Oral Answers to Questions
Pat Glass Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Jones
I meet local road safety campaigners on a regular basis, in particular families who have lost loved ones in incidents on our roads. They are difficult meetings, but I would of course be very happy to meet my right hon. Friend and her constituent.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
National road safety targets were introduced by the Thatcher Government in 1980 at a time when deaths and serious injuries on our roads were at horrendous levels. The numbers fell consistently until 2011, when the coalition Government abolished targets almost at the same time as they abolished the grant for speed cameras. Surprisingly, the numbers have started to increase. I accept that we are nowhere near the levels of 1980, but if it is your loved one or your child, that is matterless. The last time the Minister was asked about this he said that he was open to any useful ideas on how to turn the trend, so is it not time to accept that road safety targets decrease the numbers of deaths and injuries on our roads? They worked, and at the moment nothing the Government seem to be doing is reversing that trend.
Andrew Jones
I simply do not accept that policymaking is as simple as setting targets. If we look at all the action the Government are undertaking—the changes to the statutory option on drink driving, drug driving legislation, the THINK! campaign, the increase in penalties in relation to mobile phone use and so on—we see that our efforts to take road safety further are significant. If policymaking was as simple as setting targets, Gordon Brown would have left us a very well-run Government and nobody pretends he did that.
Future of Rail (Passenger Experience)
Pat Glass Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the Transport Committee for its excellent report. It sets out the details very clearly and is also readable, which is great. I am grateful that it focuses on passengers. We hear so much about train operating companies, Network Rail and the Department for Transport, but the report focuses on passengers and their experiences. They are the bottom line and the end receivers of all of this.
I will briefly say something about Select Committees. In my first five years in Parliament I was a member of the Education Committee. In my experience, Select Committees work really hard and their reports are full of good analysis, hard work and excellent recommendations. Governments do not generally take up those recommendations immediately, but over a period of two or three years, they tend to drip into manifestos and legislation. I therefore give credit to the Minister; I think he has accepted all of the report’s recommendations in full or in part, which I think says something about the report’s excellence. On the recommendations that he has accepted in full, given the Department for Transport’s history, can we not have a long, protracted period of announcement after announcement and just get on with delivering on them?
The bottom line and the reason for the series of five reports, of which this is one, is that rail passengers in the United Kingdom pay some of the highest fares in Europe and receive a poor, and in some cases very poor, service in return. In January this year, rail fares again rose above the rate of inflation, at a time when many commuters face a daily struggle to and from work to get there on time or to get there at all. That is down to the poor and deteriorating performance of train operating companies—not all of them, but far too many. While we in here might debate the high-level stuff about who should run the railways—whether it should be the market, whether it should be publicly owned and so on—rail passengers I speak to do not really care about that. They want an efficient, effective, affordable and accessible railway system. That is not what they are getting at the moment.
Given that the Government accept 13 of the recommendations in full and six in part, and do not disagree with any of the Committee’s recommendations, I will focus on the areas for which the Government only partially accept the recommendations. I ask the Minister to look again at the Government’s responses to the Committee’s criticisms and the recommendations that they have not wholeheartedly accepted. As the Committee forcibly points out, passenger experience, particularly and especially on the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern franchise, has been “woeful”. It puts that down to
“inadequate planning, weaknesses in the franchise handover process, infrastructure and rolling stock failures, mismanagement, poor industrial relations”.
The report states that the Department for Transport must “get a grip”. It actually says that, and I think anyone who has ever travelled on that franchise would agree. I recently took a journey on that franchise. I am from the north-east and do not normally travel on Southern, but I thought I should experience these things if I was to talk about them, so I did. I travelled down to Brighton and came back in the rush hour, and it was absolute hell; it beggars belief that people have to pay enormous amounts of money to endure that daily hell.
In the light of the report, the Department for Transport can no longer claim that no operator could do a better job than TSGN; in fact, it is hard to see how any operator could do a worse job. However, the whole blame does not rest solely with that train operating company. A lack of transparency over performance against contractual obligations is down to the Department for Transport. A lack of publicly available data for monitoring is down to the Department for Transport. A woefully inadequate franchise, including lack of proper information at the time of the bidding process, is down to the Department for Transport.
Even, as we have heard, the lack of drivers at the start of the franchise is down to the Department for Transport in part. Anyone who has ever run a company, public organisation or any kind of organisation knows that there will be significant staff wastage at a point of change, including in a handover period. Staff will take the opportunity to move on to other companies or jobs or to retire. Anyone who does not take account of that is quite frankly negligent. I think that is down to the Department as well as the train operating company. The failure to address that demonstrates a gross lack of knowledge or experience, insufficient due diligence or a lack of care on behalf of both the Department and the franchisee—or probably a combination of all of those factors.
Current and deteriorating industrial relations issues clearly have a part to play in this. The Committee is absolutely right to point out that those disputes can ultimately be resolved only through negotiation between Govia Thameslink Railway and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. However, given the Department for Transport’s unusually direct involvement in that franchise, it should take greater responsibility for fostering productive negotiations. The Secretary of State’s current Pontius Pilate-like handling of this is simply not good enough; this is the Government’s business and the Secretary of State has to get involved, not least to stop the dispute from spreading any further. He owes that to passengers. The dispute is not insolvable. The Government need to get the parties together and take a lead. The alternative is that it spreads across the country, as we are beginning to see now, with more and more franchises and passengers becoming involved.
We have heard a lot about Scottish rail and all its difficulties, which I accept entirely. There was a ten-minute rule Bill yesterday about handing over Network Rail to the Scottish Government; given that they have done such a cracking job of everything else that has been delegated to them, as somebody who lives on the east coast I think it would be an act of negligence for the Government to do so. However, I have to give credit where it is due, even though I dislike doing so: this dispute has been solved in Scotland. The roof did not cave in and the world did not come to an end; it was simply solved. If they can solve it in Scotland, we can solve it here. It needs some Government will and a bit of heavy lifting on all sides.
