Rail Strikes

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Grant Shapps

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. These discussions were under way when, suddenly, the union decided to ballot its members, incorrectly telling them that a strike would get them off the pay freeze. Nearly every part of the public sector experienced a pay freeze and, in any case, it is coming to an end. These pointless, counterproductive strikes should never have been called, and the Labour party should recognise that fact.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Precisely because of the potential disruption, and instead of calling today’s debate, should the Secretary of State not be taking action to try to resolve these disputes? When did he last meet industry leaders and trade unions to try to get that resolution? Has he had a discussion about bringing in ACAS to resolve this dispute? If he has not, will he commit to doing so now?

[Grant Shapps]

I hear what the hon. Lady says. The Leader of the Opposition claims to care deeply about this issue, yet he is not with us today. [Hon. Members: “Where is the Prime Minister?”] The Prime Minister has already said exactly where he is on this issue, but the Leader of the Opposition cannot find his way to the Front Bench when it really matters and when it comes to standing up for working people, Where is he?

The leader of the RMT, Mick Lynch, said only last month, “I do not negotiate with a Tory Government.” He does not want to meet us. That is the reality of the situation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Grant Shapps

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is right to spot a gap in the law here, which is why the Home Secretary is introducing, in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, legislation that would make the actual activity criminal. Instead, we have had to resort essentially to civil law. Through those injunctions, 130 activists have been served with 475 sets of injunction papers. We are seeing the fruits of that when they reoffend and the courts take offence to the fact that they have ignored the court injunction and continue to persist. Prison and unlimited fines are the upshot of that, but a proper law to cover this is coming and I invite the Opposition to support it.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Roads across this country are blocked every single day not by protesters, but by traffic congestion, at a huge cost to health, the environment and business. This problem will only get worse unless the alternatives to rising car use—walking, cycling and public transport—are safer, more convenient and affordable. Will the Secretary of State reverse his plans to raise rail fares by an eye-watering 3.8% next March?

[Grant Shapps]

I do not want to try your patience by switching to a rail discussion, Mr Speaker, but I will say to the hon. Lady, who knows a great deal about this subject, that Opposition Front Benchers do not want to build or maintain any roads in this country. Whether it is a bicycle or an electric bus—to go back to the previous conversation—they all require roads to drive along, so I suggest that she has a word with her Front Benchers and supports our plan for £24 billion for road maintenance and development.

Rail Investment and Integrated Rail Plan

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Grant Shapps

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I will make some progress.

You could be forgiven for thinking, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we had abandoned all those plans if you listened to the Opposition, and I would not for one moment want them to mislead the House—albeit inadvertently, I am sure—on what we are doing. As I mentioned, we are not just building one high speed line from Crewe to Manchester; we are building a second high speed line from Warrington to Manchester to west Yorkshire, slashing journey times across the north, and a third high speed line from Birmingham to the east midlands with HS2 trains continuing to central Nottingham, central Derby, Chesterfield and Sheffield on an upgraded and electrified midland main line. Just one of those might be regarded as a major achievement for any Government, particularly given the economic shock of the last two years, but we are doing all three.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that under his plans, the high speed line joins the midland main line at East Midlands Parkway and does not go any further north, thus depriving Nottingham and all the cities of the east midlands of the improved connectivity and faster journey times to Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle and Scotland? Is that not precisely why my constituents are so angry about his broken promises?

[Grant Shapps]

It is absolutely extraordinary: the hon. Lady’s constituents in Nottingham were not going to be served by the HS2 line that was going to be built, so they were not going to get the additional journey times or the improvements, and now they will. I suggest that it is important not to mislead her constituents—[Interruption.] inadvertently, I should say, perhaps through not having read the details of the IRP—with regard to the many advantages that they will now get. As I was about to say, the journey time from Birmingham to Nottingham will be cut from an hour and a quarter to just 26 minutes through the new plan, so it is far better for her constituents. We will reduce rail journey time between London and Derby from almost an hour and a half to just under an hour, and in Leeds we are going to invest £100 million to look at how we can best take the HS2 trains through to the city, as well as to start work on a west Yorkshire mass transit system, which is something successive Governments have failed to do.

I must say I am slightly surprised by the disappointment of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley. I would urge all those who listened to her speech today to study the actual details of the plan, because it is producing benefits not only for the midlands and the north years ahead of what was planned, but for her own Sheffield constituency. She will want to hear the benefits for her Sheffield constituency. I know from her previous work that she was diligent and worked very hard campaigning to get that electrification done, so let us give her constituents some of the facts about what this new plan brings. The midland main line will be electrified to Sheffield, which is something she has been calling for—she has been calling for it—and the upgrade of the Hope Valley line between Manchester and Sheffield will be completed. HS2 trains will reach Sheffield and—get this—the journey from Sheffield to London will be half an hour quicker.

