Huw today took part in the Liaison Committee where he questioned the Prime Minister on rail strikes, disruption at airports, and road taxation. 

The Liaison Committee is made up of Select Committee Chairs, with Huw participating in his role as Chair of the Transport Select Committee. It considers the overall work of select committees, promotes effective scrutiny of Government and chooses committee reports for debates. In addition to this, it questions the Prime Minister about policy, usually three times a year.

You can watch the full session here and the transcript from the meeting can be found below.

Huw Merriman: In the six minutes I have, Prime Minister, I want to talk to you about transport policy delivery—if you’re focused. I want to talk about rail, air and also road. Starting with rail, do you have all of the policy, and legal interventions and levers, that you need to end this rail strike? 

The Prime Minister: Thanks very much, Huw. I call on the union barons and the railway companies to sort this out. I think that they should be able to do it. And I think that, yes, we probably do need a few more tools. 

Huw Merriman: Specifically, what would they be? 

The Prime Minister: I think that you could have minimum service levels; you could have ballot thresholds. And as you know, we are bringing in—I think we have already brought in—the provision for agency workers where that is necessary. 
Now, that is not going to fix problems like train drivers; you are not going to get agency workers to drive a train. But the argument that I would make is that you need to modernise. 

Huw Merriman: Let me again just focus on the levers, because I think that in the Conservative manifesto there was a line that said, “Only the Conservatives could get Brexit done”, a few more things, “and stop passengers being held hostage by the unions.” And that was with the introduction of that policy of minimum service levels. Yet that hasn’t been introduced. 

The Prime Minister: It has not, but— 

Huw Merriman: And people are being held hostage, which might be your view. Why did you not bring, with an 80-seat majority, that legislation through before the strikes started? 

The Prime Minister: That is a very good question. And— 

Huw Merriman: And the answer is? 

The Prime Minister: And the answer is: we should have done it. The trouble was that we had a lot of covid stuff to deal with and I’m afraid it got pushed to the right, and I regret— 

Huw Merriman: I thought you might say that, although there have been other things we have been able to do, notwithstanding covid. Okay, let me move on to airports. There has been massive disruption to the airports—people having their holidays cancelled at the last minute. Why wasn’t more done to stop airlines from putting more flights in place than they had the bandwidth of staff to deal with? 

The Prime Minister: Well, the airlines should not be abusing passengers in the way that they have been, and I think there should be greater protections. But I think the— 

Huw Merriman: But again, this is all, “There should be”. My question is: why hasn’t there been? 

The Prime Minister: Because basically, we were trying to get any airlines flying at all. I mean, Diana has asked a very good question about passports, where we’re putting huge numbers of people to try and speed up the delivery of passports. We had a situation in which no airlines were moving at all. And we had to put £8 billion—as you will remember, Huw—into supporting the airline industry. 

Huw Merriman: Indeed. But Gatwick, for example, has controlled the number of flights that will be able to fly out during July and August, because they can see the airlines are trying to fly at 2018 levels. They could see the number of staff coming on, so they have taken action. Other airports haven’t necessarily. The regulator—the Civil Aviation Authority—doesn’t have the power, up front, to implement these types of policies. Shouldn’t it have that power? 

The Prime Minister: I am willing to be persuaded that it should. 

Huw Merriman: Because when we put a report on that basis, the recommendation was rejected by Government on the basis that there wouldn’t be a proposal to give the regulator up-front powers to take action, including to help with compensation. Perhaps we can push him a bit more on that, if you are behind it— 

The Prime Minister: Huw, I am going to have to look into what more powers we might need to take to get the airlines to behave responsibly towards their passengers. But I think the experience of the public is pretty wretched at the moment for all sorts of reasons, and they need to do much, much better. 

Huw Merriman: Turning to another area of policy that perhaps needs to change, at the moment 4% of the Exchequer’s revenues come from motoring taxes. Those will plummet to zero when we all drive electric vehicles. Are you serious about getting a new form of road pricing policy in place to fill that hole? If not, how will it be filled? 

The Prime Minister: Road pricing is something that we will eventually have to consider. I’m not attracted to it. I seem to remember that I successfully campaigned to remove the western extension of the congestion charge in London. 

Huw Merriman: I am not talking about road charging in that way; I am talking about—as we do at the moment—charging people per mile they drive, because that is what fuel duty does. You will have to replace that. 

The Prime Minister: I see what you mean—for electric vehicles as well, so that you charge a mileage. 

Huw Merriman: Yes, something along those lines. 

The Prime Minister: It is certainly the case that we will need a substitute for fuel duty. 

Huw Merriman: This comes back to my point about policy delivery, because— 

Chair: I am astonished. This is imminent. We are introducing electric cars. 

Huw Merriman: May I finish, Sir Bernard? For three months, Prime Minister, No. 10 has had a recommendation for a working body just to look at this, because something has to fill the 4%. The Treasury signed off on it, and for three months it has been sat in No. 10. One week, I am told somebody has signed it off; the next week, someone else has looked at it and stopped it, and it is stuck. My question is: the inertia inside No. 10—perhaps because of the events that we will go on to talk about— 

The Prime Minister: Nonsense. 

Huw Merriman: You say it’s nonsense, but it is a nonsense that we have been waiting three months just for someone to sign off on something that fills 4% of the Exchequer—that is the nonsense. Do you not agree that something should be done? If you can’t do it, do you think that perhaps someone else could come in and run it properly? 

The Prime Minister: This No. 10 was actually the first Government in Europe to set a timetable for moving away from internal combustion engine cars by 2030. 

Huw Merriman: I know. That is why you should follow through on the consequences of it. 

The Prime Minister: We have been moving at blistering speed. We are looking at all fiscal proposals to replace fuel duty, and I am happy to come back. 

Huw Merriman: You’re not. You are actually currently sitting on all proposals. 

The Prime Minister: I cannot believe that the Treasury is showing the slightest hesitation or reluctance to find a new way of taxing motorists. 

Huw Merriman: That is my point. The Treasury signed off on it. No. 10 then insisted on looking at it and has sat on it for three months. I think Andrew Griffith is currently the one who has now said, “No, I don’t like this.” We are therefore stuck, having thought we had cleared all the hurdles. 

The Prime Minister: I will take it up with Andrew.