Cost of Living

Debate between Justine Greening and Tom Harris

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Justine Greening)]

I am obviously delighted to be here today. The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) ought to try re-moding some time. We re-moded a lot of Ministers out of their cars at the last election, and I am pleased to say that many of them have had to get used to using the public transport system that many Ministers themselves use today, and very good it is, too. I came in on the District line today, and it was working perfectly.

We have had a broadly constructive and important debate on the cost of living, and some measured contributions from around the House. They have borne out that everybody realises the pressures that global oil and food markets and prices—combined, of course, with inflation—have put on household bills in recent years. That is why, even as we deal with the deficit left to us by Labour, this Government are taking action wherever we can to help family budgets. It is why, through raising the personal allowance, we are cutting income tax for 24 million people and taking 2 million people on the lowest incomes out of income tax altogether. It is why we have helped councils up and down the country to freeze the council tax for the second year running. It is why we cut fuel duty in the Budget last year, deferred the increase planned by the last Government in January, and cancelled another increase proposed by the last Government for this August.

When it comes to home owners being able to pay their bills, the most important thing we as a Government can do is to help maintain the conditions for the Bank of England to keep interest rates low. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) talked about the importance of that aspect of family budgets, and she is absolutely right. We have focused on that through the spending review, making a number of announcements setting out a credible plan to tackle the deficit and get control of our debts, meaning that we really help to keep interest rates low for the 11 million households with mortgages. That is in stark contrast to the impact of Labour’s plans.

I was very pleased to hear a number of Members welcome the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, which is in many respects long overdue. I look forward to the debate that will take place in this House to ensure it can be as effective as I am sure many Members want it to be.

The right hon. Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) and the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden)—I cannot see her in her place—talked about the importance of supporting families. This Government agree, which is one of the reasons why we have extended free nursery care to 15 hours for all three and four-year-olds and doubled the number of disadvantaged two-year-olds receiving 15 hours of free child care a week, helping 260,000 families. These are difficult decisions that we face, but we are doing our best to ensure that, in spite of that, we are helping the families that need our help and taking action wherever we can.

We need not take any lessons on the cost of living from Labour. Most people in Britain remember their record in government. Theirs was a Government who never lived within the public’s means, giving us the deepest recession since the war and running up the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history. When it comes to measures that help to put money back into people’s pockets, we need not take any lessons from a party whose only approach to helping hard-working people make ends meet was to take more and spend more, raising tax 178 times, including 12 hikes in fuel duty. Labour Members talk about the cost of living, but on their watch band D council tax more than doubled; gas bills doubled; between 2004 and 2009 regulated train fares went up by nearly 20% and unregulated train fares went up by a quarter; and, for the first time since records began, GDP per capita actually fell in the last Parliament.

[Mr Harris]

rose—

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

rose—

Rail Reform

Debate between Justine Greening and Tom Harris

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The Labour party may not be prepared to rule out nationalisation, but I am.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I am disappointed in the statement. In the time I have been in the House, I have never heard a ministerial statement so lacking in substance. This is not a statement; it is a coincidence of ink patterns on a bit of paper. The Secretary of State says that she wants £3.5 billion of efficiency savings by 2019, but she has not given us a single way of saving one penny. Was she even in the House yesterday when the Prime Minister told the nation that government was about making tough decisions? Where is a single tough decision in this statement? She does not have any solutions; all she has come up with is a series of clichés and warm words put together by civil servants not wanting to offend anyone.

[Justine Greening]

I recommend that the hon. Gentleman read the documents that we have published, which have a lot more of the detail that he wants. I am not going to take any lectures on tough decisions from someone who, when asked about Network Rail bonuses, said:

“Bonuses … are a matter for the company’s remuneration committee, not for Ministers.”—[Official Report, 24 June 2008; Vol. 478, c. 174W.]

I do not think that showed any backbone whatsoever.

Civil Aviation Bill

Debate between Justine Greening and Tom Harris

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman correctly points out that exclusion and I will address his point shortly. When Sir Joseph Pilling reviewed that matter in 2008 he concluded that the current approach was appropriate.

Importantly, the CAA’s decisions will become more accountable because the Bill will provide greater access to challenge regulatory decisions. As the CAA discharges its responsibilities, it is essential that its decisions are guided by the needs of customers. Therefore, clause 1 establishes for the first time a single, clear, primary duty on the CAA to further the interests of consumers—all passengers and owners of air freight both now and in the future—and, wherever possible, to do that by promoting competition.

Some airlines have argued that the CAA’s duty should be extended to airlines as users of airports, alongside passengers. The airlines are important of course, but I am in no doubt that if conflicts of interest arise between airlines and passengers, the regulator must be squarely on the consumer’s side. To protect consumers at all airports, the Bill gives the CAA powers to enforce competition law concurrently with the Office of Fair Trading in the airport services sector.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State makes a valid point about what should happen if a conflict of interests were to arise between passengers and airlines. However, can we not address this issue by stating in the Bill that the CAA’s prime obligation is to passengers and that the airlines are specifically a secondary priority?

