Rail Infrastructure (Train Operating Companies)

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Today’s announcement is predominantly about England, because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the Welsh Government are taking the lead in designing the franchise. I know that they have sympathy with this view, because they are pathfinders at the moment in securing bids from integrated consortiums for the proposed Cardiff metro service, but I will discuss this with the Welsh Government, as I have regular conversations with them. I hope that they may want to build on some of the things we are seeking to do in England.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

The Secretary of State’s decision to reintegrate train and track, where appropriate, is sensible. Does he accept, however, that my constituents will regard his failure to remove the London metro services from the wholly discredited Southeastern franchise as a complete cop-out and failure, and that it makes sense at all, as far as rail users in my constituency or I am concerned?

[Chris Grayling]

I know that my hon. Friend feels passionately about this, but I do not agree with him. We will have the opportunity, between London, my Department and Kent, to design an improved franchise for the future. What I had to decide was whether the benefits set out in the Mayor’s business plan, which did not involve increases in capacity on my hon. Friend’s local routes into London, and the incremental improvements that Transport for London claimed it might be able to deliver were really worth putting his railway line through the biggest restructuring since the 1920s. My judgment is that we can achieve the benefits that TfL is arguing for through partnership, rather than through massive reorganisation, and that is my aim.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Neill Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Yes. This is on my desk right now and I recognise its importance. I am very pleased that over the summer the link to north America was kept in place. Good connectivity in Northern Ireland is, remains, and always will be very important.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

On 16 July I wrote to the rail Minister requesting a meeting to discuss the daily failings that my constituents have at the hands of Southeastern Trains and Network Rail. Will he say yes to that meeting today?

[Paul Maynard]

Yes.

Southeastern Rail Services

Robert Neill Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

On one level it is a pleasure to raise this issue, but on another it is a great sadness. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to put the issue forward and a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a great sadness, because frankly the debate should not be necessary.

Bromley and Chislehurst is quintessential London commuter-land. A very high percentage of its working population travels up to London to earn its daily crust. They are dependent entirely on Southeastern trains. We have no underground as an alternative. There is, in effect, a monopoly supply. People in Bromley and Chislehurst, as in other parts of south-east London, are being badly let down. It is significant that a number of Members of Parliament served by the Southeastern trains franchise are here in the Chamber today. I note in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett), whose constituents have suffered appallingly recently, following the landslide at Barnehurst. That demonstrated the complexity of the issues and the delay in putting them right—it was a long time before his constituents knew what was happening. It also demonstrated the fact that there is a shared responsibility between the train operator, Southeastern, and Network Rail, the owner and provider of the infrastructure. Both have failed woefully.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s opening statement. It is not entirely Southeastern’s fault: Network Rail is pretty abysmal too. Whoever takes over the franchise will still have the problem of Network Rail to sort out.

[Robert Neill]

That is perfectly true and that is an important point. In terms of responsibility, the split is about 70:30. A lot of the problems are down to Network Rail and signalling, but there are real failures with Southeastern relating to the passing on of information and other issues, including poor areas of customer service, which I will come on to. I know my hon. Friend’s constituents have the same issues.

Passenger ratings show how bad the situation is. Key figures from Transport Focus show satisfaction ratings for Southeastern on value for money at 35%. Satisfaction ratings for how the company deals with delays are at 31%. Southeastern is ranked the second-lowest for overall satisfaction in the country, at 75%. If we look at the London commuter part of the Southeastern trains franchise, the figures are even worse—at about the mid-60s. I suggest even those statistics do not break it down. If we took off rush hour commuters from that, where the delays and knock-ons are often more acute, the satisfaction rate would go down even further, demonstrating the real difficulty.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

My constituents also use the Southeastern network. Day after day their trains are being delayed, particularly at peak times. This morning all trains between Maidstone East and London between 6.30 am and 7.30 am were, according to a message I received from a constituent, cancelled. These are unacceptable levels of service. I have asked the Secretary of State to let us know whether Southeastern is compliant with its franchise. Will my hon. Friend join me in asking the Secretary of State to respond to that request, and, if it is not compliant, in calling for action?

[Robert Neill]

I am sure we would all echo that. My hon. Friend is quite right. According to my information, well over 20 rush-hour trains from Kent to London were cancelled because of overrunning engineering works. Sometimes, the delays were over two hours, which affects my constituents at Bromley South station, many of whom use those trains into London. So there is a real problem here.

I have quoted from the official statistics, but people sometimes think them dry and remote, so I want to read out some of the experiences put to me directly, either on Twitter or by email, which I think capture the problem. These are people talking about their problems on Southeastern trains. In my constituency, people pay £1,600 to £1,700 a year for a season ticket. One reads:

“People’s lives are literally being made a misery by Southeastern trains”.

Another reads:

“The service I have personally experienced this month has been shocking, almost daily delays”.

A third reads:

“I got to the train on time, but the train itself seldom runs on time because of track problems, congestion, lack of stock, no drivers—not on”.

I cannot disagree with that. I use the service myself on an almost daily basis to come to Westminster, and I now factor delays into my journey. It is absolutely ludicrous.

A fourth quote reads:

“Weekend engineering works mean no trains and earliest bus doesn’t get me to work on time so no overtime for 5 weeks”.

This is somebody on low pay whose job is being made a misery by this poor performance. “Not value for money” says another—well, you can say that again! Another reads:

“There is not enough time to write all that is wrong”.

Even this Adjournment debate is not long enough to expand on all that is wrong.

I have two final quotes. The first reads:

“The delays happen on a daily basis. My train is delayed again…use the Hayes line for a week, you’ll see.”

That is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), and is wholly within Greater London. One final quote, for those further into Kent:

“7.40 Dunton Green to London delayed this morning to let 2 fast trains through. Are Metro customers 2nd class citizens?”

That is the feeling actually. There is an inherent conflict or tension in the Southeastern trains franchise, as currently constructed, between the high-volume and frequent demands of the inner-suburban services, such as in my area, and the demands of those coming from further into Kent.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I assure my hon. Friend that the frustration of the inner-London customers is shared entirely by those a little further out. I have the great privilege of representing people who use the Tonbridge line, the Maidstone East line and the Medway Valley line. All three have had a woeful service for as long as I can remember. A survey I put out recently found that nearly 90% thought the service had gone downhill since Christmas, which is really saying something, because it was hardly uphill before then. I urge the Minister to do exactly what she has been talking about, which is to hold these people to account, get the money back off them when they fail and make sure that privatisation works by making the companies pay.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, although it is worth stressing that the failures are not just with the privatised train operating company, but with the publicly owned Network Rail. I draw a contrast between this line, which I now use, and the line I used before I moved to south-east London, the c2c line, which is also privatised but which has hugely improved its performance and satisfaction levels since it was privatised. So this is not an ideological issue; it is about sheer competence, and that involves enforcing the terms of the contract.

