Oral Answers to Questions
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
The Government have committed £2.5 billion to vehicle grants and infrastructure to support the transition to electric vehicles.
Sarah Green
The British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association, based in Amersham in my constituency, has pointed out that the cost of charging is still prohibitive for many companies. If a company with a fleet of vehicles wants to install charging points onsite, it probably also needs to install a substation, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds, which is prohibitive. The BVRLA is therefore calling for a depot grant to help with those set-up costs. Will the Secretary of State consider introducing a depot grant to help companies with fleets to convert them to electric vehicles?
Grant Shapps
We are always looking at what more we can do. We put in £1.9 billion in the 2020 spending review, and we have enhanced that with an extra £620 million for the transition. I will always look at what else can be done. Electric vehicles—I can attest to this because I have driven one for several years—are dramatically cheaper than equivalent fuel vehicles, albeit that the infrastructure needs to be got right to make sure that they are chargeable.
Bill Esterson
The UK needs 480,000 EV charging points if we are to transition to electric vehicles. So far there are 28,000 publicly available charging points, and only 1,000 on-street charging points outside London. Last year, just 7,600 new charging points were installed. At this rate, we will have to wait until 2080 for everyone to be able to use an electric car. These figures are from the National Infrastructure Commission. How does the Secretary of State expect motorists to be able to play their part in the move to net zero if the Government are not delivering the charging infrastructure?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Gentleman presents a partial picture because he forgets that there are 300,000 chargers installed at people’s homes, with Government support. In addition, the figures that he quoted are now out of date. There are 29,500 public installations, 4,500 of which are rapid chargers—a 37% increase in 2021 alone. We will be ready for everybody to go electric.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
It has been more than two years since the Prime Minister promised 4,000 new zero-emission buses—representing only about a tenth of the English bus fleet—by the start of 2025. It took them a while, and it has been a year since the launch of the zero-emission bus regional areas scheme designed to deliver on that promise, but the Government said it would only deliver funding for up to 500 zero-emission buses in England. One year on, how many buses have been ordered through the standard ZEBRA process?
Gavin Newlands
I very much appreciate that answer, but it is completely different to the one I received to a parliamentary question on Monday, which was that the Government have ordered zero buses through the standard ZEBRA process since it launched but that they expect to do so later this year. I hope the Secretary of State might correct the record. The truth is that six months after the Prime Minister made his 4,000 bus pledge, the Scottish Government got on with delivering, with their SULEB—Scottish ultra-low emission bus—schemes delivering 272 buses, while just a fortnight ago Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth announced the first phase of the zero-emission bus challenge fund of £62 million for a further 276 buses. The nearly 550 buses delivered or ordered in Scotland are the equivalent of 5,500 in England. The UK Government are fiddling while the planet burns. When will the 4,000 buses be delivered?
Grant Shapps
As we said in our manifesto, we will deliver the 4,000 buses during this Parliament, and we are on track to do so. I have just given the hon. Gentleman the up-to-date information on the number already funded. The SNP spokesman makes a big fuss of this, but—I do not think he mentioned this—the Scottish Government missed their own legal emission targets under the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. They were supposed to reduce the emissions but they missed the targets.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
I am working with my Cabinet colleagues to consider support for motorists during these challenging times.
Alex Davies-Jones
I place on record my celebrations for everybody celebrating St Patrick’s day, and a happy Purim.
With fuel costs skyrocketing and the average family facing an annual increase of £386 in petrol costs, my constituents are being forced to choose between getting to work and heating their homes. Does the Secretary of State agree that now would be the worst possible time to introduce a tax hike of £255 on working people who are already seeing their pay swallowed up by the costs of simply living?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady asks specifically about the additional costs of motoring during these difficult times with what we have seen happen to the crude oil price. I gently remind her that she voted against a measure in the Budget to freeze fuel duty for a 12th consecutive year.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for the 12-year freeze in fuel duty—that is extremely welcome—but given the increases in pump prices and the costs for average constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme, we need to do more at the forthcoming Budget. The Treasury is getting more revenue from VAT, so we need to find ways to reduce that duty burden so that people in my constituency can fill up and continue to go to work. Will the Secretary of State speak to the Chancellor about that?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the pressures that exist. As I mentioned, we froze fuel duty for the 12th consecutive year, which means that it costs about £15 less to fill up a family car than it would have done otherwise. He is right to mention my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who is perhaps the most expensive Member of this House, having cost the Treasury tens of billions of pounds over the years for this worthwhile saving.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
Alan Davie, Ian Roberts, Geddes and Laird are the hauliers who keep the economy of Angus moving, and by the Road Haulage Association’s estimate they are facing an 18% increase in operating costs purely on fuel. What discussions will the Secretary of State have with the Chancellor to get something sorted to keep our economy moving?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Member is right to point out the fantastic work done by haulage companies and all their workers. Over the next five years, the 2022-23 freeze will represent £8 billion off the fuel bill for motorists in this country, including the haulier sector, which I recently backed with 32 separate measures to ensure that it can continue to operate during what have been difficult times post covid.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
It is a very happy St Patrick’s day in Ireland because fuel duty has been cut in the past week. I thank my right hon. Friend for what the Government have done on the fuel duty freeze, but the fact is that motorists are paying £1.60 or more for their petrol and diesel and we are heading for a de facto lockdown where parents cannot afford to take their kids to school and workers cannot afford to commute by car and have to stay at home. Will my right hon. Friend make appeals to the Treasury to cut fuel duty in the spending round next week?
Grant Shapps
I had not noticed that Parliament’s most expensive MP was in his place in the Chamber. My right hon. Friend’s work has been absolutely remarkable over the years: actually, after 12 years of the fuel freeze, the average family has saved something like £2,000 as a direct result of his excellent campaigning. I will of course have further conversations with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it will be for him to decide on the next measures.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
The price of diesel is now so high that a typical van driver will be paying £800 more than they were a year ago. Meanwhile, wholesale oil prices have fallen by 28% in just one week. Those are prices millions of working people and families simply cannot afford, so why is the Transport Secretary still defending the record profits of oil and gas giants as they swallow up the pay of hard-working British people? Why does he not insist that any fall in the price of oil is passed on to the price of petrol and diesel at the pump?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady is absolutely right about ensuring that any fall is passed on quickly. For example, I notice that Brent crude is down to $100 a barrel at the moment—it had been as high, I think, as $130 a week or two ago—and I want to see that passed on. But I am very curious as to why, given her deep concern about the cost of diesel, she voted against our move to freeze petrol and diesel prices this year.
Louise Haigh
The Transport Secretary thinks he is on to a very clever point given that Labour votes against Tory Budgets, but I remind him that the last time the Tories tried to put up fuel duty, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), now the shadow Chancellor, forced a vote in Parliament to delay the increase. People need help in the here and now as they struggle to make decisions over which basic essentials to cut. This has to be a wake-up call for the Government. The crisis shows exactly why this country must never again be left dependent on the oil and gas of foreign despots.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) mentioned the statistic of 1,000 electric vehicle charging units outside London—a stat that the Transport Secretary did not correct—which reveals the gross inequity of access in this country to EV charging units. The National Infrastructure Commission was also damning in its appraisal that the Government have no plan to deliver infrastructure. When will he publish the strategy on EV infrastructure that the industry is calling for, to help turbocharge the transition to cleaner transport?
Grant Shapps
I have to say again that words are one thing—I understand the hon. Lady is doing her job—but action is another. When individuals vote against measures that will freeze fuel prices for British consumers and motorists, they can hardly then stand there and say, “Why aren’t the Government doing something?” The Opposition could help: they could vote for it. On EV charging, I do not know where the stat of 1,000 chargers outside London comes from. It is completely untrue. There are nearly 30,000 chargers across the country, of which over 5,500 are rapid. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, we now have the fastest chargers in the west. I hope the hon. Lady will welcome that.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
I would like to update the House on the actions that we have taken to clamp down on Russian interests in the UK. As hon. Members have already seen, we have detained private jets that we believe are owned by, or connected to, Putin’s cronies. I can now confirm that we are investigating a small number of yachts moored in this country, which we also suspect are linked to Russian oligarchs. I have taken steps to ensure that they are unable to depart, and investigations are ongoing. I can reveal that 10 Russian-linked ships have been turned away or redirected on their course, and eight ships or their companies have severed their Russian ties.
I also inform the House of conversations that I have been having with my opposite number, the Ukrainian Transport and Infrastructure Secretary, who has asked me to thank the whole House for the cross-party support that has been provided. He said that the UK’s approach has been pioneering towards his country and that where the UK goes, others follow.
Mr Sharma
Let me declare my interest as a former employee of London Transport as a bus conductor and booking clerk. Transport for London has warned that it will be forced to cut one in five buses and 10% of tube services if it does not receive a long-term funding deal from the Government. It has been two years since the pandemic began and the Secretary of State has failed to come forward with this funding, despite offering 18 months of bail-outs to private rail companies. When will he finally stop playing political games with Londoners and provide TfL with a long-term funding agreement?
