Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

13. What funding his Department is providing for road resurfacing.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)]

Mr Speaker, before responding, given that these are the last Transport questions of the year, may I put on record my gratitude to the staff of the House, and also to those across the transport sector who will be working tirelessly across the Christmas period to ensure that families can get together and goods can keep moving?

As part of the Prime Minister’s Network North plan, the Government are providing a record funding increase of £8.3 billion for local highways maintenance over the next decade, which will enable local highway authorities to resurface roads up and down the country.

[Marco Longhi]

Potholes are a scourge everywhere, so I am not only very grateful for the additional Government funding, but very impressed by the responsiveness and the quality of work by Dudley Council’s highways department. Will the Secretary of State agree to visit Dudley, and would he support tighter contracting frameworks by local authorities so that utility companies and others are made to pay for all the consequences of their substandard work?

[Mr Harper]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, including for telling us about the good work that his local authority is doing to improve the quality of local roads. Utility companies already have legal duties to ensure that their works and reinstatements are to required standards. Earlier this year, we introduced a new performance-based street works regime to crack down on the worst performing companies leaving behind poor road surface repairs that can lead to more potholes. Those with higher failure rates are now inspected more often and are charged for it, so companies are incentivised to carry out good-quality reinstatements first time and to repair existing defects.

[Eddie Hughes]

As a civil engineer, I am always excited to hear about more money being spent on the highways, but is the Secretary of State aware of the Pothole Pro? This is a machine, developed by Staffordshire-based JCB, that can allegedly repair a pothole in as little as eight minutes. Should that sort of technology be rolled out across the country so that we do not just spend more money, but spend it more effectively?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of tools to deliver increased productivity so that we get more for what we spend. I was lucky enough to visit JCB myself and see the Pothole Pro in action, as well as the innovative work it is doing, as a fantastic world leader in innovation, on some of its hydrogen engines for its mobile off-road machinery. I am sure that local councils will look carefully at the Pothole Pro and other technologies that can help us make the best use of that record investment in road improvements.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State will know that we all want good roads, but we also want safe roads. Can I draw his attention to the dreadful road accidents killing young people recently? Is he aware that over the last 13 years, from being one of the safest places in the world in terms of road safety and deaths on the roads, we are steadily becoming very bad indeed? Will he do something about that, if he can?

[Mr Harper]

I of course share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the deaths of anyone on the roads, but particularly of young people. I do not recognise the characterisation he has set out. Our road safety record remains one of the best in the world. [Interruption.] Well, it does. The Department spends a great deal of resource on campaigns to get people to drive more safely, and we do that when we are engineering and delivering new roads. Safety is one of the very important things that we think about as we design and roll out new road infrastructure.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

4. What assessment he has made of the potential merits of electrifying the Furness line.

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[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

18. What steps he is taking to support motorists.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)]

This Government recognise that most journeys in this country are made by car, and that is why we are providing comprehensive support for motorists through our plan for drivers, which includes a package of measures to improve traffic flow, and also through the £8.3 billion investment in road resurfacing. That historic investment in road condition will benefit all road users, as we have set out in earlier answers.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Despite the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister saying that the war against the motorist is over, is he aware that many Labour local authorities have not got the message, with unwanted low-traffic neighbourhoods in place, unjustified 20 mph speed limits being proposed and traffic lights phased deliberately to delay traffic flows, causing added pollution? Will he consider giving advice to local authorities that they should do all they can to improve traffic flows and not disrupt them because of some misguided dogma against the motorist?

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend is right: we are pro-driver, but also pro- public transport and pro-active travel, and those things are about giving people better choices and making sure that councils do not deliver anti-driver traffic management measures. The network management duty requires local authorities to manage their roads as efficiently as possible for the benefit of all road users, including drivers, which some of them forget from time to time. We have also announced new funding totalling £40 million specifically for improvements to traffic lights to keep local roads moving, including deploying machine learning and artificial intelligence to optimise traffic flow to get cars moving.

