Covid-19: Emergency Transport and Travel Measures in London Boroughs
Rupa Huq Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Travel and transport are what keep our capital going, and they produced its suburbs. When we add the covid emergency into the mix, however, questions are raised about the disproportionate numbers of black and ethnic minority people and transport workers who died earlier in the pandemic, at a time when they were not getting the protection they needed. Their families are still seeking death in service benefits. There is also the whole question of democracy in the age of the virus, and how we build back better, more sustainably and in a more resilient way on the other side of all this as part of the new normal.
Happily, some of the issues I thought I would be addressing tonight have been overtaken by events. Thanks to the Transport for London bail-out at the weekend, there will be no extension of the congestion charge—phew!—and there will be no charging for under-18s. I pay tribute to our Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan—so much better than the guy before, isn’t he?—for all that.
That leaves me with emergency traffic orders, which are those controversial things that have enabled pop-up cycle lanes, pavement widenings—some people call them “road smallings”—and controversial low-traffic neighbourhoods all over our capital. They have followed a sequence of implementation now, consult later.
I want to make a confession: I am a confirmed, long- standing cyclist, dating back to when I went to school in what is now my constituency every day in the ’80s. We now have more bikes than people in our household. My own offspring replicate that journey in the ’90s when I was at Cambridge University, where it was almost compulsory to get on your bike every single day. I completely understand the benefits of cycling: it is free, it takes us door to door, and it is environmentally friendly. I am a confirmed cyclist.
These low-traffic neighbourhoods seek to get us all on two wheels or on foot, in a move towards active travel—a modal shift. We can still get everywhere we need to go in a car; they just mean we have to go the long way round. A good recent example is Bowes Road in Acton, which first became known to me because every BBC cabbie, when they took me up there, would go down it rather than the A40. Residents hated that because their road had turned into a thoroughfare and they could not get out of their houses. Now a low-traffic neighbourhood has been introduced there, and they love it. There are these oversized flower pot things called planters, and bollards, and the residents have been able to reclaim their street. In that instance, a pre-existing problem has been dealt with and rectified.
However, colleagues from every compass point of London, some of whom are here today, have told me about examples of LTNs that are not well-designed and are not working, in neighbourhoods that are already naturally low-traffic neighbourhoods. These things popped up with no consultation and no notice, even, and it feels to people like they have been inflicted on them. We have seen large-scale opposition all over London, with tens of thousands of signatures in Wandsworth and in my own borough, and in Islington I think there have been marches.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that a number of the changes that have been made have had a really negative impact on the taxi trade? The licensed taxi is one of the most accessible forms of transport. If we block it out of key routes such as Bishopsgate, we make it more difficult for people with mobility issues and disabilities to get to the places they need to get to.
Dr Huq
The right hon. Lady makes a really good point. We have relied on cabbies—remember that taxi exam, the knowledge? That is completely invalidated by these changes. She makes a really powerful point. I think people feel discombobulated because these changes are so radical and dramatic, and they appear to have come out of nowhere.
I think that policies work best when policy makers take the public with them and act for them, rather than doing stuff to them, which I think many feel has happened. In our borough there are 37 different schemes, with over £1 million of funding. The most controversial is LTN 21—they all have these rather Stalinist names. Oh, sorry—I will be in trouble. Across three wards, nigh on every side street has been blocked; it has turned the area into a convoluted maze of planters at odd angles. The right hon. Lady referred to commercial vehicles. Delivery vans have become more and more prevalent in the pandemic; they are completely outfoxed by these measures.
When news of this debate broke on a local forum, hundreds of replies—they were going up by the minute—came in with things that I should raise, so I will try to give voice to some of those.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I do not know whether the hon. Lady is more concerned about having been insufficiently enthusiastic in her mention of Stalin or having been too enthusiastic in bringing him up. In the context of low-traffic neighbourhoods, does she think that a good deal of consultation and discussion with the emergency services is critical? That has been a consistent problem with the implementation of LTNs, certainly in the view of my constituents and many others.
Dr Huq
The hon. Gentleman speaks so much sense. We are at one on Heathrow—actually, I think all three of us who have spoken so far are—and he is right. In theory, these people are not allowed to express an opinion, so the leadership say, “Yeah, fine,” but the people who have to implement these things—the ambulance personnel, police people and fire officers—all think that they have made a difficult job ever more difficult at a time when every second counts. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I am sure my hon. Friend is reflecting the views of some of her constituents, but does she share my concern that while we worry about sending car drivers around the long way, pedestrians have to walk a long way down the road to find a safe place to cross every single day and no one ever notices, because it is so normal for pedestrians’ needs to be put behind those of the motorist?
Dr Huq
My hon. Friend is right. Pedestrians often feel at the bottom of the food chain. Actually, walkers have contacted me saying that they have got nothing out of this. Cyclists have got new cycle lanes, but they seem to have been a bit forgotten in all this. I think the key thing is to take people with you and get consent, and that also means consultation.
Other issues that have popped up include kids being distressed at the much elongated minibus journey to the Log Cabin disabled children’s adventure playground. Elderly and infirm people and their carers are also affected. When we say, “Oh, the sat-nav will update”, they are a bit befuddled because they use the old-fashioned “A to Z”, as do I actually. I have a case of a lady who had regular out-patient appointments at a central London hospital, but has now been discharged because the taxi gave up on too many occasions, so that is a bit serious. This affects all sorts of businesses, such as workmen with all their tools. Shops say that they used to benefit from passing trade on the way back from longer journeys, and that has all gone now.
If hon. Members have a little google, they can see on YouTube how, all over London, traffic that was supposed to be evaporating—it was meant to disappear because, after a while, people have new habits and give up driving—has actually been displaced to main roads. Those are residential roads, and people live there too. They already had unacceptably high levels of pollution, and it has just worsened. If the whole aim was combating emissions, that is undermined when there is a very long way round—five times, 10 times longer, or whatever. In some boroughs, compliance checks that no one is driving through are done with those sinister little motor vehicles that are idling, with NO2 emissions. Again, that seems a little bit serious.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Does the hon. Member agree with me that consultation is important, but what is also important is signage? One of my constituents approached me to say that the family drives every day from Kensington through the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and on the first day that one of these schemes was operating, the family got eight tickets because they were not aware of it and the signage was so poor.
