Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)
I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend. Chalkwell, Ockendon and Southend East remain within the Access for All programme. We have delivered 230 stations and we will deliver those three as well. We had an issue with the contractor putting in a cost estimate that was about double what I would expect; that is why we have had to look anew, but I will very happily meet my hon. Friend to discuss this further, and she has that commitment. We will deliver it.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Huw Merriman
It comes down to choices. We could have chosen to continue with HS2, which would not have delivered the value we need, with time overrunning, or we could have done as the Scottish National party did when it built two ferries at a shipyard that had been nationalised, going four times over budget and running seven years late. Alternatively, we could have done as it did on the tram—described by the Edinburgh tram inquiry as a “litany of avoidable failures”. When there are choices to be made, the SNP ploughs on regardless.
Volumetric Concrete Mobile Plants
Peter Grant Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Mr Carmichael
Had I known that the hon. Gentleman had that level of expertise, I would have had him on the all-party parliamentary group for lower carbon construction vehicles a long time ago. I agree with him. I do not want to reheat old debates, but we are where we are today because there was not a proper economic and environmental impact assessment at the time. I hope the Minister will indicate that the Government are willing to revisit the issue. If we go through the process properly, we will find that there is a better way of dealing with the issue, but I will let the Minister speak for himself.
VCMs operate right across the United Kingdom. Their manufacture and use are estimated to contribute £380 million to the economy and employ more than 15,000 skilled workers. They operate the length and breadth of the country, and in communities such as those that I represent they are of prime importance to the local construction sector. Businesses such as Andrew Sinclair Ltd in Orkney and Tulloch Developments in Shetland tell me regularly about the desperately detrimental impact that the proposed changes will have on them.
Companies with VCMs operate in at least 134 constituencies and are a truly integral part of the country’s construction industry. For almost 50 years, they have operated within a proportionate regulatory environment. Until 2018, VCMs on four axles could run at the manufacturer’s design weight, which is often about 41 tonnes. However, in 2018, the Department for Transport decided to impose a 32 tonne limit for all VCMs, enacted through the Goods Vehicles (Plating and Testing) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2017. The limit forces VCM operators to phase out their current VCMs by 2028, replacing them with the 32 tonne model, which is equally expensive but less effective. Lighter vehicles mean more journeys on the road and more carbon emissions as a consequence.
That is despite the fact that Highways England’s 2017 report endorsed the operation of VCMs at about 44 tonnes on five axles and 38.4 tonnes on four axles. That proposal had the support of the then Transport Minister, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). To be less than generous, this is a classic example of an obscure regulation changed by civil servants that causes a massive headache for businesses in the real world.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The right hon. Gentleman said that, if the proposal goes through, there will be more journeys by lighter vehicles. Has his APPG looked into how many additional drivers will be needed to drive those additional vehicles? Is there a surplus of such drivers in the construction industry? The advice I am getting is that very few parts of the construction industry have too many workers just now.
Mr Carmichael
Yes, indeed. I think the hon. Gentleman knows the answer to that question. The truth of the matter is that heavy goods vehicle and lorry drivers are in scarce supply, and that is being felt not just in the construction industry but throughout the supply chain for just about every possible sector. That is another of the operations of the law of unintended consequences.
The frustration that brings us to the debate is that there has been strong opposition to the plans, led by organisations such as the Batched on Site Association, which feel that, until today, they have not been able to get a hearing. I very much hope that, after the Minister’s response, they will feel that they are at last being heard.
The change has no support among the operators, will yield no benefits to the construction industry overall and threatens the very future of VCMs in this country and the benefits that come with them. The most direct consequence of the Government’s plan is that VCMs will be limited in the amount of concrete they can carry. Operators continuing after 2028 will have to carry less weight, which is inefficient for them, their customers and the overall economy.
Traditional drum mixers and VCMs can produce something in the region of 8 cubic metres of concrete. However, because VCMs carry all the extra equipment that turns them into mobile plants, including conveyor belts to mix the sand, mixing equipment, cement, water and aggregates, they weigh notably more. Forcing VCM weights down to 32 tonnes cuts their capacity to between 6.5 cubic metres and 7 cubic metres of any mix of concrete on one trip. That has a significant impact on their efficiency, with knock-on effects on cost-effectiveness and the viability of the industry to continue at its current capacity.
The industry predicts that the changes coming in 2028 will have a dire impact on the sector. The Minister will have heard dire predictions from sectors affected by change before—we all have—and scepticism when such interests bring forward their concerns is healthy and necessary in Government. There is, however, significant and objective evidence that points to the industry’s predictions being well founded, and possibly even understated. After the Department announced the weight limit reduction, sales of VCMs fell from 55 million in 2017 to 9 million in 2020—still some eight years ahead of the deadline. Operators have already started voting with their feet—or, more accurately, their wheels—to the detriment of the sector and the construction industry as a whole. If the industry suffers and shrinks because of the regulations, many of its benefits will be lost.
Furthermore, traditional drum mixers can carry only one strength of concrete at a time, whereas VCMs have the benefit of carrying multiple if required. Take this simple example: if a customer needs only 4 cubic metres of strong concrete and 3 cubic metres of medium-strength concrete, they will have to pay for two concrete mixers if heavier VCMs are banned. VCMs mix concrete on site and can do so at whatever strengths are required and, crucially, all on one lorry. Without VCMs, such situations would be much more difficult to manage. That is why VCMs are such an important, if small and perhaps slightly niche, part of the concrete sector and the construction industry.
I have had representations from right across the country since securing this debate a mere eight days ago. The message from every corner—from those who are charged with representing the sector as a whole, to individual companies—remains the same. Sonny Sangha, founder of iMix Concrete, who operates a 32 tonne VCM as well as his current fleet of four traditional 38.4 tonne VCMs, talked to me about the estimated impact of the Government changes. He said:
“We estimate an annual loss of turnover of around £100,000 per VCM at 32 tonnes. The loss of capacity also means the need for purchasing more vehicles to accommodate the workload now that we have VCMs on both weight limits...We can see a huge difference in output and economic performance between the vehicles. The new 32T vehicle is only able to carry around 6/7m3 of concrete (depending on mix type), whereas with the other vehicles we can carry a comfortable 8m3 of concrete.”
The root cause of the problem is that there has not been an adequate economic or environmental impact assessment. The consultancy group Regeneris was brought in by the Batched on Site Association to calculate the impact of cutting the weight of VCMs to 32 tonnes. It found that a 27% cut on a 44 tonne VCM and a 16.6% cut on a 38.4 tonne VCM is likely to add 14 million more lorry miles to UK roads and 598,000 more lorry journeys each year. There will be 200 more VCMs on the roads to make up for the carrying of smaller loads, pumping 120,000 additional tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There will be a 20% increase in CO2, nitrogen oxide and particulates, generating extra carbon costs in excess of £7 million per annum. That will also require an additional 200 HGV drivers at a time of shortages. On top of that, because drum mixers have a two-hour production life for concrete, much of the concrete going to landfill comes from drum mixers.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Before I start my summing up, Mr Efford, with your permission I will briefly mention the passing of Winnie Ewing—probably the greatest politician that we have ever sent down here. I hope that in due course the House will have the opportunity to pay a fitting tribute to a giant on whose shoulders many of us are proud to stand.
