Civil Aviation Bill

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I could not agree more. I will discuss previous experience, but, as the hon. Gentleman says, recent experience underscores the expectation that the Government, the authorities or the airports will have to deal with the experience of passenger delays. The horror stories that are starting to come out about passengers experiencing delays of some hours because of shortages of immigration staff and the article in The Daily Telegraph on Monday or Tuesday of this week in which the previous chief executive of UKBA offered some analysis of the problem underscore the fact that there is an important matter to be addressed.

Amendment 9 is the generic proposal. It states:

“A licence must include provisions requiring the holder of a licence to develop passenger welfare plans.”

That is an all-encompassing proposal that we think would cover all the matters that passengers would expect airports and airlines to deal with, including stranded passengers, resilience, delays and all manner of difficulties that passengers might experience. Amendment 10 looks specifically at the position of stranded passengers and suggests that something should be done for them.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

As ever and as was the case in Committee, I am following the logic of my hon. Friend’s contribution. Will he expand a little on why it should be the owners of airports who provide provision for stranded passengers and not the airlines, as has previously been established in law?

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[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

This group of amendments draws attention to the importance of the passenger experience. The Transport Committee has looked at that theme a number of times over the years. Some improvements have been made, but there are still major questions, some of which are raised by the amendments.

Overriding the specific points made by the amendments is the general question of who speaks for passengers. The previous organisation, the Air Transport Users Council airport consultative committee, stopped being responsible for airing passengers’ views. It was suggested that Passenger Focus might take up that responsibility, but that did not materialise. When the Transport Committee questioned the CAA in our pre-legislative scrutiny, it told us that it was setting up a panel. When we asked what form the panel would take, how its members would be chosen and how it would operate, the answers were unclear. There is still a big question mark over whether there is effective representation for air passengers. Such representation does not seem to be enshrined in the Bill. I would like to hear the Minister’s comments on that.

[Graham Stringer]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point about who represents passengers. Does she agree that a flaw in the Bill is that it does not state not only who represents passengers but what the interests of passengers are? If that major flaw is not corrected today, I hope it will be corrected in the other place.

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to some important points. I agree that the matter needs further thought, and I hope that the Minister can respond on it.

The Select Committee’s work also drew attention to some problem areas in the allocation of responsibility for looking after passenger experiences. Key passenger concerns, particularly about passport and immigration issues, the time it takes people to get into the country and baggage handling, are not necessarily the responsibility of the airports, but they are, in reality, seen as responsible for them. We have heard examples recently of long queues, which are the responsibility of the UK Border Force, yet happen in the airport and are part of the air passenger’s experience. There do not seem to be any means of addressing that dual responsibility in the Bill, and that needs attention.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) referred to the Select Committee’s earlier work on the implications of bad passenger experiences and the need for passenger welfare plans. The problems that air passengers experience at times of disruption during otherwise fairly normal periods are a long-running issue, and there has also been the near-breakdown of the service in situations such as very bad weather. We produced a report drawing attention to the matter and Ministers told us, or certainly implied, that the new licence conditions could contain requirements for passenger welfare plans to be put into practice, so that there would be clear responsibility for looking after passengers and giving them information in times of severe disruption. That does not seem to be happening in the Bill.

I know that the Civil Aviation Authority, in laying down what I think it calls its indicative licence conditions, has said that passenger welfare issues are part of the licensing process. However, it is extremely unclear whether the conditions will be enforceable, how clear they will be and whether there is to be a further consultation period before any such conditions are laid down. That is another area of concern.

All the points that I have made relate to the amendments, and I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response. The experience of passengers travelling by air is extremely important, and it is time that it became a focus of our attention.

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[Mrs Villiers]

As I shall come on to explain, I do not believe that the licensing regime is an appropriate mechanism to address issues relating to border controls.

The CAA sought initial views from industry in drafting the indicative licence. However, Parliament has not yet concluded its consideration of the Bill, so the CAA has not yet begun to consult on proposed licence conditions for each airport that will be subject to regulation. Until consultations have taken place no final decisions will be taken about what goes into the licence. However, if the Bill is passed as drafted the CAA will consider the extent to which it is necessary to include conditions on resilience and passenger welfare in the licence. The CAA expects activities that may be part of the new licence regime to include taking into account other obligations on service quality standards, and the success of codes of conduct and voluntary arrangements adopted by the industry. As the body with the relevant operational expertise, the CAA is well placed to determine appropriate and effective licence conditions. The amendments could undermine our goal of giving the specialist regulator a flexible toolkit to protect the passenger, so I hope that the Opposition will not press them to a vote.

[Graham Stringer]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. As ever, she is generous with her time in answering questions. My question is slightly rhetorical. Does she accept it is much more difficult for such airports as Heathrow, which operates at 99% capacity, to be resilient?

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[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I intend to touch on Europe shortly.

Carrying out such an approach presents a challenge to the industry. Directions from Europe, with which any UK regime will have to comply, usually mandate a blanket approach. As my hon. Friend says, that may well be changing. Through the new clause, we seek to require parliamentary scrutiny and approval before Ministers are permitted to undertake what would be one of the most significant reforms to aviation security in the past two decades.

In Committee, the Minister suggested that Labour Members have set our face against moving towards a risk-based approach. That is not the case. We simply believe that any such move is serious enough to require parliamentary scrutiny—at the point and in the circumstances where the Government seek to make it.

The Government’s impact assessment predicts significant reductions in regulation and costs. If they were to emerge in practice, they would, of course, be welcome—provided they did not result in security being compromised. There is support for such a reform from airlines and airport operators, and we have listened carefully to their opinions.

[Graham Stringer]

My hon. Friend accurately relates what the Government’s regulatory impact statement says. Will he acknowledge that, as we debated in Committee, Manchester and other airports strongly dispute those figures and believe that there will be a huge increase in the regulatory burden on airports?

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend raises a good point and accurately reflects some of the concerns that cast doubt on the impact assessment, which I know will have been thoroughly engaged in and scrutinised by Ministers and others across the whole Department, as it is now in Whitehall. There was much debate in Committee over whether the assessment thus far made presents an accurate picture.

On an issue that is literally a matter of life and death, it would be deeply irresponsible to make such a major decision on the grounds of cost and regulatory burden alone. Ministers must make it clear how such a move would enhance Britain’s capacity to keep aviation secure.

In their impact assessment, Ministers have argued that a move to a risk-based regime is consistent with the principles of better regulation. The drive to improve and lessen regulatory burdens, where appropriate, is one that we pioneered in government and continue to support now. However, moving away from the current “direct and inspect” regime for aviation should not automatically follow from that. Requiring specific parliamentary approval for this reform would give Members the opportunity for more detailed probing of some of the claims made by Ministers for this change, and how they would fit with EU directions at the time the change is proposed.

In Committee, we did indeed question the reliability of the predicted costs of the reforms—supposedly £23.7 million over 10 years. Parliament should have the opportunity to consider the reliability of those figures in the light of consultation responses. Furthermore, adopting a risk-based approach will inevitably create variation within security procedures adopted at different airports—again a major step change from the present.

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[Graham Stringer]

I wish to make one general point and two specific ones. The Minister will know that although I accept the basic thrust of the Bill, I have never accepted the regulatory impact assessment and I believe that, throughout the Bill, extra burdens are being introduced for the aviation sector. I have been surprised and disappointed that she, as a Conservative Minister, has not explored more of the market-based solutions to some of these problems.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) said, any assessment of the security costs is unlikely to be accurate, because many of the security regulations will be made at the European level. Making any such assessment is always going to be difficult, but it is close to impossible in this case. I am not going to repeat the discussion that we had in Committee, but I will say that Manchester airport is very concerned that the very expensive scanners that it has put in place may be outlawed by the new European regulations. That is the background to my position; I am unconvinced by the Government’s figures.

The first of my two specific points relates to security and follows on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said. I am firmly of the school, particularly on security, that thinks, “If it ain’t broke, why try to fix it?” There is no evidence to suggest that TRANSEC is not doing a good job. It is integrated with other security services and, more importantly, for transport matters it is integrated with other transport areas apart from aviation. In short, it is doing a good job, and it seems to me that the real motive—the real driver—for moving security on to airports is primarily cost. That is not a good reason, particularly given that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said, this will not have received the scrutiny that it deserves before the Bill goes through. Why take a risk? Why stand a chance of losing experienced and well-qualified members of TRANSEC, who may not want to move into airports? This proposal is unnecessary and the justification for it is weak.

I come to my second and final point. The Minister will recall that when I asked her in Committee whether other airports in the European Union had the costs of their security paid for by their Governments, she said that she thought they did. She then wrote to me and said something, and I followed it up with a parliamentary question, which she was good enough to answer fairly quickly. Her response showed that either she was not telling me—I do not believe that she would do that; I am sure that if she knew, she would tell me and other Members of the House—or, as I think, the Department did not know which countries and which airports paid for their security and which did not.

So not only are we being driven by cost, with a lack of scrutiny, to change a security system that works, but, as with other parts of the Bill, that is going to put a burden on UK airports that is not shared by some of their continental competitors. We know that the larger airports in this country—this does not apply to the tiny airports—such as Stansted, Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham, and possibly some others, are competing as hubs for traffic throughout Europe, particularly for incoming traffic. Yet the Minister is unable to tell us, after a long debate in Committee and after a parliamentary question, whether we are being put at a competitive disadvantage, because she does not know which of those airports have their security paid for by their Governments. So I would like her to answer as thoroughly as she can on this matter. I do not believe that the case has been fully made, and I do not believe that the impact on the competitiveness and success of our airports has been judged properly and accurately.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I want to say a few things in support of amendment 11 on security checks. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) said, the amendment calls for maintaining the rigour of those security checks while carrying them out in a manner that preserves religious dignity. Obviously, we need strong security at our airports—of that there is no doubt. The terrorism threat is very real—we have had the shoe bomber and we have had the underpants bomber—and the travelling public expect the Government and the airport authorities to do all that they can to ensure their safety. It is therefore not a surprise that security is a high concern in the Bill and a strong concern at a European level.

I and a number of other MPs who have large numbers of Sikh constituents have had many representations about the matter over the past year or so. In particular, we received representations about the way in which new European rules were being implemented, a concern that focused on the question of the physical searching of the turban, or, as Sikhs call it, the dastaar. I believe that the Sikh community, like any other part of the UK, accepts the need for strong security and understands that there is a terrorist threat, but it wants security to be implemented in a way that maintains religious dignity, which is what amendment 11 calls for.

I thank the Minister for listening to the representations from MPs and organisations representing the Sikh community on this issue. As she said in her intervention a few moments ago, the Department for Transport, in response to those concerns when they were at their height, organised a trial using swab and wand technology at our airports. That trial is still in progress. I believe that it was due to finish this summer and I want to ask her a few questions. Following the transfer of responsibility for some of these matters from the Department for Transport to the Civil Aviation Authority, how will MPs make representations on such issues in the future? It is important for us to have direct access to Ministers and officials in the Department for Transport; will we still be able to reflect the views of our constituents in the same way under the Bill?

Will the Minister also tell the House what will happen when the trial involving the swab and wand technology comes to an end? Will there be a formal report or a statement to the House in written or oral form about how that trial has gone? Importantly, do the UK Government intend to report the results to the European Commission, which drafted the new rules in the first place?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) said a few moments ago that the United Kingdom had by far the largest Sikh community in the European Union. That is true. It also has the longest experience of having a Sikh community and we have been through these arguments, whether they are about the right of Sikhs to wear their turbans when riding a motorcycle, the right of bus drivers to wear them or the right of serving police officers to wear them. We have been through the arguments time and time again and different UK Governments have proven to be responsive to the concerns, which has enabled us to reach an accommodation. As my Sikh constituents often say to me, if wearing a turban was good enough to fight in the trenches, why is it not good enough to be worn in other walks of life?

The flexibility that the UK has shown through the trial is to be commended. I am not saying that the trial is perfect. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness said, it has not been implemented everywhere. Has the Minister received representations about problems in airports that are not taking part in the trial? Importantly, the fact that the Minister has written to Transport Ministers in other EU member states to outline the British approach has been a good initiative, but problems remain, especially outside the UK. We have had a number of Sikh constituents reporting aggressive and highly distressing searches, particularly at Italian airports, which have shown little regard for religious dignity. Some of us have made representations to the Italian embassy about those.

