Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Smith and Heidi Alexander

Thursday 26th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

To achieve growth, businesses rely on our world-class logistics and haulage sector. Given that Logistics UK said that it was “disappointed” that the logistics sector had not been identified as one of the foundational industries in the industrial strategy this week, what happened? Did the Department for Transport go into bat for our logistics sector? Did it lose the row? Or did it not bother? What will the Secretary of State be doing to ensure that our logistics sector is seen across Government as foundational to any growth mission?

[Heidi Alexander]

It is my understanding that the logistics sector was pleased to be recognised as a case study in the industrial strategy. I know that it welcomed the announcement in the spending review of £590 million to progress the lower Thames crossing, which is a key strategic freight route. For many years the sector has been talking to us about improving the route from the south-east to the midlands and the north. Unlike the previous Government, this Government are finally getting on with the job. We have taken the planning decision to grant consent to the crossing and are making money available through the spending review to improve the country’s critical freight routes.

[Greg Smith]

The Secretary of State clearly has not listened to Logistics UK—I hope that at least she knows where the lower Thames crossing starts and ends. Let us turn to another foundational industry to transport and growth: fuel. Elizabeth de Jong, chief executive of Fuels Industry UK said about this week’s industrial strategy:

“we are disappointed not to be named explicitly as a ‘foundational industry’ today, given the vital role of the fuels sector in enabling growth”.

Why has our transport-critical fuels sector also been left behind by the Government?

[Heidi Alexander]

This Government’s industrial strategy sets out the sectors that have the potential to deliver economic growth and for which are competing internationally for mobile capital investment. My colleague the Minister for the Future of Roads and I meet repeatedly with the industry, be that to discuss fuels or freight and logistics. We are determined to get our economy firing on all cylinders, and we know what critical role the sectors he talks about play in that.

HS2 Reset

Debate between Greg Smith and Heidi Alexander

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander]

I gently say to my hon. Friend that the Mayor of the West Midlands might have something to say about his great city being seen as the end of an extension to the London underground line. It is completely right that our two great cities—Birmingham and London—are connected with high-quality rail services. Although this is a difficult day in exposing the state of the project, I have no doubt that in time it will be a railway we can be proud of.

I also say to my hon. Friend that I am aware of forecast capacity constraints between Birmingham and Manchester and in other parts of the country. We are investing, through things such as the trans-Pennine route upgrade, in improving connectivity to other great cities in the north of England. We are determined to ensure that everyone, no matter where they live in the country, has an excellent public transport system that they can rely upon.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

My constituency has been devastated by roughly 26 miles of HS2, and I have consistently warned this House—during the previous Parliament and this—through the lens of the miserable experience on the ground in Buckinghamshire, about the reasons for the cost overruns, poor governance and everything else that the Secretary of State has highlighted in her statement today. If she must persist with this wrong project with a new delay, will she give a commitment to my constituents and the rest of the county of Buckinghamshire on how much longer they will have to live in misery as part of a building site? More importantly, will she look urgently at unlocking some of the mitigation funds that we are finding incredibly hard to access and get spent on the ground? That would be of some small, tiny comfort to my constituents who are living in misery.

[Heidi Alexander]

It is essential that we proceed as quickly as possible with the remaining civil engineering works that will have affected the hon. Member’s constituents to date. If he wishes to write to me with details of the problem he has experienced with accessing mitigation funds, I will raise that for him with the chief executive of HS2.