High Speed 2

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

No, I am not saying that.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, I am proud to host the UK’s fastest-growing ports in my constituency, and one of the things that those ports are investing in is more freight connections to transport more containers by rail, rather than road. Achieving the full potential of those connections absolutely requires HS2 to free up capacity elsewhere on the rail network, so will the Minister assure me that all the implications of any changes to the timetable for HS2 will be considered? It impacts on net zero, the demand on our road infrastructure, and where things will arrive.

[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point—I was delighted to visit some of those freight services in her constituency with her just last week. Getting freight on to rail is obviously an important objective of the Government, as is supporting those on the road network, and I will ensure that that is taken into consideration in any future decisions that the Government take.

Seafarers’ Wages Bill [Lords]

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I am pleased to be able to speak in support of this very welcome measure, but this should be only the start of what we do to improve the working conditions for seafarers, and not just in our own waters but globally. It is a fact that when we look at where companies are able to exploit migrant labour and other workers, our shipping industry is perhaps one of the most notorious. Following the successful World cup in Qatar, where lots of issues regarding migrant workers were raised, I think that shining a light on some of the practices in the shipping industry would be welcome.

The act of industrial vandalism perpetrated on British workers by P&O Ferries was absolutely disgusting, and I am pleased that the whole House came together to condemn that practice at the time. I commend the Government for being quite fleet of foot in bringing forward this legislation. It proves that they can be fleet of foot when they choose to be, and I hope to see more of this when problems and, in particular, injustices are highlighted. But of course this Bill is limited to EU traffic, particularly on the short seas—the kind of traffic that goes from and attends our ports in Hull, Dover and Holyhead.

I represent what I like to describe as the ports capital of the UK, in Thurrock, after the port of London moved east from the London docks to my constituency. This has been a challenging period for us. DP World owns the new London Gateway port, the newest deep-sea port in the country. We have been working hard to have good relations with the British management of that port, but we were equally condemnatory of the actions of the parent company, through P&O Ferries, towards those workers. I am keen to ensure that the management at London Gateway understand that we in Thurrock thought that was completely unacceptable. We want to labour that point, not least to protect the thousands of workers in my constituency who are employed by that company. It is important that this House sends a message to companies that wish to invest in our country that there are things we will not put up with, and that what passes for reasonable employment practice in their own jurisdiction will not pass in ours. It is important that that principle is hammered home.

We also have ports in Thurrock that serve European traffic, and they have a very different business model from those to which this legislation is directed. I highlight particularly the integrated port and shipping operation run by CLdN at Purfleet, and Britain’s newest port at Tilbury 2, which also serves the European market. It is a different model because we are talking about unaccompanied roll-on roll-off freight. For example, at Dover the HGV drivers will accompany their cargo straight on and off and hit the road, but those ships arriving from Europe at Purfleet and Tilbury are undertaking a much longer journey to make that crossing. They are not accompanied; a driver drops them off at one end, and another driver picks them up at the other. I register with the Minister that the regulations currently being drafted to address the particular situation of short seas should perhaps be used more sensitively than the regulations covering other kinds of economic operation.

As has been highlighted, these minimum wage regulations are directed at ships that regularly attend British ports. The truth of the matter is that the ports of Tilbury and London Gateway deal with very large ships that make multiple stops around the world. Fifty years ago, some of the people working on those ships would have been my constituents, but today, frankly, my constituents are too expensive. The ships are now staffed by Filipinos, Thais and a lot of Ukrainians—I will come back to them—and we need to think about their welfare, too. I know the Government have made that case through their role in the International Maritime Organisation. If there is one thing for which I am grateful to P&O Ferries, it is for giving us the opportunity to shine a light on how our global seafaring population needs more support and more attention to its welfare.

We have heard about what would be the most appropriate enforcement authority. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), the Chair of the Transport Committee, said about the MCA. I have seen at first hand how the MCA took action to regulate behaviour towards seafarers during the pandemic, when a number of cruise ships were stranded at Tilbury. Frankly, the seafarers on those ships were in a terrible state. They did not know how long they would be stuck there, and their welfare conditions were truly appalling. The MCA took decisive action to improve their welfare.

As we head towards Christmas, people do not worry about how the items they have purchased and wrapped to put under the Christmas tree got to the shop. The fact is that we rely on our seafarers to keep us fed and watered, and they did a fantastic job during the pandemic. The shelves were full when we went to the supermarket because the seafarers kept working. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) is nodding in agreement, and he did a fantastic job of championing them. His door was always open when I was doing my best to represent the welfare of that community, and I thank him for everything he did. He was a truly excellent maritime Minister who did much to elevate maritime issues within Government. We do not worry too much about how things get on to the shelves, but the truth is that many people are paid not very much money and work in terrible conditions to make sure they do.

My annual treat is going down to the Queen Victoria Seamen’s Rest in Tilbury to wrap Christmas presents. We give out 3,000 presents, supported by voluntary donations. Every seafarer who passes through the port of London gets a present and a Christmas card from my constituents. The present consists of toiletries, chocolates, some London mementos and a hand-knitted hat made by Tilbury’s knitting community. It is a special thing to do because those seafarers are away from their family, and the gift shows that someone has thought about them.

I particularly highlight the welfare of Ukrainian seafarers passing through the port of Tilbury this Christmas. They are away from their family, and they are clearly very worried about them. I am pleased that we are giving them SIM cards so that they can contact their family. I thank the Department for Transport for funding the wi-fi routers that give us that facility.

I wish this Bill well, and I want it to be on the statute book as soon as possible so that we can raise the standards of behaviour towards seafarers who work on our European seas. I log my clear message to Ministers that we must also do more to raise global standards for our seafarers.

Lower Thames Crossing

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, perhaps you will pass on my thanks to Mr Speaker for granting this important debate. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), to her place, although I am sorry that the roads Minister is a Member of the other place and cannot reply.

There is truly an opportunity for us to save billions of pounds that we are about to spend, unnecessarily in my view, on a new crossing of the Thames to the east of the current one at Dartford, to the east of Gravesend. The original idea behind having another crossing of the Thames was to ease the appalling congestion at Dartford. There cannot be anybody watching the debate or in the Chamber who has not sat for hours and hours trying to cross the Thames at Dartford. As is the way of Government, there have been endless studies and consultations on the best way to stop this awful gridlock on the M25. For years, Ministers have told me privately that the solution is to build another bridge at Dartford to ease the pressure caused by the inadequate north-bound tunnels. After all, the M25 runs through Dartford—it always has and it always will.

