East Coast Main Line

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

The people who are serving on East Coast trains now will be the people serving on the new InterCity franchise that I have announced today. I will quote another Labour Member of Parliament; that seems to be a bit of a habit this morning. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said:

“will he be fair to the marvellous train crews of Virgin Trains, who give extraordinarily good service, and tell them that their future is assured? Will he simply award the franchise to Virgin, which has carried it out brilliantly?”—[Official Report, 15 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 53.]

In fairness, he was referring to the west coast main line, but if I go back to that statement I could quote those people time and again.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

For years in north Lincolnshire, we have been arguing to get back our through-train from London to Grimsby via Market Rasen. At the moment, the train stops at Lincoln. What hope is there of getting back our train?

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

A “panic” review of a project that is more ambitious than anything the last Government ever dreamed of? I would have thought there would be a consensus across the House for the huge investment that we are putting into the railways through Network Rail. I am working with Network Rail and it is working with me to ensure that we get the electrification programme delivered, and within an overall budget.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

10. What plans he has to improve rail services in the east midlands.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

The east midlands will share in the Government’s massive investment in the railways, which is so unlike what was delivered by the Labour party. Last week we announced major service enhancements on the Nottingham to Lincoln line, which will provide 24 additional weekday trains from next May. The east midlands has already benefited from investment of approximately £70 million to improve line speeds on the midland main line up to 125 miles per hour, and it will see further investment with electrification extended to Corby in 2017 and Sheffield in 2020.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Of course this wonderful Minister can do no wrong, and it must therefore have been due to an oversight of her wrongheaded advisers that in the invitation to bid for the east coast main line there was no requirement to include the through train to Cleethorpes and Grimsby via Market Rasen. Will she put pressure on the bidders to ensure that the through train that we used to have, and which is vital to our Lincolnshire economy, is included?

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend will know that I stood on Cleethorpes seafront only last week. I rode that line myself, and I was made fully aware of the strength of the feeling about it. Bids are currently being assessed, and I am looking forward to publishing further information in December. It is clear that we need investment in those areas of the north. The previous Government let those franchises on a zero-growth and zero-investment basis, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

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[Claire Perry]

The hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out that one of my important local campaigning priorities is the maintenance of those vital direct links, but as he will know, as a former Minister, owing to ministerial propriety I can no longer directly comment on or investigate those links. I am delighted to say, however, that electrification and investment on that network is an important priority for this Government.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

T7. I am grateful for the private reassurances given to me by the Minister, but he will know that Lincolnshire county council has wrongly decided to close Hawthorn road over the new eastern bypass around Lincoln. Under pressure, it is now opening a footbridge, which I am glad to say one can bring a horse across, but unfortunately not many of my constituents have stables at the back of their gardens to access Lincoln on a horse. Will he please put pressure on the county council to put a proper bridge over the bypass so that we can have access?

High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

First, I, too, welcome the way in which the Secretary of State has handled the issue by not accusing anybody who is not in favour of the Bill or who has signed the reasoned amendment of being a nimby. When an issue is contentious, it is crucial that there is respect on all sides. I wish we had a second day for this debate, because five-minute limits mean no real debate and this issue should be debated.

My constituency is not directly affected in the way that that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) is affected, but when the Eurostar terminal was built at Waterloo we put up with years of terrible disruption, only to find that once it was built and was being used there was a switch and it went off to St Pancras. We had all the terrible problems, but ended up with no direct link to Paris.

When I talk to my constituents about HS2, they overwhelmingly ask whether it is the right way to spend £50 billion. Many of my constituents, who will never have a decent home to live in, who will never get out of overcrowding and who live in very difficult circumstances, are asking whether the money would not be better spent on providing decent homes for everyone in this country. These people live just a mile away from the House of Commons, yet they cannot have money spent on improving the railways within Lambeth. There is no longer a direct train at peak time from Clapham High Street to Victoria, because the platforms at Wandsworth Road need to be extended. Just small amounts of money would make such a difference to commuters around London.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The hon. Lady should come to my constituency. If she missed a train at Gainsborough Central, her next train would be one week away. That is the level of investment in rural lines in Lincolnshire.

[Kate Hoey]

That is exactly what people are asking all over the country: why is £50 billion going on this particular method of improving capacity and speed? I am very lucky, as I can walk to my constituency in five minutes and drive in four, so I do not travel on trains much, but when I do so, I do not find them crowded. Many carriages are empty and I discover that they are first class—there is nobody in them. All sorts of things could be done to increase capacity.

