West Coast Main Line

Lord Watts Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Rosie Cooper]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is here and is able to contribute to the debate. His colleagues, I believe, are away on business.

The Transport Committee is considering this matter through the work of its Rail 2020 inquiry. Several hon. Members from Lancashire, who are currently attending a meeting with Ministers on employment matters in their constituencies, wish, with your permission, Mr Bone, to speak later in the debate.

More than 170,000 people put their name to an e-petition, which was started by Ross McKillop, calling on the Government to reconsider their decision on the west coast main line franchise. That huge number of signatures, which was collected over a short period of time, reflects strong feelings and shows that the subject deserves to be debated in the House.

On the west coast main line, we are talking about 31 million passenger journeys a year and a £5.5 billion contract that will last for 15 years—that is this Parliament and the two that follow it. Hon. Members from all parts of the House have called on Transport Ministers to give Members an opportunity to scrutinise in more detail the actual process through which the decision was made. In August, my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) wrote to the then Secretary of State for Transport, asking her to make a statement to the House. This will be the first opportunity for Members from all parts of the House, apart from the Transport Committee, to ask questions of the Minister, to begin to scrutinise the decision and to put their views and those of their constituents directly to the Minister.

A considerable amount of press coverage and opinion seeks to make the issue one of FirstGroup versus Virgin. Personally, I do not care much about the name of the company that provides the service. My priority is to ensure that the final decision, taken by the Department for Transport, is the best deal for taxpayers and fare payers. I hope to get from the Minister today the guarantees and reassurances necessary to be satisfied that the decision-making process is robust, so that the right decision is made with taxpayers’ money.

Given the determined efforts of Transport Ministers to avoid answering questions on this franchise decision, I do not begin this debate from a position of resounding confidence. We are told over and over that the process is rigorous, detailed and fair. It is as if by repeating that mantra we will all believe it. Yet there have been many complaints that the process does not even deliver against its own objectives.

The basis of the judicial review is that the Department for Transport broke its own rules when evaluating the bids, and we need to get to the bottom of that. There are those who argue that the entire franchise bidding process is flawed, and driven solely by the promise of large sums of money no matter what the cost, and irrespective of the stated objectives.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Department for Transport officials, who looked at the Virgin contract when it was let, underestimated the amount of money that would be made by Virgin? Given that there is that lack of credibility, how much credibility does she place on the assessment of the First bid?

[Rosie Cooper]

I was not a Member of this House when that decision was taken, so was not in a position rigorously to examine it. Overall, though, I do not have great confidence in the various projections of the Department.

To continue, let us take, for example, the objective to achieve sustainable value for money. That is a stated objective, yet the process encourages risky bids because companies know that if their bid is £250 million more than any other bid their competitors’ bids do not go forward for further evaluation. I have deep reservations about a system that does not attempt to answer why one bid is so much higher than all the rest, and then does not quantify the difference.

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[Rosie Cooper]

I agree, and again my hon. Friend raises points that I will return to later in my remarks.

It is absolutely for sure that we are dealing with risk—risk in the assumptions and economic risk. However, the only bidder for the contract that does not seem to have put up a lot of money is the company that has been awarded the contract. Again, I will return to that point later.

Economic assumptions are central to franchise bids. Governments expect rail companies to predict GDP trends over the lifetime of a franchise. As the Government cannot manage to predict GDP over the short term, how can we have confidence that any bids based on long-term projections have credibility? If an economist can tell me that those projections are credible, I suggest that the Government employ that economist as the current lot of economists cannot manage to.

[Mr Watts]

Is not the point that the Department for Transport has a long record of getting everything wrong? It gets it wrong on roads, on airports and on rail. The only thing that it seems will protect the Minister is that some penalties will be imposed if the contract is not delivered in the way that his officials propose. Should not we be transparent and absolutely clear about how this contract was let, know how any penalties are going to work and be quite clear that there will be no payment by the taxpayer if things go wrong?

[Rosie Cooper]

I absolutely agree with those comments, and those points are central to why I asked the Backbench Business Committee to allow a debate on this subject today. It is clear that there should be an open and transparent process. Perhaps we should be at the point now of comparing bids.

Let me return to my train of thought. There are other anomalies. For instance, the Virgin bid offers £133 million more in the period of the franchise up to March 2020. After that point, FirstGroup says that it will pay £1.23 billion more between March 2020 and March 2026. It does so based on a forecast of huge growth in passenger numbers, which comes at a time when there is no planned investment and when there will be huge disruption from the High Speed 2 rail project. So I ask again: how is sustainability at the heart of this decision?

