Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Steve Brine

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

Yes.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Is it true that the Secretary of State is now so worried about the supply of vital medicines in the event of a no deal or a hard Brexit that he has asked the pharmaceutical industry to extend the period of stockpiling from six weeks to 20 weeks?

Wessex Route Study (Passenger Capacity)

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Steve Brine

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Like other Members, I congratulate my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), on securing this debate. It is about an issue that she and I have discussed more times than we care to remember, and I have a feeling that we will talk about it many more times over the months and years ahead.

Today’s debate is a great success, not least given my right hon. Friend’s brilliant speech. Often in this House, we talk about things that are declining and problems in this country, but debates about the railways start with a great success story. As my other neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), correctly said, South West Trains is the victim of its own success, and that could be said of the railway industry across our country.

I do not wish to speak for too long, although time seems to be on our side—I want to hear from the Minister—but I want to make a couple of points. My right hon. Friend said that we must watch first class carefully. I completely agree; I have thought that for a long time. We have all seen surplus capacity in the first-class carriages. The TOCs need to watch that closely. I have often wondered whether the idea of first-class provision on our railways is an anachronism in the modern age, but maybe that is a debate for another day.

For my constituents travelling to and from Winchester, the issue is all about capacity. I have stations at Micheldever, Shawford and Chandler’s Ford in my constituency, but the vast majority of travellers, some 4.5 million a year, use Winchester railway station. Thousands commute from Winchester to London, primarily, each day.

I echo others in mentioning some of the success stories for my station and my service during this Parliament, which have been significant. A £3.5 million scheme brought the new decked car park to the station. I say to my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, that it is very good and very welcome, but we should watch the lighting inside, which has to be right or there will be serious and legitimate safety concerns. We have excellent new cycling facilities. As a vice-chair of the all-party group on cycling, I was pleased to see those facilities come online.

We have a fantastic new footbridge at our railway station. When I became a Member of Parliament, people had to get taxicabs from one side of the station to the other, which was ludicrous. We now have wi-fi on many services leaving Winchester, which is brilliant, and we have made real steps on late-night safety around our railway station with the opening of a ticket office so that people do not have to go through the dark side gate. South West Trains—I do not apologise for pressing it again on this—knows that it needs to do better on that.

I am a regular commuter, and I receive feedback from constituents. The reliability of services on South West Trains is very good, and I get good feedback from people in that respect. That is not the issue on which I want to focus today. As others have said, the issue is with the lack of seats on the 6.31 am, the 6.48 am, the 7.5 am and the notorious 7.18 am—standing with one’s face in an armpit is probably one of the best outcomes for which one can hope on that service—out of Winchester into London. That is what really hurts my constituents.

A constituent who knew I was hoping to speak in this debate sent me a note saying that the key issue is obviously overcrowding on the early-morning services into Waterloo: “With ticket costs increasing year on year, and with little discernible increase in seating capacity, insult is being added to injury.” The Wessex route study, which I welcome very much, confirms that and neatly illustrates the current chronic undercapacity of services from Winchester. He said, “This is not news, Mr Brine,” and I completely agree. He talks about adding insult to injury—a standard season ticket between Winchester and London costs £5,500 a year, which is, next to their mortgage, the second biggest outgoing for many of my constituents. They are entitled to a seat for that money.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that First Great Western has reduced the number of first-class carriages on its trains from three to two? That is a very good idea, although were South West Trains to follow suit, would he urge it not to lose the only quiet carriage in first class? I never go there myself because I am always in standard class, but I have had complaints from a number of people in the south-west who now have to put up with a lot of noise, as well as paying quite high fares.

[Steve Brine]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have spoken many times about some of these issues on the all-party group on cycling. Yes, the number of carriages should be reduced where there is a surplus, but I was making a wider point about whether it is morally correct to have first-class and second-class carriages on the railways.

On the subject of the so-called quiet carriage, some of my constituents—and probably some of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents—would find the idea of a quiet carriage laughable. Even though there are big signs on the windows saying that the carriage is a quiet carriage, many people seem not to notice. I have heard many mobile phone conversations in the quiet carriage during my travels, so the railways may need to do some education work.

