Regional Transport Infrastructure

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree with him, and in just a moment I will say more about Northern Powerhouse Rail, because it is an important case.

Before I do, I will give another example of how we can achieve growth as a result of investment in regional transport infrastructure: the plan for an east coast main line link-up with Doncaster Sheffield airport. The creation of a station serving the airport has so much potential. It will support the expansion of the airport, create a major economic hub around it and make a further contribution to the UK’s national aviation capacity.

Better connecting our communities and neighbourhoods is how we give people the means to get from where they live to the economic opportunities that are being created around us. It is how we give businesses the means to shift their goods from one place to another in the most cost-effective and efficient way. The truth of the matter is, though, that there are not enough instances where we have managed to achieve those things, because despite having the ambition, we have not had the investment.

Transport for the North has a key role to play in looking at how we can make significant improvements right across the north of England. Last month, the Transport for the North board signed off its strategic transport plan, which calls for an ambitious and bold £70 billion programme of investment in the north’s transport networks. We also agreed the strategic outline business case for Northern Powerhouse Rail, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) just referred to, and which will better connect Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull and Newcastle.

TfN’s plans are hugely significant, because they remind us of what we are working towards: a transport network that fully integrates all parts of the north, connects our people and businesses with opportunities both within and beyond our great towns and cities, and transforms our economy so that it works better for the 15 million residents of the north. I take the opportunity today to ask the Minister, when he responds to this debate, to say something about how the Government intend to resource those important plans. As he will know, leaders across the north have agreed to a plan that will make a meaningful and lasting difference, but we now need the Government to get behind it and support it.

The situation we find ourselves in is underpinned by a systemic unfairness in the way that the Treasury allocates funding for major projects. The current Green Book criteria used by Government are automatically skewed toward better-performing areas, because they naturally favour areas with lots of latent demand, but do not properly recognise that transport infrastructure is a stimulus for economic growth and supports the growth of new demand as well as being a response to existing demand.

Looking at the Government’s own figures, for every £1 of public infrastructure investment spent on transport across Yorkshire and the Humber, £3.20 is spent on London’s transport networks. I am not suggesting that London should have less spent on its transport infrastructure; not only would I be in big trouble with Mayor Sadiq Khan, but investment is critical in maintaining our capital city’s vital transport networks. What I am saying is that, across Britain’s regions, we simply have not had anywhere near enough of what is required to begin to address our economic challenges.

The Government have been talking a lot about issues surrounding regional inequality, industrial strategy, growth and productivity, but if we are not prepared to make investments on the scale that is needed, we will fail to meet the productivity challenge the Government have set. The second question I would like the Minister to address today is whether he will look at the Green Book criteria with his colleagues at the Treasury, so that he can satisfy himself that the funding allocation is fair.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I represent a small but beautiful island, and we are in exactly the same iniquitous position with Green Book funding. Because we are an island, we cannot use Portsmouth or Southampton in our argument; they are the wrong side of the Solent. It is not only the hon. Gentleman’s area that suffers but mine as well.

[Dan Jarvis]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to discuss it with his Treasury colleagues. I met the Chancellor recently, and I know that he is keen to hear representations from people who share my view that the current system is not fair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for securing this genuinely important debate. I shall be brief. I apologise for being a bit late, Ms Ryan.

First, I would love Ministers to look at the ferry duopoly on the Solent. It is the most expensive ferry route in the world, and many issues that relate to the ownership of the two ferry companies are not necessarily in the public interest and help to sustain the very high fares that Islanders are forced to pay. There is also the issue of the debt that is loaded on to at least one of those companies.

Secondly, Island Line is not the longest railway line in the world, but it is nevertheless the line from Ryde Pier Head down to Shanklin, which is very important for Islanders. I am grateful to the Minster for his Ministry’s kind support in pledging to rebuild Ryde railway pier. However, there is foot-dragging on the priced option for Island Line. The amounts of money are tiny compared with the very large sums going to other regions. At the moment, travelling on Island Line is almost the rail equivalent of travelling in a Land Rover over a reasonably rough bridleway. It needs significant infrastructure work on the track, signalling and rolling stock.

There was something approaching uproar when we learnt that Newcastle’s rolling stock was 40 years old. Without sounding like something out of a Monty Python sketch, what I would give for rolling stock that is 40 years old! We have 10 Northern line carriages from 1938. As part of the modernisation for the priced option, if the Minister is generous enough, we will get refurbished 40-year-old rolling stock, which we will be more than happy with—it will be 41 years younger than the 81-year-old rolling stock we currently have. I hope I can press my hon. Friend the Minister to be generous.

