With important elections to Exeter City Council on 5th May, you can now find Exeter Labour Party's manifesto for our city online here.

More recent news from Exeter Labour:

Free Swimming Lessons For All Primary School Pupils

Praise For Exeter On Housing

Better Cycling, Walking & Park & Ride Provision To Tackle Congestion

Exeter Labour Looks To Introduce Doorstep Food Waste Collections

You can now sign up to find out more and get involved with the campaign to keep Britain in the EU here.

Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): I welcome the Secretary of State’s comments on the positive role already being played by the RAF in the coalition campaign to drive Daesh back from territory in Syria, following the recent vote in this House. Does she agree that the catastrophe, including the humanitarian and refugee catastrophe, will continue as long Daesh controls large areas of eastern Syria and as long as President Assad, supported by Putin, slaughters his own people?

Justine Greening: Yes, I agree entirely. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), it is critical that we maintain Syria’s integrity as a country, and that absolutely means regaining the territory that has been lost to Daesh. There can be no peace settlement in Syria until we have that territory back under control and it can form part of the peace talks.

Full debate

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Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): Is it not at the very least odd that the Secretary of State yet again chooses to stay away and not come before the House to answer questions on this very important subject? As a former Health Minister, I know how difficult the BMA can be, but this would seem to indicate to me that it is the Secretary of State who has become the main obstacle to a sensible solution to this crisis.

Ben Gummer: The right hon. Gentleman will know that, numerically, the previous Labour Government had far more scraps with the BMA than the coalition Government and this Government have achieved so far. He will know that it is a mark of all Health Secretaries to have disputes of one kind or another with the BMA. The Secretary of State will be here tomorrow, since the right hon. Gentleman asks, to answer oral Health questions.

Full debate

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Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for arriving a few seconds after he rose to his feet. The previous business finished rather earlier than a lot of us expected or had been forewarned about, but I congratulate him on being the driving force behind this timely debate.

At the end of the week, when I get into carriage A at Paddington with my bike in the bike space just in front of it—carriage A is the quiet carriage—I sit down, and I usually have the best two hours of my week. Every time I am on that journey, I give thanks to Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the brilliance of the line that he created back in the Victorian age, from which we are still benefiting. It still think it incredible, given that very little has happened since, that on a good day someone can get from London to Exeter—quite a long way, as I am sure hon. Members who know their geography realise—in under two hours, and that is very much thanks to Brunel.

I completely agree with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), because for all its frailties, Great Western is my favourite railway line. I travel across the UK quite a lot, and it is certainly better than the new franchise owners on the east coast main line, and the pokey little carriages on Virgin and the west coast main line. Great Western is comfortable and bright. The loos do not work, and when they do they flush straight on to the tracks. That is completely intolerable and unacceptable in the modern age and must change as a matter of urgency. The ventilation is idiosyncratic, and one can often find a carriage that is far too hot or far too cold, but the staff are always delightful and friendly, and the service is excellent.

I have one plea to all railway companies, which is that they should do much more to publicise a passenger’s right to a full refund if they are delayed by more than an hour. I really think that they are getting away with too much, and far too many people do not realise that they are entitled to a refund. I was an hour and a half late coming back at the weekend because of some of the problems that the hon. Member for Torbay referred to, and, in terms of good customer service, such compensation should be announced on the trains as a matter of course.

Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con): In highlighting the beauty of the line to Exeter, may I encourage the right hon. Gentleman to stay on the train and see how even more beautiful the line gets once it passes along the coast? It is not just about the beauty of the line, which I hope everyone will experience, but the economic importance of the line via Dawlish to the economies of south Devon. Will he join me in saying that whatever we do we must protect the line through Dawlish and protect the economies of south Devon?

Mr Bradshaw: I know the line through Dawlish very well. I spent childhood holidays in Salcombe. In fact, my parents used to get a train all the way to Kingsbridge in the good old days before Beeching took his axe to our rural rail network. It is beautiful, but vulnerable. I will come on to say something about it in a second.

Having said all those positive things, we still have rolling stock that was introduced, I think, in the early 1970s. As I have said, travel speeds have not actually increased very much for decades, if not for a century. I mentioned the loos and the heating, and the hon. Member for Torbay mentioned electrification. It is puzzling that Spain and Italy have full comprehensive networks of high-speed electric trains, but in this country we still do not have a network of high-speed trains. We are getting one slowly, but in the south-west we are set to be probably the only major region with big cities left in western Europe that does not have either high-speed trains or electrification. There is absolutely no reason why we should not already have electrification down to Exeter. There have been technical challenges, but having been on electric trains in the Alps that go up steep gradients I have never quite understood what the barrier is to electrification where there are gradients. As the hon. Member for Torbay says, we will very soon have the technology to overcome that.

