Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Firth Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

I had the dubious honour of being praised as the hon. Gentleman’s favourite MP earlier this week—damned by faint praise. I would gently push back that the West Yorkshire Mayor is able to do that only because this Government have provided unprecedented funding of in excess of £2.1 billion in the devolved settlement under the city region sustainable transport settlement.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Southend welcomes the £1 million of bus service improvement plan funding that has already enabled Conservative cabinet member Kevin Buck to reinstate the much-loved 25A route, but we need more. Will the Minister commit to come to my high-level bus summit on Monday, to listen to residents and see what more we can do?

[Guy Opperman]

In the time-honoured tradition, I can only say yes to my hon. Friend. She is a doughty champion for Southend. I would be delighted to attend her bus summit, to speak to the relevant councillors and to explain how the bus service improvement plan and the bus service operators’ grant funding is transforming local bus provision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am pleased to be able to tell the hon. Lady that within a week of her debate in Westminster Hall, my hon. Friend the Minister for buses made sure that those meetings took place, so the actions that are necessary are under way. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be able to update her on the specific timeline in due course.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

T2. The Rail Minister is well aware that Network Rail continues to let down disabled residents and visitors and families at Chalkwell station by repeatedly failing to install the much-needed disabled lift. This is the seventh time I have raised this issue in this place. Two years ago, I was promised that the lift would be installed this year. I have now been told it will not even be started until next year. This is a disgrace. What can the Minister do to accelerate this project and address this poor performance?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)]

There was a retendering at Chalkwell, and Network Rail found that the existing structures would not be suitable to deliver the project as it stood. The design work is going on right now and building will happen next year. My hon. Friend is right that the delay is not acceptable. I will meet her at Chalkwell station and bring the Network Rail team along so that we can talk her through the project and its challenges and, if we can, show how we will speed it up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Firth Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

As the hon. Lady knows, there is wide and differing experience across the charging network. Many people are able to charge at home and many people are able to charge through the increasingly large public network. The way in which electricity prices have changed has tended to dominate changes overall, but she will, I am sure, share my pleasure that the new charge point regulations mean that we can now have a much more competitive market for charging across all the different forms of infrastructure.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to support bus services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Richard Holden)]

Using the savings from HS2, we will extend the £2 bus fare right across England until the end of December 2024. This means that the Government have committed over £600 million to cap bus fares. We have also announced that the Government will continue to provide increased financial support to community transport operators, to help them protect key services by uplifting their bus service operator grant by 60%.

[Anna Firth]

I thank the Minister for that reply, and for his recent visit to Southend West. He is very aware that last year, elderly residents were left stranded, literally overnight, when First Bus withdrew the No. 21 service, cutting them off from Southend Hospital, from Leigh Broadway and from many community groups. Despite successfully working with First Bus to reroute the No. 3 bus, this is not good enough; it only runs once every two hours. Will he meet me and First Bus to make sure that Southend City gets the best bus services possible?

[Mr Holden]

I was delighted to visit my hon. Friend, and also my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (Sir James Duddridge). I would be very happy to meet her and representatives from First Bus. Her work to champion her constituents’ local transport needs is second to none. I was delighted to see that that additional piece of bus funding of almost £1 million from central Government to Southend to help protect and enhance local bus services is going through, but I will happily meet her to see how we can best ensure that it is spent in a way that protects her residents.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

I do not think that, for the reasons we have described, there is anything to complain about in relation to the progress we are making across England. Charge point roll-out remains very rapid—43% in the last 12 months —and there are 49,000 public charge points at the moment and 400,000 private and business ones, and new regulations and a new mandate have just been laid.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

T6.   Chalkwell station in beautiful Leigh-on-Sea has 40 steep steps to get up from and down to the platform; it is 100% inaccessible. I was told last year by the Treasury that work on it is part of the £350 million Department for Transport Access for All programme. Work was supposed to start a year ago, but nothing has happened. The timetable has slipped; it is not due to be completed until March 2026. To ensure that there is no further slippage on this timetable, will the Minister meet with me?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)]

I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend. Chalkwell, Ockendon and Southend East remain within the Access for All programme. We have delivered 230 stations and we will deliver those three as well. We had an issue with the contractor putting in a cost estimate that was about double what I would expect; that is why we have had to look anew, but I will very happily meet my hon. Friend to discuss this further, and she has that commitment. We will deliver it.

