Passport Office (Delays)

Debate between Mark Lazarowicz and Geoffrey Robinson

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robinson]

I will give way in a moment. If I turn round to give my right hon. Friend any further indication, I will be called to order by Madam Deputy Speaker.

A family of five in my constituency, the Vernons, and mother Amy, saved up and the whole family chipped in for their first ever holiday as a family together. Because one passport out of the five was not available—if I am correct, it was the first issue of a child’s passport—they drove 200 miles to Durham, leaving at 4 o’clock in the morning. They got nothing but hassle when they got there and further delay. They got the passport, but after driving all the way back to Coventry to fly out from a local airport, they missed their flight by 15 minutes. If that does not ring a bell with the Minister about the state of chaos in the Passport Office, I do not know what will.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister said earlier that measures have been taken to deal with this problem. I raised the issue in the previous debate, went out of the Chamber, and within two minutes I received an e-mail about yet another passport problem. We get them all the time. The Government are not taking action or making a difference yet.

[Mr Robinson]

I am willing to take even more interventions as I think they are nearly as effective as this couple of photographs—I will not display them, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will draw Members’ attention to them. They show interview rooms being used not for interview purposes but to store unprocessed files of passport applications in the course of being processed. They say that a good picture tells 1,000 words, so I refer the Minister to those photographs, which I am sure will soon be in circulation.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Mark Lazarowicz and Geoffrey Robinson

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I know that my hon. Friend speaks with sincerity, but does he really think there will ever come a time when somebody will not cite some particular issue—national or international—as a reason for not having this discussion about the House of Lords? It will always be the wrong time; there will always be more important issues for some people.

[Mr Robinson]

I take my hon. Friend’s point and accept it, but this is not really a priority. If we accept that the language of politics or the art of government are about achieving our priorities and managing the problems that are in the way of achieving them, I cannot see the House of Lords as a big problem at the moment. It really is not. It may well be an anachronism with its robes, its frumpery and all that; yes, I would love to get rid of it. For those who want reform, as I do, however, the proposals put forward by Lord Steel seem to deal with the matter. They seem to deal adequately with all my principal objections to how the House of Lords works, how it is constituted and how it deals with various aspects of ritual that people either like or do not like. The proposals deal with it all. If we had a set of provisions broadly based on what Lord Steel had proposed, I believe that we could have gained cross-party agreement, but we have not got that. We have a dog’s breakfast of a Bill.

High Speed 2

Debate between Mark Lazarowicz and Geoffrey Robinson

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

The purpose of asking yet again for a debate in the Chamber on high-speed rail was that, having had two very successful earlier debates in Westminster Hall, we knew that there was a great deal of interest throughout the House among Members representing virtually all the constituencies that have an interest in it. I am very pleased to see the remarkable attendance we have this afternoon, and to follow the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who has just opened the debate.

Those who attended the demonstration in Old Palace Yard this morning will have seen that there was a good turnout and a lively response from lorry drivers and others in relation to what we still call HS2. I am pleased to say that one lot from your constituency, Mr Speaker, remarked that they were anxious to speak to your good self about it, and I carry their best wishes and thanks to you. I said that you would almost certainly be in the Chair for the debate today, so I am pleased to see that you are indeed there.

The various points that have consistently been made against this project remain, but they have not been answered in debate or by the Government. The hon. Lady covered virtually all those points in her opening remarks. I am limited for time, and I intend to stay well within the 10 minutes because I know that a lot of Members wish to speak, but let me say that although the point about people being local or nimbyish about this issue is fair, I do not think that any MP who sticks up for his constituency should be at all apologetic about it. That is what we are sent here for, and if we do not do it, why are we here?

We have to take into account the national dimension, but I am prepared to say that I, and my Labour colleagues from Stoke and Coventry, certainly will not benefit from this project at all. I can see the arguments for Manchester, York, Leeds and other areas, which are well represented on the Opposition side, but it seems to me that we are doing things the wrong way around. I can see some benefits—although not the regional benefits that the Government claim—for Manchester, Leeds in particular, and York of being connected to a high-speed link to Birmingham and from there to London, but I think we should start the whole “Y” the other way around. We should start the line where it is most needed and most appreciated—from the north to the south. What is very clear, if we are honest about this, is that we do not desperately need the line from London to Birmingham. We are well served with trains every 20 minutes, and we are only going to get 30 minutes off the journey at best.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Robinson]

I will in a moment if my hon. Friend will hang on just a tick. I have only got 10 minutes, and time taken now will shorten someone else’s time.

We really do not need this project. What we need is for the pinch points to be relieved and some of the capacity bottlenecks to be relieved, and we could get the whole capacity increase we need on that line. Centro, which is responsible for the west midlands portion of the line, has said that it desperately needs that to be done now. That is the way to do it, not to wait until—

[Mr Robinson]

I will give way in a moment, but I know what my hon. Friend is going to say because he represents a Birmingham constituency. I take those points too, but on the argument about this being a regional policy, let me say that any remotely sensible study that has been done on it says that 75% of the jobs are going to be created in the south-east, so we should forget the idea that it is a regional policy: that does not stack up. It is a convenience for certain metropolitan centres in the north, and the idea is that if ever it gets up to Edinburgh and Glasgow it could be a spinal cord that unites the country despite the tensions we feel at present—so why not start it up there? Why not start it from Leeds or York? That is what needs doing—and urgently—but of course they will not do that, because everyone knows that the subsidy for that area would be enormous and could not be justified. It can be justified only for the small London-Birmingham stretch where the subsidy will be highest, and it will not benefit ordinary travellers in any sense. It will be subsidised to a massive extent by the taxpayer and, by those businessmen, and others—

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Robinson]

I know that my hon. Friend has been trying to get in, so I will give way just this once and then I will make progress.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Some of his points about where the benefits would flow with high-speed rail are important, but surely what he is assuming is that people would just build the line and there would be stations but nothing else would happen. The whole point is that high-speed rail offers opportunity for much more comprehensive economic planning built around a high-speed rail network. It is not just a high-speed railway and stations on their own; it is part of a much wider approach that is required.

[Mr Robinson]

I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend talk about economic planning. I think that, sadly, that went out in 1966, when the Labour Government ditched the national plan. Let us be hard-headed and realistic about this. HS2 will have some benefits, and certainly it will help businesses to travel more quickly to London, but that is about all we can say. If I were a Manchester MP I am sure I would be supporting it, but below there it does not make any sense at all.