Education and Local Services

Debate between Maria Eagle and Marcus Jones

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I can, as a result of the formula that has been put forward. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made that very clear today.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) mentioned social mobility and the importance of education in our primary schools. She said that we now have more good and outstanding primary school places than we did seven years ago. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) mentioned the importance of tackling domestic violence and welcomed the measures in the Queen’s Speech to do so.

My hon. Friends the Members for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) and for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) made important speeches in which they referred to the opportunities that we have as we leave the European Union. In particular, they said that those opportunities are about not just the trade in goods but the trade in services, which is also critical.

The role that local government plays in providing services is also essential to the smooth running of our society. Despite challenging financial conditions, councils continue to deliver, and council tax is expected to be lower in real terms in 2019-20 than it was in 2010-11. Councils have embraced innovation and transformed the way they work to deliver services for their local areas.

[Maria Eagle]

I accept the Minister’s point that councils provide important services, but can he explain why Liverpool City Council will have lost 68% of its resource by 2020-21?

[Mr Jones]

The Government have had to look extremely carefully at funding in a number of areas over the past seven years, because when the Government the hon. Lady was part of left office in 2010, they left behind a deficit of £150 billion—the country was spending £150 billion more than it was earning every single year.

We have also given councils financial freedoms and flexibilities to manage their own budgets. In 2015 we provided them with more certainty and stability through the offer of a four-year financial settlement, and 97% of eligible local authorities have accepted that. It enables them to plan service delivery, transformation and more effective collaboration with local partners.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Eagle and Marcus Jones

Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am grateful to follow my sister—as I always have.

Liverpool City Council, which covers most of my constituency, raises £146 million in council tax every year from its council tax base. This year it has spent £151 million on adult social care, yet since 2010, this Government and their predecessor have cut 58% of the budget that the council has to fulfil its statutory obligations. Is the Minister really saying that Liverpool City Council is in a position to spend any more on adult social care, which it needs to do, without more money coming from central Government?

[Mr Jones]

I refer the hon. Lady to the indicative allocations that have been made through the better care fund, which takes into account councils’ ability to raise council tax. In terms of its average spending power per dwelling, Liverpool gets £100 more than the national average. She might want to discuss with her council leader how the council can improve its collection of council tax, which in Liverpool is well below the national average.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Eagle and Marcus Jones

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

It is too early for me to comment on what will be in my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s Budget—

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

Better be careful what you say, then.

[Mr Jones]

I thank the hon. Lady for her advice.

I certainly hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) says, and we are making it a great priority to work with troubled families to try to improve their lives and, in particular, outcomes for their children.

Rising Cost of Transport

Debate between Maria Eagle and Marcus Jones

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House believes the rising cost of transport is adding to the financial pressures facing many households; notes that the Government failed to honour its pledge to cap this month’s rail fare rises at 1 per cent above inflation, resulting in some fares rising by as much as 9.2 per cent; recognises that this was a direct consequence of the Government’s decision to give back to the private train operators the right to increase fares by up to an additional 5 per cent beyond the increase set by Ministers; further notes that bus fares increased on average by more than twice the rate of inflation in 2012; calls on the Government to ban train operators from increasing fares beyond strict limits and to rule out the proposed introduction of a new category of super peak ticket which would increase the burden on hard-pressed commuters; and further calls on Ministers to support transport authorities pursuing Quality Contracts to bring accountability to bus fares, instead of using Better Bus Area funding to penalise authorities seeking to get better value for money for these taxpayer-funded services.

I begin by thanking and paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), who has decided, because of a head injury, to step down from his duties on the Front Bench. He has been an excellent, hard-working colleague, full of ideas, and I thank him very much for all the work he has done in my team. I know that he will be back.

The cost of transport is rising; it is rising by more than the rate of inflation—by much more in many cases. That increase is being fuelled by an out-of-touch Government and Transport Ministers who just do not seem to understand the pain they are imposing on hard-working people. Returning to work after the new year, those who commute by rail found that the price of their tickets had increased by an average of 4.2%, and by as much as 9.2% on some routes. Over the past year, bus fares have increased by more than twice the rate of inflation and motorists have found that VAT at 20% wipes out any relief they have had from the deferral of increases in fuel duty. Yet most people are not seeing their wages go up by anything like as much as those increases, and for many their wages or salaries are stagnant or falling.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not acknowledge that if her party were still in government and fuel duty had been 13p a litre more than it is today under this Government, bus fares would have increased even more?

