Department for Transport

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on securing this debate on the spending of the Department for Transport, and I welcome this new format for estimates day debates. I will make a few points, and pose a couple of questions about the supplementary estimate, which I hope the Minister will address in his speech.

When we look at the Department’s spending and the announcements it makes, it would be easy to think that transport is about large infrastructure projects. Infrastructure is an important enabler, of course, but we must not lose sight of the outcome we want: it is about how people travel from place to place, how they get to work, and how they get to places to learn and study, and for leisure and for family and social life. Access to good transport opportunities enhances our quality of life, and its absence can lead to social exclusion and isolation.

Just two weeks ago, BBC analysis showed that the bus network is shrinking to levels last seen in the 1980s. Rising car use and cuts to public funding are being blamed for a loss of 134 million miles of coverage over the past decade alone, leaving communities with isolated residents unable to access the most basic services, such as getting to a health appointment or making a shopping trip. The Bus Services Act 2017 might help in some places, so what work have Ministers done to understand the effect of that shrinking bus network, and what impact is this having on other Departments, such as the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions, in terms of people’s ability to get to jobs, training or education opportunities? What are the Government doing to address those problems?

The second major concern to our constituents is the diabolical state of local roads. I will come on to issues around the strategic road network, but almost every journey starts and ends on local roads. This issue is raised time and again on the doorstep, and not just when I am talking to local residents in Nottingham, as there is a huge backlog across the whole country. The Department provides money to local authorities for local roads, including a pothole fund. It would be helpful if the Minister said something about the steps that the Department takes to ensure the value for money of the investment that it makes in local roads, because the current patch-and-make-good approach does not seem to be sustainable. My hon. Friends on the Front Bench have rightly called on the Government to fix it first. Yes, that would be a start, but I would say, fix it properly.

Scrutiny of the Department is vital. The National Audit Office has done some excellent work in providing an overview of the Department’s work and identified several key areas for improvement. The NAO’s work on the first road investment strategy found that that the Department developed it before having a complete understanding of whether the 112 road enhancement schemes in the portfolio represented best overall value. As we come on to the second road investment programme, Highways England and the Department need to show that they are doing more to understand the value of the investments they are making and the steps needed to secure the wider economic benefits.

That is probably even more true of the rail investment programme. The work to modernise the great western railway has shown that the Department did not have a secure understanding of the costs of and schedule for electrification. That led to a reprogramming of the investment plans for control period 5. Electrification between Maidenhead and Cardiff is now expected to cost £2.8 billion—a 70% increase against the estimated cost of the programme in 2014. We know what a terrible impact that has had on the rest of the work in CP 5 that has either had to be cancelled or rolled over into CP 6. The Department has many questions to answer on that. What has been learned will have been lost through the cancellation of that work and will potentially have to be relearned all over again.

Many questions arise from these supplementary estimates that need to be answered. I look forward, on the Transport Committee, to asking Ministers those questions and receiving answers.

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[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for securing this debate through the Backbench Business Committee and providing Members with an opportunity to hold the Government to account on their spending. I am particularly pleased that we are debating the supplementary estimates for the Department for Transport, because I have frequently raised the issue of regional transport disparities in the House, and at the heart of this is the question of funding.

Put simply, the way the Department currently allocates and spends money is deeply unfair. It is unfair because its decisions on where to invest are based on a narrow and ultimately unsatisfactory value-for-money assessment. If the Government target transport spending in areas of high economic development or places where people already use public transport extensively, they are reinforcing inequalities rather than correcting them. Transport spending needs to be used as a tool for unlocking economic potential, and of course investment in public transport is one of the key ways of encouraging people to use it.

Bradford, like towns and cities across the north, is held back by a persistent lack of investment in our transport infrastructure. In recent months we have seen the cancellation of many rail electrification projects, the postponement of essential motorway upgrades in Yorkshire, and combined authorities forced to reduce bus services owing to continuing budget cuts.

The north as a whole, and Yorkshire in particular, is getting a raw deal. Recent analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research North has found that the true extent of regional spending disparity is considerably higher than the Government’s estimates. Under this analysis, future transport investment in London is 2.6 times higher per person than in the north. London is set to receive over £4,000 per person, compared with just £1,600 per person across the north as a whole. The situation is set to be even worse in Yorkshire, the lowest of all regions according to IPPR North, where the figure is just £844 per person.

