High Speed 2: Hollins Green, Culcheth and Croft

Debate between Helen Jones and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect of High Speed Two on the villages of Hollins Green, Culcheth and Croft.

It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am grateful to have been granted this debate on the impact of the proposed High Speed 2 line on villages in my constituency. For the record, although I live in the village of Culcheth, our home is not one of those affected by the line. Nevertheless, many of us have believed for some time that what we call “the spur”—the Hoo Green to Bamfurlong section of the line—simply does not stack up economically, or in any other terms, and that the decision to join the main line north of Warrington, rather than north of Crewe, is flawed.

I have previously questioned the costings for that part of the line. I do not propose to go through all that again, but suffice it to say that if HS2 is seriously arguing that this part of the line will cost only 28.6% of the costs elsewhere, when a viaduct has to be built over the Manchester ship canal and the M62 and the East Lancashire Road have to be crossed, it is highly unlikely to be correct. In fact, many of us have believed for some time that the real justification for the spur was to avoid the constituency of a certain former Chancellor of the Exchequer, of this parish. Now, with the decision to make Crewe a main transport hub and to abandon plans for any depot at Golborne, it makes even less sense than it did.

Even so, neither HS2 nor the Government have taken full account of the concerns of people who live in the villages. One bit of the line was tweaked following representations from the owner of the Taylor business park just outside Culcheth. That mitigated some of the impact on some houses in Culcheth but increased the problems in Croft. However, the decision allowed the business park to be sold for an undisclosed sum, reported by local newspapers to be more than £19 million—without any gain, I suspect, to the British taxpayer, since the last time I looked most of the shares in the business park were held by a company registered in Belize. We often ponder why notice was taken of one person, and not of the representations of the rest of the community.

That part of the line, however, has serious implications for all three villages. That is what I will concentrate on today. For example, Wigshaw Lane is proposed for permanent closure. It is the route that leads from Culcheth to Croft, going on towards the centre of Warrington. Traffic will therefore be forced on to the other route towards town, which is the A574, despite the fact that that road is already at a standstill at peak times. An accident on the motorway or the East Lancashire Road can gridlock traffic all around the village. It is simply not sustainable to force more traffic on to an already congested road which is used as a cut-through by HGVs.

Importantly, Wigshaw Lane is also the direct link between Culcheth and Croft, and closing it will have a serious impact on people’s ability to access services in Culcheth village. For example, many people in Croft come into Culcheth to shop and to use the doctors’ surgeries there. Culcheth High School is the nearest high school to Croft and is attended by many of the young people from that village. They will be forced on to a much more unsafe route to school, and the road closure will have a particularly adverse impact on elderly and disabled people who come to shop in Culcheth.

There will of course also be problems for people who want to move the other way, from Culcheth to Croft and towards town. For example, the hospital is in the centre of town, and young people who want to access post-16 educational provision, whether at Warrington and Vale Royal College or Priestley College, need to go into the town centre. How people will get to early appointments in Warrington, or young people to classes, when the road is congested and often at a standstill is something that no one appears to have considered properly.

In fact, young people will be disproportionately affected by the closure because they move between the villages of Croft and Culcheth for sport and recreation, as well as education. Local air cadets, for example, are based in Croft. People go there from Culcheth and all around the town. The cadets are well respected—one member of my staff learned to fly with them—but the direct route there will be closed. Similarly, for young people who want to come from Croft to Culcheth to access after-school activities and sports facilities, there will be no direct route.

If that were not enough, another proposal is that the area known as the Oaks—which is on the alternative route, the A574—will lose more than 20% of its area. Culcheth Athletic junior football club has 23 teams that play there. The idea put forward by HS2, that they can all move to Shaw Street recreation ground in Culcheth, or the Culcheth sports and social club, which we call the Daten, is nonsense: four out of six pitches and the parking facilities are to be lost. It is interesting that the Government want people to be more active and for young people to take part in more sport and in the cadet forces, yet they are set on making it more difficult for them to do so in the area.

Another part of the community that will suffer a serious impact is the Catholic population. St Lewis Primary School is in Croft, as is St Lewis parish church. When the direct route is closed, young children will no longer have an even moderately safe route to school; they will be forced on to the congested A574. Older people and others who want to go to mass will be seriously inconvenienced. That is direct discrimination against the Catholic community, which goes against HS2’s declared policies.