Dr Huq
Goodness me, the hon. Lady tells a chilling story. In Ealing, at least initially, there are no fines—maybe I should not be saying that—so that people get used to it. There is a softly-softly approach. Ultimately, I guess that people do get used to it, but it seems wrong to have that many tickets on day one.
In a global pandemic, life is hard enough as it is, and to make life even harder feels punitive. This policy is well tried in places such as Copenhagen, but this is just copying and pasting that into outer London, a place that people liked because of suburban convenience and because of the grid system.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I want to draw her attention to a recent report by the Institute of Race Relations called “The London Clearances”. This report found that regeneration projects are being used to actively dispossess working-class communities and low-income families of their homes. This process, which is commonly known as social cleansing, has mostly been understood as a class issue. However, given the over-representation of black, Asian and ethnic minority communities in social housing and the racialised language used to describe London’s post-war housing estates—for example, in the aftermath of the 2011 riots —I believe this is also very much a race issue. Certainly, constituents of mine have been in touch about the impact this is having on them and the fact that some of the measures have been targeted not towards housing estates in very congested or overcrowded areas but areas that have terraced homes—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I am sorry, but interventions by their very nature should be short, and that was very long.
Dr Huq
I thank my hon. Friend for a point that deserved to be made at length. She makes the point about the main roads, and those are people too. They feel two-tiered now: their house prices are probably lower, and they feel they have a raw deal because of the constant gridlock forcing everyone there.
At best, this has been a mixed experience. Where these measures work, where there is a need and where there is consultation, they are really good, but if it is felt that they have been illogically plumped somewhere they are not desired, that is a completely different matter. Somebody said to me the other day that a bollard had been put on a very short road that has got only one house on it. He said he did not ask for it and added, “We feel penned in like animals.”
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Is not part of the problem the lack of consultation? Has not that been caused by the Government’s insistence that the schemes be implemented straightaway within an eight-week period, not allowing any consultation with communities or very limited consultation at best?
Dr Huq
My hon. Friend speaks so much sense. It is true that it feels that this catastrophising, saying, “Emergency, emergency, we have to do it by the end of September”, with no time for consultation apart from six months later, is just the wrong way round, putting the cart before the horse.
We have had this vote today, and some of us have wrestled with our consciences about the lockdown. On balance, I thought it was the right thing to do, but coronavirus has greenlighted many incursions—some people call them draconian—on our civil liberties, on citizens’ freedom of movement. As I said, I strongly think that to gain consent, we should consult. Pictures have gone viral in Ealing of planters that have been vandalised and bollards that have been ripped out. Yes, that cedes the moral high ground: it is wrong to do that. Vandalism is bad, so it is a moral boost for the diehard proponents of the schemes, but it also shows this is not a consensual policy and that something has gone wrong if that is happening.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the low traffic neighbourhoods are really important in constituencies such as mine, which has the A23 running through it and has so much pollution? Does she also agree that the lack of consultation could have a negative impact on future measures as the public will almost learn to react negatively because they feel like they have not been consulted in the past? We really do need those measures to protect our environment and change the nature of traffic in our areas.
Dr Huq
I completely agree that we have a climate emergency, we have our net zero obligations and we have an obesity crisis, but doing this without a consultation has just got people’s backs up. It sometimes feels that these things have been formulated, not by anyone who cycles or understands local traffic flows, but just in order to satisfy the criteria for a budget where there is money available and time is running out.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Does the hon. Member agree that low traffic neighbourhoods can sometimes be important for air quality in constituencies such as mine in central London? One council is currently going through a consultation on the Hyde Park estate, and while residents welcome the ending of rat running, they are concerned that they have not been listened to. They have their own ideas and they want to work in partnership with the council to make those work. Does she agree that working in partnership with residents is the way forward for local authorities?
Dr Huq
The hon. Member, and former council leader for where we are now, speaks with authority and passion and makes total sense on this. We need a collaboration between residents, stakeholders and businesses—all the different actors in this—which sometimes feels like it has not happened.
I know the Minister is a reasonable person and I have some questions for her. She is not the type to blame it all on Sadiq Khan, like some people would.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
On the matter of Sadiq Khan, does my hon. Friend agree that he should be congratulated on seeing off the Government’s plans to extend the congestion charge zone and to begin charging under-18s for travel?
Dr Huq
Of course I agree with my hon. Friend. People would have been charged to go from Ealing to Acton, and possibly to use the A23, which goes to Brighton. It is good that that has gone, and congratulations to the Minister too, if she was involved in that.
We are told that local authorities are the final arbiters, but there is so much mistrust around this. Is there any kind of mechanism to ensure that it does not look as though people are marking their own homework? Would she, or someone, be able to swoop in? The Secretary of State wrote to councils to say that they should have had pre-implementation consultation, and should respect all road users. How will that wish be operationalised, especially in places where the consultation takes place six months after implementation? Surely there is scope for some sort of review before then if things are not working. There have been reversals—wholesale in Wandsworth, partial in Redbridge and Harrow. Could the Minister give some guidance on that? I think some councils are getting a bit entrenched; they are not for turning, or for any modifications.
In the final reckoning, does the Minister think a referendum might be a way forward? The scheme has been divisive in the way that Brexit was—sorry to bring that up, Mr Deputy Speaker, but it coloured all our lives for many years, and it has not gone away. A referendum would be completely equitable. If a council has a consultation tool on its website, only those with the right level of literacy, technology and energy will use it and make that count; what about the elderly and infirm? In a referendum, we could give as options, “Yes, with modifications, if need be”—then if “yes” wins, the modifications can be worked out—and “No” for those who want the measures removed.
Apsana Begum
I will be brief this time. Does my hon. Friend agree that there should not only be consultation, but due consideration should be given to equalities impact assessments, and to determining the socioeconomic impact of LTNs?
Dr Huq
My hon. Friend has read my mind. Impact assessments are missing in all this. There have been no baseline data or traffic surveys. It would be good to have a clear point of measurement, so we can ask, “Did it work?”. How will this be measured?
I have suggestions for the Minister. There are ways to discourage car use other than taking this big-bang approach of setting up all the LTNs at once. Instead of our closing every side road, I would like us to have dedicated, segregated cycle lanes on main roads. More of those, please—but not the bollarded ones, because I feel kettled in those, and people cannot overtake or be overtaken in them. Could she address cycle theft, cycle storage, and even bike grants? Not everyone has the same ratio of bikes as the Huq household, so could she help out there, maybe?