[Bob Stewart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Robert Neill]

Once more, but then I must press on.

[Bob Stewart]

My hon. Friend has made the case for what we have all been asking for—Transport for London to take over as fast as possible.

[Robert Neill]

That is entirely right, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is also present, would share that view too. We welcome that decision by the Department, but it is not going to happen until 2018. What we are concerned about is what will be done in the interim. For a start, when Southeastern is posting doubled profits, it sticks in the craw of my residents and commuters that they are paying a premium price for what is not an acceptable and not even a remotely premium service. There is plenty of money to pay the genuine financial penalties that are necessary if a private contract arrangement is to work. I hope it could be used to offer some form of reimbursement or remission of the fare increases for our commuters, who are simply not getting what they have paid for. That is a basic failing, and I hope the Minister will—

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(George Hollingbery.)

[Robert Neill]

A sense of déjà vu has arrived, and probably rather more swiftly than the 7.39 at Waterloo East did last night as I was going home. That minor delay did not even warrant an explanation, which is another issue.

Punctuality is a real issue, as is overcrowding, which has been made worse by the timetable changes caused by the engineering work at London Bridge. That is necessary work, but there are some basic things that Southeastern can get right. More people from my constituency stations use the Cannon Street service in the rush hour than use the Charing Cross service, because it stops at London Bridge, which has the interchange for the Jubilee line, Canary Wharf and whatever. There are generally fewer carriages on the Cannon Street trains than on the Charing Cross trains, which is the complete reverse of where the demand is. That is a basic failure that could be put right now.

I know that Southeastern is talking to the Department about being able to transfer stock from other parts of the network. That needs to go ahead swiftly, because so far the new trains that have been produced on the franchise have tended to go on the high-speed link trains and have not benefited those of us on any of the commuter services. That needs to be taken on board straightaway. I would welcome the transfer of the franchise, because London Overground has a good track record of performance, but in the interim I hope the Minister will sit down and instruct Southeastern and Network Rail to work with the Mayor’s office and Transport for London immediately to talk about transitional phases, to see whether it is not possible by agreement to speed up the transfer of the franchise and certainly, as has been said, to enforce rigorously the contractual terms to the benefit of passengers and customers in the balance of the franchise.

Finally, let me highlight some other failings. I have talked about timetabling issues, such as the nonsense of the mismatch of rolling stock between Charing Cross and Cannon Street services. Even with the changes in the timetable, it is pretty bizarre that the interchange at Grove Park for the Bromley North service—a small spur line—was almost deliberately timed to miss the most convenient connecting train, which means people have to hang around for perhaps another 15 minutes or more. That is basic. Why can Southeastern not get that right?

Charing Cross station is in the heart of London’s theatre-land. Many London commuters, certainly from Chislehurst in my constituency, will go up to the theatre from time to time. The last direct train to stations such as Elmstead Woods and Chislehurst leaves at 10.36 in the evening. Otherwise, anyone who has gone to a show in town will have to wait until gone midnight. That puts huge pressure on them, because otherwise they will have to cart around on the District line to Cannon Street, when there is a station just down the way, or fork out for a taxi to come back from Orpington. The engineering work at London Bridge cannot be an excuse for that. That is just a clear lack of customer care.

On the most basic level, the staff at our local train stations are excellent. They cope with a pretty poor situation very well and sometimes they get it in the neck when it is not their fault. The people I regularly deal with at Chislehurst and Elmstead Woods are part of the community and they work really hard, but they are not given the information to deal with things and when they try to help, it is not taken up by the management.

Chislehurst—not the busiest station on the network, but a pretty busy commuter station, as most would imagine—has one automatic ticket machine. It is pretty busy in the rush hour. For the last four weeks, that automatic ticket machine has been unable to take credit cards. Despite daily reports by the station staff that that is a problem—one can imagine the queues it is causing, with people trying to fork out cash-only at that time in the day—it has still not been put right, and it was still not right this morning when I went there. That is a basic failure, and those are the sorts of things that ought to be jumped on from a great height by the operator.

The level of repeated delay is the issue that really irritates my constituents, but the issue of compensation is also raised. People can claim compensation, but it is not a lot of help on a London suburban network, because the delay has to be 30 minutes. If a journey is supposed to take only 25 minutes, it will have to be doubled or more before anyone is entitled to compensation, which will not matter, because the start of their day’s work will have been mucked around no end in any event. That does not work effectively for suburban commuters—another strong reason why it is better to split the franchise and put short-journey but high-frequency services under the Mayor’s office. Perhaps we could have a better compensation scheme to reflect those commuters’ needs more effectively.

Against that context, I hope that I have taken the chance to ventilate my constituents’ concerns. It is not good enough if large public bodies or current privately owned bodies acting under contract are persistently unresponsive. I give credit to the Minister for taking steps and holding summits with local MPs and the top management of both Network Rail and Southeastern—an initiative that we had not seen before. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. She also warned that when the franchise was renewed, it was the last chance. I am sorry, but they have drunk the last-chance saloon dry by now, and it is about time to start calling time on their franchise.

I hope that the Minister will continue to press on these issues and provide us with a detailed timeframe for when she is next going to meet the management. Will she undertake to meet me to discuss the specific concerns I have raised on behalf of other Members in the area and ensure that all Members are kept briefed on what specifically is happening? We need to be able to see the whites of the eyes of the management, which does not always happen. More initiatives have to be followed up with real measures, which hurt any company where it normally hurts—in the pocket—and we need to look more rigorously at the publicly owned entity Network Rail, which is responsible for a very great deal of the problem, but basks in comparative protection in contractual terms. It should not be allowed to do so. That needs to be thoroughly investigated. Frankly, in the private sector, heads would be rolling if services were run in the way Network Rail and Southeastern run them. There would be proper accountability to customers and shareholders.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have trespassed on the House’s time, and I believe that my constituents and those in neighbouring constituencies are still more grateful for that opportunity.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

I have had a dry January, so I have not been in the last-chance saloon once, but it has enabled me to have a clear head and to look carefully at the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) has raised—and this is not the first time they have been raised. Indeed, silenced on the Front Bench next to me are my right hon. Friends the Members for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) and for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). They, and many others who are able to speak, have left me in no doubt of the concerns of their constituents. These are daily concerns, because many people use these trains on a daily basis.

