Govia Thameslink/Rail Electrification

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

My hon. Friend speaks powerfully on behalf of her constituents, and has done consistently. We are looking at this as a matter of urgency. It is the Department’s top priority to ensure that the unacceptable level of service comes to an end and that passengers get the standard of rail they have every right to expect. The Secretary of State has been absolutely clear that all options are available to him should GTR be found to have been negligent with respect to its contractual obligations.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Seat bookings issued for carriages that do not actually exist; new 10-carriage trains where only five are available because passengers cannot walk from one end of the train to the other; trains cancelled because the companies do not have enough staff to run both parts of the train; endless cancellations; toilets that either do not work or where passengers get locked in, but where they do at least end up with a seat—this is complete and utter chaos. My constituents would dearly love to see the Government gripping this and making sure it gets sorted now, not in some distant future.

[Joseph Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case on behalf of his constituents, and I understand his concerns on their behalf. We are improving the Great Western main line. There is a substantial investment programme, and, yes, there is considerable room for improvement, but it is good that more than 100 million rail journeys will improve next year as a result of the significant investment the Government are undertaking.

Tuition Fees

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

That is exactly right. The Opposition’s policy platform is collapsing before our eyes. The inevitable next step is their abandonment of the albatross around their neck that is their policy of abolishing tuition fees in their entirety. They are currently saddled with it. They are trying to wriggle off the hook of their clear promise to abolish student debt, and they will soon be trying to get rid of that appalling albatross of getting rid of tuition fees in total. As I have said, abolishing student debt would mean a huge addition to our net debt. The proposal to abolish tuition fees and reinstate maintenance grants would add £12 billion to the national deficit, which is equivalent to 0.7% of GDP and to an additional 2.5p on the basic rate of income tax.

[Chris Bryant]

Let me make a very simple procedural point to the Minister. If the Government want to make dramatic changes in schemes, they should take those changes through the House fairly and properly so that Members can vote on them. Ministers have said repeatedly in the House that if the Opposition pray against a statutory instrument, including those that are relevant in this case, there will be a vote. That promise has not been fulfilled. Will the Minister make it again now?

[Joseph Johnson]

As I said in my opening remarks, we have had lots of votes on student finance issues, and we won them all. [Hon. Members: “What about the statutory instrument?”] The statutory instrument in question has been in force for six months. It went through all the parliamentary processes. Labour Members had plenty of opportunity to push for votes at the correct time; they are now six months too late.

When we reformed student finance in 2011, we put in place a system designed to make higher education accessible to all. Students are now supported by a system of Government-subsidised loans, which are repayable only when borrowers are earning more than £21,000 a year. Controlling the cost of higher education to the general taxpayer who has to fund public spending in this way allowed us, critically, to remove the cap on student numbers and ensure that higher education was available to all with the potential to benefit from it.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Conservatives spend all their time suggesting that this is just a national problem. The hon. Gentleman cited the possibility of our debt being 71% of GDP, but in Germany the figure is 79%, in France it is 75%, in Italy it is 116% and in Japan it is 194%. These problems came to every country in the world, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) was not responsible for all of them.

[Joseph Johnson]

Markets can turn on a dime if they detect backsliding. Recovering lost confidence would require much bigger cuts to public spending than the credible ones that the Government have outlined. Evidence for that is in abundant supply in countries on the periphery of the eurozone. Despite the agreement on the post-2013 European stability mechanism, concerns about the underlying solvency of the most vulnerable countries—Portugal, Ireland and Greece—are growing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

Absolutely—their way of looking at our borrowing requirements is completely irresponsible. To think that we should pay more than £120 million a day in interest, which we are currently paying, is utterly absurd.

[Chris Bryant]

Incidentally, it is interesting to hear the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) condemn cavaliers. I thought he was one in the 17th century.

Many countries whose debt is a higher share of gross domestic product than the UK’s are not cutting anywhere near as fast as we are. Of all 29 major industrialised countries, only one is cutting faster than us: Greece.

[Joseph Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman may be a great economic expert, but he might find that the world’s foremost economists and international financial organisations, from the International Monetary Fund to the OECD—the entire gamut of respected economic thought—see this fiscal consolidation as necessary. There is no backsliding, which I applaud.

Before those interventions, I was saying that Portugal is moving ever closer to becoming the third eurozone periphery country to need a bail-out. Borrowing costs are again rising to a new euro-era high in Ireland, which desperately needs eurozone members at tomorrow’s summit to reach a political compromise on revised lending terms.

By contrast, Britain is a different story, thanks to the credible policies in the emergency Budget last June and the policies announced in October’s spending review. There is no sign whatever of any funding problems in the gilts market—quite the opposite—and we must prize that achievement. We have saved our triple A credit rating, which was under threat of downgrade in the last months of the previous Government, and kept our borrowing costs close to historic lows.

The coalition Government have earned the respect of the international capital markets and have their confidence, because the combination of a tight fiscal and a loose monetary policy remains the best chance of avoiding a sovereign debt crisis while ensuring acceptable increases in GDP. Britain simply could not for long run a budget deficit of 11% of GDP—the second highest in the OECD—without taking the unacceptable risk of losing the confidence of the bond markets. Almost a year on, the wisdom of taking decisive action to reduce the risk of sovereign debt crisis is obvious to all except perhaps Labour Members. Even Gavyn Davies, the Labour-supporting economist, conceded in yesterday’s Financial Times that getting the deficit down was a “defensible decision”.

A debt crisis would have been disastrous for growth and unemployment, as many European nations are now discovering. Furthermore, unlike those countries, Britain can, and is, using monetary and exchange rate policy to offset the fiscal tightening, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham said. I hope that that will keep the economy recovering.

As I have said, all manner of international bodies, from the IMF to the OECD, are unanimous in urging the Chancellor to stay the fiscal course that he has so consistently outlined for this country. Yes, real GDP growth may have dipped temporarily as consumers’ expenditure has been weakened, and today’s growth forecasts for 2011 from the Office for Budget Responsibility may be a little lower than we would have liked. However—

Parliamentary Reform

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Chris Bryant

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Joseph Johnson]

That is as may be, but institutionalised prayer and congregational worship have fallen out of practice in this country over the past century, as people may notice from the attendance at their local church. I am not against going to church, which is something that people should feel free to do, but it is something that MPs should be encouraged to do in their own time. There are plenty of places of worship in the Palace of Westminster for them to go to if they want to be put in a God-fearing state of mind at the start of play. I can recommend the chapel of St Mary Undercroft. It has some fine—

[Chris Bryant]

It is hideous.

[Joseph Johnson]

It has some fine depictions of the fates of those who are not sufficiently respectful of others in their daily activities. There are plenty of ways for MPs to put themselves in the right frame of mind—a selfless frame of mind—at the start of play. Institutionalised worship in the main Chamber is not a good use of everyone’s time.