(4 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberAs I pointed out a moment ago—perhaps after the hon. Gentleman’s question was written—it is important that we gather all the facts. Sadly, 1,700-plus people died on all our roads in 2018. Motorways of the safest of those roads, but the question is: are smart motorways less safe than the rest of the motorway network? For me, we must make them at least as safe, if not safer, otherwise they cannot continue. But we have to do this as a fact-based process. I am interested, rightly, in speaking to the families of the victims as well as to organisations such as the AA and the RAC and to Members of this House. Forgive me, it does take time to do this correctly, but I do not think the hon. Gentleman will be disappointed with the results.
I should like to join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) for the way in which she has chaired the Transport Committee over the past two years. She has done so with great fairness, and she probed with great diligence as well. I want to give her my thanks for that, and she is also a wonderful friend.
When it comes to road safety, there is great concern that school safety is at risk. Would it be possible to set up a programme of investment so that the most dangerous schools can get the necessary technology and 20 mph speed limits put in place? That would also encourage the use of walking buses.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his election as Chair of the Select Committee. Yes, I agree with him about working with schools. One point that is often forgotten is that local authorities already have the power to reduce speed limits, for example to 20 mph. I look forward to working with him as Chair of the Committee.
(4 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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I am certain that the Treasury has heard the hon. Gentleman’s comments loud and clear.
Many airlines that face these types of difficulties would get more certainty and would be more able to get through them if they were allowed to continue to operate while in administration. Airlines in the States have done just that, and have returned and are now succeeding. Will the Government look into that type of reform when they press on with the insolvency review, which I hope will happen in the early part of this Parliament?
I am sure my hon. Friend will welcome the airline insolvency Bill and the work going on, in the light of the Green Paper, to improve consumer protection across the airline sector as a whole.
(4 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberI did not come into this job until 23 July. Some recommendations of the airline insolvency review have already been taken into account and, indeed, used in this particular case, but we also require primary legislation and I am happy to have cross-party discussions about that.
It is not, as one might imagine, quite as simple as it seems. There are ideas around, including allowing what happens in Germany, where the airline is run in administration, and, separately, the interaction between ATOL and a proposed additional charge per flight of perhaps 50p or so for every flight taken, regardless of whether it is to a holiday destination. There are different ideas to be worked through; discussions are ongoing and I am keen to accelerate them.
I find this situation maddening, because two years ago, during the statement on Monarch, I welcomed the then largest peacetime repatriation effort—I welcome the current largest peacetime repatriation effort, too—and I called for reform, so that we had an insolvency regime for airlines similar to the chapter 11 arrangement in the United States and the regimes in Germany and Italy. I was told by the then Secretary of State that the Government would consider that. Two years on, we have had a review but not delivered anything. Rather than repeat what has happened before, will the current Secretary of State make sure that we reform the sector, so that jobs are not put at risk, holiday experiences are not ruined and taxpayers’ money is not lost? It is all about actions, not words.
In simple terms, yes. As I mentioned, the review reported on 9 May, and I have been in my post since 23 July. However, the answer is yes, we will get on with it.
(4 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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This project is too serious to be thinking in those terms, and I certainly was not when I asked Douglas Oakervee to carry out this review. As I have now said twice, this is about people’s lives and livelihoods and the ability of this country’s economy to function. Regardless of what happens when we finally get that election call, I hope there will be cross-party consensus to continue this important work on a cross-party basis and get the job done.
Will the Secretary of State look at the cost envelope by taking into account enhancements that benefit those on the route, inflation and incompetence?
(5 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is ingenious in the way he brings Suggitts Lane into all Transport question sessions. He is a most diligent campaigner on this issue. Since it was last raised, I have met Network Rail and the regulator to discuss the issue, and I know that he has also recently met Network Rail. I look forward to seeing the output of those conversations, and we will take up the issue.
You may have noticed, Mr Speaker, that most of our rail infrastructure is Victorian. That is why we have made £300 million available for the Access for All programme, which will cover 73 stations over the next five years. We are also seeking nominations for £20 million of funding for smaller-scale accessibility improvements for the mid-tier Access for All programme.
I thank my constituency neighbour for her response. Many MPs across the House met the Office of Rail and Road this week. We were delighted to hear that it fed into the Williams review that it thinks passenger assistance notice should be reduced from 24 hours to the same day. Does she agree that it should be possible for everybody, including those with mobility issues, to wake up in the morning and decide to use the train later that day?
I agree with my constituency neighbour. As a member of the Transport Committee, he will have heard a lot of evidence about how we can use new technology to make our rail network even more accessible. I have tasked the Rail Delivery Group with looking at the Passenger Assist app, so that it works in a way that he and I would accept, with live, up-to-date information about what is accessible on trains, including toilets, and the services needed in between.
