Oral Answers to Questions

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I commend my hon. Friend for her very determined efforts in campaigning for road improvements, not just there but elsewhere in her constituency. I know that the roads Minister will be very happy to meet her to discuss the matter further.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

Back in July, speaking about the Prime Minister’s pledge to buy 4,000 UK zero-emissions buses by 2025, the Secretary of State said that

“there are 900 buses in production right now”—[Official Report, 14 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 408.]

Allegedly, this is the Government’s flagship policy, yet the roll-out of these buses seems to be little more than rhetoric, given that every British manufacturer of buses I have spoken to says that they have no knowledge whatever of any orders. Will the Secretary of State now tell the House exactly where those buses are being made right now, as opposed to being potential on a DFT internal spreadsheet or more greenwashed PR spin from this Government?

[Grant Shapps]

I will tell you what I will do, Mr Speaker: not only will I write to the hon. Gentleman, but I will publish a copy of the letter in the House, for the House’s greater benefit. He will be interested to see that those buses are not just ordered or in production; some are actually on the road.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I do apologise for the noise. There is a helicopter somewhere overhead. I know it is Transport questions, but it is getting a bit much.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

As someone who is regularly stuck in traffic on the A13, I think no one wants to return to the levels of pollution we saw before the pandemic began, particularly as emerging evidence indicates that exposure to air pollution increases the severity of coronavirus symptoms and other respiratory conditions. That is why I am so glad to see the work done by brilliant, publicly run light rail systems such as Tyne and Wear metro and Tramlink, led by fantastic local Labour administrations. Light rail networks are an effective means of reducing congestion and pollution given that they produce next to no pollution at the point of use. What assurances will the Minister give, therefore, to support projects that incorporate light rail, tram trains, and electric and hydrogen buses such as the mass transit system proposed by the new West Yorkshire Combined Authority Mayor?

[Rachel Maclean]

I hope the hon. Gentleman was listening earlier when I spoke at the Dispatch Box about the support that the Government have provided for the West Midlands Combined Authority, led by the Conservative Mayor Andy Street, for light rail and a number of other transport innovations. The point is, the Government are investing in zero-carbon green transport across the whole country. We intend to build back better and greener from the pandemic, and we will create hundreds of thousands of skilled green jobs across the country as we do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

Recent research by the Campaign to Protect Rural England has found that the past decade of Government cuts has seen the loss of 134 million miles of bus coverage, leading to the creation of so-called transport deserts. There needs to be proper funding for bus manufacturers—such as Mellor in Rochdale, which I recently spoke to—that produce the vehicles that serve rural towns and villages. Mellor produces state-of-the-art low emission vehicles that are used in many rural areas, but unfortunately it is a victim of the big bus bias and is being excluded from the Government’s “bus back better” strategy for producing vehicles at a 23-passenger capacity or less.

At the same time, by the Government’s own figures, the rural mobility fund totals just £19.4 million, a sixth of the £120 million ZEBRA—zero emission bus regional areas—funding for zero emission vehicles. What assurances will the Minister give that significant investment will be offered to ensure that such companies have greater support to deliver the vehicles that green our industries and ensure that our rural communities are genuinely connected?

[Andrew Stephenson]

There can be no greater champion of buses than the Prime Minister, who has committed us to bus back better following the pandemic. The House will be aware that he announced £5 billion in funding for buses, cycling and walking, of which £3 billion is allocated to buses. The roll-out of 4,000 zero emission buses is crucial. We are keen to work with all manufacturers, large and small, to ensure that we get the best technology available, the best value for taxpayers and the best service for passengers.

Outer London Congestion Charge

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Rees, and I thank the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) for securing this timely debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who exposed the real situation and raised genuine concerns about air cleanliness and air quality, and my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who laid bare the facts of what is really a Tory transport delusion.

I note that the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) said that London’s electoral system is rigged in favour of Labour. The two terms served there by our current Prime Minister might point in the opposite direction. Indeed, TfL’s financial woes began under that previous Mayor of London. Perhaps the issue is that the current Tory candidate is about to get crushed in the upcoming election.

I would like to thank the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) who showed his fantastic choice of tie and Windsor knot skills. Unfortunately, he shed very little light on the facts of the debate. The hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), as a military man, will surely see this debacle from the Department for Transport and the Government for what it is: a political improvised explosive device designed to blow up the Mayor of London.

