Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Ben Gummer

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

In the measures I have described today, I shall.

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

T8. Does my right hon. Friend accept that although we are told that it is good to talk, Departments are making it infinitely more difficult for Members to contact private offices on behalf of their constituents due to inaccuracies and the withdrawal of the central register of private office numbers? Will the Minister tell us when the practice of putting communal numbers in the register will be stopped, and the individual numbers of Ministers’ private offices will be restored as they were, so that we can have proper communications between Ministers’ offices and Members on behalf of our constituents’ needs?

[Ben Gummer]

I owe Members an apology for this. It is true that some of the telephone numbers in the directory were inaccurate and some were general numbers. The revision is being made quarterly—the next one is in March—and I have instructed all Departments to provide private office numbers, as Members rightly expect.

NHS Success Regime

Debate between Simon Burns and Ben Gummer

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

I heard the right hon. Gentleman’s comments during the debate on the Queen’s Speech, and I know that he has taken a keen and detailed interest in the problems in his local health economy. I know also that he has been very careful and keen to include local commissioners and those who understand what is happening on the ground. That is why I had hoped he would be pleased about the introduction of the success regime, which will build on the financial consultations and discussions that have been going on, will involve local commissioners and, importantly, will provide the back-up of national regulators and NHS England. I did not hear the comments of Simon Stevens on local radio but I did read his speech, in which he made the opposite point to the one that the right hon. Gentleman suggested. The reforms that were brought in, far from being as the right hon. Gentleman characterised them, have saved £1.5 billion in this year, in addition to the £5 billion previously—money that is being invested in care in his constituency.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for the statement. How will my constituents in mid-Essex and the local health economy in mid-Essex see the results of what is going to be done under this regime? Can he assure me that it will examine the funding formula for health care per head of the population in mid-Essex, which has historically been skewed away from mid-Essex towards other parts of the country?

[Ben Gummer]

My right hon. Friend will be aware of the hospitals in Essex that have been placed in special measures. He will also be aware that focusing on one or several particular institutions is not sufficient to sort out the problems in the wider local health economy. That is why the success regime is being brought in—to try and deal with those systemic issues. Once the success regime has been concluded, I hope that his constituents will rapidly see an improvement in the service that they receive and that they deserve, wherever they are in the county.

On his second point about funding per head, he will know that NHS England has already started to look at that and, in some instances, address it. I have the same problem in my constituency in Suffolk, and it needs sorting out in the medium term across the country.

Rail 2020

Debate between Simon Burns and Ben Gummer

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

I am giving a bit of history because it does inform our discussion of the franchise process, which is the core of the report. I am not going to start trading statistics, but over the period of Railtrack, rail safety improved and we were going up the European safety league table. The reason so much money had to be invested—very successfully with private help—was the years of underinvestment by a series of Governments, Conservative among them. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s intervention on that point, not least because the facts on the safety of the rail network under privatisation speak for themselves.

How do we get this franchise system to work so that rail companies can compete with their natural competitors, the motorways and the airlines? I plead with the Government to do as much as they can. I know that the advice they have had recently has been to shorten slightly the long franchises that have been planned, but the longer the franchise rail companies can get, the better their ability to invest in rolling stock, customer service and improving the capacity and punctuality of their services.

Those of my constituents who have had the misfortune of having to commute on the Ipswich to London line for a long time will say that the best improvements they have seen were under the first franchise—as I am sure my right hon. Friend the Minister will agree—which was quite long and had the loosest possible terms. It allowed the then Anglia franchisee to put maximum efforts into improving performance. The last Government did many good things in rail, but one of the bad things was to have far too tight a control over the franchises, stipulating to the dot and comma how the services should be delivered. Unsurprisingly, the bidders for those franchises went in at the lowest possible price, bidding on the specification provided by the Government, and the improvement in service flattened and, in some cases, reversed. We need as loose a franchise framework as possible, and as long as possible so that the private sector can invest as fully as possible in the services without being second-guessed by the doubtless otherwise brilliant officials at the Department for Transport.