The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) has set out the arguments very powerfully indeed. If there were powerful arguments against his case, he is the kind of person who would have introduced them to his speech. The reason that he has not given us those arguments and explained why they do not carry any weight is that there does not seem to be any argument now. There might have been an argument in 2017-18—I do not know what it was, but there might have been. I cannot see what the argument is now, and I do not think the Government can, which is why they are going in the opposite direction in relation to the weight limits on a lot of other kinds of HGVs.
I can understand that there will sometimes be an assumption in the eyes of the public that anything that reduces the weight of a lorry on our roads is a good thing, but the public often forgets, as do politicians, that reducing the maximum weight of a vehicle does not necessarily reduce the total amount of stuff that it can carry on our roads. As has been pointed out in this case, if we reduce the maximum weight of a cement-mixing lorry that is allowed on the roads, only two things can happen: either there are many more journeys or far fewer things getting built and repaired.
The construction industry in Scotland generates about £17 billion for the Scottish economy and, in 2021, employed 158,000 people. It is also one of the biggest producers of carbon emissions in Scotland, as I have no doubt it is in the rest of the United Kingdom, so there is clearly a huge necessity for Governments and industry to work together. We will not get to net zero unless we work with the construction industry towards a net zero future for that industry. But I do not think that a change in the weight that we are talking about here is a part of that. As we have heard, if anything, it might make the problem even worse.
It would be reasonable to ask the Government to not necessarily announce immediately that they are going to drop the decision, but to ask them to at the very least come up with a more up-to-date and more relevant impact assessment on the economic and environmental impact, based on how the world is today, not how it was in 2017 or 2018, because the world has changed in a lot of ways since then.
As I indicated in my question to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland earlier, it is all very well saying that businesses will just have to buy more slightly less heavy vehicles, operate them in a different way and lose more money, but who will drive these things? We do not have enough HGV drivers in the United Kingdom as it is—thank you very much, Brexit. That is one of the benefits we were not told about before 2016. Where do we think all these other drivers will come from? What impact will that have on the construction industry’s costs if it gets caught up in a wage war with other users of heavy-goods vehicles?
What account are we taking of today’s interest rates increase—the highest we have had since the end of the banking crash in 2008? That makes investment in new homes, for example, a lot less attractive than it was. We need the impact of that to be built in to any further assessment.
We will need the construction industry for the changes in our infrastructure. Not all infrastructure development is good by any stretch of the imagination. There is a need, for example, for a massive hospital and school rebuilding programme. That is already happening apace, but there is still a lot more to be done. We still need to build more homes for people to live in. We have far too many homes for people to use as holiday homes once in a while, but not enough homes that are suitable for people to live in in the places they want to live—for example, close to their work.
There will be a significant amount of new-build construction as well as rebuild, repair and maintenance construction needed for as long as any of us will be here, and probably for several lifetimes after. We need to help the industry to address the issues that it has just now with its impact on the environment. I think the industry is ready for that discussion and is willing to change.
But I think the change that is being discussed here is one that the industry is resisting, not just because industry tends to resist anything that it does not like, but because it can see that that will significantly threaten the viability of a lot of small businesses across the United Kingdom, and because it can see that the problem that the change is supposed to address is likely to make it even worse. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)
It is a delight to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Efford. I apologise to the Chamber that the roads Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), is unavoidably detained, but I was involved with this issue when I was roads Minister, so I hope that I can bring some degree of understanding.
I very much associate myself with the remarks made by the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) in relation to the just announced death of Winnie Ewing, who was by any standards a great politician and a great spokesman for her party and her views.
I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for this motion and for the work he has done on this issue. Let me start by making a fundamental point. In 2017 and 2018, legal changes were made in relation to volumetric concrete mixers in two areas, as he highlighted. One change was to include volumetric concrete mixers in the operator licensing system, which ensures that VCMs are in the same regulatory regime as most large goods vehicles. As far as I understand it, there is no request to revisit that change. The second change concerned the inclusion of volumetric concrete mixers in the annual heavy vehicle roadworthiness testing regime. They were previously exempted, in part because of the difficulty of accommodating large vehicles in testing stations. However, as VCMs are based on a standard HGV chassis, it became clear over time that they could be accommodated on that basis.
It is important to say, however, that no changes were made to the maximum permitted weights for volumetric concrete mixers by regulation. It is also important to see that in context. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) asked whether some of these recent announcements really should be ignored because, as he read it, they were about higher weights. The answer is that no increase to axle weights was announced, and we are principally concerned with axle weights.
Inclusion in the annual heavy vehicle test requires a plate displaying the maximum on-road weight of the vehicle. This displays beyond doubt what is the legally accepted maximum weight on roads of a heavy goods vehicle. That is often different from the maximum weight a vehicle is permitted off-road, or on private land, and which the vehicle chassis can bear.
The Department recognised that there had been a significant period previously of operations on public roads by some volumetric concrete mixers at higher weights than these unchanged maximum on-road weights, a situation that it and others regard as illegal. Therefore, the Department sought views and checked the feasibility of a limited temporary period of operation at higher maximum permitted weights for volumetric concrete mixers. Of course, this is not an uncontested issue. There are other parties—whether they be local authorities, mayoralties, or other players in the relevant market—who have views that may not directly accord with all the views held and discussed in this debate.
Following engagement with parts of the industry and a written consultation, Ministers decided to allow an exceptional temporary weight allowance for volumetric concrete mixers for up to 10 years. Other possibilities were considered, and discussions were held at that time with parts of the industry, but no other exceptions were ever approved by Ministers.
The exceptional temporary weight allowance is a significant adaptation for VCMs, which comes despite the extra wear and tear that they impose on road surfaces. Load modelling done by the Department in collaboration with National Highways—which, at that time, was Highways England—highlighted a particular risk to bridge structures, which affects the durability of this exceptional arrangement. It is therefore not true, as I think was implied in one contribution to the debate, that in some sense National Highways has signed off higher weights. On the contrary, it found in its report that those weights sit outside the bridge load model and therefore are likely to increase wear on bridges.
Peter Grant
The Minister mentions the particular issue of bridges that might not be able to sustain a higher weight. Why is a weight limit not placed on individual bridges, so that the heavier vehicles can be allowed on the parts of the road network that can sustain such loads?
Jesse Norman
That is a separate question, and, of course, local authorities may or may not choose to do such things. This is about what the view of National Highways was, and as I have said, its view was that there was a particular risk to bridge structures and that that was one of the constraints on the durability and longevity of this arrangement.