Besides the computer modelling, there is also the anonymised scoring system, which I hope would prioritise sustainable value for money over high-value promises.

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[Mr Watts]

One of the problems that we see daily is that companies can go out of business and then start again under a new name. If First did that, could it not overcome that problem by reorganising itself, developing a new company and then bidding for future contracts? I do not see how we could legally stop it from doing so.

[Rosie Cooper]

I think that is a real option. I understand from the grapevine that First does not intend to brand the west coast main line “FirstGroup”, but that there is a great possibility that it will be called Horizon. We might be in that kind of territory; I am not sure.

If there is a failure to reach an agreement before 9 December, it would mean instituting a directly operated railway service on the west coast, matching the current system on the east coast. The Government’s own guidance says that 120 days are required to get that kind of operation in place, and here we are 90 days away from the end of the current west coast franchise. Will the Minister enlighten us on how that will be achieved to ensure the smooth transfer of services to the DOR, if necessary? There is much to consider and address: safety matters; employment and contracting issues; even the simple thing of setting up a website to sell tickets. What would be the associated costs of the DOR in the initial set-up and the monthly costs thereafter? Those costs would be incurred by the taxpayer because of the Government’s failure to handle the situation adequately.

We must consider the staff. Come 9 December, they will have no idea for whom they will be working—FirstGroup, the DOR, or perhaps even Virgin. As part of any transfer of a franchise, there is a responsibility for the incumbent to work with the new operator.

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[Iain Stewart]

I thank my hon. Friend and fellow Select Committee member for that point. There will still be a peak period and an off-peak period. My perspective is that we should be able to manage a more effective distribution. However, Mr O’Toole also made the point that he will not realise his ambition to fill the trains if fares are so high that people will not use them. His ambition is to achieve a modal shift from car and air to train.

[Mr Watts]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can clarify one point. The operators do not buy the trains; they lease them. If the increase in question does not happen, and Virgin is right and First is wrong, will First be forced to lease trains in the 10th, 11th, or 12th years—up to 15 years? Alternatively, will it just be able to decide that perhaps it will not increase capacity then, because there would be no justification?

[Iain Stewart]

I am not privy to the contractual details in relation to the trains. From memory, First would be obliged to continue with the existing Pendolino fleet, which is the mainstay of the route. The trains in question are additional ones, to meet the capacity. Things could easily go the other way. The trains that are being bought are six-car ones; if, suddenly, passenger numbers go up beyond expectations, it might be feasible to lengthen them, in the same way that the Pendolinos have been lengthened from nine to 11 cars.

[Mr Watts]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. If what he said is the case, the commitment to long-term investment may never materialise. It is one of the main planks of the argument for First, but First may not build the capacity because there might not be a justification for it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is why it is important that we have more transparency, and can all see the details of the contract?

[Iain Stewart]

Perhaps it is a case of whether we see the glass as half-full or half-empty. I see an attractive proposition for growth in use. Why would FirstGroup, an experienced rail operator, want to tarnish its reputation by not delivering on what it promises? I will come on to one difficulty that I anticipate—or on which, at least, I would like reassurance. However, I think First’s ambition is genuine. As I have tried to explain, I think that there is underlying growth in the market, and that First will be able to innovate with new products to attract people on to the railways.

I do not want to continue much longer, because other hon. Members want to contribute. I have a concern about one aspect of the matter, and the hon. Member for West Lancashire touched on it. There will be considerable work on the west coast main line over the franchise period, particularly in the Euston area, if it is decided that that will be the High Speed 2 terminus. That may have an impact on the ability of the line to deliver the extra capacity. I should be grateful for a comment from the Minister, whom I welcome him to his post. He has long taken an interest in rail, and richly deserves his position. Perhaps he could say a little about how the upgrade work at Euston and elsewhere on the line will be accommodated, along with growing passenger numbers, over the period in question. I believe that there are solutions. For example, it might be possible to divert some commuter traffic on the London midland line into the Crossrail terminus while Euston is being upgraded, and for extra capacity to be created there. If the Minister would say a few words about that, I should be grateful.

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[Derek Twigg]

We would have to explore the consequences to the rest of the rail users on the system, but it should certainly be explored.

