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We already know what is in the pipeline on the North London line upgrades. A view from the boroughs and transportation officers is that whenthe North London line is opened up and publicised—the hon. Gentleman touched briefly on that point—one of the key issues that must be addressed is the travelling public’s awareness of the existence of some of the less high-profile lines. When there is such awareness, there will be a sudden growth in the number of passengers who want to travel on the North London line. The Government need to consider the issue of funding to enable the line to operate as a six-car train service to create the additional capacity that will be needed when people start to use it.
I want to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster who asked if the Government have taken their eye off the ball in respect of transport in London. I hope that, when the Minister responds, he will be able to say whether he has had discussions with Transport for London about the North London line upgrades and, if so, whether he supports them.
I hope the Minister will say, too, what time scale will be involved, what costings are associated with the project and whether there is the risk of an impact on 2012. We need to know that a dialogue is going on; I hope the Minister will comment on that and on the line’s regeneration potential, which the hon. Member for Battersea mentioned in his opening speech. It is not only about cutting congestion, but about opening up new areas to regeneration which, in the case of the North London railway, could include a huge redevelopment area near the King’s Cross railway land.
Developers are looking at rebuilding the stations at West Hampstead and there is potential to reduce the pressure on the main termini, which we must all seek to achieve. Although it is not one of the stations that will be affected, anyone travelling through Victoria knows that anything that can be done to reduce pressure on people coming in to the main termini and swapping to other modes of transport would be welcome.
I do not need to refer to phase 2 of the East London line extension, as other hon. Members have done so, other than to say that I support what they are calling for. However, I shall underline one factor: the range of organisations and groups that are supporting thephase 2 extension, including eight or nine boroughs, the Corporation of London and a large number of businesses. They are very keen for funding for phase 2 to be approved. Will the Minister say what discussions he has had with Transport for London on the subject and the likelihood of the project proceeding? Does he, like the Mayor, believe that a £10 billion regeneration programme will be a spin-off of the proposal? Do the Government recognise that and will they therefore be able to factor it in when they are considering whether to allocate funds to the proposal?
The final piece of the Orbirail jigsaw is the electrification of the Gospel Oak to Barking line, which other hon. Members have mentioned. Has the Minister been informed of the likely cost? Does he have a view about whether the Government would be willing to underwrite that cost in one form or another?
On the totality of the proposals, if the three different funding proposals were approved, or if one, two or three of those proposals were approved individually, what plans do the Minister and Transport for London have to publicise the availability of the lines within London and beyond to ensure that commuters coming in to London from much further afield are aware of the alternative transport services and can therefore reduce the pressure on main stations?
London is the UK’s major wealth generator. The nation’s prosperity and the success of events such as the Olympics depend on a transport network that is comprehensive and flexible and that reduces congestion and pollution. The creation of an Orbirail system based on the three transport enhancements that I and other Members have mentioned fits the bill and will complete London’s transport network. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will be positive and optimistic in his reply.
3.30 pm
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con): It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr. Conway.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) on his speech. He talked authoritatively about the transport issues that face both the area that he represents and other parts of London. He rightly talked about the falling numbers of people who live and work in the same borough and highlighted the fact that more and more people are travelling across London. He is right to say that if the right services are not in place, there is a risk that those people will seek to drive rather than use public transport, in so far as it is possible to drive given the levels of congestion in and around London. Clearly, it is in all our interests that people should use public transport wherever that is possible and practical.
It is our duty to do our best to ensure that our public transport system is capable of offering people as wide a range of options as possible given the limitations of our transport corridors. It is striking how much we depend on our heritage from Victorian times. Most of the corridors that we seek to reopen, redevelop and use to expand services date from that period, so we should be mighty glad to have that inheritance.
The orbital route is already coming about. Phase 1 of the East London line is going ahead—construction will begin shortly—and we have seen a change to service patterns on the other side of London. One can now take a train from Clapham Junction through to Stratford, as the hon. Member for Battersea will know, and the new stations at West Brompton and others on the way in west London are beginning to create an alternative service pattern that was not there 10 or15 years ago. So, we have already started down the road that the hon. Member for Battersea rightly identified: providing people with different transport options around London.