What we have heard today is nothing more than a highly politicised attack on the Mayor of London, just weeks before the mayoral election. Far from being wasteful, the Mayor has been held over a barrel by the Government and forced to consider any and every option left available in order to keep afloat one of the world’s greatest transport networks. The fact that it has reached this point is frankly shameful.

I hope we will hear from the Minister whether the Government will finally give a long-term funding commitment to TfL, or keep stringing it along with piecemeal funding that serves only to kick the can down the road until a meaningful agreement is reached. Perhaps that is why so many Conservative MPs are here today. Perhaps they, too, would like to see the Government do the right thing, rather than simply using the Government’s chronic underfunding of TfL in the middle of a pandemic as a stick to beat the London Mayor with.

I will address some of the fundamentally misleading statements that we have heard today. First, the proposal for an outer London congestion charge is far from set in stone. TfL is currently in the process of carrying out an early feasibility study; no decisions have yet been taken to implement the charge. If a decision were taken to pursue the idea, clearly an extensive public consultation and detailed economic and environmental impact assessments would have to be undertaken.

[Gareth Johnson]

If the London Mayor were to implement this outer London congestion charge, would the Labour party support it?

[Sam Tarry]

It is clear at the moment that the key issue we want to focus on is a long-term funding deal for TfL, which would mean such options would not need to be considered. That is perhaps something on which we could all agree. I again point out that there would be no need whatsoever for a Greater London boundary charge if the Government supported the calls from the Mayor of London to allow the capital to keep its share of the vehicle excise duty, which is roughly £500 million a year.

If we gave TfL the level of revenue in capital funding it had for the first 20 years of its existence, that would be a game changer. Let us not forget that it is the current Prime Minister, the previous Mayor of London, who negotiated away the direct operating subsidy in 2015. That ensured that the brutal austerity measures of the then Chancellor George Osborne, inflicted on councils and the rest of the public sector from 2010, were also applied to Transport for London, literally robbing our country’s transport Crown jewels in front of the eyes of Londoners.

Let us focus on vehicle excise duty for a moment. Every year, Londoners pay £500 million in VED, money which is spent almost exclusively on roads outside of London. We, therefore, have the nonsensical situation whereby road maintenance in London is in effect subsidised by people using public transport. To put that another way, tube users pay for car drivers. I would like to know if the Minister agrees that City Hall should be allowed to keep the VED.

[Gareth Bacon]

Will the hon. Gentleman concede that people do not just use one mode of transport? Car drivers also walk, cycle and use public transport, so they pay into the public transport system. The idea that car drivers are being subsidised by public transport users is further undermined by more than a £1 billion of subsidy that Transport for London puts into the bus system and the other concessionary fares. Would he concede that that statement, which is often used and comes directly from City Hall, is misleading and wrong?

[Sam Tarry]

I think of lot of Londoners will disagree. Their money is spent elsewhere in the country. As I have said in the Chamber before, it would be good to see an agenda not of levelling down London, but genuinely levelling up the rest of the country’s transport networks, as needs to happen. As I was saying, I would like to hear whether the Minister agrees that City Hall should be allowed to keep that VED, which is paid by Londoners, so that it can be spent on their transport system. That seems only fair, given that London contributes over £40 billion net to Treasury coffers every single year.

Does the Minister agree that allowing London to keep its share of VED, so that TfL can invest in London’s roads and public transport services, is actually a very reasonable request, not least given the fact that the Conservative party at City Hall has supported that very position in a cross-party letter? Indeed, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon is on the record as having previously supported that position.

[Gareth Bacon]

The letter to which the hon. Gentleman refers was written before this proposal was put in place, and this is not an either/or question. The Mayor of London is throwing up smoke and mirrors by saying that either vehicle excise duty is devolved or there is an outer-London charge. That is not the case at all. As chairman of the cross-party budget committee, I was obliged to sign that letter because the majority of the committee said that they wanted vehicle excise duty to be devolved, but that was before the Mayor of London called for this, so the two things are not related at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sam Tarry]

The point still stands that vehicle excise duty could be an answer to TfL’s financial woes; or, indeed, the Government could reach into their pockets and give our country support, bearing in mind what we have said about that £40 billion. When London does well, the entire country does well. If we can boost our economy and come out of this awful pandemic, London succeeding will also help millions of other people across the country to succeed as well.

