High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill

Debate between Chris Clarkson and Mike Amesbury

2nd reading
Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Clarkson]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In fact, this is the biggest investment in rail, I believe, in the history of this country and it is certainly more than the sum of its parts. That £96 billion will multiply and multiply again. Warrington is already a hub of both commercial and industrial activity. It is not properly connected to Manchester. It is a bit of a mission to get from A to B, as it is to get from Warrington to Liverpool. To get from Liverpool to Manchester is like pulling teeth. The very first seat I contested, in 2015, was Wallasey. I had to start very, very early in the morning on a Saturday to get there in time for my first canvassing session. I would welcome more connectivity, especially the high-speed rail link my hon. Friend talks about.

This Bill is more evidence that the Government are delivering on the integrated rail plan for the north. The Crewe-Manchester scheme will also provide the basis on which much of Northern Powerhouse Rail can be developed. I hope that eventually it will provide connectivity from Liverpool in the west to Hull in the east.

[Mike Amesbury]

On connectivity and levelling up the north, my constituency includes Northwich, not far from Manchester and certainly not far from Crewe. HS2 is wonderful in terms of the job opportunities it will create in Crewe and the surrounding area, but on average it takes one hour 40 minutes to get from Northwich to Crewe, which the hon. Member will know is not actually that far up the road. Those who are disabled or immobile and who need to use a buggy cannot go in one direction, because there is no disabled access. He paints a wonderful picture on investment, but does he agree that there is a considerable way to go?

[Chris Clarkson]

I paint a wonderful picture because there are so many wonderful things to work with, but I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s point. Accessibility to public transport is hugely important. I have the same problem with the stations in my constituency. I only have two and one of them is completely inaccessible for those with even the slightest of mobility issues, so we have a lot more to do. Investment in local services will be driven by the fact that there will be more demand for them once we free up capacity, but I absolutely take the hon. Gentleman’s point. I know his part of the world very well and for somewhere so well located it is surprisingly poorly connected.

I hope that providing connectivity from east to west will be a vital part of our long-term competitiveness as a region. I strongly urge Ministers to keep up the pressure on that part of the project. East-west will be as important, if not more so, than north-south in the long run.

I am pleased that Ministers from the Department for Transport have been engaging with local government to make sure they can build on the opportunities of HS2 and spread the benefits of this public investment in levelling up across the region. It will not just be the centre of Manchester that will benefit. Those on the outskirts will also see the rewards. It will bring more investment into our area and into other areas of the north-west, too. It will spread the good around.

That is not to say there are not some sticking points. My hon. Friend the Minister, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) will have heard from most Greater Manchester MPs at one point or another. Obviously, there will be some snagging issues, but I am pleased to say that in the round when I have had questions or concerns, I have been able to have a frank and open conversation with him and have received honest answers, even if they are not always the ones I wanted.

I understand that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has a number of concerns about the Bill in its current form, the largest of which is how Manchester Piccadilly will be developed and configured to accommodate HS2. Its preference is for an underground through-station, rather than the proposed new six-platform overground station next to the existing one. I am pretty agnostic about that—I can see arguments for both—but I took the time to do a bit of homework on the underground option. My concerns, essentially, are that the project calls for a huge tunnel to be built under the station which is larger than anything that has ever been drilled before. We would end up with the same situation as Euston, where we have to build a giant box underground. That, in turn, means it cannot be situated under the existing station, so it needs to be either alongside it, as is the case with the overground station anyway, or somewhere else altogether, which is largely pointless.

As the GMCA wants a through station, we will need to have very bendy tunnels, which will slow down the trains on their approach and increase journey time, or we will have to build the station at a right angle to the existing station, which will mean it will be an absolute nightmare for people to get from A to B, again negating its value. Added to that is the fact that we will have a hole in the ground for a period of about seven years, which will basically be an opencast mine, with trucks making thousands of movements a year to take spoil through the centre of Manchester.

[Chris Clarkson]

My hon. Friend knows that I am an enthusiastic supporter of the Public Order Bill. To be fair, if we could get the protesters to do the tunnelling for us, it might save us 5 billion quid. That might be a way of doing it—get a few Swampy types in and get the job done.

We have regenerated the centre of Manchester many times, certainly in my adult lifetime, but this is not the kind of regeneration that we particularly want. It will undo a huge amount of good. Digging up a square mile of the city centre will certainly not deliver the value for money that we want. Having said that, may I encourage the Minister to publish in the Library the cost-benefit analysis of both versions of the station? That would enable a fuller debate, especially when the Bill comes before the Select Committee. The subject needs to be discussed further.

[Mike Amesbury]

If an underground station is good enough for London, why not Manchester? The scale of this investment will benefit generations to come. We have to get this right. What is good enough for London certainly should be good enough for Manchester.

[Chris Clarkson]

As a proud northerner, I do not think there is any bit of London that cannot be improved by digging it up. I do not think that the same is true of the centre of Manchester.

As for the cancellation of the Golborne spur, I join my hon. Friends the Members for Leigh (James Grundy) and for Warrington South (Andy Carter) in welcoming the reconsideration of that ludicrous white elephant. As hon. Members well know, it was originally included only as a sop to the former Member for Leigh, who is now the Mayor of Greater Manchester. That money could be much better deployed elsewhere, including on integrating our public transport properly.

That point brings me to my favourite subject: public transport. One area on which I can make common cause with the GMCA is that the project needs to be fully integrated into whatever network the Mayor gets around to implementing. I particularly note the call for a new Metrolink station, Piccadilly Central, to be included in the project. I support that call fully, although I will be less than chuffed if central Manchester gets yet another metro station before either Heywood or Middleton is connected to the network.

I urge the GMCA and Transport for Greater Manchester to get their collective digits out of wherever they are, and get on with the feasibility studies that are supposed to deliver these projects. Obviously, levelling up needs to be more than just a railway, but building HS2 is a vital first step towards drawing wider investment into Greater Manchester and the wider north-west. Building this scheme will help to bring businesses, jobs and prosperity to our region.