Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Dominic Raab

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising what seems like an awful case. My heart goes out to the family involved. If she would like to write to me about it, I will make sure that she gets a full answer and a meeting with a Minister if that is required.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

Q12. Georgia Harrison is an incredibly brave young woman who only got justice when she was a victim of revenge porn because she could prove that the perpetrator intended to cause her distress. Most victims cannot prove that, and perpetrators are using platforms to use revenge porn for financial gain. That is not covered in the legislation. Will my right hon. Friend commit to looking at the case studies Georgia has compiled and to reviewing the legislation to strengthen it and make it more effective?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for all that she has done in this area. There have been a considerable number of changes to the Online Safety Bill, not least because of her forensic attention to detail. They will include the creation of a new base offence of sharing intimate images without consent that does not require proof of an intention to cause distress. The Government also support the revenge porn helpline, which offers free and confidential advice. If there are any further changes that she thinks need to be made, I would be happy to look at them with her.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to help ensure that every girl receives 12 years of quality education.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)]

Over the past five years, UK aid has helped 8 million girls get a decent education, and, as the House knows, our global ambition is to ensure that 40 million girls have 12 years of quality education by 2026.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of this issue. As we go through the difficult financial situation that we face, we have been very clear that girls’ education is a top priority to safeguard. On top of the money that we are putting in and the convening power that we are exercising with the joint summit we are hosting with Kenya, the Prime Minister has appointed my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) as the special envoy on girls’ education.

[Caroline Nokes [V]]

I applaud the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister for making educating girls a foreign policy priority. As host of the G7, we have a critical opportunity to encourage others to do the same. Can my right hon. Friend tell me how much ODA spending he will commit to girls’ education this year to make sure that our manifesto commitment to ensuring that every girl gets 12 years of quality education has the funding that it needs?

British Citizens Abroad: FCO Help to Return Home

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) (Urgent Question)]

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on what measures he plans to introduce to assist British citizens abroad to return home.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. We have FCO staff in all our 280 posts in 168 countries and 10 overseas territories, and they are working round the clock to respond to this global pandemic. Over the last three days, we have seen 80 countries place restrictions on their borders. That situation is unprecedented in scale, and our overriding priority now is to assist the thousands of British travellers who need and want to return home, bearing in mind the hundreds of thousands of UK nationals who may be travelling at any point in time.

Following last week’s decision to advise against all but essential travel globally, last night I changed our travel advice again because of the rate of new border restrictions. We strongly advise British people who are currently travelling abroad who live in the UK to return as soon as possible, where they are still able to because commercial routes are still running. Where commercial options are limited or prevented by domestic restrictions, we are in close contact with the airlines and local authorities in those countries to overcome those barriers to enable people to return home. With my ministerial team, and indeed across the diplomatic network, we are engaging with numerous Governments to keep commercial routes open, particularly in transit hubs. The Department for Transport is working closely with airlines to ensure that travellers can rebook or find alternative routes home.

I know that hon. Members in all parts of the House will have had constituents contact them in relation to particular countries, so with your forbearance, Mr Speaker, I will update the House on just a few of those countries. I spoke to the Peruvian Foreign Minister at the weekend, and we have agreed special arrangements for flights to return British nationals later this week and for Peruvian nationals to get back to Peru. I spoke to the Singaporean Foreign Minister this morning, and we have agreed to work together to help those stranded to get back to their homes in the UK. Given Singapore’s role as a transit hub, this commitment to work with us to enable UK nationals to transit via Singapore is particularly important, not least for those currently in Australia or New Zealand. In New Zealand, the high commission is working with airlines, airports and, indeed, the Government to keep flight routes open and to reopen some that have closed. In Australia, the high commission is doing the same. It has also opened a register of British nationals hoping to return to the UK and is supporting British nationals via phone calls and walk-in appointments at the high commission, as well as updating social media pages.