Grant Shapps
That would be £5 billion-worth of political games—because that is the amount that we have given to TfL to keep its services running. That has been an incredibly fair settlement. The hon. Gentleman talks about a longer-term settlement, but surely he would agree with us that we should see what is going to happen with the pandemic; as it completes, we are able to talk about other things, including capital grants. However, I think £5 billion should be recognised by the hon. Gentleman.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
The A50-A500 corridor is absolutely critical to the economy of Staffordshire and improvements to those roads are vital for the levelling-up agenda in north Staffordshire. May I ask the Secretary of State to welcome the recent publication from Midlands Connect proposing a number of improvements on that route? Of specific interest to my constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme are the plans and conversations he has had about improving junction 15 on the M6.
Grant Shapps
I commend my hon. Friend for the work he has been doing in that regard. We are very keen to ensure improvements and we will make sure that we continue to work with National Highways to try to provide those.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
As you well know, Mr Speaker, I am a lifelong member of the Fianna Phadraig Irish pipe band in Wythenshawe; it is my great honour to stand at this Dispatch Box and wish one and all a very happy St Patrick’s day. I am looking forward to getting home this afternoon and joining my comrades to entertain the masses of Manchester.
Worrying news has just broken that P&O Ferries has been called to port as DP World, its owner, seeks the long-term viability of the ferry company. Major disruption is expected. Can the Secretary of State update the House about any discussions that he has had with DP World or P&O Ferries about any potential redundancies, and the fact that we do not want any crews who are made redundant to be replaced by foreign cheap labour?
Grant Shapps
It was remiss of me not to acknowledge St Patrick’s Day and Purim. Both are fun and enjoyable festivals, and I know that Members on both sides of the House and people throughout the country will be enjoying them.
On a much sadder note, I am concerned about the news that is breaking on P&O Ferries. I understand that it has temporarily paused its operations, which is causing disruption in the short straits between Calais and Dover, and at some other ports. I am working with the Kent resilience forum, and I have just instructed its members to become intricately involved, along with other partnerships. I will be taking further steps later today, which will include ensuring that my officials engage in urgent discussions with P&O about the situation, which is of particular concern to its workers.
Mr Speaker
If it is that serious and an emergency statement is required, the Chair will always be willing to listen.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Rising petrol costs are one of the many reasons that Andy Burnham’s original GM clean air zone plan is unworkable and should be scrapped. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking with colleagues from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to ensure that Mr Burnham’s desire to create the world’s largest clean air charging zone does not place unsustainable financial burdens on Greater Manchester businesses and residents who are reliant on certain types of motor transport and particularly vulnerable to increased petrol prices?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, needs to go back to the drawing board on this.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Will the Minister join me and my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) in congratulating the Unite workers on refusing to unload Russian oil at Stanlow in Cheshire? What further measures is the Secretary of State applying to sanction Russian oil and gas?
Grant Shapps
Yes, I do join the hon. Member in congratulating them. That came after I wrote to all the ports and asked them not to allow in Russian ships and Russian-connected ships. I should point out that this is the only country in the world to have a Russian-connected ban at our ports, and we look forward to other countries joining our lead, just as Minister Kubakov explained.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on refusing the Mayor of London’s decision to remove the car park at Cockfosters station. Can it be a precedent, so that we can encourage motorists to park at stations and then use the London underground network to get into the centre of London? Will my right hon. Friend use that as a means to stop car parks being removed at termini throughout London?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend will have seen my action with regard to Cockfosters station. The plan would have removed all but 12 car parking spaces, and while I am keen to get people using active travel and all forms of travel, the idea that only 12 cars a day would turn up was ludicrous. It would just have meant other cars parking on the streets and inconveniencing residents. I encourage the Mayor of London to come forward with better plans than that.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
The most recent NatCen baseline report on the Government’s inclusive transport strategy shows we are still a long way from having a fully accessible and inclusive transport and active travel system. Will the Secretary of State update the House on the progress of his ITS commitments? In doing so, will he say why the deadline to report accessibility failures has been missed, why the consultation on bus stops has been paused and when the stakeholder group will next meet, as it has not met for over a year? Finally, how many staff are working full time on delivering these strategic commitments?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady asks a series of very good questions. We are working very hard on things like access for all on rail. She asks a number of bus-related questions, and we have put money into making sure that buses are more accessible through both signage and different types of communication facilities for people with disabilities. As she asks a series of questions, I will write to her with a detailed response to each of them. I hope she will find that useful.
International Travel
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement about international travel.
It is almost two years to the day since the country first went into lockdown—two years in which we have fought an exceptionally difficult and unpredictable pandemic, two years of unprecedented restrictions on mobility and two years that have had a drastic impact on travel and on the industry. However, we have now reached an important milestone in our journey back to pre-pandemic normality. After getting rid of testing requirements for eligible vaccinated passengers a few weeks ago, I am pleased to confirm that we are once again leading the way by removing all the remaining covid measures affecting international travel into the UK.
That means we are the first major economy to get back to the kind of restriction-free travel we all enjoyed before covid. Whether for reuniting with friends and family, holidays or business trips, from 4 am on Friday 18 March—this Friday—there will be no testing or quarantine requirements for any passengers arriving into the UK, regardless of their vaccination status, and we will go further. I have heard the calls from passengers, airlines and Members across the House that the passenger locator form is a burden that has simply outlived its usefulness, so I am delighted to confirm that, from Friday, we will be removing the passenger locator form for all passengers. No more quarantine, no more tests and no more forms—international travel is back.
It will be the first time in two years that we can enable frictionless journeys for passengers travelling to the UK, and the remaining international travel legislation will therefore be revoked this Friday—18 March—two months earlier than the original expiry date of 16 May. The devolved Administrations have confirmed that they will align on the removal of these measures, so this change will be UK-wide. [Interruption.] I hear the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) chuntering away from a sedentary position. I will come to the Opposition policy, which was both to have further restrictions and then to lift restrictions—often simultaneously—depending on which Member on the Front Bench we listened to.
Today’s announcement is another vital step in our strategy set out by the Prime Minister last month for Britain to live with covid-19 and to manage an endemic virus. Thanks to the success of our vaccine and booster programmes in building population-wide immunity—further boosters are on the way for the most vulnerable this spring—we are in the strongest possible position to lift covid travel regulations without compromising public health.
We must of course remain vigilant against possible future variants, but thanks to the robust protective shield we have built, we can avoid simply reverting to the same restrictions we have used in the past. Even if another variant of concern emerges, next time we will react differently. We have learned a lot during this pandemic, and we will use that experience to respond in more measured ways and more flexible ways. For example, while quarantine hotels were appropriate for red-list arrivals at an earlier stage of the pandemic, we are now standing down the remaining capacity. Our default approach in future will be to take the least stringent possible measures, avoiding border restrictions to minimise impacts on travel. So we will maintain a range of contingency measures in reserve, tailoring our response to the situation. Our first recourse will be to public health guidance, and guidance to ports, airports and operators on how passengers and staff can stay safe and protect others, and we will avoid stricter restrictions wherever we possibly can.
Although we are dropping all testing and quarantine requirements, our advice to eligible adults who have not been vaccinated stays the same: “If you’ve not got jabbed, then please get your vaccinations. If you’ve had two jabs, please get a booster. It will boost and protect your health, it will protect vulnerable people around you and it will smooth travel to other countries.” It is important to say that vaccination status may continue to be required in other countries to make journeys seamless. Passengers should continue to check travel advice on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office website, before they book and travel, to see what restrictions may still be in place in the countries people are visiting.
As we better deal with covid-19 at home, we will continue to make our leading contribution to tackling the disease abroad. We are sending 100 million further doses of vaccines to other countries by this summer. More than 2.6 billion doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine have now been supplied to countries around the world on a non-profit basis, almost two thirds of which have gone to low and lower middle-income nations. We are working with key international partners to establish common rules and common contingency measures, reflecting what we have learned from this pandemic, to use in the future.
While all of these measures have been necessary, I do not underestimate for one second just how hard travel restrictions have been. They have been difficult for passengers, and damaging for travel and tourism in particular. Now that we have lifted the final covid measures on inbound flights, the industry will play a vital role in helping build back better from the pandemic. Soon we will publish our strategic framework for aviation, supporting the sector and the jobs that rely on it, and as part of that we will be considering the workforce, skills, connectivity and of course the crucial mission to deliver our net-zero commitments. I will set out more details about the strategic framework in due course.
We promised that we would keep draconian and costly covid measures in place for not a day longer than was absolutely necessary. Now we stand as one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and we are also the first major economy to travel freely once again without restrictions. The UK has achieved many hard-won gains over the past two years thanks to the endurance and resolve of the public. Now we are seeing the long-awaited rewards for that patience and determination. The removal of all remaining travel measures this Friday will mean passengers can book trips with confidence, businesses can plan with greater certainty and Britain can continue to bounce back from the pandemic, as we learn to live with covid. I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The aviation industry is a critical part of the UK economy, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs, and we all want to see a safe return to international travel, which is why, earlier this year, Labour outlined our comprehensive plan to live well with covid and to protect lives and livelihoods.
We know that the virus will continue to change and adapt and we will need to live with it as it does, and that is critical when it comes to the travel industry. Another variant of concern may emerge, as the Secretary of State has acknowledged, and lessons must be learned from previous Government responses that damaged the industry. He partially outlined some contingency measures, but he had previously committed to publishing a full contingency strategy to deal with possible future variants. With surging cases in international hubs such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, does he agree that he should be fully transparent about his plans, and that that would boost confidence for the travelling public and the airline industry? Can we get a commitment to the publication of that strategy today?