Railway Ticket Offices

Anna Firth Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) for securing this important debate on railway ticket offices. I also give a warm welcome to his new role to the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan). I look forward to working with him.

I will give my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset two minutes to wind up, but in the time I have allotted to me I want to set out a little more detail about the consultation, as many of the questions I have been asked have had that in mind. I will also discuss the rationale for the moves. I will try and take the odd intervention if I can, but, if I cannot, I will ensure that I respond to all right hon. and hon. Members who made their points.

I thank Members for their kind remarks and I enjoy working with everybody across the divide. I want to continue to work with all those who have railways at their heart, and at the heart of their constituencies, to make the railways work. I am a passionate advocate of this, but Members are the champions and I want to continue to work with all Members. I recognise that some of my points will be accepted while others will not, but we will continue to liaise and engage, hopefully with the good spirit and kindness that I have been shown this morning.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Huw Merriman]

I will make some progress and then I may have some time to take interventions.

Together with the rail industry, we want to improve and modernise the experience for passengers by moving staff out from behind the ticket office screens to provide more help and advice in customer-focused roles. As hon. Members have recognised, there has been a huge shift in the way in which passengers purchase their tickets at railway stations, with about one in every 10 transactions taking place in ticket offices in 2022 to 2023, although I take the points that that differs across the estate. Despite that change in passenger transacting behaviour, stations have hardly changed in the past 10 years, which means that staff are constrained to work in ticket offices, although they could serve passengers better on station platforms and concourses. Ten years ago, the ticket office proportion of sales was one in three and it is now almost one in 10.

Rail Ticket Offices

Anna Firth Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

I am putting the travelling public first when I make these points. What the right hon. Lady and others cannot deny, despite saying it cannot be believed, is that 10 years ago one in three tickets was sold across the ticket office counter, because people were not purchasing as much online or through machines. Now it is 10%. That demonstrates that ticket office staff are not being utilised fully. We want to utilise them in a better manner. Redeploying staff where they are not as busy as they were and could be better utilised and have a more rewarding job is what happens across the retail sector. The railways should be no different.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Anyone who has experienced the long queues from the machines and the ticket office at my local train station of Leigh-on-Sea—sometimes it goes out of the office and around the block—on a Monday morning, and sometimes on a Saturday, will know why I have been campaigning for contactless ticketing to be extended to Leigh-on-Sea and Chalkwell stations ever since I arrived in this place. As such, I am personally delighted; however, innovation must never be used as an excuse to exclude any of my constituents or deliver a worse service. The blind and partially sighted, such as the wonderful Jill Allen-King OBE, cannot access the touchscreen ticket machines and need a person to help them buy that ticket, but that person does not need to be behind glass. Can the Minister assure me that there will always be somebody available at Leigh-on-Sea and Chalkwell ticket stations to help the blind and partially sighted, the elderly, and anyone else who needs help?

[Huw Merriman]

Yes—any currently staffed station will not become unstaffed as a result of these changes. As I have said, 43% of stations do not have ticket office staff, but if the stations that my hon. Friend has mentioned are currently staffed, they will not become unstaffed.

My hon. Friend referenced guide dogs. I am very grateful for the meeting I had with the Guide Dogs team, because we know that when it comes to mobility and accessibility issues, what may work for some does not work for everyone. Sight loss is a particular example of that, so I am very keen to continue to work with Guide Dogs to reassure my hon. Friend’s constituents that they will always get the help they need at her local stations.

