Airports National Policy Statement

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is requiring me to remember all the evidence we heard over many months from many voices. Air quality is undoubtedly one of the key challenges that the Government face in bringing forward these proposals. That is why it formed one of the most important areas in our report; we wanted to have some certainty that the UK could indeed meet its air quality targets at the same time as addressing the need for people to travel by air.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I will have to continue at some point, but yes.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The element of risk in this whole process is an important point. The Committee identified many risks. In the event of a delay or the project not going forward, would it not make sense for the Government to consider using alternative provision where there is capacity at other airports, such as Gatwick and Stansted? There is a real risk with this project and we cannot end up in a situation in which nothing happens.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend made a fantastic contribution to the work of the Committee in developing this report. He is right. There are two issues in relation to his point. First, the NPS is scheme-specific, so if for any reason it does not go ahead, that limits the Government’s options. Having said that, even if it does go ahead in the best possible scenario, it would not be open until 2026. That is why one of our recommendations —I will come to this later—is about the better use we make of all our regional airports and what needs to be put in place.

We welcome the overall tone of the Government’s response to our report, which was published on Tuesday. It is clear that they have, in principle, taken on board much of our report and clearly acknowledged what we were trying to achieve. The Committee still needs to do more detailed analysis of the Government’s response—we want to be sure that the substance matches the rhetoric. I do not believe that accepting our recommendations in principle is enough. Hon. Members need to decide whether we can just rely on the planning process to provide these necessary safeguards and guarantees, to protect communities and passengers. The parliamentary approval stage of the planning process is designed specifically to set the criteria for approval. It should then be up to Heathrow to meet those requirements.

I want to take this opportunity to explain why the Committee made our recommendations. First, we wanted to ensure that the supporting evidence was robust and accurately reflected in the NPS. We wanted to ensure that MPs are well informed. It is impossible to know with absolute certainty what the exact impacts of this scheme will be but, given the political gravity of the issue, we wanted to ensure that MPs were fully informed of the potential scale of costs and benefits.

Although we accepted the Government’s high-level arguments in favour of their preferred scheme, our investigations revealed that the north-west runway’s advantage over the other schemes considered was not perhaps as wide as was set out. In some cases, the comparative advantage to not expanding at all was small. The strategic case for the north-west runway rests primarily on it delivering more routes to a greater number of destinations, and at greater frequencies, than the other schemes. Our detailed analysis of the Department for Transport’s forecasts revealed that the future passenger growth, destination and route offering at the UK level is broadly similar over the longer term, compared with the other schemes. Most of the passenger growth generated from the north-west runway scheme will be accounted for by outbound leisure passengers and transfer passengers, who offer fewer direct economic benefits to the UK economy. The Government’s own forecasts show that business passenger growth is negligible compared with no expansion.

The anticipated growth in connections to Heathrow is a key reason why the north-west runway scheme has garnered considerable support from regions away from London and the south-east, but there is a concern that the Government do not have the policy levers to guarantee that a proportion of the new slots created will be allocated to domestic routes into Heathrow. Given the costs currently anticipated for the north-west runway scheme, there is a possibility that domestic routes from Heathrow would not be commercially viable. It should also be acknowledged that an expanded Heathrow would abstract growth from non-London regions, with over 160,000 fewer direct international flights each year compared with a no-expansion scenario. This is a nationally significant infrastructure project. It must work for the whole nation and not just for London.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

As part of the local growth deal, the Government have already provided nearly £8 million of funding for the construction of phase 1 of the Northampton north-west relief road. We work closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that investment in this infrastructure and others helps to unlock new homes and create workable, sustainable communities.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

T4. The Minister will have seen the major story in The Times yesterday, highlighting the problems of licensing and cross-border working in the taxi and private hire industry, and the concerns around public safety. Regrettably, my private Member’s Bill—the Licensing of Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill—was talked out a few weeks ago. Will the Minister now give the public an assurance that the Government will come forward urgently with legislation to address these concerns?