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[Graham Stringer]

Amendments 2 and 1—that is the order in which they appear on the selection list—may be considered to be either relatively minor or the most important amendments to the Bill, depending on how they are interpreted.

This is the “minor” aspect. I asked in Committee why the word “effectiveness” was not included in clause 1(3)(c) and clause 2(4)(c), along with the words “economy” and “efficiency”. The Minister’s responses are always very courteous and comprehensive, but on this occasion, unusually, I was not satisfied that there was a good reason for the absence of the word “effectiveness”.

When I was more centrally involved in local government, we regularly spoke to the Audit Commission. It used to refer to the “three E’s”—effectiveness, efficiency and economy—and used to joke that “economy” was usually left out. That is not surprising in view of the dictionary definitions of all three words. “Effectiveness” apparently means

“to accomplish the purpose, producing expected results.”

The meaning of “efficiency” is self-evident:

“performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort”.

Those are clear and relatively objective terms. “Economic”, however, is defined as

“pertaining to the production, distribution, and use of income, wealth, and commodities.”

It is a much more general term, and it is the one that the Audit Commission used to say was left out. Why on earth do clauses 1 and 2 not state that the holders of licences should be effective, which is surely very important? Although I consider that to be the relatively minor aspect of the amendments, it goes to the heart of the Bill. As I have said on a number of occasions, although the Bill gives the CAA new responsibilities to look after the interests of consumers, it does not tell us either how that is to be done or what the consumer’s interests are.

The Bill states that the CAA must oversee airports to ensure that there is continuity, and that air transport services have regard to

“the range, availability, cost and quality of airport operation services.”

That in itself is fair enough, but the Bill does not give the CAA the overarching purpose of improving aviation and ensuring that it continues to form a major part of the United Kingdom economy.

Our demand for the inclusion of the word “effectiveness” highlights the strong deficiency in the Bill that we debated in Committee. No real political controversy is involved in changing the nature of the functions of the CAA, whether we are talking about the regulation of air space or the ensuring of economy and safety. That is not a matter of great debate between the parties. There is a great debate between Members and parties, however, about how aviation should develop and whether we should continue to be a leading country in aviation, and about whether our economy, which depends on aviation, should be hindered by not having the aviation facilities we deserve. I could make a very long speech about these matters. I shall not do so, but I do want to make a few important points.

I believe that many Conservative Members, and many members of the Government, want to improve our aviation facilities, including by increasing the capacity of airports in south-east England. Unfortunately, however, they are caught in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog. Indeed, there are two tails. Dogs with two tails are usually known to be particularly happy, but not in this instance. There is the Lib Dem tail, as the Lib Dems have for historical—and, I think, mistaken—reasons always opposed increasing airport capacity in south-east England. The Government tail is also being wagged by Boris Johnson, current Mayor of London, who believes he can win the mayoral election only by opposing the expansion of airports within the London system, and by proposing instead an absurd island airport in far east London—in the Thames estuary, in fact. That may be good for his chances in the mayoral election, but it is extremely bad for the country.

[Mrs Villiers]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government’s policy on airport capacity is not driven by tails or dogs or anything like that. It is driven by an understanding of the importance of ensuring that aviation has the space to grow, but also that it does so within parameters that address the local impacts of aviation, such as aircraft noise and air quality, which, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree, can be corrosive. We also need aviation to play its part in our efforts to tackle climate change. Our approach is, and always will be, based on a sound and sensible assessment of the evidence on how best to have a growing aviation industry that also plays its part in addressing its environmental impacts.

[Graham Stringer]

The Minister makes a consistent case on that, but she will not be surprised to learn that I do not accept it. The noise around airports is diminishing as planes get quieter, and air quality is regulated by European regulations, with most of the pollution around airports being caused by cars and other road traffic. That needs to be dealt with, but the levels are set by European regulations, and those levels cannot be surpassed.

Those arguing against increasing airport capacity often say that that will help in our commitments to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. As we demonstrated in Committee however, that is not the case, because as a result passengers on intercontinental journeys often have to fly via other countries, so they have to take off twice, which produces extra pollution and extra carbon dioxide.

If the Government carry through their intention to put aviation into the European emissions trading scheme, as with the polluter on the ground, aviation will be dealt with on a Europe-wide basis, so we do not need an extra domestic policy to address the issue. The Government’s current policy is strangling the British economy.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

It is absolutely true that Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, has always opposed the third runway at Heathrow. I live in west London and represent a west London seat, and he is right to do so given the threat a third runway would pose to the health of west Londoners. Ken Livingstone, the Labour party candidate, has also always opposed expansion at Heathrow airport. Indeed, this is one of the few topics on which all three main parties in the London mayoral campaign agree.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Lady is right in what she says, but all three mayoral candidates are wrong on this matter.

It is completely legitimate for any constituency MP, including the Secretary of State, to oppose what they think their constituents do not want. However, it is also incumbent on any Government to consider the national interest, not just the interest of people representing west London. Exactly the same argument is used about High Speed 2, and the analogy is a good one. I chair the all-party group on high speed rail, but if somebody was driving High Speed 2 through my constituency, I would oppose it, because I would like to carry on being an MP and representing my constituents. That is a reasonable thing for an MP to do, but I also know that HS2 is good for the economy. Similarly, I know that constraining runway capacity in the south-east is extremely bad for the economy. It will do no good for the environment; it will just strangle the British economy.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman implies that there may be a tension between a constituency interest and the national interest, but the Government’s policy and the Conservative party’s policy of being against a third runway at Heathrow precedes the previous Secretary of State. It has really been this Minister, when in opposition and in her current role, who has taken on the vested interests and put forward a policy that protects the environment, as well as the national interest. I do not believe that there is any relevant constituency interest here.

[Graham Stringer]

I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman, and I agree with him on a number of policies, but he is in error in his understanding of the history of the development of the Conservative party’s policy. To be fair to the Lib Dems, they have always opposed the third runway at Heathrow. The Conservative party was in favour of it until Boris Johnson thought he had a chance of winning the previous mayoral election—that changed its national policy. The Labour party was in favour of a third runway. When the Conservatives became the Government, the shadow Secretary of State said that she would change the Labour party’s policy—I do not agree with this, but I can see why she did it—so that there could be a discussion about how to deal with the problem facing us.

That problem—this is the final point I wanted to make—is that Heathrow is losing destinations and business, and not just because of the capacity on runways. We face at least a double whammy: air passenger duty is having an effect, too. The situation is directing passengers to airports in Europe that have added extra runways, such as Madrid, to where British Airways has moved much of its operations, and Charles de Gaulle. The hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) was talking about integrators. The two main centres for freight in the aviation industry are Brussels and Charles de Gaulle; we have already lost out on those issues. Passengers are going to Madrid, Charles de Gaulle, Schiphol and Frankfurt, and, increasingly, to Copenhagen, at the expense of London. That is damaging not only the London economy, but the UK regions, because of the decreasing number of routes from the regional economies into Heathrow, in particular, and into the whole of the south-east system.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman has hit on a very pertinent point. Four countries in the world are expanding their economies at the moment and doing well: Brazil, Russia, India and China. Is not the hon. Gentleman’s point that if we want to increase our trading with those four countries, we need better airport contacts? Is that not the very issue on which we seem to be losing out?

[Graham Stringer]

I could not agree more. Before the debate, I looked up on the internet how many cities in China have a population of more than 1 million—the size of Birmingham. There are 160 cities that are bigger than or the same size as Birmingham and five cities that are bigger than London, three of which are not very well known. The biggest, Chongqing, has a population of 31.4 million, but how many air routes do we have to Chongqing? There are routes to Shanghai from London but from nowhere else in the UK. The others are Beijing, Guangzhou—or Canton, as most people would know it—and Tianjin. Those cities are all bigger than London and there are very few routes to them. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned India, Brazil, Russia and China. This country wants to be the centre of the financial world through the City of London and, as Europe gets itself into a mess with deflation, our future must increasingly rely on trading with the growing economies of the world. However, at the same time, we are cutting off our links.

[Mrs Villiers]

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that he should not necessarily believe all the propaganda he reads on the posters in Westminster tube station. If flights to Hong Kong are taken into account, Heathrow delivers more services to China than any of its continental rivals. London is one of the best connected cities in the world. We have five highly successful airports serving the south-east, six if we count Southend.

[Graham Stringer]

Since the second world war, as the Minister will know, Heathrow has been the largest international airport in the world. Soon it will no longer be that. It is still bigger than Frankfurt as regards its international destinations, but—I do not have the figures in front of me—the number of destinations served by Heathrow has gone from something like 220 to 180. Increasingly, the passenger numbers are going up because larger aeroplanes are going to fewer and fewer destinations.

I wanted to make both that small point about why the word “effective” is not in the first two clauses and the larger point that I would like not only the words to be in the Bill but there to be an effective aviation policy, which the Government do not have. On this issue, although not necessarily on others, the Government’s policies are anti-business and anti-growth. They are damaging the UK economy and they need to change them. Changing the wording of the Bill would help.

[Mark Reckless]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). First, let me respond to what he said about Heathrow and China. We all see the adverts in Westminster tube station, but there is a fundamental inconsistency in the line being pushed by BAA and the Mayor of London, among others, that Heathrow is essential as a hub but that we do not have enough point-to-point flights to different places in China. The model used by BA and its oneworld alliance relies not just on Heathrow as a hub but on Hong Kong, too. It is deciding that it is more effective to use Hong Kong as a hub, for all the reasons given by the hon. Gentleman and others, and to fly to all those Chinese cities with greater frequency and service out of Hong Kong. I do not accept the argument that a lack of point-to-point flights from Heathrow to cities in China makes the case that Heathrow needs a third runway to be a hub airport. The very economies of the hub and of the Heathrow and Hong Kong dual hub model for service for China lead to the system that we have.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very sensible point about where hubs develop in the world. Hubs developing in the middle east are doing a similar job in serving parts of China and there are also hubs in south-east Asia. A better measure of the failure of Government policy is the number of airlines that want to get into Heathrow from all parts of the world but cannot do so. A number of those airlines, some from China and some from other developing countries with large growth rates, have applied but cannot get their aeroplanes into Heathrow. Does he not agree that that is a better measure?

[Mark Reckless]

The reason there is unsatisfied demand for Heathrow and people who would like to fly from there but cannot is that landing slots at Heathrow are still cheaper than those at other airports and certainly cheaper than they could be. BA uses most of those landing slots, has capitalised the value and does not sell many of them on, partly to ensure that there is only limited competition so it can maximise its profits. I will return to that point, but I have quite a lot of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s arguments that the regulator should look to ensure that licence holders—airports—are effective as well as economic and efficient.

I also have considerable sympathy with the shadow Minister’s new clauses on National Audit Office oversight. However, I understand that those are only intended to be probing. I hope that that will also be the case with his amendments, because ultimately I trust the Minister on this issue. I do so for the ultimate reason that, in so many areas of public policy one can pretty much know what the policy will be by looking at where the money is—where the vested interests lie—and at what the civil servants are pressing. Too often Ministers merely oversee that policy solution. In this area I believe that it is the personal, political intervention of the Minister, both as shadow Secretary of State in opposition and now as Minister responsible for aviation policy, that led to, and kept, the Conservative policy against a third runway at Heathrow.

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[Dr Huppert]

I hear with interest what the hon. Lady says, although if that is already happening, I am not quite sure what her new clause would achieve. Perhaps a worked example to give some sense of the numbers and costs involved would make the case more persuasive for me. Perhaps there will be time later—at a future date, as the Bill progresses—to understand exactly what is proposed. I would personally be interested to understand that, but at the moment I do not feel I have enough of a handle on it to support the hon. Lady’s proposal.

[Graham Stringer]

I do not suppose that the hon. Gentleman and I are likely to agree on this, but I would like to understand his position a little more thoroughly. Is it his contention that constraining capacity in the south-east will reduce the number of flights, or will it in fact increase the number of flights—as is my contention—as people fly to other European hubs?