Today’s announcement, which ends restrictions for the unvaccinated, is a reminder of another stark truth: in an era of global international travel, no one is safe until everyone is safe. We in the UK have learned that lesson the hard way. The Secretary of State has confirmed that we will be sending 100 million doses to low-income countries by the summer. Will he explain how 77 million doses will be delivered in just three months, when 23 million have been delivered over the past nine? If we are to break the cycle of new variants, there is only one way to do it: to vaccinate the world.
The elephant in the room today for the Transport Secretary is the cost of living crisis about to engulf this country. The barrier to passengers booking holidays with confidence this spring and summer is not a passenger locator form; it is the historic collapse in living standards facing millions, and the Conservatives’ refusal to do anything about it. The barrier will be the record rise in energy bills in two weeks’ time, the brutal national insurance hike that his Government are imposing on working people, and the record prices of petrol that are swallowing up the incomes of millions of British people as we speak.
This country is facing the largest decline in living standards since the 1950s, putting a holiday beyond the reach of many, and the Transport Secretary has literally nothing to say. Indeed, the only step he has taken is to hike up rail fares by the largest amount in a decade. Today’s announcement eases the remaining travel restrictions, but let us be clear: the barriers to holidays this summer are the tax rises his Government are imposing on hard-working families, the surging petrol prices, and the cost of living crisis made in Downing Street. Either he is oblivious to this crisis, or he is completely indifferent. Either way, is it not time this Government woke up?
Grant Shapps
I thought we were here to talk about releasing the final covid measures, but I am always up for the challenge and I am happy to respond to the hon. Lady. She started by talking about the importance of and costs to the aviation industry, and I have an ask for her in return. Yesterday, it became apparent that the Labour Government in Wales were less than chuffed with the idea of removing those final measures. Indeed, they want to continue to pile on the costs, bureaucracy and red tape of passenger locator forms, even though they are past their point of relevance. That is what the Labour Government want to do in Wales, and therefore we should not take lectures on how to improve things for the industry. I would have thought that being the first major economy in the world to make travel covid-free in terms of removing those forms would have been warmly welcomed, and I think the Welsh Government could do the same.
The hon. Lady referred to the importance of vaccination and I entirely agree. Moments ago we were talking behind the Speaker’s Chair about the terrible figures in Hong Kong to which she referred, and noting the fact that the deaths that are occurring from the spike in cases in Hong Kong appear to be entirely down to the lack of booster vaccinations. I know she will join me in being grateful that we in this country have managed to get those booster vaccinations to the population most at risk, particularly older people.
The hon. Lady asked about the toolkit of responses if covid comes back, and we had an extensive conversation about that with the UK Health Security Agency in our covid operations meeting yesterday. The collective decision, across all four nations, was that since we do not know the exact form that covid will take in future, rather than listing every possible measure—which, by the way, is every possible measure that has been taken in the past—it would be better and more responsible to see what we are facing in the specific when we see a variant of concern. Members across the House will already know the range of events and possibilities available, noting that vaccinations and pharmaceutical measures make those very different. [Interruption.] I do not agree with the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East that listing a range of increasingly draconian measures will somehow reassure the industry. I think it would be quite the opposite, and that was agreed across all four nations.
Finally, the hon. Lady went on to discuss the cost of living—a very valid subject to be discussing, although I am not sure it quite fits this debate. But briefly, I thought that the Leader of the Opposition had stood at that Dispatch Box a couple of weeks ago and acknowledged and warned the House that the cost of living would rise because of the war in Ukraine—I quote the right hon. and learned Gentleman when I say that. The hon. Lady asked specifically what we have done about the cost of petrol in tanks, but for 10 years, 11 years, we have frozen fuel duty, and for every one of those years Labour opposed that—every single year without fail. That measure saved £15 per gallon for the average family car, but what have Labour Members done? They have voted against it every time. They now have the chutzpah to come to the Dispatch Box and ask what we are doing about it. It is simply extraordinary. The hon. Lady then referred to rail fares, which have risen at nearly half the level of inflation. That represents a real-terms cut in rail fares because, as she knows, inflation is higher.
The hon. Lady mentioned and referenced employment and unemployment, and I have three facts for her. First, we have record levels of employment in this country, which are higher than before covid. Secondly, unemployment has been falling every month for the past year. Thirdly, no Labour Government in history have left power with unemployment lower than when they came to office.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was beginning to wonder which statement I had walked in on. Let us return to the theme of international travel, not least because thousands of people have worked in that industry over the past two years and have suffered greatly. It would be respectful of this place to focus on them, rather than on some of the wider issues that have just been brought up.
I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. Over the past two years I know that he has battled hard to support this sector. These are the last barriers to be removed, and I hope the industry will now be ready for lift off. Border Force resources will be required once capacity increases in the summer. Will he do everything in his power, working with the Home Secretary, to ensure that we have everybody we need at the airports? I used the airport at the weekend. Border Force was fantastic and really efficient, but as numbers upscale, so must it upscale.
Grant Shapps
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Ensuring that Border Force and its resources are in the right place will be important, especially when our airports get busier again. I will certainly undertake to speak to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary about those provisions. It might interest the House to know that with e-gates, not having to check a separate database for the passenger locator form—that was automatically carried out by e-gates, using both software and hardware—saves up to six seconds per passenger coming through. That should also help to relieve some of the queueing.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the SNP spokesperson, Gavin Newlands.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. It has become increasingly clear that the much vaunted four-nations approach often stems from situations where the devolved Governments are left with little choice, given the nature of the devolution funding settlement. Whether for furlough, community testing, or the various travel arrangements, when the devolved Governments perhaps took a different view, at least with the timing of such decisions, no public money would be made available for a different public health approach. It is not quite a “do as I say” approach; it is more a “do as we will fund” approach. Borrowed funds are obviously not available to the devolved Administrations, and as the Secretary of State alluded, the Welsh Government have said they are extremely disappointed at the dropping of testing requirements. The Scottish Government have said that they followed the UK Government to avoid the harm to tourism caused by non-alignment. Is this another example of the UK Government making a decision, and strong-arming the devolved Administrations into following them to avoid economic disadvantage?
Despite the unease that some members of society will have following these announcements, particularly given the rather nebulous commitment to continued surveillance, this is welcome news for the aviation and travel sectors, which come out of the pandemic in much poorer, smaller and less competitive shape than they entered it. That is largely a result of the extremely poor support given to the sector, in which the UK stood out among top aviation markets for its paucity of support.
The future is far from certain with events in Ukraine and covid potentially causing disruption as well as the cost of living, as has been alluded to. So I would like the Government to commit to being a bit more fleet of foot on aviation support should the need arise. Indeed, when will the strategic aviation review be published?
The UK Government have said that the UK Health Security Agency will continue to monitor variants of concern, so, further to the concerns outlined by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), will the Secretary of State explain what measures will be part of that continued monitoring, how long it will operate for and how it will be funded? Lastly, what consideration at all did the Secretary of State give to the position of devolved Governments in reaching the decision that he has announced?
Grant Shapps
I should point out to the hon. Gentleman and the House that the UK Health Security Agency is a four-nations body made up of the chief medical officers from all parts of the United Kingdom, including Scotland. Therefore, when we came to yesterday’s discussion at Covid-O, which included Scottish Ministers, we could take into account the advice provided. I do not want to accuse him of being happy to see the forms and bureaucracy scrapped while still somehow opposing it, but it seems to me that if one is really serious about cutting bureaucracy, one should welcome this step.
The hon. Gentleman refers to support that he claims the Scottish Government have given to aviation, but it is worth reminding the House that that is not what Edinburgh and Glasgow airports have said. They were upset that Ministers in Scotland refused to meet them, which they said was “galling” and in “stark contrast” to the UK Government’s approach. Indeed, the Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association said that its industry had been “sacrificed” by the SNP—its word rather than mine. It is important to say that we are supporting the sector, not least by removing these restrictions.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the strategic aviation review. I hope he will accept that there is no point in carrying out a review during omicron and covid—we want to do it as the industry comes out—so that will be forthcoming. He asked a sensible question about continued monitoring, which will happen in two ways. First, he will be familiar with me having said many times at the Dispatch Box when we were in the midst of the pandemic that the UK was carrying out up to 50% of the genomic sequencing in the entire world. That figure is now different, because we have helped and other countries have caught up, so, although we are carrying on our programme, much of that genomic sequencing is happening around the world rather than needing to be done specifically here. Secondly, we have the programme led by the Office for National Statistics that carries on finding out where coronavirus is in the country and the extent to which different variants might be starting to take hold. We can therefore continue to monitor things comprehensively through both genomic sequencing and the covid-19 infection survey of the population.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
May I express my gratitude to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for removing all covid-19 international travel restrictions for those coming into the United Kingdom? Will he join me in welcoming the reopening of the south terminal at Gatwick airport on 27 March and the thousands of job vacancies now available and needing to be filled as we recover our industry and our economy?
