International Travel

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right about the need to prevent the variants. Our surveillance system, which involves our sequencing the genome more than any other country in the world, as I know she appreciates, is a big part of that. We frequently find that we know about overseas variants before the host country and consequently we often tell them about it first.

I want to ensure that the record of the House is entirely accurate. I talked about the risk assessment methodology that is already published online. The methodology includes variant assessment, triage, risk assessment and outcomes, which inform ministerial decisions. Under each heading, there is tremendous detail. For example, triage includes testing rates per 100,000, weekly instances, test positivity, evidence of overseas variants under investigation and much else. Then we publish the data on both the Public Health England and the JBC websites. I invite the right hon. Lady to look at that data. I think she will also appreciate that there are times when, for diplomatic reasons, it would be difficult to publish other countries’ data before they have done so. However, she will find a wealth of information, which we are already publishing, on the JBC and PHE websites.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who is clearly putting in the effort to try to reopen international travel, but I also echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), the Chair of the Select Committee. We need the equivalent of the domestic lockdown road map for reopening international travel. I appreciate that there are complex issues to resolve on opening travel to the amber list for those who have been fully vaccinated, but I am sure he realises that if we take too long to do that, there are travel sector businesses in our constituencies that will not be there to capitalise.

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I want the issues that he raised to be resolved as soon as possible. Perhaps I should mention that through the G7 and the OECD, we are working to create internationally recognised systems. At the moment, every country is going off in its own direction, even among the EU 27, where there is no agreement on the basic standards for people moving around the world. He is right and I will be happy to return here to provide that further clarity.

Thomas Cook

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

On the pensions front, I think there are four different Thomas Cook pensions, the largest of which is a £1 billion fund. That will now be handled through the usual insolvency pension fund process. It is, of course, a worrying time for everyone involved. With regard to the constituent the hon. Gentleman mentioned, the DWP is ready for her to make contact through the rapid response unit. If there are any difficulties, will the hon. Gentleman please alert me? I will make sure that the Business Secretary and the taskforce are immediately switched on to any problem that occurs. We are very keen to get realtime feedback on this.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Like many colleagues, I have a Thomas Cook branch, in Sudbury, in my constituency, which has closed, and I am grateful to the Secretary of State for the work he will be putting in place to support redundant staff. However, does he agree that the biggest cause of the collapse was the unsustainable debt that the company had, which came from a merger strategy that was completely flawed? Does he agree that those who oversaw those mergers, who would have earned handsomely from them, and those who have run this company into the ground must be held to account?

[Grant Shapps]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Look, companies do sometimes go bust. The problem here is that they are going bust leaving a massive number of people and leaving this country with an enormous problem to resolve. That is why he is right about everything he has just said.

Delay Repay: Great Eastern Main Line

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which I welcome. He is a great campaigner on this issue. One cause of dissatisfaction among our constituents on this line is the fact that they so often have to stand. Does he agree that we should look at compensation for not only delays but standing? Is it right that someone who stands, often for two hours or more, pays the same fare as someone who has a seat?

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is right; nobody should be standing on a train for this length of time. Nobody should be standing to get to London Liverpool Street from average commuter towns like Chelmsford or Colchester, or even as far as Norwich. The journey from Chelmsford is about 40 minutes, from Colchester it is about 55 minutes and from Norwich it is one hour and 45 minutes or even two hours; we hope to get that down to one hour and 45 minutes with the new trains. Increased capacity will come with the new trains, but there is a massive issue with standing. It is not uncommon to see people—indeed, I have done it myself—standing between Colchester and London. That is not acceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) on securing this debate and on giving us the opportunity to discuss these issues. I thank other hon. Members for their contributions. We have had a very positive debate.

I fully recognise the importance of the rail service to the communities my hon. Friends represent. It is not just a question of access to the beautiful landscapes of north Essex or south Suffolk; the line serves areas of economic growth, where we are seeing innovative businesses, high-tech and state-of-the-art businesses, and growth in life sciences and renewable energy. The great eastern main line plays a significant role in unlocking the economic potential and improving quality of life in the areas my hon. Friends represent.

I also fully acknowledge the passion that rail can generate. As people have said, the constant struggle to know what is happening on a network and the impact of delays on people’s ability to make connections, get to work on time and handle childcare arrangements can be incredibly stressful and frustrating and we should be working flat out to minimise the need for any compensation to be paid at all.

I will address some of the issues raised. Obviously, we have focused today on Delay Repay, as that is the key point of the debate, but I will also touch on the issues of the performance of the network and the new trains that colleagues have raised. On Delay Repay, I recognise that, when things go wrong, we must have some means of appropriate redress. As my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) said, people are pragmatic and understand that things can go wrong; they just do not want them to go wrong regularly. Exceptional events we can understand.

These services are critical to how we run our lives. Delay Repay compensation is in place on most of our franchises. In its original form, it offered compensation for delays of 30 minutes or more, but we are improving the scheme by rolling out Delay Repay 15, under which compensation is paid for delays of 15 minutes or more, which will give passengers a better deal. It provides compensation of 25% of the ticket price for delays of 15 minutes or more and of 50% for 30 minutes or more, whatever the cause of the delay or the cancelation and whatever the ticket type.

[James Cartlidge]

The principle underpinning Delay Repay is that people should be compensated for any inconvenience caused, which brings me back to the intervention I made on my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince). Given that a seat is part of a person’s understanding of the contract of their ticket, if they have had to stand for the entire journey, is there not a principle that they should be entitled to recompense?

[Andrew Jones]

It would be very challenging to introduce that extra condition to the compensation structures. We must try to ensure that there are enough seats, but it is hard to guarantee that everyone will have a seat on every occasion. The right to a seat is not actually included in the ticket—the ticket entitles the passenger to ride and to complete the journey, but not to have a seat—although of course we want passengers to have comfortable seats, along with access to wi-fi, power sockets and so forth. I am aware of the issue that my hon. Friend has raised, and I will certainly give it further consideration.

We introduced Delay Repay 15 in Britain’s largest rail franchise, Govia Thameslink, on 11 December 2016, and it was introduced in c2c in February 2018. It is also part of the new South Western and West Midlands franchises, and was introduced most recently in the Northern franchise, last December. It will be a contractual requirement for all other Department for Transport franchises when contracts come up for renewal, so it will become a regular feature of what our rail service looks like up and down the country.

Greater Anglia currently offers Delay Repay 30. We have been actively engaged with the company to secure an affordable and value-for-money scheme for the Delay Repay 15 launch, and the process of agreeing on commercial terms is at an advanced stage. We are not quite there yet, but I can tell Members that I am confident of being able to bring them some news within weeks. I will, of course, ensure that I keep everyone informed of our progress. The Department is doing significant work in liaising with Greater Anglia. The delays in introducing the scheme in franchises are due to the complications involved in changing the nature of the contractual arrangements, and that is the only reason for the delay in this instance.

