Greater London Low Emission Zone Charging (Amendment) Bill

Louie French Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Johnson]

That is an absolutely valid point, but I would go further. About 50% of police officers in the Metropolitan police area live outside London and commute in, and the percentage for all emergency workers is probably about the same. These are the people who Londoners rely on the most—they are vital to Londoners—but if their vehicles are not ULEZ-compliant, they are hit with £12.50 every single time they go to work. Even worse, those doing night shifts have to pay on the way in and on the way out again, because at 3 am there might be no public transport. For emergency workers to be hit with £25 just for doing a night shift is totally and utterly wrong.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a great speech. As he knows, he has my full support. Does he agree that today we will see whose side Labour Members are on? Are they going to talk the Bill out, or are they going to back those emergency service workers and others in Bexley who want to be rid of ULEZ?

[Dr Johnson]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he has done in this respect. He is entirely right: we will see today whether Labour Members are in favour of the workers or in favour of Sadiq Khan.

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[Gareth Johnson]

Maybe the hon. Member has an oasis in south London, where everyone around the outside hates the ULEZ scheme but in Eltham they love it, but I would be very surprised. I gently remind him that most of the roads in Eltham are maintained by Greenwich’s Labour council, which should take its share of responsibility for the state of the roads.

My hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) mentioned the “border charge”. The Mayor launched a consultation that showed that people rejected the expansion—it was absolutely clear they did not want it. There was a question mark over how that consultation was handled, but it was clear that the majority of people did not want the expansion, yet the Mayor still went ahead with it. When he stood to be Mayor, his manifesto did not mention the fact that he wanted to expand the ULEZ scheme right to the border, so he has no mandate from his manifesto. His transport plan had no mention of the expansion either, so the Mayor of London does not have a mandate for expanding the ULEZ scheme.

I have heard people say, “Well, this is interfering with devolution. It is undermining devolution.”—[Interruption.] I would say the opposite. It is the actions of the London Mayor that are undermining devolution. The whole point of devolution is to bequeath the power to make laws to Mayors, in this example, and for those elected Mayors to use the powers for the people they represent. It is not devolution when those powers have a profound impact on people who do not come from the area that Mayor represents. The Mayor of London’s actions have had a huge impact on the lives of people living in Dartford, who do not have the power to vote him in or out. It is taxation without representation, or any kind of accountability whatsoever. Frankly, it is devolution at its worst, which is why it is right that central Government intervene over this matter. Devolved powers are being taken way beyond intended and they are impacting people who are not able to vote in that area.

I predict that this is the beginning, not the end. If Sadiq Khan wins the election for London Mayor in May, as sure as night follows day he will change the criteria for vehicles to be ULEZ compliant until we get to the stage where every single petrol or diesel car is impacted by the expansion. People watching this debate at home—if they have nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon—may be sitting pretty, thinking, “This does not affect me because my car is ULEZ compliant; it has nothing to do with me.” I say they should be very aware of what happens at the mayoral elections. As sure as night follows day, the Mayor of London will change the goal posts and ensure that all motor vehicles will be hit by the ULEZ expansion.

[Mr French]

On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that it is clear that what the Mayor of London says and what he does are very different? He previously ruled out expanding ULEZ, and then he did it.

[Gareth Johnson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is typical of what has happened throughout the debate about ULEZ. In July last year, the leader of the Labour party said that ULEZ expansion was a wonderful thing. Come the by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, he said, “Oh no, we have got to think again over this one. I’m not quite sure if we got this one right.” Just this week, he said the ULEZ expansion was a great thing. We have had enormous dithering from the leader of the Labour party over this issue, and the Mayor of London is taking full advantage of that fact.

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[Sir David Evennett]

Of course, recently local authorities have been given more money by the Government. I would say to the hon. Member that that is the fault of Greenwich council, not the Government.

[Mr French]

My right hon. Friend rightly points out that the local council is responsible for the roads. What the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) failed to point out is that the Royal Borough of Greenwich has been given over £7.8 million by the Government through the recent announcement of the potholes fund.

[Sir David Evennett]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour.

The ULEZ extension is a disastrous policy and another example of the London Labour Mayor filling the black hole in his finances. This Mayor is no friend of motorists. We have already had 20 mph speed limits, 24/7 bus lanes and the congestion charge on people who need to use their car. My constituents are very angry about this.

My borough is one of the two in London without the tube, the docklands light railway or trams. The Mayor of London has never even looked at extending any of those. We only have Southeastern rail and buses as our public transport. It is all very well to say that we should go on the tube, but we do not have it. Like many people, we have to use a car to get about in our area. The lack of public transport—and the fact that a lot of what we have is unreliable—has major implications for my constituents and residents of the borough of Bexley.

We are heavily reliant on our cars for various purposes. We have one of the highest car ownership rates and the lowest sustainable modal share rate in London. Over the last decade, car and van registrations have outstripped population growth. These are not figures we want to have. We hear all these wonderful things that the Mayor of London is doing, but in our area he has done very little. I made the point in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford that the Mayor had no mandate for this extension. It is all very well the hon. Member for Nottingham South talking about a mandate, but from his last manifesto he had no mandate for this policy. We could have debated it then. The hon. Lady was high on the mandates, but the manifesto did not mention it at all.

I believe that the consultation was rather a sham. Two thirds of people objected to the ULEZ, and they did so for many and various reasons. We have heard from businesses, and we have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford talk about his constituent who has to go and visit a relative in Bexley on a regular basis, and who now has to pay an extra £12.50 every time. The Labour party says that it cares about the less well-off and those who are disadvantaged, as I do passionately. I believe in social mobility and in giving people the chance to maximise their opportunities in life, and I have to say that the ULEZ is a tax on those who cannot afford to get around. In Bexley, we do not have the public transport services that other London boroughs have.

The congestion charge has tripled in the last few years, and the fine for non-payment has increased from £160 to £180—more than two days’ pay for minimum wage earners. It is reduced to £90 if paid within two weeks, but that is still more than a day’s pay. This is very unsatisfactory for the less well-off in the outer boroughs of London, as well as for businesses, key workers, pensioners and families. It is no good the Labour party always blaming somebody else, because the ULEZ was introduced by the Mayor of London. The poorest in my borough are the ones who do not have the ability to change their cars, and giving them £2,000 to do so is a bit of an insult. I am really disappointed.

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[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I will not speak for long, because I do not want to delay passage of this important Bill, which I have been happy to support my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) in bringing to this place.

Today we will see whose side Labour is really on: the Labour Mayor of London, who has introduced this regressive and greenwashed tax on outer London, or the hard-working people in Greater London who are struggling to pay Labour’s tax of £12.50 per day, or £4,500 per year, for going to work, medical appointments or the supermarket. This week, the Leader of the Opposition has finally got off his fence and disgracefully backed the Labour Mayor of London over the interests of hard-working Londoners. Today we have heard that the hon. Members for Eltham (Clive Efford), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) also back the Labour Mayor of London over their constituents—but the Conservatives will continue to back drivers in Greater London and the home counties, and I am pleased that the Government support the Bill.

[Dean Russell]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is less about clean air and more about taking my constituents in Watford and those elsewhere to the cleaners? The scheme taxes hard-working people who just want to get to work. When we say “hard-working people”, that includes those who work in hospitals and who want to work elsewhere in London to contribute to the local economy, including the night-time economy.

Bands that want to go and do gigs in London are now being priced out of being able to do so, and those who want to go and see them are being priced out too. It is absolutely wrong and needs to be stopped. Those who do not want to back the Bill really need to look in the mirror and consider why they are not helping hard-working people.

[Mr French]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is a real champion of his constituents. As he has just pointed out, people who come into London at night face the double charge of £12.50 to come in and then go out. That equally applies to the night-time industry. We have heard a lot about the scrappage scheme, but according to the ULEZ data from TfL, only one in three van drivers who have applied for support has received any. I completely agree with my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford that this tax on hard-working people is hurting people in the likes of Bexley, which is inside the zone, and those just outside.

