High Speed 2

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Rachael Maskell

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

What can I say after that contribution, other than that it is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Hosie? I also thank the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) for bringing forward today’s debate in a very candid way.

It is absolutely right that this House scrutinises HS2. I have listened carefully to the debate, and it is absolutely clear that the objection is rooted not so much in the actual scheme as in the governance of it, and I, too, have put question marks over the governance and management of it. Some of that sits fairly and squarely with the Secretary of State and the fact that he is not doing his job of calling HS2 to account. Therefore, it will be absolutely right that, on Monday, hon. Members from across the House support my amendment calling for greater scrutiny of the project. I very much hope that they will join me in the Lobby.

I take issue with the fact that a number of non-disclosure agreements have been issued. We want there to be real transparency. That is about calling management to account for the way they are handling the employment situation in their organisation. It is absolutely right that those questions are asked of HS2 and that it is brought to account for that.

I want now to set out Labour’s position on the whole project. Connectivity and reliability must be at the heart of our railway system. There have been problems, and we need to make improvements. We are determined to do that through our enhancement programme. HS2 should not be segregated; it needs to be integrated into our rail enhancement work, and that is certainly what we want to do. We want to see more capacity built across our railways.

Our driving force is, first and foremost, to decarbonise our transport system. Currently, 29% of emissions come from our transport system, and we are in fact seeing regression on carbon reduction, not least with the deeply ecologically and environmentally damaging road building programme—road investment strategy 2—that the Government propose. We want to see good public transport investment, and certainly that is what people will get under a Labour Government.

We want to drive modal shift. It is so important to have people moving from their cars on to our rail network—we see that as comprising the main arteries of our transport system. But crucially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) said, we need lorries coming off the roads and freight moving on to rail. HS2 provides an opportunity to ensure that we have the good connectivity—

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rachael Maskell]

I am afraid I do not have time.

There is an opportunity to have good connectivity between ports and airports and to ensure that we can bring that right through to urban consolidation centres and then to the final mile. We need to seriously decarbonise our transport system using rail.

We want skills to be at the heart of this opportunity as we build the rail network for the future, and that brings me to one of the questions I have for the Minister today. In the light of Hinkley point being behind schedule and of the number of infrastructure projects the Government have planned, we have a bell curve whereby we have a peak in demand for skills but not the skills to match that. How will she ensure that there are sufficient skills for this project, particularly given that, at its peak, it will provide jobs for 30,000 people? We need to ensure that the project is not delayed because of poor infrastructure planning across the economy.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), who made a most excellent speech, about ensuring that we measure what we treasure. This is about jobs. Certainly on the Labour Benches, we believe that it is important that we invest in high-quality jobs for those areas of the country that have been missed out to date. Therefore, inward investment in the northern towns and cities, and in the midlands—east and west—will be vital to rebirthing our economy in those areas. At the moment, they are in a lot of pain because we have not seen that investment.

We have a real opportunity, but it has to be managed properly. Building capacity across our transport system is really important. We need sustained freight paths. Part of this will also be about seeing growth in patronage and ensuring that we reduce journey times. We need to lead that right into Scotland to ensure that we can see that modal shift from plane on to train. That is the larger vision of where we are going. But we would also do things differently; we make no bones about that. For instance, with parkway stations, it does not make sense that people have to drive to get the connectivity with the rail network. We would very much want to seek urban connection points; we believe that the situation needs to be reviewed.

The final phase of the project—the 2b stage—has to be fully integrated with trans-Pennine connectivity. This should be one project, not two segregated projects; it needs integrating. We hear that call from Transport for the North, and we hear it now from HS2, and we certainly hear the call from politicians across the north that it is time we brought those projects together into one. There are proposals for constructing things differently from the current Y shape and for making this much more about ensuring, first and foremost, that we get the connectivity across the north. The case was made very clearly in the House of Lords through the paper “Rethinking High Speed 2”, and we would certainly support that.

With regard to the way we proceed on this project, we believe that the missing piece, which is crucial, is that the project is not peer-reviewed. It must be peer-reviewed independently to ensure, first, that the engineering is right and, secondly, that the value is right. That is where the lack of accountability sits. Once we have that information before the House, we can make a sound judgment on whether the project will deliver the value, the jobs and the opportunity for conurbations across this country. Until that occurs, we will put a serious question mark over the governance and over this Government’s handling of the project. We believe that it could be in a different place. Certainly on the issue of cost—the cost financially, but also the cost to the environment—we need to ensure that all these measures are properly brought into check as we move forward in improving scrutiny.

On Monday, we have an opportunity to review phase 2a in relation to the Bill. Labour will bring forward amendments on Report, and we very much hope that people who believe there should be greater scrutiny, governance and accountability of HS2 will join us in the Lobby to ensure that we put in place the right checks and balances for this project, to drive up the very treasure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill mentioned.

National Railway Museum and Ownership of National Assets

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Rachael Maskell

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I must say that it is only in the last two days that I have heard about the possible promise to get the Swanage steam engine into steam again. I suspect that might be a reaction to today’s debate. Wonderful as small private railways are as a supplement to the NRM, they cannot have the resources to do the job properly and ensure that our national assets stay in good condition. I could go on, but perhaps I have said enough.