If that were not enough, there is a proposal to put a construction depot on the A574, close to Newchurch Primary School and the residential houses that abut that road. That will increase not only traffic—yet again on a road that is already congested—but air and noise pollution for the primary school and the people who live in that area. Anyone who knows the villages would say that the proposal simply is not feasible.

As far as Hollins Green is concerned, there is a proposal to build a viaduct over the Manchester ship canal, despite the fact that on the nearby M6 the Thelwall viaduct often has speed restrictions because of high winds. It would be interesting to know how HS2 thinks that is feasible. Previous plans for a motorway in the area were rejected by the then Secretary of State on grounds that remain relevant to HS2: namely, that it would have an unacceptable environmental impact, and would cause a loss of green belt and a harmful effect on village life. That viaduct and its associated embankment will tower over the area. It will cut through a historic parish and it will destroy a network of footpaths between Hollins Green and Glazebrook.

As well as the environmental impact, there will be an economic impact on the villages. It might help the Minister if I explain that Culcheth is the centre village for Croft and Glazebury and, in some sense, for Glazebrook too. Lots of people from outside those areas come to the village because they are attracted by its mix of local shops and nice restaurants and pubs. When Wigshaw Lane had to be closed a few years ago for bridge repairs, there was a serious impact on local businesses, which lost a lot of trade. Culcheth also has a thriving night-time economy—because of the restaurants and so on. People come to the village from quite far away. That trade will be reduced if one of the main routes out is closed.

The new route will go straight through the Partridge Lakes fishery—a thriving family business built up over many years, which has also planted thousands of trees. Other businesses are situated there, too. For instance, there is a store that sells prom dresses—I think that is a thing now, although when I was growing up we just went to the pub when we left school. People come from all around to get their dresses there. There is a yoga studio and there is the Black Sheep Wools craft centre. The key thing to remember if those businesses go to the wall is that they encourage people to go to Culcheth village and spend money in the shops and restaurants. It would be a double whammy.

In Hollins Green, the Black Sheep pub will have the route going straight through its car park. People go to that pub from outside the village, and it holds a thriving farmer’s market that brings people into the village. We are constantly told that HS2 is beneficial to the economy. I do not think it is beneficial to the economy of these villages. Although I keep asking questions about the economic impact and the assessment that has been made of it, I do not get very satisfactory answers. The cost-benefit ratio of the line is estimated at between 0.5 and 0.8, but with the effect on those businesses, many of which will experience a serious loss of trade and some of which may go to the wall, that analysis changes. I hope the Minister will look at that very seriously.

There will be an impact on people’s health. The loss of the footpaths in Hollins Green, the loss of access to the linear park, which is used by walkers and horse riders, and the loss of the fishery where people are welcome to walk around, look at the wildlife and have a coffee, will have a serious impact on people’s access to green space. HS2 accepts that most anglers tend to be older men and a high proportion are disabled, although the fishery has done sterling work with young offenders to try to get them interested in the sport. We know that being out in the open air is beneficial not only to our physical health but to our mental health. Many of those benefits will be lost in those villages. We will pay the price in worse health, but in the end the country will pay the price in increased costs to the NHS.

It cannot be right that HS2 can come up with plans that anyone who knows anything about these villages thinks are unworkable. They take no account of the traffic situation, the economy of the villages and people’s health. They are just not feasible. In addition, many of them ignore HS2’s own stated equalities policies, because they have a disproportionate impact on young people, older and disabled people, and the Catholic community.

There is a way out of this situation. As the costs escalate, Ministers need to look at the cost of this part of the line. In fact, in previous debates I have undertaken, Ministers did agree that the costs needed to be looked at. The original cost of the spur was estimated at £800 million, whereas joining the main line north of Crewe was estimated at £750 million. The cost of the spur has risen to £1 billion. The original justification for not joining the main line north of Crewe was that a lot of work would need to be done to make Crewe station viable. Since the Higgins report, it has been decided that Crewe will be a main transport hub, so that work will have to be done anyway.

The other justification for the route was having a depot at Golborne, so that trains could turn around and come out of that depot. There is no longer going to be a depot there. I urge the Minister to look seriously at that. It has been said often that HS2 is of great benefit to big cities but not much benefit to towns. There is something in that. By looking again at the possibility of running trains out of Crewe to Chester, north Wales, Liverpool and up through Warrington, many towns could benefit much more, and the impact on villages could be avoided. If the Minister cannot do that, I strongly urge her to look at HS2’s plans for building the line and the impact on those villages. I sincerely believe that they will be disastrous for village life and the whole thing needs to be considered again.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 4.23 pm. Before calling the Minister to speak, I congratulate the hon. Lady on giving a detailed and knowledgeable speech for just under 15 minutes without referring to any notes whatsoever. I call the Minister.

