Infrastructure Bill [Lords]
John McDonnell Excerpts(11 years ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Will the Minister clarify the difference between staff transferring under TUPE and under his proposal in amendment 115?
Mr Hayes
I am coming to that. In shorthand, let me assure the hon. Gentleman that I do not want staff to be disadvantaged in any way, as I said. We will honour TUPE principles in this transfer of staff.
Amendment 115 makes it clear that when existing Highways Agency staff transfer to the new company, their employment terms and conditions will not change. I recognise that the changes that are planned for the Highways Agency will cause anxiety for existing staff. The amendment confirms that the existing rights and liabilities of staff will not change following transfer to the new organisation.
Mr Hayes
I will make a little progress and then let the hon. Gentleman come back.
The Bill provides that a transferring employee can terminate their contract if there is a substantial detrimental change to it if they transfer. That reflects regulation 4(9) of TUPE. Government amendment 116 supplements that by providing that where the employee claims constructive dismissal in those circumstances, no damages are payable in respect of any unpaid wages that relate to a notice period he or she has not worked. I should stress that the amendment does not prevent employees from claiming for damages for constructive dismissal, but seeks to establish a common-sense position that damages cannot be claimed for a period of required notice that has not been worked. I should highlight that the amendment ensures that the provisions in the Bill properly reflect TUPE in that regard.
Mr Hayes
The hon. Gentleman, with the courtesy he personifies, raised that with me before we came to the House today. I have committed to take another look at that through the parliamentary draftsman. There is no intention to disadvantage staff in that regard. I give that absolute assurance, but I will double-check the language, because language in such things matters. He and I are in discussion and I have committed to write to him as soon as possible, and certainly before the matter is discussed further, to clarify the use of the language to which he has drawn the House’s attention.
John McDonnell
Will the Minister clarify why he has used a formulation unused in any other legislation in the past? I have set out the various options in three amendments showing what the Government have used in past legislation to assure staff that they are transferring either under TUPE or under the Cabinet Office statement of practice, the TUPE-like agreement that the Cabinet Office agreed with the trade unions involved. Why are we not using the past formulations?
Mr Hayes
Originality and imagination are part of my style. I said style is as important as substance. The substance is in the Bill; the style is all my own. The important thing is that, having met staff representatives on 13 January, I am fully aware that there are other aspects they want me to look at. I fully recognise the concerns they raised. Some of those issues need to be considered further, and I have asked my officials to pursue those matters urgently. In the spirit that I have described, I will not allow staff to be disadvantaged by any changes. The House has my absolute assurance on that. Government amendments 115 and 116 reaffirm our commitment that existing Highways Agency staff terms and conditions should be protected, as I have described.
New clause 18 places a responsibility on the Government to report periodically to Parliament on the performance of Highways England. I have introduced this to reassure some who fear that Ministers will lose control of Highways England, and that they will have no accountability to Parliament if Highways England fails to deliver. It is absolutely right that the new body can get on and deliver the strategy that the Government devise, establish and agree, but let me be clear that should the implementation and delivery of the strategy require further involvement, direction or adjustment by Ministers, in concert with the House, the ability to make those changes must be established in the Bill. I am absolutely clear that Highways England must report to the House, and that Members on both sides of the House must have the chance to scrutinise its work. Ministers must have a role, indeed play a key role, in the delivery of the strategy.
It might be true to say that the greatest challenge we face is getting the delivery right. We have surmounted an important hurdle in developing a strategy founded on empiricism and backed with funding for the long term—more than £15 billion up to 2021—but it will happen only if we have in place the right resources, skills and partnerships, and the right range of other organisations, to make it happen. It would be inappropriate if Ministers and all hon. Members were not involved in that process. I expect directions to emanate from the Department for Transport periodically—it is not meant to be an exceptional power. I expect reports to be made to the House periodically. That, too, should not be a matter of exception. That was raised at length by the shadow Minister. The strong governance arrangements and framework we have put in place provide some of the measures he sought when he argued the case for greater accountability.
The use of directions in the licence will allow the Government to exert control over how the company exercises its statutory functions. In addition, as sole shareholder the Secretary of State can ensure that the company is properly led and governed. More detail is in the summary document published in December, but I will write again on some of those matters following today’s consideration.
Opposition Front Benchers and all Members of the House will be familiar with the new copy of the licence, which strengthens those provisions, and which was provided to hon. Members on 22 January and placed in the Library of the House. Let me say again that if there are problems with performance, I expect Ministers to make use of those directions; I expect Parliament to see the Highways monitor’s report on the impact; and I expect Ministers to ensure that Parliament is informed of how issues have been resolved.
It is obvious from the amendments that were tabled that I need to explain why we need to change the status of the Highways Agency and create an arm’s length body, and I am happy to repeat an argument I made earlier. Let me start with the point of view that some suggest—they suggest that we should do nothing more than implement a road investment strategy without changing the structure necessary to deliver it. Of course, the Highways Agency would make every effort to do so efficiently, and of course we would have some success in delivering that strategy, but we need to understand that if we are to deliver the strategy, we need to make significant changes to the existing arrangements.
The relationship between the agency and the Government has on occasions failed to reflect the wider interests of the economy and the long-term interests of taxpayers and road users. The measure is about providing a clearer, more strategic role for the Government, and providing a stronger, more certain framework, through the licence and the road investment strategy and the framework document, for the organisation mission to deliver those important infrastructural changes to our nation. By the way, those changes are not just about economic well-being; they are also about societal and communal well-being.
The industry is keen to see change both in the way funding is committed and in the way the Highways Agency is constructed. In the call for evidence for the Bill, the Civil Engineering Contractors Association said:
“Even with an apparently committed five year programme, not transforming the Highways Agency into an arms-length body could still leave it a target, should future Governments decide cuts to spending…The supply chain…has confidence that the creation of a Government-owned company would significantly reduce the likelihood of this happening.”
The CBI said that business welcomes the Government’s important decision to reform the Highways Agency to a more independent body, giving it greater funding certainty through fixed five to six-year funding cycles.
The road investment strategy provides a logical and credible commitment between two separate parties—the focus of the company is on delivering its operational objectives, and the focus of the Government is on providing a long-term funding stream. I know that some fear we will lose control of the reins of the company. That is why I have gone as far as I have in the framework document, the licence and the Bill. We will also of course have the monitor—the new body that will oversee the operation of the new arrangements. That is all in line with the conclusions of the Public Administration Committee’s recent report on the relationship between Government and arm’s length bodies, which said:
“Relationships should be high trust and low cost, but too often are low trust and high cost.”
On that basis, I resist amendments 5 to 42 which would remove the relevant clauses or reinsert the words “Highways Agency”.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I warmly welcome the cycling and walking strategy. It is not just a cycling and walking strategy; it is a cycling and walking investment strategy. As the Minister knows, good cycling infrastructure does not happen without that vital investment. I am particularly pleased to see the words “certainty” and “stability” in new clause 13. That is what it is all about, and it is how Holland achieved its objectives. It makes it appropriate for the Minister to be the Member for South Holland and the Deepings. Holland achieved its goals by having £24 a head of stable, long-term investment. If we can get that level of investment—£10 to £20 a head has been called for in the all-party cycling group—we can do the same. I pay tribute to all my colleagues in the all-party cycling group for the work they did, and I commend the cycling report. I warmly welcome the opportunity of discussing the issue with the Minister responsible for cycling, the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), who is in his place.
I think that we can expect an increase in the number of cycling journeys from 2% in 2011 to 10% within a decade, which will have enormous benefits for health. I hope there will be investment in not just infrastructure but training, and that cycle to work schemes will, in some form, be extended to young people. I warmly thank the Secretary of State for tabling the new clause, and look forward to seeing the health and well-being of the nation improve as a result.
John McDonnell
On Second Reading I echoed the fear that had been expressed by Highways Agency staff that this was the first stage of a privatisation process. Since then, the Minister has written to various Members saying that the Bill will not privatise the agency or any part of it. It is true that the Bill contains no such provision, but the staff nevertheless feel that they are being packaged up into an organisation and that the second stage will be privatisation, along with tolling.
The Minister has also given an assurance that the roads investment strategy budget will no longer be annualised, but the chief executive has made clear to staff that the revenue budget for the maintenance of the new company will be annualised. Staff fear cuts and the prospect of being transferred to a company that will be privatised in due course.
It is crucial for committed, dedicated professionals who, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), have done everything asked of them by this and the last Government over the years to be secure in the knowledge that they will have a job following the transfer. Both Governments have normally provided that assurance by including a reference to TUPE in legislation. In some instances, however, that may not be appropriate.
TUPE usually obtains when a group of staff have been transferred from the public sector to the private sector. When the transfer is between Government agencies, or from the Government to an agency, a formal agreement called COSOP operates. It was initiated by the last Government, and has been confirmed by this one, and it is negotiated and signed off by the Cabinet Office. My amendment 127 provides that
“if the TUPE regulations do not apply in relation to the transfer”
the transfer scheme may
“make provision which is the same or similar.”
There is real anxiety about the fact that the form of words used by the Government does not include such a provision, and hence does not abide by the agreement reached by them and by the last Government with the trade unions.
Amendment 115 refers to
“all the rights and liabilities relating to the person’s contract of employment.”
The transfer of undertakings extends beyond the basic contract of employment to a range of other assurances that should be given to staff on transfer. That is why people are worried, and I feel that we will lose some very dedicated professional staff as a result of the lack of commitment that is being given to the staff who have served us so well. I urge the Minister to reconsider, and to translate into the Bill a form of words that has been used in every other Bill, relating either to TUPE or to similar arrangements. If he does not do so, the staff will remain anxious and concerned.
Dr Huppert
It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak at the end of the debate, and to see the new clause make progress.
As I think the House knows by now, the case for cycling and walking is incredibly strong. It is a great way to travel. It is environmentally friendly, healthy, reliable, cheap and fun. It cuts congestion, so that everyone else benefits as well. It boosts the economy, it saves money and it saves lives. Public Health England recently said that one in six deaths was due to physical inactivity. What we do to promote physical activity helps people to improve their health.
The all-party parliamentary cycling group set some targets during the Get Britain Cycling inquiry. If we achieved those targets, about 80,000 disability-adjusted life years would be saved each year by 2025. That is a huge number. When mental as well as physical health is taken into account, the financial savings would amount to between £2 billion and £6 billion, and the national health service would save £17 billion a year if we could reach the Dutch and Danish levels. That is worth investing in. That will save money as well as lives.
The case is strong, and that is why in our report we called for spending of up to £10—heading towards £20—per person per year. The report was supported not only by all the cycling organisations, of course, and by Living Streets, a pedestrian group, but by organisations such as the Automobile Association. All forms of transport want to see this happen, and business does, too. The director general of the CBI has called for a major effort to expand the dedicated cycle network, and it is very good that the Government have agreed and are doing the right thing by supporting this amendment. I thank the Minister with responsibility for cycling, the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), in particular. I remember when the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and I tried to talk to him, and I am glad he has managed to deliver on what he knows is the right thing.
This amendment has been backed not only by the cycling organisations, but by health organisations—all of them, ranging from the British Heart Foundation to Age UK, to Macmillan, and to Rethink Mental Illness. This is clearly a popular thing to do, therefore.
This Government have made progress on the policy on cycling and walking. We have seen more money go in to this policy than ever before, and I welcome that. The £241 million from the Deputy Prime Minister is the largest single investment in cycling, but it goes nowhere near far enough. To get the benefits I spoke about, we must have the money going in. This strategy says there has to be some, but it does not say how much. My party is committed to the £10 per person per year that was agreed by this House and the cross-party group. It would also be something we would enshrine as part of our green transport Act.
I would love to see the other parties join in. I know that Back Benchers on both sides of the House are supportive, but I also know that the Front Benches on both sides are against this—or at least they have been so far. At the beginning of this year we saw an awful spat with the Conservatives putting out something saying that Labour is going to spend £63 million on cycling, as though that was too much. Unfortunately, we saw Labour respond by saying that that was nonsense and that Labour was not committed to spending any money on cycling. I hope both Front Benches will fix that, because I know their Back Benchers would like to see that happen. I know the shadow Minister was taken to task by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for not committing any money to cycling. I hope both sides and all parties will join us in committing to cycling and walking, because it is not enough to have a strategy; we have to put the resources in and we have to make sure they are available. We can do that and we should do it, and it is something this House has voted for. I hope it will become a reality in the next few months and after the general election as well.
Infrastructure Bill [Lords]
John McDonnell Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I agree with every word that the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) has just said. His speech follows on from the constructive work that he did when he was in the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Having learned that we are burning fossil fuels and bringing about climate change on such a scale that it could destroy our planet, I find it almost insane that we should be bringing forward proposals that would mean our relying on another form of fossil fuel. I totally oppose the development of fracking in this country.
I shall concentrate on part 1, which deals with the Highways Agency and the road network. Sometimes I feel like shaking people in this building. There seems to be a loss of collective memory. Part 1 is the first stage towards the privatisation of our road network and it is on the same scale as the privatisations of rail, water and energy under the previous Conservative Government. I have the same dystopian vision of what will happen: once a GoCo has been set up, it will be broken up into regional franchises and sold off, almost inevitably to foreign-owned companies, most of them state run, exactly as 80% of the rail industry has been sold off. The story of the energy and water industries has been similar. There will then be the introduction of tolls, exactly as laid out in the Government’s response to the Transport Committee, and the tolls will fund exorbitant profiteering by those companies.
The House needs to wake up and recognise that the Bill represents the privatisation of our roads. We should be honest with the electorate and warn people that that is the consequence of the Bill. Why am I saying that? It is evidenced by what has gone on throughout this Government and previously. There is a loss of collective memory of what happened when the Conservatives were last in government. Throughout the 1992 to 1997 Administration, there were proposals to build on the privatisation of rail, water and energy by also privatising roads. In 1992 the Government published “Paying for Better Motorways”, in which they said that they would establish a single Government-owned company funded by road levies—that is, tolls—and possibly break it down into a number of privatised regional franchises, as has happened with rail and water. That was the Conservatives’ plan when they were last in power; now it is being implemented under a coalition Government. I hope some of the coalition partners wake up to the consequences of the Bill.
