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That the draft Industrial Training Levy (Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 26th January, be approved.
That the draft Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 26th January, be approved.
That the draft Private Security Industry (Licence Fees) Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 31st January, be approved.
That the draft Post Office Network Subsidy Scheme Order 2007, which was laid before this House on 1st February, be approved.
That the draft Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007, which were laid before this House on 8th February, be approved. [Mr. Watts.]
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 13568/05, draft Directive on the marketing of pyrotechnic articles; notes the Governments current negotiating line; and supports the Governments actions in this field. [Mr. Watts.]
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD): At the end of a possibly historic day of business in the House, I wish to present a petition on behalf of my constituents and of the parish and town councils in my constituency. The petition deals with the closure of sub-post offices and the community.
I draw the Houses attention to my early-day motion 1031, which lists the Somerton and Frome town councils and 63 other parish councils in my constituency. All of them have subscribed to the petition, which states:
To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
The Humble Petition of the parish councils of the constituency of Somerton and Frome.
Sheweth that we deplore the social, economic and environmental effects of the potential closure of a substantial number of post offices in the constituency of Somerton and Frome.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House urges the Government to reconsider the matter before irreparable is done to local communities.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Mr. Watts.]
Michael Jabez Foster (Hastings and Rye) (Lab): I am grateful to have this opportunity to comment on Eurostars ill-judged proposal to downgrade the Ashford International rail link to the continent by abandoning all services to Brussels and significantly reducing the service to Paris. It is clear that the curtailment of international services from Ashford is in direct conflict with the Governments policy to alleviate road traffic congestion, reduce carbon emissions and regenerate economically deprived areas in East Sussex and Kent such as my constituency of Hastings and Rye.
My hope is that the Government will intervene with Eurostar with a view to getting it to abandon its ill-considered proposals. At a time when we should be celebrating the opening of the high speed channel tunnel link from London to the continent, we are facing a reduction of the service in Ashford and the surrounding areaa diminution that is wholly unnecessarily.
On 14 November, the new St. Pancras International station will replace the Waterloo Eurostar terminal. At the same time, two new intermediate stations will be openedat Stratford in east London, and at Ebbsfleet near the Dartford tunnel. That is all well and good, but the knock-on effect of those changes is Eurostars proposal to abandon all direct services from Ashford to Brussels, and to reduce the services to Paris to four a day. Those reductions could herald the end of that important terminus, although I acknowledge that the company says that that is not its intention.
My purpose today is to explain why Eurostar has got it so wrong, and why elected representatives are incensed that their concerns, and the publics, have been ignored, despite the public support for the terminal. It is worth noting that this is by no means a party-political issue. Leading the campaign against the decision is Peter Skinner, the Labour MEP for the South-East region, and alongside him are his Conservative colleague Richard Ashworth MEP, the Liberal Democrat MEP Sharon Bowles, and the Green party MEP Caroline Lucas.
Similarly, there is support for the campaign to keep Ashford open from across the political spectrum, and that includes the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green).
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con):
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I hope that he gets a more positive response from the Minister than I did when I raised this matter a few weeks ago. As he said, there is an enormously wide coalition of people with an interest in the regeneration of Ashford and the whole south-east, and in the transport network, who are opposed to Eurostars policy. That coalition includes Kent county council, the Ashford and Shepway borough councils and MPs of all parties, with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) being one of them. Another interested party is the South East
England Development Agency, and even the European Commission has become involved. The only relevant body that has done nothing to persuade Eurostar to change its decision is the Department for Transportto the extent that the Secretary of State has refused even to meet me and my right hon. and learned Friend to discuss the matter. Is not that a shameful state of affairs?
Michael Foster: The Government may not yet fully understand all the circumstances. I have to say, with the greatest respect, that they certainly appear almost to be apologists for Eurostars woeful decision about Ashford. As the debate proceeds, I hope that the Minister will realise that there are different arguments from those he may have been given by Eurostar.
I shall explain why Eurostars decision is such a bad idea. What are the facts? First and foremost are the effects on the environment. In this place, we are united in acknowledging the threat from global warming, but Eurostar seems to be moving in a completely different direction. We want to reduce air travel and pursue policies that favour sustainable transport such as rail, yet Eurostar seems intent on moving millions of existing and potential passengers away from rail services and making them transfer to roadto use other stationsor perhaps even to air.
