Humber Bridge Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I move the Second Reading on behalf of other Members from the region who are in the Chamber, including the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), the hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight). We have been united on this Bill, which seems to have attracted some interest from other parts of the country. We welcome that, and thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) highlighting the existence of the Bill, we look forward to hordes of visitors to our region from his area and elsewhere.

Let me explain in a few words why across the Humber and across the political parties we jointly believe the Bill to be necessary. We ran a long cross-party and cross-estuary campaign to get action taken on the very high tolls on the Humber bridge. As we know, this was successful when we received a grant from the Chancellor of £150 million to enable the tolls to be halved. That has had a huge impact on the numbers crossing the bridge, which was absolutely necessary given the challenges in the region, with two of the poorest boroughs in the country.

While the Minister is in his place on the Front Bench—and I see that the former Secretary of State for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) has joined us—I would like to pay tribute on behalf of myself and colleagues for the work they did to make this happen. We are indebted to them for their efforts and hard work. Without their personal involvement, I am not so sure that we would have got the results that we have seen.

I want to refer in a little detail to some of the changes introduced by the Bill and to explain their necessity. Somebody once said to me that the bridge was built on the back of a 1950s Bill, constructed in the 1970s and opened in the 1980s. Indeed, I was three years old when it opened, and we have worked out that my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes was nine when the original Bill for the construction of the bridge was introduced back in 1959. The bridge board building has been constructed for some considerable time, and those who have visited it will appreciate that; it is almost in a time warp and is like stepping back in time.

There used to be 22 members from the various local authorities serving on the bridge board, and I declare an interest as a former member of that board. I was not one of the 22 members, but one of the 22 reserve members—in total, we had 44 potential members of the Humber bridge board representing the four local authorities in the region. It has to be said that the local authorities were different at that time. It was an unwieldy institution, and the Bill will formally reduce membership to four and add two members from the private sector, which we all believe is necessary to give the bridge a new look and a new drive. Those two additional members will be drawn from the business community, and there is provision to allow for their reasonable expenses. This might have been a cause of concern to some people, but I assure Members that the four members of the local authorities will continue to draw their expenses for attending the bridge board from the local authority remuneration scheme, and there is no intention at all to draw any salaries or additional expenses from the Humber bridge board. This provision is necessary just for the out-of-pocket expenses of the two private sector members, so that they can reclaim their travel expenses, which they cannot do at the moment. There is no intention of creating director salaries for the local authority members.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

According to clause 5,

“The Board may pay to each director of the Board such allowances and expenses as the Board may from time to time determine.”

I am not entirely convinced that the Bill imposes a great deal of restraint on the directors. Perhaps my hon. Friend can help me out.

[Andrew Percy]

Obviously, all members of the board will be created equal. It is essential for private sector members to be able to claim out-of-pocket expenses, but local authority members will continue to be remunerated by their authorities through local government schemes. Given that they are elected representatives, if they made any attempt to draw salaries they could expect a backlash at the ballot box.

It could be argued that the bridge is more advantageous to people living on the south bank of the Humber, but at present 98% of liability for the burden of debt lies with the city of Hull because of the way in which it was constructed. Protracted negotiations took place involving one authority in particular, but the objections of that authority were overcome. It was agreed that the bridge was of equal importance to all four, and that the burden should therefore be shared equally between them.

I hesitate to say this, given the political beliefs of some of my colleagues who are in the Chamber, but no traffic enforcement is currently possible on the Humber bridge. I was told recently that it was possible to drive through the tolls at 100 mph naked on a motorbike without committing any traffic offences. Not many people do that, of course, but we cannot allow such safety issues not to be addressed. Those who do not pay the toll cannot currently be pursued, and the current speed limit is not enforceable. Allowing the board to deal with that is simply a practical measure.

[Andrew Percy]

I will not be drawn down that path. I understand that the person who apparently holds the speed record on the bridge may be well known publicly, but I will not name that person. It is certainly no one in the House.