What other evidence is there? The plan is evidenced by the appointments that the Government have made to the Highways Agency. They brought in Tom Smith. Who is Tom Smith? He has just been put on the Highways Agency board. He is the chief executive officer of the M6 toll road. The Government brought in Elaine Holt. What was she? She was headhunted by the Department for Transport to lead on the east coast railway line—first in public sector management, but then to prepare it for privatisation.
All the evidence is there of the Government preparing for the privatisation of our roads. We saw it with the A14. The more recent proposals for the improvement of the A14 included tolling on that road, but there was such public uproar that even the Government had to pull back. We saw the evidence in the Government’s response to the Transport Committee. Paragraph 79 states:
“The Government will consider tolling as a means of funding new road capacity on the strategic road network. New road capacity would include entirely new roads and existing roads where they are transformed by an improvement scheme”
—that is, the investment programme announced last week. The strategy, as far as I can see, is to invest as much public money as possible to bring the roads up to a certain standard in the current period so that they can be privatised under the new agency that will then be broken up into regional franchises.
I note that clause 1 refers not to “a highways company” but to “highways companies”, to enable the Secretary of State to amend the legislation, under the Henry VIII clause later in the Bill, to enable regional franchises to be set up. I warn all the travelling public—motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and others—that our road network is about to be sold off, they will soon be fleeced by tolls and the tolls will subsidise the private profits of foreign companies. If anything provides evidence of that, it is the example of what happened to rail, energy and water when the Conservative party was last in government.
Having said all that, I wish to raise a number of issues on which I would like a response during the debate. I am concerned about the 3,500 staff, who, until now, have been commended for their hard work, commitment and professionalism. What will happen to them? TUPE is not provided for in the Bill. We have argued for it time and again, and in the past four and a half years TUPE has been put into only one Bill. All we have been given, yet again, are assurances that the staff will be covered by COSOP, the Cabinet Office statement of practice on staff transfers in the public sector—the protocol agreement similar to TUPE, but not as enforceable. I reiterate that to give the 3,500 staff greater security we should insert a TUPE commitment in the Bill.
There are arguments to be made about the financial savings and the claim that they will be £2.4 billion. I note the debate over whether VAT is to be charged. First, the Treasury denied that the VAT would be saved and therefore the cost could be, over six years, some £2.4 billion—almost the savings the Government are seeking to find. Then, in the other place, we were told that there was a guarantee that VAT would not be charged. I think that is open to legal challenge. We need greater certainty, otherwise this whole operation will be jeopardised from the beginning.
We also need more details about the monitoring exercise, as we have a monitoring body that is not a regulator, no complaints procedure, and no information about the costings or the investment in the operation of the body. One of the worst aspects of privatisations in the past has been the way that remuneration at the top has gone through the roof while wages elsewhere in the organisations have not risen. We are told that remuneration will somehow be controlled through a central review. I do not think such constraints have worked elsewhere when these agencies have been set up—quite the reverse. I would like to see a ratio put in place between the highest paid and those who are on average earnings in the organisation. In that way we may be able to control the overall levels of remuneration in the future.
I am also concerned about clause 17, the Henry VIII clause, which puts such wide-ranging powers into the hands of the Secretary of State. We have now been assured that, through clause 46, the affirmative procedure will apply in respect of any changes in the legislation to be undertaken by the Secretary of State, but I am not convinced that that procedure gives those democratic protections of accountability to this House. I urge that the super-affirmative procedure be looked at.
Mr Hayes
I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Gentleman but I want to make it perfectly clear that the Government and this Minister—I am the roads Minister, after all—have no intention of privatising our roads; have no intention of not having clear lines of accountability to both Government and this House for the work of the new agency; will set the priorities; will set the strategy; and will hold those responsible for delivering it accountable. I do not want to spoil the party, but I am afraid that he is fantasising.
John McDonnell
The Minister has not spoiled the party because I have no confidence or trust that this Government will not privatise. Assurances have been given on the Floor of the House about privatisation before and it has gone ahead. This Bill is the first step towards privatisation and towards introducing tolling on our roads—a new form of funding the road network that will be open to profiteering by foreign companies. I warn this House that if it passes this legislation, it will put at risk our road network in the future, our taxpayers and the future environmental policies that might be able to protect us against climate change.
Transport for London Bill [Lords]
John McDonnell Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
It is often a tactic in debates such as these to talk at length to delay a Bill as much as possible, to obfuscate and to try to prevent it from becoming law, but we do not need any assistance in that regard for this Bill, as Transport for London has been doing that for us since 2011. It has been a bizarre process.
I reassure the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) that I will not seek to divide the House and vote against the Bill. I am a convener of the RMT parliamentary group and we are assured that clause 7 will assist us in protecting the hedging process for pension funds, so there is one clause that might have a shred of justification.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned that TfL had offered an amendment inserting a new subsection in clause 5. At some stage guidance must be issued to promoters of private Bills. TfL has been promoting the Bill since 2011; it wrote to the RMT in May when it knew about some of the specific objections and the petitions against the Bill had gone in; we had a meeting on Friday afternoon; and at 3 o’clock yesterday we received notice of an amendment. TfL’s parliamentary or advisory team needs to be examined to see how we have reached this parlous state in debating the Bill.
I would have expected TfL at least to consult everyone who had petitioned against the Bill so far before introducing the amendment. It was obvious that such an amendment would be offered, because the lack of accountability to the Secretary of State in clause 5 stood out, but rather arrogantly it thought it could force the Bill through in the next few weeks without considering the main concerns expressed by the petitioners. Perhaps further advice should be given to TfL about how to behave when promoting proposed legislation. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could suggest that sending a “peace in our time” letter at 3 o’clock on the day before the legislation is considered is simply unacceptable.
At this stage, I would expect TfL to withdraw the Bill, consult on the amendment and bring forward a properly drafted Bill, but I cannot see that happening, so let us have at least some general discussion today about why people are anxious about it. I think it is a matter of ever having confidence in Transport for London dealing with any property development. The hon. Member for Harrow East mentioned problems with taking over tube lines. Many of us have a long memory of what happened with TfL and its relationship with the public-private partnership, which was a disaster. Time and again, TfL officials and others came forward to advise us that PPP was an excellent way to raise funds and provide services, yet it was a complete disaster, which threatened £3 billion-worth of investment in TfL. When we looked at the figures, we found that £400 million had been spent on consultants, accountants and legal advisers, first to set the thing up and then in some way to try to retrieve it from the disaster it became.
I therefore think that this relatively small Bill of seven clauses has excited opposition among some members of the community and some Members of this House because of lack of confidence in TfL’s ability to go into partnerships with the private sector without either creating a disaster or being ripped off. Many of us worry that TfL will be given new powers to enter into partnerships that are not secure. These are not limited partnerships—they are not limited by guarantee or anything like that—but straightforward partnerships in which I suppose the main balance of interest will be with the private sector. The concern is that, yet again, the public sector will be left with the responsibilities. No matter what has been said about the hedging of some of the investments, those responsibilities could be unlimited.
People have examined the recent escapades of TfL in private sector development, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) will want to raise the issue of Earls Court, which does not inspire confidence. In fact, if this legislation had been in place at that time, it would have been used during the Earls Court development, which has aroused an amazingly sizeable opposition within the community. I think it has cost the party of the hon. Member for Harrow East control of the local council, such was the scale of the opposition, and it has subjected local residents to insecurity in their homes as well as raising concerns about the local community and the local environment. The concerns about this Bill are real.
Let me run through some of those concerns. The Bill will enable TfL to sell off or lease out land to developers elsewhere and right across the capital in the attempt to link up with property speculators as a means of gaining significant income—despite the track record of disasters in the past. Discussions with the RMT and other unions involved in TfL revealed their concern that such practices could produce extensive speculation around TfL sites, many of which should be secured for transport operations. Many within the industry raise with us the concern that this rush for short-term gain and short-term profiteering on individual sites will put at risk future developments needed for TfL in the long term.
The Mayor of London has rightly argued that we should be expanding the transport network in the capital, which means that some of the land currently in the ownership of TfL will need to be used. It looks as though individual developments will be allowed to take place, which will take the land away from transport use into speculative development, as we have seen in the Earls Court development. The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), who is no longer in the Chamber, mentioned that earlier. There is no guarantee that development of land in one area will not have consequences for other sites, and, as the hon. Lady said, it certainly will have consequences in her constituency. There is a real worry that giving Transport for London these powers will result in a virtual frenzy in TfL—certainly under the guidance of the current Mayor—to convert land in central London for uses other than transport.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend saying that he believes that the leadership of Transport for London will sacrifice the long-term strategic interests of London’s transport infrastructure for short-term property development gain?
John McDonnell
What those who work in the industry want is a consistent plan for the development of the transport infrastructure, but what the Bill does is give more power to TfL to enter into speculative developments on the sites that it owns, along with developers. In the case of Earls Court—on which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith will wish to elaborate—we have seen property development for short-term financial gain override the needs of the travelling public and the need for long-term investment in the future of the transport infrastructure. That example illustrates the loss of confidence in Transport for London among the public that will result from its exercise of the new powers, if they are given to it. We may well see a speculators’ charter in relation to properties that are currently in public ownership under the auspices of TfL.
People are worried not only about the desire to gain income, but about the fact that the current property developments are based largely on the selling off of land for the building of residential properties. Transport for London, as a public body, might well want to enter into a partnership with, in particular, local authorities, in the hope of combining the advantages of improving the transport network with the provision of residential homes. However, it seems from the examples that we have seen so far—notably in Earls Court—that the residential homes will not necessarily be for local people: in fact, that applies to a relatively small percentage. Most of the sites are being used for speculative development, and many are being bought by overseas landlords with a view to letting properties at extremely high rents.
People fear that if TfL is given these powers, it will go on a development binge with the private sector throughout London, without taking into account either the needs of the transport infrastructure in the long term or the needs of local communities. The Bill seems to take no cognisance of the need for TfL to bear in mind the social criteria or social objectives relating to any future development when using the powers.
As the hon. Member for Harrow East pointed out, there also seems to be a lack of accountability in the case of some of the partnerships. We received that letter on Friday specifically because concern after concern had been raised consistently over the years—for instance, regarding the fact that even the Secretary of State did not have the authority to be consulted about the exercise of some of these powers. We have now been told, in a letter that we received at 3.30 yesterday afternoon, that an amendment will be tabled to deal with that. It would have been helpful to have seen at least a draft of the amendment; all that we have is a letter of comfort, or discomfort, depending on people’s judgment of it .
If we look at TfL’s record of participation in developments with private sector entities, we see that it is the commercial entity that has gained the profit and TfL that has been left with the responsibilities and, often, the liabilities. In the case of some of the partnerships that have already been entered into, ownership of some of the sites is so diffuse that it is difficult for the public, in particular, to hold anyone to account when it comes to some aspects of the deals.
Mr Chope
I am listening with fascination to the hon. Gentleman. Does he agree that the whole purpose of Transport for London should be to concentrate on its core business—providing transport infrastructure for the people of London? It is unlikely that Transport for London will be capable of doing things that are not its core business as well as they are done by specialists in those alternative businesses.
John McDonnell
The concern that many of us have is that Transport for London is not a property developer. It is not a developer with expertise in developing sites for high-value residential properties, yet that is the venture that it seems to want to enter into across London on most of its sites. There is an in-built lack of expertise in Transport for London. Many of us think not only that Transport for London is putting sites at risk by removing the possibility of their being used to develop transport infrastructure, but that Transport for London as a whole will be at risk from some of the liabilities that it will take on as a result of going into limited partnerships, which are not protected, with developers. The Bill has consequences not just for specific site development but for the stable funding of TfL in the long term.
I say to the hon. Member for Harrow East that the Bill seems to be an attempt at a quick fix by an organisation that does not have the expertise to enter the activity that it wants to enter. I would be more convinced that it had that expertise if the progress of the Bill had been more efficient and effective. The legislation has been hanging around since 2011. At this late stage, the clauses have still not been drafted properly. Clause 4 has been redrafted three times in that period. We have just received the letter of comfort on clause 5, but no amendment. That does not inspire confidence. This organisation could sit down with some of the most rapacious developers in the history of property development and secure deals without satisfying not just community interests but the long-term financial security of the sector.
I agree with the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope): when an organisation is called Transport for London, it should concentrate on providing transport for London, rather than go into property speculation in this way. The argument may be that Transport for London is under financial pressure from the Government or others and needs to look at other ventures, but we must take into account its record of working with the private sector to gain additional income or increase efficiency.
There was the debacle of the public-private partnership under the last Government—this is not a party political point. That demonstrates an inherent lack of expertise—I put it no more strongly than that—in the organisation; it lacks the expertise to be able to do deals with the private sector that deliver the service and that avoid the scale of liabilities that we saw under that partnership. It was extraordinary. Members who were here may recall that throughout that period the House was not kept informed. On both sides of the House there was shock at the scale of the incompetence and risk that TfL ventured into in those developments.
Those are the main concerns. The organisation is strapped for cash, by the sound of it, although the Government advised us earlier in the year that it received a significant grant. However, TfL says that it is strapped for cash and needs another source of income. It is looking at developing its sites to provide that and it wants to do it through partnerships with the private sector. As a result there are concerns that the overall operation of TfL will be put at risk. Those are the general concerns.
Let me turn to the individual elements of the Bill. I advise Members to go to the minutes of evidence taken before the Unopposed Bill Committee in the other House under Lord Sewel. TfL, with the Department for Transport present, took the noble Lord through the details of the Bill. As the hon. Member for Harrow East has said, it went to clause 5 in particular, and it said:
“Clause 5 would allow TfL subsidiaries to borrow and charge against assets and revenue streams. This will provide TfL with greater flexibility on how it borrows. Under secured borrowing, TfL subsidiaries may borrow for a discrete purpose, and the security could then be structured so that the creditor has recourse only against the subsidiary borrowing and not against TfL or other TfL subsidiaries.”
It went on to say:
“TfL subsidiaries may not grant security without the consent of the Secretary of State, other than in respect of those matters that are specified in a new schedule proposed to be included in the Bill.”
