Railway Connectivity: East to West Midlands

Andrew Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) on securing this debate on this highly important issue. He articulated the importance of rail in his own area, and across the east and west midlands, highlighting its impact on reducing congestion, improving air quality and other environmental improvements, plus its role in underpinning our economy. Those are critical reasons why we should be—and are—investing heavily in rail.

I agree with points made by a number of Members about the importance of rail freight in the economy as a whole, and in the midlands in particular. It is already part of a strong logistics sector in both economies; rail underpins that comprehensively.

I receive many representations from colleagues about the rail services in their areas, typically focused on capacity and overcrowding. I will talk about cross-country, the midlands hub, HS2 and rolling stock, what we are doing now and what we are working to deliver for passengers over the next few years.

This is an exciting time for the rail industry and for passengers. We have new fleets being introduced that will help to deliver a step change in customer service. The performance of trains is one factor affecting the overall network performance. Both the Department and operators consider that to be an important part of the franchise competition process.

We are seeing a change in the operator for the east midlands franchise, which has been won by Abellio. There will be a mobilisation phase and Abellio will take over in August. It will oversee the introduction of a brand new fleet of trains on the upgraded midland main line from 2022. The new trains will deliver faster journey times over longer distances in peak periods, and new, frequent express services will be introduced, including from Corby through Luton into London. The roll-out of the new fleet will be completed by December 2023. That intercity fleet will be significantly more reliable and comfortable. The key point about capacity is that passengers will benefit from an 80% increase in the number of morning peak seats into Nottingham, Lincoln and St Pancras.

Midlands Connect is critical in planning the transport for the future of the area. It is working with HS2, Transport for the East Midlands, the Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire local enterprise partnership—D2N2—and Network Rail to make the case for enhanced connectivity to the new hub station at Toton. HS2 will indeed transform things, which was a point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), who is Chair of the Select Committee on Transport. It will not just improve connectivity to and from London, although that is obviously a part of it, but it will certainly transform connectivity between the east and west midlands in a positive way. That point does not always get exposed, but needs to be said. The Toton hub will be well connected to Nottingham, Derby and other mainline stations, and provide significant journey time improvements to the north and west. It is key to maximise the opportunities that will be presented when HS2 arrives in the area.

Midlands Connect is also investigating options to run services from Leicester to Leeds via HS2, transforming connectivity between the two cities, and developing a business case for additional services on the Derby-Stoke-Crewe corridor, so the east midlands can link to HS2 services at Crewe in 2027.

[Jack Brereton]

The Minister mentioned the Crewe-Derby line, through Stoke-on-Trent. Does he agree that there is real untapped potential on that line to vastly improve services, particularly to stations such as Longton, in my constituency?

[Andrew Jones]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend; he has made a strong case for that in meetings that we have already had on the subject, and that case has been shared with other colleagues, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). I will mention it later, but I agree entirely with the point.

Today, eight out of 10 journeys between Birmingham and Nottingham are made by road. That is not desirable. One of the key points made about the midlands rail hub was that it will help to improve east-west connectivity by doubling the number of direct services between those two great cities, cutting the journey time by more than 25% to just 50 minutes and bringing about 450,000 more people in the two cities within one hour of each other. It will enable faster and more frequent services through Derby and will include funding to examine the case for major investment to reduce conflicts between the east coast main line and Nottingham-Lincoln traffic at Newark.

I recognise how important this case is. We have received the strategic outline business case in the Department and it is going through its evaluation. The hon. Member for Nottingham North asked whether I would back the case; I cannot say that until we have concluded our evaluation, but I can say that I am extremely keen to see inter-city connectivity as a driver of economic growth, that the points he has made are spot on and that I am keen to work with Midlands Connect to take this forward. Indeed, I am meeting Midlands Connect next week. I hope that is of some interest to him.

I must mention the midlands main line, because we are seeing the biggest upgrade of the line since its completion in around 1870. The investments being made will improve long-distance passenger services between Sheffield, Nottingham and London, and services between Corby, Kettering and London. The journey time improvement and additional seats will make cities in the east midlands better places to do business in.

