Transport

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, on which I serve, is currently considering the evidence for its report on rural mental health. Time and again, the expert witnesses mentioned isolation, loneliness and the problems of basic connectivity as factors leading to poor mental health in rural communities. Combined with the many current financial pressures, plus Brexit uncertainty and added bureaucracy, this is sadly all part of a deeply worrying pattern.

Rural communities are especially dependent on reliable, regular and affordable transport links. When local bus services are cut, the effect is immediate and has catastrophic consequences. For example, if a single parent’s routine involves setting off for work knowing that their teenage child will leave for the bus 20 minutes later and arrive safely in time for registration, what exactly are they supposed to do if they are told one day that the bus route will no longer exist? What exactly is anyone who regularly uses a route for medical appointments or social reasons, or to go to college or work, supposed to do if the route is gone overnight? School and work are essential activities, so the buses are essential, too.

Far too many cars already clog up the few main routes into and out of my constituency, contributing to increasingly dangerous levels of air pollution and growing rates of childhood asthma, but what choice do people have when their buses simply disappear? We are building more and more houses, thereby inviting in more and more cars, and we are even building more roads to accommodate those cars and threatening much-loved and historical green spaces, such as the Old Park area in Canterbury. Does this sound like a recognition of the climate emergency? It is hardly progressive.

People in Canterbury, Whitstable and our villages simply want to be able to move from A to B and to get to school without damaging the planet and everyone’s lungs, but we will not achieve that if local bus services constantly disappear. What about cuts to school bus services, such as the one serving Spires Academy in Herne Bay, which is attended by many pupils who live around Canterbury? How is it more efficient for Kent County Council to have to source other modes of transport, particularly for otherwise stranded children with special educational needs and additional needs?

The cost of a school travel pass is now almost £400. There is no way that a single parent, possibly with two or more children, can magic up money like that. Several years ago, I had to borrow the money to pay for my two children’s bus passes when they cost half that amount.

It is easy to forget how dependent people are on public transport while we in this place go around Westminster. Everywhere we look we see affordable buses on every corner. When my constituents visit London, they can jump on a bus and go anywhere for £1.65, but they have to pay more than £7 to travel for around 20 minutes from Canterbury to Whitstable and back.

The fact that the 27 bus route through Rough Common, one of my local villages, is about to be cut is causing so many problems. My constituents depend on it. There are also cuts to routes 922, 925 and 7.

Despite being one of the largest local authorities, Kent County Council does not have an endless supply of money. Our county has to deal with the horrors of Operation Brock—one of the many so-called benefits of Brexit—and the recent collapse of P&O Ferries, which was a disaster for our area and about which I am sure we will hear more later from the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke). The pause of Eurostar services from Ashford and Ebbsfleet has also had a catastrophic effect. Our local authorities urgently need direct financial assistance and help to tackle such huge issues.

Canterbury City Council has committed to building far too many new homes without the basic infrastructure that is needed. Will the Government help the county to update our outlook and aims so that we do not simply choke our children as a result of outdated car dependency? We need help with a cleaner, greener, more people-focused overview of transport. We need to keep our rural communities moving and maintain east Kent as an inviting and buzzing tourist destination.

Let us perhaps model ourselves a bit more on our European neighbours and have more pedestrian-friendly town centres and cheaper and more environmentally friendly and reliable transport. Let us help our local authorities and big bus companies to work together, in consultation with national Government, and adequately fund the active travel scheme, so that we can achieve a more ambitious, greener vision for local transport throughout the country.

P&O Ferries

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

Does the Minister acknowledge that my constituency of Canterbury, and east Kent as a whole, will be particularly affected by today’s shocking news? What urgent support will the Government give to all those affected locally, including the hundreds of P&O workers who have been treated disgracefully, as we have just heard, and who are now facing no pay packet at all in the face of the soaring cost of living? They do not want a work coach; they just want their jobs back. That is not to mention the beleaguered residents of east Kent, who will yet again have to bear the brunt of serious disruption to our daily lives. I am glad to hear that the Minister will meet MPs across east Kent; that needs to be done urgently. Thank you.