I return to a key issue that several hon. Members have pointed out. A cloud of controversy has surrounded the back-loading of the premium payments to the Government in the final few years of the franchise, whereas Virgin pledged more cumulative premiums to the Government for the first nine years of the franchise. I know the west coast line well, not just from travelling it but from my experiences as the rail Minister, and there were major problems on the west coast line during the early 2000s, for various reasons. At one stage, it was almost in a state of collapse, and the train services provided were pretty awful. Income dropped massively during those early years, for obvious reasons: people were not using the service. Because of the problems, they were using alternative transport such as cars, planes and so on. Income jumped in 2004 or 2005, and the timetable came out and so on. As the Minister will be aware, in 2009, a new timetable was introduced with weekend running and faster trains, which I mentioned. Did the bid take account of, or did Ministers ask questions about, that unusual situation at the beginning at the 2000s and its impact on longer-term predictions of income?

I assume that High Speed 2 will have a major impact on Euston, unless the Minister can tell me something different. Has any care been taken about that and the possible impact on the west coast?

The other question for the Minister relates to the GDP forecast on which the bids were based. Will the Minister confirm whether the bidders went along with the Government’s forecasts—a major failing in recent years—or a lower forecast? That will have an important impact on the bids. Projections are guess work, but I am not sure—we have not seen all the details, because we keep being told that they are confidential—whether the details actually add up. There is no doubt that the line has the potential for a great amount of growth. A point was made earlier about capacity and future investment. I am slightly sceptical about High Speed 2, because it has the potential to have an impact on necessary investment in the west coast main line.

[Mr Watts]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it seems that the First bid will deliver premium payments at the end of the contract, which will mean that the Government will have less money to invest in the west coast main line in the early years? Is there not an argument for doing the opposite, so that we can invest to deal with the congestion problems we will face while waiting for High Speed 2? Given the fact that no one knows whether HS2 will go ahead, is it not crucial to invest early rather than later?

[Derek Twigg]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important point. One key failure of the system—I hold my hands up as a former rail Minister—is in being unable to get investment into certain franchises to improve rolling stock, passenger experience, gating and so on. Some companies that have won franchises have decided not to invest, for various reasons that we do not have time to go into.

As I said, all politics is local. Runcorn, in my constituency, has benefited significantly from improvements put in place in the past 10 years or so. I am concerned that we will not build on those improvements and, because of problems with the franchise, take a step backwards. What has happened in recent years is remarkable. Virgin has achieved a good partnership with Halton borough council, which has been crucial in the reconstruction of Halton’s economy. The previous Government’s massive £8 billion investment in the west coast main line, after decades of underinvestment by other Governments, was crucial in achieving the improvements we now see, and Virgin became part of that achievement because it ran the franchise. We have seen massive improvements. From Runcorn, it now takes just under two hours to get to London, with the fastest train taking 1 hour 50 minutes.

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[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

I would like to speak about the importance of the rail connection to my constituency of Rugby. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place. He will recall, in his former role, standing on a drafty Rugby station platform months before the 2010 general election. The rail connection is of massive importance. We are in the centre of the UK and we benefit from the crossroads of the motorway network. We also benefit from the 50-minute journey time on the existing Virgin service from London Euston. That service has enabled us to attract businesses to our town, where we offer lower wages and lower premises costs than businesses based in the capital. It has also led to a large increase in the number of people who commute on a daily basis from Rugby to London. The quality of the service they receive is fundamental.

The recent history of the line has been one of substantial improvements in service from Virgin. I put on record my thanks, and that of my constituents, and congratulate it on the way it has improved. My predecessors as MP for Rugby would have had a far busier time dealing with constituents on rail issues than I have had. In fact, one of my predecessors, Andy King, the MP from 1997 to 2005, was instrumental in setting up the Rugby rail users group, a campaign body set up to deal with service problems. I often attend that group, but I am not told of significant problems or failures on the line. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of this decision being announced, I went on local radio and advised that there had been no complaints about the service provided by Virgin in the time that I had been Rugby’s Member of Parliament. Somebody got in touch with me to remind me that there was an issue, but it was a ticketing issue rather than a service issue.

We have gone through a very public tender process. We knew that the tender was coming up at around this time; it had been shadowed for a great deal of time, there had been lots of publicity and the requirement was known. When assessing this tender, the Department for Transport would have known that this decision would come under massive scrutiny. I am confident that such scrutiny will have led to the utmost probity in respect of its decision.