Rail Cancellations and Service Levels

Anna Firth Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree with me that service levels across the country are just as important? There have been 10 negative stories in the last month about the c2c line, which hard-working commuters from Southend West and Leigh-on-Sea need, including signal failures, overrunning engineering works and rush-hour queues to buy tickets. Would the Secretary of State sit down with me to discuss this level of service, and in particular our long-awaited disabled access at Chalkwell station and the long-awaited contactless ticketing?

[Huw Merriman]

I had perhaps better not promise that the Secretary of State will sit down with my hon. Friend because that may be above my pay grade, but I certainly will, and I will certainly ask him if he would like to do so. We are very keen to work with all hon. Members across the House on the specific issues they may have, hers among them.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that, while this urgent question is on cancellations in the north, we are conscious that there has been a knock-on effect across the country and the network is not performing as we would like it to. One of the issues, and I again recognise that this comes down to the morale of both the management and the workforce, is that there is a contagion effect after strikes. We want a modern railway in which all in the workforce feel they have a future, with their jobs changing as ours all change and evolve, where there is more interaction with passengers and more pride as a result and we therefore see more passengers enjoying the experience. That is the passion I have for what we can do with rail. We just need everybody to work together to deliver it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Firth Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that we have already spent significant funds on active travel. There are core funds available, but there are also funds from other Departments, such as the levelling-up fund, the highways maintenance fund and the future high streets fund. Much of that money is already committed. I remind the hon. Gentleman about the poor record of the Labour party, whose funding for active travel was significantly less than we have already put in to this important area.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

6. What steps her Department is taking to help maintain the provision of bus services in all parts of the UK.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

8. What steps her Department is taking to help maintain the provision of bus services in all parts of the UK

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lucy Frazer)]

The Government have provided nearly £2 billion of support since March 2020 through emergency and recovery grants to ensure that our bus sector survived throughout the pandemic. That is on top of the £1 billion of transformation funding that will make our bus services faster, more reliable and cheaper across much of England.

[Anna Firth]

I thank the whole House for the very kind comments about Southend’s greatest ever champion: Sir David Amess, my predecessor. They will be much appreciated by everyone in Southend West as we remember Sir David on Saturday.

Southend, and indeed the whole of Essex, did not benefit at all from the Government’s bus service improvement plan earlier this year, so what steps are the Government taking to ensure that new cities such as Southend can bus back better? Will the Minister assure me that those areas that missed out last time will be at the top of the list for funding in future schemes?

[Lucy Frazer]

My thoughts are with Sir David Amess’s family today. I am grateful that my hon. Friend has mentioned him.

My hon. Friend is a very keen champion for her area. I am aware that her area was not successful in the funding round that she mentions, but I am pleased that Essex County Council and Southend-on-Sea City Council have been awarded some funds to maintain bus services, with totals of £1.5 million and £330,000 respectively to support the development and delivery of their bus service improvement plans and enhanced partnerships. That is in addition to their bus recovery grant allocation and the practical support on offer, which includes guidance and training to ensure eligibility for any further BSIP funding.

Industrial Action on the Railway

Anna Firth Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Member may want to reflect the same question to the Mayor of London, I suppose, for the same reasons. I am delighted that Merseyrail has been able to do its thing. I do hope that he will now join me—will he join me?—in condemning the strikes, because I think that would have real weight from the Labour and unions party, but the Opposition will not do it, will they? They will not condemn these strikes, and millions of people up and down this country have taken note.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree with me that Labour Members who refuse to condemn these strikes have no regard for the potential effect on the exam results of children taking GCSEs and A-levels up and down the country? Both the AQA and Edexcel—both well-known exam boards—have confirmed that they will not allow the strikes or their impact to be used as grounds for appeal for students who arrive late or perhaps are unable to arrive at all. Given the experience that schoolchildren in this country have had over the last two years, which has been the worst in our lifetimes, does the Secretary of State agree that it is utterly reprehensible for all sides of this House not to be condemning these rail strikes absolutely?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend puts it brilliantly, and she is absolutely right. It is actually callous. That is what it is. I have a daughter who is taking an exam on Thursday. Thursday is a strike day, and she will now go in by car. I can see that the stress is already building on her, because she is now worried about getting there. Yet the Opposition have nothing to say on the subject. They refuse to condemn the strikes. My hon. Friend is right: it is a callous approach.

