Transport for London Funding

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you presiding over our business, Mr Hollobone. I am not sure where the three finest are, but my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), for Eltham (Clive Efford) and for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) are here, as am I, and I hope that we can make a contribution to the debate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) on an excellent opening speech. He comprehensively covered issues such as funding, resourcing and staff cuts, which saves us having to raise them, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

It is good to see that the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), is here to represent Her Majesty’s Opposition. It is also good to see the Minister in the Chamber. I congratulate him on his recent promotion, which will hopefully make him more benevolent towards London. I intend to speak briefly—certainly for no more than 10 minutes—and to raise parochial issues, given that the opening speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West covered all the major funding issues.

I start by thanking Transport for London for its briefing, and its staff for all they do to keep this great city moving, ensuring that my constituents and I can get about. Their work is highly regarded and they do a fantastic job.

I was not going to mention the Silvertown crossing, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham raised it, it will be interesting to hear the Minister’s comments about what support the DFT will give TfL for east London river crossings. Half of London’s population now lives east of Tower bridge, yet we only have two crossings there, while there are 23 crossings west of Tower bridge. As tolling will be an issue, I would expect at least the same arrangements to apply to local residents in east London as those for residents around the Queen Elizabeth II bridge. Any tolling should be discounted, but I would be quite happy to put up with tolling to ensure that we get the crossing.

East London’s air quality is poor, and it is made poorer because of standing traffic and congestion from the Blackwall tunnel. We need to get that traffic moving. When the Blackwall tunnel has difficulties, as it regularly does because of collisions or oversized vehicles, there is gridlock in east London. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s comments about the Silvertown crossing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West talked about VED and support from licensing revenue in London. My understanding—this may be entirely wrong, so the Minister might correct me—is that the vast majority of local authorities across the country get road support grants to deal with potholes, repairs and the like, but London does not receive such grant. That gives the impression that dealing with potholes in London is paid for by tube and bus passengers, who are subsidising the missing grant.

If one thinks about financial pressures, one can draw conclusions that may be entirely erroneous. We have a new franchisee running the docklands light railway: KeolisAmey. When I started in the Commons, the DLR was carrying some 20 million passengers a year. It now carries 100 million passengers a year, including many colleagues from the Scottish National party when they travel to London City airport to fly back to Scotland on a Thursday night or Friday morning. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West set out the massive increase in journeys on the DLR. That fantastic railway is, of course, a driverless operation, which makes it separate from most of TfL’s other rail operations.

The new DLR franchise is only six months old, but its staff have already gone on strike for the first time in 23 years. One has to ask whether the resourcing of the DLR and pressure on the contract led the new franchisee to put pressure on staff’s conditions and wages. That is total speculation on my part, but the fact that we have had the first DLR strike in 23 years is not a good sign. It is certainly a concern for my constituents and a very worrying development indeed.

The final point I want to cover is another parochial one. I see that the Minister is wearing his red ensign badge proudly as shipping Minister—there is nothing wrong with that at all, and I applaud him for it. Yesterday, I attended a Port of London authority presentation at Tower pier at which it outlined its vision for the River Thames for the next 20 to 50 years. The most striking thing about the presentation was that whereas most people think that the Thames’s heyday is behind it—we have the visuals of riggers in the past 200 years and merchant vessels in the 20th century being unloaded in the docks—and that it is now much quieter, with Thames Gateway and the port of Tilbury, as the Minister will know, London is now dealing with more tonnage than ever in its history.

With new commuter routes being opened up all the time, there is more commuter traffic than ever. Construction projects such as the Thames Tideway tunnel and, to a certain extent, Crossrail, which require the Thames to be used and that get HGVs off London’s roads and traffic on to the Thames, are welcome. The PLA’s vision is that the Thames’s best days are ahead of it, so it is really disappointing that the proposed cruise terminal at Enderby Wharf, which has been approved by the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the Mayor of London, does not have a ship-to-shore energy supply. That means that when cruise ships start arriving in London, they will have to run their diesel engines 24/7 to power them while they are berthed in the middle of the Thames, which is the equivalent of putting hundreds of lorries’ emissions back into London’s air. If we provided a ship-to-shore energy supply, which I believe would cost only up to a few million pounds, we could deal a big blow to London’s emissions.

Given that background, what funding does the Department for Transport provide for TfL to study air quality? Transport emissions play a big part in air quality, as they account for between 25% and 30% of all emissions. The shipping industry is growing, and we want to ensure as much as possible that its growth is environmentally sustainable and clean. Does the Minister have anything to add to the debate about the cruise terminal at Enderby Wharf? Can he say whether, even at this late stage, ship-to-shore energy supply could be introduced into the plan, given that the situation is a negative dark spot on what ought to be a positive clean bill of health for the Thames?

I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West on securing this important debate. I have raised much more parochial points than him, and we will be interested to hear the speeches from the three Front-Bench spokesmen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) on securing the debate. I also congratulate the Minister of State on his recent promotion, and I know that he will enjoy the additional challenges it brings.

I have been asked to sum up for the third party, and I will try something quite unusual, which is to do so in a third-party way, and to be as apolitical and as helpful as I can. I want to refer to Scotland and what the Scottish Government are doing, because I believe in their approach, and I think it would be helpful to bring it into this discussion.

