Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Grayling and Esther McVey

Thursday 10th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I do not have the costs immediately to hand. However, the point about Operation Brock is that it is designed to replace Operation Stack and provide a solution well into the early 2020s in the case of disruption at the channel ports, which I do not want to see. To do the work on the M20 and the work that has happened on the M26, the cost is in the low tens of millions of pounds, but I will be able to give the hon. Gentleman an exact number. It is really important that we do not see a repeat of the disruption of 2015 in Kent.

[Ms Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

Knutsford commuters have been repeatedly promised an upgrade to the Knutsford to Manchester line to two trains an hour. However, after excuses and procrastination, that is now not happening at the time it was meant to happen. It is unacceptable to have such an unreliable and irregular service for such a busy part of the country. Will the Secretary of State intervene, speak to Northern, speak to Network Rail, and get this promise fulfilled?

Monarch Airlines

Debate between Chris Grayling and Esther McVey

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am really sorry the hon. Lady has taken that approach. Let me be absolutely clear: this airline did not fail because of Brexit; this airline failed because it had a business model that was not capable of dealing with a price war in the Mediterranean. That is the reality of the situation and that is what its chief executive said. The hon. Lady talks about Brexit causing a lack of investment, but in the past few weeks we have seen a big expansion. Jet2 has set up a new base at Stansted and there has been a huge investment in the UK by Norwegian, which is becoming a real player in the low-cost marketplace. The market is changing and sadly Monarch, a business that has been around for 50 years, was not able to adapt to those changes. I am afraid she is just doing a disservice to the economy of the United Kingdom when she claims that this was a consequence of Brexit. She talks about employees. The biggest favour we can do for the employees of Monarch is to work to ensure they get another job quickly, and that is what we are seeking to do.

[Ms Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

Following on from the many letters I have received from constituents, will the Secretary of State join me in thanking and congratulating the staff of the CAA, the Department for Transport and my local airport, Manchester airport, on the work they have done on the biggest evacuation in peacetime?

[Chris Grayling]

I am very happy to do that. I pay tribute to the staff of Manchester airport—I met the first plane back at Manchester airport—who rowed in behind the challenge. They were notified only late on the previous day, but by Monday morning staff were out greeting passengers, telling them what had happened and sorting out all the issues arising from the administration. I owe a big debt of gratitude to the staff of Manchester airport, Gatwick airport, Birmingham airport, Luton airport and Leeds Bradford airport, all of whom rose to the occasion, and to all the other people and organisations involved in the exercise.

HS2 Update

Debate between Chris Grayling and Esther McVey

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The first thing to say is that we have taken a lot of care to try to put mitigation measures in place, and the movement of the depot from Crofton is a case in point. I have looked to try to change the configuration of the route around Barnburgh, and I have been up there myself to look at the locations. I am sure that the right hon. Lady will make further representations to the Committee that considers the Bill. If she looks at the challenges facing the rail network in the north, she will see that it is not about the lines that have lots of stations; it is about the fact that the links between our major cities are caught up by slow trains. A fast train from Leeds to Manchester across the Pennines is not possible because of all the stations in between, and councils and representatives in the north have been calling for better, faster links between our northern cities, and this project will do that job between Sheffield and Leeds. One reason why I am attracted to the link between Sheffield city centre and Leeds city centre is to provide fast connections between the two.

[Ms Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms McVey]

Good choice, Mr Speaker.

I appreciate that the Secretary of State is seeking to be decisive, but my constituents in Tatton are deeply concerned by what they hear in the media. Will he ensure that my constituents, and I as their representative in Parliament, will be fully involved in the decisions that will hugely affect them, and that he and High Speed 2 will not ride roughshod over their legitimate concerns?

[Chris Grayling]

This is my first opportunity to welcome my right hon. Friend back to the House. I am delighted to see her, and she will know that, of all the constituencies in the country apart from my own, I know hers well. I used to live there, and I understand the impact on local communities. I give her an assurance that we will do everything we can to be sensitive to the concerns and needs of those communities. As I said earlier, such a project cannot be delivered without it impacting on some people. I know the route through her constituency very precisely, and I can assure her that I will continue to work with her to make sure we minimise the impacts to the maximum degree we can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Grayling and Esther McVey

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

As I said earlier, we are focused on delivering service improvements right now. The electrification process is continuing—there is no secret about the fact that this project has not gone as well as expected—but the key thing for the hon. Lady’s constituents is that, from this autumn, there will be brand-new trains, more capacity, a better service and six trains an hour from Bristol to London. This is really good news for her constituents.

