Cost of Public Transport
Mary Creagh Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
As we debate the cost of travel, thousands of our fellow citizens, in all our constituencies, are in buses, on trains or on roads, in cars or on bikes. The quality of our transport system makes a difference to each of their lives every day, which is why this debate matters. That was brought home to me on the first day of this year, when I was sitting on a train on the way to Ipswich to join Labour campaigners protesting about the ever-rising cost of rail fares. Across the aisle from me, a young woman who worked in a supermarket near Ipswich station was telling her friend, glumly, about the shock she got when she purchased her ticket that morning. It had cost an extra 60p, so it would be an extra three quid a week— £3 out of not much left over. There will have been similar stories on trains and buses up and down the country. For millions of our constituents, every penny counts, and in today’s debate we have not heard enough about the problems on buses, in particular.
Let me start by welcoming the first contribution made in this place by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon). Members have expressed their appreciation before for his revered predecessor, who has quite a successor. Like many colleagues, I enjoyed campaigning in my hon. Friend’s constituency in the autumn and noted that before coming to Parliament he had already made a powerful impact on the national scene through his inspirational work leading the local council. His powerful contribution today pointed out some of the very real contradictions and weaknesses in the Government’s devolution policies.
Despite the lack of time, we heard other excellent contributions today, including those from my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who outlined the very poor services from which his constituents are suffering at the moment, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who talked about the challenges facing her constituents. What they all confirmed was what we already knew, which is that rail and bus fares have shot up since the Conservative party came to power. We all trade figures on these things, but the key one is the comparison between fares and wages: what it really costs people. The truth is that fares have risen three times faster than wages, and that is why it hurts.
There are, however, some who do not feel the pain. The Secretary of State clearly seems impervious to it. Several months ago, he said:
“More transport, better transport...Under our Conservative majority government it's happening.”
Has he really forgotten about the broken election pledges to electrify key routes in the midlands and the north just weeks after the ballot boxes had closed? Or do the Government say that this was just paused? Is it not interesting how Governments introduce new words into the political lexicon. The word “paused” sounds so innocuous but it could ultimately be this Government’s epitaph: a country on pause.
We now have a rail investment programme delayed by years; more than two thirds of councils cutting local bus services; and more than 2,400 local authority-supported bus routes cut or downgraded. We could go on a national tour of bus shelters where there are no buses—perhaps they are paused, too.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Will he comment on the introduction of a fare increase by stealth? People expect rail fares to go up once a year on the first day back in January, but we must not forget that, a year ago in September, this Government introduced an evening peak on Northern Rail, which hit part-time workers and students in particular and caused chaos in railway stations across the north.
Daniel Zeichner
Indeed, and my hon. Friend makes a very strong point.
When it comes to buses in particular, we know that the Conservative party always talks about local decisions. The truth is that, by slashing funding to local councils, the Government are passing the buck. It is no good Government Members complaining about problems with their services, as famously the Prime Minister did, when they just troop through the Lobby imposing cuts on local councils. They really must take some responsibility.
We on Labour’s Benches strongly believe in the principle of local communities having a say over their public transport, and we have long been committed to that, but what the Government are offering for bus services is a sham. They are giving localities power with one hand while taking funding away with the other. With a 37% reduction in central Government funding to English local authorities over the course of the previous Parliament, and a further reduction of 24% to come, local authorities have been left with little choice but to cut to the bone.
For Labour, the devolution agenda seems to be little more than a front for public transport funding cuts and fare increases. As Labour Members have observed before, this is not so much a northern powerhouse, as a northern power cut. Whatever the Government spin on being in for a penny, in for a pound, it is clear that the link between fare rises and investment has been broken.
When the Government’s bus service operators grant, which is effectively used to subsidise bus services, was cut by 20% after 2010, the Department for Transport warned that small towns, and particularly rural areas, would be worst affected. It certainly got that right— they were.
What needs to be done? The answer is this: not carry on as we are. It has been fascinating to watch the delicate U-turn being carried out in the DfT as it grasps that the Treasury has finally cottoned on to the fact that we are being taken for a ride by many of the bus operators. It is an irony, is it not, that the Government are now looking to pursue Labour’s policy of bus reregulation? In the past, they were totally opposed to such deregulation. In fact, in the previous Parliament, they directly punished those areas that attempted to pursue bus tendering.
At the election, we promised the biggest shake-up of the bus industry in years. How astonished the operators must have been to find that, after the election, it is now a Conservative Government who are looking to learn from the positive experience in London and apply it across the country. Some of us are just a bit sceptical about this conversion, but we eagerly await the forthcoming bus legislation, and hope to see within it genuine power for local people and local authorities to have real leverage over their local services. The case for reform is incontrovertible and urgent because the status quo just is not working. Private bus operators have abandoned bus routes and services that they found to be commercially unprofitable, leaving the most vulnerable in our society stranded.
We want to give communities genuine power to plan fares and timetables, and to reflect local needs. Although some bus operators have strongly resisted moves towards greater co-ordination, these powers are already in use in London and they are the norm in Europe. If it is good enough for London then it is good enough for the north-east, Greater Manchester, Sheffield, Cornwall, and any other area that wants them. The alternative of continuing to watch bus services uncontrollably deteriorate is no alternative at all. At the election, the Prime Minister made many promises that have not stood up to scrutiny. He promised older people that the free bus pass, introduced by Labour, would be maintained, but, as so often with this Prime Minister, it is important to read the small print. He kept the bus pass, but said nothing about keeping the bus. The number of concessionary passes has gone up, but the number of concessionary bus journeys has gone down. How useful is a bus pass without a bus? We need a better way.
Local Bus Services
Mary Creagh Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House recognises that buses are an important tool to promote economic growth; regrets that, outside London, bus use is in decline; notes that since 2010 1,300 bus routes have been lost; further notes that since 2010 bus fares have risen five times faster than wages; further regrets that deregulation of the bus industry removed the ability of local authorities to co-ordinate their public transport networks; and calls on the Government to ensure that city and county regions are able to make use of London-style powers to develop more integrated, frequent, cheaper and greener bus services with integrated Oyster card-style ticketing.
Buses are the lifelines of our cities, towns and villages, but unfortunately, since 2010, 1,300 bus routes have been axed, and passenger numbers outside London have fallen as people have been priced off the buses. Bus fares have risen five times faster than wages, contributing to the longest cost of living crisis that any of us has ever seen. The Government have cut bus funding by 17% in just three years. We must get better value for the public subsidy that remains, which makes up 40% of bus operators’ income. We must reform the broken market for buses, and ensure that competition benefits passengers. We must move decisions and powers on transport services closer to the people who use them—away from Whitehall and closer to the town hall. We want simple, smart ticketing with a daily cap that can be used across buses, trams and trains. We want public authorities to have powers to set routes, and to help working people and businesses succeed.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I want to question the bus usage statistic that the hon. Lady just gave. My statistics on passenger journeys state that there were 5.2 billion journeys in the most recent year—2013-14—which is clearly more than in 2009-10 and the situation we inherited from the previous Government.
Mary Creagh
I am glad the hon. Gentleman raised that point because that is the only year in which numbers of bus journeys outside London have increased since 1986. If he looks at bus statistics for the past 28 years, he will see that there is a one-year blip—that year is the exception that proves the rule, which is that outside London bus services are in long-term decline.
Mary Creagh
I want to make some progress; the hon. Gentleman has made his point. We want more people to use buses, because when they do they are able to participate fully in economic, cultural, and social life.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
It is worth remembering that the previous Conservative Government cut the subsidies and imposed privatisation on local authorities. I support the motion, but we must ensure that local authorities are given the tools to do the job. That means money coming from central Government, not passing the issue on to local authorities so that they have to provide the subsidy.
Mary Creagh
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and only this morning I met Councillor John McNicholas from Coventry to discuss some of the issues with Centro and the west midlands.
I want to talk about three big issues. The first is why buses are so important to our economy, and the second is what has happened to buses under this Government. Finally, I will set out how a Labour Government will empower local authorities to take control of local transport.
Let me begin with why buses are important. Buses give people the freedom to work, learn, explore new places and connect with new people. Nearly 5 billion bus trips are made in Britain each year, and three times more trips are made by bus than by train. Buses take the unemployed to job interviews and to work, and they take young people to their exams, colleges and into their futures.
