Rail Connectivity: Oxfordshire

Clive Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Charlie Maynard]

I very much concur.

I want to quantify the housing and the scale of what is going on now. Since 2000, the population of Oxfordshire has increased by a quarter. In the 2018 local plan we were signed up for 16,000 homes over the period through to 2031, increasing our housing stock by a quarter in just 10 years. On top of that, as per the new national planning policy framework, there is a 62% increase on our current local plan.

I move on to transport. Our road is under very severe pressure. Some hon. Members might have spent time on the A40; probably more than they would have liked. It is an extremely constrained corridor, which, according to AECOM’s 2021 study, is going to be 30 minutes slower by 2031, which is seven years away—30 minutes slower between Witney and Oxford by 2031. That assumes that the disastrous bus lane project will have been completed, although that is not going to happen because there is not sufficient money. That was something that the previous Conservative Administration signed up for: £180 million for four miles of bus lane, which has turned into two miles of bus lane and a park and ride —not a good investment.

We need a long-term transport policy, which will deliver a number of things: journey times cut by up to 70% and a plan for housing. Many constituencies, including mine, support housing. We all recognise that people need somewhere to live. We want to be grown-ups at the table coming up with a solution, rather than scattering houses willy-nilly around the district with no coherent plan. There is no plan without a transport solution.

We support putting the houses that we will have to take anyway around the railway stations. Just as our Victorian forebears did many decades ago, we will use those houses to fund the railway. That would solve housing; then it would solve the economy. Our economy in West Oxfordshire really suffers. One would think that lots of good employers would come to West Oxfordshire, because we are only 10 miles west of Oxford, but they do not. There are some good employers, but very few now come in, because they know that the transport is completely unsustainable.

The concept is logical: Oxford is at one end with the best universities in the world, and at the other are places such as Witney and Carterton with excellent skills, particularly in the aerospace and aviation sectors because of RAF Brize Norton. Connecting those places with a fast, reliable transport corridor would allow businesses to locate in West Oxfordshire. That would mean less need to commute and jam up our roads. That is a big opportunity.

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

Railway connectivity is also fundamental to my constituency. Heathrow is a rarity among international airports: large parts of its catchment simply do not have any direct rail access. We need a western rail link to Heathrow. That would reduce carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to 30 million fewer road miles every year. Does my hon. Friend agree that rail is crucial for decarbonisation?

[Charlie Maynard]

Well said—I very much agree. Following on from that, transport is one of the hardest nuts to crack in that decarbonisation agenda. Without a large-scale mass public transport solution, we are not going to get there. That is at the core of Oxfordshire county council’s strategy and this would help to deliver it, just as my hon. Friend’s project would in his constituency.

I have two more points. Vast numbers of people living in West Oxfordshire have to get to hospitals in Oxford for secondary and tertiary care. The unreliability of the road puts enormous stress on their lives; they—including members of my family, as it happens—often have to go backwards and forwards a number of times a week. People have to leave home for a 10-mile journey sometimes two or three hours in advance, because they are scared about missing their appointment. That is only set to get worse on current plans.

Finally, on defence, RAF Brize Norton is the biggest RAF base both in the country and internationally, with 7,500 people working there. It was built there because it had a railway connection, but that connection was ripped up 50 years ago. We must bring back that railway connection now. In times of peace, the lack of the connection is bad news, but in times of war it is truly terrible. Is that really how we want to run our country? The biggest airbase in the country, which runs all our international transport, does not have even have a railway connection. That is a disaster.

What has been going on to date? I give real thanks to the Witney Oxford Transport Group, which really took the charge on this issue in 2014, before I showed up. I am immensely grateful for its having made me chair in 2020. Since 2020, we have conducted a number of technical studies, particularly on defining a route that goes not only from Oxford to Carterton but through the Salt Cross garden village. Those studies gave the county council enough comfort to commission a feasibility study, which was published last November, and this year Lichfields is carrying out an economic analysis. That is all working towards the new local plan for West Oxfordshire, which is being worked up now. As a district councillor, I am working closely with my district council colleagues, as well as Sasha White—the planning and land use silk of the year; many thanks, Sasha—to work the railway line into our local plan. If the line is in there, we have a real chance of getting this railway built.

I used to work in business and I understand that there is really one thing that counts here: money. A key part of our work has been on the funding, and shaking a tin at the Treasury and waiting 50 years is not what we have in mind. Who have we been working with? It has been E-Rail so far, which has just funded 30% of the Ashington-to-Blyth line by going up to landowners and developers along that track and saying, “If you want to bring back a passenger rail line here, sign some voluntary, legally-binding contribution agreements, which will allow you to build houses around those future railway stations. Bluntly, the reason why you should do so is that you will make more money.” They will make more money for three reasons. First, the local plan will allow them to have houses sited around that railway station that would not otherwise exist. Secondly, they can build at higher density around a railway station. Thirdly, each of those houses is worth more because it is next to a railway station.

That might sound radical, but it is what our Victorian forebears did 150 years ago. It is what Japan, Korea and Hong Kong do, and what much of northern Europe does. That is how they fund their public infrastructure, and I would argue that case. Labour sometimes mentions land value, and I really hope that it looks into the issue because it is a way of using private and public funding to get things moving quickly—as opposed to just sticking it to the taxpayer, which is what we have had to do up to now. I really ask for the Minister’s help in exploring that. That would fund about 50% of the railway line, and the other half would come from Homes England. We would be delivering on our side of the bargain by getting all those houses into West Oxfordshire in a coherent and sensible way. Without a railway line, we will not have that solution and we will have an unsustainable, long-term problem.