As hon. Members have mentioned, the Government have a duty to secure the best deal. They have invested £9 billion in the west coast main line. There is no use trumpeting big numbers if we do not get some benefit from that investment. It is important that we get the return not only to fare payers, as users of the line, but to the taxpayer more broadly.

[Mr Watts]

It is also the duty and responsibility of the Ministry of Defence to get value for money for contracts, but as we know that often does not occur. So what people want to achieve and what is actually achieved can be two different things. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the GDP factor is crucial? If the GDP figure is halved, will First’s bid still be deliverable? If it is not, surely that may put at risk the whole analysis of this contract.

[Mark Pawsey]

I will come on to the First bid, including questions that other hon. Members and I have put to it about the accuracy of its bid and where its bid stands. I am not sure that making comparisons with other Departments in this debate is helpful, Mr Bone. We need to ensure that the Government get the maximum value for money for every item of expenditure.

Port of Southampton

Lord Watts Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Denham]

The point about this procedure is twofold. Throughout this process, ABP took guidance from the MMO as to what requirements it needed to fulfil. It was reasonable for ABP to do that. It is because it was not well advised—indeed, it was advised to do other things—that we have ended up in this position.

In April 2010, following the re-advertisement and the intervention from Hutchison, which has no local interest at all in this matter—it is purely a commercial rival issue—and having raised those issues, the chief executive of the MMO wrote to ABP, stating:

“Please be assured that the MMO is working pro-actively with ABP to resolve these cases swiftly.”

However, it was not until February 2011, more than three years after the original application, that the MMO finally issued consent, in good time to get this work under way.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Obviously, hon. Members from Merseyside oppose the proposed blocking of the cruise terminal at Liverpool. However, on this issue we fully support my right hon. Friend. Does he agree that this scheme demonstrates how out of date our planning process is? Is not the economy suffering because we cannot make quick decisions? I hope the Minister will consider speeding the whole process up, so that we can get such schemes introduced much more quickly.

[Mr Denham]

I want to concentrate on getting this scheme approved. However, when the dust has settled it will be clear that the scope for getting things wrong and for commercial challenges by people who have no interest in environmental issues in the Southampton area is so great that it can lead to huge delays. If our collective attempts to get investment in the UK infrastructure are bogged down in legal challenges between rival commercial companies, enormous damage will be done to the chances of getting infrastructure investment under way and rebuilding the economy. There has to be a point where every major company is prepared to consider what is in the UK national interest, not a narrow view of what is in their own local commercial interest.

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[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

This is the first time I have had the pleasure of participating in a Westminster Hall debate under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate you on that, just as I congratulate the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) on securing this important debate.

So far, we have seen an interesting division of labour. The right hon. Gentleman concentrated in great detail, as he had to do, on the process of the application. My hon. Friends the Members for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) and for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) concentrated to a considerable extent on the importance of the port of Southampton to the wider region. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) and my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) emphasised the magnitude of the task of accommodating container ships that can carry as many as 13,000 units and of transporting those units, when offloaded, to the hinterland within our country.

My role, therefore, towards the end of the debate is to try to show why this issue—or, not to overstate the case, this dispute—is different from other disputes that have taken place in the past and particularly the dispute over the plans that Associated British Ports had for many years, and has not entirely abandoned, to build a huge container port at Dibden bay in my constituency, on the opposite side of Southampton water to the existing container terminal. Hon. Members from that part of the country will be well aware that there was a six-year campaign to resist the Dibden bay port development, culminating in a year-long planning inquiry, which finally decided to recommend—the Government of the day, to their credit, accepted this—that that development should not go ahead.

There is a complete difference between the situation in which we were fighting against the Dibden bay development, and the obstructiveness that has confronted ABP over the current development, which entirely conforms to what we said at the time. That is that the container terminal in Southampton, run by ABP, had the potential to be expanded, to have its capacity increased and to grow as the size and volume of container traffic continues to grow.

At the time of the earlier dispute, ranged against ABP were not just the MP for New Forest East, which is entirely to be expected, given an MP’s responsibility to his constituents, but all sorts of national, environmentally concerned bodies: Natural England or whatever it was called at the time, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds—you name it; they were against it. Where is that cacophony of objection to the development of berths 101 and 102? Is it being suggested that great harm will be done to the natural environment or the habitat? As my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North emphasised, the main concern is about migratory salmon. That is not to do with the development having a destructive effect: it is simply a question of timing the development so that the salmon can migrate in the normal way, and the piling and the preparation of the quay wall can go ahead.