The hon. Gentleman referred to that.
Let me take Members to that new schedule. This is not a delaying tactic; I would like TfL to come back with some clarity on all this. The schedule means that it can, without the Secretary of State’s approval, enter into agreement with regard to subsidiaries to borrow and charge against assets and revenue streams. As I have said, it can do that with regard to activities identified in this schedule without Secretary of State approval. Let me give a selection of them. It can borrow against assets including
“property related to a tolling scheme…property related to the generation of power…property related to sponsorship activities being carried out by third parties”.
It can also borrow against
“property related to the use of land for commercial letting”.
I have no idea of the scale that is envisaged, but it means that TfL, without Secretary of State approval, can become a sizeable landlord with commercial lets and borrow against those revenue streams. I would like TfL to say what is meant by this and I would welcome some clarity as we move into the next stages. What is the scale of operation that it is looking at?
The schedule also refers in sub-paragraph (n) to
“land which is not operational land”.
Again, it would be useful to know from TfL what its definition of “not operational land” is and what the scale of that is in its portfolio.
I raise this because many of our individual constituencies will contain pieces of TfL land which are set aside for future transport developments, and it looks as though this will enable TfL to raise revenue or borrow against those pieces of land without any Secretary of State approval whatsoever. It would be useful to know the scale of that and to have some form of report setting out where these pieces of land are. They could be fairly sizeable.
Again, I would welcome clarity about the purpose of this particular venture in this particular case. As Members have said earlier, we all have sites in our constituencies that TfL may want to borrow against and therefore develop with a private sector subsidiary. If it then removes a transport operation from that site, it will have a knock-on effect on other sites because of the shift of functions, as is planned at Earls Court. I am concerned that there seems to be a lack of clarity from TfL in its dialogue with the petitioners on some of these issues with regard to the supply of information.
In the presentation to the Unopposed Bill Committee in the other House, clause 6 was explained as follows:
“Clause 6 of the Bill will allow TfL to form or join with others in forming limited partnerships. TfL would like to be able to use partnership structures to seek third-party investors in its property estate, and to manage secondary income generated from the estate.”
TfL mentioned, I think to reassure the noble Lord in charge of the Committee, that
“Pension funds and development partners are identified as likely investors, who often prefer limited partnerships to other legal structures to invest in.”
I am sure that we will deal with this matter in Committee, but I would like to ask Members to look—if not today, then in Committee—at some of the concerns raised by the petitioners about the concept of limited partnerships and, in particular, at a petition from Mr Richard Osband and other parties. Mr Osband was with us on Friday when we met TfL. He is a knowledgeable person who has done a large amount of research in this area. He admits that he is not a lawyer, but he has vast experience in property development and commercial activities. He tried to explain his concerns, which I now share, to TfL regarding limited partnerships.
The issue that Mr Osband raised was that a registered limited partnership may not carry out any activities at all. The partnership is between one partner and a general partner, and the general partner largely bears the main liabilities. If the other partner becomes active in some way in the management of the process, it will then become part of the definition of the general partnership and will bear liabilities. Mr Osband argued that the limited partnership concept was opening up TfL to bearing almost unlimited liabilities as a result of the process that the legislation will enable it to enter into. On Friday, we were mystified as to why there was a need for limited partnerships. The legislation itself provides for the ability to enter into partnerships with companies and others. These would be proper legal entities and they would ensure that the burden of risk was shared with the partner rather than falling significantly on to TfL.
We are now at a late stage, and the petitioner has made his position clear. On Friday, he was simply inviting TfL to get further legal counsel’s opinion, because he and a number of others had contested the original counsel’s opinion that TfL had brought forward. I have yet to hear a convincing argument from TfL as to why it would want to enter into limited partnerships, given the element of risk involved. TfL said on Friday and in some of its other discussions with Mr Osband that this was the preferred route of the developer. I am afraid that that does not inspire confidence that any public investment in these developments would be secure.
John McDonnell
Yes, that is one argument, but the point of the legislation is to enable TfL to enter into not only limited partnerships but proper partnerships. Clause 4 will enable TfL to enter into partnerships that are limited by guarantee, so why do we need a mechanism that is novel for TfL, that requires new legislation and that heightens the risk to TfL when there is already a vehicle available that will protect it? This mechanism appears to have been included purely and simply at the behest of some of the development companies that have approached TfL. That cannot be right. Surely the public purse needs to be protected in the best possible way.
I understand what my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) is saying, but it does not mean that the sole way in which TfL can raise income streams is simply by a sell-off; it can enter into proper partnerships with limited companies. The hon. Member for Harrow East mentioned, on a grander scale, the ability to have shareholders and so on, but that is the normal way of protecting one partner and another: having a common shareholding in that way.
I came at this on Friday afternoon, and I find it mystifying that although Mr Osband’s petition and further detailed notes had been received, we had not been given by today, even in the last throes of the briefings that were flying around yesterday, some form of assurance about the legal protections that would be provided as a result of introducing the availability of limited partnerships to TfL.
Mr Osband quoted to the TfL representative the issues raised by the Law Commission on this matter. It said:
“The essential feature of a limited partnership is that the liability of the limited partners for the debts and obligations of the partnership is limited to the amount of their contributions. This protection is lost if a limited partner takes part in management.”
So as soon as TfL gets involved in the management of any element of the partnership and the development—I interpreted that, as did Mr Osband, as meaning any form of management of even the individual site or some asset on it—it is no longer limited in its liabilities; it becomes a general partner open to unlimited liability.
I find it extraordinary that we have got to this stage in the Bill—three years on from its original promotion by TfL, nearly six months since the petitions were submitted on this issue and following a meeting on Friday—yet we still have not had a response in any detail on Mr Osband’s valid criticisms of what has taken place in terms of the development of a concept of limited partnership at the behest of the private developers.
Let me quote from the briefing note that Mr Osband provided for TfL on Friday, although I will not use the names of TfL officers, as to do so would be invidious. He said that one of the officers dealing with this
“seems oblivious to the fact that it would be TfL’s Limited Partner that would be at risk of unlimited liability by virtue of TfL’s participation in the management of the General Partner. Would TfL really want to enter a Joint Venture with no management control?”
This is like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea. One can enter into a limited partnership and one’s liabilities are limited if one is not part of the management of that, but as soon as one enters into the management one’s liabilities are unlimited, yet a public body such as TfL would be expected to have some form of management responsibilities for the venture that is taking place. So it automatically gets caught, as this is a Catch-22 situation. I cannot see what benefit there is for TfL, although there must obviously be benefits for the individual developers who want to enter into these limited partnerships with TfL, because I fear that they will seek to ensure that the liabilities are placed on TfL and not themselves.
Again, let me cite what the Law Commission said, which was quoted by Mr Osband on Friday. He provided the quote directly to the TfL officers and still has not had a response from them. The Law Commission said:
“We understand this lack of clarity is considered a major defect in the law of limited partnerships in the United Kingdom.”
Again, a structure has been proposed in the Bill which even the Law Commission now considers relatively opaque in its operation.
I urge TfL, at this late stage, to reconsider the Bill and whether or not the legislation—certainly the clauses up to clause 7—is actually needed, given the facilities that TfL has for forming partnerships under the existing structures, which are flexible. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington has said that until now TfL has relied upon the sale of land to gain income, but that is no longer the case. It is able to enter into wider partnerships and does not have to rely purely on such sales. This concept of limited partnership is introducing a real vulnerability to the tax payer—the London council tax payer in particular—and the Government who fund Transport for London. I do not understand why TfL wishes to persist with this clause of the Bill.
I am extremely worried that the general public will not be able to scrutinise development deals if limited partnerships are established, and, even with the Secretary of State’s approval now being floated by TfL as an amendment, that there will not be sufficient political accountability. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith will cite the example of what happened at Earls Court. On the examples that we have so far, this issue of commercial confidentiality has prevented, without resort to law in many instances, the ability of members of the community or individuals who are affected by developments from gaining information on the partnerships —their purposes and their operations. When redacted documents have been offered, they have been redacted in such a way to make them virtually meaningless. I worry that this Bill offers the potential for a whole series of disastrous ventures by TfL on site after site.
The hon. Member for Harrow East also mentioned taxation. At the meeting on Friday, representatives of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers said that they were concerned about ensuring the transparency of the operation not just of the partnership itself, but of the individual partners who have participated so far under existing structures. They were concerned about their willingness to abide by and adhere to tax legislation in this country and also to some of their responsibilities. At least one company that was mentioned on Friday and that TfL entered into a partnership with is based in a tax haven and is seeking to avoid taxation as a result of its established structure. Again, that is not uncommon, but it is not something that a public body such as TfL should be encouraging. Furthermore, it is not something that we should be seeking to facilitate even further by putting forward this limited partnership proposal.
The concern is that if such a company is willing to operate from a tax haven to avoid taxation, it is quite likely and quite able to walk away more easily from the liabilities on risks if any venture becomes problematic in the future. Again, it provides us with another example of questionable judgment by TfL. Going into a partnership with a company that is based in a tax haven and that is seeking to avoid its taxation responsibilities does not inspire confidence in the ability of TfL to develop future deals. Such practice may not be unlawful, but it is immoral, and that point was put to TfL on Friday.
Those are many of the concerns that have been raised in the discussions so far. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith will go into some detail about what has happened at Earls Court. If Members want an example of what could happen under this Bill because of the lack of protection within it and because of the structure that has been put forward with regard to the limited partnership, Earls Court is a classic example. In fact, this Bill was designed to enable TfL to go into a limited partnership specifically with regard to Earls Court. TFL was not able to do that, because the legislation had been delayed for so long, but it went into another form of partnership that has exposed the local community to devastation, almost, and that has exposed TfL to being ripped off for the development.
Overall, in that example we have seen a complete lack of transparency about the discussions with the limited company. The potential issues with that site and the safe operation of the rail transport network have been raised and, as I have mentioned before, there is an increasing threat to social and affordable housing. Indeed, there is even a public health threat because of the air pollution caused by the increased activity around that site, and a threat to some of London’s cultural heritage.
Concern has been expressed about the lack of an independent economic impact assessment on the development and a lack of accountability to local people and the elected local authority in its current form. This is a shining example of how TfL, although I am sure it has the best of intentions, can be driven by political motives. I know that there have been statements about the nature of the people that some politicians want to live in the area. Mr Greenhalgh, in particular, wanted to remove working-class people from the area and to populate it with wealthier people. That was one of the statements he made publicly, but, regardless of that, TfL seems unable to defend itself against such political diktats from above and demonstrated extreme incompetence in its negotiations with developers and extreme ruthlessness in preventing local people from having a say in the development. That has resulted not just in a degrading exploitation of public assets but a debacle.
That is the example we would give of Transport for London’s incompetence in dealing with a major strategic site and with speculative property developers. If this legislation goes through, developers in London will binge at the expense of the public sector and TfL in particular. The land assets of TfL have been developed over nearly a century and they are land holdings specifically for development of the transport infrastructure. They are not there for speculative development by TfL to gain some short-term income at a long-term cost to Londoners. The Bill will risk the long-term planning of our transport infrastructure, increase the risk of the liability for property speculation falling on TfL and have an impact on the public purse.
We gave these warnings on the public-private partnership and we were ignored. We were ignored by the previous Government and, in fact, we were derided for those warnings that came from the RMT, the TSSA and the other unions that were working on the ground on London transport. They warned us and we had report after report that TfL was being ripped off in its dealings with the private sector and that there would be a catastrophe, and that is exactly what happened. The PPP became a disaster: the companies had to be brought into public ownership and control, we lost at least £400 million through payments to advisers, accountants, lawyers and so on and we put TfL at risk. I think that this is what will happen in this case.
The work force, with their expertise, and those who work deep within the heart of TfL are warning that the property speculation promoted by the Bill will put the long-term infrastructure of transport in London at risk. As I say, I will not oppose the Bill this evening because there is at least one clause on the hedging of protection for pensions that is supported by some elements of the work force, but I hope that by the next stage of our debate TfL will either withdraw some of the clauses, making the Bill workable, or at least provide some form of accountability and set objectives and parameters about the speculative developments that can be undertaken as a result of the powers that TfL will be given. Unless we set those parameters, London’s transport infrastructure could be put at risk, and we might face significant costs and burdens. I hope that the House will fulfil its responsibilities by not taking Transport for London’s assertions at face value, but will be looking at the expert evidence with which we have been provided.
I advise hon. Members to read some of the petitions against the Bill submitted by individuals with expert knowledge of the operation of Transport for London and the consequences of its developments so far. Given that TfL has brought forward, at this late stage, its letter of comfort, it would be useful if we advised it that the petitioners should be not only contacted, but invited to petition again, if they wish, specifically with regard to the amendment to which the letter refers. Although we are yet to see that amendment—we have received only the letter—I would welcome the petitioners’ views on that proposal. I have so far received only a couple of e-mails from those who attended Friday’s meeting, although I know that others have an opinion, and their view is that the amendment proposed in the letter would not save the Bill. They believe that the Bill should be opposed, despite TfL’s assurances. As I said, I shall not oppose the Bill today, but unless we get a definitive view from Transport for London on some of the questions raised in the debate, unless we have clarity about some of the Bill’s provisions and unless we understand how to set parameters for TfL’s operations in this speculative area of development, we will oppose it at a later stage.
I treat the Bill with real scepticism. It could be a speculator’s charter for the Mayor of London, whoever that might be in the future, and that may well be at a cost to London’s council tax payers. I warn the House that, as was the case with the PPP, the Bill could be a disaster for the taxpayer overall, and if it goes through, I fear that the Mayor and Transport for London will place a sizeable bill before us in a couple of years because we will have to bail them out for the losses that they have incurred due to speculative development.
To echo what was said by the hon. Member for Christchurch, TfL should concentrate on providing transport for London. It is not a property developer. If there was the expertise in TfL to carry out negotiations on such matters, an element of confidence might be inspired in us, but its track record, especially at Earls Court, demonstrates not only that such expertise is lacking, but that it does not even understand that it lacks that expertise. Property speculators run rings around it time and again, and those speculators then go off to international festivals to market sites that were once owned by the public of London. It is scandalous that speculators can make vast profits out of public asset in such a way because of either the connivance or gullibility of the people responsible in TfL.
