Outer London Congestion Charge

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Ms Rees. I apologise that I have not been able to log in in the usual manner, so I am using my telephone. Sorry for the sub-optimal reception.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway), I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) for raising this issue, and for the leadership he has shown in the strength of the petition that has raised, in Dartford alone, more than 26,000 signatures, as I understand it.

All I want to do is echo the points my two hon. Friends have made. I particularly emphasise the divisive nature of the charge for the community I represent. Banstead, Chipstead, Hooley, Netherne and Woodmansterne tend not to look to the centre of the Borough of Reigate and Banstead, to the towns of Redhill and Reigate. Quite naturally, they tend to look north, to Sutton and Croydon. Indeed, many people in that part of the constituency have grown up with their family and work being located in those boroughs, and have then moved out as time and opportunity have presented themselves, to get out of the centre of Sutton or Croydon. However, their lives and connections very much remain across the London boundary. I have received letters from people whose children’s schools or jobs are affected. In one family, the mother has to cross the boundary every day to take children to school and the father has to cross it every day to go to his job in in Wallington.

People have tended to look to those town centres to shop, or their GP, pharmacy or dentist may be there, and given the pattern of people’s lives many of their relatives are there as well. One family has written to me, having now been alerted to this issue. It is not a charge of £3.50 for the odd day of the year; it is £22.50 every week for both of them. So it is in the order of nearly £45 for them every week, which is an enormous cost to put on people’s lives, simply because they suddenly find themselves adjacent to a boundary. This measure will do profound long-term damage to the relationships of the people who find themselves living just outside the London boundary and it will also do grave damage to the businesses just inside the Greater London boundary that are used by those people.

I urge the Mayor not to proceed down this road and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that he does not do so. This is a singularly bad idea. I realise that the Mayor is in deep trouble because of the nature of the Budget, but that should not be visited in this reckless way on those people who live in the communities neighbouring Greater London.

Airport Expansion

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, and he will know that my predecessor was able to make a number of visits to the airports in Northern Ireland. He will also know that, in my role in Government, I will always take into consideration Northern Ireland, and the concerns and wants of businesses and consumers in Northern Ireland, in how we develop the strategy.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I know that hand washing is now de rigueur, but that should hardly extend to the Government’s approach to their own NPS, approved by a large majority in this House, when the judgment addressed the narrow point that the NPS had not been assessed against commitments made by the Government in Paris. The Government’s desertion of Heathrow at this point is very bad news for early delivery of global Britain in reality, and it is very bad news for confidence in the whole of the Government’s commitment to their own national infrastructure plan.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. I just want to reiterate that we are committed to airport expansion. We took the decision not to appeal, because it was a private sector delivery scheme, being privately financed. Of course, the instigators will be issuing an appeal. I understand his frustration, but it is right that any airport expansion or infrastructure project of this nature meets the key criteria for environmental protections. As I have already said, we are analysing the judgment and we will come forward with the next steps as soon as possible.

National Policy Statement: Airports

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Let me spend the first couple of minutes of my speech addressing some of the issues that have been raised this evening. We have had the 2009 vote thrown back at us—that was when my party voted against Heathrow—but since 2009, the arguments have been about the Airports Commission report. In 2009, I personally would have supported an airport in the estuary, and there are still common-sense arguments in favour of that, particularly in relation to the environment. An environmental trade-off between people and wildlife would have to be made. It is still the case, however, that we asked the Airports Commission to look at all the issues, and it came up with a clear conclusion.

I want to pick up on a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). There is a serious cost to not making a decision. We have been frigging around with this for 50 years, one way and another, but we finally have to grasp the nettle and make a decision.

I also want to address the points about hubs made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands). His argument is addressed by the relative success of Incheon airport in Korea, which has taken the cluster of airports around Tokyo to the cleaners, economically, as has Chicago when compared with New York, which has three separate airports around the city. The economic lessons about the success of hub airports are there to be learned.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) made several points about Gatwick, and I want to address them as the chair of the Gatwick Co-ordination Group, which brings together colleagues in this House, councillors from the affected local authorities, and representatives from the voluntary and charitable sectors with a key interest in the decision. We submitted our own response to the Airports Commission. The House needs to understand that there are two total showstoppers as far as Gatwick is concerned. One of the masterstrokes in my campaign was to drive the then Transport Secretary in a straight line from central London to Redhill, which is just over halfway to Gatwick. It is a distance of 30 km, and it took us two and a half hours using the main arterial route to Gatwick from central London.