An initial assessment into road wear by the Department suggested that increasing the weight limit for four-axle volumetric concrete mixers from 32 tonnes to 38.4 tonnes could increase average road wear by between 110% and 220% per vehicle. The exact impact is heavily dependent on the vehicle’s loading.
The Department recently announced the introduction of longer semi-trailers into general use because many operators run out of trailer space before reaching the permitted maximum gross vehicle weight. These longer semi-trailers are up to 2.05 metres longer than a standard trailer, but are designed to carry the same weight as standard trailers. Therefore, there is no increase in the normal maximum weight or axle weights for vehicles using the longer semi-trailers.
The Department recently announced regulations to implement an increase in weight limits for certain alternatively fuelled or zero-emission vehicles. The weight limit increase is up to a maximum of 1 tonne for an alternatively fuelled vehicle and a flat 2 tonnes for a zero-emission vehicle. In all cases, the maximum weight limit for individual axles—again, the key measure—remains unchanged. The vehicle types that are having their weight limits changed by this regulation include articulated lorries and road train combinations with five or six axles normally limited to 40 tonnes and four-axle combinations normally limited to 36 or 38 tonnes. No additional weight allowance will apply to the heaviest articulated lorry and road train combinations of 44 tonnes or four-axle rigid motor vehicles of 32 tonnes.
Network Rail: Doubledykes Crossing
Peter Grant Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Doubledykes crossing and Network Rail.
Doubledykes Road is an ancient right of way in my constituency, linking the communities of Coaltown and Milton of Balgonie to the north, and Coaltown of Wemyss, East Wemyss and West Wemyss to the south. It crosses an area of farmland, other open land and some woodland that has been well used for centuries by walkers and cyclists. The road is known locally as Queen Mary’s Road, in reference to it having been used by Mary Queen of Scots. While that story might be difficult to verify, it indicates how ancient the route is and the fact that for centuries the people of central Fife have regarded it as their public right to travel along the road any time they want to.
Doubledykes Road is certainly centuries older than the original Leven to Thornton railway, which opened in 1854. It was closed to passengers in 1969 and has not carried a train of any kind since 2001. The date 2001 is important, and I will explain why later. Throughout the time the railway operated, walkers and cyclists used Doubledykes level crossing to cross the line in safety, and I can personally testify to how well used the right of way and the crossing were on a number of occasions when I was walking or cycling through the area.
All that changed last year when Network Rail stunned local communities by announcing that, as part of the welcome, and indeed overdue, reinstatement of the Levenmouth rail link, all public accesses across the line in the area would be closed. Between Windygates to the east of the railway and Thornton to the west is a stretch of several miles of well used footpaths, all of which now run the risk of being permanently severed.
It is illegal in Scotland to block a public right of way without first going through the legal process of having it extinguished. Network Rail has closed that right of way just now, arguably for good reason, because it is a building site. Network Rail is building a railway there, so it would not be safe to have unrestricted public access. As a temporary measure, closure is acceptable, but if Network Rail is seeking to have the right of way permanently blocked, it has not yet gone through the proper legal process of having the right of way officially extinguished.
As long as Network Rail insists on looking to the law and fighting about it, we are left in this position: unless we can make Network Rail see sense, the only way the public and I, as well as their other representatives, can remedy the situation is either individually or through Fife Council embarking on probably lengthy and costly legal action, which, among other things, would cause severe delay to the reopening of the railway and could jeopardise the railway project in its entirety. None of us wants to consider that.
Like others, I have been making representations directly to Network Rail, and to the Scottish Government, whose support and money have been vital in reinstating the Levenmouth rail link. We have made representations to Fife Council, which has a responsibility, among others, to maintain public access to the countryside.
I am raising the matter here because, while there is a memorandum of understanding between the UK Government and the Scottish Government that gives the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament some powers over Network Rail in Scotland, the company is still legally controlled by the UK Government.
Network Rail Ltd is a company limited by guarantee. It does not have shareholders, but Companies House records show that the Secretary of State for Transport is a person with significant control. He is the only person, or corporate body, registered in such a way for Network Rail. The Secretary of State for Transport owns at least 75% of voting rights and has the power to appoint and remove directors. I am hoping the Secretary of State will not have to use the power to remove directors in order to resolve the problems at Doubledykes, but owing to the way Network Rail has been treating my constituents, a lot of them would sack the board tomorrow if they got the chance.
When I have met representatives of Network Rail face to face, they have always been keen to co-operate and have always come across as wanting to find a solution to a problem that I think has been caused by an oversight at the planning stage—nothing more than that—but as soon as they put pen to paper, or as soon as they put fingertips to keyboard to send an email, they start to give a clear message that they will not do anything that cannot be legally forced on them. Their position is that the right of way does not exist and, therefore, nobody has any legal power to force any action on them. That is not a co-operative and constructive position for any public body to take.
The law of right of way in Scotland is different from that in England in a number of important regards. First, there is no such thing as a statutory register of rights of way. A right of way just is. It does not need to be declared, registered or recorded on a map. There is no doubt that Doubledykes Road meets the four tests to have been established as a right of way. It must join two public places—yes. It must follow a more or less defined route—yes. It must have been used openly and peaceably by the general public, as a matter of right—yes. It must have been used without substantial interruption for at least 20 years—yes.
The 2001 date is so important because in 2001, the Levenmouth rail branch line ceased to be a railway. It was then open for a public right of way to be re-established over that crossing. That is what I am convinced has happened since 2001 and up to 2021. Let us remember that in in Scots law, there is no need for the right of way to be recorded or declared in order for it to be brought into existence and to be enforceable. There is no doubt that Queen Mary’s Road meets all those tests.
My constituents asked Network Rail what it was doing and how it could justify closing off a right of way without first applying to have it extinguished. The person who sent the initial reply said that the crossing could not legally constitute a right of way. They put “right of way” in inverted commas just to cover themselves. In their words:
“It is private in status with no authorised users.”
That is mince. The whole point of a public right of way is that it does cross private land, and that users are not authorised. They do not need authorisation or anybody’s permission. The public use a public right of way as a matter of right.
When I emailed Network Rail to explain that, and to say, “I think your position is completely wrong”, the same person who had definitively told my constituents that it could not possibly be a right of way replied to me and said that they could not
“personally offer an opinion on the legal status of the crossings”.
They then suggested that Network Rail’s position might not have been accurately represented to me. That was a strange idea, since the position had been represented to me by an email from the self-same person.
The person then discovered, or remembered, an old Act of this place: the British Railways Order Confirmation Act 1984, no less. Sure enough, when we look at the detail of that, we see that the Doubledykes level crossing was extinguished in 1984. I put on record, however, that some of my constituents have doubts about whether that Act was ever properly and legally brought into force. There may be a doubt as to whether the Act is enforceable even now.
