Oral Answers to Questions
Judith Cummins Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Ms Ghani
I recognise my hon. Friend’s passionate and persistent campaigning on behalf of her constituents and the businesses in Erewash. I also recognise the disruption that HS2 causes for people’s lives and for properties. Support is provided through the statutory and non-statutory property compensation schemes, which aim to strike a good balance between ensuring fair compensation and protecting the public purse. A consultation on design refinement is running up until 6 September, and I urge my hon. Friend to make sure she puts forward her evidence.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
The decision by Network Rail to shut the east coast main line on the bank holiday weekend is as baffling as it is nonsensical. Tens of thousands of people will be travelling to the north for our great sporting and cultural events, while rugby league fans will be heading to Wembley for the Challenge cup final. The economic impact on the north is likely to be significant. When was the Department first told about this decision, and will the Minister step in now to reverse it and prevent this misery for passengers?
Chris Grayling
I absolutely understand the hon. Lady’s concern—it is a very busy weekend. These things are always difficult to judge and to get right. I share some of her anxieties, and I have asked the Rail Minister to look, with Network Rail, at whether further ameliorations can be made that weekend to ease the pressure. Going forward, I will ask the train companies and Network Rail to try to be careful to avoid some of the busiest peak weekends. We have to use periods such as Christmas and Easter, but I do understand the hon. Lady’s issue about the August bank holiday.
Active Travel
Judith Cummins Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Michael Ellis)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) on securing this popular debate about active travel, local walking and cycling infrastructure. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to hear the contributions of hon. Members from across the House, who spoke about how cycling improves productivity, health and even one’s love life, according to the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). I need to do more cycling for all those reasons, all of which are acknowledged. I was also pleased that my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) mentioned equestrianism. Active travel includes horse riders and bridle paths—this debate includes them.
The good news is that the Government are committed to increasing cycling and walking and to making our roads safer for those who walk and cycle. That is borne out by the facts and the investment that has been put in.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Queensbury tunnel is a 1.4 mile long former railway tunnel in my constituency that links Queensbury to Halifax. This vital piece of infrastructure is threatened with abandonment by Highways England. Given the wide range of support from across the House, including from all five Bradford MPs, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), will the Minister agree to meet us and to step in so that this can be stopped? It is directly at odds with the Government’s cycling and walking strategy.
Michael Ellis
I am happy to explore that issue. I will ask my officials to liaise with Highways England about it, and I will write to the hon. Lady.
Our ambition is to make cycling and walking the natural choices for short journeys, or as part of longer journeys, by 2040. That ambition will be realised through the statutory cycling and walking investment strategy. The strategy represents a shift in approach from the short-term, stop-start and spasmodic interventions of previous Governments, which were referred to by hon. Members, and towards a strategic, long-term approach up to and beyond 2040.
In the short term, the Government have set an aim to double cycling activity to 1.6 billion stages per year, increase walking to 300 stages per person per year, and increase the percentage of children aged five to 10 who usually walk to school to 55% by 2025. Far from a lack of investment, this Conservative Government have massively increased the budget and the ambitions for cycling and active travel generally.
We know what the benefits are, but it is worth rehearsing them. Increased levels of active travel have huge benefits, including for health, mental health and wellbeing; road congestion; air quality; economic productivity, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury); and increased footfall in shops. For society as a whole, it means lower congestion, better air quality and more vibrant and attractive places and communities. As a former tourism and heritage Minister, I recognise that attractive places help with wellbeing, but also help economies.
In relation to health, illness as an outcome of physical inactivity costs the NHS up to £1 billion per annum, with further indirect costs calculated at £8.2 billion per annum. As forms of physical activity, cycling and walking can and do provide particularly high benefits for physical and mental health. Walking or cycling for just 10 minutes a day can contribute towards the 150 minutes of physical activity that we want adults to do per week, as recommended by the chief medical officer.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Witney, who called this debate, recognises that our aims and targets are challenging, particularly that of doubling cycling activity within five or six years, by 2025. Achieving our ambitions requires co-ordination of a complex delivery chain comprising Government Departments, yes, but also agencies, third sector organisations and hundreds of local authorities.