Gatwick hangs off one rail access route: the Brighton main line, the busiest commuter line in the country. Those of us whose constituents are served by and use that line have all experienced the agony it has caused over the past four years. If there were a proposal for additional rail access to Gatwick, it would at least have some credibility, but Heathrow will have five new rail accesses to serve the extra runway. There is simply no comparison, not least given the obvious point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South that Gatwick is the wrong side of London for the vast majority of the country.

The final point I want to make in the very limited time available is about the workforce. When we submitted evidence to the commission in 2015, we totalled up all the people who were unemployed and claiming benefit in a vast area centred on Gatwick who could try to service the estimated 122,000 primary and secondary jobs that would come from expansion at Gatwick. Today that number is under 20,000. If we want to add to the massive housebuilding demand in areas of the south-east that we cannot even meet now, that would be one way of doing it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Adam Afriyie]

I will not give way because of the time available.

Every single region, particularly the south-east, will have fewer flights. The second area where it is easy to have some fairly lazy thinking is the hub-and-spoke concept. The facts have clearly changed, and it is now about point-to-point travel. Nobody wants to get on an aircraft and then change to get somewhere else. Everybody wants to fly direct. The aircraft that are being purchased today by every single airline are point-to-point aircraft. Ninety-seven per cent. of all aircraft ordered are for point-to-point travel.

Aircraft can get from London to Sydney direct. Why are we showing our age? Why are we showing this lazy thinking, that we need a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem? I know it is difficult, because Heathrow has a huge amount of propaganda. Heathrow has a lot to gain. It paid £1 billion in dividends to shareholders while making only a £500 million profit. Of course it is in Heathrow’s interest to try to get this decision in its favour and to try to slow the process so it can continue to drive up landing fees.

Lastly, it upsets me as a Conservative to sit on these Benches and see us all nodding our heads and saying that we should go ahead and create the most expensive airport in the world at which to land. Why on earth would we commit to such a project?

[Crispin Blunt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. The way to make both Gatwick and Heathrow more expensive is simply to create no more slots by having no more capacity.

[Adam Afriyie]

Funnily enough, I have some sympathy with that view. I agree with my hon. Friend on having an offshore airport to address the country’s very long-term interests. An offshore airport slot would be a lot less expensive than a Heathrow slot. It costs just six quid per passenger to land at Gatwick, but it costs £24 per passenger to land at Heathrow. It is crazy to invest further in Heathrow to create a £34 per passenger cost for the airlines. That makes no sense whatsoever.

I cannot support this, and I hope that, in the coming months, as they begin to realise that Heathrow is pulling a fast one on them, the Government will begin to back off. We will then all gradually begin to change our minds.

Heathrow

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I remind the House that there is another urgent question to follow. After that we have the business question and then two moderately well-subscribed Backbench Business Committee debates, so there is a premium on brevity. What I am looking for is not preambles, but single sentence—preferably short sentence—inquiries, to be exhibited in the first instance by the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt).

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend the Minister as astonished as I am that as distinguished a lawyer as the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), could advance an argument that is so utterly threadbare in respect of the rather limited defence this agreement gives to Heathrow airport and its private investor supporters if the Government change their policy?

[Jesse Norman]

I could say that I could not possibly comment. But it is right to acknowledge that a future Government might create a liability or contingent liability. That is not ruled out, and there might theoretically be some recourse for HAL as a result of that. One should just be—[Interruption.] That has always been the case, and it is not changed by this proper recognition of the law.

Airports National Policy Statement

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

First, I thank the hon. Gentleman for that resounding statement of support. This matter was discussed at the Cabinet this morning. The Airports sub-Committee met earlier this morning and reached its view, and the Cabinet was informed of it. I can tell him that the Cabinet gave almost entirely universal support for it.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly his outlining of the five new rail lines that would support Heathrow’s expansion, but I contrast that with there being no proposals to support any new rail capacity at Gatwick. It is on the busiest commuter line in the country, and he is only too aware of the problems there today. The Opposition spokesman gave a masterclass in how to avoid making a decision if one is in that political position, but does my right hon. Friend agree that if we are to discharge our duty to future generations, having analysed and consulted on the proposal to death, now is the time to make a decision?