We should also be clear that once we start this project there is no guarantee that the costs will not spiral. I am worried that once we start the project and the costs start to go up, more and more money will be taken away, and not just from other parts of the transport network. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) is unlikely to have extra money spent on railways in his area if we go ahead with this project, as everything will be geared towards the super-project. Everyone will say that that is what we must spend the money on. We are being very short-sighted. This sounds like a sexy project, it sounds like we are being modern and trying to compete with the rest of Europe, but there is not a lot wrong with our railways that could not be dealt with if we had spent money over many years, if we had invested properly and if we now invested across the country rather than in one particular vanity project.

The compensation must be much stronger and greater. It is all very well saying that people can be compensated, but if someone has built up and worked hard on a business or home in the country only to see it blighted or destroyed, compensation might help but it does not take away the pain. It will not do so for the many people who will suffer if the project goes ahead.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) said some time ago, the scheme risks draining much-needed investment away from other railway infrastructure projects for the next 30 years. I want to know why, if the former Chancellor of the Exchequer said that, my party has suddenly changed its mind on the project.

The case for HS2 is flimsy. No amount of spin or the Front Benches being nice to each other will change the basic truth that this is potentially a huge white elephant that will not heal the north-south divide. If we wanted to heal that divide, we would be starting in the north, not the south. Money will be sucked away from all the other desperately needed upgrading schemes all over the country once the project starts. The money that goes in will have no long-term benefit for vast numbers of people in the United Kingdom. I hope that if there is a Labour Government after the next election, our Chancellor of the Exchequer will reconsider the issue and not be tied into saying that whatever happens we will go ahead with the project. The project could be doomed and we want to ensure that this Parliament has a say in whether the money is spent or not.

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[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

We have heard some very good speeches, some of which have been made with a great deal of passion and knowledge. It is not surprising that most of the speeches against this proposal were by Members representing constituencies affected by the line. We have also heard very good speeches praising it by Members representing Manchester and other great cities of the north.

I want to speak for other parts of the country that are not directly affected. I see that the Secretary of State is in his place. I am sure that Parliament will approve this line and it will go ahead, so I urge him not to forget other parts of the country. Some of us are concerned—we have not received enough reassurance on this point—that it will suck investment from the rural lines and commuter lines that the vast majority of our people are using. I am not just speaking for rural people in Lincolnshire, people standing on freezing platforms in Kent, or people trying to get suburban lines into Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool or wherever. We are worried about this vast project that is costing £50 billion, and that is just the start—we all know from Public Accounts Committee reports that we will be spending a lot more than that. I ask people to spare a thought for underinvestment in our rural lines.

When I intervened on the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who was giving a passionate speech about services in London, I was met with incredulity when I said that if she tried to take a train from Gainsborough Central to Brigg and missed it, she would have to wait a whole week for the next one. How many times have I sat, or rather stood, on the platform at Market Rasen waiting for the single cattle truck plodding its way from Grimsby and Cleethorpes at 40 mph? Perhaps that is the maximum speed. If one is lucky enough to get on the train—it is very overcrowded and infrequent—one can get down to Newark. It takes me three and a half hours to drive to the middle of my constituency—that is fair enough—but if I go by train it also takes three and a half hours. On behalf of people who do not want to travel at vast speed to Birmingham and Manchester, we are making the valid point that there is also a case to be made for people who live elsewhere in our country. We have heard so much in the past about the need for speed, but interestingly we hear less and less about that.

I am worried that too much political authority appears to be invested in this project, which started with an idea by the previous Labour Government. I am a bit suspicious about the line running through so many Conservative constituencies, but I will leave that to one side—I am sure it was not meant maliciously. The project has been taken up by this Government, and so much political authority is now tied up in it. We started with the speed case, but it seems to many of us that that has been shot to pieces. We are now told that it is all about capacity, but so many other proposals—

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

The right hon. Lady makes her point very well, but she and the House will know that that is not a matter on which I can make any ruling whatsoever from the Chair.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My speech is just like one of the train journeys from Market Rasen to London—it is a bit of a stopping service.

I was making the point about capacity. Frankly, this proposal would have got through without any controversy if railway economists had started by making a careful case for capacity and if we had considered things such as better signalling, reducing the number of first-class carriages and the M40 corridor. There are many other proposals for lines—the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) has proposed improving the service from Birmingham Snow Hill to London—but there is an element of suspicion among the general public, is there not, that this is now a political project that we have to proceed with at all costs. I am not sure that that is the best way to invest in the public infrastructure of the future. Surely the best way to make decisions is to base them on careful, transparent and open studies, and that is what I urge the Government to do.

High Speed 2

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore]

I certainly hope that there will be as much mitigation as possible. Any other option, and even expanding some existing rail lines, would also cause damage and loss of housing, because when lines were built there was development around them, so it is difficult to expand them.

