Rail Cancellations and Service Levels

Jo Gideon Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

As I said, I am keen to meet as many hon. Members as require it—no doubt my officials will be tearing their hair out—and I am happy to meet the hon. Lady. We certainly know that, because our railways were built by our pioneering Victorians, much of the infrastructure needs renewal, some of which can be particularly complex and expensive to deliver. Ownership can have an impact on that as well. I am keen to meet her to find out more and see what we can do.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

My hon. Friend might have seen the picture of me sitting on the floor of an Avanti train that was picked up by the media. Avanti’s response was mealy mouthed and gave every excuse under the sun—unions, working practices, leaves on the line, engineering works—but there is no excuse for bad management. As well as inefficient services, the services do not run on time and the ticketing is shoddy. If someone gets on a train, they cannot have a cup of coffee because the machines do not work, and there is overcharging. Everything to do with the Avanti rail service is appalling and I urge the Government to look at it in the round, not just at the reasons it gives for not running an efficient service.

Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Disabled Persons) Bill

Jo Gideon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 14th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

I welcome this Bill, which has been brought forward by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright).

The Bill is to make provision relating to the carrying of disabled persons by taxis and private hire vehicles and would improve access to private transport for disabled people. It will amend sections of the Equality Act 2010 relating to the carriage of disabled people by taxi and private hire vehicles. It aims to address inconsistencies within current legislation and expand the protections currently afforded to wheelchair and assistance dog users to all disabled people, regardless of the vehicle in which they travel.

The Bill will oblige taxi and PHV drivers to accept passengers with a wide range of disabilities who could reasonably travel in that vehicle and stop them from charging extra, or failing to provide reasonable assistance without good reason not to do so. Drivers must make every effort to ensure that the disabled passenger feels comfortable and safe while travelling. This will be beneficial not only to service users but to the wider industry. The Bill will ensure that the hard-working, honest and compassionate taxi and private hire vehicle drivers do not have their reputations tarnished by the small number who do not respect their role as professional drivers. That terminology was used by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) in his Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has just acknowledged that the vast majority of taxi drivers and private hire operators are complying and wanting to do the best thing, and I think we would all acknowledge the fantastic support that they provided during the pandemic, for instance. However, they need to be helped to understand what extra facilities they need to provide. Does she agree that the current shortages of taxis and private hire vehicles up and down the country must not be exacerbated by the imposition of onerous requirements? The requirements must be proportionate and we must encourage more people to be disability aware.

[Sally-Ann Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. The Bill does not request every taxi or private hire vehicle driver to make provision for wheelchair access or other such access for disabled users. It contains measures on those people who do provide such access and are known to do so. That is the important thing. I agree with my hon. Friend: I have some excellent taxi and private hire vehicle drivers in my constituency. I want to highlight in particular all the work undertaken by Chris Vale and his team, including voluntary work, during the lockdowns to help our local communities with food parcels and so forth.

Taxis and wheelchair-accessible private hire vehicles are a vital source of transport for many mobility-impaired and other disabled people, in both urban and rural areas. Disabled people make twice as many journeys in taxis and private hire vehicles each year as non-disabled people, but, as we have heard today, many continue to report discriminatory behaviour on the part of drivers, including outright refusal of service, overcharging, and a failure to provide assistance to enable them to board and travel in reasonable comfort and safety.

Although the Equality Act 2010 provides disabled people with some protection, it applies inconsistently and only with respect to certain disabilities. Currently, in some areas—mainly larger cities—licensed taxis have to be wheelchair accessible. In London, for example, all black cabs are wheelchair accessible. Section 165 of the Equality Act obliges drivers of wheelchair taxis and private hire vehicles to carry wheelchair users, and to provide assistance without an additional charge. Drivers of taxis and designated wheelchair-accessible private hire vehicles have various legal duties; non-compliant drivers are liable to prosecution and fines of up to £1,000, and the driver’s fitness to continue to hold a licence may be reviewed.

