Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jack Brereton and Huw Merriman

Thursday 14th December 2023 Commons Chamber

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

As the Minister will know, I very much welcome the decision on phase 2 of HS2. However, there is still an impact on many land and property owners in Staffordshire. We heard in the Transport Committee that it could take up to two years to get land back to those owners. Will my hon. Friend look into this urgently to ensure that those property owners—particularly farmers, who need to know when they can sow their crops—get that land back as soon as possible?

[Huw Merriman]

In the words of Take That, I ask my hon. Friend for a little patience. It will take time to develop a programme to ensure that we deliver value for money for the taxpayer and do not disrupt local property markets. We will engage with the affected communities throughout the process. Where land can be rented back out and therefore put to use—farming is a good example —that is happening right now, and we will ensure that that happens even more so now that we have certainty about HS2.

Rail Ticket Offices

Debate between Jack Brereton and Huw Merriman

Thursday 6th July 2023 Commons Chamber

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

Many people using stations such as Stoke-on-Trent station are infrequent travellers, and many are vulnerable or elderly and need support to buy a ticket. Can the Minister assure me that there will always be someone at Stoke-on-Trent station to provide a paper ticket to those without digital skills?

[Huw Merriman]

There are no plans to replace paper tickets through the train operators’ process. Again, the aim is to ensure that ticket office staff are freed up and on the platform to sell the tickets and help passengers to purchase them at the machines or online. The hope is that, thereafter, those passengers will be able to book for themselves with confidence, without needing to use that service. Those staff will also be available at Stoke-on-Trent to provide other services and information: more customer services. This is the exact way in which our rail passengers transact across the retail and financial space, which is why it is the right approach for the railways.

HS2: Revised Timetable and Budget

Debate between Jack Brereton and Huw Merriman

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

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

For Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, HS2 means a huge amount of pain for little to no gain. I am extremely concerned, as are many of the people I have heard from, that phase 2 will actually reduce capacity on some existing services. Will the Minister use this pause to look again at whether more of the investment should be spent on upgrading the existing network to ensure that we better connect places such as Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford?

[Huw Merriman]

To make it absolutely clear, we remain committed to the delivery of HS2 from London Euston up to Manchester. The extra time that can be afforded—that was a great conversation I had with the council leaders and Mayors—will be used to assess and improve the design, if necessary, but we will not be taken off the track of London Euston to Manchester. I look forward to more contributions from my hon. Friend, who knows I am committed to delivering transport in his area, and I do see HS2 as part of that solution.

Restoring Your Railway Fund

Debate between Jack Brereton and Huw Merriman

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on securing this important debate on the restoring your railway fund. Like me, he has a passionate interest in the future of our railways, and I pay tribute to him as my predecessor.

My hon. Friend and other hon. Members will know that the £500 million restoring your railway fund was announced in January 2020, with the aim of delivering on our manifesto commitment of levelling up and beginning a process of reopening lines and stations in England and Wales that had previously been closed. This investment is being used to explore and deliver on how we reconnect communities, regenerate local economies and improve access to jobs, homes and education opportunities.

We have already seen that in action, as many hon. Members have mentioned—not least those who represent Devon. I was delighted to travel to Devon last November to help celebrate the first anniversary of the restoration of the Dartmoor line between Exeter and Okehampton. That was the very first reopening under the restoring your railway manifesto commitment. It was delivered on time and on budget, and I am pleased to say that the restored service has been hugely popular. Over 250,000 new journeys have been recorded on the Dartmoor line in its first year. I was heartened to meet members of the local community and to hear how the reinstated line has improved their lives and is boosting local businesses, college numbers and tourism.

Another restoring your railway scheme, which I plan to visit in the next month or so, is the Northumberland line. It received £34 million of funding in January 2021, which has enabled track to be upgraded for passenger services. Once open, the Northumberland line will reintroduce direct passenger trains between south-east Northumberland and the centre of Newcastle, improving access to jobs, leisure and learning, with services likely to start in 2024. The area has been identified as being in the top 10% of most deprived areas nationally, and it has the lowest rates of regional car ownership, with poor public transport options into Newcastle.