Network Rail pointed out that a new right of way cannot be established over an existing railway, which is fair enough, but let us remember that it has not been a railway since 2001. Something cannot be defined as a railway if it does not have tracks or trains. There is a very strong argument that the right of way had become established by 2022.
Network Rail seemed to be hedging its bets and to have identified that possibility, because it then claimed that, even if the public had continued to use the crossing over the period of 21 years since the railway ceased to be a railway, the public were doing that
“at the invitation, even the tacit or implied invitation, of Network Rail.”
There have been disputes about how well used the crossing was until the point that Network Rail closed it. Network Rail thinks it was hardly ever used; everybody else says it has been very well used. For example, a lot of cyclists use apps that not only show where they are, but enable them to compare speeds round the route with other cyclists who sign up to the same app. Those apps show that there has been a lot of cycle traffic along Doubledykes Road and across the crossing since the apps were invented.
Network Rail was very cagey about what surveys, counts or other measures it has undertaken to establish how well used the crossing was. At one point, Network Rail even said that that had been done by a local organisation, which told us in no uncertain terms that it could not have done it, because, geographically, it did not have a remit in that area. It is worth noting that Network Rail’s suggestion that users were using the crossing at the invitation of Network Rail completely contradicts its claim that nobody, or hardly anybody, ever used it.
The towns of Levenmouth—Methil, Methilhill, Buckhaven, Leven, Kennoway and several nearby villages—represent about 40% of my constituency. Leven is partly in North East Fife. The area still has the unenviable distinction of being the largest centre of population anywhere in Scotland without a passenger rail service. I pay tribute to the Levenmouth Rail Campaign and other local activists, who have fought doggedly for years to get the rail line re-established. I will be forever proud that I was the leader of Fife Council who got agreement that opening the Levenmouth rail link was the single biggest public transport priority in Fife. We were the first administration to put its money where its mouth is and allow the first feasibility studies to be carried out.
I still think that took too long, and there were setbacks and annoyances along the way. In 2019, however, when the then Scottish Transport Minister announced that the Scottish Government would reopen and fund the Levenmouth rail link, there was absolute delight in Levenmouth and in many other parts of Fife. People still desperately want the railway to reopen. I can feel the excitement when I go to exhibitions to update the public about what is happening. They can see the new stations getting built and the rail tracks being re-laid. We hope that the first trains will run on the railway in 2024, just over a year from now.
It would be unacceptable for anything to be done at this stage to prevent that from happening. It is also unacceptable for any public body to hide behind its version of the law and fail to communicate and engage properly with the communities that are being affected by its decisions. Those communities want the rail link reopened, and they are delighted that that will happen. They are, however, becoming increasingly angry, not at the fact that a mistake was made in the early planning stages—mistakes happen—but at the attitude of Network Rail, one of the key players. Network Rail sometimes appears to be very co-operative, but as soon as it comes to sitting down and looking for a solution, it passes the whole thing over to somebody else.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, Network Rail emailed me and other local representatives suggesting that only a minority of locals are concerned about this issue. That is deeply offensive, and not to me—people can be offensive to me if they want; that is part of the job of being a Member of Parliament. Every single statutory community council with an area of operation that goes anywhere near Doubledykes has unanimously expressed the view that they want the crossing to be kept open. They have the legal responsibility to represent the views of their local communities. It is not acceptable for any public body to seek to dismiss their views as being only a minority. For the record, all constituency MPs, MSPs and councillors with a ward interest anywhere near Doubledykes Road, as well as Fife Council and the Fife Council Glenrothes area committee, have come out clearly as saying they want a solution to be found to this issue.
There are questions about what kind of crossing to use. I am not convinced about this, but a lot of people locally think a pedestrian level crossing could be operated safely. Network Rail have had none of that. A footbridge or tunnel is possible, but is clearly more expensive. In the bigger scheme of things, however, when we can spend at least £2 billion on a single railway station in London, surely we can find £1 million to £1.5 million to maintain one of the most ancient rights of way in our land. There is a question of who pays, but it would cost £1 million, not a huge amount of money. I am not asking the UK Government to fund it, by the way; I hope we can find a way to fund it entirely in Scotland.
There are questions to be answered, but I am convinced that a solution is possible if all those involved simply sit down and agree that there is answer to be found and try to find it. Everyone needs to agree to share the responsibility —and not to palm it off on everybody else—to ensure that as soon as is feasible after the rail line is opened, the ancient public right to travel along Queen Mary’s way will be re-established.
I will finish by commending the efforts of the Levenmouth Rail Campaign. The reason why we were able to persuade Fife Council to be so supportive, as soon as we came into administration in 2007, was that it was very clear from day one that the degree of public support in Levenmouth was huge. Levenmouth Rail Campaign has co-ordinated and brought together that public support and made it into a very effective public campaign. That has been led not by politicians, but by the people, and the politicians have supported it along the way. Thanks to the Levenmouth Rail Campaign and the dogged determination by local MSPs—initially Tricia Marwick and later Jenny Gilruth, with David Torrance on the south side of the line—the Scottish Government agreed to go through what can be quite a difficult process in the Scottish Parliament of getting approval for a significant capital investment to get the rail link open.
Everybody living anywhere near this rail link wants to see it opened. I believe that practically everybody wants to see it opened, with a safe pedestrian access maintained across a route that might not have been used by Mary, Queen of Scots herself, but which has been used by generations, decades and centuries of people in Fife going about their ordinary, day-to-day business. I want to see it reopened. I know that this is not entirely a decision for this Transport Minister to undertake. I appreciate that most of the persuasion has to be done in Scotland, but right now, the people need all the support they can get. If the Minister is able to commit to joining communities and elected representatives in Fife to persuade Network Rail to see sense and behave like a body that is accountable to the public, that is all we ask.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Richard Holden)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) for securing this debate, which concerns the closure of the Doubledykes level crossing in his constituency. I want to acknowledge the strength of feeling on the issue and thank the local community for presenting the petition, which has received over 1,100 signatures. Before I go into the specifics, I will talk briefly about railways, the role of Network Rail and level crossing safety more generally.
Rail is an important engine of economic growth. It serves several functions: it offers commuters a safe and reliable route to work, it facilitates business and leisure travel, it connects communities with their public services, workplaces and other economic opportunities, and it transports millions of tonnes of freight around the country, relieving congestion on roads and bringing huge environmental benefits. We want to build on the success in UK rail since the mid-1990s by improving and extending services where viable.
We are well aware of the positive impacts that improved, more frequent and direct rail services can have on communities. That includes the reopening of the Levenmouth rail link, which was approved by the Scottish Government in August 2019 and which will result in passenger services between Leven and Thornton for the first time in over 50 years. That project is scheduled to be completed by spring 2024 and will bring considerable benefits to the area and the surrounding region, in the hon. Member’s constituency and beyond.
