Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and we were pleased to overturn the previous Government’s cuts to Active Travel England, ensuring that it can help authorities such as Bath scale up their capability and capacity and deliver those important active travel routes. As we look towards the second phase of the spending review, the ambition is absolutely to move to multi- year settlements, deliver that important consistency and sustainability for local authorities.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister with responsibility for roads for meeting my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) and me last week to discuss the future of the A303 and the north-south routes through Wiltshire; village roads are clogged with heavy goods vehicle traffic. Seeing as the Government have scrapped the Stonehenge tunnel, saving billions of pounds, I implore the Minister, as she considers the road investment strategy for next year, to think about mitigation of the unsustainable traffic problems that we have in Wiltshire. We have been waiting years for improvements. Please could that be considered as part of the next RIS?

[Louise Haigh]

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the Minister has already asked National Highways to meet the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to discuss those important issues. We will place statutory duties and stretching freight targets on Great British Railways to encourage freight off the roads and on to the railways, but we are absolutely considering the specific congestion issues in the south-west as we look towards the road investment strategy.

Off-Road Vehicles (Registration) Bill

Danny Kruger Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Gibson]

I am grateful for that intervention from the Minister, who was the first Minister to come and visit me in Darlington after I was elected. He has made repeated visits in his various roles, and he is always welcome as he treks up past my constituency. I would warmly welcome him meeting Darlington Borough Council’s civic enforcement team as well as the operation endurance team from Darlington, and Durham constabulary. They have been doing amazing work in this area, but it is not enough.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I am conscious of the time and I am not sure whether the Minister will have time to wind up the debate, so I will waive my place in the debate and let my hon. Friend finish his speech. Does he agree that it would be great to get the Minister to commit to ensuring that the taskforce he is setting up, which is incredibly welcome, will, on behalf of rural communities such as mine, look at the blight of off-road vehicles on the green lanes that he mentioned? It is a good thing that many byways and bridlepaths have now been protected from off-road vehicles, but there are 7,000 miles of track in the UK—many of them are in Wiltshire—which are devastated by 4x4s, quad bikes and off-road vehicles, which are causing huge damage. Does he agree that it would be good if the taskforce reviewed the legislation so that we can try to get more of those lanes protected?

[Peter Gibson]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. I represent an entirely urban constituency that faces the blight of this problem. I appreciate and understand that there are significant issues in the countryside from the use of these vehicles. There are also significant issues for our farming and rural constituencies with the theft of these vehicles. There was an intervention earlier about engagement, and I have recently met the National Motorcyclists Council and the Trail Riders Fellowship on this issue, but I put on the record and want to be absolutely clear that off-road bikes are meant to be used in a lawful manner for off-road biking, trail riding and competition. I have no desire to stop those legal and lawful activities.

I have no truck with the lawful use of off-road bikes; my concerns come from seeking to address the concerns of thousands of my residents whose lives are blighted by these vehicles. It is as clear as day to me that registering vehicles will help to end the terrorising of our streets and better enable police forces to tackle the problem of these bikes ripping through their communities.

Just to bring the House up to speed following my Westminster Hall debate on this issue, there was a discussion about whether farming communities would be opposed to registration. Following that debate, I wrote to the NFU. I had included parts of the letter back from the NFU in my speech, but there will not be time to cover it. I will happily furnish the Minister with a copy of that letter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

The A338/A346, which runs north-south through Marlborough, is regularly choked nose to tail with heavy goods traffic. The villages of the Ogbournes and the Collingbournes are particularly affected, including Collingbourne Ducis, where a little girl was killed three years ago by a heavy goods vehicle. That traffic should really be on the A34 and the A36 to the east and the west. We have been waiting many months now for the results of the north-south connectivity review. Will the Minister tell us when that will happen, so that we can have a better system for managing heavy goods traffic through Wiltshire?

[Guy Opperman]

As my hon. Friend knows, I grew up in Wexcombe and I know that particular area of Collingbourne very well. I pass on my condolences to the individual family. He knows that there are powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. I will write to him in detail with the powers that local authorities have to address that particular point. On the specifics of the review, that will be contained in road investment strategy 3, which will be published very shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to improve local transport services.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to improve local transport services.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to improve local transport services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Kruger]

Rural transport networks are the arteries of our towns and villages—they bring life to our communities. However, the answer is not just big buses running the same routes on the same timetable every day; it is also partly about demand-responsive transport. The good news is that Wilshire Council recently won a £1.3 million grant from the Government to invest in demand-responsive transport in the Vale of Pewsey. May I thank the Minister for that award and ask what more the Government are doing to foment the revolution in demand-responsive transport?