There is a huge problem that needs fixing, and that is how the traffic gets past the River Thames at Dartford and through Thurrock. During the course of those years of study, other options were explored—one would expect that—including a crossing some miles further down the river to the east of Gravesend. When Kent and Essex County Councils realised that a crossing further down the Thames from Dartford was in the offing, they made sure that the consideration was turbocharged, seeing massive economic benefits to both counties if they had a link road between them—that is understandable. So, slowly, the project morphed from one about how to fix the traffic at Dartford to one about economic development for Kent and Essex, with, to them, the secondary consideration that this economic development tunnel and new road network would also have the effect of reducing some of the pressure at Dartford, and also providing resilience.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Adam Holloway]

Yes, of course, I will give way. I did mention my hon. Friend’s constituency.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend’s analysis of how we ended up with this route, but does he agree that it is all very well for Kent and Essex to draw a line as to where that road should go when it actually goes through Thurrock, to which they are not accountable? If they were really genuinely interested in supporting it, they should work towards the optimum route.

[Adam Holloway]

That is an extremely good point, and I wish that I had included it in my speech. If I have to speak about this again, I will make that point. I thank my hon. Friend and I totally agree with her.

This all became about economic development. The original purpose of easing traffic became secondary. The aims of the project changed completely, which meant that the problems at Dartford were no longer the priority—in fact, they became a secondary consideration. Then, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the then Transport Secretary, opted for Kent and Essex’s preferred option, which will do nothing to ameliorate the situation at Dartford and will be yet another massive piece of Government spending on road infrastructure just at the moment in our history when roads are to be optimised by level 5 autonomous vehicles. The way I think of it is that if we look across the rooftops of London we see thousands of chimneys, none of them used any more. This road will end up a white elephant like them in future—and not far in the future.

First, the lower Thames crossing does not address the problems on the M25 at the Dartford crossing or provide any resilience in any way, shape or form. I will explain why. The M25 northbound at Dartford remains one of Europe’s worst traffic jams on a major national road—I imagine all hon. Members, even the Minister, can picture themselves there, having sat in those traffic jams.

The problems at the Dartford crossing are primarily caused by the outdated and undersized northbound tunnels. The southbound traffic coming over the bridge moves at pretty much the same speed as the rest of the motorway; it is not immune to traffic jams, but neither is the rest of the system. The problem is the tunnels. The left-hand one is 4.8 metres high and the right-hand one is 5 metres high. They are the cause of the horrendous jams, because no fuel tankers or hazardous loads are permitted unescorted, and no vehicles over 5 metres high are permitted at all.

What happens is that we end up with traffic, including very large vehicles, weaving and causing frequent accidents and incidents, as well as frequent red traffic lights to hold the rest of the traffic in order to extract an over-height vehicle that has managed to go through. Then, of course, a couple of times an hour all the traffic on the M25 going north is stopped, because they have to run the convoys with fuel tankers and hazardous materials in them. That causes congestion and queuing, and hardly a day goes by without a major incident bringing the M25 to a complete standstill and causing gridlock at Dartford.

The lower Thames crossing, the one to the east of Gravesend, does not address those problems at all, nor does it provide a satisfactory alternate route for M25 traffic. Let us note, by the way, that the M25 is not complete—it stops just before Dartford and becomes an A road, and then becomes the M25 again. We have not actually finished building the M25 yet.

Once the lower Thames crossing is built, the Dartford crossing will still be operating at capacity and the problems there will continue. The long-suffering residents and businesses of Dartford will continue to suffer, and I believe they are being hoodwinked. We must sort out the problem of Dartford first and foremost, either with the originally promised relatively cheap and cheerful bridge for northbound traffic, or with a variant of option A14, which is the idea to have a big tunnel going underneath Dartford and Thurrock, separating all the national, long-range traffic, so the existing crossings could be used by residents of Dartford, Thurrock and so on.

Secondly, we have been assured that having a completely different crossing will provide resilience, so what will happen when the incidents continue to happen on the northbound bit of the Dartford tunnel approaches? As soon as traffic on the M25 comes to a standstill, it will seek an alternate route to the lower Thames crossing, but to exit the M25 at junction 2, the junction just before, it will have to go through a traffic light-controlled roundabout, which will be totally inadequate for the volume of traffic.

Having negotiated that obstacle, traffic will head east towards Gravesend only to find that, unbelievably, there will be just one lane from the A2 to the lower Thames crossing tunnel to take traffic into Essex. Not only will Dartford be gridlocked, but so will Gravesend and the whole of the A2 eastbound from M25 junction 2.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way, and he is now getting to the nub of the problems with the design of the lower Thames crossing. It is being applied as a piece of national infrastructure without sufficient thought to the impact on the local road networks in his constituency and mine and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe). He highlights the lack of connectivity beautifully. For my residents in South Ockendon, if we have a tailback going south and the traffic backs up, not only do they face congestion at the Dartford crossing, but the lower Thames crossing arrives at Ockendon, so residents there will be subject to congestion from both crossings.

[Adam Holloway]

Absolutely. In a sense, my hon. Friend’s residents and those over in Essex are having it very badly with all the additional roads to be built as well, so I completely concur. We have established that when Dartford is gridlocked, so will Gravesend be, and her area at Ockendon.

With junction 2 of the M25 blocked, the M25 traffic will seek an alternative route to the lower Thames crossing. We will then find that the A227, and all the villages and lanes approaching the new crossing, will become choked with traffic. Just to be clear, although the project is terminal for my hamlet of Thong and terrible for the people of much of Riverview Park and the villages that will become rat-runs, the worst will be for the residents of Dartford—more on that later.

Of course it is absolutely correct that the new crossing will provide a useful alternative for traffic heading to and from the ferry port of Dover, but that is all. Channel tunnel traffic will still try to use the M20 and the M25 and so will still use the Dartford crossing. There is more. National Highways is busy planning another kick in the teeth to motorists once the new crossing is built. In its wisdom, it intends to split the A2 and M2 into two separate two-lane highways midway between the A227 and Marling Cross. The outer two lanes will be for M2 traffic going down deeper into Kent; the inner two lanes will be for the A2 to Strood and the lower Thames crossing, and the Hoo peninsula. That is a recipe for disaster. Not only will it cause dangerous weaving and accidents while the traffic tries to get into the correct lane, but the A2 will be narrowed to two lanes, which is completely inadequate for traffic heading towards the M2 at peak periods. It is ridiculous. In 2009, Highways England actually widened the A2 at this point from three lanes to four lanes to cope with increased volumes, and now the proposal is to narrow it to two lanes.

Let me return to the contention of Kent and Essex County Councils that this crossing would bring large economic benefits. The cost of the project for central Government has increased from £3.72 billion in 2016 to £8.2 billion now. We make these throwaway comments about billions, but imagine having a stack of a million £1 coins and then creating 8,200 stacks of £1 coins. That is an enormous amount of money, and because the project is no longer being privately funded, it is taxpayers’ money. We have a cost of living crisis. Every time people go into a garage or a shop, or pay their income tax, the money for this white elephant is coming off them. It is a financial turkey right now and truly it will be a transport white elephant in a decade—and it will inevitably end up costing more.