Drones: Consultation Response

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

It might be if we had not, but of course we legislated last year.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Just prior to Christmas, I held a rural crime summit in Lavenham in my constituency. A key issue raised was hare coursing. I was pleased to learn that Suffolk constabulary had purchased a drone, which will be used to gather intelligence and will greatly enable us to fight back against this real menace in rural areas. Does the Secretary of State agree that although the incident with drones that we are discussing was criminal, the technology offers great potential for fighting back against criminality, and in particular those crimes with which we have historically struggled to deal?

[Chris Grayling]

I quite agree, which is why the strategy is about not only meeting the challenge of the careless, illegal or inappropriate use of drones but setting a direction to ensure that we allow the kind of usage that my hon. Friend talks about. As well as the inspection of infrastructure and policing, there are a whole variety of other ways in which drones can be a positive for our society.

Rail Update

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The answer is that at this stage we have not yet reached final arrangements. My intention is not to hand over money, but to get the railway line in a preparation stage for the establishment of the east coast partnership. With regard to the great western franchise, this is genuinely a consultation. There are two options: we could continue with the great western franchise as it is, or we could create a second franchise that is focused on the south-west. I have heard both arguments. I am committed to having more accountability and better transport in and around the south-west, which is why we are finally dualling the A303, for example. This is a genuinely open consultation and I want to hear views about it.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I totally support greater unification of train and track. For my constituents, it is absolutely maddening that when we have problems on the railway—unfortunately, we frequently do on the great eastern main line—Network Rail and the train operator can argue about who is to blame, because our constituents want a single body to point a finger at. Will he confirm that there will be far simpler accountability under these structures, and that when our Greater Anglia franchise expires, we will have the opportunity to look at this sort of regional arrangement?

[Chris Grayling]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. I think that this approach should spread across the whole rail network, with clearer accountability, clearer integration, clearer joint working when something goes wrong and better joint planning for maintenance works and affected services. That is a really important part of ensuring that the railways work for the future.

Road Infrastructure

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on his incredible timing. How he knew that this debate would take place on the same day as the Government’s announcement, I honestly do not know.

Many people want to speak, so I will get straight to the point. There are two main schemes in my constituency about which we are particularly concerned. One concerns the A12, which is the main A road through East Anglia. We sit on the Essex border. The A12 will soon have three lanes from Chelmsford to Colchester. It then gets to our stretch, which is extremely bendy. Our main concern is safety. Roads from villages join the A12, where the speed limit is 70 mph, at extremely short junctions into bends. Those junctions are lethal. I can only presume that the casualty count is not higher because of the caution that local drivers take approaching the junctions, but there is massive anxiety in surrounding villages, and I will look to pursue that issue.

Since it is bypass day, the main scheme that I want to refer to is the Sudbury bypass. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) talked about public support for a scheme that has been around for decades. The Sudbury bypass has been around for many decades. In fact, there has been an outline of the bypass in the local “A to Z” for a long time.

The essence of the issue will be familiar to many hon. Members. The A road goes right through the heart—right through the historic centre—of Sudbury, our main market town, which is full of heavy goods vehicles and all the pollution and impact that that implies. The historic town centre includes Gainsborough’s house, where Thomas Gainsborough was born—a museum that will shortly receive millions of pounds of lottery funding. We are desperate to regenerate our town, but the sheer pressure of HGVs is a problem.

I am pleased to say that Suffolk County Council has brought forward an initial business case for a Sudbury relief road, which it found could lead to a 60% reduction in HGVs and would have a 3:1 cost-benefit ratio in terms of economic gain, but the most important point is the environmental impact, which others have referred to. Our scheme was previously rejected on environmental grounds because, unfortunately, the only way to avoid the town—I am sure this is true of other rural areas—is to go into the countryside to some degree, but I think there is a trade-off. On the streets that the bypass would avoid, nitrogen oxide levels are very high—they are, in effect, illegal. The safe level is 40 micrograms per cubic metre of air; in Cross Street, the main road that we seek to bypass, the level is 59.4 micrograms. That is dangerous and unsafe. I therefore think the environmental argument is now in favour of the relief road, not least because the road would also protect the historic heritage environment of our town, where there are many fine wool town buildings going back hundreds of years.

Unfortunately, Sudbury’s biggest employer, Delphi Diesel Systems, which is a major exporter, has just announced a consultation on the entire closure of its plant, which would lead to the loss of 520 highly skilled jobs. We are obviously worried about that. While we are doing our best to prevent that from happening, we need to think positively about ways to revive the town. We have a strong industrial base that would benefit very much from a new bypass that would mean lorries could avoid the centre of town.

I hope that the Minister will be able to visit and give our schemes due consideration. I welcome this timely debate and the Government’s timely announcement. We all need greater support and, when it comes to relieving congestion in a historic market town, you can’t beat a good bypass.

Safety of Riders and Horses on Rural Roads

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this brilliant debate on what is an important issue for rural areas and also, now, for towns.

One reason why I wanted to speak in the debate was to have the opportunity to thank my constituent Christine Brindle, who invited me to her stables in Hadleigh in July 2016 to meet her and her fellow campaigners. She is part of the “Pass Wide and Slow” campaign group. I was brought up in London but moved to South Suffolk in 2011 and am a keen cyclist. What I have observed is that the key word is simply “respect”. Someone living in the countryside comes to respect equestrian road users and know that they should slow down and pass wide and slow. The question is: what happens when someone—either from the communities or from outside—does not show that respect and drives aggressively or carelessly? What measures can we take to make a difference?

Several measures have been suggested, including with regard to speeding. A particular concern is about anticipation, because my constituency, like many others, has bendy rural roads, and drivers have to anticipate more what is ahead of them. If they come sharply round a bend and there is someone there with a horse, they have to react far more quickly. This is about sensible driving, but speeding is also an issue. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether there are any ways in which we can affect the law. I know this is not optimal timing for changes to legislation, but it would be good to know if we could make any changes, which I think would have support, to enforce the idea that drivers should be considerate in the presence of vulnerable users, including horses. However, I think this is a public messaging issue in particular. We all know about the very good “THINK! bike” campaign, which has promoted the idea of taking motorcyclists into account and checking for them in our side mirror; we should have a similar campaign—it has been referred to as “THINK! horse”—for equestrian road users.

I want also to mention driverless vehicles. We have had driverless horses for many centuries, but driverless cars will bring their own issues. Members might be aware that Volvo has an issue with kangaroos. The company has recently reported that its driverless cars, initially tested to detect and avoid moose in Sweden, have struggled with marsupials. I am no expert, but I think it is because they bounce rather than approach steadily. This is a serious point, because we want to lead the world in the industrial field of driverless automotive: I hope that in developing large-animal detection systems in driverless cars companies will be cognisant of all road users.