[Greg Smith]

The plan for drivers clearly shows that this Government are on the side of Britain’s motorists, but there is one missing link, which is rural roads. When a rural road is closed by a utility company or others, the diversion is not just a quick five minutes, but often half an hour or 40 minutes. Buckinghamshire Council tells me that the current fines system is just too low and the utility companies shrug it off. Can my right hon. Friend take real action to ensure that councils can properly fine utility companies when they disrupt rural communities?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point that I am well aware of, representing a rural constituency myself. Some of the benefits of investment in infrastructure such as broadband do bring with them traffic disruption. One of the things we have put in place, as I mentioned in an earlier answer, is the change to make sure that good utility companies will have much less inspection and much less cost involved in delivery. Those utility companies that leave behind a mess, and therefore cause that disruption over and over again, will face more inspections and more costs, incentivising them to do a better job for his and my constituents.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I welcome my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) to his place on the Front Bench. For the past two years, part of the guided busway in Cambridge has been closed due to a complex legal wrangle with the Health and Safety Executive. It has meant that buses are snarled up and motorists and bus users have had thousands and thousands of hours of wasted time. Will the Minister meet me to try to find a way to resolve this issue speedily and get Cambridge moving?

[Mr Harper]

I am not familiar with the specific situation that the hon. Gentleman raises about a dispute with the Health and Safety Executive. I will of course make sure that the relevant Minister meets him to deal with this issue. I have to say that my previous experience of Cambridge City Council was that it was tending to implement policies such as its congestion charging scheme, which it has now had to drop because it was so unpopular. It was not focused on getting traffic moving, but being against the interests of road users. I am glad that he welcomes that change.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

Leeds is one of the most congested cities in the country, mainly because it is the largest city in Europe without a rail-based public transport system. Why do the Government have such contempt for the citizens of Leeds? When will we see a decent public transport system in our city?

[Mr Harper]

That is an extraordinary question, given that the Government have, in the Network North announcement that the Prime Minister made, put aside £2.5 billion for a mass transit system in Leeds so that Leeds no longer remains one of the largest cities in Europe without one. I have to say that that investment in Leeds to benefit his constituents is possible only because of the choice that this Government made to cancel the second phase of HS2 and to spend the money on that mass transit system in Leeds. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not welcome that significant investment for his constituents.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

7. What estimate he has made of the net cost to the public purse of land purchased and planned for sale in connection with HS2 phase 2.

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[Mr Speaker]

Margaret Beckett is not here. Will the Secretary of State answer the question as though she were, so that I can call the shadow Minister?

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)]

My officials and I have held regular meetings with senior management at Alstom. We have also convened, under my direction, a cross-Whitehall group to advise on ways to support continued production at Derby, and on how best to support the workers who could lose their jobs. This must be a commercial decision for Alstom, but the Government have been working with the company to explore every option to enable it to continue manufacturing at its Derby site, and local Members in Derby—including the fantastic colleague sitting beside me, my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway)—have been raising these issues with me regularly, effectively representing their constituents.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

Three years ago, the Government hailed the deal to manufacture HS2 trains in Britain as putting the country

“firmly at the forefront of the high speed rail revolution”.

Today, the jobs of the skilled people who work in that industry and build those trains in Derby and Newton Aycliffe are at risk. There are just days left to find a solution. Will the Secretary of State, specifically, meet Hitachi and Alstom as a matter of urgency? Does he accept that if Ministers fail to act in the coming days, the final legacy of this shambolic Government will be thousands of skilled jobs lost and HS2 trains built abroad?

[Mr Harper]

I am slightly surprised by the hon. Gentleman. He wrote to my hon. Friend the Rail Minister on 17 November, asking a series of, I am afraid, quite ill-informed questions. I sent him a comprehensive reply on 24 November, which I note he has not chosen to publicise. He tries to pretend that our decision on HS2 has something to do with this. I made it quite clear that Alstom’s contract with Hitachi—their joint venture to design, build and maintain HS2 trains—is for phase 1 only. Phase 1 of HS2 is continuing. That position was reiterated by Alstom group’s chief executive in his commentary on its recent results. I have met both Alstom and Hitachi regularly since the decision on Network North. I am afraid that Alstom’s problems predate our decision on HS2, and the hon. Gentleman’s attempt to play party politics on this incredibly serious matter, on which the Government are working very hard on a cross-party basis with the companies and the trade unions, is beneath him.

[Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

11. What discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential impact of Government proposals to reduce net migration on the transport sector workforce.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)]

I regularly engage with Cabinet colleagues on Government policy, including migration, and my Department works closely with organisations across the transport industry to understand the sector’s concerns about the transport labour market.

[Steven Bonnar]

The driver shortage in the UK is far from over and, according to sector insiders, a “tipping point” is looming. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that there were 6,000 fewer delivery and courier drivers in the UK in 2023 than in the previous year, and more than half the UK’s HGV drivers are due to retire in the next decade. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that this ticking time bomb does not blow up in our face as happened during the period following Brexit? Surely migration is part of the solution.

[Mr Harper]

It is disappointing that the SNP’s first response to any tightness in the labour market is to want to import people from abroad. My colleague the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, along with the fantastic officials in that Department and our jobcentre network, is ensuring that we provide skills training for those who are already in the United Kingdom so that we can deal with the skills shortages, as we did so effectively in the case of HGV drivers when, during and following the pandemic, we worked rapidly to get more of them into the industry.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

12. What recent discussions he has had with airport operators on the introduction of new security scanners by June 2024.

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[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)]

As I said earlier, these are the last Transport oral questions before Christmas, and we are backing drivers with an easier Christmas getaway. From next Tuesday, National Highways is lifting over 1,000 miles of roadworks, which means that over 98% of motorways and major A roads will be roadwork-free until 2 January. We are also getting on with the job of resurfacing Britain’s roads, thanks to the record £8.3 billion uplift in funding. Earlier this month, highway authorities received the first tranche of that investment, which will mean smoother, safer journeys and save drivers hundreds of pounds in costly vehicle repairs. Local authorities also have new reporting requirements, so taxpayers will know how that money is being spent.

The Prime Minister made the right long-term decision to redirect money from HS2 towards the local journeys that matter most, ensuring that more people in more places will see benefits more quickly. That is what the British people want, it is what the country needs, and it is what we are delivering.

[Stephen Hammond]

Will my right hon. Friend say when the strategic objectives behind Network North will be announced and published? Can he confirm that any projects announced so far are consistent with those objectives, and whether any of the HS2 funding will come to London and the south-east?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. As I set out, the objective of the decision is to ensure that that £36 billion of transport spending, which we are reinvesting in transport projects, will benefit more people, in more places across the country, more quickly. We are investing £6.5 billion pounds of savings from HS2 outside the north and midlands, which will benefit his constituents as well. That includes additional funding for London—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Come on boys, you’re going to have to help me. I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

May I wish you, Mr Speaker, and the whole House a very merry Christmas? Why have the Government wasted £95 million on technology to retrofit buses that does not work?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady will know that we have done a great deal of work to make sure that buses are compliant with the emissions rules. There are some technical issues being worked through at the moment, but I am not in a position to announce any decisions yet. We will announce to the House in due course when that work is completed.

[Louise Haigh]

Bus services are disappearing at record levels, yet the Secretary of State’s Department has wasted almost £100 million on retrofitting technology that does not work, because it was never tested outside a lab. Even for this Government, this is a shocking display of incompetence and waste. Will he now work with those cities left with useless technology and ensure that the next round of zero-emissions funding is targeted there, so that they can get on with the job of cleaning up our air and cleaning up his mess?

[Mr Harper]

Once again, the hon. Lady simply does not recognise the significant investment that we have made in bus services. We have announced a significant amount of extra money for protecting bus routes, we have rolled out funding to deliver the £2 bus fare cap, and we have announced the money to deliver zero-emission buses and delivered the full 1,000 we said we would deliver. There has been a huge amount of investment in bus services, because we know it is the most popular form of public transport and we will always back it.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

T2. My right hon. Friend’s Department has ensured that many bus passengers can benefit from the £2 cap on fares, but sadly Red Rose buses in my constituency is not offering it because the company says it is not compulsory. Will my right hon. Friend help me persuade all bus companies to do the right thing for Aylesbury’s residents, including by meeting bosses of the companies that refuse?

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

T4. Earlier this year, the UK Government pledged to fund a bridge repair in the constituency of the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross). The Newburgh train station campaign is working to re-establish a train station that will provide a vital transport link. Assuming that strategic funding is not just available to Members of the Conservative party, who can I speak to in order to get that station re-established?