I urge hon. Members to pay more direct attention to the Bill. There are few Members in the Chamber today, which I understand, given events in Scotland and elsewhere, but the Bill could be as catastrophic for London as elements of what might happen following the referendum in Scotland. We might not only be presented with an extraordinary bill in the future, but lose considerable assets on which we were hoping to build a modern network for transport in London. While the Bill is in Committee, I hope that we can find sensible amendments that will allow us to set parameters in the Bill to assure us that this leap in the dark will not lead to a future disaster.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for their excellent contributions, not least because they will allow me to be more succinct.
I was impressed by the knowledge of the hon. Member for Christchurch of landownership in west London. I do not have the same knowledge about Christchurch. Without wishing to go off on a tangent, however, I must say that his knowledge of politics in west London is not so good. Though other councils did, I do not think that Hammersmith and Fulham council ever engaged in the selling off and buying back of lamp posts. It indulged in capital market swaps, which is perhaps more historically famous, but that began under a Conservative council, as I know because I was chair of finance and was involved in unravelling all that, and we were granted, as a privilege for doing so, 15 years of glorious rule thereafter. He has conflated political events, therefore, but I forgive him because his summation of the arguments against the Bill was so good.
I would be interested in this Bill in any event, being a London MP and given the many concerns, which I will not repeat, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington and the hon. Member for Christchurch, who from their different political perspectives have put their finger on the issues at stake, but I have an additional and perhaps more specific—some might say parochial—interest. I can demonstrate that the origin of the proposals lie in the Earls Court-West Kensington development in west London and might well end there, unless things happen.
I shall say more about that development in a moment, but first I want to resolve the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) about, “Hasn’t the Earls Court deal already been done?”. Yes, part of the deal—concerning the exhibition centres—has been done, to the extent that the partnership agreement has been entered into, but the other major part of the site, also owned by TfL, the Lillie Bridge depot, is a minimum of five or six years down the line.
In any event, what happened at Earls Court is highly relevant to the Bill, and had the developer not pushed to get on with the proposals and had TfL not delayed the Bill, I suspect that the original idea would have been exactly the sort of vehicle envisaged in clause 5 and that the clause would have been used for the first part of the scheme.
John McDonnell
For the record, I can confirm that point. On 6 May, TfL and Sir Peter Hendy CBE wrote to the RMT that TfL
“may only use a company limited by shares as the joint venture vehicle”.
So that facility is open to it. He wrote:
“The new powers will be of most relevance to joint ventures with the private sector involving property development”,
and he
“anticipated that any such projects will be done using a partnership structure. Indeed, the choice of joint venture vehicle for the Earls Court development would have been different if TfL had the powers it is now seeking.”
Mr Slaughter
I am juggling a lot of papers here, so I am most grateful that my hon. Friend had that letter to hand to confirm the point.
It is important to note the ideas and the opportunity that came out of the Earls Court scheme. Let us be clear that this scheme is the Tennessee Valley authority in all of this: it is not just a scheme; it is a magic scheme—an £8 billion development and currently the largest site under planning development in London. It will remain so until the High Speed 2 site, also in my borough, comes along.
As to the history, it has been pointed out that the legislation for the scheme was presented to Parliament on 29 November 2010. It had an uneventful Second Reading on 13 December 2011, largely because it was below the radar for many people. Before I come on to the current petitioners, I must thank the then petitioner Mark Ballaam on behalf of the West London Line group, which is a fantastic organisation. It would be absolutely wrong to call it an amateur group. It had such a degree of professional expertise that it became the de facto guardian of the railway system in west London, doing a huge amount to promote it.
The group spotted what TfL was up to and got its petition in. Were it not for that group, I am not sure whether we would ever have got the first major concession. The Bill came before the Unopposed Bill Committee of the House of Lords, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has mentioned. It is peculiar when we go back and look at these documents: there had to be a corrected transcript because the first entry in Hansard showed that there was no debate or discussion at all. In fact, we have quoted from the quite substantive debate that took place.
There is a slight confusion because the clause numbers have changed. What was discussed in the earlier debate as clause 5 is now clause 4. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington rightly pointed out, what appeared to be a major concession was not quite such a concession because of the schedule that lists all the circumstances under which TfL can continue to dispose of land.
It was said to the Chair of that Lords Committee:
“My Lord, I would mention that following discussions with DfT, TfL has proposed certain amendments to Clause 5”—
now clause 4—
“which are contained in the filled-up Bill before the Committee today, and those amendments provide that TfL subsidiaries may not grant security without the consent of the Secretary of State, other than in respect of those matters that are specified in a new schedule proposed to be included in the Bill.”
Yes, there was a concession, but it might have been more apparent than real. It was to deal effectively with the objections at that stage in January this year. The issue limped on until it arrived here, with no urgency or hurry at all as far as I can see—until very recently when things take on a frenetic aspect.
With the petitioners, I have had three lengthy meetings with TfL, the last of which was attended by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington last Friday. That is good; I am glad that it is prepared to put in that time. It is an important Bill to TfL and it has been courteous throughout the process. That is true, but it concerns me that, having allowed things to drift for four years, it has now taken on this extraordinary degree of urgency. Similarly, it concerned me when the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said that we should support the Bill because it would make public-private partnerships run rather more smoothly. I do not think we want anything like PPP to be run more smoothly. There are lessons for us to learn that we do not want to be repeated in the context of this Bill.
Yesterday, the letter arrived, as has been said, following the Friday meeting. It said:
“We have considered the comments made at the meeting regarding clause 5 and the concerns expressed and, consequently, TfL intends to propose an amendment to clause 5. The amendment will insert a new sub-clause in clause 5 which will provide that TfL must obtain the Secretary of State’s consent to form, promote or assist a limited partnership when the purpose for it doing so is to carry on the development of land otherwise than for the purposes of TfL’s functions.”
Well, so be it. That is another attempt to deal with the objections that have been received in an emollient way, albeit at the eleventh hour. The concession has been made, and it is right that it should have been made, just as it was right that it should have been made in relation to what is now clause 4. However, it misses the point of our objection—at least, my objection, and what I understand to be the objection of the petitioners—which is that we do not think that this is the right approach for TfL to take. The fact that there will be a check is helpful, but we would prefer the clause not to be included in the Bill at all.
John McDonnell
During the meeting that my hon. Friend and I attended on Friday, one of the points raised—and it has been raised by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)—concerned not the principle of limited partnership, but the need to establish some sense of the scale of these operations. In July, my hon. Friend had a meeting with a Mr Graeme Craig of Transport for London, during which Mr Craig said that TfL had 5,700 acres of land across London, and approximately 800 archways. There was a list of schemes involving South Kensington, Baker Street, Old Street, Oxford Circus, Victoria, Golders Green and Northwood stations. Whether we look at the schedule, which relates to charges against land, or whether we look at clause 5, which provides for developments by a limited partnership, we are talking about a huge property portfolio for potential development with the private sector.
Mr Slaughter
Absolutely. I do not know whether I am right in suggesting that Earls Court was the fons et origo of that, but in any event the potential for it across London is huge. Moreover, as the hon. Member for Christchurch pointed out, the potential for it to go wrong is huge, and I think that that is what is going to happen.
Mr Slaughter
I have to say that I agree with the hon. Gentleman, although it has not been that transparent: it has taken rather a lot of work, over the last six of seven years and I am probably prematurely grey as a consequence. It has been like getting blood out of a stone, and so much work has been done, not primarily by me, but by the residents, the RMT, and people like my colleague my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington and the petitioners. They have worked day and night on this and have harried these people who are so irresponsible with the public assets that they hold—all public land at Earls Court, all being squandered and given away to developers, for losses of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds.
John McDonnell
The greyness becomes my hon. Friend, by the way, but on the point he is making, the issue is that a limited liability company will lodge its accounts at Companies House, whereas a limited partnership has no responsibility to do that, so even then there will be complete opaqueness about the financial transactions of that limited partnership.
Mr Slaughter
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention.
I was going to talk more about the formal instrument, but we have heard quite a lot about that already and I hope we will have more time to look at it in Committee. I also hope that if this Bill does go ahead we will at least remove this pernicious clause 5.
Before concluding, however, I must make two final points. The first is that I must pay tribute to the petitioners. Richard Osband has been quoted at length and he is an absolute star. He is a constituent of mine and he was a property developer. He bought a house on the west Kensington estate, a large council estate in my constituency, because he liked the area and he wanted to live there, and he is utterly affronted by the fact that he is being forced out of his home—that, with the connivance of public authorities, his home is being compulsorily purchased and he is being chucked out of it in order to do this terrible deal. I must also mention Joss Bell and Anabela Hardwick. Anabela is also a constituent of mine and Joss is an environmental campaigner, and they are also petitioners, and the next stage with this will involve their formidable talents being ranged against TfL.
I shall end my speech in a moment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington is waiting patiently to speak, but I want to make one more point about the sale of land. Until recently, TfL owned Shepherd’s Bush market. Indeed, I think it still owns part of the freehold. The market is not only an iconic London market but a massively important asset to my constituents. It sells relatively low-priced and incredibly varied produce, with a wider range of ethnic produce than almost any other market in London. It is highly successful. The only thing that makes it less successful is the fact that its landlord, TfL, has failed to maintain it. Every stall is let, and it is very popular, but what has TfL done? Rather than take the revenue stream, it has sold it to facilitate the demise and destruction of the market and the building of 200 luxury flats on the site. I am pleased to say, however, that with the help of local residents and shopkeepers, the new Hammersmith and Fulham council is endeavouring to prevent that from happening.
How contradictory is that? Is this new policy of setting up these wonderful joint ventures instead of selling off sites, as we have seen in Earls Court, going to spread across London? It is a policy that TfL appears to have no control over but every liability for. The partnership in Earls Court is with a £2 company with no covenant strength based in Jersey. If things go wrong and the project goes belly up, that company could be dissolved and the parent company, Capco, which has all the assets, could simply walk away. Who would be left to pick up the tab? It would be TfL. In the meantime, however, it has sold off substantial assets—namely, the freehold of its property in Earls Court—for a 37% stake. In my view, the way in which TfL negotiated that deal is almost criminal, yet we are being asked to give it more powers to do more of the same. That is absolutely not on. In Shepherd’s Bush, TfL had an income stream from a successful market that needed just a little investment, but for political reasons, it sold the development to facilitate another developer making a mint out of it.
I put it to the hon. Member for Christchurch that TfL gets it wrong every time, whether it is selling property or entering into a deal. It needs rather more financial rigour and better financial officers. It also needs to be less ambitious about being a property developer and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has said, more ambitious when it comes to managing our money and providing reliable bus and tube services. If TfL focused a little more on that, rather than on spending four years getting this needless Bill through, we would have a better transport system in London.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
I have listened with great interest to my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), and in particular to all the ups and downs of the developments in Earls Court and Shepherd’s Bush.
This debate is taking place under the long shadow of public-private partnerships and private finance initiatives—two wholly misconceived financial fixes designed to achieve public sector good. I will take this opportunity to say that PFI is of narrow merit and normally suited to capital projects that have a natural revenue stream, such as toll bridges. I certainly did not support the vast extension of PFI that happened under my own Government; nor did I support the misconceived PPP for public transport.
I can understand the scepticism being expressed by Members on both sides as a result of local authorities trying to be clever with financial instruments. However, I was taken aback by the headlong attack on the management of TfL by my good Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington. He accused them of wanting to go on a property development binge and of sacrificing the long-term strategic interests of transport in London to property development. That is a tiny bit unfair.
John McDonnell
Let me make this clear. TfL is working under the political direction of the current Mayor of London. This is about Boris Johnson selling off sites to speculator friends to try to bail himself out following the cuts that have been made by this Government. This is not an attack on the individual officers of TfL—far from it. There is political direction behind this.
Ms Abbott
I will come on to deal with political direction later. The point I make is that on the long-term strategic development of transport in London the key elements in the current TfL management have an exemplary record, be it under a Mayor for whom I did not vote or under a Mayor for whom I did vote twice. It is a little unfair to accuse them of not having any long-term strategic vision. A lot of what has been spoken about by my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington and for Hammersmith, and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is the consequence not of malign forces within TfL’s management, but an overheated property market in London, predatory developments and a climate of tax avoidance generally among multinationals. The House must address such things. We need changes in planning law; enhancement of local authority powers; and fiscal measures to deal with issues relating to the overheated property market in London and some of the consequences.
Ms Abbott
I will not, because I am mindful of the time and I believe there is a wish to close this debate at 7.15 pm.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington said, much of what is happening is due to financial pressures from the Government—they would say that they are obliged to do this. It is important not to confuse TfL, which was named throughout this debate, with the Mayor of London. It is not my role to stand up to defend him, but I would want to defend the long-term, responsible, strategic approach taken by the management of TfL.
There is no question that there is a danger that TfL may be dazzled by the glories of the property world. I was looking on TfL’s website at what it says about itself and property development. It states:
“Transport for London is a brand that is recognised around the world and owns great properties in prime locations. Our unique selling point is the:
Location of our assets
Impressive property space”
and so on. Clearly, it sounds like people who are perhaps overly dazzled by the notion of being property developers, but I remind the House that it is not a question of TfL buying and selling property just to make a profit; TfL, in the course of its activity, has acquired assets that could be developed, be it airspace above tube stations, bus stations, disused depots, archways, surplus London underground land or large-scale transport projects. It is not as if TfL has been wilfully engaged in property development; it has these assets, which in some cases have transpired because of changes in the nature of public transport and in technical aspects relating to transport, and clearly it wants to do the best with them. I do not think TfL has any aspirations to be a property developer.
Ms Abbott
I do not think TfL has any aspirations to be a property developer; I think TfL would argue that it does not simply want to sell off assets in a one-off manner, as some Members have suggested. It wants to construct a way to have long-term revenue streams to pay for things, such as bus service enhancement. TfL can get capital, but revenue is harder to come by.