Finally, I want to mention Southern railway. I really hope that HS2 is not diverting funds to every other rail project in the country. We should have proceeded with HS3, the northern high-speed railway, which is, as the Americans say, a no-brainer, rather than build a £100 billion route from London to Birmingham, which I am not sure we need—perhaps some of my colleagues disagree. Because of that, I am concerned that the main line routes to Portsmouth and Southampton will not get the attention they deserve. What I find most staggering is the speed of the London to Portsmouth express train service: currently 47 miles an hour, which is slower than it was in the 1920s. Will the Minister look at some of the examples of where a little bit of impetus from him and the Department for Transport would reap real benefits for our economy in the Southampton-Portsmouth conurbation, and especially in my constituency?

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the hon. Member for Luton South (Mr Shuker) to ask Question 8. He is not here.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

9. What recent steps he has taken to encourage cycling and walking.

[Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)]

10. What steps he is taking to promote the take-up of cycling and walking.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

The Department will today publish a response to its recent call for evidence on improving cycling and walking safety. This will set out a vision and a two-year plan of action, with some 50 actions. It will also include a summary of the many steps the Government have taken to encourage cycling and walking and the significant additional funding that has been made available under the cycling and walking investment strategy.

[Mr Seely]

When will there potentially be a new round of funding to support new and upgraded cycle routes such as the planned cycle route in West Wight between Newport, Yarmouth and Freshwater, which will significantly improve our cycling offer on the island?

[Jesse Norman]

The Government have made available £1.2 billion under the cycling and walking investment strategy, and that has been supplemented by a range of other funds since then, including the local growth fund. Further funding is to be made available through the highways infrastructure fund and the future high-street funding programme just announced in the Budget. Further funding from 2020-21 onwards will be a matter for the spending review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

We are a substantial net contributor to the European Union, so the money given to the UK from different European funds actually originates in the UK. We will be able to spend our money in the way we see fit. We are of course spending record amounts of money on rail infrastructure to develop what needs to be a better, expanded and more resilient rail network.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to implement the digital railway strategy.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to implement the digital railway strategy.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)]

Two weeks ago, Mark Carne, the chief executive of Network Rail, and I launched the company’s digital railway strategy in York, where we announced that the industry should make plans for all future renewals to be digital or digital-ready. I have already approved funding to develop digital schemes in Moorgate and the south-east, and in particular, I have set out plans for the new TransPennine route. The £2.9 billion modernisation, starting around this time next year, will be Britain’s first, principal inter-city digital railway, and very necessary it is.

[Mr Seely]

Later this month, the priced option for the Island line in my constituency will be presented. I will be writing next week in support of that priced option. Can the Minister assure me that the Government understands the importance of the Island line to the Island and the importance of investment in it—in track, railway and stations such as Ryde Pier Head, which is on the pier, and Ryde Esplanade, which is a key gateway? Is he aware of my strong support for a feasibility study into extending the Island line south and west?

[Mr Speaker]

I must tell the hon. Gentleman that one of his constituents, not very far from here, has been listening intently to his question.

Community Transport

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes a very important point, and I think that it is for the Minister to explain precisely why he has taken this specific legal approach to the interpretation of the regulation. I am sure that he will do so in his response to the debate.

The DVSA told Erewash Community Transport that it must

“take action to bring its operations into line with all applicable legal requirements”,

and that that applied to all its drivers and services, not just those provided under the terms of contestable contracts. The DFT’s letter confirmed that this interpretation was now to be universally applied, and not just applied to one operator, and that it was intended to make clear the broader implications for the community transport sector. The letter acknowledged that existing guidance

“may have provided an inaccurate indication”

of the rules for sections 19 and 22 permit use. Nevertheless, all operators in similar circumstances would

“now need to take action to bring their services into compliance with legal requirements.”

The letter asserted that additional licensing requirements were likely to apply mainly to large, transport-only organisations, and that many—perhaps the majority—of other smaller and community-based permit holders were likely to be unaffected. It said that the DFT intended to explain the implications more fully and to consult on its proposals in the autumn. The evidence to our inquiry, including evidence from hundreds of community transport organisations of various types and sizes, overwhelmingly suggested that that assumption was simply wrong.

Although the DFT’s letter may have been well-intentioned and designed to clarify and calm the situation, it achieved the opposite effect, by creating widespread confusion and panic. Mobility Matters, an urgently convened campaign group, told us that its survey evidence suggested that the new requirements were likely to be catastrophic for many community organisations, with 40% saying that they would be unable to carry on operating as a result of the additional costs.