[Chris Grayling]

Now is definitely the time to take a decision. I agree that transport links to Gatwick need to improve, which is why Gatwick station is one of the projects that we are working on with the airport at the moment, but I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support.

Rail Timetabling

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The only thing I would point out, respectfully, to the hon. Lady is that she has just called for the transfer of rail services from Southeastern to Arriva, which runs Northern, while other people are telling me that Arriva is not capable of running Northern. That is the reality of what she is arguing for.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I do not envy my right hon. Friend and neighbour in making this statement today, but I know that he understands the position of Redhill and Epsom only too well, because he has been to visit Redhill station and see the infrastructure improvements that he is putting in place. However, my constituents were promised an improved service in 2014, after the London Bridge investment and for the new timetable in 2018, but even if the timetable was working properly they would have a worse service than they were promised four years ago. They have the privilege of paying the “Redhill hump” for being just outside the London zoning. My right hon. Friend and his Department are part of the industry, because they get the fare income generated under the GTR franchise, so will he please look at being part of the industry and not just dumping the issue of compensation entirely? Will he rapidly ask the rail Minister to bring forward plans to deal with the Redhill hump? Redhill services have had more cancellations than those anywhere else.

[Chris Grayling]

I say to Members on both sides of the Chamber that some places have undoubtedly been inappropriately disadvantaged by the timetable change. The rail Minister and I are happy to sit down in person with colleagues who represent those places to talk through how we can address those issues in future timetable changes. That offer is open to Members from all parties. We have seen a large number of colleagues today to talk about more short-term issues, and we are happy to have similar conversations as we plan for further timetable changes.

Monarch Airlines

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am sorry the hon. Gentleman did not have a good word to say for all the efforts put in place to bring people back. I would just remind him that, interestingly, in 2008—the last time we had an aviation failure in this country, Excel Airways—the Labour Government followed a very similar path to the one we have followed, with taxpayer-funded repatriation. They did the right thing then, and we are doing the right thing now. I am simply sorry that Labour Members have forgotten that they did the right thing in government, and cannot now say that our doing the right thing this time is indeed the right thing to do. [Interruption.] They did the right thing then, and we are doing the right thing now, and I am just sorry that he could not say a good word about those involved.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the reasons for the collapse. First, this is not an issue about Brexit. The airline had been struggling for three years, and the first concerns were raised about it long before the referendum was even held.

I had hoped that this summer, after the rescue package last year, the airline would see its way through. As its chief executive said, it has been a victim of the anxieties about tourism in the east Mediterranean for security reasons. Those have led to a concentration of business in the west Mediterranean and the traditional resorts of Spain and Portugal and a price war from which the company was ill equipped to recover. That is what has happened, no more no less.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the licence, and there was no issue about its renewal. What happened was never about the renewal of the licence—the business had simply reached the end of the road. Its board came to the conclusion that it could not carry on.

The hon. Gentleman asked why the company carried on selling tickets the day before. The reality is that any airline that runs into difficulties will carry on selling tickets until it can no longer do so. The moment it stops doing so, it collapses, and that is what happened. It would happen any time an airline ran into such difficulties. There is no other way to do it. The moment it stops selling tickets, it stops doing business, and that is precisely what happened.

The hon. Gentleman talked about competition, and other airlines are already stepping into the breach. Jet2, one of our fast-growing, emerging airlines, has already said that it will step in and run some of the routes. That is what a market does. If one business fails, others step in. The tragedy of the Labour party in the last few years is that it has moved away from understanding markets to being utterly hostile to markets and the private sector.

We have a thriving aviation sector with competition between airlines delivering a good deal for consumers, and occasionally—once under a Labour Government and once under ours—something has gone wrong. In both of those situations, the Government of the day stepped in to try to make sure that we looked after the travelling public. I have no doubt that if it ever happens again, someone will do the same.

We do have to learn the lessons. We have to understand whether we can make sensible changes to the laws to ensure that this does not happen again. We are already legislating to extend the ATOL scheme to provide better protection for people who book over the internet in a different way from how they have in the past. I am clear that the job of the Government is to look after the travelling public and step in when things go wrong. We have done that, and we are seeking to get back as much money as possible, as Labour did in 2008. Above all, our job is to do our best for the travelling public and the employees. That is what we are doing. I am proud of what we are doing, and I am just disappointed that the Opposition cannot even say well done to the people who have worked so hard in support.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The chief executive of Monarch has attributed the principal reason for the demise of the airline to terrorism and the resulting flight bans to both Tunisia and Sharm El Sheikh. Can the Secretary of State give his assessment of the merits of that argument?