There could be more demand-responsive buses, and we could incentivise lift-sharing; on the other side of the pandemic, we will be allowed to be less than 2 metres apart. Perhaps we could even make public transport free, or cut fares—that was a Khan policy as well. There could be more charging points for electric vehicles. People who have bought those recently feel doubly diddled—or triply, if you count controlled parking zones, but that is probably another debate.
The biggest side-effect of this noble policy, which has good intentions—reducing carbon emissions and obesity, and all that stuff—is that it has dichotomised residents into the Lycra-clad brigade of cyclists versus the greedy, gas-guzzler motorists who feel a sense of entitlement to drive around in a metal box, when most of us are both, if not many other things, too. We all inhabit complex Venn diagrams. I use the tube every day as well as doing all those other things. Just the other day, I was on my bike, near one of those bollards. A guy in a Transit van-type vehicle had to reverse a long way, and started effing and blinding at me for being on a bike. I do not think he knew who I was—I hope not. Anyway, that is what the policy has done: create binaries in previously harmonious communities. What I am trying to say is that a well-intended policy has had unintended consequences, but there is time to rectify them. I know that the Minister is a reasonable person; I am curious to hear her answers to all those points.
Rachel Maclean
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The Mayor of London has considerable powers and influence over the roads in the capital. The Department for Transport cannot direct a local authority to halt a scheme, but the local authority in the area of the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton could do that itself and make changes to it.
Dr Huq
People are asking about the letter that was sent to every local authority from the Secretary of State for Transport, and what it actually means. Is that just him huffing and puffing, or does it translate into anything? Secondly, people do not like the term “rat run”. They feel it is insulting to describe getting between A and B in the most direct way, and reducing emissions, as “rat running” if they live there.
Rachel Maclean
I will respond to the hon. Lady’s point about the letter from the Transport Secretary. I think she is referring to the fact that we have already delivered one tranche of funding, and those authorities that have demonstrated genuine plans to consult local communities and embrace good design principles will receive a second tranche, or in some cases more funding than their indicative allocation. Authorities that have not been able to demonstrate that to the same extent will receive less, and in some cases considerably less. We in the Department want to take people with us. We recognise the benefits of cycling and walking schemes, and where those have been delivered successfully, which they have been in many areas up and down the country, they have delivered considerable benefits to the local environment, the local economy, and local communities. That is a good thing, and we want to back it.
In the time remaining to me—literally 30 seconds—let me say that I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss this important issue, and I would be delighted if the hon. Lady would like to write to me or meet me. I will also invite other colleagues who have responsibility for some of the other areas to which she has referred in this debate.
Question put and agreed to.
International Travel
Rupa Huq Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
This in-out, hokey cokey of on-off air bridges and quarantine comes without interruption. Passengers have landed at Heathrow and gone straight on to the Piccadilly line through Ealing and Acton, which is now a petri dish—we have an above-average virus rate—so can he please stop playing politics and give Transport for London the bail-out that it deserves at a time of national crisis to save the whole of London and my constituents from that second spike?
Grant Shapps
I congratulate the hon. Lady on shoehorning TfL into all this. I know that we will be having further conversations, but if memory serves me right, I have already bailed it out to the tune of £1.6 billion.
Covid-19: Aviation
Rupa Huq Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I have had scores of emails from people representing years of loyal service to British Airways, who initially welcomed these lefty-looking furlough and job retention schemes and are now finding that the public purse is being used to effectively chuck ’em on the scrapheap. May I ask the Minister to revive another old Labour tradition and, rather than acting a bit like a bystander, bang some heads together and get the unions, the airlines and the Government round the table—they can have beer and sandwiches at No. 10 if they like—to thrash out a sector-specific deal to save aviation in this country?
Kelly Tolhurst
I like the hon. Lady’s optimism for beer and sandwiches. I personally do not drink beer, so that would not necessarily be of benefit to me. Wine is more to my taste. But I should say that we remain committed as a Government to do what we need to do and align the policies in order to get planes up in the air. The aviation sector is so important for the UK economy and it will remain so, particularly with our regional connectivity. We will work through this crisis with the aviation sector in mind, working on what we can do to mitigate its impact.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rupa Huq Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We want buses that are cleaner and greener. We want them to be the right temperature—air-conditioned in summer, and warm in winter—with 5G plug-in points for phones. And we want to have electric buses—4,000 of them, with this new money. These new buses can be electric or, indeed, hydrogen powered, like the buses being developed by Wrightbus in Northern Ireland. We warmly welcome all such developments. My hon. Friend can be reassured that we are working closely with bus operators to develop new British buses.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Kelly Tolhurst)
The Court of Appeal judgment on the airports national policy statement is complex, and we will set out our next steps in due course. This Government remain supportive of airport expansion, but we will permit it only within our environmental obligations.
Dr Huq
From “No ifs, no buts, no third runway”, to engineering a trip to Afghanistan to skip the vote, the last three Prime Ministers have started off very clear on Heathrow expansion and then obfuscation and U-turns have set in. Why do not the Government take the opportunity of the Court of Appeal ruling that expansion is incompatible with our Paris climate accord obligations and make this dead and buried once and for all, and also review the other 21 planned airport expansions?
Kelly Tolhurst
As I have already outlined, the Government are, and remain, supportive of airport expansion where we are able to deliver it within our environmental obligations. I must point out to the hon. Lady that the Court did not conclude that airport expansion is incompatible with climate change. As I have already outlined, we are reviewing this complex judgment and will lay out our next steps soon.
Transport
Rupa Huq Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Andy McDonald
My message is that our country is about to miss its own targets for the fourth and fifth carbon targets, and that is an appalling record. That is on the Government’s own statistics, so we really need to focus on getting our own house in order.
Successful bus networks are key to achieving a modal shift from private to public transport and reducing carbon emissions. A fully loaded double decker bus could take up to 75 cars off the road. We are hearing references now to buses from the Conservative Benches, inspired no doubt by the Prime Minister’s painting of cardboard buses, but there needs to be more than that. Under this Government, bus funding has been slashed in real terms by £645 million a year, and more than 3,000 routes have been cut or withdrawn. Fares have soared at more than two and a half times the rate of wage increases, while bus patronage in England outside London has fallen by 10%.
Labour has committed to extending the power to franchise bus services to all local authorities in England and to overturning the ban on new municipal companies. That would allow for the cross-subsidisation of services, smart and integrated ticketing, and London-style price caps. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) remarked the other day that a £1.50 bus fare takes her four stops on the West Road in Newcastle. I endure the same thing: a £2 bus ride from my home in Middlesbrough to the bus station a short distance away is truly ridiculous when people can cross this wonderful capital city very economically indeed.
