Transport: South Wales

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The M1 is one of our key arterial motorways, and it has had a number of upgrades over the years to increase capacity. We continue to look at those bottlenecks, and there will be more on that when announcements are made for RIS3, which is the next road investment strategy period, starting in 2025.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, why was electrification of the London to Cardiff line not extended to Swansea, as promised by the David Cameron Government?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

That was because assessment of that electrification project showed no significant journey-time savings. In 2018, the National Audit Office concluded that it is right to assess investment decisions about upgrades to make sure that they give passenger benefits. We have to put our funding where it can have the largest passenger benefits.

Electric Vehicles: Charging Points

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that a lot of people, if not most, live in terraced properties and the real problem is lack of infrastructure to get cars parked outside their homes to a charging point? Has she looked at the city of Oslo, which has stanchions along the kerbside, which is safe, that allow car owners to charge their cars right on their doorstep, as it were, but on the other side of the pavement? Without government investment on a huge scale, the private sector will not be able to deliver this and the targets the Government have set will not be met.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I will certainly look at Oslo. As I mentioned in my opening Answer, there is a £4 million on-street residential charging point scheme for local authorities. To date, 28 local authorities have benefited, resulting in the installation of over 1,000 charging points. The noble Lord is quite right: this is not necessarily a matter for central government, but local authorities can make sure that there is a permissive planning environment whereby, if private networks come in—I hope that they will—they are able to put up those sorts of charging points.

Railways: Wales

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

I assure noble Lords that the Government are working round the clock to ensure that the process of Brexit goes smoothly. Of course, we will absolutely take the impact on Wales into consideration, as we will for the rest of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, are the Government really happy that the franchise for Welsh railways has been handed to a consortium that includes Govia, which is responsible for an absolute shambles on Southern Rail and from which the Government are reputedly considering withdrawing the franchise? Is that sensible?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as I said, we have devolved the decision on the franchise to the Welsh Government. The new franchise will see transformation across the Welsh railway network, including substantial frequency improvements on new routes and the doubling of service frequencies on many routes. The Welsh Government have said that the new franchise will see a £5 billion investment to fund significant improvements. The Government committed to devolve the award of the franchise to the Welsh Government; they have made that decision.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not a delight for the House that the noble Baroness has found her compellingly persuasive voice on the Back Benches? I welcome her to them. I also praise the brilliant speech of the noble Lord, Lord Low, which I hope speaks for everybody in this House.

The economy is not strong and stable but in deep trouble. It has been losing momentum for three consecutive years, and we now share bottom place with Italy in the G7 growth league. Even Greece is forecast to grow faster than Britain next year. Slower economic growth means lower tax revenues and higher government borrowing. The OBR expects borrowing this year to be higher, not lower, than last year and the budget still to be in deficit by the time of the general election in 2022. Over the next five years, the number of people aged 65 or over will increase three times as quickly as the population as a whole. Slow growth makes meeting the challenges of an ageing population even tougher—be it their health, social care or pension needs.

If the Government pursue their stated aim of cutting net immigration to the tens of thousands, it will hold back growth even further by reducing the supply of labour and aggravating skills shortages. The respected economist Jonathan Portes estimates that that alone would mean £6 billion more in taxes, public spending cuts or government borrowing.

Seven years of austerity, the Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons, have meant that UK average incomes in real terms are now 15% below where the 1961 to 2008 growth trend would have taken them. Living standards will certainly fall this year, with prices rising faster than pay and inequality rising. In real terms, pay is set to plummet, with earnings in 2022 no higher than they were in 2007, making this the worst decade for pay growth since before the Battle of Waterloo.

Oxford economist Simon Wren-Lewis estimates that austerity may cost the average household a colossal £23,000 per year in lost income by 2019-20—and there is still no end in sight to austerity, which began so catastrophically and so needlessly under George Osborne in 2010. This Government are now planning another tight fiscal squeeze up to 2019-20, hitting the poorest the hardest of all. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Tory manifesto means that the severest squeeze on the NHS since it was founded will be extended to 12 years. The Tories also now have the shrinking of school budgets in their sights.

In the private sector, big business is spending its cash mountain on company share buybacks instead of investing in the future, while the commercial property market seems to be at a standstill. Consumer confidence is down and consumer debt up, with more than 3 million people in persistent credit card debt. Last year alone, UK households borrowed a record £32 billion to buy cars, with 90% of private buyers using personal contract plans. That borrowing figure is forecast to exceed £40 billion this year. The Financial Conduct Authority now fears that banks might be hit by a sudden rise in car loan arrears, hitting car sales and hence wider economic growth.

Ten years ago, under Labour, £1 bought $2. Last June it bought $1.50. Now it is worth only $1.30—its lowest level for 30 years. Yet Britain’s foreign trade balance has worsened over the past year, not improved. We have a record trade deficit and we are about to leave the biggest, richest single trading bloc in the world on terms that nobody can foresee. UK productivity today is terrible, lagging far behind our key trading partners in Europe and America. This is not helped by the fact that 5 million adults—a sixth of our employed labour force—lack basic literacy and numeracy skills.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons that there are more than 3 million frustrated workers: those who work part time but want a full-time job, plus those who are economically inactive but want to work. This is especially true in the regions outside London. The economics editor of Sky News, Ed Conway, recently argued that Britain’s tax burden will have to go up. Certainly we need to tax both property and income wealth more fairly.

Grenfell Tower is surely a clarion cry for a clean break with austerity. As the Observer eloquently explained in an editorial on 18 June:

“But this is more than a story of a benign state being hacked at by funding cuts and deregulation. Grenfell has peeled away the layers, to reveal an unaccountable, distant state, sheltering behind arm’s-length bodies to which it has subcontracted its most fundamental responsibilities for keeping people safe … It is hard to escape the conclusion that they fell victim to a culture shaped by indifference to the less well-off; that extols the virtues of the market over the positive role of the state; that scorns expertise and regulation and cuts corners in the name of trimming budgets. It should shame us all”.


Savage cuts and the shrinking of the state must stop. Some of our public services are dangerously close to collapse. It is time to invest in growth and end austerity, and to bring the public finances back into balance—and growth, not austerity, is the best way to do that.

Airport Capacity

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I have always regarded the noble Lord as a forward-looking Peer in your Lordships’ House, and he and I have spoken extensively about the importance of regional connectivity. Today’s decision delivers that very regional connectivity. Indeed, Northern Ireland will benefit from the extra availability of slots and connectivity; it will be one of the six regions to benefit directly from this decision. On the issue of PSOs, which he has previously raised, he knows that there are decisions that we have taken—most recently to protect particular routes connecting to London to ensure the continued growth and prosperity of different regions, including Northern Ireland.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the Government, not because there are not important residential and environmental concerns—because there are—but because this decision is genuinely in the national interest of Wales, the West Country, the Midlands, the north, the east and, indeed, the south-east, and because it is the only hub airport capable of getting back some of the traffic we have lost to Paris and Charles de Gaulle. Will the Minister confirm that the decision has already been made to allow traffic by rail from the West Country and south Wales via Reading to go straight to Heathrow? That is important.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I thank the noble Lord for his support. He raises important issues about the commitment already made on the links into Heathrow, particularly the lines which he mentioned. Certainly, it is our intention not only to remain committed to them but to look at how we can perhaps bring them forward to reflect the nature of the development of the new runway at Heathrow.