Potholes: Suffolk

Debate between Jack Abbott and Patrick Spencer

Wednesday 4th November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jack Abbott]

I was about to say that road maintenance relies on transport infrastructure, which is why Ely-Haughley is so important. The Ely-Haughley scheme will take 100,000 HGVs off the road, which is incredibly important, but it is not a like-for-like replacement for the Orwell bridge, which is crossed by more than 12,000 HGVs a day coming from one of the world’s busiest container ports. That is a crucial piece of infrastructure. We have a job to do locally to make sure we renew the business case, which is now half a decade old, and see whether we can reduce the number of level crossings. The scheme has my wholehearted support, and support across the House, but we have a job to do in our local system. I am pleased that Transport East in particular has grasped the nettle.

[Patrick Spencer]

I have a sense of déjà vu. I feel I have said this to the hon. Member before, but it is incumbent on me to remind him that his party is now in government, with a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer. Last week was the third opportunity for this Government to fund Ely-Haughley. I accept that it was not done by the previous Government, but he cannot just repeat some tired line like “You didn’t do it, so I shouldn’t be expected to do it either.” If it is so important, why is the hon. Member sitting here shouting at all of us, when it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer he needs to make this point to?

[Jack Abbott]

I appreciate that the hon. Member has not been in Parliament for a while, so he may not be aware of the conversations that we have been having across the system. He is absolutely right to point out that the previous Conservative Government pledged three times to move ahead with Ely-Haughley but did not allocate a single penny of funding. It is also the case, however, that we have met consistently with the Rail Minister about this issue. The business case that was put forward for Ely-Haughley is now half a decade out of date. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Patrick Spencer) can continue shaking his head, but this is the reality, and I am giving strong feedback. This is feedback, by the way, that Transport East has grasped, that the Cambridgeshire mayoral authority knows and that our chamber of commerce knows, so it seems that everybody apart from the hon. Member is aware of the detail here.

We have been asked, as a local system, to update the business case, because how can we reasonably ask the Government to fund something half a decade out of date, from before the Liz Truss mini-Budget? How can we reduce the number of level crossings along the Ely stretch, which will also reduce the cost of this important infrastructure scheme? Is there any private investment that we can put into it, in a similar way to the lower Thames crossing? Can we build up wider regional support for the scheme? The ball is in our court. Every single stakeholder locally knows that and is advancing with that.

The other thing I would say is that Suffolk has to get serious. Collectively, we have to get serious when we pitch for funding. We are competing against every single region and nation in this country. To sit there and amateurishly keep demanding the same thing, over and over again—[Interruption.]

Electricity Grid Upgrades

Debate between Jack Abbott and Patrick Spencer

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Spencer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jack Abbott]

I will finish my point because it is directly related to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency of Central Suffolk. We already have pylons running through that part of the world. We have Mendlesham mast, which can be seen from miles around. We also have Eye airfield, big business parks, warehouses and farm buildings. We already have infrastructure in place.

[Jack Abbott]

It is not horror at all; it is infrastructure that people desperately rely on. The right hon. Gentleman might want to live in a fantasy in which costs do not matter and there are no trade-offs. Well, that is not the case.

I also say to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex: East Anglia and the fenlands, which he mentioned, are critical, because if we do not build the energy transition infrastructure that we need, guess what? There is no landscape. We will be surveying everything from a boat. That is the reality.

[Patrick Spencer]

The hon. Gentleman talks about speed and the need to do the transition quickly. May I draw his attention to the work of Bent Flyvbjerg? He wrote a book last year called “How Big Things Get Done”, in which he noted, having looked at infrastructure projects across the world, that less than one in 10 are delivered on time and on budget. Part of the problem is making bad decisions in the planning process and not making the right decisions. If we want to get things done, we should take our time now and get the planning right.

[Jack Abbott]

The hon. Gentleman has just made a case for why we must crack on, and stop dithering and delaying. There is a history of doing bad things slowly, and that should never be repeated. It is not an excuse to do nothing now. We cannot afford to keep kicking the can down the road. We cannot keep relying on our constituents to foot the bill for an inefficient, unstable energy system—which is exactly what we have inherited. We can be as bipartisan as we like, but we have to accept the reality. We cannot keep heaping costs on to our constituents and businesses for our failure to invest properly in the system, which we now have five years to do.

To conclude—I am conscious that I want to bring my colleagues in—this debate has illustrated the choice we face between two competing visions for the future. We can choose whether or not we are prepared to stand up for Britain’s energy security; we can choose whether or not we are prepared to throw away billions of pounds in taxpayers’ money on fantasies that will never come to pass, or act now to slash bills; and we must choose whether or not we are prepared to destroy vast swathes of land, which underground cabling would do, and commit lasting ecological damage. I know which I would prefer, and which my constituents prefer, and I am unapologetic about choosing opportunity over wasteful fantasy projects.