I congratulate Councillor Liam Robinson, chair of Merseytravel, who spotted that young people from larger families were not turning up to school on Thursdays and Fridays. Why? Their families had run out of money for bus fares. He negotiated a young person’s ticket where the fare is capped at £2 a day instead of £1.30 a journey. The number of bus users has grown as a result, and young people in Liverpool and Merseyside no longer miss out on their education.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is right to mention the affordability of bus services. Is she aware that in Manchester, for example, to travel six miles on buses costs more than £3, yet here in London that same six-mile journey using an Oyster card would cost just £1.45? Do we not need affordable public transport too?
Mary Creagh
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, and I was talking to Councillor Andrew Fender only this morning about some of the difficulties faced in the Greater Manchester area. If someone travels over a whole day in London within certain zones their bus fare will be capped at £4.40, but if they live anywhere outside London their fare is not capped and they pay far more.
Buses take people to the GP and to hospital appointments. When I visited Plymouth in July, Labour council leader Tudor Evans, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and Labour candidate Luke Pollard told me how a previous short-sighted Tory city council had sold off the city’s municipal bus company. [Interruption.] We heard the word “excellent” from the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). I am sure her constituents would be pleased to hear that.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
The largest provider of bus services in my constituency is Ensign, which runs a very successful commercial operation. In principle, privatised bus services can offer a very good service to constituents. Why is the hon. Lady so against them?
Mary Creagh
The bus services are privatised in London too. I have nothing against privatisation. [Interruption.] I will tell the hon. Lady a little bit about what I learned on my trip to Plymouth and maybe she will learn something about her constituency.
Cuts in bus services have forced people to take taxis or ambulances to hospital, putting pressure on NHS budgets. I am delighted to report that my Plymouth colleagues, working alongside Councillor Pauline Murphy who is undoubtedly known to the hon. Lady, has secured a new bus service from Efford to Derriford. I congratulate them on that result.
Buses bring economic and environmental benefits. The UK is one of the most congested countries in the developed world. British motorists spend an average of 124 hours—more than five days a year—stuck in traffic. Traffic jams cause air pollution, which causes the early deaths of an estimated 29,000 people a year. In Worcester last Thursday, I met Joy Squires and others who are campaigning to bring back their park and ride service. It was scrapped by a Tory city and a Tory county council, yet—here is the irony—local taxpayers are paying £3,000 a month just to keep the site secure even as Worcester, England’s third most congested city, clogs up with even more traffic. Where is the sense in that?
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that there are various reasons for congestion in our cities? For example, we have a plethora of 24-hour bus lanes when we do not have 24 hour buses. Will she therefore applaud Liverpool council, which has carried out an experiment and decided to scrap 22 of its 26 bus lanes to ease congestion for all motorists?
Mary Creagh
I am always happy to pay tribute to Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool, and to Councillor Liam Robinson. It is clear to me, from my discussions around the country, that we need properly enforced bus lanes and that they are a necessary but not sufficient part of getting regular, reliable bus services. If people think they are going to be sitting on a bus behind a load of car traffic, they will choose to take their car and add to it. Buses take people off the roads.
Sir Greg Knight
Will the hon. Lady look closely at the experiment Liverpool carried out? I understand that it found that although removing the bus lanes led to a small increase in bus journey times it had no effect whatever on the number of people using buses.
Mary Creagh
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point. There is now a lot we can do, phasing traffic lights and all sorts of clever ways, to give buses priority. They all need to be considered.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I am delighted my hon. Friend has secured the debate, which is incredibly important for my constituents. Does she agree that one of the big impacts on local bus services has been the massive cuts to local government, particularly in northern areas where local authorities have seen massive cuts to the subsidies they can provide for unprofitable services? People are able to get a bus to work during rush hour but are not able to get one home when their shift finishes. Is there not just a responsibility on the Minister here, but on the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr Pickles)?
Mary Creagh
I completely agree with my hon. Friend on that issue. County councils and city councils of whatever colour or hue have been forced into some very difficult decisions by the cuts made by this Government. It is a short-sighted policy that has caused genuine hardship across the country.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady welcome the partnership between Stagecoach, Conservative-led Warwickshire county council and employers on the new service from Nuneaton to Birch Coppice? The service is being run in conjunction with employers to fit their shift patterns, which will help many Nuneaton people to get to work.
Mary Creagh
I do indeed welcome that. I welcome any innovation from bus companies. It is important that we get large employers working with bus companies to talk about their shift patterns and, in particular, with NHS hospitals, which often tend to be built by the NHS outside city centres, without any consequential thinking about how people will access those health services or designing a bus service for people to use.
Mr Jim Cunningham
Despite the cuts to local authorities, which are horrendous in the West Midlands to say the least, we hope to maintain free bus passes for pensioners, although I am not sure that the same goes for Warwickshire.
Mary Creagh
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Of course, the Prime Minister famously said that he would protect bus passes for pensioners; what he did not say is that there would be any bus services left for people to get on.
Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)
I would like to put on record the fact that in Scotland it was Labour that introduced free bus passes. However, with the present Administration north of the border, it is questionable whether they will continue.
Mary Creagh
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Of course, the relationship between the owner of Stagecoach and a particular party north of the border is well known, although I will leave it at that.
On air pollution, Labour’s parliamentary candidate, Andrew Pakes, invited me to Milton Keynes, where I was delighted—[Interruption]—it was very nice too—to see that the Labour council had worked with Arriva to introduce the first all-electric bus route with charging plates.
Mary Creagh
I think hon. Members will find that the green bus fund was actually started under a Labour Government.
Buses are key to tackling congestion and air pollution. Buses power the early morning economy—the shift workers, the security guards and the cleaners—and they power the night-time economy, bringing young people safely in and out of city and town centres to work and have fun. However, I do not think Ministers understand the importance of buses, because they and their friends do not use them. If they did, they would not have slashed bus funding by 17% in real terms in just three years. We have seen bus fares outside London rise by 25%, five times faster than wages. The frail and the vulnerable are disproportionately affected.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will no doubt be aware that Baroness Thatcher reportedly said that the man who finds himself on a bus after the age of 25 can consider himself a failure. Does she agree that that kind of contempt for buses is why Conservative Members can never champion the kind of good quality and good value services that our constituents need?
Mary Creagh
I think that comment dates from another time. I agree that the sort of prejudice against public transport in that comment is deeply unhelpful. I think that a man or woman who finds themselves on a bus at the age of 46, as I did this morning, has achieved a great deal in life. I want buses to be seen as an aspirational form of public transport, not something that people take only if they cannot afford something better.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
Very briefly, for clarity and in defence of Baroness Thatcher—[Interruption]—that is a quote that will haunt me for some time—she never actually said those words, which have been attributed to her. It was actually Loelia, Duchess of Westminster.
Mary Creagh
I aspire to a country in which even the Duchess of Westminster travels on the Clapham omnibus—or even the Westminster omnibus.
We know that the rise in bus fares has disproportionately affected the frail and the vulnerable, as well as young jobseekers and those on low incomes without access to a car. We know, too, that in some rural areas, bus services have all but disappeared—the result of this Government’s deep cuts to supported services, which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) mentioned. Freedom of information requests by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) uncovered the fact that local authority bus subsidies across shire counties were cut by 23% in real terms between 2010 and 2014. Conservative Northamptonshire county council cut its subsidy by 55%, and Conservative-run Suffolk by 50%.
In cities outside London, there is a chaotic mix of local control over trams and metros, private provision of buses and nationally operated rail franchises—no integrated ticketing, no real-time information and no fares information at the bus stop. The bus companies say, “Ask the driver”, but can we imagine going to Tesco for a loaf of bread and being told that we have to take it to the checkout to find out the price? There is often no usable map of the bus networks and their connections. Instead, different bus companies compete for fares.
Andrew Gwynne
Is not the issue here that Transport for London set the frequency and set the standards and bus companies bid to be part of the network, whereas Transport for Greater Manchester does not currently have those powers so that private bus companies set the network and TFGM has to infill with minuscule resources that it does not have?
