Summer Adjournment

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate and to have an opportunity to welcome my colleagues on the Front Bench, who are serving—I think for the first time—as Deputy Leader of the House and duty Whip. I congratulate them on their new responsibilities.

In a summer when a decade seems to have passed in the last month—indeed, so much has happened since the ghastly murder of Jo Cox that it seems a long while ago, although in reality it was a very recent tragedy—and at a time when Brexit and the how, when and in what way we leave the European Union seem to be the dominant theme of so much media focus, I want to concentrate on issues over which we have always had complete control in this country. At this time, the emphasis is on the need for us—Government, Members of Parliament, local government and other agencies—to come up with answers and deliver them, so that life in our country and our constituencies, in my case the ancient city of Gloucester, gets better from year to year.

Let me begin with transport, because that is how we Gloucester residents travel to and from our city, how visitors arrive, and how our investors gain their first impressions. Two improvements could be made at Gloucester railway station—in the frequency of the trains and in the infrastructure. It still seems extraordinary to me that Arriva CrossCountry’s inter-city service between Birmingham and Bristol, which runs 63 trains a day, stops only three times at the city of Gloucester. My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) worked on that problem diligently when she was the trains Minister. I hope that the new Minister will pursue with the same enthusiasm the business of enabling more CrossCountry trains to stop at Gloucester as the Department for Transport completes its programme for a new franchise in the west of England.

As for the infrastructure, Great Western Railway is making good progress with a new station car park, which will open up the southern side of the station for the first time in its 150-odd years of existence. However, there is more work to be done. I hope that the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will look favourably on the bid from the Gloucestershire local enterprise partnership, which includes a significant amount of money for a general station infrastructure project that will undoubtedly be one of the drivers of growth in our city in the future.

Of course, it is also important for our bus, road and cycle infrastructure to be in as good a state as possible. Our new bus station is well under way, and I know that the city and county councils will ensure that it is delivered on time and within budget, but the road situation is more complicated. The so-called missing link on the A417 between the M4 and the M5 is a major blockage to growth, not just in Gloucestershire and in the city of Gloucester but more widely, between the south and the north of the country. I hope that my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State for Transport will take the same interest as his predecessor in ensuring that the first spade goes into the ground for that important new project before April 2020.

As a keen cyclist—only marginally put off by a promising black eye, which those with keener vision will spot, resulting from an incident this morning—I hope very much that the county council’s £3.5 million project for a new cycle lane between Gloucester and Cheltenham will receive approval from Highways England in due course. I am also separately pursuing longer-term improvements on the towpath between the city centre and Quedgeley. I can tell colleagues who have never had a chance to visit Gloucester that that is a wonderful cycle journey. They would be excused for not realising at any stage, even before visiting the Pilot Inn at the end of their journey, that they were cycling in the middle of a city rather than in a particularly glorious bit of the English countryside, because that is, in fact, what they would be doing.

Finally, I want to refer to two education projects which, in the longer term, will make a huge difference. First, there is the bid that we are preparing for a new Gloucestershire health university technical college, which will serve the people of our county and, possibly, people from wider afield who could travel by train from Swindon or even from Worcester. It will give 14 to 18-year-olds great opportunities to gain BTEC qualifications in either health or care, and also to gain significant work experience with the three NHS trusts in the county, as well as in the private sector. It is to me quite wrong that we should need 400 new nurses a year and that we are only training about 120 and are having to import them from as far afield as the Philippines. Excellent though our nurses from Portugal, Spain, the Philippines and elsewhere are, we should be training them at home; we should be giving them those opportunities to take up the 12,000 jobs in the health sector in Gloucestershire and training them in our own county. I hope very much that that bid goes ahead and is successful.

The other education bid we are making is for a new RAISE academy, which will be for excluded pupils from our secondary schools. This is also important. Everybody deserves a second chance and the opportunity to get back into learning and get the qualifications and skills they need to get good jobs later on, and I hope very much the Department for Education will look favourably at that.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I note what my hon. Friend says about the great training going on. Does he agree that with over 300 different careers in the NHS, that new training establishment for excluded pupils might do well to see if there is a place for each one of them in our great NHS?

[Richard Graham]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to stress that. She has experience of the NHS herself as a doctor, and it is right to point out that there are huge opportunities both on the technical level and the care side and on the course she took through university.

