finances, can my hon. Friend update me on what financial modelling it has done on the impact of extending the ultra low emission zone and what account it has taken of the impact should that not go ahead?
Mr Holden
I met the acting chief financial officer and Seb Dance, the deputy Mayor for transport, yesterday. They informed me that the Mayor of London, in anticipation of falling revenues from ULEZ in the next few years, had asked them to investigate the technicalities of introducing road charging across London in the future.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Simmonds Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Huw Merriman
I congratulate Luton Town. As the hon. Lady knows, my family are big supporters; they have been there through the bad times and they will be there in the good ones as well. I also thank her for showing me around Luton station. I am committed to ensuring that Access for All is delivered at that station on time; any attempts to push back will not get signed off by me. On her campaign on the leaky roof on platforms 1 and 2, which she showed me, the work will start in August and complete in early 2024—I thank her for that.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Mr Harper
Recognising Heathrow’s significant market power, it is economically regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority, including capping Heathrow’s charges. The CAA published its 2022 to 2026 settlement decision in March. The Competition and Markets Authority is considering appeals against that decision and I hope my hon. Friend will recognise that I cannot comment on that ongoing process. Separately, the Department aims to publish the independent review of the CAA by the summer and will consider any economic regulation-related recommendations at that time.
Expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 years ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Hosie. I join colleagues in commending my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) on securing this debate.
Like most Conservative Members of Parliament in Westminster Hall today, my surgery has been inundated with constituents who tell a very consistent story: that they are dependent on their vehicles, mainly due to ill health or the need to support disabled family members in accessing medical care. They have older vehicles, which have often been extremely well maintained, and which they have had for many years, but the prohibitive cost of change now means that face a really serious negative impact on their quality of life and that of their dependants. As my constituency has the highest per capita vehicle ownership in London, we might expect to see many people like that coming forward.
Around 70% of Londoners do not own a car so, understandably, the Mayor of London has seen the ULEZ expansion as something that will not negatively impact on a great many constituents of his in central London. However, for those of us in the suburbs—my constituency essentially consists of eight villages, one of which has no access to a tube or train station and only very limited access to buses—dependency on cars and other private vehicles is much higher.
When we look at a map of London, and particularly at the north-west, we see routes such as Hill End Road in Harefield, which is barely the width of a car, but which is one of the routes that takes people out of our capital and into the surrounding counties, as well as Park Lane, Dene Road and Eastbury Road in Northwood, and the A4008 in Hatch End. All of these roads change from being in Greater London to being outside Greater London partway along, so people who depend on a car— particularly if they are disabled or in ill health—to come and shop in their local high street, access their GP practice or get to their local public transport network will have to pay £12.50 every time they do any of those things, simply to go about their daily lives. What is iniquitous about this is that they do not have a choice.
My wife lived in Westminster when I first knew her, so I completely understand that, in many parts of central London, there is a very high density of access to the bus network and other kinds of public transport, such as trains and tubes, but out in the suburbs that is simply not the case.
Dr Cameron
I thank the hon. Member for speaking about the most vulnerable people. Does he agree that it is particularly difficult for people with disabilities because not all rates of disability living allowance, child disability payment or personal independence payment are exempt from the scheme? Many people will still be adversely impacted, even from 2023. They are contacting me, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for disability, and asking that more be done to support their particular needs.
David Simmonds
That is an incredibly important point, which my constituents have made to me. There are those who may have a blue badge because they have a serious health condition that requires them to attend regular medical treatment, but who are not registered disabled or covered by the exemptions that the scheme envisages.
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
I will mention this in my speech, so I hope you will forgive the duplication, Mr Hosie, but I was contacted by a charity that transports emergency blood, breast milk for premature babies, and urgent medical samples. It contacted the Mayor of London about whether it would be able to get an exemption, or even a discount, and it was told no. Does my hon. Friend agree that that seems morally wrong?
David Simmonds
That is characteristic of the Mayor’s response to the representations he has received: he simply does not want to take them into account.
Some constituents may be temporarily resident in my constituency—for example, because they are awaiting heart and lung transplants at Harefield Hospital. They are required to attend the hospital at short notice when a donor’s heart and lungs, or one or the other of those things, becomes available. That also has a significant impact. Again, the Mayor of London seems to have very little interest in that.
