Old Oak Common Station

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

My apologies for joining late, Mr Efford. I attempted to explain that to you through the Doorkeeper at the beginning of the meeting; I apologise if there was some mix-up. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) on securing this important debate. The wide range of constituencies represented in the debate and in other discussions on the subject shows just how many parts of the country are affected negatively by this proposal, and why it needs to be thought through again.

The proposals underlying the original HS2 Bill were very different from what we have ended up with. I think we can all understand why parties across the House supported the original HS2, but they did not expect it to mean that almost every journey to almost every station in the west of England would be delayed, with a long period of diversions as well.

Taunton and Wellington sits at a transport fulcrum, 99 minutes from Paddington and 33 minutes from Bristol Temple Meads. Although we are further from London than Bristol, we are actually closer in terms of journey time. Decisions taken by businesses and by people deciding where to live are changed by differences of a few minutes’ journey time and the distances that they need to travel, so the Old Oak Common project would have a major negative effect on our local economy in Taunton. One of the biggest factors in our local economy is the connections at the fantastic railway station, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in the heart of the town. As hon. Members across the west country have said, these decisions are important to all our local economies.

As well as the six-year diversion, which seems totally unnecessary, the key point that I hope the Minister will address is why it should be necessary for every single train to stop at Old Oak Common. I have been told in meetings that even if not every train stops, the journey time will be increased by trains having to slow down as they go through the station. I have stood on many station platforms, and I am absolutely certain that trains have not slowed down a jot as they have sped through, leaving the wind blowing across the platform. I do not understand why all trains need to be slowed down. We are undermining the strength of the Great Western line, and the speed to stations across the whole of the west of England. It seems totally unnecessary, and it is totally unacceptable to me and my constituents.

The history has been well described by my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) as a misadventure in rail planning over recent years, and the inadequacy of current services exacerbates the problem. Sunday services are treated like a voluntary sector operation, in which passengers might get a driver if they are really lucky. A catalogue of cancelled trains on Sundays is a certainty. That has to change. It is totally unacceptable in the 21st century.

I also reiterate the comments of hon. Members about the lack of wi-fi, the shortage of carriages, the shortness of trains, and the fact that it is normal for passengers to sit on the floor outside the toilets when they may have paid more £200 for a ticket. How can that possibly be justified? I am grateful that the Minister for Rail in the other place has met with hon. Members. I know he is concerned, and I hope that the Government will continue to strive as hard as they can to mitigate some of those effects.

Somerset has not been blessed with enormous amounts of investment in transport in recent months. We have had the cancellation of the A303 and the A358, which has reduced investment in the area by £2 billion, so it really is time that we saw some transport investment coming into Somerset, not being taken out. My hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth wants to see the Cullompton and Wellington stations project go ahead, which is also my dream. With a benefit-cost ratio of 3.67, we believe that it is the most economically important station reopening project in the country. Let us see some compensation for that project, and let us ensure that not every single train to the entire west country has to be slowed down. I urge the Government to think very hard before disadvantaging such a huge region of England and Wales.

Improving Public Transport

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) on her excellent maiden speech. When I was first elected, I thought it would be difficult to get to know my 71 Liberal Democrat colleagues, but I realise that the challenge is considerably bigger for those on the Labour Benches, so I wish her well with that.

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to her and her colleagues on Somerset council for their work over recent years, in very difficult circumstances. The previous Government may have introduced the bus fare cap, but that did not go far enough to outweigh the decimation of public transport and bus services over decades in this country, both by central Government and Somerset county council, which cut services throughout Somerset.

For example, in 2019, shortly before the Liberal Democrats took control of Somerset, the Conservative county council proposed closing the park and ride services in Taunton. Park and ride is vital to the whole system of integrated public transport, and was an innovation of the noughties, built by a Liberal Democrat council. Although there were plans for the closure of the park and ride service, my colleagues who run the district council stepped up and saved it. They restructured fares, and the service is now once again profitable and does not require a subsidy. That shows that with a commitment to public transport and political will, such services can be made viable and can be sustained.

