Airport Expansion

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane]

I thank the hon. Member. She is actually right, and well done to her for being there during the SAF debate and supporting the Government.

At the moment, the technology does not exist to fully decarbonise aviation. We are looking at hydrogen, we have the advanced fuels fund and we are investing £1 billion in the ATI, but, as the Prime Minister announced recently when he went to Merseyside, we are investing billions in carbon capture and other technology to offset those emissions. That is what we will have to do in the near future, but I envisage a day when we will have aircraft in our skies, particularly internally in the UK, with zero emissions coming out of their tailpipes.

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s commitment to growth. I also welcome their commitment to taking the difficult decisions required to generate it. We know that any conversations about a third runway will focus on the south, but I would like to ask about the north. May I ask the Minister, in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, if the project is approved, what will be done to ensure that all regions benefit from the proceeds of the growth generated?

[Mike Kane]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question and, even from this Lancastrian, for his chairmanship of the APPG for Yorkshire. I will say a couple of things. We have five great northern runways, and we need to begin to improve their capacity and connectivity. That is key to regional economic growth. Hopefully, whoever comes forward with the DCO for Heathrow will, as they have in the past, look at spreading the wealth and at logistic hubs right not just around our country, but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Road Safety

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andy MacNae]

There is no doubt that speed limits are a crucial part of this work, as long as they are targeted and appropriate. However, I cite the need for effective enforcement, because if people feel that there are no consequences from breaking those speed limits, they will be broken. Enforcement is a crucial part of the consideration.

Returning to average speed cameras, I urge the Minister to consider how sharing best practice between authorities could be improved. As the College of Policing noted, and as I and colleagues have seen all the time, there is a significant variation in the methods used to implement average speed cameras and assess their validity. Many authorities are unaware of the significant cost saving measures that have been pioneered over the last decade and the new technologies that exist.

To take one example, we were told by Lancashire county council that a relatively small average speed system on one key road in Rossendale was unviable as it would cost many millions to implement and maintain, yet when we approached a Home Office-approved supplier recommended by another local authority seen to be a pioneer in the area, we were given a quote of £800,000 for not just that scheme, but three others that together covered all the key risk areas in Rossendale. That huge disparity demonstrates not only how funding might be used inefficiently, but how local authorities are unnecessarily being held back from implementing schemes by an out-of-date view of their costs.

We need to recognise that cost is a genuine factor and that funding models under the previous Government were wholly inadequate, with road safety budgets squeezed alongside other local authority budgets. Under the last Labour Government, we had a system of netting off road fines, which helped to fund road safety enforcement activities. That should be reviewed as a possible funding stream to pay for road safety improvements, increasing policing numbers and making the best use of new and existing technology to reduce road risk. With increased information sharing, clarity over the costs of such schemes and hypothecated funds, there is significant potential to reduce the obstacles to enforcement that local authorities believe they face.

In addition to speed reduction methods, major gains can be made through improving pavements and creating cycle lanes through a genuine safe-system approach. Shockingly, of all road deaths in 2023, 25% were pedestrians, with cyclists accounting for 5%. Despite many local vision zero strategies, our road safety design evidently fails to protect those vulnerable users. I urge the Minister to use the upcoming strategy to encourage councils to meet their ambitions with action, utilising support from Active Travel England and genuinely adopting safe system approaches. That requires proactive interventions, whether through establishing clearer and protected cycle lanes, constructing safe footways or building new traffic lights and crossings where needed.

Another key area that we can tackle is the safety of commercial vehicles, as we have touched on. As I mentioned, there are schools in my constituency that border dangerous roads that are frequently used by large commercial vehicles. Due to the force of impact, HGVs are the second most dangerous vehicles on the road, killing 6.9 people per billion passenger miles—significantly higher than the comparative figure of 1.6 for cars. Considering that, it is completely unacceptable that in 2023, 36% of lorries were seen to exceed the speed limit. Drivers often have minimal oversight and training from companies, which have weak corporate safety standards.

We must proactively recognise and respond to the heightened risk that such vehicles pose. One crucial step could be to incentivise companies to maintain high safety standards in their fleet, be that through offering lower insurance to companies that demonstrate best practice, naming and shaming companies that do not, or even making companies fully liable for work-related collisions.

Alongside that, a variety of other proactive, low-cost methods could be used to improve the safety of our roads—for instance, tightening the regulations on tyre safety. Poor tyres accentuate the impact of speeding or poor driving. Over the past decade, an average of 182 people have been killed or seriously injured per year because of poor tyre conditions. MOTs flag over two million cars with sub-standard tyres each year, 1 million of which are so poor that they are considered actively dangerous. Given the improvements in tyre technology, coupled with the fact that the highest proportion of serious incidents occur in the winter months, there is room for the Minister to consider mandating that all new vehicles be equipped with all-season tyres.