My final point is that this is a predominantly rural issue. I have a predominantly rural constituency. We live in an age when people in the countryside sometimes feel ignored, and on this issue we could show that we have a transport policy for the whole country that takes into account and is fair to all users, in particular those on horseback and those riding with horses.

GPS and Heavy Goods Vehicles

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered GPS satellite navigation and heavy goods vehicles.

This is an increasingly complex issue because of the proliferation in recent years of devices and, more importantly, software available across Android, Apple and Microsoft-driven smartphones. The issue is not new but has been bubbling in the background for well over a decade. In-vehicle information systems, or IVISs, have received Government attention over the years, including in the Road Traffic (Driver Licensing and Information Systems) Act 1989 and the Driver Information Systems (Exemption) Order 1990, which concentrated on a licensing scheme for providers of real-time on-the-move information, such as Trafficmaster.

There was also a Government consultation in 2006, which sadly received just 111 replies. The results of that consultation were published in May 2008, but there were no firm recommendations for action. However, the sat-nav problem was highlighted in the consultation. In those days, very few heavy goods vehicle-only systems were available, which shows how technology has moved on at an exponential rate. The report concentrated heavily on the safety issues of—this is quite bizarre nomenclature—the human-machine interface, or HMI. There was subsequently one welcome legislative amendment, in 2011, giving local highways authorities the ability to implement advisory signs without formal traffic orders needing to be made.

On 6 March 2012, the Department for Transport hosted a “Delivering the best information to all in-vehicle satellite navigation users” afternoon. It was intended to encourage appropriate sat-nav use, local authority involvement with the mapping companies, and consideration of using the insurance market to force HGVs to require appropriate HGV-robust sat-navs. That is especially important when hugely expensive bridge collisions occur, as happens in many constituencies. Those collisions can stop train services while the damage is assessed. That has not been an uncommon occurrence on the north Kent line running through Strood.

Kent County Council, as the highways authority for Kent, issued a freight action plan in October 2012 to cover the four-year period from 2012 to 2016. It highlighted the problem, unique to Kent, of having the active cross-channel ports of Dover and Sheerness, the port of London, the then fully operational Ramsgate port, and the channel tunnel. Kent has a uniquely high level and density of foreign trucks on its roads because of the port activities, and that presents unique problems. The KCC action plan highlighted inappropriate sat-nav use and particularly the necessity of appropriate advertising of strategic road use across the county.

The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), told the House on 20 July 2015 that legislation might be an inappropriate and bureaucratic means of addressing these issues. Despite a number of years considering the problem and despite the numerous initiatives, the problem persists, and it is my contention that it is getting worse and more widespread than ever. The A257 Sandwich to Canterbury road suffers from inappropriate HGV use, and, importantly for the historic fabric of our nation, there are far too regular occurrences of economic standstill in the historic town of Sandwich as inappropriate vehicles that have absolutely no cause to be there become literally stuck, sometimes for hours.

I apologise in advance for the technical nature of my next comments, but I think it is worth while to lay out the framework of the advanced wizardry behind this now routinely used technology. The global positioning system comprises 31 US satellites orbiting 12,500 miles above the Earth. The system became fully live in 1995, but was available before then at lower levels of accuracy.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend, who is making an excellent speech on a subject that is important to my constituency. He mentions the wizardry involved. He may be interested to learn—I will talk about this later—that one of the houses in my constituency that is most frequently damaged by HGVs was used for the set of the Harry Potter film. Unfortunately, that wizardry is not available to us.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure that if we asked just about every Member of the House, they would be able to cite similar problems of historic buildings being hit.

I will develop a little further my point about the technical wizardry. The GPS concept is based on time and the known position of specialised satellites, which carry stable atomic clocks that are synchronised to one another and to ground clocks. The satellites’ locations are known with great precision. The GPS receivers that we all have on our phones and cars and wherever else also have very accurate clocks. GPS satellites transmit their current time and position, and a GPS receiver, looking at multiple satellites, solves a complex equation and determines its exact position.

As can be imagined, given the usefulness of such technology, it was designed in the US primarily for military use, but its use rapidly spread to marine navigation and has now spread to road navigation, as accuracy levels are now down to 5 metres or less. The system is free to any user on the planet who has a GPS device and it must be considered a true gift from the United States taxpayer to the world. Other countries have replicated the system, or tried to replicate it. There is the Russian GLONASS system, and the European Galileo system and Indian, Chinese and Japanese equivalents are in progress. However, I doubt that any of those new variants will ever overcome the dominance of the US GPS system, obtained through reliability and dependability. There is of course the downside that the US Government could at their discretion turn off the system for civil use at any time. One can imagine that at times of global instability that might be done, but it has never happened thus far.

It was not too many years ago—perhaps 15 years ago—that I was looking with some wonderment at the new gadgets that were appearing on friends’ car dashboards. TomTom was an early market entrant, and for many it became a status gadget, along with early in-built dashboard models in premium cars. However, it became clear within a year or two that they rapidly became out of date as new road schemes came into being. Updates for such machines were cumbersome, were often subject to expensive upgrade charges and, in the case of in-built systems, were sometimes available only at main dealers.

[Craig Mackinlay]

My hon. Friend highlights exactly what the debate is all about. I will be coming to exactly that issue in a moment.

There are now a host of portable devices—they are actually called nomadic dedicated devices—that people can put in their pocket and in different vehicles that they own. They are available at varying costs, with new brand names now commonplace in the market. TomTom was a market leader in the early days. Now there is Garmin, which was traditionally a big player in the marine navigation market, and there are names such as Mio, Navman, Magellan and many others. The price of those machines for car use is now as little as £50. For larger screen sizes, the prices can be up to £250.

The market has changed, because we now have the ability to download smartphone software, often for free, across the major phone operating systems. A search of Google Play or Apple’s App Store would reveal a huge choice of available software. Some is free if one is prepared to accept adverts, and some is free for a limited trial period. There are also fully paid systems, but even those are at a remarkably low cost, sometimes of less than £20. Practically every personal digital assistant device that we own—smartphones, iPads, other tablets—now has GPS functionality, and they can all support such software. Many operate on the widespread Google Maps application, which, as with everything Google, is becoming dominant.

[James Cartlidge]

I want to go back to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) made. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) is talking a lot about technology, and I must admit that I do not have the same level of expertise that he does. Is there any sign in the industry that the technology is reaching a point at which, without us having to legislate or regulate, it could tell a driver, “This road is inappropriate relative to the size of your vehicle”?

[Craig Mackinlay]

If my hon. Friend will let me continue just a little bit further, I will address the potential solutions.

We all realise the dominance of Google in our lives and on every machine that we own. Google Maps is a widely used application, but the downside for many of us is that it needs data transfer and use while on the move. That is not particularly helpful for people who are travelling abroad, given the data charges for foreign use. Software-based systems—the dedicated TomTom-style devices—have underlying, in-built maps called geographic information system data. They are installed so that there is no mobile data use. That is often the underlying framework used by nomadic and smartphone devices.