Oral Answers to Questions
Judith Cummins Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
Mr Speaker, as you know, we have a big programme of investment in transport across the north, after decades of underinvestment. That includes replacing every single train in the north of England, getting rid of the long-outdated Pacer trains, buying new trains for the Newcastle upon Tyne Metro and investing nearly £3 billion in the road network in the north, including an extensive smart motorways programme. The Transforming Cities funds are delivering to individual cities the opportunity to improve metro systems.
Judith Cummins
The Secretary of State may have seen that newspapers across the north have come together again this week to call on the Government to commit to a series of policy changes to power up the north. Towns and cities, villages and hamlets—despite our diversity, the north stands as one to call for more powers and more funding. At the heart of that must be the transformative new rail network linking the great north cities, including Bradford. Will the Secretary of State grasp this moment and make Northern Powerhouse Rail a priority, with a city centre station in Bradford?
Chris Grayling
First, Northern Powerhouse Rail is a manifesto commitment for this Government. The work is being done at the moment to take it forward. Indeed, as the hon. Lady should be aware, in the past few days we have published further details of the interchanges between Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2, thus demonstrating further our commitment to that project.
With regard to Bradford, as the hon. Lady knows, I have had meetings with the council leader. I am extremely sympathetic to the need to ensure that Bradford is a proper part of the Northern Powerhouse Rail network.
Oral Answers to Questions
Judith Cummins Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Jesse Norman
In 2010 the funding levels that we inherited from the previous Government stood at about £2.50 per person, and they are now about £7.55 per person. We would like to get that spending a lot higher if we can, as we fully agree about the merits and benefits of cycling and walking. However, funding is now three times the amount that we inherited from the Government who had governed for 13 years.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Local bus journeys remain central to transport choices, accounting for around 59% of all public transport journeys. Numbers of local bus passenger journeys in England have been falling since the 1950s, and they fell by 1.9% in the year ending March 2018.
Judith Cummins
Bus services provide essential independence and freedom to people with disabilities, yet disabled bus passes allow free travel only after 9.30 am, despite the fact that most people start work before then. Will the Government commit to providing the funding necessary to lift those time restrictions on disabled bus passes?
Ms Ghani
The hon. Lady raises an important point. Bus passengers and disabled passengers have a close link, and it is right that someone’s ability to jump on a bus is about not just economics but social inclusion. That is why we launched the inclusive transport strategy last year. The concessionary bus budget is around £1 billion, which supports about 10 million passengers. That funding is concessionary and down to local authorities, which have very different packages up and down the country.
Rail Infrastructure Investment
Judith Cummins Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this debate through the Liaison Committee. I also congratulate her and the whole of the Transport Committee on the excellent report that we are considering today. I intend to focus my remarks on section 3 of that report, which concerns regional disparities in rail investment and their effect on economic rebalancing. I will also touch on the section relating to the next rail investment control period.
It has been a bad year for our railways in many respects. Along with other hon. Members, I recently took part in a debate on rail services in Yorkshire. The unanimous conclusion of those who took part in that debate was that passengers had been badly let down in recent months. Of course, a large part of that disruption was due to the timetable change introduced last May, but I am also convinced that historic and continuing under-investment in our regional railway infrastructure is a major cause of passenger dissatisfaction.
The report makes it clear that regions outside London and the south-east have not received a fair share of rail investment for years. That is especially true across the north of England. There has been persistent, long-standing underfunding of transport infrastructure in our region, which figures from IPPR North repeatedly show. Over the past few years, London has seen a £326 per-person increase in public spending, while the north has seen an increase of less than half the size—of just £146. Transport spending per person remains approximately twice as high in London as in the north, as it has been for the past decade. There are also significant disparities within the north. Last year, the north-west saw an average increase of £158 per person in transport spending, and yet spending in Yorkshire and the Humber fell by £18 per person—more than any other region.