The Minister will expect me to say something on recommendation five of the report and the impact of driver-only operation on disabled people’s access—particularly in relation to “turn up and go”. The Committee asks for research to be undertaken into the potential impact of DOO on disabled passengers and for the Department to use that research to issue guidance to train operating companies to help them mitigate potential detrimental effects on disabled passengers; in other words, to make the reasonable adjustments they need to make under the law. That is reasonable and is the very least the Government could do.
Before I came to this place, I worked with disabled young people in education. I know how hard their lives are, and while I was not always able to give them everything that they wanted, I spent a great deal of time trying to give them what they needed. I know that a great deal can be done to mitigate detrimental effects with technology and through equipment, but ultimately, my experience is that it always comes down to the intervention of people. To pretend otherwise is simply disingenuous. Providing more accessible trains and buses is good. Providing audible and visual displays is good. Providing an ombudsman is good, although disabled passengers tell me that they do not want an ombudsman who will bung them a few quid a year or several months after an event. They want to be able to travel, as we all do, when they need to and with dignity, and unless the Department for Transport or the train operating companies demonstrate to them otherwise, that will mean a person other than the driver on the train or the platform to assist them.
I have always thought that the role of Government is to ensure that as we move forward no one is left behind. Frankly, if Government do not believe in that, they do not have a right to call themselves a Government; they are nothing other than a special interest group. Disabled passengers are not asking a great deal. They simply want to be able to travel when they need to, and with dignity, and that requires people.
The strength of this report is that it is not about the Department for Transport, the train operating companies or Network Rail but about the passengers, who are currently being woefully let down. I thank the Select Committee for that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), on securing the debate, and all the Committee members who have attended it as well as the other hon. Members who have participated in it.
I am pleased that the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) has, to her surprise, enjoyed the debate. Let me warn her to be careful: rail is a very seductive and addictive issue. Transport was my first Select Committee, and look what has happened to me. I put it down to the good stewardship of its Chairman that I am where I am today, so the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw should watch out for what might occur, either here or in Edinburgh—who knows?
I thank the Select Committee for its report, which is of the usual high standard. As has been suggested, I take these reports very seriously indeed. I know how much work goes into compiling them, cross-examining witnesses and drawing sensible conclusions, so I never take any report such as this lightly.
Much of the report came from an evidence session that I did on, I think, day three of being in my current role. I was a little petrified, to say the least, but the report reflects what I said, and I stand by every word of it. However, since that appearance, my knowledge has developed a bit—thank goodness—and of course the circumstances that we are addressing on the railways have changed. I want to use this opportunity to discuss some of the recommendations in the report, as well as the points made today by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass).
One important point made—by the hon. Member for North West Durham, I think—was that actions speak louder than words. We can all agree to specific points in reports and so on, but what matters is actions. Ticketing reform is a good case study for that. I remember when we looked at ticketing reform in the Select Committee—I think that was in 2012. There was a big, thick, wodgey Government document—I think it was about 200 pages in two sections—with everything that they were going to do to reform ticketing and make it all work fine on behalf of the consumer. Nothing ever happened with that. I got it out soon after my appointment as a Minister and reread it, thinking, “Maybe there are some clues in here.” And I thought, “Well, I’m not going to repeat that mistake.”
In my first week as Minister, there was a significant news story about split ticketing on the front page of The Times. I immediately sat down with my officials and said, “Right. Passenger experience has to be the key issue that we focus on,” and everyone said, “Okay, how do we define passenger experience?”, because in a sense, as we have heard today, it means everything.
Passenger experience is every single interaction between a customer who wants to travel by train and the train operators. It is quite hard to segment down, but segment we must, so when it came to my recent fares and ticketing action plan, I did not want just a list of actions that I wanted the industry to take at some future date. I wanted quite specific itemised actions, with a delivery date—because delivery dates are often quite rare in these action plans—that we could hold the industry and, indeed, the Department to account on. As the Minister, I could then start to measure whether we were achieving those goals.
Just this week, for example, I was pleased to note that the Rail Delivery Group has changed its rules on how those who leave their railcards at home are compensated. Gradually, slowly but surely, the ticketing action plan is coming into effect; that is happening as rapidly as possible. I find that all too often the greatest hurdles relate to system change—programming the computers and ensuring that each computer can speak to every other computer, so that we can then get the outcomes we want.
A large number of comments today and, indeed, the bulk of this report, focused on the issues involving GTR. I know that the Select Committee has taken a close interest in that matter, so I want to try to address it. It will come as no surprise to those gathered here today when I say that the performance of GTR is not good enough. It continues to be not good enough; I continue to be dissatisfied. I expect GTR to run a timely, reliable and predictable service for passengers, but I will only ever look at changes to that franchise arrangement if that delivers an improvement on behalf of passengers and is not merely for the sake of structural change.
The report highlighted the fact that we did not wholly accept the case that someone might do a better job. I entirely accept, philosophically, that yes, someone one day might be able to do a better job. My concern at the moment is to ensure that there is not a severe deterioration in provision because of yet another handover in franchise operator. We need to evolve this franchise into a much better place.
Paul Maynard
The hon. Lady makes a fair point. I do not think that it is for me as a Minister to say that there is a specific target that must be hit. What I expect GTR to be doing on a regular basis is seeking to improve performance, and I will talk the hon. Lady through what I expect GTR to do.
