Cross-border Rail Services in Wales

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) tell us about Rhyl station. Big changes have happened in north Wales and in the rest of the country over the past 30 or 40 years. For the benefit of the Minister, it is important to appreciate that north-east Wales, and its economy, is among the most successful and progressive areas of the country. North-east Wales has world-beating companies in the aerospace, automotive and pharmaceutical sectors that compete internationally to secure jobs and high-quality investment for British industry. In a globalised economy, it is important that the world knows we have infrastructure that is competitive, enabling those businesses and people in north Wales to journey to north-west England and beyond.

There is good news for my constituency of Wrexham, because the Welsh Government are investing some £44 million in dualling the line between Wrexham and Chester. In the 1980s, the Conservative Government made the absurd decision to limit the infrastructure for rail services between the largest town in north Wales, Wrexham, and Chester, which therefore inhibited regular rail services. Ever since, we have been able to have only one train an hour between Wrexham and Chester. In fact, we re-established an hourly service only in 2007—the impact had been so negative that rail usage substantially diminished.

Since the reintroduction of hourly services in 2007, there has been a massive increase in the use of rail services, which I see every week when I travel to London. The economy of this important economic area has developed, Glyndwr university has been established and we have seen a large increase in rail usage.

It is important that we use this opportunity to introduce three trains an hour between Wrexham and Chester, which would provide a major boost to the local manufacturing and retail economies by increasing the connectivity between Wrexham and Chester. Businesses that operate on both sides of the border would benefit from access to new markets. Such investments are important, and there are massive further opportunities in the immediate area of north-east Wales.

Another cross-border line runs between Wrexham and Liverpool, and my hon. Friends from north Wales will forgive me for mentioning it again. It runs from Wrexham, the largest town in north Wales, by the Deeside industrial estate, which has businesses such as Toyota, and goes through the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), up through the Wirral, very close to the GM factory at Ellesmere Port, then up through to Birkenhead, and links in to Liverpool. The service is interrupted by a necessary change at the Bidston interchange. Direct access along that line would be a massive boost for north-east Wales, the Wirral and north-west England as a whole, so it is important that we consider looking at that line again and designing an improved infrastructure.

In my role as a shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, I visit other countries, particularly in the middle east and Africa, and it is striking to see the investment and support for infrastructure that our competitors are introducing to their economies. Those people are keen to secure the jobs that our own constituents have at the moment and that our young people wish to have in future, so we must focus on delivering improvements to our infrastructure. Although we have had some improvements, particularly on the longer journeys from north Wales to London, which my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd mentioned, the connectivity between north-west England and north Wales is still limited and needs to be much better.

Focusing on the airports is massively important. The airports that serve north Wales are Manchester and Liverpool, but it is virtually impossible to travel to either by public transport. The region has an increasingly choked road system that was essentially designed in the 1970s and 1980s, and in substance has not changed since. It is absolutely imperative that we focus on delivering an improved public transport system to service the airports and to increase connectivity. If we do not do so, we will lose out in the longer term to our competitors.

For me the real frustration over the years has been the investment system, which is too centralised to be able to deliver local transport projects. I am pleased by the tone and content of the Adonis review, which was issued yesterday and talked about the importance of much more regional approaches to investment across England. The lesson also applies in Wales. We cannot have a top-down system only in Whitehall or Cardiff Bay—away from the localities that actually understand the need for local investment and how to facilitate it—determining investment in regional rail projects. That is one of the major reasons why our infrastructure system is so bad.

Contrast that with, for example, Frankfurt in Germany. On a recent visit, I saw the connectivity between the rail system and the airport system. The city is a major regional power player in Germany. There is a regionalised system of cities such as Hamburg, Munich and Berlin, which all contribute massively to their regional economies. The fact is that in the United Kingdom—this issue affects all our constituents—there is a massive focus on south-east England. The major transport infrastructure investments have gone to south-east England. That is unbalancing the economy throughout the country. It is a central issue not only for our constituents, but for the whole United Kingdom.

A tide is flowing in all political parties that recognises the importance of that issue. The practical impact of the policies we are pursuing is that we do not have the regional investment to facilitate projects that could create world class infrastructure. It is important that we have the capacity and the authority in north Wales to develop regional infrastructures. The development of lines such as Wrexham and Chester and Wrexham and Liverpool would facilitate investment in the rail system, which would support business and jobs in the local economy. Give us the responsibility, authority and power to make decisions, and we will continue to deliver a powerful economy in north-east Wales that will be able to compete in future.