National Bus Strategy: England

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, for the last four or five years, we have had a Government who have produced lots of very black and white-looking documents, usually a thousand pages long and full of lots of impenetrable words. Suddenly we are into glossy brochures again. I am not complaining, because I can cut the glossy brochures out and pin them on the wall for my grandson.

In the 20 years that I have been a Member of this House I have accumulated a vast number of glossy brochures produced by Governments. When I look at them now, most of them bear little relationship to what actually happened. I welcome the fact that the Government have noticed buses again. I welcome the passion that we have seen from my noble friend Lady Randerson and from the Minister. If buses are the modern passion of the House of Lords, that is great, but will the Minister accept that a national bus strategy can work only if it consists of myriad local bus strategies which must be in the hands of local people who know what is needed and what is wanted?

Will the Minister also accept that, while the document says that people want simpler fares and more routes and services, in many areas they also want much cheaper fares? I think noble Lords would be astonished at how much it costs to take a simple, short ride on a bus in many parts of the country outside big cities. It is okay if you are in a metropolitan area where it is subsidised—it is nirvana in London—but out in the sticks it is very expensive indeed and people will not leave their cars unless it is much cheaper.

Finally, will the Minister accept that, in addition to the concentration on cities and rural areas, a huge number of important bus services serve ordinary small and medium-sized towns? Towns are the most difficult places in which to provide frequent, cheap services because they do not have the demand of cities, and there is not the requirement for at least a skeleton service in rural areas that people recognise. Towns—the places in between and on the edge—are the places that this strategy will succeed or fail by.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord is right, and in the middle of his contribution he basically set out what is in the strategy: giving control and accountability to local authorities. He made some important points about services and how different areas will have different needs. One of the bits buried in the bus strategy is how local authorities will be expected to set up something like a bus advisory board or equivalent, which will take into account the views of local people, services and businesses—everyone who has an interest in making the network run as well as it can. Even though all those people will put in their contributions, it will be up to the local authority to have the skills and capabilities to meet those needs and devise the sort of network that will be required. That bit is probably quite challenging, which is why we have put quite a lot of money into it.

Alongside listening to people and putting the network into place, it will depend on the situation; the strategy is not focused on rural and urban—it is focused on everywhere, as we recognise that every single place will be different. In some areas, turn-up-and-go on bus corridors will be perfectly acceptable and we will be able to put in more services in the evenings and at weekends. The other area that concerns me, to be honest, is cross-border services: how we make sure that longer services between two local transport authorities continue to function in an effective fashion. I recognise there is a lot to do. The Government stand ready to provide guidance, advice and support to local authorities as they take this challenge and run with it.

Rail Fares: Flexi-season Tickets

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the recent pulling of the funding by the Government for Transport for the North’s scheme for smart ticketing across the north of England seems extraordinary in view of what the Minister has already said. Is this not a blow for the railway across the north of England and an indication that “levelling up” is no more than a slogan and has no substance? Will the Minister go away and get this reversed?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Not at all: TfN was allocated £150 million at the 2015 spending review for this integrated and smart travel programme. It was always the case that that funding was going to expire at the end of the current financial year. To date, TfN has managed to spend £24 million, and that is a good start, but we are now considering how best to deliver more effectively—and perhaps more quickly—a rollout of smart ticketing to improve passenger services across the north.

Railways: Electrification

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Of course, we will look at modest electrification projects when and if they are brought forward. The issue of journey times is important, but rail freight has the advantage of being able to carry less urgent goods—heavy construction materials, for example—over long distances. Therefore, it can be used for lots of different types of freight, which is to its advantage.

[Lord Greaves (LD) [V]]

My Lords, by 2010 rail electrification in England had stopped. Thanks to the Liberal Democrats in the coalition, it got going again. It has stopped again. When will it start up again?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I do not recognise an awful lot in that question, but I would like to reassure the noble Lord that, of course, it has not stopped; projects do not stop just because you cannot see things being built. A huge amount of work happens before a project starts, as the noble Lord is well aware. This Government are committed to electrification and will look at appropriate schemes that secure value for money.

