High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Andy McDonald and David Anderson

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Andy McDonald]

The point is that the man with the red flag was there to slow down the train because it was not known what impact the speeds would have had on the human form. If we do not get rid of the Pacers quickly, I think that man might have a job again. We need to move on.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

We will keep the red flag flying.

[Andy McDonald]

Indeed. The point is that the Victorian railway has been around for a very considerable time. We have benefited enormously from Victorian innovation and taken it forward into the next generation of high-speed rail travel. Once completed, phase 1 will surely be in operation for hundreds of years—we all agree that it will be operational for two centuries. That is a wonderful prospect.

However, under the current drafting a Secretary of State will be able to enjoy compulsory purchase powers over the land for the entire duration of phase 1. That is a hugely significant power and I trust that the Minister can see the merit in qualifying that wide-ranging power. The amendment will not inhibit in any way the development or operations of phase 1. It will simply introduce some degree of reasonable objectivity into the Bill, so that in years ahead—we could be talking 50, 75 or 100 years—landowners can be assured that their land and property, left intact until then, is not unfairly or unexpectedly drawn into the operation of compulsory acquisition under the Act.

Thus far, there has been no such qualification. I trust that the Minister will agree with the logic of our position and accept the amendment.

High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Andy McDonald and David Anderson

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Andy McDonald]

I can see that the right hon. Gentleman is content.

The amendment is about working in the best interests of taxpayers and to ensure that they are not sold short. The taxpayer is our concern, not the private entity that might have transferred to it property and/or property rights which of themselves had been the product of the taxpayer’s significant investment—the sum of £55 billion, or thereabouts. Calls upon the nation’s tax receipts are onerous and to be used wisely, so it is essential that we ensure that those moneys that have created such valuable assets—money that could have served other urgent and serious demands in our communities—are not simply siphoned off into the private sector.

Our concerns are not idle ones, but are extremely well founded. We are dealing with a potential asset sale as I speak, namely the announcement by Network Rail of its intention to sell some 18 railway stations on the existing network. It is of immense concern that, should any such sales go ahead, the receipts will be those of a fair market valuation and not simply from a fire sale to reduce Network Rail’s debts. In advance of the Nicola Shaw review, we hear that Network Rail is to sell off 18 major stations, including Waterloo, Reading and Leeds, in an effort to cut its £50 billion debt. If memory serves me right, Reading has benefited from public investment of some £897 million. I am sure that the public will be watching carefully what happens to the ownerships of those and other named stations.

The same concerns apply to HS2. I am afraid that the Government have form and that we have less than good experience, to say the least, of sell-offs of publicly owned assets that failed to secure fair or market value for the taxpayer. We need cast our minds back no further than the disastrous sell-off of the Royal Mail, which is still fresh in the minds of millions of voters. The Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills found that taxpayers may have lost out on about £l billion from the undervaluing of Royal Mail. Apparently, the Government feared failure and acted on bad advice over the Royal Mail stock market flotation. As we know, the shares fluctuated widely with an initial price of 330p which jumped as high as 618p and now stands somewhat lower than that. The then Business Secretary, Vince Cable, said:

“They”—

presumably meaning the BIS Committee—

“now have the benefit of hindsight, which we didn’t have at the time. We sold at a price that was regarded as the best that could be achieved in the context in which we sold it.”

But the Chair of the BIS Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), said:

“It’s very important that when the government does sell off a government asset, it does so through a process that quite clearly demonstrates that nobody selling it, nobody advising it, has a conflict of interest”.

We do not want a repeat of the conduct of the likes of Lazards who were working on the inside on the sale of Royal Mail as Government advisers and then, because of the erection of an invisible virtual Chinese wall, were able to fill their boots on the acquisition of Royal Mail shares from the profits they achieved in a few short hours after launch. A number of individuals, some with high-profile political associations, also personally cashed in. We simply do not want HS2 to be turned into a profiteering exercise at the public’s expense.

You will recall the evidence unearthed by the Public Accounts Committee under the expert chairing of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). It revealed that Lazards advised the Government not to increase the price of Royal Mail shares, despite widespread fears they were hugely undervalued, and made a profit of more than £8 million by immediately selling the company’s stock. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking said that Lazards

“made a killing at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer that lost £750 million in one day”.

A subsequent report by the National Audit Office found that the Government decided against increasing the flotation price of Royal Mail beyond 330p a share because of warnings from Lazard & Co. Government advisers were asked point blank at the Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking how they could get it so wrong that it cost the taxpayer £750 million on that one day.

Vince Cable, the then Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, said that the postal service should,

“start its new life with a core of high-quality investors who would be there in good times and bad”.