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right that we will agree on very little in this area, other than on the fact that we will disagree quite strongly. At the moment, we have a number of people travelling to the south-east, by road and all sorts of other means, in order to fly out. We can use some of the capacity in other areas, in the north. My contention is that by not expanding capacity in the way the previous Government wanted to, we will see less environmental degradation and we will better be able to stay within our carbon budget, which we can afford for the good of the rest of the world as well as ourselves. However, I do not think the hon. Gentleman and I are going to agree on this one, however many times we discuss it.

Turning to the amendments that deal with environmental issues, let me be clear what I would like to see. I would like to see lower emissions at every airport in the country. Some of that can be done technologically. Planes are coming out that are more and more efficient, which I very much welcome. I have mentioned some of the excellent work being done by Rolls-Royce, and some research has been done in my constituency specifically to enable that, which I very much welcome. I would also like to see more public understanding of the effects of climate change, and of what aviation does and how it compares with other things. I would also like to see some certainty that airports will be able to reclaim when they implement environmental measures—a point that was made very clear to me by AirportWatch, along with others concerned about a lack of certainty.

We had a number of discussions in the Public Bill Committee about the exact nuances of the amendments and their technical aspects. It is important to get things right for the longer term, rather than jumping to agree to half-baked or 99%-baked amendments. Although I recognise the spirit in which the shadow Minister will, I presume, be pressing some of his amendments, I do not think we are quite there yet. I hope that he will accept that concern, and I am sure he will take a different line when we come round to it.

Amendment 3 is definitely much improved. I am much more persuaded by it, but there is still the problem that it would apply only to the regulated airports. I am sure that the shadow Minister would accept that that is a concern, and if we could do something that affected all airports, that would go further—I will return to that point later. The same thing applies to amendment 7. I find it an interesting amendment, and I would be supportive of it, were it not for the fact that clause 84 already requires the same information to be published—I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong about that. That information should be published, as clause 84 says, so we do not need to move it to clause 83 merely to solve a problem. In Committee, I praised the Minister’s environmental credentials. She turned her party towards the Liberal Democrat position of supporting high-speed rail and opposing a third runway at Heathrow and a second runway at Stansted. She did a good job, and I again pay tribute to her. She made strong arguments that were more persuasive for Conservatives than those that we made.

It is not clear that the Opposition have made that leap, and I seek clarity as to why many Labour Back Benchers argued against the position adopted by shadow Ministers and why they are still hung up on providing more capacity and more runways across the south-east. When I raised that with the Minister she agreed to look further at what environmental benefits could be achieved. I am grateful to her for doing so, and for the time that she has spent with me discussing the matter. She understands quite well what I am trying to achieve.

My ideal is something that has not yet been included in the Bill, because there are some problems with the wording of my proposal, which was recommended by the Aviation Environment Federation. In paragraph 31 of its submission to the Bill Committee, it said that what it would most like to see was an

“amendment to section 4 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 to clarify that CAA has a duty to the general public, rather than only to the aviation industry or its consumers, and that environmental impacts are as important a determinant of aviation policy as consumer demand”.

That is something that I would love to see. I understand that there are some technical problems with the precise wording of the proposal, which is why I have not been able to table a detailed amendment that I could persuade the Government to accept. I should like to get these things right for the longer term, rather than put on a small show now. However, I hope that such a proposal would be considered, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister as to whether there is any prospect of her doing so.

A key issue made clear to me by AirportWatch and others was the need for certainty for airports. We all agree that we do not want any predatory airlines—I will not suggest any that might fall into that category—to exploit a lack of clarity to avoid paying what we all believe they should pay towards environmental improvements at airports. I believe that the Minister has received legal advice that the Bill provides such certainty, but I hope that she accepts the concern expressed by AirportWatch, the AEF, others and me that there is a lack of clarity. If there is a risk that the Bill is not absolutely water-tight legally, I hope that the Government will table an amendment in the other place to ensure that we do not encounter that problem, as we all agree that we do not want to have that concern. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts.

How do we achieve the overall environmental progress that we would like? I believe that the Government will shortly publish a draft aviation policy framework. We expected them to publish it in March, but it has taken time to get it right. We welcome the fact that such work has been undertaken, and I hope that the framework looks at the possibility of environmental regulation across all airports. That would be the best solution, rather than fitting the measure into one particular route, and applying it only to regulated airports. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that the aviation policy framework, which we all anticipate with great excitement, will deal with those environmental concerns.

There is a prospect of the Bill doing some very good things by improving the information flow and making the CAA more aware, and by making sure that we deal with risks to airports. I hope that the aviation policy framework will offer a visionary solution that ensures that we have a sustainable aviation future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Norman Baker]

The industry tells me that it is very concerned about what is happening in Scotland and Wales. It is concerned about the short notice given by the Scottish Government, and about the even shorter notice given by the Welsh Assembly Government. We, on the other hand, gave 18 months’ notice of changes in the bus service operators grant. Representatives of the industry said at the time that, in view of the notice given and the type of BSOG changes involved, they expected to be able to deal with those changes without affecting services markedly.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Statements made by the hon. Gentleman before he was a Minister suggest that he must have been constrained in his enthusiasm for quality contracts by his Conservative colleagues in Government. If he cannot help local authorities to pursue such contracts, will he consider introducing a new bus regulator to deal with market failure—an Ofbus?

[Norman Baker]

The option for councils to pursue quality contracts remains on the statute book, although I think that any pragmatic council would choose to try to deal with bus companies in a collaborative way before reaching for the nuclear option. Some of the problems mentioned by the hon. Gentleman will be dealt with by our responses to the Competition Commission’s recommendations, which pick up some of the unsatisfactory behaviour of bus companies.

Northern Rail Hub

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I will, like the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), curtail what I was going to say. I congratulate the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) on securing the debate and agree with everything that he said. I will not attempt to repeat it, particularly when so many hon. Members want to speak.

It is worth having some context in our debate. There was roughly an 80-year decline in rail services between 1920 and 2000 and, unexpectedly, over the past 10 or 12 years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of passengers using the railways. I am not sure that the Department for Transport has completely caught up with a system that is expanding, although I accept that it has done so in respect of HS2—I am talking about the rest of the system. The basic way to determine investment decisions during that long decline was to follow congestion, which meant simply putting money into the south-east of England.

When one justification for the huge investment that goes into rail is to close the north-south divide, one can no longer justify, if one ever could, spending 90%-odd of rail investment in London and the south-east. One way to change that is to ensure that the northern hub is completed in one go. I understand that the Treasury is assessing it over the next six to eight weeks. I should like to make the solid case for the whole northern hub going forward, for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and other hon. Members have stated. Detailed points need to be made about why the hub will not be as effective if it does not all go together as one.

I welcomed the previous Secretary of State’s statement to go ahead with the Ordsall chord, which is part of the northern hub. But if the whole system does not go together, there will be a reduction in services to Huddersfield, because unless an extra line is put in at Diggle to take the trains past it—I am sure that northern Ministers in the Department will be familiar with the railway lines there—the extra trains on the Ordsall curve will mean a reduction in trains on that route. If such details, including whether the chord will be there if the size of station platforms is not increased, are not dealt with, we will not get the benefit from the investment in the Ordsall chord.

Both in detail and in general terms, now is the time for the Government to say, as they have said, “We are going to try and do something about the north-south divide”, and that means investing in the rail system. Half a billion pounds is never a trivial amount, but compared to the amount going into Crossrail it may seem to be. I disagree slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge, because this is not the equivalent of Crossrail. We do not have such an equivalent. This is more the equivalent of Thameslink, which frees up capacity in the south-east, and even there it is still only 10% of the cost of Thameslink.

With a benefit-cost ratio of 4:1, the Government should be grabbing at the scheme. There are potentially 44 million passenger places on 700 trains. There will be enormous economic benefit to the whole of the north of England. I hope that the Minister assures us that she and her colleagues will press the Treasury and ensure that, in the next high level output specifications period, we get the full northern hub scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) on securing this debate, and on his commitment in campaigning for the northern hub. It is wonderful to see so many hon. Members from across the north in the Chamber, and one or two additional supporters who are more than welcome in our fight. As chair of the all-party group on rail in the north, I am pleased to see so many members of the group here. Hon. Members across parties are united on the issue of the northern hub. We are divided only by the Pennines, which are another reason why the whole hub must be united—so that we do not have the perpetual Pennine divide.

The Minister can judge how important the issue is for all of us, and how crucial it is that the whole hub be funded. We will not have the full economic benefit across the whole north if there is a piecemeal approach. I was worried recently when the Secretary of State talked about the welcome electrification of the Manchester-York line as part of the northern hub. I do not want to split hairs, but electrification was always seen as an addition to the hub, and not as the hub itself. It is essential not to lose part of the hub to that electrification, welcome though it is. It is the hub that will hold us all together.

The hub is not glamorous like High Speed 2, but it is essential if we are to tackle overcrowding, increase line speed, reduce journey times and increase services. It is an integral part of High Speed 2. I speak from bitter experience. When Virgin high-frequency trains were introduced with three trains an hour from Manchester to London, services to my constituency diminished. The trains terminated at Manchester Victoria, and we lost services to the airport and elsewhere because inter-city trains took the paths that our trains had previously taken. The only way to prevent that in future is to ensure that the engineering works proposed for the hub are carried out.

We will have more trains through and to Manchester, and more trains will connect to the west coast main line. Eventually, trains will connect to High Speed 2. That unglamorous engineering work will provide passing places so that we continue to have slow, stopping services with fast services. It will improve signalling, the Ordsall chord route across Manchester city, and Manchester Victoria station. Any hon. Members who have spent time at that station will know that it is not the nicest in the world, and I as a woman do not feel particularly safe there. There will be improvements at the station, and two new platforms at Manchester Piccadilly.

Such improvements are as important to the north as the shiny new 250 mph train, and will be to the whole economy. Services will not then stop completely at Manchester Piccadilly when the Huddersfield train leaves, because it crosses every train path coming into the station, with the result that nothing else can come in and out. Constituents in Bolton will have a better, faster service, and people at my home station, Atherton, will not have to play sardines on the train, or have long waits at another gruesome station, Salford Crescent. They will be able to join the inter-city lines.

The project will bring £4 of benefit for every pound spent, and will do something to redress the imbalance between spending in the north and south. I do not understand why Londoners should have three times as much taxpayers’ money spent on their public transport as our constituents in the north.

[Graham Stringer]

During the debate I have done some arithmetic, which I believe is right, and which my hon. Friend may be interested in. Three months’ expenditure on Crossrail would pay for the whole northern hub. Is that not extraordinary?

[Julie Hilling]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, which is interesting. It has been interesting during the High Speed 2 debate that people have frowned about putting so much money into the north, and people in the south-west have rightly asked why they are not receiving expenditure. There never seems to be an outcry about expenditure in London. I spend part of my life in London and before becoming an MP, I wanted to come to our capital city. Investment is needed in London, but it is also needed in the regions.

High-speed Rail

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

There are always barriers and challenges in dealing with such significant infrastructure problems, not least money and ensuring that finance is in place. As we have seen with phase 1, we must be incredibly careful that the route minimises the impact on local communities while maximising the economic impact that communities can get out of it. There is a long process to go through as regards talking with the Scottish Government, but I am keen to engage with them on it.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s statement will be welcomed throughout the whole of the north of England, as the chief executive of Manchester city council said, but there will be a worry in the back of some people’s minds that we were promised trains through to Paris when the channel tunnel legislation was agreed but we did not get them and that the same thing will happen again. It is not just a matter of political will. People in the north would be reassured if the Secretary of State gave a commitment to align stations and resources to build the routes to Manchester and Leeds as soon as possible.

[Justine Greening]

I can give the hon. Gentleman that commitment. I certainly am not going to take any longer than we need to take to progress the full Y network. One aspect of the first phase that I have not mentioned yet is that it will connect HS2 through to HS1, so there will be that link directly to the channel tunnel and the European high-speed rail network, which will be hugely beneficial.

