Luke Taylor
MP for Sutton and Cheam · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“I visited Croydon Crown court a few weeks ago with the Bar Council and listened to some of its members. It was clearer than ever that the demands of jury trials are not what is leaving victims waiting years for justice.”
“The Iranian regime is abhorrent. It has oppressed its people for decades, murdering protesters and activists, and it is no friend of ours. Its attacks on civilian shipping risk a global crisis, yet Donald Trump’s escalation and the US’s poorly targeted attacks have put civilians and our friends in the Gulf at huge risk, with the risk of a…”
“May I take this opportunity to congratulate the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who last week took the decision to take her Department and herself off Twitter—or X, or whatever it is called these days?”
“The report finds structural issues within police forces, with fragmented and inconsistent systems that do not make the most of our police talent. If an officer sees cronyism, nepotism and abuse of power around them, they will not have their future career at the top of their mind or trying to break through that system.”
“Q10. On Monday, with colleagues, I wrote to the Health Minister following the news that women’s health and maternity services may be relocated away from St Helier hospital due to building safety concerns.”
“Will the Prime Minister arrange for the Health Secretary to visit St Helier hospital with me to see its condition and hopefully agree to bring forward the build of the new Sutton specialist emergency care hospital—build it today, not in 2034—to ensure safe and modern healthcare and maternity facilities for my constituents?”
The complete record
Every one of 604 lines we hold for Luke Taylor, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 7 of 13.
“Luke Ervine: Some of the risks of the RCM that we need to be cognisant of include covering too much of the mandate with the RCM. We do not want to lock ourselves into high prices forever and a day. Obviously we want that to stimulate the part of the market that needs that support, so we want to leave enough room for competition. The other thing we need to think about is how suppliers might bear some of the risk that is presented in the RCM—how some of the cost of capitalising the fund, or any cost of compliance failures that they may face, might be passed through to airlines and consumers. That key area of transparency is therefore important. This needs to be well thought through, but we also need to do it quickly because we are reaching a pivotal point in terms of buy-out where we will have to just pay for no decarb.”
“Yes, without the policy, we have no 2G SAF, so we would be dependent on the 1G market, which will cap out in the early 2030s. We are not going to achieve our decarbonisation targets without 2G SAF. That is the biggest risk without the Bill. The biggest risk with the Bill is buy-out. If the incentive does not produce enough SAF—we understand the buy-out is there to manage short-term supply shortages, but if we have long-term buy-out, which we have seen in the ground transport fuels market—that is policy failure. Essentially, that huge cost is £6,000 per tonne of SAF, and if that cost comes straight back to the airline, it will go on air fares, but you do not get any decarbonisation—you get huge cost and no decarbonisation. That is our biggest risk.”
“I just have a pushback or challenge on the comments about SAF being popular. An earlier pushback, too, was on the £1.50 per passenger on top of tickets. Does that suggest that this might be easier to sell—easier to promote—to passengers than you might have suggested in the first place? I think the suggestion was that certain demographics and certain airline customer groups will be more or less in favour and able to pay it. Lahiru Ranasinghe: To add to that, for us, the average leisure traveller would say—to put it in colloquial terms—“It’s your problem to solve. We want you to do it, but we’re not going to pay for it.” With corporates, they have their own corporate targets, so from a B2B—business to business—perspective, they want to hit those. Jonathon Counsell: I will answer the risk question.”
“Our ask is to get connected to reduce carbon intensity, provide a better price per certificate, and also pay, because we do not need subsidy for carbon capture. We are ready to pay the transport and storage costs to the Government for carbon capture. Those are the three main points.”
“There is also connection to the grid, for example—grid connections take a very long time. We decided to produce our own power on site using a biomass boiler rather than waiting for a grid connection because the answer we got was that we will get it by the end of the 2030s—2039—and we cannot wait until then. Another requirement, which is very specific to us, is to get connected as early as possible to the carbon network once we start producing SAF by the end of 2029, especially when there is a unique benefit for the UK. By the way, that is very unique to the UK. No other country has a SAF mandate that is about carbon scaling and at the same time has the capability to capture CO 2 . That is also unique in Europe because the UK and Norway together have 75% of the carbon capture capacity in Europe. It is really very unique to the UK.”
