Heathrow Expansion: Air Quality

Jonathan Lord Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hayes]

Yes. Among my many responsibilities, although I know that Members in this Chamber think that they are too few, are big roads, and the M4 is indeed a big road. However, it is important to point out that in any expansion that takes place at Heathrow, a range of transport connections would be considered. I know that Heathrow is considering how people would get to and from the airport. That will not just be by car. The hon. Lady will know that about 45% of people currently make their journey to and from Heathrow by private vehicle, but that number is not fixed in stone. One would hope that—indeed, I would expect it to be so as part of this package—all kinds of innovative solutions will be delivered as to how people can get to the airport efficiently.

Therefore, I do not want to prejudge that issue and I certainly would not want either to say anything that contradicted the answer that the hon. Lady received last week, because the question then was not posed to me; I think it was posed to the Secretary of State. I reassure the hon. Lady that we are broad-minded about the means by which people get to and from Heathrow and the effects that might have on local people.

Let me make my last three points, because I promised 10 points and so far I have delivered only seven. The Government have also made it clear that we must tackle noise and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham is also concerned about this. We will also meet our obligations on carbon. On noise, Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd has committed to a ban on scheduled night flights of six and a half hours, more predictable periods of respite for communities and new and binding noise targets.

Ninthly, the Government’s announcement was just the beginning, as I said, of the process, as the preferred scheme will now be subject for consultation through a draft airports national policy statement that will follow in the new year. Of course, that is something to look forward to after the excitement of Christmas.

Finally, it is important to point out—I know that my hon. Friend is very conscious of this and I thought she deserved an answer on it—that the Government accept the recent High Court judgment that more needs to be done to improve the nation’s air quality. That does not apply simply to airports; I am looking at a range of transport modes, as she will doubtless appreciate. I can tell her that the Government will produce a revised plan by 31 July 2017 and my team in the Department for Transport are beavering away and working with other relevant Departments to make sure that the plan meets all the necessary requirements.

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I think I have only two minutes left, but what a delight it is to give way to my hon. Friend.

[Jonathan Lord]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Many experts, commentators and indeed Members of this House feel that the air quality projections made to date have been somewhat fanciful, including a large dose of wishful thinking. Can he reassure us that there is anything in the next year’s worth of consultation that will be more robust, and that the Government will take note of what many experts are saying?

[Mr Hayes]

I can give an absolute assurance that while I am the Minister of State at the Department for Transport all that we do will be studious and robust, and that includes the considerations of the kind that my hon. Friend has identified. It is important that we do the work to produce an evidential argument and also articulate that argument in a way that sends the public a very clear message—this Government are serious about transport and about wellbeing. All that we do in the Department, while I have influence over it, will be gauged by wellbeing and the effect that it has on the national interest and the common good.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the effect on air quality of proposed Heathrow airport expansion.

Weymouth to Waterloo Rail Line

Jonathan Lord Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on securing this debate on the important issue of rail services between Weymouth to Waterloo. As he mentioned, we had a very fulfilling and useful working session earlier this afternoon, which was attended by some of our other hon. Friends in the Chamber. It is telling that so many right hon. and hon. Members are here today, including my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord), who represents an important constituency on this line. In all such debates, we hear a lot of joined-up support from MPs representing people living in towns, villages and cities right the way along the relevant routes, and I shall go on to address why that is so important.

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I join my hon. Friend the Minister in congratulating our hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on securing this debate and everything that he said, but will the Minister indulge me and reiterate that she supports the large improvements that will be required over the years to come at my station in Woking, which is on the line?

[Claire Perry]

Indeed; I would be happy to support that. I was going to come on to say that the Weymouth and Waterloo termini are at either end of the south west main line. That line has the third-rail system, which is rather old electrified technology, and we know that that is one reason why its trains run more slowly than on lines with overhead technology. My hon. Friend raises an important point. Ultimately, the aspiration is to bring all electrified track up to the state-of-the-art level, which would include the investments that he references.