As I have already made clear, no decisions have been taken on this scheme. In fact, no scheme has even been designed. Let us be clear: no scheme whatsoever has been designed and no decisions have been taken on the charge level, exemptions or hours of operation. As we all know, with the election just weeks away, Conservative Members here today are doing their best to whip up this issue and spread fake news. Londoners—in fact, their own constituents—deserve far better.

Let us talk about the facts. Every weekday, 1.3 million vehicle trips are made from outside London to the capital, burdening local communities with traffic and emissions. Of those 1.3 million vehicle trips, around 1 million are made to outer London. TfL informs me that prior to the pandemic, car journeys made by residents within outer London had been in decline in recent years, whereas car journeys to outer London from outside the boundary—in other words, by non-London residents—had been increasing over the same period.

What this all comes down to is the more fundamental choices about what has to be done. Do we all want a well-funded public transport system, with a diverse range of income streams so that it is not entirely reliant on fares, or do we think that it is acceptable to cut services, because otherwise that is where we are headed? Cutting services at a time when we are trying to incentivise people back to using public transport, as they return to work after having their vaccination and the economy begins to move again, would be completely and utterly counterproductive.

When it is safe to do so, we want people to enjoy everything that our capital has to offer. However, if they think that they will be packed in like sardines and that passengers will be rammed in—perhaps from Newbury Park in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North, as I have experienced many times—they will not want to get on tubes or buses. They did not like that pre-pandemic and they certainly will not like it now.

I have also heard the argument that if fewer people are travelling because they are working from home, we should put up fares. That is clearly the preference of the Transport Secretary, who forced the Mayor of London to increase fares this year in order to access emergency financial support. The rest of us know, however, that if we price people off the public transport network, we run the risk of forcing them to use cars.

I also find it interesting to hear Tory MPs express outrage today, given what their own Transport Secretary said just last September, in a letter he sent to the Mayor of London:

“Given the significant rise in congestion in inner London, we also propose the extension of the central London congestion charging zone to cover the same area as the Ultra Low Emission Zone…and at the same time, October 2021.”

That would have been an extreme and unacceptable proposal, on the basis of what colleagues have said here today. It would also have meant that every journey within the huge area bounded by the north and south circular roads would have cost £15, in addition to the expanded ULEZ charge coming in from October this year, and all at a time when families and small businesses are still reeling from the covid crisis.

It was clearly totally wrong to suggest hitting Londoners with such an increase in charges, just as we are, hopefully, recovering from a pandemic. That is why the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was right to reject it and right to stand up for Londoners. I stress again that even if a decision were taken to proceed with a Greater London boundary charge for non-London residents, it would take at least two years to implement. It is a last-ditch option, forced on TfL by the Government’s failure to provide long-term funding, which is the key issue.

Let me turn to a point I made earlier on the real reason for TfL’s current predicament. It was a Conservative Government under Chancellor George Osborne and the current Prime Minister, when he was Mayor of London, who agreed to the withdrawal of the direct operating grant. The then Mayor’s decision meant that the network became almost completely reliant on fare revenue, unlike comparable transport authorities in any other global city across the western world. When fares subsequently slumped because the covid lockdown meant no one was travelling, TfL’s income collapsed almost overnight. It is thanks to Conservative decisions in the past that TfL is left between a rock and a hard place, with no easy choices for the Mayor and TfL, having to fix the Tories’ mess and raise the vast amount of money required to make up that shortfall.

To add insult to injury, it is yet again a Conservative Government who are more determined than ever to force through a new era of cuts and the retrenchment of transport in the capital. That is unacceptable. The Mayor, TfL and businesses are united in knowing that would be completely counterproductive. Our capital city, whose economic contribution benefits the rest of the country immensely, is so much more dependent on public transport than elsewhere in the country.