[Maria Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman knows that his Government have cut the bus service operators grant by 20%. As for any policies that a re-elected Labour Government may have carried out on fuel duty, it is just speculation to say that they would or would not have been cut or kept; it is completely speculative to suggest that there may not have been any changes in the intervening two years—

[Mr Jones]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Eagle]

No, I think once is enough.

Together with the rising costs of housing, fuel and food, the rising cost of transport is adding to the cost-of-living crisis now making life much tougher for households across Britain. Yet Transport Ministers and the Government are so out of touch with the pressures that families are under that they are making it easier for private train companies and bus companies to hike fares and increase their profits—

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Eagle]

If the hon. Gentleman allows me to answer the point put to me, I might consider giving way to him a little later.

Putting train companies before commuters is what this Government are doing; when times got tough, we acted to try to support commuters. In future, if we get the chance, we will restore the rule and put it into law so that passengers will always know that the cap on fare rises set by Ministers is the one they see at the ticket office.

As I have said before, I believe that the previous Labour Government should have been bolder in taking on the train companies and they should have done so sooner, but the important fact is that we acted when times got really tough. This Government are just clobbering commuters even more.

[Mr Jones]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Eagle]

No. I wish to make a little progress.

I think I have answered the point made by the Minister of State. If he is trying to argue that paying for a car is saving money because he is not having to pay for commuter rail fares, that is extraordinary.

[Mr Jones]

rose—

[Maria Eagle]

No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Buried in the innocuous-sounding Government paper “Rail Fares and Ticketing Review” is a plan to introduce a new category of ticket—the super-peak ticket. It proposes

“a ‘high-peak’ fare priced higher than the current Anytime day fare/a season ticket priced higher than the current season ticket.”

So a commuter who is already paying thousands of pounds for their season ticket faces this year being told that their very expensive purchase is not valid on every train, even if they have no choice about when they have to get to work, and most people do not have that choice. With a captive market, train companies will be allowed to hike fares even higher than they are now on services that suffer the most overcrowding and where there is already no guarantee of a seat. Only this Government would think that the answer to overcrowding on our trains is to price all but the richest off those services. The Defence Secretary gave away this Government’s view of the railways when he was Transport Secretary—“a rich man’s toy”, he called them.

When these tickets are introduced, an even nastier shock is awaiting commuters because the Government’s paper includes modelling on how much the cost of these new super-peak tickets could rise each year. Here is what the Government chose to include in their paper as apparently the favoured option:

“some fares (in the high peak) rising by an additional 7% annually (an additional 40% over the course of five years)”.

So there it is in black and white: new super-peak tickets introduced, with their cost then rising by 7% a year and 40% in just five years. We agree with the Transport Committee, which last week in its report, “Rail 2020”, urged the Government to

“rule out forms of demand management which would lead to even higher fares for commuters on peak time trains”.

The Secretary of State should take the opportunity of today’s debate to do just that, and I hope he will. If he does not, Labour will oppose any attempt to penalise commuters with new super-peak tickets.

The Government are not only hiking the cost of travelling by train but making it harder to buy the cheapest fare by supporting the campaign for the private train companies to close ticket offices or reduce their opening hours. The Government’s paper, “Rail Fares and Ticketing Review”, says:

“Ticket offices are the most expensive way of selling tickets…Train operators will be expected to reduce their costs and this is one important option they will want to consider…it may not be possible or appropriate for ticket office opening hours to continue at current levels.”

It may well be inconveniently expensive for the train companies to have to employ staff to sell tickets to their passengers, but it is one of the best ways for many customers to ensure that they purchase the cheapest ticket, not least when we have a ticketing system so complex that it can be very confusing. Surely decisions should be made on the basis of what is least expensive for passengers, not what is least expensive for train companies.