There are legal rights for wheelchair users and owners of assistance dogs to use taxis and private hire vehicles. As others have pointed out, many drivers are extremely helpful, but we hear too many stories of disabled people being denied transport or assistance, or being charged extra for their journeys. The Government have said that they support the creation of an inclusive transport network by 2030, enabling disabled people to travel to work or at their leisure easily, confidently, and without additional cost.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jo Gideon Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I completely agree that our frontline workers have played a vital role in the response to the pandemic—our thanks go to all of them. The hon. Lady will know that it is important that learners have the right skills to drive, because safety on the road is just as important during a lockdown as at any other time. It is vital that up-to-date road safety knowledge is there at the critical point when people drive and supervise for the first time. She will also know that motorcycle training resumed on 29 March, with testing restarting on 12 April in England and Wales. We got that testing up and running, which was possible because it is easier to maintain a covid-safe working environment for motorcyclists than for in-vehicle training and testing.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to improve the condition of England’s roads.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Rachel Maclean)]

In addition to investing £1.7 billion in 2021-22 in local roads, plus an unprecedented £27 billion in the strategic road network through to 2025, we are working towards the creation of a common data standard for the monitoring of road condition. That will aim to drive innovation and flexibility in monitoring local roads, enabling authorities to target defects in their networks more quickly.

[Jo Gideon]

Fifty of my constituents in Boatman Drive, Etruria, have been unable to access the road to their homes for over a year due to a large sinkhole that has forced Stoke-on-Trent City Council to close the road to all vehicles, including emergency services. Many of the residents have been in contact with me. One, Mr Madadi, was offered a fantastic new employment opportunity but could not accept the offer as it required relocation, and his home could not be sold because of the sinkhole. Will the Minister meet me to help resolve this issue, which I am sure she will agree has been going on for far too long?

[Rachel Maclean]

I commend my hon. Friend for raising that concern in the House and standing up for her constituents. I fully understand that this is a long- running issue involving several parties, including the water utility company and the housing developer. I completely share her and her constituents’ frustration. I would be delighted to ask my noble Friend the roads Minister, who deals with this, to meet her; she has already undertaken to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jo Gideon Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to (a) support people to switch to and (b) install the necessary infrastructure for electric vehicles by 2030.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to (a) support people to switch to and (b) install the necessary infrastructure for electric vehicles by 2030.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Rachel Maclean)]

We are investing over £2.8 billion‎ to help people buy zero emission vehicles and accelerate the roll-out of charging infrastructure.

[Rachel Maclean]

I am delighted to hear the support of my hon. Friend’s constituents in Kensington, which is shared of course by people across the UK. As ever, my hon. Friend is actually one step ahead of the Government. We are launching a consultation to improve drivers’ experience of using public charge points, and we will soon respond to the consultation on requiring new homes and non-residential properties to be fitted with charging infrastructure.

[Jo Gideon]

I am delighted to hear that Stoke-on-Trent’s £29 million transforming cities fund proposal has now been approved, and I want to thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for all the hard work they have done to help me, other local MPs and the city council to get this across the line. As I have said on many occasions, this will be a real game changer for public transport in our city. As we look to revolutionise the way we move around our city, does the Minister agree that it is right to look for investment from the active travel fund to complement bus and train travel with an e-bike hire system and to build a sustainable local network for charging electric vehicles?

[Rachel Maclean]

I share my hon. Friend’s enthusiasm for e-bikes. I got one in the lockdown, and it is absolutely brilliant for the hills of Redditch. She will be pleased to hear that the Prime Minister’s cycling and walking plan includes a commitment to create a national e-cycle support programme. As part of this, we have launched a £1 million e-bike extension fund to enable the increased use of e-bikes, with a particular focus on those hard-to-reach groups, so I would encourage Stoke-on-Trent to consider making an application. As well as this, we are investing £1.3 billion across the country to accelerate the roll-out of charging infrastructure for her constituents.

Pothole and Highway Repairs

Jo Gideon Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. I agree that where local authorities have seen funding cuts, sometimes it is right to question whether or not we went too far. Certainly with road, highway and pavement repairs, there are questions that need to be answered, because I have very similar casework coming in from constituents in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. This is one of those problems that can be very easily and quickly fixed, but, sadly, when we have to keep replying to constituents to say that resources are as stretched as they are, sometimes they do not necessarily understand how severe the situation is. So, I completely concur with her.

The reason for that situation is that the current funding formula works against us. The need to address that unfairness is the reason why I applied for this debate. This is a debate in Westminster Hall, and I think that most people would agree that the roads in Westminster, if congested, are in good order. So I looked at what Westminster City Council has available to spend on keeping roads well maintained, and I was staggered to see that in parking surplus alone, the City of Westminster enjoys some £70 million a year—talk about the need for levelling up.