[Jack Brereton]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Huw Merriman]

I will give way briefly, but I want to take time to respond to every hon. Member.

[Jack Brereton]

I thank the Minister for giving way. On the point about levelling up communities, will he ensure that projects such as Meir station, which has so much potential to level up communities, are considered favourably and that that ability to level up areas is considered in the assessment process, to ensure that levelling-up factors determine which projects get the go-ahead and move forward to full development?

[Huw Merriman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point and for his work on the Transport Committee. I will indeed look at the issue in that regard. It is important that the business case has a good cost-benefit ratio, but it is not just the direct return on money that matters; following the reform of the Green Book rules, one also needs to consider—this is great news—what projects do for regeneration and decarbonisation, and these projects deliver on both fronts.

As hon. Members will appreciate, the restoring your railway fund is heavily over-subscribed. My Department received nearly 200 bids—200 excellent bids—to the ideas fund element of the programme alone. We also reviewed proposals whose business cases were already in their advanced stages, such as the Northumberland line and the Bristol to Portishead line, along with existing proposals to introduce a number of new stations under the new stations fund element.

On the points raised by the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), I gently remind him that eight schemes under the restoring your railway fund are being delivered; 13 are progressing past the strategic outline business case towards their full business case; and 23 projects have been taken through the ideas fund stage. So I did not recognise the part of his speech where he said that not much appeared to have been delivered. And one of my hon. Friends said, the beauty of this fund is that one gains the buy-in of the local community, local Members of Parliament lead things, and schemes are decided from the grassroots up, not from the top down, which I dare say would be more the line of thinking of the hon. Member for Slough.

BBC

Debate between Jack Brereton and Huw Merriman

Monday 15th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton]

No, I have already given way to the hon. Lady.

I thank Channel 4 for taking on the BBC hit pottery programme, Stoke-on-Trent’s own “The Great Pottery Throw Down”, following the BBC’s unfortunate and, frankly, wrong decision not to commission a new series.

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

Channel 4 is a public sector broadcaster and receives subsidies, as my hon. Friend mentioned, but Channel 4 outbid the BBC for one of its own programmes, “The Great British Bake Off”. Channel 4 behaves like a commercial organisation, whereas the BBC does not—it grows organically and then, unfortunately, gets taken advantage of.

[Jack Brereton]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s point, but I suggest that a number of the programmes on Channel 4 add a huge amount of good to the country and beyond, as do many commercial stations. Many of the programmes that I enjoy on Channel 4 are factual and not just entertainment.

For programmes in the arts, crafts and culture sphere, perhaps there could be Arts Council-style grants, particularly for the purest of public good, public service broadcasts, if appropriate safeguards against interest group capture can be devised. They would not necessarily have to be made by the BBC, but could be funded by competitive tender through the BBC as a grant-awarding body. There could be more collaborative work with educational institutions, such as the Open University or others, to finance certain programme output.

It is certainly worth looking at the potential for purchased ticketing for BBC recordings. BBC shows are free to attend, but BBC tours are paid ticketed. There is clearly sufficient demand for those tours to make charges sustainable and to raise revenue. I wonder, too, given the huge waiting list and interest in shows such as “Strictly Come Dancing”, whether the market mechanism of paid ticketing might be an option to manage that demand. I have heard it said that at one point the waiting list for audience tickets to “Top Gear” was measured in decades. What an incentive it would be for the BBC to keep producing compelling programmes if it made audience ticket revenue.

At the moment, tickets to BBC shows are available to anyone with a UK postcode. There is clearly some kind of ticket pricing to be explored, perhaps even differential ticket pricing where a tour is included, or hospitality and so on. There is certainly a chance for some entrepreneurialism. I do not pretend for a moment that ticket sales would ever raise the sums raised by the TV licence, but they could be one of a number of streams that the BBC could pursue for certain programmes.