Thomas Cook

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

As the hon. Lady knows, I share her concerns. I do not want to abuse Mr Speaker’s counsel, so I refer the hon. Lady to my previous comments and will have the Insolvency Service look fully into the situation.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

About 250 Thomas Cook staff based at Glasgow airport in my constituency, along with countless others in shops across Renfrewshire, have lost their livelihoods; my thoughts are very much with them. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether, in taking his deeply disappointing decision not to intervene, he asked his Department and other Departments to calculate not only the cost of Operation Matterhorn itself, but the related costs, including out-of-work benefits, the loss of tax revenue to the Exchequer and the wider economic impact of the collapse?

[Grant Shapps]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, there are pretty strict rules involved in when the state can and cannot intervene in private businesses. If it intervened all the time, other much more successful businesses would be disadvantaged and those employments could be affected. As I mentioned briefly earlier, an accounting officer would not have signed off that kind of intervention because it simply would have represented a big problem for the state, and we almost certainly would have ended up having to repatriate people in any case, as we are today.

EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for gamely trying to defend the Government position. Fair play to him; he is the only one willing to do that. I would like to see him argue to all the members of the Public Accounts Committee that that NAO report was reassuring and that the evidence it took was reassuring, because that is not what I have heard from PAC members. So again I disagree.

If this were a real and robust process, the Government would have defended themselves to the hilt in court. They would not have caved in and done an out-of-court settlement. Again, that is indicative of where the Government are and the lack of confidence they had once they were eight-balled by Eurotunnel.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I also read the NAO report said that warnings were ignored in the “rushed…ineffective” and “inappropriate” privatisation, creating “significant risks”, that it wasted £500 million and that the number of recalled prisoners skyrocketed. But that was about the Secretary of State’s careless probation service legacy. So he clearly has a track record. As a master of understatement, he said that those reforms had not worked as well as he had hoped.

[Alan Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I spoke earlier about the systemic procurement failures in the Department for Transport. It is clear there is a common thread between the systemic failure in the privatisation and procurement of probation services and the man who is now in charge at the Department for Transport, who is sitting here lackadaisically thinking everything is okay in the world and he is doing a fine job. I am sorry but that is not the case and that is not how it is seen in the wider country.

I will now return to some questions raised in the Chamber that have still not had satisfactory answers. The permanent secretary at the Department for Transport told the PAC that the Department had awarded Seaborne the contract before Arklow confirmed its backing. So the Transport Secretary needs to be able to provide further clarity on that. We return to the question: where were the written guarantees that he was supposedly assured about from Arklow before it walked away? It is shameful that it turns out that as far as we know no written guarantees were given by Arklow, yet when it walked away some of the most hard Brexiteers, the right-wing Brexiteers, said it was an Irish conspiracy because Arklow is an Irish company. That is shameful. It was the Department for Transport not doing its due diligence

Additionally, the director general at the Department for Transport said that it was no longer possible to complete procurement and operation for any large amount of further capacity across the channel before the end of March by either sea or rail. Can the Secretary of State explain that? Can he explain how the sudden £33 million settlement with Eurotunnel, if it is going to provide all these vital services at the end of March, stacks up against the fact that the previous argument was that the Department no longer had time to be able to source those additional services?

In relation to Seaborne Freight, the Secretary of State said that

“we have spent no money on this contract.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2019; Vol. 654, c. 619.]

I ask him once again if he could please spell out the real financial implications of that award to Seaborne Freight and the handling of the direct negotiations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown]

I cannot confirm that. The right hon. Gentleman is quite comfortable with his legacy there, so I will leave that to him; what he said is on the record. No one else seems to appreciate his legacy, including the current Justice Minister, who is trying to deal with the mess.

[Gavin Newlands]

I cannot believe that the Transport Secretary stood up and defended his probation service reforms. I serve on the Select Committee on Justice, and the Ministers who replaced him and his team at the Ministry of Justice have said time and again that the service is a shambles. I am absolutely amazed that he stood up to defend it. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Alan Brown]

I agree wholeheartedly. To be fair to the current Transport Secretary, he allowed VTEC, the Virgin-Stagecoach consortium, to walk away owing the taxpayer £2 billion and said that that was not a bail-out. If I let somebody off from owing me £2 billion, it would seem that I had bailed them out. As I touched on earlier, he also has a lot of culpability in the Southern rail franchise and in how the model was set up, and he has been unwilling to get involved in industrial disputes. In fact, in a way he wanted the disputes to continue because of his views on the unions. We had the Northern rail timetable fiasco, where the Government again tried to argue that the taxpayer was not liable, but when Network Rail pays compensation to a franchise holder, that money comes from the taxpayer. All that is in addition to the £800,000 on due diligence and the out-of-court settlement with Eurotunnel. It has been a farce from start to end, but the Transport Secretary is not willing to accept accountability.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