At present, the board is allowed no flexibility in regard to dispensation from tolls. For those of us who represent the south bank, that is an important issue. Health and other services have increasingly been concentrated on the north bank over the past decade or so. Certain cancer and heart treatments are offered in Hull, but it is not currently possible for any toll dispensations to be given to the cancer and cardiac patients who must travel to the north bank regularly for their treatment.

It causes outrage locally that, while the Home Office will pay the tolls of the families who visit prisoners on the north bank and jobseekers can claim support through Jobcentre Plus, health patients receive no such support. It will now be up to the bridge board to decide whether it wishes to exercise such a discretion, and it has indicated that it is sympathetic to the requirements of certain types of patients who require regular treatment on the other side of the river.

As I said at the outset, there has been a cross-party campaign to modernise the bridge. We feel that the current structure is too rigid, that it does not give the board the commercial freedoms that it requires, and that consequently this change is essential.

[Philip Davies]

It appears that the Bill does not allow the board to increase the maximum toll, although it can vary tolls. Will it be able to increase them in future, and what will be the implications for people more widely?

[Andrew Percy]

The situation in respect of the tolls is that they could be raised and returned to £3 overnight under the order currently in place, without any consultation with the public.

This is what happens at present. A toll inquiry is held—at great cost to the board—at regular intervals, to which local MPs, including myself and many other Members present, trot up and argue passionately against any rise in the tolls, often on social or economic grounds. The bridge board’s primary responsibility and function, however, is, and will remain, repaying the debt, so those arguments are completely irrelevant.

Huge sums of money are spent whenever an inquiry is demanded and is granted by the Secretary of State, and at the end of that process the inspector’s recommendation has always been that the tolls must be raised. The Bill will allow the bridge board to raise the tolls in line with the retail prices index, should it wish to do so—although I hasten to add that the bridge board has recently said it expects to hold the tolls at £1.50, so there would be a real-terms cut year on year for the next three or four years at the very least.

The charade of a process that has gone on until now in respect of toll rises did not give the public any real say. There was a lot of debate and a lot of hot air was generated, but at the end of the day the situation fundamentally came down to the bridge board’s finances and therefore every toll rise was always consented to, with the exception of one, when a Minister intervened in the run-up to an election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers]

My hon. Friend has stolen my words. I was going to mention Jenny and the great work that she has done.

Some colleagues may express fears about the powers of the board. They need to remember that four out of six members of the board will now, in effect, be directly elected and accountable to their local communities, and that will be a restraint. Only if you live in the area do you appreciate how big an issue this is locally. Public opinion will ensure that the board drives tolls down to their absolute minimum not only in the foreseeable future but beyond that. It has already announced that it can maintain tolls at the present level for another three years.

[Philip Davies]

As my hon. Friend may know, I used to live in the area, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). My hon. Friend spoke about the concerns about and the opportunities presented by reducing the cost for people who have certain medical conditions. Does he feel that it would be worth putting any of those things in the Bill so that they are not left to the discretion of the board members, so that we can guarantee the outcome that he seeks—reductions for patients and control of future price rises?

[Martin Vickers]

I can see why my hon. Friend would consider that desirable, but if we start listing illnesses that qualify for exemption from the toll, we will discriminate against other perhaps lesser known illnesses. It is easy to say that we will exempt cancer patients, but what about others with equally serious diseases? It would be wrong, and it is surely for local people to determine these things.

One important part of Cleethorpes is the tourist trade. We have already seen the tourism industry pull together with some initiatives to attract people across the bridge such as “With entry into Pleasure Island you get your toll back.” It has clearly been a boost for the local economy, which is desperately needed in an area of high unemployment where growth is the key to the future. I urge colleagues to give the Bill a Second Reading and support it throughout its various stages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend all my colleagues on both sides of the House from east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire for their efforts in coming together to get the Bill to this stage. Clearly, they all work together well. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on making sure that we can have a debate about these matters.