The figure for the city of Stoke-on-Trent is barely 1% of that figure—around £700,000 to £800,000 per year—and in my constituency there is no room to increase parking charges without reducing visitor footfall. Perhaps if we relocated the National Gallery to Burslem or the Royal Opera House to Tunstall, there would be room, but I recognise that for the immediate future this is a quite a big ask. For now, we are much more likely to be competing with comparable cities in the midlands such as our great friend and rival to be the UK city of culture, Coventry. Even there, according to a freedom of information request reported in the Coventry Telegraph, a £700,000 annual parking surplus is secured from the single most lucrative of Coventry’s car parks.

We cannot match that, so I was delighted that the Department for Transport awarded Stoke-on-Trent a one-off £6 million highways challenge fund grant for the current financial year—that is to say that I was delighted by the £6 million grant, but I would be more delighted if it was not a one-off.

As I have said, there is not an option to increase road repair funding further locally from either parking surplus or council tax. We have, I understand, the lowest council tax base of any city other than Hull. We are more than doing our bit by squeezing every penny we can from the city’s limited local budget into roads, but we need more money. Of course, the Government recognise that, and the Minister will be as determined, as I am, to unlock the transforming cities fund money promised to Stoke-on-Trent.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. I agree with everything he has said so far and I will probably agree with everything he says from now on as well. I am sure that he agrees with me that the resurfacing of key sections of the Stoke-on-Trent road network, not least Joiners Square and Snow Hill round- about, has been a great benefit across the city, and that we need more of it. Does he agree that the transforming cities fund bid would provide similar cross-city benefits, offering increased connectivity and better public, private and commercial traffic flow on road and rail across the six historic market towns that make up our city?

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am extremely grateful, as always, to my hon. Friend and good neighbour for her intervention, and I feel that in Stoke-on-Trent we always come at least in a duo, and normally in a trio when my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) joins us. I could not agree with her more about the importance of the transforming cities fund to unlocking some of the potential for our city and to improving our highways. I appreciate that the Minister who is here today does not oversee this particular portfolio, but I am sure that she has taken note of my hon. Friend’s comments just now and will pass them on to others in the Department for Transport, which she works in.

Such investment really would transform Stoke-on-Trent as a city, with key interventions to improve traffic flow and to revolutionise the city’s relationship with public transport. There are too many pinch points on our road network and traffic is very heavy, particularly at “slow hour”, which is a much more apposite phrase for the city than “rush hour”—or at least it was until covid-19 suppressed traffic.

I have a number of points to make about covid-19, because it continues to weigh on all our minds, and rightly so. It has caused much uncertainty about the viability of public transport and it is in no way a positive thing. The road workers who have continued to work throughout the pandemic are heroes. They have been delivering ahead of schedule on a number of resurfacing projects, and they will stay out digging roads and filling in potholes in the weeks and months ahead. Like everyone else, they would have preferred to have been on schedule without the covid pandemic than ahead of schedule with it.

However, we have seen what is possible if traffic volumes decrease and investment capital is put in place. The transforming cities funding will help us to realise similar outcomes in much better times and help us to power up Stoke-on-Trent.

Flexible Rail Ticketing

Jo Gideon Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point that it is not only workers who commute. Many students commute into the capital and, indeed, other cities around the country—and, I dare say, in Northern Ireland—so I am grateful for his point.

To turn to the economics of the situation, a standard class season ticket from Tunbridge Wells costs £4,928 a year, which is a large amount of money. The price of a daily standard peak return ticket is £39.90. That means that someone travelling three days a week to London for 47 weeks of the year must pay £5,626. In other words, it costs over £700 more to travel three days a week than five or even seven days a week. It is a ludicrous anachronism and an outrageous injustice that we have the same fare structure for workers in 2020 as we did in 1950.

There are many reasons why that is no longer tolerable. First, even before covid, the pattern of working life had changed since the 1950s. Many people work fewer than five days a week from a workplace in a city centre. Either they work part time or they do not need to travel every day. How can our railways not have noticed a change that has been happening for decades?

Secondly, people who work part time usually earn less money than people who work full time. To penalise the poorest workers is a regressive policy that adds to poverty and is a barrier to work.

Thirdly, more women than men work, or wish to work, part time. The standard fare policy means that it costs them more to do so. As pay is still not equal, a further obstacle to accessing good jobs and careers is thrown up in front of women by a fare system that can make it too costly to take up opportunities. The same is true, but worse, for disabled people and people as they get older.

Fourthly, the fare structure flies in the face of the advice that the Government are currently giving to curb the spread of covid, which says, “Work from home if you can”. For many people, that means going into the office less, perhaps for important meetings or to train newer and younger colleagues, and working from home more. That pattern is not supported if it is cheaper to travel five days a week than three days.

