High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill (Instruction) (No. 3)

Debate between Huw Merriman and Jim McMahon

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

We have committed to delivering a faster route between Leeds and Bradford that will bring the journey time down to 13 minutes; that commitment is there. Look, it comes down to choices, and we have been quite clear with our choice, which is to repurpose the moneys from HS2. I believe that Labour’s position is to do likewise, because the Leader of the Opposition went to Manchester and made the same point that the line would not be recommitted. The key point is this: is the Labour party committed to repurposing for those Bradford projects? I am sure that we will hear from its Front Bench spokesperson.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Huw Merriman]

I will not give way again; I will finish so that others can speak.

We will be upgrading the connections between Manchester and Sheffield, between Leeds and Sheffield, between Leeds and Hull, and between Hull and Sheffield. We will reopen several of the lines closed more than 60 years ago by Dr Beeching, reconnecting areas such as County Durham, Burton, Stocksbridge and Waverley. We will halve the time that it takes to travel between Nottingham and Leeds by upgrading the track between Newark and Nottingham. We will increase our investment in the midlands rail hub to £1.75 billion, better connecting more than 50 stations, and we will improve journey times from north Wales to England, bringing parts of north Wales within an hour of Manchester by electrifying the north Wales main line. Network North is vital to our plans to level up the economy. It will connect labour markets across the north, expanding where people can work and where companies can recruit from. It will make it easier to deliver goods to markets and shorten supply chains in regions, growing the local economy. Instead of dragging investment towards London, we will contribute towards growth everywhere in the country.

As I said, although the motion is technical, this is still an exciting day for the north. We are taking a step towards providing the kind of infrastructure that people really want, connecting the great cities of Manchester and Liverpool, and making it easier to move around, work and invest in the region. I commend the motion to the House.

Covid-Secure Borders

Debate between Huw Merriman and Jim McMahon

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to talk about the issues that the international travel and, indeed, the health regimes face. I do so in a somewhat perplexed state, because normally I am very critical of my Government’s approach for being too cautious, but here I find that the Opposition motion is even more cautious and, in my view, would finish off the international travel industry, which is already on its knees.

What I find perhaps most galling about the motion is that all the measures that would compromise business, having no regard for those who have worked so hard and lost their job in the sector, can just be swept up in the last line, which refers to

“the need for a sector-specific support deal for aviation.”

The international travel industry does not want to be bailed out; it wants to be able to get on and do its job. It is all well and good for the Opposition to put that line in at the end as the catch-all, but it is effectively saying, “We will make you bankrupt, but don’t worry—we’ll appoint a receiver for you.” Frankly, I find it very disappointing indeed.

I am sorry that the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), has moved away, because I was hoping that he might intervene to clarify something. When I asked him about the effectively perpetual state of the red list, with the amber list being scrapped, he stated that, under the motion, the green list would be grown. In fact, the language is that the Opposition would maintain

“a tightly managed Green List,”

so it does not seem to indicate that at all. I ask the shadow Transport Secretary, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), if he is listening, to clarify whether the countries currently on the amber list, such as Malta and the Balearic and Greek islands, would move to the green list or move to the red list, resulting in quarantine.

It is simplistic in the extreme to constantly cite Australia and New Zealand as an example that this country should follow. We are an island trading nation. It is extraordinary listening to the Opposition, whose contributions in this debate I compare with those over the past couple of years in all the debates on Europe, when they said that we could not divorce mainland UK from our European Union partners because of trade and our close links. Yet all of a sudden we can throw a ring of steel around ourselves and have everyone—I assume that means the 10,000 heavy goods vehicle movements that come into this country delivering our trade—put into a red quarantine list and therefore into a hotel.

If everyone is not to be put into a hotel, we have just punctured the ring of steel, in which case what is the point in bringing the international travel industry down? Why not have the halfway house of an amber list, as the Government do? Then we have testing and mitigations in place, but at least allow travel to occur. As soon as we puncture the ring of steel there is no point in having it at all. That would be my point to the shadow Transport Secretary.

If we reduce flights virtually to zero, because no one will travel on them if they are all going to hotel quarantine, that ignores the fact that 40% of our trade comes in the belly of passenger planes, so trade will not come through either. That then results in more trade coming through on more lorries, which of course increases the risk, so there seems to be no logic to that at all.

[Jim McMahon]

indicated dissent.

[Huw Merriman]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head; I look forward to his responses. I hope he pays some regard to my comments, as I am very critical of my own side too. I am accusing him of trying to have it both ways—of trying to show some support to the international travel industry while closing it down, and of suggesting that we can close our borders down, Australia-style, while ignoring how our country interacts and works with Europe. I do not buy it for one minute, and I am afraid to say that it strikes me that the Opposition are showing a bit of red meat to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator, rather than trying genuinely to help the international travel sector recover while balancing health concerns.

