Finance (No.2) Bill

Debate between Ian Swales and Kelvin Hopkins

Tuesday 8th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have called many times in this Chamber, including in the past week or two, for more tax officers to be employed. Every tax officer collects many times their own salary. A VAT officer told me that, even for VAT on small businesses, tax officers collect some five times their own salary. When it comes to the big corporates, if we had a good chief tax officer, Vodafone might have paid a few more billions, as it should have done. We could then start to solve our problems. We have to focus on the big corporates, which are getting away with murder.

[Ian Swales]

I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s comments on HMRC staff, which I raise frequently on the Public Accounts Committee, but surely he must regret the cut in 10,000 compliance staff when his party was in government and welcome the addition of 2,500 compliance staff under this Government.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I made exactly the same speeches when my party was in government. I demanded that the previous Government employ many more tax officers. There has been a conspiracy between Front-Bench Members for some decades to get away from being too unpleasant to the corporates and to let them have their way. Well, I do not want to let them have their way; I want them to pay their taxes so that we can pay for the things that ordinary people need, particularly those who are less well off and those who are more vulnerable.

Inter-City Rail Investment

Debate between Ian Swales and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered inter-city rail investment.

As well as London, the eight largest English cities have city deal status and another 20 are being agreed at present. I want to talk about rail travel between these city regions, especially those journeys that do not involve London. My speech will not be about HS2, except in passing, partly because that subject has already been aired at length, but also because journeys between the 29 city regions involve 465 possible trips, only 13 of which are directly covered by HS2. Those figures do not include Welsh or Scottish cities, but I am sure other Members may wish to comment on them.

If we look at past priorities for inter-city rail investment, we see that there has often seemed to be an assumption that the only thing people want to do when they get on a train is travel to or from London. Research shows that prioritising transport heavily on connections to a capital tends to suck economic activity into that capital. As Chris Murray, director of Core Cities, observed recently, this over-concentration is bad for the national economy in the long term. In contrast with other developed countries, such as France and Germany, the UK remains one of the most economically centralised countries in the world. The vast majority of significant companies and other institutions are headquartered in and around London.

London itself has major capacity issues, whether they be housing, schools, airports, local transport, water, sewage treatment or even land and labour. Immigration pressures from abroad or from elsewhere in the UK are felt heavily in London as it deals with its overheated economy. A London MP recently exemplified affordable housing in her constituency, it being defined as a two-bedroom flat costing £750,000. There is constant pressure for billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to be spent addressing those capacity problems in the capital. Meanwhile, other areas, such as the one I represent, have all those assets freely available, including houses, none of which cost £750,000, surplus school places and capable people ready to take jobs.

The Government have a stated aim to rebalance the economy and I believe that inter-city rail investment can play a pivotal role in that endeavour. Others share my concerns. The former Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, said recently:

“There are literally dozens of rail and public transport projects urgently needed across the country that would make a significant economic and social impact.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 October 2013; Vol. 748, c. 1228.]

He also commented on the cuts to other inter-city services that accompany the HS2 proposals, including loss of service from Stoke, Stockport, Coventry and Wilmslow, and long journey times to Carlisle. The Institute of Directors reports that 80% of its members support increased investment in the existing inter-city network.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on what he has said so far. Does he not also agree that a spinal, dedicated rail freight route capable of carrying lorry trailers on trains and serving the north-east would have an enormously beneficial effect on the economies of the regions?

[Ian Swales]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I certainly agree with him and will mention rail freight later in my speech. He makes a powerful point which I know he has raised in the House before.

With excellent assistance from the House of Commons Library, I have conducted research on all the journeys between the English city regions, comparing fastest rail journey times against road miles as the best indicator of the actual distance between them. Many interesting facts emerge. The fastest journey times from nearly every single city region are on the lines to London. Average speeds range from 63 mph from the south coast to well over 100 mph from many other parts of the country.

