Oral Answers to Questions
Rob Butler Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we want to see this resolved, and we are in constant contact with TfL and the Mayor’s office. He is right to say that we want to ensure that TfL’s rail service, bus service and all the rest of it are there for Londoners, and those who travel into London, to use. We are well on the case, and I look forward to a resolution.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Andrew Stephenson)
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I know how tirelessly he works for his constituents impacted by HS2. In this case, the Planning Inspectorate found that Buckinghamshire Council had been supplied with adequate information, and of course it is important that these decisions are not held up indefinitely, but I will of course continue to work with him and local residents in affected communities to ensure that we get the right approach.
International Travel
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady’s enthusiasm for the aviation sector, which was genuinely world-beating prior to the pandemic. That is exactly where we want to get it back to. That is why I am delighted by what has happened with the US route, which will reopen later this year, and the announcements that we have been able to make to simplify and reduce the cost of travel. I know that the hon. Lady is no longer part of the governing party in Scotland, but it would be very helpful if she could assist in bringing pressure to ensure that, throughout the UK, aviation companies are able to benefit from the massive advantage of the huge vaccination programme that Her Majesty’s Government have managed to progress across the whole UK, and that the aviation sector is opened and allowed to get not just back on its feet but back in the air.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Many Aylesbury constituents were distressed about Pakistan’s being on the red list for many months because of the delays that meant for their precious family reunions, but they welcomed the detailed scientific explanations that were provided for that, even if those brought unwelcome news. On their behalf, I thank my right hon. Friend for removing Pakistan from the red list. Does he agree that that reflects the efforts of Governments in both countries, working together to enable safe travel, which represents another important step in our return to normality?
Grant Shapps
That’s how to do it, Mr Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend appreciates the science, he appreciates that when we were not able to move Pakistan on to the amber list, the level of vaccination was, from memory, about 20%, and he appreciates that we deliberately set up an intergovernmental working group so that officials could work together to overcome those issues. I would have thought that the whole House wants to welcome Pakistan’s coming off the red list, as my hon. Friend has done.
HS2
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I am very grateful to the Petitions Committee for securing this debate, because HS2 is undoubtedly the single biggest issue in my constituency of Aylesbury. Indeed, 2,999 petitioners are from my constituency—it is second only to Chesham and Amersham—and I have received more than 400 emails asking me to speak today.
I completely share the views of the vast majority of residents across the Aylesbury constituency that HS2 should be scrapped. As I stated at the beginning of my own election campaign, I do not believe that we need this railway. It makes no sense economically, owing to a weak business case and dramatically escalating construction costs. It makes no sense environmentally, with more than 100 ancient woodlands being destroyed for a line that will never be carbon neutral over its 120-year lifespan. I remain absolutely convinced that the scheme will do enormous damage to our area with zero benefit for the people of Aylesbury and the nearby villages.
Let us take some examples. The residents of Stoke Mandeville and Fairford Leys are already impacted by the construction work that is under way. Aylesbury itself is at risk of flooding owing to some of the methods that HS2 Ltd insists on using, despite repeated pleas to do more to alleviate the peril. Indeed, a recent FOI inquiry revealed an alarming lack of detailed knowledge of the impact on the aquifer of HS2’s construction.
The popular and beautiful village of Wendover
“will be more directly affected by the first phase of the HS2 project than any rural settlement of comparable size.”
Those are not my words. That is a direct quote from the House of Lords Select Committee. One key way to mitigate the horrendous consequences of HS2 for Wendover would be the construction of bored, mined tunnel. Time and again, local residents have provided compelling evidence of the case for such a tunnel, but time and again they have been told they cannot have it, so they have asked for a full, thorough and independent analysis of their proposal versus the one in the consented scheme. Even for that, they have again been told no. It is hardly surprising that they are up in arms.
Of course, we should not need a tunnel in Wendover because we should not have HS2 at all. There are so many things the HS2 budget could be better spent on. I have three suggestions. Local train lines—across the north of England and indeed in my constituency, notably the Aylesbury link of East West Rail, which has a better business case than HS2—would dramatically cut traffic congestion on the roads and reduce environmental harm, but we are still waiting for funding approval.
