Zero-emission Vehicles, Drivers and HS2

Debate between Mark Harper and Mike Amesbury

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes two good points, one of which is that the Leader of the Opposition has always campaigned against HS2. [Interruption.] If we look at the parliamentary record, he absolutely has. Secondly, my hon. Friend is right that what we have been able to do is free up money to pay for other road and rail projects and, for example, to fund buses. I know that the rail Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), is going to meet my hon. Friend and the colleagues he mentioned to talk about exactly the sorts of schemes we are going to deliver.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that rather than levelling up the north, this is slowing down the north? I will give an illustration. Not very long ago, a station in the town of Northwich, which I represent, collapsed. It is now finally being rebuilt, via insurance, and what is being rebuilt is the ticket office—a ticket office that this Government are consulting on closing down. That speaks volumes about how, when the Government cut their cloth, it is always the north that pays the price.

[Mr Harper]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman listened to what I said or read what we said in the document. We are going to reinvest every single penny that we are saving from cancelling phase 2 of HS2 in the parts of the country where the money was going to be spent. Just under £20 billion will be spent in the north of England, just under £10 billion will be spent in the midlands and £6.5 billion, which we are saving from the new way that we will deliver Euston station, will be spent in the rest of the country. That is reinvesting in transport projects that I think are closer to what people want to see, which is why they have welcomed the decision we have made.

Rail Services

Debate between Mark Harper and Mike Amesbury

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The offers that have been made by both Network Rail and the train operating companies—broadly the same value of offers—are fair and reasonable, balancing the interests of the workers on the railways, the passengers and the taxpayer. It is important that the staff themselves get to make a judgment about whether they think those offers are fair, and I urge the RMT to put the offer to the train operating companies to its members, and to let the members decide. Surely that is the right thing for it to do.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

It seems that an assessment has been made by the Secretary of State that actually the service is just a little less rubbish. Is that really a just case for extending the contract? My constituents are flabbergasted.

[Mr Harper]

I was very frank with the House that the service last summer and autumn was completely unacceptable. Avanti brought in a new timetable in December. For the first month, we did not really see any improvement because there was sustained industrial action on the railways. Since then, it has delivered improved performance. Is it good enough? No, it is not—I have made that clear—but I believe that it has demonstrated that it has turned things around enough to justify giving it the chance of a further six months to show that it can do the job. We will see whether it does that job in the next six months, but it has demonstrated that it can turn things around.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Mike Amesbury

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 1st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I would not go quite as far as that, as there is a serious point about representation, but the public were certainly not devastated by the idea of a modest reduction in the size of the House. The other place is, I think, the second largest legislative Chamber in the world after the Chinese National People’s Congress, and this lower House of Parliament is one of the largest lower Houses, and I thought that our modest proposal to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 was a perfectly sensible step forward.

The explanatory notes to the Bill were prepared by the Public Bill Office on behalf of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, so I do not know whether the following point was put in by that office or by him. We have made the case that reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600 saves some £13 million per year, which is £66 million over the course of a Parliament. That might be modest in terms of our overall spending, but I think the general public would think that saving £60 million that we could then spend on important public priorities like the national health service was quite important. Interestingly, the explanatory notes talk about the broader context and suggest that there will be a reduction in the cost of politics—the hon. Gentleman alluded to this —associated with the 73 MEPs who will disappear when we leave the European Union. In our debates in this House on Brexit—I promise colleagues I will digress on this only briefly, as we have plenty more days to come over the coming weeks—when we make assertions about what we thought the referendum result meant, colleagues often say, “Well, that wasn’t on the ballot paper.” I am sorry that we did not think about this at the time, but if we had said to voters that when we leave the EU we will not have the 73 MEPs and said at the same time that we were going to use that as a cunning plan to reinstate the 50 MPs going in the law as legislated for, many voters might have thought twice. I am only sorry that I did not think of making that argument in the referendum campaign, given that I was on the remain side of the argument, as we might have had a little more success. I do not think that is a sensible argument, however.

I say to the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton—I may have misheard, but I think the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) agreed with him on this—that just because there are no MEPs in place it does not mean that suddenly a lot of extra work will come to this House. There are quite a lot of things that the EU does, and that MEPs spend all their time addressing, that actually would be better just not done at all. We can make sensible judgments in this House about what we want the Government and Parliament to focus on, and picking up every single thing that MEPs do is not very sensible.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

On the point of reducing the cost of democracy, is it not the case that the Conservatives have stacked the other place with 260 new appointees, increasing the cost of democracy by some £34 million?

[Mr Harper]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman raised that point. It is certainly the case that there are more Members of the House of Lords, because at present, although they can retire, funnily enough when it is suggested to someone who has a life appointment with a considerable income attached to it that they should retire, very few choose to do so—although, to be fair, more of them have been retiring recently than previously. To repeat what I said in my admittedly slightly too long intervention, although there are more Members of the House of Lords, we made an attempt to reform the other place, but Parliament was not completely sold on the idea; and the fact is that the cost of running the House of Lords has fallen since 2010, not increased. It is true that there are more Members of the House of Lords, but the running costs have fallen because of the savings made.