Andy McDonald
I will give way one more time, but then I must make progress.
Dr Huq
I want to give my hon. Friend a London example. We have the 70 and 94 buses in Acton and Chiswick, and on Friday they became electric, despite the massive cuts to the Transport for London support grant that this Government have placed on our London Mayor. Many people in London are worried that our capital will be punished for voting Labour. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need more joined-up thinking and more funding if we are to decarbonise transport?
Andy McDonald
I agree entirely. It is remarkable that London is the only city of any comparison that is without a central Government grant. Some of the measures that we would be taking, were we in government, would have gone some way to addressing that. Madam Deputy Speaker, I will not be taking any more interventions. I am very much aware that a great number of people want to speak in the debate, so if colleagues will bear with me, I will carry on.
We said that we would totally reverse the cuts made to bus services since 2010, then invest the same amount again. That would allow for 3,000-plus route cuts to be reversed, and for the expansion of new services through the redirection of funds currently being channelled into road building. We could then provide free travel for the under-25s in the areas that own or regulate their buses, in order to address generational inequalities, encourage lifelong public transport use and help reverse the long-term downward trend in bus patronage in England outside London. Electrifying 35,000 buses by 2030 would reduce their emissions by 72% as well as boosting manufacturing. However, progress has been painfully slow over the past decade, and I wonder whether the Secretary of State might furnish us with any proposals in that regard.
Similarly, we have seen rail fares rise by 40% since 2010. In contrast, fares in Germany were cut by 10% at the start of this year to encourage more people to travel by train in order to cut emissions. It is frankly absurd that UK rail fares have risen so excessively while the cost of short-haul flights remains low, with taxes broadly frozen. That is why we pledged in the election campaign to reduce fares by 33% by using part of the revenue brought in by vehicle excise duty. This financial offer to commuters would have encouraged the shift from car usage to public transport that will be essential in the coming years if we are to be successful in decarbonising the transport sector.
However, capital investment in our railways will also be required to reverse the electrification cancellations that we have seen under the Conservatives. Despite the clear environmental and performance benefits of rail electrification, the Tories cancelled the promised electrification on the midland main line, on the line between Windermere and Oxenholme, on TransPennine and on parts of the Great Western route.
Rail freight is a low carbon transport choice, emitting 76% less carbon than the equivalent road journey, and has massive potential to lower UK transport emissions, so I regret that the Government have done so little to encourage it. For example, the TransPennine upgrade has no new capacity for freight. Labour’s policy of bringing the railways into public ownership would allow a long-term strategic approach to investment, delivering a more consistent approach that would better support UK industry and help to decarbonise our railways.
I welcome Eurostar’s announcement this week that full direct rail services from London to Amsterdam will begin on 30 April, with direct services to Rotterdam beginning on 18 May. More rail links between the UK and Europe are vital to reducing carbon emissions from short-haul aviation, and I will work with EU colleagues to promote better rail connectivity.
Ahead of the Budget next month, I remind the Transport Secretary and the Chancellor that we cannot road build our way out of the climate crisis. New roads quickly fill up with cars, and “predict and provide” is a 20th-century concept. Ministers claimed that the road investment strategy for motorways and major A roads between 2015 to 2020 would revolutionise the network. In fact, one in three of the projects has been cancelled or delayed, and the strategy is in complete disarray. Road spending should focus on providing more capacity for sustainable transport, such as provisions for bus priority and integrated transport schemes. We need to develop a more holistic approach to transport funding that is geographically rebalanced across the UK.
Labour committed to repurposing vehicle excise duty to establish a sustainable transport fund. Such a fund could provide £550 million a year for walking and cycling routes, £1.4 billion a year to fund free bus travel for under-25s when bus services are re-regulated, £1.3 billion a year to restore the 3,000 bus services lost and deliver an additional 3,000 on top, and £500 million a year to fund local road improvements and maintenance. Most journeys start and end on local roads, which are also used by cyclists and pedestrians, so fixing potholes and better maintaining those roads and pavements should be a priority.
Tackling road transport emissions requires an enormous investment in electric vehicles to see a just transition of the UK’s fleet of road vehicles.
HS2
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
What is the status of the review if we go to the polls this autumn? My constituents see this as a pre-election bribe for the Government’s voters in the shires.
Grant Shapps
This project is too serious to be thinking in those terms, and I certainly was not when I asked Douglas Oakervee to carry out this review. As I have now said twice, this is about people’s lives and livelihoods and the ability of this country’s economy to function. Regardless of what happens when we finally get that election call, I hope there will be cross-party consensus to continue this important work on a cross-party basis and get the job done.
High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill
Rupa Huq ExcerptsMonday 15th July 2019
(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Fiona Bruce
Absolutely.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford referred to the series of junctions on the M6. Junction 17 of the M6 at Sandbach in my constituency needs improvement to take the additional traffic that is increasingly burdening it, particularly because of the additional house building. It is one of the few junctions in the country without a roundabout serving it. Each morning, we see huge pressure, in particular from those commuting from Sandbach to Manchester and elsewhere. It is highly unsatisfactory and another priority that needs to be looked at—in my constituents’ view, looked at in preference to the proposed investment in HS2.
There is going to be an impact in my constituency, because while HS2 does not pass through it, it passes within yards of it. It will pass through Stanthorne and the Bostock Hall estate, literally within yards of Middlewich. Many of my constituents will be impacted—the quality of their lives will be impacted—by this without any compensation being available to them.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making a compelling case. As a London MP, I want to point out that people on Wells House Road in my seat, which HS2 will pass through, do not welcome this development at all. They are already living on a building site seven days a week, and that will carry on for 10 years. The streets are not paved with gold, and even in London, people do not want this.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I think this a bit tangential to punctuality, Mr Speaker, but I might try to get it in. [Hon. Members: “Give it a shot.”] Will the Secretary of State honour the pledge he made to me on 17 July 2017? I realise that that is not a punctual request, but now is the time. I asked him about the mutual mistrust between NW10 residents and HS2, and he said that his door would always be open. Now that construction has started, they feel as though they are living in a war zone, a dustbowl and the longest and largest building site in Europe. So will he make a visit or sit down with me and my constituents to sort this out?
