Tag: Louise Haigh

The letter sent by Louise Haigh, the Secretary of State for Transport, to Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, on 29 November 2024.

Text of Letter (in .pdf format)

The speech made by Louise Haigh, the Secretary of State for Transport, in London on 17 September 2024.

Thank you very much, it’s fantastic to be here at the launch of London International Shipping Week. Where better to deliver my first maritime address as Secretary of State than at the IMO.

Not only the global seat of maritime governance where shipping has been made safer, our seas cleaner, this industry more secure. But an enduring symbol, 75 years on from its creation, of this city’s role in maritime’s past, present and future.

It’s why London hosts the premier event in the shipping calendar, with 30,000 visitors attending over 300 events for London International Shipping Week last year. Although being a girl from Yorkshire, I should say this is about the whole UK maritime sector as well. Last year we celebrated progress made, confronted challenges ahead and continued the vital work of future-proofing this historic sector.

With like-minded states and dynamic businesses, we turned partnership into progress – accelerating work on green corridors, signing memorandums of understanding to explore the opportunities of AI, and showcasing new fully electric vehicles on the Thames.

All positive steps, which, next year, we absolutely must work together to turn into giant leaps. Because this sector faces more change in the next 30 years than it’s seen in the past 3,000 and all of us, government and industry, must be ready.

Take new technology, which will transform how maritime is powered. It will end the sector’s reliance on dirty energy. A reliance that has seen domestic shipping emissions outpace those of buses, coaches and rail combined.

Already, in this very building, the global community has agreed decarbonisation targets by around 2050. And over the coming years, Britain will continue to take the lead. Not only delivering our mission to make this country a clean energy superpower, but rallying the world to ensure those targets don’t slip from view. And we’ll explore the possibilities of autonomous shipping, never to replace human passion and experience, but to achieve levels of productivity and safety currently beyond our capabilities.

So, whether it’s hydrogen or battery power, green corridors or smart shipping, I will build on what’s come before and go further, much further, move faster – and match the ambition that’s already being displayed in our world leading sector – setting this industry on course towards a future of cleaner growth.

Steering us towards that future will be maritime’s workforce – over 200,000 strong, touching every part of the country. They are the lifeblood of this sector.

I know that working at sea isn’t just a job. My uncle left home at 16 – he ran away from home – to join the Merchant Navy. My grandma didn’t even know where he’d gone – but it changed his life forever. It gave him ambitions and opportunities that he couldn’t have otherwise achieved.

Because a maritime career represents the opportunity to be part of something bigger than yourself. We have all seen that on display, when maritime workers were tasked with getting this island nation through a pandemic, while much of the economy ground to a halt. They facilitated our global trade, almost all of which flows through our ports, before lining supermarket shelves, filling hospital stock rooms and landing on our doorsteps.

Maritime’s future depends on that workforce and on growing the pool of talent that it draws from. It means we can create a more resilient and innovative sector, proudly diverse in gender, background and skills.

It’s a future where coders and data analysts rub shoulders with engineers and seafarers – all choosing maritime as the place to launch and sustain a career. But that requires progress, real progress, on making the sector a more attractive place to work and stay.

It has now been over 2 years since the P&O Ferries scandal shook this country and the maritime sector. Clearly, not enough has been done since. I know many of you in this room will have been equally as shocked by those events. And this government is determined to start to put injustices like these right with our plan to ‘Make Work Pay’.

We’ll end the worst fire and rehire practices that undercut the rights and protections of workers, and undermine confidence in our economy. Because we know that the way to grow our economy, and to make maritime a more attractive home for a new generation of seafarers, is through a partnership between business and working people, which can be a rising tide that lifts all of us, in every corner of the country.

Today you have my assurance that I will place this sector at the heart of this government’s plan for a decade of national renewal. Economic growth. A clean energy superpower. Breaking barriers to opportunity. Whatever this government’s mission – maritime is at the heart of it.

We’ll harness London’s world leading strengths in maritime law and insurance. We’ll support exciting green projects up and down the country. And we’ll breathe new economic life into our vital coastal communities and ports.

Friends, I believe maritime’s best days aren’t confined to history but lie ahead. So, tonight, let’s fire the starting gun – or break the champagne – for London International Shipping Week 2025, making it the biggest and most impactful to date.

I know that many of you feel that maritime’s outsized contribution to our economy sails under the radar and that many of you don’t always get the recognition you deserve. But as Transport Secretary, I will champion you and this sector at every opportunity. And work with you, day in day out, not simply to secure maritime’s future, but the future of our economy and our country too.

The speech made by Louise Haigh, the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, in the House of Commons on 20 March 2023.

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. What a relief it is to see him in his place. Since he announced huge changes on HS2, affecting billions of pounds of investment and jobs, costs to the taxpayer and particularly affecting the north of England, this is the first we have seen or heard from him. You can call the search party off, Mr Speaker.

I welcome the deal on Network Rail, but it is overdue. After 10 months in which the Government refused to negotiate and, according to the chief executive of Network Rail, engaged in “noisy political rhetoric” that had been “counterproductive” to negotiations, a compromise has finally been made. However, passengers across the midlands, the north and Scotland, Members from both sides of the House, and possibly you, Mr Speaker, will be looking on in disbelief today as millions more in taxpayer cash is handed to an operator that is so demonstrably failing passengers. For the Secretary of State to stand at the Dispatch Box and hail a turnaround in the service demonstrates how staggeringly out of touch he is with the lived reality of people in this country.

The figures speak for themselves. Over the past six months, under the Secretary of State’s intensive improvement plan, Avanti West Coast has broken several records—records for delays and cancellations: the highest ever number of trains more than 15 minutes late and the highest single month of cancellations since records began. In one month, almost a quarter of services were badly delayed. That is higher than during the chaos in August and during the height of the pandemic.

That is not all. Under the Secretary of State’s so-called improvement plan, the number of trains on time actually fell to just one third. If that is what success looks like to the Government, is it any wonder that people question whether anything in this country works any more? They look on in disbelief as the answer to this prolonged failure is always millions more in taxpayers’ cash.

This issue matters because across the north, services remain in chaos. Today alone, more than 35 services have been cancelled on TransPennine Express. This has been an issue for not months but years. Six years ago, TransPennine Express had exactly the same issues that it faces today. Then, as now, it blamed staff shortages and the unions. It said then that it would recruit drivers and improve resilience. Then, as now, the Government shrugged their shoulders and let it off the hook as performance plummeted. The Secretary of State dismisses as pointless debates about the future of railways—little wonder, when the answer to the enormous challenges facing the railways is always more of the status quo.

The Conservatives promised competition that would serve passengers and lower fares; instead, as is happening today, contracts are awarded without the faintest hint of competition while fares rise again and again, and passengers suffer. Their answer to it all is more of the same: the same failing operators; the same waste and fragmentation; the same broken system. Labour will end the fractured, fragmented system holding our railways back and put passengers back at the heart of our rail network, prioritising long-term decision making. But the message that today’s decision sends could not be clearer. Under the Conservatives, our broken railways are here to stay. Under the Conservatives, passengers will always come last.

Mr Harper

The hon. Lady must have been listening to a completely different statement; what she just said bears very little relationship to either facts or the things I set out. Let me take her points in turn. I am pleased that she welcomed the acceptance by RMT members of the deal on Network Rail, and that—she obviously did not say this—she recognises that my approach since I became Transport Secretary has clearly been the right one, having helped lead to the situation we are in today. I did not expect her to pay me any credit for that, but I note that she welcomed the result.

The hon. Lady said that the Avanti figures speak for themselves, and they absolutely do. Weekday services have risen in the new timetable since December to 264 trains a day. The cancellation rate that she talked about was last year; the most recent rate is down to 4.2%, the lowest level in 12 months. That is a clear improvement. I have said that it needs to be sustained, which is why Avanti has an extension only until October. Some 90% of its trains now arrive within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, which is not good enough—it is in the pack with the other train operating companies, but at the bottom of the pack. I have been clear that Avanti needs to deliver improvement in the next six-month period. But the figures do speak for themselves: they demonstrate an operator that is turning things around but still has more to do, which was exactly what I said in my statement.

I was clear that TPE’s current service levels are unacceptable and that no options were off the table. I am interested in the hon. Lady’s focus on guarding taxpayers’ money. If I have added this up correctly, she and her Front-Bench colleagues have made unfunded promises of £62 billion of rail spending with no demonstrable means to pay for them. I am afraid that she will have excuse me for finding her professed concern for the taxpayer a little incredible.

Finally, I was surprised that the hon. Lady does not seem to have noticed that far from talking about the status quo, last month I set out in detail a clear set of proposals for reform to bring track and train together in Great British Railways, which I reiterated in my statement. That is what we will continue doing: not having an ideological debate about who owns the railways but talking about delivering better services for passengers. That will remain our relentless focus.

The speech made by Louise Haigh, the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, in the House of Commons on 14 March 2023.

Eighteen months ago, the Government slashed Northern Powerhouse Rail, binned HS2 to Leeds and sold out the north of England. Here we are again: huge changes affecting billions in investment and jobs announced at 5 pm on Thursday—minutes before the House rose.

We now know why the Secretary of State was desperate to dodge scrutiny: I have a leaked document written by his most senior officials that blows apart his claims and lays bare the consequences of the decisions he has hidden from. His chief justification for the delays to HS2 was to “balance the nation’s books”, but his Department admits what he will not—that the delays themselves will increase costs. It admits that they will cost jobs and that construction firms could go bust; it cannot rule out slashing high-speed trains that serve Stoke, Macclesfield and Stafford altogether; and it suggests that HS2 could terminate on the outskirts of London until 2041.

Is it not time that the Minister came clean that this absurd plan will hit jobs, hurt growth and cost taxpayers even more? As his own officials ask,

“you have already changed the design once, which wasted money. What will be different this time?”

Even the Government have lost faith in this Government, and little wonder. Is there anything more emblematic of this failed Government than their flagship levelling-up project that makes it neither to the north nor to central London? Last year they crashed the economy, and once again they are asking the country to pay the price. Does this announcement not prove once and for all that the Conservatives cannot fix the problem because the Conservatives are the problem.

Huw Merriman

I thank the hon. Lady, but we obviously do not comment on leaked documents, certainly not documents that I have not been given. I say to the hon. Lady that it is an entirely responsible Government approach to balance the commitments we make—as I have stated, the transport commitments that have been set out to the House total £40 billion—and, indeed, to reflect on how the delivery of HS2 had been designed. It is also well within a responsible Government’s remit to consider the public spending pressures that there are right now, due to the help that this Government have given to those facing increased energy costs and the continued costs from the pandemic, and therefore the impact on the amount of borrowing. Over £100 billion is required each year, or it was last year, to service the overdraft, which is greater than the amount we spend on defence. It would be entirely irresponsible for any Government to look at all of its portfolio without those figures in mind.

However, I am very proud of what we are doing on delivering HS2. The construction of the Curzon Street station in Birmingham, which remains, as I have stated, is expected to create 36,000 new jobs. On the hon. Lady’s point about not levelling up across the country, the redevelopment of Piccadilly station in Manchester is expected to create 13,000 new homes. In London, the regeneration of Old Oak Common will contribute £15 billion over the next 30 years. Those are figures to be proud of, and we will deliver them.

I found it very helpful, at the end of last week, to discuss this with stakeholders from across the country—businesses, regional organisations, council leaders and Mayors on the route—who were all very supportive about what the Government are doing. They also have to run budgets—unlike the Opposition—so they understood the pressures that the country faces, and were absolutely delighted that this project will continue to be built.