Grant Shapps
I do not think it is too much of an exaggeration to say that virtually nobody in the House has done more than my hon. Friend to promote the case of the hard-pressed aviation sector during the last two years of the crisis. It is great news that Gatwick’s south terminal will reopen on 27 March; I very much hope to be there for that. I know that he shares my enthusiasm for all the work that carried on during the crisis to aim for jet zero, to help clean up the aviation sector and ensure that, by 2050, we have not only a booming British aviation sector but a cleaner one.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I am delighted that England is following Norway, Ireland, Hungary and several other countries in lifting all remaining travel restrictions. Will the Secretary of State assure me that when the public inquiry into covid happens, it will have full access to all the various and quite secretive committees that the Government relied on when they imposed those travel restrictions? Many of us believe, and growing evidence suggests, that for countries such as ours, which were never going to have a zero-covid strategy, the draconian travel restrictions did more harm than good.
Grant Shapps
For the sake of completeness, I will mention Ireland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway and Slovenia, which have either removed or will shortly remove measures to put themselves in the same position. I say “of leading economies” because I am not aware of any other G7 economy that has gone as far as us in scrapping restrictions and making it easier to travel.
The inquiry will be there to learn the lessons from covid, and it is incredibly important that it does so not just in relation to travel but across everything that happened during covid. Of course, we want to learn the lessons because, without learning the lessons of the past, we can never improve things for the future.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I have learned from being in this House that when the Government do something good and well, few Opposition Back Benchers turn up—we have only one today—and the three shadow Ministers have heckled from a sedentary position because they know that the Government have done a good job. Is it not true that the Prime Minister’s leadership by getting the vaccine and unlocking our society has allowed us to have freedom day for travel this Friday? Does the Secretary of State have to sign a piece of paper or lay a statutory instrument before the House? If he just needs to sign a piece of paper, why does he not do so tonight so that we can start tomorrow?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We all remember Margaret Keenan receiving that very first properly approved vaccination in the entire world, and that happened in this country. It was not just that: we also got the vaccination programme out first and, critically, the booster programme out first and showed world leadership. Actually—this is partly in response to the comments of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh); I did not pick up this point—2.6 billion people have received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccination, so we have made more of a contribution than any other country in the world. It is absolutely right to recognise all of that.
I do not know the technicalities of quite what happens—I imagine that we must sign an SI—but I do know that we need a few days to alert everyone to change the systems for Border Force and ensure that people already away can adjust to the change. However, it is only three more sleeps, is it not? I hope that my hon. Friend can contain himself.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. It is the right thing to do and, as I have said before, freedom works. However, may I press him on his answer to the Chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) about ensuring that, after a period of having been wound down to deal with fewer passengers, ports of entry are ready to give that warm British welcome to people either returning home or visiting for travel and leisure? I heard a horror story the other day that, at Heathrow terminal 5, e-gates were telling everybody to seek assistance but there was only one official. Will he do everything possible to support our airports and work with the Home Office to ensure that all ports of entry are ready to receive people?
Grant Shapps
I absolutely will do that. I know that Border Force has been working hard, sometimes under difficult conditions. Many people do not realise that every time there was a change in which countries were added or removed or rules changed—there were hundreds of them—that often required not just software but hardware changes. As a passenger put their passport down on an egate, it was reading not only their passport for permission to enter but checking the passenger locator form, their vaccination status and how they had filled in the form—it was doing an awful lot of work behind the scenes. Updates, unfortunately, commonly caused breaks in that system. As far as I know, we were the only country in the world to even attempt anything as ambitious on e-gates—I certainly came across no equivalent in North America or Europe. It is really important that much of that bureaucracy will be removed as that should smooth things out. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), I will discuss Border Force resourcing with the Home Secretary.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
I think that everybody in the House will warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement about extra vaccines being distributed around the world. Will he ensure that a list of countries receiving them is put in the Library for us to check? Will he assure me that a good number of very poor Commonwealth countries are prioritised in the programme?
Grant Shapps
It is certainly the case that the vast majority of the vaccinations through Oxford-AstraZeneca have gone to mid and lower-income countries. Many will have been used by Commonwealth countries. I should have answered in detail the point made on that by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). I will place a note in the House of Commons Library to provide a breakdown of where those have gone and answer the further question about how the 100 million is worked out. But I think all of us in the House, regardless of which side we sit on, can be incredibly proud of this country’s literally global lead in protecting the world against coronavirus.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Axing all the remaining covid restrictions for outgoing travellers will be warmly welcomed by those working in the travel, aviation, airport and aerospace sectors, including my wife and many Gloucester constituents. Those are all areas of expertise and employment across the UK. Does my right hon. Friend share my pride and enthusiasm for the new record-breaking electric aircraft, the Spirit of Innovation, developed at Gloucestershire airport, and the new hydrogen aircraft developed at Kemble airport, also in Gloucestershire, showing that in a county famed for the first ever jet-engined aircraft take-off, we can now focus on an exciting future for travel and aviation at much less cost to the environment?
Grant Shapps
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I do not want to disappoint him or his wife. It is incoming traffic that will have the reduction in bureaucracy. On outgoing, we still encourage people to check with the FCDO. As I pointed out a couple of times, most other countries still have some restrictions. But is he right about that electric aircraft, which is a Rolls-Royce project—the world’s fastest flying electric aircraft being produced right here in the UK? He is. ZeroAvia is producing the world’s first hydrogen aircraft, which is now on its second version, a larger 20-seat aircraft. There is a lot of innovation, backed by £180 million, to assist all this decarbonisation of aviation. It is very exciting and it leads to a very strong future for British aviation.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement.
Local Transport: Covid-19 Recovery
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Government have provided unprecedented financial support to the bus and light rail sectors, in England outside London. Through the emergency covid-19 funding packages, the Government ensured the immediate impacts of the pandemic on bus and light rail networks were mitigated ensuring services kept running to enable access to jobs, education, and healthcare. In the recovery period, the latest packages, the £226.5 million bus recovery grant (BRG) and the £56 million light rail and tram recovery grant (LRTRG), due to end in April 2022, have supported the sector following the re-opening of the economy and the lifting of social distancing guidelines. We have also provided a further £29 million uplift to the BRG, to mitigate the impact of omicron on patronage over winter.
As the sector continues to deal with the ongoing effects of the pandemic and the emergence of new travel patterns, the financial challenges faced by the bus and light rail sector remain. The Department recognises the importance local transport services have to the people and economies of the areas they serve and understands that the removal of funding now would create a cliff edge with the prospect of overnight reductions in services. Such an outcome would undermine our aspirations set out in the national bus strategy and levelling up White Papers to improve transport connectivity.
I can therefore announce that we will provide over £150 million in further financial support to the local transport sector. This will fund bus operators and local authorities responsible for bus and light rail services from April until October and is the final covid-19 support package the Government will provide to the sector. The funding will assist local transport authorities and operators in running services as they develop new, effective, financially sustainable networks that cater for the needs of the local public and their local areas after the pandemic.
This package of funding shows our commitment to the development of effective financial sustainability plans, taking into account user needs. It will maximise public confidence in local transport, while aligning with our key aims from the national bus strategy, to deliver better bus services.
[HCWS652]
Transport
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
Further to my statement to the House on 21 February 2022, I am updating the House on a new extraordinary funding settlement between Transport for London and the Government which expires on 25 February. I have agreed with the Mayor of London a new settlement to 24 June 2022.
This new settlement demonstrates the Government’s ongoing commitment to supporting the capital, while balancing the interests of the national taxpayer. It provides Transport for London with £200 million of emergency funding as it recovers from the pandemic and continues to work towards financial sustainability. It also continues the Government’s commitment to cover fare revenues lost due to the pandemic. Together, this takes the Government’s overall contribution to close to £5 billion, on top of an ongoing annual capital commitment of just over £1 billion through the spending review, in line with previous levels of funding.
Furthermore, the Government recognise the need for certainty and stability in Transport for London’s capital investment programme. The Government are therefore willing to consider a longer-term capital settlement for Transport for London, which we intend to agree before the start of the next financial year. This will be on the condition that Transport for London co-operates fully and openly with the Government and provides sufficient information and data about its capital investment plans.
Transport for London needs to ensure that it is both financially sustainable in the short to medium term and in good financial health in the long term, ensuring good value for money for the UK taxpayer. Within this next funding period the Mayor has agreed to: prepare a plan setting out options to realise operating cost savings, up to and including £400 million in 2022-2023; progress with consultation on the options he has identified to raise between £0.5 billion and 1 billion per annum of additional revenue from 2023; deliver against TFL’s accelerated modernisation plan and make significant progress in moving the pension fund into a financially sustainable position.
Transport is devolved to the Mayor of London. It is therefore for him alone to take responsibility for the decisions needed to return TfL to financial sustainability. The Government will continue to work with the Mayor and TfL to ensure London’s transport system delivers for local citizens and businesses and contributes to the country’s economic recover. At all times the Government will continue to balance our obligations to the national transport network as a whole and to provide value for money for the taxpayer.
[HCWS641]
Transport for London Funding Settlement: Interim Extension
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
I am updating the House on an interim extension of the current Transport for London funding settlement that was due to expire on 18 February 2022 by one week to 25 February 2022. This was requested by TfL and has been accepted by Government.
Since the start of the pandemic, we have supported TfL with over £4.5 billion of funding through extraordinary funding settlements for Transport for London. We have recognised the reliance of London’s transport network on fare revenue. We have recognised that demand and therefore passenger revenue has been volatile and have responded accordingly, compensating TfL for that revenue loss to ensure services can be maintained.