For all its benefits, the creation of a new service does create safety risks that have to be managed effectively, not least on sections of railway track that have not seen high levels of traffic for several decades. That creates difficult choices for rail operators and for Network Rail, the operator of the mainline rail network, as it seeks to deliver faster and more frequent services safely. There are no easy solutions, and I recognise the huge responsibility that organisations such as Network Rail bear. Operational decisions such as these are rightly a matter for Network Rail, the safety duty holder for Britain’s railway infrastructure, which has the expertise needed to look at decisions in depth.
Network Rail’s responsibilities include user safety at over 6,000 level crossings on the mainline rail network. Level crossings now represent the single greatest source of risk for fatal rail accidents; there were seven fatalities at level crossings in the last year alone. In most accidents or incidents at level crossings, actions by the user, intended or unintended, have been a contributory factor.
Peter Grant
Any serious injury or fatality is a tragedy, but can the Minister clarify how many of those incidents took place on mainline railways and how many took place on low-volume, low-usage branch lines, where trains have a much slower speed than on the main line?
Mr Holden
I will happily write to the hon. Member about all the incidents in the past few years. It is probably quite helpful for him to have that specific knowledge about, let us say, the past 10 years, so I will get my officials to write to him on that. Incidents have taken place on branch lines and on the main line; I will provide a breakdown and write to him in detail about those fatalities.
Network Rail is putting significant effort into improving safety at level crossings. It is focusing on several things: first, improving the operation and maintenance of level crossings; secondly, a programme of risk assessment to identify priorities for further action; thirdly, measures to promote the safe use of crossings by pedestrians and drivers; and fourthly, where necessary, closing crossings altogether where they continue to present an unacceptable safety risk. No decision to close a level crossing is taken lightly, because level crossings often provide a really important means of access to local communities. None the less, although the safety record of level crossings in this country is among the best in the world, we cannot afford to be complacent, and we want to seek to reduce the risk of incidents wherever we can.
I turn to the Doubledykes level crossing, which is obviously of particular interest to the hon. Member and is the subject of this debate. It is one of several level crossings on the Levenmouth rail link, which on reopening will connect Leven with Thornton and join the Fife circle line at Thornton North junction.
As the hon. Member will doubtless know, Doubledykes level crossing was established in 1863 during a period of huge expansion of the rail network, both locally in Fife and right across the country. The level crossing has been used by the local community to access both sides of the railway and the surrounding area.
Since the end of passenger services on the Levenmouth rail link in 1969, services have ceased on this part of the network and people have become accustomed to using the level crossing without any risk. The reopening of the link will see, for the first time in a generation, services returning to this part of the rail network. Trains are expected to pass through Doubledykes level crossing about twice an hour. This will bring much-needed benefits to the wider community by connecting the towns of Leven and Thornton. It will also create additional risks, including at Doubledykes level crossing. Although the level crossing currently remains open, Network Rail has confirmed that it plans to close it when the new link is in operation, to protect the safety of the local community and rail users.
My Department has not been involved in the project to reopen the rail link or in the decision to close the level crossing. That decision quite properly rests with Network Rail in exercising its duty as infrastructure manager to ensure the safety of the travelling public. I understand that the decision was made in consultation with Transport Scotland, the South East of Scotland Transport Partnership and Fife Council, which are the joint project sponsors of the rail line. For that reason, it would not be appropriate for me to comment in detail on the decisions taken in this case, which are more properly a matter for the Scottish Government and the project sponsors.
I appreciate, however, that the closing of any level crossing can be inconvenient and very upsetting for local communities. That will be particularly true in the case of Doubledykes, which has not had rail traffic stopping people crossing since the late 1960s; it is evident from the large number of people who signed the petition. I cannot speak on behalf of the sponsors of the Levenmouth rail link, but I am sure that that will have been an important part of their considerations during the planning stages.
Peter Grant
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again; he is being very generous with his time. May I remind the House that I am not particularly pushing for a level crossing? It is not the only possible answer.
The Minister mentioned risk assessments of level crossings. Does he understand the local puzzlement as to how Network Rail could possibly have done a risk assessment of this crossing if it has no idea how many people are using it just now?
Mr Holden
As I have said to the hon. Gentleman, it is obviously for Network Rail, alongside the other sponsors of the project in Scotland, to justify the assessments that it has made. They will have made the assessments as part of their planning processes; it might well be best if the hon. Gentleman directed his specific questions about how decisions are arrived at to the relevant sponsoring authorities.
Ultimately, any decision on whether to close a level crossing must ensure the safety of level crossing users and rail users. In a case such as Doubledykes, I am confident that Network Rail will have looked at the risk profile, the frequency of services and the number of people using the crossing and will have worked with others in the region to look at this. However, I understand the concerns of the hon. Gentleman and his constituents about this matter.
I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), who is the Minister with responsibility for rail. He would be happy to have further meetings with the hon. Gentleman in person, to look further at the issues and see what can be done, if the hon. Gentleman would like to do so and if that would be useful to him. I will also happily write to Transport Scotland in response to the concerns that the hon. Gentleman has raised today, to push this issue further.
It was particularly good to hear that the hon. Gentleman is considering multiple different solutions in this space. I hope that his call has been heard by the decision makers and the local sponsors of this project so that they can also think about the other potential options to maintain connectivity, but, as I have said, the funding and the options are really a matter for those sponsors.
Once again, I thank the hon. Member and his local residents for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. I am sure that the Rail Minister will look forward to meeting him at the earliest opportunity to see what more we can do to work with him on the issue. I also look forward to writing to Transport Scotland to express the concerns of the hon. Member and his constituents about this important local issue.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Huw Merriman
I will certainly come by train to meet my hon. Friend, who is a true champion for transport in Ynys Môn and the wider north Wales region. She has secured a Backbench Business debate on the west coast main line in the Chamber on 15 December, and that demonstrates what a champion she is. I expect to have the business case for the project that she mentions on my desk in the new year, when I can talk to her further about it.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)
The Chancellor announced a plan in last week’s autumn statement to tackle the cost of living crisis and rebuild our economy. As I said earlier, the Government will invest more than £600 billion in infrastructure over the next five years to connect our country and grow the economy. Transport investment will play a huge part in delivering that, and I will work to deliver a stable, long-term plan to run, maintain and expand our transport network across the United Kingdom.
Peter Grant
The Republic of Ireland is facing exactly the same global economic impacts as the United Kingdom, but the recent Irish Budget was able to increase support for transport across the southern part of that island. In contrast, the real-terms cuts we will see in the coming years will have a direct impact on transport spending in England and, significantly, in the devolved nations through the Barnett formula. Will the Secretary of State undertake to ensure that the transport needs of other parts of the United Kingdom are not sacrificed for those in London? Does he agree that all public transport infrastructure spending in Scotland should be according to the priorities of the Scottish Government, who were elected for that purpose?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman is right that we will have to deal with the pressures of inflation, and the Government’s No. 1 economic priority is to reduce inflation as quickly as possible. Inflation is a global phenomenon, driven by the recovery from the covid pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, but it is important that we deal with it.