There were many unanswered questions and the broad community transport sector was understandably confused about what action was required and by what date.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for calling this debate. On the Isle of Wight, we have the excellent FYTbus service—the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Totland service. It is very successful and needs no further help. This heavy-handed and bizarre approach to regulation puts a question mark over the future of the FYTbus service, and I think that that is very unnecessary. Does she agree that we need to be encouraging voluntary drivers and the community sector, and not hitting them in this way?

[Lilian Greenwood]

That is precisely right and my Committee called on the Government not to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

After the DFT’s letter arrived, traffic commissioners and local authorities were also unclear about its immediate implications. We heard about traffic commissioners sitting on applications for new permits, because they were unsure what to do. We heard about local authorities holding off from agreeing new contracts and that some contracts with permit-holders had already been terminated. Concern was growing that vital and socially valuable services might already be being lost. Frankly, it all seemed to be a total mess and the sector felt in limbo.

The pressure from our inquiry, from the Community Transport Association and from campaign groups such as Mobility Matters perhaps hastened the DFT’s attempt to clarify the situation. On 9 November last year, it issued a letter to local authorities, making it clear that at that stage no contracts should be cancelled. On the face of it, that letter also seemed to offer some of the clarifications that were being sought. For example, it explained that services could be considered “non-commercial” where there was demonstrably no commercial market—that is, where a community organisation had stepped in to replace a failed commercial bus route, or where it was delivering a service for which no commercial operator had tendered. Essentially, it set out a potentially broader definition of “non-commercial” and seemed to address some of the more obviously perverse consequences of the initial statement. We therefore welcomed the clarifications as a starting point from which to find a more workable solution.

However, we also concluded that the fact that it had taken more than three months to produce that letter demonstrated the Department’s lack of understanding of the sector and the potential impacts of the July proposals. What we wanted, and what we recommended in our report, was for the Government to use their consultation to consider reforms designed not only to achieve compatibility with the EU regulation but to maintain achievement of the key public policy objective— the provision of high-quality, safe and secure community transport services for people who might otherwise be left isolated.

I was not reassured by the Government’s response to our report. It took precisely the legalistic position that we had warned against, and discounted almost all of our recommendations, which were intended to lessen the impacts of the proposals. It did not consider the interplay with commissioning bodies’ responsibilities under the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, despite indisputable evidence of the immense social benefits of community transport. In addition, it did not consider establishing any kind of hybrid category, whereby there would be more proportionate licensing requirements for the sector. It could not even set out an appropriate and clearly defined transition period for affected organisations and there was no commitment to offer tangible support to those required to make changes.

It concerns me greatly that the Department has offered no properly reasoned justification for its implacable stance. Given the importance of what is at stake, it is surely incumbent on the Government to explain their thinking. The comments that I am hearing about the consultation, which closed last week, are not encouraging either. The fundamental questions of whether the Government’s interpretation of the EU regulation is correct, whether their proposals will achieve what they set out to achieve and whether those proposals are proportionate and workable have not been adequately open to challenge. It amounts to a consultation in name only; the Government’s proposals are presented largely as a done deal.

Mobility Matters’ opinion, with which I have sympathy, is that the interpretation is arguably wrong. Mobility Matters asserts that the definition of “non-commercial purposes” should be applied to organisations and not only to the services that they provide. For example, it should take account of an organisation’s charitable status and the social value that it brings to its local community. Mobility Matters also points out that the issue at hand is about fairness in competition for contracts. If that is the case, logic would suggest that the issue should be dealt with in procurement guidance.

The Minister needs to demonstrate today that the Department has properly engaged with these arguments and properly considered alternative courses of action. However, the Department seems intent on pushing ahead with more stringent, more expensive licensing requirements, without knowing how many operators will be affected and how much this will cost them, or how many operators will be able to bear the strain. There is a real danger that the Government have massively underestimated the detrimental effects on the community transport sector. That is demonstrated by the initial impact assessment, which was published alongside the Government’s consultation paper and which, frankly, is woefully inadequate. First, it is dated “October 2016”, when we know, by the Department’s own admission, that as recently as last July it did not have a reliable picture of the size or shape of the community transport sector.

Secondly, in the absence of reliable data, the Department seems to have grossly underestimated the total net costs for affected operators, putting it at £69.5 million over 10 years. The Community Transport Association, the trade body set up to support community operators, with the assistance of the Department, puts the figure at nearly £400 million. The Department’s assessment did not monetise substantial costs, including the costs of tachographs, additional insurance, company registration for those needing corporate restructure, and funding required to prove financial standing for PSV operator licences.