More generally, there are significant opportunities offered by safe vehicle technologies, which can be embedded through advanced vehicle safety regulations. Let me touch on a point raised earlier about driver education, particularly protecting young drivers. This is a complex area, which needs a debate in its own right, but given that 16% of car driver fatalities are younger drivers, there is no doubt that this area really needs attention.

Finally, as we have touched on, increasing devolution is also central to ensuring that communities’ voices are heard. In places such as Lancashire, road safety interventions are still determined on a county level. Officials and county councillors are often very far removed from the roads and communities impacted by their decisions. When this responsibility is held on a unitary level, the voices of communities are louder, and decision makers are much closer to the area in question. Given the widespread local government reorganisation coming in this Parliament, the Minister has a significant opportunity to establish best practice in new unitary and combined authorities. I urge her to seize this unique opportunity, and to provide meaningful support and guidance to these emerging authorities.

To wrap up, considering the reactive and inefficient approach to road safety that the Minister inherited from the previous Government, I urge her to utilise her upcoming road safety strategy to move the country towards a preventive, community-led and statistics-informed model of road safety, alongside a sustainable funding approach. Central to that approach, I call for the following measures to be given detailed consideration within the road safety strategy: first, ending the safety postcode lottery via a robust, mandated national road safety strategy, based on a community-led, data-informed, safe system approach and, within that, prioritising lived experience and perceptions of safety over arms-length data.

[Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

On data, as a councillor in Farnley and Wortley and now as the MP for Leeds South West and Morley, I found that when I tried to help residents with accident spots on problem roads, I was often told that the average speed on that road was not high enough for action to be warranted. I have been met with that excuse so many times—too many to count—as both a councillor and as an MP. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to move away from that? Of course we should rely on data, but we should also speak to the people who live next to those accident spots, so that we can deal with them properly.

[Andy MacNae]

Absolutely. That is the essence of what we are talking about. Given that average speed data is a blunt tool anyway, we should ask ourselves who knows best: the people who live on that road and experience it every single day, or someone sitting looking at an algorithm in county hall far away? As politicians and representatives of our constituents, the answer that we should give is that the community knows best. We should put in systems to support their everyday lived experience, not the other way around.

Secondly—and this point is linked to the first—we have to use the opportunities presented by devolution and local government reorganisation to embed best practice, including improving information sharing between authorities regarding the availability of new and emerging road safety technologies.

Thirdly, we must address the barriers to proactive implementation and enforcement measures, particularly average speed cameras. Fourthly, we have to develop a sustainable funding model based on bringing back netting off. Fifthly, we must make companies fully responsible for the actions of their drivers on public roads. Sixthly, we need a genuine safe system approach to road and pavement design to protect pedestrians and cyclists. Finally, we need to address accentuating factors via advanced safety and vehicle safety regulations and develop approaches to protect young drivers.

Improving Public Transport

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer), and I congratulate the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) on securing this debate.

Public transport in Leeds South West and Morley is a lifeline for many of my constituents and me. I will focus on bus travel today, as it is the No. 1 transport issue that my constituents raise with me. I have plenty of content on the railway and the trams, but I will leave that for another time.

Without bus travel, many more rural communities, such as those in Ardsley, Robin Hood, Thorpe and Lofthouse in my constituency, simply would not have the means to access essential services, as other Members have said. In Farnley and Wortley, on the other side of my constituency, we depend on a small number of bus services, which leaves us far more exposed when those services fail. Morley, despite being the largest population centre in my constituency, is not immune to all the problems we have come to associate with bus travel.

I have relied heavily on the bus services in Churwell and Morley. The 51 and the 52 got me to school 20 years ago, and I remember being frustrated with the service even then. I swore that if I was ever in a position to do something about it, I would, which is why I am very grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate, and to be part of this Labour Government.

We need a public transport system on which we can rely. We need to try something different, because the status quo obviously is not working. The Ardsley and Robin Hood council ward in my constituency has no town centre, and parts of it are very remote, so buses are essential for residents who do not have a car. We do not have reliable routes into Leeds city centre either, and despite all this, routes keep being cut, including very recently by a private provider, leaving residents isolated.

These routes include the 212 service that goes through East Ardsley, into Tingley and right through to Wakefield city centre. Fortunately, thanks to the work of local councillors and the West Yorkshire combined authority, we have managed to find a new provider for the route, starting in January. Obviously, this counts as a victory for local residents, but we cannot rely on such sticking-plaster solutions. We cannot scrabble around to find new private providers every time somebody cuts a bus route.

