Department for Transport — House of Commons, 2018-02-27
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Francis Slaughter (Labour, Centre-left): I will just say that I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and will not take any further interventions I will give one example of how politics, rather than good sense, is governing the way that London is dealt with. It is a local example, but I think it is a good case in point. I am sure that many Members have visited the Olympia exhibition centre, an excellent Victorian centre that has been going for 100 years, serving the people of the country, not just London. Until seven years ago, it had a dedicated timetabled tube service. In response to lobbying by Conservative Members to take trains away from that part of the service and put it on to the Wimbledon part of the District line, we lost that service, despite the fact that because of development, up to 8 million visitors will be going there and it is in the most densely populated part of London We have to start taking sensible decisions. That is what the Mayor of London is doing. He has frozen tube fares, which were going up too quickly, for four years. He has introduced the hopper fare, which means that people changing from one bus to another do not have to pay extra. That has benefited 140 million journeys so far. He has introduced the night tube, which the previous Mayor failed to. He has reduced strike days by 65%, and he has, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West indicated, done a lot for not just walking and cycling but increasing zero-emissions vehicles and, indeed, the whole green agenda in London. Last year, he also reduced operating costs for Transport for London by £150 million in a single year I will briefly turn to more strategic matters. We have some major developments in London. I am a supporter of HS2, notwithstanding the disruption it is causing to my constituency and neighbouring ones, because it is one of those great transport projects that I believe the country needs. I agree, as I quite often do, with the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham that the execution of the project leaves a great deal to be desired I declare an interest, because HS2 is bringing a lot of jobs and homes to my constituency, and it is co-ordinating with Crossrail, which is bringing a £42 billion benefit to the UK economy. We need Crossrail. We also need Crossrail 2. I remind anybody who thinks it is a new scheme that it is the Chelsea to Hackney line from the 1970s. Far from building these great infrastructure schemes in a way that is controversial, we delay for years and sometimes decades in doing so Finally, one strategic project that I think is a terrible error of judgment is the expansion of Heathrow. We now know that its commercial benefit is half what the Airports Commission said. It is less than Gatwick, and the net present value of it is about zero over the 60 years. Public infrastructure, in terms of road and rail, could cost up to £18 billion. Despite paying a huge dividend to its shareholders, Heathrow is only prepared to put £1 billion of that in The expansion will have terrible consequences in terms of noise and air pollution. We must think again about that. I know that the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), is applying the four tests of the Labour party and doing exactly that.