As we heard, journey times on the line are anywhere from two hours 40 minutes to three hours. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset came to see me well before the general election to discuss the idea of upgrading the electrical supply along the line to provide a power boost. Some work has been done and, as he rightly said, it is difficult to see the cost-effectiveness—the business case—of those specific investments. As he is a person who does not give up easily, he therefore turned to option 2, which is the idea of connecting that line with the one running through Yeovil, thereby allowing a diversionary route that, of course, would benefit stations in Yeovil and Salisbury, which are represented by hon. Friends in the Chamber. That proposal is interesting, and we had an excellent session this afternoon to run through what would actually need to be done to deliver the journey time improvements that we want. We want to deliver the increased frequency and decreased journey times that would deliver the economic benefits about which we have heard a great deal.

As we know, this is a vital franchise area for the country. Waterloo is the busiest station in the UK. This franchise carries millions of people every year, which was why we announced this year that we would have a franchise competition with a view to getting a new operator in place for 2017. This is a fortuitous time to be discussing infrastructure, because the franchising opportunity gives us a chance to look at what we really want to achieve for the whole of the south-west network. There are proposals to introduce faster trains, and perhaps diesel or bimodal trains, which might be something that bidders come back with to deliver improvements to journey times overall.

There is also the question of how to get investment for infrastructure. My hon. Friend spoke about this, and I am always amazed by how expensive it is to do things on the railway. However, we are talking about a small set of projects—this is not something of the scale of the Great Western electrification. We have clearly signalled our desire not to route all railway investment through Network Rail, but to use the train operating companies as the commissioners, as well as the operators running on the network. We have an example of that, because FirstGroup is already taking the lead role in the Selby to Hull electrification project.

While we are going through the franchise process, there is an opportunity to engage with the bidders and determine their appetite is to deliver improvements. Of course, the question is: what is the cost to them? My hon. Friend is right that one cannot set out the business case without knowing the cost. In all honesty, I do not want to burden Network Rail with any more projects at the moment, given its enormous challenge of delivering the projects that we have already set out, but I will discuss with my officials a way of trying to get a better analysis of at least what the range of costs might be for these improvements. We can then start to build a case that takes account of those costs and examines the benefits that improvements to journey times and greater connectivity could deliver.

What was so refreshing in today’s meeting—I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, as well as others who attended—was that we had the local enterprise partnerships and local councils present, as well as MPs assiduously representing their constituents. All were thinking about how this network might look for the region, and that is the way to crack the investment conundrum. I have become aware that it is often surprisingly difficult to generate a business case for transport investment. The Jubilee Line extension, High Speed 1 and the M25 were all things whose benefits people in my position many years ago had to struggle to get recognised.

If we start to bring in the broader benefits, such as the housing that these transport improvements could underpin, the businesses that would move to the area and the local growth that could be unlocked, we could really start to capture the value that transport investment can bring. The right way to do that is to engage from the bottom up with the local enterprise partnerships and the council, which can then pull through investment for the benefit of their towns, cities and region.

I therefore urge my hon. Friends, working with their LEP and local council colleagues, to get this issue into the consultation for the franchise, which will run until 9 February. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset is not going to come up with a wish list. Any proposal will be targeted, but we could look at that as something that could be put into the franchise competition for the bidders. Then, by the way, we would be starting to get some competition around the bidding process, which could only be to the good.

In the longer term, as I said, there is an aspiration to improve the electrification right along the line, but we need to be in the business of the delivery of infrastructure. For too long, many Governments have been in a “jam tomorrow” place. Now, we have a fully funded list of improvements and projects that Network Rail will deliver over the next four years, after which we can start to bring together the investment horizon for the future.

What is so refreshing about this debate and the amount of work that went into preparing all the documents that my hon. Friend brought to our meeting is that we are not only spending a record amount on the railways—it is the biggest investment programme since Victorian times—but spending it in the way that most benefits local communities. The investment is being not pushed out by the Department for Transport, but pulled out by those in the regions, because without good transport investment, it is not possible to grow a local, regional or national economy.

I commend hon. Members for attending the debate and speaking so passionately for their railways, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset for all his work. I undertake to consider whether we can come up with a way of getting the numerical range to which I referred so that we can at least start to have a more detailed conversation as the franchise period progresses.

Question put and agreed to.