Oral Answers to Questions
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Simon Lightwood
I have already mentioned the fantastic benefits of the Bus Services Act. It gives local leaders the tools that they need to take back control of their bus services, and to shape them around their communities, through improved enhanced partnerships, franchising or local authority operated bus companies.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
I receive regular correspondence from constituents raising concerns about unreliable bus services. These are especially problematic in areas like Croxley Green, where residents are already suffering because of limited bus routes and late-running services. Given that many people rely on buses to travel throughout my constituency, what steps are the Department taking to ensure that the residents of South West Hertfordshire have access to a reliable transport network?
Simon Lightwood
The Bus Services Act empowers local leaders to choose the model that works best for their area. It includes a measure on socially necessary local services. Under that new measure, local transport authorities with an enhanced partnership will be required to identify local services that are considered socially necessary. They will need to put in place requirements that must be followed before any services can be changed or cancelled.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Heidi Alexander
I am interested to hear that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents want to avail themselves of concessions provided by the Labour Mayor of London. The hon. Gentleman will know that Londoners often pay a precept to fund some of the entitlements they have in London. That is why his constituents, who fall outside the Greater London boundary, do not have those concessions available to them.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Simon Lightwood
I entirely appreciate the problems that the hon. Member and her constituents have experienced as a result of Hammersmith bridge. Further information on the structures fund will be announced in due course.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Several of my constituents have written to me, concerned that Arriva, which provides local bus services, has cancelled or reduced some of their local routes, such as the 322 in Maple Cross and the 328 in South Oxhey, leaving them with no other transport options aside from costly taxis. What will the Minister do to ensure that everyone has access to public transport, such as those vital bus services?
Simon Lightwood
I will expect the hon. Gentleman to walk through the Lobby with the Government when our Bus Services (No. 2) Bill comes forward. It is exactly designed to take back control of our bus services, which the Conservative party completely and spectacularly failed to do.
The Bill will empower local leaders to choose a model that works best for their area. It includes, as I mentioned, a socially necessary local services measure. Local transport authorities that operate under an enhanced partnership will be required to identify local services that they consider to be socially necessary and put in place requirements that must be followed before such services can be changed or cancelled. They also need to consider the alternative options available to them.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(8 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. This year, we are providing local authorities in England with £1.6 billion of funding for roads maintenance, including more than £75 million for the East Midlands combined authority, of which over £4.3 million is for Derbyshire. Those councils can now get on with the job. We have also introduced new reporting requirements, meaning that from next month people will be able to see exactly what their councils are doing with that money. We will end Britain’s pothole plague.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
On-street parking has an effect on our local roads. In Kings Langley, my local high street is suffering significantly from the Liberal Democrat-led council imposing parking restrictions in a way that has caused confusion not just to businesses but to local residents. Can the Minister give any guidance to Dacorum council on how to communicate better with residents to ensure that on-street parking is properly adhered to, but not to the detriment of our high streets?
Lilian Greenwood
I understand how important it is for people to access their high streets. That issue obviously relates to parking, but it is also about the availability of active travel and public transport. I am not going to dictate how local authorities should implement parking restrictions in their area; that is for them to decide. We provide them with the powers and the resources, and it is for local people to decide what is right for their area.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Simon Lightwood
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I encourage her to continue to speak with the operator to understand whether changes can be made to the route to better meet her constituents’ needs. Our buses Bill, alongside the £2.4 million for Reading and the £1.6 million for West Berkshire, will give local leaders the tools to deliver better bus services for passengers.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Local bus services are part of the integrated travel plans for my constituency, but my constituents also rely on Transport for London to commute into London. One frustration of my community is that concession fares are offered to London residents who live very close to the Hertfordshire border but not to my constituents. As accessibility to public transport remains one of my top priorities, will the Minister push Transport for London to extend those concessions to every TFL user regardless of their address?
Simon Lightwood
That is a devolved matter, but I appreciate that TFL also subsidises many routes outside that boundary. I am happy to pick up that matter with the hon. Gentleman outside the Chamber.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)
We are delivering on the plan for rail commitments to improve railway ticketing. We recently announced that contactless pay-as-you-go will be extended to another 53 stations in the south-east, and we are working with Greater Manchester and the West Midlands on pay-as-you-go trailblazer devolution deal commitments. Some 99% of all tickets can be purchased online or through ticket machines.
