Covid-19: Emergency Transport and Travel Measures in London Boroughs
Debate between Theresa Villiers and Rupa Huq(3 years, 5 months 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.
Environment Bill
Debate between Theresa Villiers and Rupa HuqMonday 28th October 2019
(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Theresa Villiers
I will take one more intervention and then I will make some progress.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. I was encouraged by her answer on Heathrow. She and I were on the same side of this argument for many years. I wondered whether we still agree. In 2017, she said,
“this is a hugely expensive project and one that will create significant economic damage.”
Her constituents and my constituents agree. Does she still agree with those words today?
Theresa Villiers
As the hon. Lady points out, my reservations about the Heathrow expansion are on the record for everyone to read. The fact is that the House has voted by a large majority to give outline planning permission to this project. It is now for the scheme’s promoters to demonstrate that they can come up with a scheme that meets the exacting conditions on the environment that Parliament has set.