Aviation Industry

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Donohoe]

I will always be corrected by the Minister in that respect. Under the previous Government, there was a trial period of mixed mode. I understood that the only way we could increase the number of passengers going through the airport was if we brought mixed mode into operation. I do not think I will be proven wrong in that respect.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that the number of passengers going through Heathrow is only one measure of its economic importance? If we look at the destinations served by Heathrow in its constrained state, we see that it is losing out in many of the emerging economies such as China, Brazil, Malaysia, India and Russia, and that is where the damage to the UK economy is being done.

[Mr Donohoe]

I could not have put it better. My hon. Friend will be speaking in this debate and will no doubt reinforce that point. It is clear that that is the situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The future of the aviation industry has been hobbled by Government policy, but that future is important, and I hope to explain why in the few minutes available. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) on securing this debate, which is vital not just to aviation but to the whole UK economy.

Historically, the United Kingdom’s aviation business has been the second largest market in the world, not just in the production of aeroplanes but in the flying of them. We are in danger of losing that position; we almost certainly will. The arguments for constraining runway and airport capacity in the south-east fall down when looked at in detail, as do the solutions, and I will try quickly to go through the reasons why.

Aviation is vital to the economy, not just because airports and aeroplanes—the production of them and the flying of people in them—produce jobs, but because reducing the connections that aviation gives us to the rest of the world is, in essence, like switching off the internet. If someone in the House stood up and said, “We’re going to stop the growth of the internet and communications with the rest of the world,” people would think that that Member had gone off his or her rocker. Effectively, however, that is what we are doing by constraining air capacity in the south-east.

There is only one hub airport in this country, and that is Heathrow. By constraining its runway capacity, we will not necessarily reduce any increase in the number of passengers using it, because operators can use larger aeroplanes on the same runways. However, we will certainly reduce its importance to the economy, because we will reduce the number of destinations it serves. Already, the number of short-haul destinations served by scheduled services from Heathrow is 46, while Amsterdam has 67, Frankfurt 74, Paris 78 and Madrid 63. Heathrow still has more long-haul destinations than those airports, but there is an ecology of short-haul and long-haul routes, and as the number of routes diminishes, so Heathrow’s importance also diminishes. Heathrow already has fewer connections to some of the growing cities in China. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend, it has fewer connections to Malaysia and to the BRIC—Brazil, Russia, India, China—economies than its competitor hubs in the rest of Europe, so it is already losing out, and it will lose out further.

It is often said that the regional airports can take the strain, and the hon. Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley), who is no longer in her place, said that people will go to Birmingham. However, all the evidence is that the airlines have no levers to help them to get extra capacity at regional airports, and they have not had any for 20 years. We are going through a recession and economically difficult times, and the loss of traffic at regional airports is about twice the rate at Heathrow. Indeed, the Government’s policies—this also applied to the previous Government—are having a perverse impact, because of the nature of the economies involved. Air passenger duty has a really negative effect on regional airports, and some airlines are choosing to use hubs outside a region because of it. The most recent example that I have come across—there are others—is AirAsia, which was more or less signed up to using Manchester airport, but which is now flying from Kuala Lumpur to Charles de Gaulle. The reason that it gave was simply air passenger duty.

What is true for regional airports, where air passenger duty has a differential impact, is also true for the whole United Kingdom economy—we can do the sums and see the transfers. It is not just that flights are not happening at regional airports, but that operators of flights—particularly tourist flights—from Japan, south-east Asia and the emerging economies are choosing to go to Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt, Schiphol, Copenhagen and Madrid, rather than Heathrow, because of the extra cost of air passenger duty. As a result, air passenger duty is damaging not only regional airports, but Heathrow itself.

I was pleased by the decision to reduce air passenger duty at Belfast airport. However, if we want to use the capacity at our regional airports, there needs to be a differential between them and the south-east airports. Any differential must help our regional airports, rather than being less than helpful to them, as it is at present. The other way that regional airports could be helped is by building infrastructure. Very few airports in this country have direct links to high-speed trains or good public transport connections. Improving public transport to our regional airports at a cost to the public purse would therefore help in some way.

The biggest push that could be given to our major regional airports, such as Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow—I do not think this really applies to other regional airports—would come from completely opening up the skies. The previous Government gave regional airports the ability to take flights, with their permission, with fifth freedoms, which meant that those flights could pick up passengers at those airports. That is an advantage, but it would be a much bigger advantage —I imagine this would appeal to a Conservative Government—if we completely opened up the skies around those airports, so that any aeroplane could fly in and out, pick up passengers and take them wherever they wanted. Historically, the only reason why that has not happened is the Government’s over-protectionist position towards British Airways and BAA.

Things can be done to help regional airports that go beyond what is being done at the moment, which is counter-productive. Incidentally, if air passenger duty is such a good idea, why do so few other countries in Europe have it? Only four other countries—Denmark, Norway, Malta and Holland—have it; some have tried it and got rid of it because it is so economically damaging. We have to test these things against what our competitors are doing to find out whether we should have them, and I do not think we should.

It is often said that there are environmental reasons for constraining traffic in the south-east. As my hon. Friend explained, however, when we look at the detail of what happens, it becomes clear that people do not stop flying because of constraints in the south-east system; they use other hubs, and the constraints imposed by air passenger duty reinforce that. Rather than taking a direct flight or using Heathrow, people from Manchester will fly to Schiphol, Copenhagen or wherever and fly onwards because it is cheaper. That saves them air passenger duty and it saves them going into the constrained south-east hub. As a result, there is at least twice the environmental damage, because aeroplanes produce most pollutants—carbon dioxide and other pollutants—when they take off. Someone going to, say, Tokyo may go via Copenhagen. There are not, therefore, good environmental reasons for such a view.

Regional airports are not an alternative, for the reasons that I have given. The former Labour Secretary of State, Lord Adonis, said Boris island was bonkers, and within five minutes of looking at it, we can see that it will never happen—for environmental and planning reasons, and because of the sheer cost and financing involved. When there were fewer environmental issues, it took Munich 25 years to develop a new airport, which opened in 1992. Something as huge as Boris island will simply not happen as an alternative.

I should like to make a number of other points, but other hon. Members want to speak, so I will sit down. There is, however, no real alternative to expanding Heathrow; we certainly cannot use Heathrow and Gatwick as one airport. The Government’s policies are hugely damaging to the aviation industry and the UK economy.

High-Speed Rail

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on securing this important debate, with the specific title and terms of reference that he spelled out. I also congratulate him on his powerful description and analysis of many issues involved; I agree with a great deal of what he said, although not with every full stop and comma.

I want to make a few points about the project and how it relates to the north-west of England and the north of the country beyond Birmingham. I would like to draw an analogy with trams. At the moment, Manchester is trebling the size of its tram network, while Liverpool, Southampton and Leeds do not have trams. The important point that I draw from that is not that Manchester’s case, which is good for the tram network, was much better than the case of the other cities, but that the 10 districts of Greater Manchester and the three political parties were united. To cite the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), the politics in Merseyside were dysfunctional when it came to trams. Having all-party support and as much backing as possible for a project is almost as important—in some ways more important—than different economic cases, a cost-benefit analysis and an economic impact analysis.

It is important to keep such an all-party group together. This country has too little infrastructure, which damages the whole economy. One of the reasons why we have too little transport infrastructure is that we have not always been able to build an alliance between the parties. I could give example after example of where we should have had motorways, railways, trams and runways where we do not have them. Therefore I welcome a detailed debate, whether it comes from the Front Benches, the Back Benches or people with constituency involvement. The high-speed rail system is a major piece of infrastructure, which, whatever its impact to the north and the south, will help the country as a whole, and it is important to understand that.

I have read many cost-benefit analyses over the years, and while it is important to prepare them, the way in which the Treasury, the Department for Transport and other Departments look at them means that they contain so many variables that one can make them say anything one likes.

The important thing about the project is that it has been justified on two grounds. The first is that there is an immediate issue with capacity between Birmingham and the south, and the second, which comes along later, is that it will help rebalance the country, and the country certainly needs rebalancing.

On the second justification, I have spent my political life trying to get investment into the north of England and into Manchester in particular. If we want to use the project to rebalance the country, it is odd to start building it from the south to the north and not put a spade in the ground in the north of England for potentially 15 or 16 years. The reason for that is the reason that we always get from the Department for Transport: the capacity problem. Such an analysis of why we invest in infrastructure is one of the reasons why 95% of our capital expenditure on transport in England goes into London and the south-east—it is crowded there. If we use that as a basis for our investment decisions, we will always put it there and increase crowdedness, effectively subsidising congestion. I would argue that if we want to make an impact on the north-south divide, we need to start in the north and look at all the projects that are determined by congestion and overcrowding as economically transformative. I know that the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys will object to my use of that term; I rarely use it, but it is important in the context of getting as many bangs for our bucks economically, as well as dealing with the immediate transport problem. I ask the Department to look at the issue generally.

I think that the claims for the impact on the north of England from High Speed 2 are ambiguous. I did not go on the trips—I was not serving on the Transport Committee at the time—but there is certainly a case that Cordoba, Turin, Lille and Lyon have benefited. One could also make the case that high-speed rail has sometimes had a negative impact on those cities. The same is true with roads, or with any transport infrastructure, because roads go both ways: they can take economic activity away from or into an area.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

I represent Stoke-on-Trent, where there are fears that High Speed 2 could reduce connectivity if the line passes the city and does not stop there, while the capacity on the west coast main line—the Manchester-London route—is diminished. While Stoke-on-Trent might benefit from the growth of Manchester or Birmingham, there are fears in the city about its own connectivity with HS2.

[Graham Stringer]

There is a fear. There are genuine worries in Stoke, and potentially Coventry and south Wales, that there could be a negative impact. I would ask those areas please not to have a dog-in-a-manger attitude and say, “Let us not have this excellent new piece of transport infrastructure.” Let us work out how we can get investment in those areas, using either high-speed rail or something else. If people end up just opposing the project, they will damage the economic and transport base of the whole country.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Does not the point that was semi-raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) underline the need for some form of regional transport planning? We do not want to build stations with no connections to the wider community and area; we want Stoke and other similar cities that are not on but near the line to have good links. We can see that in the best European systems, which is why the benefits are more widely spread there.

[Graham Stringer]

Absolutely. It makes sense that people can connect to other places if a high-speed line is built. I know that the timetables of the rail system in the north, which I know better than that in the midlands and Scotland, are slower than they were in 1880s—I say that in nearly every debate in which I speak. Taking out congestion points and improving the northern system and that in the rest of the country must be the best way to use the investment that is going into the project.

I want to finish on some points made by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys and by the Action Alliance, which opposes high-speed rail, in the document that it sent out today. First, if someone had £33 billion to spend in the north or the whole of England, they would not necessarily sit down and say, “This is it”; they would probably sit down for a long time and not agree to spend anything. However, the project is out of the starting blocks, and there are many benefits to be had from it. If someone were to ask, “Should the country have motorways?” the answer would be, “Yes, we should have motorways.” In the same way, we should have high-speed rail. That, together with all-party support, is the real justification for the £33 billion.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. High-speed rail is important to the north of England, but it needs to be developed alongside the classic network and also alongside aviation and road. We need a strategic transport policy that covers everything. High-speed rail is not the panacea, but it is part of a strategic transport plan.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Even though I am a member of the Labour party, I am always slightly cautious about having the perfect plan. When one is involved in transport plans or economic development—it does not matter whether it is in the private or the public sector—one has to be opportunistic and take what is there. Sometimes it can take too long to wait for the perfect plan. That does not mean that we should not think about how we can connect different parts of the system.

Like the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, Action Alliance makes the point that high-speed rail does not automatically bring with it economic benefits. Let us take, for example, the economies of Manchester and London, or Birmingham and London. Some argue that high-speed rail exposes them to bigger markets, which is true because the train goes both ways. A dynamic city or region is at a real advantage. What city would not want to be in a bigger market so that they can attract more people and investment? Although it is possible to fail in such an area, it is easier to succeed if there is high-speed rail.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I, too, was struck by the Action Alliance analysis that when we improve connectivity, the stronger city benefits and the weaker city loses out. If we follow that logic through to the end, it means that we should close the M6, the M1 and the west coast main line, which is ridiculous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stringer]

It is ridiculous, but that does not mean that Action Alliance does not have a point in saying that it is dangerous; the world is dangerous. We have to take our opportunities to create jobs where we can. It does not automatically lead to growth, but it would be negative not to take this opportunity to have growth. To emphasise that point, let me make one more comparison between Manchester and Liverpool—I am not having a go at Liverpool because this, unlike the story about the trams, has a happy ending. There is a more solid case for saying that airports have a real economic benefit for regions. Unlike roads, they rarely have a negative impact. Merseyside county council did a lot of work on Liverpool airport. It extended the runway and got an estuarial take-off. The whole scheme should have had many advantages, but they were realised only when John Whittaker and the Peel Group took the opportunity and bought Liverpool airport and brought some commercial acumen and ability to it. There are real advantages here. I hope that we can keep the all-party alliance together because this project is important for the country as a whole. As it is called high-speed rail, perhaps it should be done from north to south because that would be slightly quicker than the schedules that are envisaged at the moment.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

I call David Mowat.

