Heathrow Airport: Western Rail Link
Gerald Jones Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I am extremely grateful to your good self, Mr Deputy Speaker, Mr Speaker and the House authorities for granting me today’s Adjournment debate on the western rail link to Heathrow.
I was elected to represent the good people of Slough in 2017. In 2018, realising the immense importance of this rail link, I established an all-party parliamentary group with like-minded colleagues from across the Chamber. The House will therefore be aware that I have long championed the western rail link to Heathrow, which would link Great Western Railway’s network, and constituents in the Thames Valley region and beyond, to the rest of the world via Heathrow airport. This is not just a project for the Thames Valley or for the south-east of England; it is a levelling-up project that would benefit local, regional and national economic growth.
I wish to place on the record my gratitude to the western rail link to Heathrow stakeholder steering group, Heathrow airport, the Thames Valley chamber of commerce, Great Western Railway, Slough Borough Council, Network Rail, BAE, Transport for London, the Department for Transport, Slough Estates Group, Atkins and others for all their hard work, expertise and invaluable advice to our all-party group over several years. Indeed, as eloquently explained by the Thames Valley chamber of commerce, the proposed four-mile rail link to London Heathrow airport would connect 20% of the UK population to within one interchange of our nation’s main hub airport. This strategic development would facilitate more direct access for travellers, allowing constituents to travel direct to Heathrow, eliminating the need to travel first to London Paddington and then back out again.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on the work that he has done on this for a number of years. Does he appreciate that the project would benefit not just Slough and that area of England, but the west and Wales in particular? Many constituents of mine have done that journey to Paddington and then back out. I wish him well with the project and hope that interest from the Government will be forthcoming.
Mr Dhesi
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He has eloquently put on record how the Welsh Government themselves have strongly supported the link. I know that he is a strong champion for his constituents, and he has been doing that work on a plethora of issues, but in particular within our all-party group. Importantly, greater connectivity to Heathrow would bolster jobs, growth, trade, tourism, education and regeneration.
Victims of Road Traffic Offences: Criminal Justice System
Gerald Jones Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this morning, Ms Nokes. I too would like to congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing the debate and opening it powerfully. I would like to raise a specific case I have been working on for some time. In August 2017, 22-month-old Pearl Melody Black from Merthyr Tydfil was tragically killed while walking with her father and brother. Pearl was killed when an occupied vehicle rolled from a private drive in Merthyr Tydfil on to the highway, down a hill, crashing into a wall that subsequently crushed her and injured her father and brother.
In the months after the incident, officers from the serious collision unit of South Wales police worked tirelessly to put a case together to provide justice for the family. In short, all tests concluded that the car was mechanically sound, and that it had rolled because the handbrake was not fully engaged, and the automatic transmission was not fully placed into park mode.
The case was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service locally and in London, and an independent QC was hired by the CPS to consult. Everyone was hopeful of a conviction under the death by dangerous driving category. The CPS looked into other possible options. After a number of months, however, it stated that it was unable to send the case to court, as a glitch in the law states that the vehicle must have started its journey on a public road for a prosecution under the Road Traffic Act 1988.
Even though Pearl was killed on a public road, the fact that the vehicle started its descent from a private drive meant that the prosecution was not possible. The coroner stated that the vehicle was well maintained. It seemed the issue was very much driver operation. The inquest heard that the handbrake had not been fully applied in the park mode. The inquest in October 2018 resulted in an outcome of accident.
With the support of South Wales police and the CPS, Pearl’s parents seek a change in the law to prevent other families from finding themselves in a similar situation, unable to secure justice due to a legal loophole, following such a tragic and completely preventable incident. As Gemma and Paul acknowledge, it will not help to bring justice for Pearl, as legislation is not retrospective, but if the law can be changed to prevent anyone else from suffering such injustice again, that might provide some comfort.
I have had meetings with Government Ministers in the past few years. Although they were helpful and sympathetic, there has been no major transport Bill to provide a way of introducing this change. I pursued a ten-minute rule Bill, but it failed as it ran out of time. I am hoping that an amendment to another related Bill may be a way forward, in the absence of a wider overhaul of the road traffic offences legal framework.
There are a huge number of incidences where private land adjoining public land is regularly used, and is potentially dangerous, including residential driveways, as I mentioned, as well as verges and land for schools and nurseries, to mention some of the most common. When we consider those examples, we can see that driving on that specific category of land can present a high risk to people in everyday situations, especially children, the elderly and the more vulnerable among us.