[Chris Grayling]

There is no doubt that that was a significant factor, and not only because of changes in consumer patterns. Many other airlines chose to concentrate their resources this summer in the traditional resorts of Spain and Portugal. Alicante airport and others were full of planes this summer, and Monarch got squeezed out in a price war for which it was not financially strong enough. Ironically, it carried more passengers than two years ago, but with far lower revenues, and that more than anything else is what has caused its demise. It is a consequence of the security situation and of people taking a cautious approach to their holidays.

Chris Gibb Report: Improvements to Southern Railway

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman is actually quite right. At the start of this year, we launched an enormous recruitment programme and some 350 trainees are coming through the system at the moment. He will know that the system for training drivers is too tied up in red tape, union agreements and past working practices, so we cannot train drivers as quickly as I would like or bring in extra staff. It is a nonsense that we should depend on overtime to run any part of our rail system on normal working days. Our strategy is to end that situation, but it will be a blow to some of those who depend on overtime as part of their regular income. It is certainly not the case that Southern drivers are keen to see their overtime disappear in the run-up to the summer holidays.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I suppose I should thank Southern for taking me to and from the hospital at East Grinstead for an operation this morning. I have come back for this debate, and I want to ask the Secretary of State about the future and the investment that he is making. The situation in the Reigate and Redhill area needs serious investment in changes to the track layout at Croydon, and Reigate needs a 12-car platform so that it can have proper services into London. Will the Secretary of State provide the resources for Network Rail simply to produce a potential design of a proper station at Reigate? My constituents are hit by fares and by overcrowding on a service that has all the faults identified in the Gibb report by the various parties.

[Chris Grayling]

I assure my hon. Friend that I am currently working on what we need to do to ensure that the Brighton mainline, which has not had investment over the years, is capable of meeting the challenges of the future. We are spending far more money on our rail network today than has been spent for decades. The Brighton mainline has been neglected, which is one reason why performance has been so poor, and that is something that we have to change and will.

Airport Capacity and Airspace Policy

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I thought that one Member who was seeking to catch my eye had exited the Chamber at one point during the statement, but it might be that I was experiencing an optical illusion.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Following the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), I should like to point out that the lethal combination of the new technology, the much more precise flight paths and the Government’s current policy of concentration rather than dispersal will lead to a disaster for the people who are right underneath those routes. It should be possible to use the new technology to create an artificial degree of dispersal, as happened before under the analogue systems. Will my right hon. Friend advance on this consultation with the knowledge that this is a very important issue to address for many of our constituents?

[Chris Grayling]

To be slightly parochial, I can say that those of us who represent Surrey constituencies are well aware of the issues around Gatwick airport and the flight paths that planes have been using there recently. My hope is that the consultation will lead to a system that will enable us to be much more careful about managing flight paths so that we can provide respite to communities and decide exactly how to handle approaches to airports, instead of having a rather haphazard set of flight paths. I can assure my hon. Friend that I think we will end up with a better system for his constituents and those in neighbouring constituencies.

Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I have every intention of addressing the issue and I am working as hard as I can to do so. I would tell Labour Members that figures published this morning show that, across our railways, far more—more than twice as many—problems arise as a result of infrastructure, which is in the public sector, than as a result of train operations, which are in the private sector. Their persistent arguments that nationalising would solve the problems are just plain wrong. We need to invest; interestingly, we, unlike the Labour party, are doing so.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The utility of any rail infrastructure investment on the Brighton main line in Sussex will depend on the trains running effectively through Surrey. Will the Secretary of State undertake to look at proposals from people in my constituency about extra infrastructure investment in Surrey, alongside the Sussex proposals?

[Chris Grayling]

This is a Surrey, Sussex and south London problem, and we must look at the whole thing holistically. My hon. Friend will be aware that I have asked Chris Gibb, a senior rail executive, to look at the issues and to identify ways of addressing resilience problems. He has now put in place detailed plans, and some of that work has already started. For example, a joint team to control the railway on a day-by-day basis was put in place three weeks ago—at Three Bridges, one person will be in charge on a day-by-day basis—and individual infrastructure issues are now beginning to be addressed. I am determined that we do as much as we can, as fast as we can, to improve the resilience of the network.