Union Connectivity Review

John Lamont Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Union Connectivity Review.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I am pleased to have secured this debate on the Union connectivity review and delighted that so many Members have shown an interest in taking part. I will certainly bear that interest in mind and try to keep my remarks reasonably brief.

Sir Peter Hendy published the Union connectivity review interim report last week, and I want to start by congratulating him and his team on their work so far. What leaps out from the pages of that report is a genuine enthusiasm for transport connectivity and its enormous potential to strengthen our economic performance by improving the opportunities available to the people we all represent. In my discussions with Sir Peter, it has been clear to me that he gets it. I believe we can expect a substantial and potentially transformative piece of work when the final report appears in the summer. The review should be welcomed by everyone who cares about improving connectivity within and across the United Kingdom. It is to be welcomed for practical reasons and for reasons of principle.

Before I talk in more detail about some of those practical benefits, particularly as they apply to my area in the Scottish borders, I want to set out why the review is right in principle. As Sir Peter states unequivocally in his interim report:

“Devolution has been good for transport”.

As he is a former commissioner for transport in the devolved Greater London Authority, it should come as no surprise that he says so—and he is correct. His review is rightly seeking to engage with the devolved Administrations across the United Kingdom, though in the case of the SNP Scottish Government, sadly, that co-operative attitude has not been reciprocated. The decade I spent as a Member of the Scottish Parliament convinced me of the huge potential for more responsive decision making, which is inherent in devolution, even if I did not always think that the nationalist Government were always making the most of that potential. I might return to that point if time permits.

Nothing in the content or intention of the review in any way undermines the ability of the devolved Governments to make transport policies for the nations they serve. Instead, the review does something new, imaginative and, I think, necessary—it looks at our transport connectivity right across the United Kingdom in the round. As Sir Peter points out, devolution, for all its undoubted benefits, has led to a lack of attention to connectivity between the four nations. The review seeks to pay some attention to that important matter.

It is quite right that the United Kingdom Government, as the Government serving the whole UK and accountable to representatives of the whole UK in this Parliament, should have commissioned the review. Everyone who wants devolution within the UK to work should welcome this approach. Of course, if someone’s objective is to show that devolution does not work and that separation is the only answer, no doubt they will object to it. If it is good for the United Kingdom, it is bad for the cause of separation. I fear we might hear some of that dog-in-the-manger negativity from SNP Members later in the debate, but perhaps they will pleasantly surprise me.

There is another reason that this is a timely moment to conduct a review of this sort. As we have left the European Union, we have consequently left the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network, or TEN-T. That common policy seeks to forge greater economic and social cohesion across the EU through the development of transport networks. How successful it has been, or could ever be, in achieving that aim across as vast and diverse a geography as the European continent is debateable.

What is clear is that the UK was not a major beneficiary of TEN-T projects. The UK contributed in the region of €447 million annually to the TEN-T funding vehicle, the Connecting Europe Facility for Transport. However, we achieved only around €48 million in awards. TEN-T was not a great deal for the United Kingdom, and the EU’s transport policy making was inescapably distant and remote from our needs and concerns. We now have the chance to replace that distant and remote policy with a new, bespoke and pan-UK strategic transport network. That is principled, it is timely, and it can deliver tangible practical benefits.

I will set out some of those benefits as they would apply in my own area in the south of Scotland. An obvious focus for the review has been cross-border links, and those are crucial for us in the south of Scotland. For the communities I represent, access northwards into the central belt, particularly the economic and cultural centres of Edinburgh and Glasgow, is of huge importance, but so too are links south into England and west into Dumfries and Galloway. For my constituents in Berwickshire, the local economic centre is over the border, in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Similarly, to the south-west of my constituency, around Hawick and Newcastleton, many residents look to Carlisle as their economic hub. As I am sure my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) —if he catches your eye, Ms McVey—will say that residents in Dumfriesshire also look to Carlisle.

Frankly, the south of Scotland has not been well served by successive Scottish Governments, whose focus has always been on the central belt and who have consistently neglected rural areas, particularly in the south and north-east of Scotland.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Obviously, the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge the fact that the SNP Government delivered the borders railway, which is obviously a great benefit to his constituency.

[John Lamont]

I am grateful for that. There is an opportunity in the review to accelerate the extension of the borders railway from Tweedbank to Hawick and Newcastleton, and on to Carlisle, which is why I and most of my constituents are baffled as to why the Scottish Government refuse to engage with the review and allow the acceleration of that project to take place.

That is even more surprising because the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) has called for an extension of the borders rail link to Carlisle, and for it

“to become a proper cross-border connection.”—[Official Report, 17 October 2018; Vol. 647, c. 353WH.]

Back in 2018, he asked whether the UK Government would work with the Scottish Government on that line, so I do not understand what has changed. There is an opportunity to get that project moving more quickly, yet his colleagues in the Scottish Government are trying to stop investment in transport in my constituency and other parts of Scotland.

It is hard to get it across to the SNP Government that transport links across the border are important too, and that Scotland’s two Governments should work together to improve them. The UK is a willing partner in that enterprise, as the review testifies, and it is time that the SNP put the politics aside and joined the UK Government in that spirit. My constituents welcome the ideas and intent of the UK connectivity review to boost cross-border infrastructure. The Borderlands initiative, behind which the UK Government have been the driving force, reflects the fact that the south of Scotland and the far north of England are a functioning economic area with strong ties. That is one of the reasons that voters in my area rejected by two to one the suggestion in 2014 that an international border should be erected to separate Scotland from the rest of Britain. We do not want new barriers; we want new connections and stronger links.