There is nothing like the same level, quality, type or scale of objection on environmental grounds to what is proposed. On the contrary, the port is doing what the port, with the greatest respect—I say that to the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen—should have done at the time when the extremely destructive proposal to build at Dibden bay was originally made. The port proposes to take its existing footprint, to modernise it, to do a modest dredge and to enable the larger generation of ships to dock there safely and securely. That is precisely the way in which an important port should be able to increase its capacity—without doing any harm whatever to the natural environment and without causing much concern, if any, to the people who live in the area.

The difference is, therefore, fuelled not by environmental objections but by commercial ones. ABP could similarly be accused of applying double standards regarding its commercial objections to cruises being allowed to start and end at the cruise terminal in Liverpool. However, there is no real comparison, because the objections from the city of Southampton and ABP to the proposals for Liverpool—to their credit, Liverpool MPs have been present in force today to defend the interests of their city—have been based on the fact not that there would be competition between Liverpool and Southampton for the cruise liner trade, but that Liverpool received £20 million of public money to develop a cruise terminal as a port of call, not a port at which cruises should start and end. That money was given specifically on the condition that the cruise terminal would be restricted to that purpose, and within a year of the cruise terminal’s being finished, the request was being made to tear up the condition without repaying all the money. I will not dwell on that, because we know that the argument is about to be settled one way or another, although we do not know which way.

[Mr Watts]

Was there not a great deal of public investment in Southampton before denationalisation? The port has enjoyed a lot of public investment over many years, so is it not a bit ironic that Members are complaining about public investment when Southampton has had so much?

[Dr Lewis]

That is a neat argument, but it would have a little more force if the port of Liverpool were not owned privately by Peel Ports. One should not compare what happened to Southampton before it was privately owned with what is happening to Liverpool when it is privately owned. It was a nice try, however, and I give the hon. Gentleman full credit for it.

In the spirit of consensus we have in the debate, I must acknowledge—I think ABP acknowledges this as well—that Hutchison Ports has had a bad deal. More than one local Member has ably made the point that Hutchison Ports feels that it was treated unfairly in comparison with other ports, so it has been making a point of saying that if it does not get fair treatment, it will put a spanner in the works so that other people do not get fair treatment either. I had some friendly and helpful interactions with Hutchison Ports at the time of the Dibden bay dispute, and I say to the company that it has made its point effectively, but it would be carrying things too far to try to make it again.

Time is of the essence, not only in this debate but in terms of the need to make a decision. I conclude by saying that if the debate has focused Ministers’ attention—and, through Ministers, the attention of the Marine Management Organisation—on the need to conclude this over-long process as soon as possible, it will have achieved its objective.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

I am honoured to be serving under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Gray. It has been an interesting debate, but perhaps I may seek your indulgence, as this is the first opportunity that I have had to address the House following the disaster in Italy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who have lost loved ones or been injured over the weekend. I asked Sir Alan Massey, the chief executive of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, to contact his counterparts in Italy and offer any assistance that they would need with the rescue, investigation or contamination. Perhaps they may need some skimmers from us. I have also written to my counterpart in Italy with similar remarks. On that point, I shall be on a cruise liner as soon as I can—not crossing the Atlantic, like the shadow Minister, but to stand steadfastly by the cruise industry and show that the disaster, although significant, should not reflect on the industry as a whole. I expect that nearly 2 million British people will go on a cruise by 2014-15, and I hope that that figure will be exceeded. I wish every success to all ports involved in the cruise industry.

Interesting comments have been made about the link between the position of Southampton and that of Liverpool. I am the decision-making Minister and will be considering the matter carefully and making a decision soon. If Liverpool had offered to pay back all the grant, as the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) said, we would not be discussing anything here today. The decision would have been made by the previous Administration, and that would have been enough. Liverpool has not made the offer that the hon. Gentleman described, but it has made an offer, which I am considering. However, even if I make a decision, there is an issue to do with the funding that came from Europe, and state aid clearance will be required by the European Commission. However, I will look at the matter. I want a level playing field and growth in the cruise liner industry. I want Liverpool to be a success. I have been to Liverpool—twice now—and have worked with the city council and with Peel Ports. One of the most exciting things that Peel has done is to start to use the capacity of the Manchester ship canal in a way that has not happened for nearly 100 years. There is a desperate need for that, and I congratulate Peel.

