Cross-border Rail Services in Wales

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

At the risk of sounding like Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen”, the first job I ever had, at the age of seven, was casing on Rhyl railway station with my older cousins. We would take a pram, and the trains would roll in, 10 to 14 carriages long, and disgorge their passengers. People did not have cars back in the 1960s—or not many working class people did—so they would place their cases on our prams and we would take them to the guesthouses, hotels and caravan parks in Rhyl and round about.

The train has been good to Rhyl and Prestatyn. The train arrived in Rhyl, my hometown, in 1849. I was recently talking to a 94-year-old local historian from Prestatyn, Fred Hobbs, who has researched the topic. He told me that when the train came to Prestatyn, it opened up the Welsh seaside towns to the industrialists and merchants of Manchester and Liverpool, who came and lived in Rhyl and Prestatyn and commuted to Liverpool and Manchester. They brought with them their wealth and investment, and our local towns prospered.

Rhyl was just a fishing village back in the 1840s, but it grew and grew: between 1849 and 1900, there were 900 hotels and guesthouses. The train brought great wealth to the town. The west ward of Rhyl was one of the richest wards in Wales because of the investment in hotels and guesthouses. Unfortunately, those ex-hotels and ex-guesthouses are responsible for the deprivation of seaside towns, as they have now been turned into houses of multiple occupation, but that is a discussion for another day.

The train has been good to the coastal towns of north Wales, and especially to Holyhead. The route planned in the 1840s went from London to Dublin, which was still part of the British empire in those days. It was a very important route. We want to ensure that the primacy of that route in the 19th century is re-established in the 21st century. The trains and transport links to north Wales brought wealth and investment right through the 20th century, up until the 1960s when I was casing to make a few bob on a Saturday morning. The downturn came to the north Wales coast in the 1970s, when people stopped coming to coastal towns for their traditional two-week bucket-and-spade holidays in a coastal town and chose to go elsewhere—to Spain and France. That left a big hole in the north Wales economy for a 40-year period, and we are only just beginning to put that right.

The challenge for the 21st century in north Wales is better connectivity between north Wales and the north-west of England. There are 650,000 people living in north Wales, and 6.5 million people live in the north-west—it is a huge population centre, and if a bit more of the area across the Pennines is included, it becomes even bigger. That was an opportunity in the past, it is an opportunity in the present and it is an opportunity for the future. We must improve train and transport connectivity.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we must think about that now for the future? One problem is that rail has been something of an afterthought. Industry and a lot of other things have come, but the rail system is not up to the standard required to serve industry and the people of our area.

[Chris Ruane]

I agree with my hon. Friend to a certain degree, but he is no great user of the train, unlike me and my north Wales colleagues. I have witnessed a vast transformation from when I became an MP in 1997 and it took me four hours to arrive in London from Rhyl in my constituency. The trains then were grubby and had not been cleaned; there was chewing gum on the old and faded seats. Now, we have Pendolino and Voyager trains. There has been massive investment, for which I am grateful to Virgin and Arriva. There has been improvement, but I agree with my hon. Friend that we must not rest on our laurels.

Huge investment—something like £45 billion—is coming from HS2. I want to ensure that my area, the north Wales coast, gets its fair share of that investment—that we are electrified and our stations are improved. Big progress has been made: Chester, Flint and Prestatyn stations have been improved—a huge investment of £7 million was spent on Prestatyn. Last week Arriva, Network Rail and Denbighshire county council started a £2.5 million improvement programme for Rhyl railway station. Improvements have been made, but we must not rest on our laurels. We must push for further investment in our stations along the north Wales coast.

The big cities of Liverpool and Manchester were totally transformed under a Labour Government, and we did not make enough of that. Those cities were derelict and riot-strewn in the 1980s, and they are now vibrant communities. Manchester has one of the biggest student population bases in Europe, with 45,000 students. Liverpool is the same. Two principal airports serve north Wales, Liverpool and Manchester, and they have both grown exponentially over the past 10 years. They are the local airports for north Wales, and we need connectivity to them. It is difficult to get directly to those airports by train, so we need to consider a dedicated transport link from the north Wales coast to Liverpool and Manchester airports.