Those of us who have been interested in air quality for a long time recognise that, particularly in outer west London, the big source of pollution is Heathrow airport. This measure does nothing whatever to address the single biggest source of air pollution. It is very much a case of a Mayor pursuing the thing that makes money for the mayoral budget, rather than the thing that would actually improve air quality. There are no measures to improve local authority powers to tackle engine idling. There is nothing that addresses the impact of pollution coming from the M25 or from Heathrow airport, which are the things causing the significant air pollution that affects my constituents.
As this policy makes progress, we need to recognise that local authority powers under the Environment Act 1995, through which the Mayor is seeking to introduce this measure, should require there to be consent from local authorities. In that way, we can ensure that the people who are legally responsible—the local authorities—have a say on whether such measures will tackle the actual sources of air pollution in their area, as opposed to simply talking about them and raising money for an inner London zone 1 Mayor who clearly does not pay attention to the needs of his suburban constituents.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Richard Holden)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) on securing the debate. On ultra low emissions, we heard quite a few emissions from the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), but I am not sure that any of them were really relevant to the broader debate. He seemed to praise the Mayor of Greater Manchester for what he is up to. The Mayor stopped his ULEZ. I not sure that the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East are on the same page regarding the Mayor of Greater Manchester, given the Leader of the Opposition’s recent jokes at the Mayor’s expense.
The need to tackle air pollution is something on which I hope that Members on both sides of the House—and indeed the Government and the Mayor of London—agree, to answer the question from the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson). Air pollution is a big environmental risk to human health, and the Government are determined to tackle it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) said, that is why we have invested more than £800 million to tackle air pollution in 64 local council areas. Much more can be done, although we can be proud that air pollution has reduced significantly since 2010, with emissions of particulate matter down by 18% and nitrogen oxides down by 44%, to their lowest level since records began.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) made very clear in a tour de force speech, ULEZ will have only a minor or negligible impact, as the Jacobs report has said. My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) put forward various sensible solutions. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) also reflected some of the issues, particularly around accessibility of public transport. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford said, the expansion to the London boundary was not in the Mayor’s manifesto—a point reflected by my hon. Friends the Members for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), for Orpington, and for Watford (Dean Russell). It was against the Mayor’s manifesto and against his own consultation. Those are not political points, as some Opposition Members would like to suggest; they are facts, eloquently put forward by hon. Members.
David Simmonds
I commend the Minister on the work that he has been doing on buses. Does he agree that the fact that the Labour group in Hillingdon Council supports the Conservatives’ campaign against ULEZ is evidence that this is not a matter of party politics but one of people putting their constituents and residents first?
Oral Answers to Questions
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Mr Holden
We are looking speedily at this important matter at the moment. The Seafarers’ Wages Bill is coming to this House within the next few weeks to address many of these issues that the Opposition spokesman raises.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend raises some important issues. The important thing from the Government’s point of view is that we tackle air quality. He will know better than me that how we do that and which schemes are run is devolved to local government, so it is devolved to the Mayor of London. I know that the Mayor has recently consulted on proposals to extend the ULEZ and is expected to announce the outcome, but those are matters for him. I know my hon. Friend will continue to campaign vigorously on them.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Simmonds Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Andrew Stephenson
We hope to make more announcements on the latest round of funding very soon. Officials from the Department are working with representatives from the city regions, including Nexus and Transport North East, to establish options for integrated multimodal ticketing. We have of course already announced £5.7 billion for transport networks in the eight city regions, and the north-east, the North East Combined Authority and the North of Tyne Combined Authority will receive their share of the funding once appropriate governance is in place.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Robert Courts)
We will not review the airports national policy statement at this time, but will consider the case again once the jet zero strategy has been finalised and there is more certainty about the longer-term impact of covid on aviation.
David Simmonds
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on airport communities, I know that many colleagues would like to know whether, in the light of the jet zero strategy, we now have the opportunity to spread the benefits of cleaner air travel to a larger selection of airports across the United Kingdom.
Robert Courts
My hon. Friend is quite right that the jet zero strategy provides the opportunity to spread cleaner, greener air travel across all parts of the UK. For example, the UK sustainable aviation fuel industry could create up to 11,000 green jobs while helping to level up with production facilities across the UK. We will be looking at regional aviation in our forthcoming aviation strategy.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Simmonds Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Let’s get beyond next Thursday. Then it will be easier for all of us. [Laughter.]