The punctuality of services operated by GTR was at 73.1% over the 12 months to 4 March 2017. That compares significantly unfavourably with the London and south-east average of 85.2%. No one can pretend that it is anything other than simply unacceptable. It is despite the establishment of joint industry recovery plans. None the less, we are doing everything we can to improve the situation.
The Chairman of the Select Committee rightly raised the issue of force majeure. This has been one of my bugbears as Minister for many months now. Indeed, my enthusiasm for solving it rather overcame established procedure in terms of how we go about that. I am pleased to report to hon. Members that we have now completed assessing six full periods of GTR’s performance.
The quality of the data has significantly improved, allowing us to make swifter judgments, but because what we are discussing is a contractual obligation, GTR has the right, if it disagrees with the Department’s findings, to challenge those findings. That is what we are still stuck in at the moment. I aspire to bring that to a conclusion as rapidly as possible. I share the undoubted enthusiasm of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside for putting that particular aspect of GTR’s performance behind us, but sadly I am not yet in a position to do that.
None the less, I am still trying to get Network Rail and the train operators to improve their focus on industry performance outputs. They are concentrating on three key workstreams to deliver improvements across the south-east. The first is the 2018 timetable specification, which will be crucial to increasing capacity across the south-east. The second is a back-to-basics approach—ensuring that trains are on time and correct processes are being followed and, in particular, focusing on the peaks in the morning and evening. We have found time and again that when something goes wrong on this network, what is called the perturbation and the consequential delays are significant.
I remember that in my first week, we had a sinkhole at Forest Hill—it no doubt delayed the hon. Member for Eltham on his way back to his constituency. That was an example of how something that simply could not be expected caused significant delays. It is really important that both the train operator and Network Rail work much more closely together to ensure that they recover from these problems when they occur, rather than allowing them to cascade throughout the timetable.
That is why it is important that the Department as a whole works with all the industry stakeholders to find new ways to measure performance that are more closely aligned with what passengers themselves experience day to day. That is why we are looking at improving our measurement of what is called right-time departure and right-time arrival. A passenger judges whether a train is on time by whether it arrives at the time said in timetable, and not within five to 10 minutes. Right-time departure is going to be a much more important figure in years to come, rather than the old-style public performance measure. I want to bring that change in as part of control period 6.
We also want to make sure that, as the hon. Member for North West Durham mentioned, there is much greater industry transparency on train service performance levels across franchises. I am absolutely committed to a much greater degree of transparency; none the less, it is a difficult process to engineer—if only because every single franchise has a slightly different set of measurements, which are contractual obligations in respect of the individual train operating company. That work is ongoing within the Department; it cannot come soon enough, in my view. I hope to make announcements in due course—as we always say in civil service parlance—and am very eager that we keep the pace going on it.
Many Members mentioned whether the company had a full complement of drivers on day one when they took over the franchise. I was not the Minister at the time, but I understand that part of the problem was that when the deal was announced it said it did have enough drivers, but, when it came to mobilisation day, some of those drivers had left to work in the freight sector. It is entirely right and proper that we express concerns as to how that gap occurred between those two points, but we need to take a wider look at driver recruitment across the industry as a whole.
We all know that there are skills issues across the rail sector. We have an ageing workforce and a large number of workers who are about to retire. Are we doing everything we can to make sure that we are recruiting enough drivers, that driver training is an efficient process and that people have the option of going through driver training themselves—as HGV drivers do—to seek employment somewhere else? Are we making full use of all the training facilities that we now have around the country, which I am sure the Select Committee has visited? We are in close talks with the Rail Delivery Group about how we can improve driver training as a whole to improve the throughput, make sure it meets the needs in the here and now and get the numbers we need.
Many have mentioned the industrial relations problems currently on the network. I am as frustrated as everybody else at seeing yet more RMT strikes this week, but it is clear that they are now having very little impact on the network. Last Monday, 90.5% of Southern services ran. Any strike is frustrating for passengers, but I say to the RMT, “Your strikes on Southern are not having the impact you desire. It is far better that you cease industrial action and have talks with the company, rather than persisting with the strikes.”
Paul Maynard
I take the hon. Lady’s point that it is spreading, but we remain open to talking to the RMT if it calls off its industrial action. That is the blockage that stops it from having a discussion with the Government and the various train operating companies. Nobody is losing their job; nobody is losing any pay. The independent regulator has found that the system on Southern can be safe, and GTR is taking all necessary action to ensure that it is delivered safely. I welcome yesterday’s renewed agreement between ASLEF and GTR. I gather it will now go to a ballot of ASLEF members; I hope that they endorse it, and that it then ensures we can focus on delivering improved services across the Southern network.
We are working to improve the service for GTR customers and improve compensation measures. Overall, “delay repay” payments totalled £3.2 million in the last period, of which £175,000 were “delay repay 15”. We have also launched our special one-off form of compensation, the equivalent of a month’s free travel, for all Southern season ticket holders. GTR has handled almost 37,000 special claims in that regard, totalling £8.84 million in compensation. The scheme closes on 30 April 2017, and we continue to advertise it—as does GTR—in the media, on posters at all Southern stations, on electronic billboards, in customer service announcements and on Twitter.
Please be assured that I stay in touch with the situation by having regular meetings with GTR’s chief executive officer and chief operating officer to discuss all the issues. They include compensation and the implementation and progress of all the Government-funded schemes under both the £20 million that was initially given out, and the current £300 million that will go on improving the Balcombe tunnel, removing vegetation and ensuring greater reliability.
I have five minutes remaining. As ever, how can one discuss everything about rail in the time allowed? Indeed, it is even less than that because I have to give the Select Committee Chairman a chance to have her say. I will briefly deal with accessibility, which is a mutual concern for both myself and the Labour party spokesman, the hon. Member for North West Durham.
