Jerome Mayhew MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I do not think I can; I thought that was an absolutely brilliant speech. I feel like a party-pooper, because I am going to drag the debate back to the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, and I can only apologise. I was going to assert boldly that I was the only Member of this House who had sat on a standards committee and drafted European regulations, but I stand corrected. There are now two of us. At first glance, the Bill looks tiny. There are just four clauses on product regulations and four substantive clauses on metrology. There is a reason why it is so tiny: it does not actually say anything. There is no description of the changes anticipated by this legislation. There are no examples of what needs to be addressed. There is no indication of the direction behind any future decisions—nothing. Members, particularly those on the Government Benches, have referred to e-bikes and e-scooters, electrical safety, defective toys and lithium-ion batteries, to name just a few, but not a single one of those things is in the Bill. They could be. This could be a regulation Bill trying to fix the problems that have been identified, but none of that is there. Worse than that, there is no explanation for the silence. The Bill simply makes a request of this House—of us, as parliamentarians—by saying, “Please give me, the Minister, the power to change primary legislation through regulations, including the power to create new and novel criminal offences.” This is the very definition of a skeleton Bill, where almost all the substance is left to regulations. That is contrary to an established convention in this House and the other place that the principal aspects of policy should be in a Bill, and only its detailed implementation left to delegated legislation. That is an established principle of our legislature. If we wish to depart from that, there needs to be a very good reason. In exceptional circumstances, there are good reasons, but are there exceptional circumstances here? The issue was picked up immediately in what proved to be a hostile reception in the other place on Second Reading on 8 October last year. That was followed by a review on 15 October by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which is not some right-wing conspiracy theory group. This is not “Brexit or die”; it is chaired by Labour. It is chaired by Baroness Ramsey, and it is a cross-party Committee. By the way, in another role, she is the senior adviser to the Labour party on standards and ethics, yet her report has been entirely ignored by this Government, because it was damning in its conclusions. It said that Government guidance was that skeleton legislation should be used only in the most exceptional circumstances, but that test was “failed” by this draft legislation. As a result, that cross-party Committee, chaired by Labour, made the recommendation that clauses 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9 all be removed. Those are the substantive clauses right through the Bill, on both sides. That is a stinging indictment of this category of draft legislation. However, the Committee members were so concerned that they did not leave it at that. The following day, they took the exceptional step of summoning the Minister and his officials to give oral evidence. That is very rare, and it was the first time for three years that it had happened. The Committee members were clearly unimpressed by the answers—the attempted explanations —that they were given, because in a subsequent report, on 28 October, they reported that the Minister and his officials had “failed to provide a convincing justification”. As a result of that second damning indictment of the Government’s approach, there was some movement: the removal of some Henry VIII powers, and the addition of a duty to consult, at least in the first instance. However, other Henry VIII powers remain, and the duty to consult refers only to the first instance, not to any secondary attempts. The Committee then produced a third report, on the Bill in its current form. It said that “the delegation to Ministers of law-making powers in this Bill involves legislative power shifting to an unacceptable extent from the democratically appointed legislature to the Executive”, and also that “the Government have failed to provide a convincing justification for the inclusion of skeleton clauses in the Bill”. Actually, I think the Government did understand what they were doing, because the Bill gives Ministers the power to make politically contentious decisions about the degree to which domestic law on product regulation and, indeed, on metrology should be aligned with EU laws. That is the real reason behind the Bill: the fear of EU alignment by the back door.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Every single one of the measures in that infamous list that my right hon. Friend just went through required a vote in this House, and Labour Members had to put their name to each proposed legislative change. They will not have to do that under this legislation, will they?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 31 Mar 2025 · Draft Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I have nothing further to add on the meat of the debate than what my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk put forward. I rise to explain my delayed arrival to the Committee; I was a Teller in the Divisions in the Chamber, but I came as quickly as I could. I did not mean any rudeness to you in the Chair, Dr Huq, and I am sorry for the delay.