Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We have now appointed the head of the new aircraft noise body, which will monitor noise levels at airports and inform the Civil Aviation Authority when it needs to step in and use its enforcement powers. Of course, with the transition to a new generation of lower noise, lower emission and lower fuel consuming jets, the noise footprint around our airports is now considerably lower than it was a few years ago.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to support UK transport-related industry after the UK leaves the EU.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)]

My Department is working closely with the transport industry to ensure that businesses and passengers are prepared for EU exit. We engage frequently with stakeholders to understand their needs, and we have taken action to ensure that we are prepared for all possible outcomes. We have agreed contingency regulations with the EU to ensure that flights continue and that hauliers have access to the EU marketplace in a no-deal scenario. We have also set up new UK safety certification regimes so that we have proper safety standards and rules in place in all eventualities.

[John Spellar]

Unfortunately, the Secretary of State did not refer to the manufacturing industry in that answer. As Brexit looms, his civil servants will no longer have their lame excuse that they are unable to prefer trains built locally—an interpretation of European regulations that is not shared by any other major country in Europe. Even when a firm built a factory in the north-east, it disgracefully lost a contract to a firm that will build the great majority of those trains abroad. Will this Brexit-supporting Secretary of State finally show some backbone and instruct his civil servants to buy trains made in British factories by British workers?

[Chris Grayling]

Of course, the contract to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, which was won by Siemens rather than the other bidders, including Hitachi in the north-east, was in fact let by the current Labour Mayor of London.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Jones]

We are making sure that we are dealing with the disability issue. We want to make sure that the rail network offers smooth, easy journeys for people with disabilities. With regard to the rolling stock coming on to the midland main line, of course, we will deliver it as soon as possible.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I wish to follow the line of argument of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). I do not know whether the Minister has read the very authoritative transport study produced for the previous Government by the British Airways chief, Rod Eddington, which clearly made the case against grand projects and advocated widespread incremental improvement. Would we not be better served if the Government funded not only rolling stock but many other transport improvements by scrapping the ever more expensive, budget-busting HS2?

[Andrew Jones]

Again, I give the answer that I gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis): we are doing both. It is not a question of one or the other. We are delivering HS2, which is required to add capacity into our rail network, and, at the same time, we are also delivering, in control period 6, maintenance and enhancements worth £48 billion across our classic rail network. So we are doing both, not one or the other.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Secretary of State can chew gum and walk at the same time, so while he is dealing with future viability with our leaving the EU, will he also deal with the current crisis over drones affecting airports? May I give him the opportunity to answer the questions that he did not answer earlier in the week? Were contingency plans agreed with the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office to protect our airports from drone incidents and others, and if not, why not? Were such plans not activated in time because of dithering? Why did they not work? Was that the fault of the Secretary of State’s Department, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office or, indeed, the Cabinet Office?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I listened to the right hon. Gentleman’s question with great interest. It was tangential to the substantive question, and I just say gently to him that I had been thinking of offering him an Adjournment debate on the matter, until I realised that he had, in fact, just conducted one.

Drones: Consultation Response

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I know how strongly my right hon. Friend feels about the matter. Of course, the same issue would arise whether expansion took place at Gatwick, Stansted or Heathrow. The reality is that Heathrow has been ahead of most other airports in providing protection against drones, but even Heathrow has not had the perfect solution. That is why the systems that we now have in place could be deployed at Heathrow at short notice to provide protection for the airport.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I think it was Peel who said that the absence of crime, not the apprehension of criminals, was the test of a good force. What the hundreds of thousands of travellers wanted was for the disruption to be stopped. May I ask some very specific questions? Were there contingency plans already agreed with the MOD and the Home Office to protect our airports from drone incidents and others? If not, why not? If there were such plans, why did they not work? Were they not activated in time because of dithering, and was that the fault of the Secretary of State’s Department, the Ministry of Defence or the Home Office—or, indeed, the Cabinet Office and the Cabinet Secretary in No. 10? Which is it?

[Chris Grayling]

As we are hearing from around the world, protections against such a deliberate and disruptive attack are few and far between. The reality is that the Government and different Departments, including the MOD, moved very quickly to assemble a response of a different kind from any previous one, and they did so in a way that is now being looked at very carefully around the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

I can certainly confirm that we will be consulting shortly on E10 and that we are looking closely at the issue of fuel labelling, which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, has to be addressed relatively quickly.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that what is really needed is an overall, measured, strategic approach to the propulsion mix for vehicles? That will rightly include E10, but it will also include diesel. What has been so damaging to that industry has been the Government’s war on diesel, which has been hugely damaging to our automotive sector, as well as our engine manufacturing.