I listened with great care to what was said about Earls Court and it seems to me that the Earls Court deal may have been misconceived; it may be one of those unfortunate instances where the public sector was out-negotiated by private developers. The only point I wanted to make in this debate is that, in addition to the undoubtedly passionate attacks on TfL, we must give TfL credit for its stewardship of London’s transport system over the years. I hope that in Committee the Bill can be improved, so that whatever vehicles emerge from it ensure fairness on both sides of the agreement. Given the constraints under which TfL operates and given an overheated property market, which is not its responsibility, Members would be unreasonable in not seeing the need for TfL, and in not allowing TfL, to go forward with measures that it hopes will provide it with ongoing revenue. As for this being a quick fix, it surprises me that Members can say that a Bill that has taken five years to get this far is a quick fix. I understand what my colleagues are saying, and I am particularly concerned about what I have heard about Earls Court, but let us give the management of TfL just a little credit going forward.
High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill: Select Committee
John McDonnell Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I apologise for arriving late for the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for your leniency in allowing me to speak for one minute.
Before the Bill goes into Committee, I just want absolute clarity. Last night, I asked the Minister a question about the Heathrow link. Clause 50 refers to the ability to extend the scheme under a Transport and Works Act order, without the full legislative scrutiny that would be required if a further Bill was introduced to deal with the Heathrow link. I want absolute clarity about whether my interpretation of clause 50 is accurate: could the Secretary of State use the provision to make a Transport and Works Act order to introduce a Heathrow link without full legislation? I ask that because many of my constituents want to petition against the Bill, and we need absolute clarity on which clause we are petitioning against and about whether we should petition against the whole Bill because of its failure to address the Heathrow link as part of a comprehensive package of railway network development.
In addition, I have been through all the inquiries for terminals 4 and 5, as well as various other inquiries, and I was a petitioner in relation to Crossrail the time before last. We found that there was a great inequality of arms in making representations, particularly for small community groups. Will the Government look at whether there is an opportunity for better resourcing not local authorities, which can stand on their own feet, but smaller community groups that represent individual facilities or individual communities? They need assistance of some sort to ensure that they can draw on the full expertise they need during the petitioning process.
Mr Goodwill
I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to this important debate. I do not know whether other constituency MPs often feel frustrated, as I do, that many processes such as planning inquiries and the operation of health trusts and other bodies seem to be beyond the control of us as elected Members. In this case, the hybrid Bill Committee at least means that the process will happen within Parliament.
I thank the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and her boss, the shadow Secretary of State, for the co-operative way in which we have been able to work together. It has been a little bit like Christmas day on the western front, but no doubt when we have Transport questions next Thursday the howitzers will start to roar again across the no man’s land between the two Dispatch Boxes.
Hybrid Bills come along rarely, and changes to their rules and procedures seem to be even rarer, so it is important that these motions receive the House’s full consideration despite the fact that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) said, they might seem arcane. Members have raised important issues about the Select Committee stage of the process, and I will address the amendments to the motions. I hope that I will allay many of the fears that have been raised, and that none of the amendments will be pressed.
I turn first to the points that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made about the Heathrow link. I reassure him that Transport and Works Act orders can be applied only to extensions of under 2 km, so the Heathrow spur, which would be much longer than that, cannot be authorised in that way. I hope that sets his mind at rest.
Mr Goodwill
We would need a very good lawyer to get that passed.
I was interested to hear that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) came from Bavaria. I think a socialist in Bavaria is a very rare breed indeed. She talked about passing a provision for the HS1 link. As I said, it is ultimately for the Committee to decide whether a petition should be heard, and it may choose to hear petitions suggesting that a future link should not be precluded. Its work is on the railway proposal before it, and it cannot get bogged down in considering the merits of links that may or may not happen, but it could certainly consider ruling out any future provision should it choose to do so.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), who chairs the Environmental Audit Committee, made a number of points about the environment, and I share her ambition to ensure that the environmental impact of the project is minimised. Of course, she is aware that we published a 48,000-page environmental impact report. I recognise the Environmental Audit Committee’s intention, and we are seeking to have no net loss of biodiversity. It is a hugely ambitious scheme, equal to that on any comparable project worldwide. We are building 140 miles of railway, and in biodiversity terms, it will be as though it were not there. In many cases, of course, there will be biodiversity gains. As I think I mentioned to the Committee, in some places where there is arable farming and monoculture we will put in something better than the current oilseed rape or wheat crops, which have little biodiversity and offer little in the way of habitat.
High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill
John McDonnell Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Everything about my background, and recent history in Parliament in particular, suggests I should support HS2. I am the co-ordinator of the RMT parliamentary group and have supported every campaign for investment in rail over the last 17 years in Parliament. I have also used the argument about high-speed rail and taking capacity from aviation on to rail to obviate the need for a third runway at Heathrow. However, I cannot vote for the Bill tonight—I will be voting for the reasoned amendment—because I must be one of the few MPs who does not know what is going to happen in his constituency.
Initially, when high-speed rail was put forward, I was told that there would be consultation on the main route and then, last autumn, that there would be consultation on the link between the main route through my constituency to Heathrow. I was looking forward to that, because we were told that we would look at about nine options and have a detailed consultation, and that I would be able to organise community meetings and we would come to a view on whether or not we supported the link to Heathrow from the main route—or at least on what option we would support. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) alluded to the fact that a grubby compromise was subsequently made, including across the Front Benches, whereby an Airports Commission would be appointed, in order to get every political party off the hook before the general election about deciding honestly what they supported on aviation expansion. Howard Davies’s commission has already confirmed that it could report by next January but has been told to go away on holiday between January and the general election and not report until after it.
Therefore, my constituents, like others, will not know what the political parties’ views will be about their options in respect of expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick or elsewhere. That has meant that the whole process of consultation about high-speed rail’s link to Heathrow has also been delayed. So I am the only MP in this place who cannot go to their constituents before the general election to explain to them what the implications of HS2 are. What does that mean? It means blight. It causes upset and distress for those people whose homes, businesses and community resources will be at risk, and it causes long-term blight in the area. My area is already blighted by the threat of a third or a fourth runway, but we are now blighted by the threat of a high-speed rail link that could go under us, over us or through us. We do not know which way it will go. That is just unacceptable politics.
Mrs Gillan
Does it also not send out a poor signal internationally that it is taking us so long to decide where our airport capacity lies? Surely we should be ensuring that we have the best connectivity internationally because, after all, we are in a shrinking global marketplace in which we should be competing.
John McDonnell
I agree. I just wish we had some certainty and that certain politicians kept to their word. Who said:
“no ifs, no buts…no third runway”?
That came from the Prime Minister. He never said, “No third runway during just one Parliament.” What he said was interpreted by most of us as a permanent commitment. I agree with the right hon. Lady that we need certainty on this matter, and the one group of people who have no certainty are my constituents. I would like the Secretary of State or the Minister to explain to me what the process will be for consultation and decision making on the link with Heathrow. Will there be additional legislation? Clause 50 enables further expansion of the route to go on under a transport works order and not full legislation, so I fear that there will not be full consultation and that we will not be presented with a Bill that we can debate in this House and vote on with regard to the link to Heathrow. In that way, yet again, my constituents will be left with uncertainty. This is no way to run a railway, no way to plan a railway and certainly no way to spend £50 billion—on a project that could be going nowhere.
Mr Slaughter
My hon. Friend mentions clause 50, but clause 47 allows the Secretary of State, willy-nilly, to take land where he sees an opportunity for regeneration or development of that land. As far as I can see, that gives him carte blanche to do whatever he feels right, whether or not that is in the interests of the railway.
John McDonnell
My constituents do not know the route, do not know what land is threatened and do not know what compensation they will be offered. That is not acceptable, so I would welcome at least some certainty about the process in which the Government will engage when they eventually decide on moving this issue forward with regard to HS2.
I missed the speech that the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) made, but I am sure he raised some of the environmental concerns relating to the north of our borough. May I just raise one such concern, which was raised with me by Bert May, an elderly gentleman who has worked extremely hard with Hillingdon Outdoor Activities Centre, developing it through the Queensmead school sailing club into a sailing centre that has given thousands of young people in our area the opportunity to learn how to sail and enjoy the environment? HOAC is threatened and on behalf of Bert May, my 80-year-old constituent who has put his life into that project, I ask for some certainty about what will happen to our local area, because this affects community facilities such as that and will have a devastating effect on the livelihood, if not the well-being, of many of my constituents. That is unacceptable. Any MP facing this in their constituency would do what I am about to do, which is to vote against the Bill and to vote for the reasoned amendment. We need a reasonable approach to decision making in this House that restores some confidence that we have the capacity to take decisions on major infrastructure programmes that bring people with us rather than alienating them at each stage.
TfL (Funding and Station Staffing)
John McDonnell Excerpts(12 years ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The subject of this debate is future Government funding for Transport for London and station staffing levels. They are matters of considerable concern to many London MPs, but they do extend beyond the capital. Let me first outline the reasons why we sought this debate.
As a result of the Government’s austerity drive, Transport for London’s general grant will, according to its December 2013 business plan, be cut from £1 billion in 2013-14 to £835 million in 2014-15, reaching a low of £629 million in 2015-16 before recovering slightly to £684 million by 2020-21. On 21 November 2013, London Underground, backed by its owner, TfL, and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, announced a policy called “Fit For The Future—Stations”, which includes closing every ticket office at all 240 stations, cutting 950 of the 5,750 station staff positions, which equates to a 17% cut, and removing supervisors and senior staff from many stations. At the same time as revealing station staffing cuts and ticket office closures, London Underground announced with a big fanfare a separate policy of 24-hour operation at weekends on some tube lines. The timing of that announcement was greeted by the staff of London Underground and others as quite a cynical move designed to distract attention from the plans to close ticket offices and slash station staff numbers.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend also recognise in that business plan Transport for London’s intention to seek year-on-year fare rises for the next decade?
John McDonnell
The reactions of my constituents have been remarkable, and other Members may have seen the same. People cannot understand why they are paying more in fares while station staff and ticket offices are being cut. I can understand their being perplexed.
On 18 December, the Labour transport spokesman on the Greater London authority, Valerie Shawcross, asked the following question of the Mayor:
“Will you guarantee that all LUL stations will be staffed at all times?”
The Mayor responded by saying that officers were drafting a response that would be available shortly. We still have not had that response. The fact that the Mayor has still not been able to provide an unequivocal answer suggests that that guarantee cannot be given. Following the King’s Cross fire, a legal requirement was introduced that there be a minimum of two staff at every station, but that applies to sub-surface stations only, so the others are extremely vulnerable.
The business plan also sets out that London Underground will cut the frequency of essential maintenance checks, still plans to introduce driverless trains at some unidentified point in future, is not filling posts, despite large numbers of Londoners looking for jobs, and seems to be plugging the gaps in staffing with casual workers more frequently. My constituency has a railway estate and I represent a number of London Underground workers. To be told a month before Christmas that they would not have a job not only shocked them, but caused real consternation and, understandably, considerable anger. The two rail unions that represent staff at London Underground—the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association—rightly consulted their members in the light of representations that they received. On Friday 10 January, the RMT issued the following statement:
“RMT members have voted by 77% for strike action and by an even bigger majority for action short of a strike. The results will now be considered by a meeting of the union’s executive.”
Dates will be set and there will be strike action unless meaningful negotiations with the Mayor take place. RMT general secretary, Bob Crow, said:
“RMT members on London Underground have voted by a massive majority for both strike action and action short of a strike in a dispute which is wholly about cash-led cuts”
and
“plans that would see the axing of nearly a thousand safety critical jobs and the closure of ticket offices at a time when the tube network is under growing pressure from customer demand and needs more staff and not less to ensure safe and efficient operation.”
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I must register an interest as a former employee of London Transport, where I worked as a booking clerk. I can certainly confirm that security and safety are most important for station staff when looking after passengers. The cuts will create fear in passengers’ minds and they will be reluctant to use the underground, so that they do not have to face criminals. A few weeks ago at Northfields station in my constituency, a staff member was attacked and it was only because other staff were there to assist that he was saved and a disaster was averted.
John McDonnell
My hon. Friend is experienced and knows what it is like to deal with customers face to face on the underground. He knows the insecurities of travellers and staff and outlines a recent, concrete example of what can happen.
Let me finish what Bob Crow said:
“Not only are a thousand posts on the line but staff remaining are going to be forced through the humiliating and degrading experience of re-applying for their own jobs—the same staff who have been hailed as heroes when the tube has faced emergency situations”,
which echoes my hon. Friend’s point. Bob Crow continued:
“That is a kick in the teeth for the loyal and experienced tube workforce who have kept services running safely and efficiently under constant pressure from weight of demand and a creaking and under-resourced infrastructure.”
He also said—I add this as it may prevent some carping or questions later—that before anyone starts
“shouting the odds they should take note of the fact that the turn out in this ballot was higher than the last mayoral and GLA elections and the vote in favour massively outstrips anything that those same politicians can even dream of in terms of a popular mandate.”
Those are the views of rank and file tube workers.
On 9 January, the TSSA issued the following press release:
“A strike ballot of front line station staff was called today by the TSSA rail union in protest at plans to close 260 Tube ticket offices and axe nearly 1,000 jobs.
It gave London Underground seven days notice of a ballot which will start next Friday, January 17 and end on January 27. Any subsequent industrial action could start from February 3 in the event of a yes vote.
Manuel Cortes, general secretary, blamed the ballot on the ‘reckless’ behaviour of London Mayor Boris Johnson who he said was refusing to meet the unions over their genuine fears for safety and security with the wholesale closure of every ticket office.
‘It was the Mayor who came into office in 2008 with a firm pledge to keep open every ticket office on the grounds of keeping passengers safe and secure at all times.
‘Now he wants to scrap the lot, claiming there will be no problems because he will keep staff on station platforms, those that keep their jobs, that is.
‘He wants to scrap permanent station supervisors who are in charge of evacuations and replace them with mobile supervisors who will travel from station to station.
‘But he will not answer the question; “How mobile can you be if all lines are in lockdown because of an emergency and nothing is moving whatsoever?”’.
