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9.14 pm
Ms Angela C. Smith (Sheffield, Hillsborough) (Lab): I welcome this debate. I want to concentrate principally on the issue of investment in high-speed rail networks, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer). To some extent, I want to make common cause with my friend from the other side of the Pennines, unusual though that may seem.
It was good to hear recent announcements about the formation of the High Speed 2 company, and I am sure that we all await further statements on that topic with interest. Of course, anyone could be forgiven for finding it difficult to accept that further high-speed networks will be built until we actually see the relevant signatures on the dotted lines. To be honest, our country’s history has, for decades, been one of short-term decisions at the expense of long-term investments. As Steve Richards of The Guardian said recently, there has been a “perverse indifference” to the issue.
However, the Government appear to be on the verge of doing something bold and exciting, and I can only urge our Ministers to stick with their instincts, and to deliver what it appears that they are promising to deliver as soon as they can. That we have moved to such a position is, in many ways, quite an achievement, given where we were only a short time ago. The Eddington report, for instance, argued that economic returns from high-speed rail in the UK were unlikely to be as large as
returns on investments in alternative projects. Eddington argued that that was due to the compact geography of the UK and an extensive air network, among other things, but many disagreed with him, and their contributions to the debate have helped to lead us where we are today. Public opinion is more aligned towards the progressive position than it has been for some years, and recognises that it is right to challenge aviation as the principal means of travelling within the country. I support the third runway at Heathrow, but it is absolutely right that we challenge aviation and provide a greener alternative wherever we can.
The Atkins report argued that the economic benefit to the UK of high-speed rail would be £63 billion, and the Commission for Integrated Transport made a significant contribution to the debate. The well-respected Professor David Begg argued that
“shrinking journey times between main cities”
“essential if we are to deal with capacity constraints that are building up on our intercity network.”
That point was well made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley. In other words, the capacity that was apparent in the 1970s and 1980s has been soaked up.
One option for dealing with the lack of capacity on the network would be to price passengers off the trains. It is clearly an option, and it may well be the chosen route of the train operators, but I believe, as do most progressive thinkers, that that would not be the right way forward. It would make much more sense to invest in new capacity and so free up capacity on our existing network. Given the increasing pressure on our highway network, would it not make much more sense to get more passengers and more freight off our roads and on to our trains? After all, as Professor Begg has pointed out, increasing congestion on our roads is leading to reductions in average travel speeds, and that, of course, has a negative impact on economic activity. Surely common sense, if nothing else, needs to prevail; we need to recognise that the only way out of the situation is to build more and—this is the key point—better railway capacity.
The Northern Way is the other organisation that has made the case for high-speed networks for both the east and west. I now come to the point on which I do not entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley. The Northern Way—a group of regional development agencies—argues that we need high-speed routes up the east and west coasts, linked by the trans-Pennine route. It predicts that such an investment would have an economic impact of £10 billion on the economy of the north.
All in all, then, there is a powerful economic case for high-speed rail, which could help to rebalance our economy by encouraging the integration of our regional economies. As I pointed out in a debate in Westminster Hall the other week, we talk a lot nowadays about rebalancing our economy by developing our manufacturing base, but I believe strongly that we need to do so by considering not just whether we need more manufacturing and less of a financial services sector, but whether we develop the economy of the north and the rest of the country, and balance those regions with London and the south-east.
However, the environmental case is powerful too, for only a reliable fast rail network offering a comfortable journey at a reasonable price will be able to compete against the car and the plane. I echo entirely the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) about the inconsistencies and the difficulties experienced by passengers in getting the best deal on the trains, and the disincentive that the current fare structure presents for people who make a last-minute decision to hop on a train. They find it much easier to get in the car to make that journey, because the cost of travelling on the train at the last minute is prohibitively high.
A modal shift is critical to our environmental and economic future, and I therefore call on Ministers to commit the Government to this vision for our rail network. Economically, socially and environmentally, that is the right thing to do. That vision should include in the first phase of High Speed 2 the reopening of the trans-Pennine link, preferably based, as everyone would expect me to say, on the reopening of the Woodhead line.
The Woodhead line runs deep in the hearts of most railway commentators. I have had letters from up and down the country on that subject. It was the first line in the country to be electrified and it provides a fast link of just 35 minutes between Sheffield and Manchester. It would be the best option environmentally for a new trans-Pennine link because the environmental impact of reopening that line would be much less than that of building a brand new link between, say, Manchester and Sheffield, or elsewhere.
There are other things that we need to do. Before we start investing in the high-speed network, we need, for instance, to sort out the logistical problems that dog Manchester’s rail network. It might seem strange that a Member representing Sheffield should support Manchester in wanting to get its problems sorted, but the problems of Manchester impact on every major city in the north. We need the Manchester hub, and we need it quickly. Progress in the north cannot move forward much further until that is resolved.
We need the electrification of lines such as the Great Western and midland main line, in order to bring cities such as Leicester, Derby and Sheffield closer to London as soon as possible. The journey takes two hours and seven minutes at best from Sheffield to London, but Sheffield is the UK’s fourth largest city. We could bring the journey time below two hours, but there are still certain times of the day when it is more like three hours. We need to make progress in that respect.