It is clearly desirable that we should improve service patterns in London. Evidently, if we hope, as we should, to continue to revive and regenerate our cities and encourage people to live in them—we are a small island, and cannot continue to build in green, open spaces—we need better public transport provision. People simply cannot drive everywhere in our cities that they might want to. I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman about the desirability of enhanced services and of an Orbirail-type system in so far as it can make a difference in London. I say that with a few caveats, to which I shall return.
Some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman highlights could and should have been dealt with by some of the other projects that were supposed to happen this decade but have not. I listened carefully to Labour Members’ comments about the different station options that would be available around an Orbirail network, and about how a number of communities who are not served by railway stations could be so served on such a route. That is all well and good and absolutely desirable; there is genuinely a market for radial journeys in London. However, I am less convinced that there is a market for people to come from the south coast, get off at Clapham Junction, go round an Orbirail network to Finsbury Park, for example, and get on a train to the north. I suspect that the real benefits will come for people in places such as Hackney by opening up links to other parts of London, such as south-east London, and by creating easier links to docklands and parts of north London. The network would open up places that are currently difficult to reach by public transport.
Of course, some of the pressures that the hon. Member for Battersea rightly highlighted in his speech could and should have been dealt with through projects such as the rather inaptly named Thameslink 2000, which was, according to the Government’s 10-year plan, due to be open and functioning by 2000. Indeed, it is slightly bizarre that even as we speak, there are two empty tunnels beneath St. Pancras station. They were built to create an additional dimension to cross-London transport, but will remain unopened because the Government have not, as yet, gone ahead with the commitment that they made in their 10-year plan to open up, develop and make a reality of the Thameslink 2000 service.
I am glad that phase 1 of the East London line is going ahead, but hon. Members should remember that it is one small part of a much broader range of projects to ease the congestion, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, that have not come to fruition despite having been clearly set out as commitments for 2010 in the Government’s 10-year plan.
Hon. Members rightly mentioned the significant costs of some of the proposed schemes. I suspect that that is one reason why, with the East London line, there has been a commitment only to phase 1, although the whole line was originally due to be completed within a few years. I can clearly see the potential benefits of the East London line coming to Clapham Junction; a link to Finsbury Park, as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster(Mr. Field); and various other suggested enhancements to the route. However, there are, of course, huge costs.
It should be of significant concern to us all that the costs of such rail projects have risen so much in the past few years, and it should be a challenge for Governments and would-be Governments to address why they have risen so much. We have to bring those costs down so that we can spend the savings on projects such as phase 2 of the East London line and Thameslink 2000. We must get to grips with this issue: our railways are far too expensive, especially in recent times—much more so than they appear to be in other countries. We have not yet got to grips with that challenge, but we must do so.
There has been a lot of discussion about the work done by Transport for London and the Mayor of London, and comments were made about the professionalism of Transport for London. I think that TFL does some good work. The Mayor clearly has an absolute commitment to enhancing London’s transport infrastructure, and he is not wrong to identify transport in London as a key issue for its future economic success.
A variety of transport challenges are building up: it is becoming increasingly difficult to get an easy and comfortable journey into central London, and there is a significant under-provision of transport to parts of central London such as Hackney. The Thames Gateway also causes me great concern. We cannot build a city of a million people on the Thames without proper infrastructure provision. Those issues will have to be addressed.
I have a few concerns regarding some Labour Members’ remarks about the Orbirail project, and about some of the consequences of its creation. The first such issue that I shall address is that of cost and prudential borrowing. It is becoming commonplace for people, when they talk about transport in London—people in TFL, and Labour Members—to regard prudential borrowing as something easy that can just happen. The bottom line is that the Mayor intends to spend £10 billion, raised by prudential borrowing, on transport projects over the coming years. After that money has been spent, the debt has to be paid. It is not like a zero-percentage-rate credit card on which one can go out and spend up to the credit limit and it is all fine thank you very much. We have to pay the debt off in the end. The cost of servicing that £10 billion of prudential borrowing will be about £800 million a year; TFL’s budget is about £4 billion a year, so the equivalent of £1 in every £5 will be spent on servicing the debt. We cannot simply look at the Mayor’s prudential borrowing for transport infrastructure as being some great nirvana, because ultimately it has to be paid for, and I am not convinced that he has the money to pay the bills.