As the report shows, this historic unfairness is set to continue. Analysis of the infrastructure and construction pipeline shows a stark gap between London and the rest of the country. In future spending, £1,900 per person is planned in London from 2017 onwards, compared with £400 per person in the north. The Secretary of State has attempted to brush aside that analysis, but it is clear that significant disparities are set to continue unless decisive Government action is taken.
The report also correctly describes why this regional funding gap persists. The current transport scheme appraisal method used by the Department for Transport and the Treasury will always favour London, as it prioritises congestion reduction and journey-time savings. That approach actively disadvantages less economically buoyant regions, and it must change.
I cautiously welcome the Government’s rebalancing toolkit, but it is nowhere near enough. It is also disappointing that the Government have not listened to calls to make the toolkit mandatory. Regional rebalancing must not be an optional extra, but should be at the heart of any transport investment decision making. For that to happen, the Government must commit to wholly revising the way that rail investment decisions are made. I urge the Minister to work with colleagues in the Treasury to revise the investment decision-making process so that places that have had a legacy of under-investment are treated more fairly in the future, which means putting economic regeneration and regional rebalancing front and centre.
As the Committees argue elsewhere in the report, past difficulties in delivering infrastructure projects must not discourage future investment. Areas that have seen a legacy of under-investment urgently need the projects to go ahead, so as we look to the next control period, the Government must make investing in regional rail infrastructure a priority.
I turn to Northern Powerhouse Rail. Bradford, like other towns and cities across the north, urgently needs that high-speed rail link to meet growing demand and to fulfil our economic potential, and investment in NPR should include a Bradford stop in the city centre, where the benefits will be felt by the greatest number of people. The Minister may recall from our conversation his supportive disposition to a Bradford stop on the NPR line. I must re-emphasise in the strongest possible terms the importance of that being a city centre station. The city of Bradford’s rail connections already operate under the disjointed legacy of two stations; adding a third station outside the city centre risks repeating the mistakes of the past. To be plain, a parkway station for the NPR outside the city centre would deliver neither the connectivity nor the economic regeneration that the city needs. It would represent an enormous missed opportunity. Independent research indicates that a Bradford city centre station would cut journey times and increase capacity. More importantly, it would add £15.5 billion to the north’s economy and generate an additional 15,000 full-time jobs across the Leeds city region.
NPR is the future we need, but more must be done right now to improve the punctuality and reliability of existing services and to banish outdated rolling stock. In West Yorkshire the public performance measure for rail operators, which combines figures for punctuality and reliability as a single measure, paints a depressing picture of almost universal decline in 2018-19, compared with the previous year. Performance on the Calder Valley line, which has a station stop in my constituency, was significantly worse than the year before. In some months, performance was almost 30% worse.
The train operator Northern recently admitted that it has not yet begun withdrawing the despised Pacer trains, which helps to illustrate the point further. As everybody knows, they are basically a 1980s bus body on rails. The firm blamed last year’s delays on electrification work, which contributed to the timetable and service chaos in May 2018. That is simply not good enough for my constituents or for businesses based in my constituency of Bradford South.
The Transport Committee’s report must be a wake-up call to the Government. We need action to rebalance our economy, boost our regions and give places such as Bradford the transport infrastructure that is fit for the next century.
Train Operating Companies: Yorkshire
Judith Cummins Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) on securing this important and timely debate. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). Nobody here needs reminding how terrible a year this has been for rail passengers in Yorkshire and across the north. Since the introduction of the timetable changes in May, we have seen what the Transport Committee rightly called a
“period of intensely inconvenient, costly and, on occasions… potentially dangerous disruption.”
Northern Rail, which serves Bradford on the Leeds-Bradford, Airedale and Wharfedale lines, has provided especially poor service. Since the new timetable was introduced, an average of 2.5% of trains have been cancelled, and 4.6% have operated in our region with fewer carriages than planned. On a typical day, about 100 to 200 passengers are left behind at stations in Yorkshire. They are stranded and are late for work and critical appointments that they need to get to. Unfortunately, despite the criticism that the train operating companies and the Department for Transport have come under since May, we have still not had a significant improvement in service levels. In fact, The Yorkshire Post found that rail punctuality is even worse now than it was in the immediate aftermath of the timetabling change. In November, only 62% of TransPennine Express services and 67% of Northern services arrived on time. Eight months on from the initial problems, it is shocking that the industry appears not to have got a grip on this issue. Passengers in Bradford and across Yorkshire have experienced almost a year of delays, cancellations and disrupted service. Despite that, fares continue to rise above inflation. It is simply not good enough; we deserve better.