Mary Creagh
That is indeed an important point. The competition in London happens at the point of contracting the routes, whereas in Manchester the theoretical competition happens on the road. I was on a bus in Manchester last Friday, so I know my hon. Friend makes an important point about the sort of private provision and the sort of competition that benefit not just people, but our economy, jobs and growth. If we do not have transport mobility, we will not have social mobility because people will not be able to move out of their areas to look for work, further their education and better themselves.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
It is not, of course, just Manchester, as this applies across the country. When bus services to local hospitals were cut, there was little Centro could do about it—it was the bus companies that did it—and there was nothing that local councils could do either. It required an excellent campaign such as the one conducted by our Labour candidate, Stephanie Peacock, to get the bus services working again.
Mary Creagh
I pay tribute to Stephanie Peacock. My right hon. Friend reinforces my point about linking up to health services. Interestingly during this period of cuts to bus services, what we have seen is that when services that were once “supported services” were cut by the transport authorities, they magically reappeared when bus companies suddenly found that they could operate the services commercially after all. When the taxpayer is paying but a service is suddenly found to be commercially viable, it is a further sign of a market that is not working properly.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
The hon. Lady will recognise that there is a great deal of cross-party agreement about the need for bus services and their importance, but I hope she will also recognise the importance of rail services, which might be able to take off some of the pressure on the bus routes if towns are fortunate enough to have a railway station. Will she support my campaign to extend the Robin Hood line in Nottingham to the villages of Edwinstowe and Ollerton?
Mary Creagh
I was talking to the transport lead on Nottinghamshire county council this morning. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that trains also play a part. Trains are important, but the difficulties experienced by his Government—around the franchising process, the transfer of rolling stock and the delays in electrification—make reliance on the train as a substitute for bus services more difficult. We have had a freeze in the letting of franchises, with very big difficulties, particularly in the north of England, where carriages are going to be transferred down to Chiltern Railways. The services obviously need to be part of a planned network. The people who come to those stations either by car or bus use a different form of ticket when they get there and the point we are trying to get across is that devolving such decisions closer to communities will allow the system for rail, tram, underground, metro and bus services to be the same. Ease of interchange is key to encouraging people to use those services.
At the moment, outside London, our transport network adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Different forms of transport compete needlessly, instead of providing seamless journeys from A to B, and there is a lack of competition. That does not work in the passengers’ interests, the public interest or for local businesses. The Competition Commission has estimated that the failure of competition in the bus market costs the taxpayer £305 million every year.
London is the exception. Transport in the capital works far better for passengers than in any other British city. That is not simply because there is more money and there are more people. It is because Ken Livingstone, as London’s first directly elected Mayor, took some hard decisions. He introduced the congestion charge and properly enforced bus lanes. Labour understands how important it is to equip our cities with similar powers to make their transport systems work. Bus services should be available, accessible, affordable and convenient, which is why we have announced plans to give London-style bus powers to any city or county region that wants them.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
In Bristol, First has a near monopoly on buses. I have just asked for a meeting with the latest in a long line of managing directors so I can present yet another dossier of complaints from the public about unreliable services and high fares. Bristol is crying out for the sort of change that my hon. Friend has just mentioned. We need local control of bus services. May I urge her to make good speed in trying to bring in those changes? Perhaps she can visit Bristol to see just how much we need them.
Mary Creagh
I would be happy to visit Bristol to look at some of the issues there. I know that Bristol is a good cycling city. I have been invited there to try the cycling, so perhaps I can combine the visit.
Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)
The interesting thing is that the hon. Lady almost dismisses the vast amount of extra money that London transport receives, the hugely increased population, which is larger than that of Scotland, and the compactness of the area in which London transport operates. It is totally different from anywhere else in the country. If one looks at Hampshire or Dorset, one can surely see the difference.
Mary Creagh
I do understand the difference between a big city and a little city. I also understand the difference between a big city that is growing by 70,000 to 80,000 people a year and that has a thriving tourist economy and counties such as Hampshire and Dorset, which are dealing with problems of geography, topography and in many cases poorly maintained roads. However, the bus subsidy in London is not that out of kilter, given the number of people per head who travel on buses. It is a hugely used form of public transport. I did not dismiss those differences. I do understand them.
The Secretary of State knows that the current legislation to regulate buses is too onerous, but that has not stopped the determined trying. I pay tribute to the combined authorities in the north-east and west Yorkshire, who I visited last week. There, far-sighted local leaders have spent the past four years trying to achieve better buses through a quality contract. They will have my full support in government.
We are delighted that the Chancellor, belatedly, seems to agree with us that London-style transport powers unlock growth. Does the Secretary of State for Transport agree with him? A small yes, a possible yes, or a sphinx-like silence? Perhaps there is trouble in paradise. If he does agree with the Chancellor, will he explain why any transport authority that pursued a quality contract—in essence, London-style bus powers—was penalised by his Department and banned from bidding for his better bus fund?
This morning, I held a bus summit with city and county council leaders to discuss how devolution can give city and county regions better buses.
Mary Creagh
It was, and it included Conservative representation. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can see me afterwards if he wants the names, but I do not know whether—[Interruption.] Actually, I think that I am going to make sure that they are secret.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. It is unsuitable for the shadow Minister to answer sedentary interventions. If Members wish to ask questions of the hon. Lady, they can stand up and indicate their wish to do so, and then she can answer.
Mary Creagh
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps we should have a bell that Members can ring.
I am not sure that I should say who attended the summit. Officers from Devon county council attended, as did one Conservative leader, but I am not sure that he would be pleased with me if I named him. [Hon. Members: “Name him!”] No, I will not. It is for me to know and for other Members to find out. [Interruption.] It was not a secret summit. All 105 city and county leaders were invited.
At the summit, we discussed how London-style powers could bring more small and medium-sized bus companies into a market in which five big companies take 70% of the business. We noted that those five operators all complain about a regulated market outside London, but are happy to operate in a regulated London bus market. We discussed how the voice of the passenger left waiting at a bus stop could be heard, how we could overcome the barriers to open data about buses, how ticketing could be linked with trams and trains, and how interchanges could be made easier. We also discussed the fact that communities can be isolated just a mile from a city centre if there is no bus, which is what happens on the Peacock estate in Wakefield.
On Monday, Stagecoach claimed that it could deliver multi-operator Oyster-style ticketing across the country by 2015, which came as a surprise to many Members. We know that unless the law is changed, it will not be able to deliver multi-operator tickets with a daily price cap. Stagecoach has also claimed that politicians are
“peddling the myth that London is best”
for buses. This morning, however, one councillor referred to London as the “magic kingdom” of buses. London has 7 million regular Oyster card users. In contrast, the Secretary of State this morning heaped praise on Centro in the west midlands for having just 3,000 smart card users.
I want to seize this opportunity to fix the broken bus market. The current problems stem from an over-centralised state, and the Government have done nothing to change that. All local authorities face different transport challenges. Only when public transport, cycling and walking become attractive options will they grow and improve.
I do not think it is fair that only London provides passengers with one ticket for every form of public transport, always guaranteeing the lowest fare and capping daily bus usage at £4.40.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is right to mention the multi-modal travel that is made possible by the Oyster card. If someone began a journey in Manchester on the train, transferred to Metrolink and then transferred to a bus, people would think that they were absolutely bonkers. Not only do those three travel modes not join up, but it is not possible to obtain a single ticket that can be used on all of them.
Mary Creagh
My hon. Friend has made another excellent point. I have experienced that myself. When I caught a tram from the station, a return journey cost £1.50, and I then had to take a bus to the venue, which cost £1.40.
I do not think it is fair that only London provides audio-visual announcements on all buses for the benefit of deaf, blind and partially sighted people. I do not think it is fair that only London provides seamless interchanges with real-time information that makes door-to-door journeys easy. When I was visiting—I think—Milton Keynes, a lady said to me “We call them ghost buses. You stand at the bus stop and you see from the countdown that buses are coming, but when they are due, they just do not turn up. Why are there these ghost buses in the system?” We know that there are problems with technology and other equipment, but why are the problems ironed out in some cities and not in others? Labour will ensure that cities are given the powers they need to take control of their transport system, no longer playing second fiddle to the capital. Bus provision where cities let the routes will unlock efficiencies to cut fares, run more buses and invest in growing the network. Bus provision must become quicker and easier to achieve. We want a bus market that is growing, not dying by a thousand cuts.