At the start of the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster pointed out that many people who come into London, and many people upon whom its economic prosperity depends, do not come from within the London geographic area. My constituency is inside the M25, but I am not a London MP. My constituents cannot vote for the Mayor of London and do not have a say in what Transport for London does.
I do not have profound concerns about the desirability of sensible stops being made by trains coming in from outside London to link in with an Orbirail-type development. I think that is sensible and would happen anyway. If a metro-type service is using an orbital route around central London, for someone who is running a suburban train in it will become natural and logical to stop at the stations where an interchange on to that service is possible. I do not think that that in its own right would be a problem. I think it would simply happen as a matter of course.
Mr. Mark Field: My hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) would understand that precisely that sort of mentality existed with the tramlink between Croydon, Wimbledon and Beckenham. Precisely that linking up of a range of different residential areas was involved. It predated Transport for London, so, as my hon. Friend rightly points out, it is not just the existence of TFL that has allowed some joined-up thinking in transport matters in the capital.
Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend makes a valid point and gives a further good example of where such thinking has worked well in the past without politicians seeking to direct it.
As somebody who represents people who travel into London from outside the Mayor’s catchment area, I do not wish to see the Mayor taking direct responsibility for changing the service patterns on trains that come from areas outside his control. It is simply not right to have the Mayor taking decisions about service patterns to fit a particular need in central London when those decisions materially affect commuters who live 30, 40 or 50 miles away. The Minister must be extremely careful before he hands over too many powers to the Mayor over the timetabling of the suburban rail network. Doing so may allow the Mayor to achieve his transport aspirations within London, but it will work to the detriment of those who come from outside London and will ultimately impact on the competitiveness of London and the south-east.
I have two other brief points to make. First, for all the Mayor’s aspirations for the north London line, and for improving and continuing those services around an Orbirail route, we must be careful about the impact on freight. Labour Members are right to say that some of the freight coming through north London should be going elsewhere—another of the commitments in the Government’s 10-year plan for transport that has not so far been kept. Of course it is crazy that goods coming in to Felixstowe and going to the midlands have to come through central London; that should not be happening. However, some freight comes into London in its own right, and if we fill the north London line with passenger services to the extent that those freight trains can no longer come into London, the consequence will be additional lorries on the roads. Ministers, TFL and Labour Members must be mindful of that when talking about the growth of services on the north London line.
The last point I
want to make relates to a comment made by the hon. Member for
Battersea, and is about the specification of services. He offered some
hopes about the kind of service provision that the train
companies would come up with. My message to him is that they have no
freedom to do that now. The rail service in this country is specified
in fine detail by the Minister and his colleagues. They have a team of
civil servants who write train timetables and set out in minute detail
which services can and cannot run. If the hon. Member for Battersea is
looking for a specific level of service on the Orbirail route or in
other areas that he represents, it is the Minister he needs to go to
see, rather than the train companies.
We all agree that London’s transport infrastructure is essential not only to the future economy of the city, but to that of the country. We should all work to enhance it in the right way for the future. I commend the hon. Member for Battersea on highlighting the issue of Orbirail, which is often a forgotten project, but potentially a very valuable one. I hope that the jigsaw puzzle pieces that the Government put together in their 10-year plan for transport, which would all come together to form an Orbirail route, will come to fruition by 2010, as promised by this Government.
3.44 pm
The Minister of State, Department for Transport(Dr. Stephen Ladyman): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) on securing this debate and on the passionate case he puts for an orbital rail route to serve his constituents.
One of the nice things that I have discovered about being a transport Minister is the opportunities it gives me to bring people together; I think of the good folk of Clapham junction being able to enjoy cultural interchange with the good folk of Dalston junction, and of bringing Haggerston and Hoxton on to the map. Another thing I have discovered is that when somebody comes up to me and mentions a small place, whether it be a small village far away from London or one of the villages of London, or when they ask me about the B205 or some small station that I have never heard of, the one thing I should never do is admit to never having heard of the place, because everybody thinks that transport Ministers keep an encyclopaedic knowledge of such places. I am not going to boast about whether I know of Haggerston and Hoxton or not; all I shall boast is that we will want them to be provided with a comprehensive rail and public transport service. The steps that the Government are taking, hand in hand with Transport for London, will deliver that.