The Government hold all the cards here. On behalf of all Londoners, I urge them to once and for all stop the politicking, put their hands in their pockets, properly fund our capital’s public transport network and allow London to keep its share of VED. If the Government fail to act, my advice to Conservative MPs here today and colleagues across London, including those who have spoken, is to direct their anger to the Transport Secretary and this Government. It is they alone who should carry the can. I have not heard one single word from them about an alternative. Their silence speaks volumes. London deserves better; indeed, Britain deserves an awful lot better.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is absolutely right that we need to tackle all these barriers, which is why we have recently announced that we are changing the criteria for our EV charging schemes to include small businesses, leaseholders and those in rented accommodation, especially flats, to accelerate uptake. Worth up to £50 million, the updated schemes will complement a further £20 million that we are providing for our on-street charging scheme.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

I am pleased to hear the Minister talk about electric vehicles, but the reality is that we have seen little in the way of concrete measures from this Government. We were promised 4,000 zero-emission buses by 2025, but we have heard little more about that—or, indeed, about the national bus strategy, which was expected months ago and has still yet to materialise.

It has now been a year since the Government published their transport decarbonisation plan. The Secretary of State himself said that

“Climate change is the most pressing environmental challenge of our time”,

yet all we have had is dither and delay. Although last week’s Budget saw the Chancellor freeze fuel duty for the 11th year running, costing the taxpayer about £1 billion and flying in the face of the commitment to tackle carbon emissions, this Government have a legal obligation, lest we forget, to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. When will they start delivering?

[Rachel Maclean]

Let me politely disagree strongly with the hon. Gentleman on the Labour Front Bench. I would need longer than this one simple question to answer the allegations that he has put to me. Shall we start with the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan? Shall we also refer to the transport decarbonisation plan, which, as I have now said three times, we will publish in the spring. The national bus strategy, as my colleagues have reminded me, will be brought forward very shortly. Not only that, but we are installing charge points up and down the country. We have already committed to phasing out petrol and diesel cars by 2030. We are leading the world in this fight against climate change, and we will continue to do so.

Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate - 9 February 2021: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Robert Courts]

The clause introduces schedule 11, which contains powers to ensure that any new offences related to unmanned aircraft, including those created via an air navigation order or in relation to particular EU-derived legislation on unmanned aircraft, can be enforced using the police powers in the Bill. The aim of the schedule is essentially to future-proof as much as possible the enforcement of legislative requirements relating to unmanned aircraft. It contains provisions that will enable the police powers in the Bill to be used to enforce new offences relating to unmanned aircraft in future.

Schedule 11 contains powers that allow for amendments to be made in subordinate legislation to schedule 8, clause 14 and schedule 9 once the Bill becomes an Act in the light of changes in relevant subordinate legislation. The definition of “relevant subordinate legislation” includes the Air Navigation Order 2016, the creation of a new air navigation order, regulations made by the Secretary of State under retained law and regulations made under the power in paragraph 3 of the schedule.

Those Henry VIII powers may be relied on for three specific purposes. First, the police powers can be amended so that they can be used to enforce new offences relating to unmanned aircraft created in future relevant subordinate legislation. Secondly, paragraph 1 provides for amendments to be made to the Act to ensure the maintenance of the effect of the powers where they would otherwise cease to be effective because of provisions in relevant subordinate legislation. Thirdly, schedule 11 provides for a power to amend the Act in consequence of provisions made in any relevant subordinate legislation to confer a police power that corresponds to a power conferred by schedule 9.

Paragraph 3 provides for enforcement of particular EU-derived legislation. The schedule contains a power to create criminal offences and civil penalties so that the legislation’s requirements can be properly enforced. Without schedule 11, it would not be possible to ensure that the enforcement of offences relating to the use of unmanned aircraft remained feasible, especially in the light of new and often rapid developments in unmanned aircraft technology and its possible misuse in future, with which the related legislation has to keep pace.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. We seem to be whistling through the Bill faster than the snow is falling on the Thames.

I thank the Minister for his comments. The Opposition share many of the British Airline Pilots Association’s concerns about the catastrophic collisions that could happen if drones were used maliciously or even incautiously and far too close to airports. We would therefore like reassurance from the Minister about restrictions on drone flights, for example, if the in-built safety features such as geo-fencing, lights or the transponder were retuned or deliberately disabled. The Minister said that penalty notices applied to those aged 18 and over, but it is clear that sales of drones are often to people under 18. We know how ingenious many of our young people are in this day and age, when it is possible to plug a drone into a computer and reconfigure its parameters. Sometimes we need to think about how to ensure that we are not being outwitted by people who purchase and use those items.

I would also like reassurance about the distinct threat of unmanned aircraft pilots operating drones as swarms. That is a potentially dangerous development. The military not just in the US but in Israel have been testing that, and it would not be beyond the wit of civilians purchasing unmanned aircraft to do it. We need reassurance that the police are equipped with the technology to disable a single swarm of drones conducting a mission. We also need to satisfy the safety concerns about overseeing those multiple unmanned aircraft if they are performing different missions.

