Rail Infrastructure Investment

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Diana Johnson

Thursday 17th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Transport Committee, Rail infrastructure investment, HC 582, and the Government response, HC 1557.

I am delighted to lead this debate on the Transport Committee’s Fourth Report of this Session, on rail infrastructure investment. I will start the debate as we started our report, by underlining the importance of the UK’s railways. They are a vital part of our national transport network and make a substantial contribution to the economy. Their importance has been recognised by successive Governments of all parties, with billions of pounds invested in rail every year. The importance of our railways is not in question.

However, there are serious challenges for both rail passengers and the industry. While 1.7 billion journeys were made by rail in 2018, it was not an easy year for passengers, who faced disruption and disappointment. Planned improvements—including electrification in south Wales, the midlands and Cumbria, and the opening of Crossrail—have not been delivered, while May’s timetable changes caused unprecedented chaos across the network. This year started with more unwelcome news for rail commuters, with fares increasing by an average of 3.1%.

We must work towards improving services for rail passengers and freight customers. Investment in the network is essential for enabling better services, which in turn provide new opportunities for our constituents and support the development of our towns and cities. That was the focus of our report, and today I will look at three of the main issues it raised.

First, we need to ensure that rail investment and its benefits are shared equally across the country. It is clear that many feel that rail investment is unfairly centralised in a small number of areas, and the Department for Transport has done little to respond to those concerns. Secondly, there are serious questions about what future improvements the Government’s new approach to funding rail enhancements will deliver. To date, more than a year after the new system was put in place, there is a total absence of information about what proposals are even being considered. Thirdly, there remain questions about the future role that electrification will play in improving the UK’s rail network, following the cancellation of the electrification of the midland main line north of Kettering to Nottingham and Sheffield, the Great Western main line to Swansea and Cardiff and the lakes line between Oxenholme and Windermere.

There is long-standing dissatisfaction about the level of investment in the rail network in different regions, and our report looked in detail at the disparity in investment across the country. We considered the issue in the context of the Government’s stated intention to rebalance the economy away from London, exemplified by the northern powerhouse and the midlands engine. From 2012 to 2017, the north-east, the east midlands, the south-west and Wales all received less than 10% of the level of rail investment that went to London. Only the north-west, the south-east and Scotland received even a fifth of the level of rail investment in our capital.

The capital’s size and population mean that it is unsurprising that more is spent in London, in absolute terms, than in other regions. However, there is also a substantial disparity between spending per capita in London, at £773 a head in 2016-17, and other regions, with a low of just £70 per head in my own region, the east midlands. The Institute for Public Policy Research North analysed the Government’s planned transport spending, as set out in the Government’s 2016 “National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline”, stating that it showed problems not only in the past but in the future and

“a stark gap between London and the rest of the country”,

with £1,900 per capita spending planned in London from 2017 onwards, compared with £400 in the north.

The sense of unfairness felt by many regions across the country has been exacerbated by continued investment in major developments that primarily benefit London. It is hardly surprising that there was real anger when, four days after the cancellation of those electrification schemes, the Secretary of State and the Mayor of London jointly announced an agreement in principle to fund Crossrail 2 at an estimated cost of £30 billion.

The Government have tried to rebut the figures about the regional disparity of investment in our railway. Their response to our report said that

“the planned spending per head figure is within 33% of the national average for all nine English regions. Moreover, the overall figure for the three Northern regions (North West, North East, Yorkshire and Humber) is £1,039 per head, compared to £1,076 per head for the Middle regions (East of England, East Midlands and West Midlands) and £1,029 per head for the Southern regions (London, South East and South West).”

However, those figures are based on a selective analysis. By aggregating regions, variations in the midlands, the north and the south are masked. For example, Yorkshire and the Humber received just £729 per head, the north-east £822 per head and the south-west £851 per head.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes a powerful case for the report that her Committee has produced. She just referenced the funding for Yorkshire and the Humber. The Department for Transport seems to put its head in the sand whenever it is challenged on these regional disparities. Given that the new Rail Minister is a Yorkshire MP, does she think that we might now see a recognition that the north has not had its fair share, and that we will now start to get our fair share?