We know that Ministers do not plan on listening because we have seen leaked e-mails from the Department for Transport showing that plans to close ticket offices are already well advanced. This is what one official said in an e-mail to the Department’s press office advising it on what it could say on ticket office closures:

“We can’t say that the Government has no plans to close ticket offices because we have an application from London Midland where the minister has already decided to approve some ticket office closures (it’s just not been announced yet…and there will be more of those in the future.”

When I first read that out last year during Transport questions, the Minister, the hon. Member for Lewes, said that the official must have been mistaken as he had not approved any ticket office closures. Yet weeks later it was announced that the Minister had indeed approved London Midland’s plans to close some ticket offices and reduce the opening hours of others, despite the company’s abysmal performance in recent months which has caused such misery for passengers. What is even more revealing in the leaked e-mail is that it shows how the Government intend to pass the blame for those closures on to the train companies. This is what the official told the press office:

“your way of slipping in there that the initiative comes from the TOCs”—

the train operating companies—

“not us is very neat.”

So that is the Government’s plan for fares and ticketing: ticket prices rising by as much as 9% every year; more expensive new super-peak tickets which mean that season ticket holders will not even be able to get on every train without paying up to 40% more than other passengers over the next five years; and new freedoms for train companies to close ticket offices, making it harder for passengers to get the best deals. What a contrast with the ideas to make fares and ticketing fairer and simpler that we have heard as a result of listening to passengers during our policy review process.

Those ideas include a clear definition of peak and off-peak, to prevent passengers from facing massive extra charges on the train because it was not clear when peak time ended, and to prevent train operators stretching their peak time to stretch their profits at the expense of passengers. Another is a legal right to the cheapest ticket, so that passengers are offered the cheapest deal available, with rights to refunds if they find that they were mis-sold a more expensive ticket.

Another idea is a more flexible way for passengers to change travel plans so that if, through no fault of their own, they just miss a train and have an advance ticket, they can take the next train without incurring a massive new fare on board. Another is a right to a discount for a rail replacement bus service, because if your train, Mr Deputy Speaker, becomes a bus, which usually results in a longer journey, it should be treated in the same way as a service that is delayed for any other reason. Finally, it is suggested that there should be a cap on annual increases in station car parking charges, because it is increasingly clear that some train companies are squeezing yet more money out of hard-pressed commuters by whacking up parking charges when we should be making it easier for people to leave their car at the station and commute, because by doing so they are helping to cut congestion and helping the environment.

West Coast Main Line

Debate between Maria Eagle and Marcus Jones

Monday 17th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. As a member of the Backbench Business Committee, I welcome the first of the Monday debates, which rely on the public’s response to e-petitions.

The west coast main line is vital to many of my constituents, who, I must say, are a little perplexed, to say the least, about the whole saga of the letting of the west coast main line franchise. In the debate today, it is important for our constituents to understand that we are here, as Members of this House, without the power or jurisdiction to change anything at this point. It is important to state that the only people who can change the decision, unless the will of the Government changes after the judicial review, are the judiciary. The judicial process must be followed and Members must respect that process.

That said, there are general principles that we should discuss, but as MPs it would be a grave error to delve into the minutiae of each bid, because we have not seen the information first hand, and so are second-guessing from the claims and counter-claims of the different companies involved. The issues come under two categories: first, the franchise process itself; and, secondly, how the various bids were applied to the franchise criteria. To take the franchise process first: Virgin Trains and others, particularly Opposition Members, contend that the tendering process was flawed. I have concerns and scepticism about that argument. If flaws had been identified at the outset, before the draft invitation to tender or when the Government released it, we should have seen a robust challenge from the Opposition at that point.

[Maria Eagle]

As far as I am concerned, nobody on the Opposition Benches has suggested that the tendering process as it was undertaken was unfair. We do not know the details, which is why it is important to have a debate, to ask the Minister what he can tell us.

[Mr Jones]

I thank the shadow Minister for that comment, because it illustrates the crux of the issue. There is a lot of second-guessing and a lot of assumptions are being made. The people making those assumptions do not necessarily know the full facts. As I will come on to later in my comments, it is dangerous in any such tendering process for an MP or a Government to move the goal posts once the process has begun.