The Opposition are concerned about the Bill’s failure to recognise wake turbulence. Again, the British Airline Pilots Association has raised that matter. Wake turbulence is stipulated in law in terms of the distance between aircraft, but unmanned aircraft are not currently covered. That could be a significant safety issue for the public if a drone crashed over a populated area due to an aircraft’s wake turbulence. Those are some of the areas of concern on which we would like to hear reassurances from the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Courts]

This is the interpretation part of this section of the Bill. The Bill provides that ANO 2016 means the Air Navigation Order 2016, which we have referred to throughout this Committee sitting. The Bill provides that subordinate legislation means any instrument made or to be made under an Act of Parliament on or after IP—implementation period—completion day under any retained direct EU legislation. The Bill also provides that unmanned aircraft means any aircraft operating or designed to operate autonomously or to be piloted remotely without a pilot on board. Drones and model aircraft are the most commonly used types of unmanned aircraft.

[Sam Tarry]

It is important to raise a concern and disappointment that the Bill is two years too late. For a moment, we ought to reflect on the incident at Gatwick in December 2018, which affected 140,000 passengers and in excess of 1,000 flights, costing the airline operators tens of millions of pounds. The pace of change of technology for unmanned aircraft and unmanned aircraft swarms has advanced rapidly, as I have already mentioned. The Bill must ensure that the Department for Transport and the Minister continue a dialogue with the police to identify threats as early as possible so that we are not in that situation again. More specifically, we need clarification from the Minister about how the Department and the Civil Aviation Authority plan to keep up with new anti-drone technology, to provide support and licences to private operators, perhaps at aerodromes—particularly ones near critical national infrastructure such as power stations—and then to police that technology.

Furthermore, we need to ensure that the Bill enables the DFT and the police to keep up to speed with the possible future development of broad, unmanned traffic management systems, so we need to be looking ahead. During the pandemic we have seen the ubiquitous use of Amazon. I have probably recycled more cardboard boxes from my wife’s orders than I care to think of, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that those boxes could, in the next 10 years, be delivered by drones. That is certainly something that private companies are thinking about, but will the provisions and scenarios laid down in the guidance around the Bill be able to keep pace with those developments? In fact, as a result of the rapid increase in the technology, Administrations around the world who are also looking at this issue have called for a focus on the use of drones—beyond just recreational and military use—by commercial operators.

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Gentleman’s vision for the potential future of the industry is absolutely right. There are all sorts of endless possibilities. The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East and I have talked already about, for example, the maritime sphere and search and rescue possibilities. There are myriad others. He is absolutely right to focus on, for example, how it is not inconceivable that the day-to-day deliveries that we currently do by land might be done by air in future.

The sponsoring and promotion of that aspect of things probably lie outside the Bill. We would probably look at other areas of Government to ensure that we make the most of those technologies. What we are concerned with in this Bill is ensuring that there is a safe regulatory environment by laying out a framework with the flexibility to innovate for the future to ensure that the regulation stays up to date, which we do primarily through air navigation orders.

In terms of the DFT being well informed as to what is required, I refer back to the detailed and ongoing engagement we have with the Civil Aviation Authority, which is a world-leading regulator in this sphere, as it is in other spheres of aviation. We also work closely with the police, and I have referred to how the Bill has been created in close consultation with the police to ensure that they have the powers they need. By continuing to engage closely with the CAA, the police and all manner of other bodies—we have referred to many others, such as BALPA—and listening to their views, we will stay on top of ensuring that we have the regulations we need so that the great vision we have discussed is realised in a safe manner. This Bill lays out the regulatory framework within which we can do that in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2021

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 General Committees

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

It is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship for my first statutory instrument as shadow Minister, Sir Graham. I thank the Minister for her remarks. I put on the record that the Labour party does not oppose the changes made on 1 December 2020, in accordance with the Crossrail funding agreement between the GLA and the Department for Transport.

By directly taking on the governance of Crossrail in October last year, Transport for London stepped up to the plate at a time when many thought that the Government should perhaps do more to support it. Despite the project being jointly sponsored, with enormous benefits for the whole of the UK economy, as the Minister rightly pointed out, Crossrail’s shortfall will be covered initially by the GLA borrowing up to £825 million from the DFT in the form of a grant.