With the Mayor of London taking millions of pounds each month from the pockets of drivers via fines and charges, while at the same time refusing to publish any meaningful evidence that proves that the ULEZ in outer London actually improves air quality, the public out there do not need me to tell them how much of a greenwashed con the ULEZ expansion really is.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr French]

No, the hon. Gentleman has only just come in.

The public do not need me to tell them that London devolution is broken, with TfL requiring Government bail-out after Government bail-out, London now being the slowest city in the world to drive in, and the Metropolitan police and London Fire Brigade in special measures.

[Guy Opperman]

I credit my hon. Friend for the speech he is giving. Is not the key issue here the democratic deficit for those outside the mayoral zone? A decision was made by the Mayor, which we know was not backed by a manifesto, and it is now impacting the wider communities my hon. and right hon. Friends represent, from Harlow to Bexley and Crayford. Surely the issue is how we navigate the desire to comply with the legislation—that is why the Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) does not say that we are scrapping it entirely—and the ability of individuals to have their say on whether this is the appropriate measure.

[Mr French]

I thank the Roads Minister for his intervention. I agree completely; there is a huge democratic deficit at play here. As he correctly points out, the charge affects people outside the zone who need to come into London, and it is having a significant negative impact on the likes of Crayford and Bexley village in my constituency, which are hundreds of meters away from the so-called London boundary and whose businesses are losing customers every single day because of the expansion.

The people of Bexley, who quite clearly rejected this policy in the sham of a public consultation we had, have been completely ignored. That is why I have no doubt that in a few weeks’ time they will be voting, like I will, to sack Sadiq Khan after eight years of failure. The public out there do not need me to tell them that London and the surrounding counties cannot afford another four years of Sadiq Khan and Labour running London. The plans to toll the Blackwall tunnel and install cameras on small residential closes and roads shows that ULEZ is not the end of the Mayor’s desire to hammer motorists in Bexley and outer London—people can look up Project Detroit themselves.

On 2 May, Londoners will be able to vote for Susan Hall and vote for change, to make London better and safer for everybody. People in Greater London do not need me to tell them who is on their side; they will see it with their own eyes as the Labour party desperately tries to block this Bill.

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[Fleur Anderson]

Absolutely. We want more people cycling and walking, to take cars off the roads and make them less congested for those who have to drive. We want to see an impact on active travel, but one that supports the businesses on the roadside in our community. It is unfair on the majority of constituents who do not have a car and those who live on the main roads in less expensive housing to bear the burden of air pollution.

[Mr French]

The hon. Lady is making a fair point about the impact of air pollution on the main roads. Does she therefore agree that it is somewhat strange that the largest investment that the Labour Mayor of London will have made during his term as Mayor will be the £2.2 billion Silvertown road tunnel, which will encourage heavy goods vehicles to drive along the A2 and into central London? That is why the Green party and the Conservatives are opposed to it.

[Fleur Anderson]

I would point to others, such as the Superloop—the new buses that will go around London—and the Elizabeth line. The Mayor will be able to invest more in public services because of the revenue from the ULEZ scheme, enabling people to travel on our public transport. That is the action we need to take to really clean up our air.

I have even taken to the streets for Clean Air Day to measure the clean air—or the polluted air—on Putney High Street. I used an ultra-fine particle counter, lent to me by the environmental research group at Imperial College London. It was amazing to take the counter out for the day and see the effects of air pollution. As I went down some of our main roads—Upper Richmond Road, Lower Richmond Road and Putney High Street—I saw a spike when buses and polluting cars came by. I thought there would be a constant level of dirty and polluted air, but it went up and down. I could see the impact of diesel buses and polluting cars. I thought of all the times that I had taken my children to primary school in Wandsworth over 15 years, walking along very polluted roads. All that time, it was damaging their lungs. This was worrying for me to see and for my constituents to know about.

Road Humps and 20 mph Speed Limits

Louie French Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am a long way from Wales, but I take my right hon. Friend’s point about decisions being taken in an arbitrary manner and sometimes in pursuit of a wider political objective. I simply say that his comments have been noted, and I am sure that the Minister will consider them when he winds up the debate. I agree about making sure that local authorities—and even wider authorities such as the Mayor of London or the Government in Wales—consult properly and discuss with local residents their needs and concerns. Their consideration is important in the application of these measures in their areas.

Too many Londoners in my constituency and elsewhere are struggling on main roads that have rapidly been brought down from 40 mph to 20 mph. The lower speed limit means that there is almost invariably some focus on the speedometer rather than on the road, because people are concerned that they cannot afford the fine. This may seem apocryphal, but taxi drivers are saying that they are moving out of their line of work simply because it is becoming impossible for them to navigate this process, especially taking into account some of the calming measures that have been over-instated throughout the city, where some of the roads they use are now blocked, even for some of the residents.

The important point, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) raised, is that enforcement can be lawfully carried out only by the police. The police are already under pressure, so it is difficult to see how the measures will not be abused, even when they are so little applied. The cost of the cameras alone is enormous. The extension of the 20 mph speed limits on main roads is affecting police workload.

I turn to a major issue in my constituency and, I believe, elsewhere. Speed bumps can be useful traffic-calming measures at times, but they are also extremely disruptive for residents, cyclists and emergency service vehicles in places where they may not necessarily need to be applied. My constituents have been genuinely affected by the roll-out of the 20 mph speed limits, combined with speed humps and the associated speed reduction measures in London. I know that I am not alone; many colleagues experience similar constituency issues.

Since the implementation of speed humps in residential areas, constituents have regularly raised with me the damage done to buildings by vibration transfer, such as cracking, possible subsidence, the long-term effects of the obstructions on local infrastructure, the increase in poor air quality, and emissions from vehicle engines, tyres and brake pads. Transport for London reports that in 2018, 75% of road transport particulate emissions came from tyre and brake wear. It is worth pointing out that many drivers naturally accelerate away from a speed hump, brake hard when they arrive at another, go over it and carry on. The emissions from brake pads and heavily used brakes are much greater than those coming out of the tailpipe of a diesel or petrol car. In a way, in the over-application—I stress the “over”—of these kinds of speed reduction measures, we are slightly contradicting our efforts to get pollution down.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

Emissions are a subject that has been debated widely by London MPs and others in London, particularly because of the ultra low emission zone. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the increasing traffic that has resulted from a range of schemes—such as the low-traffic neighbourhoods that have closed off many side roads in London—carries a risk of increasing emissions? London is now officially the slowest city in the world to drive in.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I very much accept that point. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, because I was going to come to that issue. It is not an issue particular to London, but in London we have the problem that traffic-calming measures are causing higher emissions in parts of the city where the measures are applied, and at the same time traffic is being funnelled with no escape routes.

We also need to take into consideration the increase in noise pollution during the day. Conversations are being drowned out in many houses near the humps, and the effect of the additional noise on residents living in the vicinity of a hump—not forgetting that the traffic goes up and down such roads all through the night—is that sleep is disturbed.

I have been in a number of houses and have stood and watched as commercial vehicles have gone over large 20 mph tables. I could hear the equipment in the back leaping up and down and the thump as the vehicles hit the tables—and they were not going over the speed limit. That is the point. When I have raised it with the council, it has dismissed it completely on the basis that it does not agree that the measures cause any problem whatever. The effects of additional noise on residents living in the vicinity include disturbed sleep and the stress resulting from sleep deprivation.

Bridges in London: Maintenance Funding

Louie French Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) on securing this debate. I appreciate and fully understand that Hammersmith bridge is of particular interest to her constituents and to people in the constituencies throughout the south and west of London. I wish to make a few preliminary points, the first of which is that clearly there is a good pre-existing working relationship between the Department for Transport and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

Obviously, as the Minister, I have to choose my words relatively carefully because, as the hon. Lady will be aware, the business case for Hammersmith bridge strengthening works has been submitted to both the Department for Transport and Transport for London for review. As she will no doubt appreciate, I can only say so much tonight to avoid prejudicing any ongoing governance procedures and the borough’s future procurement activity. However, I will attempt to address that.

