Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Richard Holden

Thursday 13th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Despite billions being invested in buses across the country and £31.7 million going specifically into Stoke-on-Trent, First Bus continues to cut routes, harming 21-year-old carers such as Charlie Preston in Chell who may now have to quit her job. This Government have done their bit—is it not time that First Bus does its bit?

[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I was delighted to visit Stoke with him and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) to see what is going on. I urge the council to use that flexibility to work with First Bus to deliver a solution for all his constituents. We have put that flexibility in there and I hope that it uses it to protect his constituents.

Buses: Funding

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Richard Holden

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Again, it was a delight for me to visit his constituency. In fact, I visit it quite regularly on the way up to my constituency. He is quite right. I spoke to the Mayor of Tees Valley Combined Authority today. He was delighted with the £1.53 million extra that will be coming this year as part of the new BSOG allocation for Tees Valley, and he wants to work with local operators to see where it can be best used to support local bus services. On top of that, Arriva North East will be getting a funding settlement. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and other colleagues to ensure that that cash supports not just current bus services but potential new ones in the right places.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Bus services in Stoke-on-Trent have halved since 2009-10, in large part due to covid, as has been reported by Richard Price, the local democracy reporter for The Sentinel. Of course, another challenge we face is that First Bus in particular has been doing a bad job of delivering good routes and reliability, which has meant that passenger confidence has plummeted across Stoke-on-Trent. We are grateful for the £31.5 million that has come in through the bus service improvement plan. What we now need is for the Minister to come to Stoke-on-Trent—he seems to have toured everywhere else across the United Kingdom—to put pressure on Stoke-on-Trent City Council to deliver on the plans the Government have funded and hold a summit to talk about creating a north Staffordshire transport authority to better connect places like Kidsgrove and Talke to the great city of Stoke-on-Trent.

[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for welcoming the cash that is there and ready to go in Stoke-on-Trent for bus service improvement. I would be delighted to visit him and to speak with the council. On my recent visit to Stoke-on-Trent, I visited Stoke-on-Trent Central rather than Stoke-on-Trent North, but I will remedy that at the earliest possible opportunity.

Christmas Adjournment

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Richard Holden

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for being slightly late. To my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), I say it is always great to hear his speeches and the tours of his constituency and, like many other Members, I wish that Southend is granted city status at some point.

It has been a very difficult year for many in North West Durham; however, they have also had a different year with a very different new MP. I have fully taken on some of the major challenges that have faced my constituency over the past few months. I am delighted that Shotley Bridge Hospital is one of the 48 hospitals that are going to get Government support, so we will be seeing a new community hospital. There is also extra money for a feasibility study for a “Consett to the Tyne” public transport link. Those two major local projects will really help to level up and transform my community, and hopefully help us to build back better beyond covid.

On a local level, I have been concentrating on the motor homes tax, and I managed to work with the Chancellor to get it reduced earlier this year, thereby saving £5,000 off the cost of a new motor home, many of which are built in my North West Durham constituency—

[Jonathan Gullis]

You are an expensive MP.

[Mr Holden]

Indeed I am—and I make no apology for it.

The legislation on relief for public lavatories is currently going through the House of Lords, and I hope to see its journey continue. I am honoured to work with colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on local democracy to see the relief finally secured. It will have a particularly beneficial impact for parish and town councils throughout the country, saving them £8 million a year.

Access to cash is something that I have been working on as a member of the Public Accounts Committee. In my constituency we have managed to save the cash machine at the post office at Billy Row, enabling that community to probably keep its local shop, and in Moorside there has been a move from a machine that charges £1.99 a go to one that is free, helping to put £20,000 a year back into the pockets of people in one of the most deprived wards in the constituency.

As far as casework goes, several things have really mattered a lot to me this year. One of them has been working with the excellent Baroness Stedman-Scott in the other place. She has really helped out a couple of my constituents, particularly with personal independence payment assessments and reassessments. They have been going on for such a long time, and we have seen really good progress there, with some constituents seeing big payments that were backdated for several years. We are really helping them out.

As far as private Member’s Bills go, last week I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill to ban virginity testing and I will do everything I possibly can to get the Government to give it a bit of space at some point, or perhaps to attach it to another Bill. I have been delighted to help out my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) with her private Member’s Bill on testing for psychoactive substances in prisons. That is a really important measure that has, I know, been welcomed by many prison officers who work in Frankland and other prisons near my constituency, because of the effect those substances have on the inmates. That is another very important piece of legislation.

Next year, I hope that we will see some more sunlit uplands than this year has provided. I know that many of my local pubs and hospitality businesses have really suffered during the lockdown, and they want the restrictions ended as soon as possible. I know that that can happen only with the vaccine programme roll-out, and I have been delighted to see the Government put their shoulder to the wheel on that, getting preferential access to a huge number of vaccines. I hope that the Oxford vaccine can be rolled out as quickly as possible when it is safe to do so, because that will make a massive difference because of the ease of distributing it in care settings across the country.

I want to mention a few things that I will be looking forward to next year. Nationally, I hope to make a bit of a push on mental health, particularly for young people. After the year we have had, the impact of that and of not being able to see friends, family and relatives has been a concern for many people locally.