We could use the money for high-speed broadband, which would enable the new ways of working that are now becoming embedded following the pandemic. Parts of my constituency still struggle to get wi-fi despite being less than 50 miles from central London. Indeed, we could just save some of the huge bill, given the hundreds of billions of pounds we have had to borrow in the past 18 months. Any of those options would be much better for my constituency and for the country than this painful, lumbering white-elephant project.
East West Rail: Aylesbury Spur
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
I very much welcome the opportunity that this Adjournment debate presents to raise a matter of great importance to my constituents—the Aylesbury spur of East West Rail. No, Mr Deputy Speaker, your ears have not deceived you: this is indeed a Member of Parliament from Buckinghamshire calling for a rail line in his constituency. I recognise that this may come as something of a shock to the Minister and perhaps even more so to the officials in his Department. But given the Transport Department’s sterling record in telling my constituents that a behemoth of a railway in their local area is absolutely essential to the future of the country, I rise in a mood of cautious optimism that they will similarly be able to sing the praises of a far more modest proposal that truly will be appreciated by the people of Aylesbury and the surrounding area.
I am no Dickens and this is no tale of two cities, but it is a tale of two railways. There is the big, bad, scary one: the one that destroys ancient woodlands, that has an insatiable appetite to gobble up billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash, and that will make it harder, not easier, for us to be carbon neutral by 2050. Then there is the smaller, gentler, friendlier one: the one that will connect towns striving to succeed in the post-pandemic world, that can play a key role in an integrated local transport system with buses, cycling and walking, and that can support the next generation’s heartfelt desires for a greener, more sustainable future. We could call the bad one HS2 and we could call the good one the Aylesbury spur.
The Aylesbury spur is part of phase 2 of the excellent plan to restore the old Varsity line on which steam trains used to power between the two ancient university cities of Oxford and Cambridge. That line fell victim to the Beeching axe in the late 1960s. Even then, many thought the decision made little sense. There was therefore a good deal of enthusiasm when proposals were made for the new East West Rail line, complete with an integral Aylesbury spur.
Aylesbury has historically had a bit of bad luck with the railways. The town was once very well connected. The Metropolitan Railway used to call at Aylesbury, but by 1963 the service was curtailed to Amersham. The Great Central Railway used to carry high-speed express trains through Aylesbury, including the Master Cutler, named in homage to my university city of Sheffield and its Company of Cutlers. These services too were removed by 1968, leaving just one direct rail link, to London. So, in Aylesbury we have lost rail connections over the years. I respectfully suggest that it is now time to reverse that trend, and indeed that the Aylesbury spur is crucial to the success of the town in the future.
Aylesbury is almost unrecognisable from the traditional market town where I was born half a century ago. Even as the millennium approached, large estates such as Fairford Leys and Berryfields were but fields; now they are thriving communities enabling people from near and far to purchase their own property. In the past 10 years alone, nearly 10,000 homes have been built in Aylesbury Vale, with a concomitant increase in population of more than 10%. However, all this development has come at an enormous cost. It is no exaggeration to say that it has created a nightmare situation for residents. Infrastructure in the town is at breaking point, and the traffic is unequivocally the No. 1 concern. In fact, The Bucks Herald reported last year that Aylesbury has the eighth worst traffic congestion in the country. It was the only town in the top, or perhaps I should say bottom, 10; everywhere else was a city. Like many other residents in my constituency, I have whiled away the hours sitting in queuing traffic on the Tring Road, the Bicester Road or the Wendover Road trying to get from one side of the town to the other. This is all the more frustrating when we know that nearly 50% of the traffic that comes to the town does not actually stop there, but is passing through on its way somewhere else, in the meantime creating an absolute bottleneck.
However, worse is to come for our creaking road network, because the house building has not finished yet—far from it. Aylesbury Vale is expected to accommodate a further 32,000 homes by 2033, with 16,000 of them in and around Aylesbury itself. To have any chance of coping with the huge increase in population this entails, the town needs rapid, significant and sustained investment in infrastructure. The East West Rail Aylesbury spur would go a long way to plugging the gap.