I am uniquely acquainted with the particular bridge. I have cycled across it many times in the past. I used to live in Fulham, back in the distant days when I first became a Member here, so I am well acquainted with it. Clearly, on my first day in the Department for Transport, I am delighted to be answering the Adjournment debate on an issue that I have inherited but which I am delighted to inherit.

It would be a sad day if there were no contribution to the Adjournment debate by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I fathomed my brain to try to work out how, on a debate on “Bridges in London: Maintenance and Funding”, a gentleman from Northern Ireland would wangle in a vital part of transport infrastructure that would make all the difference in the world, but he successfully did so without interruption, fear or favour, and I congratulate him on that. I look forward to his pitch, doubtless in writing, to myself, the Northern Ireland Government and various other local authorities for bridge assistance. I have visited his constituency on several occasions and I congratulate him, as always, on his support for this process.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

Given the Minister’s comments about the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I assume he welcomes interventions. I congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) on securing this important debate on the financing of roads and bridges in London. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to his place, but I hope he is aware that Government funding for roads and bridges in London is normally funnelled and channelled through Transport for London. He might be aware that the Government have already bailed out TfL to the tune of around £6 billion in the last few years, which is a significant sum of money.

I politely urge the Minister, as he gets his feet under his new desk, that he might consider channelling that money directly to the boroughs, in places like Bexley and Bromley, as I think that money would be better spent that way than through Transport for London. Can I be really cheeky and ask him to meet me, when he gets the time, to discuss my campaign to prevent the Mayor of London from tolling the Blackwall tunnel, which is one of the few crossings in south-east London?

[Guy Opperman]

My hon. Friend, who I know very well—I have visited his constituency in a former life—makes very good points. He is a doughty champion for Bexley. He follows in the famous footsteps of James Brokenshire, who we all miss and who was my boss at the Home Office for a long period. I am happy to discuss the issues he raises further. He makes an interesting point about funding going in a particular way. It would be wrong of me to make first-day commitments at the Dispatch Box, but I will take his point away and get officials to look at it with interest, and I am happy to discuss it further.

The hon. Member for Putney set out the history of Hammersmith bridge in some detail. She is right that it is a grade II listed suspension bridge, opened in 1887, and has served generations of Londoners very well for some considerable time. However, there are a few of her points with which I would gently take issue. First, let us go to the basics: the bridge is not owned by the Government; it is owned by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It is not the responsibility of the Government. Even if people had listened to quite a lot of the speech, they may not have picked that up.

The responsibility for maintaining the bridge and making decisions on its repair lies with the borough. It is unfortunate that the bridge had to close, first to motor vehicles in 2019 and then to all users in 2020. The reason, as we know, was that the safety of those using the bridge was deemed to be of the utmost priority. The assertion was made that the Government have done nothing. I respectfully invite the hon. Lady to accept that the Government have provided nearly £10 million of funding to support the London borough, to ensure that there is remedial work and assistance on an ongoing basis. I set that out to try to correct the record.

Following the complete closure of the bridge in 2020, the DfT provided £4 million of taxpayers’ money, which enabled a comprehensive investigation into the overall structure and condition of the bridge. Through this investment, world-leading engineers worked to develop a complete picture of the issues that faced the bridge. The works determined the bridge to be in better condition than first feared, leading to the bridge reopening on a temporary and controlled basis to pedestrians, cyclists and river traffic. The Department for Transport has worked closely with the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and with Transport for London to help facilitate the reopening of the bridge to all users. In that vein, DfT established the Hammersmith bridge taskforce, which was led by the Transport Minister, Baroness Vere, as the hon. Lady outlined. The taskforce was set up in 2019 and has had many, many meetings—well over 15—since, and it was instrumental in providing a forum for interested stakeholders to work together to develop a clear course of action to resolve the immediate safety concerns around the bridge.

I know the hon. Lady has called for a further meeting of the taskforce. I want to try to address that. I assure her that when we are in a position to hold a further taskforce meeting, it will be to discuss issues of significance or change for the project, therefore ensuring that it remains a good use of stakeholders’ time. However, she will be aware that we have been waiting for the business case to be submitted and that is clearly the key part.

The commitment to this project by the DFT has not stopped at the initial £4 million support provided to the authority. In the most recent TfL extraordinary funding and financing settlement of August 2022, we committed to funding up to one third of the costs shared with the borough and TfL of reopening the bridge to pedestrians, cyclists and river traffic, and then, depending on costs, to buses and motor vehicles. The first part of this commitment has already been delivered. In March 2022, the Department for Transport approved the business case from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham for the stabilisation works on the bridge, which in turn triggered the release of a further £3 million of Government funding. These works will ensure that the bridge remains open to pedestrians, cyclists and river traffic permanently, with no risk of further temporary closures due to unsafe conditions. I am pleased to say that those works are due to complete very early in the new year and will provide certainty to the pedestrians and cyclists of Barnes, Hammersmith, Fulham, Richmond and beyond that this link across the Thames will remain open.

Most recently, as all parties will be aware, the Department for Transport provided the borough with a further £2.5 million for the crucial geotechnical investigations now being carried out at Hammersmith bridge, which will pave the way for the next stage of the works. This brings the total amount of Government funding to the bridge to date of up to nearly £10 million. That is exceptional funding.

The next stage of the project is to strengthen the core and renovate other structurally significant parts of the bridge. The strengthening phase of engineering works will build on stabilisation works and, upon completion, will allow the bridge to reopen to all users. That should include buses and motor vehicles. Following close co-operation with TfL and the Department, the borough has now developed and submitted a His Majesty’s Treasury Green Book outline business case for the second stage of the works to the Department for Transport, setting out the estimated cost range for strengthening the bridge. The Department is reviewing that outline business case in great detail. It was submitted in on 23 April, as I understand it, so clearly that is an ongoing process. The hon. Member for Putney asked about the HS2 project and the funding related to it, but no decisions have been made regarding reallocation of funds.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) also raised the local implementation plan. It is true that Transport for London provides formula funding to London boroughs for transport projects, but its budget for bridge projects is just over £2 million, to be shared between 33 boroughs. That is obviously insufficient to fund this project.

International Rail Services: Kent

Louie French Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is completely right. As she will have heard, I made the point that this is of great interest to people not just across Kent but beyond. Certainly, she is a great champion for Hastings, and I agree that the effects of high-speed rail, in this case international rail, can spread prosperity and the opportunities that travel can bring far and wide from the station.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes the case very well about the opportunities for people in Sussex and the coastal towns, but does he agree that that also applies to people in the north of Kent and the south-east London area, as it is still much quicker for them to access Ashford International for those journeys?

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. I am glad that my hon. Friend has made that point, because of course travelling into central London for St Pancras is often a real pain for people from the outskirts of London, and certainly for those from the more rural parts of Kent. Access to Ashford, where it is easy to drive, and to get there by train—and it is well connected—makes it much easier to intersect with the international services. I am glad to have his constituents added to mine, and those of other colleagues across Kent, as people who wish for Eurostar to restore the service.

We have been through a minor version of the current impasse before. There was a time in 2007 when Eurostar withdrew the Brussels service from Ashford. A campaign over several years, which I was involved with alongside Ashford Borough Council and Kent County Council, and with the sympathetic support of Ministers in the Government at that time, succeeded in persuading Eurostar that a business-based service allowing a sensibly timed journey from Ashford to Brussels in the morning and back in the evening was viable. That proved so successful that in 2015 a weekend Brussels service was added, as well as a new service to the south of France.

I obviously accept that Eurostar is a private company and makes its own commercial decisions, but the UK Government have a legitimate and important role in influencing those decisions, not least in the specific case of Ashford station. In 2016 Eurostar introduced new rolling stock that demanded a whole new signalling system at Ashford station to allow the new trains to stop there. That was funded at a cost of £8.5 million through the local growth fund. In other words, that was the UK taxpayer spending specifically so that Eurostar could continue to service Ashford. So far the return on that for the taxpayer has been exactly zero. By a terrible irony of timing, the work was completed at exactly the same time as the pandemic struck in the early months of 2020 and international services were suspended, so no train has ever taken advantage of that spending.