“Noaman Al Adhami: From our perspective, the route we are using—the Fischer-Tropsch synthetic paraffinic kerosene route—is an American Society for Testing and Materials route that is approved already. On sustainability, the feedstock criteria are well defined in the SAF mandate. All the types of feedstock that are eligible to produce SAF are well defined. We are complying with that. The greenhouse gas and carbon intensity are other factors for measuring sustainability. For our project, without carbon capture, we are at minus 80% or minus 85% from the fossil equivalent. With carbon capture, we will go negative—we will go to even more than minus 200%. That is key for us. On what could be done better, planning is always an area where we need improvement in terms of time.”
“They are more in the detail, but we end up spending quite a lot of time on them as a company trying to break through into this market. Equally, it is a learning experience for my colleagues doing these projects all across the world. We have other projects going on in India and Australia. As a Brit, I want the UK to be our flagship and our first, and I am working hard to make sure that it is, but as I always say to people, I am competing with my colleagues in Australia and all over because lots of people want SAF. It is about how we can make it as efficient and easy as possible, keeping in mind all the good sustainability criteria, to get steel in the ground here in the UK.”
“It is not because of the quality of the planning teams; they are fantastic. It is the fact that they are quite constrained and there are not enough of them. I suppose there is a potential short-to-medium-term fix there, but also a longer-term fix in terms of thinking of the skills that we need moving forward. We automatically think of more engineering and STEM roles, but we also need the rest of the value chain to be adequate in terms of workforce and other things. I alluded earlier to the details of the mandate being really good on the sustainability piece, but there are some very complex rules that we are still consistently trying to navigate six months on. There are different interpretations to different questions—for example, in the nitty gritty of how hydrogen is treated or the rules around electricity and displacement.”
“That is not necessarily in this Bill; I would say that that has more already been laid out in the mandate rules. On what else we would like to see, potentially, through this, as I said before, there is a piece around the SAF allowances—this is a scheme currently in Europe that is funded through ETS revenues. Obviously, you are always taking from somewhere with funding, but you are trying to take at least from a funding source that is coming directly from industry, and using that to then fund the industry back with SAF. I think that has good bones and good structure, and I would love to see that being fleshed out. On a more practical level, for sure, there is planning. We have just had a recent example that some of my engineers have told me about: waiting two months for an answer on a very small question.”
“Sophia Haywood: On sustainability and fraud, I have been working on sustainability certification over a number of different fuel types. We have ISCC, which is like an auditing process that we generally have to go through—there are other providers out there—to be able to prove the sustainability of our fuel. This is a very complicated and rigorous process, and I have gone through it many times on different types of fuels. On the sustainability piece, the guidance that has been put out already in the SAF mandate is very high, and we have to go through a lot of that auditing process. To your point about the risk of fraud and other challenges around greenwashing that potentially could have happened in the past, I think the UK has done a good thing there with how it has approached this, so I support the approach that we are taking.”
“Q Thank you both. A lot of the criticism and cynicism over the value of SAF and its environmental benefits are around the fuel source or feedstuff—you have alluded to it. The Bill concentrates on second and third generation SAF. Do you see that as enabling a lot of the potential greenwashing of SAF that may have been behind all that cynicism? Does it address some of those challenges? As a follow-up question, similar to one that I asked the previous panel, what do you see as some of the challenges across Government that will hold back your ability to produce more SAF? You referred to the ability to use some of the feedstuff to produce second generation SAF mixing, but I think planning and energy will be among the responses as well.”
“We’re actually an energy transmission company, because all the problems we have with renewable energy are solved by liquid hydrocarbons”. If you look at the paper I referred to, done back in 2021, the cost of getting energy from the North sea in a cable to the consumer is probably forty to fiftyfold what it is if you wanted to do it with a liquid hydrocarbon. That is the fundamental problem that we are going to struggle with going forward. We are slowly going to morph as technology and engineering rather than policy dictate what the solution is.”