He called on the Mayor to end his six year ban on meeting the rail unions”—
he has refused to meet them for six years!—
“and to sit down with them instead to work out a solution which would guarantee ‘the safety and protection of all passengers at all times’.”
I repeat what the Mayor said in 2008, which was very specific. He said that there was no
“financial, strategic or common sense”
in the closures that were threatened at the time, and promised:
“We will halt all such ticket office closures immediately”—
That is a broken promise. It is a broken promise not only to the staff, but to the travelling passengers.
Passengers and the general public are anxious. A large poll—a face-to-face survey by Survation of 1,027 London underground users in 23 tube stations—showed widespread concern about the threat of ticket office closures: 71% of London Underground passengers interviewed said that they were “quite concerned” or “very concerned” about their station no longer having staffed ticket offices. Concerns were particularly strong among tourists travelling on the underground, with 81% saying that they would be “quite” or “very concerned” in the event of ticket office closures—no doubt because of their reliance on the offices for general information.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend has called a very important debate today on something that is affecting all our constituents who use the underground. Does he share my particular concern for women who are travelling, perhaps to and from work late at night or with their children? They will not have a sense of safety and security in underground stations and on platforms. They need to have that reassurance that it is safe to travel and that they will have support when they need it, should anything happen.
John McDonnell
Safety and security is a critical issue. Later, I will come on to some of the statistics that we have looked at, including research specific to women.
Perhaps the Minister will pass back to the Mayor of London that the same Survation survey found that 49% of underground passengers who were resident in Greater London would be “much less likely” or “somewhat less likely” to vote for a candidate for Mayor of London who went back on a promise to keep ticket offices open. That is what Boris Johnson pledged in his 2008 manifesto. That figure increased to 56% among those who voted for Boris Johnson in the previous election. People feel strongly, and they will be willing to express their concerns at the ballot box in due course. There is also a petition; 20,000 people have signed a 38 Degrees e-petition calling on the Mayor to keep his manifesto promise.
Political opposition to the cuts includes Labour and the Greens, and there has been cross-party support, including from some Liberal Democrat MPs, for early-day motion 787 proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). That sets out the detail of the cuts in an objective fashion, but its conclusion is to call on the Mayor of London to reconsider his proposals and to keep the ticket offices open. One Liberal withdrew his name in due course, but that was a tube line to Damascus conversion as a result of promotion to ministerial office. [Interruption.] I cannot believe that others would do that.
For opposition from the wider community, let me run through some of the broad range of groups that have expressed concerns. The cuts have been opposed by the TUC and by disability organisations, in particular Transport for All, which is the voice for disabled people in London on transport issues, and Disabled People Against Cuts. The National Pensioners Convention has now expressed its concern about the implications of the cuts.
Threats to passenger services are real. Let me run through what the cuts mean in concrete terms. Now, every passenger may depend on staffed ticket offices when the machines are out of order or their Oyster card has stopped working. Under the Mayor’s plans, passengers will have nowhere to turn during such everyday situations. They will have to rely on their Oyster card or contactless payment cards to travel, or they will have to pay higher prices for paper tickets. Passengers will have to buy tickets online, if they can, or at shops, and they will have to find the correct ticket on the self-service machines. Experienced tube workers have said clearly that there are real fears that errors or problems with tickets will no longer be resolved at stations, because there will be no ticket office and of course the shops that sell tickets cannot help with such problems—nor is that their role.
Mr Virendra Sharma
The role of the staff at the station is not only to sell the tickets or clean the station, but to assist the passengers, whether children, women, the disabled or visitors who come to the city and do not understand the workings of the underground system, such as moving through the stations from one platform to another. Staff are guiding passengers. Once they are taken away, individuals and groups will be suffering. I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that once the cut has been made, visitors and passengers will feel that they are not getting such services.
John McDonnell
My hon. Friend is right that certain categories of passengers will be affected the most. To finish on the subject of tickets, however, the Survation survey found that there was little confidence about relying solely on the automatic ticket-vending machines: 52% said that they had been unable to buy tickets in the past, due to the machine being broken. Obtaining information on the correct price and travel advice are also important, as my hon. Friend says.
New forms of ticket retail have become increasingly available, but surveys have shown that passengers value the face-to-face contact with staff, even for simply navigating around the complex ticket pricing system. The Department for Transport’s own review of ticketing acknowledges Passenger Focus research that found that
“passengers are more confident with ticket offices than any other sales channel of obtaining the best value ticket for their journey”.
In response to announcements in recent years about main line railway ticket office closures and reduced opening hours, Passenger Focus stated that
“passengers really value the presence of staff at stations. Any reduction in ticket-office opening hours and the subsequent withdrawal of booking staff often reduces the overall facilities available at stations… We fear that this could lead to passengers feeling less safe at stations and paying more for their tickets than they should.”
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) in praising him for bringing the subject before the House. I also associate myself with my former colleague in London Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma)—he and I were bus conductors together. I speak from a position of some knowledge in this matter.
None of the tube stations in my constituency are fully accessible. It may not be the duty of station staff to assist people up and down stairs, but it is something that they do, and they do it willingly. How in heaven’s name are people struggling with buggies, on walking sticks or with walking aids going to manage without that good will if the people, however willing, simply are not there?
John McDonnell
That is the running theme through all the comments we have had.
The Campaign for Better Transport stated:
“Plans to close ticket offices and cut staff in stations will mean passengers are left to fend for themselves when buying a ticket and will result in people paying over the odds for their journey.”
If there are 17% fewer staff to help passengers, then what? As my hon. Friends have said, staff help with incidents, accidents, advice on what route to take, directions to local venues or addresses, disability access needs, lost property and yes, lost children and everything else, as well as service updates and many more issues that passengers cannot deal with on their own or via a machine. The remaining station staff, to be frank, will be less available to help with travel and other inquiries, because they will be busy helping people to use the ticket machines who would have previously have sought help at the ticket office.
Passengers also need some types of help that a station supervisor has to deal with, in particular the more complex issues for a more senior level of staff. Now there is a station supervisor in every station, but under London Underground’s plans, they will be removed from many stations and responsible for a number of stations instead, so that they might have to travel from another station to help passengers. Staff will be expected to work on several stations over a wider area, so they will be less familiar with the area the station is in and they will often be working in isolation.
There will be an impact on efficiency—all the expert evidence that we have collected says exactly that. Station staff play an important role in keeping the trains moving, such as helping the trains to depart promptly, reporting faults and providing information and advice during service disruption. Station staff work with other London Underground staff, such as drivers and service controllers, to keep the tube running. If there are fewer staff in stations, the train service will suffer. The London Underground plans to remove station supervisors from many stations will slow down service recovery during and after disruption.
Station supervisors also play a critical safety role. London Underground plans that such essential staff will be in charge of several stations at the same time, so they will be unable to deal in person with the many safety incidents and issues. It intends to plug some of the gaps in staff coverage with a casualised work force of agency staff, as well as having office staff who occasionally work on stations, away from their normal duties and with minimal training. In many people’s view, that will compromise safety. I agree.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has obviously focused on the implications for London. I represent a constituency in the midlands, and my real fear is that if Boris Johnson and London Underground get away with these reckless cuts to staffing on stations on the London Underground network today, it will be the midland main line and other surface railway networks around the country tomorrow. Does my hon. Friend share that fear?
John McDonnell
My hon. Friend has made a valuable point. What happens in London is usually the example that is then rolled out to the rest of the country. This issue is critical not just for London but nationally. Ministers have a role in this matter, which should not just be left to the Mayor of London.
There are already issues with station staffing as there have been cuts in the past. In outer London, many stations are already neglected and are not well staffed. Transport for London responded to questions from members of the Greater London assembly on this matter by saying that on average stations have to be closed on 120 occasions a year due to staff shortages.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I apologise for arriving only recently and missing the first part of my hon. Friend’s contribution. Is he aware of the situation facing Finsbury Park station? It is almost unique on the network in having no barriers because of its size, and it is grossly overcrowded, with no step-free access. Without staff, the station would turn from being dangerous into being positively lethal because of the number of people crowding on to the platforms every morning trying to get on to very overcrowded trains. The policy is disastrous.
John McDonnell
I know the station concerned. My hon. Friend has campaigned on the matter on a number of occasions, and he has liaised with the staff there. Trade unions have raised the issue as well. It is lunacy to start removing staff from stations such as that one.
We have been here before. Some hon. Members might remember previous debates on the issue, because London Underground management in particular do not have a good track record in anticipating passenger need. Members might remember that after axing 800 staff the previous year, in 2010, London Underground was forced to recruit an additional 300 staff as a result of passenger complaints about safety and security and the campaign that a number of Members who are here today waged alongside the trade unions.
My worry is about safety in all its aspects. I am worried about both preventing and tackling terrorist attacks. Adequate staff numbers are absolutely essential both in preventing terror attacks and dealing with the aftermath when they happen.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I apologise for not being present for the opening of the debate. Is the problem of safety not even further exacerbated by the proposal to close so many London fire stations?
John McDonnell
We all feel under assault as Londoners at the moment because of what is happening to our emergency services. Through the combination of losing staff from stations and the cuts to the fire service and to policing, we feel as if our emergency services are being stretched to breaking point. If we asked the front-line staff, who are the real experts, they would tell us that as well.
Staff on stations play a role in the prevention of terrorist attacks as well as dealing with the aftermath. It is absolutely ironic that the tube staff who were applauded for their heroism during the London bombings are the ones whose jobs are being cut by the Mayor and who are being treated shabbily in the way in which the announcements are being made. I remember the statement from the Transport for London board in July 2005. I will quote from it now:
“The Board would like to express its heartfelt thanks to all TfL staff who worked so professionally and tirelessly in extremely challenging conditions immediately following the attacks. Their selfless actions to help those who had been injured is a testament to the quality and calibre of public transport workers in London.”
It is those staff whose jobs are now at risk or are to be cut. Their bravery was also praised in the official inquiry into the bombings. I will quote an extract from The Independent in 2010:
“London Underground staff ignored concerns for their own safety and rushed to help victims of the 7/7 bombings, the inquest into the deaths of the 52 people killed heard”.
I will quote a citation for one member of staff, Mr Falayi, who was at Aldgate station, and was told at the inquest:
“You were very brave and I’m sure the efforts you made, despite the risk to yourself, to save and help people there at that dreadful scene will provide some comfort to those who have either lost people or who themselves were dreadfully injured.”
It is those workers who are now going to lose their jobs, and when those jobs go, it will undermine the safety of the travelling public.
It is not just a question of terrorist attacks; there are also operational accidents. One example is people who go on to the line: in September 2012, a member of station staff jumped on to the line to save a child. During the Notting Hill carnival there was an incident in which the car barriers had broken, but as a result of cuts there were no staff to try to ensure that passengers did not go on to a live line. That demonstrates to management that there are heightened risks of that type of accident once staff are removed from stations.
Turning to the issue of security raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), in 2012-13, there were 1,897 incidents of violence on the tube. That number is rising. People have commented on the problems caused by cuts to mainline stations. For example, Anthony Smith, the chief executive of Passenger Focus, has said that
“all our research indicates passengers really like the reassurance only the presence of staff can bring. Taking staff away from stations would represent a very short-term, short-sighted saving.”
The Independent Social Research report of 2009, “Passengers’ Perceptions of Personal Security on Public Transport”, said:
“The presence of uniformed staff provided a sense of order and authority, and gave passengers confidence that anti-social behaviour would be challenged. Women and older people in particular were reassured by staffing initiatives, and often commented that seeing staff on trains, stations and at bus stations made them feel safer.”
I will quote another source, the work done by Kerry Hamilton of the university of East London on women and transport in 2005. Many of us have complimented her on that work, and she said that
“women feel more vulnerable to attack and harassment than men and their greater concern with personal security...This deep concern about personal security has important implications for the design of transport interchanges and waiting areas and for staffing levels...Therefore the quality and level of staffing on vehicles and at bus and rail stations is of vital importance.”
A former colleague, Vera Baird QC, was commissioned by the Labour party to write a report called “Everywoman Safe Everywhere”. That report states:
“A significant number of respondents to the consultation raised concerns about cuts to travel budgets and services and the corresponding impact on that could have on women’s perceptions of safety.”
Removal of station and train staff and the closure of ticket offices were chief among those concerns. A 2012 survey showed that 28% of women and 15% of men do not feel safe using London public transport at all times of the day and night. We have to get that message across somehow to Government Ministers and to the Mayor.
There is also an issue with access. I am worried about the increased problems with accessibility that have been mentioned. Ultimately, a station that is accessible for someone with a disability means a station with staff. There is no cheap and staff-free alternative that protects accessibility. Stations must keep their ticket offices open to facilitate information provision and assistance. That was confirmed by a report into the usability of ticket vending machines by Passenger Focus in 2010, which stated:
“Unsurprisingly, passengers with disabilities can find TVMs difficult and frustrating to use and reported various barriers during the interviews”.
A whole series of people came forward to express their concerns. For example, on people with vision impairments, the report said:
“Using TVMs can present a significant challenge for vision-impaired passengers as the nature of their disability can vary significantly…Vision impairments are all different; some people can see better in less light, some can see better in more light, so it’s difficult.”
People need assistance.
Wheelchair users are extremely worried now about what is going to happen. The overriding issue for them is the lack of accessibility of ticket vending machines. The Passenger Focus report on ticket vending machines stated that even machines that are compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995
“can be difficult for some wheelchair users, particularly those who are elderly or lack the upper body strength or mobility to reach the touch screen. Neither of the wheelchair users was able to position themselves close enough to the TVM to use the touch screen in the same way as other respondents. One attempted a side-on approach which got her closer, but she found the twisting motion required to touch the screen awkward and uncomfortable and she still experienced problems with the reach distance.”
There is a threat to the safety of disabled and older people. I bitterly regret to say that many disabled people have experienced hate crimes at stations, and staff are the key to deterring that abuse.
A Survation survey of 1,031 disabled and older people in April 2013 showed that enhancing personal security and safety was ranked consistently as the most important benefit that staff provide to disabled passengers. The response on CCTV is interesting:
“CCTV cameras can never replace the staff in making passengers feel safe.”
