Rail Infrastructure Investment

Debate between Jim McMahon and Lilian Greenwood

Thursday 17th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I congratulate the chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), on its detailed report and on the hard work that she puts into that brief. She is what we call in Greater Manchester a grafter—where I come from, there is no higher praise than that.

Transport is really important but does not act in isolation. There is an ecosystem that supports the society, community and local economy. It has been well trailed, but we have not seen any meaningful action on even beginning to address the regional imbalances in investment that have been well rehearsed in this place. It would be good to hear from the Minister about the practical steps being taken to invest outside London and the south-east.

We are told by the Library that overall investment in transport in London over the past five years was £33.4 billion, taking 27.6% of total transport investment. In the north-west it was £11.1 billion, taking 9.2% of the total; in the north-east it was £3.3 billion, or 2.7% of the overall transport spend. Looking specifically at rail, the gap becomes even wider. London gets 42.8% of rail investment, the north-west 9.4% and the north-east just 2%. How can that be justified, even with the difference in population? Given that the regions outside London and the south-east are seriously disadvantaged by Government investment, are we surprised that they are not realising their full potential?

The Library briefing makes it clear that the figures for the north-west and the midlands are temporarily inflated due to some of the early work on HS2. Geographical work tied to a region has been included, but the wider cost of HS2 has been pulled out of the figures, so it appears that the north-west and the midlands receive more through that project than they actually do. London is getting about half of the transport spend. How can that be right or fair, and how can it deliver a balanced UK economy in which every community can thrive?

I know Members here today are aware that there is a world of difference between our big cities and their surrounding towns. There are even bigger differences between the towns and the villages and districts. When we look at the transport ecosystem, it is really important that we are not just discounting. London is a benchmark and we discount for the cities, towns and communities, which means that most people in this country are poorly served by a transport system that does not work in the way it ought to.

We are not calling for any more or less than our fair share. I do not mind if London continues to receive the money that it has received for generations. I am not resentful if the forward view means that that continues, but I demand the same for my community. If the money can be found for London, it ought to be found for the north-west region, too—no more, but certainly no less.

We have heard about the cancellation of the electrification project in July 2017, when it was described as no longer affordable. We have seen timetable cancellations: there were a staggering 470 cancellations every single day in the summer of 2018. The Office of Rail and Road’s review concluded that that was partly due to the lack of clarity on who was responsible for what. There was mass confusion in the industry, and the Transport Secretary’s response was simply, “Well, I don’t run the trains.” If we have a Transport Secretary who refuses to acknowledge his own role in running the trains in this country and to have political accountability for that, it is little wonder that the operators get away with what they are doing. There is just no accountability, which for my community means that Northern continues to provide a completely sub-standard service on a daily basis. It not only botched the introduction of the new timetable; but is in constant disputes with staff who are at their wits’ end with the management and the way they are being treated.

The latest action is on whether carriages should have guards. People in Greater Manchester might think, “Well, even if there are no guards, we just hope there are some carriages”, because 11% of train journeys are shorted, which means that they do not have enough carriages to meet the demand from commuters. Some 5,500 journeys did not have the capacity to meet passenger demand. What is the answer? In the north-west, we have been sent trains that even the Iranian Government have decided are not fit for purpose. We have been sent more Pacer trains—from the north-east to the north-west—to make up for the fact that we have passengers who wait on platforms, without enough carriages to service them, in order to get to work and get their children to school. How can that be right? The trains were built in the 1980s and were always intended to have a shelf-life of about 20 years. They were a pragmatic and affordable way to get new stock on the lines, but they were never intended to be on the lines nearly 30 years on. That just cannot be right.

Passengers face a 3.1% increase in fares—the largest increase over the past six years—while shareholders continue to profit from a sub-standard service. We know that the Conservatives do not believe in nationalisation. Well, they do—provided it is another nation that runs our trains. Deutsche Bank, which owns and operates the trains in the north-west of England and serves Greater Manchester, is not providing an adequate service; it is making profit from that contract. Where is the accountability? We have a Transport Secretary who says, “It’s nothing to do with me, guv.” We have an operator that is taking money and creaming off the top while services are not running on time. They do not run at all in some cases—when they do turn up, often it is not possible to get on because there are not enough carriages. If the operator gets its way, pretty soon there will be no guards on carriages, and people will not feel safe. The Mayor of Greater Manchester has made it very clear that that is just not on, and he would not be comfortable with that. The truth is that it is a very raw deal.

