Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Marcus Jones and Kelvin Hopkins

Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. One only needs to look at the parallel between the Labour Administration in Wales and when the Labour party was in Government: council tax doubled over 13 years. Since 2010, council tax has been reduced in real terms by 9%.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

T3. When I bought my first home in Luton in 1969, house prices were three times average earnings. The same house in Luton would now cost at least 12 times average earnings. Unsurprisingly, home ownership as a tenure has been falling. Is it not utterly cynical of the Government to pretend that everyone can become homeowners when what millions of families need, and what many say they want, is a decent council house?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Marcus Jones and Kelvin Hopkins

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

12. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of demand for social care services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

We have provided up to £3.5 billion of funding to meet the demographic pressures on social care. This is significantly more than the £2.9 billion that the Local Government Association estimated was needed.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

When will the Government accept that the problems of social care will be overcome only when there is a comprehensive and publicly provided system of social care for all, which is free at the point of need? I am talking about a national care service, exactly parallel to and integral with the national health service—a true public service free of privatisation.

[Mr Jones]

This Government are absolutely committed to the full integration of health and social care by 2020, and we will require all areas to have a clear plan for achieving that by 2017. The hon. Gentleman will also be interested to know that, by the end of the decade, the spending review does include more than £500 million for the disabled facilities grant, which is more than double the amount this year. That will fund around 85,000 home adaptations by that year, and is expected to prevent 8,500 people from needing to go into a care home by 2019-20.

High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Debate between Marcus Jones and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Lady—my close neighbour—for her question. We took a team of 15 people, including rail constructers, and representatives from Eurotunnel and the supermarkets, to meet Geoff Hoon when he was Secretary of State for Transport. It was clear they were worried that our scheme might conflict with HS2, not because it would take up the same track, but because it might remove freight from the railway lines and make the case for HS2 weaker. We argued that HS2 could go ahead if it was thought essential, but that a GB freight route is much more vital to Britain’s economy than HS2 has ever been. What is the total cost of the scheme? A generous figure, based on outturn costs for HS1, would, we think, be less than £6 billion—a tiny fraction of HS2.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned various lines, links between the west coast and east coast main lines and so on, but he has not mentioned the Trent Valley spur on the west coast main line, on which Nuneaton station in my constituency sits. That is an extremely important junction, and the hon. Gentleman’s proposals will not do anything to help capacity there or improve fast services from Nuneaton, which HS2 would do.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I think I mentioned that on other lines there is no problem with capacity, provided we are prepared to increase train frequencies. We do not do that, however, because it is not profitable to do so while private franchisees can make more profit by running fewer trains with more people on them—very simple. The rest of the railway network clearly needs heavy investment, and Network Rail is undertaking a lot of that. This specific scheme would solve many problems and be a fraction of the cost of HS2. Indeed, upgrading the other lines I have suggested would solve almost all the capacity problems that we are now facing.

I am a passionate believer in railways, but if we are serious about them we must invest in dedicated rail-freight capacity, as I have suggested. At the moment the continent of Europe is building large rail-freight capacity right across the continent; indeed, trains can go from China to Europe even now. We will miss out on that if we cannot transport lorries on trains. We must be able to put lorry trailers on trains, or we will not see a shift from road to rail and the rest of Europe will leave us behind. For the sake of our economy, we must invest heavily in dedicated rail freight that is capable of taking lorries on trains.