High Speed 2

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

The temperature of this debate is running high. In a densely populated country such as England, it will never be easy to come to a decision about transport infrastructure going right the way through the country. That said, just because a decision is hard and opposition is loud does not mean we should shy away from hearing the points made and coming to that decision.

I have listened to a lot of what has been said about the differences between the north and the south, with Members saying that High Speed 2 will not help—but it will. I come to this debate as an MP from the north-west and, in particular, as an MP from Merseyside. This, to us, is infrastructure we need. We are not going to develop because of this infrastructure, but without it our growth will be stymied. As Government Members, we have all voted for a redistribution of wealth—a change from dependence on the public sector to the private sector. We in the north-west need this infrastructure to allow our private sector to grow so that we stop being overly reliant on the public sector. To all intents and purposes, High Speed 2 was meant to aid the decentralisation of that economic power base.

Let me turn to the figures. Yes, the cost of High Speed 2 at £30 billion is a huge amount of money. However, the fare revenue will bring down that cost to £17 billion. Private sector investment is expected to cover a lot of the cost on key parts of the network such as station developments. In response to a recent question of mine, the Secretary of State said that High Speed 2 in its entirety will bring in £44 billion. The latest review from KPMG puts tax receipts alone at between £6 billion and £10 billion per year. That means that High Speed 2 will easily pay for itself. We have not heard about any of that today.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The previous three speakers said that one of the disadvantages of the project is that it has come out of a political agreement among the three parties. I think that that is a massive advantage. It is because we do not have political agreement that we have the lowest motorway density in western Europe, a lack of airport capacity where we need it, and in the north-west a railway system running on timetables worse than in Gladstonian times. The country will benefit from this project because the three parties agree with it. Does the hon. Lady agree?

[Esther McVey]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. We need cross-party support and we also need cross-country support.

I appreciate that infrastructure is not an end in itself, but it is a means to an end. It opens up areas to opportunity and it is for those areas to seize upon that opportunity and capitalise on it. In considering the High Speed 2 development, we must look at the northern hub and connectivity across the north. We must look at the Y shape of the line and link in not just Manchester and Leeds, but Liverpool.

--- Later in debate ---

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Besides being the Member for Holborn and St Pancras, I am the Member for King’s Cross and Euston. I feel like I have been here before. About 20 years ago, the sort of people who are now proposing HS2 were proposing that the channel tunnel link should come into a vast concrete cavern to be excavated under King’s Cross station. Many local people opposed it, and when the project team asked what I suggested, I said, “You could use St Pancras, it would be a much better idea.” That was denounced as ridiculous for a time, but in due course St Pancras International was opened and is probably the most magnificent station in the whole world.

Now we have the proposition of HS2. I say to those who are in favour of it that to bring it in to Euston is just about as stupid as the King’s Cross concrete box idea. Euston is already overcrowded, and getting to and from it by either bus or tube is extremely difficult. There are no proposals to improve that. Also, Euston is not on the Heathrow Express line and is not going to be on Crossrail. In recognition of that, the people behind HS2 are proposing the parkway station at Wormwood Scrubs, hereinafter to be known as Old Oak Common, which is on the Heathrow Express and will be on Crossrail. That suggests that they accept that it would be a good idea to have that station as the terminus if HS2 is built. I say that from a strategic and passenger point of view, but I do not pretend that it is my basic point of view. I try to represent the people in the constituency that I have represented for 30-odd years, which I am proud to do.

The proposal involves the demolition of the houses and homes of more than 350 of my constituents. Their attitude, and mine, is not nimby—“not in my back yard”—but “not through my front room”, because that is what is being proposed. If HS2 is to be built, it would be totally unacceptable from a local point of view, and silly from a national point of view, to bring it into Euston.

[Graham Stringer]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Frank Dobson]

No, I shall not, because I want other people to get their speeches in.

I am particularly concerned to end the planning blight that now afflicts the people who live in the area affected and those in the area behind it, Primrose Hill, who may also be disturbed by the developments. I therefore wrote to the Secretary of State asking what guarantees he was willing to give about suitable alternative accommodation for the people affected. I asked whether it would be in the neighbourhood; whether they would remain tenants of the council; how soon such alternative accommodation would be provided; whether people would have to live in temporary accommodation while permanent accommodation was built; what security of tenure they would have; and what the effect would be on their rents and service charges. I got a letter back from him saying, “Oh, all that will need to be looked into in the fullness of time.” As far as I am concerned, that leaves 350 of my constituents on planning blight death row, and we have to do something about that. There is absolutely no reason why the Minister could not say today that she can offer all the guarantees that those people want, and that those guarantees will be one of the conditions of any agreement if the mad proposal finally goes ahead and HS2 comes into Euston.

Bus Industry

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Streeter. It is now 25 years, a quarter of a century, since buses outside London were deregulated following the Transport Act 1985. We have a great deal of experience of what the implementation of the Act meant. By and large, it has been a very poor experience. It is sensible to call it a disaster for the bus-travelling public. In Greater Manchester, in the past 20 years, approximately 30% of the number of people who travelled by bus no longer do so. Bus deregulation has meant higher fares in real terms, a reduction in the networks and less reliability. It is not surprising, therefore, that the number of passengers has reduced.

I will not say that everything about bus deregulation has been awful—most of it has been. If I had to put a figure on it, it would be approximately 80%. A great deal of it has been bad. Bus deregulation has been successful on radial routes in major urban conurbations, where the service in peak times is often better than it was. The old transport authorities and county councils were guilty of having inflexible bus routes and of sending buses to where people lived 30, 40 or 50 years previously, before areas were demolished and rebuilt elsewhere. The commercial flexibility of the deregulated system has had some benefits, but overall the impact has been negative.

How does one disaggregate that from the natural trends in bus ridership in the past 25 years or so? Well, that is fairly easy because we have a precise comparison. When bus services were deregulated in the rest of England and Wales, they were not deregulated in London. Between 1986 and when the office of the Mayor of London was introduced in 1998, the regulated franchise system in London retained its passengers with very little subsidy. From the time of the election of Ken Livingstone in 1998, the number of bus passengers in London increased and the network became more extensive because a considerable increase in subsidy was put into the system. The period after 1998 does not offer an exact comparison, but the period between 1986 and 1998 offers a very good comparison. Bus passengers were retained in this city, but they were not retained elsewhere. The simple conclusion is that that is because of bus deregulation.

Behind all the statistics that I will use in my speech, there are real people. If people want to get a sense of the damage that has been done to individual lives by the loss of bus services—it affects family life and the ability to get into employment—I suggest that they read the recent Transport Committee report, “Bus Services after the Spending Review”. That report has example after example of people’s lives being blighted, their ability to obtain employment diminished and their ability to see their families reduced because bus services have disappeared.

I thank the officials at the Passenger Transport Executive Group, Sir Howard Bernstein, chief executive of Manchester city council, and his officials at Transport for Greater Manchester. They provided a lot of the statistics in this speech about transport in Manchester and transport nationally. Two thirds of all public journeys take place by bus, even after the reduction in numbers following deregulation. We are therefore talking about something that is important to many people’s lives, often the poorest people in our communities, and something that is vital to the economy.

My main point in this speech is that there will be cuts to an already reduced system. I do not want a sterile debate in which the Government say that it is all the fault of the previous Government that they are making cuts, and we on this side of the Chamber say that the cuts are too fast and too deep. Both those points have their place. What is interesting is that, because we are dealing with cuts to a deregulated system, it is possible to diminish the impact of those cuts by looking carefully at what are likely to be the recommendations of the Competition Commission, and by trying to use more effectively and directly the facilities in the Local Transport Act 2008. That is what I want to concentrate on.

To get some sense of the size of the impact of the cuts that are likely to happen, I will go through what the bus system is faced with. First, there is the 28% reduction in local authority grants, which will affect buses. Then there are changes in the formula for concessionary travel. Estimates on the impact that that will have on the bus system vary between £50 million and £100 million. The best estimate is approximately £77 million. From 1 April 2012, there will be a 20% reduction in the bus service operator grant. In passing, I say to the Minister that BSOG is not used in the most effective way. As a general grant to the bus industry it is fine—it helps. However, it would be better if it were given to transport authorities and passenger transport executives so that they could direct it to environmental improvements or particular enhancements to transport, rather than it just being given generally to bus companies.

Those are the three big areas where there will be cuts, but there is also the abolition of the rural bus grant and the 50% reduction for small and medium-sized public transport schemes from the integrated transport block. There will, therefore, be major changes and reductions in bus services in the coming years. PTEG has tried to estimate what will happen and its conclusions are pretty stark and frightening. It estimates that by 2014 fares will have gone up by 24%—nearly a quarter—in real terms, there will be a decline in service levels of 19%, which is nearly a fifth, and patronage will be down by about a fifth. That is in metropolitan areas, which is what is covered by PTEG.

According to the Transport Committee report, 70% of local authorities in non-urban areas have already cut their grants for buses and transport. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) is present and I look forward to listening to his contribution later, but in Hartlepool 100% of the bus services subsidy has been removed, as is the case in Cambridgeshire, although I understand that that is currently subject to legal challenge. In Somerset, North Yorkshire, Shropshire and Northamptonshire, there have also been significant cuts, while in Luton and Peterborough there have been no cuts. The situation around the country is varied but, overall, it looks pretty bleak, given the PTEG projections for urban areas and the known cuts identified in non-urban areas by the Transport Committee.

Transport is a function devolved to local transport authorities but, I ask the Minister as the Transport Committee did, surely central Government have a responsibility, not to make local decisions but to know what is happening in every area, so that when the Government make decisions about their grants and where they spend their money, they can do so as accurately and effectively as possible, and that requires knowledge.

The Office of Fair Trading decided that it would refer the bus industry to the Competition Commission. There was already a great deal of evidence from Greater Manchester and other places that monopoly behaviour was effectively taking place. It has taken the competition authorities a long time to get around to looking into it. More than 10 years ago I wrote to the competition authorities and asked them to investigate—I was not the only person who did that—and they said, “Please produce written documentation of unlawful agreements between different bus operators.” Of course I could not do that—those documents would not be available to a Member of Parliament or anyone else, if indeed they existed—but by looking statistically at what is happening, we can see all the signs of real monopoly behaviour, and that is what the Competition Commission has found.

I will go through some statistics for Greater Manchester. In Oldham, for instance, 85% of the services are provided by First. In my own constituency the figure is about 67%, in Salford 77% and in the whole of north Manchester 70%. In south Manchester, we can see a mirror image of those figures, with Stagecoach monopolising: in Stockport it provides 82% of services, and in the whole of south Manchester about 74%.

My constituents suffer a real disadvantage in fare levels. I was told when I put my case to First that not many people buy the one-off fare, but that people buy weekly tickets. Even the weekly tickets bought from First by people in north Manchester are 47% higher—£17, compared with £11.50—than the price people pay in parts of south Manchester, where the average income is about £10,000 higher than for my constituents. So if they need to use buses, they are paying twice the percentage of their income on fares. Frankly, there is little on-road competition, which is what was originally intended to be the driver of better, more effective and more responsive services under bus deregulation.

Another indication of monopoly or anti-competitive behaviour is what in the system is called gaming the market, where bus companies use the fact that two different transport systems are in operation—the deregulated system, under which anyone can operate a bus service having given a small length of notice, and the subsidised, tendered services. In designed deregistration, the bus company is really saying, “We can make more money from this service, because it is an important service for the public, if we deregister it and then get the transport authority to tender it out.” Then, if it loses the tender, and a tendered service is running, the company reregisters the services, or parts of them, to undermine the subsidised service. An awful lot of such anti-competitive behaviour goes on.