Andrew Jones
Yes, there was a little bit of a tangent in that question. I am not the HS2 Minister, but I can, having just checked with the person who is, say that she will be happy to meet the hon. Lady. We will set that meeting up soon.
Chris Grayling
I am very pleased that we managed to resolve the problem. My hon. Friend puts his finger on an important point. When the unexpected happens or an unintended consequence disrupts a community, the ministerial team and I will always try to do everything we can to ameliorate or change it.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Yesterday’s judicial review on Heathrow was concerned only with the legality of the decision, not the merits of airport expansion. Given that this House has overwhelmingly affirmed that we face a climate emergency, surely a swift and easy way of meeting our obligations would be to cancel the third runway at Heathrow. Not only will it pollute my constituents’ lungs, but it is costing us the earth—literally.
Chris Grayling
I gently remind the hon. Lady that this Parliament voted with a majority of nearly 300 to designate the national policy statement because we recognise that we need to provide jobs for the future, economic opportunities, and indeed the wealth that will deliver the environmental technologies that will clean up this country and help to clean up the planet. As I said earlier, we have sought, and the Airports Commission has sought, to make sure that these expansion plans are consistent with those obligations. International aviation does present a challenge, but I do not believe that we are suddenly going to see it disappear in the future. International aviation is only likely to disappear if the cost of holidays and the cost of travel is put up by Labour.
Garden Bridge: Funding
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
It has been a busy week for us all at work, with the intractable impasse of Brexit preoccupying most, but life goes on outside this unsolvable Rubik’s cube. I want to draw attention to a scandalous misconduct issue: the £50 million-plus spent on a flower-strewn bridge across the Thames on which zero construction ever occurred. At least £30 million of that comes from the coffers of the Department for Transport. I am pleased to have a Transport Minister before us today, but this ill-fated project is a huge, multidimensional issue that is cross-departmental in nature. I hope that he can share some insights into how this represents best value and best practice and how we can learn lessons so that we do not have a repetition of what has been a catalogue of errors.
Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
My hon. Friend speaks about not having a repetition, but while this is possibly the largest example of public money being wasted on something that was never going to go ahead, public money has been wasted on other infrastructure projects, well after the time that it was obvious to anyone that they would not go ahead. Does she share my hope that we can stop this waste of public money in future?
Dr Huq
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who, until his elevation to the Front Bench, was a fellow member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, where we address these things all the time. He is bang on the money, as ever, and I will come to some of those points.
Certain words are associated with certain terms: Profumo—“scandal”; Suez—“crisis”; Grenfell—“tragedy”; Dunblane—“massacre”; and Clapham Common—“rail disaster”. That one was for the Rail Minister. The word “fiasco” should, I think, for ever more be associated with Garden Bridge. The Observer claimed last month that the project was scandalously mismanaged and would cost the taxpayer £43 million for nothing.
This is the biggest uninvestigated scandal by a long chalk. It is two to three times the size of the Kids Company scandal, which our Committee did investigate, and which was turned into a London theatrical musical. It is unlike Kids Company, however, in that there is nothing to show for it, and it is unlike Profumo and those other scandals in that it is a genuine scandal of which many people have never heard. We will never see anything about it in certain outlets. The now departed from here Chancellor George Osborne’s fingerprints are all over it, and it has been rendered invisible in the Evening Standard recently, since it all went wrong. I think the paper was quite cheerleading about it before, under its former editor. That editor is now editor of the “Today” programme, so we will never hear about it on the radio first thing in the morning over our cornflakes either.
Many of the so-called great and good are implicated in this whole affair. The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) is among them. The national treasure Joanna Lumley, who had some success with the Ghurka issue, had less success in this instance. The project had been brewing since at least 2003. The Labour Mayor at the time, Ken Livingstone, flatly refused to do anything about it. His successor, the ex-Tooting MP and current post-holder Sadiq Khan, commissioned the report undertaken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), which eviscerated the affair. After the evidence appeared, the plug was pulled. The indomitable Will Hurst of Architects’ Journal pondered:
“How was the Garden Bridge Trust able to spend £46m on a non-existent bridge?”
In fact, the figures after the final winding-up costs exceed that.
A brand-new report published by Dan Anderson of Fourth Street, a consultancy specialising in heritage lottery funding, has called the project an extraordinary waste of public money—more than £53 million in total, over 80% of which came from the public purse. The London Assembly member Tom Copley demanded to know exactly why the additional funds were not vetoed by officials when it was so obvious that the project was flailing, a point made a moment ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin). As I said earlier, there was £30 million from the Department for Transport. Our northern colleagues—indeed, anyone outside the M25—expressed indignation about the fact that so much was spent on the bridge when, in a climate of austerity, transport upgrades and initiatives have not gone ahead. This is not just a London issue; it is wider than that.
In terms of cost, the garden bridge dwarfs previous scandals. I have already mentioned Kids Company. The cash for honours scandal resulted in an £18 million loss. Arms to Iraq cost £4 million, and the parliamentary expenses scandal £2.5 million. Only the Northern Ireland renewable heat initiative cost more. However, there has been an astonishing lack of repercussions in this case.
The Minister may have a sense of déjà vu. In 2016, he was in a similar slot, responding to a debate on this matter initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). However, a lot has changed since then. We have now seen the final bill. On 13 February, just over a month ago, the cost to the taxpayer was revealed to be £53.3 million. A further £5.5 million of winding-up costs was to be paid by the Department for Transport, via Transport for London. In 2018, the legal opinion of Jason Coppel QC, an expert in public and procurement law, referred to a “probable” violation of obligations by trustees, including Joanna Lumley and Paul Morrell, the former chief construction adviser to the Government. There is a sniff of “mates’ rates” here. The project should not have been given the green light by the Government despite all the warnings.
This is a sorry end to a supposedly pioneering project, and a far cry from the 2013 national infrastructure plan. At the time, Danny Alexander said that a £30 million fund to kick-start the project would be supplemented by private income. The Minister himself said that the bridge would be magnificent and that people would come from all over the world to see it. I think that it was supposed to be the second biggest tourist attraction in Europe. My parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), was also a big fan, and the computer-generated image excited many people.