The hon. Gentleman will know that I represent a constituency quite some distance from London. I am well aware that we need to spread transport investment across the United Kingdom, and I will make sure that I work closely with the Scottish Government on shared priorities, as set out in Peter Hendy’s Union connectivity review.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Will the Secretary of State explain why it is that when essential goods such as fuel are in short supply the price has to go up, but when essential workers are in short supply, their wages are expected to go down?
Grant Shapps
As I have explained to the House, a pay rise was already on the cards, and it is false to have called a strike on the basis that there would be a pay freeze. The pay freeze had ended. It is also untrue to say that there needed to be wide-scale compulsory redundancies. Indeed, we had a voluntary redundancy programme, where 5,500 members of staff came forward, and we only accepted 2,500 of them. This strike has been called on the false pretences that I have described. It is time to end the strike and ensure that people get back to work, and it is time for those on the Opposition Benches to condemn the strikes.
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have provided £5 billion to TfL. What the Mayor does with that money and how he spends it is his choice. As I mentioned a moment ago, rather than doing the difficult things—for example, tackling the pension fund that his own review says requires tackling—he is cutting buses for Londoners, and that cannot be right.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Grant Shapps
No, no and no. For clarity, I will write to the hon. Gentleman and put a copy of the letter in the Library, explaining how a notice to airmen, as it used to be called—it is now called a notice to aviation—operates. As soon as it is issued, it is the job of the aviation organisation or pilot to obey it. There are no ifs and buts—a NOTAM is a NOTAM. It does not matter what anybody else says—that is what has to be followed. I will illustrate that in a letter to the hon. Gentleman, and I hope we can put this issue to bed.
P&O Ferries and Employment Rights
Peter Grant Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I commend the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) for her outstanding speech to open the debate, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) for his long campaign for legislation to be introduced banning fire and rehire.
The actions of P&O are morally reprehensible and may well turn out to be unlawful, even criminal. I hope those processes are carried out as quickly as possible, but even if the entire board of directors goes to jail, even if they are fined so much that the company goes into liquidation, it will not put a single plate of food on the table in front of the children of any one of the 800 people who have been treated so despicably. They are the ones who matter now. The workers have to be reinstated immediately, but even if they are, P&O and the parent companies in Dubai must be held to account. It must be made clear to them that this Government, the Scottish Government and all the Governments of Europe will not have any truck with a company that treats people so appallingly.
It was mentioned earlier that despite claiming to be losing money, P&O managed to pay dividends of £270 million. Even at £50,000 a person, those 800 employees could have been kept on for six years; it is equivalent to £337,500 per person. Instead of going to the employees though, that money went to the owners. A big chunk of it went to one of the richest and most powerful men in the United Arab Emirates, and therefore in the world—a man who was found in a UK court of law to have probably kidnapped, abducted and imprisoned his own daughters, one of whom accused him in court of torturing her to punish her for running away. Who thought it was a good idea for that person to be allowed to own a controlling interest in a company that is responsible for the livelihood of thousands of British workers, and to allow that individual to have a stranglehold on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland? Who thought it was acceptable for that sort of person to be involved at all in running businesses in these islands? Well, some people obviously did. That’s the free market for you.
We have to ask ourselves what the Government’s response would be to seeing all the ships tied up suddenly, with no notice, people’s plans being cancelled and lorries stuck on the quayside because of trade union industrial action. We would not be here today debating an Opposition motion condemning P&O. We would probably be here debating emergency Government anti-trade union legislation. If this chaos had been caused by the trade unions, the Government would have moved a lot more swiftly and a lot more fiercely against them than they are prepared to do against wealthy Arab oil sheiks. I wonder why that is.
Earlier, a Conservative Member, who is no longer in his seat, wondered why P&O thought it could get away with this action. I wonder. What could it be about six years of rhetoric about the sunlit uplands of a post-Brexit, deregulated, free-for-all Britain that made a big company think it might get away with it? After six years of being told, “We need to get rid of all the red tape that holds back businesses,” and a former Prime Minister actually saying that workers’ rights were one of the things that needed to be looked at post Brexit, I wonder what made P&O think that Britain was a good place to start trampling on the rights of its workers.
The Secretary of State, who, to his credit, turned up for the debate—a lot of his Cabinet colleagues would have run away and hidden—wants to rename the ships. May I suggest that, as a tribute to the legacy his Government are following—the trampling underfoot of centuries of hard-won rights for employees and trade unions—at least one of those ships should be renamed the MV Margaret Thatcher?
International Travel
Peter Grant Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight these cases and fight for her constituents. I just want to point out that the figure that is charged at the moment does not make a profit for the Government. In fact, it is still being somewhat subsidised in the process. I also want to point out that people should not be travelling to red-list countries. The only people who should be coming back to Government quarantine are British or Irish citizens or people with permanent rights of residence, and there should be a limit to the number of people who are still abroad and wishing to return. I sometimes come across cases where people are still using the red list as if it is a case of “It’s okay, I can come back and hotel quarantine.” That should not be the case. However, if the hon. Lady has individual cases, I am concerned to hear about them. The system is handled by the Department of Health and I would be very happy to pass them on.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The Secretary of State has quite rightly sounded a note of caution in saying that anyone who chooses to travel to an amber list country needs to be prepared for the possibility that it could become a red list country before they return. What happens if someone has booked to travel to an amber list country and it becomes red before they travel? Has he had discussions with the travel industry and the travel insurance industry to determine whether passengers will be entitled to a refund in those circumstances, or will they simply have to sacrifice their holiday and lose all their money?
Grant Shapps
The travel industry has stepped up to the plate, by and large. For nearly everywhere that people can book—I encourage consumers to take a look—people are able to get a guarantee of a refund or a change of date if there is a change in status, and holiday insurance has become quite adept as well. The Government have also tried to assist. For example, under the Air Travel Organisers Licensing scheme—ATOL—people used to be able to get only a cash refund, but we have made those vouchers effectively Government guaranteed, so that people can take them with assurance. That is also helping the travel sector to weigh up its difficulties with cash flow.
To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I am working very closely with the travel industry. He is absolutely right to raise the case. The most important thing that people can do is check before they book—particularly now, particularly this year—to make sure that refunds and rebooking are allowed in their contract.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank my hon. Friend for the pragmatic and dedicated campaign that he is running on behalf of his constituents and others on this issue. I know that he has encouraged his constituents to have their say in the recent consultation, and I thank him for that too. We are committed to decarbonising our railways, and East West Rail will continue to assess the potential environmental effects as part of the route alignment development work. An environmental impact assessment will be undertaken and an environmental statement submitted when the development consent order application is made to the Planning Inspectorate.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Rachel Maclean)
The transport decarbonisation plan will set out a pathway to achieving net zero. We are delivering ambitious international COP26 campaigns, including a zero emission vehicles campaign that aims to at least double the pace of the global transition to zero emission vehicles so that all new cars and vans are zero emission by 2040 or sooner; an aviation campaign that will galvanise industry, state and civil society support for international action to reduce the climate impacts of aviation; and a maritime campaign, where we will deliver important cross-sectoral opportunities for significant emissions reductions nationally and internationally.