That leads me to my last point. This motion seems to ignore the fact that we have a world-class vaccine that has been rolled out. In Sussex, 85% of those in cohorts 1 to 9, the over-50s, have been given both doses. We should be talking about the future and giving optimism and positivity and some signs of milestones to unlock people from the threat of job losses in the international aviation and maritime sectors, giving people hope that they will be able to see their loved ones. I ask the Opposition please to focus less on baseline politics and instead to focus on the industry—stop thinking that they can throw a blank cheque at an industry that wants to get back to work.

Council Funding and Social Care

Debate between Huw Merriman and Jim McMahon

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jim McMahon]

My hon. Friend is right. The reports, reviews and commissions that have looked into this issue have laid out clearly the scale of the problem. It has been made clear that the problem is bad today but will get worse year on year unless action is taken. Cross-party attempts have been made to resolve the issue, only to be undermined by the Conservative party, which wants to use it to wave the flag and scream at the Labour party with accusations of a death tax and a granny tax. We have heard about all that during the debate. The situation today is that the Conservatives are in Government, and it is the Government’s responsibility to come forward with a solution.

Suggestions can come forward from the Opposition—we have heard some today—and from local government, social care providers and charities. We have heard about that, but ultimately it is the Government’s responsibility. In many ways I pity the Minister. I would not like to be in a situation where my own party’s Prime Minister was completely clueless on the scale of the problem and the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed completely careless about the scale of the problem. The Minister’s own Secretary of State seems to show little interest in the brief he has been given, investing little time in it and leaving it, with all due respect, to junior Ministers to come and take the brunt of the problem.

The truth is that the Treasury will not release the amount of money that is needed. What happens as a result? Further pressure is pushed on to departmental budgets, but because the DCLG has no more money it pushes it back on to local authorities. The result—besides the fact that we do not even touch the sides in dealing with the scale of the problem—will be that council tax will have increased by 25% by the end of this Parliament. In human terms that will mean that people living in towns such as Oldham, Hull or Rochdale will notice their council tax bills increasing by 25%; but the fact that those towns historically have a low council tax and business rates base will constrain their ability to generate the total amount of money needed to provide care.

[Huw Merriman]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon]

That is right. I had the pleasure of facing the Minister across the Committee Room during consideration of the Local Government Finance Bill, where we debated that at length. I asked him clearly whether he believed there was a social care crisis, and his response was crystal clear: he did not believe that there was. That goes completely against the professional advice of people working in the sector, the 1.2 million people who need care but are denied it, and the advice of the Local Government Association, which represents its member authorities across political parties—the point is not a party political one at all. The Minister seems to want to hunker down and pretend there is not a problem on that scale.

[Huw Merriman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jim McMahon]

I need to make progress, with all due respect, so that the Minister can give a meaningful response to the debate.

Even with the 25% council tax increase, which will obviously put pressure on low-income families, particularly in areas with a low tax base, there will still be a £2.6 billion adult social care funding gap. The money will not even pay for a national insurance contributions increase, local authorities’ obligations under the apprenticeship levy requirements, or the national living wage. That is before we get to the point of tackling the poor quality of care provision in the private home care market in particular.

That is the scale of a problem that could have been avoided, and the cruelty of the situation we are in. I do not say that we could create a perfect system. We need to accept that although we will evolve a system far better than today’s, we have lost critical time for the reforms that are needed. In any transitional phase between systems there must be adequate resources in place to deal with the transition and, effectively, double-running of the system. People already in the system must be paid for, and new entrants to it must also be paid for, perhaps in a different way, to ensure that they will be looked after following the transition to the new way of working. That could be a 10, 15 or 20-year programme, and there is no appetite from the Government to look even beyond this Parliament, let alone so far ahead.

The total deficit in public service provision, at local level, is now running at £5.8 billion. That is the amount that councils need to fulfil their statutory obligations and provide basic public services. I do not agree at all that it is not a question of choices—it absolutely is. The corporation tax cuts cost us £5 billion, which could have been used either to offset the £2.6 billion adult social care deficit or even to make sure that councils could provide the 700 services that central Government require of them at local level.

Councils are being put in a difficult position. They will be expected to put up council tax by 25% at a time when the universal services that people can see, and that they believe they pay their council tax solely for, are being withdrawn—altogether, in some cases. The public will rightly ask, “What am I paying my council tax for? The park isn’t being maintained any more. The streets aren’t being cleaned any more.” In fact, most people believe they pay council tax only to get their wheelie bins emptied—and that happens less often than it used to, so where is the money going? The relationship between the taxes people pay and what they get in return is critical for democracy and for holding decision makers to account, and that link is being eroded. The truth is that a social care system reliant on 1991 property values is not a base on which to build a social care and health system for the future. It is not progressive and does not reflect people’s ability to pay, based on the income they earn. Of course, people in poorer areas ultimately pay more.

An offer has been made but not taken up yet, though it should be, to put party politics to one side. It is about choices, and we shall hold the Government to account where they make choices in favour of adult social care. There is a broad consensus across the political parties about the solution—about changing the system and ensuring that those who need adult social care can get it.