Liverpool and Manchester have huge population bases and huge research capacity at Manchester and Liverpool universities. We need to connect those universities with businesses in north Wales such as Airbus, the OpTIC incubation and research centre in St Asaph in my constituency and Bangor university. We need more co-operation, which would increase and improve if we had proper transport links. Connecting the science base of the north-west with the science base of north Wales would be helped tremendously by a proper transport system.

North Wales not only needs to be better connected with England; we need better connections inside Wales, including with the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) in north-east Wales. In 1998, the Labour Government made a £0.5 billion launch aid investment in Airbus, with the Welsh Government investing £25 million. That was a public-private partnership that produced one of the most expansive factories in western Europe. There are 6,000 engineering jobs at Airbus making the biggest wings in the whole world. We have to ensure that our population base in north Wales, especially in the bigger coastal towns that have large numbers of unemployed people, is better connected to the job opportunities at Airbus and the Deeside industrial estate in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Tens of thousands of jobs have been created and will be created, and they need to be made available to unemployed and underemployed people along the north Wales coast.

Ten years ago, the Department for Work and Pensions provided transport grants that helped people get to work. We should be drawing down grant money, European funding, DWP funding or Welsh Government funding to ensure that we have dedicated pull-in stations and dedicated trains early in the morning to take those workers to the huge factories in north-east Wales.

I will conclude on modal points, where trains connect with airports and hovercraft. I am probably one of only two MPs who can claim to have a constituency that has been, or will be, served by a hovercraft. The first passenger hovercraft service in the whole world was between Rhyl in my constituency and Wallasey. I mentioned that fact in a debate in this Chamber in December, and within three days, three hovercraft companies contacted me about restarting the service. The time taken to travel from Rhyl to Liverpool by train is one-and-a-half hours, possibly involving two changes. The time taken for a hovercraft connection to Liverpool would be 34 minutes. I would like to see people coming along the north Wales coast by rail, stopping at Rhyl railway station and getting on the hovercraft for a direct passage to Liverpool. The proposal is for a hover link that takes people from north Wales, through Rhyl, to Liverpool airport. That is a fantastic opportunity, but we need to ensure that we have the facilities to take people by rail, by car or by bus from Rhyl to Liverpool.

We are also blessed in Wales with a fine coastal path. We are the only country in the UK that has committed to, and delivered, a path along the whole coast. Walkers are coming to Wales, and in my constituency we are blessed with being at the northern end of the Offa’s Dyke footpath. We need to ensure that walkers can come to Rhyl or Prestatyn by train to do their rambling—I hope I am not rambling, but I intend to finish soon.

[Mark Tami]

You are hovering.

[Chris Ruane]

Yes, I am hovering about rambling. Thanks very much.

In Wales we are also blessed with fine cycleways, most of which are along the coast. The Sustrans bid for Big Lottery funding delivered a £4.5 million dedicated cycle bridge at Rhyl harbour. We need to make the most of the investments that have come to my town and north Wales by connecting them to rail users, which is a challenge for all of us. We have two well performing train companies. Virgin has massively improved the service over the past 14 or 15 years, and we north Wales Labour MPs campaigned to ensure that Virgin did not lose the franchise. We were highly concerned when it looked as if a second-rate company was going to take over the franchise, and I hope that Virgin continues to invest. Arriva Trains Wales is also investing heavily in north Wales, but we need to put pressure on the train companies to ensure that they deliver not for the past or for the present but for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. Today’s debate has shown the importance of transport and the rail industry to economic growth and the lives and livelihood of so many people across the country. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) on securing the debate.

Many of the questions that hon. Members have posed this morning reflect the challenges of success. Since the Conservative Government took the decision to privatise the railways back in 1993, the number of people using the railways has doubled. The hon. Lady raised issues of great importance to the economic development of both England and Wales. From her service as a member of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, she will know that cross-border links have been the subject of several inquiries, as have tolls on the Severn bridge, and I am grateful that she did not raise that matter today.

