Transport Infrastructure (North Wales)

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), and echo much of his introductory message about the strength of the economy in north-east Wales.

I want to start in a bipartisan spirit by quoting the Secretary of State for Wales—not something I do very often—who said:

“Together, Deeside and Wrexham make up one of the most important industrial areas in Europe”.

That is absolutely true. In fact, I would go further: we could say that together they form one of the most important industrial areas in the world. At the Dubai air show last week we heard the fantastic announcement that 50 A380 jets have been ordered, the wings for which will be built at Broughton in north-east Wales.

We need to be a voice for north Wales on a cross-party basis, to create strong infrastructure to support our industry. As my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside said, there is no guarantee that that industry and those businesses will remain in north-east Wales. It is important to construct that infrastructure across north Wales and into north-west England—that link is crucial—so that we can compete with international businesses and competitors that would love to have those businesses and industries in their own countries.

In north-east Wales the infrastructure in my view is really from the 1990s, but is trying to cope with industry that is developing towards 2050, so we need a far-sighted approach. We welcome the investments in infrastructure that are now being made in the region. The Welsh Government have promised to invest £44 million on the line from Wrexham in Wales to Chester in England. That is crucial to the people of Wales; many people go every morning from my constituency of Wrexham across into England, to work for businesses such as General Motors in Ellesmere Port or the pharmaceuticals centres in Daresbury. They have high-quality jobs there and need to have contact with those areas. The businesses that employ those people want to ensure that they have access to a skilled work force.

We are also seeing developments in infrastructure in north-east Wales. Yale college in Wrexham has merged with Deeside college, creating Coleg Cambria, which will be a world-challenging organisation and will build support networks for competitive businesses. In Deeside and Wrexham we need a linked-up transport system, so that the fleet of buses that now travels from Deeside down to Wrexham and back is replaced by a modern, integrated transport system.

We have heard a lot about the Wrexham-Liverpool line, which goes right through this hugely important industrial area. The Wrexham industrial estate and Deeside industrial park have both been extremely successful in attracting important international businesses. We need to link those industrial estates; as has been said, it is extraordinary that a new estate such as the Deeside industrial park was built without a real public sector transport connection. I am afraid that it is also extraordinary that in the 1980s, the Wrexham-Chester railway line was reduced from a dual to a single track, one of the most short-sighted decisions I can remember a Government making. Fortunately that is going to be addressed.

We also need collectively—it is important that north Wales MPs speak collectively on this matter—to stress the importance within Wales of north-east Wales. We have colleagues who are eloquent in promoting different areas within the country. Only yesterday I saw a report that the south-east Wales local authorities are pressing for a metro system in their region. It is true that there has been massive investment in the past 10 years in the valleys lines and the Vale of Glamorgan line in south Wales. That sort of rail investment has not happened in our area in the past. It is coming now, and I have referred to the cross-border investment in the Wrexham-Chester line, which will lead to a big improvement and create a great deal of additional capacity. We need to say to our colleagues in the UK Government and the Welsh Government that if our tremendous industrial area is to sustain jobs and be internationally competitive, we need to work collectively to provide an infrastructure, in both skills and transport, that makes the area too good for any globalised company to leave. North Wales has to be the place where people want to be.

We have world-beating industries in our area—not just Airbus, but Toyota and JCB; Sharp is also based in my constituency. Those companies are at the cutting edge of research. We established a university in north-east Wales for the first time in 2008, when Glyndwr university was established; that needs to be part of a support network for our businesses. Businesses need to work together with our educational institutions to put together proposals for the Government on building an integrated cross-border system of transport, so that people who are now travelling across the border can do so more easily and far of them can use more public transport than at present. Wrexham and Flintshire are two of the counties in the UK with the biggest proportion of people who travel to work by car. That is creating pinch points in that 1990s transport network that I have referred to.

We need to look ahead to 2050 and construct a transport system that uses the tracks we already have for a modern rail system linking Liverpool, Manchester and north Wales. Liverpool and Manchester have extremely successful air transport networks, but we have dreadful links to those airports. Anyone who travels to those airports from the west would be insane to travel by train, so they travel by car, which will create additional pressure on the road network in the years ahead. We have to look at how we will link to those international hubs, given our international businesses.

We also need to look at High Speed 2, thinking ahead to its construction and how north Wales will benefit from that. As north Wales MPs, we need to press the Wales Office about HS2 to see how it will specifically benefit our area, and we need to press the UK Government to ensure that there is a plan for north Wales with regard to HS2. We have seen enormous improvements in the rail network down to London and down to Cardiff in recent years, mainly through investment in the west coast main line but also through investment in north-south networks within Wales. That has happened only because of insistent pressure from north Wales. We need to keep that going and look much more closely than we have in the past at the public transport system within north-east Wales, especially the rail system. We need local authorities, AMs and MPs to work together to speak out loudly on behalf of the region that we should all be proud to represent.