Author: johnredwood

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): We have been invited by the Opposition to debate a general motion of no confidence in my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary. I have full confidence in my right hon. Friend. He inherited a difficult task from the last Labour Government and the coalition Government. I think that he fully understands the magnitude of that task and that he is coming up with a number of creative proposals to try to improve the position.

Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab): It is a disaster.

John Redwood: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that, for 13 years, Labour did not invest in our roads and railways to give us the capacity that we need. I fully accept that during its five years in government, the coalition was unable to invest on the necessary scale because of the financial disaster that it inherited from the outgoing Labour Government.

We have had almost 20 years of totally inadequate investment in road and rail capacity. We now have a growing economy. Many more people have jobs and need to get to work, many more children need to get to school, and many more people want to go to the shops or need to go to hospital, so we are simply running out of road and rail capacity. My right hon. Friend is trying to use every method he can legally lay his hands on to address that chronic lack of capacity.

In my constituency, another 12,000 new homes are being built quite rapidly, and the pressures on our infrastructure are enormous. I witnessed some of the difficulties due to rail delays on Thursday and Friday when I was trying to use services in and out of Reading and there were disruptions. My right hon. Friend has asked the extremely well-paid leaders of the railway industry to get a grip on their services and ensure they deliver on the infrastructure available. But he has gone further than that: he has said to the railways that they will need much more capacity in the years ahead to deal with fast-growing places such as Wokingham, and he has therefore said that digital technology will make a big difference.

I fully support his strong initiative. The very lengthy and expensive process of creating entirely new railway lines is not a feasible solution across the country, so the way to get more capacity out of our existing railways is to use digital signalling, meaning that instead of being able to run only 20 trains an hour on perfectly good track, we can run 25 or more trains an hour, giving a big boost to capacity for a relatively modest investment.

My right hon. Friend is also right to recognise that he will need private sector as well as public sector investment. I noted that the Scottish National party spokesperson, who clearly did not know the figures, was unable to respond to an intervention about how, in his party’s fully nationalised world, it would replace the large sums of capital and the considerable sums of revenue that the private sector tips into the railways as the partnership model develops.

The Labour party is with the SNP on this. It always denies that any fault rests with the nationalised section of the railway, yet in the latest set of problems, particularly in Northern rail, big errors were made by the heavily subsidised nationalised part of the industry. I am very glad that my right hon. Friend says there will be new leadership there, because new leadership is desperately needed to supervise the expenditure of the very substantial sums that this Parliament has voted for that industry and to make sure they are well spent.

Another reason why I have confidence in my right hon. Friend is because he recognises that we need road as well as rail capacity, because the overwhelming majority of all our constituents’ journeys are still undertaken by car or van or bus, and they require road capacity.

The most welcome thing he has done so far is to say we need not just to expand the strategic national highways network, which of course we do, but a strategic local network so that we can beef up the A roads. That would mean that we could have more through traffic, meaning that vehicles would be taken away from residential areas and town centres, where we do not want conflict between traffic, pedestrians and cyclists. It would also free some of the blocks on the existing highways and provide better journeys.

I hope that as my right hon. Friend goes about selecting that strategic local route network with councils, he will look favourably on the bids from West Berkshire and Wokingham in my area. We have put a lot of thought into them and wish to make progress, but we will need substantial investment to create better access routes to the main cities and centres of employment, because the existing network is already well over capacity in terms of congestion.

I hope my right hon. Friend will also consider the interface between the rail and road networks. One of the big issues in my area is that we cannot get over the railway line. We rely on level crossings, but their gates are down for a lot of the time at busy periods for the railways, meaning that we get massive onward congestion in the road system. We therefore need money for bridges.

I also hope that work on the strategic local road network will involve looking at junctions. A modest way in which we could get much more capacity out of the current road network would be to improve junctions. It is often a good idea to have roundabouts rather than traffic lights, and another good idea is the better phasing of traffic lights. Traffic lights can be fitted with sensors so that if there is no traffic on an approach road, that road does not get a green phase. Roads should get a green phase only when somebody needs that.

There are many things that can be done. I have every confidence that my right hon. Friend wants to do them, so will he please get on with that, and will Parliament allow him to do so?

Today I visited Bohunt at their request. It was good to see the large and stylish new building, with plenty of growing room for the school as it expands its numbers one year group at a time.

The school walls are enlivened by some great quotes chosen by the pupils. We are told genius is 1% Inspiration and 99% perspiration. We are advised that Logic can get you from A to B but imagination can get you anywhere. The general drift of the aphorisms is to encourage creative thinking. self reliance, and a love of learning. The School’s catchphrase is Enjoy, Respect, Achieve.

I spent some time with the pupils on the School Council answering their questions about Parliament. I also asked them a few of my own. They told me they thought modern learning was made easier by the use of the ipad. They thought their electronic library met more of their demands than the traditional book library. They had no suggestions for me or their Head on how to improve their school, seeming content with their great surroundings and the ambience created by the teachers.

I renewed my request for better settlements for local schools in my meeting yesterday with the Education Secretary. I have regularly lobbied for a better overall settlement for Education, and for a better share of the total for Wokingham and West Berkshire. We have a strong case as the per pupil amounts for our schools are  low by national standards. The government has accepted the need both to increase the total, and to improve the relative position of areas like ours that are at the bottom of the table for cash. We are discussing the magnitude and speed of improvement.

I also made the point about the problems for schools adjusting to sudden declines in pupil numbers. In order to operate a system allowing parent and student choice, and  to cope with rising pupil numbers overall, it is  necessary for more places to be available than there are pupils to fill them. If one or two schools suffer a sharp fall owing to say the opening of a new school nearby, this can cause problems for them in handling the budget consequences.

The Secretary of State promised to get back to me with a considered written reply to these points.

I am meeting the Education Secretary this afternoon to go through the case for better levels of school funding in Wokingham and West Berkshire. The final budgets for 2018-19 for Wokingham schools total £98.742 million, compared to £94.45m last year, an increase of 4.5% This increase does have to take care of the rise in pupil numbers as well as providing for rising costs. The largest rise for an individual school is for Bohunt as it expands, taking on more pupils. In contrast the Forest and Emmbrook experienced a  reduction in  pupil numbers  with adverse consequences for funding, as the per pupil element is an important part of the total.

I would like to thank our  hosts for the Evendons Ward Conservative BBQ on Sunday. The rain stayed away and we had an enjoyable meal with good company in the garden. Borough Councillors were  present so those who wanted an  update  on local matters could get one.