I will now address several of the points that hon. Members have raised during the debate. The hon. Member for Newport East asked some specific questions about her constituency, some of which I will answer in writing, if I may. On timetabling, however, franchise agreements require train operating companies to co-ordinate services, but that co-ordination clearly has not been as strong in certain areas as it might. There has been dialogue between the Severn tunnel action group, Arriva Trains Wales, Arriva and the Welsh Government, but I am disappointed that no sensible conclusion has been reached thus far. I urge the groups to continue to talk, because meeting the obligation is possible.

On connectivity, some of which is determined by constraints on the Cardiff to Cheltenham and Birmingham to Bristol routes, if there is a solution, which is possible, it will require some substantial work by Network Rail, the TOCs and the Welsh Government to investigate the options and then agree on one.

The hon. Lady also mentioned her constituents’ desire to be able to use the Bristol service to work there. Some substantial work has been done with local authorities in the west of England to fund additional services, including those to Portishead, which will introduce a metro service to the area. While that is of benefit to the Bristol area, as the hon. Lady is right to say, we are currently encouraging the Welsh Government and the West of England local enterprise partnership to talk to ensure greater connectivity between the two schemes, which would be of benefit to her constituents.

The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) spoke of his time as a casing boy, as I think he described it. Although probably not as glamorous as that of the hon. Gentleman, I too had a job on the railways and spent two rather hot summers as a carriage cleaner many years ago during my university career. He was right to mention the potential of connectivity to Airbus in Deeside to generate jobs, but that is unfortunately a matter for the Welsh Government, so I urge him to take the matter up with them to see whether it can be improved.

[Chris Ruane]

The Minister will recall that I said that the Department for Work and Pensions had grants available 10 years ago to improve transport from areas of high unemployment to areas of employment. Is that not another possible source of funding?

[Stephen Hammond]

Most issues concerning rail services wholly inside Wales are now a matter for the Welsh Government, which is the key point here.

The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), who is no longer in his place, suggested that rail is an afterthought. That may or may not have been the case previously, but it is certainly not the case under this Government. Rail is at the heart of both our economic and transport strategies.

The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) referred to the scale of investment that he had seen elsewhere. The scale of investment proposed in the current control period between now and 2019 dwarfs any of the investment that he has seen in any other country, because £38 billion is being invested in this country’s rail system. On top of that, £30 billion is going towards the road system. He mentioned regional input, and we will soon be announcing local growth funds, into which local authorities will bid. We have also encouraged local authorities to come up with local rail projects, and there is also the local pinch point fund, so there is much local activity.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the Wrexham to Bidston line, and I recognise and understand his desire for its electrification. At the moment, however, the aspiration should be to get a more frequent diesel service so that plans can move forward. The hon. Gentleman is right to have such hopes and I promise to work with him, because increasing frequency on that line would be of substantial benefit to his constituents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) spoke of his campaign for an hourly service from mid-Wales so that newly elected Conservative MPs can actually get to London, and I am delighted that that service is in place. He also asked about the new Virgin direct award deal and direct services from Shrewsbury to Euston. I confirm that he is absolutely right: there would be little point in putting in place a service that did not allow for economic growth and for easy movement from London to Shrewsbury, and the other way around, to do a day’s work. The first train in the morning leaves before 6.30 am, but gets into London by 9.15 am; the last train back in the evening leaves around 6.30 pm—I think at 6.32 pm—which gets someone back into Shrewsbury for 9 o’clock, allowing a full day’s work in London if necessary.

The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made a number of points, some of which I will cover later in my speech. He talked a little about his aspiration for renationalisation of certain parts of the line. I am not entirely sure where that fits with the shadow Chancellor ruling it out on the television on Sunday. I am happy to reaffirm to him, however, that the Government’s view is that franchising, and the creation of partnerships between the public and private sectors, is the best way to get value for money and better services for the fare payer and the customer, as well as the taxpayer. That is clear.