Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Robert Halfon

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

On Saturday, I met impassioned climate change activists Cliff Kendall and Donna Tyrelli. Cliff Kendall is on hunger strike to protect the environment. They suggest that the average household can reduce its energy bills by more than £250 a year by switching to renewable energy suppliers. What steps is the Department taking to educate households about such green initiatives that help to cut the cost of living?

[Theresa Villiers]

There is a range of programmes under way to encourage people to switch, both to ensure that they get value for money and to talk up the advantages of moving to a more sustainable electricity supply. I will certainly be taking a personal interest in these matters in my new role.

Jewish Refugees from the Middle East and North Africa

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Robert Halfon

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Theresa Villiers]

I agree. Both those points reinforce the importance of raising awareness of this issue, because if our colleagues in the House or the general public do not understand what happened to the Jewish communities of the middle east, they do not understand the middle east conflict. Understanding what we are discussing is crucial if one is to have a fair and balanced outlook on that long-standing dispute.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this historic debate. She will know that my family, on my father’s side, comes from Libya but had to leave because their home and business were appropriated by Gaddafi, and there were pogroms before that. Why does she think the United Nations has passed 172 resolutions specifically on Palestinian refugees over the past 60 years yet not one on Jewish refugees?

[Theresa Villiers]

That United Nations record is a matter of grave concern. As I will go on to acknowledge, it is of course important to recognise the suffering experienced by the Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war, but that should not blind us to the suffering experienced by the Jewish communities about whom we are reflecting today.

Jewish people lived in what is now the Arab world for a millennium before Islam was founded, and centuries before the Arab conquest of many of those territories. Until the 17th century, there were more Jewish people in the Arab and wider Muslim world than in Europe. In 1939, 33% of the population of Baghdad was Jewish, making it proportionately more Jewish than Warsaw. Until their 20th-century expulsion, Jewish people had lived in the area covered by present-day Iraq since the Babylonians exiled them from Judea to Mesopotamia in 586BC. The Bible tells us that, taken into captivity in Babylon, they wept on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. A sizeable minority chose to stay after the Persian king Cyrus defeated the Babylonians and declared that the Jews were free to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple. Jewish people living under Muslim rule shaped Judaism as we know it today. The Talmud—or the Babylonian Talmud, as it is often called—was written in the pre-Islamic academies of present-day Iraq. For centuries, Babylon was the spiritual and religious hub of Judaism.

According to the powerful book “Uprooted” by Lyn Julius—I warmly recommend it to everyone here and welcome that Lyn is with us in the Gallery—Jewish people in the Arab world faced two types of oppression. Countries such as Yemen, Syria and post-Suez Egypt drove out their Jewish populations mainly in a single mass expulsion. In other places, such as Lebanon and Morocco, Jews were pushed out gradually over a more protracted period, steadily being made to feel less and less welcome in their home countries. Several countries criminalised Zionism, exposing their Jewish minorities to the allegation that they were somehow enemies of the state.

In Iraq, the situation deteriorated over time. Having served their country proudly over centuries, the vast majority of the Jewish community in Iraq had their nationality taken from them in 1951. A crisis point was reached in 1969 with the execution of nine Jewish Iraqis on trumped-up charges of spying. Their bodies were left hanging for days on public display. Following that brutal episode, many of Iraq’s remaining Jewish population escaped through Kurdish areas, including the vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, my constituent Edwin Shuker.

Last year, Edwin visited Parliament to talk to MPs about the injustice we are reflecting on today and to share with us the story of his escape from Baghdad over the Kurdistan mountains. He told me:

“For years, we were pleading to be allowed to leave…We were happy to leave behind everything, but were denied this request. Instead, we were practically kept as hostages from 1963 until we finally managed to escape with our lives in 1971…and were mercifully granted asylum upon arrival to the UK.”

I pay tribute to the tireless work Edwin and others have done on this issue, and I am pleased he is here with us today. I welcome all those here today who have been personally affected by the events that we are considering or whose families were driven out of those ancient communities in the middle east.

Rail Service (West Anglia)

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Robert Halfon

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) on making a distinguished contribution on his return to debating from the Back Benches. I also congratulate him on securing a debate on such an important topic and for giving the House the opportunity to discuss the West Anglia rail line and the future for the franchise on the network.

My right hon. Friend assiduously defends the interests of his commuting constituents, and I am grateful for his frequent representations and suggestions for ways to improve how our railways are run. His long-standing interest and expertise on transport matters no doubt aids him in being such an able and effective advocate for his constituents.

