Integrated Rail Plan: Northern Powerhouse Area

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for initiating this debate. His indefatigable approach to all things transport always leaves me feeling slightly exhausted, because he brings so many things to our attention.

The integrated rail plan was announced only on 18 November, but already there are rumours of a U-turn. I want to wade straight in with a question to the Minister on the accuracy of recent reports in the Telegraph newspaper that the traction decarbonisation network strategy, the £30 billion plan to decarbonise the railways in the next 30 years, has been shelved. If that is even slightly true, how do the Government plan to deliver a net zero-emission rail network by 2050? As the noble Lord, Lord Birt, pointed out, we are already way behind other nations, not just in electrification but in the development of high-speed rail. How do the Government’s spending priorities in this respect stack up, when there appears to be a continued commitment to the £27 billion roads programme?

To say that the integrated rail plan went down like a lead balloon across most of the north and Midlands is an understatement. The headlines were of course about HS2 but the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, pointed out that HS2 was as much about capacity as it was about speed. By abandoning the grand plan and going instead for a patchwork of upgrades, the Government will be creating very little additional capacity. My noble friend Lord Beith has explained that issue. I am concerned about the lack of a cost-benefit analysis undertaken on these plans. Any rail upgrades carry a heavy burden of costs of disruption of existing infrastructure—not just to the railways but to the roads. The Great Western electrification, which took 10 years, involved the closure of the railway system at weekends and involved central Cardiff roads being closed for a year at a time to raise bridges, for example. The disruption was tremendous.

The blow to investment plans for northern cities, which have been based on the arrival of HS2, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, pointed out, is considerable. Birmingham has demonstrated the attraction of HS2 for investors. There was a major levelling-up opportunity. It has not just been missed; worse, it has been struck down when it was already under way.

There is hardly a reference in this document to freight. There is hardly an improvement at all to the situation at Bradford, the nation’s seventh-largest city, which has effectively been abandoned and left with appalling transport links. Once again, the Government are centralising power, thinking they know best, by taking power from Transport for the North and making decisions on behalf of the people of the north.

This plan is a disgrace, and it is no way forward for a nation that wants to hold its head up in the modern world.