The Department’s estimate was that 1,567 permit-holders would be affected by the operator or driver licensing requirements, which is 25% of permit-based operators. The CTA’s analysis is that 95% of permit-based operators will be affected, which is a total of 5,956 operators. Just today, I received the latest example of the wider impact. Keep Mobile is an operator with 14 paid drivers, three volunteer drivers and 12 minibuses providing services around Berkshire, primarily to vulnerable passengers. Last year, the Prime Minister visited to celebrate its 25th year of operation. However, as a result of the confusion created by the Department’s letters, a local authority contract was not renewed and Keep Mobile was forced to make four members of staff redundant and sell two of its vehicles. Now it fears it will have no alternative but to close down. These impacts are real and devastating.

With such a level of uncertainty about the effects of the proposed changes, it is surely incumbent on the Department to take stock, to reconsider or, at the very least, to proceed with extreme caution, and I hope the Minister will be able to assure us that that is the approach he is taking. The published impact assessment is no basis on which to proceed. Frankly, the Department has this back to front: it is announcing its policy without a clear view of the impact that it will have. When will a fuller, more robust impact assessment be published? Is he ready to rethink his plans in the light of that new data?

Will the Minister consider how we got to this point? The Transport Committee concluded that the Department failed to address valid concerns over many years. It acted too slowly. Perhaps now it feels it has painted itself into a legal corner, but why has that happened? As I understand it, complaints about the widely accepted permit system have emanated solely from Martin Allen and his small group of commercial operators, the Bus and Coach Association. The main trade body, the Confederation of Passenger Transport, seemed intensely relaxed about permit use in its evidence to our Committee. Why did the DFT allow the complaints of a small group of commercial operators to rumble on for years? If it had addressed these relatively localised complaints years ago, could we have avoided the current situation? Why could localised problems in relation to competition for local authority contracts not be dealt with through procurement guidance? Why the need for a new, blanket approach to operator and driver licensing when we all accept that the permit system has worked effectively for decades and very broadly still does?

Martin Allen and the BCA say they want an end to unfair competition, but is there not a very real danger that they will succeed in eliminating all competition from community transport operators? Has the Department for Transport and the European Commission effectively been bullied into proposals that could do immense harm to vital community services and achieve precisely the opposite of the regulations’ intention?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Seely]

The whole point about voluntary bus services, such as the FYTBus and others that we are here to defend, is that they take up the slack where there is no commercial option because the commercial bus operators will not provide services in those areas. That is the whole purpose and logic of having voluntary services.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is right. In many places community transport operators are filling gaps. In other places, they are providing local authorities with an affordable option to continue providing services to their communities.

As we emphasised in our report, the community transport sector has acted in good faith, in accordance with official guidance and with the acquiescence and encouragement of local and central Government over many years. The Minister must confirm today that he will take full account of the views and concerns expressed during the consultation. He must be clear about the next steps and the timetable for change. I would like to hear him talk about transitional arrangements, financial support and other mitigations. We have heard precious little about them so far. It would be unjust if even one socially valuable community transport service was lost in these circumstances. I fear the ultimate outcome, if the Government pushes ahead regardless of the concerns, could be far worse.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill

Bob Seely Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Allocation of time motion: House of Commons & Carry-over motion: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & 2nd reading & Allocation of time motion & Carry-over motion & Money resolution
Tuesday 30th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

One of the main points about this project is that it will allow us to build resilience into the network. That is not an either/or; this is not simply about building HS2. My hon. Friend is right say that we need to build greater resilience into our network. On the point about compensation arrangements, it has been noted on both sides of the House that we need to ensure that proper compensation is paid. These are really sensitive issues, and people should not be left wondering whether compensation arrangements will come forward. My hon. Friend is right about that as well.

I am keen to hear the Minister’s views on striking the right balance between HS2 services and freight on the parts of the network where high-speed trains will run on conventional tracks. HS2, the Department for Transport and Network Rail need to resolve the important concerns that are being expressed by freight operators. Elsewhere, there are significant questions to be answered about how the new high-speed railway will integrate with the existing rail network. During the Second Reading debate in 2014, the previous Secretary of State for Transport boasted that

“upgrading Britain’s rail infrastructure is a key part of this Government’s long-term economic plan”.—[Official Report, 28 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 567.]

He also said:

“we will be electrifying more than 800 miles of line throughout the country”.—[Official Report, 28 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 561.]

