Charlie Maynard MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jun 2025 · Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to do more to protect section 22 community bus services such as West Oxfordshire Community Transport, which are now facing a mountain of bureaucracy to re-tender for routes that it built up from scratch against commercial bus operators that have all the abilities to pitch and win, leaving community bus operators high and dry?

• 7 Apr 2025 · Road Maintenance · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Gentleman agree that adopting a policy of managed decline, as the Conservatives did in Oxfordshire in 2014, is a disaster, and is really not the appropriate way to fix the problems we have in front of us?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Rail Connectivity: Oxfordshire · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered railway connectivity between Witney, Carterton, Eynsham and Oxford. I am here to argue the case for bringing back the railway that connected Oxford, Eynsham, Witney and Carterton, but was torn up 50 years ago. That would cut journey times by 70%, connecting Oxford with Eynsham in roughly 11 minutes, with Witney in 16 minutes and with Carterton in 22 minutes. I have worked for the last four years with many parties, and I am deeply grateful to them all for their help. They include Oxfordshire county council; the district council in West Oxfordshire; town councils in Witney and Carterton; parish councils in Eynsham; the RAF; various landowners and developers, including Grosvenor at Salt Cross garden village; and England’s Economic Heartland—the list goes on and on. The reason why I put so much blood, sweat, tears and toil into the issue is that we have two huge problems in West Oxfordshire—there are probably others as well, but the two big ones are transport and housing. They are two sides of the same coin. In transport we have the A40 corridor, which links Oxford and points east with Cheltenham and Gloucester and points west. Oxford city is at the centre of that web; it is one of the strongest growing cities in the country and is putting enormous pressure on Oxfordshire. To the west is some of the worst-served infrastructure in the whole county. There is no major railway station apart from Hanborough, which is very small with one train an hour, and there are just a few miles of dual carriageway—yet enormous housing is coming into the district.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Rail Connectivity: Oxfordshire · Hansard source

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  I very much concur. I want to quantify the housing and the scale of what is going on now. Since 2000, the population of Oxfordshire has increased by a quarter. In the 2018 local plan we were signed up for 16,000 homes over the period through to 2031, increasing our housing stock by a quarter in just 10 years. On top of that, as per the new national planning policy framework, there is a 62% increase on our current local plan. I move on to transport. Our road is under very severe pressure. Some hon. Members might have spent time on the A40; probably more than they would have liked. It is an extremely constrained corridor, which, according to AECOM’s 2021 study, is going to be 30 minutes slower by 2031, which is seven years away—30 minutes slower between Witney and Oxford by 2031. That assumes that the disastrous bus lane project will have been completed, although that is not going to happen because there is not sufficient money. That was something that the previous Conservative Administration signed up for: £180 million for four miles of bus lane, which has turned into two miles of bus lane and a park and ride —not a good investment. We need a long-term transport policy, which will deliver a number of things: journey times cut by up to 70% and a plan for housing. Many constituencies, including mine, support housing. We all recognise that people need somewhere to live. We want to be grown-ups at the table coming up with a solution, rather than scattering houses willy-nilly around the district with no coherent plan. There is no plan without a transport solution. We support putting the houses that we will have to take anyway around the railway stations. Just as our Victorian forebears did many decades ago, we will use those houses to fund the railway. That would solve housing; then it would solve the economy. Our economy in West Oxfordshire really suffers. One would think that lots of good employers would come to West Oxfordshire, because we are only 10 miles west of Oxford, but they do not. There are some good employers, but very few now come in, because they know that the transport is completely unsustainable. The concept is logical: Oxford is at one end with the best universities in the world, and at the other are places such as Witney and Carterton with excellent skills, particularly in the aerospace and aviation sectors because of RAF Brize Norton. Connecting those places with a fast, reliable transport corridor would allow businesses to locate in West Oxfordshire. That would mean less need to commute and jam up our roads. That is a big opportunity.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Rail Connectivity: Oxfordshire · Hansard source