I welcome the opportunity once again to express my concerns about some of the issues raised, to talk a bit about what the Government are doing and to try to offer some bright spots. We have talked a bit about déja vu, and I am happy to keep talking about these matters for as long as it takes to get these services fixed. These are vital services that are delivering people to high-value jobs, and not necessarily just to high-earning jobs, but to lower-income jobs. These jobs are vital in the most dynamic part of the UK economy. It is absolutely right that those people have the transport investment that they need.

I do not defend the current system in any way, but my hon. Friend knows very well that these lines have been neglected for many a long year. It has been a failure of successive Governments to invest. In some cases, the tracks these trains are running over date from the 1930s and have not had proper investment subsequently. It was always going to be a challenge to deal with what is the busiest part of the railway, with 23% of this country’s railway journeys made under the Govia Thameslink Railway and Southeastern franchises, and to keep this huge number of people moving. It was always going to be a challenge to do the required improvements for the Thameslink works and the London Bridge investments without creating disruption. I want to thank passengers who, I know from my many visits to the station, get that and are very forgiving about the need for that investment.

I know my hon. Friend will be pleased to be reassured that I have made sorting this out an absolute priority. The return of services to a high-performing railway on this franchise and indeed on GTR has been my No. 1 priority since May. He may well say, “What have you achieved over all this time?” What I will say is that we have had Network Rail, the operators, Transport Focus and anyone who needs to be there down in the weeds of the problem.

Although I am interested, I do not think customers are interested in whose fault it is. They do not need to know that engineering works overran this morning, or that a tamping machine broke down. All they care about is that 20 of their services from my hon. Friend’s constituency were cancelled. We are not in the business of finger-pointing; we are in the business of working together to solve the problems as these necessary engineering works proceed.

Passenger numbers have more than doubled since privatisation, and, indeed, the number of passengers trying to travel on Southeastern’s trains has increased by 30% since it took over the franchise. As we know, investment has not kept up with that level of demand.

My hon. Friend mentioned crowding and rolling stock, an issue on which we have specifically focused. I am determined to review the business case for running the additional, bigger 12-car trains on the metro service in particular. I give the House an undertaking that there will be a decision on that in the next couple of months. If we decide to go ahead—if the business case is favourable —Southeastern will put additional trains on the tracks late in 2016.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful for that assurance, but will my hon. Friend also undertake to provide my colleagues and me with a timeframe for that process in due course, along with the precise details of how it is to be achieved? All too often, Southeastern has made promises, but the deadline for delivery has been extended.

[Claire Perry]

I shall be happy to do that, but I want to ensure that Southeastern gets the best possible deal for those trains. They would be provided by a third-party rolling stock company, and I do not want to prejudice the negotiations. As I said, I want the trains with the additional carriages to run on the metro service, because there has been so much overcrowding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Perry]

If my hon. Friend will bear with me and can spare the time, I will say a couple of words about the genuine consultation that we are running. The change could indeed solve some problems, but I know that constituents outside the London boundary have real concerns.

The intention is to complete the review very quickly and secure a final decision on the business case in the next couple of months, so that, if it makes sense, the extra capacity can be put on the metro services by the end of the year, with an additional slug of capacity to come in 2018. Southeastern has already added 95,000 seats to the network, although it is a bit like the M25: as soon as the seats are provided, people travel, because they feel that they can now get on to the trains. In some instances, we are running to stand still.

Southeastern has also refreshed and improved its trains. I sometimes get on to a train and think, “This looks nice”, and then remember that it is a 40-year-old train that has been repainted. What we want are trains that look good, provide capacity, and have state-of-the-art toilets, and some of that has been achieved on this line.

Let me now deal with the issue of performance. Basically, people can tolerate a great deal if their trains run on time, but I know that my hon. Friend shares my disappointment at the fact that this franchise holder has not met its public performance measure targets at any time over the last year—well, it may have done so on a daily basis, but not on a monthly basis. I can tell my hon. Friend that 60% of that failure is infrastructure-related, about 25% is the fault of Southeastern and involves issues related and unrelated to trains, and the rest is “train operator on train operator” stuff. I do not think customers care about that. My hon. Friend is right to say that we can demand improvements through the franchising programme, we can hold operators to account, we can demand plans and we can issue financial penalties, but what we actually want to do is run a reliable railway. I also make the following commitment to my hon. Friend and the House. Although the quadrant taskforce has been running and there has been an unprecedented level of co-operation between the operator and Network Rail, the industry needs to do more. I will be having that conversation with it in the next few days.

It is crucial, not least for the delivery of the Thameslink service which is so important in increasing the number of journeys through the core of London, that the outer bits of the track work effectively. Not only are the current levels of delays unacceptable, and in some cases inexcusable, but we have to get this working right to get the benefit out of the £6.5 billion the Government are investing in Thameslink. We have to keep demanding that Southeastern and Network Rail work together to keep the disruption to a minimum.

There have been some changes, although that is not always obvious. There have, for example, been small changes such as putting relief drivers at Cannon Street, so if there is a delay drivers are quickly on hand and do not have to move around; continuing to review the timetable to make sure there is resilience should there be a delay; and making sure trains leave the stations and the depot exactly on time—not 10 or 20 seconds late—because in a busy stopping service all that builds up.

I am very sorry to say one of the great causes of delay is trespass and suicide on the line. Someone takes their life every 30 hours on the national rail network. That causes an immense amount of delay and is, of course, often a dreadfully distressing experience for the staff and train drivers, as well as there being the tragedy of the loss. I know that Southeastern and the whole industry are working closely with the Samaritans to try and reduce that.

On compensation, in an ideal world we would not be paying it at all because the trains would be running perfectly on time. I am keen, however, to reform the delay repay scheme. It is already among the most generous in Europe; train users in other countries do not get a lot of money back. However, although in delay repay we have one of the most generous compensation schemes, we want to go further. As the Chancellor said in his autumn statement, we want to take the time at which the clock starts ticking from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, which will start to address some of my hon. Friend’s constituency problems. I expect to make announcements on that shortly. We are gearing up to reform that and I will have further details on it.