It is hard for me to comment on whether the council has any excuse, since I do not know the circumstances it is under. All I can say is that it has a share in £420 million more than was expected at the end of last year.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

5. What steps he is taking to reduce potential disruption to travel in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

6. What steps he is taking to reduce potential disruption to travel in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)]

My Department is undertaking a comprehensive and wide-ranging programme of work to ensure that we are prepared for a scenario in which the UK leaves without a deal. We continue to work to ensure that the UK does not leave without a deal.

[Gavin Newlands]

I am grateful for that answer, which I am not sure even those on the Government Benches will buy. The Secretary of State told the House on Monday that Arklow had confirmed its backing for Seaborne Freight “from the outset”. Yesterday the permanent secretary to the DFT told the Public Accounts Committee that the DFT had awarded Seaborne Freight the contract before Arklow confirmed its backing. Those two statements are entirely contradictory, so who is telling the truth—his permanent secretary or him?

[Chris Grayling]

It is very simple: the contract was conditional on Seaborne Freight producing a reference from Arklow, which it did.

Leaving the EU: Aviation Sector

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hollobone. I want, like other hon. Members, to congratulate the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) on bringing forward the debate. The opportunity is timely, given the ticking of the clock towards Brexit day. The hon. Gentleman was right to highlight the aviation industry’s skills and its scale—the fact that it supports thousands of jobs, as well as exports, imports, businesses across the entire UK, and of course inward and outward tourism. He went on to highlight the risks and opportunities, and I found some parts of what he said easier to agree with than others.

Unfortunately I agreed with the negative points, rather than the positive ones. As to risks, the hon. Gentleman was right to highlight the risk to connectivity. There is clearly such a risk, and the UK Government are now beginning to acknowledge that. He highlighted how critical the EU is for Manchester airport’s connectivity, citing the figure of 74% of its flights. With respect to connectivity risks and day-to-day operations, he mentioned evidence to the Public Accounts Committee that air and rail services between Britain and the EU are an “area of growing concern.” That point was recently echoed by Michael O’Leary of Ryanair, who last month stated industry concerns about the implications of no deal, and the lack of preparation for that. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), the hon. Gentleman was correct that the WTO is not an option; that is not an alternative that is compliant with the aviation sector. The UK Government need to get their act together.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Department for Transport has been telling the aviation industry since the Brexit vote that it will be all right on the night? I warned the Airport Operators Association and others that, while that might be the case, there was no justification for that confidence. Does my hon. Friend agree with the EASA and Civil Aviation Authority employees I spoke to a few months ago, who think that there is a huge risk that the UK Government are sleepwalking into an aviation crisis, and that it is time we in this place, and the industry, made a lot more noise about it?

[Alan Brown]

I completely agree. The UK Government’s attitude is completely blasé and lackadaisical.

The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East, in discussing opportunities, spoke about future markets, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire, who intervened on him to say we do not need Brexit for those opportunities. The whole growth of the airline industry is the result of our membership of the EU, so it is hard to see what opportunities there are. The hon. Gentleman spoke of aviation as an essential component of an outward-looking Britain, but unfortunately that is not the message that people from outwith the UK get at the moment. Britain is becoming too inward-looking, rather than being outward-looking. However, I agree with the sentiments of the hon. Gentleman’s “how” questions to the Minister, and I should like to hear the response.

Clearly, no Westminster Hall debate would be complete without a contribution from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). He certainly knows how to maximise the lack of a time limit; he used all his experience there. It was good to hear him talk about the importance of Bombardier to his constituency, but it reminded me of the games that can be played in trade negotiations, and protectionism such as the recent carry-on in the US. I am glad that that has been resolved, and it was good to hear about the new order for 60 planes to go to Latvia. I wish them well with the opportunities and jobs that it will bring.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about bringing positivity, but then even he had to admit that Brexit is not a quick and easy process, so I find it hard to believe in the opportunities that will suddenly arise the day after Brexit. I agree with him about the opportunities that the third runway at Heathrow would bring, but I hope he shares my concern at the fact that the UK Government have not confirmed how they will provide protection to domestic slots that are supposed to open with the expansion.

My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire confirmed that the single aviation market is what has transformed travel in the UK and within the EU, with the connectivity and opportunities it has brought. However, Brexit now brings risks to companies such as Ryanair, which is so important to her local airport, Prestwick. She highlighted the fact that those companies operate using the freedoms of the European common aviation area, and the registration issues that will arise post-Brexit.

