Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Monday 16th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hammond]

My hon. Friend is right that the V-22 is an exceptional platform and incredibly impressive, but he will also know that operating an additional fleet of any kind imposes a huge burden on defence. Strangely enough, I am not approaching SDSR 15 on the basis of looking for additional commitments other than those that are already well known.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

T6. Press reports suggest the Prime Minister is increasing support for armed forces children in schools, which is, of course, welcome, but today’s armed forces covenant report says that “the need for more comprehensive, affordable childcare…needs to be addressed.”What does the Department propose to do about that?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes the point very clearly. I believe that it is not possible for Britain to maintain its prosperity in the 21st century in an increasingly competitive global economy unless we can close the growth gap between north and south. Governments for the past 50 or 60 years have wrestled with this challenge and we have not succeeded yet. This approach of investing in strategic infrastructure is the last best chance to achieve that.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State share my view that developing the eastern leg of the “Y”, which will link the great core cities of Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds, has a very strong business case and should be prioritised?

[Mr Hammond]

I agree that it has a very strong business case and it will be part of the “Y” network, but the logic of building this project is that we have to do the complex engineering challenge of getting out of London through tunnels—the difficult bit of the project—first. In engineering terms, once we are out of the tunnels, it is pretty much plain sailing to complete the remainder of the construction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

5. What recent discussions he has had with local authority leaders on the future of funding for major local authority transport schemes.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Philip Hammond)]

Officials have written to all relevant local authorities, enclosing the document “Investment in Local Major Transport Schemes”, which was made available to Members of this House on 26 October and which sets out the position on the future funding of major schemes. Detailed discussions are ongoing.

In the longer term, I have made a commitment to consider the options for a much greater devolution of capital budgets and prioritisation decisions for local major schemes and will in due course discuss the best way forward with local authorities and local enterprise partnerships once they are established.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. As he knows, there is deep concern about the decision to postpone improvements to the A453 in Nottinghamshire. There is an appetite locally, across all parties, for exploring ways to retrieve the situation, and it has been suggested that a regional growth fund bid could be made to contribute to the cost. Would the Secretary of State welcome such an approach? Will he facilitate the participation of the Highways Agency in assisting local partners to explore such a possibility?

[Mr Hammond]

As the hon. Lady knows, the A453 is a Highways Agency scheme and not, strictly speaking, a local authority major scheme. It is not the kind of scheme that was primarily intended to be a beneficiary of the regional growth fund.

I have written to the hon. Lady on this subject and indicated that we will be looking at Highways Agency schemes that are not currently prioritised for commencement in this spending review period, with a view to identifying those that will be accelerated as first reserves, as it were; inevitably, programmes sometimes slip and there is a requirement for additional schemes. We will be looking at that in the new year.

Rail Investment

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Thursday 25th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

First Great Western was first off the blocks today to welcome the statement, and we will continue to work with it. We expect additional carriages for First Great Western to be contracted as part of the 650-carriage programme, and of course, when decisions are made on the IEP and on further electrification of the great western main line, the company will ultimately be a significant beneficiary.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

The Minister knows that I am delighted with the extensions to our tram network, but unfortunately we cannot travel to London on it. Electrification of the midland main line would make it possible to reduce the travel time from Nottingham to London to an hour and a half. The Minister acknowledged that the economic case for electrification is strong—I would say “overwhelming”. Can he assure me that the Government have a strategy to achieve “Nottingham in 90”, pending the development of High Speed 2?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Lady will have noted that the last Government failed to deal with the issue of the electrification of the midland main line. I thought for a minute that I was going to get a bid for a tramway extension to London; to be honest with the hon. Lady, I prefer the option of midland main line electrification. There is a strong business case for electrifying the midland main line. The Government strongly support electrification, but we have, of course, to work within the envelope of affordability. We will be looking at projects for the next Network Rail investment control period, which begins in 2014. Midland main line electrification will have a strong case for inclusion in that programme.

Transport (Investment)

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Indeed I can. As I made clear in my statement, potential for economic growth is one of the key priorities in allocating funding. I am also aware that many schemes do not have 100% support for the currently proposed solution in the communities that they serve. Where there are ideas about how a scheme might be differently presented and how costs might be taken out in order to make a scheme more attractive and thus significantly more likely to secure funding, the Department will be interested to hear about them in the course of the process.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State says that he wants to move to local decision making, but I can tell him that local people, local authorities, local MPs on both sides of the House and local businesses all want the A453 widening to go ahead, and we produced a dossier to him to explain why. Does he accept that his decision to shelve the scheme until at least 2015 will be a kick in the teeth for our regional economy, local businesses and the job creation we so clearly need?

[Mr Hammond]

Dear, dear! I must be going deaf, because I did not hear the hon. Lady mention the Nottingham tramway or the ring-road improvement. Far from being a kick in the teeth for Nottingham, this very carefully made decision prioritises the projects with the highest value for money. Whether she likes it or not, the ring road showed a much higher return per pound of taxpayers’ money—