HS2
Debate between Jeremy Wright and Ian Paisley(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and to speak in this debate. I am grateful to the Petitions Committee for bringing it to this Chamber, and I agree with a great many of the concerns that have already been expressed about HS2. For what it is worth, I always argued that the line should follow existing transport corridors; that would have done a lot less environmental damage.
Ever since legislative authority was given for the line as it stands, I am afraid that HS2 Ltd has too often—there are a few individual exceptions—acted in a thoughtless and high-handed way, failing to communicate effectively about the nature of its works and the road closures and other disruption that they cause. As we have heard, HS2’s budget has risen dramatically, seemingly without anyone being held to account for it, yet in so many of the compensation cases I have dealt with, every penny claimed by vulnerable people whose lives have been ruined by the line has been fiercely contested.
I welcome the appointment of a dedicated HS2 Minister, and my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) has been doing a good job of getting to grips with these issues. However, he will agree that there is much more to do, and much more of the construction phase to go. HS2 Ltd and its contractors have to work much harder on talking to and listening to local residents who are affected by their work, and they and my hon. Friend need to do more to answer legitimate challenges on compliance with environmental standards, and about what was known when about cost overrun.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
The hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) outlined the criteria of honesty, transparency, value for money and openness. Has HS2 not failed the test on all those things? The rocketing costs make people feel like they are on a runaway train that has not even had the opportunity to get out of the station. This is a mess, and it must be fixed.
Jeremy Wright
The hon. Gentleman is right. It is incumbent on everybody involved in the project, including the Government, to make improvements in those respects, and we must expect that to happen.
As we have discussed, there is much to criticise HS2 for, but this petition does not ask us to criticise HS2—it asks us to cancel it. It seems to me that we should not be making a judgment based entirely on frustration, considerable though it may be. The reality is that legislative authority for HS2 has already been given, and this debate does not provide a mechanism to reverse it. Even if it did, given the amount already spent and the work already done on phase 1, it is likely that any cancellation decision now would be to cancel phase 2 of the line—not phase 1, which passes through my constituency and others. That would leave us with a high-speed rail line from London to Birmingham, with all the inconvenience caused to my constituents to build it, but not a wider network. The positive case for a wider network can be made, but the positive case for a new London-to-Birmingham line cannot. Stopping after phase 1 seems to me to be almost the worst-case scenario for my constituents, and I cannot support it.
If HS2 is to proceed, the Minister will need to assure us that it will be delivered with more efficiency, flexibility and consideration for the people impacted by it than we have largely seen so far.
Online Harms White Paper
Debate between Jeremy Wright and Ian Paisley(5 years ago)
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Jeremy Wright
I agree, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work and that of his colleagues. I hope that the House recognises that within the White Paper there are contributions from a large number of Members of the House. That is as it should be, because this is a shared challenge that we must address together. I agree with the hon. Gentleman on research. It is important that we understand these problems properly, and we will do all that we can to encourage that research to take place.
Cairncross Review
Debate between Jeremy Wright and Ian Paisley(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Jeremy Wright
My hon. Friend will recognise that one reason why these companies are such a force in our society, as he says, is that so many of our constituents use their products so extensively. That is a fact of modern life, with which we must contend. It is also apparent that it will be difficult and perhaps wrong for us to assume that we can treat these companies in exactly the same way as we can treat newspapers and their editors. But none of that means that we need to abdicate our responsibility to ensure that these companies fulfil theirs. The Government intend to ensure that they do, and he will see, when we bring forward the White Paper and we talk about some of the issues that have been canvassed this afternoon, that the Government have every intention of making sure that these companies do live up to their responsibilities.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I would like to associate my colleagues and myself with the tributes paid to Gordon Banks. This weekend, we will have the Northern Ireland BetMcLean league cup final, and I am sure the Secretary of State will want to take the opportunity to wish Ballymena United and Linfield Football Club all the best as they compete for that cup—I hope the sky blues win.
We are dealing here with the concentration of enormous economic power with the few, and with a very few platforms and platform owners; the dangerous monopoly of expertise; the power of surveillance; the fact that the much-promised encryption and privacy of personal data does not exist, even in WhatsApp; and the unlimited potential for the abuse of technology and people. Surely the Secretary of State agrees that the commercial strength and share of the advertising market of these new platforms, the personal wealth of those who own them and the monopoly of personal data are, in the words of this important review, each alone a “justification” for regulation. Surely he agrees that much more must be done immediately. Will he join me and the deputy leader of the Labour party in saying from the Dispatch Box that there must immediately be put on these companies a duty of care to all those who use them? That will be the first wake-up call and the first sobering reality that these platforms will face.
Unfortunately, I fear that the Government, once again, have pulled their punches on the BBC. The BBC has huge firepower compared with ITV and UTV, its subsidiary in Northern Ireland. It has the largest news-watching audience, yet the BBC competes deliberately against it to undermine it in Northern Ireland. That disadvantage must stop as soon as possible.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. We have a ten-minute rule Bill and important business to move on to, so I ask colleagues to make questions and, correspondingly, answers short.