Many hon. Members would agree that nobody who has suffered the loss of a loved one, or who has had an accident or been injured as a result of a driving offence, should have to endure the injustice of seeing those responsible go free, simply because of a loophole in the law. Prosecutions for driving offences, and any illegal action, should be based on what happened, not where something happened.
The campaign to amend, update and overhaul current legislation would give people such as Gemma and Paul Black, as well as many others, the peace of mind that there are consequences for dangerous driving, no matter where it occurs. It would send a powerful message to help prevent such needless and avoidable tragedies happening in future. I thank the hon. Member for North Devon and wish her success. I congratulate her and the all-party parliamentary group on their work. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gerald Jones Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Richard Holden)
Our Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 received Royal Assent on 23 March and will protect seafarers who are working on vessels that operate regular international services to and from the UK from being paid less than the national minimum wage. It will boost the pay of thousands of seafarers who work tirelessly to maintain supply chains and transport passengers safely across our waters.
Gerald Jones
DP World, the shamed parent company of P&O Ferries, saw its profits soar to £1.5 billion last year and paid out a massive dividend after sacking 786 seafarers and replacing them with cheaper agency crew. The P&O workforce now face 60 more redundancies. When will this compromised Government start working with trade unions such as the RMT and prioritise the jobs and rights of seafarers and port workers in the UK over the merciless profiteering of DP World? Or does it just prove that it pays to exploit workers in Conservative Britain?
Mr Holden
I disagree. When I took the Seafarers’ Wages Bill through this House, I ensured that the Government made a number of concessions in this space. The Secretary of State has recently discussed with the French Government further options to work together to improve conditions for seafarers working on cross-channel routes between England and France. That work continues apace.
International Travel
Gerald Jones Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
That’s how to do it, Mr Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend appreciates the science, he appreciates that when we were not able to move Pakistan on to the amber list, the level of vaccination was, from memory, about 20%, and he appreciates that we deliberately set up an intergovernmental working group so that officials could work together to overcome those issues. I would have thought that the whole House wants to welcome Pakistan’s coming off the red list, as my hon. Friend has done.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
As international travel resumes, a growing number of constituents who live or work abroad in places such as Australia and Zambia, to name just a couple, are having difficulty with travel if they received their vaccinations in those other countries. Obviously, that impacts not just their travel here but their ability to get on with their life when they are in the UK. I heard what the Secretary of State said earlier, but will he give more detail on the progress that the Government are making on recognising vaccines of a similar standard, strength and efficacy so that we can have more reciprocal agreements with other countries?
Grant Shapps
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that sensible question. There are already 50 countries using vaccines that we recognise through the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. From this point forward, we will both assist other countries on the regulatory requirements to come on to our list—our requirements to on-board them—and look at how we can potentially recognise vaccines that we do not yet recognise. The MHRA is looking at that process the whole time, and I am sure it will have more to say about that type of thing in due course.
Income tax (charge)
Gerald Jones Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Although the investment that this Budget provides in our public services is welcome, it does not go far enough, and it does not bring our public services and local authorities back to a level we saw before this decade of austerity began in 2010. Our councils and public services are suffering and they need some genuine hope that austerity really has ended.
The Government’s new commitment to borrowing to invest, set out in this Budget, shows that the past decade of austerity was a failed experiment and that, ultimately, our communities and public services endured a long decade of hardship and immense pressure for a political choice. As we know, the budget for the Welsh Government has been cut by £4 billion since 2010, and this new investment does not come close to delivering the support our local authorities and our communities desperately need now. The additional £360 million of funding promised for Wales is welcome, but much more is needed, especially given that the UK Government clawed back £200 million from Wales on a recalculation only earlier this year. We all know that this welcome money does not come close to dealing with the cost of repairs and recovery following last month’s floods, let alone to supporting the Welsh NHS and all our other public services, which continue to suffer and operate under continued pressure from austerity, particularly as they prepare for dealing with the virus. We have been told time and time again that austerity is ending or has ended, and this Budget was a missed opportunity to give us all some hope that that is now truly the case. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has since confirmed what we all already knew: that this Budget does not end austerity or truly reverse the decade of cuts our communities have suffered.
On the virus, although the extra package of support announced by the Treasury to help the Welsh Government deal with the outbreak in Wales is welcome, we need clarity on exactly what will be provided and when, so that Wales can be prepared for the next stages of the spread; especially as the Welsh NHS is already under significant pressure from operating on budgets that we have endured since 2010. We have concerns about the impact on the training-based apprenticeships and on training providers, trainees and apprentices. Obviously, a lot of that is a devolved area, but we need much more support from the UK Government to ensure that Wales is able to meet its responsibilities in these areas.
