Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Chris Grayling Transport Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY

SOPHY RIDGE: Theresa May faces the biggest Parliamentary vote of her Premiership so far and, let’s be honest, things aren’t looking too good. She has already lost two votes this week including one which forces the government to set out its plans within three days if the debate is lost and someone who has known her longer than most and practically ran her leadership campaign is the Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling, who joins us now. Thank you very much for being with us.

CHRIS GRAYLING: Morning.

SR: Not long until this crucial vote and it looks as if Theresa May will lose it, so what’s Plan B?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well let’s cross that bridge when and if it happens. Right now her focus, my focus, the government’s focus is on convincing people that actually this is the best thing to do, it’s the right option, it’s the most likely to deliver Brexit and we want to convince colleagues that it is the right thing to do to back it.

SR: I understand that you want to focus on the vote ahead but people are quite worried – and I spent a week in Harlow for example where people are really concerned about what happens next if the deal falters, so let’s make a deal. You don’t have to tell me what Plan B is but you have got one, right?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well look, the important thing right now is to convince people otherwise. I am not going to get into ‘will we do this, will we do that, will we do the other’. The important thing is to say to fellow MPs, those concerns are out there and the big concerns are ‘Are we going to leave, are we going to deliver Brexit, are we going to somehow try and reverse Brexit, is Parliament going to force us to reverse Brexit?’ What we have I think is a sensible compromise deal. It’s not giving everybody everything they want but it was never going to, this was a 52/48 result.

SR: Have you got everything you want?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Of course not and I think most people, the Prime Minister herself has said this is not the perfect deal but if you offered me this deal back in 2016 at the time of the referendum and you’d have said instead of staying the European Union you can have this, I’d have said thank you very much.

SR: At the same time, and I understand you don’t want to go into the details, but if you won’t say what your Plan B is or at least give the indication that you have a Plan B, then other people will step into that gap and the Sunday papers are absolutely full of MPs from different parties coming up with their own Plan B, stepping into the void that’s been left by your government.

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well I don't think it is a void at all, the government is coming forward with a proposal to the nation, a proposal to Parliament that says this is what we think is the best compromise deal that enables us to leave as good friends, good neighbours, on good terms with the European Union, carrying on trading with the European Union and at the same time get the benefits of Brexit, being able to forge our own trade policies, to leave the single market legislation, to leave the customs union, to leave the Common Agricultural Policy, to leave the Common Fisheries Policy. What we campaigned for in 2016 was not to become an inward focused nation, not to walk away from international friendships but was to stay good friends and neighbours, to be a globally focused country but actually take back control of our laws and our finances and I think this deal achieves that but it does so in a way that recognises the fact that the nation is pretty divided on this issue.

SR: More than half of MPs have publicly said that they are not going to be backing the deal so the prospect of no deal becomes very real. You of course have been involved in some of that no deal planning as Transport Secretary so I wanted to talk for a while about how that no deal planning is going. For example, you have employed a company called Seaborne Freight to provide some extra ferry routes. It has no emerged that they don’t have any ships and actually they won’t be ready until a month after we’ve left, I mean that’s not going to spark confidence from people is it?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well what I’ve done is I’ve hired two very well established ferry companies, DFDS and Brittany Ferries, to provide an element of extra capacity across the Channel in a no deal scenario. First and foremost, my prime priority in a no deal scenario is to keep the conventional route through Dover and Calais and through the Channel Tunnel moving smoothly. I have had conversations with my French counterpart, we have had political discussions with the French, we have had official discussions with the French and everyone is committed to keeping things flowing as smoothly as possible.

SR: But that doesn’t mean that it will be smooth.

CHRIS GRAYLING: That’s why we’re putting in place some extra capacity to take some of the pressure off the system. Now we had a smaller third business that came along and said we can do something for you too, a very small proportion of what we need and we have given them the opportunity to do that. They don’t get paid unless they deliver the service but I’m not in the business of saying to a new British company, you can’t take part. What I am in the business of doing is saying is if you want to take part, you have to prove you can deliver and we are not going to pay you until you do.