[Trudy Harrison]

I am grateful for the appreciation and, most importantly, his championship of rural communities and the solution that demand-responsive services represent. We recognise that they can really improve the availability of local transport. Our national bus strategy encourages local authorities to consider demand-responsive transport as one of the tools available for improving local bus service provision. As my hon. Friend says, we have provided £20 million from the rural mobility fund to areas across the country to trial demand-responsive transport solutions in rural and suburban areas. I am delighted, and will follow the progress that my hon. Friend is so keen to achieve.

International Women’s Day

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

If I have misled the House by misrepresenting the hon. Lady, I absolutely apologise for doing so. I will check the facts, and I will set the record straight if it is necessary for me to do so.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I have just looked up the quote from the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). It may well be that she can clarify this. She was trying to explain the Labour party’s official definition of a woman, but she was asked for her own definition of a woman. She said:

“with respect…I think it does depend what the context is surely.”

She was not giving a clear personal definition, but perhaps she is able to do so now.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I will give way to the hon. Lady if she will give a clear definition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to join in this debate. Like other Members, my thoughts this afternoon are with the women of Ukraine. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for her speech, which frankly had me filling up, so I am glad I have had some time to deal with my emotions.

Thinking of war situations where women are leaving or seeing their sons, husbands and fathers being involved in fighting, 30 years ago last week the independent state of Bosnia was founded, having itself been subjected to significant wars. I am reminded of my regular visits to Srebrenica and the memorial at Potočari, which is lovingly maintained by bereaved women who lost their sons, fathers, brothers and uncles. We all know the story of what happened with the genocides in Bosnia. Many of those women do not have a body, or even a body part, but they are dealing with their grief by maintaining the memorials to other victims as well as their own. At this time, there will inevitably be bereaved women who have left their husbands and sons behind and do not know what their ultimate fate is going to be. For me as a Member of Parliament in this fantastic first-world country of Great Britain, I feel hopelessly inadequate watching these events unfold. We must do everything we can to support all those victims, and particularly to give safe havens to those refugees who are fleeing.

I would like to reflect on some of the other contributions made today, particularly that of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). I say to the Government that as the right hon. Lady has shown, we are making lots of noise about women’s health and breaking lots of taboos in that space, but fundamentally, the biggest source of our oppression is our biology—our reproductive biology. The ability of women to control their fertility and manage their reproductive rights in a safe way depends on adequate contraception services, and also on a safe abortion law. I will repeat what I have said many times in this place: the abortion law is more than 50 years old. It was written before we had medical abortion, when abortion was a surgical procedure and was much more dangerous for that reason. If we are really going to look at women’s reproductive rights from the perspective of safety, may I helpfully suggest that we need a review that does not rely on individual Members of Parliament tackling this as a matter of conscience? This is about how we deliver a safe environment for women to be able to manage their reproductive rights and their fertility. Until we properly bring that law up to date and into the 21st century, any semblance of a positive women’s health strategy is for the birds. I leave that as a challenge for the Government.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on bravely stepping into the debate about sex and gender, and the conflict of rights that arises from conflating the two—a conflict of rights that has not been adequately tackled by either of the Front-Bench teams in this place. Frankly, that is a disgrace; it is not fair to transgender people or to women, and it is high time that we did so. I am glad that my hon. Friend has done it, and the fact that he is a man doing it on International Women’s Day is a matter not for criticism, but for celebration. I am also pleased to see my hon. Friends the Members for Devizes (Danny Kruger) and for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) present, because on the last two occasions I attended this debate, there were no men. This is a way forward, because we need men to value and celebrate women too; this should not be a women-only party.

[Danny Kruger]

The Father of the House is also present.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My apologies—how could I forget my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley)?

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

It has been humbling and very disquieting to listen to the accounts that we have heard of abuse, hatred and discrimination, and, of course, violence and murder. I pay particular tribute to the family of Ellie Gould and to their friends, the family of Poppy Devey Waterhouse, who have been in the Public Gallery this afternoon—Ellie was a girl from a family of Wiltshire people who was murdered very young, as was Poppy. I pay tribute to their campaign for the law to change and I look forward to the conclusion of the Wade review, which is looking into the circumstances of those murders.

