High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill

Debate between Graham Stringer and Andrew Gwynne

2nd reading
Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

Oh, it absolutely would. We are in a Second Reading debate on HS2 and I appreciate that we can veer away from the subject, so it is very tempting to go into a rant about the lack of capacity through Deansgate, Oxford Road and into the current Piccadilly station. That is a huge issue that this does not resolve.

However, what will be resolved is that some of the east-west links, if they can be tunnelled under Manchester into the new Piccadilly station and beyond into Yorkshire, will free up some capacity in the rail network around Manchester, although it does not fundamentally solve the problem between Deansgate and the existing Piccadilly station, despite lots of promises we have had over a very long period of time that we would increase capacity through the Piccadilly corridor.

[Graham Stringer]

On my hon. Friend’s final point, only platforms 15 and 16 at Piccadilly will deal with that issue. On the major thrust of his arguments, he will not be surprised to know that I agree with him. We are often told by Ministers about the success of the regeneration at King’s Cross, where the land next to King’s Cross was used to bring enormous economic benefits to that part of London. Does he agree that what is happening at Manchester Piccadilly is that Manchester is being denied those benefits because of blight caused by ill-thought-through proposals?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I will let the House know that we both went on a walk around Piccadilly, with Transport for Greater Manchester officers and combined authority officers, to have a look at what is being proposed and what could be developed there—indeed, the hon. Member for High Peak (Robert Largan) attended the tour as well—and the tour was illuminating.

For a start, keeping the ugly monstrosity of Gateway House on Station Approach in its place means that when people come out of the new Piccadilly station, as proposed by the Government and HS2, they will be at the delivery bay of Greggs. It is just not the welcome we want for Manchester. It is not even the shopfront of Greggs; it is the back door, with the bins and the ovens. Let us have a bit of vision here, and let us free up the front. Let us have a nice piazza, and a nice welcome to Manchester.

More than that, let us get the economic development in place behind Piccadilly station, and do not just take my word for it. Business leaders in the Financial Times today are urging Ministers to revise what they call—not my words—a “hugely shortsighted” design. They say—not me—that the economic development around Piccadilly would bring in the equivalent of £333 million a year of additional economic benefit if we get this right. That is why I do say to Ministers: let us look again at getting a better solution for Manchester and a better solution for the north to Piccadilly station.

Greater Manchester Spatial Framework

Debate between Graham Stringer and Andrew Gwynne

Thursday 21st February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on securing this debate. I will call him a friend, because although we are from different political parties, we represent constituencies in the same borough and have worked together on a number of issues. Sometimes the artificial barriers that this place sets up mask the real co-operation between Members on both sides of the House.

I believe in plan-led systems. They work best when larger areas co-operate over a wide geography, and I have experience of that. Before I became the Member of Parliament for Denton and Reddish, I served for 12 years as a councillor on Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council—one of the 10 councils that make up Greater Manchester. I remember very well, in my early days as a Tameside councillor in the mid-1990s, the proposals to introduce the Tameside unitary development plan. It was intended to replace the Greater Manchester structure plan, which had been in existence since the formation of the Greater Manchester County Council in 1974. The Greater Manchester structure plan, like the Greater Manchester spatial framework, covered the entire county. It made sense, because it meant that economic growth, housing growth and infrastructure planning happened on a county-wide basis, and that there could be co-operation across all the constituent authorities. Spatial planning actually worked. It is no good having 10 individual plans, because all 10 councils want to chase after the same goose that lays the golden egg.

Sadly, that is the situation that we fell into. When the Greater Manchester structure plan became obsolete, the then Conservative Government of John Major instructed the 10 metropolitan borough councils of Greater Manchester to get on and do their own thing. Each of the 10 local authorities produced its own unitary development plan. That was great for someone looking inside the box of just the city of Manchester—you served as a leader of that local authority for a considerable time, Mr Stringer—Rochdale, Oldham, Tameside or Stockport, but of course those boroughs do not act in isolation from one another.

With devolution, with the creation of the Greater Manchester combined authority and with the election of a Greater Manchester Mayor, I saw a real opportunity to get spatial planning right for the whole county so we can pool and share not just our resources, through things such as business rate retention, but our strengths as a destination—as a place to live and do business. I am biased. I will not get into a debate about which is the second city of this country; I will leave that to Birmingham and London, because we all know that Greater Manchester is the best place in the United Kingdom.