The Government’s future spending plans therefore fail to address the historical under-investment in northern transport and infrastructure. Addressing the historical underfunding in Yorkshire will require step-by-step increases in per-person levels of funding until they are equal to those in London. The ambition to create a northern powerhouse and rebalance our national economy will remain unmet for as long as the current funding disparities in transport remain in place.

Let me be clear that I have little to no problem with the Government investing in London’s transport system; I believe that all regions benefit from a modern and extensive public transport system. What I do have a problem with are the gross inequities between different parts of the country. These inequities have real consequences for my constituents. Bradford, a city of over half a million people, with a young and enterprising population and home to some of the country’s best known companies, does not have a through railway station and is not directly on an inter-city network. This means that train journeys between Bradford and Leeds take over 20 minutes and average only 33 mph. Is it any wonder that nearly 75% of the 45,000 journeys between Bradford and Leeds each day are made by car? Bradford’s unsatisfactory rail link is a perfect example of the wider problem. For too long, ambitious transport projects in the north have been passed over, while billions have been spent on similar projects down south.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case about the need for regional rebalancing. Does she agree that the Department for Transport needs to make changes to the transport business case methodology so that it takes account of the wider economic benefits that can flow from investment in transport, rather than just journey time savings for large numbers of existing transport users?

[Judith Cummins]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, as always.

The establishment of the first sub-national transport body, Transport for the North, is a welcome step in correcting the regional imbalance, and I am particularly pleased that its strategic plan includes details of the northern powerhouse railway, including a new station in Bradford. In order to make this plan a reality, the Government must ensure that Transport for the North has the powers and, crucially, the money it needs. One way to quickly and effectively start making progress would be to unpick the skewed value-for-money formula used by the Department for Transport to make investment decisions, and to create a new formula that stops favouring areas with historically high levels of investment.

Bradford and the north face particular challenges and opportunities, and these opportunities require real action by the Government. Above all, they require a real financial commitment from the Government in order to address the historical level of underfunding of transport in the north. This is the only way to unlock the north’s economic potential and to put fairness back into our transport system.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

May I start by thanking you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your kindness in allowing me not to wear my jacket while I nurse my broken arm? I must confess that it is a transport-related injury. I tripped and fell while running to catch a tram, which is rather embarrassing given that I chair the all-party parliamentary light rail group.

In the short time available, I will make some general points about the quality of transport debates that we have in this country. I have been involved in transport debates for almost all the time that I have been in this House, either on the Select Committee on Transport or as the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. I sometimes find these debates rather depressing because this country is very good at finding reasons not to do something.

The Transport Committee is currently giving scrutiny to the airport national policy statement about whether we should have a third runway at Heathrow. I do not want to prejudge the outcome of our inquiry, but we were presented with a whole series of arguments as to why it should not happen. Had the recommendation been that we should expand Gatwick, different people would have made the same arguments. Time and again the decision on where to build extra airport capacity would be kicked into the long grass.

Just outside my constituency boundary is a lovely little village called Cublington. I mention it because it featured in the Roskill commission, which 50 years ago started its inquiry about the location of extra airport capacity in the south-east, and we are still debating that half a century later. It was the same with HS1. Before it was built, it was going to scar the garden of England. Now that it is up and running, there are few objections. Indeed, people want extra stations on the line. When I researched the HS2 debate, I found out that this House voted against the west coast main line in the 19th century because it deemed that canals would be a perfectly adequate means of intercity transport. As we consider where we are going to invest vast sums of money—both public and private—in order to upgrade our transport network, please let us do so with a vision of what can be done; do not find constant arguments as to why it should not happen.

I turn to rail in particular. Now, there are problems with franchising. I am not going to defend the system in its entirety, as it is one that needs to evolve. But when there is a problem, the answer is not just to criticise the whole system and say that we have to renationalise everything. Those who advocate mass nationalisation might care to read the words of the French Prime Minister talking about state-run SNCF today:

“The dilapidated network, delays, abysmal debt…The situation is…untenable. The French…pay more…for a public service that works less and less well”.

The point is that there are good and bad in all forms of transport. We need to raise our game and think about what works, not get involved in ideological debates.

