Earlier this afternoon I made my dispatch box debut as Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary in responding to Grant Shapps’ statement on the Covid-19 guidance for transport users and operators that his department had published.
I am grateful for the positive and on-going communication that myself and the Secretary of State have had over the last month, it is right that where we can we work constructively together in the national interest.
And I know that everyone across the UK is grateful for the hard work that our transport workers have put in since lockdown began, to ensure that our country keeps going, that people can move around when they need to and that goods can get where they need to be.
With our thanks to these key-workers we must also give them a voice, so that is why I asked the Secretary of State;
• Why his announcement wasn’t made before the Prime Minister’s statement on Sunday? So that people were given more than 12 hours’ notice to return to work on Monday without the official guidance in place.
• What is the scientific basis for the governments position on PPE to frontline transport staff?
• What discussions have taken place to ensure co-operation across the four nations of the UK?
• Whether the £2bn he announced last week was new money or whether it’d been announced pre-lockdown back in February.
• Whether the government will publish the advice which justifies why France is to be exempt from the 14-day quarantine policy?
• And whether the government will publish the scientific advice that led to the quarantine policy not being changed earlier?
We urgently need a comprehensive plan for the transport sector. The public want the chaos around the exit plan to end. So the Transport Secretary should take a message back to the cabinet – no more confusion, no more reckless briefings and no more delay.
Jim McMahon OBE MP 