We need to see other improvements, and I am glad that the Committee recommended them in its report. We need transparency in subsidy. The system is still not good enough at identifying where subsidy goes. I have tried to understand how much subsidy goes in to the great eastern main line. Network Rail and the Office for Rail Regulation are not good at disaggregating subsidy in sufficient granular detail. I have questioned them about control period 5, but it is almost impossible to get a decent idea of the quantity of subsidy or public investment we are likely to get in our line, which makes it very difficult for us, as public representatives, to fight for our constituents.

Transparency is also important for the way in which the franchise system develops. When privatisation was introduced, there was only one profit-making line in the UK and there are now many that turn a surplus. Effectively—and I know that the Minister disagrees with me slightly on the detail of this—fare income is transferred from one part of the country to another. Roughly £30 of the £74 standard fare ticket from Ipswich to London is paid in premium which is moved, effectively, to those parts of the country that need a subsidy. That is unfair on my constituents, especially those who are paid the same bad wages that some people in subsidised areas are paid. They rightly demand a social subsidy so that they can get their rail service for less than they would otherwise.

If a lot of our fare income is being moved to other parts of the country, it makes it difficult for us to get the investment we need. We should have more transparency about how the premiums are moved so that we can achieve some sort of parity for investment.

I turn now to a discussion of the east of England, and I know that the Minister has a constituency interest there and, therefore, a profound knowledge of the area. Only two regions of England outside London are net contributors to the UK Exchequer: the south-east and the east. Since the 19th century, the eastern region has suffered some of the worst levels of investment. Historically, there has been a poor level of investment in the main line from London to Norwich, with hand-me-down carriages and levels of service that other parts of the country have long forgotten about. The region has contributed to the UK economy in the past five or 10 years, but investment is needed for that contribution to continue. The region is not demanding new motorways or A roads, but investment is required for people to able to get from London, Ipswich and Norwich to the midlands. That would lead to growth that would make a significant contribution to the UK economy.

We are profoundly grateful for the investment that has occurred in the past few years. It was promised for many years, but not delivered. We will soon have a direct line between Felixstowe and Nuneaton, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). Thereafter, I hope we will have a direct line from Nuneaton to Coventry. I hope—the Minister will speak on this later—that there will be a new bypass loop north of the Minister’s constituency of Chelmsford, which would release capacity and improve performance between London and Norwich. All of these plans, in addition to Ely North junction, have been long promised and long talked about. They are at last being delivered, and for that we are very grateful. However, we need new trains on the new track; not now, not immediately or in the next few years, but within the new franchise that will be set in 2016. We need the new trains that have been provided to the rest of the country and have been denied to us. Whenever the rest of the country is finished with a new train, it is passed on to East Anglia. That is no longer good enough.

[Mr Simon Burns]

indicated dissent.

[Ben Gummer]

Well, it has been true since the 19th century. I hope that at some point we will get the new trains that will release the economic potential in Ipswich and Norwich that has so long been denied to my constituents and their forefathers.

We are making good progress. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) is now able to say that the railways are in a good place, something that would have been unutterable 10, 15, 20 or 30 years ago. We need investment to continue, we need to release the power of the private sector and we need to be able to continue the miracle of rail privatisation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Ben Gummer

Thursday 25th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

T4. The Minister and the Secretary of State will know that the world’s largest financial centre is connected by the great eastern main line to some of the leading centres of research and development in the country, yet commuters and travellers can expect to use rolling stock that was unsuitable for travellers on the west coast main line 10 years ago. The Government have invested heavily in infrastructure. When will they be able to invest in rolling stock, too?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)]

As my hon. Friend says, there is considerable interest in upgrading the rolling stock in East Anglia, and of course I have a particular interest too. My ministerial colleagues—I stress that—are currently considering what might be included in the specification for the interim franchise that will run to 2016, and our priority is, as always, improving passenger satisfaction as well as obtaining value for money for the taxpayer.