Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord McLoughlin and Richard Burden

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

As I informed the House a few moments ago, I met BALPA earlier this week. It has come forward with issues about laser pens. There is a bigger problem with laser pens, and much more evidence about the way in which they have been used. It is illegal to shine them in someone’s eyes, and there have been more prosecutions, but I am willing to take further action once we have reached agreement on the best way forward.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, you may recall that this time last month, I asked the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), when, after three years of working groups, we would be told what the Government were going to do about the danger of drones to civil aircraft. His answer, you will recall, left us none the wiser.

This week, things became even vaguer when the Minister appeared to say in a written answer that he is not even going to consult on anything until the European Aviation Safety Agency has decided what to do. That is all happening at a time of reports that drones might have hit a civil aircraft, and of drones being banned over London altogether when President Obama was in town. Other countries have already brought in registration schemes and other initiatives, so when are we going to see some clear proposals from the Government, without having to wait for a US President to come to town?

[Mr McLoughlin]

Part of the point was made by the hon. Gentleman in his question when he said, “it might have been”. Governments do not legislate on what might be; they act on what the dangers are. As I have said, we are in discussions with the airline pilots’ union BALPA, as well as the CAA, about the right way to develop this. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that all drones should be banned completely, I should point out that the Labour party never thought about when it was in office.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord McLoughlin and Richard Burden

Thursday 10th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

My hon. Friend has made the case for that road to me on many occasions, not least when I was in Cornwall and he took me around the area that we are talking about. The Government are making funds available through the local road fund for local schemes that support economic growth. It will be up to Cornwall Council to prepare and submit the bid for funding in the normal way, but Cornwall has a very successful history of obtaining funds through that grant, and I wish it well with that scheme.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

The UK Airprox Board investigated 23 near misses between aircraft and drones in six months last year. Of those, 12 were deemed to involve a serious risk of collision. The British Airline Pilots Association wants the Government to run tests on what would happen if a drone were sucked into an engine or hit a windscreen, and the Government have had a working group on the matter since 2013. So why is it only this summer that Ministers will say anything? Should we not know by now what tests have already been done, what regulatory and other options are being considered and when Ministers expect any agreed option to be put into practice?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord McLoughlin and Richard Burden

Thursday 10th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this. As I have said, a huge amount of investment is being made available to Highways England. I visited the site with my hon. Friend earlier this year, and it would open up a large area of potential development, which is very important for his constituency.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Over the summer, roads to the channel ports ground to a halt, lorry drivers who were stuck in their cabs needed emergency water to drink, and local businesses were hit as Kent villages near the motorway network were cut off. The Chancellor’s announcement of a new lorry park may be a step in the right direction, but it will not keep the traffic moving of itself and it falls well short of highways management road improvement works that local partners tell me are needed if Kent is going to be protected from similar snarl-ups in future. Does the Secretary of State consider his lorry park “job done”? If not, what else is he going to do before, rather than after, the people of the south-east go through the same thing again?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I do not regard it as “job done” but I regard it as a great step in the right direction to find that level of resources available to solve what was an unacceptable situation for people in Kent last summer. It is definitely a step in the right direction, but I will obviously keep every other option under review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord McLoughlin and Richard Burden

Thursday 29th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

Motorists will not face any increase in taxes—we have made that fairly clear—but this is one of the issues that VW will have to address in due course.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Is not the reality, though, that Ministers’ statements are leaving motorists and people concerned about air quality none the wiser? Will the Secretary of State clear the air on one point, which is what happened at the EU Technical Committee yesterday? It was not just about setting a timetable for new cars to conform with existing emissions, was it? Did it not also involve an open-ended permission to breach those limits by 50%, and is not that what the UK representative voted for?

[Mr McLoughlin]

What was important yesterday is that we got agreement for real-world emissions testing right across the whole of Europe. That has been objected to in the past. We pressed for it in May, and I am very pleased that we achieved it yesterday. If the hon. Gentleman says that it is not as much as he would like or as fast as he would like, I would say that we have made more progress in six months of this new Conservative Government than was ever made by the previous Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord McLoughlin and Richard Burden

Thursday 11th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

This was the week in which Ministers boasted that they were going to cut red tape by replacing the counterpart driving licence with an online system. That is a good objective. The trouble is that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s computer system has already crashed under the strain. Motorists who want to hire a car abroad now have to contact the DVLA online and obtain a code in order to access the same information that they would previously have had in their pocket, and if they do not hire the car within three days, they will have to go back to square one because the code will have expired. Mr Speaker, you could not make it up! Cutting red tape? It’s a mess, isn’t it?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The simple fact is that people do not have to do that online; they can phone. There was a problem on the first morning of the new system, but since then it has been operating successfully.