Unfortunately, when funding was granted last year for the construction of phase 2 of East West Rail, to the great consternation of local residents and businesses, it did not extend down to my constituency, but only covered the line between Bicester and Bletchley. This is despite the inclusion of the Aylesbury spur in the Department for Transport’s own document making the case for phase 2 of East West Rail. Indeed, specific reference is made to the town in the text. Let me be clear: the Aylesbury spur is not described as a possible later addition, and it is not a dotted line on the diagram showing the route; it is a clear and integral part of the plan. There is even a very attractive photo of Aylesbury town centre on the East West Rail website, yet suddenly Aylesbury has been excluded from the funding announcement, prompting fears that the money will never come and that the spur will be left to wither and die.
Why this should be was all rather a mystery, because the business case for phase 2 of East West Rail, including the Aylesbury spur, has always been crystal clear. It has a benefit-cost ratio of between 1.3 and 2.4, depending on assumptions made about economic and housing growth in the Oxford-Cambridge arc. The spatial framework for the arc, which the Government have very recently published, would lead one to assume that the BCR is likely to be in the upper half of the range, but in order not to be accused of gilding a lily, let me use the bottom of the range—the figure of 1.3, which is the baseline of the Department for Transport’s national trip end model.
Let us now consider the rail line that has already been given the go-ahead and is under construction, HS2—the bad guy in this story. The full business case published in April last year gives a benefit-cost ratio of 1.2 for the two phases currently given parliamentary approval. That figure of 1.2 is, in other words, lower than the lowest point for East West Rail, but that HS2 figure is not the bottom of its range. It is a figure that includes what are known as wider economic benefits, defined as
“monetised elements where the evidence is developing”.
I think in layman’s language that means, “where we don’t really know yet”. To put it simply, the business case for this phase of East West Rail is stronger than the business case for this phase of HS2.
In addition to the economic benefit, by the Department for Transport’s own admission, the Aylesbury spur would enable my constituents to experience high-speed travel for themselves, rather than just watching trains zip across their beautiful landscape. The strategic case for phase 2 of East West Rail states that the current journey time by rail from Aylesbury to Milton Keynes—a distance of 20 miles as the crow flies—is nearly two and a half hours. It requires two changes and a trip on the London underground. However, with the construction of the Aylesbury spur, that journey time would be slashed to a dizzying 38 minutes. A reduction of 75% in travel time is surely in itself a compelling argument.
While I hope I have made a strong case for East West Rail’s Aylesbury spur, I recognise that there may still be a degree of confusion about why we could possibly want yet more devastation of countryside or disruption to our communities, given our experience with HS2. The answer is simple: the Aylesbury spur would not require such devastation or disruption. That is because the Aylesbury spur is not a brand-new line. This little spur does not need Florence the tunnel boring machine to growl its way beneath the Chilterns, and it will not necessitate ancient woodlands being ripped up or countless farmers to be deprived of their land, yet left waiting years for compensation. In fact, most of the track for the Aylesbury spur is already laid, and currently used for freight. It requires relatively minor adjustments to be converted for passenger use, the addition of some passing tracks, and to be joined with the rest of the EWR line near Calvert. While I am certainly no engineer, this does seem to be well within our country’s capabilities.
In fact, far from replicating the environmental disaster that is HS2, the Aylesbury spur of East West Rail provides another important opportunity to help us in our goal to reach net zero by 2050. This is a commitment that is already being embraced in Aylesbury, most particularly with our designs for a garden town. It has bold ambitions, with sustainable transport at its heart. Our current trial of e-scooters demonstrates our enthusiasm for new and innovative modes of transport. What is more, the Aylesbury spur could drastically reduce the pollution suffered by residents living along the town’s busiest roads. For while Aylesbury Vale generally has good air quality, there are two locations where concentrations of nitrogen dioxide exceed what are known as the objective levels. Unsurprisingly, both are on the arterial routes close to the town centre.
Providing a feasible alternative to travel by rail would enable residents and commuters to leave their cars at home—but not just residents and commuters, Mr Deputy Speaker, because we are just beginning English Tourism Week 2021. I want to see far more tourists coming to visit Aylesbury: to experience the heritage of our historic old town; to enjoy the marvellous performances by our local Unbound theatre company at the Queens Park Arts Centre; to see the uniquely painted Tudor walls in our fine museum; to eat, drink and dance in the restaurants, the bars and the clubs that are springing back to life post pandemic; to walk by the canal and wonder at the beauty of the Chiltern hills on a tricycle tour. Aylesbury is bursting with attractions and it is frankly selfish to keep them for ourselves. The Aylesbury spur would enable so many thousands more people to come from across the country to share in all that we have to offer.