It goes without saying that we want everybody to have equal access to transport. We have committed more than £400 million through Access for All funding and other means to improve accessibility, and train companies have to comply with the Equality Act 2010. However, I think the real picture is the fact that more and more disabled people are seeking to travel by train. The challenge for the train operating companies is getting harder with every passing month.
In the past year, we have seen 4% more sales of the disabled persons railcard and 7% more bookings under the passenger assist scheme. With more disabled people travelling, train operating companies have an ever decreasing margin for getting it wrong. I welcome the fact that the Rail Delivery Group is trying to merge the ticket reservation system and the passenger assist reservation system by December 2018, although I query whether that is soon enough and whether it could do more to bring that forward.
I remind all train operating companies that they must ensure that procedures are in place to enable disabled passengers and persons of reduced mobility to board a train in service that is under the sole operation of the driver. Where that occurs, I want to see a second person on board or on the platform to render help to those passengers who need it most. The key difference is that I do not believe that that person should be a safety-critical person. I do not think it is acceptable to have a situation where a train is cancelled and a disabled passenger cannot depart the station in the first place because there is not a second person on that train. It is fair to say that that is a small difference between myself and the hon. Lady.
Regardless of whether such assistance has been pre-booked, the principle of a “turn up and go” railway is important and must become more important in the future. It will include the requirement for all train operating companies to provide appropriately trained staff to meet their obligations. I see that as meaning more staff required on the railways, and more passenger-facing staff—not locked behind a door focusing on buttons—engaging with passengers on a regular basis. In addition, if a disabled passenger is unable to access a station, the operator must provide alternative transport—usually an accessible taxi. That will require much more cross-Government work to ensure that we have a greater supply of accessible taxis.
I am conscious that the Chairman of the Select Committee needs to say a few final words, so I shall leave my remarks there.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pat Glass Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Paul Maynard
I am certainly keeping a very careful eye on Govia Thameslink Railway both in terms of official passenger assist bookings and the unofficial turn-up-and-go service. I am very keen to see the outcome of the mystery shopping exercises being conducted by the Office of Rail and Road. I want to ensure that all passengers who travel on GTR get the service they need from the on-board supervisors.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
You will recall, Mr Speaker, that six weeks ago I asked a question at Transport questions about the experience of disabled passengers. I have subsequently been contacted by lots of people who have told me their stories—awful stories that shame us all. I want to ask the Minister about the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, of which this House can be rightly proud. Does the Act apply to train operating companies? I think we would all expect the answer to be yes. If so, what are the Government doing to make sure that train operating companies allow disabled passengers to travel? I have been told that in the past disabled passengers were able to turn up at the station and travel in the guard’s van like a parcel. However unacceptable that is, we are taking that away. Do the Government accept that by encouraging train operating companies to take guards off trains, they are contributing to a breach of the Disability Discrimination Act?
Paul Maynard
I would be very concerned at any suggestion that it is appropriate, in any way shape or form, for passengers with a disability to travel in the guard’s van. Indeed, most of our rolling stock these days does not have a guard’s van to travel in. Like the hon. Lady, I have received a number of worrying complaints. I have met the Office of Rail and Road, which scrutinises the licence conditions under which all train operating companies operate. It is conducting a very careful evaluation of the thresholds for triggering licence conditions, which is why it is doing a mystery shopping exercise. Over and above that, I want to ensure that where individual passengers have an inadequate level of service, they too have a route to go down to seek redress from train operating companies.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pat Glass Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Paul Maynard
I am more than happy to discuss the matter further with my hon. Friend. My initial understanding at this stage is that the works at Garforth, as indeed with many on the trans-Pennine routes, are interlinked with the upgrades we are planning on the trans-Pennine network. I am happy to have a further discussion with him.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Last Friday, a disabled wheelchair user, Sandra Nighy, on Southern was left stranded on the train platform in the freezing cold for two hours because there was no one to help her on to the train despite booking assistance 48 hours in advance. She was on an unmanned station, and the trains that passed her by were driver-only with no on-board supervisor. The law is absolutely clear: train operating companies must provide reasonable access for disabled passengers. Does the Minister agree that the failure to do so strips disabled passengers of their dignity and of their right to travel and breaches the Disability Discrimination Act 1995?
Paul Maynard
I am glad that the hon. Lady raises that case. When I heard about it, my interpretation was that, in this case, Southern had not applied the policies that it said were in place for all disabled passengers. The issue is that the situation was far worse because the lady in question booked through Passenger Assist, so the company had plenty of notice that she was on her way. However, under the unions’ proposals, that train would have been cancelled in the first place and unable to depart.
Mr Hayes
The hon. Gentleman will know about our Go Ultra Low campaign, which is match funded by industry, and which is designed to encourage the kind of learning he described. We need to persuade people that that switching is desirable. It is partly about charging points, partly about battery reliability and partly about people simply knowing that electric vehicles can be good for them. We will continue that campaign in exactly the spirit he recommends.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
The VW emissions defeat device cynically deceived 1.2 million vehicle owners in the UK, and I declare that I am one of them. I am delighted that the Minister is going to have VW in next week, because drivers in the UK are being tret unfairly compared with VW drivers in the US. In the absence of any action by the Government so far, UK motorists are having to pursue private group litigation against VW. I want the Minister to understand how badly let down UK VW drivers feel because it appears that the Government are letting VW off the hook, although I hope that that is not the case. Will he, even at this late stage, offer support to the motorists in the UK pursuing their own action?
Mr Hayes
Yes. I am actually on the same page as the hon. Lady. By the way, I am glad we have moved on from the belligerent bombast of earlier—I do not think it did the Opposition any favours—and she makes her case reasonably. There is a case for further steps. That is partly about the retrofit described earlier by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), it is partly about the payment of taxpayer money I described, and it is partly about the consumer. We should consider further steps and, having considered them, take them as and when necessary.