The cost-benefit analysis carried out in 2016 had mysteriously changed from the analysis carried out in 2013 to show a benefit of the lower Thames crossing of 2.4. But in 2013, the cost-benefit analysis supported the Dartford option and was against a crossing east of Gravesend, which then apparently provided a benefit of 1.1. Somewhere along the way the figures magically changed to suit the argument. Anyway, at a new cost of £8 billion, any benefit must now be marginal at best. I can completely understand why that might not matter too much to Kent and Essex County Councils, because it is not money from their budgets, but it is the money of hundreds of millions of people who will remain sitting snarled in their cars in traffic jams at Dartford over the coming decades. Far from a new crossing away from Dartford being a victory for the people of Dartford, they are now condemned to decades more noise and pollution. An intergenerational chance to sort out the M25 has been blown by muddled thinking and a political class in local government thinking only of their own political lifetimes. Now would seem to be an appropriate time to carry out an in-depth review to determine whether to proceed with the lower Thames crossing or to go back to the drawing board, sort out the M25 at Dartford and relieve the taxpayer of accruing yet more unnecessary debt for their children and great-grandchildren to repay.

The crossing will not prevent the delays, incidents and gridlock at Dartford, and it will not provide an alternate route for M25 traffic. It is a massive missed opportunity for the people of Dartford, who will have to endure more decades of misery until finally either the northbound bridge or the long tunnel under Dartford and Thurrock is built—one or the other will have to be built eventually. Indeed, I believe that the current tunnels are close to the end of their design life, so why are we building a white elephant further down?

The crossing is far too expensive at £8.2 billion and does not represent value for money for taxpayers. As we have discussed and I have outlined, better, less expensive solutions are available. I urge the Minister to think it through herself and stop listening to Highways England before it is too late and we commit all that money unnecessarily. If there were ever an opportunity for a Secretary of State to put a red line through a massive piece of spending, this is it.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) on securing this important debate. It seems a little like groundhog day, because my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and I have been talking about the project for probably about 15 years since its first iteration came forward in about 2007. Here we are again talking about its shortcomings and it potentially not delivering what it set out to do.

Since the beginning, I have been clear that I have deep reservations about the project. I still have those reservations, because I remain unconvinced that the new proposed lower Thames crossing will do what it set out to do, which is fundamentally to relieve congestion at the existing Dartford crossing, where we know there are problems. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham has explained, it only needs the wind to blow a bit too hard or the wrong sort of vehicle to turn up and we end up with serious and catastrophic congestion. Some improvements may well come from building a lower Thames crossing as proposed, because it will move some vehicles away—I cannot remember the current figure; I think it is about 22% of existing use—but the existing crossing will still be above design capacity.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I probably have the joy of having spent more time in the congestion caused by the Dartford crossing than any other hon. Member save my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway), who often used to get stuck in it when he came to see me during election time, but that is another story.

One issue that causes congestion at the Dartford crossing is the inadequate supporting road infrastructure around junction 30, particularly the fact that there are no east-facing slips at Lakeside on to the A13, which adds further traffic to that busy junction and adds to the pressure on the Dartford crossing. Does my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) agree that we could get a lot of bang for our buck and release capacity at Dartford if we fixed the local issues around junction 30?

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The east-facing slips are absolutely vital; we must build them. People are coming down the A13 and round junction 30 to go back to Lakeside, which is utter madness, so we certainly need to do that. There are also issues locally because three different agencies deal with the roads round there: Highways England, Thurrock Council and Essex County Council not far past the Thurrock boundary. Local roads interact with the main network of roads but no one controls all the various pressure points. When the existing crossing fails, it may only be one set of traffic lights somewhere on one of the industrial estates that is causing such catastrophic congestion, because it was designed to allow through a far smaller number of vehicles than are trying to use it when there is a failure.

As I have highlighted over the years and as the Thames Crossing Action Group has highlighted, this is a destructive project, it is costly and it is environmentally damaging. It is destructive because it will put on the Essex side a vast amount of new concrete road leading from the Thames all the way up to the junction with the A127. It is very costly, as we have heard, at £8.2 billion. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham described his 8,200 towers of 1 million coins very aptly. If I had time, I could work out the volume of that, but it is a vast amount of money. Of course, the project is environmentally damaging not only in the amount of construction work that will go on, but, I think, in inviting more vehicles into the area. I know that the lower Thames crossing team are keen to decarbonise, but it cannot be built without having a huge impact on our local environment.

We have time, but I do not want to detain the House too long. The fundamental problem as far as I see it, looking back to when the route was confirmed in 2017, is that the proposal as it stands does very little to address the fundamental problem at the existing crossing. The commitment one will have to make to the new crossing, as it is so far away from the existing crossing, means that thousands of vehicles will be beyond the point of no return, and my hon. Friend described junction 2—of the A2 or the M2?

[Stephen Metcalfe]

People will be trapped inside an area that they cannot escape from. I once heard, on one of my visits to Thurrock, that the congestion when the existing crossing fails backs up at the rate of a mile a minute. That is extraordinary, but it is because of the volume of traffic, with so much traffic trying to get through that pressure point.

I am deeply concerned that, if and when the new lower Thames crossing gets built, it will not actually address the problem. When it does not address that problem and we have spent £8.2 billion on it—I suspect the costs will go up—people will rightly look at us and say, “How on earth have you spent £8.2 billion on a project that still means, on the very rare occasions when there is a catastrophic failure, that people end up having to sleep in IKEA?” That is a true fact: once the congestion was so bad that nothing could move, IKEA opened its doors, and people slept in its beds and on its sofas.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Does my hon. Friend recall that, two days before Christmas in 2013, the congestion killed Lakeside on the busiest shopping day of the year? We actually ended up with a surfeit of turkeys in Thurrock because no one could get to the supermarket to get one.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I think that is hard to forget, and it was catastrophic. Of course, it is damaging to local business, because once people think that such catastrophic congestion happens in and around Lakeside in the run-up to Christmas, they avoid it and want to go somewhere else.

Whatever we do, it has to address those problems. I am really concerned that it will not, and people will ask us why it has not, so we will be back here, after however long it may take for this thing to get built, apologising and asking what we are going to do about it and how we can address the problem.

I am conscious of the time, so I will not go on for too long, but I am particularly worried about air quality issues. We already suffer with poor air quality along the Thames estuary. That is not all to do with motoring; some of it is to do with shipping, and some is to do with industrial activity in northern Europe and fumes blowing across. However, in one ward in Stanford in my constituency, the level of particulate matter in the air is about three times the national average. It is one of the poorest air quality areas in the UK, and I cannot believe, regardless of whether we move to electric and autonomous vehicles, that encouraging more traffic into the area—giving off particulates from brake discs, tyres and the road surface—will improve that air quality.