I also want to point out to the House the London Bridge improvements. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Part of that station will be open in August of this year, although there will be continued disruption to some Southeastern services. I urge the operators and all Members to make sure everyone is fully aware of those changes. By 2018, when this station opens, it will be a brand-new, state-of-the-art station with much more capacity, able to run many more services through the core of London.

[Robert Neill]

I welcome the Minister’s comments on the compensation scheme. When she discusses, with her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, funding issues with the Treasury, might she bear in mind that, while London Bridge improvements are critical in the long term, the price of that has been that my constituents and those in the surrounding areas have been deliberately given, in effect, a substandard service for the better part of four-plus years or so? That should be reflected in any future fare increases and in making sure that there is proper generosity in future compensation schemes.

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend raises a good point, and it was exactly that conversation which led to the decision to cap fare increases at RPI plus zero for the whole of this Parliament. We effectively now have rail fares going up at the lowest level, certainly relative to wages, in over a decade. We will continue that cap, which is costing the Government about £700 million a year, precisely because we do not think that fares should be going up at a time when we are doing engineering works and causing disruption, not just at London Bridge but right across the country. We have a £38 billion investment programme and we cannot deliver that without some disruption. That cap is worth about £425 to the typical commuter on a season ticket over the course of this Parliament.

My hon. Friend raised the question of customer service levels, and he was right to say that Southeastern was not at the top of the list for overall satisfaction. It is not quite at the bottom, but it is not at the top either. I know that there are many people out there who are genuinely in despair about their journeys. Nothing could be more dispiriting for them than showing up at the station only to find that their train is delayed, or being unable to get home to pick up their children from day care at the regular time. That is incredibly dispiriting, and that is why we need to make these investments. However, 75% of the users of Southeastern say they are satisfied with their journeys. There might be pockets of dissatisfaction, but overall, three out of four users are satisfied. We would clearly like that figure to be higher, of course.

I can tell the House that we included in the franchise agreement some specific improvements to customer services that we wanted the operator to make. My hon. Friend talked about information systems, and they are not always perfect. However, the company has made a considerable investment in better information systems, including through giving its staff real-time devices. Drilling through the numbers, I was interested to note that the score for how well Southeastern deals with delays has gone up by 9 percentage points in the past year. Similarly, the score for the attitude and helpfulness of staff has gone up by 4 percentage points, so it looks as though some of the improvements are starting to bear fruit. The company has also made a £5 million investment in stations, which has included deep cleans at Bromley South, Bromley North and Chislehurst, which I hope my hon. Friend has noticed. I do not have the numbers on station improvements, but I think that passengers are starting to recognise that they are taking place.

I understand the concerns and I know that the industry has to do more, particularly on the infrastructure side, to stop the delays. My hon. Friend is a long-standing campaigner on these matters, and I want to draw his attention to the proposals for London Overground to take control of some of these metro services. This is in response to tireless campaigning on the part of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) —for obvious reasons—and the prospectus sets out some thoughtful questions that need to be answered. Clearly, some hon. Members will think that some of the services involved should go into a TfL-type service, although others might wish to raise concerns about that, particularly in relation to democratic accountability. I believe that there is a solution out there. This kind of devolution of service has happened before.

The new partnership is designed to give passengers what they need. We are trying to design the industry around passengers and customers. This proposal could deliver more frequent services and more reliable trains. It would also move the decisions on stations and stopping patterns away from Horseferry Road—much as I have fantastic officials—and closer to the people who actually use the services. This will be similar to the devolution process that we have seen in relation to transport investment in the north, as well as the support for TfL. I urge all Members who have an interest in these devolution proposals to stand up and ensure that their voices and those of their constituents and transport users are heard. The deadline is 18 March.

I would be the first to acknowledge that the system is not delivering for customers at the moment. When we talk to commuters, we find that they have been incredibly tolerant and understanding. They welcome the investment, and they want to see a joined-up industry that can respond to their needs, particularly when there are disruptions and delays. It is my Department’s job to facilitate that, either through the contracting process or, as my hon. Friend rightly says, through conversations with Network Rail, which is indeed an arm’s-length public body. I give the House my full commitment to ensure that this happens.

The aim is to return these vital parts of the railway, which move people around the busiest parts of the network, to high performance by 2018. If the results of these unprecedented levels of investment cannot be seen and felt by passengers, we will need to do better, and I offer the House my full commitment on this. I thank my hon. Friend once again for providing this opportunity to discuss these matters. He asked whether I would agree to meet him to discuss what is happening, and of course my door is always open.

Question put and agreed to.

Airports Commission: Final Report

Robert Neill Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) that I, too, believe in getting on with things and in clarity. They are good, but getting it right is better. The problem with the Davies report is that it gets it fundamentally wrong. My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), in a powerful intervention, made the point that although the report puts options on the table, they are not deliverable, because it is so chock-full of internal contractions. The contradictions have been well highlighted by my hon. Friends the Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) and for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and others.

The Heathrow option is so shot through with contradictions that it will be delayed time and again. It is a recipe for judicial review. Attempting to expand Heathrow will be a field day for well-heeled west London lawyers, but it will not deliver the connectivity that is required for the rest of the country. It is a blind alley to go down the Heathrow option. The process is flawed, the consultation is fundamentally flawed and it is not, in my judgment, legally sound.

My second point is that the Heathrow option is economically flawed. It is clear that the case does not stack up. Willie Walsh does not make the comments he is making for the sake of his health, but because the case is economically illiterate.

[Mark Menzies]

The reason Willie Walsh has taken this position is that BA acquired BMI to get its hands on more Heathrow slots. Having spent a vast sum of money acquiring BMI and the Heathrow slots, he does not want lots more Heathrow slots to come along and weaken his economic case.

[Robert Neill]

With respect to my hon. Friend, this is not about one company any more than it is about one individual constituency or one part of London.

The fundamental problem, as has been well demonstrated by other hon. Members in this debate, is that a third runway at Heathrow would be but a sticking plaster that, almost immediately, would be over capacity. There would then be a need for a fourth runway, which would not be achievable in legal or environmental terms because, whatever one thinks about the matter, the Supreme Court judgment has changed things. We cannot ignore that. The truth is that we would be sinking a huge amount of capital into something that would be a white elephant by the time it opened. That is not what I regard as getting on with things or with doing something that is deliverable. That is the key distinction.