[Jesse Norman]

I can only salute the right hon. Gentleman’s expertise in crowbarring a question about diesel into exchanges about E10. We are taking a strategic approach. We introduced changes to the renewable transport fuel obligation earlier this year. We have changed the status of the crop cap. We are pushing for the increased use of waste-based biofuels, and we are supporting the introduction of higher-performance fuels in other sectors of the transport world.

National Policy Statement: Airports

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

I will make some progress, because I am aware that many Members want to speak.

This has not been a great year so far for the British transport system, with meltdown on the railways and growing frustration across the transport industry about the Government’s “It will be all right on the night” approach to Brexit. Last week’s news from Airbus struck like a thunderbolt, so the proposal to undertake a large-scale infrastructure project in the UK should be a good news story. The expansion of our hub airport should be very good news indeed—except it is not.

The Government have not done the work to support the development of this project. Their case is riddled with gaps and is fundamentally flawed. Yet again, this Secretary of State has made a complete shambles of a vital national project. Yet again, he is not putting the relevant facts before Parliament. Today’s vote has been scheduled just days before the Government’s own advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change, is due to publish a report that is expected to warn that increasing aviation emissions will destroy Britain’s greenhouse gas targets. It appears that the vote on the national policy statement has been planned for today so that hon. and right hon. Members are left in the dark about how much the Secretary of State’s plan will obliterate the UK’s climate change commitments. That is not only reckless, but shows contempt for Parliament and for the environment.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Is not my hon. Friend slightly missing the point? Aviation—across the world and into Europe—will continue and grow, so the real question is whether it will be going into Schiphol, Frankfurt or Charles de Gaulle airports, or whether we will create investment, protect the well-paid, unionised jobs at Heathrow, and create opportunities for the youngsters of the future.

[Andy McDonald]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention but, of course, we must always ensure that any growth is delivered sustainably—that has to be the point.

Hon. Members will not have the opportunity to see the hugely important Committee on Climate Change report before they vote. Global warming is the single most important issue facing the world, yet Members of this House are being asked to vote today without full knowledge and without the full set of facts.

That is outrageous behaviour from the Government, and from the Secretary of State in particular. The Justice Committee said last week that his multi-billion pound reforms to the probation service in 2014 will never work. In his two years as Secretary of State for Transport, he has laid waste to the railways, slashing and burning and leaving a trail of scorched earth. Rail electrification cuts, franchising meltdown and timetabling chaos have caused misery to millions. His mismanaging of airport expansion, as he has mismanaged other areas of transport, will present much bigger risks, with immensely more serious consequences.

The Transport Secretary has consistently demonstrated poor judgment and a reliance on incomplete, unreliable and non-existent evidence, yet he stands here today and expects the House to take his word for it—to take a leap of faith with him. Labour has been clear that we will support airport expansion only if the very specific provisions of our four tests are met. We are not against expansion; we are against this option for expansion, as presented.

The north-west runway is too risky and it may be illegal. There are simply too many holes in the case. There are too many hostages to fortune for the taxpayer and for any future Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

My right hon. Friend has made his point eloquently. All I would say is that the major roads network that we announced last week, along with the bypass fund, is specifically designed to be part of a wider strategy whose purpose is to provide the infrastructure that new housing development requires. That should be part of the solution for any of these schemes.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. This question has been narrowly confined to Mid Sussex, from which the right hon. Gentleman’s Warley constituency is a considerable distance away. If he is going to focus his question exclusively on Mid Sussex, not “and elsewhere” or “and other places”, we will hear him.

[John Spellar]

Will the Minister accept that the improvements to the road system to East Sussex—

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

Mid Sussex.

[John Spellar]

Mid Sussex. Does the Minister accept that the road system to Mid Sussex would be considerably improved if money was diverted from the ever-deepening, bottomless pit of HS2, thus enabling those projects to move forward much more quickly? May I join my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) in calling for a reassessment of this increasingly troubled scheme?

[Jesse Norman]

Mr Speaker, it is a mark of your grace that you were able to allow the right hon. Gentleman to proceed with a question so evidently unrelated to the issue, so much so that he was not able to make it to the actual name of the constituency or the area concerned, although that came in the first 10 seconds of his question. The answer to his question, if I may dignify it with an answer, is that there will be plenty of investment in both sides of that equation.