[Rachael Maskell]

I can inform my hon. Friend that the Swanage Railway Trust is working with the National Railway Museum, using its expertise to look at how it can improve the condition of that piece of the collection. We are not talking about a divorce settlement; it is about working together on a national asset and looking at how it can be best cared for, and having the space to display it. Some of the locomotives to which my hon. Friend referred were kind of put in the back cupboard, but have now become the star of the show, because one thing that is really important to the NRM is for locomotives to be displayed where there is a geographical relevance. For example, an LSW or GWR train might be taken down to the south-west, as opposed to having it in a shed in the north-east.

The NRM has a clear desire to best exhibit its collection and to make sure it is accessible. I completely agree that we should be able to freely access the collection across the country and not have to pay for the privilege, but at the same time we must recognise that the collection’s upkeep costs money. We must therefore ensure that the collection is at least accessible, even if not everyone has the means to access it.

The Science Museum Group, of which the railway museum is a part, has in place a process for disposal that the museum assured me it follows, acting as other museums of global standing act on their collections. It wants to continue to refresh its collection, and there are gaps within its collection that it wants to fill to make sure it is telling the complete railway story. It looks at issues such as duplication, and as I say, geographical relevance. It first sends its items for disposal to be peer- reviewed by the group’s board of survey. Recommendations then go on to the collection and research committee, and then, ultimately, to the full board of trustees before items can be disposed of. The museum said that it has gifted a significant number of items from the museum to ensure they are better cared for and looked after elsewhere.

As I have said, locomotives that were perhaps put in the back shed are now being upgraded to their former glory and, we trust, even restored back into use, which is an exciting development for the museum. However, there is oversight—this is not privatisation or selling, or the locomotives going into a private collection. If, for instance, Swanage Railway Trust or any other body goes into receivership, the NRM has the first option of taking that locomotive back if other museums want it. I talked it through with the NRM, and it is like a loan on the never-never, with the local interests upgrading and restoring the collection. We need to make sure, as time marches by on that incredible 200-year history, that the collection is kept in good order.

The NRM is changing. It is currently undertaking the greatest development in its history. As we heard, in 1975 it opened in the UK’s largest urban development site, York Central, with £50 million of investment. To me, this is what is really exciting: the museum has tasked itself to inspire the next generation of rail engineers by taking people through that incredible 200-year journey of the railway, moving from the past to the present and on to the future. We know that Britain did not just create the railways of the world—its railways changed the world.

The museum now has the ambition to capture the imagination of young people and to expose them to the opportunities of engineering and to take them on that new journey, looking through science, technology, engineering and maths in its new centre. The railway museum has an incredible future in York, and it wants girls as well as boys to come from the city and to the city to engage in the new hands-on gallery, so it can teach them about the opportunities that engineering brings and ignite their imaginations to bring forward a new era of engineering innovation on the railways.

These are exciting times for York and for the NRM, celebrating the past and looking to the future. I hope everybody gets behind this project, including funders, and that the NRM will not only be about an exhibition of the future and showing off the technological advances that our country is making today and tomorrow, but will ensure that its collection is displayed across the nation for all to enjoy.

Local and Regional News

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Rachael Maskell

Thursday 30th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Kelvin Hopkins]

In my early life in politics, reporters went out and met people, spoke to them and interviewed them at length. They got to know the local politicians, the local community and the local areas; they were really in touch with the local community, and they were better for it.

[Rachael Maskell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That is exactly what journalists want—to be the people who are uncovering the stories, building the relationships and really getting that personal touch into their stories—but the limitations that are now placed on them are curbing their ability to do those things.

We are also seeing a reduction in the number of photographers—a profession that has not yet been mentioned today. The York Press, which would once have had six, seven or eight photographers, now has only one professional photographer, with others freelancing. A photograph tells a story, and there is an art in being able to get that photograph well. We are often requested to send in a photograph, so readers get the typical line-up instead of the creative story that a photographer can provide. We need to remember the essential role that photographers play and the pressure that they, too, are under when they contribute their skills to produce a paper.

We need to think about what we want for the future of our papers. We can all agree that the corporate ownership model has not delivered the local democratisation of news, and that we need to rethink it. That is why an inquiry would be so timely: it would ensure that we could look at all the options that are now open to local papers.

I have had some discussions about what a co-operative model looks like. I both agree and disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman); I think it is too late to start looking at that kind of model when a paper is failing. We need to look at it now. We need to build local co-operation from the community into papers, to ensure that there is a local eye on what is happening, not just a distant editor doing their best, possibly over a number of publications, or even just their own paper, but who is not based in the local community.

How do we bring that local voice right into the workings of a paper today? We need to raise the voices of journalists, the people working day and night on our papers, to ensure that they have real input into the shape and the future of not only their own publication but their industry, to make sure that they can use their professionalism in determining what a real community paper looks like.

I certainly support suggestions about hypothecated taxation being a means of supporting the industry in the future, ensuring that there is a real wall between content and income sources but ensuring that papers receive the injection of income that is obviously needed to keep alive the vital democracy that they provide.

We face the challenges that I have set out and we must ensure that we respond to them, because these papers and in particular their journalists, who are at the frontline, are looking to us. At the moment they are just part of the wider corporate picture, and if the money is not returned to these corporate giants, which we have heard monopolise the sector, we could lose a real element of our social democracy and we will regret that when it is gone.

I thank the NUJ for raising this issue with Members of Parliament, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for recognising the urgent need for this debate, and I ask the Minister to ensure that there is a proper inquiry into what is happening now to our local media, particularly our local print media, so that we can sustain the sector and put a proper model in place for the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Rachael Maskell

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to encourage the building of homes for social rent.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

15. What steps his Department is taking to encourage the building of homes for social rent.