Great British Railways

Lord Mann Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a debate when we can again lament the passing of the great Lord Prescott. I came down this morning on a Prescott express. One of the greatest, most transformative achievements of the last Labour Government was Hull Trains and the way it transformed the economy in the area that I represented. I do not think that, I know it—I live there.

Since the 1850s, there has been no train from Worksop to London, other than the royal train occasionally stopping there—none, for any passenger. There is a proposal for it to be brought in by Hull Trains. A letter of 4 February says, in reference to the “Hull Trains 27th Supplemental Agreement”:

“DfT analysis suggests that the proposed Hull Trains London-Sheffield services”—


the one that would connect Worksop directly to London for the first time in nearly 200 years—

“does not meet the threshold … We estimate abstraction of approximately £1.77m per annum … with EMR most negatively impacted”.

I am mathematical economist and I should like the Minister to give me the entire economic analysis and the presumptions it is based on. That says that people from Worksop go via Sheffield to London. I know the train drivers; my office was next to the train station in Worksop. I had to decide how to get to London by train. The ASLEF national negotiators—quite a number of them because of freight—were based in Worksop and had to make weekly, often daily, decisions about how to get to London by train. Huge numbers of staff from the railway industry live in Worksop and they were in the same situation. None ever went via Sheffield. It is simply not true. I stood at the station as an MP regularly, often constantly surveying the commuters. I know who goes into Sheffield and who goes the other way. I know where they park. I know most of the people by name. They do not go that way, so that figure is based on false assumptions and false economics.

The truth is that the Government are meant to be about levelling up. When I brought businesses into my area, I argued the case for a direct train service via Retford into London—if I could have done that via Worksop, it would have been even better—and it succeeded, with major companies coming in. That was the argument—I was there; I was making the argument with those companies. Laing O’Rourke is on the Sheffield side of Worksop, by the way. There is huge new investment on that industrial estate, including it. Cerealto, which came from Spain, is there. All they wanted was an improved service down the east coast main line. No one considered the East Midlands Railway.

I have nothing against Sheffield or that route. Point to point, it is dramatically longer, which might be the reason why people went the other way. The other route is far quicker and far shorter. The Hull Trains model has brought huge economic benefits. It has shifted the housing market. The Government want loads more houses with loads of land. That area is happy to have housing. It wants nuclear fusion there, which will involve massive investment—billions—and 3,000 new jobs. Again, connecting Worksop to London is an economic objective even more than a social one. It is convenient for getting down to the football, the theatre and all that kind of thing that people might want to do, but it is about the economic basis of it. I know every single major company that came in—I was there—and I know that this was part of the argument. These figures are wrong. There needs to be that flexibility.