During these years of real challenge for local government, I give credit to Somerset council for bringing back night buses. I was delighted to meet the first night bus out of Taunton, which means we can now travel between Taunton and Wellington in my constituency until midnight every night on a weekday. I was out there with Mike driving his first night bus last year. It is a fantastic improvement.

The fare cap in Taunton meant that tickets were reduced to £1, not just £2. Shockingly, following privatisation, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne), the companies closed the bus station in Taunton and sold it off. I am delighted that the council is bringing forward plans to have a transport hub once again in Taunton town centre, so that people do not have to stand shivering on pavements in the county town, getting rained on, to catch buses.

I credit the Government for the £6 million in bus service improvement plan funding, which is genuinely welcome. We would obviously have liked more and it is disappointing to see the bus cap increase to £3. As the hon. Member for East Thanet rightly pointed out, no money was pledged to support that service by the last Government. I understand the challenges, but we would have taxed big banks and big energy companies more, as my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) pointed out, so that we could fund some of these things to a higher level.

Before I leave bus services, I must mention that in my constituency of Taunton and Wellington, there is one part of Somerset where young people—students—get no discount at all on their bus fare. If they want to attend college as a sixth-former in my part of Somerset, they have to pay £900 per year just to get there and back. That is a prohibitively high bus fare to pay to get to college. I am working closely with councillors on Somerset council and I hope it will be possible to bring forward a discount scheme for students in our part of Somerset, like those that exist in other parts of Somerset and other parts of the country.

I will move on to the vital importance of rail in Taunton and Wellington and my part of Somerset. We have the fantastic West Somerset steam railway, which I invite all hon. Members to come and visit. It takes us from Bishops Lydeard, just outside Taunton, down to Minehead and the famous Butlin’s—I know that all Members will want to go there, and they can enjoy the steam journey over to it. A strategic outline business case has recently been submitted by West Somerset Railway to the Department for Transport to connect that railway with Taunton station so that it would have a mainline station connection, providing both a commuter service to Bishops Lydeard on the edge of Taunton and direct access to one of the best heritage railways in the country.

Perhaps more important than any of those things is the Wellington and Cullompton stations project. I recognise that there are station opening projects across the country that Members across the House will be championing as their favourite, but I must say that my understanding of the Wellington and Cullompton stations project is that, because it is a two-station project that would deliver two stations in one, it has the best benefit-cost ratio of any railway station reopening project in the country at 3.67. I said that like I understand Treasury benefit-cost ratio numbers; I only wish that were true. I am reliably informed, however, that anything above one is a really high benefit-cost ratio.

On that ground alone, the project should qualify for funding, and it would bring £3.3 million of benefit to the local economy. After all, growth is vital to the whole country, and reopening Wellington station would unlock thousands of homes around Wellington. We have a town council that wants Wellington to thrive and grow. The project to bring that railway station was very close to getting shovels in the ground. In July, the project had reached its final business case. The detailed design was ongoing—there was just a small amount of money needed to complete it—and then the Government froze the whole programme. However, I was assured by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Budget debate that the station would go ahead.

We are still waiting to hear why the most financially beneficial station reopening project in the country has not yet got the go-ahead. I am very grateful to Lord Hendy, the Minister for Rail, for the two meetings we have had. I know that the Government are supportive and sympathetic, but we need this project to get back on track—I am sorry, but it is impossible to avoid railway puns in this debate. The station is so ready to be built. We have a lot of third-party funding coming in. The access road and the car park are funded by a third-party developer. Cullompton, in the neighbouring constituency, is putting in similar third-party funding. We urgently need that project to go ahead.

We wish to secure the economic growth that Somerset needs, but we have lost £2 billion-worth of transport projects over the past few months. The A303 and the A358 have been cancelled. We desperately need a bypass for the villages of Thornfalcon and Henlade, which that A358 project would have completed. With all these projects being taken away, surely it is time that we received the funding for the new stations project at Wellington and Cullompton, with all its excellent economic growth impacts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos]

The Minister is trying to comprehensively address all the comments in the debate. I realise he cannot comment on individual projects, but will he undertake to inform the Secretary of State of the need to release funding for the most important restoring your railway projects?