It is quite clear that the Government have broken those promises over the past four years. They made commitments on rail ahead of the 2015 general election, only to break them days later. The reality is that the last two Transport Secretaries have cut upgrades to rail infrastructure and cancelled the electrification of rail lines. Of course, HS2 is but one piece of the jigsaw. I am therefore concerned that if the other pieces are not right, the whole thing will not fit together properly.

The current Secretary of State for Transport came to the House in November to announce his strategic vision for rail. The problem was that his plan was neither strategic nor visionary. It was a smokescreen to cover up a blatant multibillion pound bail-out of the east coast main line franchise. It is clear to passengers and taxpayers that this Government are defending a broken franchising system. Under this Government, protecting private companies comes before the public interest. Giving Carillion a contract for HS2 last July while that company was imploding was an appalling decision, and the Minister’s legal justifications for that decision were risible. His bail-out of Stagecoach-Virgin on the east coast was yet another serious misjudgement in which his dogma won out over pragmatism and common sense.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I think the hon. Gentleman has wandered into the wrong debate. We are talking about HS2, not about Carillion. Can we stick to the subject, please?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. That is a matter for me, actually.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin]

More than £200 million is being spent in Derby on re-signalling and a new platform to ensure that London trains no longer have to cross the lines going to other parts of the country, thereby enabling those trains to go straight through on the main line. That is the kind of investment that is already happening in our railways up and down the country. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been successful in securing extra investment not just for HS2, but for all the other railway lines that so badly need the kind of upgrades that we will see in Derby. We will no doubt complain when the station has to be closed for a period over the summer, but such a thing is inevitable if we are to achieve such overall benefit. We saw something similar just a few years ago at Nottingham station.

[Mr Seely]

My right hon. Friend speaks eloquently about busyness, capacity and bottlenecks on the west coast main line. Does he have anything to say about the south and south-west rail routes into London? Those routes are busier and have more capacity problems than many northern routes, but they will be unaffected by HS2 and might have their funding skewed because of it.

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin]

I do not think that that is the case, but there is nobody better than the Secretary of State to answer those points. The tremendous investment at Reading station has improved the whole network to the south-west. The investment at that station alone was in the region of £800 million or £900 million. Extra flyovers were put in to improve capacity down to the south-west.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith). May I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) to her new role and wish her all the best? It is very good to see her on the Front Bench.

I welcome the Government’s very considerable investment in our rail system—it is very good to see—and I support their ambitious railway agenda. There are lots of good things happening in our railway system. However, I find it hard to believe that the £52 billion being spent on HS2 could not have been better spent more broadly across the system.

I am not opposing or voting against the Bill, because I think there is little point: HS2 is going to happen. However, I think it would have been significantly better for our economy to have prioritised HS3, which is a good idea and clearly important for the north of this country, and then, if HS2 was to be built, to have started in the north and worked south, rather than the other way around.

What seems to be clear is that HS2 is extraordinarily expensive. There are poor returns, and by the Government’s own admission, a 1:2.3 ratio of return is extremely poor. HS2 harms the environment. It seems to be a bit of a muddle. Once we had straight lines and we were going superfast. Then we had bends and we could not go superfast. Then the stations did not quite integrate, and there does seem to be a problem with that integration up and down the network, which other Members have rightly spoken about.

However, my main concern is the cost to the other parts of the rail network. Again, Members have spoken eloquently about the need for greater capacity. HS2 does nothing for capacity for southern rail or for south-west rail. The south-west rail network is crying out for investment. We need rail flyovers at Woking and at Basingstoke to get more services on that line. We need to update the signalling system between Waterloo and Woking, and eventually elsewhere on the line, to improve speeds and services. We need infrastructure on the Portsmouth line, to increase capacity. Getting from London to Portsmouth, you travel at an average speed of around 45 miles an hour, and the idea that we are spending billions building a rail network to go superfast up north when we are still travelling at branch-line speeds on mainline routes in the south of England is very galling to very many constituents in constituencies across southern England.

We need also, probably, to double the track between Southampton and Basingstoke. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State talked about a bright new future for the railways. We do not see that on southern, and we do not see it on south-west rail main lines. If I remember correctly, my right hon. Friend, whose agenda I very strongly support and for whom I have a high regard personally, has assured me that south-west rail projects are not affected by the HS2 project. So can he—or can she—put on record a confirmation that HS2 has not delayed, or has not affected the funding and supply of, south-west rail mainline improvements, or of Crossrail 2, which will benefit the users of south-west rail, if they use Clapham?

[Michelle Donelan]

I agree, and I want to see benefits to connectivity in my constituency, including a new station in Corsham. But will my hon. Friend accept that HS2 does benefit the UK as a whole, in the form of jobs, as I said, or because we all have a wealth of SMEs in our constituencies whose supply chains and customers are based throughout the UK, and they can only benefit from this extra connectivity?

