Infrastructure

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about infrastructure in our capital city, London. The capital is about to be hit by a demographic time bomb, which seems to have taken both the Government and City hall by surprise. The Mayor’s London plan forecast that the capital’s population would be 8.5 million by 2027, but we know that that is likely to be exceeded in 2016 or earlier, and by 2031, there will be 9.5 million people living here in London. Today’s creaking infrastructure will be burdened by 1.5 million extra people.

The House has already heard the depressing detail of the housing shortage here in London, with young couples unable to save for a deposit, families of six being squashed into flats built for three, and young professionals being extorted out of more rent by their landlord and more fees by their letting agent. Less has been said about London’s transport network, which is already at breaking point and is set to be pushed over the edge. We now require the sort of vision that gave us the London underground 150 years ago.

Right hon. and hon. Members will already know about the scrum to get on the tube at rush hour. How much worse will that become over the next decade, in which an additional 700,000 jobs will be located in central London? How much more congested will it be when High Speed 2 ferries even more passengers into central London terminals at peak times? For that privilege, Londoners are paying the highest transport fares in the world.

Yet these are problems that some Londoners are envious of, because parts of our capital remain islands of isolation. Even in 2013 some of my constituents are served by only one train an hour and at weekends none at all—here in our capital city, in one of the poorest wards, Northumberland Park, which has the highest unemployment, the highest levels of child poverty and the lowest levels of attainment in the country. Without transport links, such areas are starved of investment, bled of ambition and left marooned from the throbbing economic heart of the centre.

Not only is London failing its commuters and entire swathes of its suburbs, but the very status of the capital as one of the world’s greatest cities is under threat. It is not difficult to comprehend why London has been so successful. London’s triumph over the centuries is that it has constantly been open to the world as a centre for trade and finance. Today London is a magnet for some of the brightest and most innovative talents from every corner of the globe. That opportunity is being rivalled by cities such as Frankfurt and New York, and the growth in India and China.

How have the Government prepared London to meet the challenges of the next 20 years? They almost cancelled Crossrail 1. The Thameslink programme is beset by delays. They cancelled the third runway at Heathrow and kicked the search for an alternative into the long grass. They cancelled the four-tracking of the West Anglia line that would finally have provided a decent train service from one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the capital. The only ambition that this Government seem to have for the capital—the only vignette of a solution to the challenges it faces—is the two-station spur of the Northern line to Battersea power station. Small increases in capacity are set to be outstripped and overwhelmed by the forecast growth in the number of commuters. Now the Government look set to drop the ball once again, this time on Crossrail 2.

The Chancellor and the Minister will have the seen the report published last week by Lord Adonis and the London First group that details the case for a new line linking the south-west of London with the north-east of London, including three stations in my constituency. As my noble Friend made clear, this is the only way that London will be able to cope with the challenges presented to it over the next 20 years; it is the only way that London will be able to handle the growing number of commuters; and it is the only way that passengers arriving in London from High Speed 2 can be efficiently dispersed from Euston station. It is the only way that we can relieve the dangerous levels of congestion on London’s major north-south tube lines—the Victoria, Piccadilly and Northern lines—the severe overcrowding that Londoners experience on mainline routes into Clapham junction and Waterloo, and the overcrowding across the tube.

Most important are the economic benefits that the proposal would bring to some of the poorest neighbourhoods in our capital. For areas such as Northumberland Park in my constituency, Edmonton, Hackney and large parts of our capital city, we need these infrastructure projects. We need a renewed vision for transport in our city. We must have Crossrail 2, building on Crossrail 1. We need a commitment from the Minister that the Government will get on with that. We need a Bill before the next Parliament to introduce Crossrail 2 so that we can see the infrastructure here in the city, and the city can provide the economic boost to our country that is so desperately needed.