[Robert Courts]

I thank the hon. Member for speaking out and making her constituents’ understandable anguish so clear in this place. That has been entirely heard by me and I share it. She speaks with anger, and I have expressed that anger in person to P&O today, because of the effect that this news will be having on people living in her constituency and elsewhere, particularly at a time that is already causing much uncertainty for many people. I would be delighted to meet her and any other Members who would like to meet me to discuss what we might be able to do. I referred earlier to some signposting within the DWP. That support is available, and if there are other things that would be helpful, I would be happy to hear from her. She also referred to disruption. There may be some disruption, but the only happy side of that is that we have good, well-rehearsed procedures in place to deal with that. I totally accept this situation will cause inconvenience to her constituents, but I hope that the well-practised routines we have in place will keep that to a minimum.

International Women’s Day

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

This is the fifth International Women’s Day debate since I was elected in 2017, the fifth time that I have sat here to listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) read out the names of women killed in the last year, and the seventh time that she has read that horrific list compiled by our friend Karen Ingala Smith as part of her Counting Dead Women project. This year’s list is even longer than the last, but with several cases yet unsolved and many yet to go through court, that vile list and those grim statistics will sadly only increase.

It seems that those 125 men clearly have not been listening. They clearly did not hear as women around the world said, “Enough.” They did not see or hear those women at the vigils for Sarah and were not listening as we debated in this place and spoke about women’s rage and pain and what it is like to live in fear. We can add those men to the many whose victims were included in the work of artist Wilma Woolf, who visited Parliament this week. Her decorated dinner plates show women killed by men, listed by year and with a symbol to indicate how they met their deaths. Those symbols show a grim range of causes, from strangulation to being burnt, poisoned, drowned, shot, pushed from a balcony, decapitated and so on.

Wilma says of her work, made in conjunction with the Femicide Census, that it is designed to remember the women who have needlessly lost their lives and to highlight the institutionalised and systemic acceptance of this human rights abuse, which is often regarded as an inevitable part of men and women co-existing. The Femicide Census states that

“there is little suggestion that any intervention over the past ten years has had a significant impact or even any impact at all on the number of women being killed by men.”

This, then, is surely now an absolute emergency.

In the last couple of weeks alone, we have talked about this crisis of violence against women and girls—violence, rape, murder, whether at home or in a war zone. This violence affects 51% of the population—women who work, women who vote, women watching as we fail to do anything at all to reduce these horrific statistics.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

Does the hon. Member agree that in some walks of life, such as the armed forces, women face even greater barriers to receiving support for domestic violence and harassment, and that the Government should work to ensure that there is parity so that the right support is offered to all women?

[Rosie Duffield]

I thank the hon. Member for that point; I absolutely agree.

What do women have to do? Should we collectively go on strike, stand still, lay down, leave our workplaces and homes or stand in the road or the motorway, silently disengaging with the systems and society that refuse to see or hear our rage? This is not a political hot potato; it is about society. Our representatives here have to lead, demand change and show change. It is our duty. Men need to know that without question or exception, this will not be tolerated and that nothing at all awaits them if they hurt or kill women apart from a prison cell.

Families of victims visited us here this week, again, thanks to my heroic hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley. Their pain at the loss of their loved ones has been made worse by layers of injustice, keeping those wounds as raw as when they first heard that devastating news. These injustices would shock most people, such as the killer of their daughter, sister or mother still having control of her money or access to her children; or the fact that he raped her not being included in the charge sheet or factored into the sentencing decision. We have to do better, and this all has to change urgently through drastic action, changes to our courts, police and legal systems—whatever it takes. We should demand this on behalf of women in the UK, and I am demanding this as someone whose name could once have been read out by my hon. Friend.

Let us show that we are listening and making these lists shorter every year. I pray that next International Women’s Day, we do not have to be as angry, that we are celebrating change, hope and, above all, freedom for the incredibly brave women of Ukraine.

Flexible Rail Ticketing

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I agree with my hon. Friend that this is a time in which we must display the same flexibility, innovation and responsiveness that we have—and have had to—in so many other areas of life, and that we should not be bound by the structures that we inherited.