I was talking about the cost of a standard season ticket for my constituents, which is huge. It actually costs more to get a season ticket from Winchester to Waterloo than it does from Southampton to Waterloo, even though we are nearer London. South West Trains is well aware of that issue, and I wish it would address the situation. Part-time season tickets are a nut that we have failed to crack, and I would be interested if the Minister had a comment on that issue. Smart ticketing is a coming issue, and I believe I am right in saying that it requires some sort of change at parliamentary level. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that situation.

High demand for peak commuter services to Waterloo from all our constituencies is, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke said, expected to increase dramatically over the years ahead. She coherently set out the housing development in her area; in my area our local plan, which is almost complete, is for 12,500 houses in the district over the next 20 years. Two thousand houses at the Barton Farm site, which is but half a mile from Winchester railway station, have been given the go-ahead in the past few years. I bitterly opposed that development. Yes, there will be a new primary school on the site, and there will be other infrastructure improvements from such a big development, but a brand new mainline railway station will not be built for my constituents as a result of that development, so something has to change and something has to give.

Southampton airport is a very short train ride from my constituency. Passengers going to and from that airport come through my railway station, and air passenger projections are only expected to grow. People relocating from London to places such as Winchester are welcome, and we enjoy having them. They come because of the “cheaper” housing in Winchester—everything is relative in life, but housing is certainly cheaper than in west London. They come to Winchester for the good schools, the great quality of life and the fantastic Christmas market that we have right now, but they want to commute back into London. They have every right to expect that they should be able to do that, and many contact me to say that they are horrified at the cost and the standing that they have to endure.

There are things that we can do, and others have mentioned some of them. The national infrastructure plan published yesterday has some very good announcements for my area. As I said in the House, the improvements to junction 9 of the M3, on which I campaigned for many years, are incredibly welcome. The smart motorways technology around junctions 10 and 14 are also a welcome investment in our motorway infrastructure for my constituents. Credit to the Minister and his Department for doing that. I thank him on behalf of my constituents.

There are things that we can do as a city. One of the core corporate priorities of Winchester city council is to reduce the daily outward migration from the city for work, which is why the council is so keen to redevelop Station approach, to keep top-quality employers such as Denplan and to attract other big, quality employers, all of which reduces the necessity for people to travel to London every day. It is important that should happen. Those are all things that we can do, but we cannot control all of them. The issue is about capacity.

The key constraints for passenger services are highlighted in the study, which states:

“the layout of the Waterloo throat restricts the number of services that can access the platforms at any one time; the layout at Clapham Junction does not allow all trains that currently pass through the station to stop there”.

The study continues:

“A further constraint on the ability…to accommodate passenger growth is the capacity of some station car parks”.

We have gone some way in that respect, but many other places have not yet done so.

Capacity is the issue. I admit that I was sceptical about the local enterprise partnerships, but they are part of the solution, as is Hampshire county council. Winchester Action on Climate Change sent me a brief ahead of today’s debate and, judging by its name, it is keen on railway travel, as am I. The organisation makes some positive contributions, and it will be responding to the route study in due course.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke talked about a significant plan of investment, which is exactly what is needed—now really is the moment for that. Ahead of this debate one of my constituents said to me, “A lot of the discussion points in the Wessex route plan are very big-picture and will take a long time, cost a lot of money and need a lot of political and stakeholder buy-in. What can we do in the short term?” I place one point on the record for the Minister’s consideration—I know he likes to muse on these things. As a temporary solution, could we make greater use of Victoria station for trains coming in from the Wessex area? I leave that idea for him to ponder.

You will be pleased to know, Mr Streeter, that I have nearly finished. First, however, I have some questions for the Minister. I know that St Pancras and all the investment there are very much on Ministers’ radars, but is Waterloo on the Minister’s radar? I do not know whether it is, but it needs to be.