[Mr Seely]

In principle, my hon. Friend makes a very good point and I thank her for her intervention. The problem is this. I return to the profit ratio—or the cost-benefit ratio. If any of us were to go to a Minister or Government Department and say, “This is a fantastic project and it has a ratio of 1:2.3,”—which are the Government’s own figures for HS2—we would get laughed at. To get a project off the ground, according to Green Book assessments, a ratio of 1:5 upwards is needed, and preferably 1:7. So 1:2.3 is a very poor return for Government money by the Government’s own figures. Anything that helps, within reason, expenditure and our economy is to be welcomed, but by the Government’s own figures this cost-benefit is dubious. I thank my hon. Friend for the intervention.

If HS2 will cause no delay to south-west rail projects, will my right hon. Friend commit to prioritising the necessary work on the south-west rail route that could speed up journey times between London and south coast destinations such as Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth and, yes, the Isle of Wight—my constituency? I know that my right hon. Friend is a user of south-west rail and feels the pain of the half a million people who travel in to Waterloo every day. Will he—or will she— consider setting Network Rail and the new franchise a speed target of a 60-minute service to Southampton and Portsmouth? You can get two trains an hour down the main line to Southampton. They take about one hour 17 at the moment. If we are interested in high-speed rail, can we set a new target of getting people to Southampton and Portsmouth within the hour?

In addition, I will write to my right hon. Friend tomorrow in connection with the Island. He has been kind enough to sound positive about the needs of my constituents for better public transport, especially since we get precious little infrastructure money. In my letter, I will ask about the programme of reopening branch lines and investing in the Island line. Earlier this month, Isle of Wight Council voted to support a feasibility study on extending the branch line in possibly two directions and, working with our wonderful heritage line, the Havenstreet steam railway, to get people into Ryde, which would be very important.

My letter will cover support for investment, support for a feasibility study, and, dependent on the results of that study, support for the branch line and capital work on Ryde Pier Head to ensure that the railway line there stays feasible, continues and has a future. I am supportive of my right hon. Friend on his agenda, which is excellent, but will you assure me, considering that you are spending £52 billion on one line, that the Department will not tell me that you cannot afford a feasibility study?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman is referring to the Minister, he must say the Minister, not you. I apologise for interrupting him, but this is becoming a widespread habit of Members all around the House and it must not go on. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is the person who is hearing this, and I am sure that other people will now be rather more careful. He is not a consistent offender; he is normally very proper in his behaviour.

[Mr Seely]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do apologise; I had noticed that I had written a few yous, and I scrubbed them out and put hes and shes. If my notes still contained a few yous, I apologise. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is not here, I was trying to work out whether I should be using he or she, or whether we have reached a post-gender age for Ministers as well as for the rest of us.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman and the House. The word “Minister” is very useful, because it covers just about everything and anyone, no matter which gender they might be on that particular day.

[Mr Seely]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. On that point, I will wind up.

I am very supportive of the Minister’s agenda, whichever one we are talking about, but given that we are spending a great deal of money, will the Minister assure me that the Department will not be telling me that a feasibility study is not possible because of cost? Will the Minister assure me that if a feasibility study recommends extension of our lines, that will be supported, given that the costs involved, £10 million to £30 million, are margins of error in Government accounting in the Department of Transport? Will the Minister assure me that there will be support for infrastructure projects both for the South Western Railway network and the Island line, notwithstanding the considerable amounts of money that are been spent elsewhere?

Rail Update

Bob Seely Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am happy to take forward those discussions with the Scottish Government. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Rail Minister is meeting the borders rail campaign shortly. We absolutely understand the benefits that the project, which the Scottish Government have already delivered, has brought to the borders.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that on the Isle of Wight there might be interest in extending the island line to the beautiful seaside town of Ventnor and the county town of Newport—the latter has been made possible in part due to the foresight of the Isle of Wight steam railway in securing track in decades past? Will money be available for feasibility studies to assess the costs and benefits of opening up, for economic regeneration purposes, former branch lines that were closed in the ’60s?

[Chris Grayling]

In the new year we will publish a new process for evaluating new projects and moving them into development. I will happily talk with my hon. Friend about how that process will work and how he can have his project on the Isle of Wight considered.

Safety of Riders and Horses on Rural Roads

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I very much thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for securing the debate and look forward to working with him on many issues that affect his islands and the Isle of Wight. I was fascinated to hear my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) talking about kangaroos. I think it will be some time yet before we start riding them but that will be an issue when we come to it.