Mr Mohindra
May I wish the Minister of State a happy big birthday? Sarah from my office thinks he looks no older than 25; I may not always agree with her on that one.
One of my constituents, who works at a local station, reached out to me last week with concerns about the Department’s plans. In the email, my constituent said:
“By closing the ticket office, you take away a focal point of contact. How is someone in need going to find me on a station that is as big and spread-out as ours?”
Can the Minister reassure us both that those who need assistance will be able to locate staff easily?
Huw Merriman
There is no better place to celebrate my half century than this place, with friends and even greater colleagues.
I thank my hon. Friend—and I thank his constituent—for the work he performs at Berkhamsted and Tring stations. These stations, along with another 51 stations, will be getting pay-as-you-go by the end of the year. We know that 90% of transactions are completed outside ticket offices, and this shift tends to increase for stations that operate pay-as-you-go. He asked about ensuring that staff at ticket barriers are easily identifiable. I believe that is the case, and we will certainly make sure, as these reforms are rolled out by train operators, that it continues to be the case. The proposals from train operators are aimed at redeploying ticket office staff to parts of the station where all passengers will access them and see them.
Rail Ticket Offices
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Huw Merriman
I will be looking to speak to the Scottish Executive. In Scotland, similar proposals have, as I understand it, been rolled out to a number of ticket stations by ScotRail. I want to assess whether that was a mandate from the Executive. I will certainly be having a chat with them to see what lessons can be learned, given that Scotland appears to have gone before England in that regard.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
May I take this opportunity to welcome the extension of contactless payments to Berkhamsted and Tring in South West Hertfordshire? I declare an interest as a local commuter from one of those stations. Although this initiative on rail ticket offices will, in my eyes, help more travellers, can my hon. Friend reassure the House that additional support will remain for those who require help, such as the elderly and the disabled?
Oral Answers to Questions
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his constituents. My officials continue to work closely with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority on the proposal to open a new rail station at Golborne as part of the £1 billion city region sustainable transport settlement announced earlier this year. Local partners are currently producing an outline business case to support the proposal, which we expect to receive and consider in due course. Bids to open Kenyon Junction station were submitted in the second and third rounds of the ideas fund, but were sadly unsuccessful.
Mr Mohindra
I welcome the Secretary of State to his place. Unfortunately, I have had countless pieces of correspondence from my constituents about buses in my local area of South West Hertfordshire. Services are typically infrequent and consistently late. Can he update the House as to what he is doing to ensure that those services are more reliable so that we can continue to encourage people to use public transport?
Mr Harper
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue and I am sorry to hear about the difficulties that his constituents are facing in accessing bus services. I know from my constituency how vital bus services are for individuals to get to work and to access education and healthcare. We are engaging with bus operators and local authorities to help to resolve the challenges that they face. The national bus strategy sets out our vision for bus services across England to deliver better bus services. To that end, we are investing more than £1 billion to support local authorities to deliver their bus service improvement plans, including £30 million for Hertfordshire County Council, which will support improvements to bus services in his constituency.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gagan Mohindra Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Wendy Morton
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that rail projects such as this are a vital way of levelling up and growing the economy right across every part of the country. I look forward to receiving the business case next month, and I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend and stakeholders to discuss the scheme further.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
The Centre for Economics and Business Research has estimated the cost of the RMT’s strike action to be at least £91 million due to workplace absences. However, Network Rail has estimated the direct cost of last week’s strike to the rail industry to be between £100 million and £150 million.
Mr Mohindra
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. The effect of the covid-19 pandemic on the rail industry has been well documented, as have been his and the Chancellor’s extensive efforts in providing support for our railways during that time. Does my right hon. Friend share my disappointment that, after two years of taxpayers’ money being spent subsidising the rail industry, the RMT chose to strike instead of accepting the pay rise it has been offered or continuing to negotiate?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is right, but it is actually even worse than that. Not only was £16 billion of taxpayers’ money put in—£600 per family in this country, or £160,000 per individual railway employee—but the RMT balloted for strike action under the false pretence that there would not be a pay rise, when in fact the pay freeze had already ended. That is unjustified and unjustifiable action that the whole House should be condemning.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill
Gagan Mohindra ExcerptsFriday 21st January 2022
(4 years ago)
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Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
I rise like a bat out of hell to contribute to today’s debate. First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for getting the Bill to its Third Reading in this place, and I welcome the Minister to her place on the Front Bench—I think this is the first time I have been in a debate for which she has been the Minister. This issue ties in nicely with two important local campaigns that I am running: the first is safer streets, and the second is reliable and healthy transport. Around this time last week, I was singing the praises of my own local taxi firms: how critical they have been in the community over the past 22 months during this global pandemic, and how much they are regarded as a core part of the community.
