High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and John Redwood

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

If there has simply been no updated assessment, that might explain why so many of my constituents get stuck on platforms in Leeds, trying to get back to Castleford, or on platforms in Castleford, trying to get into Leeds. So many more people are commuting for work, yet the commuter infrastructure for them is just not there. It is continually our towns that are being let down.

[John Redwood]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I am conscious of the time and see Mr Deputy Speaker looking at me, so I shall give way only briefly.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

I am very relaxed.

[John Redwood]

How would a review help, given that the right hon. Lady’s Front-Bench colleagues and the current Government are united behind the current scheme, which does nothing to help our towns?

[Yvette Cooper]

Nobody has done a proper assessment of where transport infrastructure investment is going and what the impact is on cities and towns. Some assessment has been made of the impact on different regions of the country, and that is important. Actually, it is significant, because I think the New Economics Foundation cites HS2’s own figures showing that 40% of the benefits from HS2 will go to London, whereas only 10% of the benefits will go to Yorkshire. I want to see a broader assessment of the impact on cities and towns.

Job growth is twice as fast in cities as in towns. New digital jobs, service jobs, university-related jobs and cultural jobs are all being concentrated in cities, but manufacturing, distribution and retail jobs are disappearing from towns. That is a result of automation or changes to our economy, but public sector investment decisions, including on transport priorities, are making that worse. Public services are shrinking back from towns into cities, and the new infrastructure investment is always concentrated on cities rather than towns.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Certainly, for bus services, which are crucial for our towns, the loss of revenue has been particularly crucial and devastating. This debate is about towns getting their fair share of both revenue and capital investment. Currently, I do not think we are getting either.

The campaign to power up the north led by some of our regional newspapers is immensely important, and I strongly back it, but I also think that it is time to power up our towns, as they have immense potential and are not getting their fair share of investment. Time and again, whether through HS2 or Crossrail 2, too much money—the big billions—is still going into the cities rather than the towns. That is why I support this review, but ask for it to be broadened.

I urge the Minister to broaden it as well, because the truth is that Members from our towns have been respectful, we have asked sensible questions, we have been patient, and we have waited and waited and, frankly, we have got nothing. We see no sign of anything improving for our transport infrastructure. We see no sign of anything other than warm words about promises in the future. We need that review of the geographic benefits and we need a proper towns plan—a proper plan for major infrastructure investment. Until we have that, the Government’s transport infrastructure plan is simply not in the national interest.

[John Redwood]

My worry about the Labour new clauses is that they will not achieve the objective that Labour seems to think they will achieve. The truth is that, with the legislation already in place and the likely passage this evening of the High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill, all the legal powers are there to proceed with the scheme as originally designed. As the contracts are settled, the scope for any fundamental changes arising from a review is either limited or non-existent. As the project develops, there is less and less scope to make any changes to it.

I speak as someone who, when we were first faced with the decision about HS2, decided that it was not the right project. I fully share the ambition of practically everybody in this House that we need an even more successful northern powerhouse and better transport and connectivity throughout those northern cities and towns. As someone who represents a very fast-growing and hard-pressed area of the country, just outside London, I would love to see an even more effective counter-magnet to London elsewhere in the country to pick up some of that growth and some of that prosperity, because we have the difficulties of managing so many people coming in and so many people moving around on transport systems that are woefully inadequate for the task. I share the ambition for the northern powerhouse, but I accept that a decision has already been made in principle, that a lot of money has now been committed and that various works have been undertaken in the name of the project, so it would become more and more difficult to make fundamental change or to think about cancellation.

As it happens, I think that there will be another decision taken quite shortly about this mighty project, because the very likely next Prime Minister has said that he wishes to review it and to think about it again, and I wish him every success with that. It would be a very difficult task, and it would need to be done with reasonable speed. Given that we have committed so much and that there is some reasonable merit in the project, he may conclude that he wishes to go on with it. If he were to make a more fundamental decision, all that we are talking about this afternoon in this House is a waste of time, because, clearly, the project will be cancelled and everything else will lapse.

I work on the assumption that, after review, the new Prime Minister may continue with the project, and that we are in the business of trying to mitigate the difficulties and damages. My colleagues who represent constituencies who are very badly affected by this project deserve special treatment over how it can be ameliorated and improved and how compensation can be paid and businesses dealt with.

Certainly, we need transparency. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) for raising the issue. I want to hear from the Minister about what is going to be done on transparency, so that those who are most adversely affected, should the project go ahead in full, are able to see why the decisions are being made and also have access to the information that they need to get proper compensation.

I myself will not be voting for the Labour amendments, because they simply do not bring any advantage either to those who support the project in full or those who have the problems of handling the disadvantages of the project in their constituencies. I do not see how a further review suddenly will make this a better run project. If the project goes forward, this Minister and any future Minister will have to deal with how the costs will be controlled, how the works will be carried out in a speedy manner and to a high quality with safe standards for the workforce, and how the impact of those works can be minimised on those most affected by them as they go ahead. These remain continuing management problems. An additional independent review is not going to solve any of that. We are now getting to the point where it needs individual management solutions. It is about managers on the ground, how contracts are handled on the ground, and the extent to which Ministers can and should have proper oversight of those contracts, given their commercial nature and given the technical expertise of those actually running the project.