I fully agree. In that survey, 27% of respondents claim to have suffered hate crimes or abuse at railway stations, and 25% said they sometimes or often feel unsafe; nine out of 10 passengers thought station staff were generally polite and helpful. Enhancing personal security and safety was consistently ranked top of the range of benefits that station and train staff provide, and 81% of disabled passengers said that reduced staff numbers would make train travel more difficult for them.
I will not labour the point much longer because other hon. Members want to speak, but let me list some organisations that represent disabled people and to which we should listen. The London Visual Impairment Forum said that staff on London
“underground trains are…excellent…If there are cuts to underground station and ticket office staff this could reduce the assistance offered to blind and partially sighted and other disabled passengers.”
Transport For All expressed its opposition, and cited example after example of different forms of disability requiring a personal touch and understanding by another human being, rather than a machine.
Glenda Jackson
The issue is not only about people with disabilities. People with chronic illnesses could previously have got a black cab or even an ambulance to take them to regular appointments, but that has virtually gone. A constituent who had just come out of hospital collapsed on the platform at Swiss Cottage station, and if there had been no staff there, he would have been left entirely without assistance.
John McDonnell
Example after example has been given. Thoughtistic, which represents people on the autistic spectrum, says that some people on that spectrum are not capable of using, or willing to use, automated systems, and respond better to personal intervention.
Example after example has been given and submitted to the Mayor for consideration, but he has ploughed ahead. The argument that has come back is that gateway stations—King’s Cross, St Pancras and Victoria—will have one third more staff, but that means that staff will be cut at another 125 smaller tube stations, with just one member of staff at certain stations at certain times of day.
At the moment, London Underground offers disabled and older passengers a turn-up-and-go assistance service, in which it provides help with buying tickets, planning routes and getting to the right platform, without passengers having to book in advance. That assistance gives thousands of disabled Londoners the confidence to travel. Many believe that that will be lost.
The recent introduction of manual boarding ramps at 35 stations opened up many more routes to wheelchair users, but those ramps depend on a member of staff operating them. If the staff cuts go ahead, fewer staff will be able to operate the ramps on top of other tasks. The cuts will be a nightmare for many people who suddenly saw their world opening up as a result of increased accessibility following investment over the past 15 or 16 years. Now, we are denying them that.
There is a fear that without the fixed point of a staffed ticket office, visually impaired people will find it harder to locate staff to assist them. Passengers at stations other than mainline stations will have to find a member of staff somewhere on the platform, if they can find one at all.
There have been contradictory answers to questions tabled in the London assembly and in Parliament. On 18 December 2013, Labour members of the London assembly tabled written questions asking the Mayor what assessment he had made of the impact of the cuts on women, disabled people and older passengers. The answer on 7 January was that officers are drafting a response that will be sent shortly. That was despite the fact that parliamentary questions had been answered by Ministers; they said that London Underground had carried out a quality impact assessment to identify the impact of the Mayor’s proposals, and that it showed that the changes will be positive or neutral for all equality target groups. Either Ministers have got it right, or the Mayor has. Someone should tell us the truth of what has happened with the Mayor’s overall assessment.
There will be dangers to staff and we should not underestimate that. The cuts pose a significant threat to staff safety and morale. The official documentation presented to the unions on the day when the cuts were announced was pretty damning. It said that not only would 1,000 posts be on the line, but the remaining staff would be forced to reapply for their jobs, and in addition would have to work in conditions that even on London Underground’s own assessment will carry a medium risk to their safety. It also said that employees will be
“confused, demoralized or distracted due to uncertainty…during”
the HR process. It continued:
“Although there are lone supervisors today this proposal would mean employees at a lower grade would be working alone and may increase employee perception of vulnerability, especially for minority groups at particular risk of abuse.”
That is where we are at. The level of cuts will put passengers at risk, demoralise staff and undermine the overall service.
Mr Lammy
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in the conversation about cuts, it has been hugely disappointing that the Mayor has had nothing to say about how alternative revenue might be found? He could lift the borrowing requirements for TfL. He could allow local authorities and the Greater London authority to keep 100% of London property taxes; that might be a way of supporting Transport for London. There are alternatives, and we have not heard enough about them. Does he agree?
John McDonnell
Not completely. The alternative, as my right hon. Friend said, is investment, growth, and tax collection. Interestingly, today we received a brief from the London assembly arguing for that specifically. My right hon. Friend’s proposal is supported by the London assembly, and the Mayor should listen, as should the Government.
There is an alternative if we invest, but the growth in the number of passengers must be recognised. London Underground faces cuts not because of falling demand, but the opposite. Since 1996, there has been a 60% increase in passenger numbers. Transport for London’s business plan predicts that passenger journeys will rise by 13.7% from 1.273 billion in 2013-14 to 1.448 billion in 2020-21. The same plan predicts that the population growth in London will be to 10 million in 2030. The alternative to cuts is to accept reality, and that sheer passenger demand will require London Underground to take on more staff, not fewer.
In recent decades, various London Underground contracts were taken over by private companies. That has caused public money to leave the system while bureaucracy and inefficiency has increased. Some of those contracts have since returned to the public sector, as hon. Members know, including those relating to Metronet, Jubilee line train maintenance and London Underground’s power supply. TfL saved £56 million by bringing power supply back into London Underground at a lower than expected cost. It expects that to bring significant savings in future years that will more than offset the initial cost.
Re-integrating Metronet has provided London Underground with an ongoing year-on-year saving; it was £53 million in 2012-13. If TfL re-integrated other elements of London Underground that were previously privatised, it would save significant sums of money. That could include tube lines that are in public ownership but not integrated with the rest of the tube. I am talking about cleaning, catering, ticket machine maintenance, engineering contracts, Northern line train maintenance and recruitment.
Let me finally counter some of the arguments that TfL put forward, some of which are bizarre. TfL has said that only 3% of journeys involve a visit to a ticket office, but that is 100,000 people a day. Even if the majority do not visit ticket offices, it is essential that there is a service for those passengers who do. TfL has said that London Underground’s plan will make its staff more visible around the stations. I find that difficult to believe when 950 staff—17% of existing staff—will be removed. Staff will be scattered around the station, rather than at one location.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
On redeploying staff from ticket offices, the crux of the matter is that increasing visibility is incompatible with losing the best part of 1,000 front-line jobs that deal with the London travelling public. It is not just those with special needs and disabilities who will be affected by this proposal; every person travelling on the London underground will suffer a degraded level of service as a result of these proposals.
Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that others wish to speak in this debate. The Front-Bench spokesmen will begin speaking at 3.40 pm. That leaves us with only half an hour for other Members to participate, so will he please draw his comments to a close?
John McDonnell
I will conclude by quickly refuting some more of TfL’s arguments. TfL said that other countries’ underground systems manage without staff or ticket offices. The London underground has won international recognition and awards largely due to having station staff and a good service; many other metros do not. If we level the service down, it will undermine the whole level of service. In Washington, which removed all staff and moved to a fully automated system, the press, after another accident, called the lack of safety the “price of parsimony”. TfL said that new technology means that the London underground needs fewer staff. New technology can improve the London underground, but only if it is used alongside, not instead of, staffing. Too often, TfL uses increased mechanisation as an excuse for getting rid of jobs.
Frankly, we need some clarity on all this. The Minister has a role to play in what goes on in London. This debate is an opportunity for us to ask him to intervene. Will he clarify exactly what the discussions were between the Government and the Mayor that led to the decision to make these cuts in this way? Ministers have a role to play and one thing the Minister could do is impress on the Mayor that there has been no public consultation to date on these cuts. It would be helpful if he joined us and urged the Mayor to consult Londoners. We are making a simple request: listen to Londoners. The Minister might be able to help us get some clarity on the contradictory statements by Ministers and the Mayor on the equality impact assessment.
I am really worried about safety. The Minister has a role to play in meeting the Mayor to look at what assessment has been made of safety in light of the threats of terrorist attacks and the potential for accidents. The Mayor has not met the unions for six years. Will the Minister join us in urging the Mayor to meet the unions? Secretaries of State and Ministers of this Government meet trade unions almost daily, including the TUC, the general secretaries, and others from other unions. The Mayor should at least do that, too. He owes that debt to the unions that represent these staff. The Minister could play a valuable role here. If he does not, London MPs will have to play it. We will join in with those campaigns, with passengers and with trade unions, to try to ensure that the staff are protected and our ticket offices stay open.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. Like other hon. Members, I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing this debate on Government funding for TfL and station staffing levels. Let me begin on a consensual note, because that may not carry on through my speech. As the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said, I often use the underground, and I did so this morning. I recognised, as I always do, the valuable role that the workers on the London underground play.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) asked whether I would tackle some of the myths and misinformation that are circulating. I hope that I will be able to reassure her—I am not sure that I will ever be able to reassure all Opposition Members—that the changes will make London underground staff more visible. They will be there to help with ticket barriers, ticket machines and platform safety in a way that has not been seen before.
John McDonnell
The Minister, and possibly the Mayor, might be able to convince people, but in order to convince people it is necessary to meet them. The Minister and his colleagues meet the RMT and other unions regularly. Why cannot the Mayor do so?
Stephen Hammond
I understand the fixation on the Mayor, because he is the leader of London. However, Mr Brown, who runs London Underground, meets the unions, and I understand that Sir Peter Hendy has done the same.
I was asked several questions, and I will try to answer some of them in the short time that I have. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington asked me about the response to a parliamentary question about the planned changes. The response stated that according to the equality impact assessment, the changes would be
“positive or neutral for all equality target groups”.—[Official Report, 6 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 121W.]
That information was provided to us by TfL, which has also guaranteed that it will run an engagement exercise throughout this year with disabled and older people to ensure that they understand exactly how services will continue to be accessible.
The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) spoke about the great achievements of the previous Mayor, but it is important to recognise that under the current Mayor, platform staffing levels have risen by 12% and demand by 23%. The Government recognise that transport is the key to unlocking growth and jobs, and they provide the financial settlement that allows the Mayor to fulfil his responsibilities for transport and operational matters. The Government are providing more than £10 billion to TfL over the current Parliament, which includes more than £4.5 billion to support the tube upgrade. The Jubilee line upgrade has been completed. The Victoria line upgrade features new trains, tracks and signalling and a 21% increase in capacity. The Metropolitan line has a new fleet of air-conditioned trains. The Government have provided the Mayor with a guarantee that enables him to move ahead with the proposed Northern line extension to Battersea. The upgrade of the sub-surface lines, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster and I take a particular interest, will increase overall capacity by 33%. The spending round announcement last summer included a huge commitment of £5.8 billion in capital grant and a further £3.8 billion of borrowing power for TfL to 2021, which will be absolutely crucial to the delivery of Crossrail and the Thameslink project.
The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) challenged the Mayor on trust. Memories are short on so many things; I remember the previous Mayor telling us in 2004 that there would be no increase in fare levels if he were re-elected, but the following January fares went up by a minimum of 4%. One must be careful when talking about trust, because that contention applies as much to Mayor Livingstone as to Mayor Johnson. The hon. Lady questioned me about fares, and the Mayor has said clearly that the extra accommodation that is needed can be found from TfL’s budget by a combination of efficiencies and increased commercial revenue. In the huge budget provided by the Government, there is scope for TfL to find the relatively small amount that the hon. Lady mentioned. The Mayor has decided, quite rightly in my opinion, to hold London fares down to RPI plus zero. I think it will be possible to find the amount required to do that, and it will be sustainable if he continues to deliver efficiencies and value for money and ensures that the money that the Government give to TfL is best spent.
Everybody has pointed out that London continues to grow. We are set to see a further 1.8 million people by the 2030s, which is enough to fill an extra tube train per week. It is quite right therefore that TfL set out its vision for the future of the tube on 21 November. The core commitment at the front of that vision is that all stations will be staffed and controlled when trains are running and there will be more staff visible on platforms and in ticket halls to help customers.
However we look at it, the way in which passengers choose to pay for their travel is changing. That is an incontrovertible fact, even though we may not like the 3% figure. Over the past five years, demand for travel has risen by 23%, but ticket office sales have fallen by 43%. At the same time, to meet customers’ expectations, station staffing needs to increase. The ticket office is not the heart of the station; it is simply a room. The staff are at the heart of a station’s operation. TfL’s vision for London will allow them to be better equipped with technology and information in the ticket halls and at the barriers, so that they can step out of the ticket office and improve customers’ journey experience.
Transport Infrastructure
John McDonnell Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr McLoughlin
There may be a consensus, but there will always be a certain number of people who are against a consensus. I am not necessarily sure that one gets total consensus on any infrastructure project. It often depends on how it impacts on individual constituents, which is something we have to take into account. We should not run away from that. I hope that, as a result of the detailed work that is being done by the commission and the fact that it is being as open as possible in its dealings with everybody, it will be seen that it is doing a proper and constructive job and will enjoy widespread confidence. Today has been a good example of that, in the way that the shadow Secretary of State has welcomed the initial findings of the report.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
At a minimum, according to the report, 2,000 of my constituents will lose their homes, which will be demolished. That could rise to perhaps 10,000 because of homes being rendered unliveable by noise and air pollution. Two primary schools will be demolished, with perhaps two more being rendered unfit to teach in. The threat returns that we may have to dig up our relatives buried in the local cemetery. Where will my constituents find a home? Where will my constituents send their children to school? Where will we bury our dead? Does he appreciate the sense of betrayal that is felt in my community?
Mr McLoughlin
I know that the hon. Gentleman has spoken very sincerely about this on behalf of his constituents. However, he is prejudging the outcome of the report. The report has not said which option it has gone for. It has come forward with three shortlisted options and another option that will be looked at in the longer term. This is not a fait accompli. The commission’s work will continue over the next 18 months.
High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill
John McDonnell Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. A large number of Members wish to participate in the debate. May I ask people to keep their comments a little more clipped so that we can facilitate as many people as possible? I cannot impose a time limit as we are on Report, but Members can watch the clock and appreciate that five to 10 minutes would be a good proxy as regards the length of their speeches.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I shall try to be brief. I have tabled amendment 23 on the link between the network and Heathrow. Some hon. Members will understand that I have raised the issue on behalf of my constituents, as is my right, in each debate we have had on High Speed 2.
