Railways: Trans-Pennine Freight

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank my noble friend for raising further questions around HS2. She referred to HS3, which is known to most noble Lords as Northern Powerhouse Rail. It is an incredibly important, complicated and extensive project. It works closely with the trans-Pennine route upgrade, and indeed with HS2. The Government have already committed £60 million of funding to Transport for the North to develop the proposals and a further £300 million to ensure that HS2 can accommodate Northern Powerhouse Rail. As she made clear, Northern Powerhouse Rail could bring huge benefits.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, some weeks ago, I asked someone from Transport for the North where they could find extra freight rail capacity between Liverpool and Hull. The answer was that they had identified that, if you took container traffic through Daventry, you could take it from Liverpool to Hull; that is an interesting diversion. Meanwhile, freight container traffic goes along the M62, which becomes even more crowded. Can we therefore raise the awareness and importance of increasing freight paths on rail through the north of England without having to go via either Scotland or the southern Midlands?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

We are deeply aware that there are a number of freight routes for rail and are doing what we can to improve their usage. For example, I am not sure whether the noble Lord is aware of the W7A gauge clearance project, which is going on at the moment. We are building a business case with industry to develop a W7A gauge clearance which would run along the trans-Pennine rail route via Huddersfield and Stalybridge. I hope that meets with his approval. If there is a positive business case, we will proceed with it forthwith; it could be in place by late 2020.