The port that I have visited more than any other in the 18 months when I have had the honour and privilege to be the shipping and ports Minister is Southampton. There are many reasons for that, but not the least of those is its significance within the ports industry. That cannot be looked at in isolation. The issue has to do with a commitment of £150 million of private funding for increased capacity of 201 and 202 berths. Anyone who has heard me speak as shipping Minister in the past 18 months will have heard me go on and on about the importance of ports to an island nation. Frankly, successive Governments have not taken ports seriously enough. With the dramatic change that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) alluded to in the size of bulk ships, which we could not have envisaged a few years ago, we need to make sure that our nation is not left behind, and that we have the necessary capacity in the UK. The investment by Hutchison at Felixtowe, which as hon. Members can imagine I have also visited, was significant in that context. I pay tribute also to DP World for sticking with it and going ahead with a £1.5 billion investment—36,000 jobs—in London Gateway. That will create competition for Felixstowe, which is good because competition within the ports industry is important. As I have said many times before, it is about not just those very big ports, but the provision of myriad services through the ports.

What is proposed in Southampton is not the largest deepwater port. Some of the bigger ships that are now being built will not be able to get in there. We are talking about a 16-metre depth when a 17-metre-plus at Gateway is under discussion and Felixstowe already has 17 metres. None the less, what this will do is allow the capacity to be spread around the country. Anyone listening to me will probably think that I am not supportive of Southampton having this port facility; well, categorically, I am. I want others to have it as well. Planning permission for deepwater ports already exists in Tees, Bristol and Liverpool. They will not be the largest ports, but they will take deepwater capacity ships—certainly to the size of 13,000 or 14,000 20-foot equivalent units.

As we look at this matter, we must ensure that the environment is protected. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who is no longer in his seat, referred to the habitats directive. That directive has become a real issue; it was designed to do one thing and has become a hindrance in other areas. A review is currently under way, which will report in March. It will try to address the balance between protecting the environment and allowing this country to grow and businesses, especially ports, to carry out their work.

Members will hear the frustration in my voice when I say that much has been said about the MMO. The shadow Minister will not like what I am going to say, but the MMO was a creation of the previous Government. It did not come into force until April 2010. All the earlier action was carried out by the Marine and Fisheries Agency. Let me say—I will not beat about the bush here—there was a big cock-up, which is why the judicial review said that maladministration had taken place and that the agency had not done what it should have done.

Can I criticise Southampton for looking at what was given to it as a requirement and saying, “The legal body is telling us to do this, this and this”, and then doing it? I have always been involved in small businesses, and issues relating to the highways and to rail would have been addressed within their own business plans. If they had been asked to do something, I am sure that it would have happened. There is no doubt about that. In this case though, that did not apply. One of the things that Hutchison is concerned about is that it was certainly asked to do such things when it was expanding the port at Felixstowe which I visited at the start of my tenure as Minister. One of the delays to do with Gateway’s decision was with DP World. It was asked to do significant things relating to rail and road infrastructure. Negotiations, particularly over junction 30, went on right up to the last minute. Something that Hutchison has raised with me is whether the subsidies are there or not.

As we go forward, we can look at what the problems have been over the past few months. As I have said before with a degree of frustration in my voice, I do not have control over the MMO. I have control over the national ports policy, which we will debate tomorrow. Members will hear me talk about the renaissance in coastal shipping and in ports, both small and large. I can take so much freight off our roads. So many road miles can be taken away if we utilised our ports.

[Mr Watts]

I understand the political banter and why the Minister has talked about things happening on the previous Government’s watch and not his own. I think that that is a valid point. What action has been taken to deal with the officials who made that “cock-up”? This is what I find all the time. When one Government leaves office, the other one blames them. On this occasion, the problem is down to civil servants and individuals. Are they still working? Has action been taken to ensure that they do not make the same mistakes again?

[Mike Penning]

I do not know how Hansard is going to get the word “cock-up” in, but there it is again.

The MMO is a quango with almost no ministerial control whatever. Many of the civil servants in the previous incarnation did not transfer to the new organisation because it was reincarnated in Newcastle. Much of the personal knowledge about this particular case was not transferred. Once we have got through this—I must ensure that I do not interfere with any judicial process—we will be looking very closely at the matter. Remember this is a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Department for Transport issue. Do not get me wrong, the Minister would never have seen this; it would never have got to him. This was below the radar level. None the less, it is quite simple to say, “You looked at these ports and you asked for this, this and this. When you came to this port, you didn’t ask for something that you have asked for at nearly every other port that I have looked at.” We will address this matter.