For those trying to get home in other countries, we are providing as much practical advice as is physically possible. We would first advise all travellers to take a look at the travel advice online, which is the best and most comprehensive source of information and is updated in real time. If people are in need of urgent assistance, they should call our embassies and high commissions. They will be automatically connected to our consular contact centres, the global centres based in Malaga and Ottawa—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) will allow me. We know that there has been considerable pressure because of the restrictions being placed in countries around the world and the rate at which that has been done, with either limited or no notice. We doubled our capacity. We are now doubling it again to deal with the surge in demand. We are helping to reduce travel costs by encouraging airlines to have maximum flexibility on changing return tickets. Where people are in real need, our consular teams will work with them to consider their options. As a last resort, we offer an emergency loan.

More broadly, the United Kingdom is working alongside our international partners to deliver our international strategy, which rests on four key tenets: to provide resilience to the most vulnerable countries; to pursue a vaccine; to keep vital trade routes and supply chains for foodstuff, medicines and other things open; and to provide reciprocal support for the return of our nationals who otherwise are at risk of being stranded. These are the right priorities. We are working day and night to keep British people safe at home and abroad.

[Caroline Nokes]

There is an MPs’ helpline that rings with no answer. Emails are acknowledged but not replied to. Embassies are closed, with staff flown home days ago and doors shut to our travellers. Guidance was issued by the Foreign Office yesterday advising British tourists to return to the UK where commercial flights are available, but they are not available. They are either banned entirely, are trying to transit via countries where no layovers are permitted, or are priced at tens of thousands of pounds and via airports that are expected to close imminently.

What help exactly is my right hon. Friend’s global network offering? He knows that the situation is dire, but he knew that last week when he stated in this House that

“we will look and liaise with the airline operators…to make sure that, where there are gaps, we can always provide as much support as possible for vulnerable or stranded constituents.”—[Official Report, 17 March 2020; Vol. 673, c. 809.]

There are gaps. My constituents stranded in Argentina, Honduras, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand, India, Peru and Egypt have much in common: an inability to get through to consular services on the phone, a standard acknowledgement email telling them to contact their tour operator, airline or insurer, and an increasing inability to find accommodation. Hotels are shutting, flights are cancelled, borders are closed and there are no routes home. Many are hours away from large airports in countries operating curfews. Those in Australia and New Zealand are looking for routes via Singapore, so I welcome the comments my right hon. Friend made about working with Singaporean allies, but to them, it looks like his words of last week were empty. I ask him today, as I asked him last week, to explain how he is working with airlines with unused planes parked at airports around the globe to bring our people home. He must get the process fully under way. The vision of British citizens sleeping rough on the streets of Caracas is not a good one.

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. In relation to embassies, she said that they have been closed, but actually, a very small number of posts have had to be closed. What we have found—this is not a choice that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has made; it is a direct result of the restrictions that have been put in place by Governments in those countries—is that they have had to work remotely, and indeed, a large chunk of the consular staff work from home. That is not a decision that we made—it was forced upon us—but I reassure her that in all the jurisdictions that she mentioned, we are trying to respond to what I hope she will understand, given her experience, is an incredibly fluid situation. Some of these restrictions are being imposed with no notice or limited notice, and that is very difficult, of course, for our constituents, but we are making sure that we provide them with as much advice and support in real time as we can.

My right hon. Friend mentioned Peru. As a result of the work of the FCO, and having spoken to the Peruvian Foreign Minister, we now have agreement for flights to come out of Peru. There is, of course, a challenge because not everyone is based in Lima, which has the international airport, so we also have to try to work out how we get UK nationals travelling in more remote parts of the country to the capital. We are actively working on that. We have several flights lined up, but we also need to work around or try to overcome the restrictions that have been imposed.

I hope I have explained what we are doing in Australia and New Zealand. My right hon. Friend is right, and I thank her for her remarks, about the critical importance of keeping the international hubs open, and not just in relation to Singapore. We are concerned about other international hub airports. We must try to keep those open. Tomorrow, I will lead the discussion among the G7 Foreign Ministers on this and our wider international strategy for tackling coronavirus. This is extremely difficult. We have hundreds of thousands of British nationals abroad, but I can reassure her that, from the call centre to the support they are receiving at post, we are doing everything we can to give them as much support as swiftly as possible.