I should finish my contribution today by drawing attention to two exciting things happening in Gloucester during this great summer period. The first is our summer of music, art and culture, which is already well under way. The world’s longest running and I think longest festival of all, the Three Choirs festival of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester, starts on Saturday. There will be spectacular concerts for the next couple of weeks around that. We will then come to the Gloucester history festival, which I created with many other friends and partners some six years ago, and this year is looking to be even bigger and better than usual. That will be in the first two weeks of September, immediately after Gloucester day, when we celebrate the moment when the city of Gloucester refused to open its gates and surrender to King Charles I, thereby preventing the King from succeeding in his mission in the civil war and ensuring the supremacy of Parliament, which I am sure we all celebrate, as I wish all colleagues a very happy summer recess.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) for her well-made points. I absolutely believe in keeping Britain tidy and would be happy to join any such movement. I am lucky in my constituency and applaud the Friends of Bushy and Home Parks. Everyone knows that they should always take their litter home when out in the parks over the summer—rubbish is particularly damaging to the parks’ wildlife. I am grateful to those in the community who do regular litter-picking in addition to the good job done by the council. I also welcome the new Deputy Leader of the House to his post.

Like the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and my hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), I have concerns about rail services. I absolutely agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes when he said that passengers must come ahead of rail companies. I have had many meetings and have been in communication this week with South West Trains. I note that the franchise is coming up for renewal, and when I met South West Trains and other bidders I made clear what standards are expected at the eight stations in my constituency, including Twickenham, and on the network.

The problems are both chronic and acute. The chronic problems include the lack of regular and frequent trains at all our stations, which is appalling considering that many passengers travel into London to work. That lack has economic consequences. Trains are not frequent enough at any of the stations on Sundays. This is the 21st century and we should be appreciating passengers and the different lifestyles that require regular services every day of the week. Unfortunately, every single station in my constituency suffers from cancellations and delays and from overcrowding. Those are the chronic problems between the temperatures of 5° C and 25° C.

We are in the 21st century and have predictable weather. We were all told about the high temperatures this week—one does not have to be a climatologist—and that leads me to South West Trains’ acute problems. This week, the line has not been functioning properly and conditions have been unhealthy. When the temperature is over 25° C, a code of conduct should apply—I hope the new Rail Minister will take that on board—and adequate supplies of water must be given out free on platforms when there are delays or overcrowding. We can predict temperatures for the next few years—the next generation—and they will persist, so there must be a plan for air-conditioned trains on our suburban network for people who regularly travel into London.

The previous Mayor of London, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), introduced the Oyster card system into my area, which is great for commuters who do not have much time, but there must be a way of refunding to Oyster cards following delays. Like many of my constituents, the service that I experience when getting home is not good enough—sometimes 2 hours instead of a 40-minute journey—but it is impossible to navigate the website to try to get a refund, and it is even harder when using Oyster. Like most people, if I cannot do it within two clicks, I give up. There must be a way of putting the passenger first and making refunds easy.

There must also be a better way of communicating. There was no information this week on the platforms or at station information points about the duration of delays, which is critical for people if they have medical problems, are tired or need water.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

There is also a big problem for people such as me who use their bank card instead of an Oyster card to get on a train, as trying to get a refund on a bank card would be even more difficult.

[Dr Mathias]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point, as more and more people will be getting rid of the Oyster and so we also need a tap-and-refund system there, putting the passenger first.

If Ministers or any of their family are travelling by air over the summer—I will not be, but I know many people will—I ask them to give a thought to the three quarters of a million people suffering from levels of more than 55 dB Leq or to the quarter of a million people suffering from levels of 57 dB Leq. I ask them to give a thought to the fact that if there is expansion of Heathrow, it will particularly affect my constituency; more people under that flightpath will be affected than are affected around the Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Frankfurt and Madrid airports combined. On a medical level, I do not think this Government wish to inflict that on their residents. I hope that Ministers, including Transport Ministers, will be aware, every day during the recess, when the nitrogen dioxide levels are above European Union or World Health Organisation standards—I do not mind which are used, because both show this is unhealthy. We need a better, not a bigger, airport for such a populated area.

Nevertheless, I wish everybody a peaceful and well-deserved recess. I shall be spending it in my constituency, because we have the best parks and the best stretch of the River Thames; people do not need to go away to have a wonderful time.