I welcome the Bill as it is drafted, but I would like to hear the Minister’s views on any unintended consequences. All legislators want to create good laws, and rightly so, but I am aware that cab drivers are really reliant on their jobs, and this Bill could potentially prohibit that. Although I have been a councillor for many years, I have never had the privilege of sitting on a licensing committee—partly because they were daytime meetings, but also because of the expertise and level of training required to sit on those committees—so once again, as others have, I applaud the quality of those discussions. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington addressed this issue earlier, and I hope that the Minister will do so in her closing remarks, but my concern is where human error might lead to a particular taxi driver being on the list, so to speak. That should not prevent them from having due process and the ability to appeal, or render them unable to take on further jobs while the process is being followed through.
Other Members have spoken about the size of the industry—the 343,000 different licences and 276 licensing authorities that are out there. It is a really important and core part of communities up and down the country. My constituency is really reliant on taxis; although, as I have said previously, we have some great transport links north to south via public transport, both train and the tube, our east to west links are not so great. Although we have a bus service, it is not consistent enough to mean that people can use it as a daily means of getting around. I, for one, need either to drive to the station or use my local cab company to get there in order to commute down to London.
The other thing that is really important about this Bill is the confidence it will give to users of that particular mode of transport. We have already spoken about the safety implications not only for women but for vulnerable people and those who are younger—those who need that transport to get to school, sports clubs, or whatever it may be. Anything we can do to give them confidence and put safeguards in place is absolutely the right thing to do. It is probably worth remembering that 98% of taxi hire drivers are men, and about 2,500 reported assaults on women in 2018 were from one taxi app alone, so the proactive nature of this Bill is right and proper. I applaud the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and others who have spent many years trying to get to this point. I look forward to the Bill getting on to the statute book, subject to its progress in the other place.
We have not yet mentioned the wider use of taxi firms, but I hope that the Bill will also help in our battle against criminal gangs. A very small minority of cab drivers abuse the system—in county lines, for example—and I would argue that they are probably inclined to pursue other criminal activities as well. This process will make it harder for them to do so. It might be a slight inconvenience for local authorities and applicants, but it is worth it if the quality improves. I know from my conversations with drivers that they are proud of their industry and as keen as anyone else to remove the bad apples, and I think the Bill will make that easier.
I will bring my remarks to a close, because I am conscious that other Members wish to speak. We have talked about a national database. Local authorities already have this information to hand, and all that the Bill is asking them to do is collate it in one system, so I do not think there is much of a barrier to getting this done relatively quickly and cheaply.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), as so many have done from across the House. We have been on a similar journey with our private Members’ Bills—at least, I hope we have, because I hope we will reach mine a little later today. I applaud him for everything he has done to get to this stage, not least passing Committee stage without amendment. I know, only too well, what a challenge that can be.
Taxis are not just a convenient mode of transport, but a lifeline for many of our constituents. During the pandemic, taxi drivers have been tremendously important in my local area of Aylesbury. They helped ensure that people could get to urgent appointments and were particularly important for vulnerable residents. On behalf of the people of Aylesbury, I thank our local taxi drivers for all the hard work they have done in what has been an incredibly challenging period of almost two years.
As we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members, taxis are especially important for those members of our community who are disabled. Having a convenient door-to-door service helps to give disabled people the freedom to travel locally, thereby enabling them to live the lives that everybody else lives, often without giving a second thought to the way they get around. That can prove essential to the wellbeing of disabled people and help to combat loneliness and isolation. Many taxi firms in Aylesbury provide transport for schoolchildren who have special educational needs or disabilities, helping them to get the provision they need, so they receive the best education possible.