I saw those things as an opportunity, but I feel as though it is slipping away. We have had some really good co-operation on things such as housing targets, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove said very seriously, if Stockport were to go it alone, the housing needs that would fall on Stockport would mean that it would have to eat into the green belt. It is a very constrained borough, in the sense that it is surrounded by the green belt on three of its four sides. The only place where there is no green belt is where Stockport meets the city of Manchester and Tameside, but there is no room for it to grow that way either, because it has developed right up to those boundaries. By co-operating—not only has Stockport done that, but all the other outlying boroughs have done it to a lesser or greater extent—Salford and Manchester have been able to take around 40% of the housing growth for the entire county. That is good, because it will reinvigorate a large swathe of redundant brownfield sites in east Manchester, which borders my own constituency, as well as in the city centre and central Salford. The sites have lain derelict for decades and it is right that they are utilised first.

I do not just want to see growth in the central core, important though that is. There will only be a certain amount of demand for apartments and high-rise buildings without the greenery and the personal and private open space that comes with houses with gardens. There will have to be housing growth not just in the central core of the conurbation, but in the outlying areas. My hon. Friends the Members for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) and for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) are absolutely right. Unless we can get proper sequencing of “brownfield first”, there is a real danger for our conurbation.

The urban regeneration in the city centre is happening because land values have gone up, which makes brownfield sites worthy of developing, but similar brownfield sites—former old industrial sites that are now suitable for housing in Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside and parts of Stockport—will not have the same land value, and that value falls even further if there is an oversupply of green-belt land. This is about free market economics, and supply and demand. If I am a developer and a mass of sites have been identified, I will go for the cheapest site that gives me the greatest return. Frankly, in Greater Manchester, that is a green-belt site.

There could be much more buy-in to the loss of green-belt land. We all recognise that some green-belt land will have to be developed in the future growth of our city region, but if green-belt land is to be taken, we must have a proper “brownfield first” approach. I do not want to be here in future years saying that my constituents were proved right because the derelict site in the centre of Denton is still derelict 10, 20 or 30 years on, but the green-belt land surrounding Denton has been eaten up by development. If the green-belt land has to be built on—I accept that some of it might have to be—let that be because the brownfield land has been exhausted and it is absolutely necessary to build on the green-belt land. We should be creating sustainable communities. For a community to be genuinely sustainable, we need urban regeneration alongside new builds.

I want to commend the two councils in my constituency. Stockport Council is very ably led by Councillor Alex Ganotis, who is standing down in May. I thank him for his public service. He has done a great job of emphasising the need for urban regeneration. I particularly thank him for what I think will be a great legacy of his: the future regeneration of Stockport town centre. As part of the Greater Manchester spatial framework, with Andy Burnham using his new mayoral powers to create mayoral development corporations, Stockport is going to have the first mayoral development corporation in the country. It will regenerate Stockport town centre, which has got so much going for it. At the moment it is quite derelict on the edges. The historic core of the town—an absolute beauty—does not have the retail offer that it should have. However, the more people we get living and working in the town centre, the more vibrant and active it will become. I commend Stockport Council for its approach to urban regeneration, and I look forward to the mayoral development corporation transforming Stockport into the employment, residential and retail hub that a town of that size should be.

I also pay thanks to Councillor Brenda Warrington, leader of Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, not least because she is my parliamentary agent; until last month she was also my constituency party chair. She, too, has approached the spatial framework process with fresh eyes. She understands that the environment matters, too; the built environment matters, and the natural environment matters.

One lasting legacy of the old Greater Manchester Council, and something I am really passionate about, is the transformation of the river valleys across Greater Manchester from industrial blackspots in the 1970s to linear country parks. In every part of Greater Manchester, there are river valleys that 45 years ago were industrial wasteland, but anyone standing in them now would think they had always been open countryside. One thing that unites the whole of my constituency, cross borough as it is, is the Tame valley.

I raise the Tame valley because the main campaign that has brought the hon. Member for Hazel Grove and me together is a campaign against the extension of the Bredbury Parkway industrial estate. I am not against economic growth, and Greater Manchester needs to grow economically. It is not a bad thing to want jobs to be created in Greater Manchester, in locations where our constituents can access them, but I have an issue with Bredbury Parkway. The existing industrial estate is locked in by the infrastructure in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. It has direct motorway access on to the M60 at Bredbury roundabout, but unfortunately most HGVs cannot use it because they cannot get under the low railway bridge on the main line between Manchester and Sheffield.