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  It has been an absolute delight to listen to the debate. There were times when I thought that having an official Opposition was unnecessary because of the amount of opposition from Government Members. I congratulate my Norfolk neighbour, the hon. and gallant Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis). I am delighted to have a return of these rather archaic honorifics, because next time he refers to me, he will have to call me honourable and learned, which I know will stick in his craw. I congratulate him on introducing a groundbreaking Bill to the House. It would have a huge impact on the water industry, for good or ill, as I will discuss in the coming minutes. It is surprising to me, and perhaps to other hon. Members who were in this place before the last general election, to see the total absence of any Liberal Democrat Members in the Chamber. Not even their official spokesperson is here. I remember the amount of noise they made before the election about their views on water. It is telling that when it comes to a groundbreaking piece of legislation that could really make a change, according to the hon. Member for Norwich South, they could not even be bothered to attend. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I have unified the House. We all agree on one thing, and we know what that is. The hon. Member for Norwich South made not just a critique of the water companies, but of private ownership in general. I want to address that very briefly, in a single sentence: capitalism has lifted more people in the world out of poverty and despair than any other economic system in history. However, I recognise that there are many forms of ownership in a capitalist system, including national and public ownership, mutualisation and private ownership. Before throwing the metaphorical baby out with the almost uniquely clean bathwater that we enjoy in this country, let us take a moment to look back at private sector water company performance, in a way that would have been impossible for me to do prior to the general election, because the campaigning noise was so deafening that rational debate was too often brushed aside. I am taking a risk, but I hope that today, in this Chamber, we can have a more rational and careful debate, and look at the data. Let us look at the private performance, both good and ill. This is not a defence of the status quo, but it is a challenge to the assumption that public ownership is necessarily the solution. I will go back and look at elements of the performance of the private sector over the past 30 years. The first duty of a water company is to provide safe, clean drinking water for its customers. As we heard from the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), our water industry passes that test with flying colours. It is not just clean water but the cleanest water in the entire world, jointly with one other country—and I hope no one intervenes to ask me which country that is, because I simply do not know. Let us not forget, as we bash the water companies, that they have provided the cleanest drinking water in the world. The next thing water companies have to do is to make sure that the supply is uninterrupted. We had an experiment with nationalisation of our water industry up until about 30 years ago. During that period, interruptions in the water supply were five times as likely as they are today. To put it another way, privatisation has reduced the interruption of the water supply fivefold. We can argue about why that is, but that is a fact. There are examples of disruption such as the one the hon. Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon) referred to, and they are terrible, but in aggregate, the number of disruptions has reduced fivefold. We then turn to leakage. As my neighbour, the hon. Member for Norwich South, says, water is a scarce and valuable public resource, so leakage is very important. Since privatisation, the amount of leakage has reduced by a third. How has all this been achieved? The answer is that £236 billion has been invested by the private sector in our water infrastructure since 1991. How has it been able to do that? The answer, in my submission, is that it has not been competing with the provision of new hospitals or new schools, and—perhaps Government Members will feel this more closely to their hearts—it has not been competing with personal independence payments for the disabled, the disability element of universal credit or carer’s allowance. Try asking the Chancellor of the Exchequer now for £236 billion to be spent from the public funds on water. We know from the debates we have had last week and this week that that is almost impossible. I turn to performance. There are various ways of measuring performance, but the headline is serious sewage incidents. In the 1990s, the average number of serious sewage incidents was 500 a year. Now it is well below 100. The last year for which I could find data was 2021, and in that year the number was 62. There are other elements of performance. There are the chemicals being leached into our waterways through treated sewage. The most damaging for biodiversity is phosphorus. Since 1990, because of the investment, the amount of phosphorus entering our waterways through the water treatment system has not increased; it has reduced by 80%. This is at a time when our economy has grown and our population has increased significantly. The next most damaging chemical is ammonia. Again, since 1990, the amount of ammonia going into the waterways because of treated water has not increased along with population growth or economic growth; it has in fact declined by 85%. The next most damaging chemicals are cadmium and mercury. Since 2008—a slightly different starting point, I accept—the amount of cadmium and mercury has reduced by 50%. If we take away the emotion and start looking at some of the core data, we can see that there have been very real elements of progress—not universal progress, but real elements of progress because of a huge amount of private investment in our water industry.