Kevin Foster: I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who, given the speech he is making today, I will call my right hon. Friend even if that is not strictly correct. Does he agree that the question arises of how long it takes us to deliver infrastructure projects in the UK? We touched on this in relation to western rail access to Heathrow and electrification. We just take too long to make decisions and to deliver on them.

Mr Bradshaw: I entirely agree. The Labour Government set up an independent infrastructure body—I cannot remember its name—and the hon. Gentleman’s Government have gone on to do something similar. We need to be much more radical in how we manage big infrastructure improvements. Network Rail is currently pleading, in today’s Financial Times, with the Government not to privatise it, but instead to hand over such decisions to an independent rail commission. That is a very sensible and sound idea, and I hope the Government will listen to it. The fragmentation and privatisation of Network Rail would be an absolute disaster. It is worth reading the piece in today’s Financial Times.

Oliver Colvile: If we want business to use railways, we also need to ensure a good level of broadband so that people can actually work on them.

Mr Bradshaw: I forgot to mention that broadband is terrible in standard class. It never works. I just use 3G, or 4G, if I have it, on the train. I raised this issue with First Great Western a number of times, but it still has not been resolved. I am told that it is fine in first class, but who travels first class? MPs certainly do not; not in my experience, anyway. I never have and since the new expenses system came in we are quite rightly not allowed to.

As hon. Members will remember, two years ago last week we had the catastrophic severing of the line at Dawlish. As the hon. Member for Torbay said, it had a huge impact on the region’s wider economy. Flooding then cut the line on the Somerset levels and this weekend there was flooding between Taunton and Castle Cary. My train was diverted from Exeter because of flooding. There are a lot of resilience problems throughout the network. As we all know, with the growing threat from climate change there will be increasing occurrences of extreme weather events. There has been meaningful and substantial investment in the railways, including in the south-west—although not as much as in other parts of the UK. Following the Hatfield disaster, hon. Members will remember that under the Labour Government there was a major programme of work to make signalling and track safer. That work is ongoing. Improvements at Reading have already made a significant positive difference to the reliability of the service. There used to be regular delays, in particular when coming into Reading on the return journey.

There have been improvements, but we in the far south-west, as opposed to the Bristol-south Wales corridor, where major electrification is planned, still feel the poor relation when it comes to investment. There were a lot of generous—I will use that term rather than grandiose, because we took them at their word—promises made by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Transport Secretary after Dawlish and particularly in the run-up to the general election. I lost count of the number of times the Chancellor and the Prime Minister appeared in Devon and Cornwall wearing a hard hat and a fluorescent jacket and promising us more than £7 billion of rail and other infrastructure investment. They will be held to those promises. A whole swathe of Conservative MPs were elected in Devon and Cornwall on those promises. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] They are laughing, smiling and “hear-hearing” now, but if those promises are not delivered the smiles will be on the other side of their faces come the next general election. It is up to them to get their Government to deliver.

I feel sorry for my Conservative colleagues. We are friends—we have regional solidarity—and I feel sorry for them. In the past two weeks, we have had an absolute public relations fiasco over a tiny sum of money. The Peninsula Rail Task Force in the south-west is a group that got together after Dawlish. It is run by a Conservative councillor. All the councils have taken part and most of them are Conservative. It came up with a fantastic document, on which the hon. Member for Torbay based most of his speech, about what needs to happen in the south-west. Its very small initial ask is for £250,000 for the necessary feasibility studies into electrification and resilience, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. We were promised that this would happen. There was going to be a press release. It was going to be announced last week on the second anniversary of Dawlish. I hope the Minister will use the opportunity this evening, when she responds to the debate—it is not a very good time to put out such a fantastic news story that our media in the south-west would absolutely love—to come up with this small amount of money. It is £250,000 for two feasibility studies. Nothing has been said about when the work will happen.

Johnny Mercer: Will the right hon. Gentleman concede that Network Rail committed to paying for the studies? The Government have not given money to a project and then taken it away. The money has fallen through as a result of what Network Rail has done. We have asked the Government to step up and deliver in its place.