People may ask what this has to do with the people in Shipley. Well, people in Shipley use the Humber bridge too. On their many visits to east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire they are expected to cough up when they go over the Humber bridge, just as much as anybody in east Yorkshire is expected to cough up when they go over it, so of course we all have an interest. As I made clear in an earlier intervention, I lived for a number of years in Haltemprice and Howden and at that time was a regular user of the Humber bridge. I am delighted with what the Government have done in reducing the cost for people using the bridge, which will be warmly welcomed in that part of the world. I am all for reducing taxes and costs.

I have no objection to the Bill. It is a good rule of thumb that if it is good enough for my hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), it is good enough for me. But like my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I would not want the Bill to have any unintended consequences. I think that it is incumbent on us to point out any problems we think there might be with the Bill, and then it is ultimately for its promoters to decide whether they want to take heed of that view or ignore it. If they have considered it, do not have a problem and want to ignore it, that is fine by me, but I think that it would be remiss of us not to flag up some issues so that people can take them away to consider.

I do not want to go through the whole Bill and so will focus my remarks on the two main considerations that I think might impact upon, and potentially upset, local residents. One relates to the bridge toll. It seems slightly bizarre to me that after the Government have reduced the charge for crossing the bridge, which I think we all approve of, we might be about to allow other people effectively to overturn that reduction in the not-too-distant future and start putting up charges.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes indicated that he thought that the matter should be decided locally, and that because those people would all be elected locally, they faced the prospect of being voted out if they put the fees up and it proved unpopular. But that is not necessarily how I read the Bill. If the members of the Humber Bridge Board were directly elected, there would be some merit in his argument, because they could be directly elected on the basis of their record on the board—but that, of course, is not how it works.

Schedule 1 makes it clear that the board members will not be directly elected at all; they will, in effect, be appointed by the various local authorities. They might well be elected councillors in their particular field, but when they come up for re-election to Hull city council, North Lincolnshire council or the East Riding of Yorkshire council, they will not simply be voted in for their particular ward based on their track record on the Humber Bridge Board. They might represent a ward in which there are not many people who use the bridge, so it might not be a big consideration when they come up for re-election. They will face re-election based on their track record of working hard in the local ward and on the other work they do on the local council.

Therefore, I do not see that there will be direct elected legitimacy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes would have us believe, based on how he responded to my earlier intervention. I still fear that people will be able to use their position on the board to vote through toll increases that are unpopular with the local community but will not face the sanction that he would like them to face at a subsequent election.

[Martin Vickers]

My hon. Friend is making a perfectly good argument for having more directly elected officials and politicians, and in principle I am very much in favour of that, but the reality, of course, is that he could apply the same argument to the role of Government Ministers, who are not directly elected. It is just an impossible situation. As I said in my contribution, the key is that four of the six board members are elected. Because of the importance of the issue in the locality, I can assure him that it would be very foolish of the board members to act irresponsibly in any way when it comes to toll increases.

[Philip Davies]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, and he might be satisfied that there will be sufficient accountability. I merely wanted to flag up the fact that people might want to consider some additional safeguards in the Bill to prevent tolls from reaching levels that would be unacceptable to the local community. I know that that is not his intention or, as far as I can see, that of any Members from Humberside—an awful term that I object to greatly. I do not think that it is the intention of anyone from either side of the Humber to see fees go up. I do not think that anyone supporting the Bill wants to see that. My concern is that that might be an unintended consequence of the Bill without additional safeguards.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Bill gives the board the power to have differential charges for the residents of the four local authorities concerned and for non-residents, so there is the possible scenario whereby the charges for residents of the four local authorities would be kept down while the charges for visitors, such as my constituents and those of my hon. Friend, would be pushed up. Should not the Bill provide a safeguard against that?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We wish to represent the best interests of our constituents too, so we need to be cautious about that.