UK Maritime Industry
Pat Glass Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. This has been a very full debate, with many important contributions. I pay particular tribute to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing the debate. I was going to say that Opposition Members welcome it, but judging by the tone of the debate as a whole, I think it is welcomed right across the House, and I look forward to what the Minister will have to say at the end.
I would like first to give credit where it is due. I very rarely give credit to the Scottish Government, but I will on this occasion. I welcome the announcement by the Scottish Government of changes to the charter agreement for the two Seatruck vessels operating between Aberdeen, Shetland and the Orkneys.
However, I have to be fair: we have heard a lot about maritime companies paying less than the national minimum wage. On Scotland’s only commercial maritime freight link to the continent, the hourly rate paid to Lithuanian seafarers can be as low as £1.64. Justifiably, we get angry when we hear about modern-day slavery on ships in the far east harvesting prawns, but we are prepared to see £1.64 an hour paid within our own waters, so I think that although a great job has been done, there is much more to do.
Drew Hendry
The hon. Lady will of course be aware that that shipping route is in international waters and the Scottish Government have no locus over the pay rates of that company.
Pat Glass
I am simply pointing out that the company is operating in our waters and that we need collectively to do something about it.
We are an island nation, a net importer, and we are now leaving the European Union. We have the largest port sector in Europe in terms of tonnage handled and, as has been said, we have millions of ferry passengers every year. Our economic, social and security interests will depend more than at any time since the second world war on seafarers and a resilient UK maritime skills base. It is probably worth putting this in context. At the time of the Falklands war in 1982, the UK had a strong merchant naval sector; we employed 58,000 UK seafarers. That figure has now shrunk by almost 60% to 23,000. That is the context in which we are working.
Sub-national minimum wages continue to blight the lives of seafarers working on UK domestic and short sea journeys. I have seen figures alleging that at least eight operators along 11 short sea routes to and from the UK are underpaying more than 800 crew. In my own area, on ships crossing from Newcastle to Amsterdam, DFDS pays its staff £2.93 an hour—less than £3. I took a recent weekend trip to Amsterdam, which I really enjoyed, but quite honestly, if I had known that—well, I feel really uncomfortable about it. As a result of this debate, I will be writing to DFDS and other companies to say that it is simply not acceptable.
At present, passengers and businesses are travelling on Condor Ferries to the Channel Islands on vessels crewed by seafarers earning as little as £2.40 an hour. On freight-only ships, the pay is as low as £1.64 an hour. That is not acceptable. Prior to the national living wage increase for over-24s last April, it was estimated that 8,300 ratings were working the UK shipping industry for rates of pay below the national minimum wage. That was in April last year; the figure is now considerably higher than 8,300. Increasingly, companies are recruiting outside the UK to crew their ships with non-UK seafarers, particularly ratings, in order to profit from these sub-national minimum wage rates.
This is not a new problem. It has to be said that this goes well beyond the current Government. Beyond the simple injustices, we can see the cost of not having acted in the past. This legalised exploitation has systematically undermined maritime jobs in the UK, damaged the skill base and driven up unemployment rates in seafarer communities across the UK. Since 2011 alone, the number of UK ratings has fallen by 25%. If we end the pay exploitation in shipping, we can help to reverse the decline of our merchant navy. This need not be a party political issue, but one of sense, fairness and humanity.
There are three points that I would like the Minister to take forward from this debate. First, he has already committed to review the application of pay legislation across the shipping industry imminently. However, as we have already heard, that has already happened—the Carter review did it—so this is just a case of setting a timeframe and getting it implemented. Secondly, can the Minister give a date for when we can expect publication of updated guidance to HMRC on enforcement of the national minimum wage for seafarers? Thirdly, when will he publish the outcomes of the review of the existing protections in part 5 of the Equality Act 2010 against nationality-based pay discrimination for seafarers? That work was completed in April last year, yet 10 months later it has still not been published.
However, as we have heard, pay is only part of the problem and part of the solution. More than 70% of deck and 74% of engine ratings are now aged over 40. We are heading for a shortfall in trained and skilled seafarers. If we take no action, that will be filled by non-UK staff. The Select Committee on Transport warned over two years ago that the Government needed to act on funding, on approved standards for maritime apprenticeships, on the take-up of apprenticeships in the industry, on setting annual statutory targets for seafarer training and on including the number of trainee ratings in annual seafarer statistics. We would like to know from the Minister when we will get some action on that.
One area of maritime growth where the Government have not dragged their feet is on the recommendations to make the UK shipping register more commercially responsive, in the form of a Government corporation. I would gently point out to the Minister some other areas where this and former Governments have rushed to privatise—the rail industry, the energy industry and the water industry come to mind. Recent attitude polls among the electorate now show that the majority of our constituents—in some cases over 90%—want to see those decisions reversed, because they see formerly Government-owned, privatised industries making massive profits, but customers paying massive bills and getting a poor service. I would gently ask the Minister whether he will properly and carefully consider the costs and benefits of transforming the UK shipping register, fully consider all the options and also promise that this House will be given time to scrutinise those options?
Before closing, I wish to press the Minister on leaving the EU. At the moment we know nothing about the Government’s wider maritime priorities, at a time when we need a clear direction on maritime issues that would inform the Brexit negotiations. How will any changes to the single market affect shipping and seafarers? Will there be customs checks? Will there be tariffs? Is his Department feeding into the Brexit negotiations on these matters? If it is, will he tell us how?