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I am absolutely not saying, “You’ve never had it so good,” but I am drawing attention to the actual data, so that we can make a balanced judgment. I will come to some of the disadvantages of the last 30 years later on in my speech, so I hope I will give a balanced judgment. We have dealt with the rivers and serious sewage incidents— [ Interruption. ] Hon. Members should wait and not be hasty. Sewage discharges from storm overflows have been, without doubt, the greatest area of failure for decades, in both public and private ownership. Why? It is because the problem was hidden for decades. It was not reported, and it was not measured. Back in 2010, the Labour Government monitored only 7% of storm overflows. As a result, we had no idea how frequently storm overflows were being activated, or for how long. Worse, Labour changed the law in 2008—I think one Labour Member present was in Parliament at that time—to allow the water companies to self-monitor their environmental performance. The Liberal Democrats do not come out of this very well, either. [ Interruption. ] We can all agree on that. During the coalition, there was a Liberal Democrat Water Minister from 2013 to 2015. What action did they take when they held the levers of power? Absolutely none. It was the Conservatives who forced transparency on the water industry by requiring 100% of storm overflow data to be monitored and then published within 15 minutes. That exposed the problem, and we then took action through the £56 billion storm overflows discharge reduction plan to fix the problem over 25 years. We all want to go faster, but it is about the balance between costs, the industry’s ability to react, and the time a responsible Government have to take these decisions. We also had a plan to improve the water quality of chalk streams, which is an issue close to your heart, Madam Deputy Speaker. I believe you have the Test in your constituency, and I can beat that with the Stiffkey, the Wensum, the Bure and a couple of others. Despite the unacceptable storm overflows, the question we need to ask is whether river water quality has got better or worse under privatisation. The difficulty is the lack of comparative data, because as we have monitored more, we have more data points identifying more discharges that were previously unrecorded. One of the best datasets to look at is invertebrate biodiversity, on which there has been a comprehensive study by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, analysing 223,000 samples taken between 1989 and 2018. It looks for biodiversity gain or loss, especially in species that are particularly sensitive to clean water—the mayfly and the caddisfly. You will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that invertebrate biodiversity has tripled in our rivers over the last 30 years, during the period of privatisation. I am not defending the water companies’ lack of inquisitiveness about the number of storm overflow discharges. This terrible problem has to be addressed, and it was being addressed by the last Conservative Government, but it prompts the question: has our water got better or worse, in aggregate, over the last 30 years? The data suggests that it has got considerably better. I will talk about the pros and cons of privatisation in terms of funding. In my view, there are definite cons to the private ownership model we have had over the past 30 years. I concede that some water companies have exploited weak regulation to take advantage of their monopolistic position. True competition cannot exist because we have monopoly providers. The role of competition is meant to be provided by regulation and, too often, the regulation has been found wanting, particularly on the financial engineering of the leverage that water companies undertook in the noughties, peaking in about 2015. Again, I accept that that is a problem that should have been prevented, but all the major parties are guilty and played their part. It started under Labour and continued under the coalition—I am afraid that both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have their fingerprints on this—before stopping in about 2015, when Ofwat belatedly tightened up its provision. Members will have noticed that the latest return on capital allowed by Ofwat is, from memory, 3.4%, which I submit is a reasonable return on capital and one that individuals might get from a high-interest account. I hope that I have given a balanced assessment of the good and bad of privatisation over the past 30 years. We need to do that, because it is the basis on which we address the next question about the Bill: what is the right mechanism of ownership? In my view, privatisation has, on balance, been a success, because it has managed to lever in investment to improve our water quality overall, to reduce leakage and outages in the way that I have described, and to provide us with the safest water in the world.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I have not intervened on other speeches, but on that one comment that the hon. Lady has made, has she read the plan for water that was published by the previous Government and is she aware of its contents, which include £56 billion of investment to deal with exactly this issue?

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I would like to give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to correct the record: the official Opposition did not oppose that Act.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  The profit motive does promote efficiency in innovation, because companies want to minimise their costs and therefore maximise their profits. It also provides access to capital in the manner that I have described, because there are rights issues as well as the recirculation of water bills. It is right that that is the foundation of the business, but it is not the only access to capital, whereas with public ownership, as we are very aware this week, there are limited funds. We cannot borrow forever. We have what I think are described as iron-clad fiscal rules, which we have heard a bit about recently. We know that this Government, and all Governments, are constrained in their ability to borrow and spend, and that they have other priorities, so we will never get a big budget for water if it is in public ownership. The Bill has generated a huge amount of interest. I thoroughly agree with elements of it, particularly on nature-based solutions, which build on the “Plan for Water” published by the last Government in 2022. If the Bill proceeds, there are areas that I would like to discuss and develop in Committee, but I will not detain the House any further on them now. I look forward to the progress of the Bill.

