Rail Services (Clitheroe, Blackburn and Manchester)

Jack Straw Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Thank you very much for that, Mr Speaker, and for the opportunity you have given me to raise this important local issue of rail services between Clitheroe, Blackburn and Manchester in my first Adjournment debate at least in this century and going back a good part of the previous one.

With the Transport Secretary’s key announcement earlier this afternoon of the Government’s commitment to press ahead with the High Speed 2 line, today will go down as a day of great significance in the development of public transport in the United Kingdom. Of course I welcome that announcement, as I welcomed the earlier announcements to extend electrification to the Manchester-Liverpool and Manchester-Preston rail corridors. HS2 will not, however, be completed until at least 2026, and the north-west electrification schemes will not be completed until at least 2016. So this evening I want to make the case for the pressing and much more immediate improvements needed in the north-south rail services from Clitheroe, which run through Blackburn and Darwen, and into Manchester. I also want to seek the advice and guidance of the Minister on how we can break out of an apparent Catch-22 that is in the way of those improvements, whose benefits for existing and future rail passengers, and for the wider economy of east Lancashire and the north-west, will, we believe, be significant.

The campaign for improvement in the services is supported by all the Members of Parliament for the area, all the political parties and all the local authorities affected. My constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), is in his place and will speak immediately after me, and the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) would be vocal in his support for this cause but for the fact that, as a Deputy Speaker, he can take no part in debates.

Let me set the scene. Rail services in our area run east-west and north-south, with the main interchange being at Blackburn. When I became its Member of Parliament in 1979, these services in east Lancashire were, like those elsewhere, in the shadow of Dr Beeching’s axe, and they were in a process of what appeared to be terminal decline. Some lines had been closed altogether or had had their passenger services ended. On other lines, double tracking had been replaced by single tracks, and service frequencies had been greatly reduced—that is the fundamental problem on the line under consideration.

In the 33 years since I became an MP, there have been some significant improvements in rail services. In the early 1980s, the Copy Pit line to west Yorkshire was reopened for passenger services. There is now an hourly fast service across the Pennines that, combined with a local stopping service to Colne, gives a half hourly east-west service throughout the day. In 1994, following a great campaign by rail groups in the Ribble Valley, with the support of the MP for that constituency and the county council and district councils, passenger services and stations from Clitheroe to Blackburn were reinstated. The new service has proved immensely popular.

Significant sums have been spent on station improvements. In 2000, Railtrack replaced the old and decaying train shed at Blackburn station with well-designed new station facilities, which were part of a £5 million regeneration project. That set of improvements has been augmented in the past few months by new buildings on platform 4 at Blackburn station, which were made necessary by the increased demand for rail services on both the east-west and north-south lines. Much needed improvements at Darwen station will be completed in April and regional growth fund moneys for the Todmorden curve, enabling direct services from Burnley to Manchester, have just been agreed.

Office of Rail Regulation data show that there has been a 90% increase in rail travel within the north-west in the 12 years from 1995-96 to 2007-08, exceeding by 20 percentage points the overall growth in all rail passenger journeys in Great Britain over the same period. The data also show that east Lancashire has been part of that extraordinary growth in local rail services in the north-west. There has been a 27% increase to 1.2 million a year in the number of passengers going through Blackburn station in the five years from 2004-05 to 2009-10 and an astonishing 46% increase in the number of passengers going through Darwen railway station, which is now 250,000 a year.

Overall, the north-south Clitheroe to Manchester line is forecast to be used by 1.7 million passengers this financial year, the highest patronage ever enjoyed by the route. The service developments that are already taking place at Manchester Victoria will put more stress on the service as connections become even easier to a larger range of destinations, including Manchester airport.

The irony is that alongside that catalogue of significant improvements, the one service that cannot be significantly improved at the moment is the line under consideration. The reason is very simple: the track between Blackburn and Bolton was singled in the 1960s. The result is that the maximum level of service that is possible to run on that line is that run today—basically, an hourly service with a half hourly service in the morning and evening peaks. Even maintaining that pattern of service is difficult as, because of the long sections of single track, delays become amplified, sometimes throughout the day. Overcrowding on the services can be intense, as all of us who use it can bear witness, and the quality of the rolling stock is poor on the whole—it is made up of the old Pacers and Sprinters of the 1970s and 1980s—despite the best efforts of Northern Rail, the train operating company. Essentially, other areas’ cast-offs are “cascaded” —I think that is the polite term—as new stock is brought in not in east Lancashire but elsewhere.

The solution to that systemically unsatisfactory situation is obvious: to double track some, although not all, of the line between Blackburn and Bolton, to lengthen trains and to improve the quality of the rolling stock. A great deal of technical work has been undertaken already on the key issue of doubling the track. The north-west rail utilisation strategy for 2007 put the “anticipated cost” of the necessary infrastructure improvement at “over £20 million”.

The consultants commissioned by the local authorities, Faber Maunsell, concluded in their 2007 report that a

“positive business case is achievable for some of the options”

under consideration. That said, the scheme has not so far scored highly enough on the standard cost-benefit analysis tools to feature in Network Rail’s confirmed investment programmes. The frustration that we all feel—the Catch 22—is that we know as a fact that there has been a huge increase in ridership even given the less than satisfactory frequency, reliability and comfort of the current service and we are convinced that pretty modest improvements in the scale of things would enable there to be dramatic improvements in reliability, frequency and ridership, with major benefits to the local economy. We see proposals elsewhere in the region and in the country whose intrinsic benefits appear to be no greater being more successful in the competition for funds, yet the formulae used do not appear satisfactorily to capture the economic and social benefits that we are sure will accrue from this investment. So, we look forward with optimism and anticipation to the advice from the Minister on how we can break away from the circular trap we are in and progress this scheme.