I appreciate that £8.5 million does not seem much in the context of the quantum of money that may not have been entirely prudently spent in recent years on the railways, but the point is that this is not a wasteful investment; it is a good investment that, if utilised, would provide services that passengers want, and make better use of the existing railway infrastructure. Having spent that taxpayers’ money, it is the Government’s responsibility to see that it was well spent. I therefore hope and assume that the Minister will back my call for the Kent services to be resumed.

Eurostar’s current position has evolved—not in a helpful direction. In September 2020 it said that no Kent services would stop before 2022. In 2021 it said no services until 2023. In 2022 it said no services until 2025. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and I have met Eurostar’s representatives, and I have met them on a number of occasions with the relevant local authorities. In every one of those meetings I would describe them as perfectly polite but completely obdurate.

Eurostar is of course a commercial company whose contract is not determined by the same kind of franchise or concession model that national services have. Its majority ownership is the French nationalised rail company SNCF, with a small stake for the Belgian state rail company and the other 40% owned by private sector companies. Eurostar has now merged with the Thalys group, and it is undoubtedly true that the pandemic dealt it a very severe financial blow. To survive that blow it took on large amounts of commercial debt that it has to repay. It says that it still has the long-term ambition to grow its services, but that for a variety of reasons it cannot do so at the moment.

There are, however, two reasons that make today’s discussion particularly timely, because that low, difficult period identified by Eurostar is coming to an end. The first reason is revealed in its own press release last June about its latest financial results. It says:

“We have turned the page on the Covid crisis and are now moving towards a new chapter of building the new Eurostar group”.

Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation—EBITDA in the jargon—were a record €332 million. Clearly it is now generating cash because it repaid €127 million of the debt that it incurred during the pandemic. It is now evidently in a position to expand if it wanted to.

The second reason it is timely to be having this discussion in public is the imminent arrival of a competitor to Eurostar in providing international services to the UK; the Evolyn consortium says that it has a billion-pound project to buy an initial 12 trains from Alstom and intends to start services in 2025. At the moment, it, like Eurostar, is planning only capital city services, but the advent of competition means that both companies will have to seek advantages, and the free offer of stations that are already built and raring to go is a potentially great advantage to either of them if they have the gumption to take it.

Obviously, as we have heard in discussions with Eurostar for a long time, stations are useful only if there are passengers who want to use them, and we know that there are. I have heard the argument that anyone in Kent who wants to travel to the continent will travel to St Pancras and start there. However, as we have heard in this debate, that argument does not wash with many people. Apart from the nonsense of having someone catch a fast train to travel 60 miles north-west so that they can get on another fast train that travels south-east under the channel, we have to consider the expense of having to do that. At the margin, some people will be discouraged from that. We know how strong this feeling is because my constituents have organised a petition along the lines of what I am saying this evening. In just a few weeks, more than 36,000 people have signed it and many more are doing so every day. There are clearly tens of thousands of people in Kent, and many thousands more beyond Kent, who would prefer to travel from their local stations, and I think it is incumbent on all of us to make that happen as soon as possible.

In the light of that, I want to ask the Minister a number of specific questions, the first of which is an overarching one: given that Eurostar profits are returning and the Government have put taxpayers’ money into the Ashford signalling so that Ashford services can return to 2016 levels, what are the Government doing to support the return of services to the Kent stations? The second relates to an environmental point. There are many studies showing that international rail travel is more sustainable than air travel. Eurostar itself claims that the carbon footprint of one flight is the equivalent of that of 13 Eurostar journeys. As the Government are looking for ways to meet their welcome net zero target by 2050, what are they doing to expand the use of international rail as a more sustainable form of transport, especially as we know that there is significant capacity available, both on the line and on the train paths through the tunnel? There is no capacity constraint in this part of the rail network, so it would be good to use it as much as possible, for the good of the environment.

Road User Charging Schemes

Louie French Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for securing this important debate. I also thank not only all those constituents of mine who have signed the petitions, but the 6,000 constituents who have signed my petition against the Mayor of London’s ULEZ expansion to Bexley and all of Greater London.

The subject of this debate is of huge concern to my constituents. The planned ULEZ expansion—a tax raid on drivers in outer London and the neighbouring countries, as we have heard already—will hammer families, small businesses and emergency service workers with bills of £12.50 per day, or around £4,500 a year. As the petitions highlight, and as we have already heard from Conservative Members, the ULEZ expansion is overwhelmingly opposed by the public. The debate has also raised a number of serious issues and questions, including about the process and powers being used by the Mayor to push it through. I hope that the Minister will look closely at that again, given these petitions.

First, there are questions about whether the Mayor has the mandate to do this. As we have heard already, it was not in his manifesto, and the impact of the expansion will be felt far outside the Greater London boundaries. That is alongside the fact that local authorities also have a statutory duty over air quality, and, as we know, several boroughs are opposed to the policy.

Secondly, as highlighted already, the proposals were overwhelmingly rejected in the consultation by around 70% to 80% of people in outer London. Unsurprisingly, the number of black taxi drivers who reject them is even higher. Even Unite the union, one of the biggest funders of the Labour party, is against Labour’s policy and has described ULEZ as “anti-worker”. Despite that, in a rare moment of consistency, the Labour leadership is supporting the policy and doubling down on its support for the Mayor of London.

It is clear why people are so furious about the decision, given the current cost of living challenges. In Bexley alone—the area that I am proud to serve—around 31,000 vehicles will be directly impacted. It is hammering us—businesses, families and key workers—with those bills. According to the RAC’s own independent estimates—they are far different from those provided by TfL, which I think we have all started to question—851,000 vehicles will be impacted in outer London. That is just inside those Greater London boundaries.

By introducing the charge in August, with less than a year’s notice, the Mayor has given people hardly any time to switch vehicles, which was one of the main points raised by objectors in these petitions and elsewhere. That may suit the Mayor, as he and Labour desperately hope that people will forget about ULEZ before May’s election. However, I have some news for the Mayor: Londoners will not forget, and barely a day goes by without a constituent stopping me in the street and highlighting how ULEZ will impact them. That also goes for the upcoming by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where voters have the opportunity to send Labour a message when it comes to ULEZ.

Those constituents include pensioners who rarely drive but need their car to go shopping or to hospital appointments; families who need to drop off their kids, perhaps to different schools each morning; and, as we have heard, tradesmen who need their vans for their tools and to get to jobs. As my Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) has highlighted, shops on the boundary of Bexley, in places such as Bexley village, face a particular issue. Many customers come from neighbouring Dartford or Rochester to use their services, and people are so scared that there will be a significant drop in customer footfall.

Alongside the clearly negative impact of the ULEZ expansion on businesses and hard-working families, it is also important to again highlight that over 50% of blue-light workers in London live outside the capital, and 90% of care workers nationally use their own cars for work. Those are not my figures but official figures. The expansion will create many knock-on issues for the emergency services in the likes of Bexley, including, as we have heard, the doubling of charges for those working nights. It will also negatively impact patients, with my local hospital in Sidcup, Queen Mary’s Hospital, sharing a number of services and nurses with the likes of Dartford.

Those are all issues that I do not believe have been properly thought through as the Mayor of London desperately seeks to fill the black hole in Transport for London’s finances, which he is responsible for. Bexley does not have the underground, and, like many other London boroughs, it does not have the same transport options and connectivity as central London, so it is extremely unfair that the Mayor of London is proposing plans for ULEZ expansion.

In recent years, as I have said, our bus and other services have been cut by the Mayor of London, and there is nothing in his so-called reinvestment plans that will help areas such as Bexley and the south-east. For example, when we last debated this subject in this very room—I believe it was back in December and that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford secured it—the Mayor’s office sent out a glossy press release just before the debate. It went to all Members of this House, highlighting that we should support ULEZ because he would expand the bus network in outer London. But what actually happened in reality? The very next morning, the B13 service in Bexley, which serves my elderly constituents and others, had its frequency cut.

Since then, we have heard what we call the super-flop announcement. Bus routes are getting rebranded in outer London but they are not helping anyone at all. We are expected to tell our constituents, “We’re really sorry, but you should drop your opposition to ULEZ because the Mayor of London is rebranding an existing bus route in our area.” It is complete nonsense. Unfortunately, it is also a prime example of the problems that we have had with this disastrous Mayor of London. All we hear is press release after press release, but when it comes to substance and helping hard-working Londoners, he fails time and time again.