It is time now to make this change. It does not have to be this way. If we can bring in a job retention scheme within days of the need being identified, if we can invent a scheme in July to help thousands of restaurants attract back millions of customers in August, and if businesses can switch to conducting meetings online virtually overnight, surely we are more than capable of introducing without further procrastination a train ticket to meet the needs of part-time and flexible workers. There is no shortage of models available: a ticket that allows any three days in seven, for example; a ticket that permits travel only 12 days in a month; or, at the most basic, a carnet system that gives a discount on the purchase of multiple peak-time tickets to be used within a limited period.

At the end of July, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) wrote, along with all Kent MPs, to the managing director of Southeastern, Mr Statham. He replied that Southeastern has submitted proposals for flexible ticketing to the Department for Transport and is waiting for the Department’s authorisation under the emergency measures agreement. I say to the Minister: please act now. As the Transport Secretary said last week, we are in a different era. The Government are—which is to say, we are—paying for the railway. With these covid-changed circumstances, very few people are going to be paying for an annual seven-day-a-week ticket at any time soon. That money is simply not coming in.

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

For years I have been hearing from constituents who are desperate for part-time season tickets. The right hon. Gentleman is making some brilliant points on this issue. I have been speaking to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi)—our shadow Rail Minister—and he is in agreement with me. With the job market about to be reeling for years in a post-covid environment, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government must do everything and anything they can, such as allowing part-time season tickets, or at least thinking about doing so, to allow businesses to create new jobs and accommodate flexible, part-time working?

[Greg Clark]

As I have said, this problem has persisted for too long and we need to catch up with the 21st century, but now is a particular moment to make that reform, so that people can go back to work according to the needs of their employer while also respecting the advice to stay and work at home where possible.

In contrast to a full season ticket for five or seven days a week, a flexible commuting ticket is likely to be bought by commuters here and now, and could actually increase revenue to the railway and the taxpayer while fighting covid by supporting people not going into the office every day. It would also provide a long-overdue journey of the railway fare system to a rendezvous with working life in the 21st century.

I suspect that the Minister, whose talents I admire, will be briefed to buy time and say that these things must be examined in greater detail, but my admiration of him extends to the knowledge that he has embraced his portfolio with enthusiasm and ambition. He does not need to be a captive of the standard advice on this subject that has been given out for years; he can make a difference during the next few weeks ahead. He will go down in railway history as one of the reformers if he is the Minister who brings railway ticketing into modern times—and I urge him to do it.

South-Eastern Rail Franchise

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I share his enthusiasm for the access-for-all process and the recent announcement of extra funds and where those funds will be targeted by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani). I can tell him that design work on the stations selected will be starting over the summer, with construction as soon as possible thereafter. I know that he is anxious for the benefits to serve his constituents. So am I and so is the Under-Secretary of State, who I know is listening. She has indicated that she would be very happy to meet him to take the matter forward.

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

Further to his letter of 10 April in which the Under-Secretary of State assured Members that robust scrutiny would be used in this decision-making process, can he please reassure my beleaguered constituents in east Kent that that scrutiny will also apply to the exorbitant fare rises, constant delays and disruptions, arbitrary timetable changes and removal of services?

[Andrew Jones]

I can most certainly provide the hon. Lady’s constituents with the assurance that she is seeking. We will obviously be focusing on fares. We want to make sure that the travelling public get a great deal, which is why we have frozen regulated fares in line with inflation for the sixth year in a row. It is also why, in January, we saw the launch of the 16 to 18-year-old railcard, which will come into play later this year. So will there be attention on costs and scrutiny of fares? Of course there will. We will be maintaining that. This policy, which has delivered its sixth year, against Labour’s intentions, will be continued.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

No roads can be built without public consultation. We are working out in broad measure which route a corridor might follow, so that we can then do detailed consultation with the public.

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

19. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the number of bus routes in England and Wales.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Whether for commuting to work or seeing friends and family, buses play an important role in keeping communities connected, with 4.4 billion passenger journeys a year. Between 2015 and 2017, the number of live local bus services registered increased by 14% in England and by 6% in Wales.

