Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Transport – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 30 March 2017.
Bill Esterson
Shadow Minister (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), Shadow Minister (International Trade)
12:00,
30 March 2017
I had two letters from the Minister of State last week, one describing work on the M25 and the other about Switch Island, which he describes. We all know that the Government have a Surrey-first approach to spending money, but my constituents want to know about Switch Island. It has a very serious safety problem. There are accidents nearly every week, and there was one just two days ago. Will he change the priority of this scheme? I was told it would happen next year, but it needs to happen much sooner than that. Safety must come first.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
