Bus Services: England

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. Before I thank the Minister, I will say that we on the Island are fortunate for many reasons, but one of them is that we still have a very healthy set of bus routes by rural standards. Even in my little hamlet in the Back of the Wight, in west Wight, where we are served by the No. 12 bus, we have eight services from Newport per working day and seven in the other direction, if my memory serves me. The last time I used the bus, and indeed our wonderful £2 bus fare, which I will come to shortly, was the week before last, when I needed to get to Carisbrooke castle for the wonderful Walk the Wight event in aid of the Isle of Wight hospice.

Being a Minister is often a thankless task, so it is nice to have a Minister who goes the extra mile for Conservative colleagues and, I strongly suspect, Members of Parliament on the other side of the House. I thank him for helping us to get the electric bus bid for the Isle of Wight over the line. We had to push quite hard, but I am delighted that, following a few conversations with my hon. Friend the Minister—he should clearly be my right hon. Friend —we could get it over the line. I am hugely grateful that he was able to support the excellent bid from Southern Vectis and Richard Tyldsley. It is a great little company. Bus drivers on the Island seem to be incredibly friendly and a decent bunch; it is always lovely to see them and I thank them for running such a friendly and reliable service.

Thanks to the funding that we are getting from the Minister, we have already started testing electric buses on the Island. We will soon have zero-emission buses covering route 1 from Newport to Cowes, route 5 from Newport to East Cowes and route 9 from Newport to Ryde. That will mean lower emissions and better air quality for the Island towns of Newport, Ryde, Cowes and East Cowes.

The Minister will also know, because we have talked about it on quite a few occasions, how popular the £2 bus fare is. According to Richard at Southern Vectis, it has undoubtedly got thousands more people a month using the bus network on the Isle of Wight. It was going to be a temporary scheme, but I was not the only Member of Parliament lobbying the Minister—many of us were, including, I am sure, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), whom I thank for organising this great debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton).

I am absolutely delighted that we have been able to extend the scheme because it is really important to help youngsters on the Island to get around. Pensioners get free bus passes—we know about that—but if someone is on the minimum wage or a young person is starting out in their first job and they do not have a lot of money, taxis on the Island are really expensive. We have a vibrant bus network, so having a £2 max fare in one direction—£4 there and back—makes a big difference.

[Guy Opperman]

My hon. Friend is talking eloquently about the £2 bus fare, which I utterly endorse. It is the simplest and most persuasive way of getting people back on the buses. The most important thing for me, certainly in my constituency and up and down the country where it has been brought in, is that the impact on people with a low income is off the charts. The ability in tough times, which we have clearly been living through for the last few years, to get to work for an understandable figure that is by far discounted on what it was previously is a genuine game changer.

[Bob Seely]

I thank the Minister for his intervention. The last time I had a school visit in Parliament, some of the kids said, “Why should we vote Conservative?” I could have talked about the amazing apprenticeships schemes, but the first thing that came into my head was the £2 bus fare. If someone lives in Wales or in Labour-controlled London, fares are going up. If they are in Conservative areas, for the most part there is a fantastic scheme that helps young people get around.

In conclusion, I thank the Minister for finding the money to make sure that the Isle of Wight was included in his electric bus scheme. It will make a big difference and help to drive down emissions and improve air quality on the Island. I also thank him for the £2 bus fare, which has made such a difference and is getting people back on the buses, not least me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for securing the debate. I thank also the other hon. Members for their contributions. It is fair to say that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and I do not agree on much, but I have managed to identify some areas where we do. I join him in paying tribute to bus drivers and other public transport staff who, as he rightly said, served through the pandemic—before and after. They put their lives on the line and some of them died. He reminded us of the important role that people in public transport play.

We also agree about the importance of buses in England. Millions of people depend on them and they are by far the most used form of public transport. Regardless of our policy disagreements, we can at least agree on their significance in his constituency and mine, so I genuinely thank him for securing the debate.

England’s crumbling bus network is symptomatic of the scale of astonishing decline that the Government have presided over. The statistics say it all. The bus network was deregulated in 1985, and there were 1.5 billion fewer bus journeys in 2019 than there were in 1985. Since 2010, 300 million fewer miles have been driven by buses per year and thousands of bus services have been cut. In the hon. Member’s patch alone, bus miles have halved in the last decade—one of the highest falls in bus numbers in the country, as he acknowledged. Some parts of Stoke-on-Trent are barely served by buses at all.

Although I welcome the better news that the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) shared about attempts to improve the service, this is a very serious story across the country. In 2023, an outspoken local politician in Stoke-on-Trent said that the state of the buses and the figures were

“damning on the poor performance of operators like First Bus”

and that

“we need to…let current operators know they’ve been put on notice.”

Those were the words of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. In fact, he has been an outspoken critic of his local bus operators on multiple occasions, even going so far as to lecture Ministers that

“First Bus continues to cut routes”

and it is

“time that First Bus does its bit”.—[Official Report, 13 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 489.]

The experience that he describes demonstrates the reality of bus deregulation under the Conservatives, and completely exposes the failure of the Government’s sticking-plaster approach to address the problems of a creaking bus network.

[Bob Seely]

If the hon. Gentleman is so critical, what would the Labour party do about it?

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the second half of my speech, because I will come on to that. Before I do, the criticisms by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North are a tacit admission that we need bold reform. On the question of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), only Labour will be able to deliver that.

Despite the pleading of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, deregulation has not compelled First Bus to pull its finger out. Instead, it has robbed communities of a say over the vital bus services on which they depend. Micromanagement from Whitehall makes it ridiculously complicated for local authorities to access the kind of funding streams that he and Conservative Members were alluding to. It simply has not achieved results.

The current system has led to thousands of vital bus services across the country being axed. Bus services are a shadow of what they once were because unaccountable operators remain able to decide for themselves where services go and how they run. The Government preside over shockingly bad bus services. We have a Prime Minister who prefers to travel by helicopter and private jet, and who has no experience of the buses and trains that the rest of us use, so is it any wonder that public transport is in such a mess?

Turning to Labour’s plans for Government, we know that a reliable, affordable and regular bus service is the difference between opportunity and isolation for millions of people. Labour will give every community the power to take back control of their bus services and will support local leaders to deliver better buses and to do so faster. Labour’s plans will create and save vital routes and services, will end today’s postcode lottery of bus services, and will kick-start a revival of bus services across England.

Cross-Solent Ferries

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Pauline Latham (in the Chair)]

I will call Bob Seely to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for cross-Solent ferry transport.

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham.

I will come straight to the point: the relationship between the ferry firms and the people of the Isle of Wight is breaking down. The ferries are a genuine lifeline; we have no choice but to use them. There is no public service obligation. We need to get a better deal. I have produced a study of the ferries, which I think is the first major work on the ferries that has come out of the Island for 40 years. In it, I highlight how we can get a better deal for the ferries, some of the options for the firms and how we can get there.

Time is tight, so I will make as much progress as I can. The Island depends on three private ferry operators: Wightlink, Red Funnel and Hovertravel. Hovertravel is not really part of the picture, but Wightlink and Red Funnel are. Wightlink was privatised in 1984, and Red Funnel has always been in private hands. The firms’ services initially improved throughout the ’80s and ’90s, but they are now worsening, in part because of the private equity-style ownership model. I will return to that, because it is a constant theme.

