Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Norman Baker]

The Home Office is the lead Department for legislation, but all Government Departments are fully seized of the need to deal with this issue as a matter of urgency. Discussions are taking place about options. This issue affects not only railways but the highway network and the coastguard service, for example. Most despicably, the theft of cable in the Vale of Glamorgan recently forced the cancellation of 80 operations.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

As passengers up and down the country could tell the hon. Gentleman, performance on Britain’s rail network is getting worse and metal theft is a major factor. On the basis of the Department’s own figures, metal theft is set to cause up to 7,000 hours of delay this year. When are the Government going to act?

[Norman Baker]

The Government have already acted with the measures announced by the Chancellor in his recent statement to appoint the special taskforce to which I referred. As I have mentioned, there are also ministerial discussions taking place across Departments. I assure the hon. Lady that discussions are taking place. Particular proposals are being considered and evaluated and there will be an announcement quite shortly, I hope.

[Maria Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman is right to recognise the importance of this issue, but passengers want to see action, not just discussion and a taskforce. With passengers facing rail fare rises of up to 11% and given that the Department calculates that this issue is costing Network Rail more than £16 million every year and a further loss of £10 million in economic cost to passengers and the economy, when will the Government listen to Network Rail, agree to legislate to tackle the illegal market in scrap, and ban cashless transactions?

[Norman Baker]

Under the 13 years of the hon. Lady’s Government nothing much was done to amend the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 and we are now taking action on that front. The issue of cashless payment was referred to by my ministerial colleague the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), at Home Office questions on 12 December. He said that he was looking at dealing with a situation where cashless payments ought to be removed. As I mentioned a moment ago, discussions are very active—very live—and I hope there will be an announcement in the near future.