Railways: Fare Structures

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord must be reading our minds. Of course, there will be man things that we might want to consider doing once the course of the pandemic is clear and we have come out the other side, and once there are no restrictions on people’s travel. It may be that we introduce certain incentives, because we all know that the best way to travel is on public transport.

[Lord Greaves (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister is being uncharacteristically coy in her answer to all these questions and saying nothing at all. She did say that the railways at the moment must be available and safe. They are available and are extremely safe, but the danger is that when the Covid emergency comes to an end, people will not go back to them. Can she tell us what the Government’s plans are and what they are thinking about in order to get people back on trains once it is possible for everyone to go on them?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am not sure I have been called “uncharacteristically coy” before. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right: we are in a situation at the moment where people’s habits may change, which means they may form the habit of not using public transport. This is the same for trains, light rail and buses, across our public transport system. Of course, the Government are thinking very clearly and hard about the sorts of mechanisms that we can use, whether that be marketing campaigns or incentives, as I outlined to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. We will consider all of these things. However, now is not the right time for that; now is the time to follow the November restrictions to make sure that we keep the virus under control.

Network Rail’s Enhancements Pipeline

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

To answer the first part of the noble Lord’s question, any decision on new or expanded project scopes will be made after the spending review has concluded. On decarbonisation more generally, whether it is uphill or downhill, Network Rail is developing an overarching traction decarbonisation network strategy which will provide strategic advice about which technology—electrification, battery or hydrogen—would be best suited to each section of a decarbonised rail network. This would include individual decisions taking into consideration local conditions and topography, and they would be developed as needed.

[Lord Greaves (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I want to concentrate on one small scheme that after years of stop and start has reached stage 2, the development stage, of the pipeline: the reinstatement of 11 miles of track between the forlorn single platform and buffer stops at Colne and Skipton. Does this review mean that the Colne-Skipton project has gone back to stock and everything will again be thrown up in the air? When will we be told we can start again?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As the noble Lord has mentioned, that particular project is at stage 2, which is the “develop” stage; it needs to go to “design” and then to “deliver” to be built or reopened. The pipeline is always very ambitious, and it is the case that a project getting into the pipeline does not necessarily mean that it will be delivered—it will depend on the value-for-money and various other considerations over that period. I cannot comment specifically on the Colne-Skipton railway, but it will be reviewed alongside all the other projects. That does not mean that it is going backwards in any process.

HS2

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I wrote a pretty good speech, but then discovered that the debate was starting in about two minutes and did not have time to go and get it, so this will have to be off the top of my head, I am afraid. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on securing this debate. When I first became a Peer, people said to me, “You’re a Lord? Do you have to have a castle?” I congratulate the noble Baroness on having both a manor and a castle, but I am sorry to say that I do not agree with what she said. I agree that even now, the climate emergency is more serious than most people recognise. It must be taken very seriously. COP 26, which the Government are organising with Italy—when they both have some spare time away from coronavirus—will be an important event. If it does not fundamentally change what we all do, we may well be doomed, but I do not agree with the Green Party that HS2 is somehow at the heart of everything that is going wrong with the planet.

If HS2 was abandoned, what would be the consequence? I am afraid to say that, given the forces that exist in this country, it might well be more motorways. That would be utterly and totally disastrous. Chris Davies, one of our former MEPs for the north-west, told me that HS2 is equivalent to two whole new four-lane motorways. I do not know where that comes from, but it is clear that the west coast main line is just about full. Whenever anything happens, there is chaos—as there was yesterday, when I tried to get down here. If you stand at a station on the east coast main line such as Retford or Newark, and watch the trains whizzing past, you think, “My goodness, they really are coming every other minute.” That may be a slight exaggeration, but both those main lines are essentially full, so something has to be done.

