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

Debate between Jack Brereton and Graham Stringer

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jack Brereton]

I thank my hon. Friend for those very thoughtful points. I entirely agree that the instruction is wide-ranging. It is concerning to see those sorts of powers being put forward to the Committee. It really does show the abuse of the hybrid Bill process. If any services are to use the line, the railway would have to secure much wider enhancements and additional complex infrastructure, and there is no guarantee of that being delivered. As I said, the delivery of any services on this line will depend on permission being secured for the rest of the section, and that will be approved under a completely separate planning process. The approach being taken really is totally back to front.

[Graham Stringer]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have a principled disagreement with him on HS2, but I respect his position. He is making a powerful case for dividing the House on this matter. Will he divide the House on it?

[Jack Brereton]

We may come to that shortly, but I am very concerned about this. Certainly, we may consider dividing on the motion.

We should focus first on properly understanding the connectivity enhancement need, and then design the infrastructure to meet that need. Instead, we already have the infrastructure design, and are trying to make it fit with the improvements that we would like for connectivity across the north, because we do not want to spend time doing this properly and restarting the hybrid Bill process. It might have made sense to use the proposed route when the track would be shared with HS2, but it does not make any sense now that phase 2 has gone. It is neither the optimal route for benefits nor the most cost-effective to deliver. I am afraid that this really is an abuse of the hybrid Bill process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stringer]

I agree with the hon. Lady, and I hope I have already made that point.

[Jack Brereton]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Scotland. Of course, it was always intended that HS2 would be compatible with the conventional network that serves Scotland. Why does he think the Department for Transport specified HS2 trains that are not able to tilt and are not the right size to go on the classic network?

[Graham Stringer]

I cannot answer that question. It was a Government decision, and the Minister has indicated that he will answer.

I respect those who oppose HS2. This House has supported HS2, which has been in all of our manifestos. I think it is outrageous that HS2 to Manchester has been cancelled by an insulting edict from the Prime Minister. The most important point in this debate was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), who said that the elected Mayors of the west midlands and Greater Manchester have put together a plan to consider alternative methods of funding HS2. I hope the Minister can reassure the House that the Government will not follow a “burnt fields” policy of destroying it to make it more difficult for an incoming Labour Government to resurrect it.

The Conservative Members present say that they will remain opposed to HS2, and I remain supportive, because HS2 is good for the country, good for the environment and good for the economy of the north of England.

Leaving the EU

Debate between Jack Brereton and Graham Stringer

Monday 5th October 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is delightful to see you in the Chair, Sir David, and to be back in Westminster Hall. I agree with most of the comments made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton). First, I would like to declare three unremunerated interests: I am a board member for the Centre for Brexit Policy; I am on the advisory board for the Foundation for Independence; and I was, until just after the referendum, a board member of Vote Leave.

I ask hon. Members inside and outside this Hall a simple question. We have seen a two-pronged attack on democracy since the decision in 2016, which, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South said, was the single largest vote in our history. Most people in this country would be absolutely horrified if President Trump challenged a victory by the Democrats in the United States and it went to the courts, but that is exactly what has happened in this country. Many of my hon. Friends who care passionately about this and wanted to stay in the EU simply do not see it in those terms. That two-pronged attack on democracy has come from hon. Members, both from my party and from others, who want to overturn the decision, and from the EU itself, which is less surprising, because it is a non-democratic body that has used many tactics to make it painful for this country to leave, as a warning to other countries that might want to leave. So, I will start with that point.

I will also say that we have left the EU, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) has said, but we are still in the transition period and subject to the withdrawal agreement. I hope that we get a Canada-plus style of free trade agreement, which was on offer at the beginning of this process, and it is another element of bad faith from the EU that that has been taken off the table, as has giving this country third-country status, which is real bad faith.

I hope that we can get that type of arrangement, but it is vital that the final leaving agreement is sovereign-compliant. We need control over our fishing and over how we subsidise our industry, if that is what we choose to do. This country subsidises industry, providing so-called “state aid”, at about half the rate of the rest of the EU, so it is not a big problem.

However, it is vital that we have control of our own laws. That is why people voted to leave the EU, so we need the final leaving agreement to be sovereign-compliant. And we must not have overhanging liabilities that are unaccounted for, to be determined by some future decisions that the EU might make to give us more financial commitments. Finally, regarding the conditions for leaving, we must not be subject to the European Court of Justice. Otherwise, we will not be a truly independent country.

I have supported the decision to leave the EU in many votes in the House of Commons. I did not support the final withdrawal agreement, because I never believed that there should be the possibility of Great Britain being separated from Northern Ireland. The EU has exploited that situation and weaponised the historical situation in Ireland to try and keep control over our laws, so I hope the Government can get an agreement that does not lead to the splitting-up of the United Kingdom in those terms.