If we are serious about expanding our economy, we must find a way to improve capacity because I firmly believe that it will increase. We have to move forward with the project as quickly as possible. There would be regret if in future we looked back and asked, “Why did we not do it 10 or 20 years ago?” This is our opportunity to grow and distribute our economy throughout the UK.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I have the right to impose a time limit, but I think we should be all right for the time being, if Members are aware of the clock. I shall start by calling Cheryl Gillan, who, I am sure, will be considerate to other people.

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[Mrs Gillan]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Minister in a minute.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. We are in danger of going round in circles now, so perhaps the right hon. Lady could get on with her speech. Perhaps if she gives way to the Minister, we can get on and hear from other people.

[Mrs Gillan]

I give way to the Minister of course.

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[Mrs Gillan]

I am not digging up anything. The project has not got the final stamp of approval. There is still the option of pursuing other ways in which we could improve our economy.

Let me get back to my local picture, because I think that it is only fair to my constituents that some of their grievances are aired. The agricultural holdings in Chesham and Amersham will be severely impacted. Several farms will be badly affected by the construction, to such an extent that they will probably be put out of business. People cannot run an equestrian business next to a major construction site; nor can they use ground that has been submerged in 50 feet of soil. Will the Minister, although he is rightly going to defend his position, as he must, let me know what detailed work he had done on the losses that will be sustained by the businesses and particularly the farming and agricultural holdings in my neck of the woods? HS2 Ltd estimates that, across the whole route between Birmingham and London, about 300 existing businesses will be required to relocate to new premises, but people cannot relocate a farm and people cannot relocate a family business, when its land has been divided into two or part of its land has been appropriated.

I referred briefly to roads that will have to be closed, realigned or diverted during the construction phase. The impact on communities and local facilities will alter people’s travelling patterns and shopping habits, perhaps even for life. That is a great threat to the local economy. If people start to read through the detail of the environmental assessment, they can see some of the estimates of traffic congestion at the junctions of School lane and the A413, the Amersham bypass and the A404, and Chesham road and Bottrells lane—I could go on, but people will have got the idea. But I want to know what estimates the Department has made of the losses to our local economy from the delays, traffic congestion and disruption that years of construction will bring to Chesham and Amersham.

I believe that some of the claims made by consultants are not correct. There will be a lot of substitution in the economy. Yes, businesses will be attracted to the high-speed rail line and may move, as they did when the BBC, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh East referred to, went to Salford. That move has attracted many production companies and media companies to that area. However, that is substitution, because the businesses have been drawn from other parts; hence one of the very important things that was highlighted in the KPMG report was the disinvestment and the permanent loss to GDP of other regions as businesses are attracted falsely to the line.

This will be a distorting project. Many MPs around the country do not realise that there will be an effect on their constituency, which will suffer disinvestment as businesses move closer to new conurbations, for example into buildings created with Chinese investment, as we have heard, for the Manchester airport area and in other centres where they intend to build buildings that will accommodate businesses or shops.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. The right hon. Lady has been speaking for 20 minutes, so I think she might bring her remarks to a close now.

[Mrs Gillan]

That is exactly what I intend to do, Sir Edward, and I am grateful for your latitude. I think everybody understands how badly Chesham and Amersham will be affected and how strongly people feel about the matter.

I do not believe that HS2 will deliver all the benefits that have been laid out, but I can see at first hand the terrible effect that it will have on my locality and the businesses there. Many commentators, including the Institute of Directors, the New Economics Foundation and the Institute of Economic Affairs, have said that the project is not the answer to economic growth. I urge the Minister to be sympathetic to my constituents and what they are going through, and to question hard whether the project is the right one. It is still not too late to look at the alternatives.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. The wind-ups will start at 20 minutes to 11.

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[Mark Lazarowicz]

I will have to leave that point.

I will make some final points as briefly as possible. First, one strong argument for committing to high-speed routes as well as high-speed trains going to Scotland is that the economic case for the entire line is improved if Scotland is linked into the process at an early stage. That point has been made by other people, and I strongly endorse it.

My second point is about the economic benefits of the line, not just in the long term, but in the construction phase, as a direct consequence of engineering and construction. The Government must assure people like me that they are making every effort to ensure that the benefits are spread as far as possible throughout the country. A document on HS2 was recently produced, I think by the Department for Transport, that emphasised how Crossrail had brought a wide range of job benefits to large parts of the country. If one looks at the chart in that document, the vast majority of the benefits, perhaps unsurprisingly, were focused around the Crossrail route and south-east England. Hardly any benefits from construction, engineering and knock-on consequences reached further north. The Government must ensure that a major effort is made to make sure that the indirect benefits from the construction phase—jobs and employment—reach the entire country.