Willington, Tow Law and Crook really need some good news on the towns and high street funds side of things. Crook has had more than a decade of being ignored and having services removed—it saw its local swimming pool removed almost 10 years ago—and it is important that it sees some proper local investment. The post office in Wolsingham has been earmarked for potential closure, and I am going to work with local people to see whether we can find somebody to take that on.

The Christmas lights in Consett this year were an absolute disgrace. The council seemed to manage to put out cones as quickly as they could all over the town centre when it came to easing the lockdown, yet when it came to putting up a few fairy lights to brighten the town centre ahead of Christmas it seems to have totally failed. I hope that the council will work with me next year to make Consett, Crook and Willington town centres look a bit brighter. I am delighted to be going to Wolsingham tomorrow to open the Christmas lights.

On the particular issue of covid-19 and hospitality, next year I would like the Government to reflect on what a hard year this has been for the hospitality sector, particularly our local pubs and brewers. I will certainly join colleagues on all sides to put pressure on for a reduction in beer duty and a change to the taper system to allow small breweries to expand without a massive tax hit.

Finally, I want to mention two things that have affected lots of different parts of my constituency in lots of different ways. The first is planning. There has been a huge amount of talk about it here, but we need to see our towns and communities enabled by large unitary authorities such as mine to come forward with proper neighbourhood plans that give them a proper voice. In particular, I am thinking of the High West Road in Crook and the Medomsley Bank development. There is also concern about the possibility of a waste-to-energy incinerator in Consett. Secondly, speeding is a huge problem in so many of my towns and villages. It would be really nice to have the council work with me on getting some buffer zones, particularly for our rural villages and small towns, to make those communities safer for everybody.

Kidsgrove Sports Centre

Debate between Jonathan Gullis and Richard Holden

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Gullis]

I do not think any Member can have an Adjournment debate without the honour of being intervened on by the hon. Gentleman. I completely agree with him. He tirelessly champions his work on obesity. If we do not tackle this issue, there will be health implications and pressures on our NHS, as well as the mental health aspects. We also need to be aware of the bad education that leads on for generations. I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need community-led, community-run sports clubs that are funded partly by central Government and partly from elsewhere to best serve our constituents.

To restore the heart of Kidsgrove, the project must secure funding for the sports centre to be renovated and modernised to meet the highest health and safety standards, as well as current and future leisure needs. The cost of renovation is significantly lower than that of a rebuild. I endorse unreservedly the expansion of sports provisions, but I cannot say that, when the Jubilee 2 centre was built at a high cost to taxpayers across the county, I did not understand the annoyance and frustration of the residents of Kidsgrove. It should now be Kidsgrove’s turn to see investment.

The cost of a fully functional renovation has been projected to be £5.5 million, and the council has already committed £3.1 million towards the project. However, we are all aware of the cost of covid-19 for local councils, and Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council is no different. Government funding of £1.3 million has been secured, and that has reduced the immediate pressure on council finances, but that sum is sufficient only to cover the council’s lost income and additional costs for the first three months of the year. The council will be required to draw down all of its revenue reserves, in addition to taking action to restrict all non-essential expenditure, at a time when our communities are looking to the council to lead our local recovery efforts.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

It is great to hear what is happening in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Up in County Durham we have problems with obesity levels similar to those in Stoke, Newcastle and Staffordshire in general. Does my hon. Friend agree that councils like Durham should not be building brand-new council headquarters at a cost of more than £40 million, and should instead invest that money in sports facilities for young people in towns such as Crook in my constituency, as well as in the Durham Dales ladies’ hockey club in Wolsingham?

[Jonathan Gullis]

My hon. Friend speaks with absolute conviction: the people of Durham are being failed. It is self-indulgent for councils to go ahead and build nice, big, shiny brand-new buildings. Members from the west midlands will have seen the west midlands police and crime commissioner wasting taxpayers’ money on shiny objects rather than investing in front-line policing, so I completely endorse what my hon. Friend said. The people of Crook deserve what they need, and I hope the council will listen to my hon. Friend, who speaks with conviction on all issues.

I plead with the Minister to help us in Kidsgrove and Talke. We will require Government support, alongside that from Sport England and the local council, to open up this valuable community asset, helping to create jobs and improve physical and mental health. I am not asking for large sums, but any financial support that my hon. Friend the Minister can give would show that Kidsgrove is no longer forgotten in this House. Reopening the swimming pool in the existing sports centre represents the quickest and lowest-cost option for providing a sports and swimming vision in Kidsgrove. This is not about profitability, although there are solid grounds to suggest that the sports centre would become self-sufficient; this is about health, happiness and community. When we find ourselves able to live freely and safely again, it will become more important than ever to participate in communal activities and keep ourselves healthy, physically and mentally—to join a Zumba class as the kids take their after-school swimming lessons, and to laugh and come together. This could, and should, become a key recovery project in the wake of covid-19.

I know that the Government are committed to encouraging a healthy, active lifestyle and levelling-up across the United Kingdom, and I fully accept that, as we brace for economic recovery, the public purse strings will be pulled that bit tighter. However, it has been demonstrated time and again that investment in leisure and recreational pursuits eases the strain on our national health service and our valued emergency services, as well as reducing crime rates and improving mental health. The people of Kidsgrove ought not to be financially penalised for wanting to keep fit—indeed, encouraging people to keep fit is a pillar of the Government’s strategy —so I implore the Government to do the undeniably correct thing and invest in my constituents, as we promised in December.