Guto Bebb
Main Page: Guto Bebb (Independent - Aberconwy)Department Debates - View all Guto Bebb's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Susan Elan Jones
It is no secret that the slow pace of rail journeys to parts of mid-Wales is scarcely believable. I agree totally that the London-Birmingham high-speed link would make a tremendous difference to that, or at least part of a difference. This is our opportunity. I want to see benefits of the kind that the TGV delivered in northern France brought to Wales, as well as to the midlands, northern England and Scotland, through HS2.
Although the planned route for HS2 does not go directly into Wales, that does not matter. Getting the journey time from London to key hubs such as Manchester or Liverpool down to an hour and 10 minutes would be a massive improvement for us. Some tube journeys take longer than that, as I am sure many hon. Members realise. Suddenly, getting business representatives from London to north Wales and back in a day would look easy.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
On that point, I travel down by train from Chester or Runcorn simply because the North Wales Coast Railway line is so poor. How does the hon. Lady think that the economic case for north Wales will be improved by making the journey time to Manchester 1 hour 10 minutes rather than 1 hour 50 minutes, when north Wales will still be three-and-a-half hours away?
Susan Elan Jones
There is work to be done in north Wales. We are talking about a link that would speed up the entire journey down here. The examples that I gave earlier show how it is much quicker to travel to parts of Europe than to parts of north Wales, which bears testimony to my argument.