I think the solution lies with the base maps that the systems use. Only a few are actually used. A market leader is Navteq’s SDAL map, which is now called HERE. The Tele Atlas system drives TomTom and provides Apple Maps with its data. Of course, Google Maps has its own system. There is also an open source system called OpenStreetMap. There are 100 or more software variants that can run across different types of map data, and there is interchangeability in some software and devices so that they can accept and read any maps, from wherever they are sourced.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. Again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) on securing this timely debate. I am here because I receive constant email correspondence on the subject, which I regard as one of the biggest issues in my constituency.

In the past couple of weeks, we have had a major incident in Sudbury, a big market town in my constituency, which I will address in a moment. The purpose of my speech is simply to emphasise that there is a problem that we need to address. My hon. Friend has come up with many interesting solutions, and I will not pretend to share his technical expertise, but I will emphasise what is happening in my constituency.

Lavenham is a fine medieval village. I will not be undiplomatic and get into a competition about how it compares with Sandwich, but suffice it to say that they clearly share a great and ancient heritage that is threatened by HGVs. I recently received an email about Lavenham from a chap called Tony Ranzetta, who lives in Water Street—his house dates back to the 15th century and was used in the “Harry Potter” films. He says:

“Along the A1141 as it enters the village of Lavenham, is a unique set of houses, the longest uninterrupted terrace of medieval hall houses in England, followed by one of the hall houses owned by the Earl of Oxford and recently forming much of Godric’s Hollow in the Harry Potter films.”

I do not know the significance of Godric’s Hollow. My wife and daughter are very keen on “Harry Potter.” The email continues:

“The wider issue of the risk to our heritage across the county and the opportunity to use this current issue and the incident in Sudbury as the spur should only be grasped if it leads to the establishment of a county wide approach to diverting heavy goods traffic from ‘heritage’ villages and towns. We need to show a united and strategic front in the face of a problem shared across the county.”

Another resident of Lavenham, Mrs Simonetta Stonehouse, lives in one of the most beautiful houses on the High Street there. She recently wrote to me, saying:

“HGVs travelling through Lavenham High Street mount the pavement outside our house then negotiate the left turning into Water Street. I’m sure you are aware that the Swan Hotel”—

a famous and ancient hotel—

“has been damaged on numerous occasions, our property has also been hit. Houses on Water Street are regularly damaged and not so long ago a car was written off by a six-axle 44-tonne vehicle. It is not only the damage that these vehicles are doing to our medieval village but also the issue of safety to the residents and tourists.”

I was recently in Lavenham and witnessed an HGV of extraordinary proportions—I have never seen a lorry that big—attempting to go down Water Street, which is very narrow, although unfortunately technically an A road, which is part of the problem. The houses on it, including the house to which I referred, are beautiful and ancient. Lorries are scraping past them and tearing them to pieces, and it is incredibly sad to see. That is the heritage of the constituency that I represent, and I have come here to stand up for it and to find a way to protect it. Lavenham is also one of our biggest tourism draws, and I worry about the damage that could be done. Tourists do not come to villages to see massive HGVs go through them. The lorry on that occasion was an articulated lorry, but I am not sure how articulated the driver was.

Another village that is similarly ancient and has the same problem, and which probably creates as much correspondence for me, is Clare, a very pretty village on the Suffolk-Essex border. Only last week, I received the following email from a man called Bob Verguson, who did not know about this debate:

“We, the villages/residents along said A1092 Baythorne End to Long Melford road, require a stop to the 55 feet, 60-ton articulated lorries that are destroying our communities and infrastructure. The only lorries we should see in Clare are those delivering along the A1092 or along local side roads leading off the A1092, this is sadly not the case as approximately 92% of HGVs are passing through without stopping, merely using this road as a short cut…Clare alone has approximately 160 listed buildings”.

There is a pinch point in the village where lorries struggle to get through.

We see it all over the constituency. Nayland is another beautiful village near the Stour with the same problem, as are my two main market towns, Sudbury and Hadleigh. In Hadleigh, the problem is in Benton Street, which is narrow but is the main route by which my constituents access the A12 and Manningtree mainline station in order to get to London or Chelmsford. It has been a long-running problem. We thought that we might have solved it when I got Highways England to put new signage on the A12 to make clear the weight suitability and to say that HGVs should not use that route, but they continue to do so because of sat-nav, which is of course the same thing sending them down inappropriate roads in Lavenham.

I have had an email from a lady called Sue Monks, who lives on Benton Street. She makes a point about safety. In an incident two weeks ago,

“a resident on Benton Street had a car seat she was carrying knocked out of her arms by a passing vehicle whilst on the side of the pavement…Fortunately for her and us all, the seat was not occupied by a child.”

However, she emailed me the following day to confirm that there was a baby in it. Fortunately, it was a car and not an HGV. If it had been an HGV, I suspect that the event would have been tragic.

Finally, in Sudbury, the main market town in the constituency, a recent incident occurred at an intersection in a key retail part of my constituency. A lorry that should never have come down that road attempted the bend, severely damaging the frontage of a retail outlet selling ladies’ fashion. It is fair to say that in a town like that in a rural constituency, such things are a big deal. The incident occurred right next to the site of a major fire last summer, which was probably the biggest incident in my constituency since I was elected. It is demoralising for the town, and people want action to be taken.

I am not naive. I mentioned Harry Potter, but I know that there is no magic wand that can easily solve the problem. I have had frequent meetings with Suffolk County Council. Although we do not have Harry Potter, we have Councillor James Finch, who holds the transport portfolio for Suffolk. He is doing his best for the area. We are constantly considering what can be done, but there is one thing that the county council cannot control: sat-nav. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet has hit upon the nub of the problem. He mentioned the TomTom Trucker and other solutions. I would have thought that the industry could come up with a solution, given all the technology available; I am interested to hear from the Minister whether there is anything that the Government can do to force the industry’s hand.

All I can say is that, whatever steps my hon. Friend wants to take to raise the issue and to keep up the pressure—forming action groups or whatever—I will be more than happy to support him. I commend him for securing this debate and hope that we can find a way to keep HGVs out of these beautiful ancient villages and stop them damaging the infrastructure that is key to quality of life for our constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

It is as always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) about what has shocked many of us in the transport world today. I happened to be giving a speech to a delegation from the Chinese airport authorities as the news came through, and it focused us once again on the issue of security. We are all vulnerable, across the country, and I pride myself on the work that our police forces, special forces and citizens do in keeping us safe. I know our thoughts and prayers are with those affected today.

