Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) raised the issue of flood damage with me as well, and we are looking at what we can do. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) raised the issue of the importance of funding for improving local roads. We made a big decision on that, and improving the road network over time and allowing local authorities to spend that money shows an important sense of priorities. We are also making sure that reporting requirements are in place, so that highways authorities have to set out to the people to whom they are accountable what they are spending the money on.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The pothole situation is a metaphor for what the Government have been doing with public investment in the past 14 years. The roads have got worse and worse, with the Automobile Association describing October as the worst month for pothole breakdowns on our roads. If the Government were really concerned about this issue, they would not have starved local authorities of the resources to deal with the problem. Is that not correct?

[Mr Harper]

No, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman on that at all. We have given local authorities more than £5 billion of funding for local road maintenance. The £8.3 billion in the Network North plan is over and above that. I would have thought he would welcome the fact that when we announced the money for local road maintenance, I decided that in London, 95% of that extra funding would go to London councils, rather than Transport for London, so that it gets spent on fixing the roads, rather than being wasted by the Mayor of London.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

The use of private e-scooters on public land—on roads and pavements—is illegal in the UK, and it is up to the police to enforce that law. We have 23 different legal trials of rental e-scooters around the country. We recently announced the extension of those trials, and we are using that data to learn more about the dangers or otherwise of e-scooters, which will inform the policy for the future regulation of e-scooters.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Mayor of London has frozen fares for five out of the eight years he has been in office, meaning that they are 14% below national fare increases. Should I take it from the Secretary of State’s earlier answer to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) that he is opposed to those fare freezes, and that he expects a Conservative Mayor to put fares up if elected?

[Mr Harper]

No. What I find surprising is that the London Mayor spends an awful lot of time pretending that he does not have any money, so he puts up taxes on hard-working motorists in outer London, and then just before an election, he finds a secret war chest that enables him to do popular things. Everyone knows that if he were to win, he would put up taxes again on the poorest motorists as sure as night follows day, which is why they should vote for Susan Hall.