Christmas Adjournment

Simon Burns Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise an issue of great importance to my constituents: the rail service between Chelmsford and Liverpool Street.

We have a problem with the railway because, by the historic nature of its original build, it is only one track up the line and one track down, and it is impossible to expand it to two tracks because of where the track was positioned in the first place. We are relieved that, in the next five years, Network Rail will be investing £149 million in improving the whole of the Great Eastern main line. In his autumn statement, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer embraced the Great Eastern taskforce recommendations, which will see £476 million invested in improvements to the rail network.

However, in the short term, there is a problem. If one looks at the reliability figures over the past six months between April and the beginning of November, one sees that they have fluctuated each month, between 92.6% on a good day and as low as 87.5% on a bad day. Worryingly, Chelmsford station is, according to the Office of Rail Regulation, the second busiest station in the region. More than 8,500 people commute daily to London to work, so they are reliant on that service to get to and from work each day. Since late November, we have been seeing far too many disruptions to the line, which have caused severe problems for those who need to get to work or to travel to London or elsewhere along the network.

Sadly, one reason, which is not unique to the line, is the increased number of suicides that are occurring on our railways. It is a tragedy not only for those who commit suicide and their family and friends, but for society at large. It is, as Members will recognise, a difficult issue to overcome, but more needs to be done.

There are three top causes for the disruptions to our railways from 1 December to 15 December. First, 22% of the total delay is due to technical fleet delays, which basically means broken down rolling stock and engines. That has accounted for 23% of the rail cancellations. The second reason is what is known in the trade as possession overruns, which is a serious and totally unforgiveable issue. It is when Network Rail overruns on the engineering work it has been doing over the weekend. Of course, we all welcome the engineering work being done, because it shows investment in the track and overhead electrification cables to improve and enhance the service, but to my mind there is no excuse if, due to bad planning, it overruns into the rush hour on a Monday morning, causing catastrophic disruptions for commuters trying to get to work.

The third reason is track faults and broken rails, which account for 11% of total delay minutes and 9% of the total calculations. Those three categories alone caused 45% of the disruptions to the service in the first two weeks of December.

When we talk about broken-down trains, the company that gets most blame is Greater Anglia, which provides the service, but in most of the cases in this two-week period it was not Greater Anglia trains that were breaking down but freight trains, which then caused the back-ups and backlogs in the service. That is why I want far quicker action on electrification of the Felixstowe to Nuneaton line so that more freight trains can use that electrified service and will not have to come down through Chelmsford into London and around north-west London to go out again towards the midlands and the north of England.

I also want to see new trains for Greater Anglia routes or for whoever else gets the franchise to run the service in 2016. I am particularly pleased that my right hon. Friends the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Transport have accepted that a commitment to new rolling stock and trains will be part of the franchise tender document published next year, before the award of a new franchise from 2016. We have now become one of the parts of the rail network with the oldest rolling stock. It is at least 30 years old and has all the problems that 30-year-old rolling stock suffers from, particularly with the reliability of the engines.

I am also keen that more should be done by Network Rail to put measures in place to ensure that when it plans its timetable for badly needed engineering work—considerable engineering work has gone on on the line for the past 10 to 15 years, with an upgrade of the track from Liverpool Street through to Chelmsford and north up to Colchester and the replacement and modernisation of the electrification cables—it must do so in such a way that when Monday morning dawns it has completed the work planned for that weekend and the rail network can get back to running a reliable and proper service for hard-pressed passengers who have to get to work. I have spoken to Network Rail and appreciate that it understands the problem and the need to get its timetables and programmes right, but it cannot simply talk about it. It must ensure that that actually happens.

Commuters, whether they are in Chelmsford or elsewhere, do not pay cheaply for the service they get. I accept that in the past when British Rail was a nationalised industry, successive Governments, Conservative or Labour, always had investment in the rail network as one of the first cuts at their disposal when getting into financial problems. It was a false economy at the time, and since privatisation successive Governments—to be fair, the previous Labour Government did this too—have played catch-up to provide the investment. In this control period, 2014 to 2019, £38.5 billion is being spent by Network Rail to upgrade our rail network, just as the previous Labour Government, in control period 4, invested billions of pounds. The only difference is that one of the main challenges for the rail network now involves greater electrification. In 13 years, the previous Government provided an extra 10 miles of electrification whereas this Government will provide 856 extra miles. The hon. Gentleman on the Opposition Front Bench, who I do not think has ever been a transport spokesman, is shaking his head, but I assure him that those figures are right.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Although I was not a transport spokesperson, I worked for Network Rail and I am a member of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association. I worked on a project to build a new electrified line that was 15 miles in length, so I am sorry that the former Transport Minister is not quite aware of all the facts.