In introducing the three petitions, my hon. Friend referred to the legal action that is being taken. It is the most curious legal action. I am not a lawyer, but who has ever taken legal action against a Bill passing through this House that is yet to become law? It is extraordinary. Indeed, it is not only extraordinary in that sense; it is extraordinary in that it goes against the EU policy itself. In the Kadi I and Kadi II decisions—a complicated case adjudicated on by the European Court of Justice—the Court came to the conclusion that

“the obligations imposed by an international agreement cannot have the effect of prejudicing the constitutional principles of the EC Treaty”.

So the legal action is not only absurd in its first terms; it also goes against the way that the EU deals with its own policy.

I think it was mentioned that several court cases found that actions taken by parties on both sides have been in breach of the law. That is wrong; it should not happen. There is no general election or local election that I have ever been involved in where there have not been problems; that is just what happens in the heat of the campaign. Regarding Vote Leave, the Electoral Commission gave Vote Leave bad advice, and it ended up in breach of the rules, and it has paid a fine for that. I do not believe any of that affected the outcome. The single biggest factor in cash terms was that the Government paid £9 million effectively to put out a remain leaflet, which dwarfed all the rest of the expenditure.

I will finish by swiftly dealing with the petitions. There is the petition that cites covid as a reason for delaying the implementation. I understand at least one motivation behind that. The fact is that if we can control our own laws and regulations, we are in a better position to respond to any crisis immediately and not to be bound by the European Union’s bureaucracy. I will give an example: it took about 18 years for the EU to change the clinical trials directive, and lot of jobs went out of Europe because it was so slow. In order to build our economy after covid and to deal with it now, we need to be completely in charge of our rules and regulations.

[Jack Brereton]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the challenge of getting an EU covid recovery package together is an example of that?

[Graham Stringer]

I do agree. I will not get into a debate about covid, but we need to be spritelier than we have been in response to this crisis, and being in charge of ourselves is the best way to do it. I have previously said that both sides have been found to have been in breach of the regulations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool mentioned foreign interference. Did the biggest interference in terms of publicity—when President Obama came over and asked people to vote remain—make any difference? I suspect in many cases that boosted the leave side of the debate.

This country has decided to leave the EU, and we have to get the best deal possible. We have to ensure that we get it to be sovereign-compliant, and not let the EU carry on with what are effectively imperialistic policies. It wants to carry on controlling our laws and regulations. It wants to keep us paying, without our having any say whatever in the creation of those laws and regulations.

Road Safety

Debate between Jack Brereton and Graham Stringer

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered road safety.

It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Mrs Moon. I am grateful to have secured this important debate. Road safety is an issue that affects every constituency, and I am delighted to see colleagues here from both sides of the House. No doubt they will want to draw my hon. Friend the Minister’s attention to particular roads or even particular accidents, but I will endeavour to keep my remarks as encompassing as possible and to explore how we can best measure and improve road safety as a general rule. I hope that we can have a dispassionate debate about an emotive subject, while always recognising how traumatic failures of road safety can have life-changing implications.

In Great Britain last year, 1,793 people were killed in road crashes—that is 1,793 too many. In addition, the Government estimate that road traffic collisions cost the UK economy more than £16.3 billion a year. In Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire alone, all accidents involving speed cost the economy an average of £32.5 million annually. Those costs could be reduced if we made our roads safer.

Last month, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety released a new report, entitled “Developing safe system road safety indicators for the UK”. That timely and interesting report from PACTS will form the basis of my remarks. It was done in association with Ageas, which is one of our largest motor insurers; it employs more than 400 people in my constituency. They are all too aware of the devastation that poor road safety can cause to those injured or bereaved. I am grateful to them for sending me briefing materials and also grateful for input from the Association of British Insurers, the Road Safety Foundation, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, the Institute of Alcohol Studies, Living Streets and Highways England.

The economy has grown every year since 2010, and the population and the volume of road traffic have grown with it. Despite that, the number of road deaths has not grown over the same period, and we can be thankful for that. However, we could be doing better and getting the number of deaths and serious injuries down. More worryingly, the number of pedestrian fatalities accounts for more than one quarter; it is up 5% on the previous year and up 11% on the 2010 to 2014 average.

We have some of the safest roads in the world, but we need to ensure that the general downward trend in road deaths over the past 45 years continues. That was achieved through improved safety measures, technological advances and public awareness campaigns, modifying behaviours and militating against elements of previously fatal scenarios. And we are far from exhausting the potential for technological advances, particularly in the field of autonomous cars and smart roads. It is at this time of great technological change that a more comprehensive approach to road safety is needed—something against which both current and new forms of transport can be tested, and something that is responsive to new technology. The Government are of course aware of that, and it is strongly to their credit that the UK is leading the way in embracing the advances that driverless technology promises to bring.