Today’s debate is particularly urgent, because the Garden Bridge Trust—the charity responsible for the project—will wind itself up imminently. We now have an itemised bill, in which £21.4 million for building contractors is the biggest expense. Again, this was in 2016, when the funding was not in place and the planning permissions were not there; none of that had been sorted, yet this huge contract was signed off—£10 million to designers and architects, £400,000 on a gala fundraiser, £1.3 million on geotechnical marine surveys of the Thames, £161,000 for the website. So there are huge question marks around the robustness of the business case for this ill-fated bridge to nowhere, and there are questions about the Department for Transport’s own criteria set by the Treasury, which we need to make sure are followed through properly next time. A lot of questions about due process, openness, transparency and accountability have dogged the project since inception and those involved need to be held to account.
We know that the Transport Minister, the Chancellor and Chief Secretary at the time have all moved on, but the Mayor of London from then, the project’s chief midwife, is still active in politics. Until recently, he was Foreign Secretary, and just this week he had a tasteless outburst on the airwaves about money being blown on a historical child abuse inquiry, which has upset families. That seems rich given the cumulative price tag of all his pet projects—not just the unbuilt bridge, but the unused water cannon, the unfeasibly hot buses, the £20,000 on going to Afghanistan to avoid the Heathrow vote.
This episode also raises questions about the role and performance of the Charity Commission. There are question marks over Transport for London as well. It has experienced unprecedented cuts to operational funding over the last five years, with its budget reducing by £700 million a year. It has become one of the few transport authorities in the world that do not receive a direct Government grant for their operational running costs. I would like the Minister to address that.
This is a national scandal. It seems that the usual channels of civil servants and the traffic lights system, by which are warnings when things are going wrong, were bypassed here. It feels like this was a vanity project masquerading as a transport scheme. The fact that it was part of a national infrastructure plan makes it sound more like a regeneration scheme than anything to do with transport. The Hodge report suggests that the sequencing of all the decisions was in tune with electoral cycles rather than anything else. This waste of money on something only tangentially to do with traffic should be seen against the background of austerity, too.
There are implications for other big concerns and projects such as Carillion and HS2, which goes through my seat. There are question marks over the Thomas Heatherwick partnership, which is perceived as greatly favoured in a lot of these contracts nowadays. I am thinking of the Olympic stadium and the new Routemaster buses—the “cauldron on wheels” buses as they have been called. We need to look at the public sector’s use of poorly regulated charities to deliver capital projects, because there is real lack of accountability.
So since the last debate in 2016 there has been a huge volume of new evidence. I would like to know from the Minister whether we can have a fresh inquiry with fresh eyes now that the final bill has come in. There seems to be a merry-go-round involving Arup and others, with people who are trustees also regulating the companies involved and the same companies being awarded contracts.
This floral tribute and unbuilt bridge was meant to pay for itself. Fantastic promises were made, but the local group Thames Central Open Spaces, which I have met, was ringing alarm bells from back in 2014, and it had some success in getting the land listed as an asset of community value.
I ask the Transport Minister why the business case was never really made. Some £60 million of public money was agreed. This is something that I will not lay at the door of his boss whose name rhymes with “failing”, because fortunately that particular Secretary of State did have the foresight to pull the plug on some of this money, but there is a feeling that favoured providers were being fattened up. There seems to be a circular route whereby if we want to, we can set up a charitable arm’s length trust with its opaque governance structures and give all the jobs to our mates and so forth. The regulation is very shady; there is no clear accountability structure here. TfL says it is the Government, and the National Audit Office can only narrowly investigate bits of the Department for Transport and cannot investigate TfL. The GLA has no teeth to investigate TfL. The Public Accounts Committee is now saying that it has done its bit and that this is one for the London Assembly. We are all being led a merry dance, or perhaps led up the garden path. This is a masterclass in buck-passing.
We should be aware that other big projects are going to be funded through this same structure, including the Crystal Palace park and, I think, the national holocaust memorial. Those are great, laudable projects, but we need to ensure that accountability procedures are in place. I mentioned HS2. The garden bridge did not even have the advantage of shaving time off the journey to Birmingham. People saw it as having no direction or purpose.
Was this a complex web of corruption, lies, deception and cover-up, or was it a comedy of errors involving negligence mixed with a touch of arrogance and hubris stemming from a fragmentation of confused responsibilities? Whether this was a cock-up or a conspiracy, lessons must be learned in relation to oversight, because a £40 million-plus mistake is a big mistake to make. This should not be taken lightly. Will Hurst from the Architects’ Journal has said that
“heads should roll over the Garden Bridge but the odds are they won’t”.
There are wider questions about TfL. As I have said, its resource grant has been massively cut. There are also issues about the mishandling of Crossrail, which is now running over budget and over time. It will come through my seat, and my constituents want to know whether it is ever going to happen.
Throughout the garden bridge project, there were constant shortfalls between stated income and real balances. The unforgivable thing was the £24.1 million construction project that was committed to before ownership of the land, funds or permissions were in place. This all happened the wrong way round. Cart before horse; the sequencing was all completely wrong.
I have a couple of questions for the Minister. The National Audit Office report made a series of recommendations about the Department for Transport’s decision-making processes. Have any consequences flowed from that report? Why were DFT officials ignored when they said that there was too much funding for pre-construction activities? We need to see a chain of command between DFT and TfL, because it is not clear what was going on in terms of oversight responsibilities.
We live in an age of freedom of information, social media, public inquiries, televised hearings and investigative journalism, so these kinds of rigged procurement processes involving dodgy competitive tendering and taking things off the books will be noticed now. It is not good enough to have cabals, cliques and the old pals act. I am grateful to Tom Copley, Will Hurst, Peter Walker, Thames Central Open Spaces and Dan Anderson for helping me to illuminate this murky garden bridge fiasco. I have learned a new term this week—“spaffed up the wall”. I learned it from our former Foreign Secretary. Politicians are usually seen as being in it for themselves, incompetent or out of touch, but here it looks as though all three were applicable. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I hope that we can ensure that these things never happen again.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) on securing this debate. I have to say that I think she has seen a lavish amount of conspiracy in this issue. She made comparisons with Suez and various other things which were, frankly, a little overblown. I have written down terms such as “rigged processes” and “mates’ rates”. Those are quite strong accusations, and I will comment more on them later, but I think it is important that we do not lose perspective.
I recognise, as did the Secretary of State and my ministerial colleagues at the Department for Transport, that the garden bridge is a subject that has always divided public opinion. I also remember that debate of about three years ago where strongly held views were expressed, both for and against, by people sitting next to each other on the Opposition Benches. This is a disagreement between neighbours as much as anything else. I do not think we can regard it as a political matter. It was a project that could have added a significant extra dimension to our already magnificent capital city.