As the Office of Rail and Road reported, the responsibility for the fiasco must be shared between the train operating companies, Network Rail and the Department for Transport. Each failed to prepare for the changes, and there was a clear lack of leadership at all levels.
It is also worth looking at the longer term causes of the crisis. There has been a persistent and longstanding underfunding of transport infrastructure in the north. As well as addressing the immediate problems with the performance of train operating companies, the Government must commit to revising the way that rail investment decisions are made. As a start, they should commit to working with Transport for the North to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail as a priority. Bradford, like other towns and cities across the north, urgently needs that high-speed rail link to meet growing demand and fulfil our economic potential. It is only by investing in rail infrastructure, planning for future timetable changes and ensuring that passenger interests are at the heart of our rail system that we will prevent a repeat of the unacceptable service we have seen in recent months.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend referred to the work of the Transport Committee, which looked at timetabling and rail infrastructure investment. Does she share my concern that, according to the figures for the national infrastructure and construction pipeline, planned spending on transport per capita in Yorkshire is set to be the lowest of all the regions? It was not only lower in the past, but will be lower in the future—in 2017-18 and 2020-21?
Mr Sheerman
It is really simple: deep into the 21st century, towns and cities in Yorkshire should be connected by a regular, good, safe service that everyone can depend on. How can it be that my constituents and I cannot get to Bradford easily from Huddersfield? Why has the line between Huddersfield and Wakefield been closed, with a tremendous impact on those cities? Will my hon. Friend join me in going on those trains and waving banners?
Judith Cummins
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is an immense frustration for me, as a Bradford MP, that we are not properly connected with the rest of the north. That causes problems and limits my constituents’ learning, development and job opportunities, which are crucial to a city like mine.
Road Safety
Judith Cummins Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean). Road safety is an issue that I repeatedly raise in the House, and I welcome the opportunity to debate it in the Chamber this evening. We all know what a vital issue it is, and it affects many of our constituents, often tragically. In West Yorkshire, 815 people were killed or seriously injured in road traffic incidents last year. In my constituency, more children are killed or seriously injured on our roads than almost anywhere else in the country. I know that it is ambitious, but we should aim to eliminate road deaths and serious injuries entirely in the UK. Vision Zero seeks to do exactly that, and I urge the Government to look into that approach.
Clearly we will need a wide variety of tools in order to achieve that, and one crucial part is a tougher criminal justice approach. It was for this reason that I warmly welcomed the Government’s announcement in October 2017 that they would bring in longer sentences for drivers who killed through dangerous or careless driving, as well as the announcement of a new offence of causing serious injury through careless driving. I pay tribute to all those who campaigned for this change, including the road safety charity Brake, but we are now over a year on, and the Government have still not delivered on their commitment. In fact, we are no closer to those changes being made.
Ministers are now claiming that the changes will be incorporated into a review of cycle safety, but I have to say that that is completely unacceptable. It is right, of course, that the Government should look at the laws around cycling in order to make it safer for all road users, but it is not good enough that already-announced changes on sentencing are being rolled into the open-ended process. I really hope the Minister will listen and set out exactly when parliamentary time will be available to bring these changes into effect. The delay is adding to the suffering that families face when they lose loved ones.
Turning to another criminal justice issue, we must ensure that the exceptional hardship rule, which allows drivers to keep their licence even when they have reached 12 points, is not abused. Data from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency show that more than 200 people in Bradford alone successfully used that argument last year and escaped a ban. There are 11,000 drivers across Britain who still have their driving licences despite passing the 12-point limit. We are allowing unsafe drivers to remain on our roads, and ultimately we are putting people at risk. Anyone who reaches 12 points should expect to be banned. Anything less makes a mockery of our road laws.