• 27 Mar 2025 · St Patrick’s Day and Northern Irish Affairs · Hansard source

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  It has been an enormously enjoyable debate. I start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee). From the perspective of Conservative Members, he is one of a depressingly large wave of new entrants into this place, but he has definitely marked himself out as one to watch. He produced a tour de force—a wide-ranging review of the historical community ties between the nations of the British Isles. The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) gave us a very interesting history of St Patrick. I certainly learned more from his speech than I was able to find in my Wikipedia search in preparation for this debate—that is an admission. The hon. Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins), who is, I think it is fair to say, a proud trade unionist, and other Labour Members highlighted the strong connection between people of Irish descent and the trade union movement—so though that movement has not all been good, some of it has been. My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) called with great force and, in my submission, quite rightly for a bank holiday to celebrate St Patrick. If the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme put forward a proposal to celebrate both St Patrick’s day and St George’s day as bank holidays, I would be one of the first to support him. My hon. Friend the Member for Romford also mentioned the now defunct order of St Patrick, and his campaign to reinstate it. That sounds like a sensible thing to do. He made reference to the green of St Patrick. From my research on Wikipedia, I learned that St Patrick’s colour was actually blue, not green. Green is a development of the most recent centuries, so we might have to do a bit of work there. The hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) celebrated—boasted about, frankly—having the largest Irish diaspora of any UK constituency. She highlighted, as did others, the huge contribution that people of Irish descent have made to the local economy and the local community. I will skip to the hon. Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon), who spoke of the Tayto diaspora and celebrated the London Irish community. He made an eloquent plea for support for his campaign on Philomena’s law. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) rightly described the significant contribution of Northern Ireland to this nation’s fight for freedom in the second world war, but he went on to recognise some darker aspects of the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and of the east-west relationship, and I do not think he was wrong to do that. If we are to have a mature relationship built on trust and respect, we need to recognise each other’s weaknesses, as well as being sentimental about our shared history. We should be clear-eyed and recognise the failings of others, as well as ourselves, in our shared history. While I do not agree with everything he said, there were points when I thought, “Yes, you are quite right. We should be clear-eyed about this.” That takes me to St Patrick. His day, 17 March, is forever linked in my family with my father, Patrick Mayhew, who was half-Irish. It was a red letter day in my family’s calendar. Wherever we were in the world, we would always ring up or get in touch with my father to wish him a happy St Patrick’s day. St Patrick was, in fact, a Briton. I knew that, but I did not know until I prepared for this debate that that he was captured by Irish pirates and taken forcefully as a slave to Ireland. Whatever his experience there, he cannot have hated it too much, because he then voluntarily returned to bring Christianity to Ireland and to drive out the snakes. That is an early example of cross-border cultural mixing that has been to our mutual benefit. The latest census suggests that more than 400,000 Irish- born people live in the UK. Ireland is, of course, our closest neighbour by geography, by culture, by family connection and by friendship. That has led to a historical interlinking of our economies—an interlinking that can be developed further. As of 2023, some £78.8 billion of trade flowed between our nations. The United Kingdom is Ireland’s largest trading partner, and Ireland is the sixth-largest trading partner of the United Kingdom. We cannot pretend, as the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim rightly pointed out, that there are not continuing economic and political challenges in the relationship between our countries. I therefore welcome the close political co-operation, east-west and, increasingly, north-south. Speaking from a personal perspective, I recognise some of his comments about the difficulties of dealing with the Irish state back in the 1980s. In those days, I well recall the then Attorney General expressing considerable frustration at extradition applications being refused because of typing errors and grammatical inconsistencies. That is just a little historical note that I wanted to add to the account given by the hon. and learned Member. We had a UK-Ireland summit as recently as 6 March, and it was noticeable that the Taoiseach said: “we make the greatest progress when our two governments work together, particularly to support peace, prosperity and reconciliation on this island. Rooted in our commitments as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, I am confident that today marks a new chapter in the Irish British relationship.” That is what this debate, among many others, is doing. It powerfully supports a bringing together of our two nations, and a focus on and recognition of our shared history and future. May St Patrick inspire us all to further friendship and co-operation across the British Isles.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Passenger Rail Performance · Hansard source