Let me briefly give the context. My background is in supporting rail expansion and investment. I represent a constituency with a railway estate and a large number of railway workers and, in addition, I chair the RMT trade union group in Parliament. We have been strongly behind the development of increased capacity and investment, so when the idea of high-speed rail was first proposed it was welcomed in my constituency for a number of reasons. One was that if we could get railway journeys below four hours, that would take pressure off Heathrow airport and reduce the need for short-haul flights into Heathrow. That assisted in our campaign against the expansion of Heathrow.
When the route was published, every Member south of Birmingham could assess its impact on their constituency, except me, because the link to Heathrow was not included. The route of the link to Old Oak Common was published, but then we were told that there would be a direct link at some stage, the options would be published, there would be a consultation, a preferred option would be considered, compensation arrangements for those affected would be discussed and then this House would make a considered decision.
There are real concerns about the environmental impact where the network hits the north of my borough. The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) and the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) have valiantly argued the case for their constituents and achieved some tunnelling, but a lot more needs to be done. Other facilities that serve the whole borough will be affected, such as the Hillingdon outdoor activities centre, which will need to be relocated.
I am also concerned that my constituents now have no idea what impact the route will have on them because, following the introduction of the Davies commission, the whole timetable and consultation process for the link to Heathrow has been deferred until after the next general election, which means more years of blight for my constituents. That affects all of them, because nine different options for linking to Heathrow are being discussed, which means everyone’s home or business is under threat. That is no way to run a railway or consult on such a massive project. We were promised a logical process with a tight time scale. We were told that as the main network was decided, the routes would be published, there would be consultation on a preferred route, and a decision would be made relatively speedily, which would at least have given us some certainty. That has all gone now.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) said that we do not want to put off any decision on high-speed rail until after the Davies commission reports. The solution, then, is simply to ensure that the commission reports earlier. The fact that it is due to report after the next general election is a political fudge to get everybody off the hook. In the coming six weeks the commission will report on a range of options, but there will be no final report until after the general election. Why is that length of time needed? All the experts, and indeed a number of Government Members, have been clear that the deadline could be brought forward so that we can have certainty about the Government’s preferred option before the next general election.
Andrew Bridgen
I have great sympathy for the hon. Gentleman and his constituents facing the blight of uncertainty over possible routes for HS2 and the link to Heathrow. It is the same for my constituents in relation to the route for phase 2, which is out for consultation, and it could be changed, so huge swathes of my constituency and those of fellow Conservative Members are similarly blighted. To paraphrase, we are all in this together.
John McDonnell
I understand that, which is why I said that Members south of Birmingham know roughly what the route will be.
I was given promises and undertakings in this House about the process that would be followed to determine the route of the link to Heathrow. At least we thought we had some certainty on the time scale for the consultations. In fact, I was holding public meetings to go into some detail about the compensation arrangements for whatever option was to be proceeded with. Now it is all up in the air again and the route that the link will take is uncertain. The Government have opened discussions about a potential third runway at Heathrow. Sometimes Members can become paranoid in this House and think that they are coming for them.
John McDonnell
I will not take it too personally.
Frankly, my constituents have had enough of political fudge after political fudge. What they want to know, and they want to know it soon, is where the line will go, how they will be affected, how we can cope with the social, environmental and economic consequences, and how they will be fully compensated.
Steve McCabe
I have great sympathy with my hon. Friend’s predicament, but is not part of the problem that the Government are missing a trick? This uncertainty is allowing opposition to the whole project to develop. Were we to focus on reducing domestic air travel as part of the project’s value by tackling some of the uncertainty, that would help everybody.
John McDonnell
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), who chairs the Transport Committee, has made the point time and again, with regard to the overall matter of strategic planning—with regard to aviation, I think that she and her Committee are absolutely clueless—[Interruption.] She knows that she has my respect and affection. If we are planning for transport infrastructure in the long term, we must ensure that it is integrated. The way to have integration for this project is by ensuring that the timetable set out for HS2 is integrated with the Davies commission’s report, which means having the report sooner. That could be within six months of the initial report being published this month. The decision could then be taken before the next general election. It is also about being more honest with the electorate on rail and aviation, and not only in my constituency, but nationally.
Rehman Chishti
In relation to the hon. Gentleman’s comments on the Transport Committee, in an earlier debate on aviation he said that it keeps coming back with the proposed expansion of Heathrow, which he disagrees with. If it keeps coming back with that in different guises and compositions, clearly that shows that it must be right.
John McDonnell
It shows a consistent aberration of judgment, because time and again Governments eventually say no.
I appeal to the Secretary of State. There is a solution to my constituency problems and those of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. First, we must address the environmental damage that is still being threatened in the north of my borough. The right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner have a series of requests that could readily be met to overcome some of the environmental and social damage.
Secondly, please give us certainty. That means having the Davies commission’s final report sooner, which could be done early next year, and integrating it with the final decision on the link to Heathrow, giving a properly planned process in which people can have confidence. Otherwise, I will take every opportunity I can to vote against high-speed rail until my constituents are satisfied that their views have been taken into account.
Karen Lumley
I rise to support amendment 17 and will speak extremely briefly. My views on HS2 are fairly widely known, but I want to place on the record that the project is needed now. The west coast main line is nearly full, and as a regular traveller on that service I know that it is essential for many commuters. HS2 is about capacity as well as speed, a fact that is sometimes lost in the argument. I totally understand where those of my colleagues who oppose it are coming from, as there are also strong views in my constituency, but I firmly believe that it is of huge national importance and must go ahead. In my region, the west midlands, we cannot ignore the facts: a £1.5 billion increase in economic output, thousands of additional jobs and increased wages.
Aviation Strategy
John McDonnell Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I agree with the hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma): this is like the annual reunion of the Heathrow debate. The Transport Committee always comes out with a report in favour of expansion. I have a lot of respect and affection for my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), but it is the same recommendation every time it reports. We then have a discussion and we usually put the decision off. As the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) said, we also put off having a discussion on aviation strategy more generally, including coming to a conclusion.
I agree that we should not put off any decisions from here on in. The Davies commission is a fudge to get everyone past the next general election without having to come to any conclusion so that the electorate cannot know what any political party stands for on this political issue. That is not good enough. It is not good enough for parliamentary democracy and it is not good enough for my constituents.
I agree with the hon. Member for—is it Putney?
John McDonnell
Richmond Park. That posh area of London, anyway.
I agree with the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). All of us with sound common sense should band together on a cross-party basis and insist that the Front Benchers agree that the Davies commission should report in full before the general election, so that we can come to some conclusion. We should be able to go into the next general election with a clear view from each political party about their position on future aviation strategy.
I cannot see any political party going in to the next election in favour of expansion at Heathrow. Before the last general election, the Prime Minister made it very clear that as part of his greening of the Conservative party it would come out against the third runway at Heathrow. The Lib Dems, to give them their due, have consistently opposed it—the one thing on which they have been consistent throughout. The current leader of the Labour party opposed the expansion of Heathrow and has made that clear publicly. That might be why—together with his position on Syria—my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) is on the Back Benches, I do not know. The politics of this is that there is no consensus in favour of expansion at Heathrow, and so far there is no consensus in favour of a new airport in the estuary. The arguments put forward have been about cost, and I cannot see anyone grasping that nettle.
John McDonnell
I think that anything that gets past £40 billion frightens the horses of any future Government—I apologise for allowing the intervention, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will press on.
In recent months, the debate has changed significantly as people have become more aware of the environmental and health consequences of what is already happening at Heathrow. A series of reports from Imperial College London and Harvard have demonstrated that, as a result of air and noise pollution, the area has low birth weights. Children’s growth patterns are affected even as they grow older, and there has been some growth delay as a result. In addition, a huge study over 12 boroughs has demonstrated an increased risk of heart attack and stroke as a result of aviation noise. If anyone comes forward at this stage in favour of further expansion at Heathrow, there will not be protests like last time and the Camp for Climate Action—I was there—or anything on that scale; the protest will be multiplied tenfold. It will be the largest environmental battle that the country has seen, and I will be part of it.
If there is a fudge at the next general election, and then a decision is made to expand Heathrow, people will feel that they have been conned and betrayed. That will motivate them even more into saying that democracy in this country has been undermined, and there will be more direct action as a result. It is important to convince the leaders of the different political parties that they need to bring forward the Davies commission to before the next election, so that we can have a proper debate and be honest with the electorate about its conclusions.
I enjoy a good joke, so I saw the submission by Heathrow Airport Ltd to the Davies commission—I do not know whether Members have seen it. It does not just want one more runway, it wants three; it wants to obliterate not only my constituency, but two others as well. The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) is not in his place, but he is a prime advocate for expansion at Heathrow. Now he has been taken at his word—they want to expand into his constituency. His councillors have met and said, “We’re still in favour of expansion at Heathrow, as long as it is to the north”—a breathtaking act of nimbyism if ever I saw one.
The proposals by Heathrow Airport Ltd—now owned by Ferrovial, the Chinese sovereign state fund, and Qatar—looks at an expansion that will take 20,000 people from their homes and expand air pollution, possibly to about 100,000 people. We are already beyond EU limits; children in my constituency are already going into classrooms and handing over their puffers to their teachers. The proposals would increase such things, perhaps tenfold. It will destroy whole communities, but I do not think people will sit back and allow that to happen. I think they will mobilise.
A new campaign has been launched called Back Heathrow. It has basically come together and said, “We are in favour of ensuring that we maintain the airport.” I contacted it and said, “This is a wonderful initiative.” I fully support that because we want to keep jobs in the area, and we can improve the quality of Heathrow and look at how we expand to meet challenges, for example that of China. Routes between China and Heathrow have been limited because we have been refused access in some areas, but that is now opening up. There is capacity at Heathrow to do that because if we took out the short-haul flights—25% of flights at Heathrow are short-haul or point-to-point—we could accommodate those direct flights to China.
I was in favour of the Back Heathrow campaign, but then I discovered that it backs Heathrow only in favour of the airport’s recommendation to expand, and that it is actually funded by the airport itself. What a surprise.
Zac Goldsmith
I had something from Back Heathrow through my door as well. It calls itself, “The voice of the silent majority of west London residents in favour of Heathrow expansion”. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is a very, very silent majority in west London?
John McDonnell
The silent majority is in an office by Heathrow airport and solely funded by Heathrow airport. I cannot find a community group or a resident in favour of the expansion. Let us expose that campaign for what it is on the Floor of the House and ensure that people are aware that it is a con of that nature.
We want a sensible debate on aviation strategy. We need to recognise that, realistically, London has seven airports and eight runways serving it. We move more passengers than any capital city in the world. Paris is fifth behind London—nowhere near us. People make the argument of business connectivity, but we come top of every poll on business connectivity. The answer to the need for further capacity at Heathrow is to ensure that it is not bigger, but better, which is exactly what the Conservatives said at the last election. We should manage it better by moving the short-haul and point-to-point flights elsewhere. I do not accept the argument that we cannot have a collective hub. We can have one as long as we ensure connectivity between the airports.
We need that rational debate to take place. I welcome the report as part of the debate—it is rubbish, but it at least stimulates debate. I urge Members not to allow the deal that is going on between the political leaderships to put the debate off until after the election. Let us have the Davies report before the election, and come to conclusions with which we can then go to the electorate.
Railways
John McDonnell Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
When we have such debates, it is important that we consult the people who run the railway system. I therefore refer hon. Members to the evidence provided to the Select Committee on Transport by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. When privatisation came about, RMT submitted evidence to the House and made it clear publicly that privatisation would result in a risk to safety. Eventually, Southall, Paddington and Potters Bar happened. I attended the funeral of the driver who died at Southall—he was an ASLEF member and my constituent. I remember the warnings that were given. As a result of privatisation, people such as that driver sacrificed their lives.
This time, RMT is saying clearly that the proposals, if they go ahead, will compromise safety. RMT is saying that the system is fragmented and complicated with numerous interfaces, and that the measure will simply introduce another tier of bureaucracy for it to deal with. Its view is that safety should be dealt with at national level and local level, where there is local knowledge. Yes, interfaces in Europe should be dealt with internationally by agreements within Europe, but safety should rest as a national competence. In that way, we can achieve safety on the basis of the knowledge of those who operate the system.
The second point made by RMT is on infrastructure. It clearly says that there is a move—the measure is a further step—towards a single European infrastructure manager. The House has debated High Speed 2. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House believe that key decisions on infrastructure should be retained at national level. Of course, we need integrated decision making when we go across national boundaries, but basic infrastructure decisions should be based on local knowledge and the representation of local interests, and particularly local constituency interests. The measure will take us beyond that.
RMT’s third point is that rail is effectively a money laundering exercise. This is not petty nationalism, but we see an incremental nationalisation of our railway system by Deutsche Bahn and others. The taxpayer subsidy poured into the system is laundered into investment in those companies’ own countries. Why do I say that? Let me quote the German Transport Ministry. It said:
“We’re skimming profit from the entire Deutsche Bahn and ensuring that it is anchored in our budget—that way we can make sure it is invested in the rail network here”.
The laundering of the British pound into German euros is a deep irony, and it is happening as a result of the UK Government’s proposals to support elements in the package.
John McDonnell
My hon. Friend says that we should have a referendum, but we will come back to that in due course.
The objection is about democracy. The measure will fetter the hands of a future Labour Government, who will be unable to renationalise the railway network or keep some element of it in public ownership. That is what the measure is about, and why Government Members support it. They want to ensure that no Labour Government can at any time in future bring rail back into public ownership.
A number of us prefer public ownership and have made the arguments time and again. Public ownership is more efficient, more effective and more cost-effective. If hon. Members disagree with that, I suggest they read a succession of Transport Committee reports from the past few years. I appeal to Members on both sides of the House. Whatever they think about rail nationalisation, they should not allow Europe to fetter the hands of a British Government on such a major issue. This is about democracy, and about ensuring that, when we go into the next election, we have the right to implement what is in our party manifestos. If the measure progresses, it will fetter the hands of future Governments, and therefore undermine British democracy when it comes to deciding the future of our transport system.