(5 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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There are points in the current operation of the franchise system that can be improved, but micromanaging from Government is not helpful. The Labour position is to micromanage everything from Government by nationalising the railways, so there is—[Interruption.] There is a little bit of inconsistency in what the hon. Lady says.
My constituents will be disappointed with this delay, but I have every faith that the Minister will get this right. The Transport Committee has looked at the franchising process in a number of reports. It is very complex and detailed, and as a result it can be expensive and litigious. Will there be an opportunity to simplify the franchising process, so that we do not experience such delays when making decisions?
I hope that simplification of the structure of the industry, including the franchising process, will be one output of the Williams review.
(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for his question. I am delighted to announce that we are making available from today £21 million in new funding to support the national cycle network. I have agreed with Sustrans that it will work with High Speed 2 and Highways England to integrate routes wherever possible and to use the money we have provided to leverage further investment from other sources.
I warmly welcome the extra funding from the Minister. Two weeks ago, the Select Committee on Transport took its active travel inquiry up to Manchester, where we met Chris Boardman, the walking and cycling commissioner. He told us that they are unable to introduce certain safety measures in Manchester, such as mini pedestrian crossings, due to being discouraged by the Department for Transport because those are not recognised interventions. How can the Department do more to devolve safety improvements to local authorities, so that we can eradicate some of the less safe areas of our streets?
That is such an important question. We are working closely across all parts of the Department for Transport to think about improving road safety. I have huge respect for the work that Chris Boardman is doing in Manchester. I have met him on several occasions, as well as Brian Deegan, his chief designer, and we have specifically discussed that issue. There is a tension between national standards and local innovation. We are keen to ensure that both are met in the right way. I will certainly take this up again, because it is an important issue, and we want to see more innovation, particularly in support of road safety.
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I will come to in due course. He is a long-standing, experienced and expert member of the Transport Committee, and I am delighted that he is here this afternoon.
The DFT also argues that it is difficult to break down regional spending accurately, saying that where expenditure on the railway takes place is not always an accurate reflection of where the benefits are felt. The Department also emphasises the difficulty of analysing investment annually, or even five-yearly, given that railway assets typically have a lifespan of 25 to 40 years, pointing out that there was inevitably
“a cyclical nature to replacing them that does not lend itself to an even split of funding across all regions within every 5 year control period.”
Of course, there is merit in those arguments, but I simply ask the Minister, when was there a time when investment in the north exceeded investment in the south?
While the Government’s commitment to rebalancing the economy is welcome, it is clear from past experience that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said, current methods for making investment decisions make it much easier for highly populated, economically successful places to prove the case for schemes in their area, because the model has a bias towards schemes that exhibit strong levels of potential demand and/or high potential to relieve existing transport congestion. Witnesses to the inquiry told us that this approach inevitably drew more investment to London and unless the system could be altered to take greater account of wider economic benefits, the process would be inexorable.
Maria Machancoses, the director of Midlands Connect, told us that
“figures on the disparity of investment, no matter which formula you look at—whether by the DFT or the Treasury—they all say that outside London it is just not working.”
Her view was that this should be the starting point from which to “move forward.” However, in their response to our report, the Government did not accept the suggestion that their scheme appraisal methods did not provide a fair share of investment in rail across the UK’s regions. This completely fails to acknowledge the overwhelming feeling across the country that investment in rail is unfairly concentrated in a few small areas.
While there are undeniable complexities in accurately breaking down regional spending and identifying where the benefits of investment are felt, the Government must recognise the concerns that have been raised about the regional disparities of investment in our rail network and take action to address them. It is hard to believe that the Department will do so if it does not accept that there is a problem in the first place.
The DFT has published a rebalancing toolkit, to be used as part of the strategic assessment of future investment programmes. This was welcomed in principle by our witnesses. However, when we asked the then Rail Minister, the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), for examples of the toolkit’s influence on DFT’s transport investment decisions, he could not provide a single specific example. He told us that it was “relatively early days” for the approach. Our witnesses said that the Government needed to prove that what the rebalancing toolkit is meant to achieve will actually take place. I ask the Minister, over a year after the toolkit was introduced, how has it influenced the DFT’s investment decisions?
In our report, we also called on the Government to be more specific about the economic rebalancing effects they intend to achieve. We call on them to tell the regions in need of regeneration how they can prove their cases and secure investment. We argued that people in the north-east and south-west, regions that have experienced relative under-investment in recent periods, must have a clear sense of what the Government are trying to achieve in order to be able to judge their success.
We also recommended that use of the rebalancing toolkit be mandatory and that the Department worked with Her Majesty’s Treasury to explore how economic rebalancing can be made an intrinsic part of appraising transport schemes. That would put rebalancing at the heart of investment decisions, rather than it merely being an add-on. In response, the Government have told us that it would be impractical to make use of the toolkit mandatory. Why has the Department developed a toolkit that is impractical to use?