Similarly, every year we hear this argument that fare increases are the fault of the privatised system, yet there were inflation-busting fare increases year after year under nationalised British Rail. The debate is on the mix between what the farebox provides for revenue and what central taxation provides. There is a legitimate argument both ways, but let us get away from the stale argument every year that it is the fault of the private sector and that nationalisation would be wonderful.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I do not wish to get into the argument about why franchising is not currently working, but does the hon. Gentleman share my concerns that the supplementary estimates show that receipts are expected to be £248.6 million lower than expected? Although the Treasury is providing an extra £60 million to partially offset that, £188 million of income still needs to be found from existing budgets. Does he share my hope that the Minister will address where that money in going to come from given the shortfall in revenues from franchises?

[Iain Stewart]

Revenues go up and down; it is very difficult to forward-plan the income from a railway. The Virgin Trains East Coast situation is not a problem of a line losing money or failing on passenger satisfaction. It is making money—just not as much as was forecast. That is one of the reforms of the franchising system that I wish to see.

Look at Network Rail—a public body. It has problems and has mismanaged some projects, Great Western electrification being the prime example. However, let us also praise it when it gets things right. The Reading and Nottingham station upgrades have been a success and many other projects have been delivered on time and on budget. No system is intrinsically bad or good. My point today is that we should raise the quality of the discussion and not get locked into this stale old debate that too often plagues transport discourse in this country.

My final point in the few seconds that remain is please let us put the passenger front and centre of our conversations. Too often, the transport industry works in silos: it looks at what the rail or bus provision is. We have to look at door-to-door transport, embrace new technology and the opportunities that it brings. When we invest in new trains—enormous numbers of new rolling stock will be coming on to the network in the next couple of years—let us make them comfortable. Technologically, they are brilliant but a lot of them are dashed uncomfortable. Let us put the passenger first and raise our game with a proper debate about how we invest in and improve our transport infrastructure.

Public Service Delivery: Northamptonshire

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I would be delighted to visit Liverpool on the hon. Lady’s invitation. I was just being briefed by my officials on the good work that her council is doing on the troubled families programme, particularly with vulnerable children. I would be delighted to accept her invitation and meet people in Liverpool in due course.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Northamptonshire County Council has completely failed its citizens and its staff. Northamptonshire MPs have consistently voted for huge cuts to local government funding, and Ministers have refused to listen when Labour Members described the impacts of rising demand for services and even deeper cuts to our councils. When will the Minister listen and respond to the budget crisis facing all councils, including my own City of Nottingham Council?

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Lady asks “When?” The answer is tomorrow, when we will be debating the local government finance settlement, where councils will see a real-terms increase in their core spending power this year. As I have said, Northamptonshire itself will be receiving at least a 3% increase in its core spending power next year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

9. What assessment he has made of the effect of the local government finance settlement on the ability of local authorities to meet their statutory responsibilities.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

19. What assessment he has made of the effect of the local government finance settlement on the ability of local authorities to meet their statutory responsibilities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

Our fair and sustainable financial settlement gives local authorities the ability to protect important local services. It marks the third of a four-year deal, providing funding certainty to local government and a real-terms increase in available resources to the sector.

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[Rishi Sunak]

The Government are piloting 100% business rates retention and have seen extraordinary applications for those pilots, and we are learning from them to design the appropriate system to take over in 2019-20 together with, as the hon. Lady said, a full review of fair funding, so that we can get the allocations right.

[Lilian Greenwood]

This Government have deliberately targeted their cuts at the most deprived communities. Nottingham City Council has lost a staggering 80% of its funding since 2010. Now the Government’s only answer to the social care crisis is to add another 3% to council tax bills. In Nottingham, that will raise just £3 million, which is way short of the extra £12 million the city needs to meet the costs of caring for more elderly and disabled people. When will the Minister stop dumping the financial burden on to Nottingham’s taxpayers and start funding social care properly and fairly?

[Rishi Sunak]

I gently point out to the hon. Lady that core spending power per dwelling in the 10% most deprived local authorities is actually 23% higher than that in the least deprived, and indeed in her local authority, it is 11% higher than the national average.

Supported Housing

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Sir Graham, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. I join colleagues in welcoming the joint report between the Communities and Local Government Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee on supported housing, and congratulate them on securing this debate.

A safe, secure and supportive home can be the key to improving or repairing lives and to unlocking people’s potential, as has already been acknowledged. Supported housing helps hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable people across the country to live independently or to turn their lives around. That is why it must be a priority for all of us in this House.