[Ms Ghani]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I also read the story, which was very alarming. He knows that licensing authorities are responsible for ensuring that taxi drivers are fit and proper, renewing licences and doing criminal record checks. He will also be aware that there is a task and finish group looking at taxis. I am waiting for that group to present its report to me. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am looking at the issue very closely, as the safety of passengers is a big priority for me.

Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and other expert members of the Transport Committee who have spoken in this debate. I am only sorry that the Secretary of State has left the Chamber—left the dock, effectively—because I was rather hoping that we might discuss what we will do with the £2,400. I was going to suggest that we should perhaps buy him a bus pass, because I am very keen on moving from rail to bus. I was actually going to say something nice about him as well—only one nice thing, I hasten to add—because I was going to thank him for raising the vexed issue of the timetable changes. Many Members will have heard their constituents’ concerns about the way in which the process has been handled. Of course, this is a major set of changes—we understand that—and such change is not easy to implement.

I was on the “Mann in the Morning” programme on wonderful Radio Cambridgeshire this morning, listening to people who have had bad experiences on the rail line from Cambridge. Those experiences were immediately blamed by the Secretary of State on Network Rail. We are now in the process of no longer transferring risk within the system, but transferring blame. It is not all about Network Rail; the train operating companies must bear some responsibility. If we get a chance to look into what happened around this timetable change, we may well find that that is the case, too.

The positive side is that people in the industry want to make it work. The message from passengers that I heard today is that they want the system to be run as a public service, and that is also the ethos that many in the industry want. We should try to focus on that because, despite privatisation over 25 years, most people in the rail industry still have a public sector ethos. If we could celebrate that and make it work, we would do much better.

I do not agree with Members who say that the franchising system works. I am deeply sceptical about it. A number of reasons have been raised for the failure of this particular franchise. Network Rail is, of course, immediately blamed for ideological reasons. In fact, the evidence given to the Transport Committee rather suggested that the relationships were “not very clear” and that there were some “implicit” understandings rather than “contractual” understandings. If we are writing big contracts, we do not do it like that. Network Rail was not to blame for the failure of this particular contract. It was probably down to a decline in the number of season ticket sales because this route, as has been said, is volatile.

If we are to return to the Brown recommendations and say that train operating companies should not be subjected to these big macroeconomic risks, I would ask what kind of risk transfer is really taking place. These are the very risks that we face, and other businesses have to cope with such risks.

[Helen Goodman]

This discussion about the over-bidding on the franchise reminds me precisely of the discussion that we had with the mobile phone companies, which came along, cap in hand, having overbid for their spectrum. It was clear that the system was just not working because people wildly overbid.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend is right. That takes us into a much broader philosophical discussion about how we get investment into our key industries, and that applies to a whole range of discussions. Just look at the huge number of consultants, lawyers, contracts and all the rest of it that are involved. We are told that some 300 people are employed just on trying to sort out who is responsible for delays and that hundreds of millions of pounds are lost on this process. Frankly, do we really need all of that? What are the train operating companies actually delivering, apart from the delightful colour changes that have been suggested? If we ask passengers what they want, they say an integrated system. They are talking not about transferring risk or arguing about blame, but about getting the system to work. Let me conclude with a few words about the so-called future partnership model.

[Mr John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman is, as ever, making a valuable contribution. One of the most interesting things that has come out of this debate, thanks to him and to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), is the business of how we integrate transport policy. We have heard that a competitive element is associated with road and rail and that all kinds of other factors affect projections and estimates. Perhaps the Minister will take that away from the debate. There has always been a call for an integrated transport strategy, and every Government have wrestled with it. Perhaps this event will stimulate and catalyse just that sort of approach.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Once again, the right hon. Gentleman, an experienced former Minister, speaks very wisely. In the end, this is a slightly false debate. Of course there will always be a role for the private sector in transport; the question is whether we have to build in competitive mechanisms in this kind of way. We could probably repeat the same discussion with regard to buses and other parts of the transport system. We need investment—of course we do. It is a straw-person argument to point to British Rail 30 years ago. Of course we knew that there was underinvestment in British Rail 30 years ago. The question is what the system will look like in the 21st century and how we will unlock the resources that we need.

