Queen’s Speech

Earl of Arran Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Arran (Con)]

My Lords, all of us here today are passionate about our own regions, and I make no apology for returning to the subject of infrastructure investment, this time in the south-west. We have long described ourselves as the forgotten and unloved peninsula—the Cinderella region of England—in terms of the quality of our road and rail network. We are essentially dependent on one main artery, the M5 motorway, linking the whole of the peninsula with Bristol. This road is already overloaded at peak times, and pressure around Bristol can mean hours of delay for essential goods and service deliveries and for our vital tourist industries. A major accident on the road can paralyse movement for hours, costing many millions of pounds in lost business. The only investment in recent years has been a short new link road to Torbay, built after nearly 40 years of talks and delays. Work is also finally under way on the missing section of dualling on the A30 in Cornwall. These improvements will help, but are minor in comparison with the potential which would be unlocked if the south-west had 21st-century connectivity. To further illustrate this lack of investment, the latest data revealed in response to a Parliamentary Question show that just £35 per head of population in the south-west was spent on road and rail, compared to £113 across England as a whole—that says it all.

During the run-up to the election, both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor promised billions of pounds to reverse these decades of underinvestment. Only last month, the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin claimed he was delivering the investment to help the region grow. The stark reality, however, is that, apart from around £35 million that was spent reconnecting the main rail link at Dawlish when it was fractured by a collapse of the sea wall, all that is being really offered is money to carry out studies and to develop options to improve resilience. Currently, these studies include further reports on the upgrading of the A30/A303 to provide a second artery into the region, further consideration of essential works to adequately protect the main rail line from flooding and cliff collapse, and options for reopening Plymouth Airport. In addition, there is £1 million to explore improvements to the north Devon link road, which currently is largely only a two-way speed controlled corridor serving the whole of north Devon. Many of these studies have been conducted on countless occasions and serve only to delay the reality of spades on the ground.

The south-west cannot continue to operate with fragile and crumbling Victorian infrastructure: it needs a 20 to 30 year investment plan just to catch up with the rest of the country. I urge the Government to put real cash on the table rather than creating another rainforest of soon-to-be-dusty reports. I have to say to the Government that unless they start to walk the walk and stop sheltering behind talking the talk, that stark blue colour which currently pervades the western peninsula will all too soon become tarnished and rusty.

Queen’s Speech

Earl of Arran Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Arran (Con)]

My Lords, I will say just a few words on a part of the United Kingdom so far scarcely mentioned—it is called the West Country—where there is still a sense of deep shock at how at how quickly the events of the general election changed from the predictions of the pollsters to an outcome which, for the first time for a generation, shows the peninsula with a blue political colour-scheme, save only for fortress Exeter. The implications of that will take time to assess, but we do not forget that the coalition has not been unkind to our local economy and that many of the coalition members have worked hard to highlight that the deficiencies of our infrastructure should be remedied.

It is interesting to note that the 5.2 million population of Scotland currently receives £2,000 per head more than the 5.3 million population of the south-west. Perhaps many felt, when faced with their voting choice, that the risk of this becoming an even wider gap was too big to stomach.

What next? Do we risk again becoming the forgotten peninsula—the Cinderella of the west—or will we hold Whitehall to the commitments that were made during the pre-election period? That we most certainly will. In simple terms our message is easy to understand. The south-west cannot function without effective infrastructure. Some 90% of transport needs are on the roads, but we still have only one 21st century route, in the M5. When that is disrupted, paralysis quickly follows and many hours of business are lost before normal service is resumed. The case for a second artery—the A30/A303—has been argued for 30 years. It was nearly approved 15 years ago. It is ready to go. The maths are also simple: £2 billion expenditure equals a payback of £40 billion and 40,000 jobs. The Treasury has confirmed these figures. We cannot wait another five to 10 years before this work starts.

The rail network is in a similar state of under- investment. We have the oldest rolling stock in the United Kingdom—it predates the Ford Fiesta—and journey times that are an embarrassment when we greet national or international investors. We have been promised some new train sets, but this decision is still subject to Treasury approval. These commitments simply must be honoured. When considering rail, it would be wrong to ignore how vital both the national and the local networks are to our economies. In my own area of north Devon, the Tarka line carries nearly 1 million passengers a year, many of whom are students travelling to Exeter and back. The potential for growth in local rail initiatives such as the West Somerset Railway and the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway is quite simply huge. Again, they are vital lifelines for supporting economic growth.

It would be enough for most Members of your Lordships’ House to have to live with infrastructure deficiencies such as the ones I have just mentioned; however, they are not quite the end of our woes. What is now taken for granted across the country—simple access to mobile telephones and decent broadband speeds—is still absent in many of our rural, and surprisingly urban, areas. If the south-west is to improve its productivity outputs, which currently languish 10% behind the UK average, the quickest solution, which would attract the greatest support from businesses big and small, is broadband and mobile infrastructure investment. It would create a bow wave of exciting business activities. In the last five years, the south-west has created nearly 60,000 new jobs in the private sector. A high percentage of these people are self-employed, and many are working already in international markets. Broadband will ignite these businesses, enabling them to be the new generation of entrepreneurs and demonstrate that the south-west can deliver significant value to the UK economy.

In the run-up to the general election, a number of bold statements were made on—here we go again—housing. It was said that 200,000 houses a year will be built, and the right-to-buy provisions extended. Fine words, but how and when? In north Devon, the gap between affordable housing delivery and the housing waiting list becomes bigger and bigger. The current right-to-buy arrangements have not seen a like-for-like replacement of affordable dwellings. Planning delays can hold up vital schemes for three to five years and cost thousands of pounds, which could be invested in more dwellings. The impact on my local economy is most damaging in the recruiting of skilled key workers. In the rural economy these problems are multiplied, fuelling an exodus of the next generation and destroying family succession for many in the farming industry. The housing issue is a time bomb, as so many of your Lordships have said this afternoon. Radical reform is necessary, starting with yet another major reform of our heavily overbureaucratic and protracted planning system.

This is not a list of whinges and whines. It is simply a list of some of the promises made by the Government during the election—promises that, both politically and economically, must be kept, for to renege on them would be both irresponsible and most unwise.