The Government are still committed to supporting London’s transport network as we have since the start of the pandemic and they had offered TfL and the Mayor of London a fourth extraordinary funding agreement. TfL has asked for an extension of one week to allow the Mayor of London to consider the terms of the settlement letter and agree it with Government.
The Government are committed to supporting London and the transport network on which it depends, balancing that with supporting the national transport network. I will update the House on the details of the next financial settlement after the close of this extension period.
[HCWS610]
Transport
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
I would like to update the House on action we have taken against the behaviour of Insulate Britain activists. Last year I asked National Highways to seek injunctions against the so-called eco-warriors who have inflicted such misery on motorists across the country, and following the latest High Court hearing yesterday a further five immediate prison sentences were imposed as well as 11 suspended sentences against Insulate Britain activists for breaching these injunctions. That brings the total number of sentences and suspended sentences handed down to 31. Gluing oneself to the tarmac and throwing paint on public highways, causing miles of misery, just is not on; it affects hard-working people and causes misery to them, costing the taxpayer money.
[Official Report, 3 February 2022, Vol. 708, c. 446.]
Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps).
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones)
The correct information should have been:
Grant Shapps
That brings the total number of sentences and suspended sentences handed down to 34.
Transport for London Funding Settlement: Interim Extension
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
Following my statement to the House on 5 January, I am updating the House on an interim extension of the current Transport for London (TfL) funding settlement that was due to expire on 4 February 2022 by two weeks to 18 February. This has been agreed by the Mayor of London.
Since the start of the pandemic, we have supported the transport network in London with over £4.5 billion funding through extraordinary funding settlements for Transport for London. We have recognised the reliance of London’s transport network on fare revenue, and Government continue our commitment to mitigating loss of fare revenue because of the pandemic.
Government are committed to supporting London’s transport network as we have since the start of the pandemic, and are in discussions with TfL on a fourth funding settlement. This short extension will enable us to finalise the terms of a robust settlement for this period, ensuring TfL and the Mayor take steps to move towards financial sustainability. In this extension, Government will continue to ensure the provisions of the existing agreement are delivered while providing continued certainty to Londoners as we move out of plan B restrictions.
Support to Transport for London has always been on the condition that Transport for London reaches financial sustainability as soon as possible and with a target date of April 2023 and Government continue to press the Mayor of London and Transport for London to take the decisions needed to put the organisation on a sustainable footing. I will update the House at my earliest opportunity on the details of the fourth funding settlement.
[HCWS592]
Oral Answers to Questions
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
We are committed to reversing the Beeching cuts and reopening railways through our £500 million restoring your railway fund. I was pleased to reopen the first such line—the Dartmoor line—in November 2021.
Damien Moore
Does my right hon. Friend agree that restoring the Burscough Curves link, which would connect Southport with Preston and up to Glasgow via the west coast main line, should be a priority for the Government, both to demonstrate the levelling-up agenda and connect all regions of our great United Kingdom?
Grant Shapps
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend—and, it seems, yourself, Mr Speaker—that it would be a great idea. My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for the people of Southport. I know he applied unsuccessfully for the first round of restoring your railway fund money, but I am very committed to working with him on that to link up his community. I will arrange to meet him. I spoke to him about it this week and I am arranging to meet the Rail Minister on the subject.
Sara Britcliffe
We are moving forward with the Rawtenstall to Manchester line, which would significantly benefit my constituents in Haslingden, but will the Secretary of State provide the House with an update on the Skipton to Colne railway line?
Grant Shapps
I certainly can. Regarding the Skipton-East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership—or SELRAP—and the rail link between Skipton and Colne, I appreciate my hon. Friend’s unstinting support for the scheme and will set out our position on the projects in the rail enhancement portfolio very soon.
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
Good morning, Mr Speaker. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the residents of Levenmouth and East Neuk of Fife, who will see their rail link restored more than 50 years after it was abolished by his predecessor? Yet another Westminster cut reversed by Scottish Parliament as part of the transition to net zero. Does he agree that the glacial progress on reconnecting communities in England to the national rail network is hindering growth, compared with the Scottish Government’s record of delivering real benefits for the people of Scotland?
Grant Shapps
No, I do not agree. It has taken 50 years for a UK Government to come along and reopen the lines that were closed under Beeching and successive Governments. We are the ones reversing that and paying to reverse it, and Britain is proud of that.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
If we are really going to celebrate the 200th anniversary, it would be good to open even more lines. You will know, Mr Speaker, that not far from your constituency, the first person to be killed on the railway was a Member of Parliament and Minister when the Rocket was being trialled. We should remember that.
If we are serious about marking the anniversary and bringing the old lines back into use, will the Secretary of State look again at Yorkshire? We feel absolutely bereft. Here is this opportunity, with a Government commitment to raise standards and level up, at a time when the Government have smashed the integrated plan for Yorkshire rail.
Grant Shapps
Huddersfield massively benefits from the £96 billion plan—the biggest plan that any Government have ever announced on railway funding. By the way, it is bigger than the plan that President Biden just announced for railways in his package, even though the United States has a population that is five times bigger than ours. I would have thought that people in Huddersfield would be celebrating in the streets.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
I regularly speak to the Chancellor about the impact of the fuel duty freeze, which has now run for 12 consecutive years, in no small way thanks to my right hon. Friend.
Robert Halfon
My Harlow constituents strongly welcome the fuel duty freeze, and long may it continue. When wholesale oil prices rise, the cost at the pump rockets. The RAC and FairFuelUK have shown that average profit margins for diesel have increased by 150% in the past two years, with petrol margins at the pumps more than doubling. But when the global oil price comes down there is a feather approach; the savings are not transferred to the motorist. Will my right hon. Friend introduce a pump watch monitor to ensure fair prices at the pumps for motorists?
Grant Shapps
It is genuinely true to say that there is not a more expensive Member of Parliament. The cuts—or the freezes—that my right hon. Friend has persuaded successive Chancellors to make are now accumulating a £1,900 saving for a UK driver every year. He is right that when oil prices go up fuel prices seem to track very fast, and when they come down they are much slower. I will pay close attention to his idea.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
It is for the Mayor to take decisions about how to balance the TfL budget. We are committed to supporting the system and have done so with hard cash—£4.5 billion and counting.
Bob Blackman
As my right hon. Friend knows, the current deal expires very soon. The Mayor was due to provide ways that he would balance the budget; I understand that he has not done so yet. Could my right hon. Friend confirm that in any arrangements that he makes with the Mayor of London, we will exclude the outer London charge for people driving into the London area and stop the Mayor introducing road pricing in London unless the whole country goes ahead with it?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is a terrific champion of a fair settlement. It is the easiest thing in the world for someone to propose a tax that people other than their own residents pay, which is exactly what the Mayor has been pursuing with the boundary tax. It is not fair; we will oppose it—no taxation without representation.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
The Government’s piecemeal funding for Transport for London is short-sighted and, yet again, will have an impact on thousands of jobs across the entire country. For every £1 spent on London’s transport infrastructure, 50p is spent outside the capital. We know that they have the money after yesterday’s news about the latest Government wastage—£9 billion blown on dodgy PPE about as effective as the Prime Minister’s Save Big Dog strategy.
Some 30 TfL projects currently support thousands of jobs around the country from Wrightbus in Ballymena in Northern Ireland to Bombardier in my constituency. That includes a £1 billion contract for building tube trains in Goole in East Yorkshire. Is it not time for the Government to save jobs across the country, stop rolling out the rhetoric and start investing in London’s transport infrastructure?
Grant Shapps
The trouble is, when someone writes that kind of passage in advance and practises it in front of the mirror, they potentially miss the announcement that was made in the original answer. We have now spent £4.5 billion propping up TfL to help out, rightly, because of the pandemic and, in addition, because of the decisions that failed to be made earlier, such as the four-year fare freeze and the concessions that go way above anything available elsewhere in the country.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
I would like to update the House on action we have taken against the behaviour of Insulate Britain activists. Last year I asked National Highways to seek injunctions against the so-called eco-warriors who have inflicted such misery on motorists across the country, and following the latest High Court hearing yesterday a further five immediate prison sentences were imposed as well as 11 suspended sentences against Insulate Britain activists for breaching these injunctions. That brings the total number of sentences and suspended sentences handed down to 31. Gluing oneself to the tarmac and throwing paint on public highways, causing miles of misery, just is not on; it affects hard-working people and causes misery to them, costing the taxpayer money.
Ruth Jones
The Secretary of State will know that vehicle standards, including for e-scooters, are reserved to Westminster. I am hugely concerned about the impact of e-scooters on people living with sight loss in Wales as they cannot be heard and are very quick. What plans does he have to assess the impact of the already widespread and illegal use of e-scooters in Wales?
Grant Shapps
We currently have a trial programme for e-scooters, with 31 trials in operation, which is collecting the data that the hon. Lady seeks. I share her concerns, particularly about e-scooters sold through the private market where they are not legal to be ridden on the roads or pavement, or indeed in the public arena. We are looking at measures that will crack down on those while ensuring that those that have been properly insured and used through the trials continue until we have all the data.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I welcome the new rail Minister, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), to her post. Last year the Prime Minister promised
“great bus services…to everyone, everywhere”,
with £3 billion of new funding to support that. Yesterday we learned the truth about the transformation funding—slashed by £1.8 billion. Why have the Government broken their promise and downgraded the ambition of communities?
