Transport Infrastructure (North Wales)

Debate between Hywel Williams and Mark Tami

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mark Tami]

I thank my hon. Friend. I agree there are lots of small changes that could be made. Someone came to see me who was blind. He said that few announcements are made on trains, so he feels unsure whether he is getting off at the right station. There are small things we can do to improve the situation, and they do not involve a big cost.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The hon. Gentleman has listed a large number of possible road improvements, and he is now talking about rail improvements. However, I was under the impression that transport is a devolved matter. I am not springing to the Minister’s defence, but would the hon. Gentleman’s comments not be better directed at his Labour colleagues in Cardiff?

[Mark Tami]

I would say that I thanked the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but that would not be true, would it? He has made his point, but I was talking about joined-up government, which would make sense. The hon. Gentleman might realise that there is no Hadrian’s wall at the border; in fact, there is no border at all as far as most people are concerned. As I have tried to illustrate, people work on both sides of the border, and we do not want to be turning away jobs, although perhaps that is what the hon. Gentleman wants.

[Hywel Williams]

rose—

[Mark Tami]

I think the hon. Gentleman has made his point.

The Wrexham-Bidston line does not work well, particularly for shift workers, for whom it does not start early enough or end late enough. We really need to modernise the service. In the first instance, we need to introduce a half-hourly service. In the longer term, we need electrification, although we must take on board any concerns among people living along the route.

We have to look at a cross-border service. In the past, when we thought we had made progress on the Wrexham-Bidston line, it came to nothing, partly because costs suddenly spiralled—I never quite understood why—but also, if we are honest, because the Administrations failed to work together for the benefit of those on both sides of the border.

I certainly support upgrading the service. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd mentioned, we need a dedicated station on the route to serve the Deeside industrial park. The Hawarden Bridge station offers an opportunity, although we might want to build a different station. However, we need something on the site. To be frank, it is incredible that the industrial park was built without a dedicated station in the first place—that seems crazy to me. For those who do not have a car, the only way to get there is to use the shuttle bus. For a park with 7,000 or 8,000 jobs, that is completely ridiculous. We can look to the past, but we really have to learn the lessons of the past and not make the same mistakes again.

I welcome the improvements at Saltney junction, where line speed and capacity will be increased. I would also welcome the reinstatement of the Halton curve, which links the Chester-Manchester line at Frodsham with the west coast main line at Runcorn. That would allow the reintroduction of a direct rail service between north Wales and Chester, and on to Liverpool Lime Street and, importantly, to John Lennon airport. A study is looking at the viability of that, and I hope it reaches a positive outcome.

A service we tend to forget—it is seen just as an add-on—is buses. We need a more co-ordinated approach, and we need to look at the cross-border nature of bus services. As I indicated, even short journeys seem to take a ridiculous time—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd is indicating that I am doing a similar thing. As I said regarding the Wrexham-Bidston line, the public must have confidence in bus and train services if they are to use them. If they do not, they will see them as unreliable, and they will carry on using cars.

I will make one final point, as I know people are keen that I conclude. There has been some mention of having an airport in north Wales at Hawarden, effectively in Broughton. Broughton is vital for taking wings out of the manufacturing facility there to be assembled in France and Germany, and for a limited number of light aircraft movements. It is in a very built-up area, and we have two perfectly good airports at Manchester and Liverpool. We do not need to expand any service at Broughton; we need to ensure it is easier to get to and from the airports at Manchester and Liverpool. That makes far more sense than expanding capacity at Broughton.

In conclusion, we have a great opportunity in north Wales to grow and to create jobs, and to use the very skilled work force we have there to grow the economy for the future. We are only going to do that if we have the right transport infrastructure in place.