Fifthly, the fare system hampers our recovery from the economic consequences of covid. Our businesses and their staff need to be flexible and adaptive. Instead, working patterns will be formed not by what is ideal for the business and the worker, but to conform to an antiquated fare system.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that rail operators must act responsibly during the pandemic to ensure that passengers do not have to choose between a journey on an overcrowded train and paying the top rates for anytime travel tickets? On the west coast line, for example, travel between London and Stoke-on-Trent rises from £53 to £129 after 3 pm, and only returns to £53 at 7 pm, when the trains are packed. Surely a temporary suspension of peak fares while the country is in a national health emergency is the right thing to do to protect rail travellers.

[Greg Clark]

I agree with my hon. Friend that this is a time in which we must display the same flexibility, innovation and responsiveness that we have—and have had to—in so many other areas of life, and that we should not be bound by the structures that we inherited.

It is time now to make this change. It does not have to be this way. If we can bring in a job retention scheme within days of the need being identified, if we can invent a scheme in July to help thousands of restaurants attract back millions of customers in August, and if businesses can switch to conducting meetings online virtually overnight, surely we are more than capable of introducing without further procrastination a train ticket to meet the needs of part-time and flexible workers. There is no shortage of models available: a ticket that allows any three days in seven, for example; a ticket that permits travel only 12 days in a month; or, at the most basic, a carnet system that gives a discount on the purchase of multiple peak-time tickets to be used within a limited period.

At the end of July, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) wrote, along with all Kent MPs, to the managing director of Southeastern, Mr Statham. He replied that Southeastern has submitted proposals for flexible ticketing to the Department for Transport and is waiting for the Department’s authorisation under the emergency measures agreement. I say to the Minister: please act now. As the Transport Secretary said last week, we are in a different era. The Government are—which is to say, we are—paying for the railway. With these covid-changed circumstances, very few people are going to be paying for an annual seven-day-a-week ticket at any time soon. That money is simply not coming in.

Public Transport: North Staffordshire

Jo Gideon Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Christopher, for chairing the debate. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute, and I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), on securing it. There is great consensus among all the north Staffordshire and Stafford MPs about some of the issues and how we need to address them.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South ably put it, Stoke-on-Trent is today too car-centric and has too few rail and bus services, no trams and scant provision for cycling. Pedestrians, and town centres themselves, are too often treated as an inconvenience to traffic flow across the city. Places that would once have been market squares or bustling high streets now act instead as mere thoroughfares for vehicular traffic trying to get somewhere else. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South pointed out, we are one city but we are made up of six distinct historic market towns.

I have the great honour to represent Stoke town and Hanley, including the main railway station for the city in Stoke and the main bus and coach station for the city in Hanley. Although the city has taken welcome strides to regenerate Hanley as the city centre, my strong opinion is that it has failed for too many years to make the most of either Stoke town or the Trent, both of which are very close to, and should be an easy walk from, the railway station. I know from talking to residents in Stoke town, and its surrounding suburbs of Penkhull, Boothen, Oak Hill, Trent Vale, Hartshill and Basford, that they have been feeling left out. Well, their voices will be heard through me. It is absolutely essential to go ahead with the works to improve the onward journey to Hanley from the east side main exit of Stoke station. However, the west side exit needs equal attention to connect it properly to Stoke town, thereby giving pedestrians the most direct journey possible via Elenora Street, through the exciting development at Spode Works, on to the heritage high street of Church Street and London Road.

Stoke town is separated from Stoke-on-Trent railway station by eight lanes of traffic and a canal, and pedestrian access is a long and unattractive walk round. That barrier must be bridged—literally—if the strategic aim of increasing footfall in Stoke town is to be realised in full. A pedestrian and cycle bridge needs to be built from the station’s west side entrance, across the road and canal to the side of Stoke town that has suffered most from being cut off from the station. I want to see it as an integral part of the city council’s otherwise excellent transforming cities fund bid, which currently indicates minor improvements to the existing pedestrian route. That means that it will still take more than 10 minutes to walk from Stoke railway station to Stoke town centre.