For journeys between cities outside London, however, the overall fastest miles per hour speeds are in the 20s, and many are in the 30s and 40s. Fastest journeys can involve absurd dog-legging through London—for example, Cambridge to Sheffield, Ipswich to Newcastle and Swindon to Leicester—and journeys between the 29 key city regions can involve as many as four changes. Those figures are the consequence of past investment focused on hub-and-spoke systems based on London, and of under-investment on other routes, which has helped to concentrate economic and administrative power in the capital.

The record of the previous Government was poor, with too much micro-management but only nine miles of electrification investment. Fares went up by 66%, but subsidies went up £1.7 billion as well. Journey times are slower than they were 15 years ago, and 61% of UK businesses are concerned that the UK’s transport infrastructure lags behind international competitors.

I welcome the steps that this Government are taking. A good example of the work needed is the Milton Keynes to Oxford route. At 22 mph, it is one of the slowest possible journeys, so the Government’s decision to revive the east-west route to join those two city regions is very welcome and will provide the connectivity to help release potential. However, the Milton Keynes to Cambridge route, at 24 mph, will remain one of the slowest in the country. Other examples of very slow connectivity are the routes from Leicester to Coventry, Bournemouth to Bristol, Southend to Ipswich, Sunderland to Darlington—I could go on.

It is certainly welcome that the east coast main line is at last due to get modern rolling stock. Despite being one of the most profitable lines in the country, botched franchising deals have led to a sense that it is somehow a basket case, with consequent high fares and old trains. Passengers richly deserve the investment in new rolling stock and, as a regular user, I suppose that I should declare an interest.

It is worrying that a briefing I received for today’s debate from the Rail Delivery Group, a consortium of Network Rail and the train operators, states that the east coast line

“essentially serves two main destinations…Leeds and Edinburgh”.

It makes no mention of services that terminate in Newcastle or Aberdeen, of the 750,000 people in the Tees valley served by Darlington, or of numerous other towns and cities served directly or through connections. Sadly, the geography of many of the decision makers seems to get sketchy outside the M25.

One area that I want to highlight is the wide corridor of national importance through south Yorkshire and south Lancashire. It contains four of the six biggest cities in England, as well as many significant towns and other cities, and it is home to more than a quarter of the UK’s small and medium-sized businesses. Although it is already an economic powerhouse, it could be so much better with proper inter-city rail investment. Our forefathers recognised its importance by building one of the first cross-country motorways, the M62, to link Hull and Liverpool. How is the rail service through the region? The answer is, very poor. The 120-mile journey from Hull to Liverpool takes 30 minutes longer than the 214-mile journey from Hull to London, which means that it is at exactly half the speed. The vital commercial centres of Leeds and Manchester are joined by a service that runs at only 46 mph, whereas they both already have services to London at more than 100 mph.

Slow train times lead to far more people travelling by road, which in turn has an impact on train passenger numbers. They also give the appearance of low demand: no doubt that affects perceived investment, but this is surely a classic case of “Build it and they will come”. Getting people, and of course freight, off the roads also has major environmental benefits.

I welcome the many improvement projects contained in the northern hub initiative and the associated forecast of growth in passenger numbers, but they fall short of providing the kind of radical improvements that could transform the economy of the region. We need speedy train services to link our northern cities to each other, not just linking them separately to London and the south.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Swales]

I thank the hon. Lady. I am sure the Minister is logging the various bids that are being made.

My area of the north-east has good journey times to London, but very poor journey times to other places. Is it right that it takes longer to get from Darlington to Manchester on a single train than it takes to get to London? The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was stunned recently when he discovered how long he had to spend on the train when travelling from Liverpool to Darlington. Ironically, he was making the trip to be present at the inauguration of the new inter-city train factory at Newton Aycliffe, which is hugely welcome in my part of the world.