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  Well said—I very much agree. Following on from that, transport is one of the hardest nuts to crack in that decarbonisation agenda. Without a large-scale mass public transport solution, we are not going to get there. That is at the core of Oxfordshire county council’s strategy and this would help to deliver it, just as my hon. Friend’s project would in his constituency. I have two more points. Vast numbers of people living in West Oxfordshire have to get to hospitals in Oxford for secondary and tertiary care. The unreliability of the road puts enormous stress on their lives; they—including members of my family, as it happens—often have to go backwards and forwards a number of times a week. People have to leave home for a 10-mile journey sometimes two or three hours in advance, because they are scared about missing their appointment. That is only set to get worse on current plans. Finally, on defence, RAF Brize Norton is the biggest RAF base both in the country and internationally, with 7,500 people working there. It was built there because it had a railway connection, but that connection was ripped up 50 years ago. We must bring back that railway connection now. In times of peace, the lack of the connection is bad news, but in times of war it is truly terrible. Is that really how we want to run our country? The biggest airbase in the country, which runs all our international transport, does not have even have a railway connection. That is a disaster. What has been going on to date? I give real thanks to the Witney Oxford Transport Group, which really took the charge on this issue in 2014, before I showed up. I am immensely grateful for its having made me chair in 2020. Since 2020, we have conducted a number of technical studies, particularly on defining a route that goes not only from Oxford to Carterton but through the Salt Cross garden village. Those studies gave the county council enough comfort to commission a feasibility study, which was published last November, and this year Lichfields is carrying out an economic analysis. That is all working towards the new local plan for West Oxfordshire, which is being worked up now. As a district councillor, I am working closely with my district council colleagues, as well as Sasha White—the planning and land use silk of the year; many thanks, Sasha—to work the railway line into our local plan. If the line is in there, we have a real chance of getting this railway built. I used to work in business and I understand that there is really one thing that counts here: money. A key part of our work has been on the funding, and shaking a tin at the Treasury and waiting 50 years is not what we have in mind. Who have we been working with? It has been E-Rail so far, which has just funded 30% of the Ashington-to-Blyth line by going up to landowners and developers along that track and saying, “If you want to bring back a passenger rail line here, sign some voluntary, legally-binding contribution agreements, which will allow you to build houses around those future railway stations. Bluntly, the reason why you should do so is that you will make more money.” They will make more money for three reasons. First, the local plan will allow them to have houses sited around that railway station that would not otherwise exist. Secondly, they can build at higher density around a railway station. Thirdly, each of those houses is worth more because it is next to a railway station. That might sound radical, but it is what our Victorian forebears did 150 years ago. It is what Japan, Korea and Hong Kong do, and what much of northern Europe does. That is how they fund their public infrastructure, and I would argue that case. Labour sometimes mentions land value, and I really hope that it looks into the issue because it is a way of using private and public funding to get things moving quickly—as opposed to just sticking it to the taxpayer, which is what we have had to do up to now. I really ask for the Minister’s help in exploring that. That would fund about 50% of the railway line, and the other half would come from Homes England. We would be delivering on our side of the bargain by getting all those houses into West Oxfordshire in a coherent and sensible way. Without a railway line, we will not have that solution and we will have an unsustainable, long-term problem.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Rail Connectivity: Oxfordshire · Hansard source

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  Just one small correction: from Oxford to Carterton North is £600 million only—we do not need to build out to Carterton West necessarily; that would just be a nice-to-have—and, of that, land value capture would allow something like £300 million. That is the broader scheme of it.

• 25 Nov 2024 · Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Liberal Democrats would like to see a much more fundamental reform of business rates. Although there are promises of further steps, it is disappointing that our new Government, with such a large majority, are not being more ambitious now. Our high streets will remain in deep trouble. The retail, hospitality and leisure sector will now have only 40% relief instead of 75%, but sectors such as manufacturing, which is having such a difficult time adjusting to a post-Brexit world, will get zero relief. National insurance contributions will be greatly increased, with taxes having to be paid before a business even makes a profit. On top of that, we all know that our high streets—such as Witney’s beautiful high street, as seen in The Times today—are being eaten alive by online retail. We need to do much more to level the playing field between online and offline retail, but this adjustment is a very, very blunt instrument for doing so. We need to be much more precise about going after big tech and taxing it appropriately. There are a few steps that we would like to see. A commercial landowner levy that taxes just the land value of commercial sites, not productive investment, has worked very effectively in Australia, Denmark and Estonia. A land value tax is much more effective at capturing the publicly created uplifts in land value, rather than leaving it to landowners to pocket them, sometimes with enormous gains. This is largely how our Victorian forebears built our railway network, and it is how countries around the world, ranging from Japan and Korea to much of northern Europe, fund new transport links—something that we want to do between Oxford and Witney. Scrapping stamp duties on commercial land would make our market in land simpler and more efficient. Switching the tax to the owner rather than the tenant would spare 500,000 small and medium-sized enterprises the admin burden of property taxation and would save money and time in collecting the tax. Ending the exemptions on empty and derelict premises would incentivise action rather than inaction. We very much hope that the new Government will follow through on their promises to take further substantial steps. After all, they have the votes.