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
The Government do not support a boundary charge. The Mayor of London cannot expect non-Londoners to clean up his mismanagement of Transport for London finances.
David Simmonds [V]
Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is precisely not the fresh start that TfL or London as a whole needs to see? The cost of the Mayor’s financial mismanagement should not be passed on to my constituents and other Londoners at precisely the time when we are trying to kickstart our economy after covid. Does he agree that this measure, if implemented, would be damaging particularly for high streets in outer London boroughs, and especially for the disabled and those who rely on their cars for personal reasons?
Grant Shapps
That is absolutely right. Let us be fair to the Mayor of London. No one could have predicted the coronavirus. This Government have generously backed TfL with more than £3 billion of support so far, but it is because of the Mayor’s mismanagement of that organisation, with years of being woefully unprepared, that he was not ready when this economic shock came. If London wants a real fresh start for TfL and does not want this boundary tax, it should consider voting for Shaun Bailey on 6 May.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Simmonds Excerpts(4 years ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Chris Heaton-Harris)
The Government recently made £350 million available to make accessibility improvements at a further 209 stations through the Access for All programme. We also require the industry to comply with current accessibility standards whenever they install, replace or renew station infrastructure.
David Simmonds
According to the London Assembly transport committee, only one third of stations in London provide step-free access. What pressure can my hon. Friend bring to bear on the Mayor of London to ensure that this is improved and that stations like West Ruislip in my constituency, which the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), had the opportunity to visit recently, are brought up to standard?
Chris Heaton-Harris
As my hon. Friend rightly highlights, transport policy in London is devolved to the Mayor of London and delivered by Transport for London. It is therefore a matter for the Mayor to determine his accessibility policy. However, Ministers and officials in the Department for Transport hold regular discussions with the Mayor on a range of transport issues, including this issue, and I will make sure it is highlighted at the next one.
Transport for London: Funding
David Simmonds Excerpts(4 years ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
We have heard many sensible contributions from Members across the issues tonight. I would like to focus in particular on those that we experience in my constituency and many other parts of London towards the outer edge of the suburbs, in zone 6.
For those who have not had the pleasure of visiting Harefield, in my constituency, I should say that it is well known as the largest village in London to the north-west. Getting there means travelling through proper English countryside surrounded by fields, with grazing livestock and woods. It certainly does not feel like a part of our capital, and although it is served by a small number of bus routes laid on by TfL, we must recognise that for the residents there, and in many other parts of the outer suburbs, the subsidy provided for travel only helps if they can access the transport network reliably. For many places that simply do not have access to trains and tubes, that means a restriction on the benefit that they see. For many of my constituents, in a place that is much more dependent on the car than most of London and also home to many cabbies and minicab drivers, the services that TfL operates to keep our traffic moving are also enormously significant, although afforded rather less attention under what feels very much like a zone 1 Mayor than we have seen historically.
We need to recognise that all Londoners need to benefit from the services provided by TfL. Although my children and I are particularly huge fans of it—there is no greater pleasure than standing on the bridge and watching the tube trains come in and out, and working out which of the bus routes go where—we need to ensure that we provide value for money for all Londoners in how TfL carries out its operations.
At the heart of tonight’s debate is the impact on children and young people of the changes that are taking place and that will take place in the future. London’s local authorities have for a long time had programmes such as the safer routes to school scheme to encourage children to walk or cycle to their local school. There is the home-to-school transport legislation, which sets out a framework of distance around those routes. Of course, in planning the new schools that have been required to meet the rising numbers of children in London, local authorities have always been cognisant of distance to ensure that as far as possible, every mum and dad and every child has access to a good local school.
It is therefore a reasonable challenge to TfL to recognise that a very significant proportion of the journeys undertaken by children are those going to school and are well under the statutory distances. It is a reasonable challenge that transport commissioners need to look at, and they need to ask how, given the difficult times we face and the need to ensure proper social distancing on public transport, we manage that challenge as effectively as possible.