Rail investment is not just about passengers, but about freight, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) mentioned. It was good to see the recent but long-overdue investment by the Government to enable modern-sized containers landing at Teesport to join the east coast main line. However, a large modern port needs good connections to a wide hinterland and, again, the cross-country links are very poor. If such a container was destined for Preston, which is less than 100 miles away, it would have to go via Birmingham, so poor are the trans-Pennine links.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is talking about freight, even though this debate is essentially about passengers. Some 80% of freight in Britain and across the channel goes by lorry, not by container. Containers are splendid things and lorries are the problem. Do we not need to be able to get lorry trailers on to trains? To do that, we need a dedicated route with the height and gauge capacity to deal with it.

[Ian Swales]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. I am certain that the current trans-Pennine links would also be inadequate for that solution. I agree with what he says. This matter needs to be considered seriously. What is the point of investing heavily in rail freight handling in the Trafford area of Manchester, which is going to happen, if there is no easy route to the major ports on the Tyne, the Tees and the Humber? The ability of east coast ports to collect goods from northern businesses for export and to deliver imported goods and materials to them by rail should be a key economic driver.

As part of rebalancing the economy, the Department for Transport should be accelerating inter-city investment in the regions for three reasons. First, the economic benefits of constructing that infrastructure would be felt most strongly in the regions concerned. Secondly, the manufacture of infrastructure materials tends to be concentrated away from the south-east. An example is Tata Steel’s construction beam mill in my constituency. Finally, the provision of good infrastructure tends to lead to more economic development in the local region.

Rail investment should be used proactively to drive our regional economies, not just reactively to address overcrowding. Quicker travel would make existing businesses more efficient. Better city links would allow regionally based businesses to set up and expand more easily, and to take on London-based competitors.

As Jim O’Neill, the chair of the City Growth Commission, observed in a recent article in The House magazine entitled “Going for growth”,

“We already know that around the world, mid-tier cities generate higher economic growth relative to their populations.”

In the same magazine, Alexandra Jones, the chief executive of the Centre for Cities, noted that

“most of the UK’s largest cities…punch below their economic potential.”

The underperformance in the UK is due partly to our transport infrastructure. The excessive focus on London recently led the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to say that London

“is becoming a giant suction machine draining the life out of the rest of the country”.

In closing, I want to emphasise the following points. A business person’s time is just as valuable when they are travelling from Newcastle to Bristol or from Norwich to Liverpool as it is when they are travelling to or from London. It should be possible to run an effective, competitive national or international business from any of our city regions, not just from London. The Government have a key aim of rebalancing the economy. I commend the work that is being done on city deals and through the regional growth fund. The Department for Transport needs to take up the challenge and play its full part in that rebalancing. After decades of under-investment, I welcome the renewed focus on rail investment that the Government are driving. I hope the Minister will explain how the Department’s inter-city rail investment policy will meet the ambition of making the whole economy more successful, and not just that of London and the south-east. I look forward to his response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Swales]

As we are all bidding for electrification, let me point out that the Grand Central service from Sunderland to London runs on a non-electrified line north of Northallerton through Eaglescliffe and Hartlepool.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I think we are well behind the rest of the world in electrifying our rail routes and we need to do a lot more. It is happening, but it is going to take some time yet. We should have done this years ago.

Hon. Members have mentioned some of the corridor routes I intended to speak about, such as that from Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds to York. A modern, electrified fast service linking those great cities would be a tremendous boon to the north. I am obviously not speaking on behalf of Luton here; I am speaking about my interest in railways and in the country in general.

A second electrified route should link York, Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance, which would provide a real chance for growth, particularly in the south-west, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View said. Those are two important corridors, and I could provide more detail on others. Fast electrified services would greatly benefit the relevant regions.

In a rail debate on 31 October I set out a scheme for upgrading and improving the east coast main line from London to Edinburgh. I shall not go over the detail again now, as I want to reserve my time to deal with other schemes, other than to say that this is another important investment that should go ahead to improve capacity and speed on the east coast.

