Access to Ports

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I will not detain the Chamber long. I welcome the report from my constituency’s point of view. The Chair of the Select Committee will know the areas I will talk about, given her previous distinguished career as leader of Lancashire county council, as will the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), given the geographical position of his constituency.

The key line for me in the report was:

“Ports are national assets, often out of the limelight, but essential to the economic well being of the nation.”

That needs to be said again and again. I am making an appeal on behalf of the smaller ports. There is talk in the report of a national strategy, which I think is a sensible, common-sense, positive push forward, but part and parcel of that must be the inclusion of Britain’s smaller ports. The Select Committee Chair made reference to coastal shipping and all that goes with it, and the smaller ports have a key part to play in that. As I will try to suggest, they have a particular part to play in any emergencies at our major ports. I will come to that point in a moment.

On a more positive note, I noticed in paragraph 7 on page 8 a reference to the problems of getting to Heysham port, which is just outside my constituency and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), because of the lack of a link road from the M6. That has been an issue since 1938; I am sure the Chair of the Select Committee will remember from her time as leader of Lancashire county council the constant pressure for such a link.

As we speak, the diggers are in and work on the road is moving along. That work started only a few months ago and, interestingly enough, the mere fact that it has started is already attracting businesses to the area. Distribution businesses are looking at setting up along the road, and the container companies in the port are delighted and considering expanding. Something planned in Lancashire for more than 80 years is finally coming to pass, which is a plus.

I have two smaller ports in my constituency. Glasson dock, run by the Lancaster Port Commission, is a very small dock on the estuary of the River Lune that can take ships of up to 3,000 tonnes. It is at the end of the Lancaster canal system, so it has a freshwater and a seawater wharf; it is quite an interesting area. The little, busy port is well run by the Lancaster Port Commission. It is mainly dependent on Glasson Grain Ltd, which imports, in smaller ships, feed ingredients that are converted to animal feed for the agricultural areas in my constituency and in Lancashire more widely. On top of that, a weekly boat takes cargo to and from the Isle of Man. Glasson dock is quite a successfully run private port.

The Committee talks about access. Glasson dock is not a strategic port, so it is not controlled by the Highways Agency; it falls under Lancashire county council. I ask for the Committee’s patience while I make yet another appeal concerning the B5290, the road that goes into Glasson dock. A sign on the road states that it is liable to flooding, and it does flood. There is huge pressure from the port and the people who live in the village of Glasson Dock to get that road re-done. It has been left in a deplorable state, yet wagon after wagon of animal feed comes out of the port, keeping that commercial entity going. Despite that plea, Glasson dock is a very successful example, I would argue, of a functioning smaller port that can add something to the wider ports strategy, if there is to be one.

My main concern—I am sure hon. Members will understand why—is about the much larger Fleetwood port. It has declined over the years, first with the downturn in the fishing industry and more recently when Stena Line stopped sailings between Fleetwood and Larne in 2010, because the boats were getting too old and it was too expensive to replace them and because of the problems in getting in and out of Fleetwood that resulted from the tidal system.

We now have this huge great empty space, still owned by Associated British Ports. There has been lots of talk over the years about the possibility of reviving Fleetwood as a support system for supplying new wind farms, and we hope that something might come of that. There has even been talk recently of its becoming a centre if fracking develops. Believe it or not, fracking might be possible in the Irish sea, and Fleetwood would be in a strategic position for that.

There is a reference in the report to dredging, which I thought quite interesting. One of the key issues to do with whether Fleetwood could ever be revived is the cost to ABP of continual dredging. ABP is running down that operation, so there is some dredging, but it is not as deep as it was. The worry is, therefore, that the port will eventually silt up. I note that the report states in paragraph 21 on page 12:

“The Mersey Dock and Harbour Board successfully bid for money from the Regional Growth Fund to dredge the Mersey so that the port of Liverpool could accommodate larger ships.”

The Government stated that that was “an exceptional case”. I am sure that they have to say that all the time, and as a local constituency MP I could argue that Fleetwood is an exceptional case. If the regional growth fund, perhaps through the local enterprise partnership, made that decision, why should not the Lancashire LEP decide that a grant should be made available to keep Fleetwood port properly dredged for the time when there is demand for it?

Colleagues will understand why my old antagonist in the Greater London authority, Ken Livingstone, is not someone I would praise to the hills, and I am not doing so now. However, I remember his constant determination to protect the 10 redundant Thames river wharves. I sat on the London Development Agency for a while, and there was constant pressure to redevelop those wharves into housing. However, there was a kind of rule that we could not touch them, because the Mayor did not want to touch them. During the Olympics, some of those wharves were revived for the delivery and removal of building materials and we have seen the development of a more extensive river service, so the protection of those wharves turned out to be extremely important.

I support the Select Committee’s proposal for a national ports strategy. Surely as part of that we have to look at all the smaller ports that may one day be important back-up. If Liverpool port is to expand—hopefully, it will—and is dredged to let in the big cruise ships, what happens if the Mersey is blocked one day by an emergency? Where is the sea traffic going to go? There is nowhere along that stretch of coast: Heysham and Barrow are already extremely full, so we need an emergency contingency plan. That is why support is required to preserve smaller ports such as Fleetwood—there may be others across the country—that do not currently excite the market but one day might. However, if the capital resources are not supplied and entry to and from the port, both seaward and landward, is simply left to die, such ports will be useless in future. I argue that they do have a future, and that that should be recognised in whatever grant system is available.

I want to finish by talking about the access to Fleetwood. Fish processing is thriving, alongside the Freeport retail centre and all kinds of other things, but there are problems with road access, which is the responsibility of the Highways Agency, all the way through to the port. Despite my meeting with the Highways Agency last year, there are still great big signs all the way down the M55 saying “Ferry”, “Ferry”, “Ferry”—but the ferry has not been there for four years. God love the agency, because it has promised to blank those parts out, but we are still waiting four years down the line. It does not help the look of Fleetwood to have such big signs pointing to a redundant port.

The ports I have been discussing should be included in a strategy—and yes, we need a strategy. Who knows when Fleetwood port will be revived? I obviously hope that it will be sooner rather than later, but even if “sooner” is a bit later, in spring or winter—the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) knows the terminology far better than I do—in the short term there must still be a back-up for emergencies. If there is an emergency in Liverpool, I would argue that Fleetwood is a really good back-up port.