As I said, the competition authorities were slow to get off the mark and to look at the area, but they have got off the mark, and credit to them for that. They have found that profits are much higher in the deregulated area than in London. In the past 24 hours Go-Ahead, for its out-of-London services, has just announced record profit levels of up to 10.4%.

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that anyone may enter the bus market, but does he agree that one of the faults of deregulation was that it did not create a perfect market? There are significant barriers to entry, even if one does not go through the subsidised route but sets up an independent service.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly sound point, which I will come to in my conclusions. The large operators own the garages and can afford to subsidise competition if there are new entrants to the market—it is a long way from being perfect competition.

I was talking about the profits of Go-Ahead but the profits of Stagecoach are truly staggering, especially when the economy is flatlining and we have been in recession. They are up to £153 million from £126 million, which is an increase from 14.4% to 17.1%. In the friendly debates I have with Brian Souter of Stagecoach, he once called Gwyneth Dunwoody and me “dinosaurs” because we believe in going back to a sane system of regulated buses—he even set up little models of dinosaurs. I do not know how many people in the Chamber remember the film made of the James Clavell book, “King Rat”. When the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore was liberated by allied forces, there was one very fat prisoner among all the other prisoners, whose ribs were showing—they were starving to death. At a time of austerity and the economy not doing well, Brian Souter and Stagecoach are the King Rats of the British economy, doing enormously well out of public subsidy when everyone else is struggling to get to work and make a living. They are, in effect, subsidy junkies.

The figures in the Transport Committee’s report show that the bus industry outside London receives from the fare pot about £1.8 billion in a total income of £3.4 billion, so 47% of the bus industry’s income comes from taxpayers. It is as simple as that. Whenever a bus leaves a depot, an average of 50% of its costs are paid by taxpayers. Given what has happened with deregulation, is that sensible use of taxpayers’ money? Are we receiving the best possible value?

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman may not know that in my constituency there is only one bus company for the whole island, and there is no competition. What prevents large companies from competing in the parts of Manchester that he mentioned, where that seems not to happen?

[Graham Stringer]

I am the wrong person to ask, but my view is that companies do not compete because then they can exploit the market using informal agreements or in nods and winks, by putting up fares in their own areas without the cost of competing. The statistical evidence in their profits and fare levels is that they are exploiting the market compared with what happens in the London market. That is voluntary. Companies are happier operating in their own areas. They say that they do not like the extra dead mileage if buses must be driven into areas where other companies operate from their depots, but that is a weak argument. They simply do not want to compete because it is more profitable for them not to.

The making of high profits was the first major finding in the Competition Commission’s interim report. The second was that many operators face little or no competition. It is welcome that the commission finally got around to writing the report, but it is flawed in many ways, as such reports tend to be because they look at statistics over the past five years, but the economic world is now different and more difficult. They estimate that anti-competitive behaviour costs £70 million, but they do not include the cost when people abandon buses; if that were included the real cost to the public would be much higher. In addition, they do not look at how the current bus system inhibits the use of simple integrated ticketing, which would drive up the number of passengers using buses.

I have a few requests for the Minister. First, when the Competition Commission’s report is published and he is considering what to do about buses, will he bear in mind that there is a lot of information out there, but it has to be culled at great expense from surveys and other sources, because the bus companies keep much of their information private, despite receiving 50% subsidy? Good-quality information is vital for local transport authorities when planning their services.

My second request is for through-ticketing. We know what brings people back on to buses: a simple, low-fare structure with through-ticketing. It is estimated that if fares are cut by 20%, passenger numbers increase by 13%, with a further increase if the ticket structure is simplified with through-ticketing. What can the Minister do to help that?

My main question, which goes back to the beginning of my speech, is how can the Minister support and help to build on the powers and structures in the 2008 Act? I know that he understands the legislation thoroughly, because he and I served on the scrutiny Committee. There are many barriers facing South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and Tyne and Wear passenger transport authorities. They are considering moving back to a regulated system of quality contracts, because the buses, bus drivers and depots are in the hands of the bus companies, which have rubbished the Competition Commission’s interim report—well, they would—and are threatening a scorched earth policy for any passenger transport executive or authority that decides on re-regulation. What help can the Minister give those transport authorities?

Everyone knows that we are dealing with a coalition Government. The Minister’s views are well known from the time before he was a Minister, as are the Secretary of State’s. The Secretary of State is more of a free marketeer, and the Minister believes in the instruments in the 2008 Act, but when the bus industry is declining, the balance between the two parts of the coalition, resulting in a watching brief and agnosticism on the industry’s future, is not satisfactory. I should be grateful if the Minister told us his view.

My final point is that the present Government and Governments for the past 25 years have not done enough for the quarter to one third of people who do not have access to a car and rely completely on buses. One of the most appalling sarcastic comments made by the last Prime Minister, in response to a Birmingham Member who asked what he would do about the loss of a bus service in Birmingham, was that he would immediately call a Cabinet meeting. He said that sarcastically, but Cabinet Ministers should discuss bus services. They are vital for many millions of people in this country and they have been neglected or given too low a priority for long enough. I look forward to the Minister’s support in protecting and helping the bus industry at a time of inevitable cuts. That is possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wright]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, but I would suggest that we have had more or less the possibility of open competition and certainly deregulation since the mid-1980s. I accept the point that perhaps that has not meant free and open competition and there may be barriers to entry because of the structure—the way in which the legislative framework has been put in place. However, looking at the examples from my constituency, I would suggest that there has been market failure and, as a Labour politician, I would suggest that where there is market failure, the state should intervene. The hon. Gentleman and I will possibly disagree in our analysis of the reasons for that, but certainly we would agree that there has been market failure. I will ask the Minister, in trying to respond to the issue of market failure, to consider a number of things.

[Graham Stringer]

I acknowledge the weight of my hon. Friend’s remarks. Does he agree that where serious competition has taken place in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Preston and Manchester, where bus companies have set about competing with one another and where, in the short term, bus fares have dropped and there has been a conveyor belt of buses, the consequences have been worse congestion and pollution and then one bus company withdraws?

[Mr Wright]

That is one of the fears because of the way in which the bus market currently operates, with the dominance of four or five big players in the market. They have the bargaining power and, frankly, the cash to be able to hound smaller operators out of business. For example, in the north-east a number of years ago, a new and ambitious operator wanted to come into the market, but the big dominant operator of the time, which was Stagecoach, hounded it out by providing zero fares—free fares—at certain times. Stagecoach had the cash flow to be able to do that, so there is market failure, with domination by big players.

I hope that the Minister will respond to a number of points. I urge him to be bold when considering the Competition Commission’s report on bus services. He needs to examine why there has been so little take-up of the quality contract partnerships introduced by the previous Government. I urge him to undertake further work to see whether such partnerships need to be made easier to operate and enforce. To help with that, the Minister should consider whether franchising of local bus services within an area such as Hartlepool could provide a better quality of service and ensure that local authorities can determine the priorities on behalf of their residents. The Government need to be bold and radical for the good of passengers in Hartlepool and elsewhere. I strongly believe that they should re-regulate the market to ensure that local bus services are run for the benefit of passengers and communities, rather than purely for shareholders.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I thank the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for raising this important subject and doing so in his usual measured and thoughtful way. His knowledge is considerable, as I discovered when we served in Committee on the Local Transport Act 2008. I am delighted to have rather more time than I thought I might to respond to the debate.

The Government are committed to supporting local bus services and markets through concessionary travel reimbursement, direct operator subsidy and our funding of local government. However, as I have made clear before, with those significant amounts of public expenditure invested in the bus market, it is only right to consider whether it is delivering the best service for bus passengers and best value for the taxpayer. The Competition Commission has identified, in its provisional findings, aspects of the local bus market where competition is restricted, prevented or distorted. That cannot be good for passengers if it means that they enjoy less frequent services and have to pay higher fares as a result. If that in turn means that fewer people are able to make use of their local bus, and instead have to travel by other means or cannot travel at all, that has wider, and unwelcome, societal and environmental impacts.

Of course, bus markets are local in nature. Many of the effects will be localised, and I have encouraged the Competition Commission to set out where and in what circumstances it believes competition is failing to materialise. It is important that it should be specific in its comments in the final report. One of the concerns raised by the Competition Commission, which I share, relates to profitability—a point raised by the hon. Members for Blackley and Broughton and for Hartlepool (Mr Wright). Excess profitability is an important indicator of ineffective competition. Evidence commissioned by the Department for Transport suggests that profits are particularly high in the largest metropolitan areas, so I have asked the commission to consider whether it can identify specific areas where ineffective competition is most prevalent. A key test of potential remedies will be whether they result in more people travelling on buses and bring about wider benefits to society by helping to create growth and cut carbon emissions.

The inquiry is ongoing, and with representatives of local government and passenger and bus operators, my Department continues to engage with the commission as it prepares to publish its provisional remedies later this month. Hon. Members will understand why I do not propose to anticipate those remedies in my remarks today: it is important that we let the commission, as an independent body, come to its conclusions on the basis of the evidence placed before it. However, I will take this opportunity to respond to the points raised during this debate.

The Local Transport Act 2008 made changes to the provisions of quality contract schemes and partnerships and introduced new forms of legal partnership working. It came into force only in 2009, and the Competition Commission has indicated that quality contracts and quality partnerships may be remedies for the competition problems that it has identified. It is therefore sensible to wait for the final outcome of the inquiry at the end of the year before deciding whether further changes to the regulatory regime are needed.

The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton asked about the coalition policy as it relates to the 2008 Act. It is on the public record and therefore no secret that the two coalition parties, when in opposition, had differing views on the Act. The Conservatives were more sceptical about the value of quality contracts than were the Liberal Democrats. When the coalition was formed, the decision was taken that, as the process was already under way, the sensible course of action was to wait for the Competition Commission to analyse the market and produce its findings, so that we could proceed on a sound basis, free of prejudice, relying on proper analysis and collated evidence. That remains the position. I do not accept that that is agnosticism—the term used by the hon. Gentleman. It is a sensible decision to wait for the evidence, at which stage we shall analyse it internally and decide what action, if any, we should take in response to the findings of the commission. That process is under way in relation to the structure and landscape of the market.

The hon. Gentleman no doubt expects me to make the point that the landscape about which he and his colleagues complain is largely the one that their party’s Government created, which we inherited. He and the hon. Members for Hartlepool and for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) will also be aware that it is on the record of the Local Transport Bill Committee that, had the amendment that I tabled been accepted, many of the actions that Opposition Members now ask for would be unnecessary—the measures would already be law. We did not make more progress at that time because of the then Government’s reluctance to go further.

Before the Competition Commission report is published, however, I want to encourage joint working between bus operators and local authorities. We have seen good results, with local authorities and operators working effectively in partnership to improve bus services in places such as Birmingham, Brighton and Oxford.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) and I are lucky in having good bus services in our area. I too pay tribute to Roger French, who has been most effective in driving up bus patronage. He has shown that it can work and that the moaning Minnies who say that bus patronage is going into decline are wrong, as the examples of Brighton, Hove and other places prove. My hon. Friend complained about the effective monopoly that operates in Brighton and Hove and the difficulties faced by the Big Lemon service; he clearly wants to give the Big Lemon aid in some form. The monopoly of which he complains is not terribly different from that which the hon. Members for Hartlepool and for Blackley and Broughton complained about. One operator having an 85% to 90% market share inevitably makes it difficult for other companies to enter the market, and it can be difficult to challenge. My hon. Friend is right to say that the cost of fuel does not relate to the route on which it is used and that differential pricing is clearly a result of competition along those routes. The absence of competition clearly enables Brighton and Hove to charge a higher rate for its bus services. That is a striking example, but I shall ask my officials to ensure that the entire report of our debate is passed to the Competition Commission so that it can see what has been said and take it into account, albeit quite late in its deliberations.