[Justine Greening]

I do not think we need to go that far. As I have said, the Bill’s key purpose is to provide clarity on what the CAA must focus on primarily, which is consumers. It is important to provide that clarity.

Rail Fares

Debate between Justine Greening and Tom Harris

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I think many people watching the debate will wonder why the hon. Lady’s party did nothing in 13 years. I will shortly publish a Command Paper setting out our approach to tackling a number of the broad challenges that exist.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I am disappointed that the Secretary of State is being so churlish and saying that the last Government did nothing to reduce costs. Is she even aware that in the five-year control period ending in 2009, they forced Network Rail to improve its efficiency by 33%? Why has she not admitted that that was a major achievement, or that further efficiency savings were included in the next control period ending in 2014?

[Justine Greening]

I do not think there is any way in which the hon. Gentleman can dress up the outcome of the McNulty report, which set out very clearly just how expensive our railway industry is compared with those in mainland Europe.

I understand that rail fares are a large part of household expenditure for many people, particularly commuters, who often travel significant distances to go to work and earn a living. Of course, the taxpayer subsidises the rail industry alongside rail fares, and thanks to difficult decisions that the Government took in the emergency Budget and the spending review, the Chancellor was able to announce in the autumn statement that we would fund a reduction in the planned increases in fares so that regulated fares would increase by RPI plus 1%. That reduction is helping millions of people who use our trains.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

I really suggest that the hon. Lady stops digging the last Labour Transport Secretary into a deeper hole than he is already in. The contract is absolutely clear-cut, stating categorically in black and white that the flexibility levels introduced by her party’s Government would be reintroduced the year after their abolition.

[Mr Tom Harris]

Irrespective of what the legal agreement was, does the Transport Secretary personally believe that it would have been a good idea to renegotiate a further period for which the flex would not have been in force?

[Justine Greening]

I do not, because I believe that the train operating companies need flexibility, so I support my predecessor’s decision. If I did agree with negotiating a further period, it would represent a spending commitment. I agree with the shadow Chancellor that now is not the time to make any further spending commitments, even if the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood does not. We can see the absolute disarray that the Labour party is now in.

I find it incredibly frustrating and galling, as I think many other people do, to hear on one day the leader of the Labour party—the party that left this country in a worse financial state than any other Government ever have—profess that we must be responsible, even though Labour was irresponsible and did not have the custodian values that it needed in looking after our public finances, then the day after, to hear Labour talk about more spending and more debt in the middle of a debt crisis. The very people who let this country down the most and left our public finances in their worst state ever are now the ones talking about responsibility. Most people outside will see that for exactly what it is—absolute political gibberish.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

Since the Secretary of State spent some time talking not about rail fares but about the economic legacy of the last Labour Government, I wish to make one brief point first. As an Opposition Member, she was a member of the shadow Treasury team and, up until November 2007, the Conservative party’s policy was to support every penny of spending made by the Labour Government. If she is claiming that the deficit that the Government inherited was created in the last 18 months of the Labour Government, that is something that the House would like to debate. She cannot pour scorn on the spending of that Government when she sat on the Opposition Front Bench and supported every penny. That is double standards. The Secretary of State shakes her head, and I am more than happy to give way if she wants to explain why she did not tell the then shadow Chancellor that he should not support Labour’s spending plans.

[Justine Greening]

Everybody in Britain knows exactly which party got the country into the financial mess. It is precisely why Labour Members are on the Opposition Benches now: it was them.

[Mr Harris]

That says quite a lot about the Secretary of State’s reluctance to accept her own culpability for supporting the spending plans of the previous Labour Government.

I do not believe that the railway industry is broken, or a basket case. I was proud to serve as a railway Minister in the last Labour Government, and I understand the successes that have grown from 13 years of Labour governance of the railway industry. We have more people travelling on the railways than at any time in their history outside of wartime. We have more services every working day than ever before, and punctuality is at an all-time high. Those were achievements that this Government have managed to continue—and I hope that that continues—but fares are a fundamental weakness. They are the crucial interface between the travelling public and the railways and—irrespective of the public subsidy to the railways—if we do not make rail travel affordable for ordinary people, it will not be surprising if they feel that the railways are letting them down.

The previous Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), famously described the railways as a “rich man’s toy”. A few weeks ago, I challenged the Secretary of State in the Transport Committee about whether she agreed with that assessment and, understandably, she did not want to commit herself. She told the Transport Committee that she wanted to see the balance between the taxpayer and the fare payer move towards the latter. She also said that in the long term she wanted the fare payer to pay less. Well, she can have one or she can have the other, but she cannot have both. It is clear that unless the taxpayers’ contribution is increased, fares will not come down. The Secretary of State refused to answer that point at the time.