In conclusion, although I welcome many of the proposals to improve rail services in the medium to long term, there are many things that the Department for Transport can do in the short term. By improving the quality of stations and providing safety and disability access measures, we can improve the travelling experience for train passengers. I commend my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for making available £35 million for such upgrades. I am delighted that upgrades are in the pipeline for stations on the much used Huddersfield to Sheffield line, which is one of those sardine-tin lines that is packed for most of the time that the rolling stock is in operation. Investment is promised for Penistone, Silkstone Common and Dodworth. More of this type of short-term investment would be good for our railways and provide a useful stimulus to our ailing economy.
Finally, with reference to Sheffield being shortlisted for the new inter-city rolling stock, it would be wrong to underestimate the city’s history of railway component making and manufacturing, or its capacity to deliver that new stock.
9.24 pm
Mr. Denis Murphy (Wansbeck) (Lab): I will be as brief as I can. As part of the argument for an expansion of the rail network, I draw attention to the Ashington, Blyth and Tyne railway line, which is a fully maintained, operational, mostly double-track freight line that last saw regular passenger services in the 1960s. It forms an important part of our regional network. The main trunk runs from Newcastle through Northumberland Park, which has a Metro station connection, then to Seghill, Seaton Delaval, Newsham—for Blyth—Bebside, Bedlington and Ashington. There is a further branch, which runs from Bedlington, through Choppington, connecting back to the east coast main line at Morpeth. There are other freight branches to the Alcan aluminium smelter and the port of Blyth.
Supported by other funding partners, the North East assembly has already completed a technical report into restoring passenger rail services on the line. The report concluded that there would be a one-off cost of £4.1 million and an annual operating subsidy of only £50,000 per annum for an hourly service to Newcastle until early evening—or of £100,000 per annum for a half-hourly service until midnight, which is our preferred option. No extra rolling stock would be required as, instead of waiting 30 minutes at Morpeth, the train would continue along the line to Bedlington. That would double the train frequency and provide a service until midnight for both Cramlington and Morpeth.
The proposal to open the main section of Ashington to Newcastle via Northumberland Park was the subject of a technical study funded by Nexus. It concluded that an hourly service was easily achievable in addition to existing freight traffic. The study did not examine capital costs, revenue or operating costs, but as Ashington is a much larger community than Bedlington and its station is in a prime town centre position, it can be assumed that patronage and revenues would be much higher if Ashington were included.
A Network Rail guide to railway investment projects 3 study, or GRIP 3 study, on the prospect of restoring passenger rail services from the Metro centre outside Newcastle into Ashington has just started. At the same time, a freight operator has requested a study on significantly increasing freight movement on that line. A new coal-fired power station is proposed for north Blyth; it would require 6 million tonnes of coal per year and approximately 3 million tonnes of that would come in on the rail line.
I conclude by asking the Minister to consider the request to reopen the railway to passenger rail services and by informing the House that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has agreed to visit Ashington and Bedlington to see for himself the benefits that that would bring.
9.27 pm
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton, North) (Lab):
I am very short of time, so I cannot do justice to my theme of rail freight. I strongly believe that we need heavy investment in dedicated rail freight and in infrastructure linking
the channel tunnel to Glasgow. With colleagues from the rail and haulage industries, I have been supporting the EuroRail freight route scheme for some time. We have a detailed, worked-out scheme, and I am glad to say that we have put it directly to the Secretary of State and the Minister with responsibility for railways. They know the detail.
I want to emphasise that the issue of rail freight is underplayed by the Government. The rail White Paper allocated only £200 million for rail freight over a five-year period. That is a tiny amount of money—just one eightieth of the proposed spending on Crossrail, one fortieth of what has been spent on west coast main line modernisation and half of what will be spent on modernising Birmingham New Street station. It is a tiny amount, and the Government are not taking rail freight seriously.
If we want those major economic regions in Scotland, the north and the midlands to be linked to the continent of Europe, a dedicated rail freight line going through the channel tunnel to those regions is vital. The existing routes cannot take double-stack containers and most cannot take full-size containers. They cannot take lorries on trains. They will not be used by hauliers without regular services accessible through terminals close to motorways; hauliers could load their lorries and get them delivered to Dortmund, Rome or wherever the next day. That is what we need and we have to invest in it.
We estimate that our detailed scheme would cost £4 billion—a tiny fraction of what would be spent on a high-speed passenger service, and of what is being spent on many other schemes. I would have liked much longer to speak about the scheme. I have just touched on it, but I hope that the Minister will take note.
9.29 pm
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con): On 12 February, we spent a full three hours in Westminster Hall debating the Select Committee’s report, when several interesting points were put to the Minister—some of which have been reiterated tonight—and several questions were asked of him. I hope that he might answer some of those in his speech. Tonight we have had the chance to range a little more widely.