Let me start at the beginning by explaining why the Government decided to support this iconic and novel project. The previous Mayor of London was approached, some years ago, with an idea for a completely new type of bridge: a footbridge, but one that was also a park; a place where people could cross the river as part of their journey or stop and enjoy their surroundings and the magnificent river views that this city presents. The then Mayor and Ministers considered that it could be an innovative and iconic project, but they did not believe that it should be wholly taxpayer funded. However, they did agree to help with some funding to kickstart the project and stimulate private sector funding. The Chancellor therefore announced in the 2013 autumn statement that the Government would provide £30 million towards the project as long as the Mayor contributed a similar amount and as long as a satisfactory business case showed that it would deliver value for money for the taxpayer.
The Garden Bridge Trust and Transport for London produced a business case in early 2014, and the Department for Transport analysed it carefully in the same way that it does for any other transport project. While the project was highly unusual and had a wide range of potential cost-benefit ratios, our analysis showed that there was a reasonable chance that it would offer value for money for the taxpayer. The hon. Lady asked whether the process was followed, and it was, but it was tough to cost and quantify the potential benefits.
In the light of the analysis, the Department agreed to release the £30 million pledged by the Chancellor but, importantly, we attached a number of conditions to it, including a cap of around £8 million on the amount of Government money that could be spent on pre-construction activity. That condition was designed to limit taxpayer exposure in the event that the project did not proceed. We also included a requirement for TfL to draw up a detailed funding agreement with the trust to govern how the money would be used. Over time, and in response to requests from the trust, the cap on the Government’s exposure was increased in stages to £13.5 million as circumstances changed and it became clear that more money was needed to get the project to the point at which construction could start.
Andrew Jones
This was a very individual project, and it could have been a captivating addition to London’s already captivating centre. I could immediately see why organisers would consider such a venue as location for events, so I could see how those income streams could be developed. However, it is a challenge to decide how to use the initiative and ideas that come from campaigners, architects and designers and the good will of the charitable sector, with Government support in a public-private partnership, to deliver significant public good.
I am sorry that the project has not materialised, but we cannot say that an approach that brings people together should never again be used, because I can foresee circumstances in which it could, and possibly should, happen again. The hon. Lady mentioned certain projects, and although I am not particularly familiar with the detail of the Crystal Palace proposal, I am absolutely certain that initiatives that come from the creativity of community involvement, by bringing people together and using the Government as a means of leverage, either financial other through ministerial engagement, are part of what the future can look like. We should not rule that out, but if public money is involved, we should make sure that we learn the lessons, to which I shall come later in my speech.
In 2016, the Garden Bridge Trust asked the Government to underwrite the project’s potential cancellation costs. Let me be clear: that was not a request for additional funding; instead, it was a request to be able to use some of the £30 million that we had already committed, to pay the project’s cancellation costs, should that be necessary. The trust said that without such an underwriting guarantee, the project could not continue. After careful consideration, in late May 2016, the Department agreed to provide a time-limited underwriting guarantee but, again, with various conditions attached, including a requirement for the trust to provide more regular reports to the Department on the status of the project and the steps the trust was taking to address risks.
Over the summer of that year, as a result of further delays to the construction timetable, the trust asked whether the underwriting guarantee could be extended beyond the end of September 2016. Again, after consideration, the Department agreed that it could, but in such a way that the risks would be more fairly shared between the Government and the bridge’s private sector backers. To be precise, the Government agreed to underwrite up to £9 million-worth of cancellation costs, and it was intended that the private sector would be required to underwrite any additional cancellation costs above that amount.
The Government continued their support for the project and wished it well, but they always made it clear to the trust that it should not just be public money at risk should the project fail. Unfortunately, the garden bridge trustees took the difficult decision in August 2017 that, without the necessary guarantees from the current Mayor of London, the project could not continue and the formal decision was taken to close the project. Since then, the trustees have been negotiating with their creditors to close down the trust in an orderly fashion.
Transport for London has been working with the trust to satisfy the Department and itself that every £1 of public money spent on cancellation costs is absolutely necessary to support the project’s claims. I understand there are many concerns about the project, and I will talk about some of them. The Garden Bridge Trust was set up in 2014 to manage the construction of the bridge, and the experienced group of trustees was wholly responsible for the development and fundraising. The Department for Transport and Transport for London spoke to the trust on a regular basis about progress and concerns.
I understand that the hon. Lady and other hon. Members have expressed concerns about how the trust was being run, how public money was being spent and how much transparency there was on the project, but it would be wrong to say that nobody has scrutinised the project. There have been several reports and investigations into the project. The London Assembly has reviewed the procurement process. The National Audit Office has reviewed the project and reported on the Department’s grant control measures in 2016. The Charity Commission has looked at how the trust was run as a charity and reported in 2017.
Dr Huq
The Minister is detailing all the different reports, but we need one now that we have the final winding-up costs and the final bill. Those reports are historical. This looks like another white elephant, and I did not mention the cable car, which is another one. This is a whitewash of a white elephant.
Andrew Jones
I have mentioned investigations by the London Assembly, the National Audit Office and the Charity Commission, which clearly were not whitewashes. These are independent bodies. The hon. Lady has mentioned mates’ rates and closed groups, but the head of the Garden Bridge Trust was a former Labour Minister, now Labour peer, who was dealing with a Conservative Mayor of London. I do not view this as some closed, chummy, “old school tie” thing, which is what the hon. Lady is suggesting. I do not think the facts are remotely like that.
There has never been any secret about the investigations, and the fact that they have taken place demonstrates the robust scrutiny that has applied to this project to ensure that it was run properly and that we got the best value for taxpayers’ money. It is because of those inquiries that I do not think it necessary to have a new inquiry.
The Department for Transport continues to scrutinise the use of public money in spending decisions robustly. Clear safeguards were included in the garden bridge project on how and when the money could be spent to limit expenditure should the project fail. The hon. Lady asks about lessons learned, which are important for anyone who has responsibility for public finances. It is quite a difficult question, because this is such an individual project, but there is the principle of control of money. The Department has, for example, changed the way it handles rail development projects by introducing the rail network enhancements pipeline—the RNEP process—to ensure that projects cannot proceed to the next level of development until it is clear what the funding implications are. There is always, then, this iterative process of review and of lessons being learned from experience and new developments. Of course we learn lessons.
