Small Towns: Transport Links

Joe Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

As always, Sir Roger, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) on securing such an important and timely debate.

As the MP for the largest constituency in England, I spend a lot of time speaking about local transport, whether that is rail, road, walking or cycling. Over the recess, I was lucky to cycle a part of the proposed Haydon Bridge to Hexham cycle way. I look forward to working with the community group that is trying to get funding for that.

I will spend a lot of my time focusing on a particular case: the ongoing campaign to bring rail back to the village of Gilsland, which sits half in my constituency and half in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns). Gilsland sits on the Northumberland-Cumbria border, at the heart of the Hadrian’s wall world heritage site. The village is a central point for visitors to the incredible features of historical interest in the border country. There was a train station at Gilsland from 1836 to 1967, when it closed because of the Beeching report, along with thousands of other stations across the country.

There has been passionate community campaigning, spanning decades, by the Campaign to Open Gilsland Station and the Tyne Valley Community Rail Partnership, which are dedicated to the cause of reconnecting local people to their rail network. They have been challenging outdated assumptions, securing reports showing clear evidence of the credible economic and social case for reopening the station, and submitting multiple bids to multiple Government pots of money. Almost 60 years after closure, there is still no operating station, despite the fact that locals have to see trains passing the station on the Newcastle-Carlisle line every day. That is a living example of a rural community being left behind.

I am passionate about getting the station reopened. It would be fantastic not just for the economy of Gilsland, but for the economy of the whole of Northumberland. It would add to the county’s already magnificent tourism offer and would make it easier for people to come into my region and spend their money. Visit Northumberland, the tourism body, spends most of its time—as does the Conservative-run county council—promoting the coastal regions of the county, rather than promoting west Northumberland.

I want to comment briefly on a subject that my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen touched on: road safety. There can be no good connectivity without road safety. On a summer tour last year, I held 80 surgeries in four weeks across my constituency; I will do it again this year. The No. 1 concern that comes up in almost every village is “Can we get a speed limit? Can we get a speed camera? Can we do something about road crossings?” It particularly affects those small villages where people have to cross the road to get the village hall or the shop. These are often communities where there is no available road crossing.

I would like to see the Government doing far more to push local authorities to address what are often ticking time bombs. Those cases are often acted on only after there has been a tragedy. We need far more proactive action from local authorities.