The ambition is to stay within that figure—one hopes that that remains the case—but it is far from a given, in the light of the huge complexity and various pressures of the project. The GLA will pay that loan from business rate supplements and mayoral community infrastructure levy revenues. Importantly, the statutory instrument enables repayment by extending the period within which the Mayor of London can collect and apply the CIL for borrowing for Crossrail projects from 2030 right through to 2043.

This is a statutory instrument, so I do not mean to play politics, but I will make the small point that the Government could perhaps have done more at an earlier stage in the project so that Londoners were not asked to chip in. That comes despite the fact that the Treasury receives the overwhelming majority of the economic benefit of Crossrail. It is important to state that it is generally forecast to generate at least £42 billion for the wider UK economy. Furthermore, more than 60% of the project’s suppliers are based outside London, which is incredibly important because it means that the additional funding will support the economy across the country. That is a further example of London supporting the economy, in stark contrast to the way that the Government sometimes talk about London and its payback to the rest of the country.

Members may well point to the recent deal struck between the Government and the GLA, but in reality, far from providing urgently needed grant funding, the deal only forced the Mayor to borrow more, meaning that ultimately, Londoners and businesses will pay. That was the only deal on the table, but it makes available only an initial £825 million of the potential £1.1 billion shortfall that is projected—that is a concern. I know that Crossrail Ltd and TfL are working incredibly hard to deliver the project within that funding structure. I hope that, should the full £1.1 billion be needed, the Government will adopt a more responsible approach to those discussions with the Mayor, and end the brinkmanship on such an important project that benefits so much of the country.

London needs the Elizabeth line more than ever as we emerge post-covid, and UK-wide, the railway will help the UK economy to recover as life returns to normal in, I hope, the not-too-distant future. Although the pandemic has significantly impacted transport ridership, as London reopens to business, the Elizabeth line’s capacity will, I hope, enable passengers to adhere to social distancing guidelines more easily when they travel, and provide relief to other methods of travel, including the London underground. The Elizabeth line—I think this is where the Opposition and the Government agree—can and should be the spearhead of that recovery.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now welcome to the Dispatch Box shadow Minister Sam Tarry.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Instead of levelling up the north, where this Government have cut £4 million from Transport for the North, the Minister and his Government clearly intend to level down London’s transport network. This is not the first time we have had to come to the House to ask about the Government’s support for TfL because it did not go far enough in the first place. At a time when public transport ridership has collapsed and we are still a long way off recovering to pre-pandemic ridership levels, we must think about redistribution. That is clearly the right approach. Vehicle excise duty, which raises £500 million from drivers who live in London, is invested almost exclusively in roads outside the city. Keeping it in the capital would enable TfL to continue to be a world-class transport provider and boost our nation’s economy, so will the Transport Secretary commit to looking at this as a way to support TfL?

[Grant Shapps]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his position, warmly congratulate him and look forward to many exchanges. He asks about TfL. The Government have provided £3.3 billion and counting to TfL to keep it afloat. I just listed some of the moneys that had not been collected in by the Mayor, and I hear that the hon. Gentleman now wants to give the Mayor responsibility for the collection of vehicle excise duty in addition. Londoners will be interested in this. The Mayor is already planning an over £31 band D increase in council tax this year and now he has this new boundary tax, which might be £3.50 or £5.50—we await to hear—for entering London from certain locations. Where does it end?

Transport for London: Funding

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) and the Petitions Committee for the debate. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare that I was proudly a trade union officer dealing with Transport for London at the time of the previous Conservative Mayor, seeing at first hand the insane obsession with £400,000 buses and failing schemes such as the garden bridge that cost an eye-watering amount of money and did not even build a bridge over the Thames. To take lectures from Conservative Members about that poppycock —to use one of the Prime Minister’s terms—is simply unbelievable. They are right, however, that the root cause of the problem goes back beyond covid-19 to the cutting of the operating grant.

For a long time, London’s transport system has been the jewel in the crown of this country’s transport infrastructure; every major railway line stops here to serve the rest of our nation as the economic engine. Yet we are the only country in western Europe to have pulled nearly £1 billion of the main subsidy from that transport system, which moves millions of people in and out of London every single day. That is the root cause of the problem. I have seen at first hand how the previous Mayor and the current Mayor have had to suffer the consequences of that decision.