On the Isle of Wight, we have the highest percentage of horses per acre in Britain and our riding stables are an important part of island life and of our economy. I share the concerns about the dangers of riders and cars colliding on busy roads. On the Isle of Wight, we have been fortunate enough to have a new contract to resurface all our roads so we will soon have some of the best roads in England, if not Europe. However, riders have expressed concerns that the new road surfaces will, at least for the first few months, be slippery and not all horses can have studs fitted, so I look forward to talking to Island Roads about what more we can do. Although I am generally impressed by the consideration that islanders in my part of the world have for riders when they pass them, there are complaints from a small minority of drivers that horses should not be on busy roads. However, riders clearly do not want to share roads; they do so only when there is no other choice.

So what do we do? In my part of the world I will raise with our council the issue of what can be done to improve the conditions of some bridleways, to encourage their use by not only riders but cyclists, who are also vulnerable users. I think there could be a role for the ferries in reminding people coming to the island that we have a lot of very small lanes, like west Cornwall, and to remind people of distances and to be considerate of more vulnerable road users.

More generally, I wonder whether more could be done to encourage minimum distances. We have heard about the excellent campaign from the British Horse Society and others, but can minimum distances be stipulated, apart from in emergencies? Can they be in the driving test? Can it be brought home to people in towns and villages that there needs to be a minimum distance between cars and horses, cars and cyclists and cars and motorbikes? I say that partly out of self-interest: while a car is very dangerous to a horse, a horse is reasonably dangerous to a car if it kicks or spooks. Thoughtfulness and consideration should be our bywords.

I share the concerns about single-lane roads. I live one and a half miles down a single-track lane. On my patch, someone going round a corner at more than 15 mph will have a problem if something is coming at more than 20 mph from the other direction. I share that lane with lots of horses, because it is a popular route for them and lots of other lovely members of the animal kingdom. I wonder whether the answer is to have what have become known as quiet roads, where drivers do not have priority, but pedestrians and cyclists and riders do. We have one or two quiet roads on the island. There is a cost to them, but they could be in part an answer to national speed limits, which make driving very fast on single-track roads legal, but extremely foolish.

To sum up, my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives mentioned his national campaign ideas, with which I fully agree, but I stress that more might be done with the driving test to reinforce minimum safe distances.

Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing Bill

Bob Seely Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 3rd July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I want to say what a great privilege it is to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling), but such was the brilliance of his speech that my heart rather sank.

I am genuinely humbled by listening to some of the wonderful speeches including those by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) and my hon. Friends the Members for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) and for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), who really brought home why we are in this place; we listened in silence, and I thank him.

I think I am going to support this Bill, although I have to say that any Bill relating to tourism that encourages anyone to go anywhere other than the Isle of Wight seems to suffer from what our philosophical Front Bench would call an a priori flaw. However, my constituents are as generous as they are understanding, and I am sure that they would allow me to support this otherwise very sensible Bill.

I also want to pay tribute to my predecessor. Andrew Turner was a kind man, a good listener, attentive to his constituents and held in very high regard by many of them. He worked hard for our island for 16 years and I wish him a long, contented and happy retirement.

Representing the Isle of Wight—we call it the island, and I apologise if I refer to it as such—is for me a labour of love. It is my patch of England. I have loved it ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and it is close to my heart.

It also has a special place in the nation’s heart, serving as a source of inspiration for islanders, visitors and our nation’s greatest artists. Turner’s first great work was for the Royal Academy: “Fishermen at sea” in the Solent, with the Needles as a moonlit backdrop. The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson settled here, and we hear our sounds and understand our sense of place in his work. When we listen to the seawater today rushing off the stones at Alum Bay, we understand the line in “Maud”:

“Now to the scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the wave”.

Swinburne and Keats wrote here:

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”,

from “Endymion” is one of Keats’s greatest lines, and was inspired by visits to Shanklin and Carisbrooke. The wonderful eccentric Edward Lear tutored Queen Victoria at Osborne, the Bonchurch watercolourists painted near Ventnor, Julia Margaret Cameron, the wonderful feminist, pioneered portrait photography at Dimbola Lodge, and the Pre-Raphaelites hung out in Freshwater. And today we remain a home for many island artists, as well as cultural and sporting events of world renown.