One thing that could be done is to significantly reduce travel and the amount of goods being moved around the country, but I do not see any policies from the Green Party suggesting how on earth this could be achieved. Yes, there will be bulldozers and chainsaws, and they are ugly machinery, but what are the alternatives —walking, cycling, local buses? Even the Government think these are important now, but I am not sure that they are putting enough money and resources into them. However, I cannot get from where I live in Lancashire to Euston or Westminster by walking. I cannot even do it by cycling nowadays—I could have done it once, although it would have taken some time—and certainly not by local bus.

I have looked at the information the Wildlife Trusts have provided about the number of sites they say will be affected or destroyed. There are all these figures being bandied about, some of which were given by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—the latter from a different point of a view—so it would be helpful if someone sorted them out and worked out exactly what the truth is. As much as I support the Wildlife Trusts in all sorts of ways—particularly their planting loads of trees in places such as the new Northern Forest—they are probably overstating their case substantially. Yes, starlings, frogs and sparrows are important, but what they want is woodland; the frogs want nice places where they can breed and splash about. If that can be provided in greater quantity, we do not need to preserve every single existing sparrow, starling and frog; otherwise, there is no development of any sort, anywhere. The Green Party has to come clean on this and say if that is what it wants. If so, okay, but it should tell us.

It looks as though, initially—cross fingers—we will now get the HS2 from London to Birmingham. There is a Bill going through for extension 2a to Crewe, taking trains to what the Minister called the “gateway to the North”, which is the north-west’s version of Balham: the gateway to the south. Noble Lords of my age will understand the joke. I see the Minister is laughing, so she must understand it—that is good—despite being about 100 years younger than me. Extension 2a to Crewe and beyond will allow compatible trains to travel on to Manchester, up the west coast main line to Preston and beyond to Scotland. One hopes that that is still firmly in the plan. It will also allow some to go to Liverpool and north Wales—we will see how that comes about—but that in itself will not sort out the north of England.

We now have a new specific HS2 Minister, who has been given the job of sorting all this out. He happens to be the Member of Parliament for the constituency where I live, Pendle. I wish him the best of luck. It will make his career or destroy it—we shall see—but it is time that HS2 made careers because it is so important.

At the moment, there is a proposal for an extension to Manchester. There is also a proposal for the other leg of phase 2a—or is it 2b or 2z, I do not know—to Yorkshire via the east Midlands. We need to be banging the table and saying that the leg from Birmingham to the east Midlands and Yorkshire is fundamentally important. Loose talk is going around in some circles suggesting that that will be put to one side and the leg to Manchester will be built and continued over the Pennines to Leeds as part of the thing that has various names, one of them being Northern Powerhouse Rail. That would be a fundamental mistake because it would miss out south Yorkshire and the east Midlands, two important urbanised industrial regions that the line really needs to serve.

My noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland will give some detail on the proposed line in Yorkshire east of the Pennines, and I pretty well agree with what he will say about that. However, it is vital that the way in which HS2 conceived is changed. So far, it has mainly been seen as a way of connecting places in the north of England and Birmingham with London: it has all been about connections and routes to London. Well, we are going to get the route to London. But in the future, we should look at the Birmingham to London section as a branch line, or at least as a line off, with the main spine of a high-speed line in England extending from Newcastle to Exeter. Trains can then run from the far south-west—a region that needs as much infrastructure investment as the north of England—right through to the north-east, and then through to Scotland. We can run trains via the north-west by Carlisle, but the north-east is the major industrial region north of Lancashire and Yorkshire. That new concept ought to be looked at.