Peter Grant [V]
The Scottish Government have committed to cutting car use by 20% by 2030 and to providing an interest-free loan for first-time buyers of new and used electric vehicles. In contrast, the British Government are cutting the grant for electric vehicle purchases by 50%. Will the Minister explain how that 50% cut in support will help to facilitate the decarbonisation of transport?
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Paul Maynard
I am always cautious at the Dispatch Box not to trespass on the territory of APD, which is a matter for the Treasury, but I am sure the hon. Gentleman would welcome the renewal of the public service obligation to service the City of Derry airport.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)
Now that the repatriation of those Thomas Cook passengers is complete, my focus is on the next steps, including the announcement in the Queen’s Speech that the airline insolvency review will be turned into an Act of Parliament.
Peter Grant
May I first pay tribute to the staff of Thomas Cook in Glenrothes, who for a great many years have provided my constituents, and indeed myself, with a very professional and courteous service? Last week, the Government finally admitted that no Minister had spoken to Thomas Cook directly before the company collapsed. The Secretary of State claimed that the company could not be saved, but then some parts of the company in other countries were indeed saved. Will he now accept that if the Government had engaged sooner with Thomas Cook, they could have mitigated the impact of this failure, fewer people would have lost their jobs, the cost to the taxpayer would have been less and fewer people would have seen their holidays ruined?
Grant Shapps
That is simply not correct. I met the chief executive of the company on 9 September, and I have checked my closing words to him at that meeting, which were—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman might want to listen. My closing words to that company and to the chief executive were: “If there is anything that Her Majesty’s Government could do then please get in touch.” The response was: “There is nothing that can be done at this time.” Later, on 18 September, he wrote to the Government asking for not the £200 million that has been reported, but up to £250 million. That decision would have required accounting officer sign-off for a company with debt of perhaps £1.7 billion or, we now hear, perhaps even £3 billion. It simply would not have stacked up. We would have spent all the money that has been spent on repatriation in any case, as well as money to bail out a company that had enormous debts.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts
Peter Grant Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Andy McDonald
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that revealing clarification about the obvious chaos that the Government are in over these important issues. They do not speak with a concerted and singular voice, and people are falling out with each other left, right and centre. That comes as no surprise to me whatsoever.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman clearly has a lot more experience than I do in matters of collective responsibility. Let us take the previous intervention at its word. If a Secretary of State is clear that the collective responsibility of the Government is preventing him or her from doing the job properly, is not the only honourable course of action for that Secretary of State to resign? So what the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has done by speaking in his defence is say that the Secretary of State should not resign now, as he should have resigned months ago.
Andy McDonald
That is a fair observation. We have heard that the Secretary of State was prevented from undertaking contingency planning in the first place because of disputes in the Government and that it took the Government to make a collective decision because nobody could come forward to take a decision on this settlement themselves. That really does characterise a Government in chaos and meltdown. Can the Secretary of State say which Departments contributed towards the £33 million? Yesterday, the Health and Social Care Secretary did not know whether his Department had contributed, so will the Transport Secretary please clarify which Department or Departments paid that bill?
Charlie Elphicke
I have given way quite a lot, so I will make some progress.
The Secretary of State has worked hard in the national interest to make sure that contingency plans, once authorised, have been taken forward. I pressed him on the point, because I wanted to see a new route from Dover to Zeebrugge in Belgium, but it would have required a level of intervention that is difficult under the procurement rules. As it was, he undertook procedures that were known within the Department to be legally risky, but were seen as being in the national interest because of the time available. I have to agree that that decision was in the national interest. It would have been very easy for the port of Dover to go for an opportunistic legal action on the basis that it was being shut out of the process, but it would not have been the right thing to do.
Everyone across the country could see what the Secretary of State was trying to achieve: to take pressure off the port of Dover and the channel tunnel in case there were difficulties with France. That was a concern at the time because of the kind of rhetoric that was coming from the French President, Monsieur Macron. Now that things have moved on and we know that the European Union will extend transit on a no-deal basis, the risk of such difficulties is much less, but that was not known at the time. It is right that the Secretary of State and the Department take measures based on the information before them.
Kevin Foster
The hon. Gentleman has had his answers to his points. He may not like the answers he gets, but he has had them and I will not take a further intervention.
Some people have come here today talking about the fact that we should take no deal off the table and that would make all this absolutely pointless. I am afraid that we cannot simply take no deal off the table. We have to do one of two things. To be fair, the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats take the consistent position that they would look to ignore the referendum result by revoking article 50. In effect, they would take no deal off the table by staying in the European Union. The only other option to take no deal off the table is to agree a deal with the European Union. That is where we see the inconsistency of many of Labour’s positions. It is all very well Labour Members saying, “I don’t like this deal; I don’t want that deal,” but, unless they are prepared to say that they would revoke article 50—there are two parties that are still on that platform; I do not agree with that but it is at least a coherent position—then it is absolute nonsense to come here and say, “We don’t like any of the deals but we demand that no deal be taken off the table.” That is absolute tosh and rubbish.
Peter Grant
Has the hon. Gentleman read the alternative deal that was put forward by the Scottish Government in December 2016?
Kevin Foster
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I did read the White Paper put out by the Scottish National party a few years ago that was a bit of a work of fiction. My understanding, unless he wants to correct me, is that his position is that he wishes to remain in the European Union.
Kevin Foster
If the hon. Gentleman is going to get up and say that it is not, that will be quite a surprise for quite a number of Scottish National party supporters.
Peter Grant
I take it from his non-answer that the hon. Gentleman has not bothered to read that document. What the Scottish Government put forward over two years ago showed a willingness to make a significant compromise. They would have been willing to consider a deal that kept us in a single market and customs union if it allowed Scotland—and, indeed, Northern Ireland—to have the wishes of our people respected. It is a pity that he clearly has not bothered to read that document. Although his Government have completely ignored it, I would still recommend it to him because it might yet show us a way out of the shambles that they are creating.
Kevin Foster
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I say, I naively thought that his position was to stay in the European Union, because that is what I keep hearing in virtually every debate on Brexit that the Scottish National party contributes to. I recall the SNP Government’s proposals on staying and it makes the point: why on earth would anyone want to be outside the European Union while following all its laws, all its rules and all its customs obligations, and probably ending up still within its common fisheries policy, which, as we know, has had such an impact on the north-east of Scotland? It would continue to do so if we stayed in the European Union. We would be obliged to be part of it, despite the claims by the Scottish National party.