Finally, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) correctly highlighted issues to do with EASA—that it is not just a matter of safety. He pointed out the standards that it imposes for pilot registration, and consequent issues relating to conversion to the CAA and a bilateral agreement. We need to know the Government’s plans as to membership of EASA.

It is clear that from the perspective of Tory Back-Bench Members the future of the aviation seems not to be of much concern. It is surprising that those Benches are empty.

As the clock ticks towards Brexit, the UK Government’s handling of the aviation sector sums up their shambolic approach, including the attitude of the Secretary of State for Transport, who is an arch-Brexiteer and has the blasé attitude that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North said, “It will be all right on the night; everything will be okay.” I am speaking of a Secretary of State who does not know how the US-Canada border works for lorry crossings, and who seems still not to accept Brexit’s implications for the Ireland-Northern Ireland border. He is someone who goes along with the mantra “They need us more than we need them,” and the assertion “You know what—Spain needs flights, and the tourists who come from the UK, or their economy will crash.” That level of arrogance is not enough to get over the finishing line, which will need hard thinking, hard negotiations and a willingness to compromise.

Let us consider the promises on an aviation deal, to date. In November 2016, in a debate on Brexit, the Transport Secretary said he was

“in absolutely no doubt that we will secure in good time and effectively the agreements that our aviation sector needs to continue to fly around the world”.—[Official Report, 23 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 953.]

In October 2017 he told the Transport Committee:

“I am absolutely certain that over the coming months we will have mutual sensible arrangements put in place”.

On the open skies agreement with the US, another EU benefit, he said in October 2016 that his

“expectation and my intention would be that we retain the open skies arrangement for the United States.”

In March 2018, after media reports that the US would offer only its standard bilateral agreement, those claims were rebutted. We heard from Nick Calio, the chief executive of Airlines for America, who said:

“In terms of the timetable, we hope something will be in place as early as the end of the month or the beginning of April.”

There we are. Two years on from initial claims of how easily and imminently those definite agreements would be reached, I ask the Minister where they are. Yesterday in an article in The Guardian we learned that with five months to go the Secretary of State for Transport admits that negotiations on an aviation agreement have not even started. What does the Minister say about that? It is truly shameful, if it is true.

It is now five months to Brexit day. As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire said, airlines are now selling seats with disclaimers for post-Brexit issues. Clearly, people are being put off from making bookings beyond Brexit. It is a fact that lack of certainty is curbing airline expansion and the opening of new routes in the EU, with respect to the UK. If an EU airline has a choice of a new destination, it will clearly choose the internal EU market over the UK. That will be a simple business decision to make.

The UK Government have clearly been operating on the premise that there is no way the EU will allow flights to be grounded, because of the inconvenience that that would cause EU citizens and airlines. I agree that it seems inconceivable; but it also now seems to be a real possibility, and our only method of overcoming it seems to be to kick it into the long grass of a transition period. It is clear that the proper preparations for no deal are not in place. There will be some sort of fudge. It will be kicked down the road and not be dealt with properly. Why do not the UK Government look at staying in a customs union, the single market and the single aviation market? It just makes sense.

We have heard that the UK Government have been making contingency plans for no deal. They, too, have warned about the risk of planes being grounded. However, the advice about the no-deal technical notice for aviation seems to be that each airline is to negotiate directly with the relevant authority in each country that it wants to fly to, and must get approval from EASA, with the slight caveat added that at present there is no process enabling individual airlines to do that. What kind of no deal preparations are those? It is saying to the airlines, “It is over to you lot, because we don’t know what to do.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Let me be clear: all Members of the House would like to see a long-term solution to the issues on the island of Cyprus. This country will continue to work with our friends in Cyprus to try to achieve that goal, but our policies on flights have not changed.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

T5. The east coast franchise is now run with the part publicly-owned London North Eastern Railway, and it is a major transport operation in Scotland. Despite that, the UK Government have not allowed any Scottish Government representation on the board. Will the Secretary of State rethink that, and commit to ensuring that the Scottish Government are represented on that vital piece of infrastructure?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Joseph Johnson)]

The London North Eastern Railway started operations on 24 June. We are in the process of establishing the east coast partnership board, and we will ensure independent representation on that board. We are in consultation with stakeholders across the length and breadth of the line to ensure that their views are taken into account in the management of that new operation.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [Lords]

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

For a start, the UK Government have delayed the agriculture Bill. The SNP wants control of immigration to support the farming industry. There are big concerns about agriculture, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. There are concerns about the power grab and the attempt to override devolved policy matters. We heard at the weekend about the much promised review into common agricultural policy funding. The UK Government kept money that was due to Scottish farmers. They held on to it and we heard at the weekend that the review has been delayed again. I will not take any lectures from the hon. Gentleman on agricultural policy.