In 2009, under new Labour, the ferries were given a clean bill of health, and we were told there was open competition between them. That was not true. For passenger services, there are two local monopolies in the west: between Yarmouth and Lymington and between Cowes and Southampton. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Minister here, as ever. The idea that people will travel 25 miles from Yarmouth to Ryde to cross four miles of water into Portsmouth in order to travel 35 or 40 miles around to Lymington again is nonsense. In Ryde, there is competition of sorts between Hovertravel and Wightlink, although not to the same destination—one goes to Southsea, and one goes to Portsmouth harbour. On the car ferries, there is an effective monopoly in the West Wight, again on the Yarmouth to Lymington route, and a duopoly for the rest of the Island, with Red Funnel pitched slightly below Wightlink’s extortionate prices—but it is not true that there is a free market among Isle of Wight ferries.

Barriers to entry are very high. I am trying to support two potential competitors into the market—a passenger ferry and a potential car ferry—but that is difficult, because the ferry firms also own the ports.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing the debate forward. There is a similar issue back home, except for one difference. We have a ferry that connects Portaferry, in my constituency of Strangford, with the constituency of South Down—with the boundary changes, that will all be mine next time around, if everything goes according to plan. We never privatised the ferries back home; we retained them under the Department for Infrastructure, because we thought that that was the best idea. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that perhaps Government retention would be a better way forward?

[Bob Seely]

It is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman. That is absolutely one of the ideas that I will discuss later; I thank him.

What are the problems? First, as I have said, the ferry firms have no legal obligation to meet timetables or standards of service above the minimum levels of safety required in law. The Island’s connectivity is entirely at the discretion of the firms, which are answerable to—and overwhelmingly driven by—the needs of their shareholders. They have no public service obligation and no regulator, and they set their own service standards. The Minister should know that I am having a Bill on a ferries regulator for the United Kingdom written. The ferry firms change their speeds and timetables whenever they want, and they judge their own punctuality rates depending on the service that they want to run, not on the service that we agree they should run.

Secondly, the firm’s corporate structures and incredibly inflated valuations are becoming a critical issue for the Island. I also believe they are bad for the United Kingdom. What do I mean by that? The Solent market has an established model of private-equity style ownership that has several generations of acquisition and sales, and in all that time, debt has gone up. The Island is a captured market: we have no choice but to use the firms. They have reliable high incomes, there are high barriers to market entry and they are highly profitable. That makes them ideal for private equity investment.

Typically, owners purchase the ferry firms with borrowed money. The firms are subsequently restructured to pay interest on that debt. They effectively avoid tax perfectly legally because they pay back their shareholders through loans. We, the users, pay for the owners’ purchase of the firms, and then pay through the nose to pay back interest on those purchases. Returns to shareholders are via loans on the debt. Such private-equity style structures may be common elsewhere, and are sadly used by the water utilities, which are not a great example of them, but those firms have a utilities regulator, whereas the ferry firms that use such structures do not have any regulator to control them or to put limits on debt or limits or demands on service.

The firms have been increasingly overvalued by bankers with a vested interest in ramping up their value. The higher the value of the initial purchase, the greater the debt loaded on to the firm and the greater the need to repay that interest, so the more the Islanders—to put it bluntly—get stuffed by the ferry firms, and the more we have to pay through the nose to pay back the interest on buying the firms in the first place. Manchester United had a similar form of ownership, as do the water utilities, as I said, but the water utilities have a regulator that makes demands on the firms.

For example, for the year ending 2023, Wightlink had tangible assets of £85 million and an operating profit of £15 million. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister has distinguished expertise in matters of transport and will know the operating margins for the rail firms. If we look at the operating margins for the ferries in the last 30 years, we see that in 1990 the margin was 28%; in 1995 it was 19%; in 2000 it was 32%; in 2004 it was 29%; in 2010 it was 20%; and in 2019 it was 25%. Red Funnel’s operating margins over the years went from 15% in 1990, to 21% in 1995 and 24% in 2019. These companies have vast profit margins. Compare that with the operating profit for rail firms, which is perhaps 2%—is it 5% maximum? There is a real ethical problem with the amount of profit that these people are making and the amount of tax they pay on that, which is very low.

Effectively, since the early 2000s—I do not know why we have allowed them to get away with it—the Isle of Wight ferries have been treated as collateral for loans for private equity and for pension funds. Not only that, but there is a web of offshore companies that own both the firms. Wightlink’s parent company, Arca Topco, had borrowings—I find this amount unbelievable—of £261,593,000. A small ferry firm has borrowings or loans outstanding of more than a quarter of a billion. That is a phenomenal amount. Some of that is in terms of investment, but most is debt that has been loaded on to those firms over the years by pension funds and private equity in order to buy the firms.

Arca Topco paid interest totalling £16,825,000. Various bodies that have owned the company or been paid back those loans include Basalt Infrastructure, Fiera Infrastructure and, amazingly, the People’s Bank of China. The People’s Bank of China, an arm of the Chinese Communist party, has owned the company that owned the company that owned Isle of Wight ferry.

I will say one more thing about Wightlink. Wightlink argues that it makes no profit because it uses loans to invest in the company. Although that is not wholly untrue, because it does use some of the loans to buy new things and make investments, it is nothing like enough, on both counts. It is also largely dishonest because those loans are used not to invest in the company but to pay back the massive amounts of debt that are loaded on to the firms, which is why Islanders are being screwed—to put it in the vernacular; I apologise for my bad language—every time they use the firms. That is the problem here.

I personally feel that I have been lied to by both firms about the debt and the ownership structure for too long. Frankly, my tolerance of them is reaching a low point. The firms have become overvalued cash cows. Red Funnel was worth £200 million in 2007; 10 years later, the most recent time it was sold, it was worth £370 million. It is phenomenally overvalued and I suspect it was always going to have trouble paying back the loans based on that overvaluation.

Since covid-19, the passenger market has dropped 30%. So what are the firms doing? They are cutting back their services. I will come back to that in a moment. Effectively, they are overvalued cash cows, and because these cash cows are not delivering, we—the passengers—are being squeezed more. To deliver the returns they need on their inflated valuations, they have cut back services. For any given Monday in February, if we compare 2004 with now, we see that Wightlink reduced the 36 daily sailings from Fishbourne to 18, the 24 daily sailings from Yarmouth to 16, and the 32 daily sailings from Ryde to 18. Wightlink is cutting back significantly on services in order to increase profits. Since 1998, Red Funnel has reduced 33 daily sailings from West Cowes to 22. Although Red Funnel says it has increased daily car ferry sailings from 13 to 14, the number of unrestricted sailings has stayed the same.

Services are also slower. Red Jet used to take 22 minutes; it now takes 28 minutes. That means—the Minister should know this—that it is now a slipped service. Instead of departing every half an hour during peak periods, there is a delay of 10 minutes each time, and that is messing up people’s connectivity with the mainland when they want to get trains or buses to different places. Before 2009, Wightlink FastCat reported a maximum speed of 34 knots; today, it is 26 knots. Late-night services are also being cut. Red Funnel has just cut the late-night service between Cowes and Southampton. To its credit, Wightlink has put one back on, but it was painful to get it to do so.

