Govia Thameslink/Rail Electrification
Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Bob Stewart(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Joseph Johnson
We have a lot to learn as an industry from what went wrong, which is why the Secretary of State has set up the Glaister review, an independent review chaired by the Office of Rail and Road. It is important that we learn all the lessons from what happened in the run-up to May to ensure that mistakes are not made again in December and May 2019.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
The Government’s strategy is to combine track and train. How does the Minister think this will improve the lot of passengers?
Joseph Johnson
My hon. Friend refers to the Secretary of State’s strategic vision for rail, published last November, which seeks more integration between train operating companies and Network Rail to ensure less buck passing and less of the blame game in the future. A foretaste of how that will work can be seen in the new west coast partnership and the east coast partnership publications.
Student Loans Company
Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Bob Stewart(7 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Joseph Johnson
I would of course be happy to do that, but I remind the right hon. Gentleman that the SLC is in many ways a successful organisation, so we should not denigrate it. Opposition Members are doing a massive disservice to public servants who are working hard in Darlington and in Glasgow to ensure that students are getting access to the finance they need to undertake higher education. It is an achievement for an organisation to have 4.7 million customers but to receive complaints from less than 0.1% of them each year, so we should not endlessly run the SLC down. Of course it has room to improve, and the Government are committed to helping it do so.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
What does my hon. Friend consider to be the most significant change brought about by the Higher Education and Research Act 2017?
Mr Speaker
Order. That question is not altogether adjacent to the matter of the management and operation of the Student Loans Company. If I am being very polite to the hon. Gentleman, which I invariably am, I will say that his inquiry is at best tangential. It has at best a nodding acquaintance with the SLC, but no better than that. However, the Minister is a versatile and dextrous fellow, and I feel sure that he will be able to handle the matter eloquently and pithily.