The Government issued a British road safety statement in 2015. That was followed by the road safety management review commissioned last year and published in June of this year. It is clear that the Government favour a partnership approach, fully respecting devolution and local authority competences. That is all very welcome, and it is welcome that the report by PACTS and Ageas has come forward. In this spirit of encouragement, I ask the Minister to respond to the points raised by the report. In particular, I ask how the Department is progressing towards a safe system approach.

Traditionally, road safety measures have always been far too reactive. Areas with a history of more serious collisions have received far more focus and, often, locations where there is the greatest danger of collisions and a history of near misses do not get the attention that they need. Also, campaigns have focused on getting drivers and vulnerable road users to stop certain behaviours, instead of such behaviours being proactively designed out.

Systemic measures are needed; that is what a safe system is all about. It is an evidence-based approach focused on preventing death and serious injury, rather than preventing all crashes in the face of human error. Because people do make mistakes and collisions do and will take place, a systemic approach recognises that minimising the physical impact of collisions is a shared responsibility for those who design, build, manage and use roads and vehicles. To put it bluntly, if we crash into someone or something, the vehicle and not the people should take the impact and any damage. That means that, as well as expecting road users to comply with the laws on seatbelts, speed limits, not using phones and so on, we should expect, first, vehicle makers to design safer cars, vans, lorries and buses and, secondly, highways agencies to design and maintain legible and forgiving road infrastructure. Thirdly, medical and emergency services should be prepared, trained and equipped to provide an efficient and effective post-crash response.

A key aspect of a safe system approach is the ability to monitor, target and track progress through specific performance indicators. As Dr Suzy Charman of the Road Safety Foundation has said,

“You cannot manage what you do not measure. There is a need for road safety performance indicators in order to drive effort and investment in the right direction.”

I would be interested to hear from the Minister what consideration has been given to devising any indicators beyond those EuroRAP—European Road Assessment Programme—indicators that are already in use for the strategic road network. I would be especially keen to hear his early responses to the eight indicators proposed in the PACTS report. I will briefly run through the indicators set out in the report.

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

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. Before he gets on to the eight indicators, would he agree with me that it is already known where the most dangerous roads are? They are often roads over moors, in rural areas, where overtaking takes the car on to the other side of the road, and there are often head-on collisions, which lead to fatalities. Improving those roads should be the focus of the Government’s investment policy. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Jack Brereton]

I agree to an extent, in that those are some of the key roads where investment should be prioritised. There are also far too many accidents occurring in urban areas—hits particularly involving pedestrians, which are obviously much more prevalent in towns and cities, where an accident can be much more serious.

I will go through the eight specific indicators. The first is compliance with speed limits on national roads. Speeding currently accounts for about one fifth of road fatalities. The second indicator is compliance with speed limits on local roads. Data collection for both those speed indicators would be through existing speed monitoring equipment and self-reporting in, for example, the Royal Automobile Club survey, which already identifies this.

Obviously, speed is not everything when it comes to reducing dangers, so the third point is abstinence from alcohol and drug consumption. That is a key indicator. Nearly 15% of road crash fatalities involve a driver exceeding the legal alcohol limit. I am told by the Institute of Alcohol Studies that deaths caused by drink-driving are now at their highest rate since 2012. Meanwhile, it is estimated that some 200 road deaths a year—more than 10% of road deaths—are drug-driving related.

The fourth indicator is the percentage of car occupants using a seatbelt, child seats or child restraints. For many people, wearing a seatbelt is now second nature, but, despite it being illegal not to wear a seatbelt, not enough people are wearing seatbelts. Not wearing a seatbelt accounts for between 20% and 30% of road fatalities among car occupants. That is more than 150 deaths a year.

The fifth indicator relates to one of the more recent legislative changes; it is the percentage of drivers not using an in-car or hands-free phone. It can be difficult to establish when mobile phone use has contributed to a crash, but it is reported that dozens of fatal crashes involve the use of a mobile phone.

The sixth indicator is the percentage of new passenger cars with the highest European New Car Assessment Programme safety rating, which is obviously important for the quality and design of vehicles. An academic study cited in the PACTS report has estimated that the risk of fatal injuries is dramatically reduced in five-star-rated vehicles by as much as 68% compared with two-star-rated vehicles. The seventh indicator is the percentage of roads with the highest relevant International Road Assessment Programme ratings, broken down by road type. The final proposed indicator is the percentage of emergency medical vehicles arriving at an accident within 18 minutes of notification.

Those are the eight indicators set out in the report by PACTS and Ageas. Some data will be more challenging than others to collect. The report identifies a number of sources and methods for that collection. It also lists alternative indicators that were considered but rejected because of the difficulties in accurate data collection, such as cyclists not wearing the correct type of helmet, which would be quite difficult to calculate.