At present, Ashford is connected to the trans-European network, as is the whole of the south coast, through the link from Ashford to Rye, Hastings and on to Brighton and beyond. Only last year, Southern introduced a fast rail service from Brighton to Ashford, creating an interchange to Europe that is much appreciated and increasingly used. Similarly, towns in Kent and on the south coast have direct rail services to Ashford, thus ensuring a convenient link to Brussels and beyond through the Ashford connection. Five Network Rail lines converge on Ashfordfrom Canterbury, Folkestone, Brighton, Tonbridge and Maidstone. It is the perfect centre for onward rail travel to the continent. Those lines serve a population of about 1 million, in addition to the 100,000 people living in the greater Ashford area. Ashford is the natural focus for collecting and distributing traffic from a large part of south-east England through a sustainable rail link.
Norman Baker (Lewes) (LD): People in my East Sussex constituency are also concerned about the loss of service, especially given the loss of Waterloo, because Kings Cross and Stratford are more inconvenient for Lewes and similar areas. The matter is serious. To pick up one of the hon. Gentlemans points, does he realise that the alternative for business people in my constituency who use the improved rail line from Brighton to Ashford will be to travel by air from Gatwick? There is lack of continuity in Government policy in relation to the Eurostar cut, because there will be more emissions when people travel by air from Gatwick to Brussels and Paris than if they used Eurostar from Ashford, as they want to do.
Michael Foster:
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and if the decision stands, he may be right. The alternative that Eurostar is offering is a nightmare journey from the south coastfrom Lewes, Brighton
or Hastingsand the Kentish towns. People will have to travel on the M25, crawling and polluting their way to Ebbsfleet station, which has no effective domestic rail connections. That is bizarre.
My first question to my hon. Friend the Minister is why do not we ask Eurostar for an environmental impact statement before the company is permitted to proceed with its foolhardy decision? Eurostar must know that the M25-M2 interchange is already one of the most congested parts of the British road system. To place more traffic on that connection will not only cause endless delays and perhaps missed trains, it will also significantly contribute to pollution in the area. Indeed, it will be easier for many Eurostar users in the south-east to travel into London and across the city to St. Pancras, which will further inconvenience passengers and heighten congestion in the city.
The economic effects of the decision are important, too. The loss of the Ashford service will have a hugely detrimental effect on the economic prosperity of south-east England in general. Ashford is one of the countrys fastest growing towns, which is no doubt due in part to its easy links to the continent. Further afield, Hastings and Thanet are of special economic interest, and have been so designated by the European Commission. Investors from mainland Europe need simple and easy links to their bases on the continent and the move away from Ashford will make things more difficult for them.
The economic interest is even wider. Towns such as Rye, Eastbourne and Leweseven Brighton and beyondhave through rail links to Ashford, so people can travel with ease to the continent by train. As the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) suggested, the chances of them jumping into their cars and negotiating the M25 are remote when they have the option of catching a plane from nearby Gatwick. It beggars belief that a rail company should be so short-sighted.
Mr. Michael Howard (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for seeking to educate the Government on points that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and I have already made to them. Perhaps he would agree that we would have been able to expand on those points had the Minister been prepared to meet us. Does he also agree that, given the extent to which the track that Eurostar trains run on was publicly funded, the Government have a clear responsibility to intervene in this matter, and for them to continue to refuse to do so is a complete abdication of that responsibility?
Michael Foster: I cannot agree that it is an abdication because I suspect that the Government will be prepared to look again at this issue. However, to date, it is certainly difficult to distinguish what has happened. After this evening, I hope that that situation will change.
Why is the Eurostar argument so acceptable to the Government? Nobody else would seem to have bought it. I suspect that it is because Eurostar has produced a number of facts that are simply wrong. If one starts from the wrong premise, one gets the wrong answer. The first argument that Eurostar makes is that the Brussels to Ashford route is little used. In the last few
weeks, I have travelled back from both Brussels and Paris. I know that it is only empirical evidence, but there appear to be scores, if not hundreds, of happy passengers leaving the train at Ashford. Their existence seems to be denied by Eurostar. Why should that be so? I give two reasons. The first is that people simply buy their tickets from London. Why not? It is the same price. As a consequence, those joining at Ashford are perhaps ignored and not counted. Eurostar says that that is not quite right, because it checks things out with customer surveys. I was on the train last Friday and by the time I got on at Ashford, the customer surveys had already been sent round and were being collected back. No-one from Ashford was even in the count.