There are also processes for sharing good practice. There is a transport efficiency project whereby different parts of the Department share best practice to see whether lessons can be learned in the development of rail that could be applied to road, and vice versa. I would caution the hon. Lady, therefore, about saying that no lessons have been learned. Learning lessons is an existing part of standard DFT procedure and—I would hope—of every other Department and public body.
As the hon. Lady may be aware, the sum spent on cancellation liabilities will be significantly less than the £9 million made available, meaning that more of the funding originally allocated can be returned to the Department to be spent on other transport projects.
In conclusion, I understand the concerns raised by the hon. Lady and others who have spoken today and previously and I recognise it is unfortunate that public money has been spent without the project coming to fruition, but despite people’s best efforts projects sometimes do not achieve their potential. The decision to support the project was taken with the view that it would be successful. It did not fail to capture the public imagination. It might have polarised it, but some clearly saw how it could enhance an already magnificent cityscape.
My Department will continue to scrutinise funding decisions and make sure we continue to deliver value for taxpayers. That is a regular part of all that we do. It has not been compromised by this project and will remain a part of all our future project management.
Question put and agreed to.
EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts
Rupa Huq Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Alan Brown
Well, let’s see. Perhaps I would ensure that no deal was off the table, so that there would be no hint of that cliff edge with no medicines coming through. That is what I would do to start with. We should also consider extending article 50, to try to give this incompetent Government time to make some real preparations, although I have no faith in the possibility that any more time would actually work for them.
I have mentioned transparency and accountability. Let me record my thanks to the journalist who first broke the story about Seaborne Freight in the new year and to the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office for the work that they have done so far in assessing the diligence. Members on both sides of the House have raised some important questions: for instance, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) first raised the matter of the likely illegal tendering process.
We have still to get to the bottom of the overall process. It started in secrecy; it has been shrouded in secrecy ever since; and the Transport Secretary’s non-answers and evasions have not helped us to secure any further clarity. His Department has form when it comes to procurement issues. I remember, years ago, the collapse of the west coast main line franchise, which came about following another court action challenge. That resulted in Virgin receiving a direct award to extend its services, which clearly does not provide the best value for money for the taxpayer.
If the Transport Secretary believes so much in competition and privatisation, we have to ask why so many rail franchises have received direct awards, because that is the complete opposite of competitive tendering. The Southern rail franchise model has clearly failed, and much of that failure has been due to the inaction of the Transport Secretary, and the fact that somebody just wanted to have a fight with the unions rather than trying to improve markets and get services up and running.
That is the background to some of the systemic procurement failings in the Department for Transport, and it brings us neatly to where we are now. When the information about the award of the Seaborne Freight contract first surfaced, it was almost like a sick joke. This was an emergency contract for a company to provide emergency services. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) referred to vital services to keep medicines running. The Government, and the Transport Secretary, chose to pick up a ferry company that had no boats, had negative equity of £374,000, and had no history of running ferry or freight services. Both Brian Raincock, one of the directors, and Ben Sharp, the chief executive, had had companies liquidated when they owed money to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Raincock’s debt was £600,000. I remind the House that HMRC is, effectively, all of us taxpayers.
What, then, constituted the due diligence, and what red flags were identified at that time? We have still to hear the answers to those questions. It turned out—I touched on this earlier—that the due diligence heralded by the Transport Secretary was actually very limited. It was very high-level, that meant that it was not due diligence. The companies which carried it out confirmed that they could not make a proper assessment of the merits of Seaborne being given a supposedly vital contract.
We need to ask some questions, and the Transport Secretary needs to start answering. How on earth did Seaborne get hand-picked for direct negotiation, given the circumstances? Saying that it accounted for only 10% of the vital services is no answer. Saying that that the Government were supporting a vital British start-up company is certainly not an answer. Why should we hand-pick start-up companies for vital emergency services? That makes no sense whatsoever. It was so wrong that it led to a £33 million settlement for Eurotunnel. The Transport Secretary is shaking his head. Hopefully he is managing to multi-task and listen to these points, and will respond to them at the Dispatch Box.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the £33 million for something that never materialised—the phantom ferry contract—is not dissimilar to the £30 million that the Secretary of State’s predecessor committed to the garden bridge? There is nothing to show for that either. It was not even directly a transport project. The hon. Gentleman mentioned rail upgrades. Vital rail upgrades elsewhere in the country were cancelled when the money was committed to this project. It is taxpayer money, and Members should not laugh at this appalling waste.
Alan Brown
I thank the hon. Lady for highlighting yet another miserable failure, with more money being thrown down the drain. It is interesting that Eurotunnel was paid £33 million for vital services, given that that seems in one way or another to replace the contract of Seaborne Freight, which was given only £14 million. So we really do have to ask what extra we are getting for the £33 million, or is this all the compensation that Eurotunnel walks away with and the taxpayer has no chance of recouping? Again, the Transport Secretary really needs to explain this.
The Government have argued that direct negotiation was possible under regulation 32 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, which relates to emergency situations brought about by unforeseeable events. So, after more than two years of no-deal planning, we suddenly had an unforeseen event—an unforeseen event, however, that allowed such protracted negotiations and £800,000-worth of due diligence. I would like the Transport Secretary to explain how long those negotiations were ongoing in this supposedly emergency situation, because £800,000 of consultants’ money amounts to a fair bit of time in negotiation, so he needs to explain when the actual emergency situation kicked in.
The argument from the Dispatch Box was that Seaborne Freight would only receive the money if it delivered the service, but that misses the point, because if it did not deliver the service, the emergency service it was contracted for would not happen, and that would leave the Government in a right mess in terms of no-deal preparations. The Transport Secretary has also argued that Seaborne has not cost the taxpayer any money. Hopefully he will re-explain these figures, because I would like to know how £800,000-worth of due diligence, at least some of which was on Seaborne Freight, has not cost any money. How did going to court and defending the Government’s position not cost any money? How did an out-of-court settlement with Eurotunnel at £33 million not cost any money that was related to Seaborne, because I am pretty sure a key plank of Eurotunnel’s objections was the fact that the Transport Secretary gave an important contract to a company with no ships? Meanwhile Eurotunnel is a company that obviously provides successful cross-border services. It is no wonder it was at court.
I would also like to ask the Transport Secretary whether there are any more objections outstanding: any more risks of court action. In response to a written parliamentary question I was told that a limited number of representations were received. In my book, a limited number is more than one. We have already had one court case to date; are any more court cases pending?