Humber Bridge Bill

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I rise to emphasise that there is cross-party, cross-Humber support for the Bill. I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Members for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), my hon. Friends the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), too. We have all worked together to establish a new way of looking at the Humber bridge. I also pay tribute to the Secretary of State for International Development for the work she did in her previous post. To emphasise the cross-party consensus, I should point out, too, that the Minister who will be replying to the debate is a Liberal Democrat.

It is said that the way to bring two communities together is to build a bridge. We did that to bring the communities of east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire together. In a way, that bridge became a cause of division, however, and it certainly did not allow us to fulfil the economic development potential of the region. This Bill changes that, not least because the bridge board will have the power to promote and participate in the economic development of our sub-region.

Because of the tolls and because of the archaic, centralised and almost Stalinist way in which the Humber Bridge Board was set up—it was a creature of its post-war time—it was impossible to use that bridge between the two communities to maximise our economic potential. Now, with the local enterprise partnership, with an emphasis on localism, we are determined to make that work. We have done an awful lot by halving the bridge tolls, which is very important, but we need to set up a new structure, reducing the 22 board members to four local authority members—and we need to include all the local authorities, because one was not included under the current structure. We also need to add to that the knowledge and expertise of the business community. Allowing those things to happen will mean that we can take advantage of the huge potential in renewables, chemicals, logistics and digital gaming, which are all huge for our sub-region.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I agree with every point that the right hon. Gentleman has made, but will he join me in paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), who, when she was a Treasury Minister, played such a role in not only finding the money to halve the tolls, but setting out the vision, which he has just described, of a more dynamic board, rather than the Stalinist one we had before?

[Alan Johnson]

I clearly recall paying tribute to the right hon. Member for Putney, but I am happy to do so again—she is so good, they pay tribute to her twice.

I do not want to speak for long. This Bill is very important for our little corner of the world. There is not a person, organisation, agency or business opposed to this development, and I very much hope the Bill gets its Second Reading this evening.