[Mr Burns]

I am impressed by the hon. Gentleman’s qualifications, but I will tell him, and he can check the facts later—surprisingly, his own Front-Bench team have never questioned them—that under the Labour Government there were 10 extra miles of electrification in their 13 years. Under this coalition Government there are at present 856 extra miles—not replacing existing electrified line, but over and above, new electrification of our railways. Before Christmas if he has time or in the new year, the hon. Gentleman will no doubt be able to check his facts and write back to me confirming the accuracy of my figures.

I think we have consensus now. On that happy note, I wish all the staff who work so diligently and hard on our behalf throughout the year a very happy Christmas, and Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish you a very happy Christmas.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Thank you.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), and I echo entirely what he said about identity—in Stafford and Staffordshire, during difficult periods over the past few years, we have experienced that same sense of identity.

Yesterday, we heard the welcome news that the number of people out of work claiming jobseeker’s allowance had fallen in Stafford by 452 in 12 months. Stafford’s strengths are many—in engineering, especially energy, and in information technology, health services, defence and consumer chemicals—and signs of investment are everywhere. There is the substantial expansion of the Ministry of Defence base, to welcome two new Signals regiments in 2015; two new business parks; major developments in the town centre; Northfield village, which brings together a new health centre, extra care housing, a first-class dementia care home and a community centre; and the opening of Pencric in Penkridge, which is a superb example of extra care housing, with a mixture of homes to buy and houses for social rent.

Stafford borough and especially Stafford have also been clear about the need to build more homes to meet current and future needs—more than 10,000 of them—but in a planned way. Several developers have tried to break open a plan on which so much time and effort have been spent. Fortunately, thus far, it has been to no avail, but I urge the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make it clear that an agreed plan is an agreed plan and that efforts by developers immediately to throw it into the bin will not succeed.

After five and a half years, two Francis inquiries and a trust special administration, our hospital, now the county hospital, can finally focus on what my constituents and its excellent staff wish to do: deliver top-quality, safe care. I thank the Support Stafford Hospital group and many others for all they have done to get this far. The hospital is now part of the University Hospitals of North Midlands Trust. I believe that this coming together will bring both challenges and benefits. We will see benefits through increased investment in A and E, cancer and dialysis services, and refurbished wards and theatres, but the challenge will be to ensure that the trust makes best use of the county hospital for my constituents and others. The hospital is a tremendous asset, and our community campaign has managed to save its A and E and acute status and even to save it from closure, which some people feared might happen.

As we debated this morning, there is great pressure on A and E everywhere. In Stafford, we have a much improved A and E that is open 14 hours a day. Increasing that back up to 24 hours a day with paediatric cover will bring great benefits both to Stafford and the rest of the region, where hospitals are under pressure. The proposal for an overnight, doctor-led service at the county hospital from April is welcome and will help, but I will continue to argue for a return to 24/7 A and E until it happens, because it makes absolute sense and the cost is manageable.

[Mr Simon Burns]

My hon. Friend is being somewhat modest, because he omits to mention the tremendous work he has done for the hospital ever since he became a candidate. We should also mention the work of our hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash).

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comments. He was a doughty supporter as a Minister in the Department of Health, which we appreciated greatly.

A 24/7 A and E department would guarantee 24/7 access for children to paediatric emergency doctors. In the meantime, I and my constituents need assurances that any transfer of services will not happen unless independent experts say that the arrangements are safe.

Next year will see the review into consultant-led maternity services. Let me be clear: this must be properly carried out, as the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary have said. There can be no pre-ordained outcome. I have still heard no convincing explanation why our major European neighbours can run much smaller consultant-led units but we cannot, especially when, as with our county hospital, a hospital is part of a large trust that could surely provide such services on a network basis.