The scrappage scheme announced by the Mayor does not even come close to matching demand or addressing the costs and practical issues associated with buying a new vehicle. The fact that he is forecast to spend double the amount of taxpayers’ money to install cameras to fine people highlights how this policy is aimed not at improving air quality, but at raising money. When Labour members of the Greater London Authority had the chance to vote to expand the scrappage scheme to help more people, they did not do so, despite the fact that ULEZ is forecast to raise over £1 billion in the first two years of expansion, as revealed by freedom of information requests in the last week or two. The Government have also provided Transport for London with over £6 billion in taxpayer bail-outs in recent years—another figure that the Mayor frequently forgets to mention.

As we have heard, the Mayor’s own independent impact report on the policy highlighted that it will have a negligible impact on improving air quality in outer London. Our areas are very different from central London. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) said, we are already seeing improvements in air quality, but we need policies that actually improve it and encourage people to act more sustainably, not ones that are clearly greenwashed to raise money. If the Mayor of London actually wants to help tackle air pollution rather than raise money, further investment should be made to support people and encourage them to switch to electric vehicles where they can, including by installing electric vehicle charging points and leading by example with TfL’s own bus fleet. We have also heard about underground air pollution.

With traffic having been highlighted as one of the main causes of air pollution, there needs to be an urgent review of the impact of the Mayor’s road closures on increasing traffic and emissions across London. By pure coincidence, I am sure, those closures have also raised millions in fines for Labour councils in central London. Like ULEZ, they are clearly designed to penalise drivers rather than encourage improvements in emissions. I will highlight another unwanted statistic for the Mayor: London is now the slowest city in the world to drive in, despite the congestion charge and ULEZ. These schemes are not working. Traffic in the capital is getting worse.

While the Mayor of London is out trying to sell his new book, he is issuing more and more licences for private hire vehicles. The inconsistencies are stark wherever we look. The Mayor does not like to talk about it, but we have already heard about the last Labour Government’s proposals for the purchase of diesel vehicles. When Sadiq Khan was the Transport Secretary at the end of their time in government, he was also in favour of Heathrow expansion. He does not like to talk about that either. One of his most fundamental policies and investments during his mayoralty is the Silvertown tunnel, which will encourage many more people to drive through east and south-east London and increase the number of vehicles on the road—something that the campaigners against Silvertown tunnel like to point out.

We will not take any lectures from Sadiq Khan on air quality. His days are numbered; we have figured him out. Next May, Londoners across the capital have the opportunity to kick out this failing son of a bus driver, and ensure that they have people in charge who can get our great city moving again and make it safe for us all to live.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gill Furniss]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that question. She would perhaps would want to ask the candidate that; I am not here to put words in his mouth.

[Mr French]

May I ask the hon. Lady a question?

[Gill Furniss]

No, I will not give way.

We will accelerate the roll-out of charging points and give motorists the confidence to make the switch to non-polluting, CAZ-compliant vehicles. New targets will hold Government to account and provide long-term assurance for investors. We will rapidly scale up UK battery-making capacity by part-financing eight additional gigafactories, which will create 80,000 jobs and add £30 billion to the UK’s economy, all while powering 2 million electric vehicles and improving air quality, alongside clean air zones. The next Labour Government will build the infrastructure fit for the century ahead by delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail and High Speed 2 in full, unlocking the growth and investment that businesses are crying out for, and helping people to switch to clean public transport.

We are also committed to passing a clean air Act, building on the pioneering work of the Labour Government in Wales. The Act would establish a legal right to breathe clean air and would place tough new duties on Ministers to ensure that air quality guidelines are met. We will enshrine World Health Organisation standards for air quality in UK law and act quickly to bring down harmful emissions and air pollution through our own ambitious green prosperity plan.

That plan will allow us to invest in the green industries of the future, making the UK a leader in green industries such as clean and renewable energy. Rolling out more electric vehicles, greening our power sector and insulating 19 million homes within a decade will make a huge difference to the amount of air pollution emitted from UK transport, energy and homes.

Labour’s plans will ensure that people across the country are no longer forced to breathe air that is harmful to their health. While the Government are too busy tearing themselves apart to tackle these serious issues, Labour stands ready to decarbonise our transport, clean up our air and make Britain a world leader in the technologies of the future.

I have just one question for the Minister: why have the Government not done more about air quality for the past 13 years while they have been in office, and why have I got quote after quote from Conservative London MPs saying that they supported ULEZ, but now they are all backing off? I wonder why.

Motorways: Litter

Louie French Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Mike Penning]

I think not only that it is not given enough consideration, but that it is a national disgrace. I specifically picked on motorways because of the legal responsibility Highways England, the Highways Agency or whatever it wants to call itself today—it has renamed itself several times since I was the Roads Minister. I do not know why it has spent so many thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money renaming itself. If the brand is decent, it should not be renamed. If the brand is bad, it should be renamed, and that seems to be exactly what Highways England or the Highways Agency—Highways something—has been doing. It has a legal responsibility for its network, which includes not just motorways but some A roads.

We should have better enforcement and use the technology that we have. If we can prosecute people for going two or three miles per hour over the speed limit—I am all for that; I was a Transport Minister—we can use the same cameras to prosecute people who throw litter. I am sure that, like me, colleagues have seen footage of people on the motorway driving down the road—there is the car, there is the numberplate, there is the face, there is the phone—and exactly the same technology can be used for people chucking litter out of the car.

Penalties almost certainly need to be stronger. Perhaps we should do something not dissimilar to what I did when I was the Minister and we brought in the driver awareness course. Fines and points were not working, but the evidence showed that drivers actually drive better and slower after they have done such a course.

At the end of the day, we have to do two things. We have to educate people through courses such as the driver awareness course, and we have to make sure the person or organisation responsible for these highways takes action. I picked the motorways because it is not like in our constituencies, where it could be a borough council, a district council, a county council or a unitary authority; there is a single body legally responsible for motorways and some A roads under section 89 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. We have got to the ridiculous stage where individuals—I will talk about John Read and the Clean Up Britain campaign—are almost certain to use section 91 of the Act to take National Highways to court. We have the right under the Act to say, “You are not doing what you are supposed to be doing, which is to clear up the mess on our highways.”

When I applied for this debate, I was thrilled by not only by the excellent paper produced by the House of Commons Library, but by John Read of Clean Up Britain, Policy Exchange and the RAC Foundation. I also thank the Sunday Express for helping to highlight this issue last weekend. They have all come together to say, “What can we do to stop this blight, predominantly on the English countryside, getting worse and worse?”

As I said earlier, the litter will soon start to be covered over as the plants grow, but in the autumn, when the frost comes, there it will all be. What surprised me enormously was some of the commentary coming from National Highways. It produced a lengthy paper saying that it regularly checks the highways, and that more than 60% do not have any rubbish on them. All I can say is that they should have gone to Specsavers, or other places that are available, to check their eyesight when they drive back and forth to work on our highways. Litter is a danger not only to our wildlife—I have seen aluminium tins on the side of the road that have been there for so many years that they are starting to degrade, and plastic does not degrade in the same way—but to the staff clearing it up, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said. There have to be road closures and it has to be done safely.

Interestingly, other countries seem to have solved this problem quite well. Any of us who go on holiday this summer to Germany, France or Spain will see that their highways are not covered in trash. Many people from this country will go to Florida, which has large five or six-lane roads. The hedges and grass are not covered in trash, and any litter is certainly not all chopped up when the grasscutters come along and it has not been picked up.

We have to ask ourselves why. Is it a cultural thing, or is it because the organisation that is legally responsible for clearing up rubbish is doing so? Frankly, if someone has broken the law and they get a community project, I cannot think of a better way of paying back into the community than being in a team that goes out and safely clears the rubbish from the sides of our roads. When I was in the Minister’s position, I was told that that was not possible because it was not safe. I used to be the Health and Safety Minister as well, at a different time, and it could be made safe. It is safe for workers to do it, and some of the stuff they have to pick up is truly horrible. We will not go into that in this debate, but Members can imagine what gets thrown out of car windows.