In all honesty, there needs to be a settlement—a real one that is actually sustainable for Londoners. As hon. Members on both sides of the House have said, London is an economic driver. Although many people are having to work at home at the moment, which may be a fundamental change, the reality is that TfL will not be able to wash its face when 70% of its fares have gone completely.

Let us give the Mayor of London credit where credit is due. He successfully forced the Government to give up their plans to scrap free travel for older and younger Londoners, alongside their ill-conceived attempt, which almost caused a riot, to extend the congestion charge to my constituency of Ilford South on the border of the A406. That was a nakedly political move to hit the Mayor of London, and I believe it would be as deeply unpopular in east London as in many west London constituencies. Clearly, it was thrown straight out the window when constituents made their voices heard.

Again, those negotiations went down to the wire. The funding deal was agreed by the Government only 17 minutes before the deadline. That is not the way to run a system that supports millions of people travelling to work, even during the covid-19 crisis. The deal also came with huge strings, including £160 million of additional savings this financial year. On the facility time for trade unions, under Sadiq, relationships have been far better than they were under the Prime Minister, who would not even pick up the phone to me or any of my colleagues for four years. Megaphone diplomacy through the pages of the Evening Standard is not the way to run our capital city’s transport system.

Despite what was written in black and white in a letter from the Transport Secretary to the Mayor, the Government and, of course, Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate, are pretending that Sadiq chose to impose those conditions on Londoners. Londoners will not be taken for fools; they know that the Prime Minister wrongly said on the Floor of the House that the Mayor had bankrupted TfL before the pandemic. To use another of his phrases, that is simply balderdash. There is no possible way that radical change would not have been needed when 90% of footfall disappeared almost overnight.

The knock-on impact of the financial crisis is that young people in my constituency, which is one of the most diverse in London, now face having their zip card taken away from them. That is what allows them to travel across London and, when we are out of covid-19, to visit museums and the local library to study. As the Child Poverty Action Group has said, those are the children whose parents will have to decide whether to put food on the table because they suddenly have to pay for their child to travel to school. Let us not have a north-south divide. Why not level up the north, rather than level down London?

Aviation Industry

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for securing this important and timely debate. I also thank the Unite and GMB unions for campaigning so passionately and effectively on the issue, since the covid pandemic began, to safeguard the future of all those working in the aviation sector. As many colleagues have said, the livelihoods of 230,000 people employed in the sector—the third largest in the world and the biggest in Europe—are threatened. To challenge, slightly, something that was said by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), who chairs the Transport Committee of which I am a member, the sector actually contributes £28 billion to the economy.

That is why it is astounding that eight months since the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box and promised a financial support package for the aviation sector, that has yet to be delivered in a substantive way. In that time we have had wave after wave of redundancies, despite the furlough scheme, and one airport operator even described that as little more than a drop in the ocean in relation to fixed costs. The Government’s failure to provide the rescue package has meant such disgraces as the 13,000 redundancies at British Airways, and the firing and rehiring—things that are totally out of step with British values and the way our companies should behave. That is why the Transport Committee report damningly branded British Airways a “national disgrace” for its behaviour. The Committee Chair spoke of standards falling “well below” those expected of an employer.



It is simply unacceptable that the Government have not stepped in to do more to drive this level of change. For the Government to stand by when companies take advantage of these situations is deeply frustrating, because we know that there are options on the table that could be taken, such as prioritising loans or taking stakes in companies. Businesses that receive such support should then be prohibited from paying dividends, undertaking share buybacks or making capital contributions—potentially, even executive pay could be capped. We need to show that the needs of ordinary British workers are the priority for this Government and our country.

There are many examples from around the world of Governments backing the aviation industry. The US injected $45 billion into the sector. Another good example is France, where Macron’s Government unveiled a series of historic rescue packages but also put in place important mechanisms to tie parts of those packages to very clear decisions that airline bosses had to make to bring forward plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, to transform the fleet and to treat their staff, including their long-term employees, far better. By the way, it is vital that such efforts to tackle climate change are not lost while all the focus is on retaining jobs.

Consideration should be given to publicly financing smaller airports—there are many near me, such as City airport—and air traffic control, as well as specific routes within the UK’s aviation sector. Time is running out, and the Government really must act now.