Let me turn now to the partnership model, which, I am afraid to say, the Secretary of State has hidden behind. The Transport Committee heard pretty clear evidence on Monday evening from experts in the field that that approach does not look like the best one to try out. Apparently, some 20 passenger, freight and open access operators use the line. Once again, this is a recipe for argument and dispute about who gets priority and how the whole thing will work. It seems to me that this was more an excuse for the Secretary of State to hide behind to spare his blushes, because he could not bear to admit the fact that the line was coming back into public ownership.

Finally, let me take this opportunity to disagree with Lord Adonis, who spoke very engagingly to the Transport Committee on Monday in defence of the franchising system. At the end of his evidence, he gave a warning to me and people in Cambridge who use the line into King’s Cross, explaining how difficult it could become because of the various competing priorities within this partnership. I had to tell him that that was already happening. A year or so ago, I had the pleasure of having a cab ride to King’s Cross—one of the best parts of being a Member of Parliament is that I get to ride in the front of the train. It was an extraordinary experience and very different from the mixed experiences as a passenger. I well remember the train halting from Cambridge as it joined the east coast main line, and the drivers pointed out that there are regular disagreements and disputes about priority at that point. These are very real issues.

Let me return to the people who really matter. I am not convinced that the passengers who were fuming on the station platform in Cambridge this morning are that bothered about the intricacies of franchising approaches and who is to blame. They want a railway that works and a railway that is affordable, and that should be the aim of everyone in this House.

Community Transport

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that during this important debate, we can begin to get the assurances we need from the Minister.

The UK has taken a unique approach to community transport by legislating for a relatively light-touch, affordable regime through the section 19 and section 22 permits of the Transport Act 1985. It is widely acknowledged, including by the Government, that the regime has provided an effective framework within which not-for-profit organisations can safely provide community-based local transport services. The Government have also very broadly accepted throughout that the long-established permit regime still achieves that. Furthermore, they accept that developments in the sector that have led to the current situation have been not only supported by official guidance, but explicitly encouraged by local and central Government for many years.

Not-for-profit community organisations have been encouraged to become more professional in outlook and, in the face of growing pressure on local authority budgets, to become more financially self-sufficient. Community organisations have responded to that call by quite properly and, I stress, in accordance with the official guidance, developing their operating models to deliver services via a mix of grant funding and local authority contracts.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the changing situation in local authorities—I have seen it in Cambridgeshire—whereby mainstream services have disappeared to be replaced by not just voluntary, but professional schemes, has led to those problems?

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is right. Many community organisations, some very successfully, have achieved greater self-sufficiency and sustainability by cross-subsidising what can be thought of as core community transport services with income from contracts for school and social care transport, for example.

And so to the bombshell of last summer. At the end of July, in what the Department seems to have hoped would be a relatively innocuous letter from a senior official to issuers of section 19 and section 22 permits, it set out a new approach, which was contrary to the official guidance that had been applied for decades but in line with a new interpretation of EU regulation 1071/2009, which has been in force since 2011. This is the crux of the matter: there is a potential misalignment of the relevant sections of the 1985 Act and its associated guidance and practice, and EU law.

The European regulation defines three derogations from the operator and driver licensing requirements on the mainstream commercial sector: where organisations are engaged in road passenger transport services exclusively for non-commercial purposes; where they have a main occupation other than that of road passenger transport operator; and where organisations have only a minor impact on the transport market because of the short distances involved. Member states can choose whether to apply the third derogation.