I have met Highways England, Network Rail, Stockport Council and the prospective developers. It is fair to say that the prospective developers do not want to pay for any infrastructure upgrades—certainly not of the magnitude required. Highways England and the highways authority of Stockport Council say that the road cannot be lowered under the bridge, because it has already been lowered to its maximum depth; if it is lowered any further, the bridge will fall down. Network Rail says that to rebuild the bridge would involve the closure of the main line between Manchester and Sheffield, which would require funding of many millions that we will not get.

If there is any extension to the Bredbury Parkway, HGVs will have to come through Denton in Tameside to get on the motorway network at Crown Point. My constituents will not have that. They are already blighted by a considerable number of HGVs coming from the Bredbury Parkway scheme. Any extension would not be acceptable to them on traffic grounds or, indeed, on air quality grounds. My constituency is one of the most air-polluted in Greater Manchester. Two motorways run through it—the M60 and the M67—and anything that makes air quality even worse for my constituents is, frankly, not acceptable.

However, the situation is worse than that. The developers propose, aided and abetted by the Greater Manchester spatial framework process, to build very large distribution sheds in the “v” of the Tame valley. Everything at the top of the hill, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hazel Grove, has basically already been developed, and everything sloping down to the River Tame, which is the constituency boundary as well as the local authority boundary, is currently pasture. Those sheds would be terraced, but—this is worse—they would come right up to the river bank. On the opposite bank are not one but two local nature reserves, which are very precious not just to the people who live in my constituency, but to those in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

It would be fine to destroy the green belt in that way if we took the jobs argument alone. However, this is not a Stockport local plan—this is not a matter just for Stockport—but a Greater Manchester strategic plan, and over the whole county there is an oversupply of new land for economic development in the spatial framework, so the argument for removing the green belt at Bredbury automatically disappears. That land is not just green belt; it is the Tame valley. It is the thing that unites Tameside and Stockport, and every part of my disparate communities of Dukinfield, Audenshaw, Denton, Reddish and the Heatons. That is why I am so cross; it is why I will continue to oppose the Bredbury Parkway scheme, together with the hon. Gentleman; and it is why I hope those who propose the Greater Manchester spatial framework exercise common sense with the next revisions, which will be published after the consultation ends.

I want very briefly to refer to the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who cannot be here. I would probably have had to give her the same dispensation as I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton, because they are both members of the shadow Housing, Communities and Local Government team. She feels really strongly about this issue, so she has asked me to say a few words on her behalf. She has led a campaign with local councillors in Wigan against the use of land to create warehouses by junction 25 of the M6. In 2013, a similar scheme was thrown out by an independent planning inspector, but planning permission has already been submitted for warehousing the size of six football fields, and the jobs have been advertised.

That poses an important question: what is the point of even consulting on a spatial framework if developers can usurp the system as they seem to have done? That is precisely what is happening at Bredbury, where the developers have already held a public consultation. It makes a mockery of the plan-led system. I hope to get reassurances from the Minister that he takes very seriously the principle that developers and others should not seek to usurp the plan-led system, but that we need to get the plans in place before developers seek to develop cherished protected sites.

The other thing that has been mentioned—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I would be grateful if he started to bring his remarks to a conclusion so the Minister has about the same time as he has had.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am bringing my comments to a conclusion. I just want to touch on the serious issue of the numbers. We need clarity from the Minister about whether we should use the ONS numbers or the earlier numbers he set out. That brings me back to my first point about supply and demand. If we have an over-supply of green-belt land because we have used the wrong set of figures, how can the Minister give assurances to any of our constituents that those brownfield sites will be developed first?

I hope that the Minister will take on board the concerns we have raised and that he understands our sincerity. We want the best for Greater Manchester—we want our city region to grow and be prosperous—but it has to be sustainable for the future of all our communities.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I ask the Minister to leave at least a minute at the end for summing up.

Anti-Semitism

Debate between Graham Stringer and Andrew Gwynne

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

This week, we have been reminded of some of the darkest days in human history as we commemorate the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. More than 120,000 Jewish people were transported to Belsen, a high proportion of whom were children. One of those children was Anne Frank, the very person the Secretary of State quoted earlier. She died with her family only weeks before the liberation of Belsen by British soldiers. While in hiding, she wrote:

“How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to gradually change the world! How wonderful it is that everyone, great and small, can immediately help bring about justice by giving of themselves!”