For the benefit of the House, I will try to return to the Bill. Part 1 covers the haulage permit system, as stated earlier. This is just an enabling Bill, so the real proof of the pudding will come from a combination of Government negotiations and the secondary legislation that is required as part of the Bill. At the moment, we really do not know what we are getting from the Bill.

The Government have stated that they intend to consult on fees later this year when the negotiations are much clearer, but that does not give me much confidence either. The reality is that we should be there or thereabouts with the negotiations already if we are going to get systems in place and advise hauliers and the Freight Transport Association what the future looks like for them, and what they need to do to comply. Clause 2 also introduces further uncertainty by referring to possible random selection or selection on a first come, first served basis, if permits are limited. If that is the outcome, it will cause further uncertainty for businesses.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

My constituency is home to W.H. Malcolm Ltd, one of Scotland’s largest hauliers. When I met its staff, they said that the industry has gone through a tough time for a variety of reasons over the last few years. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Secretary of State’s gung-ho, “It’ll be all right on the night” approach gives little comfort to hauliers such as W.H. Malcolm and to exporters across the UK?

[Alan Brown]

I completely agree. I am sure that the haulage company that my hon. Friend referred to—it is clearly a massive haulage company—will have concerns about how the licence will come about, how vacancies will be filled in future and, as we heard earlier, the rising age profile of drivers. Something else that the UK Government have refused to do is help to pay for drivers to be trained so that they can get into the industry. Individuals cannot afford the £3,000 that it costs to train for an HGV licence.

Just to surprise the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), on a slightly positive note, I welcome the fact that clause 9 comes from the Government accepting a Lords amendment about future reporting on the impact on the UK haulage industry of the restrictions that apply to a permit scheme. What I find curious about that is that when I try to get amendments through in Committee that require the Government to report on future implementation, they always vote them down, so I hope that this will be a precedent for other future legislation. I welcome these provisions on future reporting.

Clause 12 covers Northern Ireland. Despite assurances from the Minister in the Lords that this legislation will not result in a hard border in Ireland—we have heard that from the Secretary of State—we need to know how the powers will be enforced and how it will not lead to a hardening of the border. I notice that the Secretary of State could not state clearly how the Irish Government see this operating. The Bill also specifically requires the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which, as I am sure he is aware, has not been operating for 16 months, so will the Minister or the Secretary of State explain how consent will be sought in the absence of a devolved Government?

Overall, the Government may continue to assert that there will be no hard border, but they need to answer difficult questions about the broader picture regarding not only the Bill, but the customs arrangements and how they will do checks with this mythical “no infrastructure.” The Secretary of State talks time and again about how there are no checks on the US-Canada border, but I remind him that there are. Lorries have to stop there, so that model cannot be followed or else it will mean a hard border in Northern Ireland.

Part 2 of the Bill covers trailer registration as a consequence of ratifying the 1968 Vienna convention. Again, this is a series of enabling clauses with the detail to follow, so we do not know how this will be implemented or what the costs will be. The UK Government have stated again that private-use trailers such as caravans and horse trailers will not fall within the scope, yet those exclusions have not been put in the Bill, so how can we guarantee that that is the case? The Secretary of State might be aware that the National Caravan Council has raised concerns about the lack of clarity on exemptions for non-commercial trailers. It currently operates its own voluntary registration scheme, which is cost-effective and very successful, so any new scheme should not duplicate what it is doing. If needs be, a new scheme should build on what it is doing. We have also heard that this is only a registration scheme, yet clause 14(4) suggests that the regulations may make

“provision for a periodic mandatory safety standards testing scheme”.

What are the Government’s intentions regarding road safety measures for trailers? Is there a planned timescale for implementing them?

In conclusion—everybody will be pleased to know that I have come to the conclusion—we do not know if part 1 of the Bill is required, and if it is, we do not know what the secondary legislation will look like. We do not know what the fees will be. We do not know what the application process will be. We do not know whether there will be limits on the number of permits available. We do not know what additional checks will be required and how the situation will be managed regarding the Irish border. To borrow from Donald Rumsfeld, it seems to me that there are still a lot of known unknowns as regards the Bill. I also suspect that there are further unknown unknowns to follow. Having said that, the Government must be delighted with the progress they have made on taking back control, so I absolutely welcome the Bill.