I want to encourage more of that sort of partnership activity so that bus passengers get the services that they deserve and expect. More partnerships need to tackle punctuality, which is the No. 1 priority for passengers and which can be compromised by any number of issues, from road works to poor planning. It is not clear whether the 81% punctuality figure referred to by the hon. Member for Hartlepool was the result of a failure of the bus company or of, for example, congestion, which is a problem for the local authority. Punctuality is not a matter only for the bus companies; there is also a local authority aspect. That demonstrates the need for authorities to be fully involved and to work sensibly with bus companies in their areas.

The Government are looking for operators and local authorities to work in partnership, sharing punctuality and traffic management data to benchmark and improve performance. To facilitate this, a significant number of Vehicle and Operator Services Agency examiners are being trained to engage proactively with operators and local transport authorities to ensure that proper procedures and lines of communication are in place. That new approach is being introduced gradually and has been in place in the north-west since June. I assure hon. Members that traffic commissioners will continue to take effective enforcement action when performance is poor, and that any lessons learned from the north-west will be absorbed before full roll-out takes place. The hon. Member for Hartlepool may want to contact his local traffic commissioner if he is concerned about punctuality in his area.

As the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton said, another important concern for passengers is integration, especially in fares and ticketing. I share his view that what he described as a simple fare and ticketing structure, with through-ticketing, can be effective in driving up passenger numbers. I absolutely agree and the Department is focusing on that aspect. My vision is of seamless end-to-end journeys, with tickets being available at a decent price and being valid on all services in a city, not only those of the dominant operator.

I shall continue to encourage the development of integrated multi-operator ticketing schemes, and my officials are actively engaged with the Competition Commission and bus operators in helping to remove barriers to their successful implementation. I firmly believe that bus tickets should be valid with more than one operator, but they should also be valid over much wider areas and easy to use. That will be of clear benefit to passengers. That is why I am committed, with operators and public sector bodies, to delivering the infrastructure necessary to enable most public transport journeys to be undertaken using smart ticketing by December 2014.

In many places, including in Greater Manchester and other large metropolitan areas, smart ticketing is already being introduced by local authorities and major national bus operators. It is fuelled by the smartcard incentive offered by the Government through the bus service operators grant and other pump-priming schemes that we have offered since the election. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton referred to the use of BSOG, saying that there was a better way of targeting it. If I understand him correctly, he believes that it may be more effective to hand it to local authorities to be used for general transport uses. However, it is difficult to square the complaint that the money being made available for buses is diminishing with the argument that what is available should be deployed for wider transport purposes.

[Graham Stringer]

I apologise to the Minister if I did not make my position clear. I suggested handing the money to PTEs and local transport authorities, not for general transport use but for the targeted improvement of bus services. It should be used to help particular bus services, not for other transport schemes.

[Norman Baker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification; he wants the money to be ring-fenced for bus services.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has asked me to initiate a review of BSOG to see whether it is deployed to the best advantage. As far as possible, our time scale is designed to coincide with the Competition Commission report, so that if changes are necessary to the landscape of the industry or to that form of financial help, things could be combined at that stage. To that end, I have been in discussion with the industry and local authorities to hear their aspirations and views on the matter. I shall try to come up with a solution that is satisfactory for both parties—I shall then go on to deal with the Israel-Palestine problem. I hope that we might make some progress. It is in the interests of local authorities and bus operators to come to a sensible arrangement on BSOG.

We understand that good bus services can contribute to both of the Government’s key transport priorities—creating growth and cutting carbon emissions. By providing an attractive alternative to the car, not only can we cut carbon but we can unclog the congestion that chokes off our local economies. However, it must be remembered that we also have to deal with the budget deficit.

I do not want this to be a sterile debate—a phrase used by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton—about why we are where we are, but I have to respond to the comments of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, the Opposition spokesman. It would have been helpful if he and his colleagues had acknowledged some responsibility for the financial situation in which we find ourselves, rather than pretending that the cuts are somehow malicious and optional, and could have been avoided. That is not the case. I would like to think that we could work across the House to ensure that the impact on bus services is minimised in the constructive way suggested by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton.

I shall deal briefly with the three elements of funding referred to earlier. About 80% of bus services are run commercially. I will leave aside questions about the consequences of that for the market and for local government support. The money from the Department for Communities and Local Government is not relevant to those services. At present, local authorities rely on BSOG. The reduction in that grant was trailed long in advance, at the time of the spending review, and it will not take effect until April next year. There has been an 18-month lead in, and the cut was much less than the bus industry anticipated—and much less than Members of Parliament expected. At the time, the Confederation of Passenger Transport, which represents the bus industry, indicated that the cut was manageable and could be introduced without a diminution of services or general fare increases. That is what it said. It is important to point out that bus companies can take the BSOG arrangements in their stride. That should not, therefore, lead to cuts in services.

The basis of the reimbursement arrangements has not changed one iota. The hon. Gentleman will know that primary legislation stipulates that bus companies should be no better and no worse off from handling concessionary travel. That legislative requirement has not changed, and local authorities are required to reimburse bus companies accordingly. All that has happened is that the Department for Transport has issued some guidance to help local authorities to calculate how they should reimburse bus companies, and that, as Members will appreciate, is quite a complicated business. The ultimate test remains the same. If bus companies are unhappy with the reimbursement they have received from a local authority, it is open to them to appeal and their case will be handled independently.

One of the changes that I have made is to ensure that, if there is an appeal, it is possible for a local authority to win. Hitherto, when bus companies have appealed, their contribution has either been reduced or it has stayed the same. Now the appeal process can assess whether local authorities have had to pay too much and reduce the costs to them. That seems to be a much fairer way of dealing with those matters. The appeal process is open, fair and independent and can deal with any complaints that people have.

As for cuts in funding to local authorities, we all accept that local authorities have a challenging settlement. That is particularly the case, may I say for the benefit of the Member who has disappeared, for rural areas and for those services that are supported by local authority funding because they are not commercial to run. Having said that, the pattern of responses from local authorities across the country is varied. Unfortunately, some councils have taken something of an axe to local services, while others have made very few cuts. That is a matter for localism. It is up to local councils to exercise their increased freedom and to decide how they are going to spend their pot of money. We will increasingly see a situation in which one person living in an area will say, “Why is it that my county council has cut these bus services when the county council next door has not cut bus services at all?” That is a perfectly proper question to ask and one that we are trying to encourage in our drive towards localism.

[Norman Baker]

I well understand why my hon. Friend made that point, which has been made by a number of others. All I can say is that the Prime Minister has made it clear that the concessionary fares regime for local bus travel is not to be compromised and that requiring a charge would do just that. All I can undertake to do is to ensure that my hon. Friend’s comments are passed up the chain so that others are aware of that view.

The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton mentioned the monitoring of cuts. Let me assure him that we are taking steps to establish the picture. I have asked my officials to do so on a rolling basis. We are checking where services are being significantly cut and where they are being protected. Ultimately, it is a matter for localism, but we have to understand what is happening.

The hon. Gentleman failed to mention the introduction of a £560 million grant, a significant amount, from the local sustainable transport fund, which can be used to drive up the number of bus services in a particular area as part of an integrated package to create growth and cut carbon. That has been well received. If we take the total package of measures under the loose heading of sustainable travel, the £560 million represents an increase in funding compared with what was available under the previous Government. Therefore, despite the difficult economic circumstances and the budget cuts that have taken place, we have made an increase in funding, which has been well received by councils. Every council that could qualify under that scheme, with the exception of the Isles of Scilly, has applied for funding. We had a good first round. I am happy to say that, in Manchester, the key component bid was approved, which is a cycling project for the city. Moreover, a large project from Manchester has applied for a significant amount of money and it has been shortlisted for the final approval process. Therefore, steps are being taken to address the issue of sustainable transport more widely as well.

[Graham Stringer]

I am not sure whether the Minister is referring to the cross-city bus scheme in Greater Manchester. If he is, will he agree to have a meeting with me to discuss it, because the scheme is not as good as it could be and it is not well thought out?

[Norman Baker]

I am happy to say that I was referring to an entirely different amount of Government funding that may be forthcoming depending on the outcome as regards the local sustainable transport fund. However, I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss the particular scheme. He just needs to contact my office to arrange a time.

I am interested that both Conservative and Labour Members have indicated unhappiness—perhaps for different reasons—with the present arrangements in the bus market. Their comments are useful and timely given the nature of the Competition Commission inquiry and its report. I will pass on to the commission a copy of the transcript of this debate from Hansard so that it is aware of the comments that Members have made. I will continue to study carefully the representations not just from hon. Members but from people outside to ensure that we proceed in a sensible way.

[Graham Stringer]

The Minister is being generous with his time. Both he and I have had a lot of time in this debate because it has not been as well attended as it might have been and that is because it clashed with the Transport Committee, so some of the hon. Members who would have been most interested in contributing are on duty elsewhere. Mr Streeter, I wonder whether we could tell Mr Speaker that this has happened and in future scheduling of these debates, we could look to avoid such clashes of obvious interest.

[Norman Baker]

That is not a matter for me, but the comments have been heard and will no doubt be passed on.

The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish mentioned the situation in London. He was advocating that the powers that are held by TFL might be extended to the rest of the country, which would be quite a change in the arrangements. I am not quite sure whether that is official Labour party policy. If it is, I am interested that he has put it forward today. Although his argument interests me, it is not quite the panacea that some people think. For example, when competition started in Manchester, we heard how there were queues of buses down the main street. I have to say that we get queues of buses in London, many of which are empty, because they have, in some cases, been overprovided, so similar problems arise with one operator—TFL. It is also the case that London buses are much more expensive to run overall and there is quite a cost to the public purse. Although I am not negating the argument in total, I am just making the point that counter-arguments have to be taken into account when we consider the landscape after the Competition Commission has reported.

To conclude, buses matter to this Government. My focus is on ensuring that the right funding and regulatory framework are in place to ensure that passengers receive the best possible service, and that taxpayers receive the best possible value from public expenditure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I think my hon. Friend’s question betrays the fact that he has already made his own assessment. I believe that this suggestion was made in a response by regional airports to a consultation on APD conducted by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. No doubt the Chancellor will respond to those suggestions in due course.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I think it is an excellent suggestion. There is huge capacity in the regional airports and since there has been complete freedom to fly anywhere in Europe, it has been difficult for Governments to use that capacity. Does the Secretary of State have any ideas how that extra capacity in regional airports can be used to the benefit of the UK economy?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: there is significant capacity in our regional airport runways. We have to recognise that the demand for aviation growth in the UK is not just an aggregate demand—it has a certain geographical distribution—but I am keen that the regional airports play a role in meeting that demand. I believe that the high-speed rail project will help them to do so.

Railway Expansion

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting case and might be getting to the point that I want to make. Is the real reason why there has been little investment in new lines over the past 30 years or so because of the methodology used for new investment? A terrific amount of investment is going into the railways at the moment, but nearly all of it is for the south-east, because the criteria used are about capacity and overcrowding, not about economic development, which is the point he was making. Does he agree that a rebalancing of the criteria of economic development and of overcrowding is needed because otherwise all the money will go to the south-east?

[John Pugh]

I heartily endorse that sentiment, as well as the hon. Gentleman’s point about methodology. He makes a very good case. However, the Government are in favour of rebalancing the economy, and they accept that one of the ways of doing so is through infrastructure capital projects, particularly on something such as rail. It is sad that really big rail schemes are being progressed in the south yet very little is happening up north, apart from such necessary developments as the Manchester hub.

It is fair presumption that if we want to move people around the country, laying down metal track and then shifting people around in large, uncomfortable iron boxes need not automatically be seen as the best approach. However, if we took that presumption to its logical conclusion, it would debar any tram schemes, although in places such as Manchester they have been extraordinarily successful. Even if that presumption is in place, it has to be tested, although that rarely happens. It is contested, however, when we come to the really large schemes such as Crossrail, high-speed rail and the Thames Gateway, on which the Government seem to be prepared to proceed—most hon. Members would support that.