Next is yield-management pricing, which the Minister will know about, being very expert on these things. We go online, we look for flights to Cairo, Ibiza or Paris, and we get different pricing because that is the way that yield-management pricing schemes work. If we do it in advance, it becomes cheaper, and so on. For air travel that works, but with monopolies it does not. Although the firms say, “We still have starting prices for a family of four with a car for £29,” because of their surge pricing, the amount of tickets in that bracket are tiny, if not non-existent.

There are somewhere between 13 and 15 price brackets. The fact that someone can go online to book a ferry on a bank holiday or in the summer at a weeks’ notice and pay £250 for a return ticket means that there are huge numbers of tickets available at the most expensive, rip-off prices, and virtually none at the cheaper rates. My concern is that this form of surge pricing is hiding significant inflation in the cost of travelling, and it is having a significant effect on our economy.

I will wrap up in the next five to six minutes, so I will really rattle through. Why change now? First, because the firms have old car ferries because they have spent too long paying back shareholders and not enough time investing. If they want green money from the Government, that should come at a price. Secondly, because I and the Scottish councils lobbied for the Islands Forum initiative, and the Government are now looking into connectivity between the mainland and the UK islands.

Thirdly, because during the covid pandemic the ferry companies took money from the Government, because they recognised that the firms ran a lifeline service. Fourthly, because Red Funnel is probably up for sale again, and I am worried that eventually one of these firms will be so overloaded with debt that it falls over.

Fifthly, because there may be an attempt by a local entrepreneur, Nick Wakefield, to introduce a public-service ferry service, which I believe the Government should support because it would help to break the duopoly of Red Funnel and Wightlink and break the monopoly of this corrupted private equity-style investment system.

There are many questions that I want the Department to answer, and I will follow up with letters if I do not get all the answers today. Does the Department for Transport have an opinion on supporting new ferry firms? Does it really believe, given the state of the private equity-style investment, that this is a healthy market and a healthy structure, or one with duopolies and monopolies? There is a rail Bill coming up, which I am sure the Minister knows about. Can we add the Isle of Wight ferries to it as well?

On the sale of Red Funnel, what powers do the Government have to block a sale? What powers do we have to prevent it from selling its third passenger ferry? Red Funnel is running a “comprehensive” service with just two passenger ferries and is even slowing them down to save money. If one or both of those ferries falls over, there will be no service. How do the Government feel about that?

Next, what is my answer? There should be easy multi-link tickets for poorer Islanders; a greater discount for journeys that start on the Island; electronic through-ticketing, which, ridiculously, is something we still do not have; and the ability to book places for passengers, including the elderly or those going for medical treatment. There should also be independent assessment of punctuality and reliability; permanent improvements in late and early passenger services, so that the ferry companies understand that they have a public service obligation; regular services, and not the unacceptable slip service that Red Funnel is running to save money; and a duty to ensure best connectivity with national rail services—I am bored of having to lecture the firms to ensure such connectivity.

There should be stronger sanctions for failures to deliver an agreed standard of service. A couple of weeks ago, the ferry firm did not run the last service, so someone living on the Isle of Wight coming back with his family would have been stuck in a hotel, which would have cost him three hundred quid. Does the Minister think that he should pay, or does he think he should be able to claim the money back from Wightlink or Red Funnel the next time it happens? It is completely unacceptable.

There should also be an accurate understanding of investment levels in recent years; a better deal for young people; better wheelchair and disabled access; more transparency about corporate structures; and some thought given to whether the Isle of Wight should take a seat on the board of the major ferry firms. I am happy to discuss nationalisation, although I cannot see it being on the cards—it has not been under any Government, including Labour Governments, in the past—but what happens when these firms have debts that become unmanageable?

What are the options for getting there? I am having an independent regulator Bill written. Would the Government consider supporting it and installing a regulator, not only for the Solent ferries but for all the national ferry firms? I have had to do a national Bill—I say that for Islanders watching this debate—because if I bring in a Solent Bill alone, I as an MP cannot present it. The parliamentary etiquette is that I can present only a national Bill; therefore, I am presenting a UK ferries regulator Bill, rather than a Bill just for the Solent. That is the first point.

Secondly, would the Government demand the rights to sign off on the firms’ timetables, as they do for rail services? Is there more money for central Government funding for healthcare-related visits to the Island? Might we persuade the companies to enter into voluntary regulation, so that there is a formal process and they have to listen to us more seriously, perhaps with beefed-up powers—maybe legal powers—for our transport infrastructure board to demand better things? I will be writing to the Competition and Markets Authority to see what scope there is, and whether I can request an inquiry into the ferries and, if so, how that could be initiated. Will the Department of Transport support my request?

We cannot go on as we are. Despite some incremental gains over the last two years, we are now reaching a crunch point, where these firms are so overvalued and their shareholders’ demands for returns are so loud, that we simply do not get listened to. It is harming our future, whether it is our tourist bookings, which are down, or the fact that young Islanders cannot go to Southampton in the evening because there is no way back—yes, they can get the car ferry from Portsmouth, but it goes from a different place from where they left.

I thank the Minister for bearing with me. I know that this is not his responsibility per se—the relevant Minister is in the House of Lords, so I am sorry to be unloading on him today—but to sum up, the ferry companies are failing the Island. The private equity model is now breaking down. The disparity between the power of the shareholders and the needs of the Island is becoming too great. The situation is becoming acute. Shareholders are relentlessly prioritised over the needs of the Island. Sailings are fewer, slower and more expensive than they were 20 years ago.

The firms have no obligation to run a service. One of the things that really grips me is that when I say to them, “Shouldn’t you be raising your game?”, their attitude is: “If you complain too loudly, we won’t invest.” It is literally a form of blackmail on a genuine lifeline service—if we dare to criticise them, they might rethink their investment plans. If we criticise them and they say, “Oh, we don’t know if we’re going to invest,” that is reason enough for the Government to give them an enormous kick up the backside. The Government should say, “If that’s the way you play it, we’ll force regulation on you to make sure that you are considerate and thoughtful, and that if you say you’re running a service, then you damn well run a service and don’t just change your timetable when you fancy slowing down your boats to save some money, to pay your shareholders over the needs of the Isle of Wight.”

As you can see, Mrs Latham, this is an issue grips me, because it is harming the people of the Island, and we need change. I am really hoping that the Minister will now work with me, because there is a window of opportunity for change when it comes to green funding for the ferries, to Island connectivity, because of the Islands Forum, and, potentially, to ferries clause in the rail Bill, whether that is voluntary change from the ferries firms or change that we encourage or force on them. It is now time to look again at this issue, because we cannot have another 20 years of this.

Lifeboat Services: Search and Rescue

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the contribution of lifeboat services to search and rescue.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I am grateful to my colleagues on the Backbench Business Committee for granting me this debate, and of course to my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), who did the legwork on the application to secure it.

It is worth giving some context at the debate’s start. Search and rescue provision in the UK is delivered through an amalgam of Government Departments, emergency services and various SAR charities and voluntary organisations. UK SAR is arranged through the UK SAR Strategic Committee, an interdepartmental body chaired by the Department for Transport, hence our being joined by a DFT Minister and his shadow. His Majesty’s Coastguard provides a response and co-ordination service for air and sea-based SAR in the UK. HM Coastguard has existed since 1822, and of course celebrated its bicentenary last year. The coastguard co-ordinates air and sea-based SAR through its nine operation centres around the UK. They are in Shetland, Aberdeen, Humber, Dover, Fareham, Falmouth, Milford Haven, Holyhead, Belfast and Stornoway. In addition, the London coastguard, which is co-located with the Port of London authority, looks after SAR on the River Thames. HM Coastguard has its national maritime operations centre in Fareham in Hampshire.