I have campaigned for a number of years alongside my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) for improvements to be made to the main A1 trunk road, which links Edinburgh and the borders to Berwick, Newcastle and the rest of England. I am delighted that the A1 between Newcastle and Edinburgh is listed as a major priority in the interim report.

Alongside improvements to the A1, my other chief priority for the review is the campaign to extend the borders railway to Hawick and Newcastleton, and on to Carlisle. That extension would bring huge benefits to the local area and has the potential to open up a new cross-border rail corridor. A £10 million feasibility study of an extension was announced last year as part of the UK Government-backed Borderlands growth deal. I pressed the case for borders rail directly with Sir Peter Hendy, and I will continue to make the case for it. The Campaign for Borders Rail is looking forward to meeting the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), in the coming weeks.

The Union connectivity review is taking a new approach to assessing where our transport investment priorities should lie. In line with the Government’s levelling-up agenda, and following the Treasury’s recent review of the Green Book process, the focus is rightly shifting away from a narrow cost-benefit analysis towards a more strategic approach, taking into account wider environmental and social impacts. That is why I say that the connectivity review has the potential to be transformative, because better transport connectivity can transform lives.

Those who live in cities or in well-connected suburbs take connectivity for granted. They know that if they want to change jobs, embark on further study, take up a new hobby or simply go to the shops, the cinema or a concert, there will be transport options to get them there and back, but there is no such certainty in the smaller rural communities that I represent. That limits people’s opportunities, and it drives away younger people who might want to stay in the local area surrounded by family, friends and support networks but just cannot make it work because of the lack of transport connectivity.

The improvements for which we are fighting in the Scottish borders are not about shaving a few minutes off a commute or increasing the chances of getting a seat on a rush-hour train, important as those things are for many people. We are fighting to replace no service, no choice and no opportunity with something new and something better.

I remember speaking to a parent in Newcastleton about the lost opportunities experienced by her family. Her children could not take part in after-school activities at the high school in Hawick, as the school was more than 28 miles away, and there were no public transport options for getting the kids home after the sports and other activities had finished. What impact does that have on our children who live in communities where they simply cannot access what other young people take for granted as part of their educational experience? Doing things the old way has not served many of the communities in the Scottish borders well. The Union connectivity review represents a new, principled, pragmatic and imaginative approach that has the potential to change lives. It has my support, and I urge Governments at all levels across the United Kingdom to give it their support too.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I shall call other Back Benchers, followed by the SNP spokesperson, the Opposition spokesperson and the Minister. We want to get to Front-Bench contributions by 5.30 pm, and a lot of people wish to contribute today, so the time limit will be between four and four and a half minutes so we can get through everyone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. The Union is over 300 years old. The Tories have been in power for 66 years since the end of world war one, and yet now suddenly we need a Union connectivity review, with Westminster telling us what we need. Westminster has failed Scotland for years and now we are supposed to embrace a vanity project such as a Union bridge or tunnel to Northern Ireland.

If we look at Scotland’s road systems, it is the SNP that has been making up for a previous lack of ambition. The SNP Scottish Government have delivered the new M74 and the new M80 motorways—we never even had a continuous motorway linking Glasgow and Edinburgh until the SNP made it happen. We have also built the Queensferry bridge and are dualling the A9.

In a similar vein, our island communities benefited from EU funding, not Westminster generosity, for bridges such as Scalpay to Harris, causeways, ports and road upgrades, including the Fort William to Mallaig road to the Isles, which was the last remaining single-lane trunk road in the UK until 2009. It was being in the EU that helped Scotland to access funds, which were not coming from Westminster, and now the Tories have also taken that avenue away from us.

If we look at the A75, which has now suddenly become a modern Tory totem, what about acknowledging the Cairntop to Barlae, the Newton Stewart, Barfil to Bettyknowes, Planting End to Drumflower, and Hardgrove to Kinmount upgrades, as well as the Dunragit bypass? There has been a lot of money spent in the A75 by the SNP.

If we look back at Hansard, it confirms the Tories actually promised the Dunragit bypass, as a scheme that was in progress in 1989, as was the Barlae upgrades. It is the SNP that is making up for decades of failed Westminster promises and failures of Labour at Holyrood as well, yet the Tories still shout “More, more, more!” They do not want the Scottish Government to have additional borrowing powers, they stand by while the Chancellor cuts the capital budget to Scotland to 5% and yet they shout “More!” The SNP has also undertaken several upgrades to the A77 including the Maybole bypass—a project first thought about decades ago and also promised by Lord Douglas-Hamilton in 1989.

Turning to rail, the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) actually had the cheek previously to speak out against the Borders rail project because, he said, if it was only going to Galashiels, he would rather have the money spent elsewhere.

[John Lamont]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Alan Brown]

I do not have time.

The hon. Member still has not complimented the SNP on delivering what was the longest new railway in Great Britain for over a century, and we do not need a Westminster review to tell us the benefits of extending it to Carlisle. I appreciate he did point out that I have spoken about this in the Chamber before as well.

On rail, I have also highlighted the absurdity whereby the choice of rolling stock for HS2 means that when it comes into operation, trains from Scotland to Crewe will go slower than they do now. What we need is independence and to be able to speak about cross-border transport as a nation of equals, rather than being told what to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Lamont]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for participating in the debate and the Minister for her response and constructive engagement. I think what my constituents in the Scottish borders—and, indeed, Scots across the nation—will remember about the debate is the SNP MPs arguing against more investment in Scotland and investment in Scotland’s transport network. When they go to the polls in a few weeks, I am sure they will remember that Scottish nationalist MPs were arguing against extension to the borders railway, against improvements to the A1 and A75 roads and against many opportunities to improve employability and opportunity for people in Scotland. That is a great shame.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Union Connectivity Review.