With all that said, there are potentially some positives. I would like to thank the lower Thames crossing team generally for their interaction with me. They are delivering what the Government have asked them to do, and they are trying to do that in the best way they can. They want to consult and to engage with the public, and I want to thank them for that. That does not mean I necessarily think it is the right project, because as we have heard, it has the potential to be a white elephant. In future there will be changes to the way we move freight, and a drive to use more rail to move freight around. As we improve signalling and move to a more digital railway, the capacity of that railway will increase to allow us to move more freight.

We must also take into account the pandemic, and the effect it has had on people’s desire to work from home and travel less. Will we actually need this capacity where it is proposed, or should we be having a rethink? If this project goes ahead there are opportunities for businesses—indeed, if any small businesses in Thurrock, Essex, Kent or Gravesham are not aware of this, there is a supply chain school, and large tier 1 contractors are looking for local businesses to help them deliver this. If the project does proceed, I welcome the fact that there will be apprenticeship and training opportunities.

In conclusion, for all the reasons I have stated I remain unconvinced about the lower Thames crossing. It will be destructive, costly, and environmentally unfriendly, but my primary objection is that I do not believe it will work. We will still get congestion at the existing Dartford crossing for all the reasons we have heard, and we will be back here trying to find a solution, having spent £8.2 billion on something that might benefit those who want to get from Dover to Cambridge, but will not benefit those who want to get from Gravesham to Thurrock. After 15 years of discussing this, I ask the Department for Transport and the relevant Ministers to please look long and hard at whether what is being proposed still aligns with what it set out to achieve.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I do not plan to speak for as long as colleagues. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) for securing this debate. I listened carefully to his points and those of other colleagues, and I know his passion for representing the lovely people of Gravesham in Kent. Alongside other colleagues, he continues to lobby the Government and National Highways to secure improvements and mitigations from the crossing.

For those less familiar with the geography of south-east England, my own wonderful constituency of Old Bexley and Sidcup is on the edge of south-east London and north Kent, and the most southerly point of Bexley lies roughly 12 miles from the proposed crossing. The busy A2, which runs through the centre of my constituency, is the main road link to the existing crossing at Dartford— that is the problematic one we have heard about—and the proposed crossing to the east of Gravesend. I therefore know the area fairly well, as well as the challenges we face with congestion, albeit to a lesser extent than colleagues who are at the coalface when these issues occur.

My hon. Friend mentioned the expansive consultation done by the team at the lower Thames crossing. They have had somewhere in the region of 47,000 responses, which shows the lengths to which they have gone to engage with the wider population in Essex, Kent and south-east London who will be impacted by the proposed crossing. The team deserves a lot of credit for their extensive work, and they engaged with me in my role as a councillor in Bexley long before I even became a Member of this place. They have done a lot of good work in trying to engage with the local community. We all experience the traffic build up and congestion at Dartford, which can cause great misery—indeed, we heard about an extreme case.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is right to say there has been extensive consultation, but it has been pursued on the basis that this is a national infrastructure project, so it has been a national consultation. Does he agree that rather more attention should have been paid to representations made by the local community, instead of treating all representations the same?

[Mr French]

I completely agree, and everyone who is directly impacted should have their voices heard. I hope that the Department will listen closely to those calls. Getting that balance right between a national project and the local impact is difficult for any Government.

Dartford congestion causes complete misery, backing up even as far as where I am in Bexley. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham said, if the wind blows one way or the other way, the bridge closes and we have congestion, and it is complete misery for people, whether they are commuting home or trying to see family on either side of the bridge. As our population continues to grow in south-east London, Kent and Essex, it is vital that we secure the supporting infrastructure and make sure it is in place to support the people in these areas—both the current population and the new population who might be moving in.

Today’s focus is on transport, but the issue extends far wider. My big cause is ensuring that we secure the health provision we need for the growing population of Old Bexley and Sidcup. We have to ensure that, as a country and a Government focused on levelling up, our part of south-east England is not forgotten.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Trudy Harrison)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway), a most assiduous Member, on securing this debate about the lower Thames crossing and on raising views so sincerely and diligently, as he clearly has for many years. I also congratulate the other local MPs here, collaborating and giving one view on the need to improve the situation at Dartford crossing.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French); I believe that this is the first time I have responded to my relatively new hon. Friend, and it is a pleasure to do so. He welcomed the prospect of future meetings with the relevant Minister—that is, the roads Minister Baroness Vere, who sits in the other place. I will endeavour to ensure that that meeting happens because I recognise the strength of feeling in the Chamber tonight, and it would be most helpful.

I have listened carefully to my hon. Friends’ representations about the scheme. I hope that my response provides some of the answers, but I recognise that it will probably not resolve the issues here and now. I want to set out and highlight the opportunities and possibilities that the lower Thames crossing will provide.

I beg my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham’s forgiveness for reflecting briefly on how the need for the lower Thames crossing arose. He has covered that pretty well already, as have other speakers, but for over 50 years the Dartford crossing has provided the only road crossing of the Thames east of London. Dartford is regularly used by 180,000 vehicles per day, despite being designed for 135,000. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock mentioned when IKEA came to the rescue of motorists; I put on the record my thanks to the company for doing that. Clearly, however, what happened was not a desirable outcome.

Put simply, the road is significantly over-capacity. It is now one of the busiest in the country, used by commuters, business travellers, haulage companies, the emergency services and holidaymakers alike. It connects communities and businesses, providing a vital link between the channel ports, London and the rest of the UK and enabling local businesses to operate effectively—or it should. It connects people on both sides of the river with work, education, leisure and one another.

In summary, as has been said so eloquently, it is a critical part of the UK’s major road network, carrying local, national and international traffic. Furthermore, despite the unprecedented circumstances of the past few years due to the pandemic, the Dartford crossing has played a key role by carrying more food and goods than ever before. We are all well aware that, unfortunately, due to its age, the Dartford crossing has restrictions on hazardous goods vehicles. They have to be convoyed through, causing even more delays for everyone. As we have heard, that occurs frequently. Together with congestion and a lack of alternative transport links, that creates significant disruption and pollution.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

There is one way that we could release more capacity at the existing Dartford crossing. The Minister set out the figures well and the crossing is carrying more traffic than it was built for. One of the reasons why is that people such as me have to travel to Kent by car, because there is no other link, apart from a tiny little ferry between Gravesend and Tilbury. There is no train link, for example, yet HS1 travels between Kent and Essex. Will she go back to the Department and look more creatively at how we can join up other methods of transport to get that capacity, so that we can shift residents away from using the crossing?