Covid-19

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Lady asks a perfectly reasonable question. May I reassure her that we are taking the best scientific advice that we have got in the UK? The circumstances in different countries will change. Part of that is about the timing and the peak within which coronavirus hits an individual country. She talked about co-operation with EU partners. I am consistently on the phone talking to all our European partners about all these issues, whether that is the multilateral drive to tackle coronavirus with support for vulnerable countries, research and development, or the particular logistical issues with getting constituents home. The diplomacy with our European friends has never been more intense.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

My constituent Jamie Harris is stranded on MS Ocean Endeavour off the coast of Argentina. She is travelling independently, so has no recourse to a tour operator and flights from Argentina to Europe have been stopped. Will my right hon. Friend consider working with flight companies such as British Airways—there are many others—to look at ways that we can bring constituents home when there simply is no other alternative for them?

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. For those in South America more generally, there has been a range of concerns in different countries. Fundamentally, we want to encourage, as I have explained, commercial operators to keep running because that is the way of easily repatriating people at scale. But of course we will look and liaise with the airline operators—the Transport Secretary is already doing that—to make sure that, where there are gaps, we can always provide as much support as possible for vulnerable or stranded constituents.

South West Trains

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Dominic Raab

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important and, it appears, annual debate. He is moving on to an important point. One of my constituents said to me this morning that they would accept consistently increasing prices if the quality of service improved, and concluded by saying, “That is not the case currently.” Does my hon. Friend agree that the nub of the problem is that commuters are paying more for what they see as a worse service?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is absolutely bang on. That is the crux of the matter. We have heard interventions already about other parts of the country. I can speak for Elmbridge and for Surrey, but it is interesting to hear that the problems are systematic and not parochial.

Clearly, the Surrey network feels the pressure of a high volume of commuters. In Elmbridge borough alone, some 12 million people use our stations. The number of recorded journeys almost doubled between 2002 and 2010, so demand is high and increasing. Fares will rise by 2.5% again in the new year. The Minister will say that that is not a real-terms increase, so we thank heavens for small mercies, but none the less it is an increase. The fares are already some of the most expensive in Europe. A season ticket for the 25-minute journey from Esher to Waterloo currently costs just under £2,000, and many pay a good deal more.

What is hard to explain, let alone justify, to many passengers—I think my hon. Friends were making this point—is the enormous subsidy that they pay as passengers for other lines across the country. That is largely hidden from view. Of course, redistribution of wealth is a natural function of general taxation—it is the stuff of politics and Parliament to debate how much or how little there should be—but I doubt that many are aware of quite how stark the impact is. Certainly, in my area, Surrey residents contribute £6 billion to the Treasury, and we get back less than £1 billion in services. The point is that, on top of that redistribution of wealth via general taxation, Surrey rail passengers, through their fares, are not just paying high fares for the services that they use. They and many others using South West Trains are paying a whopping subsidy for investment in the rail network across the rest of the country.

In 2013-14, South West Trains passengers paid the Department for Transport the highest premium for their rail service at 5.2p per passenger per kilometre. That compares to the 13.1p subsidy doled out by the Government to Arriva Trains Wales, or the 2.8p subsidy received by London Midland, and the 2.2p subsidy received by Southeastern. Some train companies are therefore paying an inordinate amount for the right to run the service while others are effectively receiving a subsidy.

Over the past four years up to 2013-14, South West Trains passengers have effectively coughed up the largest subsidy to Government coffers of any train operating company, totalling just over £1 billion. That is the scale of the subsidisation of other lines by my commuters and other passengers using South West Trains. That is more than £1 billion over and above what is redistributed via general taxation. It is a staggering amount.

Aside from the scale and the volume or the amount, no one can explain to me how this allocation of premiums and subsidies across the train operators is calculated. I have looked at the franchise contracts for the train operating companies. They do not disclose the information. We are told it is too sensitive, and the Minister’s predecessor could not explain what the allocation or criteria are. It looks arbitrary in terms of the relative wealth of the areas concerned. For example, Southeastern received £97 million in 2013-14 to run the service, compared with South West Trains, which paid £312 million for the right. Will she, if she can, explain in plain language that my constituents can understand how the allocations—the premiums and the subsidies—are worked out? How are they calculated and how are they justified? In particular, how can they be justified given what we have heard about overcrowding, particularly on South West Trains?