We do need to move forward and there is an alternative. Heathrow may well have been the optimal place for an airport in 1948 or 1950. At that time, London was a shrinking city. Its population was reducing and nobody anticipated the massive population growth to come. Heathrow is no longer in an appropriate place. We therefore have to look at the alternatives. Nobody is saying, and I am certainly not saying, that we should close Heathrow down. It is an important part of the west London economy, but there are more readily deliverable options to increase capacity. I am in favour of increasing airport capacity in London and the south-east.

My constituents, like many of us who wrote a letter to The Daily Telegraph today, are not from west London. My constituency is not directly affected by the flight paths, although we do suffer from stacking. The irony is that the stacking would be removed for only a very temporary period by a third runway, because the overcrowding would return, meaning that the stacking would be back until people tried to get a fourth runway, which would be impossible. It is a complete canard or red herring to suggest that it would solve things.

We need to get on with the option that can be most quickly delivered. No option is perfect and I might not have started from this point. I have sympathy with my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst). If we had looked at the Foulness option many years ago, perhaps it would have been attractive, but we are not in that place now and revisiting the idea will not improve its deliverability.

I take the view that the Gatwick option is the right one because it is deliverable. No doubt there will be challenges, but the potential for legal challenge is significantly lower around Gatwick and the issues of dispute are significantly more discrete. It is therefore much more readily deliverable and we have a much better chance of delivering it on time. Having an additional runway at Gatwick would not exclude the possibility of more imaginative options being developed for the future or prejudge other ideas, but it would give us an immediate capacity increase. It would not involve anything like the amount of sunk cost that would be involved in the potentially unviable option of a third runway at Heathrow. Those are all good reasons for opposing Heathrow expansion.

Finally—this is the only thing that I say as a London politician, as I am sure the Minister will understand—I fought the 2010 election and two elections for the London Assembly by saying that I opposed Heathrow expansion. I campaigned twice for my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) to be elected Mayor, while saying that we opposed Heathrow expansion. Call me old-fashioned, but I rather like to keep my promises, and I hope that we can do that for this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

We have a duty to deliver a modern competitive economy for ourselves and for future generations. National decisions will always be tough, but they need to be taken in the interests of the country.

It is very clear that the south-east needs additional runway capacity. Sir Howard’s foreword to the Airports Commission report notes that there have been no new full-length runways built in the south-east since the 1940s. Air travel growth is forecast to slow to a median estimate of 2% a year until 2050, compared with old growth rates of 5% since the 1970s. However, UK passenger numbers are still forecast to increase from 225 million today to 315 million in 2030 and to 445 million by 2050. If we overlay that date with current capacity, it shows Heathrow and Gatwick at 100% capacity by 2020, and all other London airports—Stansted, London City, Luton and Southend—at 100% by 2030. Half the UK population uses air travel each year. It will only grow. As we have a growing international middle class, I certainly want Britain to be a destination of choice. If we want to continue as the global economy we are, these will be constraints to growth.

There was much good news about growth in yesterday’s spending review, but it is predicated on our global economy. We face losing out as a global centre allowing point-to-point travel, particularly in relation to connecting the UK with the new dynamic economies of the world, if we do not get going. We are already lagging behind Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. We need only look at Dubai. In 2001, it ranked as the 99th in the world in terms of international passengers. By 2011, it was fourth in the world and it will overtake Heathrow as the No. 1 international airport within a year. We are seeing similar meteoric growth at Istanbul, which is rapidly becoming an international hub.

I am not speaking today to suggest Heathrow is the only answer, or to discount Gatwick. The operators of each airport have made their own persuasive arguments and the economics of expansion for the country are obvious. What I would like to emphasise is the benefit of regional airports, particularly in the shorter and intermediate sector. I note, to the great benefit no doubt of Southampton, the support in the spending review yesterday for new air routes to Munich and Lyon.

Returning to the Heathrow versus Gatwick argument, this is a matter for right hon. and hon. Members in those areas to overcome. There are obvious connectivity, air quality and noise issues to consider. I am here to put on the table a relief valve for current pressures. Whatever is decided, the lead time before expansion will be a decade, a decade in which we will fall further behind in the international aviation league. Too often, the UK is behind the curve, whether on energy generation, railways, roads, Thames crossings and airport provision. That is a criticism of all Governments in the past 30 years.

To increase capacity in the south-east, and free up valuable slots and develop and accommodate growth, we have Manston airport, which is just 80 miles away. It is ready to go within months to take freight-only aircraft from both Heathrow and Gatwick, to offer new routes in the low-cost market, and as an immediate solution to opening up additional intercontinental routes, particularly to growing markets. It will never be, it could not be and I would not want it to be a major hub airport.

As Members may know, Manston airport was closed a year ago and sits unused. It has an uncertain future. In both parts of Thanet, north and south, there is a desire for aviation activity to recommence and with it the opportunities, for instance, for emergency provision—the Virgin incident last year blocked Gatwick for eight hours. We also have the opportunity for new industries in the UK, including big jet dismantling and recycling.

I bet Members must wonder why all this has not already happened. Very simply, the UK Independence party-run local authority was elected on a single strong policy of promising back-to-back compulsory purchase orders, but it has given up and backed out of the deal. There we are: a huge runway sitting idle. It is well connected and can take any size of aircraft, but it is doing nothing.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. From my experience as a Communities and Local Government Minister, I am aware of the benefits that Manston would bring. Does he not also agree that, fortunately, Conservative-controlled Kent County Council takes a much more progressive and sensible view of the value of economic growth in this area? In fact, the development of Manston would be entirely consistent with our devolution of economic powers to our regions and shire counties.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I tend to agree that Kent County Council is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to supporting Manston, but it could be a key driver for economic development.

Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

I am not going to name individual LEPs at this stage in the debate. If the Minister talks to LEPs, he will find that they agree with my view. I used to sit on the board of a LEP until three years ago. They have access to much smaller budgets than RDAs could have and to far too many small funding pots. The model is too fragmented and too short term. I suggest that he speaks to some of the LEPs if he does not think that there is room for improvement along those lines, because I think he will hear from them what he has been hearing from me this afternoon. What the LEPs are looking for and what they need is longer-term horizons if they are to act more strategically. The Government need to understand the need for more local decision making and fewer centrally imposed constraints, and making these changes to LEPs would be a step forward in allowing that to happen.