Of course, our laws are an effective deterrent only if they are properly enforced. For this we need well-resourced police forces that are able to patrol our roads, proactively tackle dangerous driving and bring those who break the law to justice. It is for this reason that the cuts to frontline policing caused by a reduction in funding from this Government are extremely worrying. On top of the 30% cuts in West Yorkshire since 2010, police forces across the country are facing an additional £165 million unexpected pensions bill, which will lead to even fewer officers. Prior to the Budget, I raised the issue of police pensions with the Prime Minister, and I wrote to her about it on 26 October. Unfortunately, I have not yet received a response. We cannot keep people safe on the cheap, and we cannot keep roads our safe without sufficient resources. If the Government are serious about making our roads safer, they must properly fund police budgets.
Finally, I would like to mention graduated driving licences, which allow new drivers to build up their driving skills and experience gradually, in well-defined, structured stages. There is clear evidence that a graduated licence system would make our roads safer, by reducing the number of young people involved in car accidents. Drivers aged 17 to 24 currently make up only 7% of drivers, but they represent nearly 20% of the people killed or seriously injured in car crashes. To conclude, I would like to return to that Vision Zero ambition to eliminate road deaths and serious injuries in the UK entirely. Ambitious, yes, but we owe it to the families who have lost loved ones to do everything we can to reduce deaths and make our roads safer for all.
Oral Answers to Questions
Judith Cummins Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
My officials are currently considering what it would take to move the project forwards, and I have had discussions with the combined authority. The potential route sits alongside a growth area in West Yorkshire, so I am personally taking an interest in the scheme, which is now subject to careful assessment.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
In recent weeks we have seen endless delays, cancellations across the north and a report from the Select Committee on Transport that confirmed a bias against northern regions in rail investment decisions, and we now hear reports that the trans-Pennine electrification will be scrapped altogether. Will the Secretary of State now respond properly to the One North campaign and commit to giving Transport for the North the full powers and funding it needs to deliver the necessary changes?
Chris Grayling
I am afraid that this is a total misnomer. First, the part of the country that will receive the highest Government spending per head on transport over the next five years is the north-west. Spending is higher per head of population across the north than it is in the south. Secondly, as I have already announced, we will start the £3 billion trans-Pennine upgrade next spring, which will substantially rebuild the railway line between Manchester, Leeds and York and deliver much better services to passengers. It is long overdue.
Rail Timetabling
Judith Cummins Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
We are working extremely hard to make sure that this does not happen again. We have to deal with the short-term problem. We also have to make sure that this is not repeated with the December timetable change or future timetable changes. Where major investment leads to a major change in services, we cannot have a situation where that causes chaos on the network again.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State understand the real human cost of this fiasco and the fact that every disrupted journey represents chaos for our constituents and losses for our businesses? He talked in his statement of major failures and holding the industry to account, but when will he take responsibility and hold himself to account over his repeated and major failures?
Chris Grayling
My job is to do everything I can to make sure that the industry gets itself back on the straight and narrow, and that is what I will do.
East Coast Main Line
Judith Cummins Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
The travelling public are the most important people in all this. Tomorrow, and indeed on 25 June, they should notice no difference to the timetable or the tickets; they can buy tickets in advance. The difference is that from that point on they will notice a change to the trains, which will become LNER livery trains. Later this year, there will of course be brand-new LNER livery trains, providing a much better experience for the travelling public—and a more reliable experience at that.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State said in his statement that there is “no suggestion of either malpractice or malicious intent in what has happened.” Does he agree with me that what has happened smacks of a pattern of failure and incompetence, and that he, as the Secretary of State, should take responsibility?
Chris Grayling
Clearly the Government have to act in a situation like this, and we have done so: we have acted decisively. The reality is—I stand by what I said—that there is no malicious intent. A major corporation has made a major mistake, and it has paid a price equivalent to a fifth of its market capitalisation, which is a big cost for any business.