I hope that all of us in this House today will be able to live up to those words.

I want to begin by addressing the comments made by the Secretary of State. As politicians, we all—and I mean all—have a duty to root out anti-Semitism, but recent events have shown that we in the Labour party need to be better at policing our own borders. The Labour party was formed to change society and to give a voice to the oppressed. Reflecting the existing defects of society can never be enough. It is our responsibility to show that we have zero tolerance of anti-Semitism in the Labour party. There is no place for anti-Semitism in the Labour party, on the left of British politics or in British society at all. End of.

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

I completely associate myself with my hon. Friend’s last three or four sentences. I represent one of the more significant Jewish populations in the country, in Kersal and Broughton, and I have worked with the Community Security Trust over a number of years to try to reduce the number of attacks on Jewish people in my constituency. I have to say that I have never come across anti-Semitism within my Labour party, and I have been shocked to realise that it exists in the party and among people associated with it. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the things we can do to reassure the Jewish community, not just in my constituency but throughout the country, is to deal with any accusations through a proper process as quickly as possible and, where necessary, either throw the accusations out or throw the people out?

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and speed is obviously of the essence. We cannot allow any allegations of anti-Semitism to be kept on the back burner. Where there is an allegation of anti-Semitism, we must not only call it out but root it out.

Local Bus Services

Debate between Graham Stringer and Andrew Gwynne

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend will know that Greater Manchester Buses was split into two companies, one in the north and the other in the south of the conurbation. In his constituency, the buyer was First Bus and in my part of the conurbation it was Stagecoach. We now have, in effect, two private monopolies.

[Graham Stringer]

We do indeed, and I will deal with why the deregulated system does not work. Partly it is because on-road competition cannot work, as there simply is not enough space for the buses. When competition has been tried, it has led to massive congestion.

Let us look in detail at what has happened in the major metropolitan areas. The bus companies have gamed the system. They have not responded as one would expect in a competitive private sector area, by responding to what the customer wants; they have responded to where the subsidy is. So networks have contracted, as the companies could make a bigger profit on the major routes; and services have been withdrawn, so that the companies could get direct subsidy in franchised systems and larger amounts of money. It is a fact that every bus that goes out of a depot has a 50% subsidy attached to it, one way or another. This is not a private competitive market responding to customers; it is a private market responding to a subsidy regime.

So I am not surprised when Martin Griffiths, the Stagecoach chief executive, says something like the following, although his nose must have grown a great deal when he did so:

“The truth is that England’s city regions have significantly lower fares and higher customer satisfaction than London, as well as having access to frequent, integrated bus services and smart ticketing.”

I do not know what he was on when he said that; the bus fares are higher, and they have regularly increased by more than inflation and by more than increases in London. We know why Stagecoach is happy: it has been extraordinarily successful at gaining the subsidies.

I have no objection to business people making a profit for providing goods and services, and doing it well. The fact is that Brian Souter and his sister have made £1 billion. Does anybody think that has come from providing a better service and improving our bus services in the major metropolitan areas of this country? Of course it has not. It has come from knowing how to get to the subsidy and how to move the bus services in order to get there. That partly shows the answer to the point raised by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) about where the money will come from. The capital return on investment in buses in the English regions is twice what it is in London. Why should the people I represent in north Manchester be giving Stagecoach and First Group twice the profit because they are operating in a deregulated system? If we put this out to proper competition in a franchised system that was open and fair, so that the more competitive bus company won, those profit levels would go down to a level similar to that in London, and with some of that money we would be able to improve the service. The only evidence we have of a franchise system within England, Wales and Scotland is the one in London, and it managed for the first 13 or 14 years after deregulation, when the companies were regulated, to run services with very low fare increases and maintain the number of passengers, whereas in the rest of England the numbers decreased by 50%. Those companies managed that without subsidy, so I think that in the metropolitan areas we, too, would have a better service and we would not be going to the Exchequer for more money.

I will finish with a plea. I was delighted with the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement about Greater Manchester and what he was saying about re-regulating the buses. This is not an ideological battle and nor should it be one. The fact is there is a simple way of improving services in the major metropolitan areas, which is by making it easier to have a London-style system and allow franchises. That would help everybody.

Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Graham Stringer and Andrew Gwynne

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

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

Unusually, but not uniquely, I did not support London’s bid for the Olympic games. I said so in the House during preparations for the bid, and I advised against it. I did so for two reasons, one of which is relevant to the debate. The first reason, which is not really relevant, is that no other UK city was allowed to compete with London for the right to represent the UK in the International Olympic Committee’s competition.

The second reason is that I simply did not believe the prospectus that London put out on the impact and cost of the games. Financially, that view has turned out to be right, as the cost of the games has increased by a factor of threefold or fourfold, the sustainability criteria have been thrown out of the plans for the Olympic games and the participation that was promised has not occurred. It has been repeated, as it was repeated during the bid, however, that the economic benefits of the Olympic games will be spread throughout the country.

I do not doubt—I am certain—that there will be economic benefits from the Olympic games. They will be felt in east London, in particular, and throughout the rest of London, but no Minister—from any party when in government—whom I have ever asked about the Blake report, which the previous Government commissioned, has answered my questions on it. The report showed that, although there would be benefits, there would also be a £4.5 billion disbenefit to the rest of the United Kingdom, meaning that the benefit to London would be even greater.

One can of course go to individual businesses and find that there will be a particular benefit. Steel will be provided for the Olympic games from Bolton, for instance, and one can go around the country and find such things, but the Blake report, which was produced at a time of economic growth, stated that overall there would be a disbenefit.

No Minister has contradicted the report, because it has been kept a great secret from them by officials or by more senior Ministers who know about it, but if one takes that analysis and places against it the Sunday trading proposals in the Bill, which will increase the Sunday trading of large stores, one sees that the impact is likely to be negative on many small stores and street traders throughout the rest of England.

I received a letter 10 days ago. It is not, as it happens, from a shop that will be affected by the legislation, but it shows the difficulties that small traders are currently experiencing—similar to many convenience stores on the street corners and high streets in our towns, cities and rural areas. The man in question runs an angling shop, which, when my 12-year-old son was into fishing, I used to visit fairly regularly. He wrote to me and—excuse the language, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the inaccurate constitutional position that my constituent took—said, “Will you sack that idiot in the Cabinet Office who has made people fill up all their cars with petrol. I used to employ four people in this shop, I am having the greatest difficulty making ends meet, I might be out of business within six weeks and trade was just beginning to increase in the spring. Now everybody’s gone and spent their money on their cars and nobody is coming into my shop.”

That shows how difficult small traders are finding things at present. If we take the fact that the Olympic games are going to have a negative impact, that overall there will be less money about throughout the regions and that people are going to go into Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and Morrison’s at times when they could not previously go into them and spend money, we find that the Bill is going to put small businesses out of business. They will not exist, and the Bill will have a greater negative impact on them than probably anything else at present.

That is the prime reason why I oppose the Bill, but I also urge some caution on the figures that Government Front Benchers have provided, because they are not net figures. I do not doubt that 6 million people are likely to come into the country during the Olympic games period, if that is what we are told, but the experience of many host cities is that, although people go to watch the games and to enjoy the sporting and cultural experience, many people who would otherwise visit the city—to look at the Tower of London and London’s other great tourist experiences, for example—do not do so. Los Angeles’ lowest bed occupancy in more than a decade occurred in 1984, at the time of its Olympic games.

I have been fortunate enough to go to a number of Olympics, and had Members been in Atlanta in 1996 they would not have known that the games were taking place—unless they had been in the stadiums or nearby. As many people went to those games as went to any other Olympics, but other people left the city. Even according to the impact assessment—my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) did a very good job of showing how inadequate it is—the impact is unlikely to be as impressive as it might seem.

It has been said several times that this will not be a precedent. I would advise people to go and look at a dictionary. Whatever anyone says, it is a precedent, because it has not happened before. Hon. Members are saying—I do not disbelieve them; they are honourable people—that they will not use it as a precedent, but other people might do so. Nothing can stop that, and it will be extremely bad for small shopkeepers and small businesses.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is right to point to the concern that this may be used as a precedent. Was he as surprised as I was that the Secretary of State, in giving an example of this, could not cite another Olympic host city but had to cite the football World cup in Germany?

[Graham Stringer]

I was not surprised. I suspect that this is driven by lobbying by the very big stores, which want to open permanently in the long term—