Finally, I have a question for the Minister about the further education college that has been proposed to provide trained workers for the high-speed line. I recognise that the college must be based somewhere, but all its activities need not be based around one location; nor must they take place at just one physical college. That initiative should be aimed at ensuring that the job benefits from the construction phase of HS2 are spread as far as possible throughout the country. I suggest to the Minister that it would be worth while to enter into discussions with the Scottish Government at an early stage, so that there could perhaps be a linked initiative in Scotland to provide similar benefits to the section of the HS2 line that I hope will be promoted by both the UK and Scottish Governments at a relatively early stage. In that way, we too can see the jobs benefits, as well as the longer-term economic benefits, of HS2, for which I think the case is very strong.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

The three speeches so far have lasted 20 minutes, 20 minutes and 17 minutes. I am afraid that Members’ speeches are going to have to be a bit more high-speed.

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[Lilian Greenwood]

I will not give way as I have very limited time to speak.

We heard this morning that the Business Secretary has announced plans for a new further education college to educate the work force we need to build HS2. That is welcome news, but we want a proper jobs and skills strategy. Last year, during the evidence sessions for the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill, we were told that that document was being prepared. Can the Minister tell us when it will be published? As he knows, the current Crossrail project has begun to train a new generation of highly skilled workers, and a plan must be in place for the HS2 project too.

Labour successfully amended the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill to make the Government account for the number of vocational qualifications gained each year. Another Labour amendment that was accepted will compel the Government to account for any underspending or overspending in the project’s annual budget. I note that the Minister’s colleague in the Lords, Baroness Kramer, described the process that we put in place as

“a very vigorous reporting process under which the Government must report back annually and record any deviation from budget, and the consequences of that…which has put in place a very intense scrutiny process around the budget.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19 November 2013; Vol. 749, c. 949.]

I am glad that Labour successfully wrote a “vigorous reporting process” into the primary legislation, but the truth is that the Government should have got a grip on escalating costs since the election.

The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) rightly raised concerns on behalf of her constituents about the uncertainty about compensation after the Government’s initial consultation was deemed to be unfair—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Lady bring her speech to a conclusion?

[Lilian Greenwood]

Certainly, Sir Edward. It is in the interests of the wider rail network, regional economies and the nation as a whole for the project to succeed. That is why I am proud to support it and why Labour wants to see HS2 delivered on time and within budget.

Transport Infrastructure

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I understand exactly where the hon. Lady is coming from. Concern has been expressed in a number of regions about the accessibility of London. However, people could consider using other airports, such as Luton and Stansted.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Do the Government accept the commission’s contention that a new runway needs to be built in the south-east before, or by, 2030?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I believe that what the commission has said is important, but we must await its final proposals and establish whether we can work to that deadline.

A14 (Tolling Proposals)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on a superb speech. She is saying everything that I would say.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Gentleman address the Chair and not turn his back?

[Mr Ruffley]

My hon. Friend asks why there was not greater consultation with Suffolk. Does she agree that now, because, as she mentioned, other A roads in our region and other regions are not being tolled, there is a risk that there will be an A road apartheid in Suffolk—discrimination against business users, and other travellers into the county? Could that be deleterious to logistics companies in Bury St Edmunds, Stowmarket and Needham Market, in my constituency, and, equally importantly, in the golden triangle of Norwich, Ipswich and Cambridge? That is one of the engine rooms of growth for the whole nation.

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend is right. I hope that the Minister realises that we are united across the county in our concern about the economic impact on the county and region, particularly in the light of our growth industries. My hon. Friend put that well.

To go into a little more detail, there were various options with the original consultation and it seems that we have taken up option 3, which includes the Huntingdon southern bypass scheme and removal of the A14 bridge, and whose estimated cost is £687 million, with a benefit-cost ratio of 2.15 and 2.26 million vehicle hours saved; and option 5, which also includes the bypass and would retain the trunked A14 through Huntingdon, with the addition of local roads.

The estimated cost of option 5 is £1.2 billion, nearly double that of option 3, with a BCR of 3.49 and 2.98 million vehicle hours saved. In both cases the eastbound saving is 19 minutes and the westbound saving is 14. The document gave, as a reason for introducing local access roads, allowing tolling to be put in more easily; so it seems that the scheme has been designed to make tolling easier, although introducing those local roads would increase complexity and cost at the Girton junction. The combination of the two options is coming out at £1.5 billion, but that sum is also due to enhancements to the A1, which were never part of the original proposals.

There are several issues to consider. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) wants to speak, so I shall draw my remarks to a close. The A14 needs to be improved. I thank the Government for investing so heavily in that key route for our region and for UK plc. However, users feel that they already pay their share; they do not want to be singled out to pay a toll while other parts of the road network continue to be fully financed.