In closing, I hope the Minister can elaborate on his Government’s plans for Brexit, or at least recognise that maritime is an exceptional issue that needs to take precedence. He must also assure the House about the future of the shipping register, along with the timeframe and process for any reforms. Will he outline his priorities for seafarer training and skills, and say whether he will set targets for recruitment? Finally, I look forward to him addressing the key point to come out of this debate about seafarer pay and conditions.
Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)
We have a lot to get through. Will the Minister be mindful to leave a minute or so at the end for Mr Carmichael to wind up?
Draft Road Traffic Offenders Act 1998 (Penalty Points) (Amendment) Order 2016
Pat Glass Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I had written a speech for this morning, but I do not think my voice will last to the end of it. I therefore intend to cut to the chase and just ask a few questions.
We do not intend to oppose the order. We support both the Government’s intention and the way in which they have consulted on the order. I have a number of questions. First, why six penalty points as opposed to an outright ban? The Minister was very eloquent in telling us about the number of fatal accidents in which a handheld mobile device has been a contributory factor. This is becoming an increasing, almost endemic problem on our roads. Every time we take the car out on the weekend, we usually see somebody doing something silly and then see that they are using a mobile phone. It is also fast becoming the biggest single killer on our roads.
The Department’s own figures show that it is now more dangerous than drink-driving, yet the penalty for drink-driving is an outright ban. Why the difference? Why is there no consistency?
If this is about changing behaviour it would be helpful to know why the Minister thinks that six penalty points are going to change behaviour. I remind the Committee that back in 1967, when I was just a child, the Labour Transport Secretary, Barbara Castle, introduced the drink-driving laws; it was precisely about changing behaviour. Drink-driving was endemic on our roads and it was felt that penalty points were not going to change behaviour, whereas an all-out ban would. It was a question of enforcement: when people saw individuals they knew losing their licence, it started to change their behaviour.
Why have the Government not considered an outright ban? I notice that the Ministry of Justice is currently consulting on changing the penalty for death by dangerous driving where a handheld device is involved from 14 years to life. Given that the difference between someone using a mobile phone having a near-miss and actually killing somebody is largely about luck and the surrounding circumstances, there appears to be very little consistency. Why six penalty points and not an outright ban?
The second question is on monitoring and targets. What targets will the Department for Transport have in place and what monitoring will it be carrying out to ensure that this is actually working, so that if it is not working, we can come back and look at it again?
Andrew Jones
I was not suggesting that the police would target older women having a glass of wine. I simply do not want to criminalise them, and I do not want to stop the police focusing on those who are not in the 50 mg to 80 mg per 100 ml of blood category. The people who drink-drive are way over the limit. Those are the people we should be targeting. Just over 2% of road fatalities in which alcohol is a factor are from that band of 50mg to 80mg per 100 ml. We can make changes there too, but it only affects just over 2%. Our real target should be people who are way, way over that limit.
I was asked about targets. We do not have any road safety targets and I am not planning to introduce them, because I do not need a target to tell me that road safety is important. I have a fairly relaxed approach about other bodies setting targets for themselves, as Highways England has done, but there will be no national targets coming out from the Department.
Monitoring will certainly be important. I look at all the quarterly statistics, and every time a statistical review is released by the Department I monitor it extremely carefully. We have been able to make good progress because we are targeting the specific issues rather than making sweeping road safety statements and comments. We have now reached the point where 1,770 people are still losing their life on our roads, but the broad-brush approach that has made such progress over the years will not make us progress in future. Instead, it should be about targeted messages at the groups who are still causing problems.
Why six points, rather than 12, three or four? We have had to take a view on what a proportionate sentence is. This is a significant change: a driver who commits two offences could lose a licence. We have had to take a judgment call on what will affect behaviour change and be proportionate, and we think that six points, rather than three or four, will achieve that—two offences and you are out.
Pat Glass
I understand the issue with targets: if targets are put in place, people work to them and things start to leak out in other areas. However, did the Department for Transport and the Minister consider an all-out ban? He must have some figures in his head. If there is one fewer death or serious accident, is that considered enough? At what point will he look again at something more serious, such as an all-out ban?
Andrew Jones
The hon. Lady tempts me into targets in a very gentle way. I review all the data. Is any progress good? Certainly, but I want to see more progress. That is why this measure is part of a suite of actions. It was one ingredient in our road safety statement. I am conscious that we are focusing on one thing today, but it should be viewed in the context of an overall package of measures to improve safety on our roads.
I will not be bringing back targets; I do not think they are necessary. We do not have a target that says, “You as road safety Minister must bring forward a plan.” I brought forward a plan because I thought it was the right thing to do. That plan is populated with ideas that are the right thing to do to make a difference. I am not planning to reintroduce targets.
On clarity, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar raised some difficulties. I am amused at the thought of people watching Beyoncé and Bublé, but he is right: we have seen some shocking cases in which people have been busy watching programmes that they have downloaded on tablets or whatever. That is clearly wrong; it is dangerous. We want people’s minds to be on the road and their hands on the wheel. That is broadly what we should be doing and it is what the highway code says. I will have another look at the highway code in the light of my right hon. Friend’s comments, but there is absolutely no doubt that if there are concerns about safety, people simply should not be doing it. It comes down to individuals taking responsibility for it. The rules are clear.
Great Western Line: Electrification
Pat Glass Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I will endeavour to be as quick as I can.
The recent decision by the Department for Transport to delay the electrification of the great western route is just the latest in a series of announcements of delays and pauses made by the Government on electrification of our railways. We have had one announcement after another by the Government, who still state that they are planning electrification, but while the Government have promised much, they have delivered little.
I sympathise with the Minister. Like me, he is new to the role and just happens to be holding the parcel when the music stops. However, I have a criticism about his recent announcement, because he appeared to sneak it out just hours before the November recess and on the day of the American election when, presumably, he was hoping we would all be looking the other way.