Ultimately, the debate is not about the niceties of the bail-out package. A Mayor of whichever political party needs to show that the fate of London is genuinely in his hands, and that he is willing to take ownership of the challenges that present—whether that is covid, as it is today, or one of the many other challenges our city has faced in the past. The response that comes out of City Hall must command the confidence of all Londoners. The challenge we face at present is that Sadiq Khan comes across as a nice, quite affable chap—he is clearly very good at PR—but he is just not very competent at managing the services and finances in our capital city: not just in respect of TfL, but in so many other regards, such as with the police.
We need to ensure that we bring about a change that ensures that my constituents have a sense that they have a leader in City Hall who can command their confidence, and who understands and is interested in the issues that concern them in the suburbs. That is why we need a change from the mayoral elections when they come up next year.
Covid-19: Emergency Transport and Travel Measures in London Boroughs
David Simmonds Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Huq
The right hon. Lady makes a really good point. We have relied on cabbies—remember that taxi exam, the knowledge? That is completely invalidated by these changes. She makes a really powerful point. I think people feel discombobulated because these changes are so radical and dramatic, and they appear to have come out of nowhere.
I think that policies work best when policy makers take the public with them and act for them, rather than doing stuff to them, which I think many feel has happened. In our borough there are 37 different schemes, with over £1 million of funding. The most controversial is LTN 21—they all have these rather Stalinist names. Oh, sorry—I will be in trouble. Across three wards, nigh on every side street has been blocked; it has turned the area into a convoluted maze of planters at odd angles. The right hon. Lady referred to commercial vehicles. Delivery vans have become more and more prevalent in the pandemic; they are completely outfoxed by these measures.
When news of this debate broke on a local forum, hundreds of replies—they were going up by the minute—came in with things that I should raise, so I will try to give voice to some of those.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I do not know whether the hon. Lady is more concerned about having been insufficiently enthusiastic in her mention of Stalin or having been too enthusiastic in bringing him up. In the context of low-traffic neighbourhoods, does she think that a good deal of consultation and discussion with the emergency services is critical? That has been a consistent problem with the implementation of LTNs, certainly in the view of my constituents and many others.
Dr Huq
The hon. Gentleman speaks so much sense. We are at one on Heathrow—actually, I think all three of us who have spoken so far are—and he is right. In theory, these people are not allowed to express an opinion, so the leadership say, “Yeah, fine,” but the people who have to implement these things—the ambulance personnel, police people and fire officers—all think that they have made a difficult job ever more difficult at a time when every second counts. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Rachel Maclean)
It is a pleasure to respond to the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) on raising this important subject, which has attracted wide interest from colleagues in all parts of the House. The title of the debate is “Covid-19: Emergency Transport and Travel Measures in London Boroughs”, so it is important that I welcome her support for the generous help the Mayor of London has been given for Transport for London, thanks to the Conservative Government; it will keep London going throughout the pandemic. I put it on record that it was certainly not the Government’s plan to extend the congestion zone. That is a matter for the Mayor of London.
I move on to the subject at hand, about which the hon. Lady addressed a number of questions to me. I am pleased that she is a keen cyclist—we start from a point of agreement there—and I am sure that she welcomes the Government’s record investment in cycling and walking. That is the biggest ever investment to get people out of cars, clean up our dirty air and decarbonise our transport sector.
David Simmonds
The Minister refers to the need to clean up our dirty air, which many of us regard as a high priority, particularly in the capital. Does she agree that it is necessary to make the enforcement powers that we give to local authorities sufficiently meaningful, as envisaged by our local council here under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken)? That would ensure that people who behave in an antisocial way by idling engines near schools, for example, receive a penalty commensurate with the damage they are causing to the local environment, children and other nearby pedestrians.
Rachel Maclean
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is right that we focus all our attention as a Government on keeping our air clean through measures such as the one he mentions and others.
Our active travel fund was set up to encourage more active travel, particularly while public transport capacity was constrained. That is why we announced £225 million of active travel funding in May. Many of the points made by hon. Members relate to feedback from their constituents. It is important that those queries and concerns are raised and addressed in the House.
The Government published clear guidance to set out what is expected of local authorities when making changes to road layouts to encourage cycling and walking. Low traffic neighbourhoods are a collection of measures, including road closures to motor traffic, designed to remove the rat-running traffic that can blight residential roads. They deliver a wide range of benefits for local communities.
The Government have consistently made clear to local authorities the importance of consulting on such schemes, which is key to delivering a scheme that works for all. As the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton said, it is about taking local communities with us.