[Ms Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

T9. A number of my constituents are deeply concerned about the impact of High Speed 2—particularly residents in Ashley, who came to see me in a surgery last week. I am sure that you, Mr Speaker, will be pleased that I am not going to go through every point they raised with me, but could the Minister meet me to go through every concern they had?

Youth Employment (Wirral)

Debate between Chris Grayling and Esther McVey

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The big problem that we had with the new deals was that they were effectively programmes designed in Whitehall. The standard new deal format was 13 weeks in a classroom, with relatively little financial focus on outcomes or whether people got into work at the end. It was very much about the Government paying for placements. The placements happened, but as for the outcomes of the different new deals—yes, they got some people into work, but the number who stayed in work was disappointingly low. One of the big differences with the Work programme is that it will not simply be about getting people into work, but will be about sustaining them in employment.

In particular, where young people come from the kind of difficult background that the hon. Member for North Tyneside described, the programme will not be about just getting them through the first days of work; it will be about helping them to stay there and overcome some of the hurdles that they face in the workplace, including some of the cultural aspects of working life that they do not expect. Having mentors sitting alongside them in the workplace is an extremely important part of what we are seeking to do.

I am expecting to have specialist providers serving the Wirral and Merseyside whose job it will be to work with unemployed young people, as well as those of other ages, not only helping them to find those first opportunities to gain work experience, develop interview skills and understand how to put together a CV, but going out and working with employers, match-making young people with the opportunities that are out there. As the hon. Lady will know, there are quite a large number of vacancies out there, but often a jobseeker will not know how to go about finding those opportunities. The skills brought by professional providers working with people with the potential to get into work, so that we match them with the right opportunities, are fundamental.

We should set that against our plans for the skills system. We are currently consulting on how the further education and skills system can be developed to respond effectively to the skills gaps that we need to address. We want to give training providers greater freedom to target provision to meet local needs, alongside giving colleges and other providers greater local autonomy to say, “This is what we need in our area,” ensuring greater provision of apprenticeships and putting in place the Work programme, which will be both local and national. The programme will be a national scheme, but the responsibility for delivery in each area will be devolved to a provider in a local community who will be specifically mandated to work with organisations in the voluntary sector and organisations such as Wirral council.

Indeed, I very much want to see local authorities participating locally in the work that is done, working with the providers and sometimes doing the work themselves. What we will end up with is local partnerships collaborating to match individuals with employment opportunities and to overcome the hurdles that often exist between the two. Although we face tough and straitened times—I will be absolutely frank and say that, as an Administration, we will not be able to do all the things that we would like to do—we need to make that investment in skills development and deliver those apprenticeships.

[Esther McVey]

As my right hon. Friend would like to see that work, let me invite him, as a good friend of Merseyside, to come up to Wirral and see our apprenticeship scheme in action.

[Chris Grayling]

I would be very happy to do that at some point. I am always happy to revisit Merseyside. There are some great people there, and it is a great community. Liverpool is a magnificent city. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West and the hon. Member for Wirral South represent important constituencies that are also nice places to live in and to represent, and I would be delighted to come and see some of the work being done there at some point.

I share the aspiration of the hon. Member for Wirral South to ensure that as many young people as possible can find work, although there will undoubtedly be times when she and her colleagues disagree with me and my colleagues about the means that we are using to try to achieve that. We certainly face tough and challenging times financially, and that will make it more difficult to do all the things that we would like to do. At the end of the day, however, we all share that aspiration. I do not want to see large numbers of people whose lives are wasting away while they are stranded at home on benefits, doing nothing.

We need to make changes to the welfare state to improve the incentives to work. We also need to give people an extra push, particularly when they have been out of the workplace for a long time or have never worked. Such people can build up problems with their confidence, and they are often uncertain about how to get into the workplace and how to go about getting a job. We have to help them to overcome that. We all want the same thing. I want to see as many people as possible of all ages, but particularly young people, in work in thriving businesses in an enterprise culture that we have created, in which businesses are growing and developing, and emerging from our universities, and in which companies are coming into the UK to invest and create jobs. If we can create that dynamic business environment, provide investment in skills and deliver really effective back-to-work support for those who are struggling to get work, we shall be able to achieve the goals that the hon. Lady rightly sets for her constituents and for those of all right hon. and hon. Members across the House.

Question put and agreed to.