Great Western Railway Routes

James Heappey Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bradshaw]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the Government have never come up with the money. I am suggesting that they should. Network Rail is not able to come up with the money because of the massive cost overruns and delays on the whole of the rest of its infrastructure investment projects; not just the huge cost and time overrun on the Great Western line into south Wales but on its overall investment all over the country. Incidentally, the Government knew about that before the general election when they were making all those great and grandiose promises about what they were going to deliver to us in the south-west. Those are the conversations the hon. Gentleman needs to have with his Front Bench colleagues. I will leave that to him and wish him the very best of luck.

It is completely obvious to me why the money has not been made available. Network Rail has not got it because it has massively overspent and overrun on all its other projects. I hope that when the Minister responds we can hear a little bit more detail on exactly what we can expect in the far south-west and when. If she cannot tell us about the feasibility study money this evening, perhaps she can tell us: when we might be able to hear about it; when we might have some hope about the prospect of electrification beyond Bristol into our part of the region along the lines that have been suggested; and when we might have some idea about the timetable for an additional alternative line to Dawlish.

I completely agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). We do not want to lose the line at Dawlish. It is beautiful and the people of Dawlish do not want to lose it. However, the fact is that if we talk to any engineer or climate change scientist about the long-term viability of the route, they do not just talk about storms and sea level rises but the fragility of the cliff. The biggest problem with the block last year was that the cliff kept falling down. It is a multiple problem and the line is between the sea and quite a soft cliff. As hon. Members will know, there was a plan back in 1939 to build a sensible, slightly inland alternative from Powderham Castle to Newton Abbot. That did not go ahead because the second world war broke out. There are other options. I can understand that people in north Devon and north Cornwall like the idea of the Okehampton line being reopened. Let us have a look at that and have some idea about what is going to happen and when. As the Prime Minister himself said, we cannot afford to have the south-west cut off like that again. Our economy cannot afford it. I was on the right side of that block, so it did not affect me, but the Plymouth, Cornwall, South Devon and Torbay economies were seriously affected by it.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

May I add to the right hon. Gentleman’s shopping list? The Minister might like to reassure us about where the south-west and south Wales sit in the Government’s wider priorities. It would appear that we have neither resilience in our network, nor had significant investment in the speeds of our journeys since the ’70s—certainly beyond Bristol, there is no evidence of that coming soon. Other regions, therefore, will zoom ahead with much faster high-speed rail within a decade or two. It would be useful if the right hon. Gentleman added to his list this question about where we stand in the Government’s priorities.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I entirely agree, and we look forward to hearing the Minister respond at the end of this debate. I intend to finish with what I hope will be an attractive suggestion to all those Conservative Members who were swept to power—

--- Later in debate ---

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on securing this important debate. It is important for two reasons. First, rail infrastructure in the south-west was a central part of the Chancellor’s long-term economic plan for our region. As such, it is important that we hold the Government to account in the delivery of that plan. Secondly, the south-west as a region is, unfortunately, defined by its poor infrastructure. We have a poor road network beyond the M5, we have relatively poor broadband, and access to the national airport is difficult. We have some fantastic and growing regional airports, but still nothing on the scale of those in other regions. Our rail network is only one line deep, and that line, not too long ago, was washed into the sea. That shows just how vulnerable we are. Moreover—although the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) made the point that broadband could be better integrated into the rail service, I will exclude broadband from what I say next—our roads, our rail and our airports are poorly integrated. Not only are they individually bad, but collectively they do not create a particularly well joined-up network. That adds to our woes as a region.

My remarks come under two headings: the inter-regional and the intra-regional. On the first, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay was noble in resisting the temptation to compete with other regions, but I believe that the important thing is how the south-west fares against other regions, and therefore where the region should be in the Government’s priorities. It takes one hour and 42 minutes—give or take—to go from London to Bristol Temple Meads. That is 118 miles. On the west coast main line, we can go from London to Crewe in an hour and 34 minutes. That is 183 miles. On the east coast main line, we can go from London to York in an hour and 50 minutes. That is 215 miles. Already, our region is at a huge disadvantage relative to other regions, because of the speed of access into the south-west. The new Hitachi bimodal trains will reduce the journey to Bristol to around an hour and 25 minutes, which is very welcome indeed, but our line will still be slower, mile for mile, than the lines serving the midlands, the north-west, the north and the north-east.

I make three points about that. First, I have just given for comparison the journey to Bristol, which is in the northernmost part of our peninsula where the lines are fastest, so it is, in theory, the quickest to access from London. Secondly, in other regions, huge further improvements are expected to the rail infrastructure that will accelerate journey times into those regions. While we catch up with the bimodal trains that will get us to Bristol in an hour and 25 minutes, the other regions will sprint ahead, so we will remain in the second division. Thirdly, the effect of limited electrification will be marginal. Electrification only to Bristol, or only part way down the west country line, will mean that passengers reach the end of the electric line relatively quickly, but thereafter their journey will be relatively slow. Proceeding beyond Bristol will be rather like jumping off a cliff back into the slow world of diesel trains. I fear that that will accelerate investment into the Thames valley and the M4 corridor, but not necessarily beyond Bristol and into the south-west peninsula at large.

What do we ask, from an inter-regional perspective? Clearly, our connection to London—and London Heathrow, which has been mentioned a few times—is vital. It would be churlish not to say that it is the most important connection, so it is absolutely right that it is the key aim of the Government’s rail plans for the south-west of England. It is not the only inter-regional connection that matters to the south-west, however. Our visitor economy will benefit enormously from improvements to the cross-country network, because so many of our visitors—they are very welcome indeed—come down from the midlands, the north-west and the north-east to find some sun in the west country.