Let me turn to rail electrification. Under successive Governments since 2009, the Department has made a compelling case for widespread electrification, moving from diesel to electric traction, particularly on heavily used parts of the network, which would reduce journey times and facilitate lighter, more efficient trains, reducing long-term costs, improving environmental sustainability and enhancing capacity. The Government’s decision to cancel electrification schemes in south Wales, the midlands and the Lake district were a huge disappointment for people who had been promised improvements to their network. Following the cancellation of these schemes, there are also serious questions about the Government’s support for future electrification of the network.
It is clear that the plans for electrification were over-ambitious and suffered from inadequate planning and budgeting. The schemes were hampered by an unclear definition of responsibilities between the DFT, Network Rail and the Office of Rail and Road, and disappointment at their cancellation was compounded by poor communication by the Department for Transport.
Although the decision to cancel the midland main line and the lakes line schemes was taken in March 2017, it was not announced until July, on the day the House rose for its summer recess, limiting opportunities for scrutiny of the decision. The Government also presented the decision not to electrify these lines as a positive story about passenger benefits being delivered in other ways. The announcement, unsurprisingly, was met with scepticism by those who saw it as a pragmatic, cost-based response to overruns. The National Audit Office agreed with those sceptics, and concluded:
“The Department decided to cancel projects in 2017 because Network Rail’s 2014-2019 investment portfolio was no longer affordable.”
Passengers on the midland main line and Great Western main line should eventually see some improvements in capacity and journey time from other enhancements in control period 5, but the way that enhancement to these lines has been handled is far from ideal and has done nothing to create confidence in the Government’s approach to rail improvements.
I congratulate the hon. Lady, my friend, the Chair of the Select Committee, on securing the debate. She took us through our Select Committee report and chaired us so well. The Government rightly place great faith in the future in hybrid trains and bi-mode, but does she share my concern that we are in a bit of a hiatus? We either have electrification or technology that is not quite there. Many communities—mine in particular, with the extension of HS1—are faced with uncertainty as to whether they will ever get a better service.
The hon. Gentleman is a very valued member of the Select Committee. While new traction, hydrogen and battery potentially have a place on our railway, it is clear that they are not sufficiently developed to be a proper replacement for electrification. There is some doubt about whether they will ever be a suitable replacement for electric trains, particularly on inter-city journeys operating at higher speeds. He is right to raise concerns about the time that might be taken for parts of the country to see improvements to their services, particularly if there is a continued aspiration to use bi-mode technology. While that can provide some benefits, it undoubtedly also has a significant impact on operating costs. When passengers are very concerned about their fares raising, building in long-term costs seems a wise approach.
While it is now clear that the electrification schemes that had been planned were undeliverable, the Railway Industry Association and others were convinced that, for now, electrification remained the optimal solution to train traction. The case for electrification is particularly strong on heavily used routes, balancing significant benefits to passengers with the wider environmental benefits and long-term cost efficiency. Our report called for electrification to be delivered through a long-term rolling programme in which the Department, Network Rail and the wider industry learn the lessons of earlier schemes and strive to reduce costs. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water.
A key driver of Government investment in the rail network is their commitment to reduce carbon emissions. In February 2018, the Government called on the industry to produce a vision for how it will decarbonise with an initial response due in September last year. The Government response to our report confirmed that an industry taskforce, led by Malcolm Brown, is taking this forward. Have the Government received this taskforce’s report on how to decarbonise the rail system? If so, what does it say and what are the Government doing with it? David Clarke, technical director of the Railway Industry Association, has said that to achieve the Government’s aim of decarbonising UK railways by 2040,
“electrification must be one of the prime options for intensively used routes”.
The Government accepted our recommendation that it should engage with RIA’s electrification cost challenge initiative. The Department committed to producing a report on cost-effective electrification by this summer, but has said that it will remain agnostic about the best means of securing rail enhancement and that it does not expect proposals for new enhancement to begin with a predefined solution such as electrification. I am afraid it is clear that the Government have no plans for the future electrification of the railways.
I ask the Minister to update us on the Government’s work to produce a report with the industry on cost-effective electrification. When we conducted our inquiry, we heard that there was considerable interest in third-party-funded electrification schemes on the midland main line. We recommended that those proposals should be fully considered as an alternative to the proposed bi-mode solution.
The Government accepted our recommendation and said that they would fully consider
“Any proposals made to government or Network Rail about private sector solutions on the Midland Mainline that could provide benefits in addition to the passenger benefits that are being secured by the Government.”
What discussions have the Government had with third parties about proposals for electrifying the midland main line, and how will the improvements for passengers of the enhancements that will be going ahead compare with the improvements that would be delivered by electrification?
