High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill (Instruction) (No. 3)

Jim McMahon Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

We have committed to delivering a faster route between Leeds and Bradford that will bring the journey time down to 13 minutes; that commitment is there. Look, it comes down to choices, and we have been quite clear with our choice, which is to repurpose the moneys from HS2. I believe that Labour’s position is to do likewise, because the Leader of the Opposition went to Manchester and made the same point that the line would not be recommitted. The key point is this: is the Labour party committed to repurposing for those Bradford projects? I am sure that we will hear from its Front Bench spokesperson.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Huw Merriman]

I will not give way again; I will finish so that others can speak.

We will be upgrading the connections between Manchester and Sheffield, between Leeds and Sheffield, between Leeds and Hull, and between Hull and Sheffield. We will reopen several of the lines closed more than 60 years ago by Dr Beeching, reconnecting areas such as County Durham, Burton, Stocksbridge and Waverley. We will halve the time that it takes to travel between Nottingham and Leeds by upgrading the track between Newark and Nottingham. We will increase our investment in the midlands rail hub to £1.75 billion, better connecting more than 50 stations, and we will improve journey times from north Wales to England, bringing parts of north Wales within an hour of Manchester by electrifying the north Wales main line. Network North is vital to our plans to level up the economy. It will connect labour markets across the north, expanding where people can work and where companies can recruit from. It will make it easier to deliver goods to markets and shorten supply chains in regions, growing the local economy. Instead of dragging investment towards London, we will contribute towards growth everywhere in the country.

As I said, although the motion is technical, this is still an exciting day for the north. We are taking a step towards providing the kind of infrastructure that people really want, connecting the great cities of Manchester and Liverpool, and making it easier to move around, work and invest in the region. I commend the motion to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the debate so we can reflect on the importance of high-speed rail, the Northern Powerhouse Rail project, and connecting our towns and cities.

When we talk about connectivity, we always talk about the great powerhouses that are our cities, but our towns matter too. In many cases, towns have been the first to see cuts and the last to see investment. We need to use this opportunity to talk about our communities in the round. Generations to come will look back at this period in our history with regret at a missed opportunity to invest in the future of our country. When previous generations planned the infrastructure we see today, and in many ways take for granted, whether that is the canal, railway or motorway network that we enjoy, people had foresight. They planned well ahead, understood that in order to create a connected country they had to plan for a connected country, and took decisions for future generations, not only the current one. In that spirit, the cancellation of HS2 from the midlands to the north is a matter of serious regret.

The proposals have been pitched to say, “Well, the north of England can now have Northern Powerhouse Rail. Isn’t that good news?” Of course the £12 million investment connecting Manchester and Liverpool is welcome, but London did not have to choose between HS2 and the Elizabeth line, which cost £19 billion. If London does not have to choose, why on earth should the north of England have to choose on the same basis? Again, it is because the north of England has been shortchanged when it comes to investment.

Local leaders and Mayors across the midlands and the north have been working hard to try to rescue this decision and make some sense of what it can mean for future investment. We owe a significant debt of gratitude to our great council leaders, our Mayors and our transport authorities—particularly the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, Transport for the North and the local transport bodies—for the work they have done.

None the less, there are serious questions about the proposal on the table. Why do the Government seem to want to close the door completely on the idea that a midlands to Manchester link of HS2, funded by private finance, might be an option in the future? If the Government do not want to fund it today, why close the door for a funding model tomorrow?

Why has Manchester Piccadilly been told that it cannot have tunnelling that would take the platforms underground instead of overground, when the whole of the south of England is more or less tunnelled from the centre of London outwards? Why is a tunnel good enough for a field in the south of England, but not for one of our major cities in the north of England?

Manchester Airport station is a significant hub not just for Greater Manchester, but for the whole of the north of England, so why is Greater Manchester and its taxpayers being asked to make a local contribution to that scheme, when it is essentially a national project?

Why not use this as an opportunity to look at transport in the round? Heavy rail is important, and all the benefits of HS2 were well-rehearsed: they were about capacity, passenger transport, taking freight off the congested motorways, increased frequency and reducing costs. The whole project was also an opportunity to look at transport in the round—multi-modal transport, including bus, trams, trains and other airports. Why not use this as an opportunity to look beyond the cities to our towns? It is a significant frustration in Greater Manchester that most of our transport relies on the centre of Manchester to go in and out, because the cross-borough connectivity is so poor. Why not use this as an opportunity to bring forward plans to have an orbital tram for Greater Manchester—for the north-east of the conurbation—connecting the Bury line to Middleton and on to Chadderton and Oldham and through to the Ashton line, which, under these plans, faces a two-year closure during engineering works at Manchester Piccadilly. Why not use this as an opportunity for that?