I want to take issue with the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), who seemed to imply that we take our eye of the ball and leave London’s transport to TFL. TFL, like local authorities outside London, passenger transport executives around the country and other bodies are the delivery mechanisms by which the Government deliver most of their transport schemes. TFL is just one such body. Most transport in this country is local. The Government must have some direct input into the Highways Agency trunk road network and the main rail services, but the vast majority of goods and people are moved on local roads and through local transport. We have a very close relationship with all those local authorities.
In
London, we have the close relationship with TFL and the Mayor in order
to deliver London’s transport.
We are certainly not taking our eye off the ball by relying on the local
expertise of the Mayor and his team at TFL. The hon. Gentleman might
feel that the voice of Members of Parliament is not heard because they
are somehow divorced from TFL, but I would argue that it is the job of
MPs to get engaged with their local transport delivery mechanism. Just
as I try to engage with Kent county council on behalf of my
constituents, he should be engaging with
TFL.
Mr. Field: Does the Minister not accept that for strategic funding purposes, one of the difficulties that we have in London is that the Mayor has a precept? He is able to charge tax, part of which goes to transport, although other bits go to policing and are spent in other high profile ways. That breaks that nexus and makes it more difficult for all of us; it is the devolution debate writ large. I speak for Conservatives, although perhaps not for Labour Members of Parliament with London constituencies, when I say that there has been a sense in which the Department for Transport has taken its eye off the ball as far as London transport is concerned.
Dr. Ladyman: I do not accept that at all. Every local authority has the power to raise funds through its council tax to supplement the money that the Government give it for its transport systems. I was listening to the comments made by my hon. Friends, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who talked about the views of Members of Parliament who represent constituencies outside the M25. She believes that they have a negative view of the amount of money that is spent on London. It is true that many Members who represent constituencies outside the M25 think that all the money is spent on London and that more of it should be spent on their areas.
The Government clearly take the view that spending on London transport is a necessary part of our national transport infrastructure, and that we have a largely radial transport network in this country and it comes in through London. We think that there are benefits to spending on transport in London. If there is a tension between Members who represent constituencies outside London and those who represent London constituencies, I would like to encourage London Members to start engaging with Members who represent constituencies outside London and explaining to them the importance of travel investment in London. That would also give them the opportunity to explain the difficulties that they feel. The fact that both Members who represent London constituencies and Members who represent constituencies outside London think we are spending too much on the other area probably indicates that the Government are getting the balance about right.
I return to the matter of the
London orbital railway. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea and
other hon. Friends made powerful cases about the levels of deprivation
and unemployment in London, which many people do not realise. The
Government certainly do, and we see benefit in providing a transport
infrastructure in places for which regeneration is a huge opportunity.
We see the benefit of the orbital network relieving congestion, and
alongside orbital services we must recognise the need to maintain
journeys on the
radial routes into London as journeys on those services are also vital
to the economic well-being of London.
We must also recognise the importance of allowing freight traffic to serve London and pass through its rail network from, among other places, the channel ports. My hon. Friend made a powerful case but nearly lost me when he appeared to suggest that freight from the channel ports should not come through London. Perhaps he momentarily forgot that I represent a constituency that is a channel port and that many of my constituents are employed in putting freight on a line that comes through London.
Martin Linton: I am suggesting not that freight should not pass through London to reach its destination but that it might benefit the channel ports and London if there were a simpler route. There was at one time talk of a tunnel under the Thames at Shell Haven to allow freight from the channel to reach the rest of the country without having to use the congested and clogged railway lines of London.
Dr. Ladyman: My hon. Friend is right that freight currently has to pass through London. Maybe in the future we can find simpler and more straightforward ways to move freight around. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) pointed out that dilemma, but the difference between him and the Government is that we are making investments that will allow us one day to deal with that problem, whereas I suspect he has no intention of even thinking about such investment.
On 14 February this year we announced the transfer of responsibility for the management of the rail services collectively known as the North London railway to Transport for London. That transfer will become effective from November 2007, from when TFL will be responsible for the franchising of passenger services that are currently operated by Silverlink. It will be responsible for the management of the franchise—or as I understand it intends to callit, the concession—and the financing of future enhancements. Those matters will need to be judged alongside other TFL priorities. It is important to pause and reflect on what that means: that a London organisation, answerable to London politicians and therefore to the people of London, will be deciding the priorities for London, rather than national politicians such as myself trying to second-guess them. That is an important step forward.