I submit that it is absolutely right and reasonable for my constituents to say to the Government that if we must have all the disruption of HS2 and if we must endure new housing construction, then the least consolation would be to give us the railway that we do want, and indeed thought that we were going to get. It has support from residents, with a petition still collecting signatures. It is championed by Buckinghamshire Council, which has itself contributed millions of pounds to funding the scheme’s development. It is backed by Buckinghamshire’s local enterprise partnership and by Bucks Business First.
The station is there, most of the track is there, and the passengers are poised. Only last week, the Transport Secretary himself told this House that rail will shape our future. He said:
“No other form of transport can bind the nation so effectively and help us to level up our country, bringing new jobs and investment…as we build back from covid.”—[Official Report, 20 May 2021; Vol. 695, c. 888.]
I could not agree more, and, in Aylesbury, we want to be part of that bright new future. It would be odd indeed if, at a time when the Government have pledged to expand the rail network, not shrink it, the planned Aylesbury spur disappeared from the iron web of Great British Railways.
Aylesbury is the proud county town of Buckinghamshire, but our pride is worn lightly. We are humble in our request of Government. I began with a reference to Dickens, I end with one to Rev. W. Awdry: we have no need for the slightly arrogant big blue express engine, Gordon, hurtling across our countryside with a degree of disdain, for us a simple but enthusiastic Thomas the tank engine on a modest spur will suffice.
I respectfully ask the Minister to put a smile on the faces of my constituents and approve funding for the Aylesbury spur, and, in so doing, help level up our town. Make Aylesbury an even better place to live, work, visit and invest.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Greg Smith has sought and received permission to make a short contribution from the mover of the motion, Rob Butler, and the Minister responding, Chris Heaton-Harris, and I have been informed as per the rules.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Andrew Stephenson
I know that my hon. Friend has met the Rail Minister on numerous occasions to discuss the Croydon bottleneck and the impact on stations across his constituency. We recognise the importance of the issue and are continuing to work closely with Network Rail and operators to develop the scheme further.
Rob Butler [V]
My constituents are really enthusiastic about a piece of rail infrastructure that could bring a real benefit to their lives. No, they have not changed their minds about HS2; the railway they really want to see is the Aylesbury spur of East West Rail.
However, funding has so far not been secured, despite it being in the original proposals and despite the DFT’s own figures showing a stronger business case for East West Rail than for HS2. Will my hon. Friend commit to working across Government to get funding for the Aylesbury spur, which would reduce car use, cut emissions and help to level up my town?
Andrew Stephenson
As my hon. Friend is aware, in January the Government approved an additional £760 million of new funding to deliver East West Rail between Oxford and Milton Keynes. I know that he has met the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Rail Minister to make the case for connecting Aylesbury to East West Rail. I understand how important the connection is to his constituency, and we continue to explore the options.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rob Butler Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is nodding her head. I have had a similar constituency experience of that, where roads for estates built 15 years ago still have not been adopted. I do think that it is an issue, and I undertake to work on this complex legal issue with my right hon. Friend the Housing Secretary, because it is a joint transport and housing problem, and I have seen how much difficulty it can create for all of our constituents.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Aylesbury has recently begun a trial of e-scooters, and I have been lucky enough to try one myself. However, at the same time that I was sticking to my cycle lane, others were trying to pull wheelies in the middle of the road, which is quite a feat, let me tell you. Will the Secretary of State consider requiring registration plates on all scooters, if legislation is introduced to permit them, so that irresponsible riders can be identified and punished?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; while we are very keen to see the roll-out of e-scooters, and about 20 communities are already enjoying the benefits, it is also the case that we want to ensure that the regulation is right and that every single e-scooter is properly insured and built to the proper standards. That is why we are carrying out a very careful and cautious programme to roll them out, thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), and we will be reporting back to the House what we learn from those trials and ensuring that the problems that my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) raises are not experienced elsewhere.