Transport in the North-East

Iain Wright Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) on securing this debate. I want to make three distinct points, on buses, rail and road, but they are all linked by a common theme: a lack of attention, priority, co-ordination, and investment when it comes to transport in the north-east.

Let me start with buses. Thirty years of deregulated bus services has not given Hartlepool a good market, full of choice and quality for passengers. According to Department for Transport figures, 91% of the bus market in Hartlepool is run by a single operator, Stagecoach. Arriva has 4.9% and the Go-Ahead Group has 1.7% of the market. A market distorted in that way is not a market that helps potential passengers. Little wonder that passenger journeys in Hartlepool, unlike in the south-east and London, are falling, from 5.4 million journeys in my constituency per year in 2009-10 to 4.6 million journeys in 2013-14.

People may be making fewer journeys because they are using other modes of transport, but it is more likely that bus journeys are falling because choice is being restricted, timetables are being cut and the ability of people to travel by bus in Hartlepool and further afield is being hampered.

Let me give a couple of examples. The No. 1 bus service, from High Tunstall into the centre of town, out to Seaton Carew and then further to Middlesbrough has its last bus from Throston Grange terminus not at 11 o’clock or 10 o’clock in the evening, but at 10 minutes past 6. If someone works in Middlesbrough and lives in Hartlepool, they have to catch the last bus home at 6.14 pm. The No. 4 service travels across the town from South Fens to Bishop Cuthbert, but if a person is going to a friend’s or checking on a relative at night, they cannot do it, because the service stops during the week at 10 minutes to 6. Those who live in outlying villages such as Dalton Piercy and Elwick are virtually imprisoned at night, because there are no services at all.

The lack of a true bus service both within Hartlepool and connecting to surrounding towns and cities is a real barrier to economic growth and social unity. If a person in Hartlepool wants to get a job in, say, the steel plant in Redcar, some 10 or 12 miles away, they cannot, because there is no bus service. The point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) that economic activity and travel-to-work patterns do not respect local authority boundaries. There is a pressing need for some sort of regulated service within the local authority of Hartlepool and the wider Teesside area, and also within the wider north-east region, to address that issue.

Secondly, I want to raise the issue of rail rolling stock. We have debated this in the House before, but no improvements are being made. People using the Northern Rail service from Hartlepool to Newcastle and Sunderland in the north, and to Middlesbrough in the south, are faced with the oldest rolling stock in the country, built in the 1980s, with standing room only, no toilet facilities and health and safety issues.

I wrote to Northern Rail on behalf of a constituent who was concerned about the overcrowding and the condition of the rolling stock. This week, I received a reply:

“Sadly, there is not much we can do to address the overcrowding issue in the short term. The fleet of trains we operate under the current franchise from the Department for Transport, which runs until February 2016 and is currently out for consultation, is aging and all units are used to their maximum.”

In other words, “Get used to it.”

There has been some confusion, and I hope that the Minister will clarify things today. Will he ensure that discussions on the new franchise will definitively include the need to replace, rather than refurbish, the decrepit Pacer trains that passengers in the north-east, unlike those in any other part of the country, have to endure?

The third and final issue that I want to raise is investment in the road network. All hon. Members here will realise that Hartlepool is the centre of the universe, but unusually for the centre of all known life and activity everywhere, it is difficult to connect to major economic centres such as Newcastle in the north and, particularly, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire and Leeds in the south. There is a pinch point on the A19 at its interchange with the A689, which causes real traffic congestion. If connectivity is an important prerequisite for economic growth, investment to widen the A19 to three lanes between Wolviston and Norton would unlock economic development and employment opportunities in the short term, and would provide growth potential in the long term. Will the Minister give a commitment today that that project will be given the go-ahead soon?

People in my constituency have to contend with inadequate transport provision and infrastructure. In the north, we really need to address that in the round, and at the moment, that is not happening. There seems to be a lack of priority and a lack of attention, and I hope that the Minister will address that in his remarks.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) on securing this debate. Like the shadow Minister, I will resist taking interventions, not because I do not like to take them, but because I want to cover as much ground as possible. If there are any matters that I cannot address, I will write to hon. Members. Specific issues have been raised on particular schemes in particular constituencies, and people deserve a serious response.

I acknowledge three or four of the core points that have emerged across the speeches in this debate. First, transport serves economic interests, but it has a bigger function, too. Transport serves well-being and is critical to communications because it allows people to get to opportunities. If we restrict transport, we restrict opportunity, which is a point that has emerged on both sides of the Chamber during our short debate today. I will not use the text that has been prepared for me by civil servants, because as hon. Members know, I like to speak my mind and respond to debates properly.