[Simon Lightwood]

I am sure the Secretary of State will have heard that message, as will the Rail Minister regarding the hon. Gentleman’s individual project.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Croydon East (Natasha Irons). I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East will welcome the £485 million that was delivered to Transport for London in the last Budget; as a northern MP, I can say that without any hesitation. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) for her passionate speech, which was delivered by a passionate advocate for public transport.

Turning to the comments made by the shadow Secretary of State, I will take no lectures from the Opposition on public transport. Looking at the Opposition Benches, all I will say is this: a picture paints a thousand words.

Bus Funding

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

I was delighted to be in Harlow with my hon. Friend this morning to announce record levels of investment for Essex, another area that was badly underserved by the previous Government. Someone mentioned earlier that bus passenger numbers have been increasing since covid, which is true, but concessionary levels are still far below where they were before covid. I am afraid that potentially highlights the real issue of social isolation, and the hidden issue of older people not being able to access public transport. Only by delivering reliable, accessible bus services can we tackle social isolation and give older people the service they deserve.

[Mr Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

The £6 million funding for Somerset is clearly welcome, although it is much less than was needed, considering that Somerset was rated as having the worst county bus service in the country. I particularly welcome the ending of the lottery that sets one community against another. Will the Secretary of State congratulate the Somerset bus partnership volunteers who, working with my Liberal Democrat colleagues now running Somerset council, prevented the previous Conservative county council from closing the park and ride, got night buses going and have begun a new transport hub since the bus station in Taunton was closed as a result of Conservative privatisation?

[Louise Haigh]

It sounds like the Somerset volunteers are doing a cracking job. I am very happy to congratulate them and to welcome the £6.8 million of funding announced for Somerset today.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Gideon Amos Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I rise to give my maiden speech. I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your position and the Transport Secretary and the Front-Bench team on their positions.

It is a privilege and a pleasure to follow the maiden speeches that we have just heard, including by the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean), who, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde), significantly increases the Josh quotient in the House. If I contribute nothing else, I clearly increase the Gideon quotient by the massive number of one new Member of Parliament. I also thank the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), whose public service has been enduring. He has had my congratulations on that already. Their speeches will be a hard act to follow, but I have the advantage of representing Taunton and Wellington, so it should not be too much of a problem.

I give credit to the former Conservative Member for Taunton Deane, Rebecca Pow, who will, I am sure, continue her enthusiasm for gardening and wildlife. She was, of course, a Minister with responsibility for water and for our rivers. I am partial to a dip in the river from time to time, so I was pleased to successfully apply for bathing water status for a stretch of the Tone in Taunton to get the improvement in water quality that we desperately need in our rivers down in Taunton. The River Tone is the silver thread that joins Wellington to Taunton to the levels, close to where the famous cakes were burned near the King Alfred Inn at Burrowbridge.

I also pay tribute to the former Liberal Democrat MP Jeremy Browne, the Member of Parliament for Taunton Deane from 2005 to 2015. He served as a Home Office and a Foreign Office Minister, and remains incredibly well liked in the constituency. He was the first Member to propose a new railway station for Wellington, and I am delighted to have had the Chancellor’s assurance in the previous debate that that project will go ahead. I am the eighth Liberal to represent Taunton in Parliament since some guy named Disraeli was defeated by the first one in the 1835 general election. Of course, nothing further was heard of him—at least not in Taunton.

Taunton’s parliamentary tradition is very deep-rooted. As a county town with a castle, which today proudly houses the Castle hotel and the superb Museum of Somerset supported by our dynamic town council, its parliamentarians held out in siege after siege. Today, the hard work of so many people in Taunton at the Brewhouse theatre, the Southern Sinfonia, the Bluebirds Theatre Company, the Tacchi-Morris, the Willows and Wetlands visitor centre, the Creative Innovation Centre, Arts Taunton, GoCreate Taunton, groups such as Amici and Voce, and the Bradford Players—I have many more—the Taunton Thespians and the @2K Theatre; and in Wellington at the Arts Centre, the Wellesley Theatre, the operatic society, and the Gaumont theatre, which once played host to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and is now home to the bingo, all comes together to mean that not only do we have a Mecca, but our area is a cultural mecca to which people come from far and wide.