I am proud to support the “No Toll Tax on Suffolk” campaign of the Suffolk chamber of commerce; it has gathered much momentum. I also welcome the backing of Suffolk county council, Suffolk Coastal district council, New Anglia local enterprise partnership and other business organisations. I am sure that the Minister will write to me if he cannot answer all the questions, but I ask him to listen to the concerns being put to him, because the issue is rousing Suffolk as we speak.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

The convention of the House is that if a Member wants to contribute after the initial speech, they must have the agreement of the person who secured the debate and the Minister. I remind the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) that we must leave adequate time for the Minister to sum up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

The hon. Lady was smiling at the end of her question, and that betrays the fact that it was a very good line written for her but not quite believed by her when she delivered it. We are doing a huge amount in delivering for UK infrastructure. I look forward to seeing the recommendations that she wants to put to the Davies commission, which will tell us what Labour wants to do.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

6. What improvements to transport infrastructure he has planned that will affect Lincolnshire.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)]

This Government is investing in transport infrastructure that will bring real benefits to Lincolnshire. We are bringing forward improvements to the A160/A180 by 18 months, which together with our funding for the A18/A180 will improve access to the port of Immingham. We are also providing some £50 million to support the Lincoln eastern bypass scheme. The line upgrade between Peterborough to Doncaster via Spalding and Lincoln will improve rail capacity in the area.

[Mr Leigh]

May I take my hon. Friend on a journey from the hills of Sussex to the broad plains of Lincolnshire along the old Roman way, the A15? If he goes along that route, he will find it narrow, congested and dangerous. Will he persuade his colleagues to reject the hideous wind farms that are going to disfigure it, and instead make it a dual carriageway, a noble highway taking people safely and speedily from Lincoln to Scunthorpe—the Via Norman Baker?

[Norman Baker]

I am always interested in winding journeys from Sussex to elsewhere in the country, so I look forward to being in Lincolnshire again. Wind farms are not a matter for the Department for Transport, as my hon. Friend knows, but I am sure that his comments have been noted, as you would put it, Mr Speaker.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Hammond]

My hon. Friend is right. The use of a mobile phone will qualify for an increased fixed penalty, if that is what the consultation decides. In more serious cases, that offence can be prosecuted with considerably greater penalties.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

15. What recent progress he has made on updating rolling stock on the east coast main line.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)]

In July this year, the Government announced a £4.5 billion investment in new trains under the intercity express programme. That will include new trains to replace the existing high-speed train sets on the east coast main line.

[Mr Leigh]

In the eastern counties, we are very appreciative of the fast service and the excellent rolling stock up to Newark. However, when one gets beyond Newark and into Lincolnshire, one enters a time that land forgot—and, indeed, that the Department for Transport seems to have forgotten. Will the Minister assure me that, as part of the invitation to tender process, he will ensure that there is sufficient good-quality rolling stock, in particular diesel trains, so that the long-standing campaign involving me, my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) for a direct service to Cleethorpes, via Market Rasen, has some chance of success?

[Mr Burns]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. I hope that I can go some way towards reassuring him by saying that the Government are committed to having 35 new trains on the east coast, which will be a combination of electric trains and bi-mode diesel and electric trains. It would be premature to say where those trains will feature on the network, but consideration will be given to the need to improve the service along the whole line.

Cost of Living

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks). We all know that he has not been very well recently, but he gave a fantastic speech and we wish him well. I join him in a lot of what he said about promoting family life. He made some interesting comments about the desire of women to have more children—my wife and I would have liked to have had more children, but perhaps six is enough—and about child benefit, and I will say a bit about waste in Government spending in a moment. I support child benefit as we have always had it, because not only is it the most popular benefit, but there is no fraud, error or means-testing to it and it works. So much of the waste in government is down to excessive micro-management of benefits. That is why I, like the right hon. Gentleman, believe in child benefit as we have always understood it. Many middle-class people may be under heavy financial pressure and we should recognise in the benefits system the cost of children, although I suppose I must declare an interest, as people might say, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

What I really want to discuss today is something that perhaps not many others—certainly not many Opposition Members—will be talking about. This debate is about the cost of living, but the greatest burden on families is the burden of government, and heavy and wasteful Government spending. Total Government spending increased under the previous Labour Government by 55% in real terms over the 13 years. We hear a lot from the Labour party, and indeed from the Government, about how we are now trying to correct that. Indeed, it is in the political interest of both the Labour Opposition and the Government to exaggerate what the coalition is doing to try to rein back a disastrous financial situation. Let us just imagine what would happen if a family’s spending increased by more than half but there was a paltry increase in the real wealth coming into that household. This coalition Government’s spending cuts from 2010 to 2015 will amount to only 3% of Government spending, so let us not get too excited when the Labour party tells us that these “horrendous cuts”—up to now there have been no cuts in spending; there have been cuts in the deficit, but no cuts in spending—have produced the dire economic situation we are in.

The Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent body, forecasts that for the coming year almost 41% of all output in our country—all that hard-earned money, from people slaving away in offices, factories and services—will go to the Government. That is more than the figures for America, Australia and Canada. We have heard a lot about the European Union in the past week—we have heard about its difficulties, its waste, its over-taxation and its overspending—but even many EU countries have a lower tax burden than Britain. Such countries include Ireland, Greece, which is apparently the basket case of Europe, and Spain; they all tax their economies less than we do. We are in a dire situation and we have to address it.

The Government expect to borrow a staggering £126 billion this year—imagine an ordinary family having to borrow such a proportion of their total spending every year. I take a particular interest in this because I firmly believe that we can deliver the same outputs for people in effective public services with very much more efficient inputs. I believe that big government is always accompanied by big waste.

[Albert Owen]

When the hon. Gentleman said that other European countries tax less, was he talking about the total tax take, including from industry, or just about personal taxation? As I recall it, personal taxation is significantly higher in the Republic of Ireland than in the United Kingdom.

[Mr Leigh]

I am talking about total taxation, which is the important thing to understand. I know that it is difficult to compare countries. For instance, we often talk about Italy being a basket case in terms of Government borrowing, but private borrowing is very low in Italy. We have to address this problem by considering the total taxation of all output, because that is what is of interest to efficiency and an efficient Government.

As I was saying, big government is accompanied by big waste. I am sure that many hon. Members were shocked, as I was, by a National Audit Office report in January—or rather by a report of reports; I am sure that everybody in this House avidly reads what the NAO says every week. This report was published in January, so it was not an attack on the previous Labour Government; it relates to now and the situation this minute. It is about this apparently hard-hitting, right-wing Government who are cutting left, right and centre, and persecuting the people—that is the charge against the Government; I would not say anything like that, of course. The report suggests that there is waste, at the moment, of more than £31 billion across government. Hon. Members may recall that Philip Green carried out an efficiency review, after which he said:

“You could not be in business if you operated like this. It would be impossible.”

His review identified, among other things, £700 million in saving on the Government telephone bill alone. In the past two Parliaments, the Public Accounts Committee conducted more than 400 hearings on waste. Such hearings are carrying on in this Parliament, as they will in the next Parliament and the Parliament after that. Nobody can tell me that enormous opportunities to cut waste do not remain.

Why is that issue important, given that this is a debate on the cost of living? This is not some anorak issue in which only accountants or economists should be interested. Every taxpayer in this country should be interested in what is going on in government at the moment, because the public sector is funded from the pockets of ordinary people and ordinary firms—many of them small, struggling firms—across Britain. Spending money in such a way means that the public and firms are being hit by a double-whammy, as prices are inflated by wasteful government spending, and firms have less of their own money to invest and families have less to spend. That situation is not fair.

We have mentioned the complexities of the benefits system and discussed child benefit. In addition to a hugely wasteful government system, Britain suffers from a horrendously complex tax system. Our tax code is now the longest in the world. Do a Conservative Government find that satisfactory? Our tax code has recently overtaken India’s in length and has doubled in size since 1997. Our horrendously complex tax system may have allowed the previous Government to keep many of their taxes a secret, but it has led to Britain being ranked 89th in the world, behind Nigeria and Zimbabwe, on the burden of government regulation in a recent World Economic Forum report. That simply is not good enough. I know that my friends on the Treasury Bench are doing their best, but they are not trying hard enough. They have to do better, because ordinary people and ordinary firms are paying for all this.

That complexity is structurally biased against ordinary workers and small businesses, because they lack the resources to investigate all the available loopholes. According to the Centre for Policy Studies, the effective marginal tax rate for some people on low incomes is as high as 96%. We know that, because we have done all these studies; the right hon. Members for Croydon North and for Birkenhead (Mr Field) served with me on the Select Committee on Social Security for many years, and for many years the right hon. Member for Birkenhead has campaigned on the issue of the trap for ordinary people, particularly those at the bottom of the heap, of paying marginal tax rates of 96%. We are crushing our own people, and not just with the waste for which we are responsible in our own spending. We oversee that waste in this House of Commons—we are responsible for it; nobody else out there is responsible. We crush our own people under a hugely wasteful system of government inefficiency and with increasingly complex taxes and benefits.