Why not use this scheme as an opportunity to reinvigorate plans for reopening some of the lines closed by Beeching? It would be fantastic to reopen the Middleton Junction station on the Rochdale to Manchester Victoria line, serving new communities that have been rebuilt around the Foxdenton Lane area in Chadderton. Why not use it as an opportunity to have a joined-up transport system? FirstGroup, through the Lumo brand, has suggested a potential 2027 connection from Rochdale to London Euston. It will pass through Mills Hill in Chadderton and Moston, which serves Chadderton, without stopping to say hello. Why not look at that in the round and say that, since the light rail system was introduced in Oldham, there is no longer a heavy rail station for Oldham town centre. The nearest that we have is Mills Hill, so why not have that national connectivity at Mills Hill, joining up to Victoria and on to London Euston?

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly powerful argument, but he is also making an argument as to why this should be a wider discussion; it should not just be shunted upstairs. Does he agree that we need to open up this debate so that we can have bespoke, clear legislation to make this happen?

[Jim McMahon]

The problem is that there was no debate or legislation when the Prime Minister woke up one morning and decided to cancel HS2; it was done on a whim. All those manifesto commitments, all those promises to the business community and to the public that we would see this through, because we had a generational responsibility to plan for the future, were scrapped overnight. I have no faith that any further parliamentary process will ultimately deliver better transport in the north of England. In the end, it will be used by people who have another interest, which is to stop it entirely.

[Jack Brereton]

If we had a Labour Government—I hope that we will not—does the hon. Gentleman think that they would bring phase 2 back?

[Jim McMahon]

In the end, it would be for the Labour Government to assess what they inherit at that point, but does that not make the case for not having a scorched-earth policy of completely derailing what could have been HS2 by selling off the lands and the assets that were purchased to free up that route in the way this Government are currently proposing?

[James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon]

I will, although I am conscious of time, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[James Grundy]

The hon. Gentleman calls it a scorched-earth policy. I declare my interest as somebody whose family farm is affected by the proposed route of HS2 phase 2b, but ultimately people such my own family and the community I live in have been suffering for over a decade with uncertainty about whether the project would go ahead. He calls it scorched earth, but is it not only fair that people get their life back after having that uncertainty for so long?

[Jim McMahon]

Any functioning Government should be able to balance the need to involve local people in decisions that affect their day-to-day lives, providing certainty about the future and being able to get vital infrastructure investments for the country off the ground. It should not be a trade-off between one or the other, where people’s livelihoods and lives are left in the air for years and years, only for the project to be taken away. In the end, nobody wins, do they? People cannot get the time back that they wasted being stressed about the impact because they were not properly consulted and engaged, only to have it scrapped overnight—and for what? It is about involving people in the right time in the right decisions, so that they have agency in the process.

I will bring my remarks to a conclusion with this: if London did not have to choose between its sub-regional investment and its national investment, why on earth should the north of England?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

In order to get the last two speakers in, I need to put on a time limit of six minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris]

As well as having served on the hybrid Bill Committee, I serve on the Transport Committee, and part of that Committee’s duties is to scrutinise HS2 and hold the Rail Minister, who is responsible for the delivery of HS2, to account. Certainly, concerns were expressed to the Transport Committee that statutory undertakings and assurances were not honoured—at least not in the form in which they were presented to the Committee.

[Jim McMahon]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Grahame Morris]

I will give way one more time, very briefly.

[Jim McMahon]

This was only separated out because, as in this debate, some tried to make out that residents were opposed to the project overall. However, my hon. Friend must have seen in the hybrid Bill Committee process that quite a lot of the opposition was about the operational performance of HS2 Ltd and the considerations for local people in construction traffic, delays and the rest of it, which probably could have been done much better.

[Grahame Morris]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that perfectly reasonable point. Indeed, it is certainly true of requests for variations to traffic in locations of construction sites and so forth. However, I only have a couple of minutes, so I do not want to be tempted on to the wrong track, as it were, and will just share a couple of thoughts.

I am a bit of a buff. I might be an anti-node, but I am familiar with the locations on the route.

This afternoon, those of us on the Transport Committee have been involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the rail reform Bill, and have been listening to representations from representatives of the Welsh Government and the sub-national transport bodies. They were commenting on the new structure and the new draft Bill, and there is general recognition—not just from Transport for the North in my region; we had witnesses from Midlands Connect and Transport East, as well as the Welsh Government—that there is a major transport infrastructure issue. For many decades, we have concentrated on north-south connectivity—principally on connectivity with the capital city. We have done that for sound economic reasons, but the case for east-west connections is supported vociferously by the metro Mayors of Manchester, Liverpool and West Yorkshire, and there are sound economic and connectivity arguments for addressing the need for those connections.

This mechanism is far from perfect. As a separate matter, the House should look at whether the pre-legislative scrutiny process can be truncated in some way to speed it up, but we must give petitioners—Members of Parliament, individuals and businesses—the opportunity to raise their concerns. Imperfect though the mechanism may be, and imperfect though I may be in advocating for it, it does have its merits when it comes to scrutinising major infrastructure schemes such as this one, so I will support today’s motion.