My goodness, Sir Alan; we might have thought this would be a very dry debate, going by the title, but we have heard all sorts of things. We have heard an expert description of the GPS service, for which I am grateful. We have learned that the original barbican is actually in Sandwich. We have heard about the village of Clare—I feel a visit coming on; Claire for Clare strikes me as very exciting. We have heard about Godric’s Hollow and about TomTom Truckers, which sounds to some of us like a rather unsavoury form of specialty video, but there we are. It has been an interesting and informative debate, and I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) for doing his research and bringing in so many interesting points.

The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), showed up well briefed as always. I appreciated his comments about looking at maps. The shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield, knows the subject of the debate inside out, but I was the Minister responsible for road freight in the previous Parliament, so I have some knowledge of the sector. Indeed, I was very proud of the work that we did in trying to reduce some of the burden of red tape on an industry that is, as he said, absolutely vital to the smooth running of the economy. It is a logistics sector in which we lead the world in many ways. As my hon. Friends will know, these are often small businesses with slim margins, and anything we can do to make them run more effectively is important.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet pointed out, satellite navigation is becoming a ubiquity in our transport journeys. It is a defining innovation; we are all very reliant upon it. It allows people to move around much more easily and much more effectively. Indeed, according to the AA, drivers using sat-nav travel 16% fewer miles and spend 18% less time at the wheel than drivers without such systems.

I, on the other hand, have a sneaking sympathy for what the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun talked about. I like to get out my maps, plot the cross-country journeys and actually work out which way is north. That is not just because I was a geography student at university. Britain led the world in map making and mapping different continents, and it is a skill that we must not lose. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) pointed out, with technological innovations such as driverless vehicles and HGV platooning, there is a chance that the whole system will become dependent on the accuracy of the information being put into such systems and that makes the issue that we are debating even more important.

Although we directly associate satellite navigation with in-vehicle driving guidance, of course there are enormous applications in terms of aviation, fleet management and logistics. Indeed, on the railway, the use of GPS technology, both for managing train movements and for providing more information to customers, is an area of extraordinary innovation.

I turn now to some of the questions around sat-navs, HGVs and what the Government have been thinking and doing. It is in no one’s interest for HGV drivers to make the wrong decision or to rely on inaccurate information. We heard tellingly and powerfully this afternoon what happens when things go wrong: tight corners; historic houses; and congestion. We have all seen the jack-knifed lorry that tried to get through the tight road bridge. Indeed, in my own constituency, we had an almost tragic incident when a large lorry tried to get across a bridge and knocked a piece of masonry on to the mainline track between London and the west country. It was only because of a lot of very quick thinking on behalf of the train crew that an accident was avoided.

Consequently, we have been very assiduous in this area, particularly in linking freight associations, local authorities and sat-nav companies to ensure that responsible HGV drivers are aware of the issue and have the latest information available to them. Indeed, properly equipped lorry drivers now have the tools to avoid low bridges and narrow lanes, and of course that saves them fuel, time and money. No lorry driver wants to be sitting there blocking a village street; that is not a pleasant experience for anyone. Therefore, as we have heard, there are specialist sat-navs that assist.

Neither central Government nor individual local authorities have direct powers over the routing of sat-nav devices, but sat-nav companies and users can help to ensure that they have appropriate routes by ensuring that their device maps are up to date. I confess that my hybrid vehicle had an in-dashboard sat-nav and I do not think that I ever once updated the maps. I hold my hand up in shame now as I say that. That was, of course, before my ministerial career and making that admission might actually be the end of it. There is an element of personal responsibility and indeed corporate responsibility to make sure that the maps are up to date.

Of course, the routing guidance is only ever advisory. Motorists, including HGV drivers, are responsible for determining the best route for their journey and for determining whether there are appropriate road conditions, even if a route is signposted as being appropriate and open. Drivers are responsible, of course, for ensuring that they follow routes that are legal—that they do not breach height or weight limits, which are set and enforced by local highway authorities and the police.

I have some sympathy—again, based on the experience of my own constituency—about the ping-pong there can be between a local authority and the highways agency as to who is responsible for signage on a particular road and the consequences of re-signing a particular road, which may push congestion over the border into another constituency or on to other roads that are less suitable, so it is not a trivial exercise to get the signage right. Clearly, however, when it is done, it can work.

What we must not ignore is the ability of GPS data to provide such an enormous level of innovation, both in transport and logistics, and in society in general. On trying to mandate specific technologies, such as commercial sat-navs or other route guidance systems, that is difficult. In my view, the heavy hand of Government mandating anything in the technological space tends to act as a drag on innovation, and by the time we have tried to solve one problem the world has moved on and we are all using entirely different systems or devices. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet referred to other competing global systems that may well be operational within the next few years and it would be a difficult process then to start that conversation with those specific road users.

The Government still believe that the private sector remains best placed to develop new products and services, and the market—sensibly regulated—should determine whether those succeed. However, I also want to pay tribute to organisations such as the Freight Transport Association, because there are very responsible industry bodies out there that work with Government and local authorities and that are absolutely committed to making sure that their members are using the most appropriate systems. It is important that we continue to improve those communications and that co-operation to ensure that everyone is using the right technology and equipment.

There is an Act—the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions Act 2002—that equips highway authorities to apply warnings and restrictions to the parts of the local network that they manage where they feel it is appropriate for HGVs to avoid using inappropriate routes. As I have mentioned, that can be a complicated exercise, but it is important. One of the things that the last Government were proud of doing was making it easier for local communities to do things such as applying particular speed limits and putting up signage to give communities the ability to manage their road conditions more appropriately.

There is more work happening. The Government are taking direct action now to improve the quality and sharing of transport data; £3 million has been dedicated to create a digital road map that will enable better data sharing between local authorities and service providers. The map is being developed by the Ordnance Survey and it will be launched later this year. It will include information such as road widths, traffic calming measures, and height and weight restrictions, which could then be linked to other public sector data sets, such as planned road works and cycle paths.

Unlike some of the Ordnance Survey data in the past, I believe that this will be open data, so it can be taken up by the various providers of information to the mapping companies, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet pointed out. It is a really important step forward to take Ordnance Survey data, which is of very high quality, and to put it on to the existing digital maps, which in some cases are not of particularly high quality or not particularly detailed about local conditions. I think that this has big potential to improve the quality and accuracy of the routing advice offered by sat-navs, as well as to cut bureaucracy.

[James Cartlidge]

Obviously, I agree with the Minister about not wanting to regulate if we do not need to, and I am aware of the point about signs. However, my experience is that signs often do not work with HGVs. If, as the years progress, we continue to have these problems, if the signage is not stopping them and if we have these villages and areas that are being damaged by HGVs that, if you like, are abusing routes because of sat-nav, do the Government have any power to intervene with sat-nav companies to try to ensure that they can guide lorries on to the correct routes?