Transport

Anna Firth Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and to have heard all the contributions from around the Chamber.

A famous politician whose name I forget once said that his priority was “Education, education, education”. When it comes to economic growth, what is required is better connected location, location, location. The new city of Southend has location in spades, but its connections are not all that they should be. Southend city is situated on the world’s most famous working waterway. It is served by two fast train lines and has a world-class, multi-use business park next to Europe’s fastest-growing airport.

The city of Southend is ideally located to be the best seaside city in the country. More than 7 million tourists visit Southend every year, contributing more than £470 million to the local economy and supporting 16% of our local jobs. Our advanced medical technology industries, among others, contribute £3 billion to the Exchequer every single year. Yet despite this extraordinary contribution, there is one area where Britain’s newest city lags behind other UK cities—our transport infrastructure. Long-term underinvestment and lack of planning from Southend city’s Labour-led council has left Britain’s newest city with a disjointed and deeply unsatisfactory transport network. As the Chancellor himself has said,

“Great cities need great transport”,

and Britain’s newest city now needs and deserves serious investment in our public transport network. Of course I welcome the fact that the Government have committed almost £7 billion to levelling up transport across the country, but sadly nothing of substance has yet made its way down the line to Southend, and levelling up must include our coastal communities.

As the UK’s newest city, we deserve to bus back better. Our buses are old-fashioned, irregular, too expensive, and liable to be cut without proper notice. In 2020, Arriva withdrew our eco-friendly bus fleet and replaced it with second-hand polluting diesel buses from another city. Another city’s cast-offs are not good enough for Britain’s newest city. Only last month, Essex First Bus axed the very popular No. 26 route, with only a few days’ notice, when the Labour-led council withdrew support funding. The loss of this vital bus route has cut elderly residents off from the hospital, shops, essential services, and, very, importantly, their constituency surgeries. There is currently no bus service for elderly people in my constituency to go to the seafront or to the town of Leigh- on-Sea. I regularly get letters saying that old people are left standing in the cold and wet because the buses and trains are not connecting. The A127, one of two trunk roads into Southend, is in desperate need of an upgrade, and our roads and pavements are literally crumbling.

All this must change. First, we need a new overarching integrated transport plan for the new city of Southend to turbocharge our local economy and attract even more investment into our city. We have already seen what can be done when proper investment happens. I welcome this week’s announcement to make Chalkwell station in my constituency fully accessible to all. Indeed, I would be delighted to invite the Minister to come and take the first ride in the lift at Chalkwell station, along with the brilliant local campaigner who has helped to make this possible—Jill Allen-King.

Secondly, our trains need overhauling. We need greater capacity and a real improvement in the ticketing system. There is nothing more dispiriting than standing on the station, as I do myself, queuing for the one working ticket machine and seeing your train pull away without you on it. All the stations in Britain’s newest city need to have contactless ticketing.

Thirdly, buses are a lifeline for our elderly community. I echo everything said by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) in this regard. They are essential not only for economic prosperity but for wellbeing. Our buses must be overhauled, and I do hope that we will receive some of the Government’s planned 4,000 hydrogen buses. Most importantly, no bus service should be allowed to be withdrawn without proper notice and consultation. This must never happen again. The A127 needs to be upgraded, as I mentioned, and we must stop prevaricating over this. We also need safer provision for cyclists in the city, and all residents want the council to get on with fixing the potholes in our roads and mending our pavements.

For us as a new city, it is time to implement major projects that would have a long-term impact on Southend for generations to come. If the Elizabeth line was extended from Shenfield to Southend, there would be major local and national economic benefits similar to those that Reading is now enjoying. It would be the only direct route linking London Heathrow airport with London Southend airport. Better connecting the city of Southend to London would better connect London itself and unlock the biggest opportunity for growth in the south-east.