Mr Bradshaw: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the Government have never come up with the money. I am suggesting that they should. Network Rail is not able to come up with the money because of the massive cost overruns and delays on the whole of the rest of its infrastructure investment projects; not just the huge cost and time overrun on the Great Western line into south Wales but on its overall investment all over the country. Incidentally, the Government knew about that before the general election when they were making all those great and grandiose promises about what they were going to deliver to us in the south-west. Those are the conversations the hon. Gentleman needs to have with his Front Bench colleagues. I will leave that to him and wish him the very best of luck.

It is completely obvious to me why the money has not been made available. Network Rail has not got it because it has massively overspent and overrun on all its other projects. I hope that when the Minister responds we can hear a little bit more detail on exactly what we can expect in the far south-west and when. If she cannot tell us about the feasibility study money this evening, perhaps she can tell us: when we might be able to hear about it; when we might have some hope about the prospect of electrification beyond Bristol into our part of the region along the lines that have been suggested; and when we might have some idea about the timetable for an additional alternative line to Dawlish.

I completely agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). We do not want to lose the line at Dawlish. It is beautiful and the people of Dawlish do not want to lose it. However, the fact is that if we talk to any engineer or climate change scientist about the long-term viability of the route, they do not just talk about storms and sea level rises but the fragility of the cliff. The biggest problem with the block last year was that the cliff kept falling down. It is a multiple problem and the line is between the sea and quite a soft cliff. As hon. Members will know, there was a plan back in 1939 to build a sensible, slightly inland alternative from Powderham Castle to Newton Abbot. That did not go ahead because the second world war broke out. There are other options. I can understand that people in north Devon and north Cornwall like the idea of the Okehampton line being reopened. Let us have a look at that and have some idea about what is going to happen and when. As the Prime Minister himself said, we cannot afford to have the south-west cut off like that again. Our economy cannot afford it. I was on the right side of that block, so it did not affect me, but the Plymouth, Cornwall, South Devon and Torbay economies were seriously affected by it.

James Heappey (Wells) (Con): May I add to the right hon. Gentleman’s shopping list? The Minister might like to reassure us about where the south-west and south Wales sit in the Government’s wider priorities. It would appear that we have neither resilience in our network, nor had significant investment in the speeds of our journeys since the ’70s—certainly beyond Bristol, there is no evidence of that coming soon. Other regions, therefore, will zoom ahead with much faster high-speed rail within a decade or two. It would be useful if the right hon. Gentleman added to his list this question about where we stand in the Government’s priorities.

Mr Bradshaw: I entirely agree, and we look forward to hearing the Minister respond at the end of this debate. I intend to finish with what I hope will be an attractive suggestion to all those Conservative Members who were swept to power—

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry): I simply hope that at some point the right hon. Gentleman will welcome the fact that there will be a new station opening in his constituency next year.

Mr Bradshaw: Yes, and we have already had a new station opened just outside my constituency—and the investment programme for it was put in place by the Labour Government, so I am very grateful that the Minister did not cut it. [Interruption.] Of course I am grateful for that.

Claire Perry rose—

Mr Bradshaw: I am sorry, but I am not giving way again.

Several hon. Members rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel): Order. The right hon. Member is not giving way.

Mr Bradshaw: I have said I am grateful for that station and that I am grateful for the investment programme that the Labour Government initiated. I say to the Minister simply that she has cut that investment programme over the last six years at a time when every sensible economist in the world thinks we should be investing in our infrastructure for the long term. We have record low long-term interest rates in this country and a faltering economy, so now is the time when we should be investing in infrastructure, and particularly in rail. I repeat that I am very grateful that the Minister did not cut the money for that station and that we are going to get another station—but, incidentally, the Labour Government initiated the plans for that, too.

I am going to end with the following suggestion to the Conservative MPs in Devon and Cornwall who were swept to victory last May on great and grandiose promises of a rail revolution and renaissance in the south-west. I got into a great deal of trouble with my Whips in the last Parliament for refusing to vote for the money for High Speed 2 up to the north. To give credit where it is due, one Conservative Member, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter)—sadly, he is not in his place tonight—did the same. We withheld our support for that money. The Government now have a majority of only 12—

Mrs Sheryll Murray: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr Bradshaw: No, I will not. I am finishing and the hon. Lady can speak in the debate.