“At the moment, we are talking about sustainable aviation fuel, but actually there is a lot of energy in the North sea that is not getting used because of the challenge of the cost of getting it from there to the consumer. This is where e-fuels come in. The Bill would help to move us in the right direction to start to tackle that problem, because you would have these companies with the new tech working out how to make that viable. There is a very good, well researched paper by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US and the Department of Energy. It was done back in 2021. I had a conversation with our CEO and the board one day and realised, “We’re not actually a fuels company, although we’re called Zero Petroleum and we’re making jet fuel and gasoline.”
“If you want e-fuels to be part of the future, we need to make sure that that research is supported in the UK and that when it is supported in the UK there is proper IP regulation of that. That needs to be mandated as part of the support from the Government. What is happening in the aviation area is clearer cut, because you cannot get the energy density into an aircraft with hydrogen or electric, so it is kind of obvious, but I think it is a solution for a lot of the fossil-based fuels, including gasoline and diesel. I think what we will end up doing is that, if we can develop that core technology, it is then transferable to other sectors, and with that we will be able to deal with the real problem, which is the end-to-end solution of getting renewable energy to the consumer. That is the real challenge.”
“Q You have given a really helpful view of the long-term solution. I do not think many would argue with PtL being the solution for the industry. This question is similar to one I have asked other panel members: how do other parts of Government, other levers and other enablers need to be brought in place to enable you to do what you need to do? What conditions does the Bill need to set? What do you see as the main challenges for the Government to act? You have spoken about skills. What else needs to be done in the Bill to enable you to be successful and for the Bill to achieve what it needs to achieve? Doug McKiernan: Coming back to the IP, there needs to be some sort of support for e-fuels core technology development. That is very important.”
“Hopefully we do not cover all the fertile soil with solar panels and we can generate it elsewhere, and then use the power-to-liquids to get it from A to B.”
“Q Just for clarity—forgive my technical inexperience—what you are suggesting is production of the hydrocarbon at the source, at the base of a wind turbine, which is then collected in tanks rather than transmission over cables? Doug McKiernan: Correct. Within that report, there were also comparisons to hydrogen—that was a sixfold increase over a two-foot oil pipeline—and to ethanol, methanol and ammonia. It looked at how you get energy from A to B in the cheapest operational expenditure and capital expenditure form. That is a fundamental. The cost of getting the renewable energy is what all the engineering will come back to. I believe the renewable energy will be in remote locations, a bit like oil today. Ultimately, we are going to put renewable energy in those places.”
“I think the initial thoughts are indeed to fund that through ETS. I do not have a strong preference between ETS-funded or levy-funded. The most important thing is that it is clear, transparent, consistent and predictable. Once we know the details and find out how the whole mechanism will work, we can perfectly live with the levy mechanism—as long as it works practically. So we do not have a strong preference between ETS or levy funding.”
“Q Mr Downie stole my question, so I will develop it a bit further. The RCM sets the levy on to the fuel producers who will likely pass it on to passengers. You operate internationally and see mechanisms being implemented elsewhere in the world. We mentioned the alternative of using the ETS to fund the RCM. How do you see the advantages of one system or the other, and where have you seen alternatives implemented elsewhere that have worked well? Ruben van Grinsven : That is a good question. First and foremost, the UK is ahead of pretty much everybody else when it comes to developing those mechanisms. I know the EU is basically inspired by the RCM and trying to come up with a similar framework, which it will be announcing in September in the sustainable transport investment plan.”
“I am not here as a spokesperson for the Government, but the jet zero strategy outlines a range of measures to support the ongoing development of more efficient aircraft, which is a key tool in our toolkit, along with modernising airspace with the new UK airspace design service, which is vital for more efficient airspace, and support for new hydrogen technology and greenhouse gas removal. This is a vital part of that package.”