Let me start with the question put to the Minister by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). The estimates book states that £7.5 billion out of the total £23.5 billion relates to financial instruments. Does that not create a huge risk? I understand that these estimates involve Government guarantees against London and Continental Railways, Network Rail debt issuance and the Air Travel Trust fund. To enable the House to assess the risks attached, can the Minister confirm when those guarantees were put in place, for how long they will extend, and what risk analysis has been undertaken; and will he put into the Library the probability analysis that was undertaken by the Department prior to making a risk assessment?
I want to refer to the White Paper, “Delivering a Sustainable Railway”. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that less than two years after the publication of that so-called 30-year strategy, it is already out of date and falling to pieces. It is no wonder that the Select Committee concluded that
“the Government should seek to develop a genuine 30-year rail strategy”,
for the document that they produced is clearly not that. At the time of its publication, it was rightly lambasted by all industry experts for its lack of vision and detachment from reality. Where does one start? It was over-hyped by the then Secretary of State; it has ultimately proved to be visionless; and although the high-level output specification contained many good things, they were, like so much from this Government, recycled or double counted, and the new things have yet to materialise.
So what, in reality, did the White Paper contain? There was the re-announcement about Birmingham New Street and Reading, there was £100 million for all station improvements outside London, and there were the much-vaunted 1,300 carriages, which went from being “new” to “extra” carriages, and all of which had been announced by the two Secretaries of State prior to the Secretary of State at that time. Quotations about “Delivering a Sustainable Railway” include:
“The level of ambition is too modest”;
“We urge the Government to be bolder”;
“It is deeply disappointing the Government dodged”;
“Hesitation means years of avoidable misery”;
“The white paper dismisses electrification too easily”.
Those are not my words—they come from the Select Committee report. In the end, one is forced to conclude that the Government’s 30-year strategy was an expensive waste of paper and printing.
In the less than two years since the strategy was produced, it has been seen to be wanting. The White Paper’s dismissal of high-speed rail and electrification has been rendered obsolete by the Government’s U-turns. On high-speed rail, the new Minister of State has clearly reversed the catastrophic opposition of the then Secretary of State. It is a shame that the Government’s plans for high-speed rail are rather less extensive than those announced by the Conservatives. The plans are so far uncosted, and we do not know where the trains are going to start from or go to.
Mrs. Ellman: Should the hon. Gentleman not be praising the Government for changing their position on high-speed rail, and should he not recognise that that is at least partly a consequence of the Select Committee’s report?
Stephen Hammond: I certainly praise the fact that the Government have joined the Conservative party in recognising that, like so much they have done on the railways, they have got it wrong and we have got it right. I do not know whether that was due to the Select Committee or the announcement that we made prior to that of the Select Committee. The hon. Lady will know that my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) announced our investigation in 2007, and our policy in 2008.
David Taylor: Would the hon. Gentleman find it surprising to be told that those looking in on this debate would reflect on the appalling legacy that was left to this Government in 1997 and assume that the Opposition would need industrial-strength chutzpah by the shed load to expect to be taken seriously on this issue, when a long period of silent contrition would be more appropriate?
Daniel Kawczynski: But the Conservatives will inherit a bankrupt economy.
Stephen Hammond: My hon. Friend is right: we will inherit a bankrupt economy, and given the fiasco of British Rail left by the previous Labour Administration for the incoming Conservative Government in 1979, history may not treat the comments of the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) that kindly.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: Does my hon. Friend not think that it is a badge of shame for this Government that when questioned last year it would seem that not one civil servant in the Department for Transport was allocated the task of looking at high-speed rail? In fact, after 11 years of Labour Government, we have just 113 km of high-speed rail, while France has 1,900 km.
Stephen Hammond: Indeed I do. The fact that no civil servants were looking at high-speed rail was confirmed by the then Minister responsible for rail, the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris). My hon. Friend’s point is absolutely accurate, and like him I might conclude that the Government have finally joined us in our far-sighted policy.
The capacity shortage on the network should be the top priority for the industry. The Government’s attempts to tackle the shortage have been misguided and totally inadequate, which was borne out by the evidence taken by the Select Committee. In its report, the Committee said that it was concerned that the Government were failing to deal with the concerns of the industry. It recommended that the Department revise its method of costing rail patronage, and it said that the Government’s approach to increasing rail capacity was over-cautious. That may be one word for it, but I bet that the commuters from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), of whose struggle he spoke so eloquently, do not use the word “over-cautious”. A stronger, more unified strategy for tackling overcrowding and keeping costs down is urgently required. That will help to take the pressure off rising fares, and more importantly, it would drive better value for money for the fare payer, the taxpayer and the traveller.
Hon. Members have raised a number of points tonight, but we have spent a lot of time listening to comments about the extra carriages, which are clearly the key to delivering extra capacity in the short term. The high-level output specification outlined 1,300 extra carriages, and we would welcome that. But are they new? How many of them are new? How many are cascaded? How many of them have actually been ordered? Will Thameslink phase 1 be delayed? How many carriages will be delivered and when? The process is close to a shambles.
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