Cycling

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Steve Brine

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bradshaw]

I fully accept what my hon. Friend says. There is actually a 20 mph limit through much of Exeter, but the problem is that the Conservative county council and, I have to say, Devon and Cornwall police, do not enforce it. This problem has already been raised by several Members, and it needs to be stressed further. It is vital to have 20 mph limits, but they must be enforced.

Not only has cycling increased by 50% in Exeter, but more than 20% of school children there now cycle to school, whereas hardly any did before. In London, too, the situation has been transformed. Thanks to the congestion charge and other policies initiated by Ken Livingstone, there has also been a cycling revolution here. It warms my heart to see banks of cyclists at all the main junctions at commuting time, particularly young women and even parents with child seats and trailers. However—and this is the hub of the report we are debating today—in spite of the progress that we have made in the past 16 years or so, we are still far behind the best practice of the rest of northern Europe, and without sustained investment and political leadership from the top, we will never catch up.

I am delighted that the Labour party has today launched its Labour for Cycling campaign. I hope that those on my Front Bench will sign up fully to implement the recommendations in our report, but we need the Government to act as well. Without that, we will not see the growth in cycling of recent years sustained; nor will we see a reversal of the worrying recent trend of increased cyclist deaths and injuries on our roads.

I am pleased with some of the things that the Government have announced and done. The recent commitment to supporting cycling in a number of selected towns and cities is welcome, but it is basically a smaller-scale version of Labour’s cycle demonstration towns programme, and instead of happening in a few places, it should be happening everywhere. It would take only a fraction of the annual roads budget to achieve that. I would also like to know why the scheme was available only in places that were already part of the Government’s separate city deal programme. That ruled out cities such as Exeter from applying, which means that now, under this Government, only a quarter of the amount of money is being invested in cycling in Exeter than when Labour was in power.

I deeply regret the abolition of Cycling England, and I believe that the Government do, too. It was the body that drew all the disparate cycling organisations together and it was a vital co-ordinating voice and deliverer of policy. I also think that the Government were fatally mistaken to go soft on road safety, in abandoning Labour’s road death reduction targets and declaring their ridiculous war on speed cameras.

I am encouraged that the noises coming out of the Government more recently on road safety have been more sensible, but I am still concerned that they are not speaking with one voice. If they are serious about cycling, why are they allowing the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make the ludicrous suggestion that vehicles should enjoy a free-for-all by parking on double yellow lines, without even mentioning the impact that that would have on cyclists, pedestrians and road safety? The Secretary of State went on to say that the only people who were bothered about cycling were the “elite”. I do not know whether his animus towards cycling is a result of some deep Freudian consciousness that he is probably the Cabinet member who would benefit the most from cycling’s health-giving and girth-narrowing magic, but his comments are signally unhelpful and they should not go unchallenged if the Government are really serious about cycling.

[Steve Brine]

Does that not underline the point that we made in our report about the need for a national cycling champion with real—dare I say it—weight behind him, to force the right way of thinking through every level of Government?

[Mr Bradshaw]

Yes, and the hon. Gentleman might even be that person in the future. He is absolutely right. During the hearings, I told the inquiry that when I was a Minister, the only time we really got pedalling on this issue, to excuse the pun, was when the Secretaries of State in the Department of Health, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Home Office and the Department for Transport—all the important Departments —were committed to it and were working together to make things happen. Otherwise, nothing would happen.

That leads me to my final point. Time and again, when our Committee was taking evidence on cycling, our witnesses came back to the importance of long-term, sustained investment and joined-up political leadership. We need more than a Prime Minister who cycles to work for a photo opportunity while his limo drives behind him with his papers. We need a Prime Minister, and the whole Government from him down, who will make it clear that cycling is a priority across Government. It is cheap, and it will save lives, improve health and boost productivity. It will also reduce congestion, air pollution and carbon emissions. This is a no-brainer, and the infinitesimal cost of doing it would be more than recouped in the form of a happier, healthier, safer, greener, cleaner, thinner and more productive nation in a very short time indeed.