Then, of course, there is the magnificent Somerset county ground, graced by the towers of St James and the minster, where I married Caroline just 28 short years ago. I thank her and our children, Emily, Fraser and Fenner and Felix, from the bottom of my heart for their support. Our schools from North Town and Minerva to Bishop Fox’s, Court Fields, Castle, Pyrland, Selworthy and Monkton Wood feed into our nationally renowned Richard Huish College, Bridgwater & Taunton College and University Centre Somerset, which now offers degrees like nursing, in support of the superb staff at Musgrove Park hospital. Funding is urgently needed for the hospital’s new maternity unit, because buckets are currently used to catch the rain in the corridors of a building built for the US army—as a temporary building—in 1940.

Similarly, King’s and Queen’s, Taunton and Wellington’s independent schools, make a massive contribution to our area’s local economy. We also have a successful home education community that inspires an innovative generation of young people. To all our area’s children, I say: “Be yourself. If your name is Gideon, for example, there’s no need to change it to get elected to Parliament.” That is something I once tried to discuss with the former Member for Tatton. I confess that it has taken me a little time to get to this Chamber—if I had not had to deliver all those bibles to hotels, I would have got here a lot quicker.

All those institutions, together with the UK Hydrographic Office, make Taunton the ideal location for new research and innovation entrepreneurs. It is only 104 minutes from Paddington, so they should all come and enjoy the amazing quality of life that we offer. When they come to Taunton, they will find a ticket office at the station that is still working. I was amazed to hear the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) apparently still advocating the closure of ticket offices—a policy about which I can say only “good luck”. To encourage people to come to Wellington, I look forward to working hard on the Wellington station project that I mentioned earlier.

I invite the right hon. Lady the Transport Secretary, and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wakefield and Rothwell (Simon Lightwood), to visit the project. On their visit, I hope that they will enjoy a glass of famous Sheppy’s or Taunton cider—or, to pronounce it correctly for Hansard, zyder—at the Ring of Bells, the Green Dragon or the Pump House in Tonedale, in a Rocket and Bird glass with some Somerdale cheese and perhaps some Bumblee’s relish, followed by a meal at Guddi and Gikki, Maliha and Taj, the Little Wine Shop or Augustus. They are ideal for planning visits to key organisations in the constituency, like WPA, Pritex or indeed the 40 Commando Royal Marines at Norton Manor camp.

I was delighted to support the Royal Marines, with the help of former Royal Marine Paddy Ashdown—raising an ultimately successful petition to gain a U-turn on the previous Government’s shocking proposal to close down the entire facility. In his maiden speech the other day, my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas), drew attention to the huge sacrifice that previous generations made so that we are all free to sit in this Chamber today. My service in the Territorial Army was pretty minimal, but my father, FJC “Jim” Amos CBE, and my mother, Geraldine Amos MBE, both served in world war two, following their fathers who served in the trenches. I remember discussing it with them all.

When I was growing up, hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that the atmosphere and the memories of war loomed large in discussions around meal tables. Is it not that generation’s courage and bravery, not only in rebuilding Britain but in defeating fascism in the first place, that demand our respect? They demand that we do everything we can to defend the liberal and democratic values that make this country so great. Their bravery surely also demands that all hon. Members, on both sides of the House, always say no to those who would stir up division, despair and hatred for nothing more than votes, because they have nothing positive to offer people.

It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve the residents of Taunton and Wellington—from Hatch Beauchamp, Helland and North Curry in the east to Whiteball, West Buckland, and Sampfords Moor and Arundel in the west; and from Bishopswood, Churchinford and Stoke St Mary in the south to Pickney, West Monckton and Kingston St Mary in the north—in this House. I am here to do one thing: work for them and stand up for them to those in power whenever that is the right thing to do. I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to begin that duty today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Kevin Bonavia to make his maiden speech.