Rail Timetabling

Debate between Lord Walney and Chris Grayling

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We will do that. I will ask the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), to sit down with my hon. Friend and go through this to make sure that we address some of the timetable anomalies that inevitably come out of a big change like this, which are not just short-term issues but actually structural issues in the timetable.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)]

Yes, of course the timetable changes have been a total fiasco, but does the Secretary of State not understand that people in Furness in Cumbria have been begging him for months to get to grips with this appalling situation? Before Northern took on the full franchise, there were 103 cancellations in a year on the Furness line. Last year, there were 212. Then, in the financial year that has just finished, there were 517—and that was before the timetable changes. Will he stop treating my constituents as though they have got the fag end of what is a pretty horrendous deal right across the country and take this situation seriously, starting tonight?

Rail Update

Debate between Lord Walney and Chris Grayling

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We get caught up in the biggest projects, but sometimes the smaller ones—even a bit of track realignment in places—can make the biggest difference. I hope to do big things, such as the trans-Pennine upgrade, but also smaller things at, for instance, Ashford, where we are trying to improve the situation for passengers.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Secretary of State will know, the Cumbria coastline and the Furness line are giving a dire performance at the moment. It is disappointing that Cumbria was not mentioned in the strategy. Will he ask the Rail Minister, the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), to meet us to discuss what can be done about the 50-year-old locomotives that are breaking down and annoying residents, the terrible state of the rolling stock, and the awful standard of reliability? There is an urgent need to fix all that, otherwise there will be significant damage to the economy.

[Chris Grayling]

I am delighted to be able to remind the hon. Gentleman that we are scrapping all those trains on that route and getting new ones. We are also introducing better services, including Sunday services. All that is being rolled out now. We have a partnership with the Labour leaderships in the councils of the north and Transport for the North, and we have been working side by side to shape the new franchise and the replacements for the rail fleets, for which the Government are paying. Those trains are on order, and the first new trains are now entering service in the northern networks and the trans-Pennine network. Every single train in the north of England on every single route is being replaced—either completely refurbished as new, or scrapped. The old Pacer trains on the Cumbrian coastline, which should have been scrapped years ago and were not under Labour, are being scrapped by us now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Walney and Chris Grayling

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that this is a huge challenge for us. The truth is that, since the general election, youth unemployment has risen by approximately 100,000, with about half that increase coming from full-time students looking for part-time jobs. I regard any level of youth unemployment as too high, and I hope that the subsidies that we provide for employers who hire young people, together with the extra work experience and apprenticeship places being created through the youth contract, will help those in precisely the parts of the country to which he is referring.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What recent progress he has made on reassessing the incapacity benefit case load.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

Incapacity benefit reassessment has been successfully implemented and the reassessment exercise remains on track to be completed by spring 2014. We are reassessing around 11,000 claimants on incapacity benefits each week. Those who are ready and fit for work are able to receive support via the Work programme. Those who are not fit for work will continue to receive ongoing support for as long as they need it.

[John Woodcock]

I thank the Minister for his answer, but is it not true that growing delays in the process are increasing the uncertainty for vulnerable people? Does he accept the evidence provided by groups such as the Barrow & District Disability Association that the call-back time for the advisers’ helpline has increased from three hours to often more than 24 hours? Does he acknowledge that if this process runs aground due to incompetence, the most vulnerable people and the taxpayer will lose out?

[Chris Grayling]

Let me repeat that the incapacity benefit reassessment process, which is just coming up to one year old, is running on time. We have some delays in the claims process for new claimants of employment and support allowance, which is resulting in people having to wait an average of five days longer to be assessed than was previously the case. That is too long. They are having to wait five days longer as a result of the changes implemented following Professor Harrington’s review, but we have a programme in place to enable us to catch up by the summer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Walney and Chris Grayling

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

1. For what reasons Work programme contractors are not permitted to publish their performance data.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

I thought that this afternoon we might have been extensively debating the benefits cap, but no Labour Members have been brave enough to raise the issue; I cannot think why.

The Department is following guidance issued by the national statistician in order to comply with the code of practice for official statistics and to protect the integrity and accuracy of data. However, we propose to allow providers to publish data that do not compromise the official statistics and will issue guidance to providers shortly.

[John Woodcock]

As the Minister knows, under the flexible new deal, providers were allowed to publish their data if they wanted to. If he is confident in his Work programme and knows that he has got the contracting incentives right, about which there is some doubt, why on earth is he refusing to let these providers publish their data if they want to?

[Chris Grayling]

It is precisely because I am keen to get information out there that we are looking at ways to ensure that that can happen, despite the rules about national statistics, which we have to obey very carefully. If the hon. Gentleman wants some statistics about employment programmes, let me share a set with him. The flexible new deal, to which he referred, cost the taxpayer £770 million and delivered 50,000 six-month job outcomes. He can do the maths on that—it amounts to approximately £14,000 per six-month job outcome. That is one failure of the welfare-to-work programmes we inherited, and that is why the welfare-to-work package that we have put together through the Work programme will be better value for the taxpayer and do a better job for the unemployed.

Jobs and the Unemployed

Debate between Lord Walney and Chris Grayling

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I would like to make some progress.

We will introduce radical reform and follow policies that will encourage growth and development in the private sector. We will also radically reform welfare, with a real focus on helping people to find sustainable work. We will reform the benefits system so that work pays. We will tackle endemic worklessness and the intergenerational cycles of disadvantage that it creates. We will halt the tragic waste of human potential that exists when people are out of work. When I listen to Labour Members talking about unemployment, I simply remember their record over the past 10 years, and those 5 million people who have consistently been on benefits.

Next year, we will launch the Work programme to provide a coherent package of support for people who are out of work, regardless of the barriers that they face or the benefits that they claim. We will end the programme complexity that we have seen over the past decade, and replace all the paraphernalia of programmes with a single, integrated package of support. It will not be a one-size-fits-all scheme, however, because we have had too many such schemes from Whitehall. We will trust the professionals on the ground who deliver back-to-work support to find the right way of delivering that support to individuals. We will look to investors in the private, public and voluntary sectors to provide the support, and we will judge the organisations that participate on their success rate.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Of course I want whatever new scheme the Minister comes up with to succeed, but does he share my concern about the possibility that the private contractors whom he wants to employ will charge more for their services because the changes the Government have made in the Budget will result in fewer jobs in the economy than there would otherwise have been?

[Chris Grayling]

That is not my concern. My concern is to ensure that, if the OBR forecasts are correct and we see employment growth amounting to 1.5 million more jobs in the next few years, we do not make the same mistake in government as the hon. Gentleman’s party did and fail to get people off benefits and into work to take those jobs. I do not want to see a steady and unchanging level of millions and millions of people on out-of-work benefits over the course of a decade while jobs are created around them, effectively operating outside our mainstream society. That must change. I want opportunity for those people. I want to see them back in employment. I am sure the hon. Gentleman shares that goal, but what we aim to do is make it happen this time around.