That is not to say that all private bus companies are bad—far from it. In my previous role as a councillor for Farnley and Wortley, I was very happy to work with First in Leeds on dealing with antisocial behaviour on the 42 route that went through my ward. I am so grateful for the work of First and the police to end that antisocial behaviour and restore the bus route. First has always been willing to engage with me on issues affecting its bus routes, even when it has not been able to solve the problems. However, I do not want to rely on the hope that every private provider is as willing to engage with me as First has been. We all know that private providers have to cut routes that are not profitable or subsidised, or if they go bankrupt, even if those routes are essential to vulnerable communities. That is why we need a long-term solution.

West Yorkshire is very fortunate to have Mayor Tracy Brabin, who has put public transport at the heart of her mission to change how we get around our region. I welcome the news that a franchising system will be introduced in West Yorkshire in 2027. That cannot come soon enough. It will give us direct control over the bus companies and the bus routes, so that we can finally put people before profit in our public transport system. Mayor Brabin’s work closely aligns with this Government’s strong commitment to fix the broken bus networks across our country. The new buses Bill will end the postcode lottery of bus services and deliver the biggest overhaul to our bus system in 40 years. While that move is welcomed by my constituents in Leeds South West and Morley, it is imperative that we continue to ensure that buses remain sustainable. That is why I welcome the £1 billion of investment in bus funding recently announced by the Government, including £36 million for West Yorkshire. That has helped us to extend the £2.50 price cap for the whole of 2025, and to secure routes like the 212. I respect a lot of the points made by Liberal Democrat Members, but I point out that whereas the bus fare cap was going to be abolished next year, a new cap has been introduced because of the actions of this Government. Yes, it is higher, but it is none the less a cap that will keep exponential fare rises down.

Returning to Leeds, I predict that the next two years will be vital to our bus network. As we build towards franchising in 2027, we must sustain a good level of service until that date and use every tool in our arsenal to do so. I urge my constituents to continue to contact me with problems relating to the bus network in Leeds South West and Morley. I will work with councillors of every party and with the West Yorkshire combined authority to deal with the problems that we encounter before franchising. The Minister is one of my neighbours, and has heard me set out all the arguments to do with, and problems in, my constituency, and as well as some of the solutions. Can he tell me if there is any other tool that I can use to help my constituents in the build-up to franchising in 2027, should problems arise before that date?

To conclude, we cannot understate the significance of effective public transport. Communities in Leeds South West and Morley rely on it. I can tell them that we are genuinely getting on with the job of fixing our bus networks. It is time that my constituents had access to the public transport that they deserve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

8. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the condition of local roads.

[Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

9. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of the condition of local roads.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

I believe the hon. Gentleman met the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), last week on exactly that issue. She will follow up on it, as will National Highways.

[Mr Sewards]

I associate myself with the comments about Lord Prescott. I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s answers on local roads. The roads in Leeds South West and Morley are in a dire state. Asquith Avenue has been compared to the surface of the moon. Commuters in Farnley, Wortley, Morley and Tingley have to dodge potholes every day, and even the more rural areas of my constituency, such as Ardsley and Robin Hood, are suffering the same fate. What reassurances can the Secretary of State give my constituents that those roads will be improved, and when can they expect those improvements?

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Potholes and poor road conditions are a menace that make our roads less safe and have saddled drivers with costly repairs. The £500 million uplift will be available in ’25-26, and we will announce the allocations shortly, including those for West Yorkshire.

Rail Performance

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

We will be setting out a long-term infrastructure strategy in spring next year, working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and colleagues across Government to ensure that we are unlocking the transport infrastructure that will be of benefit and allow us to meet our housing targets but also improve rural connectivity. My Department is also reforming how we do appraisals to ensure we maximise our investment in transport infrastructure for economic growth and to tackle socioeconomic inequality.

[Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s decisive action to end industrial action, get the railways moving again and unlock the barriers to economic growth that we absolutely need to sweep away to get this country growing again. It is particularly welcome to hear about the green shoots of recovery and the improvements in LNER’s performance. However, passengers at Morley train station tell me that the services are still unreliable, so can the Secretary of State update the House on what she will do to improve the reliability of the train services running through Leeds South West and Morley and the rest of the UK?

[Louise Haigh]

LNER’s reliability has improved in the past year, but I am not naive and do not think we are there yet; these are only the green shoots of recovery. The real improvements from these reforms will come when we can truly integrate track and train. LNER and the east coast are a perfect example of where the previous system was failing. Billions of pounds were spent on upgrading the east coast main line, but with absolutely no improvement for passengers. By integrating track and train, we can ensure that those upgrades to the east coast main line are fully realised for passengers and that the timetable and service from LNER are improved.