Transport plays a vital role in driving economic growth. Devolution is important and control over transport is important, but transport is much more than that. It has profound effects on us as people and on the places where we live. It affects our health, our environment and our quality of life. Buses are the lifelines of our cities, towns and villages. Buses enable people to get to work, bring jobs and growth to our high streets, reduce isolation and ensure mobility for those unable to drive.
Labour is the party of the bus user. In government over 13 years we increased funding for buses from £774 million in 1997 to £2.3 billion in 2010.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
The hon. Lady makes the valid point that buses bring mobility to those who are unable to drive. How then does she feel about Southampton city council removing concessionary passes from disabled people, who have previously enjoyed them?
Mary Creagh
As I have said, Southampton council is doing no more than delivering the very strong cuts to its budgets that the hon. Lady’s Government have imposed on it and that she has voted for as a loyal servant of her party, so I tell the people of Southampton to vote Labour next time.
Mary Creagh
No, I am going to conclude my remarks as many Members wish to speak.
We introduced free concessionary bus travel for pensioners and the disabled, bringing freedom to millions.
Mary Creagh
I will not give way; I have two sentences left, and then I am going to sit down.
Only a Labour Government will tackle the cost of living crisis and drive renewal of our buses. Britain’s bus market is broken. The next Labour Government will fix it, and make buses once again a transport of delight.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Creagh Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
In May when I asked the Secretary of State about problems with the electrification of the Great Western main line, he said that
“there will always be problems”.—[Official Report, 8 May 2014; Vol. 580, c. 264.]
Will he confirm that the Great Western £1.1 billion electrification project is now a £1.6 billion electrification project, and will he say which electrification projects will be delayed or cancelled when his Department has concluded its panic review of his flagship projects?
Mr McLoughlin
A “panic” review of a project that is more ambitious than anything the last Government ever dreamed of? I would have thought there would be a consensus across the House for the huge investment that we are putting into the railways through Network Rail. I am working with Network Rail and it is working with me to ensure that we get the electrification programme delivered, and within an overall budget.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Creagh Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
The press announced last Wednesday that aviation security in the UK was being stepped up, yet it was Tuesday evening, a full six days later, before this Department issued a statement to MPs. There is confusion among passengers about what they can and cannot take through security, and different airlines appear to have different policies on the checks and on returning confiscated items to travellers. Nobody is arguing with the need to protect passengers, but can the Minister reassure the House that he and his Department will work with airlines to give passengers the clear information they need to prepare before they travel, ensure that airports have adequate charging points for electronic gadgets, and guarantee that Members of this House will be kept fully informed?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
The Secretary of State was on breakfast television today making it quite clear what the new rules will be, and making it clear that passengers travelling to and from the UK may be required to demonstrate at the departure gate that their electronic devices can be powered up. I know that airlines are taking steps to ensure that this can be addressed in a number of ways—for example, people can be reunited with their devices or charging facilities could be made available—but it is important that we react to this new security threat in a way that continues to protect the travelling public.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Creagh Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mr McLoughlin
I hear the representations my right hon. Friend makes to me now, and has made to me on many occasions privately, about the desire for new rolling stock on that line. It will be something I will want to consider when we look at the franchising agreements we will put forward.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
The £5 billion project to electrify the Great Western main line has been hit by flooding, bats on bridges and lengthy road closures which have crippled businesses in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. What guarantees can the Secretary of State offer the House that the electrification work will be completed by 2017 when those new intercity express trains will be ready to run?
Mr McLoughlin
The points the hon. Lady makes about forward orders and the fact that that new rolling stock is due to come on board by 2017 with the electrification of that line are very important. I have every confidence that Network Rail will rise to the challenge to deliver what it has set out to deliver in the rail investment strategy. Quite often attacks are made on Network Rail, but I think we can all stand back and think of the remarkable way in which it managed to re-establish the line through Dawlish and the work it did working almost 24/7.
Mary Creagh
I thank the Secretary of State for that reply, but it was his Department’s mismanagement of the Thameslink rolling stock contract that meant it took two full years to close the deal with Siemens. That project will finish three years late in 2018 and our colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee said last October:
“We are sceptical that the programme will be delivered by 2018 given the delays in awarding the contract for new trains”.
On Thameslink we could have new track but no trains, and on the Great Western line we could have new trains but no track to run them on. Does the Secretary of State agree with me that this is no way to run a railway?
Mr McLoughlin
I simply say to the hon. Lady that this Government have announced the biggest investment programme in the railway industry that we have seen in this country and I am very proud of that. Of course there will always be problems. I think the Thameslink programme was actually Thameslink 2000 so it has overrun—that is certainly true—but at the end of the day we are going to get a far, far better commuter service for all the people in the areas served by that line.
Business of the House (No. 1)
Mary Creagh Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on securing the Bill’s Second Reading last night, but it is extraordinary that the Prime Minister, who found the time to reassure his Back Benchers on his EU referendum plans, was too busy to back this hugely significant infrastructure, which is of national importance. High Speed 2 is really important for our country. In the spirit of cross-party working, I agree with much of what the Secretary of State has said.
Yesterday we debated the principle of HS2, and today we will debate the detailed process that Parliament will establish to ensure that the Bill receives the scrutiny it deserves. Any Bill of this size and importance will be controversial, and we must debate it properly. Today’s motions will set up a Select Committee to consider petitions on the Bill, instruct the Committee on the removal of the spur from Old Oak Common to the channel tunnel rail link and allow the hybrid Bill to be carried over into the next Session and the next Parliament.
I am pleased that it was Labour’s pressure that led to this second day of discussions on the Bill. I am very glad, as I am sure are many right hon. and hon. Members, that yesterday we did not have to sit through the night to vote these motions through—the public would certainly not have thanked us for that. Also, Parliament has hardly been overburdened with business for the past six months. Labour supports the Bill and will vote in favour of today’s motions to allow it to proceed. The Bill requires proper scrutiny, in broad daylight and in full public view, so I am glad that today it will get that.
High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill
Mary Creagh Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating the Secretary of State on bringing the Bill before us, and I would like to thank him for the patience and generosity with which he has treated us today and for the cross-party approach he has taken on this vital national issue.
Michael Fabricant
Does she share just a teensy-weensy bit of my unease that where there is a love-in and a cross-party approach, it invariably means that the parties are getting something wrong?
Mary Creagh
Well, I do not share anything teensy-weensy or of any other size relating to the hon. Gentleman—[Laughter.] I think we will leave it at that. To give the hon. Gentleman a straight answer, I think that it is important to work co-operatively across the House on issues of national significance The debate that we have had has shown that the vision is important, but also that the concerns and the case for mitigation must be listened to. If we are elected next year, I hope that that will continue during the construction of the line.
High Speed 2 will cut congestion on the railways, better connect our cities and help to deliver a one nation economic recovery, which is why Labour will support the Bill tonight. Its 335 miles will be the longest and most ambitious piece of rail infrastructure to be built in this or the last century. Managed properly, HS2 has the power to transform the economic geography of our country. It will build up our great cities and bring them closer together; it will connect people to each other, to work and to leisure; and it will help to rebalance the economy, creating new skilled jobs and apprenticeships in every nation and region of our economy.
Mr Kevan Jones
My hon. Friend says that the project will link the cities and regions of our country. Does she include the north-east in that?
Mary Creagh
I certainly do. The full Y line will terminate 14 miles south of York so that the classic compatible network trains will be able to run from the north-east—directly from Newcastle—and join the high-speed line outside York, significantly cutting the journey time to Old Oak Common in London and to those intermediate cities of Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham and Birmingham. There will be significant benefits to the north-east.
Paul Farrelly
Given the urge for more speed in the Higgins report, what comfort can my hon. Friend give to the people of north Staffordshire who, as HS2 stands, face the prospect of having only three direct services a day to London from Stoke-on-Trent station, instead of more than 30?
Mary Creagh
It is too early to write the railway timetable for 2026, but when phase 1 of the line is open people from my hon. Friend’s constituency will be able to get on a classic train at Stoke-on-Trent, go down the west coast main line and join the high-speed line at the Handsacre junction—
Mary Creagh
We will not be paying any tolls to go through Lichfield. Journey times to London will be significantly cut. One of the benefits that has perhaps been undersold is the connectivity that HS2 will bring even to those cities not directly connected. Given the anxieties in Stoke-on-Trent and the key decision to be made on Crewe, when will the Secretary of State bring forward his response to phase 2? It would be helpful to know his thinking.