Due to the unprecedented nature of the spread of this virus and its devastating impact on businesses, communities and, crucially, families, I urge the Chancellor to bring forward emergency measures to support jobs, small businesses, including pubs and restaurants, and the most vulnerable in our society, as we all attempt to weather this increasingly serious and constantly changing situation.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we need support for not just small businesses, but one-person businesses? I have been inundated by constituents contacting me because they run a business by themselves and do not qualify for much of this support. I hope that the Chancellor will make an announcement on that, because many people are desperate for that help in the future.
Gerald Jones
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that. Indeed, only yesterday, I received an email from a constituent who was having similar problems. Such support is appropriate and we hope that the Chancellor will bring forward some measures later today or in the very near future.
I welcome the Welsh Labour Government’s response to the outbreak, which has seen a £200 million emergency package provided to support retail, leisure and hospitality businesses across Wales suffering due to the outbreak. We must also support our food banks in the coming months, because we know they will be needed much more than ever.
It was shocking that the Chancellor made no mention of Wales when talking about the damage from last month’s flooding. Communities in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, and across Wales, were some of the hardest hit by last month’s storms, and the funding we desperately need to recover must now be forthcoming, as it has been promised—by the Prime Minister indeed. The cost of the initial repairs is estimated to be more than £15 million in my constituency alone, and we need assurances that Wales will not lose out and will get the funding it needs for our communities and businesses to recover.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) mentioned earlier, it was alarming not to hear anything in the Budget statement about progress on how EU development funding will be replaced at the end of the year. There are just nine months to go until the EU development funding programmes end and we have still not had any information or clarity from the Government on how the funding streams will be replaced, or any clarity on the proposed shared prosperity fund. For months, Members from all parties have called for clarity on the fund. The people of Wales need answers. There is a gap of well over £300 million in EU funds for the Government to fill. They cannot hide or kick the issue into the long grass any longer. Our public services, local authorities and businesses need assurance and must be given time to prepare for the transition. I urge the Minister to give us clarity and confirm that it will be “not a penny less, not a power lost,” as we have been promised time and again.
I welcome the measures introduced so far to help our communities and businesses to cope with the current situation with covid-19. I praise the Welsh Government in particular, and local authorities and community organisations in Wales and throughout the UK, for how they have responded to the virus and sought to protect the most vulnerable among us. I also praise the incredible acts of kindness and compassion that we have seen from so many residents—I know that all Members are seeing the same in their communities—as well as the community initiatives we have seen as we endeavour to help those who need it most. We will unfortunately need much more of that in the coming months.
Finally, I urge the Chancellor and the Government to take the decisive action required to protect those who will be hit hardest by the virus outbreak and who do not have the means to support themselves. It would be a good start to remove the five-week wait for universal credit and to support self-employed workers with a realistic statutory sick pay. I hope the Minister will show that this message and the calls from other Members have been heard, and that the Government will now do what is necessary in this increasingly severe and fast-moving situation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gerald Jones Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
Michael Ellis
The Department and the Secretary of State take these matters extremely seriously, and a great deal of work continues to be done on the subject of road safety. Any deaths or injuries via drink-driving are of course totally unacceptable, and we will do everything we can to continue to mitigate that. The fact is that the Department has doubled the penalty points for improper use of a mobile phone while driving, and we have also been investing via Facebook in the Think! campaign. We continue to work across the board to mitigate these issues. We are in constant contact with the Home Office and the police service on this issue, and that will continue.
Gerald Jones
In August 2017, 22-month-old Pearl Melody Black from Merthyr Tydfil was killed after a runaway car hit a wall, which fell on top of her. The current legislation did not allow the Crown Prosecution Service to bring justice to my constituents, Paul and Gemma Black. I have written to the Secretary of State, to the Department and to Ministers and previous Ministers to request a meeting to see whether we can work together to bring about a change in the legislation so that other parents do not have to endure this in future. Will the Minister agree to meet me to see what can be done?
Michael Ellis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that tragic case of the runaway vehicle. The decision to prosecute lies with the Crown Prosecution Service. It would be inappropriate for the Department for Transport to comment on its decision, but I would be happy to meet him. I can say that DFT officials have been in discussion with the CPS and the Ministry of Justice about the case and dangerous driving offences more broadly, and we will continue to monitor the situation.