Grant Shapps
I am really pleased that the hon. Lady has raised this, because I have seen her tweet and talk about it elsewhere and I want to inform her that she is inadvertently misleading. The figure is still £3 billion; the £1.2 billion is a part of that £3 billion and there are other elements of funding that have already been announced, including £0.5 billion on decarbonisation, and more money is on the way. So that is simply an incorrect figure that I ask her not to continue to repeat.
Louise Haigh
I can assure the House that I am not the one misleading anybody. We have it in black and white, in a leaked letter from his own official, who wrote to local transport authorities confirming the cut and saying
“the scale of the ambition across the county greatly exceeds the amount”
of transformation funding. Doesn’t that say it all: the ambition of this country far exceeds that of the Government? So will the Secretary of State come clean by admitting that vast swathes of the country will not get a penny in transformation funding and that he sold bus transformation but is delivering managed decline?
Grant Shapps
No, that is absolutely incorrect. We have just heard about this Government’s investment in Stoke. That is investment we are going to spread across the country. It is false to claim that that £1.2 billion is the total funding. It is not, as I have already pointed out. There will be £5.7 billion over five years for the city region sustainable transport settlement, for example, bringing more money in. I will write to the hon. Lady with a detailed breakdown, but I ask her to take into account the full amount of money being spent on buses—a record never achieved before by any Government, as far as I can see.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Grant Shapps
If the hon. Lady is exempt from levelling up, we need to have a word with the Mayor of London about it, because transport in her constituency is run by him, of course. On a serious note, I am very interested in that scheme, and I will speak to her about it offline.
Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northampton- shire) (Con)
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
Grant Shapps
We would be very pleased to organise that meeting with my hon. Friend. I will set up a meeting for him with the Minister with responsibility for roads. As the House knows, we are spending £24 billion on roads and at least half of that is for their upkeep and maintenance.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)
The Scottish Government are currently rolling out free bus travel across Scotland for anyone under the age of 22. Will the UK Government take a moment to congratulate the Scottish Government and tell us when they might deliver the same for young people in England?
Grant Shapps
The difficult decisions that need to be made have to be made by every Government, but I think what the hon. Lady was pointing out was just how generous the grant funding is, through the Barnett formula, for the Scottish Government.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State agree to an urgent meeting with me and representatives of the business community in North West Leicestershire impacted by the Birmingham to East Midlands Parkway route of HS2, to discuss the necessary changes to the route to enter Parkway station and any possible mitigations?
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
My constituents already face long waits for overpriced bus services without the real-time data that Londoners take for granted, and now we hear that there will be further cuts to bus services. We urgently need a bus service improvement plan. Why will the Secretary of State not urgently support one?
Grant Shapps
As I have mentioned a couple of times, we have the biggest ever programme of bus service improvements. We have gone out to local authorities to ask them for their plans, and we have funded them to bring forward those plans. They are now coming back with the first stages in the levelling-up White Paper. We will continue to deliver more on the bus agenda over time.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
There has been clear interest on both sides of the House in investment in the future of buses, and we have a very positive bid from North Yorkshire County Council, working with local bus companies, to improve the services in Harrogate and Knaresborough. Will the Minister give me an indicative date for when we might hear of that bid’s success?
Covid-19: International Travel
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on international travel.
It is less than two months since the first cases of omicron—the most infectious variant to emerge since the start of the pandemic—were confirmed in the UK. Thanks once again to the nationwide army of medical staff and volunteers and the huge public response to our booster programme, today, with more than 137 million jabs administered, including nearly 37 million boosters, Britain is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and omicron is in retreat. Thanks also to the decisions taken by the Prime Minister, we have managed to turn the tide on the virus in remarkable time, while keeping our domestic society one of the most open in the world. Today, I can confirm to the House that our international travel regime will also now be liberalised, as part of our efforts to ensure that 2022 is the year in which restrictions on travel, lockdowns and limits on people’s lives are firmly placed firmly in the past.
From 4am on 11 February, and in time for the half-term break, eligible, fully vaccinated passengers arriving in the UK will no longer have to take a post-arrival lateral flow test. That means that, after months of pre-departure testing, post-arrival testing, self-isolation and additional expense, all that fully vaccinated people will now have to do when they travel to the UK is to verify their status via a passenger locator form.
We promised that we would not keep these measures in place a day longer than was necessary. It is obvious to me now that border testing for vaccinated travellers has outlived its usefulness, and we are therefore scrapping all travel tests for vaccinated people, not only making travel much easier, but saving around £100 per family on visits abroad, providing certainty to passengers, carriers and our vital tourism sectors for the spring and summer seasons.
Let me explain to the House how this will work in practice. For now, we will maintain our current definition of “fully vaccinated” for the purpose of inbound travel to the UK. That means two doses of an approved vaccine, or one dose of a Janssen vaccine. We will go further. The measures for those arriving in the UK who do not qualify as fully vaccinated have not changed since last March, so the time has come to review that position, too. Today, I can announce that passengers who do not qualify as fully vaccinated will no longer be required to do a day 8 test after arrival or to self-isolate. They will still need to fill out a passenger locator form to demonstrate proof of a negative covid test taken two days before they travel, and they must still take a post-arrival PCR test. This is a proportionate system that moves us a step closer to normality while maintaining vital public health protections.
For kids travelling to the UK, under-18s will continue to be treated as eligible fully vaccinated passengers, which means that they will not face any tests at the UK border. Today I am pleased to confirm that from 3 February, 12 to 15-year-olds in England will be able to prove their vaccination status via the digital NHS pass for international outbound travel. Again, this should help families to plan holidays for February half-term.
Reconnecting with key markets not only boosts the UK economy but will help the hard-hit aviation sector to take back to the skies, so I can also confirm that from 4 am on 11 February we will recognise, at the UK border, vaccine certificates from 16 further nations, including countries such as China and Mexico, bringing the vaccine recognition total to more than 180 countries and territories worldwide.
One consequence of covid and of rapidly changing infection patterns across the world has been a border regime that, while necessary, has at times been complex, confusing and very difficult to navigate. That has been a challenge for many people who have been travelling over the past two years, so we will also simplify the passenger locator form, making it quicker and easier to complete, and from the end of February we will also make it more convenient by giving people an extra day to fill it out before they travel. Although the option for a red list of countries will remain in place to provide a first line of defence against future covid variants of concern arriving from other countries, we are looking to replace the managed quarantine system with other contingency measures, including home isolation, provided that we can develop new ways to ensure high levels of compliance. In the meantime, our contingency measures remain available. As the House knows, there are currently no countries on the red list. However, I must make it clear that those contingency measures will be applied only if we are particularly concerned about a variant of concern that poses a substantial risk—one that is even greater than omicron.
The UK Health Security Agency will continue to monitor threats and will maintain a highly effective surveillance capacity, monitoring covid infections overseas. But I can announce that, over time, we intend to move away from blanket border measures to a more sophisticated and targeted global surveillance system. I also commit us to developing a full toolbox of contingency options to provide more certainty on how we will respond against future variants. The Government will set out our strategy, including how we will deal with any future new strains of the virus, next month. We will continue to work with international partners, including the World Health Organisation, to help all countries to achieve a level of genomic sequencing to monitor variants that is much closer to our own world-leading capacity.
We are moving into a new phase of the fight against covid. Instead of protecting the UK from a pandemic, our future depends on our living with endemic covid, just as we live with flu, for example. We will set out our strategy for that transition in the spring. But as we navigate our recovery, and as we return to more normal travel next month, our advice to all eligible adults who have not been vaccinated stays the same: please get jabbed as soon as possible, and if you have had two jabs, please get boosted. I have recently been speaking to many of my opposite numbers around the world, and they have made it clear to me that regardless of what we do, they are very likely, by this summer, to require that people have had the booster jab. So my advice to anyone who wishes to travel this year, including during the summer, is: do not leave it too late to get your booster as you are very likely to be required to have had it by the third country that you are flying to.
We already have one of the most open economies and societies in Europe, with the result that our GDP has outpaced that of other G7 countries. With the changes announced today, we have one of the most open travel sectors in the world. Of course we know that covid can spring surprises, but everybody should now feel confident about booking holidays, business trips, and visits to families and friends abroad. Be in no doubt: it is only because the Government got the big calls right—on vaccination, on boosters and on dealing with omicron—that we can now open up travel and declare that Britain is open for business. Today we are setting Britain free. I commend this statement to the House.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of the statement. The aviation industry is a critical part of the economy, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs across the UK, but the Government’s haphazard approach and their refusal to grant it sector-specific support have caused it real damage. The UK’s aviation sector has experienced a slower recovery than any of our European counterparts and had more than 60,000 job losses by summer last year. It is baffling that the Government did not do more to support it as a strategic sector and potentially attach conditions for transition to net zero, as countries such as France and Germany did.