[Trudy Harrison]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government’s priority is to enable more of those journeys to be walked and cycled and for public transport to be used. Reference was made to the future of transport. We will introduce legislation on self-driving vehicles and so on, so we will see significant improvements in this area. As the Minister responsible for decarbonisation and the future of transport, I would be delighted to work with her to identify where the opportunities for better public transport and active travel may be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.

There are 20 km of new or improved pathways for walkers, cyclists and equestrians. There are three new green bridges, one of which is 84 metres wide—one of the largest in Europe—connecting this network of pathways to the area’s rich mosaic of parks and woodland.

Members have expressed their discontent with the proposed road—that is loud and clear—and, straight after this Adjournment debate, I will reflect that to the roads Minister. As everyone has agreed, there is a clear need to address the challenge at Dartford crossing, and the lower Thames crossing aims to relieve congestion and provide resiliency to the strategic road network.

I am sure all hon. Members agree that we must plan not just for the short term but for the medium and long term.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

No one can doubt the sincerity with which my hon. Friend has addressed all the points raised in this debate, but at the heart of this is a very unsatisfactory planning and consultation process. The Department needs to reflect on that. Thurrock has big ambitions for jobs and new homes, but we cannot settle our local plan during an ongoing consultation process. As she outlines, we will now need to have another consultation. While we are addressing these issues with the lower Thames crossing, other Departments are attacking Thurrock for not making further progress. Can we make sure that we join up to consider the real local impact of national infrastructure? That has been missing from this process.

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank my hon. Friend. All hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon have been clear, collaborative and collegiate in representing their constituencies. The Department continues to support the lower Thames crossing as part of one of the biggest programmes of investment in the strategic road network in a generation.

I have set out how we are supporting road users by investing in our motorways and major A roads to relieve congestion, to support local communities and to facilitate economic growth locally, regionally and nationally. We believe that supporting this project is the right decision for the people of Kent and the people of the UK as a whole.

The Department supports the lower Thames crossing, but I recognise—who could not?—the alternative views of the Members in the Chamber this afternoon, and they have been well and truly heard by me, my Department and the roads Minister, and I am sure by National Highways and their constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I wish I could say that it was a pleasure to contribute to this debate, but it really is not. None of us wants to be debating the act of industrial brutality committed by DP World and P&O Ferries last week. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who is not in his place, articulated an anger that I have seen is shared by many people across the country. This incident has more cut-through than any other I have witnessed in recent years and I hope that DP World is taking note of that.

As chairman of the all-party maritime and ports group, I care very deeply about this matter. It must not be without consequence for DP World. Although I was very pleased to hear the robust messages from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box, I fear that DP World has got its ducks in a row legally and that the threats of criminal prosecution will be rebutted quite robustly. That is why we must use all the tools at our disposal to make sure that there is some punishment for DP World for taking this action. This was a decision taken in Dubai, so the company cannot claim that its subsidiary has nothing to do with it.

We must make sure that we use all the tools at our disposal. I say that as an enthusiastic supporter and proponent of the Thames freeport, which hon. Members have heard me wax lyrical about several times. I say in all honesty to DP World that if it is really serious about a resolution, it should step aside from the freeport agreements that have been struck. It would simply be wrong to give that company any tax incentives while the dispute continues. I associate myself with the calls to have the workforce reinstated; I suspect that they will fall on deaf ears, but that is why we simply must take all action at our disposal.

I crave the indulgence of the House for a moment, because Thames freeport has been associated with DP World in recent press comments since these tragic events. Thames freeport is not just DP World. Thames freeport is Ford Motor Company: the freeport will breathe life into Dagenham, which has been a centre of motor engineering for a century or more. It is also Forth Ports: while DP World has been marching around Whitehall demanding everything left, right and centre, with concession after concession, Forth Ports has been quietly operating its ports in Scotland and its port in Tilbury without asking for those favours. We have massive ambitions to expand the operation at Tilbury, and those companies do not deserve to be disadvantaged because of their association in good faith with DP World. I ask for a very clear commitment from those on the Front Bench not to let Thames freeport be disadvantaged. However, we should by all means give DP World the challenge that it cannot necessarily expect to be treated with favour after behaving in this way.

The other element of the Thames freeport is Thames Enterprise Park, which is on a redundant petrol refinery, the biggest brownfield site in Europe. That is what freeports are all about: resurrecting that growth and that regeneration. Frankly, we should not let DP World’s association with the Thames freeport undermine the very real objectives that all of us across the estuary wish to achieve.

As colleagues have recognised, our maritime sector is in our DNA. If we are serious about being a maritime nation, we have to value our seafarers. The truth of the matter is that we have all quietly looked the other way while shipping costs have been kept low. Our seafaring workforce has declined and has been replaced by overseas workers being paid a pittance. This example puts that into stark relief. We have happily looked the other way because, if we do not, it will mean higher prices in supermarkets as a result of shipping costs that properly reflect the cost of labour. At a time when the cost of living is a challenge, that is not something that we want to tackle, but perhaps now we will. We are not going to be a maritime nation unless we give young people who live in coastal communities the ambition to see the world by working in this fantastic industry.

International Women’s Day

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

This week, I attended a meeting with the brave Ukrainian women politicians at the British Inter-Parliamentary Union to discuss the humanitarian impact that war has on women and girls. News last night that the war criminal Putin now bombs maternity hospitals fills us all with disgust—this is clearly a war crime. Yesterday, I chaired an event with six brave Afghan women to discuss the regressive impact the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has had on women’s and girls’ rights. One told me:

“Before the Taliban takeover I was someone. The day after the Taliban took over I was no one.”

It was clear from the meeting that any engagement with the Taliban must be done on the basis of strict conditionality in support of women’s and girls’ rights in public services, employment and civil society. I wish to take this opportunity to express my solidarity with those and other women in the world living in war zones or under repressive regimes.

Today, however, I wish to talk about access to reproductive healthcare, which has been crucial in the improvement of women’s rights globally. The development of the contraceptive pill in the middle of the 20th century is considered one of the most crucial developments in the women’s rights movement; reproductive rights are fundamental to the physical, psychological and social wellbeing of women. I am chair of the all-party group on sexual and reproductive health in the UK, and we know that there are still too many obstacles facing women in accessing this vital healthcare. One woman recently said:

“I find it very difficult to find a clinic that’s accessible and has appointments out of office hours.”