I do not see how an independent review can help at all. I do not believe that any serious change could result from it, because the contracts will be let, and we will be told that the contractors have to get on with it. There does remain the issue of whether a new Prime Minister wishes to reopen the whole question, but assuming that he does not we will need proper answers from Ministers about what action they have taken to control the costs, improve the quality and deal with safety, and about how much power they will have in future, given the commercial nature of the operation.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and John Redwood

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I completely agree with the right hon. Lady. What I am saying just comes from listening to employers in my constituency who have told me that they have bought all the storage capacity they can find in order to stockpile, but they cannot stockpile more than 10 days’ worth of some of their products, and they are really concerned about the impact of the delays on just-in-time technology.

[John Redwood]

Does the right hon. Lady agree, in wanting to promote stronger and better industry once we have left, that the Government should set zero tariffs on all imported components, which we would be free to do, which would make them cheaper from non-EU countries and preserve zero tariffs for EU components?

[Yvette Cooper]

It is not clear to me how that strengthens our negotiating position with countries all over the world that might then keep their tariffs extremely high on our goods. The whole point is that, if we crash out on WTO terms, it undermines our negotiating power. Whether one thinks that is about negotiating with the EU or negotiating with other countries, we are weakening our position abroad.

We also have the impact on the NHS, which is spending £10 million on fridges: it will have to put more money into this which could be put into patient care. The police have warned that we will be less safe. They and the Border Force would immediately lose access to crucial information that they check 500 million times a year to find wanted criminals, dangerous weapons, sex offenders and terror suspects. We will not be able to use European arrest warrants to catch wanted criminals who fled here having committed serious crimes abroad. We use those warrants 1,000 times a year to send people back to face justice in the countries where those crimes have been committed. If those 1,000 suspects commit more crimes here, MPs will need to explain to the victims why we took away the power from the police to arrest and extradite them by tumbling into no deal.

Customs and Borders

Debate between Yvette Cooper and John Redwood

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I do agree with that and it is, interestingly, the view of both the CBI and the TUC that a customs union is particularly important for the future of our economy and the future of trade. Hon. Members can see why it would matter at the border. James Hookham, the deputy chief executive of Britain’s Freight Transport Association, has warned that an average delay of two minutes as a result of new Brexit spot checks at Dover would create a tailback of 17 miles. In a world of just-in-time production and retailing, when companies hold less stock, when supply chains run across borders and back again, it makes even small delays costly.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Can the right hon. Lady explain how it is that we have such a smooth-running, fast-growing and very large trade with the rest of the world, on World Trade Organisation terms, where we have to pay EU tariffs, and we are not allowed to negotiate them down all the time we are a member of the customs union?

[Yvette Cooper]

I think the right hon. Gentleman is simply making the point that our trade was growing, within the current arrangements, with the rest of the world. That seems to be a good thing, and suggests that perhaps, therefore, we can carry on increasing our international trade and our global trade, even within customs union arrangements.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and John Redwood

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

This has been a very thoughtful debate, and I hope that the Government are in no doubt about the scale of parliamentary concern about the way in which the Bill concentrates powers in the hands of Ministers.

In his opening speech, the Secretary of State recognised that the Bill is not what will take us out of the EU; Parliament has already voted for article 50, which will take us out of the EU—and rightly voted for it, as well. However, Parliament also has a job to do to hold Ministers to account and the Bill, as drafted, stops us doing that. It stops us standing up for democracy in this House, and it stops us making sure, frankly, that the Government do not screw up Brexit in the process they put it through and the decisions they take.

Many of the purposes behind the Bill are right. Parliament will need to repeal the 1972 Act, and Parliament will also need to transfer EU-derived law into UK law. As the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), has already said, we will have to have a Bill, but not this Bill. There is a choice about the way in which we do this, and we do not have to do it in a way that concentrates so much power in the hands of a small group of Ministers.

Let me run through some of our concerns. The shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), set out a very forensic and powerful account of the Bill and the detailed powers that it will give Ministers, with no safeguards in place. There are the powers in clauses 7 and 17, as well as those in clause 9, and there is the fact that it will reduce British citizens’ rights. Far from allowing Brits to take back control, the Bill weakens protection for employment rights, equality and environmental standards; it weakens remedies and enforcement; and, crucially, it reduces the right of redress. It is both sad and telling that Ministers have chosen to exempt the charter of fundamental rights. I hope that that will be reversed, and that they will change their position.

The greatest concern—I want to focus on this point—is the concentration of powers in a way that, frankly, is not British. Parliament will not be able to do its job to stand up for citizens’ rights against a powerful Executive if the Bill goes through in the way that it has been drafted. The unprecedented powers given to Ministers in certain clauses—clause 7 and, in particular, clause 17 —are powers that would make a Tudor monarch proud. Everyone realises that the sheer extent of the provisions means that we will need both primary and secondary legislation as part of the process, but not to this scale, not with this lack of safeguards and not with this concentration of power in Ministers’ hands.