The rich do not suffer from that. The marginal tax rate for top-rate taxpayers is just 57.8%—the very richest do not even pay that. They do not even pay 57%. With the benefit of having successful and hugely expensive accountants, they are paying 10% or 15%.

In the most recent global competitors report by the World Economic Forum, three of the four biggest problems facing UK businesses were identified as tax rates, tax regulations and inefficient Government bureaucracy. Let me set out what I believe we should have in the Government. Apparently we are going to have a reshuffle soon. What we need are Ministers—the Prime Minister has to check on their performance—who are, like a non-executive director on the board of a private company such as Tesco, obsessed not by policy but by efficiency. We have three excellent Ministers sitting on the Front Bench—the Secretary of State for Transport, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) and the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns)—as well as our Whip. I am sure they are doing these sorts of things every day, but much more could be done. I hope the Whip is listening to all the kind comments I am making about the Ministers. I sincerely believe that this is one of the most important things the Government could do.

An obvious conclusion to reach, given what I have said, is that the tax system should be simplified. That would reduce costs and simultaneously be likely to increase revenues. As I have argued again and again, this is not necessarily a market-driven, right-wing point of view, because the lower-paid would benefit from it. The natural conclusion of such simplification would be a much flatter rate, or even a flat-rate tax system. Such a system has been successfully introduced in places as diverse as Serbia, Hong Kong and Russia. When I was in Russia recently, I spoke to a young entrepreneur. The flat-rate tax in Russia is 13%. How extraordinary that the former Soviet Union now has a more entrepreneurially based system than we have—a flat-rate tax of 13% in a large economy such as Russia.

There is a precedent for such an approach in this country. When the Thatcher Government more than halved the top tax rate, the proportion of income tax revenue paid by the highest earners rose. As I said in our debates on the Budget, I welcome what the Chancellor of the Exchequer did in cutting the top rate from 50% to 45%; indeed, I think it should be cut from 45% to 40%. Such people do not bury their money in the ground. If they are taxed less, there is more entrepreneurship and more of them stay in this country. They earn more and give more, and less effort is spent on tax evasion and tax avoidance.

As important as tax reform is, the key to Government finance is a reduction in spending. If we spend less, we can tax less—it is that simple. There is nothing inherently good about Government spending, although Ministers from parties on both sides of the House have apparently congratulated themselves on how much they have spent on the health service and education. They congratulate themselves on spending inefficiently what other people earn.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman says there is nothing inherently good about Government spending, but good can come from Government spending if it is on assets in order to redevelop capacity in the economy. We could have that rather than the current austerity programme, which is starving the economy.

[Mr Leigh]

We all accept that the Government can usefully spend on assets. I do not deny that. There is nothing wrong with Government spending, but there is something wrong with wasteful Government spending. In a recent global competitiveness report, Britain was ranked an unbelievable 72nd in the world behind Ethiopia and Tajikistan on the wastefulness of Government spending. That simply is not good enough. If a private company was ranked so low in the pecking order, questions would be asked about the people serving on the board, would they not? We have to try harder and do better. Government money does not come from nowhere. Every pound wasted by Whitehall is a pound that could have been invested by a British company or spent by a British family.

Before I conclude, let me speak about a few other issues, including aspects of the Queen’s Speech which I welcome. The right hon. Member for Croydon North talked about family life. One reason I have supported a marriage tax allowance, which sadly was once again not in the Queen’s Speech, is that it would address precisely the point he was making—the tax disincentive for a parent, usually a woman, to stay at home to look after her children. Nobody pretends that a tax gets people married or keeps people married. It simply deals with the totally unjust situation that a married person, normally a woman, who stays at home and looks after her young children is uniquely attacked by the tax and benefit system. That cannot be right.

I am glad that the high-speed rail line was not in the Queen’s Speech. I will do a deal with my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary, who will sum up the debate. I will support her high-speed line, which will admittedly cut the journey time between London and Birmingham—no doubt that is all very good and means spending the assets that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) spoke about—if she will support the building of a third runway at Heathrow airport.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Justine Greening)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Leigh]

She shakes her head, sadly, but one never knows: we might win this argument in the end. This is about ensuring that the UK is globally competitive. I have talked a lot about waste in Government spending and about spending less. We have to be globally competitive, and Heathrow has to remain globally competitive. The City of London and Heathrow are the two things that have really propelled the British economy forward over the past 15 years. The situation seems madness to me. If Heathrow is prepared to expand with virtually no cost to the Government, we should do it. I know there is a long way to go on that argument, but we will keep trying. By all means, if people want to build a new high-speed line between Gatwick and Heathrow, I am all in favour of that, but I want to create the biggest and best international airport in the world, because I want Britain to be a successful transport hub. I cannot believe that on, frankly, spurious green grounds—I do not think the argument has been particularly well made—we are denying ourselves the opportunity of creating the best airport transport hub in the world.