We have a special place in science, too. We had the world’s first telegraph station, the hovercraft and the seaplane were built here, and the Blue Streak missile system—what a great name for a missile system—was test-fired from the Needles. And today the island’s experts produce some of the most sophisticated radars in the world for the Royal Navy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) eloquently assured us a fortnight ago that he was still thrusting. I am sure of it, but let me remind the House that our Thrust 2 jet-engined supercar, built largely on the island, won and held the world land speed record for our nation for over a decade, at some 633 mph. So on the Isle of Wight, even our thrusting is world class.

Moving from science to pseudo-science, Karl Marx was a regular visitor, a point I might have to make should the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) ever come to power—although if the victory last month was any harbinger of the future, let us wish Opposition Members many more such victories in the years to come.

On a more serious note, I mentioned our arts and science not to provide a potted history lesson or to express my love for my constituency—which I hope is self-evident—but because they are what we need for our future. We need again to embrace art, science, technology, innovation and education to inspire, to enrich and to employ. Our island is special in many ways, but our wealth has not always been of the financial kind and there is a perception that Whitehall sometimes overlooks us. In the 1990s, the Government promised the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Isles that they would study the extra costs of being an island. Sadly, that promise came to nothing, but those costs are recognised in Scotland through the special islands needs allowance, which provides an uplift in funding for some half a dozen councils with island seats. I believe that we need a better deal for our island, and it is not just a question of money, although every little helps and I will fight for extra spending on health and education. It is about islanders working with the Government to generate ideas for the public good, and about the Government working with us and being keen to listen. I know that there are good examples of that happening, and I wish to encourage more of it.

We need to embrace the knowledge economy and higher education. I look forward to working with the Department for Education and with universities to provide opportunities for such engagement. We need to continue to drive all education standards on the island, and I will continue to fight for the future of the Sandown Bay school. I look forward to the Government’s continuing support.

Our cultural offer is getting stronger. We have the wonderful Isle of Wight festival—I think Rod Stewart topped the bill this year, as part of a tartan revival that is clearly taking place in politics as well. We also have the wonderful literary festival and the cutting-edge Ventnor fringe festival—look out, Edinburgh! However, I wish to work with Culture Ministers and institutions to find out how they can help us to improve our museum offer and possibly attract a major gallery to the island, to help with year-round cultural tourism.

I look forward to engaging with Sport England and with trade and investment Departments to work with our high-tech sailing industry and with the sailing clubs of Cowes and others to ensure that the town of Cowes remains the centre of the sailing world. I also hope that it becomes a global centre for disabled sailing. That would be an important move that would have practical and moral implications. I was privileged last month to meet the captain of our national blind sailing team, who were prepping for their world championships, and I wish Lucy and her inspiring team all the very best.

We need to work with the Department for Work and Pensions, and organisations such as Help the Aged and our wonderful Mountbatten hospice, to make the island a national leader in ensuring quality of life for those in later life, combining health and social care and voluntary and state support to enrich life.

In transport, we need to ensure the future of the Island railway line and improve our cycling routes to make us Britain’s leading cycling destination. We also need to engage with the ferry firms to provide a better service. Let me be clear: privatisation did a great deal of good in the ’80s and ’90s nationally, but the privatisation of our ferries was not such a great success. I do not have all the answers, but I know that we should not have started from that point. I am uncomfortable with the levels of debt that Red Funnel and Wightlink have, because islanders—who are not the richest people in the country—have to help to subsidise it in order to cross the Solent.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to social housing and starter housing from the bottom of my heart. I find it difficult to explain to my fellow islanders why rich property developers were able to build houses there that most of my constituents could not afford. We do not need large-scale projects, which are heartily disliked by many islanders. They do significant cumulative damage to our precious landscape, on which much of our tourism—which accounts for half our economy—depends. We do, however, need genuinely affordable projects to provide homes for islanders, and we will work with the Government to build them. Our island plan should reflect that. For my islanders, housing is hope, especially for the younger ones. Working with many others—our chamber of commerce, our council, our excellent tourism team, voluntary groups and individuals—we will present ideas for a brighter future for our island.

Nationally, this Government have laudable aims of social justice, hope, meritocracy and opportunity for all, values which were inherent in manifestos and are absolutely inherent in our hearts, but we sadly failed to translate them during the campaign. I want those principles, aims, values and aspirations for my fellow islanders and for our nation. Let us deliver real change and real hope in the next few years and set an example, whether economic, moral, or political, that we are the natural party of government.

My fellow islanders deserve nothing but the best, and I will do my best to give them the voice that they deserve. Some Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire, have explained why we are here far more eloquently than I have, but I will battle for my island. I cannot promise to win every battle, but I will fight every battle on their behalf for as long as I have the honour of serving in our Parliament what Wordsworth called “that delightful Island”.

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear!