Labourhome - Stories by tom harris mp

[Blogs] Crossrail could be Theresa's unintended victim

2008-10-23T17:58:10-05:00

I WAS genuinely surprised when Theresa Villiers confirmed during her party’s conference that the Conservatives would oppose a third runway at Heathrow. Surprised because this is one promise that simply won’t be kept, and she should know that; and because it flies in the face of Cameron’s valiant efforts to depict his party as serious about government.

Over at Conservative Home today, Theresa has been defending her policy, presumably in part a response to her own backbench colleague, David Wilshire, who used the same site to blast the policy earlier this week. I’ve spoken to one senior Tory front bencher who shares my utter bemusement at this policy and I doubt if he is alone.

Certainly the Tories’ traditional core constituency, business leaders, are appalled by Villiers’ suggestion that the need for a third runway could be offset by the building of a new high-speed rail network. High-speed rail will, I’m sure, have an important part to play in this country’s transport strategy in the future. But to claim that it will obviate the need for more runway capacity at Heathrow is over-optimistic at best, self-delusional at worst.

How could high-speed trains reduce demand for international travel? In fact, while Heathrow operates at 99 per cent capacity at the moment, best estimates suggest the kind of high-speed network now advocated by the Tories could reduce that by just two per cent.

An expanded Heathrow is necessary because without it, international travellers will vote with their executive club cards and turn their backs, not just on Heathrow, but on UK plc. We will not be able to maintain London’s position as Europe’s financial capital while our biggest and most important airport is choking to death.

But the policy would claim another victim which has so far been ignored: Crossrail.

Crossrail, due to open in 2017, will provide a new commuter link between Maidenhead and Heathrow to the west of London to the City of London and onwards to Kent in the east. It is not only essential to the economic prosperity of London and the rest of the country - it is also very, very expensive. It will cost more than �15 billion, with the taxpayer meeting about a third of the cost and the remaining two thirds being met through a supplement on London’s business rates and by contributions from the capital’s financial institutions, who see the new link as vital to their future prosperity.

The financial package is robust, though inevitably there are those who remain unconvinced. But how robust will the package be if the airport to which Crossrail will provide a vital link is to be left to wither on the vine? How much value will Crossrail itself add to London if Heathrow cannot expand and cannot compete? And how willing will the City be to pay for a link to Yesterday’s Airport?

The real motivation behind this Tory transport policy - one of the few that the front bench team have come up with after Ms Villers’ 18 months in charge - is votes. Or more specifically, a clutch of marginal seats to the west of London that the Tories need to win in order to have a chance of forming the next government.

What a handicap for any new government to have to carry in its first months in power: a manifesto commitment to eroding a central pillar of our economic success, a commitment which would have serious - possibly terminal - consequences for the most ambitious and expensive rail scheme since the end of the war.

Which is why it’s a promise that simply won’t find its way into the Tory manifesto at the next election. Because to include it would be to invite the (justified) accusation that Cameron isn’t serious about growing the UK economy.

But if this policy is to be ditched, it’s surely very likely that a new policy will have to be developed and promoted by a new Shadow Transport Secretary.

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[Blogs] Nadine Dorries and the politics of hate

2008-10-17T16:03:11-05:00

WITH the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill heading back to the Commons this week, Nadine Dorries MP has been drumming up self-publicity support for her stance on abortion.

Nadine got some publicity last time round by spreading the myth that Labour had an unofficial whip on the abortion vote when it last came up. Now she’s at it again.

In May she was claiming that “Labour abandoned the free vote principle by whipping their MPs on a three line whip ‘to attend the chamber’. I saw the whipping note, a copy of it was left for us to see.”

Now she’s claiming it was Harriet Harman alone who whipped the vote.

Maybe it’s because Nadine hasn’t been an MP for long, but she clearly doesn’t realise that there is no such thing as a whip that forces MPs to “attend the chamber”. She claimed back in May that Labour whips were encouraging Labour MPs to walk into the pro-choice lobby; funny, then, that I walked into the lobby in favour of 20 weeks and found myself accompanied by Nadine and… four Labour whips.

Women’s abortion rights are important to Harriet, and I would be astonished if she had not attempted to persuade as many colleagues as possible to vote to maintain 24 weeks. And I know that Nadine did the same on the other side of the argument. But when Harriet did it, it was “whipping”; when Nadine did it, it was “lobbying”.

In fact, I was approached by only two people asking me to vote one way or the other. Anne Snelgrove, the Swindon MP and a good friend, tutted and shook her head when I told her I would be voting for a lower limit - gosh, some real arm-twisting from the Sisters there, eh?

And who else whipped lobbied me? Oh, that’s right - Nadine Dorries.

Nadine has been trying for some time now to make abortion a party political issue. She justifies this by claiming that Labour made it a political issue first by whipping Commons votes. Now that I’ve pointed out that this never happened, she should withdraw that accusation. She won’t.

Nadine Dorries must gaze on her new heroine, Sarah Palin, and wonder why she has found it so difficult to import into the UK the rancid politics of hate that the Alaskan governor and her followers thrive upon. To give her her due, Nadine is trying her best.

But along with the great majority of her own party, I sincerely hope and pray that she fails, as she deserves to.

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[Blogs] Earth calling Redwood...

2008-09-25T08:08:23-05:00

I RARELY write as a transport minister on transport issues; this is a personal political blog. However, one of my regular readers has suggested I respond to John Redwood’s piece about transport on his blog, and for once, I’m more than willing to do so. John is an obviously intelligent bloke who has a reputation for bringing an expert level of detailed analysis to his subjects, particularly the economy. But I detect an element of emperor’s new clothes in most of his writing, and his post on Ruth Kelly is a perfect example.

John, remember, is probably the only Tory MP who still thinks Railtrack was a good idea! As we all know, it was, in fact, an unmitigated disaster for the railway network and for the country. And John Redwood was a member of the government which created it.

He starts off his attack on the railways by lamenting the absence of services from his local station before 4.00 am. And there were so many such services under the Tories, weren’t there? Is the current Conservative Party pledging to introduce them? No.

When he writes of his plans to catch a Eurostar service to Paris, he does so through gritted teeth, almost as if he believes that the money spent on creating a high-speed rail link to the continent was not well spent. When he writes: “No wonder people find it difficult doing more with the continent when such a crucial link as London-Paris is so poor”, he seems oddly ill-informed about the commercial success and popularity of High Speed 1 (or HS1) since it opened last year. Let’s remind ourselves that it was indeed the Conservative government who pledged to build HS1 but it was also the Conservatives’ finance package which had to be rescued by John Prescott after it failed to deliver the capital needed. HS1 was built because of a Labour government. I accept that that may not necessarily be an achievement that impresses Mr Redwood.

Then he refers to “the government’s worst form of travel, going by air.” I wonder which government-owned airline he meant? Which government-owned airport did he plan to use, do you think? What was he talking about? Does he regret the fact that civil aviation is, rightly, an entirely commercial business? Does he believe a future Conservative government should intervene more in such an industry? As far as I know, the only intervention the Tories want to make is in vetoing Heathrow’s third runway, a move which would be a disaster for our country’s economy.

John Redwood writes: “Ruth Kelly, like her predecessors, has failed to take decisions to expand network capacity.” And yet, I know for a fact that he is very well aware of the government’s guarantee of 1300 additional railway carriages to be delivered before April 2014. If he wants to talk about forward planning, fine: let’s talk about his own government’s record on rail.

I have no problem whatsoever with the railways being in the private sector. But can we just remind ourselves of the reasons why the Tories privatised in the mid-’90s? The first was political: John Major felt he needed to prove himself to his party’s right wing (including John Redwood) by supporting a flagship privatisation project. He needed to do so in order, partly, to emerge from his predecessor’s shadow. The second, and more important, reason was that the government wanted a way to manage the expected - and, to them, welcome - terminal decline of the railways in Britain.

Much to the disappointment of the Conservatives and, I suspect, John Redwood, today’s railways are a success story, albeit a success story with its own challenges. Performance as recorded by the industry-standard public performance measure (PPM) is today higher than than at any time since it was first measured. Safety continues to improve. There are more services than ever before and, crucially, more passengers are being carried than at any time in the history of the British rail network outside of the two world wars.

And when so much media attention is concentrated on the cost of headline advertised railway fares, it is easy to forget that regulated fares are no more expensive in real terms than they were when we came to office and that four fifths of rail passengers use either regulated or discounted fares.

Does John Redwood, I wonder, regret the fact that more private train-operating companies (TOCs) than ever before are paying the Department for Transport for the privilege of running services, rather than accepting public subsidy? The prospect of such a development would have been ridiculed in the days when he sat round the cabinet table.

But the challenges to which I alluded are significant: high demand means pressure on capacity. The modernisation of the West Coast Mainline - which Network Rail rescued from the incompetant hands of John Redwood’s Railtrack, bringing costs down from �14 billion to �8 billion - will mean a 50 per cent increase in capacity. Crossrail (which the Tories failed to deliver during their term in office) is going ahead, Thameslink is happening because of �5.5 billion of government investment, the Reading bottleneck will at last be dealt with thanks to a �425 million commitment from this government, and Birmingham New Street will at last be given the make-over for which Birmingham’s citizens have long been asking.

And that’s before the roll-out of the 1300 additional carriages.

Record investment in the railways, nationwide concessionary travel for pensioners and disabled people, new powers for local authorities to address declining bus patronage - these have all been opposed by John Redwood’s party.

His disdain for public transport speaks volumes about the Conservatives’ attempts to present themselves as even remotely concerned about the environment and their claim that, suddenly, after decades of antipathy towards passengers, they could care less about those who depend on it to travel.

Labour Party members often talk about our achievements and of how terrible it would be if the Conservatives ever got the chance to undermine them. Ruth Kelly’s departure is as good a time as any to remind ourselves that in the field of transport, our achievements are impressive and worth fighting to preserve.

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[Blogs] Poverty, shmoverty

2008-08-28T14:46:46-05:00

THE CONVICTION that the elimination of poverty - child poverty, pensioner poverty, Third World poverty - is at the heart of the Labour movement. Every Labour activist I’ve ever met would agree that the fight against material poverty must be a priority for any Left-of-centre government.

I’ve commented here before about the Tories’ new-found - and utterly unconvincing - passion for fighting poverty. So why shouldn’t Cameron and co. be trusted on their claims that they are best placed to combat poverty? And why should Labour in government be trusted in this effort, particularly when recent figures show we’ll have difficulty meeting our child poverty targets?

You’ll forgive me if I, again, use the Tories’ record in government as evidence; after all, ‘Dave’ has hardly uttered a single word of criticism of the Thatcher/Major years, so we have to assume he thinks their example is one his party should follow.

Labour may be making less progress in the fight against poverty than we all would hope, but surely that will always be the case, however much progress any government makes? After all, no level of poverty is acceptable. But when a Labour government fails to hit its own targets on poverty reduction, that represents a disappointment for the whole government and party.

But let’s not allow our opponents to succeed in convincing the public that our policies have been ineffective; to the contrary, Labour policies have materially transformed hundreds of thousands of families’ lives for the better.

Because we do have targets. We do have ambition. And we do have priorities.

Look at the Tories in power: not a single measure aimed at reducing poverty; not a single target for poverty reduction. Even mass unemployment was considered “a price well worth paying”, according to the man who gave ‘Dave’ his first post in government (which is perhaps why he has not even repudiated this ridiculous statement). Poverty in every area soared under the Tories. Sometimes, that was a deliberate aim of policy; sometimes it was simply an irritating consequence of Thatcherite economic policy that demanded some warm words for the media and a nod and a wink to the activists at conference.

This is the key: the Tories in government don’t fail to meet their poverty reduction targets, because they don’t have such targets. They don’t believe poverty reduction is at all important. They believe that if poverty is to be reduced, the market alone will do it through “trickle-down” economics. Poverty, and the fight against it, isn’t important to the Tory Party. If it were, they would surely have come up with a policy during their time in government to fight it.

The same is true of the nationalists. Poverty, the health service, education, the economy - success in these areas is only important as a means to an end, the end being an independent Scotland. That’s all that’s important to nationalists; if they could achieve it without having to worry about actual policies, they wouldn’t lose any sleep over those areas.

The Liberals? Well, provided they get PR for the House of Commons, everything will be all right anyway.

But for Labour, poverty is an anathema, an unacceptable scab on the face of society. Yes, we can argue about the effectiveness of tax credits, the minimum wage, about whether absolute or relative poverty should be our benchmark, about whether we need to tax the very rich more. Different people and sections within the Labour movement will have different ideas about how we reach the common, agreed objective of defeating poverty once and for all.

When it comes to government action against poverty, the question Labour asks itself is “How?” For the Tories (and the nationalists), the question is more likely to be “Why?”

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[Blogs] In praise of Labour government

2008-08-14T19:44:48-05:00

UNFASHIONABLE though it may seem, it’s time someone pointed out a fact that most commentators - and certainly most of the blogosphere - have been avoiding: the government has done a good job in the last 11 years and Britain is a far better place as a result.

As Nick Raynsford said in his New Statesman article last week:

Compared with the position we inherited in 1997, today’s Britain is a better, fairer, more successful, more confident and more tolerant society.

He’s right. We’ve been kicked around so much, and so severely, recently that it’s almost easy to forget that we don’t have to take it.

Remember the sky-high inflation under the Tories? The record mass unemployment that was “a price well worth paying” for questionable economic returns? Remember the TWO Tory-built recessions? Remember the millions of workers encouraged to claim incapacity benefits by the Tories as a way of massaging the unemployment statistics? Remember the days before the minimum wage, when employers could pay their workers peanuts, and do it with the government’s blessing? Remember the legions of school-leavers put on the scrap heap instead of being offered training and further education? Remember the double-digit interest rates? Remember the scrapping of the pensions-earnings link without anything put in place to raise pensioners’ living standards?

‘Dave’ likes to gloss over the fact that he is a (whisper it) Tory, because he doesn’t want us to remember his own party’s record, nor the part he played in advising the worst Chancellor in modern history.

Every government faces difficult challenges, as do our own citizens.

But Britain is far better off with Labour than it could ever be with the Tories. Their smug complacency and arrogance - evidenced by some of their members’ comments on this and other sites - helped to shatter our society and our economy before. It would be a tragedy if they were to be allowed to do so again.

It’s been a bruising year so far for Labour. Government is difficult. Life is difficult for many people.

But Labour can win a fourth term.

We can win a fourth term if we believe we are up to the challenge, if we start making the case for Labour afresh, acknowledging where we need to make changes while avoiding sounding defensive about our record in government, which is something we can and should be proud of.

The next election has yet to be won or lost. The people, not the commentariat, will decide its outcome. The prize for Labour as a party is a fourth term in office. The prize for Britain as a nation is growth, prosperity and security, and its deliverance from a victorious Tory Party which has yet to learn from its mistakes in office, and so is doomed to repeat them if it is ever allowed back.

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[Blogs] Wishful thinking by the paranoid right

2008-08-12T15:38:56-05:00

WHEN cyber-Tories aren’t moaning about not having a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, they like to bang on about the so-called “intrusive state”. Iain Dale yesterday carried a letter published in Der Spiegel:

Sir, At the end of August I’m leaving London because I don’t wish my child to be forced into the kind of conformity where not only are school uniforms obligatory but even haircuts are regulated. That’s to say nothing of the ever present CCTV in schools or of the fact that even primary school kids have to give fingerprints.

Hmm. Aren’t Tories the ones who are most likely to complain about lack of uniforms in schools? And since when was the government responsible for regulating haircuts (good idea, though; must mention it to the manifesto group…)?

As for CCTV, I know of no MPs whose constituents have approached them asking for fewer CCTV cameras in their constituencies. The only people in Glasgow who I’m aware are against them are drug dealers who would rather not be filmed going about their business.

That CCTV cameras are some kind of threat to civil liberties seems to have become one of these accepted “facts” that barely qualifies as an opinion, so scarce is the evidence in its favour.

The regular accusation that we are living in what is close to, or is in reality, a “police state” is not only ridiculous - it’s offensive to the millions of people across the world who do live in such states and who regard the UK, rightly, as a beacon of freedom and democracy. So there.

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[Blogs] Salmond has done Labour a favour

2008-08-11T03:46:49-05:00

ALEX Salmond should have the gratitude of the Scottish Labour Party for at least one reason: for establishing beyond doubt that minority administrations can govern without the need for a coalition partner. I sincerely wish Labour had learned this lesson while we had the chance. I personally was convinced at the time of the necessity of doing a deal with the LibDems in order to govern effectively. Had we instead listened to wiser counsel, and decided to govern on our own, we could have avoided the electoral and democratic catastrophe that was proportional representation for local government.

We made that particular reform for one reason only: to buy the co-operation of the LibDems, whose support had been effectively advertised for sale on eBay for the right price. And the right price was Lowest Common Denominator politics.

Sick of the old system where only the most popular candidate won? Want a new system that guarantees a winning candidate even for the losing team? Reckon everyone should be able to be represented by a councillor from his preferred party regardless of how many votes that party actually wins? Then the single transerable vote is the one for you. In fact, have three, or even four councillors and then you can choose which one to represent you. That’s democracy in The New Scotland - the political equivalent of non-competitive sport in schools: all shall have prizes.

So thank you, Alex. Thank you for showing us the error of our ways. I trust it’s a lesson Labour will remember when we return to power at Holyrood.

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