Before I respond to the points made by my right hon. Friend, I shall update the House on the franchise arrangements on the West Anglia route. Last September, the Department for Transport issued a notice to National Express East Anglia exercising the Government’s contractual right to extend the current franchise by a little over six months. A written statement to the House in December announced that a short management contract would be let for the Greater Anglia franchise, which would be in place from February 2012. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, it was expected that a long-term franchise would begin in July 2013. The competition to let the short-term interim contract started last week.

The timetable has been put in place so that when we let the long-term Greater Anglia franchise, we can take on board the outcome of the recent consultation on rail franchising and the findings of the rail value for money study, which is chaired by Sir Roy McNulty. The study is aimed at reducing the costs of running the railways, thus making it easier to deliver the kind of improvements that my right hon. Friend has passionately called for in the debate.

Sir Roy McNulty’s work to date indicates that better alignment of incentives between Network Rail and train operators is a vital way to get costs down on the railways. We believe that the Greater Anglia franchise is a promising candidate for such a reform because it is less complex and more self-contained than some other lines, and there is already some alignment between the area covered by the franchise and Network Rail’s internal regional structures.

My right hon. Friend clearly highlighted the crowding problems on the lines serving his constituency and his general concern about the quality of the rolling stock that his constituents use every day. The Government are funding increased capacity on the National Express East Anglia franchise. One hundred and twenty new carriages will enter service over the next few months, with the first of the new rolling stock in operation from March. Although, as we have heard, those will be deployed primarily on the Stansted Express route, it is worth noting that during the peaks, that line serves commuters as well as airport passengers. I also note that my right hon. Friend mentioned his concerns about the growth of Stansted and the sufficiency of the supporting infrastructure.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way, and heartily endorse the comments of my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst). I welcome the Government’s plans to invest in improving the rolling stock. Obviously, hard-pressed Harlow commuters who are crushed every day, particularly in the rush hours, would welcome any signal that the Government can accelerate the plans to improve the rolling stock.

[Mrs Villiers]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. As I said, the rolling stock is due to come into service pretty soon—in the next few months in the case of the Stansted Express. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made an announcement about the provision of rolling stock elsewhere on the national rail network. Negotiations are under way with various train operators about those additional carriages.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden will appreciate that, had the previous Government’s misguided plans for a second runway at Stansted gone ahead, it would have placed even more pressure on the surrounding infrastructure. That is one of the many reasons why the coalition has firmly ruled out a second runway.

As my right hon. Friend knows, National Express has also decided to operate some of the new units, which were originally destined for the Stansted Express, on Cambridge services. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend’s successful lobbying on that, because I am sure that it played an important part in the decision to deploy some of the new rolling stock carriages on Cambridge services. The introduction of new units on the Stansted Express and Cambridge services will, in turn, free up carriages that will be used to strengthen services across the Anglia network.

On 12 December National Express East Anglia introduced a new timetable, which saw 68 additional carriages brought into service, providing more than 4,000 additional seats for passengers during peak times. In addition, I can confirm that my officials are in discussion with National Express East Anglia to determine whether some Cambridge services can be speeded up from December 2011.

My right hon. Friend expressed his concerns about the relative speed of services. The change in times is largely due to the fact that the trains are stopping at more stations to meet the increasing demand from passengers at different locations. That is part of the reason for the change in journey times that he highlighted.

My right hon. Friend also set out his grave concerns about the poor performance of National Express East Anglia rolling stock during the sub-zero temperatures in November and December. Unfortunately, he is correct that the type of rolling stock operated on the West Anglia route has problems during the kind of severe weather that we experienced before Christmas. I am afraid that that has also been apparent with other train operators who use the same kind of vehicles.

Problems include snow ingress into traction motors and freezing door mechanisms. In some instances, the Kilfrost used to treat platforms affected door runners, stopping doors from closing. Those problems were compounded by issues with Network Rail’s infrastructure, including freezing points and icicles forming under bridges and interfering with overhead lines.

My officials met National Express East Anglia to discuss what actions they had taken to mitigate the effects of the extreme weather. Those include applying antifreeze to doors and deploying additional staff at stations along the route to try to deal with problems as they arise. Modifications to the traction motors are being investigated, and other mitigating actions are being urgently considered by the train operators in preparation for any recurrence of severe weather. Throughout the crisis, officials were in constant touch with the rail industry. The Secretary of State and I were in contact with the senior management of Network Rail and of a number of different train operators. Although disruption is inevitable with extreme weather conditions, we need to ensure that transport operators work as hard as they can to secure the best service deliverable in the circumstances.