England’s local government finance settlement is one of the most centralised anywhere in the world. Councils lack the freedom they need to innovate to the maximum and to spend as much as they would like on local priorities. Even London, which is currently more devolved than anywhere else in the country, is reliant on central Government for three quarters of its funding. That compares with figures of just 30% in New York and 25% in Berlin. London is a world city and it is competing with other world cities that have much more control over their own destinies. London does not need to be kept on such a tight leash, and nor do the other cities and regions across the United Kingdom that also hope to grow their roles in the future.

The Communities and Local Government Committee concluded that local authorities in England have limited control over local taxation and, as a consequence, rely by comparison disproportionately on central Government funding. New clause 24 does not prescribe a particular settlement, but calls on the Secretary of State to publish a framework for further devolution of fiscal powers that is in keeping with the approach that the Government have taken throughout this Bill including, but not limited to, setting and re-evaluating local tax rates banding and discounts. We would like the Government at least to consider allowing councils to add additional council tax bands at the top and the bottom of the scale. That would allow for very large properties to be charged more and for smaller properties to be charged less, which is a move towards a more progressive model of taxation.

I have some experience in this area. Before I came to this House, I was leader of Lambeth council. We froze council tax for six years after taking over from a Tory-Liberal Democrat administration that had pushed up council tax by 24% in a single year. The Government need not worry about profligate Tory or Lib Dem councils behaving in that way, because they are accountable to their local electorate. However, that should not be used as an excuse to prevent more localisation together with a fair equalisation mechanism operating across the country. I hope that we will hear more about that during the autumn statement in just a few weeks’ time. The Bill strikes me as another appropriate place to be putting in some of those measures to drive forward the devolution agenda and the ability of local councils to ensure that they have the resources that they need to exercise fully the powers that they will increasingly be acquiring.

The Government can and should go further. They are devolving some of the powers, but little of the money. Devolution without the resources to make it work is not ambitious devolution; it is devolution where the Secretary of State remains the puppet master pulling all the strings, too often afraid to let go.

On new clause 34, we welcome the fact that new sub-national transport bodies must consult adjoining authorities before making a proposal. On transport, the Government have recognised that the devolution of powers to combined authorities concerns neighbouring authorities that are not part of those combined authorities, but are affected by their decisions. I am thinking about areas such as Plymouth in relation to Cornwall, Chesterfield in relation to Sheffield, and Warrington in relation to Greater Manchester. This is an important principle, but it extends to other areas beyond transport.

Decisions made over health, for example, could have an impact on neighbouring populations. I am thinking about proposals for hospital closures, new hospitals, and reconfiguration of regional or strategic health services. Decisions over Sunday trading could also have an effect should those plans go ahead—of course I hope that they will not.

New clause 36 would ensure that regard is given to neighbouring authorities affected by devolution deals. It would be on the same principle as the Government’s new clause 34, so I cannot imagine what objection the Government might have to it. If we want to build support for devolution and not to fuel resentment, this clause needs to be included, and we intend to test the will of the Committee on it by pressing it to a vote.

Finally, let me turn to new clause 39 on environmental considerations. This new clause places a duty on the Secretary of State to set out guidance on how co-operation between combined authorities can be strengthened to mitigate environmental problems and develop green infrastructure. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has carried out an assessment of the current devolution proposals and found that there is an appetite among local councils for greater co-operation on environmental priorities.

The duty to co-operate is not currently strong enough, and local planning can fail to take into consideration the ability of the community to build a positive vision for the local environment. Such changes would strengthen and improve this Bill. I am interested to hear the Government’s position on them when the Minister has an opportunity to respond.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) on the sentiments of his speech, if not entirely on the detail, because many of us have some sympathy for the need for further fiscal devolution and will be interested to see what form that can eventually take. With no disrespect to those broader issues, I shall refer to new clause 38, which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) and the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and which relates specifically to enabling devolution to joint committees in London. That might sound technical, but it is actually important. I stress that new clause 38 is signed by the three of us on a cross-party basis. In fact, it is supported by the all-party parliamentary group for London, by London Councils on a cross-party basis and by the Mayor of London. So this is a London ask to the Government.

New clause 38 essentially relates to the fact that, as certainly I and a number of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House said on Second Reading, it is sometimes thought that devolution in London is a job done. Well, it is not; more remains to be done on devolution in London. The Government recognise that fact—potential means of devolution to the Mayor and to London boroughs have already been discussed—but the purpose of new clause 38 is to probe the Government’s thinking a little, and I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s response on precisely what legislative framework is required to achieve devolution to the Mayor and to London boroughs, either for all of London in some cases or specifically, as would be allowed under these proposals, to parts of London.

We have been talking about the various devolution deals. I was delighted to hear two of them announced today. Of course, they are important and they rightly vary from place to place. Well, the same applies to London. By its very nature and size, London is infinitely bigger than any other city and any other potential devolution deal. For that reason and because of its nature and complexity—although with the directly elected Mayor and the Greater London Authority, it was the first to have a form of devolution of the kind that the Government envisage, which we welcome being rolled out elsewhere—it has different governance arrangements. In particular, we must recognise the role of the 32 London boroughs—far more than in any other proposed combined mayoral authority—as well as that of the London Assembly.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking specifically about London, but as the devolution deal goes through, will it not also need to be reflected in the broader picture—for example, if there were a mayor for Oxfordshire and a number of combined authorities?

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend makes an entirely fair point, and I recognise his long experience in local government and his interest in the matter throughout his time in the House. It is perfectly true that we must look at the situation in the shire counties, particularly where two-tier arrangements apply. I very much hope that we will see county devolution deals as well, because the strategic counties of England are potentially just as much economic drivers as our great cities, but we will need tailored governance arrangements to recognise the two-tier nature, which differs in its competence from that within the London boroughs or the metropolitan authorities.

[Mr Steve Reed]

May I associate myself with the very welcome proposals being made by my fellow co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for London? Given the complexity of London’s governance, it will be difficult for further devolution to happen if such proposals are not accepted by the Government. I endorse the view that is being expressed, and I hope that the Government will listen to it as a means to promote further sensible devolution in London.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support for the new clause. It is not intended to be the definitive text, but I hope the Minister will take heart from the fact that any text brought forward by the Government is likely to enjoy cross-party support and is unlikely to impede the progress of the Bill, but will enhance the opportunity for devolution deals within London as a whole.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Neill Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The Minister truly is a man of the people.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

13. If he will meet senior management of Southeastern to discuss the reliability of its rail service; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

I regularly meet the senior management of Southeastern to discuss their rail services, and I want to assure my hon. Friend that the recovery of reliability on that route is of the utmost importance to Southeastern, to Network Rail, to my Department and to Transport Focus. I now chair the weekly meeting of a taskforce comprising all those bodies and Southern Railway that is dedicated to improving the reliability and performance of the railway for customers travelling on those vital routes.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the Minister for the steps she has taken, of which I have had experience, but the fact remains that the performance of Southeastern trains is wholly unacceptable. I am getting emails from my constituents saying that their train is five minutes late more than 60% of the time, which tells me that the message is still not getting through. Should we not be urgently considering the introduction of financial penalties? Should we perhaps consider, even in advance of the franchise renewal in 2018, bringing in an operator such as London Overground, which operates its services infinitely more efficiently?