Mr Redwood
What has changed between last autumn and today to move the Labour party from thinking that HS2 offers very poor value for money to thinking that it is a great financial project?
Mary Creagh
David Higgins and Simon Kirby, the former Network Rail chief engineer, have been appointed to the project, and the Higgins review has shown where costs can be brought down. The key risk to the project costs is political delay. We have also looked at the strategic alternatives, as we did in government, and we believe that HS2 is the best way to move to the low-carbon transport infrastructure that our country needs if we are to meet our climate change emissions targets.
Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady accept that in addition to improving journey times for people living in Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire and Staffordshire, an even greater benefit will be the release of capacity on the west coast main line? That will mean that people travelling to London will be able to get seats and will have a better journey.
Mary Creagh
Absolutely. It will also be a key issue for my right hon. and hon. Friends from Coventry, because one of the pinch points on the west coast main line is the crush when commuting from Coventry into Birmingham in the rush hour.
Andrew Bridgen
Can the shadow Secretary of State confirm that the Opposition’s support for HS2 is still contingent on its being delivered for under £50 billion?
Mary Creagh
We will have to see what the Committee delivers as the Bill goes through the Committee process. There are clearly issues to do with the High Speed 1 and High Speed 2 link, which has now been taken out of the Bill. Some of the issues that the Committee will consider will be debated more fully tomorrow.
A Bill of this size and importance will be controversial, and we must debate it properly. A project of this size will affect very many individuals and communities, and the environment. We must minimise the negative impacts wherever possible and deal with the utmost sensitivity with the people whose homes are affected.
On the capacity crunch, HS2 will deal with some of these constraints on our railways. Already, thousands of commuters are standing on packed rush hour trains into Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Euston. Last week’s figures from the Office of Rail Regulation showed that the number of rail journeys has more than doubled since 1996. This number will continue to rise, and by 2026 peak demand will be two and a half times the capacity at Euston, twice the capacity at Birmingham New Street, and nearly twice the capacity at Manchester Piccadilly. There is already more demand for train services than there are train paths available on the west coast main line, and by 2024 it will be running at full capacity.
This congestion will have a significant impact on the freight industry and its customers. The west coast main line is the key artery in the Rugby, Daventry and Northampton golden triangle for freight. Over the next decade, passenger constraints will become more serious on the east coast main line and the midland main line. Network Rail’s £38 billion investment programme for the next five years will deliver signalling improvements, platform extensions and some additional services, but those incremental changes will not deal with the looming capacity problem.
Labour Members know from our time in government that major infrastructure takes years to plan and to construct. Many right hon. and hon. Members will remember the Crossrail Bill, which Labour introduced in 2005 and which received Royal Assent in 2008. That railway will open in 2018. Labour in government identified the need for more capacity on London’s railways by the end of this decade, and we acted to deliver it. We must do the same now to build the infrastructure we need to mitigate the looming capacity crunch on our railways.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
Is the shadow Minister aware that we need 20 paths to take care of increased freight over the next 10 to 15 years, and that our current network cannot supply even one of those paths? Is not that a major reason for arguing for this Bill?
Mary Creagh
Yes, absolutely. Freight has been a Cinderella subject; the focus tends to be on passengers, and that is absolutely right. If we are to achieve the modal shift by getting HGVs off our roads and freight on to trains—that is key in the hon. Gentleman’s area—we have to make sure that freight is able to go on the west coast main line.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The hon. Lady said that we need to mitigate the worst effects of the railway. Does she accept that as regards ancient woodlands there is no way of mitigating those effects because we cannot replace ancient woodland? According to the Woodland Trust, the preferred route for phase 1 will see the loss of, or damage to, 83 irreplaceable woodlands.
Mary Creagh
I will come to the environmental part of my speech in a moment. I would say to the hon. Lady, as the sole representative of the Green party in Parliament, that her party is in an extraordinary position in voting against what will be the key plank in moving towards a low-carbon transport infrastructure.
Let me turn to reductions in travel times. High Speed 2 will not just increase capacity; it will use the latest high-speed technology to reduce travel times between Scotland, the north, the midlands and London. It will connect with existing railway lines so that from the end of phase 1 direct high-speed services can be operated from Glasgow, Wigan, Preston and Liverpool. [Interruption.] They will go through Lichfield, without a toll. The full scheme will cut journey times from London to Birmingham Curzon Street to 49 minutes, to Sheffield Meadowhall to 69 minutes, and to Leeds to 82 minutes. When both phases are complete, HS2 will link our northern cities, providing new express commuter services between them, as we have seen with High Speed 1 in Kent. That will drive jobs, regeneration and growth across the midlands, the north, Scotland and Wales.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
The hon. Lady mentioned the journey time to Curzon Street, but I am sure she is aware that the journey time from London Euston to Birmingham international will go down to 31 minutes. That will result in an under-utilised runway becoming competitive with some of the London airport runways, which could help relieve congestion in the south-east.
Mary Creagh
That is a very important point. The impact on western Coventry and Birmingham international airport cannot be overstated. When I was 18, the journey time from Coventry to London was two hours, and the £9 billion upgrade has got that down considerably to an hour. To reduce it still further would be a phenomenal achievement in one’s own lifetime.
Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend and I have been parliamentary neighbours and friends for a long time, so I say in a very positive spirit that I started off, as the Secretary of State has said, supporting HS2 because I thought it would bring power, wealth, activity and jobs to the northern regions, but I have changed my mind because the research increasingly shows that it will suck more power into and give more strength to London and the south-east. Does my hon. Friend share my concerns? The Institute of Economic Affairs raised such questions this morning.
Mary Creagh
I missed that last bit about this morning, but the report we have had and the Treasury analysis show that the benefits will accrue to Yorkshire and west Yorkshire, including my city and my hon. Friend’s town of Huddersfield. One of the key points of the Higgins report is that full investment in east-west rail links across the Pennines is one of the great prizes that HS2 can bring to our area.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
In view of the fact that the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and many other nations have a high-speed link, does my hon. Friend not think it is high time that this country had one? It is about not just those areas that will actually get the link, but interconnecting areas, so people in north Wales and mid-Wales will also benefit from the Crewe link. We have to look at the budget, but surely it is high time to get on with it. That is why people in Wales who do not back everything the Labour party says, such as Professor Stuart Cole, are backing it.
Mary Creagh
The benefits of increased connectivity for north Wales cannot be overstated, given the potential for new railway links to towns and cities that currently have no direct rail link to London, and I will now address that in greater detail.
HS2 frees up capacity on the existing network. The full route will provide up to 18 long-distance train services into London every hour, which is the equivalent of a new green motorway. It will separate long-distance trains from local commuter services and freight and free up capacity on the network. That free capacity will bring new commuter services into London from areas of significant housing growth, including Milton Keynes, Luton, Northampton, Peterborough and Corby. The free capacity could also provide more direct, long-distance services to London from places such as Blackpool, Shrewsbury and Bradford.
Jonathan Edwards
The Labour Government in Wales changed their position on calling for equivalent Barnett consequentials following a call from Jim Pickard in the Financial Times asking why they were not making the same case as Plaid Cymru. The financing decisions on HS2 will be made during the next comprehensive spending review, when I suppose the hon. Lady would hope to be making such decisions as Secretary of State for Transport. Will she therefore give a guarantee that, should the Labour party form the next UK Government, Wales will get a fair share?
Mary Creagh
I understand that the pressing issue in south Wales in particular at the moment is the electrification of the Cardiff valley lines. I would hope that that is at the top of everybody’s in-tray to try to sort that out, because there seems to have been some sort of miscommunication, to put it charitably.
Mary Creagh
No. I am not a Government Minister, so I have not seen it. The hon. Lady will have to ask her colleague the Secretary of State to share its contents with her.
Mary Creagh
That is a decision for the Government and they have taken it. Perhaps the hon. Lady should have put that question to the Secretary of State.