The Department’s letter noted the findings of a DVSA investigation into the licensing arrangements of an individual community operator in Erewash, Derbyshire—I see the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) is present. Essentially, that investigation, which was conducted in response to a complaint from a commercial operator, found that as the operator in question held a number of competitively tendered local authority contracts, it could not be considered to be operating for non-commercial purposes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

I know there is strong local support for improvements to the rail network in Cheshire. I am pleased to confirm that the Cheshire and Warrington local enterprise partnership is in the process of establishing a working group with local authority partners and Network Rail to examine the feasibility of reopening the mid-Cheshire link railway line, including Middlewich station, in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and that the Department has offered to provide advice.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

A few weeks ago, we had the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the free bus pass scheme for pensioners, which is a hugely popular policy. What efforts did the Department make to mark that anniversary? What assurances can the Minister give pensioners about the future of the scheme?

[Ms Ghani]

The bus pass scheme tends to be reviewed every five years, and what we have been able to do is ensure that that review does not take place every five years and that the concessionary bus pass remains in place for as long as is needed.

Rail Franchising

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I would like to engage the House on the question whether franchising works. My local radio station, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, will next week be celebrating 25 years since this country started on the journey from British Rail to anything but British rail. I remember it rather well because I went to a Railtrack meeting at the time and asked what I thought was a naive question: “Who is going to sort out the problems of who is responsible when things go wrong?” We might think now that people would have thought about that point then, but it is still being argued about 25 years on.

When I talk to people in the industry, they tell me about the small army of people who spend their time not helping passengers or improving the railways, but arguing over who is responsible for paying when things go wrong. Of course, there are so many opportunities to game the system. There are so many ways in which operators can make their trains just not quite late enough to incur any penalties.

I made a bit of a social gaffe at a dinner recently. I was sitting next to someone from a train operating company and asked the rather unfortunate question. “What exactly is the point in train operating companies?” I wondered, like most people would, “You don’t own any trains; you don’t own any tracks, so what do you do?” They said, “Ah—we sell tickets and we innovate.” That explained it—“Kind of like ticket touts, then?” I suspect I am not going to be invited back for a follow-up. That is the problem with many of these people. It is a very complicated system.

My hon. Friends have already raised some of the issues on two of the routes that serve my city of Cambridge. I am grateful for the piece in The Sunday Times that was mentioned, where we learned a bit more about the East Anglia franchise—its £3.7 billion price tag. The managing director was right to describe it as “scary”. That was negotiated in and around the time of the referendum in 2016, and, amazingly, renegotiated very hurriedly in the days afterwards—completely out of public sight, as usual, and all shrouded in commercial confidentiality. Within six months, the company had sold a 40% stake of itself to a Japanese company. Does any of this matter? I think it does. These are our public services being bought and sold, speculated on and turned into financial instruments, when what we actually need is an environmentally sustainable, cost-effective, reliable, sensible transport system that people in my constituency can afford.

With regard to the other route, I am afraid that a National Audit Office report revealed, as has been eloquently explained by some of my hon. Friends, the appalling levels of service that constituents of mine are suffering. Many of them are paying almost £5,000 a year for a season ticket—a huge amount for the many young people in my constituency to have to bear.

In conclusion, I say to the train operating companies: take a look at the station clock. Tick TOC, your time is up—just like mine.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

I went on such a walk a few weeks ago in Spalding town centre, and I recommend it to hon. Members; I know many will have done it. It gives an entirely different insight into the struggle that people have getting around town centres when others have inconsiderately parked and there are many obstacles in their way. It also gives a real understanding of how wonderful our guide dogs are. It is important that the Government do their bit. Of course the charitable sector does an immense amount, too. I certainly take my hon. Friend’s remarks seriously. We will look closely at what more can be done, but he can be absolutely certain that I and my colleagues in the Department will be champions of the interests of people who are visually impaired and use guide dogs.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that one of the biggest obstacles to the take-up of cycling is people’s fears about safety. Has he done an assessment of whether the necessary resources are in place to implement the cycling, walking and investment strategy, and if he has, could he publish it?