This debate is about having a go at no-deal preparations, while at the same time complaining that the impact of no deal would be too great. There is a real opportunity next week to put an end to all these discussions by voting for a deal. It is an opportunity for some Opposition Members to come off the fence and be clear about their options: the deal that has been negotiated, which is realistic and can be passed, or joining the SNP in voting to stay in the European Union. It is easy to make party political points. It is easy to have a go and criticise decisions that you know you probably would have taken. [Interruption.] Sorry, Mr Speaker—decisions that they know they would have taken; the only decisions you take are on who is called to speak and procedural matters in this House.
That is the nub of this debate. Ultimately, it was a legal risk versus a risk to medicine supply. Many Members sitting in the Chamber know what they would have done in those circumstances. The contracts with DFDS and Brittany Ferries are still in place, providing the majority of this capacity. Next week, people will have to start choosing between the alternatives that are actually on the table, not ones that they pretend might be.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) on securing it, and I thank you for approving it, Mr Speaker.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) could have conducted this debate on her own, because in the space of what I am reliably informed was about 10 minutes, she utterly dismantled any shred of credibility that the Secretary of State and the Government had left. She has made a succession of attempts to get a simple answer—I can vouch for that, because I was often either behind or beside her when she did so—but one has not been forthcoming. The charitable explanation of that is, as she suggested, that the Government made up the answer just a few days earlier. The less charitable, but, I fear, correct, answer is that they responded to every single question with a deliberate attempt to place obstacles in the way of Members of Parliament and prevent them from doing their job. This Parliament is supposed to be getting back sovereignty as a result of Brexit, but the Government’s first, and often only, response to proper parliamentary inquiry is to stonewall, swat away questions and often to insult the motivations of those asking the questions.
It was a bit rich for the Secretary of State to talk about how many times he has answered these questions. He has not answered them at all. He has responded to them, but has not yet given an answer. Although my right hon. Friend could not, within the terms of parliamentary order, say that he has not been telling the truth, it is fair to say that he has not been telling the whole truth. Although not telling the whole truth is not unparliamentary, it can sometimes have the same effect as telling a complete untruth. Although the explanation that the contract is about securing emergency medical supplies has apparently been talked about in Government circles since August or September last year, it has been used as an explanation for Members of Parliament only for the past few days. It simply does not wash.
Tom Brake
I agree that the explanation about medicines is entirely dubious. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, even if it were true, the fact that our Government—in peacetime, not wartime—are having to prepare to air freight in medicines because of the risk that they will get stuck at the border is condemnation enough of their complete incompetence?
Peter Grant
Absolutely. The single biggest example of incompetence coupled with complacency—it must be said that a lot of the official Opposition were guilty of this—was triggering article 50 and setting a two-year deadline that we cannot unilaterally get out of, after which we will leave without a deal, before the Government had any idea what no deal meant. It is notable that, although the Prime Minister’s mantra was, “No deal is better than a bad deal,” we just heard the Secretary of State announce that, two years after the referendum, they suddenly discovered that no deal would be a lot more disruptive than they realised. I will just mention in passing that when the Government discovered that a no-deal Brexit would be much worse than they realised, they were allowed to change their minds, have another think about it and do something that they had not done before, but 60 million citizens of these nations have not been allowed to have another think and perhaps another go at a decision now that they have been told what they could not have been expected to know in June 2016 about the disastrous consequences of no deal, because Her Majesty’s Government were blithely unaware of it until August or September last year.
We are told that the reason why the Government brought in this new company was the desire to support a new start-up business. Well, bravo. I would always support that, but it completely annihilates the claim that the reason for urgency was that this was a potential life-or-death medical supplies requirement. If there is a service that cannot be allowed to fail because people’s lives would be at risk, who in their right mind would give the opportunity to undertake that work to somebody who had never done the job before? I am sure that health services and health authorities all over the United Kingdom do what they can to give work experience and job opportunities to young people who have not had too great a time at school, but they would not under any circumstances put them behind the wheel of an ambulance with a blue light and ask them to go and save lives, but that is, in effect, what the Secretary of State is telling us the Government did with this contract. Either the contract was innocuous enough that we could afford to give it to a business that did not exist, because nothing would go wrong if the whole thing collapsed, or it was a life-or-death contract that, for reasons of urgency, had to be signed very quickly. If that was the case, it was an act of utter folly to award it to anyone who did not already have an impeccable record in the running of ferry services.
I commend the efforts of the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) to protect the Secretary of State by saying, “It wasn’t the Secretary of State who was incompetent; it was everyone else in the Government.” My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West has given us the way out of that.
What does the fact that this Parliament does not have the authority to table a vote of no confidence in the Secretary of State for Transport tell us about this model of parliamentary democracy? We do not have the authority to instruct a Prime Minister to remove a Minister from office, and we do not have a say over who the Prime Minister appoints or does not appoint to any post in the Government. We must be one of the very few allegedly democratic Parliaments in Europe that does not get a say before Ministers are appointed. Ministers in the Scottish Government have the same Crown appointment as Ministers in the UK Government, but the First Minister of Scotland will not put them forward until they have been agreed by a motion of the Scottish Parliament. The First Minister herself did not accept the commission from Her Majesty until her appointment had been recommended and agreed by a vote of the Scottish Parliament. Maybe that is one of the 1,001 improvements to democracy we need in this place, so that in future Ministers are appointed and unappointed not at the whim of the Prime Minister but by a vote of their peers in this Parliament and can removed from office when this Parliament loses confidence in them, rather than only when the Prime Minister decides they have become too much of an embarrassment.
Throughout this Brexit shambles, any number of serious issues have been raised—life-or-death issues, issues with the potential to devastate our economy, issues such as citizens’ rights that have the potential to ruin the lives of millions of our fellow citizens, issues with the potential to wipe out entire sectors of industry and put tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people on the dole—and each and every time the knee-jerk, first-choice response from Her Majesty’s Government has been to throw it back at the person raising the concern. If it comes from Labour Members, they are told, “Well, if you lot had been in power, it would have been an even worse disaster.” What kind of a way is that to run a Government? I can understand why a lot of people would have concerns if the current Leader of the Opposition became Prime Minister—I would have my concerns as well—but if the only thing the Government can say to defend themselves is that the Government-in-waiting would be even worse, they are a Government well past their sell-by date.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West has repeatedly and rightly raised valid concerns—I hope she will continue to raise them because she has right on her side—and the response from numerous Ministers has been ridicule: she did not know what she was talking about, she was trying to make trouble, she was just an SNP Member, the SNP did not want to leave the EU anyway so how could they possibly have any good ideas for making Brexit less damaging? That would be unacceptable for a Government with a majority of 150. For a Government who threw away their majority and do not command majority support in the House or the nations, it is a despicable way to behave. If that is the best they can do, not only the Secretary of State but the whole Government have to go.