I therefore congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) on securing this important debate. She and I served together on the Select Committee on Education when we were new Members in this House, and I understand her dedication to the city of Bristol. I also want to acknowledge all the MPs from Bristol: they are four strong women, who are here together fighting for a better future for rail in their city.
The case for the electrification of the route was set out in October 2009. The Department for Transport projected then that it would take eight years to complete and cost up to £1 billion. According to the original timetable, we should have been looking at a fully electrified line from London to Swansea by the end of next year. Since then, however, the project has had a very unhappy journey.
Two weeks ago today, we were told by the Rail Minister that the project will be paused, with no detail of when it might be unpaused or restarted, or, indeed, if it will ever be completed at all. Over the past six and a half years we have had delay after delay to the original timetable, and the cost to the taxpayer has skyrocketed as a result. As the Minister knows, the National Audit Office, in its recently published report, laid the blame squarely on the Department for Transport, stating that it did not
“plan and manage all projects…in a sufficiently joined up way.”
I have worked in government at local and national levels. At the national level, I found that the lack of planning and joined-upness makes local government look like a smoothly operating machine, and that is saying something. Even within that, the Department for Transport has its very own place.
The cost of the project was reassessed in September 2014, when the Department estimated it at £1.5 billion, up 50% on the original costings. Although the cost-benefit ratio expected by the Department for Transport in March 2015 was within the Department’s high value-for-money range, at 2.4:1, by the end of last year that had dropped to 1.6:1, which meant that it had fallen to within the medium value-for-money range. That is because the Department was forced to announce that the cost of the project had been revised yet again and was now estimated to be more than twice the original projection, at £2.1 billion. The latest announcement is in another league altogether, however, with the estimated costs to the taxpayer reaching £5.58 billion. The Government have managed this infrastructure project so badly that the cost-benefit ratio has now fallen through the floor.
The issue is not isolated to the great western route alone. Rather, the Government’s handling of the electrification of UK railways is being felt right across the country. First, we had the delays to the electrification of the trans-Pennine railway. Originally planned to be completed by the end of 2018, that is now looking distinctly unlikely—to put it politely. The electrification of the midland main line was paused in June last year. The wires will now not reach Kettering and Corby until 2019—that is today’s estimate—whereas the original plan had been for electrification to stretch far beyond Corby to Derby, Leicester and Nottingham by 2018. When the Government finally announced that both plans had been revived, it was only to say they would be four years behind schedule.
In 2013, 30% of the most crowded train services in England and Wales were Great Western services into Paddington, and the Department for Transport forecast tells us that passenger demand on that route is to grow by 81% between 2013 and 2019. Electrification is therefore essential if we are to see any improvement for passengers. It will lead to further economic benefits, in particular driven by freight trains running on electrified lines, and it is vital if we are to reduce our carbon footprint and will help to build a greener transport network, with the increase of freight on rail being central to that aim. It is therefore really disappointing to see that a significant part of the estimated £330 million that will be added to the bill for the electrification of the great western route will come about because of the revisions that are needed to the new all-electric trains that the Government ordered.
Thanks to the delays, those trains, which were set to cost the taxpayer £4.1 billion, will now need to be fitted with diesel engines so they can run on sections of the great western route that the Government have now decided will not be electrified. Adding those diesel engines will make the trains heavier, less energy efficient, more polluting and more damaging to the track. So this Government will spend £5.58 billion on upgrades to the great western route that will in fact cause a reduction in capacity, a slower service and an increase in carbon emissions and mean that rail lines will require even more regular maintenance work. That is quite an achievement.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said that this issue impacts on the earlier debate about pollution in the Thames valley and the decision about a third Heathrow runway. Further, passengers in the north of England and Scotland will have to wait up to two years longer for improvements to their services, because the revised plans and delays to infrastructure works mean that old Great Western Railway stock will not be passed on to other areas that were depending upon getting that old stock to make such improvements.
The budgeting for this project has been shambolic, and clearly no one can confidently rely on any figures produced by the Department for Transport. The Government cannot be allowed to get away with continually claiming to be investing in infrastructure when we see Ministers once again with their tails between their legs trying to sneak out announcements about further delays to their plans.
Will the Minister tell us exactly when the Government intend to follow through on the great western line? When can we expect the pause to cease and the project to restart, if it restarts? In what shape will it be if it ever restarts? At the beginning of the debate, the hon. Member for Bristol North West talked about passengers. She is absolutely right: neither passengers nor taxpayers are getting a good deal, and quite frankly, they deserve better.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. Will the Minister bring his remarks to a conclusion no later than 5.43 pm to allow the mover of the motion to sum up the debate?
Oral Answers to Questions
Pat Glass Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will no doubt have seen the “Panorama” programme that was broadcast on 7 November that highlighted the daily hell faced by passengers, especially those using Southern rail on the line mentioned by the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield). Is he content that Southern rail customers are facing this commuting hell every day, or will he act to do something about it?
Chris Grayling
No, I am not at all content. Of course, the biggest step that could be taken would be for the rail unions to call off their action so that we can deal with some of the underlying infrastructure problems, which I described a moment ago. One of the things I find sad is that, far from joining us in calling for the strikes to end so that we can improve the situation, Labour Members seem keener to line up with the militants rather than opposing them.
Pat Glass
Southern rail was a disgrace before the current industrial action, and it will continue to be a disgrace long after the current industrial action is complete and the dispute is settled. The Department for Transport sets the routes, allocates the franchises, dictates the number of trains that run and sets fare increases, so when will the Secretary of State stop pretending that this is nothing to do with him, stop blaming everybody else around him and act to stop the daily hell on this line?