I referred to the sardine express earlier, but that is just one service. In 2013, average overcrowding on South West Trains was the joint third highest in London and the south-east. Overcrowding increased in each of the preceding four years. South West Trains services featured three times in the top 10 most overcrowded services across England and Wales for 2012, and twice again in the Department’s spring 2013 data. To put those raw numbers into perspective, EU rules stipulate that calves, adult goats and unshorn sheep must be transported by train in an area of space of at least 0.3 square metres per unit of livestock, but the new Government standard for commissioning commuter services for humans is now 0.25 square metres, which is significantly less. I understand that the only train company operating to that standard is—you guessed it, Dr McCrea—South West Trains. Can the Minister explain why my constituents, who are paying ever-rising fares and doling out more than £1 billion to improve rail services for the rest of the UK that they will rarely use, do so for the privilege of travelling at one grade below cattle class on South West Trains?

The Minister will understand immediately why in Passenger Focus’s 2014 national survey, South West Trains passengers ranked their service the third worst in the country on value for money, with a bare 37% saying that they were getting bang for their buck. That dropped to 28%—barely a quarter—for peak-time passengers. Just in case anyone thinks that all passengers and commuters grumble, that compares with approval on value for money of 78% with Grand Central passengers and 61% with Virgin Trains passengers. It is not beyond the wit of man or woman.

I recognise that South West Trains will argue that it is playing the hand it was dealt by Government in the franchise agreement. That is the line, and there is obviously some truth to it. The Government ultimately decide on the premium or grant, and that very much conditions and influences the nature of the service that can be run and the resources available. That might, however, be a little easier to swallow if director remuneration at Stagecoach Group, which is the operating company, had not doubled between 2010 and 2014, just as these developments were taking place.

Nevertheless, with the fragmented nature of responsibility for rail services, it has got difficult to get straight answers to straight questions. As an MP, I find it difficult to explain to commuters and constituents why the high fares they pay deliver so little in return. My hon. Friends have made that point. What action has been taken to deliver a fairer deal for my constituents and the many others using South West Trains who feel as though they are treated like a cash cow, despite travelling in sub-cattle class conditions?

In particular, what progress has been made on expanding the platforms available at Waterloo into the international terminal that used to service the Eurostar routes? I understand from the managing director of South West Trains that that, at least in the short term, offers the greatest scope for lengthening platforms and trains, thereby easing overcrowding along the lines I have mentioned. Does the Minister agree with that analysis? If so, what is holding up progress in that direction? Will she update me on the options for Crossrail 2? I understand that her officials are looking carefully at the so-called regional option, which would link to the metro option, servicing south-west London, Surrey and Hertfordshire. That would substantially alleviate pressure on existing services, as well as carrying a multitude of other regional benefits. What is her view on the regional option?

Finally, we have been sweating under the franchise agreements signed off by the Labour Government. I have always argued that they bear the responsibility for the framework in which we are operating, but an extension to the South West Trains agreement was agreed in 2013, taking it to March 2019. I am sure the Minister’s Department looked carefully at the terms of the extension. Will she help me explain to my constituents what the premium or subsidy will be between now and 2019? What criteria are being used for that? What are the objective grounds justifying the different rates at which operating companies are being charged or paid?

My constituents have rather stoically endured the immediate frustration of high fares and acute overcrowding. We all know the financial situation the country faces, and that rising demand for rail services will continue for a range of demographic, economic and environmental reasons, but the raw truth is that, when I stand on that platform with my fellow constituents and take the sardine express up to Waterloo, I need to be able to explain in clear language how we will address over the long term the conditions of travel, which are often cramped and uncomfortable. I need to explain how we are going to deliver better value for money. I need to give them some light at the end of the tunnel. I hope the Minister can provide me with a degree of reassurance today.

Brain Tumours in Children

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is right. It is particularly regrettable that we have such a delay in comparison with other countries if we could take simple steps, which would not even cost the taxpayer money, to reduce the delay through political will and co-ordination.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He has mentioned political will and co-ordination; does he agree that county councils and local education authorities can play a critical role in getting the HeadSmart cards out to schools? Will he join me in commending Hampshire county council, which has met Mrs Langton-Gilks and is working to ensure that the message is better disseminated to schools to increase awareness?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is bang on. I was going to come on to exactly that point, and I could not agree more.