Transport: North-east

Debate between Mary Glindon and Chi Onwurah

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, for making such an important point, which I will come on to properly later. I agree wholeheartedly with the implication of his comments. The economic contribution of effective transport infrastructure for the north-east is not recognised in the same way as it is recognised in London and other areas of the south. That absolutely has to change if we are to have any hope of rebalancing our economy and making it more resilient and distributive across the country.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend set out what she will speak about, but airport passenger duty is also important to the economics of the north-east. Our airports play an equally valid and massive role in helping our economy. We heard nothing today about what will happen with regard to Scotland, but it will be detrimental to our north-east airport if the Scottish Government reduce APD.

[Chi Onwurah]

Given the interest in and strategic importance of transport, I will focus on the issues I set out, but my hon. Friend makes a critically important point. Newcastle airport is a vital part of our economic infrastructure. Naturally, it competes with airports in Scotland. The lack of a decision today—I am not sure whether it has been kicked into the long grass or into orbit—is detrimental to economic certainty at a time of great uncertainty for many other aspects of our economic future.

Let me talk briefly about rail and the metro. I was nine or 10 when the metro came into being. It was a fantastic, highly advanced network that was ahead of its time—I think it was the first network in Europe or the world to be accessible to disabled people—but 40 years later we are using exactly the same rolling stock. Is that believable? Hitachi recently told me that it can deliver trains that would provide what we have been talking about—an extended light rail and metro service across a greater part of Tyne and Wear and the north-east. I hope the Minister will commit to that investment, because we need transport infrastructure and a metro without delays to support the kind of economy we want.

Most of Newcastle Central’s transport is about buses. We have a number of metro stops, but for most of the west of my constituency and parts of the north it is about buses. The failure of bus deregulation in Tyne and Wear has been so patently obvious for so many decades that it beggars belief that we are still debating it today. Outside my constituency office near Central station in Newcastle two No. 1 buses leave in totally different directions, one going north, one south—they both have the same number, because obviously that puts them at the head of some queue. It is totally incomprehensible to those who have lived in the city for many years, never mind visitors.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South discussed, we should not still be debating the lack of integrated bus transport in 2016, when we have seen the success of, for example, the Oyster card and the integrated system in London. I really cannot believe that the Minister will stand up to say that Tyne and Wear and my constituents do not deserve some control over a bus system that is so important to them simply because of the lack of a mayor.

Why is this all so important? As my hon. Friends the Members for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) and for Houghton and Sunderland South said, transport is important because it is part of our economic infrastructure and the north-east having critical mass.