Oral Answers to Questions

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

2. What the timetable is for Transport for the North to submit its proposals for Northern Powerhouse Rail.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)]

As I am sure the hon. Lady is aware, Northern Powerhouse Rail will provide faster and more frequent rail services across the region. We have committed £60 million to developing the scheme and we are working closely with Transport for the North on potential route options and their costs and benefits. That analysis is due to arrive with us by the end of 2017.

[Judith Cummins]

I am sure the Minister will be aware that Bradford has launched the “Next Stop Bradford” campaign to secure a High Speed 3 station in our city centre. Will the Minister join me in supporting a Northern Powerhouse Rail station in Bradford city centre and thereby support the huge £1.3 billion boost to the northern powerhouse economy that the new station promises?

[Paul Maynard]

I am indeed aware of Bradford’s campaign. The leader of the council has already written to me, and I was grateful for that communication. It is important to stress that Northern Powerhouse Rail is about linking not just the major cities in the north but some of the smaller towns and cities where connectivity can be significantly improved.

Bus Services Bill [Lords]

Judith Cummins Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 27th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

New clause 1 stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) and for North West Durham (Pat Glass). It would require that the Secretary of State for Transport publish a national strategy for local bus services within 12 months of the day on which the Act is passed, setting out the objectives, targets and funding provisions for buses over the next 10 years. It would also require that the national funding strategy include a consideration of a reduced fare concessionary scheme for young people aged 16 to 19.

New clauses 2 and 3, in the name of the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), also relate to bus funding generally, and to young people’s concessionary fares specifically. New clause 2 would require the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament setting out possible steps to support local transport authorities in providing concessionary bus travel to apprentices aged 16 to 18, and new clause 3 would require local transport authorities to assess how creating an authority-wide travel concession scheme for 16 to 18-year-olds in full-time education would affect the way in which students use bus services.

It is clear that a long-term national discussion from central Government on the funding of the bus industry is long overdue. Since the bus market in England outside London was disastrously deregulated in the 1980s by a Conservative Government, public support for bus services has been provided in a far from transparent way. The effects of deregulation have been stark.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the drop of more than half in passenger journey numbers in Yorkshire and Humber since 1985 is no coincidence—it is down to deregulation?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and I will return to other examples of the failure of deregulation in a moment. It is not just about the number of services. Fares have risen faster than inflation, and patronage overall has fallen by more than a third. Bus market monopolies have become the norm in far too many places.

Back in October, we noted the 30th anniversary of bus deregulation, but it was far from a cause for celebration. It meant 30 years of bus users being ripped off by a handful of big bus operators, which have carved the market into chunks and which go largely unchallenged in their own territories.

Bus Services Bill [Lords]

Judith Cummins Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane).

I broadly support the Bill, as do many Members in the House, and I acknowledge that a number of sector bodies, including the respected Urban Transport Group, also support it. However, I say “broadly” because I have concerns that it contains a fundamental deficiency, and I will come to that later in my speech.

The Bill promises what many have been pressing for since bus services were deregulated in the 1980s: the reintroduction, in particular, of local franchising powers. The model before deregulation was by no means perfect, but many, including sector bodies, believe that deregulation has been an unmitigated disaster.

London, of course, did not suffer the same fate—it did not lose its local decision-making and franchising powers. Those remain, and they have arguably supported the vast improvements seen in London under the auspices of TfL and the Mayor of London. Regrettably, areas outside London, including my home city of Bradford, saw bus services subject to intense and increased centralisation.

Local decision making on bus services is common sense. Ensuring local accountability to the travelling public is worth while and valuable. More importantly, decisions are better informed when they are made locally. Why else are we pursuing devolution deals up and down the country?

The case for reasserting local decision making over our local bus services is more compelling than at any time in recent history. That is because our local and regional public transport models are falling desperately short of their desired aims. Public transport is not delivering for our local communities, and that is for a number of reasons.

First, the use of local bus services in metropolitan areas outside London has faced steady and relentless decline. That is despite concerted and strenuous efforts on promotion and education over the years. That decline is compounded by rising private car use across the country. In the largest city regions outside London, the number of bus journeys has fallen by over 51% since 1984. That decline in bus usage, along with rising private car use, has caused widespread and persistent congestion on the roads in my constituency. However, the story of Bradford is not unique. Congestion blights communities, impedes economies and causes frustration for the travelling public.

The need to improve bus services is compelling for another reason: the ongoing cuts to local government budgets. For many years, local authorities across the country have subsidised local bus services. Without those subsidies, many bus routes would be unviable, as low passenger numbers mean that they are uncommercial. As local government budgets are cut further, councils will have less and less capacity to continue to subsidise bus services. The size of these subsidies must not be underestimated. The public sector is responsible for 40% of private bus companies’ income, mainly through fuel subsidies, support for the older person’s pass and support for non-commercial services. Given these challenges, the need to cut congestion is beyond doubt.

The reintroduction of franchising is long overdue. Competition in most areas is limited, and as a result, excess profits are rife. Those excess profits undermine the viability of local bus services, and have done so for many years. Analysis by the Urban Transport Group reveals that profits in city regions are running at double the levels seen among bus operators in the capital. In London, bus operators make 4.1% profit on average, but the figure is 8.1% in city regions. That reduces the amount available to bus services. Dividends to shareholders have taken priority over the bus travelling public for far too long. The reintroduction of franchising across all regions is key; the operation of local bus services in London over recent decades offers strong and undeniable evidence of that.