If I may change the subject before I conclude, I am sorry that we are not going further on education. The Secretary of State for Education gave a marvellous speech last week. He rightly bemoaned an issue about which there is very little conversation in the House. Why is it that half the places in our best universities are taken by private school pupils, despite the fact that only 5% or 10% of people go to private school? That is scandalous. What is the left doing about it? Why do we have a situation in which people are able to afford such an extraordinary advantage for their children by sending them to a private school?

I believe we should go further with the education reforms. We have created academies, which are a great success, and the Secretary of State for Education is one of the most successful members of the Government, but as well as creating academies we could learn from the success of the independent sector and create independent academies. I am not saying that the existing academies that perform well should be allowed to become independent, but what if the bottom half—those that are not performing very well—were allowed to become independent academies? What about free schools not being allowed to charge but in all other respects having the total freedom of independent schools? Let us set them up in the poorest areas and see if we can remove what is almost an appalling bias which prevents people from rising up from the ghetto and our poorest areas. Let us try to be innovative in education.

I was talking to a Labour councillor last week. Funnily enough he was from the Speaker’s constituency; I was amazed that there were any Labour councillors left in the Speaker’s constituency, but apparently there are. That councillor, who is a very good man, not a market-driven, Thatcherite, right-winger like myself, said, “This situation can’t carry on; perhaps we should actually pay some of our poorest people to go to private school.” As a way round, we could say that any child who has never been to a private school—so there would be no deadweight cost—or any pupil coming from one of the 100 poorest postcodes should be subsidised by the state to go to private school. Why should we not at least try that? Why should we, whether we are on the right or the left, be prepared to accept the great elephant in the room: that a smaller proportion of people on free school meals across the entire country get into Oxford or Cambridge than those from schools attended by the leader of the Conservative party and the deputy leader of the Labour party? Why do those two private schools send more people every year to Oxford and Cambridge than come from the entire stock of pupils in the country on free school meals? Why are we not prepared to be radical and try to think of new solutions to help those at the bottom of the heap to rise to the top and get the same opportunities enjoyed by people going to private schools?

Those are the kind of radical ideas that the coalition could propel. We have a coalition and we have to live with that. There is no point bemoaning its existence, because we did not get enough votes to get a purely Conservative Government. There are many areas where our two parties can work together. One of the best things the Liberal party has done in recent years is to make the economic the ideological case for taking people out of tax. That is the best way to help the low-paid—ordinary people—and it is one of the very best things the Government are doing.

We heard an excellent speech from the Secretary of State. He talked about freeing up the electricity sector. That is something we can work on with our Liberal friends—radical ideas to free up the economy.

This morning, there was a press conference about reforming the Public Order Act 1986 and getting rid of section 5, which outlaws insulting language. Again, Liberals, Labour people and Conservatives can unite. Section 5 has a chilling effect on debate out there. We want more vigorous debate not just out there, but in here. We want fresh and radical ideas to try to free people from the overwhelming incubus of wasteful Government spending and regulation that holds down families and small businesses. I firmly believe that this Government—a coalition of Conservatives and Liberals—is moving in that direction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for that reminder, and I am sorry that I was diverted by the irrelevancies of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). I will simply say to him that if he is talking about higher education, it is not only university fees, but the education maintenance allowance, the withdrawal of which is depriving thousands of my young constituents of getting advanced education.

[Mr Leigh]

rose—

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

Oh, I must give way to the hon. Gentleman, if Mr Deputy Speaker will allow me to do so.

[Mr Leigh]

Will the right hon. Gentleman be too alarmed if an old reactionary like me supports him on House of Lords reform?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Let’s not go there.

Rail Reform

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is right. One problem in the past has been that, every time a Government have wanted to drive efficiencies in the rail sector, they have rearranged the whole railway structure, whereas what we need to do is get the pieces that are there working better.



The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the west coast main line, which is a good example of how things can go wrong. It was pencilled in to cost £2 billion; it ended up costing £9 billion and took significantly longer than was anticipated. It is a good example of why we cannot go on like that and why we have to work with the industry and challenge it to work better itself.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Exactly. Does the Secretary of State agree that politicians are useless in any industry at picking winners, and will she reassure us that this Conservative Government remain committed to a privatised industry in which competition and a market-driven approach have driven record growth in numbers, and that there will be no return to the bad old days of British Rail with stultifying ministerial control?

[Justine Greening]

The Labour party may not be prepared to rule out nationalisation, but I am.