I want Sir David Higgins and his team to look carefully at how High Speed 2 integrates with our national strategic road network to minimise travel disruption during construction and operations. Network Rail’s future investment plans must be aligned to maximise benefits to the north. We need an integrated transport system for the UK.
As the Bill proceeds through Parliament, Labour will continue to hold the Government to account to keep costs down. Across the country, our constituents face a cost of living crisis. In this time of austerity, it was right for my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor to call the Government to account for their mismanagement of this project. We know that construction costs in the UK are higher than for comparable projects elsewhere in Europe. They must be rigorously controlled.
Let us look at how the project has been managed. The Government inherited a detailed plan for HS2 from the previous Labour Government, but Labour’s brainchild has been sadly neglected. Four years of delays and mismanagement have caused costs to rise. First, the Government split the project into two phases for financial reasons, which has delayed the benefits of the line to the midlands and the north. Secondly, their review of strategic alternatives took 18 months, and costs have continued to rise as time scales have slipped. Thirdly, their initial consultation on property compensation was a lesson in incompetence: the process had to be rerun after a High Court judge ruled that it was
“so unfair as to be unlawful”.
Fourthly, the Government did not launch the consultation on phase 2 of the route until July 2013; yet it was being worked on when we were in power three years previously, so what was the hold-up?
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
My hon. Friend rightly says that the Opposition will be looking at the costs. If they keep rising, at what stage would she, on behalf of the Labour party, say, “No, this has gone too high, and is sucking out too much money from the rest of the railway network”?
Mary Creagh
We have been very clear that there is not a blank cheque for this project. The Select Committee will obviously look at the parts of the Bill, as it goes through it and hears the petitioning process, but a very clear budget is set out for the project from now until 2020. There will be annual reports on the budget under our amendments to the paving Bill. We look forward to receiving the first report from the Government.
The Transport Secretary has admitted that the legislation will not be passed before the 2015 election, as was apparent to all Members, so his Government have missed their target on that. It is right that there is proper scrutiny and ample opportunity for the Select Committee to examine every complaint and comment thoroughly, but there must be no more Government delays.
I want the Secretary of State or the Minister who replies to the debate to tell us when we can expect the Secretary of State’s response on the phase 2 route to ensure that the north, the north-east, the north-west and Scotland reap the full benefits from HS2 quickly. What impact does the Secretary of State anticipate the construction of the line will have on the Great Western franchising process, which is due in 2016?
On workers memorial day, we remember all workers who have been killed at work, particularly in constructing our transport infrastructure across the decades. In particular, we remember the worker who was recently killed on the Crossrail project, and send our condolences to his family and friends. Our ambition, which I am sure is shared in all parts of the House, is that this railway is free from fatalities and serious injuries.
Mr Redwood
Is the hon. Lady at all worried that the business case says that load factors on the west coast main line will be only 31% in 2037, and that there will have to be cuts of £8.3 billion to non-HS2 services to try to keep costs under control?
Mary Creagh
The right hon. Gentleman refers to a part of the report that does not immediately spring to mind—I have not perhaps digested it and kept it in mind as thoroughly as he has done—but there is broad consensus across the parties that the project is the right thing to do for the nation, and I hope that we can proceed on that basis.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
As a Yorkshire MP who is now behind the project at full throttle, will the hon. Lady commit herself to selling it in Yorkshire—to her council and beyond—to ensure that we make the most of this project for our region and every city in it?
Mary Creagh
Absolutely. It is right for Wakefield council to represent the views of local residents. The costs of HS2 are significant, but I believe, as does the hon. Gentleman, that the benefits are great.
As I said earlier, we want a one nation economic recovery to rebalance the growth across sectors, nations and regions. A long-term high-speed rail investment programme presents huge opportunities for the UK’s design, engineering, construction and manufacturing sectors. It offers a secure future for the railway supply chain and will showcase the UK’s expertise in the global high-speed market. The Olympics, Thameslink and Crossrail have transformed travel in London. It is time for the wider UK economy and society to benefit from the transformational opportunities that a major infrastructure project brings. The first phase will bring more than 40,000 jobs: 9,000 jobs in construction, 1,500 permanent jobs in operation and maintenance, and 30,000 jobs at Old Oak Common, Euston and Birmingham.
Mr Straw
I entirely support the case that my hon. Friend is making. Would she like to remind sceptics like the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) that as much money is being spent on a single railway station that serves his constituents, namely Reading, as is being spent on the electrification of services across the north-west?
Mary Creagh
That was an excellent point, well made. My right hon. Friend has triggered my memory. There has been £6 billion for Reading, £6 billion for Thameslink and £18 billion for Crossrail—pretty soon there will be enough for a high-speed rail network. I have read about the debates over the disruption that Crossrail has caused. Tottenham Court Road station was closed for two years, yet the centre of our global capital was prepared to put up with that because it realised the benefits that it would bring through reduced journey times. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) has the freight flyover at Reading station, as well as a couple of new platforms and re-signalling work. He will no doubt enjoy the faster journey times to London. I would like the same for my constituents and the constituents of the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith).
I wonder when the Government will be able to report on the vocational training elements of phase 1, which were provided for by Labour’s amendment to the paving Bill. We want to see the annual report and to see what is happening. We welcome the new further education college that will train the next generation of young women and men to become rail engineers. Members on both sides of the House have been bidding to host the college. I look forward to hearing where and when it will open.
Sir David Higgins’s report called on the Government to be more ambitious in the development of Euston station. The iconic new developments at King’s Cross and St Pancras show how stations can transform and regenerate their local areas. I hope that that will also happen at Reading. Euston is potentially central London’s biggest regeneration site. Its redevelopment must provide new social housing to tackle the acute housing crisis in Camden, as well as retail and office space. It would be a disaster if it followed the housing developments in the city centre that are sold off-plan to foreign investors, creating ghost towns, rather than going to local people.
I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and Councillor Sarah Hayward, the leader of Camden council, will continue to battle to get the best deal for their community. It has been inspirational to talk to my right hon. Friend about the life sciences hub that he wants to see around the Francis Crick Institute, which is due to open near Euston in 2015. To have the tech hub at Old Street and a life sciences hub at Euston would be an enormous boost for young people and jobs in his constituency.
Frank Dobson
I welcome what my hon. Friend has said. Will she bear it in mind that the investment in the Francis Crick Institute, which is a biomedical research centre, is just over £300 million? I believe that it represents a bigger contribution to the future of this country than spending £50 billion on a railway.
Mary Creagh
Perhaps I will break the consensus now. My right hon. Friend’s constituents will benefit from the investment in Crossrail and Thameslink, which will improve London’s transportation system. I gently say to him that his might be a slightly London-centric view. I hope that HS2 will be of benefit to every nation, region and sector of our country’s economy.
We welcome the removal of the HS1-HS2 link from the Bill, which would have caused huge disruption to Camden. Removing it will save £700 million from the budget. We also welcome David Higgins’s proposals for a coherent transport plan for the north, which has been historically underfunded, and for proper east-west rail links between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull. Our cities must plan and are planning how to maximise the regeneration and growth opportunities around the stations.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) and I have formed the new all-party parliamentary group on integrated transport strategy. We are about to do a piece of work that will show that we can start building phase 2 in the north as well as phase 1. Does the hon. Lady have a view on the sequencing of the building?
Mary Creagh
Tempting though it is to offer up my words of complete ignorance on the best way to build a railway, I will leave the matter to Sir David Higgins, who has a bit more experience in the area than me. I would certainly welcome anything that brought the benefits to the midlands and the north quicker, but he is the expert on delivering such large-scale projects.
The transport authorities must prepare to ensure that regional towns and cities reap the benefits of HS2. Railway engineering and advanced construction skills should be a national priority. We want more UK businesses, large and small, to win the large contracts. I hope that in his conclusion the Minister will tell us how he will support cities and businesses to make the most of the scheme.
Mary Creagh
There will be more frequent train services, not just to London but to the major cities of the north, and there will potentially be better east-west rail links in the north for people who want to visit friends and family on the other side of the Pennines.
More capacity on the existing network means more space for rail freight. That will take lorries off the motorways, reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality. The full network should reduce the number of flights from Manchester and Scotland to London. HS2 will help us to move towards a sustainable, low-carbon transport system.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend spoke about flights from Manchester airport to London. At the moment, taking a train from my constituency, which contains Manchester airport, to London takes two hours and 24 minutes. When HS2 is completed, the time will be brought down to 59 minutes. Is that good for the regional economy and for Manchester?