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that performance is recovering, from a pretty low point last autumn, and that right-time performance is about 62%. That is still not good enough, in my view, but performance is on the mend. We face a massive challenge, in that we are doing some of the biggest engineering works in the UK around the critical stations that serve that part of the network, but that is not an excuse. We have to get performance better during these times of disruption, and that is what the quadrant taskforce is dedicated to doing.

Network Rail

Robert Neill Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

When the hon. Lady says “further pain and misery”, I note there may be occasions when, because of ongoing work, trains will be altered and timetables changed. We cannot carry out this huge electrification programme, as I outlined earlier in my statement, over the length of track and through some of the tunnels we are talking about, without there being some big engineering challenges, but it is absolutely right that the Great Western main line takes priority, and that the new trains that will run on the line from 2017 to 2018 are there and used.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement on Network Rail. As someone who has worked with Sir Peter Hendy in London government, I know he is a world-class transport executive and will make a better job of delivering major projects like London Bridge than those that my constituents have had to put up with so far. Will my right hon. Friend to keep up the pressure started by his rail Minister on existing franchise holders such as South East Trains? I can top my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker): Napoleon III chose to live in exile in Chislehurst because it had a fast and reliable train service to London. My constituents are now selling their houses and moving out because it is so bad on a daily basis, as I know.

[Mr McLoughlin]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments about Sir Peter Hendy. My hon. Friend the rail Minister needs no encouragement from my hon. Friend or anybody else to keep up the pressure on those services.

Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Williams]

The group touches on an incredibly wide range of issues, but I shall concentrate my remarks on the amendments and new clauses that have aroused significant interest across the House.

Government new clause 14 relates to the Greater London Authority’s powers to incur expenditure on transport elements of housing and regeneration projects. This matter was raised in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), and I promised him that I would look urgently at the legislative options available to address this important issue. We have concluded that it is necessary to make a minor change to the Greater London Authority Act 1999 and have therefore proposed the new clause.

The new clause removes a prohibition in section 31 of the Greater London Authority Act preventing the GLA from incurring expenditure on anything that may be done by its functional body, Transport for London, if it relates to housing and regeneration. We are making this change to the 1999 Act because the GLA has said that, because TfL’s powers are wide-ranging, they preclude the GLA from incurring expenditure on anything transport related. This includes expenditure on transport elements of projects to deliver housing, jobs and growth in London, which the GLA has been responsible for since 1 April 2012, when it took on the roles, land and contracts of the former London Development Agency and the Homes and Communities Agency in London. The new clause will apply in relation to expenditure incurred by the GLA before, as well as after, the coming into force of the new clause, because it was clearly the intention of Parliament that the GLA should have powers equivalent to those of the LDA and HCA following the Localism Act 2011. Making this change to the 1999 Act is therefore essential to ensure that the GLA can deliver new homes and jobs for London.

Government amendment 95 provides for new clause 14 to extend to England and Wales only, and Government amendment 102 provides for the amendment to the 1999 Act to come into force on the day the Act is passed. Government amendment 85 relates to clause 29 and will ensure that future purchasers of land owned by the HCA, GLA and mayoral development corporations can develop and use land without being affected by easements and other rights and restrictions. Clause 29 will bring the position of purchasers of land from the HCA, GLA and MDCs into line with those currently enjoyed by purchasers from local authorities and other public bodies involved in regeneration and development.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

May I welcome the new clause and thank the Minister, along with the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), for engaging with us on this important matter? It is extremely helpful to the GLA and much welcomed by the Mayor.

[Stephen Williams]

I thank my hon. Friend, a former Minister in the Department, for his intervention. We did indeed seek to concur with the GLA: it identified the problem, and now we have introduced the solution.

I turn to new clause 3 and Labour party policy on the proposed introduction of a national infrastructure commission. The Bill covers a range of important issues, but the debate we had in Committee on this proposal from the Opposition was one of the more thoughtful and interesting: we dealt not only with the intricacies of formulating infrastructure policy, but with the role of the Government and Members of Parliament in formulating a vision for rail, road, energy and other infrastructure development? I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) for re-tabling the new clause and allowing us to deal with these issues again.

Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I hope that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) will forgive me if I do not pursue the points that she has raised, because I want to concentrate on part 4 of the Bill. It is an important Bill and, overall, one that I welcome; I shall be supporting it tonight. I shall concentrate on planning and related matters.

My first point relates to the arrangements for national infrastructure policy. I welcome the changes, which represent a logical development from what is currently in place and fit logically with the work that has already been done on the national planning policy framework. I should like to make a few observations. I have taken an interest in this area, both when I was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government and subsequently. Professionals to whom I have spoken, including representatives of the National Infrastructure Planning Association and of the Compulsory Purchase Association, welcome the steps that the Government are taking in the Bill.

It is worth noting that development consent orders are a key element of the process, and it is valuable to tighten up the way in which they operate. There is a feeling, however, that we should be prepared to go still further in due course. I am not suggesting that that should be done in this Bill, but I hope that Ministers will bear in mind that, helpful though these changes are, there is a strong feeling among many professionals in the sector that they will not be a substitute for a comprehensive review of the operation of our compulsory purchase and land compensation legislation and its associated case law, and that such a review should be undertaken before too long.

Some of the legislation is fairly elderly by now and I hope that in the next Parliament we will take a comprehensive look at the way in which land compensation works. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) pointed out that other jurisdictions, such as France, deal with major infrastructure projects partly through quality of design and partly through much swifter and sometimes more generous land compensation arrangements when compulsory acquisitions are required. We may need to consider that in this country.

Clause 26 deals with planning conditions and deemed consents, which we discussed when I was a Minister. On balance, I support the proposed changes, which are necessary. It is worth taking a step back and remembering that planning conditions are an important part of the system. They are imposed essentially to make what might otherwise be unacceptable development acceptable, so they have a legitimate and proper role. The issue that arises here is not the legitimacy of the role, but the efficiency thereafter. There is a genuine issue that needs to be addressed.