Retail Store Closure: Boxing Day

Debate between Helen Jones and Philip Hollobone

Monday 12th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. We heard from a number of people whose relatives have to look after their children on Boxing day because no childcare is available.

We heard from one lady who described her “nightmare” journey to work. She works in London, but there are no trains from where she lives on Boxing day. She has to get three different buses to work. It takes her a long time. However, she told us that some of her colleagues cannot get home to see their families outside London over Christmas, because they finish too late on Christmas eve and have to get back too early on Boxing day. She described herself as one of the lucky ones. Some luck, I would say.

For all that, many people in the sector now receive no extra pay. It is true, to be fair, that a few people in an online consultation with MoneySavingExpert.com said that they rely on their extra pay on Boxing day to pay for Christmas. I understand that. My answer would be that they should be paid a proper rate of pay throughout the year. Those people are unusual; most companies no longer pay premium rates. They have disappeared, just as the premium rates for Sundays did. The House may remember that we were promised, when Sunday trading was introduced, that people would not have to work on Sundays if they did not want to, and would be paid extra for doing so, but that arrangement disappeared as new people came in, and there were new contracts requiring them to work Sundays and holidays. If they did not sign up for that, they did not get the job. That is how it is for Boxing day as well. It is clear from talking to people in the sector that they can be required to work; an employer has a right to require people to work if it is in their contract, or if it is the usual practice in the industry—and working on Boxing day is increasingly becoming the usual practice. One person said to us, “I don’t get the choice of whether I want to work or not.”

We have been told over and over that people who are sick on Boxing day face disciplinary action, and that a refusal to work means instant dismissal. The worst case we heard of was of a woman who had her drink spiked on Christmas. She was ill and unable to work on Boxing day, and was therefore dismissed. The Government might want to reflect on how difficult it is for those who have the right not to work on Boxing day to enforce that right, given that the Government have extended the time that people have to be employed for before they can claim for unfair dismissal, and have hugely increased employment tribunal fees. Low-paid workers, many of whom are not in unionised workplaces, have very little chance of enforcing their right not to work.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I am hugely enjoying the hon. Lady’s speech; she is making a powerful case. Some 181 people in Kettering signed the petition. The Library briefing for the debate says:

“Under the relevant legislation…workers do not have a statutory entitlement to time off on Bank Holidays”,

which includes Boxing day. I am not saying whether that is right or wrong, but is it the hon. Lady’s wish that employees be statutorily entitled to have Boxing day off?

[Helen Jones]

I think the hon. Gentleman is right about the law as it stands; if he will forgive me, I will come to that in a moment.

Retailers say that Boxing day trading is important to them. The British Retail Consortium declined to give written evidence to my Committee before the debate, but in the past it has said that last year’s sales were up 0.7% on the year before. However, it is important to remember that those sales did not reach the December peak, which last year was on 23 December, or the November peak, which last year was on the day after that appalling American import, Black Friday.

The director of retail intelligence at Ipsos Retail Performance said:

“Boxing Day has grown in significance as a shopping day over the last 5 years, as increasingly more retailers have started their Sales immediately after Christmas.”

I say two things to that: first, sales are on now, as anybody who has looked around knows; secondly, I have not seen any evidence that Boxing day opening generates more trade, rather than moving it about between days. If retailers were closed on Boxing day, there might well be more trade on 27 December—or, more likely, the Saturday following Christmas, when most people are off work.

However, we have had evidence that some stores may not even be that busy; I accept that some are, but some are certainly not. One store manager told us that his store was less busy than on a usual Sunday. Other people working in retail have told me that they are not busy, and that they do not accept returns on Boxing day because that would make the sales figures look worse. There are differences across the sector, and it seems that many shops open simply because others do; staff and store managers in my constituency say that that is often the case. As someone said in our consultation, retailers are great followers. Many in the sector would like Boxing day to be treated like Christmas day and Easter Sunday, when large stores cannot open. In fact, 92% of respondents to an USDAW consultation did not want to work on Boxing day, but 78% felt that they were pressured to.