Of course Network Rail will remain the owner and operator of the track infrastructure, and the agreement that we have struck with Transport for London does not change the status of that ownership. As part of the handover process, TFL has named the four bidders that pre-qualify to tender for services and it will soon issue invitations to tender. Services under its control will include Gospel Oak to Barking, Stratford to Richmond and Euston to Watford Junction. TFL’s aspiration is four trains an hour on each of the core routes and significantly greater frequencies on some sections, especially at peak times.
Although the
scheme has not yet been committed to and is subject to agreement with
Network Rail on the
availability of paths on the route, TFL also plans significant station
upgrades and a fleet of new trains. Two new stations on the West London
line—Shepherd’s Bush and Imperial Wharf—are
planned to open in 2007, with four new stations being added as part of
the northern East London line extension.
I say as an aside that my Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter), who is here with me today, has reminded me how useful it would be if there were an additional station on the West London line in his constituency, linked to Crossrail. I must tell him that we cannot always get what we want, but I know that he intends to campaign hard on his idea.
The 60 existing stations, including those south of New Cross Gate, will be cleaned, renovated and upgraded. All the changes are being made possible by the record level of investment in London’s transport infrastructure facilitated by TFL’s five-year investment programme and the funding settlement reached with the Government for the period 2004-05 to 2009-10. The first phase of the North London railway infrastructure enhancement is expected to be completed by early 2011, and it will be in good time for the Olympics. Used properly, the North London line has the potential to be a vital radial route around a wide arc of north London, shortening journey times for those travelling across London and relieving congestion at the central London terminus stations.
However, when considering such services we must also be aware of the important role that the North London line has for freight and the contractual rights that freight operators have on it and on other routes. The North London line is part of the main route between the major east coast ports, Felixstowe and Harwich, and the west midlands and north-west. The route has been cleared to allow larger containers to operate along it, with the aim of maintaining rail’s modal share as the container market changes. Any changes to passenger services must be considered alongside freight requirements, and we know through work with TFL and Network Rail that the requirements of freight operators have been a major issue in identifying the infrastructure requirements to deliver enhanced services on the North London line. That probably answers the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea about why the extension of the line around Highbury and Islington and Canonbury, although it is only a short stretch of line, is so much more expensive than the other parts of the enhancement. It is because of the need to provide extensive signalling and other work to meet the needs of freight traffic and those using the interchange between the two lines.
We have not
ruled out the further devolution of franchising powers, and we will
need to consider it on a case-by-case basis. We need to be mindful of
the synergy between London’s services and those further afield
in any decisions that we make, and understand the potential impact on
issues such as performance that may be the result of such decisions.
The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell pointed out the problems that would
be caused if the Mayor were to make decisions on commuter trains
stopping frequently in London and the impact that that would have on
the hon.
Gentleman’s constituents and mine. We would clearly need to
engage with the Mayor on that matter, but it is sensible that he is
allowed to make suggestions about the need for trains to stop at
particular interchanges so that people can take an orbital route around
London rather than having always to come right into the centre and
travel out again. It is a matter of getting the balance right and
listening to the Mayor’s ideas rather than allowing him to
dominate the decision-making
process.
TFL has not taken over the franchising role for the north London railway, so we shall have to assess how that project develops in the coming years. Orbital services will be significantly enhanced in 2010 when the East London line extension phase 1 opens. That project will link the rail network north and south of the river to the east of the city and provide, for the first time in a number of years, regular and fast journeys between north, east and south London, with services between Dalston in the north and west Croydon and Crystal Palace in the south. Journey opportunities will be significantly enhanced by opportunities for connections with existing services. Preparatory infrastructure works to facilitate the extension have commenced and as part of them Shoreditch station recently closed.
The planned and committed investment in enhancing London’s orbital rail network up to 2012 is in excess of £1 billion. The Department is aware of further aspirations for enhanced orbital services: the East London line extension phase 2, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, would provide further orbital journey opportunities, but it is not funded within TFL’s current business plan and I am afraid that it is not expected to take place until after 2012. I am of course aware of the representations that my hon. Friend has made to my ministerial colleagues on that project and the importance that he places on it, and the Government will consider the funding of such enhancements as part of the next spending review, and in TFL’s submission to the Department if it TFL proposes it.
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