[Mr Hayes]

As the hon. Gentleman implies, we do have such a strategy. He is also right that cyclists need the same kind of attention that I mentioned in my previous answer. They can be put into hazardous circumstances by a range of different obstacles that they encounter as they go about their business. The Government are strongly committed to cycling, as I think he knows, but he is right that we must look closely at the hazards cyclists face, and that will be included in the strategy.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

Well, I was not going to add that, but, yes—in rather less number. Those cars add a vivid aspect to motoring—an elegance and style we would not wish to see lost in any move towards this change in technology. But, for most people, their daily experience will not be to drive an Allard, a Jensen or any other of the cars my right hon. Friend and I revere; it will be to drive a car to get to the places in which they work, to access educational opportunities and to get to the places where they buy the goods they need to service their wellbeing; it will be to use a car for recreational purposes, in the way my father did for his family all that time in the past, as I described a moment ago.

The change that we are now experiencing, and that we will experience to a greater degree in the coming years, is not a threat and not something to doubt or fear, but an opportunity. It is an opportunity for Britain from the perspective of the technology we will develop and export. It is an opportunity to give access to cars to those who have never had them—the profoundly disabled, the elderly, the infirm, and the partially sighted and the blind. They have not been able to drive, and they have relied on others to drive them, but they will suddenly have the opportunity of car ownership, which has been denied them for so long by the nature of their disability or their need. That is the sort of future I envisage.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The Minister is making a characteristically wide-ranging speech, and he touches on important points, but the Bill is remarkably thin. It does not deal with many of these points. There are so many other issues—the social issues and the skills issues. When will the Government bring forward a Bill that actually deals with the issues the Minister is referring to?

Taxi Trade

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting). His account was exhaustive, and the work of the all-party group has been extremely helpful. A proper discussion of the issues around the industry is long overdue. I do not want to rehearse the arguments that have been made, but I will make a few observations on some of the things I have learned over almost a decade of trying to understand how the trade works in my area.

Although the APPG’s report is excellent, it has a picture of a black cab on the front—it has a London focus, which is entirely reasonable. However, one thing that has struck me as I have gone around the country is how different things are in different places, and how difficult that makes it for us to cope with all the different local circumstances. That is why there will always be a role for the local licensing authority.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who led an Adjournment debate on this subject just over a year ago. He gave a brilliant account, which should almost be obligatory reading for Members as they start to consider this issue. I also pay tribute to the local people in my area who have explained the issue.

The complexity of the issue is shown by the Law Commission report back in May 2014. Whatever one’s view of that report, the fact that it ran to nearly 300 pages—I am not sure how many people have got through it from beginning to end; I have started it on a number of occasions on trains—and had 3,000 submissions demonstrates a huge amount of complexity and detail. I will come back to how we respond to it, but as I read it, I found myself thinking about how it applied to my area. I am very grateful to several local people: Paul Bradley and Rashel Mohammed of the Cambridge Hackney Carriage Association, and David Wratten, who works for Cambridge City Licensed Taxis and represents the taxi drivers working from the station. As we begin to look at just one area, we realise how many different groups and interests there are within one trade.

The Local Government Association handbook advises councillors on how to deal with such issues. It runs to a full 60 pages and involves a lot of training. I am grateful to my councillors, Jeremy Benstead, Kevin Blencowe and Gerri Bird, for putting up with simplistic questions from me over the years as I try to understand the issues. I recommend that hon. Members go out with local taxi drivers to understand the job from their point of view and to see some of the problems they face on a daily basis. Many of us use taxis as passengers, but going out with the drivers and hearing them explain what they are up against is a very different thing. I am grateful, particularly to Paul and Rashel, who have taken me out on numerous occasions.