On that basis, I ask the Minister to go back to her department and talk about this. Meanwhile, just get on with the first part of this, please.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands– Crewe) Bill

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Motion to revive Bill
Tuesday 25th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I support the comments just made by the noble Lord from Cumbria—whose name I have forgotten and to whom I apologise—whom I often meet on the trains coming down from Cumbria and Lancashire. Is not one of the problems of the whole organisation of HS2 the lack of adequate integration of stations in cities and towns where it joins the traditional network, and that the stations proposed in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are not ideal because in effect they are not the same stations as far as passengers are concerned?

While I am talking about Crewe, for some of us Crewe, like Balham, is the gateway to the south, not to the north. Even if the Minister wants to take a southern-centric view of Crewe, it may be the gateway to the north-west but it is certainly not the gateway to Yorkshire or the north-east.

Transport Infrastructure

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My Lords, the third runway at Heathrow is a private development. If it falls within the criteria of the airports national policy statement, it will go ahead.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I give a perspective from the hills in the middle of the Pennines. I am interested in knowing that we are going to have more tree-dappled sunlight. We welcome the trees; the sunlight might be beyond even the present Prime Minister. I just point out that those of us who live in the corridor between east Lancashire and Skipton in the Aire Valley in Yorkshire are not bothered about having high-speed rail. We want our railway back: the 11 miles between Colne and Skipton. We would be quite happy for the trains to go at a normal speed, but please can we have our railway back?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

The noble Lord is a doughty campaigner on this matter. We have heard his message and, as he knows, we are working on it.

High Speed 2 (Economic Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this. I pay tribute to him because he has at least stirred up a lot of very interesting debate about where investment in the railways—a huge amount of it—is now required.

Various noble Lords, starting with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, said that the priority is for the north of England. There are two questions there. Can you build the northern half of HS2 and not bother with the southern half, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, suggested? All you would end up with is high-speed services from perhaps Crewe to Birmingham, or Leeds to Mansfield, with passengers then wanting to get on to the existing main lines to London, which are already full. It is nonsense.

However, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that when I set off on Monday to drive to the station, I saw a train coming over the viaduct in Colne, which is at the end of the worst branch line in the north of England—that must be true because I keep saying it—and it was a Pacer. On the other hand, the Pacers are about to go. There are loads of new trains and carriages in the north of England. The problem is that the infrastructure that these new trains will run on is often inadequate and, in some cases, rubbish. Therefore, the timetables cannot make proper use of them.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am sure the noble Lord does not mean to misrepresent the report. Our report does not suggest that HS2 should be cancelled. It suggests that the cost overruns could be addressed by lowering the speed and leaving the link to Euston, and that the priority should be to ensure that the infrastructure improvements are made in the north.

[Lord Greaves]

I do not disagree with that at all. I am grateful to the noble Lord but there is a general undercurrent implying that if we could get rid of HS2, even at this late stage, people would be happy.

I have a confession to make: I like Euston station, and there are two reasons for that. First, it is where I go when I go back north, and therefore a nice place to go; secondly, it is efficient. The problem when Euston was built was that civic engineers and architects in this country had lost the great Victorian ability to combine efficiency and beauty, which I think we are learning again.

The people challenging the existing programme for HS2, who want it to be slowed down or stopped, or whatever, really have to answer the almost unanimous civic and economic leadership in the north of England, who all say that they want to get on with it. That means the mayors, council leaders, councils generally, businesspeople and everybody else. To say that it is only because they are businessmen and MPs who want to get to London quicker is just derisory. There is a general belief in the north of England that it is a good thing and needs to be got on with now. This is not least because if it were to be cancelled, or deferred for another three or four years for more inquiries et cetera, the idea that a lot of activity would suddenly start up in the north of England as a result, and have lots of money allocated to it, is just cloud-cuckoo-land. It is a complete pipedream. The problem is that people see defects in the system for developing infrastructure in this country, of which HS2 is a good example, then transfer that to the scheme itself. The problem is the system, not the actual scheme.