I want to look at how the MMO works. As the Minister standing before the Chamber, listening to colleagues and going on visits, it is enormously frustrating having very little control over things such as the harbour revision order. Even if the whole local community and the MP is against that order, all I can do is advise the MMO; I cannot actually instruct it.

High-speed Rail

Lord Watts Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I can confirm that when we look at the key people pushing for this scheme, we notice that the key economies and great cities in the north will see the benefits. The monetised total value is upwards of £40 billion, even £50 billion. Ultimately, however, we must recognise that that calculation takes place over a 60-year time frame. Anybody building the railways back in Victorian times would never have counted the benefit we get from them today, which is very real, and the potential benefit of HS2 is significant.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State really think that people will believe the costings she has set out, given the past history of building railways and Government schemes? Will she give an assurance that the route will be extended to the north-west as, frankly, most people believe that they have more chance of travelling in the Tardis than on HS2?

[Justine Greening]

In terms of costs, there is safety in two things. High Speed 1 was delivered on time and on budget by the last Conservative Government. I aim to have a much better performance than we saw from the Labour Government on the west coast main line, where a £2 billion planned upgrade mushroomed to £9 billion. Finally, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that his constituents will see the benefit of phase 1 from day one. In many cases, the HS2 trains will be through-running trains that, having saved that time on the high-speed network, will continue their journey further north on conventional lines. I think that will benefit far more cities than just London and Birmingham.

Coastguard Modernisation

Lord Watts Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We are always interested to hear of the Minister’s holiday arrangements, as well as his fear of the death penalty.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

The Minister assured the House that there would be some Liverpool-based facility. Will he clarify whether there will be any people in that facility who will be able to rescue anyone?

[Mike Penning]

The rescue facilities in the Liverpool area will be enhanced. We will utilise the buildings that we have so that we do not rent new buildings for the sake of it. We will have more trainers, more enhanced staff, and the volunteers will provide a much better service for the public to rely on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Watts Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

T2. Has the Department carried out a study of the likely effects of massive rail and bus fare increases on the number of people who are able to use such services in the future?

[Mr Hammond]

The Department did, of course, carry out the usual equalities impact study that is required, before making the proposals. There is a hidden premise behind the hon. Gentleman’s question. Nobody increased rail fares ahead of inflation happily or gladly. The decision whether to protect the planned investment in reducing overcrowding by delivering additional rolling stock, or to scrap that programme, was a difficult one. We decided to protect investment for the medium and long term, and unfortunately that means three years of further above-inflation rail fare increases.

High Speed Rail

Lord Watts Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Well, they were your aircraft carriers, and I am not going to let the right hon. Gentleman anywhere near designing our trains; that is for sure.

The Eurostar trains that run on HS 1 were designed nearly 20 years ago and have concentrated power cars at front and rear. There will therefore be about 30 years of evolution in train design in respect of reducing noise and increasing fuel efficiency between the design of the Eurostar trains and the design of the trains that will run on these lines.

I also say to my hon. Friend that where we can hide this line, we will hide it. Where we cannot hide it, we will ensure that it is architecturally designed and that it is something that people are pleased to look at, not a British Rail engineering-style eyesore.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Given the massive cuts to regional and local transport systems that have already been announced and the fact that the capacity problem could be dealt with by investment in the existing west coast main line, why are the Government wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on this scheme?

[Mr Hammond]

Because the capacity problem could not be dealt with by further investment in the west coast main line. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says that it could, but if he looks at the engineering reports that have been published, he will see that, in practice, it could not. We are going ahead with additional rail cars and additional train sets on the west coast main line, and the Network Rail route utilisation study published two weeks ago shows that by 2024 the line will be operating at capacity between London and Manchester, and London and Birmingham. It is not possible, because of the design of the infrastructure—we are not just talking about platform lengths—to put longer trains on a railway that is designed in the way that the west coast main line was designed. If he recalls the chaos that lasted for years when the west coast main line was upgraded a couple of years ago and if, on the back of that, he is seriously proposing that we should add two additional tracks to its entire length while resignalling the whole thing, he needs to think again.