To be fair, the Government have looked at the area I am speaking about: restoring curves. During the passage of railways legislation under the previous Government, Tony McNulty, the then Transport Minister, let it slip that the Department for Transport was looking closely at some of the schemes to see if they had any value. The Government were taking the folders out of the cupboard, dusting them down and seeing what worked and what did not. However, since that inadvertent confession of what the Government were up to, none of the research has seen the light of day, as far as I know. There is a presumption against such development, and that presumption is not argued but insidious. It was actually contested just before the general election by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), who is now Under-Secretary of State for Transport. He expressed his support for a range of smaller schemes, some of which I have mentioned already.

Being completely fair, there is evidence that rail travel is more expensive than it looks, given that it has a hidden public subsidy, as the Minister will no doubt say at some point. However, there is rather less evidence than there used to be that empty carriages are being carried around unnecessarily. I remember the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), during his short spell as Secretary of State for Transport, calming things down by suggesting that he was going to contract the network further because parts of it were full of carriages of fresh air. No one is saying that any more. However, a man would never lose money by betting against the Department for Transport’s dismal projections on rail use. I recently looked at some statistics that demonstrated that even branch lines, which are one of the archaic aspects of our structure, are showing increased use.

There is a case that needs to be answered. Many hon. Members during their time in Parliament make cases for specific schemes, but what happens when we question the institutional inertia on the topic and when rational people bring forward considerations? Whether or not it is because of the methodology used, which the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) mentioned, hurdles get put in place.

In the past, the Department for Transport has asked me for a business case. Sensibly, I have asked what needs to go into a business case, but the Department is completely incapable of telling me, so I do not know what a good business case should look like. There simply has never been a good business case for a project such as I am suggesting that has been accepted by the Department. Demand studies have been carried out, but they are not so much optimised as—if this is a word—pessimised. People always assume the worst-case scenario, and that if the track is laid and the trains are built, no one will use them. Prices, however, are always maximised, without any indication of how competitive they are by international standards. I point out again that if we had adopted the same approach for trams that we have for small-scale railway infrastructure development, we would never have got a tram scheme off the ground.

If the Department for Transport puts in place the demand and the business case hurdles yet enthusiasm is still not dimmed, it is normally then suggested that the obvious way to promote the scheme would be under some local funding solution. However, there is always an underestimate of what a hard ask that is. Promoters of any substantial scheme would certainly have to talk to local councils to get them lined up, as well as dealing with passenger transport authorities and regional development authorities, when there were such organisations. All such organisations, by and large, have erratic, on-off funding streams. Their strategies have been revised over recent years and then changed again. The demands made of them have also changed, and even the labels of the organisations have changed, given that PTAs became integrated transport authorities. They are subject to changing mandates and central directives, some of which come from the Department for Transport. The promoters are then expected to pull all those organisations together and to work with national bodies such as Network Rail, which are also subject to prescriptions from the Government and the Office of Rail Regulation. Granted, Network Rail is more approachable than the disaster that was Railtrack, but it is still hard to deal with it. Had doing so been easier, we would have got to the yes-or-no stage for a scheme before now. What actually happens is that most schemes exist in limbo—they are simply around; neither in nor out, and neither done nor not done. Periodically, there are outbursts of activity in connection with them, but nothing that would represent substantial progress.

We can ask whether that is a problem, because no progress means that no money is spent, which means that no money is lost. People have a horror of losing money on railway schemes—of spending money futilely. We can look with equanimity on an unused road, but an unused railway is a different proposition. However, I agree with the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton that this does matter. If any such schemes represent economic opportunities missed, they are largely economic opportunities missed in areas that need them: in the north, and outside the south-east and the London area.

Not to progress such schemes leaves in place a transport structure that, post-Beeching, does not make much sense, would never have been designed like that, and has been vandalised. Investigation of such schemes and why some people are keen advocates of them shows that they were often attempts to deal with a huge transport anomaly in their area. The third reason for requiring clarity is that while schemes remain in limbo, the land is preserved, the track bed is kept, and the aspiration and hope is retained—but for what, if there is no case for implementing them?

Many post-Beeching schemes that are still alive and kicking today are not based on pure nostalgia, and there is normally not a case for never implementing them, but there is also no clarity about when all the boxes for implementing them will be ticked. The situation is strange and Kafka-like, and we cannot get out of it. The Government have been honourable and clear in saying that such schemes are off the books for four years, although I understand that some are an exception, but while they are in that strange transport limbo we may be missing serious economic opportunities that we should investigate to a conclusion.

I want to pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton about the London parallel. The Chair of the Select Committee on Transport constantly recites figures—they elude me for the moment—on how much is spent on transport in London compared with elsewhere.

[Graham Stringer]

Nearly all.

[John Pugh]

I suggest that the ratio is 10:1, and perhaps an hon. Member will correct me if I am wrong. I speak with some bitterness, because I spent two years discussing the Crossrail Bill. Its Committee stage was one of the longest in the past 50 years, and it was pure endurance, but one could not help being impressed by the scale of what was being attempted, although there were days when one thought there were better uses for one’s time. It is an engineering marvel, and will link the bankers of Canary Wharf with their planes at Heathrow. I am not against that, but London is already probably the best connected capital in the world, and it already has a tube and bus network that is the envy of every other city in the UK. I genuinely doubt whether London’s contribution to UK plc will be massively affected whether or not we build Crossrail on the most expensive real estate on the planet, with all that is involved. If the bankers of Canary Wharf, like their Venetian counterparts, are forced to take a vaporetto along the Thames, life would not be greatly worse for the nation or the economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I came to this debate to listen, rather than to participate, but that was such an interesting speech and I would like to make three simple points. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) on securing this important debate. He made an excellent speech with many important points.

My first point is a bit of a boast. It might come as a surprise to the hon. Gentleman to know that, when I was chair of Manchester airport, I was responsible for creating two new railway lines in the north of England. One was to the south of Manchester airport, and one to the north, and they connected the airport to the main rail network. It was tough getting those lines. At the time there was Railtrack—there is much to say about Railtrack and some of the current problems that we have in the railway system of too much money going in and not enough coming out. Turning the railways into a property company was one of the worst mistakes of the 1990s. Having first created a link to the rail network to the north of Manchester airport, we agreed with Railtrack to create a link to the south and the west coast main line. As we reached an agreement, Railtrack withdrew all the funding and Manchester airport had to put in the money. That was a difficult problem.

My second point is to expand on my intervention. If looked at over a period of 10 or 15 years, the amount of money that enters the transport system in the south-east of England and London is unjustifiable on a national basis, given that we are one country with huge regional disparities. Some statistics are worth quoting. The overrun of costs on the Jubilee line extension came to more than the total investment in rail and transport in the rest of England over the 18 months that it took to finish that extension. I am not talking about the cost of the Jubilee line extension itself, which was built partly to connect south-east London and partly to justify the money spent on the enterprise zone in the docklands. That statistic is an outrageous imbalance, and if we take that example, it is not surprising that we have such regional disparities.

If we add up the public-private partnership, which is sometimes left out of the equation, Thameslink, Crossrail and the investment going into the Olympics and transport into east London, the rest of England is left with only about 4% or 5% of that investment—the figure varies depending on how the sums are done. It is interesting to note that whatever area is looked at, such as education or health, London receives more per capita than the rest of the country, probably for good reasons. Nevertheless, the one block of expenditure where the gap between London and the south-east and the rest of the country has been growing is in transport. Ministers have never been able to justify such disparities—I am not talking specifically about the current Minister; I am referring to those in the previous Government—and to explain why that change took place when the London economy was doing better. That comes back to the methodology used for investment in the capacity of the system in terms of carriages, and for new investment in signalling and tracks.

The arguments based on capacity and overcrowding are not stupid. If people have to sit on top of each other there is a case for making platforms longer and putting on extra coaches. However, if that is the main—or only—criterion, we end up with a final result that means that 90% of investment goes to the south-east. Because that investment is put into transport, which is economically vital and important and helps the economy to grow, more congestion is created. The best way to put that argument is to say that investment is provided to support congestion. As the hon. Member for Southport said, we should not get rid of criteria on overcrowding, but we should balance them up so that investment is also made in places where it will have an economic benefit. That will probably involve a lower cost-benefit ratio than one would get in the south-east, but if we do otherwise, we will create more congestion. As the hon. Gentleman said, London probably has one of the best transport systems of any capital city in the world. It can certainly compare with most, but there is still a lot of congestion because there is an imbalance in the country.

My third point was to compliment the Government—not something I do regularly—on their commitment to High Speed 2. That is a generational project for rail expansion, but it will happen only if all three parties are committed to it. Not long ago, along with other members of the Transport Committee, I questioned Minister after Minister about High Speed 2, and they all gave good reasons for why it was not going to happen. To be fair, the Liberal Democrats have always been in favour of it. The Conservatives came out in favour of it because they thought it was a way of answering the question about capacity in the London airport system and winning the London mayoralty, which was a bad reason, although the outcome was good. The Labour party also came to support High Speed 2, partly because we eventually had a Secretary of State who understood something about transport before he took up his post, which has been unusual over the past 50 years or so. He was committed to High Speed 2, and the Labour party came to support it.

High Speed 2 is vital for the country’s future. It is one of the key measures that will rebalance the economy in the way I described. If it does not happen, the economy will become unbalanced in the opposite direction. At some point in the next 10 or 15 years—I cannot give the exact date, and the projections are never that accurate anyway—the west coast main line, even though it is much improved and has extra capacity, will reach full capacity. That is the best case that can be made to doubters in the Conservative and Labour parties. There will have to be extra capacity on the west coast main line at some time, and it might as well come in the form of High Speed 2, which would link this country to the continent and make us feel like the rest of Europe, with excellent train services. That is the basic case for High Speed 2, and it has nothing to do with the environment or getting people off aeroplanes; it is an economic case and it relates to the north of England.

There are two other things I would like to say. If we are going to build extra capacity down the west coast main line, we also have to build extra capacity into the ordinary rail system in the north of England. It is a shame that we have to wait for control period 5 for that increase in capacity to take place, but I hope that it will be there before High Speed 2 happens. The rail system in the north of England—this is another great statistic that I often use—runs on schedules that are slower than they were 130 years ago. The schedules for the trains running between Blackburn and Manchester, between Bolton and Manchester and in the rest of the north-west would have shamed Gladstone; they are quite shameful. It takes as long to get from Doncaster to Manchester in round terms—there are a few minutes difference—as it does to get from Doncaster to London, and that illustrates the imbalance in the transport system. By and large, someone can get to London very quickly, but it will take them quite a long time to get anywhere else, and that is true not just in the north of England. We therefore need extra capacity, whether or not that involves electrification. I welcome the commitment to the Ordsall chord. I also hope that we can have the northern hub as soon as possible in control period 5 and that we can really improve the capacity and speed of trains.

I have one final point about high-speed rail. As I said, the case for it is economic. The case for the connection between Birmingham and London is based on capacity. However, High Speed 2 will be a failure if it goes only between London and Birmingham. What is the point of that? It really must go to Manchester and Leeds, and I hope that it will go beyond, to Edinburgh and Glasgow. That will really bring the country together and bring economic benefits to the west and east sides of the country. Although I do not expect this to happen—things have probably gone too far—I would have started building the lines from the north to the south. That is partly because we would have had support for that. I understand why Conservative MPs have done what they have, and they have every right, and the responsibility, to represent their constituents’ interests and to oppose what is going on, but I suspect that it would have been much easier politically to start high-speed lines in the north, given the enthusiasm and support for them in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Manchester and Merseyside. I have tilted at many windmills in my political life, however, and that is not one that I will tilt at too much.

If High Speed 2 cannot be started in the north of England, however, there must be a solid commitment as the hybrid Bill dealing with this issue goes through the House that the lines will go at least to Manchester and Leeds, if not further. Those of us who are long enough in the tooth to have been talking about regional disparities in transport for 25 or 30 years remember the commitments given regarding the Channel Tunnel Bill. There were commitments that trains would come through the tunnel and go to cities in the north of England, including Manchester. Those trains were built, and they were in sheds outside Manchester for years before they were scrapped; indeed, every time anyone got on the west coast main line in Manchester, they would have gone past those sheds.

I will support High Speed 2, and I want the Labour party to stay committed to it. However, in keeping the three parties together, which will be a national project that might take 25 or 30 years, there must be an absolutely solid, unbreakable legal commitment to build the line to the north of England and beyond, if possible. I hope that the Minister can respond to those points.