People have talked about northern powerhouse rail but I am not clear what that is or whether there is consensus on what it means. For Transport for the North, which has produced a strategic transport plan that includes the railways, northern powerhouse rail is the line between Liverpool and Hull, particularly the part between Manchester and Leeds. The Prime Minister seems to think that it is from Manchester to Leeds; that also seems to be what the Conservative manifesto said. I consider it ludicrous that priority now should be given to spending a large sum of money—I am not quite sure what this includes or where it comes from but if the figure of £39 billion is bandied about now, it will be £60 billion or £70 billion before long, as we know—when it seems to be simply a high-speed railway line between Manchester and Leeds, which stops at Bradford. Whether all the trains will stop at Bradford, I do not know. I am in favour of them stopping there, as a Bradfordian, but it does not seem a priority to me. All the towns in between—Halifax, Huddersfield, Oldham and Rochdale on the other side, and so on—will get no benefit at all. If you live in Huddersfield and want to go on this railway, you will have to get the train to Bradford, then turn around to go back over the Pennines.

This is a vanity scheme that does not mean much. If it is meant to be part of a wider network of high-speed lines in the north of England and their connecting lines, including to Liverpool, Hull and Sheffield, then it requires HS2 to be built. This is because it is intended that the northern powerhouse rail network in the north of England, apart from the section between Manchester and Leeds, will include a substantial part of the stuff built for HS2, as the noble Lord across the Chamber said. Therefore, if it is a sensible strategy to significantly increase the amount of pretty high-speed trains between the main cities in the north of England, or at least the main cities in Lancashire and Yorkshire, simply building 40 miles of fast track between Manchester and Leeds does not seem sensible. I do not think that is a priority at all. The single main rail project in the next five years of improvements will be improving the existing trans-Pennine line between Leeds, Huddersfield, Oldham and Manchester, the Standedge route over the Pennines through the Standedge tunnel. That has been downgraded. It needs electrifying throughout and to be made four-track throughout as it goes over the Pennines, opening up the old tunnels. That is the priority, because it is something that can be done in five or six years.

Building a new railway line between Leeds and Manchester to high-speed standards, requiring a parliamentary Bill and all the rest, will mean that our successors in your Lordships’ House will be discussing it in 10 years’ time and it still will not have started. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that less ambitious schemes—although many are ambitious—covering the whole of the north of England should be the goal. The north of England is not like London—which has a centre, with everybody commuting in—but a constellation of cities and big, medium-sized and small towns, many of which have railway lines between them, and some of which need railway lines reinstating. We should look at the whole of the north of England, because that is what is needed.

Railways: Trans-Pennine Freight

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Greaves]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have for TransPennine freight in the next 10 years.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, the provision of capacity and capability for cross-Pennine freight is a key priority for the Department for Transport. We are considering how best to enhance the current capability and capacity for cross-Pennine bulk and intermodal rail freight between a range of origins and destinations. This includes consideration of the potential freight demand via a reinstated Skipton-Colne route. This piece of work is due to report soon and will include a wider assessment of cross-Pennine rail freight.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I refer to the Colne-Skipton gap in the network. The then Secretary of State, Chris Grayling, came to Colne at the beginning of last year and again at the beginning of this year to announce two studies. On 19 September, the Department for Transport said:

“An initial study, which was completed in December 2018, found that it is technically feasible to re-open the line. We are now working to assess the freight demand and the commercial viability of the scheme”,


as the Minister said. The new team of consultants attended a routine meeting of the high-level project development team at Peel Ports in Liverpool on 26 September this year. According to people present, the new contractors said that the route was entirely unsuitable for freight of any kind. Can she investigate what is going on? Will she arrange for the publication of the original Steer group report, so that we all know what is in it?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I can indeed update the noble Lord about what is going on: work is continuing apace to understand the amount of freight demand that is not currently being and may be met in future by reopening this line, as well as to look at the commercial viability of the scheme. I undertake to him that we will publish all the reports when these important issues have been fully explored and we understand the full picture.