Lifeboats are not the only part of SAR at sea; many organisations, including the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, commercial vessels in the vicinity of an incident and HM Coastguard’s helicopters, play their part, but in this debate, I will focus on the lifeboat service. The classic image of the lifeboat service is one of heroism, and of its crews fighting through rough seas to save lives. The courage of those involved, and their commitment to saving those in peril on the sea, are the anchor that holds the crew together during a rescue mission while, in the words of the famous hymn,

“the breakers roar and the reef is near”.

No debate such as this should pass without mention of how that legendary bravery was demonstrated on 19 December 1981, when the Penlee lifeboat headed out into atrocious conditions to try to save the lives of eight people in peril. Tragically, all eight lifeboat crew were lost that night. It was the last time the Royal National Lifeboat Institution lost a whole crew in one incident—a record that I am sure we hope will stand for many years to come.

It is of course the RNLI that most people will think of when they hear a reference to lifeboats. It was founded as the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck in 1824. In 1854, it changed its name to what we know it as today. Its main base is in Poole, Dorset. It has 238 lifeboat stations, and an active fleet of 431 lifeboats, which range from large, all-weather lifeboats to smaller inshore vessels.

The impact of the RNLI’s work cannot be overestimated. Its operations have saved over 143,900 lives since 1824, and it is not just men who have been the heroes: Grace Darling became one of the Victorian era’s most celebrated heroines when, on 7 September 1838, she risked her life to rescue the stranded survivors of the wrecked steamship Forfarshire. Today, around 95% of the RNLI team are volunteers; they are around 5,600 crew members, 3,700 shore crew, including station management, 82 lifeguards, and 23,000 fundraisers. The scale of the RNLI’s contribution to search and rescue is immense. In 2021 alone, there were 8,868 lifeboat launches, 84 of which were in at least force 8 conditions, and 1,022 crew assemblies—a total of 9,890 taskings. That resulted in 12,903 people being aided, and 296 lives being saved.

The RNLI’s work is about not just reacting when things go wrong, but reducing the need for search and rescue by educating and advising on dangers. RNLI water safety teams reached more than 27 million people in 2021 with essential messaging, undoubtedly saving more lives and keeping families together.

We should bear in mind that lifeboat services are not just about the RNLI—a subject that is close to the heart of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes. In addition to the RNLI, a number of voluntary organisations provide independent lifeboats for the purpose of saving lives on the water. There are more than 50 independent lifeboat organisations around the UK, and independent lifeboats operate in coastal areas—for example, the Hope Cove lifeboat in south Devon—and on inland waters, rivers and lakes, while some organisations operate independent lifeboats alongside other search and rescue services, such as mud rescue. The majority of those independent lifeboats are equipped, maintained and operated in accordance with the rescue boat code.

Independent lifeboat organisations vary greatly in size, crew numbers, rescue numbers and types of rescue boat used. Crews range from the 12 crew members at Port William Inshore Rescue Service in Dumfries and Galloway to the around 260 crew members at Community Rescue Service, which operates across Northern Ireland; and call-outs range from the five call-outs in 2021 for the Sea Palling independent lifeboat in Norfolk to more than 120 for the Hamble lifeboat in Hampshire. The rescue boats involved range from small RIBs—rigid inflatable boats—to large all-weather lifeboats, which are comparable to the boats that many people associate with the RNLI.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and I thank him for doing so. He is making important points about independent lifeboats, but also about the support services. We have independent lifeboats at Freshwater, Sandown and Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, which do wonderful work, on top of the RNLI stations at Bembridge, Cowes and Yarmouth. Not only that, but our inshore lifeboat centre in East Cowes keeps half the nation’s fleet of RNLI boats in good condition. Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to those services?

[Kevin Foster]

I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend list the amazing support that the Isle of Wight provides. It does not just save lives and help those in peril on the sea around the Island—as he knows, some of those waters famously present obstacles and risks to passing shipping, and it is worth paying tribute to the many Islanders over the years who have put their life at risk trying to save those in peril near the Island—but makes a wider contribution to the service. As he says, lifeboat services are not just about the team who go out on the boat; they are about the support network that enables the lifeboat teams to go out. It is great to be able to pay it the tribute that he just did.

Independent lifeboats are not a new invention, and the first independent lifeboat station was formed in Formby, Lancashire, in 1776. Although many independent lifeboat stations were RNLI stations when they were established, others have been set up in response to specific incidents. For example—I see colleagues from Northern Ireland in the Chamber—Foyle Search and Rescue was set up by local people in 1993 in response to the alarmingly high number of drownings in the River Foyle, 30 in 18 months. It has since adopted a role in suicide prevention and supporting families in the city more widely. That shows the diversity in the types of work that such organisations can take on, and the contribution that such services can make.

It is right that we remember the contribution that those organisations make, and how their work is supported by the National Independent Lifeboat Association, a new charity founded last year by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes. All independent lifeboats in Great Britain and Northern Ireland were invited to join the association, and it has 30 members from England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Jersey.

During my preparations for the debate, it was made clear to me that the RNLI is proud of its independence and the fact that it can operate free from requirements of the type that Government funding would bring. I was advised of that in the knowledge that such debates can sometimes involve the subject of whether the service offered by the RNLI should be publicly funded, rather than our having the current funding arrangements, which are based on voluntary giving.

It might seem strange to some, but this service is not lobbying for Government funding. That position recalls the fact that, a decade ago, a former Prime Minister described his vision of creating a big society—a concept in which individuals come together to tackle an issue or make a difference, rather than the state setting up structures to intervene that might often be less effective or efficient. There are often debates about how that concept can be defined in real life, but in many ways lifeboat services reflect that idea, from the crews who volunteer their time to train, and who are ready to answer the call of duty, to fundraising teams in communities who raise the resources needed to support operations, to the many community members who do their bit by simply dropping a few coins into a collection box when they buy a pint, visit the local shop or walk past one of the many collection boxes across coastal communities. Also included are people who, when thinking about the legacy they want to leave, tell their solicitor to include the lifeboat service in their will. This shows how society comes together to help others in need, and to provide a unique service that we can all benefit from, but hope never to need.

Those who regularly hear me speak know that I will not miss an opportunity to highlight the work being done in south Devon, and I will start with the Torbay RNLI lifeboat station. It was established in Brixham in 1866 and has occupied the same premises since 1872. It was established after a fleet of merchant ships were caught in hurricane-strength winds in Torbay in January 1866, causing the loss of about 40 ships and nearly 100 lives. Today, the lifeboat station has 35 crew members, including those who are shore-based. The station operates two lifeboats that reflect the diversity of the rescues that the station may be called on to perform: a Severn class all-weather lifeboat and a D-class inshore lifeboat. The crew members are volunteers who mostly have day jobs.

In 2022, Torbay RNLI lifeboat station responded to 111 shouts. The station is supported by the Torbay Lifeboat Fundraisers, who work throughout the year to raise the funds needed to support the lifeboat. The group has over 200 volunteer members, and it organises a range of events and activities to raise money. I thank everyone in Torbay who supports them; the crew would not be ready to save lives without their contribution.

