England-Wales Transport Links

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) on securing this debate on a matter that is of huge interest to me and has been for most of my adult life. I want to address specifically how we deal with cross-border links in a devolved United Kingdom. It is not just because my constituency is Montgomeryshire; I worked for a long time to develop the economy in mid-Wales with my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), and one part of the strategy that we always knew was important was transport links. It was much more important for mid-Wales to have a link out than it is for England to have a link in, which lies at the root of the problem.

I was going to talk about road links, particularly two specific ones, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion mentioned rail links, I should say how important they are as well. When we discussed the Aberystwyth-Euston link, it was part of an initiative that we in mid-Wales developed. We got every organisation there to come together in a partnership and invest in the Cambrian line, because it was so important to us. Although we have lost the Aber link, we hope that the Shrewsbury-Euston link will be restored soon. I hope that the Minister will reconfirm the position on that; we have been left feeling optimistic about it.

The hourly service that we all desperately want is now in the lap of the National Assembly for Wales. The investment in the line has been made; it now just needs extra investment in the infrastructure—the trains and the cost of the line. I am hopeful that it will happen at some stage. It has been delayed, because there is cost pressure on all forms of Government, including the Welsh Government, but I am hopeful that it will happen before too long.

The Shrewsbury-Euston line is important. Clearly, we would like the line to go to Aberystwyth, but the Shrewsbury line is key because Shrewsbury is so accessible to us. If we were confident in that line, there would be investment in car parking. Particularly as the prison in Shrewsbury is closing, I can see opportunities for that station to become a key station for mid-Wales, but the link to Euston is important. The newly renegotiated Virgin contract may deliver that.

Road links are hugely important to us in mid-Wales, and there are two that I want to speak about. One is called the Middletown bypass; it is actually the connection between Welshpool and the improved road to Shrewsbury. I am talking about half the length of that road. The same principle applies to the Llanymynech-Pant bypass, but it is much further down the pecking order, so I will base my points on the Middletown bypass.

When I was involved in developing the economy in mid-Wales in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the bypass was a key part, and we thought we had secured it. Then an Act was introduced relating to protecting the badger population, and it was suddenly found that the agreed line, which would almost certainly have gone ahead, ran through a badger sett, which delayed things at a key time in the early 1990s. The Government then, like the current Government, needed to cut expenditure, and there was a bit of a fashion to be anti-roads. At that stage, the scheme slipped back and back, although it has been resurrected since then.

The Assembly Government are enthusiastic to proceed with their part of the scheme, and would make the commitment. I do not know the exact figures, but the road scheme would probably cost about £30 million. The Welsh Government would commit about £25 million, and the Highways Agency over the border would commit about £5 million. The Welsh Government want to do it, but the Highways Agency has no priority whatever to come into Wales. There is no economic benefit, and any cost-benefit analysis will give it no priority, so the scheme cannot go ahead.

As a consequence of devolution, cross-border schemes —not just in mid-Wales; I think that there are four or five—have simply been put on the back burner, and there is no prospect that they will ever proceed. That is a massive blow to mid-Wales, because we need that road out. Anybody who has travelled from Welshpool to Wollaston Cross knows that it is the most appalling road. Drivers settle in to travel at 30 or 40 mph, because that is the way it is; they get stuck behind lorries they cannot overtake. That is not acceptable. The whole economy depends on it.

We need the Government at Westminster to recognise that it is not just the cost-benefit analysis for the west midlands that counts; Westminster must consider the impact in Wales. That applies to every single devolved service. If we do not consider the impact on Wales, although we do not have a direct responsibility, the post-devolution United Kingdom cannot operate with anything like the fairness or efficiency that it should.

The same issue applies to the Llanymynech-Pant bypass. That scheme is further down the pecking order, but it has been seriously considered in the past. The bulk of that scheme is in England, so I can see why the issue will be much more difficult to resolve. Again, the west midlands body will consider that scheme, as it has done, and put it right down the list. There is a big local campaign—I have been to public meetings—because anyone who travels through Pant and Llanymynech can see that it is not a modern highway. It attaches to the road to Manchester and Liverpool and the north of England, which is crucial to the economy. It is not good enough.

We have cross-border links, but devolved Britain—nobody is more committed than I am to a devolved Britain that works—works negatively in terms of cross-border roads. We must address that, not just from the Welsh side but from the English side. We all want devolution to work. We want a country whose governance operates well and efficiently, so that we can feel comfortable with it, but in mid-Wales—certainly among those who depend on its economy or are trying to create jobs there—we are furious. It is one of the biggest negatives about devolution that could possibly be created, and I think it will get worse. I hope that the Minister has heard the points that I have made and will not only address them today but ensure that they become part of the Government’s thinking.