Tom Harris
Main Page: Tom Harris (Labour - Glasgow South)Department Debates - View all Tom Harris's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years ago)
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Gavin Shuker
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. Ofwat, the industry regulator, lays out tough targets on water companies reducing leakage in some places, but not so tough targets in others. The fundamental problem is that if the cost of water being lost is less than the cost of making the repair, it is not economically viable for water companies to make the repair. That is why we need comprehensive action and a comprehensive water Bill, rather than a draft Bill, in this Session.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend see any merit in the idea of alleviating drought conditions in the south of the country with some form of network distribution of water? That should be implemented in order to allow water from Scotland—believe me, we have too much of it—to be transported south in an efficient manner through a national pipeline network.
Gavin Shuker
We are jumping around in water here. My hon. Friend is my new colleague in the shadow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs team and I am sure hon. Members on both sides of the House would want to welcome him back to the Front Bench. He makes an extremely good point. What is required in the industry to move water from places where it is in good supply to areas where there is less? For me, that is not primarily about building a big pipeline from north to south; it is also means getting interconnectors between different water companies working appropriately. Of course, the carbon cost of that is great.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Justine Greening)
I am obviously delighted to be here today. The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) ought to try re-moding some time. We re-moded a lot of Ministers out of their cars at the last election, and I am pleased to say that many of them have had to get used to using the public transport system that many Ministers themselves use today, and very good it is, too. I came in on the District line today, and it was working perfectly.
We have had a broadly constructive and important debate on the cost of living, and some measured contributions from around the House. They have borne out that everybody realises the pressures that global oil and food markets and prices—combined, of course, with inflation—have put on household bills in recent years. That is why, even as we deal with the deficit left to us by Labour, this Government are taking action wherever we can to help family budgets. It is why, through raising the personal allowance, we are cutting income tax for 24 million people and taking 2 million people on the lowest incomes out of income tax altogether. It is why we have helped councils up and down the country to freeze the council tax for the second year running. It is why we cut fuel duty in the Budget last year, deferred the increase planned by the last Government in January, and cancelled another increase proposed by the last Government for this August.
When it comes to home owners being able to pay their bills, the most important thing we as a Government can do is to help maintain the conditions for the Bank of England to keep interest rates low. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) talked about the importance of that aspect of family budgets, and she is absolutely right. We have focused on that through the spending review, making a number of announcements setting out a credible plan to tackle the deficit and get control of our debts, meaning that we really help to keep interest rates low for the 11 million households with mortgages. That is in stark contrast to the impact of Labour’s plans.
I was very pleased to hear a number of Members welcome the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, which is in many respects long overdue. I look forward to the debate that will take place in this House to ensure it can be as effective as I am sure many Members want it to be.
The right hon. Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) and the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden)—I cannot see her in her place—talked about the importance of supporting families. This Government agree, which is one of the reasons why we have extended free nursery care to 15 hours for all three and four-year-olds and doubled the number of disadvantaged two-year-olds receiving 15 hours of free child care a week, helping 260,000 families. These are difficult decisions that we face, but we are doing our best to ensure that, in spite of that, we are helping the families that need our help and taking action wherever we can.
We need not take any lessons on the cost of living from Labour. Most people in Britain remember their record in government. Theirs was a Government who never lived within the public’s means, giving us the deepest recession since the war and running up the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history. When it comes to measures that help to put money back into people’s pockets, we need not take any lessons from a party whose only approach to helping hard-working people make ends meet was to take more and spend more, raising tax 178 times, including 12 hikes in fuel duty. Labour Members talk about the cost of living, but on their watch band D council tax more than doubled; gas bills doubled; between 2004 and 2009 regulated train fares went up by nearly 20% and unregulated train fares went up by a quarter; and, for the first time since records began, GDP per capita actually fell in the last Parliament.