I welcome the Government’s change of heart on funding for longer-term supported housing, but I remain extremely concerned, along with many of my colleagues, about the funding and provision of short-term supported accommodation services with a target length of stay of up to two years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said in opening the debate, the Committee’s concerns about funding for emergency accommodation should not apply to that wider provision. Short-term supported accommodation providers across Nottingham are telling me that

“the Government obviously feels it has listened and taken account of what providers have been saying.

Unfortunately though, the problem is not solved for providers like us who offer short-term supported housing. If anything, the new proposals…are worse than the previous one.”

Notwithstanding the reassurances offered by the Government in the consultation, they are leaving this sort of accommodation in a vulnerable position. Local providers do not know how the localised funds will be distributed and there is no guarantee of what will happen to them over time. They are worried that, even within a ring fence, local authorities—whose budgets are of course under extreme pressure as a result of seven years of austerity—will have to reallocate funding to align it better with their statutory obligations.

Nottingham Community Housing Association has told me that, as a landlord that operates across the east midlands region, covering several local authority areas, it is concerned about the proposal for a locally administered pot. It says that the expertise in housing is not held with upper-tier authorities, and it is worried about the correct sizing of the pot. In addition, it says that the locally administered pot is likely to be subject to different requirements in different local areas, so a landlord such as NCHA will have the apprehension of dealing with not one approach to housing costs, as in the current model, but with several different approaches across the region. NCHA is worried that the outcome will be increased costs in the management of such arrangements and potentially differing levels of housing management services procured across the region, resulting in a postcode lottery for residents.

I am sure that the Minister will agree that if unnecessary procurement and commissioning achieved poorer value for money, it would not be good. Of course, housing costs are already subject to scrutiny by housing benefit teams, the local market in respect of self-funders—particularly in the case of sheltered accommodation—and through the value for money standard, which is a significant feature of Homes and Communities Agency regulation. Adding a new level of administration to local government will increase costs without directly benefiting individuals or the public purse.

Currently, providers are able to move quickly to meet unmet housing need without having to go through local government procurement channels. As an example of that, to ease the pressures of homelessness this winter, NCHA reopened a recently closed care home as a much-needed temporary accommodation service for couples and families who are homeless in Nottingham. They did so in consultation with the city council and in a matter of weeks. Under the proposed arrangements, such flexibility could be lost. The service would need to be commissioned and funded from a pot that has potentially had its entire allocation accounted for and is therefore empty.

I will say a little bit more about some of the local services and how they will be impacted. Last year I visited the Stephanie Lodge step-down mental health service in Radford in my constituency, which provides outstanding care and support for up to 10 residents leaving in-patient psychiatric care. Again, that is an NCHA service, and NCHA is concerned that under the current proposals residents at Stephanie Lodge will lose their automatic entitlement to housing benefit or the housing element of universal credit.

Holly Dagnall, director of homes and wellbeing at NCHA, told me that

“whilst rolling up housing costs with care and support costs to be met by a locally administrated ‘pot’ might be helpful for those in our services who wish to work, the reality is that most if not all of our residents are a significant distance from the workplace, having moved to Stephanie Lodge from acute mental health in-patient services. NCHA believe that this is the only potential upside of the current proposals and that in reality this is an upside which will not be relevant to the vast majority of our residents at Stephanie Lodge.”

NCHA is anxious that

“the loss of automatic entitlement to housing costs being met for the individual means that the service is at risk of insufficient funding being made available to fund the important, statutory and legal housing management functions required to ensure that landlord duties are adequately discharged in the provision of safe and secure accommodation”

for tenants who are, as I am sure the Minister will appreciate, very vulnerable.

Short-term supported accommodation providers in Nottingham tell me that they would like to see housing costs remain within the benefits system as the housing element of universal credit, whether that is for services like Stephanie Lodge or others, where residents are likely to live for between six months and a year. They believe that that is possible to administer and provides the best assurances for both landlords and service providers, and people in receipt of the services. It will also provide housing cost assurance for new developments, meaning that providers will be able to proceed with greater confidence in providing much-needed support for vulnerable people in my constituency.