More than 12 Conservative Members with constituencies in Devon and Cornwall could stop the Government putting that money through if they do not get what this Government promised over the next five years. I challenge them to do that—to stick up for their constituents, stick up for the south-west and stop taking no for an answer.

Full debate

Below is my latest column for the Exeter Express and Echo:

The state of our roads is probably the most common grievance raised by Exeter residents with me and my volunteers as we’re out and about. With the NHS and care for the elderly in crisis, one might have thought these would be top of people’s agenda. But the thing about roads and potholes is they affect everyone and they are a visible sign in everyone’s street of the more general decline people feel in our public realm. Meeting residents in Dorset Avenue on Saturday I got a real sense of their frustration. Their road is in a terrible state. We’ve written letters and raised petitions to Devon County Council, who are responsible for the roads, to no avail. Dorset Avenue hasn’t been resurfaced for more than 30 years. Although it’s fairly busy, it’s not a priority route because it doesn’t link directly to a main road. It’s on “the list”. But its prospects of being done any time soon look slim. The county council says it needs to spend £65 million just to keep the roads in their current state, but is spending only £35 million. So things are likely to get worse.

Which leads me to my main point of this week’s column. Our local councils face another £6.7 billion of cuts in this Parliament, on top of the huge reductions over the last five years. This was sneaked out by the Government just before Christmas and we don’t yet have details because councils have not set their budgets. Exeter City Council, responsible for parks, leisure, housing, street cleaning and planning, among other things, has managed to protect most of its services so far, while levying the fourth lowest council tax in England. But that job’s going to be even harder in future. The cuts that most people have notice have been in services run by Devon County Council – social and elderly care, the youth service, children’s services and pavement and road maintenance, including weeding. The police have also suffered big cuts and there’s a danger we could lose all our Police and Community Support Officers. As well as more cuts, we’re also facing the biggest council tax rise for many years as the Government shifts the burden for funding social care to local Government. Councils will be allowed to add an extra 2% to the council tax for social care and, with the police and fire expecting to seek similar rises, we’re likely to see a council tax increase well above cost of living and wage inflation.

On a brighter note, congratulations to Exeter City Council for helping secure Radio 1’s annual Big Weekend in May. This is Europe’s biggest free music festival and the majority of those people going will be local. It’s fitting that Coldplay, whose lead singer Chris Martin was born and raised in Exeter, is one of the main acts. Following the huge success of the Rugby World Cup this is the latest feather in the city’s cap and something for our young people and some not so young people to look forward to.

Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): I wish the Prime Minister and the British negotiating team well for what remains of this process. Will he acknowledge that all the major threats and challenges Britain faces, from international terrorism to climate change, demand that we work closely and collaboratively with our close neighbours, and that we do not relegate ourselves to a position of isolation and impotence?

The Prime Minister: My judgment in all of this is that I want things that increase the power and the ability of Britain to fix problems and to deal with our own security, stability and prosperity. What matters is this: are we more able to deal with these things? One thing Europe needs to get right is to get rid of the pettifogging bureaucracy on the small things that infuriate people but do not actually make a difference, and to focus instead on security, prosperity and jobs—that is the focus.

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Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): Following the shocking official report into the murder here in London of Alexander Litvinenko, when will the Prime Minister and his Chancellor take some meaningful action to tackle the dirty Russian money and property here in London that helps to sustain the Putin regime?

The Prime Minister: The report was shocking, although as the Home Secretary said at the time, this confirmed what the Labour Government understood to have happened. None the less, when one reads the report all over again, what happened is deeply shocking. That is why we have taken action in the form of asset freezes and the other measures described by the Home Secretary. On the problem of so-called hot money coming into London, I made a speech recently explaining that we are doing more than other countries in respect of transparency and beneficial ownership—who owns what in terms of companies, and we are going to do the same with property. That is one of the best ways not just to make sure that we do not have illegal Russian money, but to make sure that corrupt money stolen from African taxpayers and other continents does not end up in London.

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Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): I shall be brief to allow as many colleagues to speak as possible. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) on securing the debate and on the very salient points that he made. This is the umpteenth debate that we have had in the House since I was elected in 1997, and I want my remarks to focus on the financial commitment to this agenda.

The report by the all-party group in the last Parliament was an important report that all the Back-Bench members signed up to. The Prime Minister declared that he wanted to see a cycling revolution in this country. The Minister is a man who, thankfully, has been in the job for some time, so he knows about it. I believe that he is sincerely committed to this agenda.