Too often, the Government’s indecisive and chaotic approach to each wave of covid infections has failed to keep the country safe while causing uncertainty for the travelling public and for business. Each time a new variant has emerged, the Government have taken a different approach to border controls and restrictions. We all want to see safe international travel and the protection of public health, and that is precisely why the public finally deserve to hear in full how Ministers intend to develop a comprehensive, easily understandable plan to ensure that that can happen in the months ahead. We must avoid the sheer absurdity of the Secretary of State announcing one set of restrictions before promptly scrapping it and announcing a completely different regime. Businesses and the public should have clarity about what changes the Government will likely make in the event of a new variant and not have to wait until 5 pm on a Saturday night for new measures required on a Monday morning. That is why it is welcome that the Government will finally produce a plan to allow the travel industry and the public the certainty that they need. Labour recently outlined its plan on the action needed to learn to live well with covid and protect lives and livelihoods and help avoid harsh restrictions in future waves. That is critical when it comes to the travel industry.
As the Secretary of State said, it is inevitable that another variant of concern will emerge. With omicron, the Government’s plan was upended, proving that it was simply not fit for purpose. They must learn lessons and outline a framework to guide future decision making and detect future variants. Therefore, when the Secretary of State publishes his plan, will he include the data that will guide the approach to future variants and detail the economic, wellbeing and equality impact of each scenario? Given that only last week the Health Secretary said that testing will remain part of our walls of surveillance, does he agree that we should build up the UK’s sovereign capability to ensure that we always have a supply of tests when we need them? Has he considered the merits of a surveillance system to detect possible future variants?
Last month, the Secretary of State confirmed to me that he would raise my concerns and those of the Competition and Markets Authority about the PCR market with the Health Secretary. Will he update the House on what progress he has made in cleaning up that market for future travellers? I would also be grateful for his confirmation of whether the passenger locator form will be available in other languages in the future.
The announcement is also a visible reminder of another stark truth: in an era of global international travel, no one is safe until everyone is safe. In the UK, we have learnt that lesson the hard way. If we are to break the endless cycle of new variants, we must vaccinate the world, yet Ministers simply have not met the commitments made last summer at the G7 to get the vaccine rolled out to other parts of the globe; instead they cut the overseas aid budget. Will the Secretary of State outline what steps the Government are taking to deliver on those measures committed to at the G7?
Living with covid cannot be just an empty slogan with no plan. That is why we need to properly prepare and protect our lives and livelihoods in the future. It is time that Ministers finally gave passengers, industry and communities the security and stability that they deserve.
Grant Shapps
I thank the hon. Lady very much for—I think—welcoming the statement. I understand that she has not been in post for very long, but she will be aware of how her predecessors simultaneously called for us to tighten up and close the borders while relaxing and opening them, often on the same day or a few days apart. I understand that she has recently come to the post, but, if she does not mind my suggestion, there is one thing that she can do current day. She may be able to speak to her Welsh Labour governmental counterparts, who are a constant drag on opening up aviation. I hear that she is very keen that we move ahead with today’s plan; I hope she will be able to assist by persuading them to move a little more promptly.
The hon. Member quite rightly says that we need a toolbox to respond, as I mentioned in the statement. She is absolutely right about that; we do need a toolbox going forward, which is a question not just for the UK. This morning I was talking to the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, who co-chairs a World Health Organisation body working exactly on the global response. One of the most important things to stress in my statement, which might have been missed, is that we believe the time is right to move from individuals being checked as they come over our border—as we know, whatever the variant, eventually it gets in, as every country has found—to a global system of surveillance that is every bit as good as what we have here. “World leading” is applied often in the UK, but we genuinely have a world-leading version of surveillance, through the amount of coronavirus testing we can do with genome sequencing, and we are helping other countries through practical applications to catch up.
The hon. Member also asked what the Government are doing to honour the bid we made at the G7 and elsewhere on coronavirus. I gently point out that the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed by Oxford, has been used in more arms than any other vaccine in the world—I think I am right in saying that about 2.5 billion people have been vaccinated with it. That is a huge contribution, in addition to COVAX and all the other donations that we have made and will continue to make.
I am pleased to hear, I think, that the whole House welcomes the plan to unlock and to set Britain free.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Not only is today’s announcement another example of our living with covid; this is also a landmark day for international travel, a sector that has been absolutely decimated over the last couple of years. Today’s news is surely the evidence it needs to show that people should now feel confident to book with certainty. With that in mind, will the Secretary of State ensure a culture across Whitehall so that if there are bumps in the road, international travel will not be the sector that has to be made an example of, and so that we continue to support international travel and all the fantastic people who work in it?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As we have learned more about the pandemic, as it becomes endemic, it is quite right that our response should be different—a moment ago I mentioned shifting from individual testing at the border to a global system of testing—so I do give him that commitment. We are now looking to work with a new toolbox that will help to set out a framework. We will of course always act quickly if we have to, but I believe that the days of having to go back to big lockdowns at the borders are past.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Once again, though, we have an announcement on coronavirus restrictions being made to the press before Parliament. While the Government, and particularly this Secretary of State, are desperately trying to save the Prime Minister’s skin with announcements such as this or the removal of plan B restrictions generally, Parliament is repeatedly cut out of the loop, as the Government throw out policies to placate their base.
However, we have reached the omicron peak a little earlier than projected. Indeed, today in Scotland nightclubs can reopen, while the caps on indoor events, table service requirements for venues selling alcohol and social distancing have also been removed. However, as the Secretary of State acknowledged, the revised requirements that he has announced will apply to England only. What discussions has he had with colleagues in the devolved Administrations about the measures in his statement, and how did they factor into his decision? The devolved Administrations were consulted very late on previous changes to travel regulations and not given adequate time to look over the data and announce a decision simultaneously.
The Secretary of State proposes to remove the requirement to test on arrival, but he will surely accept that regular lateral flow testing is still imperative in identifying and tracing cases more generally, and allowing everyone to travel safely. What representations has he made to his colleagues to ensure that LFTs remain free on request for everyone, regardless of income? Can he also tell us a bit more—it has been asked about and I do not think he answered—about what mechanism will be put in place to monitor possible new variants, now that testing is no longer in place?
Finally, the aviation industry is still in the same position on the sector-specific support promised by the Government nearly two years ago. The impact of covid on travelling patterns and customer behaviour will not end with today’s statement, so what plan does the Transport Secretary have to fulfil the promises made to the sector at the start of the pandemic for real, targeted Government support? The job retention scheme was not enough for the 3,000 people in my constituency who lost their jobs, or for those who faced fire and rehire by companies such as Menzies Aviation and British Airways.
Grant Shapps
I just want the hon. Gentleman to know that, through the UK Health Security Agency, the four chief medical officers were involved in studying the data and reaching this conclusion. I also spoke this morning to a member of the Scottish National party Government, Michael Matheson, about these measures, so there has been that communication.
The hon. Gentleman asked, as he often does, about the support. It has now reached £8 billion for the aviation sector. We have had not just the job retention programme but loans, in addition to assistance to those on the ground. I ask him to look a little closer to home, because both Edinburgh and Glasgow airports have criticised the SNP Government for refusing even to meet them. They have said that that is in stark contrast to the proactive approach of the UK Government, and the Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association has said that the industry has been “sacrificed” by the SNP, so I do not think we want to be taking too many lectures about support. Support comes from getting airlines back in the sky.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
There has been nothing particularly unusual about the constantly changing rules in England—that has been replicated all around the world—but one thing that has been consistent throughout is the World Health Organisation’s advice that travel restrictions and border closures are not necessary because they do not prevent the spread of this virus or variants, so I welcome today’s statement. Of course, many of our popular holiday destinations in North America and in Europe will continue to require testing of people from third countries, so what discussions is the Transport Secretary having with other countries to encourage them to take the sensible approach that we are taking here in England?
Grant Shapps
I am in constant contact with my equivalent numbers around the world. We are having frequent conversations, in particular with G7 countries—we are, of course, chairing the presidency of the G7—with which I speak regularly. The biggest thing that could happen elsewhere is for them to reach our level of booster protection in particular. Our 37 million booster jabs have provided us with a wall of protection. Once that is available elsewhere, that will help to get international travel moving even faster.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I warmly welcome today’s announcement. As the Secretary of State knows, the Transport Committee has been unanimous in calling for this for some time. Could he explain, though, why he is keeping the passenger locator form? It is a massive irritant to people. It is much longer than the EU form and is very complicated. I hope he is not keeping it because he is relaxing the rules for the unvaccinated. That would be very unfair on the vaccinated. Will he reassure this House that, given what the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) has said—namely, that compared with domestic health measures, these onerous testing requirements and draconian travel restrictions have been shown to have absolutely zero impact on the spread of covid and omicron over the past two years in this country—the Government will never resort to this policy again?
Grant Shapps
I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. I also heard him making approving noises while I made my statement. He will want to speak to his Front-Bench colleagues, who, unlike Government Members, have consistently wanted us to go further and faster on closing the borders. We have tried to balance it against the critical nature of our island status as a nation.
The right hon. Gentleman asks a very good question about the passenger locator form and why we are keeping it. Members may not be aware that it is our only way of distinguishing between those who are vaccinated and those who are unvaccinated when they use e-gates to come into this country. A lot of work has been done to automate the e-gate so that it reads the passport number, refers back to the passenger locator form and knows whether that individual has had to take a pre-departure test—which people who have not been vaccinated have to take—and, indeed, whether they have to take a day 2 test. It is there for a critical reason. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the complexity of the passenger locator form, and I committed in my statement to going back through it and simplifying it, which is much easier to do now that we have the status of fully vaccinated people not requiring any tests at all.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
My sincere thanks to the Government for these measures to reduce significantly the testing requirements for international travel during covid-19. As the Secretary of State has correctly mentioned, other jurisdictions around the world will require British travellers entering those countries and territories to do testing. Will he continue to monitor those testing companies in this country that, frankly, have been ripping off many customers and providing appalling service? One example affecting a number of my constituents is Chronomics. People have paid a lot of money to it and have waited in many cases more than a week to get test results back.