SR: Another thing that perhaps isn’t going to be inspiring huge amounts of confidence is the traffic jams that were organised in which 150 lorries were hoped to turn up and actually only 89 arrived. I mean you can’t even organise a traffic jam.

CHRIS GRAYLING: Because that wasn’t the purpose of the exercise. It’s great to grab these headlines and say, oh it didn’t work. Actually what we were doing was tracking the flows of lorries in and out of Manston Airfield and further down on the A256, actually in groups of 25, so that you could see how quickly lorries could move into and out of the site. People tend to look at something, form their own impressions and reach a conclusion as to what’s happening. Actually the trial worked fine and if you are bringing in lorries on the day – and some of them will get late work to do – you will be inviting more than you need to get the job done and that’s what we did.

SR: Have you been in touch with the Ministry of Defence about some of your no-deal planning?

CHRIS GRAYLING: I have talked to Gavin Williamson about no-deal planning quite regularly, yes.

SR: What about?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well we discuss as Cabinet colleagues what we would do in no-deal planning terms. I mean I don’t have the military actively involved in no-deal planning beyond the secondment of a small number of staff at the Ministry of Defence, as is happening across Whitehall. I mean our focus in no-deal planning has been to make sure we have all the aviation agreements we need in place, making sure we take into account the possibility of disruption in Kent – I do not want a repeat of what happened in 2015 when the whole of Kent was ground to a halt by troubles in the Channel ports. Making sure that we have some alternative capacity where it’s needed but first and foremost, working with the French, working with people at Eurotunnel, working with people at Dover and Calais to make sure that we keep the trade flowing smoothly. Everybody wants that to happen.

SR: But the Army is on standby, the military is ready to help if it looks like there will be major disruption?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well I have not asked for military support for the operations in Kent, that will be handled by Highways England and Kent Police.

SR: Okay. Now yesterday you said that the far right could benefit if Brexit isn’t pushed through and I wanted to just have a look at some of those comments you did make because you said that if MPs don’t back Theresa May’s deal ‘We risk a break with the British tradition of moderate mainstream politics that goes back to the Restoration in 1660.’ What did you mean?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well I think you are putting into quotes things I didn’t actually say as a quote but what I actually meant was if we …

SR: That was the quote in the Mail, were you misquoted then?

CHRIS GRAYLING: No, I think that was a quote outside question marks, I don’t recall mentioning the Restoration. What I said is that we will lose a tradition …

SR: My understanding is that that was in quotation marks.

CHRIS GRAYLING: Okay, let me explain. My concern is that we will have in the aftermath of a decision not to go ahead with Brexit, if we do not fulfil the terms of that referendum, what we will have is the arrival in this country of the kind of populist politics on the extremes that we are seeing in most other European countries. We have always in this country – and this is where the point is absolutely right – we have always had I think a sensible political mainstream that has dealt with issues in a mature way throughout the decades. What we haven’t seen in this country is the appearance of political extremism in the way that we have seen in some other countries over the years. I do not want that, the emergence of the populist parties that we are seeing in most other European countries now, in this country because we turned around to the people, the 17.4 million people who voted to leave and simply said to them, sorry guys, we’re not leaving after all.

SR: So just to be clear, in the Mail on Sunday interview they were saying that you were talking about the breaking with a tradition of politics that goes back to the Restoration in 1660 and I think people are thinking, hang on, there have been some pretty bad things that have happened since 1660 – wars, executions, millions of people not being able to vote at all. They were the good old days?

CHRIS GRAYLING: No, I did not specifically mention the date 1660. What I said is that I am concerned that we will see now the kind of populist politics in this country that we have previously seen emerge in other European countries and I do not want that to happen.

SR: Okay, now I just want to talk about your own record because you have been Transport Secretary now for two and a half years. Train punctuality is at a 13 year low but fares keep rising; more than 3000 bus routes reduced or scrapped since 2010. Is that a record that you are proud of? Do you think things are better now?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well I think what we are doing on the railways is continually expanded demand for services. Our rail network is absolutely full, we are putting a huge amount of money into the rail network, £47 billion over the next five years, opening new services around the country, starting new routes, replacing old trains with new ones. Every single train in the north of England is being replaced with a brand new or a completely refurbished train over the coming months. We have got the express trains on the East Coast Mainline or the Great Western Mainline, on the Trans-Pennine route coming later this year – a huge amount of investment taking place around the country. Some of that investment has been delayed, frustratingly, so what happened with Northern Rail last summer because of the delay to the electrification of the line from Blackpool to Manchester, that was an investment programme that we were putting in with government funding, which was delayed and caused knock-on effects to the timetable. But the reason we are spending this money is because we recognise that the rail system is hugely congested and what we’re trying to do is ease the pressure, increase capacity, give people a better travelling experience.

SR: I can’t help but think that if you are one of these rail passengers, and we have been to Wigan with the show for example and spoken to some of these people who have had their lives really, really put under great strain because of the delays, not being able to get back to put their kids to bed, struggling to get to interviews and to jobs because they just can’t rely on the transport system, the output is not really good enough is it?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well of course it’s not good enough, that is why we are replacing all the trains for the people with brand new trains and more seats, with more capacity and the frustration last summer were the problems that were caused by an electrification project that went wrong, that was delayed. This was government investment that was delayed, it wasn’t government not putting in money, it was government investing money and the delay to the project which meant there was a knock-on effect, electric trains couldn’t be used and therefore there was a shortage of rolling stock. It is hugely frustrating, it’s why we will make sure passengers receive compensation for what happened. The service is now running better, it’s not perfect, there’s a way to go yet but the service is running better and more reliably now but it’s not nearly good enough yet and that’s why I think the new trains coming across the North over the next few months will make a real difference.

SR: You didn’t mention bus routes there which I did in my original question. Now I can’t help but thinking again, bus routes are something that people don’t give enough attention to in Westminster and yet disproportionately people on low incomes tend to use buses, people outside the south-east. Do you use the bus?

CHRIS GRAYLING: I do occasionally, I use the train mostly, I catch the train most days, I use the bus from time to time but that is one reason why we have given franchising powers back to mayoral authorities in recognition that it may be necessary for them to plan a significantly integrated network, better services and actually in places where local authorities are really working with the private operators to deliver better services, like Cornwall for example, you are seeing a rise in ridership, you are seeing a rise in revenues and a better service for passengers, so it can be done.

SR: I just want to talk about drones as well before you leave because I have to say it has been pretty embarrassing hasn’t it, two of our major airports temporarily shut down because of drones. There have been a lot of questions about why this wasn’t recognised sooner as an issue.

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well the simple answer is, in the case of Gatwick what happened there was a unique situation that has not happened anywhere else in the world. Heathrow was different, Heathrow was a drone that appeared and disappeared, Gatwick was a deliberate disruptive attack. The systems do not exist to completely tackle a problem like this. We were able to bring in some military equipment that helped ease the situation, Gatwick is now looking to put together a new set of systems that can tackle the problem but we’ve had airports from all round the world come to us since this happened and said we’re not sure how we would cope, how did you cope? This is a new area, the technology is very immature, there is a lot of effort now going into this from airports around the UK, we’re working with them to try and find the right solutions but there wasn’t a simple off the shelf solution that should have been in place that wasn’t in place.

SR: It feels that you have been trailed shall we say with misfortune in the Department of Transport with the drones, before that in the Ministry of Justice with very controversial cuts to legal aid, issues with the probation service. Why do you think it is that this misfortune seems to follow you?

CHRIS GRAYLING: Well it is a challenging time for all of us in government. We have to deliver change, we have to tackle new issues like the drones for example so it is a question of getting on with the job and tackling the problems as best you can but at the end of the day, deal with your financial positions and also dealing with particular challenges like the expanding of the railways, you just have to get on with the job and do you best.

SR: Okay, thank you very much.

CHRIS GRAYLING: You’re welcome.