Figures from University College London, published last year, show that the proportion of unplanned pregnancies in the UK has almost doubled during the pandemic. There is still much work to do to ensure that women and girls have full control over their reproductive health. In 2020, the all-party group published the findings of our inquiry into access to contraception. We found that women are finding it increasingly difficult to access contraception that suits them, and this is a situation made much worse by the pandemic. Even in today’s The Guardian there is an article by Nell Frizzell entitled

“A 10-week wait for a coil? British women are facing a quiet crisis in contraceptive care”.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I want to put on record that one reason why women are finding it increasingly difficult to access contraception easily is that we have a number of commissioning funding streams in the NHS, which is leading to under-commissioning of this vital resource. At a time when perhaps one in three pregnancies are unplanned, which is leading to more abortions, which are themselves a less safe method of dealing with reproductive health than contraception, will the right hon. Lady join me in encouraging the Government to look properly at how contraception is commissioned?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Absolutely. I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for all the work she has done; she took a particular interest in this issue when she was a Health Minister. That brings me to my next point: despite practitioners’ best efforts, covid-19 exacerbated existing problems—including long-standing funding cuts and the fragmentation in commissioning structures to which the hon. Lady just referred—leading to further restrictions to access.

The public health grant has faced serious cuts over the past decade. Evidence presented to our inquiry suggested that sexual and reproductive health budgets were cut by £81.2 million—12%—between 2015 and 2017-18. It is estimated that during the same period contraceptive budgets were cut by £25.9 million, or 13%. In Hull, where my constituency is, spending on contraception has fallen by 38% since 2013-14, and almost half of councils have reduced the number of sites that deliver contraceptive services in at least one of the years since 2015.

Our inquiry heard that long-acting reversible contraception fittings have been most severely impacted. In 2018-19, 11% of councils reduced the number of contracts with GPs to fit LARCs, and GPs are not adequately funded to provide LARC, which disincentivises their provision. The disparity among regions is stark. In my city, the rate for GPs prescribing LARC is only 2.1 women per 100,000; whereas in other parts of the country it is 51.5 women per 100,000. Access issues have particularly hit marginalised groups, with services reporting a drop in the number of young, black, Asian and minority ethnic people requesting the services.

As we continue to emerge from the pandemic, we have a unique opportunity to reshape contraceptive services according to the needs of women. For example, we should offer contraception as part of maternity services. If we integrated care around the needs of individuals, women would be able to have all their reproductive health needs met at a single point of care. I hope that those points, and the recommendations from our report, are reflected in the Government’s upcoming sexual and reproductive health strategy.

I wish to finish by talking about telemedicine for early medical abortion. I am absolutely furious at the Government’s decision to end telemedicine for early medical abortions after 30 August, ignoring the clinical evidence and advice of many royal colleges and clinicians. I am sorry that the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), who was in her place earlier, has left the Chamber, because I wanted her in particular to hear my comments on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to join in this debate. Like other Members, my thoughts this afternoon are with the women of Ukraine. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for her speech, which frankly had me filling up, so I am glad I have had some time to deal with my emotions.

Thinking of war situations where women are leaving or seeing their sons, husbands and fathers being involved in fighting, 30 years ago last week the independent state of Bosnia was founded, having itself been subjected to significant wars. I am reminded of my regular visits to Srebrenica and the memorial at Potočari, which is lovingly maintained by bereaved women who lost their sons, fathers, brothers and uncles. We all know the story of what happened with the genocides in Bosnia. Many of those women do not have a body, or even a body part, but they are dealing with their grief by maintaining the memorials to other victims as well as their own. At this time, there will inevitably be bereaved women who have left their husbands and sons behind and do not know what their ultimate fate is going to be. For me as a Member of Parliament in this fantastic first-world country of Great Britain, I feel hopelessly inadequate watching these events unfold. We must do everything we can to support all those victims, and particularly to give safe havens to those refugees who are fleeing.

I would like to reflect on some of the other contributions made today, particularly that of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). I say to the Government that as the right hon. Lady has shown, we are making lots of noise about women’s health and breaking lots of taboos in that space, but fundamentally, the biggest source of our oppression is our biology—our reproductive biology. The ability of women to control their fertility and manage their reproductive rights in a safe way depends on adequate contraception services, and also on a safe abortion law. I will repeat what I have said many times in this place: the abortion law is more than 50 years old. It was written before we had medical abortion, when abortion was a surgical procedure and was much more dangerous for that reason. If we are really going to look at women’s reproductive rights from the perspective of safety, may I helpfully suggest that we need a review that does not rely on individual Members of Parliament tackling this as a matter of conscience? This is about how we deliver a safe environment for women to be able to manage their reproductive rights and their fertility. Until we properly bring that law up to date and into the 21st century, any semblance of a positive women’s health strategy is for the birds. I leave that as a challenge for the Government.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on bravely stepping into the debate about sex and gender, and the conflict of rights that arises from conflating the two—a conflict of rights that has not been adequately tackled by either of the Front-Bench teams in this place. Frankly, that is a disgrace; it is not fair to transgender people or to women, and it is high time that we did so. I am glad that my hon. Friend has done it, and the fact that he is a man doing it on International Women’s Day is a matter not for criticism, but for celebration. I am also pleased to see my hon. Friends the Members for Devizes (Danny Kruger) and for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) present, because on the last two occasions I attended this debate, there were no men. This is a way forward, because we need men to value and celebrate women too; this should not be a women-only party.

[Danny Kruger]

The Father of the House is also present.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My apologies—how could I forget my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley)?

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I had planned to listen rather than speak, but can I say two things to my hon. Friend? The first is to ask whether in winding up this debate, the Minister can say what harm was done by, and what benefits there were from, early, easy and safe contraception by telephone. There is a responsibility on Government to give that information in the open so that we can challenge it if necessary, or agree with it if they say it was safe, easy and convenient—that it had benefits.

Secondly, on the issue of sex and gender, I agree with my hon. Friend that people need to speak much more openly, and that those who call people like Professor Kathleen Stock a dangerous extremist for her book “Material Girls” clearly have not read it. She, Jo Phoenix and others have written very plainly and sympathetically about trans people, but have also written determinedly that sex matters, and that women should be safe and feel protected.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. The fact remains that women are entitled to single-sex spaces for their own sake; this should not just be about risk assessment and danger. We should be able to make choices about when we want to enter spaces without men present, and that should be as important as any potential risk that any man might pose.

I will focus the substance of my comments this afternoon on the criminal justice system, though, as we are talking about breaking the bias. I do so in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on women in the penal system. Without reiterating points made by my hon. Friends, this comes back to the point that men and women are different, and our laws and—in particular—our criminal justice system need to reflect that.

We have had a real move towards gender neutrality in how we approach public service delivery and how we produce law, but standing here in a debate to commemorate International Women’s Day, I tend to view gender neutrality as just another way of centring men, because it is making us all the same, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the criminal justice system. We have a penal system built on prisons and based on the principle that we incarcerate violent, dangerous men, and that has been the approach to women. We have seen study after study that has shown that prison is not the best place for women offenders, because more often than not, women offenders are more vulnerable than their male counterparts.