Grant Shapps
I absolutely commit to doing that. The system of testing is run by our colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care, and I share the frustration that the public have, as I know do colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care, that on occasions these companies have in some cases not behaved appropriately. The vast majority of the time, it should be said, they have provided excellent private sector provision, without which we would not have had capacity within the NHS, but I share my hon. Friend’s concern, and I know that colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care are on the case.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
It is right that the Secretary of State said in his statement that the border at times, while necessary, has been
“complex, confusing and very difficult to navigate”.
That is fair. I highlight that, on a visit to Heathrow airport with the Home Affairs Committee last year, we heard about the frustration and the lack of engagement with the industry and trade unions by the Government on the regimes they were bringing in. Will the Secretary of State comment on the long-term plans to fully engage with unions and the industry to keep the border safe?
Grant Shapps
The right hon. Lady is clearly right to say that it was complex, confusing and difficult, as I mentioned in my statement. That was by necessity in many cases: we had to act over a weekend, and we had to change the law in a matter of four hours with the mink variant, I recall. That has necessitated a lot of discussions. I want to let her know that I have been in constant contact with, for example, Heathrow and the airlines. The aviation Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), is doing that day in, day out, and we commit to redouble our efforts with them. Today is a watershed moment. Those are not my words, but those of Airlines UK, which has said that this is a real opportunity for the industry to get back on its feet and back into the air.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
When it comes to international travel, Her Majesty’s Government can obviously control only so much. I warmly welcome the excellent Secretary of State’s announcement today, which puts inbound international travel in the best place it has been for two years. I am especially grateful—as he knows, I raised this issue in the House last week with the Prime Minister—as are many of my constituents with half term and Easter plans, that 12 to 15-year-olds will be able to prove their vaccination status via the digital NHS pass from 3 February, as the Secretary of State said in his statement. Can I ask him how practically that will happen, given that under-16s are currently barred from accessing the NHS app at all? What about young people who have had one jab and a recent infection? How will they be able to prove that status? Some practical examples, please.
Grant Shapps
On the NHS pass, my hon. Friend is right that 12 to 15-year-olds have not been able to access it up to now. They will be able to access that in time for half term. So they will be able to show their status or, indeed print it out in advance. Up to now, they have had to call 119 and order it. That system will change, which I know he will be pleased about.
The situation of people who have had a jab and then caught coronavirus and are then potentially in a position of natural immunity will continue in the short term to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, but we recognise that is an issue. I have spoken to the chief medical officer and the chief exec of the UK Health Security Agency as recently as today on that issue, and the ideal will be in a February review to move more towards a system of being able to accept natural immunisation. There is more work to be done on a technical level before that can happen.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The Secretary of State is totally right that covid can spring surprises—in new variants, more often than not. There is one way we can ensure fewer new variants, and that is to vaccinate the world, but we are a long way away from that. In low-income countries, just 10% of people have had two doses. What discussions has he had with Cabinet colleagues to ensure we live up to the 100 million doses that we have pledged to COVAX? Only 30 million have actually been deployed, and we have only six months left.
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we are not safe until everyone has been vaccinated and boosted, as well. I do not think any country in the world can claim a better record on this, not least because, as I mentioned, we have invented the Oxford jab, in part thanks to money that the taxpayer and this Government put in. That has gone on to vaccinate 2.5 billion people, many of them in developing nations, with the huge advantage of not having to cold-freeze the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine at minus 70°. We are also committed to providing those vaccinations to the COVAX programme. I am happy to write to the hon. Lady on progress towards that target, so that she can have more detail.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
My right hon. Friend’s statement is welcome and is likely to encourage more families to book trips abroad and the like. What assurance can he give me, following the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) about the resilience to be guaranteed by the Department of Health and Social Care and others, that, as families take up the opportunities to make bookings, families with children—I declare an interest—under 12 will not see their youngsters left behind at the gate because they have not been able to prove what it is that they need to prove?
Grant Shapps
Some pretty good reassurances is the answer. It is obviously the case that something worse than omicron could come along. We very much hope—and the chief medical officer and others suggest—that, over a period of time, although not necessarily in a linear fashion, this should become more and more endemic. As for what we accept when people come here, under-18s are exempt. As for flying out, we are making it easier, with 12 to 15 year-olds being added. The message to my hon. Friend, to his constituents and to the whole House is that I hope to expect no surprises between now and the February half term, and enjoy your holidays.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I welcome the announcement by the Secretary of State, but he will know that other countries still have testing requirements for travellers from the UK. I know that that question has already been raised. He will know that, if testing is to be valid for international travel, tests must be conducted by private testing firms, which are often based in the UK. One of my constituents has written to me and said that she paid £150 for a single test. In response to a previous question, the Secretary of State said some empty words, which I have heard several times. Is there a concrete plan of action from the Government to crack down on this overcharging?
Grant Shapps
It is, as the hon. Lady knows, a competitive testing market, in which many different organisations offer to test people. The market, of course, ensures that prices are being driven down. In fact, we have an exact test on this, because for a while in Wales, under the Welsh Government, only NHS tests were allowed to be used, which meant that Welsh people had to pay more for their tests, rather than doing it privately. I do not think that she means to attack the private system, but she is right that it is wrong for people to be ripped off. The Competition and Markets Authority is looking into it and, as I have said, my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care who look after this side of things are also working to make sure that the system is not being abused. Removing the necessity to have tests removes a large part of the need for that marketplace as well.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
Throughout the pandemic, Labour has flip-flopped, calling for a pause on international travel, then opposing all and any restrictions. May I thank my right hon. Friend for ignoring its game playing—[Interruption]—and for his unalloyed support for international travel and a truly connected global Britain?
Grant Shapps
Opposition Members do not like the question because it is true. Everyone has witnessed it. Their Front-Bench team has flip-flopped on one side, then the other side; one way, then the other. As it turns out, it is important to follow the evidence, and when the evidence says that we should unlock and do away with these tests that is exactly what we have done. [Interruption.] One would think that the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), who is shouting from a sedentary position, would welcome the data-driven, spreadsheet-based approach to this issue.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. My former colleagues in the travel industry will certainly welcome it. But how did we get here? Billions of people are protected by the vaccine developed in Oxford; we have had a successful vaccine programme here; and so many people have now been boosted. We are now the freest state with travel restrictions and we are coming out of lockdown nationally. Does that not show that we have great leadership from our Prime Minister and our Government? But why can we not bring it forward a bit from 11 February?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend got a question in there at the end. He is absolutely right about everything he said before the question. I would add that we lead the league table not only in being unlocked as a nation, but in growing as an economy because of the difficult decisions we made at the right times to make sure that 37 million people got the booster in their arm and we are able to keep ourselves unlocked, and that of course includes setting Britain free so that people can travel. In answer to his question about timing, it takes a little bit of time to put these technical changes in place and, indeed, to bring all four nations with us in the process. The good news is that it will be ready for the half-term break.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
As someone who represents a very international constituency, where people regularly fly not just for holidays but for business and family reasons, I warmly welcome these changes. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that this shows that we as a Government have made the right decisions when it comes to this virus, and that our country is fully open and ready for business?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is never going to be easy tackling a global pandemic—there is no rulebook or textbook that tells us what to do—and some things we will have got right, while other things we have had to learn along the way. Two years in, I think today is a momentous moment, as Airlines UK has said, because it is important that we are able to unlock the borders and that people are able to travel again to do business and, most importantly, to see family who many people will not have seen for a very long time because of the prohibitive costs, so I am sure the whole House will welcome today’s statement.
Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games: Transport Plan
Grant Shapps Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games will take place from 28 July to 8 August 2022 and will be the biggest sporting event ever held in the city featuring thousands of world-class athletes and over a million spectators. With an estimated global television audience of 1.5 billion people, the games will showcase Birmingham, the west midlands and the entire country as an amazing place to live, work, study, visit and do business.
We know that putting in place effective transport provision is a crucial part of any major sporting event and requires detailed planning and coordination. A well understood and supported transport plan is therefore essential.
On 23 October 2020, in line with section 25(1) of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Act 2020, I directed the West Midlands Combined Authority to prepare a transport plan for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Today I am pleased to inform the House that the West Midlands Combined Authority board has approved the final Games Transport Plan.
The transport plan has been produced in close collaboration with Birmingham City Council and the Birmingham 2022 Organising Committee. It sets out a strategic approach to planning and co-ordination of transport to support the games; covering the transportation of spectators, athletes and the games family, while at the same time ensuring that any disruption to transport users and residents is kept to a minimum.
The transport plan is also the result of consultation with key stakeholders, including local authorities, police forces, transport operators, and the Department for Transport, as well as wider public engagement.
The transport plan presents five principles that have guided decision making throughout the stages of strategic planning, and which underpin the objectives for transport during the games. These principles are:
Clean and green; a public transport games
Safe, secure, reliable and efficient transport
Minimising disruption
Long-term benefits
Access for all.
I am placing a copy of the Games Transport Plan in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS539]