I turn now to the fundamental deficiency in the Bill: the Government’s decision to restrict franchising to those local authority areas where a devolution deal is in place. My suspicion is that the responsibility for conflating the reintroduction of franchising powers with this Government’s devolution agenda lies at the door of DCLG Ministers. We must recognise that devolution deals involve complex negotiations across many local authorities and take time to finalise. Some are in place and others are imminent, but many others may take months or years. The decision to conflate local bus franchising with devolution is at best tactless and at worst cynical. All local areas, not only those that have agreed local deals, should have access to franchising powers. All local areas have a strong interest in improving local bus services for the communities they serve. Denying the benefits of this Bill to certain areas until devolution deals have been agreed is a cynical ploy. It delays the undoubtable benefits of franchising until local areas relent. I urge the Minister to consider that point. Local bus services are too important to become a bargaining chip in this Government’s devolution negotiations.

Transport and Local Infrastructure

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I was eager to speak today on transport because I believe that there is arguably no more potent policy lever in the hands of Government that has the capacity to drive increased economic prosperity than that of improving transport. Transport is a policy area that requires Government action more than any other. Infrastructure projects begin to deliver payback only over the longer term and, in the case of railways, decades. With that time horizon, business finds such projects difficult to finance, but the payback, which includes more jobs, increased housing and a more diverse and knowledge-intensive business sector, is critical to the continued prosperity of our country.

Importantly, not only politicians but business people believe this. Business requires Government to step up, show leadership, and signal their commitment to helping our business community to deliver what we all agree it is best able to deliver—increasing prosperity throughout this country.

Unfortunately, I fear that my constituents and the constituents of so many of my right hon. and hon. Friends will find little comfort in the measures announced in the Queen’s Speech. As this House knows all too well, this Government are fond of grand announcements, backed by even grander rhetoric. And no area of Government policy is blessed with grander rhetoric than transport. We hear much about sea changes and renaissances from the other side of the House. A case in point is the northern powerhouse, and more recently, its close relative, High Speed 3. These so-called powerhouse projects both promise, we have been told, a renewed industrial revolution in the heartlands of the north. As you can imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, as an MP who proudly represents the city of Bradford, I was keen to hear more about how this Government intend to invest in improved regional transport, whether railways, buses, roads, or indeed air, to help to rekindle an economic renaissance in my city. I was hopeful that I would be able to offer a debt of gratitude to this Government for investing in the city of Bradford, helping my constituents to realise their potential. But in reality little has emerged from this Government's Queen’s Speech, other than further confirmation that the Government’s term of office is going to be marked by a roll-call of broken promises and a litany of excuses.

Despite six years of the so-called northern powerhouse, the only realities felt by my home city of Bradford, and by my constituents, have been bruising Government cuts and a continued concentration of wealth, economic activity and capital investment in London and the south-east of England. Until I and other northern MPs hounded the Government into an embarrassing U-turn, we faced a broken promise about the trans-Pennine electrification project. This has now been reinstated, albeit with a much less ambitious delivery date.

By most measures, Bradford is one of the UK’s strongest players. It is the fifth largest local authority in Great Britain, with a growing population of over 528,000. It benefits from having the youngest population of any city in the UK, with 23.5% of the population under 16 years of age, compared with 18.8% nationally. In 10 years’ time the population is expected to increase to 569,000, with its working age population forecast to rise by 24,000 to 353,000.

Bradford’s economy is valued at £9.2 billion, the 11th largest in the UK. The city is home to a number of major companies, including Morrisons, Yorkshire Building Society, Princes, Santander, Provident Financial, Pace plc and Hallmark cards. In total, 17,000 businesses call the district of Bradford their home, providing much valued employment to over 195,000 people. But despite these figures, Bradford continues to be shackled by poor connectivity. This poor connectivity is especially glaring when we take the time to consider the city’s regional rail links. Unlike comparators, both nationally and internationally, it has few direct services to other major regional cities. For example, and most shockingly, Bradford has no direct rail services to Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Hull or Manchester airport. Where Bradford does have a direct service to major regional cities such as Manchester, the average speed of the journey is a derisory 33 miles per hour.

A further indictment is the poor regional rail link with Bradford's neighbouring city, Leeds. Currently 45,000 workers commute between Leeds and Bradford on a daily basis, the largest flow between any two major cities in the UK. Despite the two city centres being only 8 miles apart, three quarters of those journeys are made by car rather than by public transport—an unbelievable figure.

As many will recall, since being elected to this House I have reserved my precious few opportunities to question the Prime Minister directly for the subject of regional rail improvement. I first asked about the Government’s broken promise on trans-Pennine electrification. My second question, asked only a few weeks ago, was on electrification of the Calder Valley line, because of the key role it promises to play in HS3 and Bradford’s connectivity.

My constituents might have hoped that the Prime Minister and his Government would take the opportunity offered by the Queen’s Speech to bring forward proposals to improve rail connectivity between Bradford and its neighbouring major cities. The northern powerhouse and HS3 promise no increased regional connectivity for Bradford. For a city the size of Bradford, with an economy valued at £9.2 billion, the 11th largest in the UK, to be notable by its absence from one of the Government’s flagship infrastructure projects is a stark and disturbing oversight. There was an opportunity in this Queen’s Speech to put right that error and to announce measures to better connect a vital cog in this country’s engine room of growth. It is a shame that this Government have chosen not to take that opportunity.