The opening of the stores has a price for our communities, for families and for individuals; nothing in life is for free. If more shops open on Boxing day, there needs to be more of other services, such as waste collection; emergency services must be on duty; and there is more pressure on transport to run as normal. There is a spiral effect when more and more people are made to work the bank holiday. As I said, there is a price for families. People lose the time with their children or their parents, and other members of the family are very often pressed into service looking after children, meaning that they cannot make plans for the day. The real impact is on the poorly paid retail workers and their families, and from the comments that we have received, it is clear that most people would rather have that day off.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. That is an example of the pressures that those retail workers come under, many of whom are women and have caring or childcare responsibilities. I doubt that much would change if store openings began on 27 December. As one of the contributors to the consultation said about stores, “They will make their money back, but we will never get our time back.”

What is the purpose of all this? Does anyone actually gain? As another person said to us in the consultation, “I should like to think that the keen shoppers of the UK could wait one more day to grab a juicy bargain”—or, as staff call it, stock that has been gathering dust in the stockroom since 1993. Another person said, “Isn’t seven-day trading and numerous late nights enough?” I think it is.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am even more impressed by the hon. Lady’s speech as it goes on; she is making an extremely powerful case. However supportive I might be of her argument, one of the difficulties is that if people cannot physically go to a high street or out-of-town shop, they will shop online on Christmas day or Boxing day. That will ultimately take business away from the very shop workers whose livelihoods we are seeking to protect.

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very reasonable point. My view is that, if people are going to shop online rather than go to the shops, they are going to do that anyway. For instance, it was put to me that many people receive vouchers for Christmas, particularly children, and that they enjoy spending them. Yes, they do, and I suspect they would enjoy spending them just as much on 27 December.

We need to find a balance. If my right to shop is being exercised at the expense of some of the poorest-paid people in our community, their time with their family should take precedence. It is a question of what kind of society we want. Do we want a society in which people are able to spend time with their family—their children or parents—or maybe even invite in an elderly neighbour who is on their own, or do we want a society that is a free-for-all, and in which the weakest go to the wall?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Mrs Moon. In truth, I had not intended to speak, but I was so moved by the powerful speech made by the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) that I felt inclined to do so on behalf of my 181 constituents who signed the petition.

I find myself in the awkward position of seeing both sides of the argument. My instinctive sympathy is for retail workers who are forced to work on Boxing day, when they feel they should not have to do so. I feel for them, as I would anyone who was forced to work on Christmas day, which of course has statutory protection. My solution to this dilemma is for the Government to enact the relevant legislation, such that it would not be compulsory for retail workers to work on Boxing day if they did not wish to do so. I do not see why that would be difficult for the Government to do. There would be retail workers who were prepared to work on Boxing day if they had, to their mind, the requisite recompense to do so.

The reason I come to that compromise is that we now live, rightly or wrongly, in the age of the internet. Whether physical shops are open or closed on whatever day of the week, internet shopping will always be available. The bald, bold truth is that many retail workers will have signed this petition who will themselves go online on Boxing day to shop for items they want. While that is a digital choice, at the end of the day that digital request goes through to a warehouse—perhaps one of the warehouses in Kettering—where an employee is given an instruction to get that item from a shelf and put it on a pallet to go into a lorry for delivery to that consumer.

We are talking today—I recognise that it is with the best of intentions—about retail workers in physical shops on the high street or in our retail parks. However, they are in competition with real human beings who are employed in warehouses to respond to digital requests for consumer goods. Those digital requests are being posted online 24/7. People are shopping on the internet at times when you and I, Mrs Moon, may not think about shopping. Those retail requests go through to employees in warehouses who physically have to get those items off shelves and put them on pallets to go into lorries. The difficulty that I have—I am sure other Members have the same difficulty, if they are really honest about it—in responding to this petition is that we have to make a choice between retail workers on our local high street and employees in our local warehouses. It is a difficult choice that we, as parliamentarians, have to be honest about.

A fair compromise would be for the Government to say that no one should be required to work on Boxing day. That would give an element of statutory protection, recognising that Boxing day is the day after Christmas and has special meaning in our country. As the hon. Lady said, it goes back to giving servants boxes to thank them for their service over the previous year. We would then recognise the contribution that retail employees make and say to them that they do not have to work on Boxing day if they do not want to. There would be no downside for them—no loss of pay, pension or holiday entitlement—if they decided they did not want to work on Boxing day, but someone who wanted to would have every right to do so.

[Helen Jones]

I see where the hon. Gentleman is coming from, but does he not recognise that, even with the right he suggests, many low-paid workers in this sector are and would be pressured into giving up their Boxing day? There is little to prevent that because, with low-paid workers often in non-unionised workplaces, there is not an equal balance of power here.