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend has been an outstanding advocate for the north and its need for rail investment. The Minister is a newish Rail Minister, but I know that he previously served in the Department for Transport. We had discussions in the past, when he was the Minister responsible for buses, and I always found him genuinely prepared to listen. I hope that he brings the same approach to his new role.

In January 2018 IPPR North assessed the Government’s analysis of regional spending and stated that it excluded spending in the pipeline for after 2020-21, meaning that the analysis omitted some £42.5 billion of planned investment, 40% of which—£19.8 billion—is earmarked for London. The Government have therefore presented, even if accurate, a rather skewed picture of how planned transport spending will be distributed across the country in the coming years.

Flooding

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Diana Johnson

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Diana Johnson]

rose—

[Mr Pickles]

If the hon. Ladies will bear with me, I want to talk about the challenge of climate change and then I will give way.

The same approach should apply to climate change. There are certainly man-made causes to the recent flooding and the main cause needs man-made management. Policies on dredging, development and even tree planting directly affect our landscape, but the weather is a factor in itself. The debate on climate is highly charged and polarised between sceptics and zealots, but the conclusions should not be. We know that Britain’s weather and climate is fickle. If Britain was to have a national symbol, it would undoubtedly be the umbrella. Any expectation that the Met Office could have predicted the amount and severity of that rain is simply unreasonable. It does not have a crystal ball, despite improvements in predictions.

The Met Office still does not definitively know whether climate change contributed to the recent weather patterns. This might be a short-term trend or a long-term one, but I would simply say this: the risk is there to our nation of a changing intensity in Britain’s weather. Given that risk, we should prepare. It would be irrational not to insure ourselves against that risk, and if there is a long-term trend, we should adapt to such change, as my noble Friend Lord Lawson has advocated.

“Just as science and technology has given us the evidence to measure the danger of climate change, so it can help us find safety from it.”

That seems a very reasonable statement and I commend it to the House. It is the view of a former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and I think he spoke very wisely.

School Food

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Diana Johnson

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) on his tour de force on school food. By the end of his contribution, I felt as if I had been at primary and secondary school with him and knew Mrs Pomfret well. Listening to him talk about Victoria sponges and custard cream biscuits, it is clear that food is an important part of my hon. Friend’s life. We all recognise that a love of good food, and an understanding of how it helps us function well and do our best, is important.

I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). They have led the way in Parliament over the past few years in ensuring that Ministers, and the Labour party more generally, are made aware of the importance of good school food, and why that fits with our agenda for improving educational attainment and addressing health issues, such as obesity. I congratulate my hon. Friends on their work, and I thank them for coming to Hull a couple of years ago to see what happened there and to talk to head teachers. They also talked to Professor Colquhoun at Hull university, who is the academic who was tasked with evaluating the scheme in Hull. It was useful and helpful for my hon. Friends to have that time in the city. We have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham, and I am pleased that we will soon hear from the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West.

I want to say a few words about the Hull experience and about why, from the point of view of a constituency Member of Parliament, what happened there is instructive. One of my big concerns about the coalition Government is their failure to look at evidence and make policy on the back of that. I am also concerned about the renaming of the Department for Education. It used to be called the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which recognised that education does not stand on its own but is part of the whole experience that a baby, child or young person has in their family, their school and with education. The narrow approach to education taken by the Government is shown in their approach to school food. It is almost seen as something that does not have to be considered because all they are really bothered about is English, maths and the introduction of the English baccalaureate, which is a narrow approach to education. We should be concerned about that, because education is much more than just academic subjects. That is where I start from.