The question has to be, why is National Highways not taking this issue seriously? The organisation cannot be taking it seriously, because it has given contractors contracts but is not monitoring them. Following a freedom of information request to Mr John Read, National Highways came back and said:

“We don’t undertake audits of our contractors’ work for litter clearance.”

How do they know that 60% of the roads are clear if they are not monitoring their own contracts? It baffles me.

Under the Secretary of State, the Department for Transport has introduced key performance indicators for National Highways, but litter is not one of them; it is just part of something else and seen as not that important. I say to the Minister that it is important. How can we have a key performance indicator for the contract issued to National Highways by the Secretary of State that does not take into consideration the legal responsibility it has to the public? This is public money being spent on behalf of the public through the Secretary of State.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Many of my constituents express many of the concerns that he has already outlined. On the point about legal responsibilities and KPIs, we also have an issue that is applicable not just to motorways, but to A roads. In my constituency, we have the A2 and the A20, where there is general confusion about who is legally responsible for cleaning the litter from the hard shoulder and the verges. Transport for London often says that it is the local council’s responsibility, and local councils often dispute that, because they are obviously Transport for London roads.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that alongside strengthening the KPIs, we also need to have legal clarity about who is responsible for litter on motorways and our A roads? I echo his enthusiasm for encouraging community volunteer litter pickers who want to go out and help, but who are told no because of health and safety.

[Sir Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend has made several points that I completely agree with. As I said earlier, National Highways is responsible not only for motorways; it also has some A roads in my own part of the world. What was the M10 is now the A414, but it still has responsibility for that road. I do not think the organisation knows that, because it has not been anywhere the road since the day it ceased to be a motorway. I wrote to the Secretary of State and what I think was then known as Highways England, asking whether there was any chance that it could come along and pick up some of the signage that is lying on the roadsides, getting rusty and acting as a blight on animals and on the safety of someone who has pulled off the side of a road in an emergency. The signage is still there today.

The point that I think my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) is making about who is responsible is actually quite crucial. I mean, when I was the Roads Minister, I did not realise that with the M10—I live right next to the M10, although I know it is now the A414—the Highways Agency had kept responsibility for it and several other A roads. So that could be resolved very simply by the Minister dropping our hon. Friend a line to say that “the legal responsibility for the A2 lies with X”. I am sure that the Minister could get his officials to do that; that is what I might have done if I was the Minister. But who knows?

Regarding the other point that my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup made, there are lots of volunteers out there today, going out and picking litter up; I have some in my own constituency and they do a fantastic job. There is that issue and there is actually the payback issue. People who are blighting my community in myriad different ways and who may get a community order should have to be supervised out there to clean the roads.

If anyone goes to Florida, they will drive down wonderful, clean roads. One of the reasons is that Florida actually uses people who are incarcerated to go and clear the roads. They are not dangerous criminals, but they are people in for short-term sentences. Of course they are not chained up or anything like that, but if they scarper—the sort of language that my grandmother would have used—they will eventually be found and at the end of the day they would not have any parole. They are not going to be attacked if they scarper, and they are already starting the payback. In our open prisons, why could we not have that today in parts of the country? It would be slightly difficult with some of the open prisons in, say, Norfolk, because there are no motorways in Norfolk. Payback and should mean payback.

The Minister might say to me, “Well, actually, the contracts are set in stone over a period of time with National Highways and the KPI is set.” But if he looks carefully at the legislation, he will see that the Secretary of State has the powers at any time to deviate the contract, so the KPIs could be changed.

I think this is an issue of national importance. We can talk about it being rubbish, or trash, but we have some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, in my opinion. We should cherish it. There are people demonstrating out there, yesterday and today, because they passionately believe—I do not agree with their motives and how they are trying to do it, but I do agree that we have to protect our countryside.

Over the years, we have put lots of roads right the way through some of our countryside, and that countryside is being blighted, day in and day out. Frankly, looking at the correspondence, particularly from National Highways—I am sorry, Minister, but I do not think they get it. They just talk to me. Among the briefings, they are talking about the responsibility of local authorities. Well, no local authority in the country has responsibility for clearing up the motorways. They—National Highways —have it. The title of this debate was specific, so as not to have that debate about local government. The narrative here is purely about National Highways.

There are lots of things that are probably not fully in the Minister’s bailiwick, and I share his frustration with some of that, because I used to sit in that chair and think, “I’d love to have done that,” and, “I would love to do this.” But if we have the will, we have the way. Fines need to be increased. If people want to throw stuff out of car windows—some of it the most abhorrent products that we do not particularly want to discuss today—they should be penalised for it.

Similarly, however, if an organisation has the legal responsibility in law, set by this place, that it is their job to clear up that mess—go and give them some powers if we want to use the cameras in a way in which we can actually enforce the issue. They cannot cop out of this; it is actually in statute whose responsibility it is. The KPI can be changed, so that the regulator can step in and actually say, “You’re not fulfilling your contracts,” because if that does not happen, we will have individual members of the public taking this organisation—National Highways, which is funded by the British taxpayer—to court for a breach of the Act. To me, that is a crying shame, but if it happens I will fully support that commitment to go to the magistrates courts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holden]

If my right hon. Friend gives me a short amount of time, I will come to exactly what he is after.

NH believes that this improved practice over the past couple of years is due to sharing best practice between regions, more detailed data on targeted litter collections, and improved engagement with local authorities and authorities that clear litter on A roads, including Transport for London. We are currently developing the third road investment strategy, and continue to explore further metrics for inclusion in it—my right hon. Friend might want to put some specific KSIs in. That will include a performance specification and possible improvements to the specific metrics, including on litter. I will write to him on the specifics of what National Highways has to report, on what it is held accountable for and on those KPIs.

[Mr French]

I have a constructive suggestion for the Minister and the Department on producing new metrics. They will be familiar with the job of clearing up TfL’s mess by now—excuse the pun, but it is very deliberate. On the issue of responsibility and the impact of litter going on to motorways, we must consider consumer behaviour. However, there is an issue with some of the junctions that we have all spoken about, where litter is being blown through boroughs from TfL roads—I have mentioned the A2 and the A20. Certain boroughs want to clean the roads and some do not, and that is adding to the problems on motorways. When producing KPIs and working with other bodies, I suggest that the Department ensures that they have their own practices in place, so that this does not add to the pressures on National Highways.

[Mr Holden]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. This is about local authorities working together at TfL level in London and with National Highways, and I will ensure that his views regarding key performance indicators are taken into consideration.

I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead that the performance indicator is there. There is not a target; this is about monitoring at the moment. That is for RIS2, but KPIs might be exactly where we want to go at the next stage—I want to make that clear to him. We are working to ensure that there are targeted metrics in RIS3 and that the KPIs focus on the things that are most important to road users, and it is quite clear from today’s debate that keeping the highways litter-free is one of them. The current situation is not tenable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford said, and I will speak to National Highways about the specifics as we look at its KPIs for RIS3. Progress will involve considering responses to the forthcoming public consultation on the National Highways strategic road network initial report, and I urge right hon. and hon. Members, and interested parties, to feed into that. As I said earlier, there are discussions about introducing an awareness campaign going forward.

Regarding enforcement and the use of technology, I have spoken about using education and awareness to influence littering behaviours, and about the work and performance of National Highways in clearing litter from the SRN. I want to cover enforcement and penalties, because right hon. and hon. Members also mentioned them. The Government understand that enforcement plays a key role in this regard, especially for litter thrown from vehicles. The enforcement of penalties for littering is owned by DEFRA, and we work closely with it and National Highways to improve enforcement options. Local authorities may issue fixed penalty notices for littering offences committed in their areas where it can be proven that litter was thrown from a vehicle.