[Andrew Percy]

I have enormous respect for my hon. Friend, and I understand his argument, but I think that he is failing to understand that the primary purpose of the board is to service the bridge’s debt. That is what it is there to do and that is what the tolls are necessary for, so the idea that it is suddenly going to shove them up to five quid overnight is wrong—it is not going to happen, to be polite about it. We must remember that the primary purpose of the board is to service the debt, and that is done either through the tolls or through a levy on the local authorities.

[Philip Davies]

I take my hon. Friend’s point and his reassurance. However, he must accept that although we have seen a change in strategy this evening, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has noted, some people will believe politically that the best way to raise money to service the debt is to increase taxes or, in this case, charges. The people on the board may not accept the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole that the best way to increase the revenue stream is to reduce the price—they may take the view that the best way to service the debt is to increase prices—so there is no guarantee that what he suggests will always prevail. I will not go on for too much longer because I do not want inadvertently to talk out his Bill, but there is a concern about what might happen, and it is worth putting that on the record and asking him to think a little more about whether a provision should be inserted in the Bill to prevent any potential problem further down the line.

I have two final points. The first is about the people whom my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes wants to be given a full or partial relief from the toll, perhaps because of medical conditions. He said that when one makes a list one might inadvertently miss something off and cause a problem, and I understand that. However, an intention to give certain people a relief is only that—an intention. Nothing in the Bill would force it to happen or guarantee it. People could have their hopes raised and then see them dashed. It would be unfortunate if the board had a change of heart, or its personnel changed, and it no longer felt that a relief was appropriate or affordable because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole says, their primary responsibility is to service the debt.

It might therefore be worth inserting a provision—it does not have be as specific as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes perhaps inferred from my intervention—to make it clear that there should be some form of relief for people with, for example, serious medical conditions. It need not specify anything in particular but would make sure that what he intended happened in reality. One of the many unfortunate things in politics is people’s hopes being raised and then dashed when other people have made promises that they cannot keep. It would be good if we could demonstrate in the Bill that this provision would be an inevitable consequence of its being passed, whereas at the moment it is just an aspiration and a hope that cannot be guaranteed.

My final point is about clause 5, on allowances and expenses, about which I made an intervention earlier. I took the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole about out-of-pocket expenses. I do not think that anybody will reasonably object to people being able to recover their out-of-pocket expenses, but that is not exactly what the clause says. It says:

“The Board may pay to each director of the Board such allowances and expenses as the Board may from time to time determine.”

With the best will in the world, whatever the intention and whatever expectations people may have, that gives an awful lot of scope under the Bill for people to be paid allowances and expenses that local residents may consider at some time to be excessive. This kind of thing can often build up resentment if it does not come with the support of the local public. If the intention is for people to have their out-of-pocket expenses repaid—I would not object to that and I am certain that the vast majority of local residents would not, either—perhaps the Bill should make it clear that that is what it means, rather than say

“such allowances and expenses as the Board may determine from time to time,”

which would give people scope to vote for considerable amounts of money that others would find unacceptable or offensive.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend draws attention to the fact that the Bill does not even use the word “reasonable” with regard to allowances and expenses.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. The Bill gives carte blanche to the board to vote for any amount of money it chooses. There does not seem to be a restriction, aside from the expectation voiced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes that the four elected people would be voted out on their ear at the next election. There is no guarantee, however, that that would happen. People will not be judged on that alone. I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole to consider these points. I understand what he and Members from all parties and from both sides of the Humber intend to happen, and I would not wish the Bill not to deliver on their or their constituents’ hopes and expectations.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on allowing us to have this debate. All the private Bills we have debated over a number of years have involved certain points that the promoters have not given consideration to or that, with hindsight, they might have done differently. This debate has given us an opportunity to look at such points. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole will take some of our concerns on board and even table some modest amendments when the Bill goes to Committee.