I have a suggestion for how the hon. Lady can use the extra half an hour she will have gained. I think she could spend half an hour speaking to her party leader and convincing him of the case for HS2. She might have her work cut out, though. This, after all, is the man who called for HS2 to be cancelled, and he even voted against his own party’s instructions—defying a three-line Whip—to try to stop the thing she says she is now campaigning for. I have no doubt about her own convictions on the need for HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail, and she has been consistent in calling for the electrification of the midland main line, but I do wonder if she knows her own leader’s views on that project. Recently, he called the electrification of the midland main line “complete nonsense”. As usual, we are looking at a Labour party riddled with divisions and too busy arguing with itself—and that is just the Leader of the Opposition. Meanwhile, we are getting on with delivering, as promised, better, faster and more reliable trains, and they are going to get there sooner as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Grant Shapps

Thursday 29th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Yes, I absolutely recognise the concerns. As I mentioned a moment ago, there is a problem with congestion on rail services around Manchester, which needs to be resolved. I am working with all the local partners in order to do that. I have set up a special meeting of the Northern Transport Acceleration Council after the elections, in order to work with the Manchester recovery taskforce and resolve exactly that issue.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab) [V]]

Between January and June last year, the Minister of State told the House three times that his Department would shortly publish its research on the level of funding needed to meet the target of doubling cycling and increasing walking by 2025. Will he now publish that missing research, or is he breaking his promise because he knows it confirms that the funding allocated falls woefully short of what is needed?

[Grant Shapps]

Given that we have £2 billion of funding for walking and cycling—the biggest sum ever invested in active travel, as far as we can work out—the idea that there is a lack of investment is, of course, entirely untrue. The hon. Lady will have noticed that last year the coronavirus occupied almost everything we were doing, but it did not prevent us issuing a new cycling strategy, published by the Prime Minister and backed by me. We will be saying a lot more about that, and I welcome the hon. Lady’s enthusiasm.

Transport

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Grant Shapps

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I agree with my right hon. Friend on the importance of stopping those pinch points, where traffic just idles, pumps out all this CO₂ and creates pollution. That clearly is not sensible, so we have a big programme in place; we are putting £28 billion into our roads. We will shortly be announcing more developments on our road investment strategy, RIS2, and getting rid of more of those pinch points. It is also important to get the traffic that runs on those roads to be greener and to get greener quicker, with electric and other forms of lower carbon and zero carbon production. I will talk a little more about that shortly, but I am clear that simply saying that we will not build any roads anywhere will increase pollution and the toxins in our atmosphere, not reduce them.

The targets have to be tough, and they have to be challenging. That will help to focus the minds not just of the consumer and business but of Government, and that is absolutely right. Targets also have to be viable and practical. That goes to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). It will not be easy to meet these goals if we simply try to do it by destroying industry along the way. That point is easily forgotten, but if we do forget it, we will not get the miracle that we have had of a 42% reduction in the amount of CO₂ at the same time as a 73% increase in the size of the economy.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that actually the best way to tackle congestion is to get people off the roads and on to bicycles, walking, and indeed using public transport? I want to come back to his point about electrification of the railways. It is good to hear that he is now committed to, and an advocate for, electrification. We are getting electrification of the midland main line to Kettering and Corby. The only way to decarbonise an intensively used railway like that is to electrify it. Is he willing to look at electrifying it all the way through to Sheffield and Nottingham?

[Grant Shapps]

I can absolutely reassure the hon. Lady that under this Government we are seeing, and will be seeing, a lot more electrification. I do take slight issue with the idea that the only way to get to a decarbonised railway is to electrify it. There are other possibilities, including, in particular, hydrogen, which we are starting to experiment with on the railways right now—an excellent plan going forward. On her point about roads, bicycles and other forms of transport need roads, so we still have to have them built in this country. I simply do not believe that there is a way round that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Grant Shapps

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

1. What steps his Department is taking to improve road safety.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)]

The Government are committed to improving safety on all our roads, and to reducing the numbers of those who are needlessly killed and injured. Last July, we published “The road safety statement 2019: a lifetime of road safety”.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) has this week accused Highways England of

“a shocking degree of carelessness”

in rolling out all-lane-running motorways, and the chairman of the Police Federation has described smart motorways as “inherently dangerous” and “a death trap”. I welcomed the Secretary of State’s announcement of a rapid evidence stocktake, and he promised to bring forward recommendations in a matter of weeks, but it has now been three months. What is he going to do, and when, to prevent further avoidable deaths?

[Grant Shapps]

I should like to start by thanking the hon. Lady for her sterling work as Chair of the Select Committee on Transport, which I am sure is recognised by all Members of the House. She is absolutely right about that stocktake. Two things have happened. First, the general election intervened and took up some weeks. The other thing that has happened—I say this in all sincerity—is that I have uncovered a range of issues that I am not content simply to brush over. I have therefore requested further information, and we are nearly there. In this process, I have specifically included going back to, speaking to and in one case meeting the families of those who have been affected by these issues. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead that there is far too much complication in having all-lane-running dynamic motorways—smart motorways. If the hon. Lady will forgive me, this is taking a little longer, but I think we will get to a much better outcome.