[Mr Iain Wright]

Your officials look frightened.

[Mr Hayes]

This Chamber knows how I behave as a Minister, and my officials too are used to how I work.

The second point that has emerged from this debate is that, when serving well-being in the way that I have described, one needs to take a lateral, holistic approach. As the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, when people travel it is not easy to define boundaries. Different people travel to different places for different purposes at different times and by different means. For that reason, we have to consider transport in the round. We have to consider how bus travel interfaces with rail travel, and how investment in roads will affect other modes of transport. That is a challenge for any Government, because the shadow Minister is right that Governments tend to work in silos, and Departments do, too. I am the antithesis of a silo, as he knows, because I have a broad vision but a laser-like focus.

My laser-like focus is on the north-east, which I know well, although not as well as most people in this Chamber because I do not represent a north-east constituency. I regularly travel to the north-east using the A1. People who know me well will know that I am often in Northumberland, so I know the difficulties of getting to the north-east by road. One thinks of the A1 north of Newcastle, which has been mentioned in this debate and in previous debates. One thinks of the congestion around the west side of Newcastle. I was delighted to turn the first sod on the improvements we are making between Coalhouse and the junction to its north, which will not only allow local traffic to use the road but allow better throughput for those travelling further north. That scheme had been long called for.

I recognise that the connection between the north-east and the rest of the country is vital for economic purposes, as well as for well-being. I also recognise that that requires us to think carefully about the specific challenges in that part of the country. Members of Parliament for the north-east have made it clear that they see the particularity of their needs as being central to the concerns that I need to consider.

I am surprised that the shadow Minister has been untypically ungenerous about this, because that is not his normal style, but the Government can rightly claim to have taken a more strategic approach to road investment. As he knows, we have committed funding for a five-year period, rather than the stop-start funding that characterised the previous Administration. I am not generally one of those people who demonise earlier Governments, but one of the features of the previous Government was that they did not have as consistent a commitment to road investment as the current Government.

As the shadow Minister knows, and frankly the facts speak for themselves, we are making further investments. Some £24 billion will be invested in this Parliament and the next, comprising 54 new national road projects. Eighty per cent. of our roads will be resurfaced. There will be 750 extra lanes of smart motorways. As he knows, more than £17 billion will be invested in the next spending round, including £10.7 billion for major projects and £6 billion for maintenance and resurfacing.

The hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South made a spirited case for improving bus journeys. I do not want to get too involved in this familiar dispute, but the hon. Lady powerfully defended rural interests, echoing the sentiments of my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton South (James Wharton) and for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who are great champions of the interests of rural communities and fully understand that good transport enables such communities to access neighbouring places. There is clearly a major dispute in the Labour party, and it is not for me to comment on that, but as the hon. Lady knows, it is a matter for local determination. The Transport Act 2000 makes it clear that local authorities can make a decision in tune with local interests. It is not for me to get involved in such decisions. I assure her that I appreciate and understand the importance of bus travel, and I recognise that buses are vital for some of the people she described, who would otherwise be entirely isolated, and she has a long pedigree of saying so. Before coming to this debate, I checked her many contributions on this subject. Indeed, she spoke in this Chamber earlier this year about bus travel and its importance to her constituents. Although I will not get involved in that dispute, or indeed in that decision, the Government and I recognise the significance of bus travel. We will happily take further some of the suggestions that have been made in this debate about how we can further enhance what we do to support access to travel.

A number of hon. Members have talked about rail. I have mentioned that I regularly travel to the north-east, and I use the east coast main line. I get on the train in a rather more southerly place than many of the hon. Members in this Chamber, but I know the line well. People are concerned about the franchise, and I gather from what the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) and others have said that people are also concerned about the rolling stock. I will look at the rolling stock and whether it is part of the franchise, and I will respond to him on that specific point following today’s debate. He is right that detaching considerations about rolling stock from the broader considerations about the franchise would be an error.

We have also heard about Network Rail’s £530 million northern hub programme, the electrification of routes to the north-west, the north TransPennine line and other enhancements. All of that is evidence that the Government take the north of England, and travel to the north of England, very seriously. I entirely understand that it is a mistake to see such things in isolation, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South, the hon. Member for North Durham and others have talked about taking a bigger view of transport. Of course every journey, by its nature, is local, but to see it in only those terms, without considering the whole of the north and the relationship between the north and the south, would be an error. We are also investing in stations. As the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) knows, funding from Network Rail and the regional growth fund is supporting a scheme that has not only transformed Newcastle station, which is a magnificent station that I know well—