So much for that hope, Mr Hanson. As you and I both know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[Mr Anderson]

Will my hon. Friend also recall the fact that it is not only the Royal Mail? The coal industry was privatised in 1994. One of the arguments for privatisation was that it would transfer the risks from the public sector to the private sector. We had the situation where a company was importing coal from places like Colombia, which uses child and slave labour to dig coal out of the ground. The Government presided over the closure of the last deep mine colliery in Kellingley at the end of 2015, but the people who bought the coal industry have used assets in land and estates which have multiplied massively from what was paid for them in 1994.

[Andy McDonald]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. It is absolutely imperative that we learn lessons from previous experiences, and that is what the amendment is intended to address. We do not want to keep repeating these errors and finding the taxpayer short-changed. Certainly, when there is something so prestigious and ambitious and it has widespread support, we do not want its reputation tarnished in any way. We want it to be sustained.

High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Andy McDonald and David Anderson

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Andy McDonald]

I hope the workers will not be charged for working on the site. That would be over the top. I hope they will be able to turn up for work and not think about paying car-parking fees.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Health workers do.

[Andy McDonald]

Health workers do but, hopefully, it will not happen on this occasion. Perhaps we can have better practice for HS2. There will undoubtedly be a very large area where they can park their vehicles, so perhaps the Minister could reflect on that.

I understand what the Minister is saying and his clarification is helpful. If I were being unkind I would say that his telling us that we should not insert this provision about short-term car parking in the Bill now prompts the question why the Bill specifies 7,500 car spaces and five spaces for coaches, but I think he has addressed that. I am also grateful that he has made it clear that he contemplates the five parking spaces for coaches for dropping off passengers and not for long-term parking.

As he said, all of that will come out in the wash, but the basic principle of the amendment is to encourage people to use trains and not make unnecessary journeys. He is also right about the 12 hours. People may be able to travel to London, do their business and get back for dinner before they have even set off, it will be so quick; so we look forward to those developments. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment, having been satisfied with the Minister’s clarification.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 23 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 24

Development consent

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Debate between Andy McDonald and David Anderson

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Anderson]

That is absolutely right. The Government are saying that they can go only so far, because the companies cannot afford more, but they are forgetting the fact that companies have received millions and millions of pounds, which they could and should have put away since 1965, in the knowledge that this might come along one day. Is not the whole point of insurance that people should save for a rainy day? Well, the umbrellas are up now.

[Andy McDonald]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we are talking about sophisticated people, who have battalions of actuaries to look at the figures, and that they would have taken into consideration the possibility of having the cut-off date as 10 February 2010 rather than later? That would have been in their thinking, so why can they not be encouraged to step up to the mark and live up to their responsibilities?

[Mr Anderson]

Those people must obviously have realised that there was a potential for that. If the consultation had lasted for a short period, it would have been that date, but without a shadow of a doubt, they clearly could have thought that it might be the start date.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham spoke about some of the consultations. I went to some of the meetings, which Ministers opened and then virtually handed them over to members of the insurance companies to run and to answer questions. Civil servants and Ministers were not engaged; it was people from the Association of British Insurers who answered all the questions, and it was clearly in their interests to do what they have now got away with. It is clear that the scheme will not provide full protection or full compensation.

I share the concerns of other hon. Members about the level of payment. For the life of me, whatever the cut-off date, I cannot see why the payment should be anything less than 100%. I made the point earlier that there is 100% liability on the employer and the insurer, while 100% of those with this disease have died. If people go through all the hoops they have to go through, which are the same as those in civil litigation, it is not their fault that insurers, employers or both have disappeared; the fault lies with the industry, which collectively should be putting this right. The insurers have had the premiums and have invested them, so they should pay up.

We are talking about at least 6,000 people who, between them, have lost somewhere in the region of £800 million. Compensation of 75% means that people have to absorb 25% of the ongoing costs. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck said that that is at least £43,000. To somebody who is probably on the sick, and whose family is probably not working because they are taking care of them, £43,000 is a life-changing sum of money. It might not be very much to insurance companies or to some of those funded by insurance companies, but it is clearly a lot of money for people at a time of grief.

I want to pick up what has been said about the exclusion of other diseases. If people have been criminally exposed to a poisonous substance, those who did that should be brought to book, and the way to do that is to make them pay compensation. I hope that we would support that and that as the Bill goes forward we can make that case more and more strongly.

Again, why is the cut-off date not February 2010, which is when the consultation was announced? The written ministerial statement came out two and a half years after that consultation was announced. That was two and a half years of what—things gathering dust and people having discussions? What were civil servants doing? All of a sudden, there was a statement two and a half years later, followed by a discussion period to bring us to where we are now. That clearly is not fair. The minimum has to be February 2010, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham that if we really are serious, we should go back to 1965. My guess is that we probably will not, but we must address that issue in Committee as a matter of real urgency.