Paul Flynn
Main Page: Paul Flynn (Labour - Newport West)Department Debates - View all Paul Flynn's debates with the Department for Transport
(9 years ago)
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Andrew Jones
We are providing local authorities with financial support amounting to a record £6 billion between now and 2021 for highways maintenance. We are also encouraging them to look at the way in which they manage their programmes, and 85% of local authorities in England have now signed up to the highways maintenance efficiency programme. This is how we are supporting councils. We are talking about a significant investment here: it is enough to deal with 18 million potholes per year, and it is making a difference to the quality of our road network.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
T5. The port of Newport is the second largest steel handling port in the United Kingdom and it is likely to suffer grievously from the current steel closures. What has the Minister done to assess the consequential job losses in transport and elsewhere as a result of the Government’s neglect of the steel industry? Will he persuade his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to end his policy of gifting British jobs to Chinese workers?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
As the Minister with responsibility for ports, I am all too aware of their importance in getting exports out of our country and getting imports in. Yesterday I was at the port of Bristol, which is going to benefit from developments in the nuclear industry, which will be partly financed by the Chinese, and I am going to Felixstowe later today to see the developments there.