Call me a pink-hearted liberal, but I tend to view our prison population as being full of people who have been failed by the state, and that is a matter of shame for me. It is particularly the case when it comes to women. We know that there are high rates of illiteracy and innumeracy among our prisoners, so how are they going to get on in life? We know that there are a huge number of people who have been through the care system and then been left on the scrapheap. In the case of women, we know that many of them are victims of sexual abuse, and in that context, prison is not the best place for them, and study after study has shown that.

Every time we make progress in this area and we start to say, “This is an opportunity for a first intervention to support women and address that vulnerability”, we then seem to go backwards. I highlight the fact that this Government have a female offenders strategy but equally are investing in 500 more prison places for women, and we need to properly join the dots and use the opportunities to make interventions to support women and break the cycle of offending. We all know that once someone has been incarcerated, the chance that they then embark on a lifetime of reoffending and re-entering prison is very high. That is not good for them, but nor is it good for society or the taxpayer. We need to get this right.

We know also that many women do not belong in prison in the first place. One issue I have been taking up with the Ministry of Justice is the extent to which women are remanded in prison for their own protection. We have a mental health policy that has been removing police cells and prisons as places of safety—recognising that they are not good environments for people who are mentally unwell—but we are still remanding women in prison for their own safety. I thought it would be only a small number of women, probably no more than a dozen a year. Having raised the issue with the Government, I could not get any data on it. However, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons visited three prisons last year and in total found 68 women who had been remanded in prison for their own protection. They were not people who had committed an offence, and it was not a punishment. It is totally inappropriate for a country such as this to be remanding women in prison for that purpose, and that was in just three prisons. Across the whole system, we know that women being remanded for their own protection are a significant proportion of the prison establishment, and frankly that is not good enough. I am ashamed of it, and I call on the Government to do better.

My criticism is not with the Ministry of Justice. One of the issues is that the Ministry of Justice is sweeping up the failings of other organisations within the public sector. It is sweeping up the ability of local authorities to offer safe spaces for women to be sent to when they are at risk. Mental health services are sweeping up that failure by the Department of Health and Social Care, and I encourage the Ministry of Justice to be rather more robust in its dealings with other Departments and say, “You know what? These are not our problems, they are yours.” We should not be dealing with vulnerable people within our estate.

The other side of the criminal justice system where women are particularly negatively impacted is as victims, and we have had a number of debates in recent weeks about the poor prosecution rates for sexual violence crimes and rape in particular. Having spoken to victims, I understand that one of the reasons for that is that they are treated as a piece of evidence in that prosecution. If someone has gone through trauma, constantly reliving that in a dehumanising way is not the best way to ensure that we bring people to punishment. We really have to look at that.

There has been a lot of investment in services, but we have still not got it right. My biggest challenge on that point is that the likelihood of a victim getting justice depends on who they are. Victim-blaming, which we heard reference to earlier in the debate, is at the heart of that. Over and over again, assumptions are made about victims that impede their ability to get justice. White working-class girls in northern towns and cities were victims of abuse for many years before public authorities would pay proper attention to it, because they were not prepared to make that challenge.

I also highlight what we loosely describe as “honour killings”. What kind of a phrase is that to describe people being murdered? They are murdered by their families, who should love them and keep them safe, and we call that an honour killing—“honour”, which is a positive word, and “killing” for murder. That very phrase is an illustration of the discrimination against those victims; I am getting emotional just thinking about it.

In the context of the list that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) read out, we do not have to do much of a study to realise the socio-economic background of most of those victims. The only ones that we ever read about in the papers—the ones who the media get excited about—are nice white middle-class people with professional backgrounds. People who engage in prostitution disappear every week and do not get a column inch, but they are victims. They are women who are victims of male violence against women and girls.

Let us not pussyfoot around it: this is a gendered crime. My hon. Friends who are present—my hon. Friends the Members for Boston and Skegness, for Devizes, for Harwich and North Essex, for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) and for Worthing West—will not take offence when I point out that those crimes are committed by men, which is exactly what we need to face up to. We will not tackle that issue unless we tackle it as a society, which means men stepping up too.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an extraordinarily impassioned speech. She is absolutely right to make the point that men are 99% of the problem, but we can be 50% of the solution.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I welcome that comment from my hon. Friend and I am not surprised to hear it from him. I would go further than that, however: we will not fix the problem until men become part of the solution. I am afraid that the Government need to stop pussyfooting around by talking about violence against women and girls and call it what it is—male violence against women and girls.

Cruise Industry

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Efford, and a great pleasure to contribute to the debate, ably moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). I do so as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary maritime and ports group, but also as a Member of Parliament for Thurrock and particularly the port of Tilbury, which is home to the London cruise terminal. I will happily concede to my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen that Southampton is, indeed, the capital of cruising. However, by the same circumstance, Thurrock is the ports capital of the UK. It is only natural that cruising forms part of that.

We have heard already this morning about the difficulties faced by the industry during the pandemic and I want to pay tribute to its stoicism when grappling with the issues caused by the pandemic. Dare I say that its behaviour contrasts rather favourably with that of the aviation sector, which has been loud and noisy about the challenges it has faced? Fair enough, but the fact that the cruise industry has not been as vocal about the difficulties that it has faced does not make them any less difficult.

As we have heard, the industry stopped sailing in March 2020. The skyline in Tilbury was transformed, because we were home to seven ships that should have been sailing the high seas but were permanently docked there. That included two ships owned by Saga, one of which had yet to take its maiden voyage. It was a challenging time but we were pleased to host them. However, it is fantastic news that we finally have the cruise sector sailing again and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for his real efforts to achieve that.

I have been in debates about the industry. Only last week, we talked about how the silo culture in Government often means that the sector does not get the support it necessarily deserves. That has been particularly true in this regard. We have had the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Transport all having an influence on whether the industry could sail.

Although the Department for Transport has been an extremely effective and enthusiastic champion of the sector, unfortunately the decision making about whether sailing could take place really rested with the Department of Health and Social Care and the question of whether it was safe. We have already heard that cruising is perhaps the safest method of travel. In fact, we know that the industry has made great investments to make it so, reducing capacity to enable social distancing on ships and so on. The medical facilities are also second to none. Obviously, the Department of Health and Social Care and the chief medical officer have the objective of disease control, and they took a risk-averse approach to whether the sector could get going.

The most difficult thing was the travel advice issued by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which treated our cruise ships not as a mode of travel but as a destination. It was pretty unfair to do so given that, as we have heard, they are a safe method of travel. In terms of the destinations that a cruise ship will visit, the amazing thing about ships is that they are very flexible, and if a destination suddenly becomes red, they can go somewhere else.