[Mr Harper]

On her first point, we are working with the local authority to progress that scheme, which was announced earlier. On her specific point, I will arrange for the relevant Minister to meet her so that she can put forward the case for that scheme, and we will look at whether it is possible to do anything to help her.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

T3. I know the Minister understands that open-access rail can provide better, cheaper, more varied and more resilient services for passengers. In the next few weeks or months, how much rail network capacity does he expect to make available for open-access services from currently unused track slots, potentially from unused slots freed up by timetable improvements and from services currently provided by the operator of last resort?

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[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

T5. I emphasise to the Government the point made by my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), about pressing ahead with the Ely junction and Haughley junction schemes. Network Rail has done much of the preparatory work and is poised to get on with it as quickly as possible.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that scheme again. I know it is an important issue for colleagues in the east of England and I am delighted that we are able to make progress as a result of the decision on Network North. I have discussed it with Network Rail and the next steps involve the development of the full business case. Network Rail has what it needs to make progress, and I know my hon. Friend will be wishing it every speed.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

T7. Over the past year, yet more people have been killed or seriously injured on our roads, and the UK’s record on that has plateaued. While we have accident investigation organisations for air, maritime and rail, we do not have one for roads. The Government promised to set up a road safety investigation branch last year. When will that become a reality?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the important issue of road safety. I notice that the statistics she set out are inconsistent with those set out by her hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). She recognises that our road safety record is not going backwards, as he suggested. When there is a fatality, road accidents are investigated by the relevant authorities, and that remains the position. We learn lessons from accidents, so that when we build new road infrastructure it has safety at its heart.

[Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)]

T8. Will my hon. Friend update the House on the progress of the potential return of the direct rail link from King’s Cross to Grimsby and Cleethorpes?

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[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

May I encourage my right hon. Friend to cut the money given to the West of England Combined Authority, as it spends it extraordinarily badly on vanity schemes for the Mayor, on cutting bus services for my constituents and on pillorying motorists with this dreadful scheme, which is hated in Saltford, for a bus lane on the A4?

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point about regional Mayors, which is that we have devolved powers and resources to them, but they are ultimately accountable to their constituents. I hope very much that if they are punishing the motorist, the motorist will punish them back at the appropriate time at the ballot box.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

Now that the blight of HS2 has been lifted from North West Leicestershire, can the Minister update the House on when work will commence on reopening the Ivanhoe line, which will offer rail access for the first time in many decades not only to my constituents, but to our neighbours in South Derbyshire?

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[Mr Speaker]

Order. Hang on a minute. Do not take advantage, Barry, because I will not call you again otherwise.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman is simply wrong. Not only are we not briefing against hydrogen combustion engines; we are very supportive of them. I have been to Cummins. I have been to JCB. I have looked at the fantastic work that is being done developing hydrogen. We have some world-leading companies here. The Department is very supportive, and working closely with them.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I commend the work of my disabled young constituent, Nathaniel Yates from Reddish, who has assessed every single railway station in Greater Manchester. Too many of them are not step free. We have the money for Reddish North, but when can we get the money for Levenshulme?

[Sir Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

The key element of Scarborough’s successful town bid is the station gateway project, but getting permission from Network Rail to knock a new entrance into the back of the station is proving slow and bureaucratic. Can the Secretary of State gently lean on Network Rail a bit, please?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that question. I am sure that Network Rail will have heard that. I will take it away, raise it with Network Rail, and get back to him to let him know whether we can make that go faster.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The latest of many improvements to Gloucester Station since 2010 includes vital work on the station underpass and forecourt; however, contractor costs have risen since the original station improvement fund award. Will the Rail Minister agree to meet me and Great Western Railways to resolve that potential issue?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour for that question. I am very familiar with the investment and work that is currently being undertaken at Gloucester Station, as it is the one that I use on a regular basis when getting the train to London. The Rail Minister will be delighted to meet with him to see whether there is more that we can do to take those matters forward.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Inevitably, concerns about overcrowding will come up this afternoon at a Chiltern Railways drop-in at Marylebone with Buckinghamshire MPs, so can the Rail Minister assure me that the Government are doing everything possible to push Chiltern to improve?