Chris Grayling
I have every intention of addressing the issue and I am working as hard as I can to do so. I would tell Labour Members that figures published this morning show that, across our railways, far more—more than twice as many—problems arise as a result of infrastructure, which is in the public sector, than as a result of train operations, which are in the private sector. Their persistent arguments that nationalising would solve the problems are just plain wrong. We need to invest; interestingly, we, unlike the Labour party, are doing so.
Local Bus Services
Pat Glass Excerpts(9 years, 12 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman not see the irony of his walking through the Lobbies to make massive cuts to his local council’s budgets and then criticising it for making cuts?
Eric Ollerenshaw
Does the hon. Lady not see the irony of proposing a motion which suggests that other councils should be
“able to make use of London-style powers”,
but contains not one cent of financial commitment? How would the Oyster cards be paid for? What about the massive amount that would have to be invested in machinery? This is pie in the sky. It is great pie in the sky, but money would have to be found from somewhere to pay for it. What would Lancashire do if such a system were introduced? How could the county council deal with it, given that it already wants to cut bus services?
Following a massive campaign led mostly by the parish councils but also by— obviously—myself, along with members of every political party except Labour, including my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), the county council has withdrawn its original proposal. However, it will now review each bus route separately.
I acknowledge that there is a problem with the use of rural buses, partly because of the inability to invest in technology, and I share the dream of rural bus services becoming like those in London,. However, a party less than six months away from a general election is not prepared to say how it would make the initial huge investment. If we agreed to the motion, would we be expected to pay for it by means of increased fares or increased borrowing, or to ask county or city councils to introduce even more cuts? Where is the finance to support this scheme? Although I have massive sympathy for it, I prefer the Secretary of State’s step-by-step approach. It will enable us to do what we should have done years ago and start to introduce a bit more regulation, but, before we do so, let us make clear how we will pay for it.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I thank my Front-Bench colleagues for securing this debate, which is incredibly important to people in constituencies such as mine. We spend a lot of time in the House talking about important things that do not have a direct or immediate impact on the lives of constituents, so it is good today that we are talking about something that is having such a disabling impact on the everyday lives of my constituents. They simply would not recognise the rosy picture that the Secretary of State and some Government Members have tried to portray today. The more I speak in or listen to debates in the House, the more I realise that we are living in two countries here. Ministers either live in or think in terms of London and either do not recognise or do not care about what is happening in the rest of the country.
I listen every week to the Prime Minister talking up the economy, saying that unemployment is reducing, but the gap between his rhetoric and the reality for my constituents is immense. The number of people who are unemployed or under-employed continues to rise in my constituency and in the north-east generally. To tackle the issue of jobs in the north, we need a transport infrastructure that supports job creation. That is not just large, grandiose schemes that Ministers like to talk about in the House and love to be seen opening. It is about things like buses that make people’s everyday live workable and stops older people becoming increasingly isolated.
Government cuts in the north have hit councils such as mine massively. My county council has lost a third of its budget. If we lost a third of our budgets, we would lose the roof over our heads. It is ironic that a number of Government Members have criticised their local councils while going through the Lobby to cut council budgets massively. In counties such as mine, as soon as the cuts were announced subsidies on buses went. That meant that communities in largely rural constituencies were left with no buses at the weekend and after 6 o’clock in the evening. If a bank holiday falls either side of a weekend, some communities can be left without a bus for almost a week. That cripples people’s lives.
Constituents have told me that they have been sanctioned by the Department for Work and Pensions because they cannot get to a job interview because there are no buses. That is just cruel. That is the sort of downward spiral that affects people’s lives every day. Far too many of my constituents are on zero-hours contracts and one lady told me that she can be called into work at any time. Often that means working the shift from 10 o’clock in the evening until 6 the next morning. If she wants to get there, she has to walk 3 miles. She does her shift and then has to wait either three hours for a bus or walk home again. That is the daily reality of people in constituencies such as mine.
Having no buses has a daily and negative impact on people’s lives in large rural constituencies. People cannot get to work if they do not work 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. Young people cannot get to school and colleges and take the courses that they need and which our economy needs them to take. They cannot socialise in the evenings and at weekends, and that does not just apply to young people. Local health services and GPs are worried about older people becoming more and more isolated in their homes. They have free bus passes but they have no buses to use them on.
Our neighbouring authority has decided that enough is enough, and Tyne and Wear voted in the last couple of weeks to have a quality bus contract. I understand that the Government fought it every inch of the way on this, and penalised it at every point. The bus companies in my part of the world know exactly where the Government’s allegiances lie—they lie with the bus companies that are making massive profits, and not with the people who use those buses.
The Government should be on the side of the people and not of the massively profitable bus companies. Like the big six energy companies, the rail companies and the water companies, the bus companies are making massive profits out of the British public, and they know that they can rely on the support of the Government in that. The people of this country need a Government who stand with them. Let us hope they get one in 2015.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pat Glass Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mr Goodwill
The Government are committed to localism and to local people making decisions about their local services. Whether to adopt a London-style quality contract scheme is a matter for individual local authorities to determine. This is an independent process, with the scheme examined by the QCS board and chaired by a traffic commissioner. It would be inappropriate for the Government to comment or intervene, but if there are issues to do with resources for that board, we would be keen to consider them.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Large infrastructure transport projects such as HS2 and Crossrail are all very well, and quality bus contracts may help in areas such as Tyne and Wear, but when will the Government do something—anything—for rural areas that have no buses at all, or no buses at weekends and at night?
Mr Goodwill
Representing a rural area, I am well aware of the problems of pensioners with concessionary travel passes but no buses to use them on when, in some cases, evening or weekend services have been withdrawn. The Government are contributing more than 40% of the farebox through subsidies to buses in various ways, and we are committed to improving local bus services wherever we can, working in conjunction with local authorities.