Indeed, a recent report from the Department for Transport showed that, on average, disabled people are 55% more likely to take journeys by taxi or private hire vehicles than non-disabled people. That underlines why it is so important that safeguarding is at the very highest level, and my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington’s Bill is helping to achieve just that.
My constituency is called Aylesbury, after the proud county town of Buckinghamshire, but the seat is, in fact, quite rural. Almost two thirds of my constituency, including many villages and hamlets, such as Speen, Lacey Green, Great Hampden, Bledlow Ridge and Radnage, is nestled in the quiet and peaceful tranquillity of the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty.
Mr Mohindra
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Chilterns are a beautiful part of the world and we should do all we can to protect them?
Rob Butler
I entirely agree. Many people adore living in that very beautiful area and they want to protect it and ensure, for example, that houses are not built on the stunning green landscapes. However, people also have a cost to pay when they live in this area, which is that there is very little in the way of public transport. Consequently, they need to drive or be driven in cars. In practice, that means travelling to Aylesbury or High Wycombe to do their shopping, going to one of the many excellent restaurants in Aylesbury or visiting the exceptional Aylesbury Waterside Theatre if they would like to see some of the fine performances that take place there.
If, for example, someone had wanted to travel from Great Hampden to Aylesbury to do some shopping at 9 o’clock this morning, they could not have done that if they were relying on public transport. Equally, if I wanted to travel from Speen to Aylesbury at the same time by bus, I would first have had to walk for a mile downhill along very narrow country roads to reach the nearest bus stop. Although there are some excellent community initiatives, such as the Risborough and Wendover dial-a-rides, which help to serve our more rural areas, connecting people—particularly many elderly residents—to places such as Aylesbury, Princes Risborough and High Wycombe means reliance on a taxi. Taxis are essential to get out and about.
That is why this legislation is so important for my constituents in Buckinghamshire, just as it is for the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington, and—as we have heard this morning—for constituents across the length and breadth of this country, whether they are represented by Government or Opposition Members.
Although taxis are convenient, it is vital that they are also safe. The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend helps to ensure that that will be the case, by requiring taxi and private hire vehicle licensing authorities in England to share any information about recent adverse licensing history. The purpose of this Bill is admirably clear. It will ensure that only a fit and proper person will be licensed to convey passengers from A to B. Therefore, it will dramatically reduce the likelihood that an unsuitable person will be granted or hold a taxi or private hire driver’s licence. The key, of course, is the new central database, into which licensing authorities in England will be required to put relevant information about cases where an authority has suspended, revoked or refused to grant or renew a taxi or private hire driver’s licence, because of a relevant—that is an important word—safeguarding or road safety concern that relates to the driver.
I have to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I was rather surprised to learn that no such database existed already; I am very pleased that my hon. Friend has introduced this Bill to correct, at pace, that glaring omission. I am very glad, too, that he has also gone much further than the current statutory guidance issued to local authorities, to allow for the recording of inappropriate behaviour by drivers that is relevant to their responsibilities when carrying passengers. Although such behaviour might not have warranted police investigation or reached the threshold to meet a criminal prosecution, what will happen now will permit licensing authorities to better safeguard the public by identifying worrying patterns of behaviour by drivers. Having that data easily accessible on a central database will mean that unscrupulous drivers who are a safeguarding risk to their passengers cannot just hop to another licensing area to acquire a new licence.
That is why it is so important that licensing authorities should have a duty to search the database and have regard to relevant information. We have heard an awful lot this morning about recording the data, but of course that is useful only if people then access the data and act on it. I am very pleased to see that my hon. Friend’s Bill ensures that that will happen.
There are clear requirements for decision-making authorities to request the relevant information from the authority that has made an entry of concern, and a duty for that latter authority to respond within a specified timeframe. Again, that is really important as it means that these things do not just go into a hole of paperwork and get completely forgotten about. I am very glad to see that. In short, a centralised database will allow for a joined-up approach between licensing authorities, which will make our roads safer.
In conclusion, it is clear that we must protect our constituents from disreputable and harmful drivers, and this Bill will allow us to do just that. However, I will end where I began, because it must be stressed that the Bill will affect only a minority of drivers. The vast majority are hard-working, law-abiding and vital members of our community. I repeat my thanks to drivers in my constituency of Aylesbury and my congratulations to my hon. Friend on the success of his Bill thus far.