The Bill will give Ministers the power to change primary legislation for an incredibly broad range of reasons, and the test will simply be whether they think it is appropriate. The test is not whether a change is needed, proportionate or essential, but only whether Ministers consider it to be appropriate. The Bill also includes the power—the Secretary of State made slightly disingenuous remarks in the way he presented this—to create new criminal offences so long as sentences are not more than two years. That is a serious power to give Ministers on such a broad area without parliamentary scrutiny.

Let me give some examples of the things that the Bill would do. I raised the European arrest warrant with the Secretary of State, and his response to my question about what safeguards there would be was simply to point to the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act—by the way, Conservative Front Benchers have pledged to get rid of it—is not a sufficient safeguard. We know that we should not rely on the courts to have all the safeguards, and that we in Parliament should provide some of them as well. We also know that within the scope of the Human Rights Act there is a huge range of potential policies on extradition on which Parliament should have a say.

On my past record, I suspect that I am probably closer to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary on what the extradition policy should be than many of their Back Benchers. I still do not think, however, that they should have unlimited powers to decide extradition policy without having to come back to Parliament.

We debated the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 forensically—in fact, it was an example of Parliament at its best. We gave that Act detailed consideration that balanced security and liberty and changed it as it went through. Given, however, that some of the Act’s genesis depended on ECJ judgments and its relationship with EU legislation, the Bill today could give Ministers the power to reopen the Act and change the primary legislation that we put forward with great care, and—again—to do so through secondary legislation only, without there being proper safeguards and checks in place. Ministers will have the power to rip up the working time directive, too, if it does not fit with what they think should happen under the appropriate arrangements after Brexit.

I do not trust the Prime Minister and the Cabinet with these immense powers. One would expect me not to do so, but no parliamentarian should trust them with these powers. None of us knows who the next Prime Minister will be or who will be in the next Cabinet. This is about the powers in principle, not who is doing the job right now. Clause 9 is particularly disturbing; it should not even be in the Bill. We should be legislating separately for the withdrawal agreement. We should have a separate Bill—and, yes, it would need to provide for secondary legislation; we should not be doing it now, when we have no clue what the withdrawal agreement will be, when we have not had a vote to endorse the Government’s negotiating strategy—we do not even know what it is on a whole series of different areas—and when there is not even a statutory commitment to a vote on the withdrawal agreement.

We could start legislating later, in the summer perhaps when we have a bit more of a clue where on earth this is all going, or perhaps in the autumn when the withdrawal agreement supposedly will have been signed. Then we could put the exit date, which some Government Members are concerned about, into primary legislation and legislate without giving Ministers any more powers than is strictly necessary, rather than hand them unrestricted power to do the job.

[John Redwood]

Does the right hon. Lady not accept that the Government are conducting the negotiations? Parliament can say, “We like the result,” or “We don’t like the result,” but we cannot amend it; it is what the negotiation is.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am not comfortable with the right hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for giving the Government blank cheques. Even if he is happy to support the Government and let them do whatever they want on the negotiations, he should be deeply uneasy about giving Ministers unrestricted powers to implement the withdrawal agreement in whatever way they so choose.

The Prime Minister has no mandate to do it this way. To be fair, she asked for one—that is what the election was all about; it was about subverting the Cabinet, her party and this Parliament—but she did not get one. In fact, the Conservative party lost seats. We now have a hung Parliament, and it would be even more irresponsible for a hung Parliament to hand over such huge powers to the Executive than it would be in any other circumstances.

We do not need to legislate like this. This is about more than just Brexit. It is about the precedents we set. Many hon. Members have quoted precedents about different kinds of secondary legislation, but that only strengthens the argument: we should not be setting a precedent in Parliament that hands this stonking great lump of powers into Ministers’ hands without any safeguards. This is about who we are. It is about what kind of democracy Britain should be.

Even before the Brexit legislation, the former Lord Chief Justice warned about the steady diminishing of Parliament, about the handing over of power and control, year after year, to the Executive—to be fair, that includes previous Governments, not just this one—and about the number of statutory instruments and the fact that since 1950 Parliament has said no to only one in 10,000 of those laid before it.

Henry VIII’s Parliament had an excuse. The man had a habit of chopping off people’s heads. What is the excuse for this Parliament? How can we possibly, in this generation, allow ourselves to become the most supine Parliament in history by handing over powers on this scale? We sit in the Chamber and listen to maiden speeches with great respect because we all still think that there is something special about being sent here by our constituents—sent with the power of democracy; sent on the wings of all those many thousands of ballot papers folded up with the crosses by our names. We think that we have a responsibility to hold the Executive to account, and not to hand over to Ministers, in an unrestricted way, all the power given to us by our constituents to do what they like with. Yet that is what the Bill is doing.

History will judge us for the decisions that we make now, for the precedents that we set and the choices that we make. Six months ago, I voted for article 50 because I believe in democracy, but now it is that same faith in democracy that means I cannot vote for the Bill. Let us not choose to be the most supine Parliament in history. Let us be the parliamentary generation that stands up for Parliament: the generation that pursues the article 50 process, but does so in a way that holds Ministers to account.