Some hon. Members present represent areas of the north covered by the transpennine route. The upgrade of that route is expected to include some electrification, but those enhancements have been considerably reduced since the then Chancellor announced in 2016 that the Government were
“giving the green light to High Speed 3 between Manchester and Leeds”.—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 961.]
There are serious concerns that the upgrade will not be fit for purpose for freight trains, and that because only part of the line will be electrified, the route will need bi-mode trains, which will build in higher operating costs for years to come. Are the current proposals for the transpennine route upgrade in line with the advice from Transport for the North? If not, why not? I note the letter to the Secretary of State for Transport from the operator of Humber, Mersey and Tees ports on 7 January, which says:
“It is of increasing concern that the Department for Transport and Network Rail are undervaluing our industry in the North and undermining the economic goal and objectives of the Northern Powerhouse; it will only make the productivity gap between the North and South of England even greater and devalues further the role of Transport for the North.”
It is concerning when the industry feels that the transpennine route upgrade, as it is currently considered, will lead
“to an utter dependence upon the M62 for Transpennine freight traffic for at least another generation.”
We have talked about some of the problems experienced as a result of planned railway improvements in the past five years, which have triggered successive reviews of the planning and delivery of enhancements and led to a substantial change in the way future investment in the railways will be considered and delivered. The next five-year control period will focus on operations, maintenance and renewals, the volume of which will increase substantially, not least because of the number of renewals that have been postponed from the current control period.
Following those postponements, the greater focus on maintenance and renewals in control period 6, which starts in April, is necessary and welcome, but there are long-standing concerns in the industry that investment in renewals has been lumpy, stop-start and boom and bust. We have heard that the level of uncertainty about upcoming spending could have knock-on effects on the wider industry’s confidence to invest in its workforce, skills and innovation.
In our report, we called on the Government to work with Network Rail, the regulator and the industry to look at the ways in which investment could be smoothed out from the start of control period 6, throughout that period and beyond. The Government accepted that recommendation, so I ask the Minister, how has the Department worked with the industry to smooth out investment for the upcoming control period?
Instead of forming part of the five-year control periods for Network Rail investment, future enhancements of the rail network are now subject to a separate process. The new rail network enhancements pipeline is intended to support a continuous planning approach and move away from the overly rigid five-year cycle that was linked to railway control periods.
The Government have signalled that they expect more railway enhancements to be market-led proposals brought forward by third parties. We heard that there was likely to be interest from third parties in bringing forward such proposals, but it was not clear to us that Network Rail had the structures or culture in place to support such third parties to engage and participate in the planning, delivery, funding or financing of the railway.
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am acutely aware that passengers across the north—and, indeed, other parts of our network—did see an unacceptable service in 2018. Those Northern passengers most directly affected received targeted compensation worth about 8%—obviously, far more than the increase that we have just seen. Further compensation funds are available. We are agreeing with Transport for the North about how that money should be spent.
I warmly welcome the decision to extend discounted fares for 16 and 17-year-olds. Four of the five secondary schools in my constituency have no sixth form. We require our students to stay in education until they are 18, and they have to travel by train either north to Kent or to the south coast.
I have always been a big believer in giving it 100%. May I encourage Front Benchers to have that as their long-term aspiration, so that we give a 100% discount on rail fares for 16 and 17-year-olds?
That would indeed be a very bold aspiration. Obviously, we want to make sure that we have a viable rail service. If we can offer greater value, we certainly will—that is why we have capped rail fares in line with inflation for the sixth year in a row. We are keen to offer value across the rail network wherever we can.
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll buy my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) a cup of tea in a minute.
Will the roads Minister meet me to discuss how we can transfer a section of the A21 through Hurst Green from the hopeless Highways England to East Sussex County Council, before more of my constituents end up in hospital?
I do wish the hon. Gentleman would wear his Arsenal tie a bit more often.
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Lady will be surprised to know that there is a housing infrastructure fund that is in part precisely designed to facilitate the relationship between road building and new housing, and of course, that is what it is doing.
It is not so much the condition of local roads but the amount of obstructions on them, from double parking to kerbside parking to parking in bus and cycle lanes. Rather than waiting for traffic management orders, which can be quite binary, to come into place, would it not be better for the Department to issue guidance on the definition of “obstruction”, so that more local authorities can deal with it in a flexible way that means that motorists are not being penalised in an unreasonable manner?
Gosh, I am going to resist the temptation to bring in the casuists to discuss the question of how obstruction is to be defined, but I direct my hon. Friend, without giving too much of a sneak preview, to the work that we have done—announced today in a written ministerial statement—on the cycling and walking safety report, which includes enforcement against parking in mandatory cycle lanes for precisely the reasons that he indicates.