At last common sense has prevailed. I hope the Minister and the Department for Transport can reconfigure their relationships with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Department of Health and Social Care, so that the situation the sector faced is not repeated. In August 2020, the industry showed the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), the safety measures that were being put in place across the industry, and nobody could have doubted the effort being taken and the safety they would generate. Alas, it took a long time to persuade everyone else, but lessons have been learned.

The difficulties that the sector has faced have led to some cruise companies going, and a number of vessels have been scrapped, but the industry’s optimism is striking and inspirational, given the difficulties it has faced. Just this weekend, the Disney cruise ship left from Tilbury, which was great to see. Lots of children went to wave it off, because it was accompanied by lots of Disney tunes, which was lovely. I am pleased that, at last, the Spirit of Adventure has commenced its maiden voyage and is currently sailing around Scotland.

I am pleased that we have had this opportunity to pay tribute to this fantastic sector, which is much neglected. I hope that we shall continue to celebrate its contributions in the future.

UK Maritime Sector

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is good to see you in your place, Sir George. I will endeavour to meet your time limit, although as hon. Members know I can talk about the maritime sector till the cows come home.

I would very much like to associate myself with the remarks made by the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has set out as good an exposition as any of why we need to prioritise shipbuilding and the maritime sector. I agree that we often do not celebrate the sector enough. It is very telling that, through the horrendous couple of years of the pandemic, the supermarket shelves stayed full. That is because our maritime sector kept going. I suspect that it is only when things start to go wrong that people start to realise its importance. In that respect, we had something of a stay of execution when there was a slight difficulty in the Suez canal; I do feel that we are perhaps still yet to see the out-turn of the difficulties created by that.

It is great pleasure to contribute to this debate as chairman of the all-party parliamentary maritime and ports group and during London International Shipping Week. We have had a lot to celebrate in the ports sector this week: only yesterday, we heard confirmation from DP World that it is investing a further £400 million in a new berth at London Gateway, and Forth Ports are due to invest a further £1.2 billion in new port facilities at Tilbury3, following hot on the heels of Tilbury2, which I can tell the House took just under a year between planning permission and the ships arriving. That shows how dynamic the sector is. If only our public sector procurement could deliver things as quickly.

That success is very rarely celebrated. I know that I am preaching to the converted when I address all this to the Minister, who has taken on the brief with characteristic ambition and gusto; he is much respected in the sector, and we hope he continues to do the job for quite some time. Could I just ask him to switch his phone off, perhaps?

The right hon. Member for North Durham referred to the fact that maritime is seen as a smokestack industry. When it comes to how public policy makers see the sector, I could agree with him more. They generally do not see it as part of the future, yet it is an intrinsic part of our present. We cannot talk about global Britain or the importance of trade if we do not actually value the means by which we secure that trade. We really do need to make sure that we champion the sector more.

I lose the will to live when I have meetings with public policy makers in my constituency, which is, as I often call it, the port capital of the UK. It is the fastest growing port in the country, yet I still have to tell them that the ports are our future and ask why they are wasting time prattling on about spending money on creative industries, which frankly are never going to contribute as much to the wealth of this country as the maritime sector does.

As Great Britain, it is part of our DNA that we are a maritime nation, but sometimes we say these things and then realise there is not very much to back them up at all. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) put it very well when he talked about how the sector touches on various Departments, because one of the tragedies in how we get things wrong in government and policy making is that so many of these things are siloed. We plonk maritime in the Department for Transport, which has to deal with providing infrastructure for how we get around the country, but maritime is at the heart of how our economy functions in an international way, as well as of employment. We need to get better at making sure that we deal with all those things.

I will make just a couple of final points. First, I totally endorse what the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said about seafarers. I also say gently to the Government that we are very good at lecturing other countries around the world about poor working conditions, but we look the other way when they exist in our sphere of influence; there are many complex reasons why that might be the case, but we must value seafaring and make sure it is adequately compensated. I give my personal thanks to my hon. Friend the Minister for finally getting the cruise sector moving, a sector that has obviously been hit very badly during the pandemic.

I have one final ask before I sit down. I endorse the comments made by the right hon. Member for North Durham about the need to foster investment in new technologies, particularly if net zero is going to mean anything, so I particularly encourage the Minister to look at Windship Technology, which I am hugely excited about. I think it could offer such a big future to this industry, but that technology and innovation is in every danger of going elsewhere if we do not do our bit to support it. I could go on for much longer, but I will sit down now.

Aviation, Travel and Tourism Industries

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I am delighted to have got in at the end of this debate to make a plea for the cruise sector. We have heard much about aviation today, but rather less about our ships, which is rather bad for a maritime nation such as ourselves.

It has to be said that the impact of this pandemic on the cruise sector has been seismic: there has been a massive loss of capacity in the industry; operators have gone to the wall; and ships have been scrapped. We really need to get that industry, which is a great success story for this country, going again. Let me put some figures on that. We are talking about a £10 billion a year industry that supports nearly 90,000 jobs, and 2 million passengers a year enjoy going on a cruise. I am certainly anxious that we can all get back to normal, and we cannot be waiting for that for very much longer.

The fact is that all UK cruise traffic ground to a halt in March. I am delighted that, not so long ago, the Minister announced that domestic cruising could recommence, but the truth of the matter is that this sector is not sustainable until it can commence international sailing.

We have heard much about the traffic light system as regards international travel, whereby each country is given a traffic light class, but the problem is that the Foreign Office is currently treating cruising as it would a country and it is not allowing international cruising. We should really be thinking about cruise ships not as a destination, which is how the Foreign Office advice is currently working, but as a method of travel. Ships are very flexible methods of travel. If a country which is on an itinerary goes on the red list, that ship can simply go somewhere else.

I really must encourage the Government: let’s give these people a break. The cruise industry has done everything that has been asked of it by the health authorities during the pandemic. It has introduced incredibly sophisticated covid-secure measures, with testing of both staff and passengers. Equally, it can organise self-isolation and quarantine on the ships themselves.

This industry is a great British success story. It is led by a gentleman. They have been suffering in silence, actually, and doing what the Government have asked of them. They are very complimentary of the support they have been given by the Minister, but my message now is to the Foreign Office, the Department of Health and the chief medical officer particularly: give this sector a break and let us get our ships back sailing on the seas, where they belong.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

I met the hon. Lady’s predecessor, Anne Main, and local constituents just before the election. I am well aware that the PIR is overdue and I am very keen for the CAA to get on with it. I am happy to meet her.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Yesterday, Highways England published the latest plans for the proposed lower Thames crossing. In that set of plans, the proposal for a Tilbury junction, which would divert HGVs from my constituency road network, has been removed. Does the Minister agree that, if we are going to get a road that the community does not want, it is incumbent on Highways England to ensure that it works for us?

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I would be delighted to meet her and the roads Minister, Baroness Vere, who is in the Gallery.