The reason why, in 2002-03, Hull started to look carefully at free school meals was that Hull’s children, who are as bright as children anywhere else in the country, were not achieving as much as they should have been at primary and secondary levels. The council took a far-sighted view about the measures that it could introduce to help to deal with some of the educational inequalities in the city and with health inequalities. Unfortunately, my constituents tend to suffer from diseases and medical conditions far earlier than people in other parts of the country. There is a tendency to suffer strokes and to develop obesity and cardiovascular disease much earlier than in other parts of the country. Hull made a real attempt to deal with some of those issues.

We should pay tribute to Councillor Inglis, the leader of the council at the time, who fought hard and used imaginatively the flexibilities that the Labour Government had introduced in relation to education. That allowed the council to introduce a pilot scheme in Hull to provide free school meals in all our primary schools and special schools. It was called the “Eat Well, Do Well” scheme. Young people would go into school and have a healthy breakfast and a healthy lunch. If they stayed for activities after school, healthy snacks were available then as well. The aim was to combine the whole day’s eating within a package of healthy eating and to encourage young people to see food as something positive and enjoyable.

The scheme was in place between 2004 and 2007. Of course, it was important to evaluate the scheme and find out whether it was delivering. Professor Derek Colquhoun of Hull university produced a superb report about what happened in Hull’s schools. We have heard in relation to the experience in Durham what teachers say about the willingness and readiness of young people to learn in the classroom, having had a healthy breakfast or lunch. We hear about parents being pestered when they go to the supermarket by their youngsters saying, “Oh, I tried broccoli at school today. Can we buy some broccoli at the supermarket?” Amazing stuff happened in Hull.

One effect was the development of social skills when children ate together around a table. That was especially the case when there was family service. The food was put in the centre and shared out among all the participants around the table. That facilitated interaction among the children, who talked and listened to one another, which helped them to develop good table manners as well.

Another effect was that gardening clubs were encouraged in schools. Those clubs enabled young people to see food being grown in the playground. Cooking clubs were also encouraged. I went to Thoresby school in my constituency just a few weeks ago. It has an active cooking club. The children like to cook, and they see the value in eating well and in enjoying their food. There have been positive spin-offs from the “Eat Well, Do Well” scheme.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has mentioned gardening clubs, because I have visited a number of schools in my constituency where there are community gardens or the school has a garden. I am referring to Southwold school, which is in Radford, and to Greenfields school and Riverside school, which are both in The Meadows. The children are involved in growing salads and vegetables, which they incorporate into school meals. That encourages them to try fresh produce. Perhaps they would never normally want to look at it, but because they have grown it themselves, they are excited about it and they are trying new things. I also want to mention the importance of introducing fresh fruit into nurseries, which was another thing that the Labour Government did. I know from going into school with my own daughter that children were trying fresh fruit that they had never tried before, which encouraged them to take a much healthier approach to eating.

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. There was a proud history over the past 13 years of what was achieved in relation to food in schools and encouraging our young people to eat well.

I pay tribute to the trade unions. Unison and the GMB worked very hard to ensure that the pilot scheme that we ran in Hull worked well. Their members were involved as dinner ladies and cooks, and they were passionate about what the scheme was doing for children in Hull. The unions really embraced the scheme.

As my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has said, when, unfortunately, the Liberal Democrats took control of the council in Hull in 2006, the first thing they did was to say, “Right. We’re not going to wait for the evaluation of the scheme; we’re just going to scrap it. We’re telling you that in 12 months’ time, it will just end.” That was very disappointing, and it was an act of political vandalism that will come back to haunt them. Having read today’s newspapers, I say to the Minister that that was a foretaste of the way in which the Liberal Democrats were to act in government, because we see today that the policy that they introduced on the education maintenance allowance—suddenly saying that they were scrapping EMA without looking properly at evidence and considering their options—is, unfortunately, the way in which the present Government seem to make policy.

That happened in Hull in 2006. It was very disappointing, but what came out of it, which was heartening, was the recognition by the Labour Government that what had happened in Hull was special and that further evidence was needed to see whether it would provide a basis for rolling out free school meals around the country. As a result, we had the pilots.