[Claire Perry]

I do not believe that we have the statutory power to do so currently. Again, this is one of those slightly concerning paths down which to go, but I can certainly look to see whether anything has ever been proposed for the statute book on that basis. We talk about technology, but it is not in anyone’s interests, including those of a fleet manager, to have an HGV trying to force itself down a road. It will be entirely obvious if an HGV is trying to do that long before the problem arises and any responsible fleet manager would then communicate with that driver and say, “Where do you think you’re going? This is absolutely not appropriate.” Again, I think that we need to use the technology as the solution to some of these issues, while recognising the problems related to the technology.

Flexible Ticketing: Rail Transport

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to be called to speak in my first Adjournment debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, and for it to arrive early, which is not something we can always say about trains on the great eastern main line.

The great eastern main line is a massive issue for people in my constituency. Our railways are a key strategic asset and the performance of the line has, frankly, not always been up to scratch. I want to focus on an important part of the line: the ticketing structure, and the annual, monthly or weekly season tickets that my constituents buy. I feel strongly about the availability of part-time season tickets.

I am the first to recognise that hon. Members on both sides of the House have raised this issue and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) has done a lot of work on it. Pressure groups such as Transport Focus have campaigned for it. I am proud to say that it featured in the victorious Conservative manifesto at the last general election, which stated:

“We will also introduce smart ticketing and part-time season tickets.”

Why did I want to secure this Adjournment debate? It is basically due to lobbying from the focus group—the lobby group—that matters more than any other to me: the hard-working commuters and constituents of South Suffolk. To make my case, there is nothing better I can do than to follow the example of the Leader of the Opposition and read two emails from my constituents. I have had many emails about this, but two in particular cover the case for flexible ticketing.

The first is from—

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Rosie.

[James Cartlidge]

Calm down. It is from Deborah Adams of Sudbury. Sudbury is the main town in my constituency—a beautiful market town; the home of the great Thomas Gainsborough. She writes:

“A few years ago David Cameron announced the phased introduction of flexible season tickets for rail travel. As someone that commutes to London from Sudbury 2-3 days a week, this struck me as a very good idea. However, I have not been able to find out any more about it.

Flexible season tickets are an excellent idea, especially for constituencies like ours where there are large numbers of commuters. Many work from home some days, which makes the price of a regular season ticket of questionable value.

Flexible season tickets would encourage more people to work from home some days, which would reduce overcrowding on the trains, and would benefit South Suffolk, as more people would have time to spend their London wages locally.

It is very old-fashioned to think that workers go to their office every day and we should not be penalised for flexible working.

A system whereby a commuter could say buy 10 day returns for the price of 6-7 would really encourage the flexibility that the modern work force needs when juggling work and family life.

What do you think about this?”

She hits the nail on the head.

[Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that his constituent makes a good case for using new technology and the new options in e-ticketing? If it is possible to board a plane using one’s iPhone, would it not be possible to board a train?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I will talk about technology later in my remarks.

Another email that hits on some other points is from Russell Badrick, a solicitor who works in London but lives in Nayland, a beautiful village on the Suffolk-Essex border by the river Stour. He says:

“I was born in the constituency, and have recently moved down the road from you, to Nayland. I am a commuter and work in London. I work from home one day a week, and I commute the other four days.

You no doubt must receive a great many messages complaining about the Abellio Greater Anglia Services, which are generally very poor. The notion that they might be nationalised is obviously crazy”—

he is clearly sound. He continues:

“I wanted to ask you if anything was being done to persuade Abellio to introduce flexible tickets? It is becoming increasingly common for people to work from home, yet we are still forced to pay the season tickets for the entire week, month or year. For me, that means paying for 365 days of travel, when in fact I only travel on 208 of these. In fact, when holidays are discounted, I only travel 192 days a year.

On the basis of me paying £5,520 a year (i.e. 15.12 a day), this means I am really overpaying for 173 days a year – i.e. a full £2615.76 – again, obviously crazy.

I appreciate this is a business decision on the part of Abellio, but in this situation I, like many of your constituents, are captive consumers. Can anything be done about this?”

I should add as a caveat that while he talks about £2,615.76, Members—especially my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay), who I believe is an accountant—will know that that is taxed income, so the real figure is far more than that.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling case. We all know that there is a commuter belt around London and other major towns and cities, but there is a huge economic opportunity for towns and communities just beyond that, from where commuting into a great city full of opportunities, such as London, is possible one or two days a week, but is onerous five days a week. In my constituency, there are 500 people with daily commuter season tickets from Newark to London, but it is very tiring to make that journey every day of the week and most of those individuals do it only one, two or three days a week. Does my hon. Friend agree that we want people to have these opportunities because that brings wealth and new opportunities for fulfilling careers into a whole belt an hour or more further north, south, east and west of London?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. When I had the pleasure of campaigning in his by-election, I remarked that I was in a beautiful part of his constituency.

Before turning to the points made by my commuting constituents, I want to set the context of South Suffolk. In many ways, it fits the pattern described by my hon. Friend. The key to its beauty is that although we are not that far from London in commuting terms, we really feel like we are in East Anglia. There are many beautiful counties in the south-east, but people feel the pull of the M25 and of London. Once they get to South Suffolk, they feel as though they are in a different part of the country. The area has beautiful ancient villages such as Lavenham and Long Melford, which are famous and attract many tourists. Nevertheless, from Colchester, which is an 18-minute drive from my village, we can take the express train and get to Liverpool Street in 47 minutes. Although we are a long way from London in one respect, we are certainly well within commuting distance.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing a timely debate. I do not wish to be political, but members of voluntary organisations, such as church people, who have to come to London from Coventry or Birmingham find their travel very expensive. Many of them have retired. Although the operating companies have assured us that they will provide cheap travel, they have not done so. Those people find that they are spending four times more than they would have spent in the past. What does the hon. Gentleman think about that?

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Towards the end of my remarks, I will come on to the question of how we pay for cheaper travel, because the rail operating companies obviously have to find the revenue from somewhere.

I represent a commuting constituency, although fine manufacturing industries are based there, as well as agriculture. I was brought up in Barnet in north London and moved first to Essex. When Emily and I moved our family out to South Suffolk, it was because we wanted to be able to afford a house that had some land and was in a beautiful part of the world so that we could have that quality of life, and because we wanted to move out of the London rush, so to speak.

This issue will become ever bigger. Partly because of London house prices, there will be a great exodus, particularly of professional families, to Suffolk, Kent and so on, right up to Newark. People will move out in search of a better quality of life. If that is their motive, will they still expect to travel five days a week when they face such a long journey? As my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) said, many of them will travel four days a week, and that is my experience. I have noticed a marked number of people on my local trains doing four or three days because the journey is so long.

[Mr Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on an important subject. As in his constituency, many of my constituents have moved away from London for precisely the reasons as he articulated. They now travel from stations around the Solent region—Havant, Emsworth and Bedhampton —to London for work. Will my hon. Friend join me in calling on South West Trains and Southern to reflect changing living and working habits in their flexible fare arrangements?