[Rosie Duffield]

My constituents have had to face a 480% rise in the cost of their children’s bus passes in the past five years. The No. 14 bus connecting Canterbury to rural east Kent villages was cut in September, and replaced by only a twice-daily bus service. This is just one of the cuts proposed by Kent County Council. What steps is the Minister taking to protect much needed rural bus routes from being cut by cash-strapped local authorities?

[Ms Ghani]

Local authorities receive a substantial amount of money from central Government to support bus services. The Government paid out some £250 million last year to support bus services in England. Kent County Council receives over £1 million per year, and Canterbury City Council receives over £83,000 per year. The hon. Lady mentioned bus fares. They rose almost three times faster every year under Labour than under the Conservatives, with local bus fares across Great Britain rising by an average of 1.9% each year in real terms. Bus fares go up under Labour.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill (Second sitting)

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 31st October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Hayes]

Q I have one further question, on a slightly different subject. This morning, we talked about how these developments will change the nature of the skills required. Steve 1, if I may call you that, mentioned that earlier. Presumably you will also acknowledge that it will give rise to new skills. There will be a shift in skills and new kinds of jobs and skills will develop. Is there not an exciting prospect of a whole range of new competences coming as a direct result of this technology? Is that fair?

Steve Nash: Absolutely, yes. There is probably more opportunity than threat from the new technologies. We are interested in ensuring that those skills develop in the right way. If you look at autonomous vehicles—I mentioned electric vehicles earlier—we only know as yet what manufacturers have said about their plans in the future. It may well be, for example, that when we get to level 5, or even level 4, a lot of those vehicles are not sold in the way that they are sold today. A new electric vehicle was launched a couple of weeks ago by a new brand called Polestar, which is owned by the same people who own Volvo. They say that the car will be sold on a subscription model, so it would remain within the possession of the manufacturer.

There is a lot of road to cover between now and then. Whoever is looking after those cars—I have already talked about electric cars, but when we get to autonomous cars as well—they will still have accidents. Things will drop on them and things will happen to them that are not caused by the car. When they are repaired, we have to be assured that they are repaired to a standard that returns them to exactly the same capability they had before the accident, which means we need people who are certifiably competent to do that. That is where we are interested in seeing some clarity.

We have cars with quite substantial autonomous capabilities already—Tesla is a good example—and I have seen second-hand examples of them that have gone beyond the dealer network. You have to wonder about the competence of the people who will work on that car—I am not saying that they are incompetent, but I do not know that they are competent. When someone next engages the autonomous capabilities of that car, will they do the things they are supposed to do? We cannot just leave that to chance. We have to be sure that there is some way of assuring ourselves about the people who work on them. This is not like the days when there was somebody who was “a bit handy”, as I think the phrase used to be, and you could give your car to them and they could look after it. This is a paradigm shift. We need to move with that and recognise that these cars, even though they have four wheels and look a bit like the cars that we have today, are entirely different. The skills base needs to be elevated to deal with them because they are an entirely different prospect.

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

Q If there was one aspect of the Bill that members of the panel could change, what would it be?

Brian Madderson: The mandating of motorway service areas and large fuel retailers should be taken out at this stage because the market is just developing far too rapidly. We have even asked the Department for Transport what the definition of a large fuel retailer is, and it has said that it does not know yet and it will consult on that. Is it the size of the plot of a single one? Is it a multi-site organisation that might have filling stations all over the UK? Is it the amount of existing fossil fuel that a retailer is supplying? There is no definition, so I do not think it is reasonable or fair to mandate a large fuel retailer when you do not know what that is.

For similar reasons, I do not think that is fair and reasonable for motorway service areas either. There is just no money in it at the moment to justify huge investments, but there will be at some stage in the future and that is when the market will be able to say, “Let’s move on this now, and quickly too”. Hence my plea that the planning authorities are fully engaged to be able to allow effective planning applications as and when they are required for charge points.