“Q My question is relatively straightforward: does the Bill go far enough to allow us to proceed with aviation expansion and be consistent with our climate change goals? Matt Gorman: This Bill is part of a package of measures from the Government, and I think it is absolutely vital. I see the Bill and the SAF mandate as equally important, with the SAF mandate driving a requirement for 10% SAF and with the Bill encouraging investment in domestic production. Those are vital tools, and the Government are taking a range of other steps.”
“Our view is that heading more in the direction of the EU’s ambition over time will be important for Heathrow and for aviation generally, but we will keep that under review. It is really important to get started and make a strong start in this decade, to show that as well as producing SAF globally for use in the UK, as we are already doing, we can produce it in the UK.”
“Joking aside, I have talked to fuel suppliers and investors to get a sense of how they are seeing the market. They say that this package, with the mandate and the revenue certainty mechanism, is a really strong policy package from the UK. To answer your question, Heathrow has been invited by the Government to submit updated proposals for our expansion plans by the end of this month. Within them, we will be setting out our views on our future trajectory to net zero. We think that the mandate and the revenue certainty mechanism are vital. The Government have already said that they want to keep the mandate levels under review; you are right that although we are more ambitious to begin with and the EU is less ambitious, the EU takes over.”
“Q The SAF mandate is 10% by 2030. The EU target is much lower: 6%, I think. Our target goes up to 22% by 2040, but elsewhere the target increases more dramatically. As Heathrow is such a large user—17% is a massive component—will the mandate be achievable alongside the goals and targets set out in the Bill? You have said that other things need to be done and that this is part of a suite, but I guess the question is whether this is enough. Do you need to see more aggression and more ambition, with investment in firms through skills and through the measures we have drawn out from previous witnesses around the protection of IP? Do you see this as enough? Matt Gorman: I think this is a very strong start from the UK. I was smiling when the Shell representative said that the EU had been inspired by the measures that the UK is taking.”
“Is there a risk that that sort of rhetoric damages investor confidence and that, with that sort of language and those sorts of pronouncements being made, we see challenges in delivering the jobs and the plants and seeing the capacity that we need come online? Josh Garton: Yes, absolutely there is. It feeds into the overall narrative in the UK on the direction of SAF. It is more than just at the regional level; there are murmurings around the strength of the mandate itself and its being upheld. All those murmurings impact the narrative and the appetite for investors. The more we can do to support those first-generation plants to get through to a final investment decision and through to production, the better we prove out the sector as a viable one in the second and third-generation fuels.”
“Q I want to be very careful with this question. We have had questions about investors and appetites to put money into these technologies—into refineries, production and particular projects. There was previously a fairly strong consensus on the need to address climate change, and this is one of the projects that we are doing to mitigate those impacts. There is a fair amount of rhetoric at the moment about stopping investment in net zero projects in particular regions, some of which have a heavy dependency on or a high frequency of these sorts of projects—north Lincolnshire, Humberside and such areas.”
“However, I will do my best by starting with the general statement that I think you are quite right that the second that waste becomes more valuable than an alternative use of that waste, you have to start questioning whether it is really waste. Funnily enough, that is more of an issue in some of the first-generation products that we are using, where the waste is becoming more valuable than virgin vegetable oils. That is a different issue, but it is very important. In this case, as long as people either do not get anything for waste or have to pay to get rid of it, the risk of it distorting other parts of the hierarchy is manageable, particularly with a sensible degree of oversight and monitoring. I would not lose too much sleep about that. You will have to help me with the other part of the question.”
“Is that bigger picture being considered—not just producing electrons, as you say, but using waste heat for district heating networks? There is a bit of additional complexity. That leads into the bigger question of the holistic view across different Departments and the incentives that the Bill creates, which I am sure are all positive. It promotes better, more sustainable options in different Departments. Is enough work being done elsewhere for this to work within the bigger system? You have 15 minutes. Philip New: My roots are as a fuels and energy guy, so I will not be able to respond with much expertise to the more specific questions about the waste sector.”
