Integrated Rail Plan: Northern Powerhouse Area

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I am a proud Liverpudlian and chair of a business headquartered in Yorkshire. Well into the last century, most people, like my grandfather, walked to work. No longer. Modern business requires a multiplicity of skills, from technologists to service engineers to data scientists to financial analysts and myriad more. Most people travel significant distances to work and while they undertake their work, mostly not on trains but in cars, vans and HGVs.

Economically, it is best to think of the heartland of the north, from Liverpool through Manchester to Leeds, as a single metropolitan area with a huge population. The north has long had a wholly inadequate road and rail system to connect its major centres. The M62 is seriously jammed for many hours of the day. By way of example, Halifax and Huddersfield are only eight miles apart, but the direct route between these two famous towns is through hilly country on narrow, bending and heavily trafficked roads, and at rush hour the eight-mile journey can take a whopping 45 minutes. By train, it takes an incredible one hour and 46 minutes to travel the 74 miles from Liverpool to Leeds at a sluggish 42 miles per hour.

To unleash its potential, the north needs not just a rail plan but an integrated rail and road plan. That plan would create a strategic road network and, inter alia, relieve the pressure on the M62 and enable rail to do what rail does best: moving people into, out of and between major metropolitan areas. Leeds and Liverpool need to be connected to London by high-speed rail. London is an unrivalled global centre of financial and professional skill and, to prosper, the north needs effective connectivity with it. Remarkably, under the Government’s proposals in future it will be quicker to reach London from Manchester than to reach Leeds from Liverpool. That is truly shocking. The north will not thrive until the Government focus equally on all three of its major metropolitan areas.

For the past 70 years—not 25, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said—we have had the worst record of any major country in the world in investing in our national transport infrastructure. The Treasury bears prime responsibility for that. High-speed rail is the most vivid example. The International Union of Railways records that China has 38,000 kilometres of high-speed rail, Spain has 3,500, France has 2,700 and the UK—any guesses?—has 113 kilometres. That is 24 times less than France.

That is truly shameful, and it illuminates a horrible truth about our politics: all the pressures on our highly disputatious political system press on the short and not on the long term. This is less than half a plan and I do not expect to see that change.