Our part of Staffordshire is tendering for cancer and end-of-life services. I understand the reasoning—a desire to integrate the services better to improve care and outcomes—but, as I have said before, I believe that this form of tender is not the right way to go about things. If there is a need for an integrator to help better joint working, let us search for an organisation to work alongside the providers; there is no need for the integrator to be the commissioner as well. It will simply add another layer of management. I therefore urge the Department, NHS England, Macmillan, which is involved, and the clinical commissioning groups to reconsider my proposal for an integrator that helps providers to work better together but does not actually commission the services.

Our libraries are at the heart of many of our local communities. Staffordshire has had a consultation on their future, and I welcome the county’s desire to keep all its libraries open, but the initial proposals for my constituency are flawed. The main towns in the county should all have a library in the top category—“library extra”. I simply cannot understand how Stafford and Cannock were not placed in this category, but Newcastle-under-Lyme, Burton, Lichfield and Tamworth were. That needs correcting. Penkridge is also a large and thriving community with an excellent library. As stated in the petition I presented here last week, it needs professional staffing—assisted, of course, by the volunteers who are very willing to support it. The other libraries in my constituency in Rising Brook and Holmcroft also need the support of professional staff.

Let me turn to other matters concerning my constituents. Nuisance telephone calls and copycat websites that pretend to be official, but charge people money unnecessarily are the bane of many constituents’ lives. I urge the Government to mount an education campaign to alert people to the free services and to work with search engines to ensure that the free Government services are always top of the listing.

Respite care funding is another issue. This Government have introduced more of it, which I welcome, but there is increasing need for people to have respite care. The millions of carers around the country depend on it.

I welcome the steps that the Minister for Schools has taken to improve schools funding for the underfunded counties and authorities around the country. In Staffordshire, however, we have not gone far enough, and there is a problem with the formula under which special care funding is calculated. I welcome the fact that the Minister has now included the county of Staffordshire within the 10 authorities where that is being investigated. General practice and health funding need looking at, too. The weighting of funding for older people is not sufficient, which certainly affects my constituency and my county.

Constituents have raised a number of other matters, often relating to older people and their treatment by pension funds and their tax treatment. A widow who had been married to a policeman who died in the course of his service has found that, having married again, she is not able to collect her pension. There seems to be some confusion about whether that should be the case. I have been told that it should not be under new regulations, but her experience is that she is unable to receive her widow’s pension.

I discovered last week from a constituent whose husband died more than 50 years ago—and she has not remarried—that she is not entitled to the transferable inheritance tax allowance on her property, whereas someone whose spouse had died more recently would be entitled to that transferable allowance on the estate. The estate effectively claims on both spouses, the original and the current, making two allowances. I believe that this amounts to some sort of age discrimination, which the Treasury could look into.

I would like to bring to the attention of the Department of Health the matter of retrospective care refunds. There was a problem a few years ago when families were overcharged for care. A process of refunding is going on, but it is taking too long, with bureaucratic hurdles in the way. I ask the Department of Health to look into this and to work with CCGs to ensure that the refunds, many of them dating back as far as 2006 and 2007, are given to the people to whom they are owed.

Finally, I would like to thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for all the work you do and to wish you a very happy Christmas. I would like to thank all the staff and everybody in my constituency. I thank the voluntary organisations, and then there are local councillors, to whom we do not often give enough credit. This year, when the Staffordshire mayoralty is 400 years old, it is particularly important to remember local councillors and the work they do, alongside volunteers and everybody else who makes my constituency such a wonderful place in which to work and to live.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Simon Burns]

I assume from his generous comment that the hon. Gentleman will accept that I was talking in the context of England, and that my figures were therefore correct.

[Thomas Docherty]

I think—if I may say so gently—that the confusion may have been confounded when I referred to the Airdrie-Bathgate rail link and the right hon. Gentleman was unaware that that was in Scotland. Let me move on, however, to his useful remarks about suicides and attempted suicides at this time of year, particularly those involving railway lines. He and I will both know, because of our backgrounds, that not only are many of the very unhappy individuals who seek to throw themselves under trains unsuccessful, but horrific and life-changing injuries may result from their actions. I am sure that all Members would urge any constituent who faces such troubling times to contact organisations such as the Samaritans. I commend their work, and also that of Network Rail and the rail companies which have invested a great deal of time in recent years in trying to minimise the number of cases that occur.

The hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) raised the issue of the 1812 war. He knows of my interest in that subject, and he was right to draw attention to the 200 years of close co-operation between our two nations. He was also right to point out that a third nation participated in that war. When we stand at the Dispatch Boxes, which rest on a table that was donated by our Commonwealth cousins in Canada, we are always grateful for their continued friendship.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) referred to Bahrain. He will not be surprised to learn that Opposition Front Benchers do not share his particular view of the decision to set up a base there, but he was right—as he was earlier today—to call on the Government to organise a debate about foreign policy and our defence posture in the new year, particularly as in 2015 we shall have a national security strategy from the new Government. We strongly support that call, and we hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will refer it to the Leader of the House for consideration.

As ever, the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) made an impassioned and knowledgeable speech about the situation in North Korea. She has a tremendous track record in relation to the persecution of Christians, and—again, as ever—she made a hugely important contribution. I know that her work has the support of all Members.

The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) spoke in support of what I suppose could be called the bird communities in the United Kingdom. He is a champion of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and, as he knows, my researcher Sally Webber says that he is probably its biggest supporter in the House of Commons. The RSPB will certainly miss him, even if not all Back Benchers are entirely forgiving of his strong leadership during his time in the Whips Office.

I want to mention some of those who serve the House. Many Members on both sides of the Chamber have rightly thanked the House’s staff, and, on behalf of the Opposition, I too thank all those in all the Departments, particularly Hansard, the Doorkeepers, and those in Visitor Services. I also want to highlight a small group of individuals, some of whom have retired or are about to retire after decades of public service. I am grateful to the Clerk of the House for his assistance in the compiling of this list.

Roger Rankine worked at the House for nearly 27 years. He started as a joiner working in the outbuildings, before working his way up to become a higher technical officer. In that role, he covered the external works for state openings and has led the search team for that event. Roger is sports mad and an extremely keen golfer.

Rosalind Bolt retired at the end of October. She served for 21 years in the House. She started her career in the accounts payable team and finished as office manager in the web and intranet service. She knew many, many people across the parliamentary estate and was, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, widely respected. She was always quick to offer support and guidance to her colleagues and had a strong sense of the “right way” to interact with colleagues, stakeholders and suppliers.

Mel Barlex, whom I had the pleasure of working with in particular on restoration and renewal, stood down earlier this autumn as parliamentary director of estates. He turned a struggling organisation into a high-performing delivery team, providing maintenance, capital works and property services to both Houses.

Michael—Mick—Brown was a Doorkeeper who retired at the start of the summer recess. He had been here since 1990, and before that had served in the Royal Navy and is a Falklands veteran. Ian McDonald, a fellow Cumbrian, will be retiring this week. He worked here from December 2006 and before that served in the Metropolitan police. Sonia Mcintosh retired in October 2014 after some 30 years’ service in the House. Chris Ridley completed 37 years of public service, retiring at the end of October 2014. He worked in the civil service and the House of Commons over that period. Peter Thomas started in the catering services as a kitchen steward in 1990. He was the first person to come into work at the weekend for the lying in state of the Queen Mother.

Janice Spriggs retires today from the House of Commons catering service after 38 years of service. Janice joined as a waitress in the Members’ Dining Room before moving to the Harcourt Room, which is now, of course, the Churchill Dining Room, and then the Strangers’ Bar. She ran the 6th Floor 7 Milbank room until its closure. Latterly, she has worked on the Principal Floor managing the Strangers’ Dining Room. I know she will be fondly missed by many customers and colleagues.

Finally, Carol Hill, the heritage cleaning team manager, has retired after 15 years in the House. Her team is responsible for looking after the heritage areas in the Palace.

I, on behalf of the Opposition, want to wish all those public servants a very enjoyable retirement. I am sure they will all be trying to have a peaceful Christmas, and will perhaps even take a slice of Chorley cake to top off their Christmas lunch. Let me end by wishing you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and all colleagues a very peaceful and merry Christmas, and a happy new year.