We have hackney carriages in Cambridge, but we do not hail them. It may be different in other places, but they all work from ranks and a lot of them are dual licensed, which causes total confusion in the minds of the public. People really do not understand the difference in a city such as Cambridge, and I think it might be similar in other places. We have a different set of distinctions from London. In many places the cap on numbers for taxis was lifted some years ago. I am pleased to say that the Labour council in Cambridge acted bravely. They went through the process of testing the market and reintroduced the cap a year or two ago, which has helped. We had a massive over-ranking problem, which is typical of historic cities. The problem is not completely solved, but the cap has helped. The problems that we still have are how to deal with basic technological things such as making sure the ranks are filled from feeder ranks.

Also, there is the problem, which was touched on by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), of cross-border issues when neighbouring authorities have different approaches to taxi licensing. That is not untypical. The Cambridge Labour authority takes a rigorous view. The councillors are very hands-on in their approach to managing appeals. However, neighbouring authorities take a different view, which creates a real problem when they are contiguous and we see large numbers of taxis coming in from other areas.

We have also had some self-inflicted problems. The Deregulation Act 2015 created additional problems. The idea that someone’s booking can be passed on to someone else might have seemed a good idea in terms of efficiency, but it means people do not know what they are getting. It is like going to a supermarket checkout with a box of Jaffa Cakes that gets substituted for an own brand and being told it is the same thing when it is not. People have told me that they have phoned up to get their taxi—or, in this case, their private hire vehicle—and then someone else has turned up, someone who they did not want to see turning up because they had had problems with them before. In a way, that has taken choice away from the consumer, and I am not sure that was what the Government intended.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North made strong points about the access issues and guide dogs. I have heard about heart-rending cases from people who have told me about disagreements they have had with taxi drivers who have not exactly welcomed them into their cab with either a guide dog or a wheelchair. As we have heard, progress has been made on that, but more needs to be done. Training is needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish tried to introduce a Bill in 2016 to make such training mandatory, so I hope the Government will come back to that.

Another set of issues raised with me around the country are the opaque set of charges for drivers using a rank at a railway station, supermarket, hospital or retail park. All those institutions are now trying to maximise the value of their assets. In the old days, railway stations were places for getting people around, but now they seem to be a source for raising funds. I have asked questions and I still have not had satisfactory answers. The issue is decidedly opaque and we need to make sure that such privileges are not being abused.

A huge range of issues needs to be tackled, as evidenced by the Law Commission report. We have seen the change in technology—I will not re-rehearse the arguments. I am not one of those opposed to changing technologies. Technology can be applied in the right way, as Gett and other applications have shown. I hope that in the future we will see such technology used in a transformational way for public transport, not just for taxis and private hire vehicles.

There are so many challenges, yet we still do not seem to have had a response from the Government. I really hope that at some point we will see a substantial piece of legislation introduced to deal with the issues. There is clearly a consensus around the idea of national standards to deal with the cross-border hiring issues. The Local Government Association, the all-party group and many others have called for that, and it was a manifesto promise from my party. It cannot be right that someone denied a licence in one area can turn up on the same streets within a few days, as we have seen in some places around the country, with a licence from somewhere else. That completely undercuts public confidence and frustrates local councillors, who feel they have no enforcement powers. We have to find a way forward. I hope I am not abusing the system, Mr Wilson, if I conclude by saying that I will be presenting a private Member’s Bill tomorrow, which I hope will tackle the issues.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

At the same time as we meet to discuss the mid-Cheshire line, I will be more than happy also to discuss some of the issues with the HS2 phase 2b route, which goes through my right hon. Friend’s constituency.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

When the Conservative manifesto was published, there was no mention of Crossrail 2. Will the Minister tell us whether that was by accident or design? When does he plan to make a decision on the business case?

[Chris Grayling]

First, I absolutely support the need for the capacity improvements that Crossrail 2 will bring to London—indeed, not just to London, but to areas outside. We are working our way through the business case. I do not think it is any secret that the Transport for London funding package has not quite lived up to initial promises, but I want this to work. I am seeing the Mayor next week, and we will do everything we can to make it work.