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  We are told that nationalisation is the answer to improving passenger rail performance. If that is the case, surely it would make sense to start by nationalising the worst performing operators. CrossCountry comes last out of all train operating companies for passenger satisfaction and it is not complying with its obligations. The Secretary of State could call in that contract, so why is it not the first operator to be nationalised under GBR?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Passenger Rail Performance · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but she ducks the point that if she had the political will she could bring CrossCountry in-house now. It is not the first operator to come under GBR or even close to it. Under current plans, the Government will not get around to tackling CrossCountry until 2031. In the meantime, highly effective private operators with some of the highest levels of customer satisfaction such as c2c and Greater Anglia will be subjected to dislocating nationalisation this year. Why are the Government forcing nationalisation in areas where current services are liked, and sitting on their hands where people are crying out for improvements?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  In October last year the Chancellor delivered a massive tax, borrow and spend Budget. Now her plans have collapsed around her ears, with an emergency Budget to cut that spending, so has the time now come for the Prime Minister to state in public that he has full confidence in the Chancellor?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I drove a tractor to Fakenham racecourse about five or six weeks ago, to take part in a demonstration that not only involved farmers but encompassed the wider rural community, including farming industry suppliers. Does my hon. Friend agree that the mood in relation to the Government is sulphurous?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  The rate of decrease has been increased substantially. Does the Minister not agree that that will have a negative impact on financial viability? The change in the pace of the decrease of the delinked payments makes an old impact assessment unreliable.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing multiple interventions. We have heard about food security, but the Government have a number of other legal obligations, one of which is to halt biodiversity net loss by 2030. If SFI—the key measure to help farmers in the fight against biodiversity loss—is effectively cancelled, how on earth will they hit their legal obligations?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Is the problem not worse than that? Farmers can no longer rely on the schemes that seem to be applicable to them because the SFI can be paused or cancelled without notice. What confidence can they have that any scheme to which they seem able to apply will be there when they need it most?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I should have referred to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I personally benefit from these payments, and I am the director of a farming company that benefits indirectly from the payments. I want to make that absolutely clear , Mr Twigg.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  We all enjoyed the emergency Budget earlier today. One of the core elements that the Chancellor of the Exchequer planted her flag on was economic stability. How does my hon. Friend the shadow Minister think farmers can have economic stability when schemes such as the SFI are removed without any notice, while at the same time they suffer a 76% reduction in the first £30,000 of the delinked payments and nothing above? How do we get economic stability with that approach?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  The Minister has mentioned the £5 billion over two years on a number of occasions—not just in this debate, but in previous ones—but does he accept that if we take the £2.4 billion per year that started in 2019, at the start of the previous Parliament, and simply update that for inflation, the figure of £5 billion over two years actually represents a real-terms cut in support for our farmers of several hundred million pounds? My second question, which I would love him to answer, is what happens afterward? The Red Book suggests a £600 million reduction in support thereafter.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend accept that farmers right across the country are currently seeing a cash-flow crisis? A business may be profitable in one, two, three or five years’ time, but if it cannot pay the bills now, it will go bust. Does my hon. Friend accept that the Government’s cumulative actions are putting farmers at risk?

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am just flummoxed by the Government’s approach to the Bill. Clause 1 raises employer national insurance from 13.8% to 15%. Almost more damagingly, clause 2 reduces the threshold at which they start paying it from £9,100 to just £5,000. The Government know how damaging this measure is for healthcare. We can see that because they have taken action to exempt the NHS from it. That will cost billions of pounds, because healthcare providers cannot just diversify as other sections of the economy might be able to. They cannot raise prices. A general practitioner’s customer is the state, and prices are fixed by the Treasury. As a result, the Government know exactly what the impact of this proposal will be on hospices. We have already heard that without an exemption, they will face an additional £30 million of costs every year as a result of these changes. When the Bill was first announced, I assumed that there had been an oversight by the Treasury and that it would be addressed as the Bill progressed. But both last week and this week, the Lords have moved to fix what was originally considered to be perhaps an oversight. Today’s decision to seek to reverse Lords amendments 1B and 5B in particular demonstrates beyond doubt that it is not an oversight but a deliberate decision taken by Labour to penalise hospices for the care of the dying, and to do what with that money? We may be in the obscene position in a few weeks’ time of funding for state-assisted dying being raised by taxing palliative care. This is absolute madness. If Members wanted any other reason why they should not support the Government, that is an overwhelming one. I make one last reference to the emptiness of the Government Benches. There are now two Labour Members sitting there who are not required to be— [ Interruption. ] I take it back, there is only one. That indicates to me that Labour Members do not want to be associated with the Bill. They will scurry through the Lobby later, but they are not brave enough to stand up and defend the decision of their Government.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Chancel Repair (Church Commissioners' Liability) Measure (HC 773) Church Funds Investment Measure (HC 772) · Hansard source

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  This appears to be a very sensible proposal. I noticed that the parishes of Brundall, St Lawrence, Great Plumstead, St Mary and Buxton, St Andrew are all in my constituency. Am I right in thinking that as a result of the Measure, their liability for the repair costs of their chancels will not be increased, that there will be no increased liability for parishioners and that it will just make the process of applying for payment from central funds much simpler?