There are concerns about the cost, of course, but if the Minister would come to Stoke and see how and where a new bridge would fit into the wider regeneration of the west side of Stoke station, she would see how important such a bridge was to making every penny of the scheme work. I note that a similar bridge in Barnsley, if a little less ambitious, is costed at between £5 million and £6 million. Such a bridge in Stoke would have a clear view down Elenora Street towards the old Spode Works, which is being transformed into an amazing, accessible cultural destination, with its museum, hotel, café and workshops. It would be deeply disappointing if, after so much had been invested in Stoke station, it still took the people of Stoke more than 10 minutes to walk to it, as planned. To finance a bridge, there may be room for savings from the current transforming cities fund bid. Local concerns have been raised about the proposed canopy, for example, which would look a bit like the roof of Portcullis House. I would greatly value a discussion with the Department about that.

Fundamentally, Stoke town suffers from the fact that its main square, Campbell Place, was reduced to a thoroughfare of four-lane traffic some years ago. Viable public transport alternatives to the car, including buses, are absolutely vital if we are to reverse the 1960s and ’70s road traffic planning, which has done nothing to help the vibrancy of the town as a place to enjoy, linger and spend time.

The River Trent runs from the north of my constituency to the south, and for most of its length one would not know it was there, yet it could be one of the most pleasant pedestrian routes through the city. The Thames path was once a pipe dream, but its reality shows that it was right to dream big. Equally, there is more to be made of the Trent and Mersey Canal, and branches of it, to provide handy walking and cycling routes through the city. Access could be improved in various parts of the city, and more could be done to separate pedestrians and cyclists at certain pinch points, particularly around bridges. We need to see buses stop in convenient places for joining canal and river paths.

I deliberately say that we need to see buses stop, not that we need to see bus stops. On Leek Road in my constituency, there are already bus stops that could serve the Trent Mill nature park along the River Trent at Joiners Square, but they are no longer in service. Ironically, unlike too many of the bus stops in Stoke-on-Trent, those unused bus stops have shelters. Shelters are very important to bus users, particularly when the clouds burst and we get a dose of the rain that keeps Stoke-on-Trent a green and pleasant city. We need more of them.

In order that more people enjoy the greenery of Hanley Park, I fully support the council’s bid to improve the frequency and reliability of connections to Hanley from Stoke-on-Trent station via College Road, which runs alongside Hanley Park and affords great views of it.

I am really excited by the prospect of being a super-bus city. My constituents are the biggest users of buses in the city, and one third of households in Stoke-on-Trent central do not own a car. We need something radical such as the super-bus scheme to remind people how useful and relevant bus services can be in the transport mix. We should make them attractive for the people who forgo an alternative mode, and sustainable for the people who have no choice but to rely on them.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South said, Hanley used to be served by Etruria station, which was completely demolished and excavated beyond trace under the previous Labour Government, even though private rail companies were willing to run trains there. It was supposedly to speed up services down the west coast main line. Etruria served both Hanley and Newcastle-under-Lyme. It certainly needed clearer pedestrian routes to the city centre, but it has done no good locally for it not to be there at all. Any funding for a study into restoring the station and improving its strategic function in a seamless public transport system would be very welcome indeed.

I accept that much of the lost North Staffordshire Railway network—the Knotty, as it was known—is unlikely ever to be brought back into service. The old line to Newcastle, for example, has been built on. The most likely contender to reopen is the line from Stoke-on-Trent to Leek via Fenton Manor. In my constituency, it could serve stations at some combination of Joiners Square, Bucknall Park, Abbey Hulton and, at somewhere on the boundary with Stoke-on-Trent north, Birches Head Academy. Going north, it would have stations in Stoke-on-Trent north and Staffordshire Moorlands that a good number of my constituents would be able to walk to: Milton and Stockton Brook. The line would end at Leek, where it would meet parts of the North Staffs Railway that are preserved as a heritage railway through the Moorlands countryside. My right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) has long supported the scheme, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) favours it too. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South has raised it in a previous debate on train services in north Staffordshire, which he referred to earlier.

Having being closed to passenger traffic many decades ago, the line continued to serve as a mineral line until relatively recently. It is mostly overgrown with trees, but the track bed is still there and the route has not been built on, although I understand that there is a legal battle over whether it is a public right of way for walking at the Moorlands end. I will be grateful if the Minister has any update on the contact that the Department has had to find out what the current intentions are on that.

If the Minister is able to accept an invitation to visit the city, I am sure that, between us, we could put together quite a tour of the relevant sites across Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire. It would be good to highlight the huge potential for honing the plans in the transforming cities fund bid, and achieving a great deal with the money we are asking for. By getting it right locally, we will have our greatest economic impact nationally.