In addition to the concerns expressed to me by providers, I have been contacted by residents across Nottingham South, who have told me how living in supported accommodation has changed their lives. One former service user, Katie, who was supported by Framework—I do not know if the Minister is aware of it, but it specialises in homelessness and homelessness prevention across the east midlands—spoke of the transformation that supported housing has created for her. She said:

“I was homeless before I moved here. It was scary because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I felt powerless. I’ve been here for three or four months and it’s been great… It’s been great to have a roof over my head but it’s also taught me a lot about life.”

She explains how having to pay rent and bills for the first time has been an education and helped her to grow up and realise she could live alone in the future. Short-term supported housing is essential to help people like Katie to move on with their lives, but they also have to have somewhere to move on to within the housing system. Framework has told me that one of the reasons people cannot move on is that hostels are full and there is nowhere for people to move on to, which is creating a backlog of unmet need.

In his final budget, George Osborne announced a £100 million capital fund for the development of move-on accommodation. It later emerged that 50% of the fund was earmarked to be spent in London, leaving only £50 million for the whole of the rest of the country, even though local authorities in the midlands and the north now face greater numbers of people sleeping rough than in London, and the rate of increase is faster. Concerns have been raised with me about that programme, and indeed were raised with the Minister’s predecessor, by Andrew Redfern, the chief executive of Framework.

Andrew Redfern was told by CLG officials that the programme was likely to be launched in the autumn of 2016. While it was launched by the Mayor of London on that date, there has still been no indication of when and how the £50 million for outside London can be accessed. What is the hold-up? Can the Minister tell us today when we can expect to see that much-needed funding made available for local authorities to bid for?

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) and other hon. Members have already spoken about the dangers that the Government’s proposals present to domestic violence refuges, including our own local provision. This is incredibly serious, given the pressures that we know are already in the system. Every year the refuges run by Women’s Aid Integrated Services in Nottinghamshire turn away one in 10 women due to lack of space. That is not a problem localised to Nottingham. Demand for refuge places remains sky high across the country. Nationally, 60% of referrals were declined in 2016-17. Shockingly, on just one day this year, 90 women and 94 children were turned away. Any change in funding that endangers their future is extremely worrying.

Clearly, we should do even more to support the refuges for women fleeing domestic violence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) said, there is the potential for devastating consequences arising from the proposals as Women’s Aid estimates that half of refuges may have to close or reduce their provision. So we have been warned. The move to a local model is deeply flawed. According to the information that I have had from local refuges, two thirds of the women flee to a refuge outside their local area, and that is backed up by what is happening. Nationally, Women’s Aid is issuing an SOS call to the Government—I know the Minister is listening—to secure a sustainable funding solution for what are literally life-saving services, and I stand with Women’s Aid in making that call.

I am pleased that locally there has been a strong commitment from both Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council to fund our refuges. Currently, five out of the nine refuges in the county are commissioned by them. However, one refuge in the city area and three in the county receive direct DCLG funding, which runs out over the next few months. Women’s Aid Integrated Services has told me it is unclear what will happen to those four refuges. Locally, that leaves us facing the loss of 112 bed spaces accommodating 21 families at any one time. One of those four refuges is set to close at the end of March. That particular refuge is one of a small number of refuges in the country that can accommodate women with large families, women with older male children and women with complex needs for whom the usual shared refuge is not suitable. The refuge has six houses with 37 bed spaces, and the largest house can accommodate a family with up to eight children. One more Nottingham refuge that accommodates women with complex needs is also facing a very uncertain future. The loss of any beds and spaces will put intolerable pressure on the rest of the system.

Val Lunn, CEO of Nottingham Women’s Aid Integrated Services, said:

“The Government is planning a new Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill...to protect survivors”—

which we certainly welcome—

“but this is neither use nor ornament if refuges close because of the proposed changes to funding...Refuges save the lives of women and children trying to escape domestic abuse. These plans threaten to take us back to the bad old days of the 1970s.”

I know the Minister will not want us to go back to those days. I urge her to take account of the considerable concerns among providers on the front line and to work with Women’s Aid to find a solution.

The Minister’s predecessor took account of the concerns of providers and of the Select Committees’ views on long-term supported accommodation provision. I, in common with colleagues today, am raising concerns about short-term housing provision. It is time for her to listen to the experts again.

[Sir Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, it might be helpful for me to say that I hope to move on to the winding-up speeches by 10 to 4 at the latest. Three speakers have indicated they would like to take part, so if they can try to keep themselves to around 10 minutes each, I will not need to impose an official time limit.