Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent discussions he has had with the Midlands Expressway on usage of the M6 Toll Road.
Answered by John Hayes
The Government has had recent discussions with Midland Expressway in order to renew an existing agreement to provide resilience to the Strategic Road Network in exceptional circumstances. General usage on the Toll road is a matter for the operator.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will take steps to ensure that HS2 Ltd takes account of the report by RPS Planning and Development, entitled Acoustics assessment of the effects of HS2, rebuttal evidence, published on 24 November 2016, in any discussions on compensation that it has with Aston Villa Football Club relating to the effect of noise from High Speed 2 on that club's Bodymoor Heath training ground.
Answered by Andrew Jones
HS2 Ltd will take the noise evidence provided by RPS Planning and Development into account in the on-going discussions regarding the effects of noise from HS2 on the Bodymoor Heath training ground.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if his Department will estimate the amount lost by businesses in Birmingham and the West Midlands conurbation as a result of congestion on the M6 motorway in each of the last five years.
Answered by John Hayes
Information on the amount lost by businesses in Birmingham and the West Midlands conurbation as a result of congestion on the M6 motorway is not held centrally.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much has been spent from the public purse on bus services per capita in (a) Birmingham, (b) the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority, formerly Centro and (c) each region of England from 2009-10 to the most recent financial year for which information is available.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The attached table shows the estimated revenue spend on bus services and estimated revenue spend per capita on bus services for the English regions, West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority and Birmingham for 2009/10 to 2014/15, the years for which data are available.
The table also shows figures used to derive the total revenue spend from:
The estimates do not include spend from DCLG estimates on ‘public and other transport planning, policy and strategy’ and ‘public transport management’ that could relate to bus services. It is not possible to determine the extent of spend on bus services in these categories from the DCLG figures. Also, any local authority or DfT capital spend on bus infrastructure has been excluded.
Local authority revenue spend is not available for Birmingham. They receive a proportion of the funding from West Midlands ITA to run bus services in their area that is not disaggregated in the DCLG local authority spend estimates.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much has been spent from the public purse on rail services per capita in (a) Birmingham, (b) the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority, formerly Centro and (c) each region of England from 2009-10 to the most recent financial year for which information is available.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The series for government expenditure on rail per head of population from 2009/10 to 2014/15 for English regions is shown in the table below, as per part (c) of the request.
Government expenditure on railways1 per head of population | ||||||
Region | 2009/10 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 |
North East | £59 | £57 | £54 | £55 | £53 | £52 |
North West | £97 | £98 | £89 | £92 | £91 | £93 |
Yorkshire & Humber | £95 | £93 | £103 | £107 | £110 | £98 |
East Midlands | £45 | £39 | £36 | £42 | £40 | £34 |
West Midlands | £61 | £52 | £49 | £53 | £54 | £68 |
East of England | £58 | £52 | £59 | £56 | £52 | £71 |
London | £386 | £371 | £331 | £281 | £268 | £353 |
South East | £85 | £84 | £70 | £68 | £66 | £69 |
South West | £49 | £44 | £39 | £40 | £37 | £35 |
England | £120 | £115 | £106 | £100 | £97 | £113 |
1 Includes expenditure on all types of railway | ||||||
Source: HMT, ONS | ||||||
The step change seen in London spending last year is due to increased spending on London Underground and HS2 plus some increase in the Network Grant. This investment is needed to meet the ever increasing demand for passenger journeys into London, of which there are currently about 4 billion every year.
More widely, care needs to be taken in interpreting regional spend figures. Expenditure is usually allocated between regions on the basis of which regions benefit from the expenditure rather than on the basis of where the expenditure is made. However, it is not always possible to put the value of spending down to certain parts of the country and this is particularly a problem for spending on the rail network. Though the Department does try to distribute rail funding across the regions, allocations are inevitably fairly imprecise.
It is also important to note that expenditure comparisons on a ‘per-head’ basis (using resident populations) can present a skewed picture of the distribution of benefits for transport generally, and for transport in London particularly. This is because the transport networks in London are routinely used by a very large number of other regions’ residents.
Even allowing for these points, one would also expect London’s ‘per head’ transport expenditure to be higher than the national average. London provides key international travel gateways for the whole of the country. London is also densely populated with different public transport and infrastructure demands – for example London residents comprise around 15% of the population of England, but London accounts for almost two-thirds of rail journeys in Great Britain.
The equivalent information is unavailable at a sub-region level, therefore cannot be provided as per parts (a) and (b) of the request.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the total amount of capital spending per capita by Highways England was in (a) Birmingham, (b) the West Midlands Metropolitan County and (c) each region of England from 2009-10 to the most recent financial year for which information is available.
Answered by John Hayes
The majority of the capital investment made by Highways England (and the Highways Agency prior to April 2015) is in large schemes that cross city, county and regional boundaries. Data cannot be meaningfully collected on this basis.
However, for the purpose of national transport statistics, spend is apportioned between regions using an established estimation process and is published up to the financial year 2013/14 at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/transport-statistics-great-britain in the series of tables TSGB0717 / RDE0101.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many permanent HS2 Ltd employees are based in Birmingham; and what proportion of the total number of HS2 Ltd employees those employees represent.
Answered by Andrew Jones
As at the 1 October 2016 there were 338 permanent HS2 Ltd employees based in Birmingham, representing 37% of the overall HS2 Ltd employee base.