The hon. Member for Harrow West talked about Transport for London services being crucial to business and to people. He talked about London’s urban growth being the fastest in the European Union. I have something in common with him, because Inverness is the fastest-growing city overall in Europe. I know exactly what he is talking about, but perhaps on a different scale.

People coming into London have an interest in this issue as well as those already in London. People need to make internal connections, but external connections cannot be ignored. It is every bit as important to make sure that links such as the Gatwick Express operate properly. I hear again that it is a disaster this morning, incidentally, with two trains cancelled and another stuck for many minutes on the line. The hon. Gentleman talked about roads being under pressure, and the knock-on impact of a failure to invest. That came through in all hon. Members’ contributions, as did the point that what may have been missing is a longer-term vision and an overall view of how things should be developed.

The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) made an important intervention in which she talked about the absolute need to engage people in major decisions. That brings me to my first point about the approach in Scotland, which I feel passionate about. I think there is agreement across parties on an outcomes-based approach to development, where we take things forward towards a longer-term outcome with people in mind, rather than as an afterthought. That came through time and again.

The Minister spoke in an intervention about smart ticketing, and I compliment him on doing so. We have to make it easier for people to use different modes of transport, but it is important—we must mention this early—that smart ticketing be fair. It should be carried forward in such a way as to enable everybody to interact with it. A point was made about fairness later on, and adopting an outcomes-based approach makes a big difference to that.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) rightly mentioned the hard-working staff on the network. Too often, we forget that when we ask people to take charge of new developments and bigger challenges, those involved in their delivery will be put under pressure. The hon. Gentleman was quite right to mention those people. We should reflect in the same way on the people who work in the transport system across the nations of the UK. He made the telling point that the DLR recently had its first strike for 23 years, and that tells us something about the communication that is needed. He also made an important point about the growing need to take shipping into account.

One thing missing from the debate—I am not trying to score points, but I want to take in the context—was any discussion of possible airport expansion. Hon. Members do not know where the pressure will be in London, because the decision has not been made yet, but that must be taken into account in future planning.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Some of us, like the hon. Gentleman, listened in the Chamber yesterday afternoon to the statement from the Government, in which they delayed the decision yet again. That was most frustrating for most colleagues right across the Chamber.

[Drew Hendry]

I agree about that frustration. As I have said, I will not try to use this debate to score points, but we must look at making decisions that are connected to others that we make. Other hon. Members brought that out in spades today.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) talked about Transport for London as a property developer. He asked what kind of developer it would be, and what it would do in future. The point about outcomes for people shone through in his questions, and it is important to look at what kind of outcomes there will be. If property development will be a vehicle for investment, he is quite right to say that we should know what kind of investment will be made. He asked what the point was of TfL investments if not to improve transport for people.

The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) talked about air pollution, having the correct infrastructure requirements, and the need to see what people want to do in the future, which goes back to my point about outcomes. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is unfortunately not in his place, mentioned buses in an intervention. I want to mention Britain’s largest bus manufacturer, Alexander Dennis, in Falkirk. It would, I am sure, be delighted to supply vehicles. What is needed is an outcomes-based approach with a longer-term view. People should not, as the hon. Member for Eltham pointed out, be made to pay more just because of where they live. That should be taken into account when deciding how to take things forward.

I said I would talk about Scotland. Since 2007, more than £15 billion has been invested in transport, and the Scottish Government have adopted an outcomes-based approach to policy, through which they look for a healthier, wealthier, greener approach to development. I believe that that is now considered to be the right approach by those from across the different parties in Scotland. We have looked at sustainable transport options that will encourage people out of their cars, and made sure that we made the investments necessary to connect people.

Our conversation this morning contains a contradictory message, and I will fire back a bit of a warning to hon. Members. They cannot say, “Let’s not invest in cycling and walking” while moaning about emissions and congestion. There has to be a balance between those things. In Scotland, since 2011, we have invested in 190 km of cycling and walking routes. We have also made the largest single investment in Scotland’s transport history with the £3 billion upgrade of the A9, because it is a vital part of the transport mix, and it is what people asked for and required. I am delighted to say that it connects my constituency with Perth, and that connection is ongoing. That development was vital to the highlands economy, and it was part of our work on a mix of transport options, which included simultaneous investment in the rail links between Aberdeen and Inverness, and Inverness and Perth. Investment is not limited to those lines, however; hon. Members will be aware of the recently opened borders railway link, with which we threw off the ghost of the railway cutback and built the first new railway in Scotland since the Beeching cuts. In our rounded approach, we take an outcomes-based look at how transport has to be put together.

I will not take much more time. In summary, people’s absolute need and right to be connected fluidly to all the different transport options available came through clearly this morning. That is a substantial challenge for an organisation as big as Transport for London, but if it takes an outcomes-based approach—I fundamentally believe that all hon. Members’ contributions this morning indicated the need for such an approach—it will start to get somewhere with looking at the wider picture and the longer-term view.

Of course, if greater public investment is to be made, the public need to be involved and feel involved. It would be a good move for Transport for London to look at how it engages with people and how it will take forward conversations with the relevant communities, so that it can ensure that it carries forward in its planning the points made by hon. Members this morning. I hope that it will heed my warning and take an outcomes-based approach to such development.