I must also comment on what I believe to be the disingenuous dissemination of information. The Count down has begun booklet is apparently a set of facts that supports Eurostars case. However, in reality it is nothing of the kind. What it says is often factually incorrect. For example, the publication suggests that the average travel time by car from Hastings to the new Ebbsfleet stationa distance of some 57 milesis 1 hour 16 minutes. Dream on. Negotiating the A21 is a nightmare and then as a reward one joins the M25, finally negotiating the M25/M2 junction. Doing that journey in 1 hour 16 minutes would mean seeing a blue light following shortly behind. It may just be possible in the dead of night, but then there would be no trains to catch. It is that sort of disingenuous proposition that has made people so angry. The same goes for the information given by Eurostar for the rail connections. It says that Brighton is within 1 hour 13 minutes of Kings Cross Thameslink. In fact, the average timetable shows a journey of between 1 hour 18 minutes and 1 hour 46 minutes. That is a considerable difference. The facts are simply wrong.
Why is Ashford so important? Its location 45 miles out of London draws interconnecting road and rail traffic away from areas of chronic congestion around the capital. Ebbsfleet will do the reverse, increasing peak tidal flows. Ebbsfleet has a purpose, but not in attracting the current Ashford traffic. So, what do I want from this evenings debate? I want my hon. Friend the Minister to understand that this is not a cry from the wilderness on behalf of my constituents in Hastings and Rye alone. Although many of my constituents, such as Councillor Godfrey Daniel, Councillor Dominic Sabetian, Neil Perry, Rhoderick Powrie, Trevor Sheldrake, Terry Dorrity, Ann Hamilton, Simon Foster and Mike Turner of Friends of the Earth, are exceedingly exercised, this is a much wider cry than that. It is a cry that has cross-party support, with virtually no dissenting voice. I challenge my hon. Friend to find anyone who supports the Eurostar case. The campaign is currently supported by South East Partners Brussels office, which represents local authorities across the south-east, by passenger groups on both sides of the tunnel, such as Railfuture and the Marsh Link action group, and by, so far as I am aware, not only the hon. Members who are present this evening, but the vast majority, if not all, of the regions MPs and MEPs.
My hon. Friend should not underestimate the strength of feeling about the preservation of this vital service, with the prosperity, convenience and environment of
the south-east at stake. He must not be taken in by the superficial figures that Eurostar offers him to support this dastardly deed.
When I initially secured the debate, I thought that all that I would be able to do would be to ask for the Ministers support in my entreaty to Eurostar. However, according to an article in The Guardian on 21 February, it appears that the Office for National Statistics believes that the British end of Eurostar is effectively under Government control because of the Governments stake in supporting the enterprise. If that is the case, I ask that my hon. Friend not only requests Eurostar to think again, but demands that it does so. In the other place, on 8 February, my noble Friend Lord Bassam confessed to a liking for Ashford, but suggested that the Government could not intervene because the previous Conservative Government had committed the enterprise to the private sector. That might have been the case, but if things have changed and the ONS is right, my hon. Friend has a further opportunity to act.
In the short time available for the debate, it has not been possible to explore in detail all the economic and environmental arguments that are available to those who want Ashford International to prosper, and nor has there been time to dissect the paucity of the Eurostar case on which my hon. Friend might have previously relied. I thus ask my hon. Friend to meet me and a delegation of south-east MPs and MEPs, together with interest groups, so that we can persuade him, if he is not yet already persuaded, that Ashford International must be saved for the south-east of England.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Tom Harris): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Michael Jabez Foster) on securing the debate. I also welcome to the Chamber the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). Last October, I replied to a debate that the hon. Member for Ashford secured on exactly the same subject, so he might find some of my comments vaguely familiar.
I know how much importance Ashford attaches to its international links, so I am pleased to have the opportunity to explain the development of the channel tunnel rail link, the operation of Eurostar international services and the way in which the Department for Transport is working to ensure that the transport infrastructure is in place for Ashford to fulfil its potential as a growth area. I will try to address the main points raised by my hon. Friend.
I should begin by making it clear that despite our arms length relationship with Eurostar, which is, after all, a private company, the Government have kept a watching brief on consultations over the timetable changes. In that respect, we have noted with interest the statement from the leader of the council and chair of Ashfords future delivery board, Councillor Paul Clokie. He said:
We are of course disappointed at the decision to reduce the number of international train services from Ashford by Eurostar;
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