[James Cartlidge]

I am more than happy to do that. The franchise in our area is Abellio Greater Anglia. My region is fortunate in at least one sense—I am not sure what the score is in my hon. Friend’s region—because the franchise is up. There are three bids going in for it.

Let me take a few of the key points from my constituents about why we should have part-time tickets and more flexible ticketing. Deborah from Sudbury said:

“It is very old-fashioned to think that workers go to their office every day and we should not be penalised for flexible working”—

I totally agree.

Some years ago, I went to a presentation about voting patterns by a leading American psephologist. He said there are three groups of voters in the country. I cannot remember two of them, but the other was symbolised by a grey cloud. That was not a political point; it was about character and how we appeal to different types of voter. The voters symbolised by the grey cloud had certain features, one of which was that they were moved by newspaper headlines about bad weather, which is quite interesting. However, the most common feature was that they ate their dinner at the same time every day—quite frankly, that describes my late grandad. However, the era of predictability, of nine to five and of everyone doing the same thing all the time is gone; it has been shattered and blown apart by liberalisation and globalisation. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a fact of life that we and our constituents all face, and our rail ticketing system should reflect that.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Would he say that this is also about reflecting families’ changing lifestyles, in that the 1960s model—the father commuting to work five days a week while the wife was at home with the children—is now gone? With men and women rightly sharing parental responsibilities, they may wish to divide up the days of the week that they work, and season tickets need to reflect that.

[James Cartlidge]

That is an excellent point. Recent Office for National Statistics data show that between April and June 2015, just over 7.3 million people had a flexible working pattern. By the way, that is people who are employed; it does not include the army of people such as self-employed contractors who go into London a few days a week. We have a flexible labour market and flexible working, but our rail ticketing system is, in effect, stuck in the same Julian calendar that we have had since 46 BC. If that sounds like a long time, hon. Members should wait until they get stuck on a delayed service out of Liverpool Street.

Russell from Nayland made an important point about bad value for money:

“On the basis of me paying £5520 a year…this means I am really overpaying for 173 days a year”

of travel, which is an extraordinary statistic. That means that he is, in reality, paying £2,615.76 or, depending on his tax bracket—if he is a solicitor, I suspect it is 40%—£4,000 or more for those 173 days. That is a big deal, particularly in our region, because an extensive survey recently undertaken by Transport Focus found that just 21% of the commuters on Abellio Greater Anglia were satisfied that their ticket was value for money, compared with 34% on other lines. I realise that I may end up in a competition with hon. Members in the Chamber about whose line has fewer happy customers, but there is no doubt that value for money is a big concern.

It is fair to say that if there was more satisfaction with value for money in general, the issue of part-time tickets would not actually feature. I get these emails because people feel frustrated that they look hard at what they are getting and think, “Hold on a minute. I’m paying for Saturday, Sunday and Friday.”

[Robert Jenrick]

Perhaps I could add another point. When we think of those who commute into central London, we tend to think they are on higher incomes, but that is not always the case. I have many constituents who commute into London, but also some who commute into Nottingham and Derby, and some of them might be on very low incomes. The average wage in my constituency is £23,000 a year, and commuting costs, even from Nottingham to Derby, certainly eat into that. One group that came to me recently was made up of apprentices; they do not go to work every day of the week, because, in many cases, they will be doing courses at the local college. They might want to go to Newark College, which they can walk to, one day a week, and do three or four days a week at Rolls-Royce in Derby. A full-time season ticket will eat into their quite modest incomes.

[James Cartlidge]

Another excellent point.

What is to be done? To go back to my constituents, Deborah suggested this:

“A system whereby a commuter could, say, buy 10 day returns for the price of 6-7 would really encourage the flexibility that the modern work force needs when juggling work and family life.”

There is a word for what she proposes—it is “carnet”—and I must confess that, when I lived in Barnet, I used a carnet. [Laughter.]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

It’s “car-nay”.

[James Cartlidge]

In French it is a “car-nay”; in Barnet, we called it a “car-net”. It was a small book of tickets that were usually valid for up to three months on the tube, which was very handy and convenient when I was teaching English as a foreign language and did not know which days I would be working. Of course, that has been phased out now that we have moved to the Oyster system. The key problem with the previous system was the absence of technology. If we want flexible ticketing, we need the technology, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) has said.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I rise because I am an expert on technology. Train companies could easily do this through the use of technology, but they do not want to do it, because they make a profit out of people such as my hon. Friend’s constituents and mine in outer London. They could easily do it with—what is it?—a part-time Oyster card or something.

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. I will come on to how we would pay for it and the positon of the rail companies.

I want to reflect on the progress that has been made, because there is a lot of ongoing work and it was in our manifesto. To be fair to the Government, in October 2013 the Department for Transport published its fares and ticketing review, which proposed several schemes to make ticketing more flexible, including long-distance pricing, advance tickets on the day of sale and flexible part-time season tickets. The report stated that the plans could mean

“receiving a discount on season tickets for travelling three days rather than five, or for travelling earlier or later, avoiding the busiest trains, or there could even be an incentive for not travelling on certain days of the week”,

all of which I welcome.

[Mr Jayawardena]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. He is making a very strong case for flexible ticketing in terms of not only the number of days, but the way in which we manage demand on the railways. Often there is capacity available, but it is underutilised, so flexible ticketing could incentivise us to make better use of our railways. That is particularly true of students; indeed, those in my constituency have said that they would welcome that.

[James Cartlidge]

That is another very good point.

The south-east flexible ticketing programme is the main system that is being developed. There are many ways to describe it, but I call it the Network SouthEast Oyster: it is the equivalent of Oyster for the south-east overground. The beauty of South Suffolk, however, is that technically we are not in the south-east, but fortunately we are part of the south-east flexible ticketing system. I hope the Minister will tell us more about that programme and the progress it is making.

I wrote to the three companies bidding for the Anglian franchise to ask them what their plans were for flexible ticketing. Chris Atkinson of National Express highlighted that it currently holds the c2c franchise and that flexible season tickets will be offered on that line as early as this summer, so progress is being made.

Jamie Burles of Abellio Greater Anglia explained that the company will be extending two innovative flexible ticketing schemes to customers during the current franchise, which I welcome. The first will be SEFT, which I have described, and he also told me of a live trial with a third-party smart ticketing supplier that is providing a post-travel account-based payment solution—the multi-pass scheme—which is currently being trialled on the Cambridge to London line. The company plans to extend it to other parts of the network in the first quarter of this year.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has identified how technology can solve the problem. It is remarkable how the Oyster system can completely change our approach to tickets and the archaic way of doing things. The situation is similar in my constituency. More and more people are moving there—who can blame them, given that it is a beautiful part of east Kent?—but the cost per year for high-speed rail is more than £6,000. We find that modern working can mean working two or three days a week. I hope that this debate will encourage the train companies to consider their commerciality, because this could be good for them as well as for local residents, who are the key to improving the local economy of those over-50-mile-fringes outside London.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I was about to mention Oyster and technology. In January, Transport for London said that more than a quarter of the capital’s pay-as-you-go transport customers were now using contactless payment, including smartphones and debit cards. That is an extraordinary statistic. Usage has grown incredibly quickly, and that shows the potential of technology. There is no reason why my hon. Friends should not put pressure on bidding companies in their area to take up smart ticketing when the franchises come up.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I am envious of other hon. Members who are here today. Some of us do not even have a station in our constituency, so I have to make a plug for a station. Notwithstanding that, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, because it brings up the broader need for flexible travel and flexible pricing. Can they be used to tackle problems such as congestion?