I want to focus today on a particular scheme. I have mentioned it before, but I want to re-emphasise its importance. I believe it would be a major advance to upgrade the Birmingham, Snow Hill to London line, which passes through Solihull, Leamington Spa, Banbury and other towns, on which only a handful of trains currently run each day to and from Marylebone. The line also runs directly to Paddington—a much more useful London terminus that links directly with Crossrail and thus to the City. Snow Hill is in the centre of Birmingham and easily accessible to the business district.

There is, however, a much more compelling and exciting possibility for this route. If it were to be electrified, a simple link to Crossrail at Old Oak Common would provide direct passenger services between the centre of Birmingham and the City of London and, indeed, Canary Wharf. Business travellers would have available direct travel from city centre to city centre with no changes required, thus saving time and inconvenience. But there is more: the electrified Snow Hill to London line could also branch off at Greenford to join Crossrail going west, thus providing a direct service from Birmingham city centre to Heathrow. The electrification of that line and those two links with Crossrail would together cost no more than £500 million.

There is still more. The Snow Hill line has a branch at Leamington linked to Birmingham airport, which opens up the possibility of direct, non-stop electrified 125 mph services between Birmingham and Heathrow airports, as well as a direct link between Birmingham airport and the City of London via Crossrail. A journey time of one hour between the airports would be a boon to both of them, making Birmingham effectively a satellite of Heathrow and possibly removing some of the pressure from the growth of passenger traffic there, as well as being advantageous to workers in Birmingham.

I believe that the scheme would be enormously beneficial economically at both ends of the route. It would breathe extra life into the economy of the west midlands, and it would take a bit of pressure off London. It would also be helpful to services going further north. It would be possible to travel to the airport from Birmingham New Street and on to that route directly as well. There are numerous exciting possibilities, provided that the whole line is electrified and upgraded. Even now, it would be capable of 125 mph services, which I think would be sufficient for the journeys to which I have referred.

I urge the Minister, Opposition Front Benchers and Network Rail to give serious thought to my proposal. It is not just my own idea; it is based on detailed advice from experienced railway engineers. It would work, it would be easy to construct, and it would bring great benefits at modest costs. I commend it to fellow Members, and especially to those on both Front Benches.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Ian Swales and Kelvin Hopkins

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Hon. Members are calling out numbers to me—600 in England and 2,500 in Scotland. Why something is so easy in Scotland and so difficult in England is beyond me to imagine.

One point that the hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) made quite strongly concerned democracy. Democracy is not dictatorship of the majority. Our kind of democracy accepts freedoms for minorities as well. The humanists are a substantial and significant minority, of whom I am proud to be one. Over the past decade, between the past two censuses, there has been a substantial increase in those professing no religion, and a significant proportion of those people have become humanists. If a number of those professing no faith understood that there was an alternative way of living according to some strong ethical beliefs, they could become humanists themselves. They would only need to find out more about humanism, and they might well become humanists and want a humanist marriage.

[Ian Swales]

In the 2011 census, 25% professed no religion. That is more than 14 million people. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that they should have the opportunity to celebrate their marriages?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those figures, which had escaped me for the moment. Indeed, 25% is a substantial number. I do not want to oppress any minorities, or majorities, but I do not want my minority to be oppressed by anyone else.

Finance Bill

Debate between Ian Swales and Kelvin Hopkins

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ian Swales]

Well, £4,000 extra VAT is obviously one way that they are contributing as a result of this Government’s policies.

The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) said in the previous debate that the important focus of the tax and benefit system is on need and alleviation of poverty. I believe that VAT increases, which impact on the wealthy more than on the poor, are a good way of doing that.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman keeps referring to VAT as a progressive tax. It is a flat tax, proportionate all the way up the income scale. Progressive taxes have increasing rates at higher incomes.

[Ian Swales]

Technically, VAT is a progressive spending tax because the average rate paid increases the more one spends. That is the definition of a progressive tax.