I pay tribute to the team at the National Coastwatch Institution in Torbay, who also play a part in search and rescue operations in south Devon. NCI watchkeepers, who are volunteers, provide eyes and ears along the coast, monitoring radio channels and providing a listening watch in poor visibility. When people get into trouble, NCI watchkeepers can alert His Majesty’s Coastguard and direct the appropriate rescue teams, including lifeboats, to the casualty. The NCI station at Torbay is one of over 50 such stations located around England and Wales. Located at Daddyhole plain, it is the first purpose-built NCI watch station. In January 2012, the station was given declared facility status, meaning that the station was not only fully operational, but fully recognised in search and rescue operations as having the same status as RNLI lifeboat stations. That shows the benefit of partnerships between organisations that save lives.

Lifeboats are as vital to search and rescue operations today as they were in the era when horses drew the boat to the launching point and the crew pulled on the oars against the high sea to reach a vessel in distress. Direct funding is not sought, but I am interested to learn from the Minister how he sees the future for our lifeboats, and on a couple of other points.

First, some independent lifeboats are not fully declared HM Coastguard rescue facilities, often because of the complex process that must be undertaken to become such a facility. Does the Minister see an opportunity to simplify the process, without compromising standards? Secondly, independent lifeboats are not represented on the UK SAR operators group, but hope to join the group later this year. Will he provide an update on that? Finally, how does he see the work of lifeboats and their contribution to search and rescue fitting into wider efforts to improve safety at sea?

The debate is a good opportunity to highlight the contribution of lifeboat services to UK search and rescue. As we speak, crews across the UK stand ready to answer the call to save those in peril; they are ready to face whatever dangers that may bring. They are some of the best of our nation, and I end with a simple message to them: thank you.

Russia’s Grand Strategy

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Of course, many people quote Eisenhower as saying that all strategic plans break down on first contact with the enemy. Of course, they forget the next sentence: nevertheless, it is still necessary to plan, and to have a framework.

It is also necessary to look at this issue, as our opponents do, in a broad spectrum to see how all the areas interlink. That is the problem that we faced for some years with industrial espionage, for example, although people are waking up to that to quite a degree. Traditionally, all the way through, there has been industrial espionage by the Russians, and more recently by the Chinese, but there has been a reluctance and a failure to see it in such a way. Many of those who criticise such an approach say, “You are trying to recreate the cold war.” No, we are not. The cold war has already been restarted.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

As far as I can see, President Putin reanimated a sense of hostility—people can call it a cold war, or whatever they like—in his Munich conference speech in 2007. Since then, what has been so blindingly depressing about western Governments, and specifically the UK Government, is that we desperately tried, really until 2014, to pretend that that had not happened. I am afraid that that just shows that it is better to face the reality, however uncomfortable it is, than to behave like an ostrich.

[John Spellar]

Such behaviour, I am afraid, has been a regular feature. Everybody should be very clear. Putin only recently described the break-up of the Soviet Union as

“a disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union”.

We should remember that he previously called its collapse the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. Oh that mine enemy would write a book! He has made it very clear where he stands, and therefore we have to respond to that effectively. We look at the troops in Ukraine, and talk about the little green men. We must also look right the way through the middle east and north Africa, and indeed further down into Africa. The Wagner Group is a so-called private sector operation, but it is licensed by, closely related to and deeply embedded in the Kremlin, and operates on its behalf and at its behest.

Slightly diverting from the Political Warfare Executive, in the post-war period under Ernest Bevin the information research department was created at the Foreign Office, precisely to run a full spectrum influence war in order to shape opinion in the UK and more widely in the western world and, as part of that operation, to look at and operate on the structural weaknesses within the Soviet bloc. If Soviet communism is an effective way of seizing power, it is a lousy way of running economies and societies. We therefore have to take the fight to them.

That is not just about agitation, propaganda and trying to mirror the disinformation and lies; one of the most effective weapons against such authoritarian and dictatorial regimes is to tell the truth about what is going on in their societies. We should always remember why the Russians, the Chinese and others are so afeared of their own populations knowing and understanding the truth. There is ample historical evidence from the last 100 years that many of those who run such societies and their secret police know much better than we do how unstable those societies are, and how thin is the level of support. That does not mean that they are not dangerous, because one of the ways of trying to mask that is external adventurism and trying to create the prospect of a threat abroad.

It has been rightly said that NATO is not an offensive alliance; it is a defensive alliance. I do not understand—I put this to the Minister—why we are not providing defensive equipment to the Ukrainian forces, not in order to take the fight to Russia but to allow them to defend themselves effectively against any incursion. Military doctrine should say that the defender has a significant advantage. We have seen, for example, in a number of recent conflicts that heavy armour can be severely impacted by the use of quite cheap drones.

I am not trying to create such an expertise, but merely questioning whether we are looking at providing defensive equipment to protect a sovereign country—a country guaranteed by the Budapest agreement, signed by Russia and ourselves—and why we are not supporting it in maintaining its independence. This is also because of the signals to elsewhere in the world, which others have talked about, such as the other countries formerly in the Soviet Union, particularly the Baltics, which have been feeling the pressure both of military exercises and indeed of intelligence operations for a very considerable period.

I am mindful of your strictures on time, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I would just like to say this in closing. Some of those countries will be saying that this is destabilising. Actually, I think that recognising the nature of the system and being not aggressive or assertive but robust, while indicating that we stand by our rights and by our friends and negotiating in a proper and effective way with the Russians on that basis—not giving concessions just for having talks, but trying, as we did in the cold war, to reach containment and a modus vivendi—is the route ahead. However, that requires robust action, and, in the words of someone who was involved in those discussions previously, “Trust, but verify”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman about Nord Stream—indeed, I regularly try to berate British Government Ministers for not being robust enough and decisive enough on that issue. My anxiety about our having left the European Union is that there is a danger, in respect of the Europeans’ common security and defence policy, that they will renege on the kind of policies that we would like to see. I would like us to find a way of still sitting at the table so that we can influence such decisions. The Spanish Prime Minister once said to me that one problem with the EU maintaining its sanctions regime was that once Britain—frankly, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)—was no longer in the room, everybody started to fracture apart. I come to the same conclusion as the hon. Gentleman but from a different perspective.

Others have talked about the pattern of behaviour, about South Ossetia and Abkhazia, about the problems in North Macedonia and Catalunya, about the destabilisation in the United States of America and, of course, about the invasion of Crimea, as well as about the recent problems in Montenegro. All that is, of course, a deliberate distraction from the real problems of the Russian economy. I say that because I have a copy of a document—as does the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely); he may refer to it later—signed by President Putin himself on 22 January 2016. It clearly outlines Russia’s strategic aims. First, it notes the falling incomes of Russian people which, it says, could lead to significant social tension. It also notes the positive effect of the invasion of Crimea and the policy in the Donbass region on public opinion in Russia, but points out that that positive effect has been only temporary and may not last.