Mary Creagh
I knew exactly how long that journey took, because I looked at train times during my hon. Friend’s by-election campaign and thought that it was a very slow journey. HS2 will be transformational, because it will bring Manchester and London very close together. It will also create a modal shift away from aeroplanes. For any journey that takes about three and a half hours, passengers will be taken out of aeroplanes and on to high-speed rail. That is obviously of benefit and will help us to meet our climate change emissions targets.
High-speed rail offers some of the lowest carbon emissions per passenger kilometre. The emissions are significantly lower than those from cars and planes. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a green spine that links our great cities and to open up wildlife corridors. I was inspired by the Wildlife Trusts’ vision for Low Speed 2, which is a green network of cycleways and footpaths along the line that would connect communities with nature and each other. We must learn from and build on the excellent biodiversity work that has been done by Crossrail. It has worked with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and others to create new habitats for bird life at Wallasea island, using spoil from Crossrail’s tunnelling that was carried down the Thames on barges.
Caroline Lucas
The carbon benefits that the hon. Lady is talking about will happen only if HS2 is responsible for a modal shift away from high-carbon sources such as cars and aeroplanes. Only 11% of passengers are likely to make that modal shift. HS2 is therefore about new journeys, so it will not cause the carbon reductions that she claims.
Mary Creagh
As our country grows and as people travel more, there will be new journeys. One hundred and fifty years ago, people thought that going at 3 mph on a canal through the Standedge tunnel between Huddersfield and Manchester was a marvellously fast way of getting goods from the port of Hull to the port of Liverpool and vice versa, but today we expect a little more. We built the M62, the nation’s highest motorway, which provides a stunning drive from Leeds to Manchester and Liverpool. That is fantastic, but if we end up with transport links that cut down journey times and that get people out of their cars and on to trains, it will be of huge benefit.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Given that 80% of the London to Paris travel market is by train not plane, does the hon. Lady agree that the channel tunnel demonstrates that if transport links are good enough, people will shift the way they travel?
Mary Creagh
Absolutely; people have a tendency to work it out all by themselves. Particularly in this era of the internet and smartphone apps, I am sure that people will be pretty cute about figuring out the best railway and greenest journey that they can make. I do not share the scepticism of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about whether people will shift. However, she also mentioned ancient woodland, and HS2 should set the gold standard in environmental mitigation and in promoting plant and animal life along the route. We will hold the Government and HS2 to account to reduce its environmental impact.
The Secretary of State mentioned climate resilience, and we saw in the devastation of the Great Western main line at Dawlish and the flooding near Maidenhead in February the direct impact of climate change on our transport networks, and on communities and businesses in the south-west and Wales.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
I will support the Government tonight in the Lobby. The hon. Lady talks about the north and London and so on, but does she recognise that this whole debate has very little impact on the west country? [Interruption.] We have just had the most devastating effects through losing our railway line, and it is important that while we proceed we ensure that the west country is not forgotten in the whole story, so that we can deliver growth too.
Mary Creagh
Absolutely. [Interruption.] I pay tribute to the Network Rail staff whom I visited out by Reading and who worked around the clock in difficult circumstances to open the route—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady, but there is a low level of conversation going on around the Chamber. This is an important debate. If Members wish to have conversations, by all means they can leave the Chamber to do so. If they are in the Chamber, they should allow the hon. Lady a fair crack of the whip.
Mary Creagh
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) who have continued, along with the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), to raise the need for resilient transport links in the south-west. I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that his Government previously promised his community £31 million of funding for rail resilience works, including at Cowley bridge outside Exeter—money that failed to appear in last year’s autumn statement and which was brought forward only after the devastation at Dawlish in February this year. However, he makes the important point that today’s vote is not about choosing between HS2 and other rail projects, and his great western main line will be electrified over the next five years. The Government have repeatedly raised expectations in the south-west and said that money will be found to make the transport infrastructure more resilient. Perhaps in his closing remarks the Minister will tell the House when we can expect some of those scenario planning options, which I know Network Rail is acting on—I think there are three scenarios at the moment.
Mary Creagh
I will conclude my remarks, because I know that other Members want to speak.
High-speed rail in Britain is nothing new. The great western line, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was the first high-speed line, taking travellers from London to Oxford in just over an hour in the 1850s—twice as fast as the competition. HS2 follows in Brunel’s great tradition of railway innovation, and we should learn from that ambition for our railways. HS2 is our opportunity to connect our cities, rebalance the economy, and deliver a railway fit for the 21st century. Let us continue to work across the House to realise that ambitious vision for our country.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is a delight to follow the impassioned pleas of the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley).
Edward Watkin is buried in St Wilfrid’s churchyard, a few hundred yards from where I live in my constituency. He was a rail engineer, an entrepreneur, an industrialist and a Liberal MP. He designed the Great Central Railway, from Manchester to London, which opened in 1899. It could be described as the high-speed rail line of its day—it was modern, used the European gauge and brought down the journey time from the great city of Manchester to the great city of London immensely.
As part of his rail empire, Watkin began to dig the first attempt at a channel tunnel, which has been mentioned by Government Members. He wanted to connect his railway line from Manchester to London and all the way to France. The project was started, but, unfortunately, it was then opposed in this House, because it did not trust the French. Some 120 years later—
Mike Kane
Thank you, Mary. It is ironic that part of HS2 will go along the pathway that Edward Watkin built 120 years ago. It is a further irony that it will pass within metres of his graveyard in my constituency of Wythenshawe and Sale East. That will be a fitting tribute.
As a new Member, I will talk for a second about what I believe the purpose of good public policy to be. It must always be to promote the common good. It must be to create the conditions that allow people, groups and communities to thrive, fulfil their potential and live life more fully. I believe 100% that High Speed 2 will do that.
I served as a young councillor in Manchester under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). I remember the projects that he started and delivered, and that I supported. He bid for the Olympic games, which was unheard of. He won the Commonwealth games. We built the second runway. We introduced light rail. We brought about regeneration after the IRA bomb just after the change of leadership. I am immensely proud of that. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, we pulled that city up by its bootstraps in that decade. I was proud to serve on that council under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton and, subsequently, that of Sir Richard Leese.
With the HS2 line, Manchester and the northern economy can fulfil their potential. We can unleash good public policy for the common good, which will help individuals, groups and societies in northern England to prosper. The line will vastly reduce the time that it takes to travel between Manchester and London from two hours and eight minutes to one hour and eight minutes. As I said in my intervention, the time from Manchester airport to London will go from two hours and 24 minutes to 59 minutes. Manchester airport is the most important air gateway in this country outside the capital. We must imagine the benefits of the economic regeneration that that will bring. In fact, we do not have to imagine the benefits because we know what they will be. An HS2 station at Manchester airport will bring about £500 million of investment per annum and more than 9,000 extra jobs.
We have talked about how to rebalance this nation economically. There was a fascinating programme called “Mind the Gap” by Evan Davis, which was all about clustering. When Daniel Adamson built the Manchester ship canal in 1822, he wanted there to be a northern region that stretched from Liverpool to Hull. If I serve in this Parliament for a long period, that is what I want to see achieved. HS2 is the first stage in creating that northern hub—that second city.
High-speed Rail
Mary Creagh Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice and early sight of the statement. May I also congratulate Sir David Higgins and Lord Deighton on their substantial and thorough reports?
Transforming rail capacity south of Birmingham and improving connectivity north of Birmingham are vital and will transform our great cities. We support HS2 because of the capacity constraints that too many commuters on our railways face. We will continue to hold the Government to account for keeping costs down on the project. We will vote in support of the hybrid Bill when the Government finally bring it to Parliament.
David Higgins has made it clear that there are significant savings to be made if Ministers get a grip of this project and stop the delays. He says:
“a lower budget for Phase One could be set at some point...but only when the legislative timetable becomes clearer and more certain.”
What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that the phase 1 hybrid Bill is put before the House as soon as possible? The Government must now act so that the scheme can be delivered under budget.
