Colne to Skipton Railway Link

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Graham P. Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. I do not have to hand the figures for Manchester Road station in Burnley, which is on that link. It is a circuitous route. It is not the old 30 minutes direct into Manchester; it is 60 minutes. None the less, passenger numbers at Accrington station have gone from, I think, 289,000 to 469,000— or thereabouts. I may be corrected afterwards, but it is not far off. That is a huge increase in numbers since the line was put in. The reinstatement of Colne-Skipton could only add to patronage and use of the lines, and investment in those areas.

The reinstatement would probably cost about £360 million. Let me talk about that number. The Government think that £360 million for a deprived area would probably not be money well spent. Not only would it be an investment in people, but if the railway is there for 100 years it comes to £360,000 a year. That would be the capital cost, instead of millions for titivating town centres. I might compare that with my local clinical commissioning group, which spends almost £1 billion in the east Lancashire area annually. We must get some perspective. There is serious ill health and deprivation in the area, but we are reluctant to invest in people and we try to cut margins on the railway. Economically that does not stand up. The Government’s policy of investing in other things and giving away grant money seems to me to be a case of looking in the wrong direction. We should be investing where it matters.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

There are a lot of MPs here to support the proposition that the hon. Gentleman is putting forward, and I am glad to add my support. Does he agree that the secret to investment in any area is connectivity, which he has referred to, and that the key to that is a functioning railway line? Does he further agree that the proposed reopening of this line would enable not only better commuting, but more investment potential for these two towns and indeed the whole area, which should be the primary reason for the Government to pursue this proposal?

[Graham P. Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right; all these little bits of links, as I mentioned in my response to my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), add value to other sub-regions; they are not just an advantage or an addition for that particular sub-region. These things really matter, and with this particular line we are talking about potentially connecting the port of Hull with the port of Liverpool for manufacturing and the shipment of goods, as well as passenger services. That has a broad connectivity that goes beyond east Lancashire, which is why there is support all the way from Merseyside to Hull for the reinstatement of this line.

Yet we are sitting here with 12 miles missing in the middle, between Skipton and Colne. I want to see that line upgraded to a twin-track railway for freight—I think it is gauge 12, although I will stand corrected if it is not—and built to modern standards. We need to put back that line, which was cut in 1970, because it will connect two big industrial heartlands and provide opportunity for both passengers and freight. The decision to cut the line back in 1970 was a terrible one, which has mirrored the deprivation indices for east Lancashire, but since then we have seen an increase in passenger numbers on Britain’s railways. In fact, they have doubled.

That is certainly what would happen here. Think of the Borders Railway: what a success it has been. The Government said it would not be a success and ScotRail said it would, and who was right? It was not the people in Westminster or the people in the Department for Transport; they were wrong. The people who were right were the people north of the border. That line has been a huge success, and there should be a lesson there to us all about listening to mandarins in Whitehall instead of investing in and listening to local people.

Most of the route between Skipton and Colne is flat and level, and can be walked in a few hours. Some bridges need to be rebuilt, and in a couple of places—particularly at Earby—major road works are needed. However, in the words of the DFT’s 2018 report presented to the Transport Minister last December, there are “no showstoppers” preventing us from putting those12 miles back.

As I said previously, the Skipton to Colne link has widespread support throughout the local community. It is important to say that it is also backed regionally and by businesses, and regularly features in the media. I think it is on the list of 13 schemes that the Government are considering for rail line reinstatement. The campaign has more than 500 individual paid-up members and 50 businesses are signed up, as well as other organisations. Key businesses include Peel Ports, Drax—which is having problems getting to the power plant there—and Skipton Building Society, among many.

The project also has the support of all the MPs in the area. I note that the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) is here; he is a campaigner for the rail link and I pay credit to his campaigning, as I do to that of others—I do not think there is anybody, either candidate or MP, who is against the reinstatement. We have even had co-operation from Yorkshire, and that is remarkable. We just need some signs saying, “Welcome to Lancashire” when we reinstate the line.