The document suggests that, consequently, Russia has to engage in a process of influencing other states in the world, particularly the United States of America and western democracies. It says it should do this, first, by the provocation of the emergence of a sociopolitical crisis in the United States of America; secondly, by the delegitimisation in the public consciousness of the state system in western democracies; thirdly, by instilling an internal social split in order to facilitate a general increase in the radicalisation of society in western democracies; and fourthly, by provoking the emergence of and strengthening non-traditional communities in the United States, with ideological focuses ranging from extremely right to extreme left but always with one message: they do not hear us. That is precisely what the Russian state has been doing for the past few years in the United States of America and in every western democracy, including the United Kingdom.

I know that the Intelligence and Security Committee looked at this issue, although I do not think it had that document. I do not understand why, when our own Intelligence and Security Committee has recommended changes in this policy area and the proper investigation of attempts to try to destabilise the British political system, the Government have simply refused to do so.

Frankly, we have been getting our policy on Russia wrong for two decades now. We vacillate and send off mixed messages all the time. We look weak and indecisive. We look as if we need Russia, rather than the other way round. We constantly make ourselves the supplicants—the demandeurs: “Please, don’t do that, Mr Putin. Please don’t do that!”

We tempt Russian oligarchs to the United Kingdom with easy visas: we had these golden visas that largely went to extremely wealthy oligarchs who had made their money corruptly in Russia, with no questions asked other than, “Do you have enough money?” We did not even ask, “Are you going to invest it in the United Kingdom?” We boast about our clever lawyers and accountants who can tidy things up so that assets are protected, however they have been obtained. We open up our high-end housing market to Russian billionaires even though we know that the best way to squirrel away a dirty fortune or, indeed, to launder £20 million is to buy a property that is worth £10 million for £20 million. Yes, £10 million is lost, but we have managed to clean up £10 million. That is precisely what has affected the London housing market so deleteriously. We even grant—Government Ministers do this—some Russian individuals anonymity in what is meant to be the public register in Companies House of beneficial ownership of companies.

[Bob Seely]

The hon. Member is, as always, making an excellent speech. He is talking about all the corrupt and corrupting facilitators in our society. Is he as concerned as I am by the use by Putin allies of very high-end libel lawyers to try to silence former Members of this House and people such as Catherine Belton who are trying to expose what Putin allies are doing in the west?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

We have spent a lot of time on Russia, and we have heard from a lot of people who claim to understand the Russian mentality, but I am not sure it has been mentioned that in the Orthodox calendar, tomorrow is Christmas day. I shall be joining my Russian Orthodox wife at the service this evening and tomorrow morning, and I wish you a very happy Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I make no apologies for President Putin. Although I am a former chairman of our all-party group on Russia, I certainly gave it up in the light of what happened at Salisbury and before. No doubt he is running a corrupt regime, although I did go with a Council of Europe delegation to look at a previous election that President Putin won, and there was no doubt that there were a lot of people voting for him because people felt that he had restored the pride and the greatness of Russia after the terrible, infinitely corrupt and useless years of Yeltsin, when we took Russia for granted.

I make no apology for President Putin and I do not defend him in any way, but I think the mistake of this debate is to assume, if there was any other conceivable leader of Russia, that their strategy would be very different. Many Russians felt deeply humiliated at the loss of territory that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union, and we constantly hear about the invasion of Crimea and the Donbass region. We hear very little in this Chamber about the fact that Crimea was of course part of Russia for 200 years. It was signed away by the pen of Khrushchev, without the Crimean people being consulted at all, in the 1950s. There is no doubt at all that Crimea is overwhelmingly Russian and wants to be overwhelmingly Russian, and we have to respect its self-determination, and the same applies to many areas of eastern Ukraine.

[Bob Seely]

I am not going to disagree entirely, because I think my right hon. Friend has a useful alternative voice, but what he is saying about eastern Ukraine is not really true, because ethnic Russians are not in the majority. I think he is getting confused between Russian speakers and ethnic Russians—even in Crimea. He talks about the Russian people in Crimea, but Crimea was historically Crimean Tatar, which was the indigenous population. There has been an awful lot of infill of Soviet military pensioners, but that is different from the indigenous people.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I know that entirely, but when people go on about the fact that Crimea was originally Tatar—no doubt America was originally populated by Red Indians, but we do not say that America does not belong to Americans—the fact is that we have to deal with the situation on the ground. All I am saying is that there is an overwhelming feeling among Russian people of a deep sense of humiliation during the Yeltsin years, and as in all countries, they yearn for strong government and leadership.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I will crack on through as many points as I can in the next few minutes. To answer the central question of the debate about Russian grand strategy, in the realm of Europe at any rate, it is probably down to four things: first, the reabsorption of Ukraine and Belarus into Russia’s sphere of interest and control; secondly, the shattering of NATO; thirdly, the establishment of a sphere of influence line from Kaliningrad in the north to the Baltic and Transnistria in the Balkans, to the east of which is Russia’s sphere of interest out of which it will fight to push any western influence, including from Russia, Belarus—obviously, by now—and potentially the Baltic republics in future; and fourthly, the re-establishment by President Putin of a Russia that is virulently illiberal, hostile to the western interest and, in the Russian historical term, a Slavophile rather than a westernising nation.

The idea peddled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who to be fair, made some valid points, that that was inevitable, is simply nonsense. It was not inevitable at all and it is incredibly tragic that it has happened. More broadly, as several hon. Members have said, there is a battle this century between open and closed societies. Open societies are not yet prepared, but China and Russia are effectively engaged in forms of hybrid conflict—I will come to that term, if I may, because I think we are slightly misusing it—with the west. It is non-military at the moment, but there is no doubt that it is happening.

Some people say that Russia is a great mystery—as if we need to have some great cosmic understanding of it—but to be fair to the Russians, they signal clearly. Putin’s essay this summer on the historical unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people was a signal that he does not respect Ukraine’s borders—it is a no-brainer.

To return to the point about hybrid war, if anyone wants to understand what the Russians think contemporary Russian warfare is, I respectfully suggest that they read the Russian military doctrine that is available on the Russian MOD website in English and Russian. If they fancy a weekend project reading it, they will understand that the first characteristic of contemporary warfare, which we sometimes call hybrid war, is the combination of military and non-military effects in the service of state power with popular protests and special operations, combining the economic, political and military. It is all there written down. It is not a secret and we do not have to interpret it.

Hybrid war, as laid out by Frank Hoffman when he was originally talking about Hezbollah about 25 years ago, is the combination of military and non-military. It is not the non-military or the grey zone war, which is different to hybrid war. The purpose of hybrid war—the true definition that is used in academic circles—is the combination of military and other tools.

To be fair to my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and to President Putin, the Russians are under intense threat. In the past two political generations, they have experienced profound shock: the loss of the Warsaw pact, the loss of their buffer territory, the loss of former Soviet republics, two putsches, absolute economic decline and an utter change in their world. Since the end of the cold war, our view has been a rather woolly liberal internationalism. Their view has become a hardened aggressive zero-sum realist game. They sleep well when others do not. The great strategic conundrum is how to overcome that in the next two decades without war.

I have run out of time, because other hon. Members spoke for more than 10 minutes, which is a shame, so I will wind up with three points about Russian strategic culture. Historically, most historians and strategists would say that there are three elements of Russian strategic culture or three pressures that feed Russian strategic cultural thinking.