[Mr Hollobone]

The hon. Lady, following on from her good-natured speech, makes a characteristically powerful point. I recognise that, but the brutal, honest, bald, bold truth is that if we said that shops were not allowed to open on Boxing day, millions of our fellow citizens would shop online. Instead of talking about human beings in high street shops, we would be talking about more of our fellow human beings in our local warehouses responding to people shopping online. That is the reality.

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. Surely his argument is one for 24-hour shop opening. People can shop online at any time. Is there not some place where we just have to draw a line?

[Mr Hollobone]

I am very sympathetic indeed to the hon. Lady’s cause. I voted against extending shop opening hours during the Olympics, and I voted against liberalising Sunday trading, but I recognise that I am probably on the wrong side of history in this debate because of the influence of internet shopping. I am trying to be honest with the hon. Lady and the Chamber. Ultimately, we are here to represent the citizens in our communities. Some of those citizens will work very hard in our local high street shops and some will work very hard in a local warehouse, especially in Kettering, just down road responding to digital requests. If I supported the thrust of the debate and said we should ban retail sales on Boxing day, I would be saying that that local high street employees were not allowed to work on Boxing day, but employees in the warehouse down the road could work and would be working harder, because they would be responding to online digital requests from our fellow citizens who decided to shop on Christmas day and Boxing day.

Do I think there should be 24/7 shopping? No, I do not. Do I think we should recognise what is left of our Christian heritage? Yes, I do. Do I think this request for a special exemption for Boxing day is religiously driven? No, I do not. I think that whatever Christian meaning there was in Boxing day has probably long departed us, unfortunately. Do I recognise there is still a religious and cultural significance to Christmas in our country? Absolutely, I do.

That is why I suggest what I hope is a reasonable compromise: employees should not be required to work on Boxing day and there would be no redress against them if they decided not to do so. I recognise absolutely what the hon. Lady is saying about hidden pressures, or sometimes overt pressures, on employees who do not wish to work on Boxing day, but I hope Her Majesty’s Government could establish a system that was fair enough and understood by enough people for it to be accepted in this country that if people did not want to work on Boxing day, that would be fine.

That would probably mean that employees who wanted to work on Boxing day would have to be paid more. In many ways that is not a bad thing, but it would have to be accepted by employees who chose not to work on Boxing day that they would not be entitled to that double or triple pay. They would have to make a choice. If we are honest, many employees who do not want to work on Boxing day now might want to if they were offered double or triple time. I am not saying that is a satisfactory choice. I am just saying it is probably a realistic one that would result from such a system.

With that compromise, I think we would end up with a smaller number of people who were dissatisfied and a larger number who were happy to accept the end result. I cannot see any other way of solving the problem and cracking the nut. That is difficult because we now live in an online world. If we were having this debate 20 years ago, I would have agreed absolutely with the hon. Lady that retail shopping on Boxing day should be banned, but in 2016-17 it is almost impossible to do that because of the internet. I do not like it; I am not advocating it. I am just saying that is the way it is.

My solution and my humble petition to the Chamber in response to this excellent petition signed by so many people is that Her Majesty’s Government should make a sensible compromise and tell retail workers they do not have to work on Boxing day if they do not want to, but if they do, they have every right to do so.

Private Members’ Bills

Debate between Helen Jones and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend tempts me into a matter that is one for Mr Speaker and his deputies. I am sure that if hon. Members were filibustering, Mr Speaker would not allow them to do so.

When I last counted, I think the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) had about 20 Bills on the go, and the hon. Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) had 13 each. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of those figures, because my eyes started to glaze over as I went through the list. Frankly, I started to lose the will to live after a while.

The problem comes down to the fact that Members who are successful in the ballot for private Members’ Bills and wish to introduce legislation should have a fair chance to have their Bills debated and voted on. It is up to them to gather enough support from all parties to get their Bills through, but I say to the hon. Members who have tabled the amendment that that cannot happen if others table so many Bills that they block up the system entirely. It is neither fair nor proportionate.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

But that cannot happen in the second part of this extended Session, because there is not going to be a further ballot to allow private Members to take part in the process. Does the hon. Lady agree with the coalition Government that there should not be a further ballot?

[Helen Jones]

We will wait to see what the Government bring forward, but if the hon. Gentleman thinks that his Bills do not have a chance of getting through, one wonders why he tabled them in the first place.

I hope that we can agree to the motion, so that Members who wish to pursue their private Members’ Bills have a proper opportunity to do so and get a fair hearing from the House.