“Q As a good Liberal Democrat, I want to talk about bins again. Incineration and energy recovery facilities are broadly seen as the least worst options. If there is now an alternative, lots of us will be very interested in the opportunities for local authorities and for making conditions better for our residents. If that means cheaper bin collection, we will all be in favour. I have questions about the big picture. It has the potential to disincentivise recycling. Does the increasing value of SAF feedstock undermine the efforts to recycle? Another, more technical question is: could plastics recycling be better diverted into this process to solve a lot of the problems we have with exporting plastics for recycling and the energy used to do that? Many of our energy from waste facilities are now linked to heat networks.”
“It has the potential to touch them in a very positive way, but it is also exposed to some inadvertent—I would not call it negligent—inattention in somewhere that does not feel a very strong ownership of the space, which could really mess things up. A degree of conscious, whole-system understanding of what it takes to enable a brand-new sector to emerge, and providing some co-ordination of that, would be welcome. Whether that looks a little like mission control in the electricity transition or something else, I do not know, but something to provide more comfort would be important. It touches many parts of the economy and many Departments.”
“If you are worried that the market will go long and there will be lots and lots of lower-priced product that undermines your economics, the RCM is a great way of giving you insurance that your investors will stay whole and happy. On the other hand, by taking it on, you are sacrificing your exposure to the upside. That is the premium you are paying. I think the balance that has been designed into the RCM is a really attractive way of keeping everyone honest while still enabling investment to flow into the sector. I do not think it should distort the underlying drivers or mechanisms. That having been said, I worry about the range of sectors that a successful SAF industry will touch.”
“Q It is the broader question of how this sits within the system. The implications of this Bill are really broad in the way the incentives will come into a whole different set of markets, including agriculture, waste and local government. Philip New: First, I challenge the suggestion that this is an incentive. I think of it more as an insurance policy. If you are a recipient of the insurance policy, if it turns out that the market price is higher than you contracted for—your strike price—you will end up paying. The counterparty will be in receipt of money from the participants in the scheme. It is not a one-way incentive. One of the charms of the RCM is that it is nicely balanced.”
“There will not be enough waste, cropland or algal stuff to produce the SAFs we need. Generations 4 or 5 will be the ones that ultimately look after the aviation industry. I would still say to be agnostic; I cannot believe I am saying this, but let the economics work its way through at the moment to see who comes out on top in the UK, and then take through the next generation.”
“Professor Maslin : The Bill provides financial security for industries producing SAFs, which I think is essential. I do not think it has real tweaks to favour particular SAFs—whether you want to do that or not is another matter. The problem is that some SAFs have a better environmental signature, and they are better, but we are going to run out of those. Ultimately, the real SAFs that we are going to be looking at globally are massive algal productions and artificial kerosene, whereby you produce huge amounts of energy, and you use water and CO 2 from the atmosphere to actually create kerosene. That is extortionately expensive at this moment in time. However, as I said, if there are 14,000 planes, going up 4% per year, by 2050 you will have a very large number of planes in the air at any one moment in time.”
“Q May I start by heartily endorsing your encouragement of engineering as a career or an education? As an aeronautical engineer before I came to this place, I am available for motivational speeches whenever necessary. From my discussions with industry on the Bill up until now, I am not quite sure that I am convinced about being agnostic to SAF production, source and mechanism. My worry is that it does not give enough ability to shape the environmental benefit of that SAF stream and to incentivise the most beneficial SAF production, such as PTL compared with the earlier gen SAFs, even 2g SAFs. Does the Bill as presented give enough of the right mechanisms to incentivise the right sort of SAFs that will be most beneficial and provide us with the greatest environmental benefit?”