First, there is the sense of external threat—to put it bluntly, no borders. To be fair to them, they have been invaded by the Tartars, the Swedes, the Poles, the French and the Russians. Nowadays, that sense of threat is not only physical but more psychological, hence the need to control the internet and shut down non-governmental organisations that are pro-western or funded by the west. The sense of psychological threat is sadly reaching paranoid conspiracy theory levels among the Russian elites. Secondly, there is the defence of its autocratic political system. Thirdly, there is its desire to be a great power.

Those pressures feed into the nexus that is Ukraine, because without Ukraine, Russia feels less of a great power. It is threatened because if democracy works in Kiev, it can work in Moscow, and it is losing its buffer territory. For those three strategic reasons, so much of Russia’s strategic angst is focused on Ukraine. I will leave it there.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

To resume his seat no later than 4.30 pm, I call Daniel Kawczynski.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Europe (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for securing the debate, and congratulate him on that and on his very well-researched and well-delivered speech. He made many points, but one theme that I spotted—and have spotted throughout the various briefings I have had during my two weeks in my current role—is that the west seems to operate in the relatively short term, while Russia, as has been demonstrated by its actions in Georgia and Crimea right up to now, operates in the long term. That is something that we really need to think about.

Like the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), I feel that this is one of the best debates to which I have ever responded in this place. I thank all Members for their contributions, especially the Opposition spokespeople, both of whom made mostly elegant and excellent speeches. The hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) may not remember that we served at the same time in the European Parliament at the beginning of his and the end of my career there. It was good to hear him speak so widely about this subject. I will try to respond to as many of the points that have been raised as I can in the time available to me.

As this debate has highlighted, recent actions by the Russian state are of significant concern. Indeed, as the integrated review made clear—and while, as so many Members have said, we have no issue whatsoever with the Russian people—Russia itself currently poses the most acute and direct threat to the UK’s national security. As most Members probably know, we set up a cross-Government Russia unit in 2017, bringing together the UK’s diplomatic, intelligence and military capabilities to try to achieve the maximum effect, and we are working closely with our partners to address the threats from Russia and hold it to account. The UK has demonstrated international leadership on this, for instance through our G7 presidency. Following the appalling attack in Salisbury in 2018, we expelled 23 Russian intelligence officers, and the international community joined us in solidarity. That resulted in the collective expulsion of more than 150 Russian intelligence officers.

Obviously, the current relationship with Russia is not the one that we want, but unfortunately it cannot be normalised until Russia stops its many and various irresponsible and destabilising activities. We are seeing a very concerning pattern of Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s border and in illegally annexed Crimea. We have repeatedly made clear to Russia than any incursion into Ukraine would be a huge strategic mistake, and would carry severe costs. The Prime Minister delivered this message himself when he spoke to President Putin on 13 December, as did the Foreign Secretary when she met Foreign Minister Lavrov on 2 December. The Russian Government need to de-escalate their activities and engage in serious discussions.

As well as speaking directly to Russia, we are working with our allies and partners to address the challenges to our security. The Foreign Secretary led G7 Foreign Ministers and the High Representative to the EU in a joint statement on 12 December:

“We call on Russia to immediately de-escalate, pursue diplomatic channels, and abide by its international commitments on transparency of military activities.”

Four days later we joined our NATO allies in a joint statement from the North Atlantic Council emphasising that we are

“ready for meaningful dialogue with Russia”.

We are firm in our position that NATO will remain the foundation of collective security in the Euro-Atlantic area, and we will continue to make our position clear at every opportunity in the coming days and weeks.

I assure the House that we remain unwavering in our support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are in close contact with their Ukrainian counterparts. Most recently, the Prime Minister spoke to President Zelensky on 17 December to reiterate the UK’s support, and the Foreign Secretary spoke to Foreign Minister Kuleba on 4 January.

The Foreign Secretary further demonstrated our support by hosting the first ever UK-Ukraine strategic dialogue on 8 December, and we announced a huge range of commitments, including UK support in the face of Russian aggression and steps to build stronger trade links. This includes increasing the amount of support available through UK Export Finance for projects in Ukraine to £3.5 billion. These announcements complement our existing security, economic and political support to Ukraine, which includes: defensive military training for 20,000 members of Ukraine’s armed forces through Operation Orbital; a package of £1.7 billion to enhance Ukrainian naval capabilities; and vital support in fighting corruption and strengthening the judiciary.

[Bob Seely]

I am delighted to congratulate my hon. Friend on his new role, and I am delighted that we are doing all that, but it is a bit late. The time to make a difference when training and supplying an army is one, two or three years before the army needs to use it. If the Russians are intent on invading sooner rather than later, does he agree that it is all far too late in the day?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I hope it is not. I have been in post for only two weeks, so I am doing as much as I can as quickly as I can.

Sadly, we know all too well that Russia has a record of flagrantly violating international law. We are at the forefront of efforts to end Russia’s illegitimate control of the Crimean peninsula, and Crimea is, of course, Ukraine. We used our G7 presidency last year to maintain a high level of international engagement on that, and the UK also supports the international Crimea Platform in its work to hold Russia to account.

Meanwhile, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) mentioned, Russian interference in the western Balkans threatens to undermine the region’s hard-won security. We take this extremely seriously and will continue to work with our partners to strengthen stability, democracy and the rule of law. To demonstrate this commitment, the Foreign Secretary brought together the Foreign Ministers of the six western Balkan countries on 13 December. Our new special envoy to the western Balkans, Sir Stuart Peach, visited Bosnia and Herzegovina on 16 December and will be back in the region soon.

Integrated Rail Plan: North and Midlands

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The Manchester recovery taskforce, mentioned on page 104 of the integrated rail plan, is working on that very knotty problem of what happens in the corridor as we come through and out of Manchester. It is one thing that this plan seeks to resolve, and it will help my hon. Friend’s constituents in Bolton to get that electrification, particularly between Wigan and Bolton, sorted out as well. There is a lot in here for him to digest and I look forward to my next visit.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State and his excellent team on this far more sensible approach. However, may I respectfully suggest that the lesson from the HS2 debacle—it is not so much a turkey as a turkey mixed with a white elephant—is that never again must a politician’s vanity project, and a New Labour one at that, be allowed to gather a head of steam? Secondly, is he sure that the £40 billion on the Birmingham to Crewe route is the best use of public money, when there would be far more support in this House for properly funding all the northern powerhouse? Thirdly, may I gently remind him that the Wessex routes are the most underfunded and overused in Britain?

[Grant Shapps]

I was wondering how the Isle of Wight might benefit from HS2. Of course it will when my hon. Friend’s constituents cross to the mainland and want to travel north. With regard to Birmingham to Crewe, it has already been legislated for, and it received support from across the House. I do not think that we want to spend too much time going back into an argument about that on a day when we are looking at joining-up plans for the north and the midlands, much as I could be enticed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I do agree that this is an urgent measure. That is why, before anybody else was talking about it, we were already acting—carrying out these consultations, putting in place these measures—and we have 50% more people being tested. I hear his call for more immigration to resolve the problem, but we do have to stand on our own two feet as the United Kingdom. There are a lot of people coming off furlough, and I look forward to those people getting jobs.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

5. What assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of imposing a public service obligation on vehicle and passenger services between the Isle of Wight and UK mainland.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Robert Courts)]

We recognise the importance of this route. We will always keep route assessments under review, including if there is any evidence of market failure that requires intervention.