[James Cartlidge]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She has reminded me that I should add, for the record, that I have only one station, Sudbury, in my constituency. The Sudbury line goes to Marks Tey, where it joins the main line. Apart from Sudbury, all the stations on that line are in Essex. Many of my constituents go to Manningtree, Colchester or Ipswich, which is on the main line into London. I am sure that even though my hon. Friend has no station in her constituency, many of her constituents are rail commuters who travel to stations nearby.

I have a few specific questions for the Minister. In a situation like that of Anglia, where we have a live franchise bidding process, to what extent can we still influence that? Given the interest in flexible ticketing, to what extent could the Department for Transport go back to the bidders and ask them to push for better flexible ticketing solutions? Another hon. Member, who could not make it today, asked me how he could get involved with the South West franchise, which is coming up for renewal soon. I suspect other hon. Members will want to do likewise.

On technology, I was struck by the point about the use of smartphones on Oyster. To what extent is smartphone-based ticketing possible with the SEFT system, and how soon could that come about—if, indeed, it is not already coming about through testing?

Finally—I believe that this is unique to my region; certainly, I do not think it applies to other Members who are here—there are live discussions about a combined authority between Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. That is a major step for our part of the world. What powers does the Minister think might be given to an elected mayor or combined authority in relation to ticketing, flexibility and so on? That is a classic example of the sorts of powers they should have.

On cost, I am a businessman by background and a Conservative, so I am well aware that money does not grow on trees, and that if we suggest policies we have to be responsible and explain where the money will come from. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet said, I think that more flexible ticketing will pay for itself, to a certain extent. It will entice a certain type of skilled person—someone who has become a full-time mum, for example—back into the workplace because they can commute a few days a week. That will suit their living pattern and their work-life balance. In other words, it will bring new revenue to the companies, so I think they should embrace it and be bold about it.

The other point I would make is that if rail companies would lose a lot of money by introducing part-time tickets, that tells us that they are basing their business model on something that is not sustainable or, dare I say it, even fair. The idea that profits are based on people paying for millions of days that they never use and phantom journeys that they will never take seems quite incredible.

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is being generous in allowing interventions. As other hon. Members have said, there is a huge economic opportunity for rail companies to create a whole new generation—a wave—of commuters beyond the classic 50-mile commuter belt and spread those opportunities another 50 miles or 100 miles outside London. That is a massive financial opportunity for train companies that they will have to harness over the next 10 or 20 years as London becomes an increasingly expensive place to live and commuters look not just to the classic commuter belt, but as far as my constituency in the north midlands.

[James Cartlidge]

That is the key point. The rail companies really need to embrace that as a positive opportunity to strengthen their revenues and build a new customer base.

The Government need to see the big picture in terms of the wider economy. There is no doubt that this country’s long-standing economic failing has been, and continues to be, relatively low productivity compared with other European nations. However, one of our big assets is our flexible labour force. Every part of our country, our key infrastructure and the way in which we interact with that infrastructure should reflect the fact that we have a flexible labour market and a mobile workforce. That will maximise productivity, and it will ensure prosperity and a better work-life balance for years to come. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that in the era of flexi-time, we need flexi-fares.

Airport Expansion: East Anglia

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I do not want to enter too much into the undoubted controversy that I know exists around Luton. It has its proponents and its opponents, but I accept what the hon. Gentleman says.

All we got in terms of access from London to Stansted airport—apart from the M11, which had originally been conceived as the London-Norwich motorway but was somehow stunted and ended up close to Cambridge—was a spur off the main rail line. The tunnel into the airport has a single track, so there is an obvious limitation on its capacity. A 41-minute service from Liverpool Street was inaugurated and quickly proved to be unsustainable, because there was not the rolling stock to accommodate the continuing and growing commuter needs, while half-empty trains were going out on a regular basis to the airport. In the end, the service had to slow down over the years in order to deal with the totality of traffic.

In those circumstances, it was small wonder that major carriers were not attracted to Stansted. The day was saved by the emergence of low-cost carriers such as Ryanair and easyJet, which had never been heard of at the time the terminal was built. The terminal was not designed for the kind of traffic that it eventually found itself accommodating. The day was also saved for Stansted by the break-up of BAA much later on. There is no doubt about it: Manchester Airports Group is incomparably better than BAA at looking after Stansted. London Gatwick has also become a far more welcoming airport than it ever was in the past.

Relations with the local community improved. Stansted is the largest employer in my constituency. Manchester Airports Group has been active in developing educational and apprenticeship opportunities, and in that direction has been aided and abetted by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment, whose ministerial duties prevent her from being here this afternoon. Passenger throughput is now growing and has reached 22 million passengers per annum. Jobs are being created on and off the airport. Its presence has had a wider regional effect, and we are now seeing world-class businesses clustering close by, notably in Cambridge but also at various points along the spine of that railway and further afield, in places that have access. The whole M11 corridor is attracting high-end business growth and, at the same time, is of course generating housing development.

Thinking about it, that might be seen as a dream scenario for anyone who wants to build and operate a railway and operate trains. The airport is growing its passenger numbers and needs to find employees. High-tech companies, large and small, need to draw in staff, and influential business visitors are coming from overseas. There is a level of housing construction along the line which, although it may be worrying to some in its concentration, is nevertheless unavoidable if we are to provide homes for aspiring owners. However, in all this time, nothing has been done to improve the West Anglia rail line.

Fast, efficient, comfortable surface transportation is essential, and not just for the railway, although I focus on that to a large extent. The volume of traffic is increasing, whether from the north or the south. If the constituencies nearest to the airport have high employment, they have to look further afield for employees for the jobs being created, and those people also need the convenience of being able to travel. Quite a number of people travel out of London to work in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and so on, as well as those who come in the other direction. There is just a growing volume, which includes airport passengers.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point and is giving a very interesting speech. South Suffolk is not far from Stansted, but the commuter transport is very poor. One reason why we want improvements to our local roads—there has been a long-running campaign for a Sudbury bypass—is so that young people in our constituency can get within commuting distance of Stansted.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for underlining my point. There have to be wider connections across the region, and notably with Norwich. Given that it is one of the major cities in the region, it is incredible that the rail link is so insubstantial.