“The Government know exactly what we are doing in a joined-up way. To answer your mission question, we have said that we want to be a clean energy superpower, and this Bill helps us to do exactly that. It gives us sovereign capability here on UK shores to do that; not only is that the right thing to do, but, in the increasingly uncertain geopolitical situation we face, it is becoming almost essential. The other mission that we have is growth. Today, I heard some very big figures on what that could mean. Our Department figures show at least £5 billion GVA added if we do this, and about 15,000 jobs— [ Interruption. ]”
“Q I have one straightforward question, and one that is a little more spiky. First, we have heard a lot about the need to work across Government to ensure that we get the most effective outcome from the Bill. From all the evidence we have heard, it seems to be the right thing and structured well, but how do we ensure that municipal waste streams match up with incentives for heat networks, waste hierarchies and that sort of stuff? We hear a lot about mission-based Government—is that what will give the advantage to being able to co-ordinate across Departments? Will you give us an account of what you are doing so far to pull those Departments and different groups together to make sure it works? Mike Kane: To get any Bill this far, as any Member will know, it has to have consent right around Government.”
“We are investing more than we ever have in that area. We are also now aligning, or are in negotiations to align, our ETS with the European Union. That would give us a bigger market, and therefore help aviation in this space. In addition to the £2.3 billion, the Chancellor recently announced £63 million for the advanced fuels fund. The Government are putting their money where their mouth is. As part of the work that I have done this year to restart our confidence in aviation, I set up the jet zero taskforce, which is jointly chaired by me and the Minister for Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), at DBT. There is an awful lot of joined-up thinking in this area.”
“Q Thank you, Mr Pritchard. Minister, your first answer was very helpful. My second question is on a theme that I have brought up a couple of times, and which echoes the evidence around ETS funding from a couple of the witnesses. I am going to be a bit pointed, but if you had had the choice and the permission from the Treasury to get the funding from the ETS, rather than passing it on to firms and then passengers, would you have seen that as an optimal solution, in these constrained times? Mike Kane: As the departmental Minister, I want to avoid the pitfall of commenting on Treasury policy, but I did hear some earlier evidence that £500 million came in from the ETS. What did they get back for it? Well, £2.3 billion of investment in the ATI, which is looking at engine capacity, hydrogen and reduced noise technologies.”
“I also rise to join the tributes to Dr Susan Michaelis, who passed away on Wednesday, for her campaigning for the better treatment of lobular breast cancer. I met Dr Michaelis in October last year, and was moved by her advocacy for improvements in treatment, and subsequently, by her support for the Bill. For Kate, Susan and many others, it is important that the Bill passes today. Please do support it.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) for his work on the Bill, and all those who have supported its progress. I rise briefly for two reasons. First, to speak for a constituent, Kate, who is only 40 years old and has an inoperable brain cancer. Kate contacted me this week to tell me about her case and to encourage me to support the Bill. She is under the care of 10 consultants and specialists as her condition worsens. Research on brain cancers and glioblastomas has hardly progressed in 50 years, yet it is the biggest cancer killer in children and adults under the age of 40. The Bill should improve the rate of cancer patients who are offered trials; currently, 82% are not and that is not good enough. The Bill should improve those chances.”
“There are regional imbalances in this country that are totally unjust—I know that more than most, having come here from rural Lincolnshire—but there is no path to growing Britain without a strong, dynamic, self-governing London. As I stand here having recounted so many of the challenges that London faces in continuing to contribute to the nation’s economy, I wonder again in frustration why, in my role of Liberal Democrat shadow London spokesperson, I am not able to shadow a Minister for London—although I mean no slight on the Minister who is here. There has been one, on and off, for 30 years, and the Government’s decision not to appoint one is a gross oversight for all the reasons brought up in this debate.”
“He is evidently not as affective, and this Government not as receptive, as we were led to believe. As a result, I fear Londoners are being sidelined in respect of the industrial strategy and fiscal policy. Why, for instance, is London excluded from the new £150 million creative place growth fund, and from the British Business Bank’s new nations and regions investment fund? Why have the Government not listened to calls, from not just the Liberal Democrats but the private sector, to replace the apprenticeship levy with a skills and training levy that is properly integrated with devolved powers over skills, to give businesses the flexibility they need? Why have the Government not even listened to our calls for lifelong skills grants? I hope the Minister can explain. We must level up all parts of Britain.”
“How else can we explain the actions of a Government who are pushing ahead with a new funding settlement that could leave some councils losing 70% of their spending power? That is particularly foolish at a time when councils are doing great work to boost London’s growth, with superb research and development schemes such as the London cancer hub in my borough of Sutton, which could create thousands of new jobs locally. Perhaps the most pertinent question is: who really speaks for London? It certainly isn’t Sadiq Khan, who promised us that with “the winds of a Labour Government at our backs” he would be able to deliver for Londoners, but on the day of the spending review made himself completely unavailable for media comment. Where was the voice that London needed on that day?”
“Many Londoners are left asking why London’s contribution to the nation does not mean that its voice is heard. Compared with its peers around the world, London does not have anything like the appropriate devolved powers. In the patchwork of devolution that has been woven in this country this century, London’s settlement is looking increasingly threadbare and outdated. The Greater London Authority has nowhere near enough power to shape the mayor’s agenda and hold them to account, and the mayor’s powers are themselves too limited. Not enough money raised in the city can be spent in the city. Local councils, the bedrock of London’s governance, are ignored, prevented from working strategically across the city, and powerless to stop year after year of funding cuts.”
“London is not just Soho and Chelsea: it is places like Sutton, Hillingdon, Hornchurch and Enfield—proud boroughs with combined populations of millions that must play their part in growing the pie, and that need commuter transport investment to do that. Where infrastructure projects happen, they seem either to be delivered at great delay and overspend, like the new Piccadilly line trains, or to be unimaginative white elephants, like Mayor Khan’s Silvertown tunnel. The new four-year deal for TfL outlined in the spending plan presents a chance to change that. I invite the Minister to outline whether the Government will now look at finally delivering progress on reopening Hammersmith bridge, on the Bakerloo line extension and on the DLR extension to Thamesmead. It is just not good enough.”
“Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) so vividly explained, Hammersmith bridge—such a vital artery not just in her constituency but across west London—remains shut, with no commitment to a proper funding agreement to get it permanently reopened. Parts of outer London, like in Sutton in my constituency, remain in effect cut off from the TfL network, because of either poorly performing bus and national rail services or the complete absence of tram or tube infrastructure in the borough. To be absolutely correct about that, we have half a tram stop in Sutton, but we tend not to count that.”
“Whether Londoners or the British people, remainers or leavers, nobody wanted to be worse off—and we were all promised by both sides that we would not be. There is a significant opportunity to right that wrong as we normalise our relationship, and the Government are just not taking it. In much the same way, the Government are failing to invest in the infrastructure that London needs to deliver its share of the growth that Britain needs. Even though we welcome the 10-year infrastructure plan, many of us noted that there was no commitment in the spending review to the capital funding needed for the Bakerloo line extension. As my hon.”
“The Government have also chosen not to seriously grip the mantle of the reform that would turbocharge growth most of all: fixing the Conservatives’ botched Brexit deal that has left London languishing outside the European market in so many meaningful ways. It is good that they have begun some of the work of normalising our relationship with our biggest neighbour and trading partner, but they will not budge on the most critical issue of all, which is a new customs union with the EU that would boost growth and, by extension, tax receipts. Nobody wants to return to the Brexit wars of the last decade, but the Government would do well to remember that nobody voted to make themselves poorer on that day in June 2016.”
“Indeed, that figure could be more readily and justly raised by reversing Conservative tax cuts for big banks, increasing the digital services tax on the largest multinationals or the remote gaming duty for online gambling firms, reforming capital gains tax to make sure that the super-rich pay their fair share rather than hard-working Londoners being hit by the tax because of the ballooning housing market, or funding His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to collect the tax that is owed and currently dodged by companies and individuals wealthy enough to afford the best advice. Governing is about choices, and the Government have made the wrong choice for Londoners and the whole country with the NICs hike. Will the Minister outline whether a review of the policy, or at least exemptions, will be considered at the autumn Budget?”