Steve Gooding: Rather than changing something in the Bill, I think we would say that the powers—particularly in relation to electric vehicles—are drawn quite broadly. We would like to see how they are going to be used in succeeding regulations. We published some suggestions on how they might be crafted. There will obviously be some concerns—Brian’s perhaps first among them—about the implications for the operators of service areas, for local authorities and for householders. We would like to see the detail and to be confident—as I am sure we are—that the Department will get it right.

Brian Madderson: I would come back to that and say that the RAC’s report suggests that forecourts—filling stations, as they are at the moment—are probably one of the least best places to put a bank of charging points because of constrained space and alternative use, and because the few that we have today are all pretty busy selling diesel and petrol.

Steve Gooding: Apart from motorway service areas.

[Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Q Could I just follow up an answer you gave earlier, Mr Wong? You talked about the Audi model of traffic jams, where a car will offer to take over when a series of conditions are met. Is that how you see this working in the short term? Is it phase four?

David Wong: Level 3.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you for that admirably clear answer.

[Rosie Duffield]

Q You talked about getting drivers behind this because they know it is the right thing to do, and that drivers are frightened. We are also trying to meet the environmental targets that the Government have set. Knowing car enthusiasts as you do, do you think that people will ever feel as enthusiastic and fanatical about electric vehicles as they do about Ferraris or other exciting cars?

Quentin Willson: That group of car enthusiasts is quite small now. It is a very small percentage of the market. Most of us just see the grim business of getting from A to B as a necessity. As I said earlier, the idea of the open road with your Porsche 911 is a golden age that has passed. The Tesla P100D is the fastest accelerating car in the world. It does nought to 60 in 2.4 seconds. It is faster than a Ferrari, which is great. But in terms of mainstream electric cars, I think it will be a while before your hardcore car enthusiast really likes them. We have a big Clarksonesque blockage here—he does not like electric cars or the people who drive them—but I think he is an irrelevance and so are those car enthusiasts.

Our concern should be mainstream consumers who have to get to work, to school, to the shops and to hospitals. We have to make it easy, effective and inexpensive for them but also give them that range. Until we get rid of range anxiety through better infrastructure and battery technology, that will not happen. What will happen is that they will buy hybrids that will do 20 or 30 miles on electric but the rest on petrol. That does not really solve the problem, does it? The people in the Mitsubishi Outlanders who hog all the charging stations will do maybe 20 miles on electricity and the rest on petrol. Again, that is something we need to manage. We need to look at the far reaching, perhaps unintended, consequences of the decisions that we are making now.

[Mr Hayes]

Q Thank you for coming again; you will remember that we had an exchange when you came to the evidence session on the previous Bill. One would accept your view that we will not switch to electric vehicles overnight. Clearly, we do not want to eliminate the use of older classic vintage vehicles—my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire challenged me on that on Second Reading—but surely there is a good case for taking advantage of the improved battery technology, the greater affordability of electric cars as volume grows, the smoother ride that they give, and their many other virtues. I do not claim that electric cars are nirvana, but given that this will not happen just like that and some allowance will need to be made for the older vehicles that my right hon. Friend champions, surely you acknowledge that it is likely to happen and in the end it is quite a good thing?

Quentin Willson: I agree. The older classic cars are a tiny proportion and their emissions are a raindrop echoing in an ocean because they are used so seldom—some for only 200 miles a year. We should not worry about them.

Mass electrification is coming, but until I see a step change in battery technology, we will not be able to give consumers the beatific vision of 300 to 350 miles to one 40-minute charge. Will that come by 2040? I do not know. You have heard from the car manufacturers. Will we be able to accelerate that technology? It is good that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has given the 2040 cut-off date, because up to now they have broadly been compliance cars made to keep emissions down for EU regulations. Manufacturers will be throwing everything they can at developing batteries, but someone like Jaguar Land Rover does not really have any electric product at all, and Mini has only just scrambled together one electric Mini that does not have a brilliant range. They have a lot of work to do to get to that level. It has taken us 100 years to get to the efficiency of the combustion engine as we have it now. I know innovation is not linear and it will start to climb up, but we need to understand that if we do not give consumers that 300 to 350 mile range, it is going to be very difficult. You see Teslas strolling down the motorways, because they do 250 miles to one charge. That is great, but you never see a Nissan Leaf—think about it.