In December, the Secretary of State asked David Quarmby to conduct an urgent audit of transport operators’ performance in England and their compliance with the recommendations that he made earlier in the year on winter resilience. The audit emphasised the importance of improving the information given to passengers in the event of disruption, and concluded that the rail industry is rather over-dependent on electronic provision of information. The Department for Transport expects transport operators to act on David Quarmby’s report.

As demand on the West Anglia route increases, changes will need to be made to the way in which services are delivered. Our response will depend on the extent of demand growth and, of course, on affordability. When competition is under way for the long Anglia franchise, starting in 2013, we will run a consultation to hear from local stakeholders what their priorities are for the rail network. I do not propose pre-empting that competition, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden urges bidders to consider putting forward proposals for new rolling stock on the line. Bidders may well want to make such proposals. I am sure that they will be interested in hearing from my right hon. Friend and other MPs what local people’s priorities are for the much needed improvements to the railways. Bidders for the longer franchise will also need to evaluate likely growth and passenger demand over the coming years.

We believe that our new approach to rail franchising, which my right hon. Friend mentioned, with longer and less prescriptive franchises, will incentivise train operators to invest in improved services, and better stations and rolling stock, as he suggests they should. We will require bidders to take into account stakeholder aspirations in the improvements that they propose making to passenger services under the Greater Anglia franchise. We will need to be confident that those competing for the franchise have fully understood which improvements matter most to the communities served by the line. We also want them to generate ideas on how to deliver those improvements in an affordable way.

My right hon. Friend hinted at the range of upgrades to the Anglia network that have been discussed. He felt that there was a need for additional tracks to deal with the overcrowding problem and to improve services. Network Rail’s route utilisation strategy recommended that the number of tracks on the route between Tottenham Hale and Broxbourne be increased from two to four, which is what my right hon. Friend called for. However, there may be alternatives that address the issues that the project is designed to solve, such as passing places on the line. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, there are mini and maxi options. The relative cost of all the options would have to be carefully assessed. As he acknowledged, no funding has yet been committed for delivering Anglia route utilisation projects beyond 2014, but our goal is to improve services for passengers, and that may well include infrastructure works in the next railway control period. I am sure that he will agree that decisions will have to be based on affordability, given the crisis in the public finances that we inherited from our predecessors.

A key goal in letting the Anglia franchise that commences in 2013 is to generate ideas for improving services, and to listen to the representations of people such as my right hon. Friend, who know well the concerns of their commuting constituents. The coalition’s franchise reforms, announced today in a written ministerial statement, are designed to ensure that the rail industry performs more efficiently and invests more in the kind of improvements highlighted by my right hon. Friend this evening.

We believe that our predecessors tried to exert too much control from Whitehall through lengthy and detailed specifications and complex management regimes. On too many issues they attempted to second-guess the professionals whose job it is to run train services. A significant downside of this command-and-control approach is that it provides the private sector with only limited incentives to invest in the facilities and improvements that passengers want. It also leaves the private sector with little scope to deploy innovation and enterprise in responding to passenger concerns.

That is why we have proposed a new approach, which chimes in with much of the appeal that my right hon. Friend made this evening. We will set demanding outcomes for the rail industry to achieve, but we will give the industry more flexibility and freedom in deciding how best to deliver those outcomes for passengers. We intend to reduce the involvement of the Government in the way services are configured, while continuing to mandate the provision of core levels of service.

I firmly believe that I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) that longer franchises will provide a stronger incentive for private sector investment in rolling stock, in stations and even potentially in broader infrastructure improvements. They will also make it easier for operators to invest in the long-term relationships that are so crucial for delivering reliable services and a successful railway—relationships with the work force, Network Rail, local authorities and, of course, passengers. As well as forming part of our strategy for reforming the franchise system, strengthening these pivotal relationships will be part of the valuable work being done under the auspices of the McNulty review to reduce the cost of running the railways for the benefit of both groups that fund them, taxpayers and fare payers.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Robert Halfon

Thursday 17th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Villiers]

I understand the importance of this issue, including in Wales, but the previous Government, of which the hon. Gentleman was a member, had 13 years to do this and failed. Just a few short years ago, the 30-year strategy they published for the railways had virtually no place for electrification. Then we had a last-minute change of mind, made at a point in the cycle when, as Labour’s outgoing Chief Secretary made clear, there was very little money left. We support electrification—it was in our manifesto and the coalition agreement—and we will take forward those projects that are affordable in the light of the deficit left to us by the Government of which the hon. Gentleman was a member.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

8. What priorities he has set for departmental expenditure on the road network.