Points of Order

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I seek your advice? Last Monday, following the oral statement on rail timetabling, I asked the Transport Secretary whether he would refuse any request by Arriva Northern to extend the immensely disruptive two-week suspension of the Lakes line in Cumbria. He replied:

“I am not prepared to accept more than the current two weeks and…I have been clear to Arriva that doing this over the long term is simply unacceptable”.—[Official Report, 4 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 58.]

I was therefore horrified to learn on Friday that Arriva Northern had, in fact, extended the suspension by a further two weeks, to 2 July, and that a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Department had said that it did not object to the “operational decision”.

The Transport Secretary told the House that he would do one thing, and he has gone and done the complete opposite. What can you do, Mr Speaker, to compel him to appear before the House and explain himself and to ensure that commitments made by Ministers of the Crown in this House are actually fulfilled?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I am not privy to the details of this matter, but my response to the hon. Gentleman, off the top of my head, is twofold.

If a Minister feels that he or she has been inaccurate in a statement to the House, it is incumbent upon, and open to, that Minister subsequently to correct the record. It may be that the Minister holds a view, and would offer an interpretation of the sequence of events, that differs from that of the hon. Gentleman. I do not, in all candour, know.

I would just add, without offering any judgment on the merits of the case—which it would not be right for me to do—that a less than 100% correlation between what is said at one time and what happens at another time is not entirely without precedent in our parliamentary history.

I feel that on this occasion—and he will take it in the right spirit—the hon. Gentleman was perhaps more interested in what he had to say to me than in anything that I might have to say to him, and he has been successful in his mission: it is on the record.