Rail Services: Open Access Operators

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this important debate on open access operators.

Rail transport in the north has suffered long-term neglect, with new plans left to gather dust. From George Osborne’s northern powerhouse speech in 2014 onwards, they have essentially been an unfunded wish list passed from one Government to the other. But under our new Government we have Great British Railways on the table, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how we will incorporate open access operators into our plans, because the north-south divide is real.

Total Treasury spending on rail in Yorkshire and the Humber last year was £1.25 billion, compared with £9.3 billion for London and £3.1 billion for the south-east. The current funding structure for transforming regional transport also makes it very difficult for areas such as the one that I represent in Scarborough and Whitby, incorporated into the York and North Yorkshire combined authority, to address the desperate lack of connectivity that exists. The main funding scheme that the Government inherited is the city region sustainable transport funding settlement, but combined authorities like ours do not qualify as they are not a city region. That funding gap has left York and North Yorkshire struggling to even plan a transport strategy. I hope that the Government will address that in the spending review.

Open access operators could step in to help. Coastal communities such as Scarborough have suffered for too long from poor rail services, and that has had a major impact on our economies. I have been campaigning for a half-hourly service between Scarborough and York, which would be taken for granted in other areas, but it seems an impossibility. The line was opened in July 1845. It took just one year and three days to complete the 45-mile route, but TransPennine Express, which now runs services on the line, today appears to have little of that urgency about it.

Scarborough is, of course, our first coastal seaside resort and is beautiful. We also have the North York Moors national park on our doorstep. The growth of staycations and holidays means there is real potential for visitors, as well as for the residents who are crying out for a better service. With the creation of Great British Railways, we have the chance to have one body responsible for the strategic direction of our railways, ensuring, as the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham said, that infrastructure and services work together and drive regional growth. I urge the Government to look at open access operators, because although they currently account for only 0.6% of total passenger journeys, they have massive potential to open up new routes, such as the Scarborough to London via York route. Look at the success of Hull Trains: in 1999 there was only one train a day between Hull and London, and now there are seven each weekday and six at weekends. As the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham said, new direct services are being approved and opened all the time.

I appreciate that there is a question whether open access services put extra pressure on network capacity and I look forward to the Minister’s response. However, unless we look at how we serve coastal communities such as mine, given the poor connections we will not move forward. If any operators are listening, I would love to see a direct service between Scarborough and London.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making a really important point about coastal communities. Rural communities find themselves in a similar situation, where they may have lost a direct service. Wrexham, Shropshire and Midlands Railway has an excellent plan to run a direct-to-London service through Wrexham, Shropshire and the Midlands but it is taking an inordinately long amount of time for it to get through the Office of Rail and Road. Does the hon. Member agree that we need not just keen operators but to process their applications quickly, to give the people the service they deserve?

[Alison Hume]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. She makes an important point about time. Time is of the essence as we strive to deliver better rail services. Perhaps we need a little of the spirit of the 19th century’s rail pioneers to fully connect coastal communities at last.