• 19 Mar 2025 · Transport Connectivity: North-west England · Hansard source

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  Their concerns were wrong. I had a minor position in the Treasury at the time, and I can assure the hon. Lady that that was genuine redirection of funds, albeit over a period, as one would expect, with the release of funds associated with the development of HS2 in the northern sector. To conclude the list, we had £3.3 billion for road improvements and an additional £11.5 billion for Northern Powerhouse Rail from Manchester to Liverpool. The question that is easy to miss in opposition but impossible to avoid in government is this: where do the Government want money to be spent? That money could be used for those widespread improvements or be rediverted to a northern branch of a version of HS2, but it is impossible to spend the same money twice. If the Minister wants to do both, where is the money going to come from? Finally, many hon. Members referred to the seeming disconnect between investment decisions in London and the south-east and elsewhere in the country, the north-west in particular. The hon. Member for Leigh and Atherton used a good phrase: “Growth goes where the growth already is.” The previous Government at least took the first step in tackling an injustice in the Green Book analysis. That was undertaken to unlock some of the levelling-up investment that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) referred to. I am concerned that the new Government—certainly the new Treasury—are reverting to type. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer had her growth panic a few weeks ago—

• 19 Mar 2025 · Transport Connectivity: North-west England · Hansard source

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  It is lovely to see you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) for securing the debate, and congratulate all hon. Members, who have put very forceful cases for transport in the north-west. Their combined contributions have demonstrated that there are many shared problems in the region. I do not have time to mention every hon. Member who has contributed, so I will limit myself to commenting on the contribution of the hon. Member for Leigh and Atherton, who highlighted that her constituency, like I suspect many others in the area, is a post-industrial commuter belt that is struggling to cope with the consequential increase in traffic. Because of the over-reliance on cars, the society suffers from high transport-related social exclusion. There are a number of issues, but I will try to mash them together into three headlines. Let us start with the positive news, which is the welcome devolution of transport policy. It was implemented by Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, but it was of course a Conservative policy that was brought in in 2017, so while we welcome it, we should share the plaudits. I welcome the success of the Bee network, but we have to recognise that it was expensive—there was £1 billion of Government support. That raises a big issue, because as well as that £1 billion, Bee is supported by considerably north of £130 million a year from central funds, by my calculations. Its parent, as it were—Transport for London—receives in excess of £1 billion a year. There is therefore a fundamental question here for the Minister. The Bus Services (No. 2) Bill is going through the House of Lords, and I have with me the consultation on Great British Railways and “A railway fit for Britain’s future”. If this is the model for the future, can the Minister shed some light on where the increased funding will come from? It is a good development—it was Conservative policy—but where it is expanded beyond the large mayoral combined authorities to other combined authorities, there will inevitably be an associated cost. The second related issue is the potential conflict when regional policy butts up against national policy, when a strong regional mayor rightly wants control over a combined transport policy, whether that is buses, rail or road. We potentially have a directing mind under Great British Railways—intended to be one of its key benefits—coming up against Andy Burnham, for example. The consultation paper refers to that, but has no detail on how those potential conflicts will be resolved and who will be the final arbiter. Perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity to respond on that. Many hon. Members called for the reintroduction of the northern HS2 extension, focusing not on speed, but on capacity. We have to recognise that, again, it comes back to money. The cancellation of the northern part of HS2 redirected £19.8 billion to other transport projects for the region. This is not a comprehensive list, but it gives a flavour: £2 billion for the new station at Bradford and a new connection to Manchester; £3 billion for upgraded and electrified lines from Manchester to Sheffield, Sheffield to Leeds, Sheffield to Hull and Hull to Leeds; about £4 billion of additional transport funding for the six city regions; £2.5 billion of additional funding for outside the city regions; and £3.3 billion for road improvements, albeit largely filling potholes.