Oral Answers to Questions
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rachel Maclean
I can assure the hon. Lady that the Government have announced plans to develop with local partners a long-term spatial framework, and that it is along the lines of the 25-year environment plan to build beautiful and sustainable places in her community and in the whole region. Consultation with local residents and herself is central to achieving this vision.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
The Mayor of London is responsible for Crossrail’s costs and completion through Transport for London, although the Government have offered an additional £825 million in borrowing to meet Crossrail’s funding shortfall.
Felicity Buchan
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Mayor of London has monumentally mismanaged the Crossrail project, which is over budget and several years delayed, and that it is ordinary Londoners who are having to pick up the bill with a 10% increase in the share of council tax for the Mayor?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is of course correct. We have had the failure to deliver Crossrail on time, £5.2 billion; higher pensions at TfL, £828 million; the fare freeze, with £640 million of fares not collected; and fare dodging, £400 million. I know that that is all just millions and billions to us, but it all adds up.
Oral Answers to Questions
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
As the hon. Lady knows, I am very concerned about this particular matter and have been engaged with it for quite some time. Fortunately, we are in a position in the United Kingdom—with the funding that the Government are putting in and, indeed, the actions that people themselves took during the first and second lockdowns—where the cycle market has never been as buoyant as it is. However, we can never be complacent, and I follow this very carefully indeed.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Rachel Maclean)
We are investing over £2.8 billion to help people buy zero emission vehicles and accelerate the roll-out of charging infrastructure.
Felicity Buchan
My constituents in Kensington are largely very supportive of electric cars, but they are concerned about the lack of charging infrastructure. Would my hon. Friend consider mandating all new builds to have charging points, and encouraging all petrol stations and car parks to have them too?
Rachel Maclean
I am delighted to hear the support of my hon. Friend’s constituents in Kensington, which is shared of course by people across the UK. As ever, my hon. Friend is actually one step ahead of the Government. We are launching a consultation to improve drivers’ experience of using public charge points, and we will soon respond to the consultation on requiring new homes and non-residential properties to be fitted with charging infrastructure.
Covid-19: Emergency Transport and Travel Measures in London Boroughs
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Huq
My hon. Friend is right. Pedestrians often feel at the bottom of the food chain. Actually, walkers have contacted me saying that they have got nothing out of this. Cyclists have got new cycle lanes, but they seem to have been a bit forgotten in all this. I think the key thing is to take people with you and get consent, and that also means consultation.
Other issues that have popped up include kids being distressed at the much elongated minibus journey to the Log Cabin disabled children’s adventure playground. Elderly and infirm people and their carers are also affected. When we say, “Oh, the sat-nav will update”, they are a bit befuddled because they use the old-fashioned “A to Z”, as do I actually. I have a case of a lady who had regular out-patient appointments at a central London hospital, but has now been discharged because the taxi gave up on too many occasions, so that is a bit serious. This affects all sorts of businesses, such as workmen with all their tools. Shops say that they used to benefit from passing trade on the way back from longer journeys, and that has all gone now.
If hon. Members have a little google, they can see on YouTube how, all over London, traffic that was supposed to be evaporating—it was meant to disappear because, after a while, people have new habits and give up driving—has actually been displaced to main roads. Those are residential roads, and people live there too. They already had unacceptably high levels of pollution, and it has just worsened. If the whole aim was combating emissions, that is undermined when there is a very long way round—five times, 10 times longer, or whatever. In some boroughs, compliance checks that no one is driving through are done with those sinister little motor vehicles that are idling, with NO2 emissions. Again, that seems a little bit serious.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Does the hon. Member agree with me that consultation is important, but what is also important is signage? One of my constituents approached me to say that the family drives every day from Kensington through the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and on the first day that one of these schemes was operating, the family got eight tickets because they were not aware of it and the signage was so poor.
Dr Huq
Goodness me, the hon. Lady tells a chilling story. In Ealing, at least initially, there are no fines—maybe I should not be saying that—so that people get used to it. There is a softly-softly approach. Ultimately, I guess that people do get used to it, but it seems wrong to have that many tickets on day one.
In a global pandemic, life is hard enough as it is, and to make life even harder feels punitive. This policy is well tried in places such as Copenhagen, but this is just copying and pasting that into outer London, a place that people liked because of suburban convenience and because of the grid system.
International Travel
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
I may have taken the rather presumptuous position of thinking that the House knew how much I love aviation, but I will put it on record again. As a qualified pilot for 25 years, I absolutely think it is a terrific industry. However, the right hon. Member is right about the balance between getting people back to work—he knows how hard we are working to persuade people to go back—and doing it in a safe way. I do slightly take issue with him over the idea he expressed when he talked about the risk-benefit ratio, and it is very important that we do not see another spike. We are seeing the numbers creeping up, and I think it would be unforgivable if, having got on top of this virus, we re-imported this disease back in again.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Iceland has a system whereby arrivals are tested at the airport and then five or six days later. Could that be viable in the UK?
Grant Shapps
The Iceland example is very interesting. I have seen some other countries where they have been doing day zero testing and will privately, in conversation with me, concede that it does not actually provide the answers they require. A test later—whether that is five days, seven days or eight days is to be calculated by the scientists—is a much more possible and probable solution. I gave the example earlier of what happened when one of the airport bosses had his group tested a week later, and he found somebody who already had the virus but was not picked up at the beginning, so I think my hon. Friend is absolutely on to something.
Oral Answers to Questions
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
The hon. Member will be interested to hear about the transport decarbonisation plan, which I think she will find goes way beyond even the ambitions that she has set out. She will not have to wait too much longer to see that in detail, but I have already mentioned the net zero board, which is driving exactly the change she seeks.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend will be interested to hear that I am in touch with Swissport and I am following those proposals carefully. As I said in response to an earlier question, we believe that it is important to provide international standards, which may well include specific types of testing. So the answer is yes.