Concern was flagged up as long ago as the Killian Pretty review of 2008 that one of the worst causes of delay is the post-consent process. There will come a time when conditions either have been complied with or are no longer necessary for various reasons and ought to be discharged. There is no reason, therefore, why speeding up the discharge of conditions should be a problem in terms of the principle of planning law. We need to make the process more efficient. Killian Pretty was clear about the problems that remained, and my right hon. Friend the Minister, in introducing the Bill, highlighted the fact that that remains a difficulty.

As well as looking at deemed consents imposed by the planning authority, we should pay particular attention to the situation where the planning authority has imposed a condition at the behest of a statutory consultee. It is sometimes difficult for planning authorities themselves, who may be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea—the legitimate desire of a developer to get on with important development. There are all too often delays by the statutory consultees in responding to the inquiries made of them. Part 1 happens to deal, in a different context, with one statutory consultee, but frequently the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency have been among the worst offenders in this regard, and local authorities are in a difficult position.

As well as doing what the Government are doing, which I support, I hope we might consider going further and deal with a situation where, in relation to applications, discharge of conditions and potentially also appeals, a statutory consultee fails to respond by the time limit. In such a case, why should there not be a provision deeming that the statutory consultee has no objection to the proposal involved? Such deemed assent by the statutory consultee would speed up the process and remove a pressure from the local planning authority that it cannot otherwise effectively control. Another mechanism that might be considered is some cost penalty against statutory consultees that delay the process.

During my time as Minister for the Thames gateway, I was repeatedly frustrated by the delay in getting decisions out of the Highways Authority about important aspects such as removing the tolling booths at the Dartford tunnel, when we were using technology that any Londoner had known about for many years, or the necessary improvements on the A13 between the DP World site, a nationally significant infrastructure site, and the Dartford crossing. I hope that whatever new arrangements we have for the highways company, as it is now to be, there will be a greater sense of the commercial imperative to speed up decisions.

I remember one important housing site, which everybody agreed was the right site for housing; an otherwise properly prepared and robust local plan by the planning authority for the area was suddenly thrown into disarray at the very last minute by the Environment Agency’s raising an issue about habitats, which ought to have been foreseen much earlier in the process. We need to put more pressure on statutory consultees not only to do their duty, but to do it properly and efficiently. I hope we might be able to strengthen the provisions of that part of the Bill.

I turn to two more technical areas, which are important. The first relates to easements, which I racked my brains about when doing planning law, but I eventually got to the bottom of it. These are particularly important in the context of London, so I speak now as a London Member of Parliament. Clause 28 makes changes to easements affecting land. The changes are good as far as they go. A particular problem arises in London, and I draw it to Ministers’ attention in the hope that we can address it in Committee. We all know that it is important that easements run with the land; that is a fundamental concept. I refer to the overriding powers of the Greater London authority, the Homes and Communities Agency and now mayoral development corporations, which I hope we may see replicated with joint authorities outside London. Allowing these bodies to benefit their successors in title will be hugely important for unblocking development, as is already the case in the capital.

Developers and specialist lawyers in the field have significant concerns that the law threatens development sites. That was an omission from the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, which clause 28 is designed to tackle—and it does so, up to a point. However, it is not retrospective. Usually I am not a fan of retrospective legislation, but in London we have a specific issue. Some key development land, in particular land in the docklands area, was transferred from the London Development Agency in 2012. A lot of land around the Olympic park, the lower Lea valley, was part of the land for debt swap that some right hon. and hon. Members will remember.

As the Bill is drafted, that will not be covered so there will not be the legal certainty that successors in title will benefit when the land is sold on down the development chain. I hope the Minister will look specifically at the Mayor of London’s request that the Government delete subsections (11) and (12) of clause 28. That will enable it to operate retrospectively in relation to those areas of development land in London that had already been transferred, before the Bill becomes operative. It is a technical matter but a very important one, because it affects some of the most significant housing and commercial development land in our growing capital.

The final technical area to which I shall refer relates to clause 32 and the allowable solutions arrangements for offsite carbon abatement measures. Clause 32 is a sensible clause and very useful, as far as it goes. The principle of allowable solutions is a fair one because not every site will permit a mitigation measure onsite, so a degree of flexibility is sensible. However, there is an issue in relation to the geography. Again, it applies particularly to a large strategic planning authority, such as London. Unless there are some additional protections from London’s point of view, the Mayor of London and the Greater London authority are concerned that the scheme could see investment draining out of London, because it would be cheaper for developers to provide their offsite alternative solutions in areas of lower land value—in other words, outside the capital, rather than within it.

[Dr Whitehead]

rose—

[Robert Neill]

I shall give way in a moment, when I have developed the point.

It is important that there is some means of making sure that the investment is captured within the capital. There is some evidence to support that. Unintended consequences have occurred under the energy companies obligation scheme, so that the capital has received proportionately less in funding than it should receive. For example, about 13% of the national share of housing is in the capital but in the first year of the ECO scheme London received only 6.4% of the spending. That system, once in place, could generate about £90 million per annum, so it is important that London gets a fair share of it.

[Sir Andrew Stunell]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that the argument he is putting forward strengthens the case for saving the maximum amount of energy on site, so that the leakage and spillage to which he has referred does not arise in the first place?

[Robert Neill]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman resumes his comments, may I say that it was pointed out by the Chair some time ago that 18 Members are still to speak and 10 minutes each would get us comfortably to the wind-ups? It seems that Members are ignoring the request for 10 minutes, which means that other colleagues will have their speeches curtailed. May I ask again that Members behave in a collegiate way, at least for today, and allow all their colleagues to speak in the debate? Mr Neill, you might like to look at the clock and see that you have been speaking for 12 minutes.

[Robert Neill]

I had almost finished, Madam Deputy Speaker. I simply observe, out of courtesy, that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) makes a fair point. Most of us would always prefer that the mitigation should take place on site, but where I slightly differ is in my view that there will be sites where that is not possible, and so the Government are right to introduce the flexibility.

In large planning areas—we have them in Greater London and we may be seeing them develop with the growth of joint authorities, which may take on more strategic planning powers elsewhere—it may be sensible for us to reflect on a means through which more of the investment can be captured within the local authority planning area, so as to give those communities an incentive to take on board the low-energy development that we want.