Market Harborough station has recently seen considerable improvements to make it more accessible and ease the curves in the track, which will increase line speed, deliver improved journey times and help to reduce fuel use. That project has been going well and saw a landmark completion earlier this month. The next east midlands franchise will deliver new bi-mode trains on routes between London, the east midlands and south Yorkshire, delivering benefits to both passengers and the environment.

However, the east midlands railway will provide additional capacity and more frequent services on routes across the east midlands, not just on the lines to and around London. Those include the route between Leicester and Nottingham, the Robin Hood line and routes in Lincolnshire. As an example, the Derby to Crewe line will see the introduction of additional capacity. The key thing here is that it has been a single-carriage service, which has not met the needs of the travelling public in the area. We will see additional capacity using modern trains, which will have air-conditioning, at-seat power points and free wi-fi.

Many trains from Crewe will be extended through to Nottingham and there will be additional morning and evening services introduced, as well as an hourly service on Sundays. That upgrade has attracted significant attention—I have had more comments on this part of the east midlands franchise than on any other—so I hope that that will be of interest to colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South has been a key champion for it.

One project that I have visited recently in the east midlands is the upgrade to signalling and modernisation of the railway around Derby to improve train service reliability. That has been an important project to unlock capacity, and I must say that when I visited it I thought it was a significant piece of work that had been achieved well by Network Rail.

A further project that is coming on stream later this year, which I have not had a chance to visit, is the brand-new station of Worcestershire Parkway, delivered by Worcestershire County Council. When it opens, the station will be served by CrossCountry services on the Nottingham-Cardiff route, providing improved journey opportunities between the east midlands and destinations in Worcestershire and the Cotswolds.

I mentioned earlier the services provided by CrossCountry; I have had significant representations from colleagues about the capacity problems on that line, because it has been so popular that it has seen huge growth in passenger numbers. CrossCountry provides local train services between the east and west midlands, with its long-distance services covering the most extensive franchise in Britain, from Scotland to Cornwall and Manchester to Bournemouth. CrossCountry offers regular direct trains from Derby to the north-east and Scotland, as well as to Bristol, Plymouth and the Thames valley. All routes serve Birmingham New Street.

Because of this extensive network, and to avoid the possibility of fettering the outcome of the Williams rail review, which is looking at the future structure of the rail industry, the CrossCountry franchise competition was cancelled last year. We are now working with the incumbent, Arriva, to develop a direct award franchise agreement. This work will consider the results of the extensive public consultation held in 2017 to deliver appropriate passenger benefits.

The key question that is consistently raised, and therefore our No. 1 priority for the next CrossCountry franchise, is providing additional capacity for passengers. We are working on a number of options to deliver additional trains for the CrossCountry fleet as they become available in the rolling stock market. The rolling stock market is going through one of its greatest changes in our country’s history. We are seeing a fleet update equivalent to when we went from steam to diesel in the UK. That is the scale of change we are experiencing, and it will free up rolling stock to add additional capacity into our network. We must remember that we are now enjoying more services on our rail network than at any point in British history.

I once again thank the hon. Member for Nottingham North for securing this debate on this important issue. We have covered a lot of ground, but I hope I have made clear that we are seeing new trains, new services, new lines and new stations. Rail in our country is being transformed, and he has made a great case for east-west connectivity in the midlands. I am happy to keep colleagues informed and I look forward to working with Midlands Connect and other bodies in the area, because I strongly believe that rail is a key driver of economic growth, environmental improvement and social mobility. Before closing, I will just highlight that the Government fully understand that, and it is why we have secured a record investment of £48 billion for our rail network over the next five years and are investing £1.5 billion in the midlands main line upgrade—the biggest since its completion 150 years ago.

There was one question about infrastructure spend by the different parts of our country and I have some updated information that the House might like to know: the infrastructure pipeline data from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority shows a per capita spend of £236 for the midlands for the period from 2018-19 to 2020-21, which is the same as the south and just a little bit behind the north. We are seeing a radical change in the infrastructure spend across the country, as we believe strongly that the economy of our country needs to be rebalanced. Underpinning that is a rebalancing of our transport investment, and at the heart of that is work in the midlands.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered East to West Midlands railway connectivity.