The Littering from Vehicles Outside London (Keepers: Civil Penalties) Regulations 2018 make provision about reporting littering from vehicles in England. In recent years, the Government have bolstered local authority enforcement powers by raising the upper limit on fixed penalty notices for littering and by introducing powers to issue the keeper of a vehicle from which litter is thrown with a civil penalty. As I said, I recently spoke to National Highways and visited its site at South Mimms, where I saw some of the cameras in action. National Highways passes on evidence of the most egregious cases of littering and fly-tipping, but more could be done to co-ordinate its work with local authorities. I will come on to some of that work, on which we are doing a pilot at the moment. In the end, though, it is for local authorities to decide whether to pass on that information and whether they believe they have sufficient evidence to take enforcement action in any given case.

Expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone

Louie French Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), who is also my constituency neighbour, for securing the debate.

It has been said:

“As Sadiq Khan shows in London, Labour in power delivers.”

Those are not my words; they are the words of the Leader of the Opposition from April this year. They feel very appropriate, given today’s debate on ULEZ—and because it is pantomime season, after all. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) just pointed out some highlights from the Mayor’s time in power; he mentioned Crossrail, and the Mayor’s record on the Metropolitan police and the London Fire Brigade.

I will stick to the subject of ULEZ, Mr Hosie, as you have asked. It is the last outrageous tax raid on drivers in outer London. We have had the Mayor’s share of council tax increase by 43% since he entered office, and it is expected to rise to above £400 next year. The ULEZ rise—a tax rise—on drivers in outer London and the neighbouring counties will hammer families, small businesses and emergency service workers with bills of around £4,500 a year to drive. I am not sure that even the champagne socialists of north London could afford that bill. If that shows what Labour in power delivers, then this really is the nightmare before Christmas for the British public.

As we have heard from hon. Members already, the ULEZ expansion was overwhelmingly opposed by the public, despite the consultation clearly being skewed to try to give TfL and the Mayor the answers they were looking for. It has also raised a number of serious issues and questions, including the process and powers being used by the Mayor to push it through, which I hope the Minister will look closely at. First, there are questions about whether the Mayor has the mandate to do this, given that it was not in his manifesto, and the impact of the expansion will also be felt outside the Greater London boundaries. That is alongside the fact that local authorities have a statutory duty over air quality, and several boroughs are opposed to the policy. Secondly, as highlighted already, the proposals were overwhelmingly rejected in the consultation by around 70% to 80% of people in outer London.

It is clear to see why people are so furious about the decision, especially with the current cost of living challenges. In Bexley alone, the area I am proud to serve, around 30,000 vehicles will be directly impacted, hammering businesses, families and key workers with the bill of £12.50 a day, or £4,500 a year. By introducing the charge in August, it gives people hardly any time to switch vehicles. Barely a day goes by without a constituent stopping me in the street and highlighting how ULEZ will impact them. They include pensioners who rarely drive, but need their car to go shopping or to hospital appointments, families who need to drop off their kids to different schools each morning before going to work, tradesman who need their vans for their tools and to get to jobs, and shops on the boundary, which fear that customers will stop coming into Greater London from the likes of Dartford because of the ULEZ charge.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman support the investment in the extra 1 million km of bus network in outer London and the investment of £110 million in scrappage to get rid of 15% of more polluting cars, or not?

[Mr French]

I will happily answer the hon. Member’s question, because our buses in outer London have actually been cut—if he checks Bexley’s record, he will see that our bus routes have been cut. I will come on to the scrappage scheme later, to cover the exact point that the hon. Member is trying to make.

Alongside the clearly negative impact of the ULEZ expansion on businesses and hard-working families in my area, it is also important to highlight that over 50% of blue light workers in London live outside the capital, and 90% of care workers nationally use their own cars for work. That expansion will create many knock-on issues for the emergency services in the likes of Bexley, including—as we have heard—the doubling of charges for those working nights, an issue that was also highlighted in The Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago. It will also negatively impact patients, with my local hospital, Queen Mary’s Hospital Sidcup, sharing a number of services and nurses with the likes of Dartford. These are all issues that I do not believe have been properly thought through, as the Mayor desperately seeks to fill the black hole in TfL’s finances that he has created.

Bexley does not have the underground, and like many other London boroughs it does not have the same transport options and connectivity as central London, so it is extremely unfair that the Mayor of London is proposing plans for ULEZ expansion. In recent years, as I have said, we have also seen our bus and other services cut by the Mayor of London, and there is nothing in his so-called reinvestment plans that will help areas such as Bexley and in the south-east. The scrappage scheme announced by the Mayor does not even come close to matching demand, or addressing the costs and practical issues associated with buying a new vehicle, and the fact that he is forecast to spend double that amount—roughly £250 million of taxpayers’ money—to install cameras to fine people again highlights how this policy is designed to raise money, rather than improve air quality.

That point is supported by the fact that the Mayor’s own independent impact report on the policy highlighted a negligible impact on improving air quality in outer London areas such as mine, which are very different from central London and have already seen an improvement in air quality. For example, in its consultation response to the Mayor, Bexley council highlighted that air quality has been improving already, and that Bexley was one of 11 boroughs that recorded no population exceeding air quality thresholds. The Government have also brought forward their plans and investment to improve air quality, with £880 million of support for local authorities to take immediate steps to reduce nitrogen dioxide, and £2 billion of investment in cycling and walking over the course of this Parliament—the largest ever boost for active travel.

If the Mayor of London wants to help tackle air pollution rather than raise money, further investment should be made to support people with the transition to electric vehicles, including the installation of more electric vehicle charging points and leading by example with TfL’s own bus fleet. With traffic having been highlighted as one of the main causes of air pollution, there also needs to be a review of the impact of the Mayor’s road closures on increasing traffic and, potentially, emissions across London, closures that have again—by coincidence, I am sure—raised millions in fines for Labour councils in the capital. Dare I even mention the Silvertown tunnel, which will likely encourage more vehicles to drive through south-east and east London, and appears to be completely inconsistent with the Mayor’s so-called championing of air quality?

I again urge the Minister to do everything in his and the Government’s power to stop this disastrous ULEZ policy, which will hammer families, businesses and the emergency services in Bexley, Greater London and neighbouring counties. As I and other colleagues have highlighted today, the impact of ULEZ will go much further than the boundaries of London, and—once the cameras are installed—will likely lead to further taxes on drivers that I believe will be inconsistent with national transport policy. As such, I ask the Minister and the Government to please review the situation urgently, and if the Mayor of London is listening, I call on him to stop the virtue signalling and worrying about his book sales and to put hard-working Londoners first by U-turning on this tax raid on drivers in Greater London. If he does not, it is clearly time for this failing son of a bus driver to get off at the next stop, before calls for the Mayor to get scrapped get even louder.

Southeastern Railway Timetable Changes

Louie French Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

Thank you for chairing, Ms Harris, and I thank the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) for securing this important debate. Although we often differ in our views, when it comes to Southeastern trains we share frustrations over the timetable changes that will come into force next week. On my first anniversary of being sworn into Parliament, local residents will not be surprised to see me standing up and fighting against Southeastern for them again today.

The issue of no consultation has been mentioned by several colleagues. The new Minister is already aware of how frustrated MPs and members of the public are over not being informed of the timetable changes by Southeastern until it was too late. In recent weeks, people in Bexley have experienced two transport shocks. First, Southeastern pushed through these changes under the guise that they are demand based, when they clearly go much further. Secondly, the Mayor of London ignored the wishes of the clear majority of Londoners who rejected his outrageous ULEZ—ultra low emission zone—tax raid on drivers in outer London. We have had no consultation on the trains, and a sham consultation by the Mayor. That helps explain my anger and that of local residents across Bexley.

The Minister and many Members here will be aware that, since Southeastern’s announcement in late September, I have been running a constituent survey on the timetable changes. The thousands of responses to the survey highlight that the most impactful changes are the reduction in Albany Park station services in my constituency, the loss of off-peak Charing Cross services on the Bexleyheath line—we have heard about that from colleagues already—and the loss of the loop service on the Sidcup line, which I will talk about in turn.

I echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) on the loss of off-peak Charing Cross services and the impact on passengers travelling to the west end for leisure and work. As someone who commuted to the City for more than a decade from the likes of Welling and Sidcup train stations, I can confirm that Cannon Street services at those times are of minimal benefit to local residents and will force thousands of passengers to change trains at London Bridge. That is of particular concern, given the impact on the more vulnerable residents in our communities and the general increase in travel times that they will experience. I hope that the Minister will at least explain what support Southeastern is putting in place in the short term to help passengers forced to change at London Bridge station.

The extent of the changes in the new timetable are arguably best reflected by the drastic, near 50% reduction in Albany Park services. Peak services have been reduced from seven trains per hour to four, and off-peak services from four trains per hour to two. That reduction has not only led to concerns about overcrowding and long waits in the event of cancellation, but resulted in the loss of direct services to Lewisham station, which is used by commuters from Albany Park to the DLR and Canary Wharf. I visited that station during my campaign against the timetable changes and I saw at first hand how busy it is, particularly during peak times on Tuesday to Thursday. I remain concerned that that is not fully accounted for in the passenger numbers.

I raised those concerns with the Minister and at our latest meeting with Southeastern, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford. I am grateful for Southeastern’s commitment to look at the live train-loading data for that station daily, and for the fact that it has since visited Albany Park station to reassess passenger numbers. I again request, through the Minister, that it provides the latest peak-time passenger numbers and capacity for the station, especially for Tuesday to Thursday. Furthermore, I would be grateful if the Minister can use his position to ask Southeastern again why there has been such a significant reduction in trains stopping at Albany Park station. Will he seek assurance about the future of the station, which is frequently used by commuters in a residential area with few alternative transport connections? There have been some silly rumours floating around locally that the station is closing. I hope the Minister will put them to bed by confirming that there are no plans to close it.

At all meetings, I have expressed my considerable disappointment at the loss of the loop service on the Sidcup line, which is used by many constituents, including to connect to the Elizabeth line and for Charlton Athletic fixtures. It is also used by children and parents travelling to school. Again, I am concerned about the data that Southeastern used to inform that decision. The time period used to capture passenger numbers does not incorporate the increase in passengers on the service since the Elizabeth line was opened. It would be a shame for residents to lose that connecting service, especially given the four-year delay and the billions it has cost taxpayers and businesses in our area. I again urge Southeastern to provide more services to Abbey Wood on the Sidcup line, especially off peak and at weekends.

As Members have said, Southeastern has consistently stated that the timetable changes have been demand-led, and that their purpose is to reduce crossovers in Lewisham, thereby improving reliability and reducing delays. I fundamentally disagree with that reasoning, especially given the consistent increase in passenger numbers since the pandemic and the £250 million investment in junction works at Lewisham over the past couple of years. Those engineering works, which have often required full and partial line closures, have been to improve track, signalling and capacity at Lewisham to meet demand “for decades ahead”. I am frustrated that my constituents have been negatively affected by regular disruption caused by union strikes and the works, which includes a planned nine-day full closure of the Bexleyheath line later this month, only a couple of weeks after the timetable changes.

My constituents have tolerated that major disruption to their journeys over the past couple of years on the basis that the works are

“to meet the demands of the railway today.”

That is a real kick in the teeth, because they are now losing a substantial number of services and the choice of termini to reduce crossovers at Lewisham—the very issue the works were said to address. I hope the Minister will address that issue, because that could be a massive waste of taxpayers’ money. It should be a good thing for the area, not a bad thing.

I emphasise again my disappointment and outrage at the lack of consultation for such drastic changes, which will have a detrimental impact on my constituents and their ability to travel for work, school and leisure. Given that Bexley does not benefit from direct access to the underground, rail services are the principal means of transport into and out of London, as well as for travelling to other areas in the south-east. It is therefore vital that the frequency and links to a range of central London stations are preserved. I continue to call for urgent concessions and reversals to many of the changes, particularly ahead of the new timetable in May.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louie French Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I have had many powerful representations made on behalf of York, including from the local council at last week’s Conservative party conference. We will confirm our intentions around announcing the location of the headquarters shortly.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

Modernising our railways and maintaining services are vitally important. Thousands of residents in Old Bexley and Sidcup have already completed my survey outlining their concerns over Southeastern’s December timetable changes on the Bexleyheath and Sidcup lines. Will the rail Minister please meet me again to discuss these concerns and Southeastern’s lack of consultation?

[Kevin Foster]

As always, my hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for his constituents. He has already been in contact with me a number of times and I think we may have a meeting scheduled, at which I look forward to exploring these issues further with him.

Lower Thames Crossing

Louie French Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I do not plan to speak for as long as colleagues. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) for securing this debate. I listened carefully to his points and those of other colleagues, and I know his passion for representing the lovely people of Gravesham in Kent. Alongside other colleagues, he continues to lobby the Government and National Highways to secure improvements and mitigations from the crossing.

For those less familiar with the geography of south-east England, my own wonderful constituency of Old Bexley and Sidcup is on the edge of south-east London and north Kent, and the most southerly point of Bexley lies roughly 12 miles from the proposed crossing. The busy A2, which runs through the centre of my constituency, is the main road link to the existing crossing at Dartford— that is the problematic one we have heard about—and the proposed crossing to the east of Gravesend. I therefore know the area fairly well, as well as the challenges we face with congestion, albeit to a lesser extent than colleagues who are at the coalface when these issues occur.

My hon. Friend mentioned the expansive consultation done by the team at the lower Thames crossing. They have had somewhere in the region of 47,000 responses, which shows the lengths to which they have gone to engage with the wider population in Essex, Kent and south-east London who will be impacted by the proposed crossing. The team deserves a lot of credit for their extensive work, and they engaged with me in my role as a councillor in Bexley long before I even became a Member of this place. They have done a lot of good work in trying to engage with the local community. We all experience the traffic build up and congestion at Dartford, which can cause great misery—indeed, we heard about an extreme case.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is right to say there has been extensive consultation, but it has been pursued on the basis that this is a national infrastructure project, so it has been a national consultation. Does he agree that rather more attention should have been paid to representations made by the local community, instead of treating all representations the same?

[Mr French]

I completely agree, and everyone who is directly impacted should have their voices heard. I hope that the Department will listen closely to those calls. Getting that balance right between a national project and the local impact is difficult for any Government.

Dartford congestion causes complete misery, backing up even as far as where I am in Bexley. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham said, if the wind blows one way or the other way, the bridge closes and we have congestion, and it is complete misery for people, whether they are commuting home or trying to see family on either side of the bridge. As our population continues to grow in south-east London, Kent and Essex, it is vital that we secure the supporting infrastructure and make sure it is in place to support the people in these areas—both the current population and the new population who might be moving in.

Today’s focus is on transport, but the issue extends far wider. My big cause is ensuring that we secure the health provision we need for the growing population of Old Bexley and Sidcup. We have to ensure that, as a country and a Government focused on levelling up, our part of south-east England is not forgotten.

[Adam Holloway]

My hon. Friend mentioned, as I should have, that when the wind blows the bridge going from north to south can be closed; that was one of the arguments deployed in favour of having the second crossing further down. But I would have thought that that could be simply remedied. If we had what we should have had—a new bridge going from south to north, so we would have two bridges—we would still have two tunnels. In extremis, those could be used.

Anyway, the new bridge will have a new design to sort out the wind issue. We would still have two tunnels that could be used going from north to south in the event of inclement weather. I just wanted to address that other nonsense that has been raised.

[Mr French]

I clearly do not have the same level of detail about that issue, but I take my hon. Friend’s point, which is valid. We must ensure that whatever is introduced stands up to scrutiny and actually works. That is the main point of today’s debate. All MPs in the area recognise that something needs to be done; the issue is working out what that is and how it will work best and have the most impact.

In conclusion, we all see clearly that the Mayor of London is failing miserably at one of his primary objectives: to keep London moving. He has been closing roads and creating far greater congestion. As a Government, and particularly as Conservatives, we have to ensure—I implore Ministers to meet all relevant colleagues—that the project has maximum impact and delivers the goal that we all want to achieve: solving the congestion at the Dartford crossing and its impact on our communities and neighbourhoods, whether in south-east London, Kent or Essex.