We made it clear that the essential components of a successful cycling strategy were political leadership and a sustained funding commitment. The hon. Member for Bolton West was partly right when he talked about the level of funding that the Government have now committed, but the figure that he referred to included London, and London massively skews the overall figures. The overall amount that we are currently being offered in terms of cycling investment is still little more than £1 per head per year, in contrast to the £10 per head per year that the all-party group report said was a starting point, leading to £20, which is equivalent to what most other European countries spend.

We will not deliver the cycling revolution that the Prime Minister spoke about without significant extra resources for cycling. My one request of the Minister is that he explain something that he and predecessors have not really been able to explain to me. We are talking about such a tiny amount of money—a fraction of his roads budget, for example, and a fraction of his overall strategic transport budget. All he would need to do is reallocate a very small amount of money that is already committed to other things—we are not asking for more money from the Treasury—to cycling, and he would deliver the cycling revolution that the Prime Minister says he wants, so my simple question for when the Minister responds is: why can they not do that?

The full Westminster Hall debate on Government funding for cycling can be found here.

Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): Devon NHS had no deficit in 2010 when we had a Labour Government. It now has the worst deficit in England. What assurances can the Minister give my constituents in Exeter and those elsewhere in Devon that services and waiting times will not deteriorate even further?

Ben Gummer: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his co-operation and help in trying to form the future of the NHS in Devon. This will work only if there is a cross-party effort, and the same is true of the national level. We have particular, urgent problems in Devon, and that means that the deficit will increase unless we take significant local action. That action needs to be led by local clinicians, and I am very glad that they are talking constructively. My job and that of the right hon. Gentleman is to provide support in the coming months so that we can have one plan that we can then implement.

My appearance on this week's Sunday Politics South West is now available to watch online here.

Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): What additional investment the Government plan to make in rail infrastructure in the south-west during this Parliament; and if he will make a statement. [903324]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry): I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, as a fellow south-western MP, will be pleased that the Government have committed to investing about £400 million in rail infrastructure in the south-west. This includes re-signalling the main line from Totnes to Penzance; developing a strategic freight network; electrifying the Great Western main line; refurbishing the Cornwall sleeper; £35 million for the necessary repairs at Dawlish; a brand-new station at Newcourt, just outside his constituency; another station planned in his constituency at Marsh Barton; plus 29 new AT300 trains. The Government get the importance of rail investment in the south-west.

Mr Bradshaw: Of course, that electrification is into south Wales, not the south-west.

The people of the west country well remember the repeated promises from the Transport Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of billions of pounds of investment in rail in the south-west, but the Minister has just failed, once again, to confirm that the Government will commit a paltry half a million pounds for the feasibility study that Devon and Cornwall needs after the Dawlish disaster into improved resilience and rail transport times. Do not the people of the south-west rightly feel completely betrayed by the Government?

Claire Perry: Month after month, the right hon. Gentleman comes here and seems to be in complete denial about the fact that his Government did nothing for the people of the south-west and that his party wanted to cancel the vital A358 road scheme that helps people directly in his constituency. I have already set out—but I am happy to discuss it further—that I am considering ways to find the very small amount of money required to do this one technical feasibility study, which is a tiny part of the south-west peninsula taskforce study. We expect that report to come out in April and deliver the strategic uplift the region requires.

Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): One reason why the number of calls to 111 has trebled is that people find it impossible to get to see their GP. As well as the shocking failings of this family’s GP, is it not the case that the Government were warned of the consequences of abolishing the popular and successful NHS Direct and of replacing it with a non-clinician led service? Will the Secretary of State look personally at the performance of 111 in the south-west, which has been bedevilled by failings ever since it was set up?

Mr Hunt: I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that when 111 was set up it had the support of the Opposition. The shadow Health Secretary at the time looked at the risk register. The number of calls has increased dramatically partly because demand for NHS services has increased dramatically. That does not mean to say that there are not important things that need to be improved. We need to look honestly at what went wrong. The 111 service was one of the four areas where we should have done better. I am happy to look carefully at what is happening with 111 in the south-west. One improvement is that, in many areas, we are integrating the commissioning of 111 with the Ambulance Service, and that is something that happens in the south-west. On the whole, that has been a positive experience, but I know that there have been problems in the south-west, and I am happy to look further at them.

My latest column for the Express and Echo is now available to read online here.