Sir David recommended, and the Secretary of State has acted, scrapping the link between HS1 and HS2. That is welcome because the link was set to cause huge disruption to large parts of Camden. At Euston, Sir David proposes central London’s biggest regeneration site, with a mix of retail, office and residential units. Given the acute affordable housing crisis in Camden, a significant proportion of any new housing must be social housing. Does the Secretary of State agree that the community and council must be fully involved in those plans?
At Old Oak Common, where significant regeneration is planned, there is as yet no decision from the Government about the relocation of the First Great Western and Heathrow Express train depots. When can we expect a decision about linking HS2 and Crossrail into the west coast main line at Old Oak Common? That is key to maximising the development potential of the area and to improving the capacity for commuter services into Euston, which is crucial if there is to be a longer construction phase at Euston. When will those three important decisions be made? What contact has the Secretary of State had with the Mayor about setting up a development corporation to take regeneration plans for Old Oak Common forwards?
Sir David has listened to concerns from cities such as Milton Keynes, Northampton, Rugby, Stoke, Leigh and—yes—my city of Wakefield about how the line will connect to the current railway network and how their services into London can be improved. When can we expect the Government’s response to those significant issues in Sir David’s report?
On phase 2, we are glad that HS2 will link to future Network Rail classic rail investment and that the connections between our great northern and midland cities that we have called for have replaced the Government’s previous take-it-or-leave-it approach. We want a coherent transport plan for the north and the midlands, which have been historically underfunded, and for proper east-west links between Liverpool and Manchester and Leeds and Hull. A rebalancing of railway investment into the regions to close the economic divide: that is how we maximise the benefits for the whole country from this project.
We welcome the faster construction of phase 2 to bring benefits more quickly to the northern cities and north Wales. Will the Minister tell the House when the hybrid Bill for phase 2 would need to be completed in order to get to the north-west by 2026, as Sir David recommends? Sir David also recommends that discussions between council and business leaders and the Government should be conducted on a regional rather than a bilateral basis. When do the Government envisage such meetings starting, given the imperative to work fast to reduce costs? When will the Government announce their response to the phase 2 route consultation in order to get it started more quickly?
I turn to Lord Deighton’s growth taskforce report. He is correct that HS2 must become the spine for jobs, growth and regeneration in our country. His report wants cities to set up locally led delivery bodies to maximise the regeneration that High Speed 2 will bring. He warns:
“Even the very best authorities will be stretched to manage a project as complex and large as HS2”.
What help will the Government give councils whose budgets have been cut by 40% over this Parliament in order to do that? He says that land for development should be bought early before land prices rise and to reduce blight around the station sites. When will the Secretary of State set out which costs will be included in the costs of the High Speed 2 railway and which are excluded, so that councils can budget accordingly?
On transport, Lord Deighton wants the Government to set out their plans for commuter rail in non-high speed areas by the end of the year. Will the Secretary of State undertake to publish such a plan?
On skills, Lord Deighton warns that the railway work force are ageing. Some 10,000 new people are needed to work on the railways in the next five years alone, and he also states:
“Railways have an image problem.”
How does the Secretary of State plan to transform that image to entice young people of both sexes to work on the railways?
When will the site of the High Speed 2 skills college be announced? Wherever it is located, it must not be a stand-alone institution; it must reach out to cities and towns across the UK that have young people who want to work on High Speed 2. Which Minister is overseeing that skills work and how can procurement processes drive up the number of apprentices on the project?
On small and medium-sized enterprises procurement, the Minister must learn lessons from Crossrail, where SME contract numbers are high on volume, but the total value of those contracts is uncertain. We must ensure that the High Speed pound reaches all parts of the UK. It is vital that we maximise the opportunities that the new north-south line brings to our country. We are behind the project. We wait for the Government to rise to the challenge.
Mr McLoughlin
I thank the hon. Lady for her support. I am not sure how many questions she asked me, but I will try to answer the vast majority of the points she raised. There will be other points on which I shall respond to her in due course.
The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) has been a long-time critic of the HS1-HS2 link. It is right that we needed not only to listen to what local communities said, but to look at how we get a better link between the two stations of Euston and St Pancras. We are talking about a fundamental redevelopment of the whole of Euston station, which I think is the right thing to do. Anybody who has looked at those three stations over the past 20 years will have seen stations, particularly St Pancras and King’s Cross, where one would not really have wanted to spend any time at all. Today, they are destinations in their own right and show what can be done with proper work and careful consideration. That is why I think that a complete regeneration of Euston is necessary. I hope that we can address those problems. With regard to Old Oak Common, the Mayor has already announced his intention to set up a development corporation. I have regular meetings with him. In fact, I have one coming up this week.
It is right that we look at the overall cost, which of course is an important consideration. There is a £14 billion contingency built into the current budget of £42 billion. It has been left in place because at this early stage that is thought to be the right thing to do. One of the reasons why costs have gone up—it is important to reflect on this—is that we have taken exceptional steps to try to meet some of the environmental concerns that have been raised by many hon. Members, their constituents and communities. I do not apologise for that, because it is right that something that will be there for the next 150 years is built correctly and properly, as it will be.
The hon. Lady made an important point about skills development and the opportunities that that can bring, for example through apprenticeships. I will be looking at Crossrail, which I think has done incredibly well in trying to spread the benefits across the country, even though it is a London project. It benefits London in particular, but it also brings great benefits to the United Kingdom and the regions. I will also be looking at how Crossrail has tried to improve apprenticeships and develop skills across the industry. By the time it ends, the shovels will be on the sites for HS2, so hopefully there will be some cross-over.
This should send out a message to young people that the railway industry has a great future. What has happened to the industry over the past 20 years, with the number of passenger journeys rising from 750 million to 1.5 billion and continual growth each year, shows people who want a long-term future that the industry certainly offers good opportunities and work prospects. That is why it is important. I will write to hon. Lady in due course on the other points she raised.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Creagh Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr McLoughlin
The schemes that have been put forward in CP5 have been approved by this Government.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
We welcome electrification of the railways, but not if there are no trains to run on the tracks. One of the achievements of this control period will be the electrification of the Liverpool to Manchester line, which should mean better services, but the Department’s incompetence on franchising has put that progress at risk, as some TransPennine Express trains will transfer to Chiltern Railways next year. What is the Secretary of State going to do about it?
Mr McLoughlin
I realise that the hon. Lady has to try to find some things to attack and criticise us on, but I would have thought she welcomed a very significant increase in the investment into the railways. There were 9 miles of electrification during the 13 years of the previous Government; there will be 880 miles of electrification under this Government. Of course it is absolutely right to get the rolling stock right. Part of the problem with rolling stock has been the dismal performance of the previous Government in ordering it.
Mary Creagh
If it was so dismal, I do not understand why Hitachi has moved here because of the intercity express programme, but we will move on from that, because it was a Labour decision that caused that announcement today. [Interruption.] It was an order made under a Labour Government, not a Conservative Government.
The point of railway investment is to make life better for passengers, not worse. The Secretary of State talks about the electrification of the midland main line in control period 5, but again there are no answers on which trains will run on those tracks. Handing down older trains from the east coast line will lead to slower journeys on midland line trains than with the current diesel trains. What reassurance can he give the House that his botching of the TransPennine Express and Northern Rail franchises will not happen again in his own backyard?
Mr McLoughlin
The simple fact is that rail usage in this country has been a tremendous success that should be celebrated across the House. There were 750 million passenger journeys when the railways were privatised; there are 1.5 billion rail journeys now. I am very pleased about that. We are investing huge amounts in the railways. Of course there will be some problems with rolling stock, but it is this Government who have confirmed the intercity express programme orders for the east coast line and the great western line, and this Government who are signing off the contracts.
Driving Tests
Mary Creagh Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Mary Creagh
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many new drivers passed their first driving test in each of the last five years.
[Official Report, 3 March 2014, Vol. 576, c. 710W.]
Letter of correction from Stephen Hammond:
An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) on 3 March 2014.
The full answer given was as follows:
Stephen Hammond
The information requested is in the following table:
Number | |
|---|---|
2008-09 | 345,411 |
2009-10 | 320,695 |
2010-11 | 744,044 |
2011-12 | 332,697 |
2012-13 | 310,373 |
Total | 2,053,220 |
The correct answer should have been: