Crossrail 2

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on securing the debate, and apologise for the fact that I was not here at the beginning. His battle for Tottenham is akin to the one we fought and, to some degree, won in Hackney. We had poor transport links, and we now have new links that have transformed the borough. For his sake and that of my constituents, I hope that we will see a change.

I want to pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) about the need to absorb growth. It takes me back to when I was mayor of Islington in the late 1990s. Angel station was revamped from a grotty little station to a brand new one with platforms so wide that you could park a car on them. That station is already overcrowded. Canary Wharf just about manages to cope with the crowds as does, arguably, Westminster, but it will not be long—perhaps a decade—before there will be too much growth.

When we set up the mayoral system in 2000, there was a decision on the first Mayor’s desk. His job was to develop transport and planning strategies for London. After much thought and discussion, the then Mayor, Ken Livingstone, decided that we would absorb population growth in London instead of having another wave of new-town building with new towns such as Milton Keynes. London was set to grow from then until 2015—we are still part of the way through that growth—by the equivalent of a city the size of Leeds. All the experience that hon. Members have outlined about the difficulty of squeezing on to tubes, whether travelling from Milton Keynes or Hackney, demonstrates that growth. Whenever I cannot get on the tube, I think back to those discussions when I was a member of the London assembly with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham back in 2000. We are now seeing the impact of that.

Part of that strategy was to have a transport hierarchy. We encouraged people to change their transport habits so that those who travelled by tube would get on the bus, and the then Mayor greatly improved the buses. We then wanted people who travelled by bus to walk and cycle. Cycling increased massively after the 7/7 bombings, when the tragedy made people think about their transport and get into the habit of cycling. I represent the borough that has the highest number of cyclists of any borough in London, and perhaps anywhere in England. The history of it is long-standing, and it has grown with population growth.

The then Mayor invested massively in bus transport, and bus ridership rose 7% during the first two terms of the London assembly and Transport for London. I am sure that the Minister is aware that Transport for London is a model for a good transport authority. Sadly, there is a slight reversal with the stealth cuts in bus services. The frequency of the 242 bus in my constituency has fallen from 10 an hour to around seven an hour. It is the only bus serving the Clapton Park and Nye Bevan estates to and from Homerton hospital, and with six bus stops on those estates the cut in service is a big one for my constituents. When I raised the issue with Transport for London, it argued that the East London line, which I will mention in a moment, solved the problems. Well, that is not the case for someone who lives on the Clapton Park estate and who has to walk up the hill every morning, or for older ladies or men who have to wait for the bus so they can take their shopping home.

The 38 bus has recently seen a similar reduction, with every other off-peak bus turning at Hackney Central. That is fine for people who want to get off there or anywhere between there and Victoria, but not for those who live anywhere between Hackney Central and Clapton pond, as many of my constituents do. I therefore urge the Minister to look back at the glory days of London bus travel and to bear these issues in mind when he looks at budgets and policy for buses. Unless the bus service is good, the transport hierarchy will not work. People will not get off the train and on to the bus, because they will not be sure the bus will get them where they want to go on time. Once we lose that reliability, things could start going backwards from the huge achievement we saw in London.

To return to the issue of my constituency and borough, London was to absorb the huge growth I mentioned. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East described what has happened in her neck of the woods. Similarly, Hackney grew by 30,000 people between the last two censuses. Those are mostly under-fives, and I confess I have contributed to that, having given birth in the past few years. There are also a lot of young people in their 20s and early 30s. Another 30,000 people will be born in Hackney by 2020, so there will be exponential growth. A lot of that has been boosted by some of the new private and public sector housing developments.

That is putting public transport under great pressure, and we need to look at how we change travel routes. Boosting the North London line was a great move by Transport for London, and we all applauded the fact that it took over the route. We had a disciplined campaign in support of the East London line, which serves stations from Dalston Junction, slightly north of my constituency —it was in my constituency when it was built, but we then had a boundary change—right down to New Cross. The line has been hugely successful—it is impossible to get a seat in the morning—and that has made a big difference.

We can all learns lessons from the East London line campaign as we campaign for the much-needed benefits of Crossrail 2. It was a disciplined campaign. We were all urged to ask not for lots of whizzy things to make our stations even more beautiful, but for basic stations and basic rolling stock to ensure that we had the service running. Of course, we were fortunate that there was an existing rail line. There were regular meetings between local authorities, officers and elected Members from across the board. Every time a problem came up, we discussed how we would deal with it as a group, rather than striking out alone to argue that Hackney should have something better than Tottenham, or that Tottenham should have something better than Hackney, much as we might have felt like doing that. We realised it was better to focus on discipline and to achieve the ultimate end. The East London line opened in 2010, and it has been a huge success.

I hope the same discipline can be applied to the new all-party group on Crossrail 2. I would certainly join it and support my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham. The line would link Dalston Junction to Tottenham Court Road and mean an 11-minute journey; it will change things phenomenally. [Interruption.] If only I had time to go shopping in Tottenham Court road. I am thinking more of jobs for constituents who could work in the area.

When I was on the London Assembly, I also represented Waltham Forest. The council had a good plan at the time—this was between 2000 and 2004—to get people into jobs at Stansted airport. The transport links were there to make that easy. Hackney, which is virtually the same distance away, but which did not have the transport links, did not have the same jobs programme. The difference was phenomenal, and that has been one of the things driving my support for these new transport links. I saw the stark difference transport links made when I represented the boroughs of Waltham Forest and Hackney.

When we build railway lines, there are also issues about homes. There has been a housing boom along the East London line. That is quite a good thing. If we are to change travel habits and travel patterns, we need people not to go through the centre of London, so it is good to boost our suburban and outer-London areas. However, there is also the issue of prices and rents going up, which has a huge impact on many of my constituents. I am delighted that, among other developments, Peabody is building a number of affordable housing units at Pembury Circus, with a mix of properties for rent, sale, social rent, part-buy and so on. After a long campaign by me and many residents of the Kingsland and Haggerston West estates, London and Quadrant Housing Association is finally building there. Those changes are happening close to the rail links, and that will make a difference.

Let me say in passing, although it is important, that Hackney is very much against the Government’s proposal to allow offices to be easily converted into homes under a light-touch planning rules. That would be disastrous for my borough, where there are jobs, and where office space is used properly by a range of creative businesses. Those businesses are an engine room for the British economy. I hope bits of the Government are having a word with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government about the folly of his race to build inappropriate homes in the wrong places. The occupants of No. 10 and No. 11 regularly appear in Shoreditch, which the Prime Minister calls “Tech City”, although it is still known as Shoreditch to the people who live and work there, while someone else’s Department is saying that we should turn vacant offices into homes. That would be a mistake. Those properties would be chichi loft apartments for certain strata of people, not homes for local families who live in overcrowded conditions in my area. Although I want travel links to spur the building of homes—again, building homes near transport links fits into the hierarchy of transport because people have to travel less if they live near stations—I do not want that to happen at the expense of our valuable office space.

Generally, I support Crossrail 2 and Transport for London taking on more rail. I congratulate the Minister on his openness in talking to Members early about plans to pass more rail lines to the Mayor of London and Transport for London. Whoever the Mayor is, I support Londoners, through their Mayor and Transport for London, being more in control of the lines that serve them and help them get to their jobs. That is a good step. I hope we will see a similar openness and engagement from the Minister on Crossrail 2. I know he is not in a position to wave a magic wand or, more importantly, a cheque book at the moment, or to give us absolute deadlines, but I hope that, in the spirit of openness he has shown on other issues, we can have a similar dialogue. We can help him argue our case in the heart of Government for Crossrail 2, which will make a huge and beneficial difference to my constituency if we do it right and get cracking.

To pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East about Crossrail 3, if we do not get Crossrail 2, Crossrail 3 will be a pipe dream. However, we need to start now, and we need to lay the framework. We need to be disciplined about the planning, and we need to make sure all the ducks are lined up.

The Minister has here the nub of a body of people, from inside and outside London, who are willing to argue the case for Crossrail 2, and others would have liked to be here today but could not be. We will do anything we can to make this case stack up. We can always argue for the best and most wonderful railway line, but, above all, we want a railway line, and we can compromise if that is what it takes to get it delivered. However, we really want and need this line in my constituency and in London.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Hammond]

I understand entirely the right hon. Gentleman’s point. That is why, in terms of the next stages, the challenge for TfL—I could have gone into it in greater depth, but he understood the point that I was making about why it is important for TfL to lead—is to go from the London First report into schematic detail and engineering detail. Those sorts of issues can be thought about and a business case properly developed only once the initial work is done. Clearly, one challenge for the Mayor and the Department—the Department wants the Mayor to undertake the challenge—is to look at building a comprehensive business case in the near future.

The right hon. Gentleman challenged me, saying that he had sat in my place and that he knew some of the tricks about discussions with the Treasury, and pushing things into the long grass. I also sat in his place and made exactly the same challenge to Ministers. He will know, as the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch said, that I do not have a cheque book in my back pocket and I will not be wielding it this afternoon. I can, however, give this commitment: before the next spending review, the onus is clearly on the Government to give serious consideration to Crossrail 2, its business case and the options for funding, and we will do so. The challenge, therefore, is for the Mayor to come forward with a proposition—a business case—that could be delivered in time for this spending review, and if not, it potentially looks to be a post-election issue. We can commit to giving the issue serious consideration, but the Mayor needs to develop that business case.

The Government’s record on making those commitments has been good. We have protected capital spending in spending round 10. We are determined to invest in essential infrastructure to support the economic recovery, both in London and nationally. We want to prioritise the schemes that offer best value for the taxpayers’ pound and the best growth potential. The business case must be developed and it is essential, therefore, that the Mayor and TfL show that the efficiency of the spending that they are using in this spending round, and in this spending review period, can be continued. The Mayor needs to ensure that there is the same rigour as has been seen—we would like to see more rigour—in terms of the efficiency of how he is spending the taxpayers’ pound when he develops the business case. For instance, it is also clear that in central Government we have borne down on administrative costs in that area. Administrative costs across Whitehall in this spending review have gone down by 33%, which is important. It is important to show that where we are spending the taxpayers’ pound, we are spending it efficiently.

The right hon. Member for Tottenham was slightly unkind to the Government—I would expect nothing less—in terms of the picture that he gave about investment in London. It was certainly not a picture that I recognised. A massive amount of transport investment is going into London. The Government have clearly, and rightly, recognised that London is the economic engine of the UK economy. In the last spending review, we provided TfL and the Mayor with a settlement, despite the tough economic environment, that allowed progress on the tube upgrade, Thameslink, and Crossrail. They have had certainty through this spending round, and another settlement and spending round will allow them to make their case.

Spending review 10 provided a multi-billion pound funding package for Crossrail, and we can think of the package coming through: for instance, there is £4.5 billion for the tube upgrade programme. The Jubilee upgrade that was completed last year has increased capacity by 33%. The Victoria line upgrade that was completed in January this year gave another 21% capacity. Delays on the underground have been reduced by more than 40% since 2007. That is not to be complacent. This is exactly the challenge. We have done these things to catch up. This is the 150-year celebration, and both the previous Government and this Government have made that investment to catch up. The potential for Crossrail 2 is the future.

[Meg Hillier]

The Minister rightly describes London as an economic powerhouse. I am pleased that the Government recognise that, and it has led to some investment. Will he illuminate for us the internal discussions in Government about whether his Department, obviously buying into that agenda through the investment in transport, has had any conversations with the Department for Communities and Local Government about its policy to convert offices into homes? It is the crack cocaine of developers and a quick buck for the owner of the property, but it means devastation for the economic powerhouse for which he professes Government support.

[Stephen Hammond]

I am here to talk about what my Department is doing for transport to ensure that London remains an economic powerhouse, and I wish to continue on that line. I am sure that the hon. Lady will want to make that point to my colleagues—I am sure that they have heard it before. None the less, I do not think she would wish to stop all office development, or all offices with the potential for conversion being developed. It may or may not be the crack cocaine in certain areas, but it is providing essential housing in other parts of the capital. I have seen a number of social housing schemes being developed from old office blocks in south London as well, so one needs to be a careful about over-generalising.

The point I was making a moment ago is that the Government are, and have been, spending a huge amount of money on the tube upgrade system and the tube upgrade plan. The Mayor of London and the Secretary of State for Transport opened the Clapham Junction to Surrey Quays link of the London Overground, completing the overground orbital network, which allows people from south London to commute to the City and Canary Wharf without travelling through central London.

I know that will be of some benefit to the constituency of the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander). I hear her points about the Bakerloo line. I say to her again that, as she will recognise, transport in London is a devolved issue, and it would be for the Mayor to come forward with proposals to the Government. Any proposal for London Underground to extend the Bakerloo line further in south-east London is a matter for the Mayor and TfL. They would have to come up with a plan, and potentially, if they seek to fund it in sponsorship with the Department, come to the Department. It is not for the Department to impose the proposal on TfL or the Mayor.