I will talk about the wider transport ecosystem. We need to bear in mind that it is not just rail that has been hit by poor service. When the Pacer trains were brought in for their 20-year life—nearly 30 years ago now—bus travel was commonplace. It still is, but there are now 140 million fewer bus journeys in Greater Manchester than there were 30 years ago. That is a 40% decline in bus use in Greater Manchester. Why? Because there are 40 operators in Greater Manchester—we are desperately trying to get franchising off the ground, but the Government are not providing the investment required to get through the legal process and produce the business case—all with different ticketing systems, and all deciding where they are willing to operate.

Oxford Road—the university corridor in Greater Manchester—is one of the busiest bus routes in Europe, and one of the cheapest. One of the most affluent parts of Greater Manchester—the south—is the cheapest place to catch a bus. In the north, which is generally the poorer part, the fares can be 40% higher. Often the poorer a person is—depending on where they live and where the operators choose to operate from—the more they pay just to get to work. That, by the way, is if there is a bus that goes where they need to go at the time when they need to get there. Shift workers in Greater Manchester might as well give up on the buses, because they cannot get to most big employment sites, such as Manchester airport or Trafford Park, to meet shift-work patterns.

The ecosystem has been completely torn apart. Operators pick and choose what they are willing to do, the taxpayer is desperately trying to plug the gap but it is nowhere near enough, and the number of bus journeys is falling. Year after year, we see subsidised routes taken away because the money does not stretch far enough, and the same is happening with rail.

It is a raw deal for taxpayers, passengers and, critically—this is really important when we are talking about a future Britain beyond Brexit—the future of our economy. After Brexit, the country will be hugely vulnerable to the danger of financial services and the insurance market deciding to relocate and basing themselves elsewhere in Europe. That will expose how lazy this country has been in addressing the underperformance in our regions. We have relied on the City of London to keep the UK economy going, and that has allowed us to ignore the hollowing out of the economies in the regions. Transport is a key part of that. We know that investment in transport leads to growth and jobs and creates a more vibrant economy. People live better lives and can access job opportunities that they might not have been able to access previously. We need more action and Government spending.

There are different views on HS2. I am a supporter, partly because it is investment in the north, so why would we not support it? However, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is already issuing calls for a zero-sum review of capital spend projects such as HS2. I put this down as a marker: the Government may believe that, because it is not in London or the south-east, it is an easy target to be deleted, but we are watching it very carefully. It is critical that we ensure that the UK can perform to its full potential. The routes and investment beyond HS2 to ensure that the north of England is connected are absolutely critical, too.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I wholeheartedly endorse my hon. Friend’s concerns about future investment in HS2. There are good reasons to be concerned. When the transpennine route upgrade was firmly committed to in 2015, the DFT promised that, when the work was finished, the whole route from Liverpool to Newcastle, via Manchester, Leeds and York, would be fully electrified. The recent letter from Transport for the North’s chief executive board members reported that the DFT’s plans leave a crucial part of that route unelectrified—a gap of 18 miles in the 183-mile route. Does my hon. Friend agree that the failure to electrify that 10% will mean worse reliability and higher operating costs in the north for years to come?

[Jim McMahon]

I generally think that, with these types of capital project, once the decision to invest is made, the investment has to be seen through, because the full potential of the investment is only realised when it is done to the quality, standard and specification that was set out originally. When things are chipped away towards the end of a project, it is inevitable that the full advantage and economic return on the investment will not be realised, and the original investment will be compromised.

It is critical that the Government take a long-term view. There is far too much short-termism. They are looking to the next election, the next target seat and where their core vote is, rather than to what the structure of our economy will be in the next 10, 20 or 30 years. Greater Manchester is trying to look ahead with its 2040 strategy, but it is very difficult to do that if it does not know what funding is coming down the pipeline. We can decide what is important for our regions, but the way the Government invest makes it very difficult for our regions to plan ahead and ensure they have a joined-up transport strategy. It also makes it very difficult for UK manufacturers and engineering companies to bid for that work and plan ahead, because they do not have a forward programme that they can organise and work towards. I speak to many manufacturers in my constituency. In Oldham, they have contracts with Transport for London and the German Government, but they say consistently that it is very difficult to get a contract with the UK Government. Part of the reason why the Elizabeth Tower is shrouded in steel from all over the world, apart from Britain, is that it is easier for other countries to get contracts from our Government.