[Bob Seely]

The Secretary of State knows that I hold him and his ministerial team in high regard. However, is it right that we have in the Isle of Wight ferry services a public service without any sense of public service obligation, and can the Minister tell me of a single example elsewhere in the United Kingdom where we have a true lifeline public service with no lifeline obligation attached to those services?

[Robert Courts]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He is a long-standing advocate of improving the service for his constituents, and he and I have spoken about it on many occasions. He will of course know that service provision to the Island is a matter for the local council, working with service operators. None the less, the Government will continue to monitor the service on this route, and if there is anything he would like to discuss with me at any time he need only ask.

RNLI and Independent Lifeboats: Covid-19

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I will not take up too much time. I am just going to thank the many lifeboat crews we have on the Island and then reiterate some of the concerns, which I am sure the Minister is listening to. I congratulate him on his reasonably new role, which is incredibly well deserved.

The Island is in part defined by our coastline. Indeed, the south-west of the Isle of Wight was a centre for shipwrecks. There were nearly 50 shipwrecks from the late 18th century until the early 20th century, so we were something of a ship graveyard. Many ships sank off the south-west of the Isle of Wight, sadly leading to loss of life, and lifeboats were developed on the south-west of the Island from the 1840s and 1850s onwards to address the situation. A great-great-uncle was the coxswain of the Brooke lifeboat well over a century ago, and I am very proud of that connection to the lifeboats.

For the work they have done this summer, I thank Sandown & Shanklin Independent Lifeboat and Freshwater Independent Lifeboat; the RNLI lifeboats in Cowes, Yarmouth and Bembridge; the coastguard rescue teams in Needles, Bembridge and Ventnor; and Ryde Inshore Rescue. There is a common-sense theme: a lot of people are engaged in helping sailors, swimmers and others who get into trouble at sea, and we on the Island are very grateful to them. Feedback from Sandown & Shanklin Independent Lifeboat indicates that it was one of the busiest summers on record—possibly the busiest, as many people flocked to the beaches from June onwards. People got out and about while the covid pandemic was at its height, and the Island was absolutely packed from August onwards. That meant that many people were out on the water and the lifeboats were busier than ever.

Combined with that busier-than-ever period, significant fundraising has been impossible this year, so I hope very much that the Minister will take on board what I and other right hon. and hon. Members have said about the need to provide some slight additional support. That could mean reintroducing the rescue boat grant fund, which was an exceptionally good idea brought in by a previous Government in 2014. Is there any way in which we can bring that back into being, or at least provide funding for the protective equipment that both the independent and the RNLI lifeboats have had to buy? Most of the independent lifeboats in my constituency have funding for the year ahead, but, depending on what happens next year, they might start to get nervous about their cash flow and their ability to raise funds in order to continue doing the incredibly important work to which we have all paid tribute.

The Island is at the centre of global sailing and it has many beaches. We know of the vulnerabilities faced by people at sea, and everyone involved in rescuing them is very important to my constituency.

Income tax (charge)

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The right hon. Lady makes an excellent point, as ever. The reality is that, because of social distancing, it might well be desirable to have more space between people so that they can keep some distance. Yes, that absolutely needs to be taken into account as we consider the timetabling.

We will get through this crisis together as a nation. Working in this great national effort, we will ensure that we come through on the other side and provide hope for all our citizens. The Budget shows that we are serious about the pledges we have made and about the trust that the electorate put in us only three months ago. We intend to deliver on those infrastructure pledges.

The Department for Transport has already been working hard to deliver on those pledges. For example, in recent weeks we have taken decisive action to improve journeys for millions of Northern rail commuters by putting the franchise into the operator of last resort. We have announced plans to extend discounted train travel to more than 830,000 veterans. The Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), has kickstarted work on reversing the Beeching cuts, which have so blighted the nation in decades past and prevented people from being interconnected. In January we announced the preferred route for the east-west rail link that will connect Oxford and Cambridge, which will increase access to jobs and make it easier and cheaper to travel, creating a region that has been dubbed the UK’s silicon valley. We are not only making journeys more efficient and easier; we are also making them cleaner. We are consulting on bringing forward the end of fossil fuel cars and vans to 2035, or earlier if practical. We are taking enormous steps forward.

The Chancellor has delivered a Budget that includes some of the most ambitious infrastructure programmes seen since the 1950s. It will help to level up this country. Infrastructure that is unreliable, overcrowded and no longer fit for purpose acts as a drag anchor on our entire economy. When it is efficient and gets people where they need to be, it can turn around the fortunes of our towns and cities. With interest rates at an historic low, now is the time to get Britain building.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend knows, I am pressing for a better deal for the Isle of Wight. What are the criteria for the levelling up agenda? The Island is part of the wealthy south-east, but our economy has more in common with the north, or indeed with parts of east Devon and Cornwall, so what does levelling up look like for us? Is it part of the funding settlement or is it infrastructure projects?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As many Members across the House will know, people often think that just because a constituency is in a certain part of the country—the south-east in his case—it must be enormously prosperous. Many of us represent enormously deprived communities, perhaps just an individual ward, within an otherwise prosperous area, so it is very important that the criteria for levelling up take that all into account. That is why the Green Book is being rewritten as a result of last week’s Budget. We look forward to hearing more about that in due course.

With interest rates at an historic low, it is time to get Britain building. That is why the Chancellor set out plans to inject £640 billion by 2024-25 into roads, railways, hospitals, broadband, housing and research, to modernise the fabric of our country, turbo-charge our economy—perhaps to electrically charge our economy —and get every single region of the UK growing, not matter where it is.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill: Revival

Bob Seely Excerpts

Carry-over motion & Bill reintroduced & Bill reintroduced: House of Commons & motion to revive Bill: House of Commons
Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

On the contrary, it was one of the most cataclysmic episodes of the HS2 story. When everybody and his dog knew that Carillion was in difficulties, and hedge fund managers were making millions on the demise of Carillion, this Government ploughed on with it, regardless of the information that was in the public domain. It was clear evidence of utter incompetence.

The Oakervee review was correct to say that HS2 must be a fully integrated part of the modern railway system and must extend to the great cities of the north, linking up with Crossrail for the north and on to Scotland, to curtail the demand for domestic flying in this country at the earliest opportunity.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

One issue that many people like me on the south coast have, which I hope Ministers will look at, is that the average speed from London to Portsmouth and Southampton has not changed since the 1920s. At the moment, we are seeing vast amounts of money going into a project of mixed popularity, to put it mildly, while people in Southampton, Portsmouth and my constituency of the Isle of Wight will be struggling with speeds—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We are not talking about the Isle of Wight. We are talking about a procedural motion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I do not think that MPs who represent their constituents, whichever side of the debate they are on, are somehow undermining democracy—quite the opposite, in fact. This is the biggest infrastructure decision that this country has ever made and the biggest in Europe. It is quite right that it is properly and carefully considered, using not only that Network Rail evidence but everything else. The good news is that he will not have to wait too long.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I welcome the fresh new approach of this Front-Bench team. Given the importance of sustainable transport and sustainable housing, do Ministers agree that building low-density housing on greenfield sites is bad for sustainable transport, bad for sustainable housing and bad for our environment, because it is so car-dependent, which is why so many of our constituents object?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (George Freeman)]

I commend my hon. Friend on that point and his “Island Manifesto”, in which he makes that point. We are working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that we move the dial on much better integration of cycling, walking and public transport in new housing.