I want to speak, first, about the economy in which women find themselves and, secondly, about the politics of gender. We have heard that behind every great woman is a great man, and I am proud to stand behind so many great women on the Government Benches, and opposite so many great women as well. I am the son and grandson of full-time working women, who are also mothers—very good mothers, I emphasise—and I spent 10 years working with my wife for the charity that we founded together. We worked in prisons, including in Holloway prison before it was thankfully sold off, disbanded, closed down, and I am very glad that my children have such role models in their mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

I echo the point that the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) made about the way that opportunities have opened up for girls and young women in our time. Of course, women have all the legal rights that they need and, increasingly, equality is becoming a reality, but there is so much more to be done, as we have heard. Perhaps just as worrying is that the idea that women can have it all often just means that women must do it all —that they must continue to do all the work that they were doing before. That presents very difficult choices, not just for women. I also made the World Book Day costume for my daughter; I advise my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) just to use cardboard boxes. That is what I did; it is so much simpler than sewing something together. My daughter wanted to go as the “Boy in the Tower”, which was a very easy costume to put together—I recommend it.

My simple policy point is that we need a more balanced economy. We need work to be closer to home. We need men and women to be able to mix the work that they do for pay in the commercial economy with work that they do with their children and elderly parents and work in the community. That would be better for everyone—for children, older people, our neighbours and ourselves.

Let me move on to the difficult topic. I regret the suggestion from Opposition Members that International Women’s Day is somehow not a moment in which it is appropriate to discuss what actually a woman is. I wish that this was not a controversial topic, but the fact is that it is, and surely this is a time and a place in which that topic can be discussed. I notice that the leader of the Scottish Government has today announced an official apology to the victims of the Witchcraft Act—the victims of the hunt for witches back in the early modern period in Scotland. I hope she would also extend some sympathy to the victims of today’s witch hunts. Women—mostly women, but also men—are vilified, cancelled, professionally destroyed or physically threatened for their beliefs. They are people who simply believe in a biological difference between men and women. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) and the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) for their courage on this topic. I call attention to the interim report from Dr Hilary Cass, which is just out, which highlights the vertiginous increase in young teenage girls presenting as trans. I am afraid I do not believe that we have suddenly discovered a whole new population of trans people who were repressed or denied. I fear that, by telling people that they can change sex, we are further confusing a lot of very confused young people at the most confusing time of their life.

Just as great a concern is the biological males deciding in adulthood that they want access to women-only spaces. I echo the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) and for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). I hope there is some value in a man saying that. I think that trans activism is a new form of misogyny. It involves the essential denial of reality. I think we need a legal definition of what a woman is. A woman is an adult female. It is a biological and immutable reality and it is time to recognise that in the law.

Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

Again, unfortunately, the Opposition are just getting this simply wrong. The integrated rail plan will kick off the electrification of more than 75% of the country’s rail network. If the hon. Member takes the TransPennine route through Church Fenton at the moment, he will see the overhead electrification cables being erected. The midland main line electrification will start before Christmas. I would just gently remind the Opposition spokesman that, in 13 years of Labour Government, they electrified only 63 miles. Over the past 11 years, we have already electrified 1,221 miles.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to maintain funding for restoring your railway projects following the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

Good morning, Mr Speaker, and merry Christmas to you and your staff. [Interruption.] Well, someone has to do it.

Through our restoring your railway programme—a £500 million fund—we remain committed to reopening lines and stations, reconnecting communities across the country.

[Danny Kruger]

Mr Speaker, a merry Christmas from me, too, to everybody.

Devizes is of course the jewel of Wiltshire. It used to have, according to medieval chroniclers, the finest castle in Christendom, until Cromwell pulled it down. It also used to have a very fine train station. Beeching closed it. The Victorians rebuilt our castle. I hope the Government are going to rebuild our station. Can the Minister tell us when he is likely to announce the successful award of restoring your railway funding to Devizes?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Can I thank my hon. Friend for his question and congratulate him on obviously being a huge champion for his constituency? His knowledge of the history of the railways in his locality and beyond is second to none. As he will know, we have now received the business case for that particular scheme, and we will be considering the next steps for a tranche of projects, including Devizes gateway, in the new year.