Clearly, the Government have only so much cash, so what matters is the way they sequence how the cash is spent. This is rather like the debate about broadband. We talk endlessly about whether our responsibility is to deliver superfast broadband to as many people as possible or to deliver broadband just to those left without it altogether. The debate about rail in the south-west of England is very similar: do we sprint ahead with the development of high-speed rail into the north of England, when the south-west still has bimodal trains, because we can only get electrics so far down the line and thereafter have to revert to a technology not employed elsewhere? From the nodding of the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), I suspect that very much the same applies in Wales, once people go beyond Cardiff. This is an opportunity for the Government to state very clearly—I shall come back to this point later—where the south-west sits in their priorities. Those priorities are very clearly demonstrated by the way in which the Government sequence the spending of cash on rail infrastructure.

On intra-regional train networks, the Peninsula Rail Task Force has rightly received praise this evening, but there is a danger with PRTF. Its genesis lay in the difficulties we had in accessing Devon and Cornwall after the floods a few years ago, so much of the plan it has come up with addresses those difficulties. There are some benefits for Somerset in that, because the lines affected by flooding need to be made more resilient, but Somerset is an integral part of the Peninsula Rail Task Force, not just a territory to enable quicker travel down into Devon and Cornwall.

I want to plant it in the Minister’s mind that the PRTF has responsibility not only to get greater resilience in Devon and Cornwall and to look at commuter capacity in and around Plymouth and in Devon, but to recognise that within Somerset—certainly north of Taunton—the requirement is to generate commuter capacity to Bristol and Bath. When I speak to people in that part of our county, which includes my constituency, about faster rail connections, they may or may not mention London first, but many of them will certainly talk about their inability to commute by train to work in Bristol or Bath. We need to make sure that that is addressed.

I have met the Peninsula Rail Task Force, which assures me that that point is part of its thinking, but one cannot help but notice that there is no specific mention of it in its interim document. I hope that from our meetings so far, from this debate this evening and, I hope, from the Minister feeling suitably animated by this matter, more explicit mention may be made in the future, because this is hugely important to the economic development of our part of the county.

There are a number of challenges when it comes to increasing commuter capacity from Somerset up to Bristol and Bath. The arrival of rolling stock from the Thames Valley will be very welcome. However, plenty of our stations have platforms that are not quite long enough for them, and we need to address that; plenty of them do not have the car parking capacity to meet the growth in demand that I hope will come, so we need to address that; and many of them have no disabled access whatsoever, and we need to address that.

We also need to look at timetabling services better. In my last job in the military, when I was working in the Ministry of Defence, I saw how South West Trains has services coming in from Hampshire and Surrey that stop relatively frequently until Woking or Surbiton and then go straight into London Waterloo, while others stop hardly at all and then stop all the way up from Woking or Surbiton. Given that people are now willing to travel a bit further to work and that the Bristol and Bath economies are growing very fast, I wonder whether there is an opportunity to have services that stop at Taunton, Bridgwater, Highbridge and Burnham in my constituency and perhaps Worle on the outskirts of Weston-super-Mare, but then accelerate through into Bristol to deliver a journey time that encourages people to live a bit further out in Somerset.

That is hugely important for creating jobs that people in Somerset can access through this new public transport link. It is also important because one of our great problems in the south-west is that houses are very expensive—those within the Bristol and Bath commuter belt are cripplingly expensive—but accelerating commuter traffic from Somerset up into Bristol and Bath would allow people in Bristol and Bath to access cheaper housing in Somerset. That is a win-win, given the Government’s priorities in those areas.

Highbridge and Burnham is an interesting case, if I may be slightly parochial for a few minutes. It is the only station in my constituency—a constituency of about 750 square miles. It is on the no-man’s-land bit of line between Taunton and Bristol, which may or may not be electrified. Improving that station presents a real opportunity, given the frustrations that so many people in my part of Somerset have in accessing Bristol. More parking could be delivered. There is no disabled access whatsoever on the Taunton-bound platform when coming across from the car park, other than by going out on the road and over a bridge with no traffic lights or anything. There are huge opportunities for improvement, but because the station is in a quiet backwater of Somerset, it is too easily forgotten. The opportunity that sits there just waiting to be harnessed, which would require a relatively small amount of money, is too often overlooked. [Interruption.] I have placed it on the record now, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I will move on.

To conclude, the Government have committed a welcome amount of investment to the south-west. We now need to deliver on what has been committed. The Government made some exciting promises on rail in the south-west in their long-term economic plan. We now need to deliver. Although we recognise that the public purse is stretched, the Government need to come good on the things they said in the west country during the election campaign and make it clear that the south-west is a priority for them. We believe that the Government’s majority was made in the south-west.

The right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) has left his seat, so I can say without fear of reply that the south-west benefits enormously from being represented almost entirely—bar one—by Conservative MPs. We speak as one voice on all sorts of issues, from school funding to local government funding, which we talked about here the other night, and rail, which we are talking about tonight. That one voice gives the south-west an opportunity in this place that it has not had before. We need to harness that by making sure that the Government deliver on their promises and on the things that we are so keen to see happen in our constituencies.

Our region has poor infrastructure. The road improvements that the Government have promised are very welcome. The broadband improvements that the Government have promised are very welcome. The rail improvements that the Government have promised are absolutely vital. I hope that the Minister will agree that it should be a priority to deliver them in the south-west, and that if money does not allow for things to be done at the same time, the south-west will get priority over other regions so that we can catch up with everybody else.